Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"Evil people always support each other; that is their chief strength."

- Aleksander Solzhenitsyn

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."

- Blaise Pascal

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: if we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle."

- Carl Sagan

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 18, 2023

2. China’s Ex-Foreign Minister Ousted After Alleged Affair, Senior Officials Told

3. Taiwan submarine dream surfaces as China tensions rise

4. The CIA Politicizes Intelligence on China and Covid

5. Zelensky Cleans House in Corruption-Plagued Defense Ministry

6. Biden to Urge Nations to Protect and Nurture Democracy

7. Missing F-35 Is Third Costly Accident for Marines in Recent Weeks

8. Biden to address U.N. assembly in an effort to bolster alliances

9. Abrams tanks to enter Ukraine soon, Austin says at Ramstein meeting

10. India, Canada expel diplomats over accusations Delhi killed Sikh activist

11. When will China invade Taiwan? The answer lies in West Africa

12. Opinion | Meet Putin’s Ghostwriter

13. Opinion | The Ukraine war showcases new military technologies. Whoever masters them wins.

14. Analysis | The main storylines at a gloomy United Nations

15. President Zelenskyy Goes to Washington (Again)

16. Former Biden official at the heart of Pentagon culture wars launches House campaign

17. Republican Army veteran to run for Democratic-controlled Virginia U.S. House seat

18. FBI chief says China has bigger hacking program than the competition combined

19. Watch Out for Backroom Warmongers Urging NATO Entanglement in Ukraine

20. Norms at Home, Norms Abroad: Security Force Assistance and Civil-Military Relations

21. It’s Time for a Special Inspector General for Ukraine Assistance

22. Making Military Service More Attractive for Modern Spouses

23. American Hatred Goes Global

24. Department of Defense Enters an Agreement to Expand Domestic Manufacturing to Strengthen U.S. Supply Chains for Rare Earth Magnets

25. China is edging out the US military’s advantage on tech

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 18, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-18-2023

Key Takeaways:

Ukraine’s liberation of Klishchiivka and Andriivka south of Bakhmut may have degraded the Russian defense in the area south of Bakhmut and could have rendered combat ineffective as many as three Russian brigades according to Ukrainian military officials.
Ukrainian counteroffensive operations may have resulted in the particularly severe degradation of critical elements of the Russian elastic defense in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
Ukrainian counteroffensive operations may have resulted in the particularly severe degradation of critical elements of the Russian elastic defense in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
Recent Ukrainian advances south of Bakhmut may correspond with the similar degradation of defending Russian units in the area.
Russian forces conducted a series of Shahed-131/136 drone and cruise missile strikes on coastal and rear areas of Ukraine on the night of September 17-18.
An organization with alleged ties to Russian First Deputy Presidential Chief of Staff Sergey Kiriyenko is reportedly responsible for disseminating pro-war propaganda and false information about Ukraine to prominent figures in the Russian information space.
Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia and advanced in some areas on September 18.
Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations in at least two sectors of the front and advanced in western Zaporizhia on September 18.
Some Russian sources claimed that former Wagner Group personnel are working closely with Rosgvardia (Russian National Guard) in order to return fighting in Ukraine.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 18, 2023

Sep 18, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 18, 2023

Riley Bailey, Christina Harward, Nicole Wolkov, Grace Mappes, and Frederick W. Kagan

September 18, 2023, 9:00pm ET

Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 2:00pm ET on September 18. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the September 19 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Ukraine’s liberation of Klishchiivka and Andriivka south of Bakhmut may have degraded the Russian defense in the area south of Bakhmut and could have rendered combat ineffective in as many as three Russian brigades according to Ukrainian military officials. Ukrainian Ground Forces Commander Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi stated on September 18 that Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut) and Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut) were important elements of the Russian Bakhmut-Horlivka defensive line that Ukrainian forces “breached.”[1] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Captain Ilya Yevlash stated on September 17 that Ukraine’s liberation of Klishchiivka will allow Ukrainian forces to control Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) supplying the Russian force grouping in the Bakhmut area — likely referring to Ukrainian forces’ ability to establish fire control over the T0513 Bakhmut-Horlivka highway.[2] ISW is currently unable independently to evaluate the strength and extent of the Russian defensive fortifications in the Bakhmut area, although Russian forces have likely fortified their defense lines near Bakhmut less heavily than they did in southern Ukraine. Russian forces south of Bakhmut are also likely battle-weary from the recent efforts to hold Klishchiivka and Andriivka, and the Ukrainian capture of two settlements defending a key Russian GLOC supporting Bakhmut indicates that these forces will likely struggle to replenish their combat strength and defend against any further Ukrainian offensive activity south of Bakhmut. There are no immediate indications that the liberation of Klishchiivka and Andriivka will portend a higher rate of Ukrainian advance south of Bakhmut, however, and the Russian defense of positions west of the T0513 will likely continue to present challenges for Ukrainian forces in the area.

The Ukrainian liberation of two villages that Russian forces were fighting hard to hold could correspond with the severe degradation of the Russian units defending them, as Ukrainian advances in western Zaporizhia Oblast appear to correspond with the significant degradation of defending Russian units and formations in that sector of the front. Russian forces defending in western Zaporizhia Oblast since the start of the counteroffensive have done so largely without operational-level unit rotations and have likely suffered compounding losses.[3] Elements of the Russian 42nd Motorized Rifle Division’s 71st, 70th, and 291st Motorized Rifle Regiments (58th Combined Arms Army, Southern Military District)routinely repelled Ukrainian assaults and engaged in various “combat clashes,“ including limited engagements and some counterattacks, during the first phase of the counteroffensive from June to August 2023.[4] In mid-to-late August, Ukrainian forces began breaking through the initial Russian defensive layer that these elements of the 42nd Motorized Rifle Division had spent considerable amounts of manpower, personnel, and effort to hold.[5] Russian reporting and footage suggest that many of these elements of the 42nd Motorized Rifle Division have since withdrawn to positions behind a subsequent Russian defensive layer between Verbove (18km southeast of Orikhiv) and Solodka Balka (20km south of Orikhiv) and now mainly shell advancing Ukrainian units.[6] The absence of recent reports and footage of these elements participating in combat engagements in western Zaporizhia Oblast suggests that casualties sustained during the first phases of the Ukrainian counteroffensive rendered them combat ineffective. Elements of the 70th Motorized Rifle Regiment reportedly temporarily withdrew to a rear area during the Ukrainian breakthrough and returned to frontline positions in early September, suggesting that Ukrainian advances had degraded this unit enough to compel the Russian command to give it time to refit in the rear — which would be one of the very few unit rotations ISW has observed on this sector of the front.[7] Elements of the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade (Black Sea Fleet), which also held forward positions at the initial Russian defensive layer during the earlier phases of the counteroffensive, similarly appear to be deployed further behind the Russian defensive layer ahead of the current Ukraine advance.[8] Elements of the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade reportedly engaged in close combat during the Ukrainian push through Robotyne (10km south of Orikhiv), and Russian milbloggers maintain that some elements of the unit hold positions near the southern outskirts of Robotyne.[9]

Ukrainian counteroffensive operations may have resulted in the particularly severe degradation of critical elements of the Russian elastic defense in western Zaporizhia Oblast. Elements of the Russian 22nd and 45th Separate Spetsnaz Brigades appeared to be responsible for counterattacking against significant Ukrainian advances in the Robotyne area during the earlier phases of the counteroffensive and likely suffered heavy losses in these operations.[10] Russian reporting and footage of the Robotyne area in recent weeks has largely omitted mention of these Spetsnaz brigades, suggesting that this degradation may have severely impacted their ability to continue counterattacking. A prominent milblogger claimed that elements of the 45th Spetsnaz Brigade were still operating near the frontline as of September 12, however.[11] Elements of the Russian 7th Guards Mountain Airborne (VDV) Division that laterally deployed to the Robotyne area in mid-August during the Ukrainian breakthrough now appear to be responsible for conducting counterattacks against the most forward advances of the Ukrainian breach.[12] Russian sources routinely claim that VDV elements, which may include elements of the 76th Guards VDV Division that also laterally redeployed to the area, repel Ukrainian assaults and conduct counterattacks near Robotyne[13] The degradation of the elements of the 22nd and 45th Separate Spetsnaz Brigades initially responsible for counterattacking in the Robotyne area likely prompted the Russian command to laterally redeploy these elements of the 7th and 76th VDV Divisions to assume responsibility for counterattacking. The Russian elastic defense requires one echelon of Russian forces to slow a Ukrainian tactical advance while a second echelon of forces rolls back that advance through counterattacking. Counterattacking requires significant morale and relatively high combat capabilities, and the Russian military appears to rely on relatively elite VDV units and formations for this undertaking, possibly at the expense of heavily degrading these forces.[14]

ISW has not directly observed the level of degradation among the Russian units referenced above and it is possible that some have suffered heavier losses than others. It is also possible that the Russians have used the arrival of elements of the 76th and 7th VDV Divisions to conduct belated unit rotations of their tired frontline units. The current battlefield geometry between the Ukrainian advance and current Russian defensive positions may also be contributing to the apparent absence of these likely degraded units from combat engagements, as the gap between Ukrainian advances and Russian defensive positions may result in less direct combat engagements. Ukrainian forces may engage these units in more direct combat as they further advance into and past the current Russian defensive layer. It is thus too soon to assess with high confidence that the initial defenders in this sector have been rendered combat ineffective, but the evidence currently available points in that direction.

Recent Ukrainian advances south of Bakhmut may correspond with the similar degradation of defending Russian units in the area. Syrskyi stated that Ukrainian forces completely destroyed the combat capabilities of elements of the 72nd Motorized Rifle Brigade (3rd Army Corps), the 31st Guards VDV Brigade, and the 83rd Guards VDV Brigade during the liberation of Andriivka and Klishchiivka.[15] Russian “Vostok” Battalion commander Alexander Khodakovsky’s claim that the 31st VDV Brigade commander has been killed supports this statement.[16] The 72nd Motorized Brigade has likely been rendered combat ineffective, although the exact level of losses among the two VDV brigades remains unclear.[17] These VDV elements were involved in counterattacking and attempting to roll back Ukrainian advances around Bakhmut — similar to the way that VDV elements operate in western Zaporizhia Oblast — and likely suffered heavy losses.[18] If recent Ukrainian advances south of Bakhmut resulted in the destruction of the 31st and 83rd VDV brigades’ combat capabilities, then the Russian command will likely laterally redeploy elements of another relatively elite formation to maintain critical elements of the Russian defense south of Bakhmut. Ukrainian counteroffensive operations have pinned elements of two VDV divisions and another VDV brigade in addition to the 83rd and 31st in the Bakhmut direction, and the Russian command may decide to conduct tactical redeployments to make up for the reported losses among the 83rd and 31st VDV brigades.[19] Lateral redeployments from elsewhere in Ukraine or substantial tactical redeployments of other VDV elements in the Bakhmut area would therefore indicate that recent Ukrainian advances have resulted in significant Russian losses.

Russian forces conducted a series of Shahed-131/136 drone and cruise missile strikes on coastal and rear areas of Ukraine on the night of September 17-18. Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces launched 24 Shahed drones from Krasnodar Krai and occupied Crimea and 17 Kh-101/555/55 air-launched cruise missiles from Tu-95MS strategic bombers that took off from Volgograd Oblast.[20] Ukrainian officials reported that Ukrainian forces shot down 18 drones and all 17 missiles.[21] The Ukrainian Air Force noted that the Russian drone strike targeted Mykolaiv and Odesa oblasts.[22] Russian sources claimed that Russian drones hit ports in Odesa Oblast and that the Russian missiles targeted the Starokostyantyniv airfield in Khmelnytskyi Oblast.[23]

An organization with alleged ties to Russian First Deputy Presidential Chief of Staff Sergey Kiriyenko is reportedly responsible for disseminating pro-war propaganda and false information about Ukraine to prominent figures in the Russian information space. Russian opposition news outlets Meduza, Vazhnye Istorii, and the Bell reported on September 13 that the non-profit organization “Dialog” created multiple popular Telegram channels to increase pro-Russian reporting on the war in Ukraine at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion and has subsequently been distributing false information about the war in Ukraine to prominent figures in the Russian information space, including Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, prominent milbloggers, and popular news aggregators.[24] Dialog is also reportedly affiliated with pro-Russian Telegram channels that mimic Ukrainian channels.[25] Dialog reportedly advised unspecified individuals in the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) to issue a “tough” and “prompt” response following increasing reports of a lack of ammunition and provisions among Russian mobilized personnel in Ukraine.[26] Dialog-affiliated sources also reportedly disseminated negative reports about deceased Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin while Wagner forces were fighting in Ukraine.[27] The Russian Ministry of Digital Development reportedly transferred 6.5 billion rubles (about $67.7 million) to Dialog in 2022, and its deputy general director, Vladimir Tabak, reportedly has ties to Kiriyenko.[28] ISW has consistently observed some Russian sources making similar claims with similar language on the same days, which may suggest that some Russian sources receive information from the same source. Kiriyenko’s reported affiliation with Dialog is consistent with ISW’s assessment that some Russian siloviki and senior military commanders control various Telegram channels intended to further their individual objectives in the Russian information space.[29]

Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Moscow on September 18. Lavrov stated in his opening remarks that the world is undergoing “tectonic shifts” and reiterated boilerplate rhetoric on the importance and previous successes of Russian-Chinese cooperation.[30]

Imprisoned ardent nationalist and former Russian officer Igor Girkin issued a direct criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin to rally supporters to his cause. Girkin, via his lawyer Alexander Molokhov, posted a statement on September 18 dated September 15 that justifies Girkin’s opposition to Putin.[31] Girkin humorously answered the question “why Strelkov [Girkin] has gone crazy” for asserting that he is “better than Putin.” Girkin claimed that the “Troubles” (likely referencing the Time of Troubles in 17th century Russia that preceded the rise of the Romanov dynasty) have begun in Russia and that the Kremlin’s attempts to address the direst issues have failed, so the current “bureaucratic-oligarchic system” will eventually “collapse.” Girkin claimed that it is his “duty” to try to unite other patriots to be a suitable alternative but acknowledged that he may lack the resources to succeed or may have begun his initiative too early. Girkin expressed hope that his efforts will inspire others to “act as leaders of the national-patriotic movement” because “it is too late to be afraid and wait” as it is the “eve of the collapse of Russian statehood.”

Key Takeaways:

Ukraine’s liberation of Klishchiivka and Andriivka south of Bakhmut may have degraded the Russian defense in the area south of Bakhmut and could have rendered combat ineffective as many as three Russian brigades according to Ukrainian military officials.
Ukrainian counteroffensive operations may have resulted in the particularly severe degradation of critical elements of the Russian elastic defense in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
Ukrainian counteroffensive operations may have resulted in the particularly severe degradation of critical elements of the Russian elastic defense in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
Recent Ukrainian advances south of Bakhmut may correspond with the similar degradation of defending Russian units in the area.
Russian forces conducted a series of Shahed-131/136 drone and cruise missile strikes on coastal and rear areas of Ukraine on the night of September 17-18.
An organization with alleged ties to Russian First Deputy Presidential Chief of Staff Sergey Kiriyenko is reportedly responsible for disseminating pro-war propaganda and false information about Ukraine to prominent figures in the Russian information space.
Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia and advanced in some areas on September 18.
Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations in at least two sectors of the front and advanced in western Zaporizhia on September 18.
Some Russian sources claimed that former Wagner Group personnel are working closely with Rosgvardia (Russian National Guard) in order to return fighting in Ukraine.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
Activities in Russian-occupied areas

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian forces continued limited ground attacks along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on September 18 but did not make any confirmed gains. Former Ukranian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar stated that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks near Novoselivske (15km northwest of Svatove).[32] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Captain Ilya Yevlash stated that Russian forces have slowed their offensive activity in the Kupyansk direction.[33] Malyar stated that Russian forces conducted no assault operations near Kreminna and continued to regroup in the area.[34] Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Head Kyrylo Budanov stated that Russian forces deployed elements of the newly created 25th Combined Arms Army (CAA) to the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line with 80 percent of its planned manpower and only 50 percent of the necessary equipment, supporting ISW’s assessment that the 25th CAA is likely combat ineffective due to its rushed deployment.[35] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces made unspecified gains west of Svatove in the direction of the Oskil River and that fighting continued near Synkivka (9km northeast of Kupyansk) and in the direction of Petropavlivka (7km east of Kupyansk) on September 17.[36]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted unsuccessful ground attacks in the Kreminna area on September 18. The Russian MoD claimed that elements of the Russian Central Grouping of Forces repelled two Ukrainian assaults near Dibrova (7km southwest of Kreminna) and the Serebryanske forest area south of Kreminna.[37] Russian Central Grouping of Forces Spokesperson Alexander Savchuk claimed that Russian forces also repelled a Ukrainian assault near Torske (17km west of Kreminna).[38]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in the Bakhmut area on September 18 and reportedly advanced. Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Captain Ilya Yevlash stated that Ukrainian forces achieved unspecified success in the Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut), Bakhmut, and Predtechyne (12km southwest of Bakhmut) directions, and near Andriivka (9km southwest of Bakhmut), Kurdyumivka (12km south of Bakhmut), Bila Hora (12km southwest of Bakhmut), and Opytne (3km southwest of Bakhmut), likely referring to broad tactical directions.[39] Former Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar stated that Ukrainian forces recaptured 5.1 square kilometers of territory in the Bakhmut direction in the past week.[40] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued assault operations near Klishchiivka[41] Yevlash stated that Ukrainian forces continue efforts to consolidate positions in Klishchiivka and that fighting continues near the railway line east of the settlement.[42] Russian milbloggers continued to claim that Ukrainian forces do not completely control Klishchiivka, claiming instead that the northern part of the settlement remains a contested “gray zone” after Russian forces withdrew from the settlement.[43] Russian milbloggers claimed that heavy fighting is ongoing along the Kurdyumivka-Andriivka-Klishchiivka line, in nearby forest areas, and near the railway line to the east.[44] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces also attacked near Dubovo-Vasylivka (6km northwest of Bakhmut).[45] The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian assaults near Vesele (20km northeast of Bakhmut), Klishchiivka, and Mayorske (20km southwest of Bakhmut).[46] Another Russian milblogger posted footage of unspecified elements of the Russian 106th Airborne (VDV) Division operating near Bakhmut on September 18.[47]

Russian forces continued to counterattack near Bakhmut and reportedly advanced on September 18. Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces recaptured some Ukrainian positions in northeastern Klishchiivka during counterattacks, but ISW has not observed visual confirmation of these claims.[48] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks near Bila Hora, Klishchiivka, and Andriivka.[49] Former Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully tried to break through Ukrainian positions near Orikhovo-Vasylivka (11km northwest of Bakhmut), Bohdanivka (5km northwest of Bakhmut), Klishchiivka, and Kurdyumivka.[50]

Russian forces continued ground attacks on the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line on September 18 and marginally advanced. Geolocated footage published on September 18 shows that Russian forces marginally advanced north of Avdiivka.[51] Malyar stated that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive actions near Keramik (14km northwest of Avdiivka), Avdiivka, Sieverne (11km southwest of Avdiivka), Marinka (27km southwest of Avdiivka), and Novomykhailivka (36km southwest of Avdiivka).[52] A Russian news aggregator claimed that fighting was ongoing near Opytne (4km south of Avdiivka) on September 17.[53]

The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian assaults near Marinka and Vodyane (7km southwest of Avdiivka) on the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line on September 18.[54]

Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations in the western Donetsk-eastern Zaporizhia Oblast border area but did not advance on September 18. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces conducted assaults in the Shakhtarske direction, presumably referring to the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area.[55] Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Urozhaine (9km south of Velyka Novosilka), Staromayorske (9km south of Velyka Novosilka), and Novodonetske (12km southeast of Velyka Novosilka).[56]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations in the western Donetsk-eastern Zaporizhia Oblast border area on September 18 and reportedly recently advanced. A prominent Russian milblogger claimed on September 17 that Russian forces control Stepove (22km southwest of Velyka Novosilka), although ISW has not observed visual confirmation of this claim.[57] Former Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar stated that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Novodarivka (16km southwest of Velyka Novosilka).[58] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces attacked near Urozhaine and from Pryyutne (16km southwest of Velyka Novosilka) but did not specify an outcome.[59] A Russian milblogger claimed that elements of the Russian 37th Motorized Rifle Brigade (36th Combined Arms Army, Eastern Military District) and the 127th Motorized Rifle Division (5th Combined Arms Army, Eastern Military District) are operating east of Urozhaine and north of Pryyutne, respectively.[60]

Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced on September 18. Geolocated footage published on September 18 indicates that Ukrainian forces advanced west of Verbove (18km southeast of Orikhiv).[61] The Ukrainian General Staff and Malyar reported that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in the Melitopol (western Zaporizhia) direction where they pushed Russian forces out of unspecified positions.[62] Malyar stated that Ukrainian forces have liberated 5.2 square kilometers in the southern direction within the past week and achieved unspecified successes east and south of Robotyne (10km south of Orikhiv).[63] Russian sources claimed on September 17 and 18 that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Novoprokopivka (13km south of Orikhiv), Verbove, and Robotyne.[64]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations in western Zaporizhia but did not advance on September 18. The Ukrainian General Staff and Malyar reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Novodanylivka (5km south of Orikhiv) and Robotyne.[65] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces counterattacked west of Verbove but did not specify an outcome.[66] The United Kingdom Ministry of Defense (MoD) stated that at least five regiments from the Russian 7th and 76th Airborne (VDV) Divisions were redeployed to reinforce the 58th Combined Arms Army (Southern Military District) near Robotyne recently.[67] The UK MoD assessed that these relatively elite VDV units are highly likely under strength.[68] ISW has been reporting on the presence of three regiments of the 7th VDV Division and two regiments of the 76th VDV Division in this area for some time. A Russian milblogger claimed that elements of the Russian 1429th Motorized Rifle Regiment (58th Combined Arms Army, Southern Military District) are operating near Robotyne.[69]

A Ukrainian strike on September 13 significantly damaged a Russian cruise-missile capable submarine and has very likely rendered it hors de combat for the duration of this war. The Georgia-based Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) posted photographs on September 18 indicating that the Ukrainian attack on the Rostov-on-Don Kilo-class submarine in occupied Sevastopol, Crimea on September 13 caused significant damage in two areas of the submarine.[70] CIT amplified an assessment that the Russian Navy will most likely remove the submarine from active duty until the end of the war in Ukraine given the extent of the damage. The Rostov-on-Don is one of four cruise missile capable submarines in Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.[71] CIT stated that repairing the Rostov-on-Don is theoretically possible but that it would be easier for Russia to build a new Kilo-class submarine instead of repairing the Rostov-on-Don.[72]

A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces tried to land in occupied Crimea and simultaneously conducted a drone strike on the peninsula on September 17.[73] The milblogger claimed that Russian naval aviation stopped 14 Ukrainian boats headed towards Crimea from Vilkovo, Odesa Oblast, and damaged several of the vessels.[74] The milblogger claimed that Russian air defenses and electronic warfare shot down two Ukrainian drones over Cape Fiolent (11km southwest of Sevastopol), two near Belbek airfield (6km north of Sevastopol), and one over southwestern Sevastopol.[75] The milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces have targeted Crimea almost every day for the past 10 days.[76]

Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)

Some Russian sources claimed that former Wagner Group personnel are working closely with Rosgvardia (Russian National Guard) in order to rejoin the hostilities in Ukraine. Russian sources claimed that unspecified Wagner commanders are in “the closest possible contact” with Rosgvardia and that unspecified actors reached an agreement that will allow Wagner fighters to return to fighting in Ukraine as a “separate unit.”[77] Russian authorities may have negotiated with Wagner personnel to rejoin hostilities in Ukraine through subordination or connection to Rosgvardia because many Wagner personnel refused to sign contracts with the Russian MoD.[78] ISW continues to assess that it is unlikely that the Kremlin will restore Wagner as a large-scale quasi-independent organization under a unified command independent of the Kremlin or Russian MoD, which is the only likely form in which Wagner personnel would present a significant threat to the Ukrainian military again.[79]

Russian State Duma Defense Committee Chairman Andrei Kartapolov claimed on September 16 that Russian authorities will not fine individuals for ignoring electronic summonses in the upcoming autumn 2023 conscription cycle.[80] Kartopolov claimed that Russian military authorities will use paper documents as the main method to notify individuals of conscription summonses and that electronic summonses are “additional.”[81] The Russian State Duma approved amendments in July to increase fines for non-compliance on military summonses, however.[82]

A Russian military court convicted a pregnant female Russian soldier for failing to go through the proper channels to receive a medical exemption for service during partial mobilization. Russian news outlet Kommersant reported on September 18 that the Vladikavkaz Garrison Military Court sentenced Corporal Madina Kabaloyeva to six years in a general regime colony for failing to appear for military service without a valid reason.[83] Kommersant reported that the medical company of Kabaloyeva’s military unit had issued a recommendation for her temporary release from military service due to her pregnancy and responsibility over another child, but that Kabaloyeva did not appear before her unit’s leadership and continued to receive the salary and benefits of an active-duty soldier without serving.[84] Kommersant reported that the court will likely defer Kabaloyeva’s sentence due to her child and pregnancy.[85]

Chinese export restrictions have reportedly led to interruptions in the supply of drones and drone parts to Russia. Kommersant reported that temporary Chinese export restrictions starting at the end of July have resulted in a shortage of drones weighing over four kilograms and drone components, including thermal imagers.[86] Kommersant also stated that Chinese drone sellers are trying to establish parallel imports through transit countries but noted that Kazakhstan recently tightened its import procedure.[87]

Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian citizens into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Russian federal subjects continue to expand their patronage networks in occupied Ukraine. The Kherson Oblast occupation administration reported on September 18 that the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic is constructing a new medical facility in occupied Mykhailivka, Skadovskyi Raion.[88] Zaporizhia Oblast occupation administration head Yevgeny Balitsky announced on September 18 that the Tver Oblast government provided Russian occupation authorities with timber for the construction of new Russian fortifications in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast.[89]

Significant activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks and Wagner Group activity in Belarus)

The Ukrainian Resistance Center stated on September 18 that fewer than 1,000 Wagner personnel remain in Belarus.[90] The Resistance Center added that 200 Wagner instructors in Belarus are training Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs and Ministry of Defense personnel.[91]

ISW will continue to report daily observed Russian and Belarusian military activity in Belarus as part of ongoing Kremlin efforts to increase their control over Belarus and other Russian actions in Belarus.

Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.

2. China’s Ex-Foreign Minister Ousted After Alleged Affair, Senior Officials Told

A honey pot in Washington, DC?

Key point:

Turmoil at such high levels in the government and military “would suggest political instability in China at a time when stability is desired due to the economic slowdown,” said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank. “It also calls into question whether Xi is truly in control of the overall situation.”

China’s Ex-Foreign Minister Ousted After Alleged Affair, Senior Officials Told

Qin Gang remains under investigation for possible national security violations, according to people familiar with the matter

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chinas-ex-foreign-minister-ousted-after-alleged-affair-senior-officials-told-fdff4672?mod=hp_lead_pos1

By Lingling Wei

Sept. 19, 2023 12:36 am ET

Qin Gang in Beijing in March. PHOTO: NOEL CELIS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

NEW YORK—Senior Chinese officials were told that an internal Communist Party investigation found ex-Foreign Minister Qin Gang to have engaged in an extramarital affair that lasted throughout his tenure as Beijing’s top envoy to Washington, according to people familiar with the matter.

Qin, once considered a trusted aide to leader Xi Jinping, was stripped of his foreign minister title in July—without explanation—after he disappeared from public view a month earlier. At one point leading up to his ouster, the Foreign Ministry said the absence of 57-year-old Qin was due to health reasons.

Senior Chinese officials—including ministers and provincial leaders—were briefed last month on the party’s investigation into Qin, who served as the Chinese ambassador to the U.S. from July 2021 until January this year, the people said. The senior officials were told the formal reason for Qin’s dismissal was “lifestyle issues,” a common party euphemism for sexual misconduct, according to the people.

The officials were further told that the probe found that Qin had engaged in an extramarital affair that led to the birth of a child in the U.S., two of the people said.

Names of the woman and the child weren’t disclosed to the party officials when they were informed about Qin’s investigation, the people said, and the Journal couldn’t confirm their identities. The investigation is continuing with Qin’s cooperation, the people added, and it is now focusing on whether the affair or other conduct by Qin might have compromised China’s national security.

The State Council, China’s cabinet, still lists Qin as one of the five state councilors. China’s Foreign Ministry and the State Council Information Office didn’t respond to questions.

The downfall of Qin, who was in the foreign minister post for just seven months, comes as China’s leadership seeks to cut off any security vulnerabilities amid the the country’s intensifying competition with the U.S. and its allies.

Taiwan submarine dream surfaces as China tensions rise

Taipei to unveil island-made sub despite years of Beijing pressure on suppliers

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Asia-Insight/Taiwan-submarine-dream-surfaces-as-China-tensions-rise?utm_

THOMPSON CHAU, Contributing writer

SEPTEMBER 19, 2023 06:00 JST

TAIPEI -- By the start of next month, Taiwan's long-secretive plans to make its own submarines will become known to the world with the first public appearance of a vessel in the southern port city of Kaohsiung.

What still won't be known after the scheduled debut, assuming early tests are successful: whether the multibillion-dollar program, some seven years in the making, will prove a powerful deterrent to Chinese aggression.

In the face of Chinese pressure on other countries not to supply vessels to Taiwan, Taipei's ambitious plans call for a total of eight domestically made, diesel-electric powered submarines equipped with MK-48 anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare torpedoes made by Lockheed Martin of the U.S., according to Admiral Huang Shu-kuang, convener of the National Submarine Task Force.

The first craft comes with a price tag of $1.54 billion, according to official data. It wasn't immediately clear when further vessels will be constructed, nor how much they would cost.

First mooted in the 1990s under then-President Lee Teng-hui, the idea of a Taiwan-built submarine fleet -- to complement two aging Dutch-made submarines acquired in the 1980s -- has been cherished to varying degrees by successive leaders of the island democracy of 24 million people.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen attends a ceremony for the start of construction of a submarine fleet in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, on Nov. 24, 2020. © Reuters

In China, under President Xi Jinping, who took office in 2013, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has inexorably escalated its aggression and threats against Taiwan. China's actions have stoked a sense of urgency on the part of Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen to unveil the results of the submarine program before she steps down next May.

They have also instilled in Tsai a desire to leave a legacy as a firm but pragmatic defender of Taiwan who fought Beijing's efforts to discourage foreign companies and governments from supporting her defense and military reforms.

The CIA Politicizes Intelligence on China and Covid

A whistleblower says that analysts who favored the lab-leak theory were paid to change positions.

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chinas-ex-foreign-minister-ousted-after-alleged-affair-senior-officials-told-fdff4672?mod=hp_lead_pos1

By John Ratcliffe and Cliff Sims

Sept. 18, 2023 2:12 pm ET

4. The CIA Politicizes Intelligence on China and Covid

There is also a lot of politicization in this OpEd by the authors.

But no one can argue with the need for accountability.

Excerpts:

Reforms are needed to ensure intelligence analysts can offer dissenting opinions in writing without needing their supervisor’s approval. Their military and diplomatic counterparts already enjoy this protection, which ensures that political leaders receive the best possible input.

The intelligence community also needs a renewed sense of accountability. Senior bureaucrats currently hold their rank and pay for life, with benefits lasting into retirement, even if they oversee major intelligence failures, suppress analysts’ findings or are caught harassing subordinates. The good work of the CIA is necessarily hidden from public view. That means the agency never gets the credit it deserves—but it also allows rotten leadership to evade accountability. Congress should end the practice of lifetime appointments and subject these high-level officials to Senate confirmation, bringing the intelligence community’s personnel system in line with the State Department and military. Officials who betray the public trust—either by bad acts in office or by politicizing their credentials after leaving—should be stripped of their security clearances.

An inscription in the wall of the CIA’s headquarters quotes John 8:32: “And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” The American people need to know that the CIA gives its best insight to every president without weighing the domestic political implications of their analytic judgment. It’s the least a democracy should expect of its secret intelligence service.

The CIA Politicizes Intelligence on China and Covid

A whistleblower says that analysts who favored the lab-leak theory were paid to change positions.

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chinas-ex-foreign-minister-ousted-after-alleged-affair-senior-officials-told-fdff4672?mod=hp_lead_pos1

By John Ratcliffe and Cliff Sims

Sept. 18, 2023 2:12 pm ET

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

A Central Intelligence Agency whistleblower claims that the CIA rigged a report on the origins of Covid-19 to exonerate China. According to the allegation, the most senior member of a seven-member CIA analysis team “was the lone officer to believe COVID-19 originated through zoonosis.” His six colleagues thought the intelligence and science “were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment” that the disease came from a lab leak.

“The whistleblower further contends that to come to the eventual public determination of uncertainty, the other six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their positions,” according to a Sept. 12 letter from two House committee chairmen.

If these claims are true, they are consistent with what we observed during our time in the office that oversees the U.S. intelligence community: a dangerous trend inside the CIA to politicize intelligence on China, and to suppress dissenting views that stray from the company line. When preparing the President’s Daily Brief, it wasn’t unusual to ask why the CIA’s China assessments seemed at odds with intelligence from the other 17 U.S. spy agencies.

Sometimes there were good reasons. But there were also times when the culture within the CIA discouraged dissent and subordinated the truth to other considerations. When we pushed to declassify intelligence exposing some of what the U.S. government knew about the virus’s origins and the Communist Party’s initial coverup, we faced constant opposition, particularly from Langley.

Even in the chaotic early days of the pandemic, every shred of intelligence pointed to the likelihood of a lab leak. Other agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, have reached that conclusion. Yet the CIA continues to refuse to avoid such an acknowledgment—which would have enormous geopolitical implications that the Biden administration doesn’t want to face head-on.

A similar pattern was evident regarding attempts to interfere in U.S. elections. In 2020, the intelligence community was tracking a plan by China to hurt President Trump’s prospects for re-election. That August the network-analysis firm Graphika reported on social-media activity from what it called “Spamouflage Dragon” and described as a “pro-Chinese political spam network.” It was posting English-language videos that “attacked” Mr. Trump and his policies. Although Graphika didn’t have evidence these operations were led by the Chinese government, the U.S. intelligence community did.

But when the intelligence community presented its March 2021 report on foreign election threats, the majority assessment was that China hadn’t sought to influence the 2020 race. Only one analyst disagreed. We knew of this conclusion while still in office and had seen the full body of intelligence, which seemed to show China participating in the same types of election-influence operations as Russia and Iran.

How could the majority view be otherwise? We were told the CIA simply didn’t believe there was evidence the Chinese government was behind these activities. But nobody can do anything in China without the consent of the Communist Party.

An investigation by the intelligence community’s analytic ombudsman got to the heart of the matter: “China analysts were hesitant to assess Chinese actions as undue influence or interference . . . because they tend to disagree with the [Trump] administration’s policies, saying in effect, ‘I don’t want our intelligence used to support those policies.’ ”

The ombudsman also found that “there were strong efforts to suppress” the view that China had sought to influence the election to hurt Mr. Trump, including by “CIA Management.” The dissenting analyst, Christopher Porter, wrote last year that when the Biden administration took over, it immediately removed election-threats analysis from his portfolio “because I had taken a dissent on the China influence issue.”

Last month Meta reported that Spamouflage Dragon is “the largest known covert propaganda operation ever identified” on Facebook and Instagram and that it has connections with “Chinese law enforcement.” That means the Chinese Public Security Ministry, which administers the country’s Great Firewall.

The CIA has gotten the message that objective analysis jeopardizing what is now the administration’s accommodating posture toward China won’t be well-received. These political expectations trickle down to the apolitical CIA officers who devote their lives to searching for truth and keeping the American people safe.

The New York Times in 2020 quoted an anonymous former intelligence official who accused us of “conclusion shopping” on Covid origins and even compared our pursuit of the truth to “the Bush administration’s 2002 push for assessments saying that Iraq had weapons of mass of destruction and links to al Qaeda, perhaps the most notorious example of the politicization of intelligence.”History has disproved the accusation against us, but the underlying point—that politics shouldn’t drive the work of intelligence analysts—is an important one. If the intelligence community fails to foster a culture that encourages full consideration of dissenting views, the results can be catastrophic.

Reforms are needed to ensure intelligence analysts can offer dissenting opinions in writing without needing their supervisor’s approval. Their military and diplomatic counterparts already enjoy this protection, which ensures that political leaders receive the best possible input.

The intelligence community also needs a renewed sense of accountability. Senior bureaucrats currently hold their rank and pay for life, with benefits lasting into retirement, even if they oversee major intelligence failures, suppress analysts’ findings or are caught harassing subordinates. The good work of the CIA is necessarily hidden from public view. That means the agency never gets the credit it deserves—but it also allows rotten leadership to evade accountability. Congress should end the practice of lifetime appointments and subject these high-level officials to Senate confirmation, bringing the intelligence community’s personnel system in line with the State Department and military. Officials who betray the public trust—either by bad acts in office or by politicizing their credentials after leaving—should be stripped of their security clearances.

An inscription in the wall of the CIA’s headquarters quotes John 8:32: “And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” The American people need to know that the CIA gives its best insight to every president without weighing the domestic political implications of their analytic judgment. It’s the least a democracy should expect of its secret intelligence service.

Mr. Ratcliffe served as director of national intelligence and Mr. Sims as deputy director for strategy and communications, 2020-21.

5. Zelensky Cleans House in Corruption-Plagued Defense Ministry

Excerpts:

The deputy defense ministers removed on Monday were not the first to lose their jobs during the war. In January, one was dismissed and arrested after reports of the department paying drastically inflated prices for food for the military. Another was replaced last year, and months later a Ukrainian news outlet released what it said was police video of a search of the minister’s home, with officers pulling wads of cash out of a sofa.

Last month, Mr. Zelensky fired all 24 chiefs of Ukraine’s regional military recruitment offices, after the government acknowledged that dozens of recruitment officers were under investigation for accepting bribes to mark eligible men as exempt from service. And there have been waves of anti-corruption raids and dismissals involving other parts of the government, as well.

Daria Kalenyuk, the executive director of the Kyiv-based Anticorruption Action Center, said that Monday’s dismissals were a “positive step” that showed that Mr. Zelensky recognized the problems in the ministry and was intent on finding remedies.

“The ministry of defense is one of the least reformed ministries in our country, and it is not able to cope with the challenges of the war,” she said in an interview. The timing of the announcement, she added, sent a signal to Ukraine’s allies in Washington ahead of Mr. Zelensky’s trip that his government was committed to overhauling the military bureaucracy.

Zelensky Cleans House in Corruption-Plagued Defense Ministry

By Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Andrew E. Kramer

Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Andrew E. Kramer reported from Kyiv, Ukraine

Sept. 18, 2023

The New York Times · by Andrew E. Kramer · September 18, 2023

On the eve of a trip to the United States, Ukraine’s president is eager to demonstrate that the billions of dollars Washington is spending to aid his country is not being squandered.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in Kyiv last month. Ukraine dismissed all six of its deputy defense ministers as Mr. Zelensky headed to the United States, where he is scheduled to address the United Nations on Tuesday.

Sept. 18, 2023Updated 4:07 p.m. ET

Two weeks after replacing its defense minister, Ukraine dismissed all six of its deputy ministers on Monday, deepening the housecleaning at a ministry that had drawn criticism for corruption in procurement as the military budget ballooned during the war.

The shake-up in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s wartime leadership team came as he headed to the United States, keen to demonstrate to American officials and other Western leaders that his government is not squandering — on either graft or mismanagement — the tens of billions of dollars in aid they have sent to Ukraine.

Mr. Zelensky is scheduled to address the United Nations General Assembly in person on Tuesday in New York, and later in the week to meet with President Biden and members of Congress in Washington in his ongoing efforts to shore up support for military aid. He is expected to argue that defending Europe’s borders from an expansionist Russia in Ukraine serves Western interests in preventing a wider war and the destabilization of the European Union.

In Ukraine’s fight to take back territory seized by the Russian invasion, the chain of command for battlefield decisions runs directly from Mr. Zelensky to the military’s uniformed general staff, largely bypassing the civilians at the defense ministry, so the turnover is not expected to have an immediate effect on the course of the war. The ministry’s role is primarily not in tactics but logistics — procurement, salaries and benefits — where changes may not be felt right away.

Ukrainian anti-corruption groups said the dismissals, though not all of them from positions related to procurement, sent a positive signal about oversight and a crackdown on wartime profiteering.

Much of the Western aid to Ukraine has been in arms, gear and training — not cash — supplied directly to the military, and there have been no documented instances of diversions of weaponry. Ukraine’s allies have also supplied billions in financial aid, helping shore up a depleted government and battered economy, but that money has not gone to the defense ministry, whose budget is drawn from Ukrainian tax revenues.

A pro-Ukrainian symbol, “V,” is painted on a destroyed car in Svyatohirsk in eastern Ukraine on Sunday.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

Even so, some U.S. critics of spending on Ukraine — notably a faction of Republicans in Congress — have said that reports of corruption were a reason to place stricter limits on military aid, and some members of NATO are nervous that weapons could be illicitly rerouted from their intended purpose.

The decision to dismiss the deputies was made at a cabinet meeting, according to a Ukrainian government statement posted on the Telegram messaging app on Monday. The government did not give a reason for the move.

Mr. Zelensky and top aides have described turnover as seeking fresh leadership after more than a year and a half of war. The Ukrainian military pushed Russian forces back in three successful counteroffensives that reclaimed about half the territory Russia seized in the full-scale invasion that began in February 2022. It is now locked in a bloody, slow-motion fight in the country’s south intended to cut Russian supply lines to the occupied Crimean Peninsula.

Earlier this month, Mr. Zelensky dismissed Oleksii Reznikov, the defense minister, after a din of criticism from the Ukrainian news media and civil society groups about inflated prices in contracts and financial mismanagement. At that time, Mr. Zelensky, who named Rustem Umerov as the new minister, cited the need for “new approaches” 18 months into the war.

Mr. Reznikov, who had won praise for his diplomatic efforts to coordinate a vast flow of weaponry and ammunition into Ukraine, was not personally implicated. Anti-corruption groups have, however, singled out lower-level officials for mismanagement in military contracting, or for failing to tackle corruption on their watch.

The deputy defense ministers removed on Monday were not the first to lose their jobs during the war. In January, one was dismissed and arrested after reports of the department paying drastically inflated prices for food for the military. Another was replaced last year, and months later a Ukrainian news outlet released what it said was police video of a search of the minister’s home, with officers pulling wads of cash out of a sofa.

Last month, Mr. Zelensky fired all 24 chiefs of Ukraine’s regional military recruitment offices, after the government acknowledged that dozens of recruitment officers were under investigation for accepting bribes to mark eligible men as exempt from service. And there have been waves of anti-corruption raids and dismissals involving other parts of the government, as well.

Recruits from Ukraine’s Third Brigade rest between drills in the Donetsk region in July. Last month, Mr. Zelensky fired all 24 chiefs of Ukraine’s regional military recruitment offices.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

Daria Kalenyuk, the executive director of the Kyiv-based Anticorruption Action Center, said that Monday’s dismissals were a “positive step” that showed that Mr. Zelensky recognized the problems in the ministry and was intent on finding remedies.

“The ministry of defense is one of the least reformed ministries in our country, and it is not able to cope with the challenges of the war,” she said in an interview. The timing of the announcement, she added, sent a signal to Ukraine’s allies in Washington ahead of Mr. Zelensky’s trip that his government was committed to overhauling the military bureaucracy.

Along with the deputy ministers, Kostiantyn Vashchenko was also dismissed, according to the government statement. He had served as the state secretary for defense, which is a senior managerial position at the ministry. The statement did not name any replacements.

The deputy defense ministers released from their posts on Monday included Hanna Maliar, who has emerged in recent months as one of the most prominent government communicators of the daily movement of Ukraine’s counteroffensive. Hours before her dismissal was announced, Ms. Maliar continued to post updates on Telegram about the war.

Matthew Mpoke Bigg is a correspondent covering international news. He previously worked as a reporter, editor and bureau chief for Reuters and did postings in Nairobi, Abidjan, Atlanta, Jakarta and Accra. More about Matthew Mpoke Bigg

Andrew E. Kramer is the Times bureau chief in Kyiv. He was part of a team that won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for a series on Russia’s covert projection of power. More about Andrew E. Kramer

The New York Times · by Andrew E. Kramer · September 18, 2023

6. Biden to Urge Nations to Protect and Nurture Democracy

Timing.

Biden to Urge Nations to Protect and Nurture Democracy

By Michael D. Shear and Peter Baker

Michael D. Shear reported from New York, and Peter Baker reported from Washington.

Sept. 19, 2023, 12:01 a.m. ET

The New York Times · by Peter Baker · September 19, 2023

In a speech to the United Nations, President Biden is expected to promote his administration’s achievements around the globe even as he confronts challenges at home.

At the United Nations this week, President Biden will argue that the same nations that came together to oppose Russia’s invasion of Ukraine need to focus their attention on the desperate economic fates of some of the world’s poorest countries.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Sept. 19, 2023, 12:01 a.m. ET

President Biden will attempt on Tuesday to focus global attention on the need to protect and nurture democracies, calling for the world to continue backing Ukraine and urging advanced nations to do more to bolster economies in the developing world.

In his third speech as president to the United Nations, Mr. Biden is expected to promote his administration’s achievements around the globe even as he confronts challenges at home: growing resistance to additional Ukraine aid, a looming government shutdown, inflation and listless approval ratings ahead of next year’s election.

The president’s speech on Tuesday is the centerpiece of a week of international diplomacy as the Biden administration confronts threats from Iran, tensions with Israel and the slow, grinding efforts by Ukraine to push back Russia’s invasion.

Mr. Biden arrives at the United Nations at a moment when he has asserted American leadership in world affairs and repaired many of the relationships that frayed under his volatile predecessor, Donald J. Trump. But with the next election looming and Mr. Biden effectively tied with Mr. Trump in early polling, many other nations will be greeting the president with uncertainty about his staying power.

“He will lay out for the world the steps that he and his administration have taken to advance a vision of American leadership that is built on the premise of working with others to solve the world’s most pressing problems,” said Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser. “The president will talk about how those steps — how all of those steps he’s taken so far ladder up to a larger vision.”

After a long career in the Senate and as vice president, Mr. Biden enjoys a strong reputation among his peers and is seen as a committed internationalist fighting the tide of isolationism. While the chaotic withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan left sour feelings among many traditional American allies, Mr. Biden has restored some of his global reputation by rallying the West and other allies against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the seminal foreign policy crisis of his presidency so far.

He has also managed to stitch together a series of partnerships in the Indo-Pacific in the face of aggressive moves by China. He has bolstered relations with Australia, India, the Philippines and other nations in the region; elevated the standing of a bloc called the Quad, consisting of the United States, India, Japan and Australia; brought together the leaders of Japan and South Korea at Camp David for a three-way alliance that had long eluded Washington; and just last week cemented a strategic relationship with Vietnam during his first visit to Hanoi.

At the same time, America’s two major rivals appear weakened. President Xi Jinping of China looks less potent internationally as his country’s four-decade streak of economic growth flattens while President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia cannot even travel to the United Nations meeting or other major international gatherings because of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for war crimes in Ukraine.

But with his approval ratings mired in the low 40s and Mr. Trump threatening to take his job back in the November 2024 elections, Mr. Biden’s domestic troubles loom large over this year’s gathering at the United Nations.

“Biden has lots of reasons to feel good about his standing on the world stage, but the U.S. domestic political situation continues to introduce uncertainty,” said James M. Goldgeier, a professor and former dean of the School of International Service at American University. “The 2024 presidential election and the potential return of Donald Trump to the White House creates a great deal of uncertainty about the ability of the United States to chart a stable international course forward.”

On Monday, Mr. Biden announced the release of five Americans who had been imprisoned in Iran, the culmination of a lengthy negotiation in which the United States agreed to unlock $6 billion in Iranian oil revenue and release five Iranians jailed for sanctions violations.

Three of the five Americans who were released by Iran are greeted upon their arrival in Doha, Qatar, on Monday.

Mr. Biden will met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Wednesday, the first face-to-face meeting between the pair since tensions between them deepened. And on Thursday, Mr. Biden will host Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, at the White House for the third time.

Mr. Biden’s advisers have publicly expressed confidence that a bipartisan majority in Congress will once again approve Ukraine aid. But that approval appears likely to become tangled up in the ongoing congressional fight over the budget. That would be a blow to Mr. Biden’s vow to support Ukraine’s military resistance “for as long as it takes.”

Mr. Biden has been making that promise since the months before Russia invaded Ukraine in February of last year. It is at the heart of the president’s vision for a more robust foreign policy that aims to reverse Mr. Trump’s “America First” agenda.

“We see, at this point, more — a strong demand signal for more American engagement, for more American investment, for more American presence across all continents and all quarters of the world,” Mr. Sullivan said.

At the United Nations this week, Mr. Biden will argue that the same nations that came together to oppose Russia’s invasion of Ukraine need to focus their attention on the desperate economic fates of some of the world’s poorest countries, many of them in the southern hemisphere.

That message is a continuation of one Mr. Biden delivered at the meeting of the Group of 20 nations in New Delhi this month. And it is part of the president’s strategy to counter China’s influence in developing nations with its Belt and Road Initiative that helps poorer countries build ports, rail lines and communications networks.

At the Group of 20, Mr. Biden described his administration’s request to Congress for billions of dollars in funding for the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to help leverage even more private support for developing countries. White House officials said nearly $200 billion in credit could flow into countries around the world in the years ahead.

In his speech to the General Assembly on Tuesday, Mr. Biden plans to challenge other countries to do more to support nations whose people are struggling in deep economic distress with little hope for the future.

Kori Schake, the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said it was important for Mr. Biden to show up at the United Nations to explain American positions and policies.

Those explanations can help ease anxiety around the globe that the United States is committed to the kinds of engagement that many of its allies are looking for.

With the exception of protectionist trade policies, “he’s done an awful lot to deserve the relief most countries feel after the anxiety of the Trump administration,” said Ms. Schake, who served as a national security aide to President George W. Bush.

“But there’ll be hesitance still internationally,” she said, “because President Biden can’t actually reassure countries that their fear can’t materialize of a return to the presidency by Donald Trump.”

Michael D. Shear is a veteran White House correspondent and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who was a member of the team that won the Public Service Medal for Covid coverage in 2020. He is the co-author of “Border Wars: Inside Trump's Assault on Immigration.” More about Michael D. Shear

Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent and has covered the last five presidents for The Times and The Washington Post. He is the author of seven books, most recently “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,” with Susan Glasser. More about Peter Baker

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Biden Plans to Use U.N. Speech to Urge Nations to Nurture Democracy

The New York Times · by Peter Baker · September 19, 2023

7. Missing F-35 Is Third Costly Accident for Marines in Recent Weeks

Missing F-35 Is Third Costly Accident for Marines in Recent Weeks

There were two previous deadly crashes involving Marine planes

Published 09/19/23 06:03 AM ET|Updated 45 min ago

Luke Funk

themessenger.com · September 19, 2023

The crash of a missing FB-35B Lightning II aircraft on Monday was the third accident involving a Marine Corps plane in recent weeks.

Debris and parts associated with the $80 million F-35 fighter jet that disappeared after its pilot ejected from the aircraft over South Carolina on Sunday were found in Williamsburg County, South Carolina, according to Joint Base Charleston.

Officials had been searching for the aircraft since its disappearance over the weekend — and even asked the public for help. The pilot who ejected from the plane was treated for his injuries at a medical center.

The Marine Corps ordered a two-day stand-down for jets Monday, prior to the F-35 being located.

A spokesperson for the Corps told The Messenger that because of three Class-A aviation mishaps in the past six weeks, no units will be allowed to fly until further discussions around safety take place.

Incidents are classified as Class-A mishaps when damages reach $2.5 million or more, a Department of Defense aircraft is destroyed, or someone dies or is permanently disabled.

The announcement on the pause in flights gave no details on the two previous incidents. But in August, three U.S. Marines were killed in the crash of a V-22B Osprey tiltrotor aircraft during a training exercise in Australia, and a Marine Corps pilot was killed when his combat jet crashed near a San Diego base during a training flight.

Cpl. Christian Cortez, a Marine with the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, said the details of what prompted the pilot to eject from the aircraft Sunday were under investigation.

A second F-35 returned safely to Joint Base Charleston after the incident.

The planes and pilots were with the Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 501 with the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing based in Beaufort, near the South Carolina coast.

With the Associated Press.

themessenger.com · September 19, 2023

8. Biden to address U.N. assembly in an effort to bolster alliances

Biden to address U.N. assembly in an effort to bolster alliances

In New York, the president seeks to reignite backing for Ukraine amid signs that support for aid is flagging

By Tyler Pager and John Hudson

September 19, 2023 at 5:00 a.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Tyler Pager · September 19, 2023

NEW YORK — President Biden will outline his vision for tackling global challenges in his annual address to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, seeking to use the marquee speech to bolster cooperation from allies and partners amid signs of shifts and strains in the world’s alliances.

U.S. officials declined to give many specifics on the president’s speech, saying it was still being finalized on Monday evening, but this year’s gathering is once again expected to heavily focus on Ukraine. The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to preview the president’s remarks, said Biden will reaffirm his commitment to the U.N. charter, express a commitment to reforming international organizations to meet the current moment and address global challenges including climate change, infrastructure and economic development.

They said Biden would tout the work his administration has done in those areas and outline ways the United States can work with other countries to make even more progress.

Last week, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that a “substantial section” of Biden’s speech will focus on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“He will talk about the fundamental fact that the United Nations Charter — the charter that founded the organization that everybody is gathering next week in New York to engage with — speaks to the basic proposition that countries cannot attack their neighbors and steal their territory by force,” Sullivan said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will be in attendance here. He travels to Washington later in the week to meet with Biden and members of Congress. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is facing an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court over Russian atrocities in Ukraine, is not attending the U.N. event.

The high-profile gathering gives Biden one more opportunity to try to catalyze world opinion behind continuing to supply Ukraine with arms and other aid amid signs that support for Kyiv may be flagging in the United States and abroad. At a recent meeting of the Group of 20 economic powers, members struggled to produce a joint statement on Ukraine and other matters. In the United States, Republicans are divided over whether to support continued aid.

A long-awaited Ukrainian military counteroffensive against Russia has made less progress than its allies had hoped, adding to the sense that the war is turning into a long slog without a clear endpoint.

In addition to Ukraine, Sullivan and other U.S. officials say the president will focus on a wide range of global development issues, including those important to less-wealthy nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America, a region that is often referred to as the Global South.

“He will lay out for the world the steps that he and his administration have taken to advance a vision of American leadership that is built on the premise of working with others to solve the world’s most pressing problems,” Sullivan said. “We’ve put a lot of points on the board, and the president will talk about how those steps — how all of those steps he’s taken so far ladder up to a larger vision.”

Underlying much of the message is the growing rivalry between the United States and China for influence in the Global South. U.S. officials hope to take advantage of the fact that Chinese leader Xi Jinping will not be traveling to New York for the gathering this week, nor will China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi.

While Biden has the benefit of a high-level U.N. week without Putin or Xi, he is sharing the proverbial stage with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

Raisi, who is holding meetings on the sidelines of the summit this week, harshly criticized the United States during a meeting with journalists on Monday, saying its “meddling” in the Middle East has caused “seven decades of oppression” and “destruction.”

The Biden administration disputed Raisi’s comments on Monday evening, saying recent U.S. efforts to facilitate ongoing peace talks between Yemen’s Houthi rebels — who are backed by Iran — and Saudi Arabia, and a potential normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, demonstrate a determined U.S. effort to reduce tensions in the region.

Biden and his aides are coming to New York with a message that the United States is open to diplomacy, whether that means delicate prisoner swaps with Iran or smoothing relations between the region’s geopolitical and sectarian rivals.

“Generally speaking, the region’s about as stable as it has been in many years,” said a senior U.S. administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic moves. “I believe a lot of that is due to some pretty smart — often backroom — U.S. diplomacy.”

On Monday night, Biden told Democratic donors that he hoped to press upon world leaders this week the notion that America “is back.” He has often used that phrase to convey a U.S. return to global leadership following the presidency of Donald Trump, whose approach often involved disrupting or withdrawing from traditional alliances.

The president will attend four political fundraisers during his four-day stay in New York, signaling that the 2024 campaign season is starting to heat up.

Also on Tuesday, Biden will meet with U.N. Secretary General António Guterres and host a meeting with leaders of five Central Asian countries. In the evening, Biden and first lady Jill Biden will host a reception for world leaders at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

On Wednesday, the president will hold a bilateral meeting with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and the two will then host an event with American and Brazilian workers. The labor event comes amid worker strikes across the United States.

Biden will also meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It will be their first face-to-face encounter since Netanyahu won his election last fall and initiated changes to the country’s judicial system that have been widely criticized as anti-democratic and have been met with massive protests in Israel. Relations between Biden and Netanyahu have often been frosty, and this week’s meeting comes in the absence of a more formal event for the Israeli leader at the White House.

The Washington Post · by Tyler Pager · September 19, 2023

9. Abrams tanks to enter Ukraine soon, Austin says at Ramstein meeting

Abrams tanks to enter Ukraine soon, Austin says at Ramstein meeting

Stars and Stripes · by Jennifer H. Svan · September 19, 2023

Air Force

ByJennifer H. Svan

Stars and Stripes •

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U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin greets Rustem Umerov, Ukraine's new defense secretary, during opening remarks at the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting Sept. 19, 2023, at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. (Alexander Riedel/Stars and Stripes)

RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany – The M1 Abrams tanks provided by the United States soon will enter Ukraine and join the counteroffensive the country is mounting against Russia, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told world military leaders gathered at this U.S. air base Tuesday.

The tank crews began accelerated training in May at the Army’s Grafenwoehr Training Area in Bavaria.

Partner nations must to “continue to dig deep” to arm Ukraine, Austin told representatives of about 50 countries during opening remarks at the 15th meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group.

“We must continue to push hard to provide Ukraine with air-defense systems and interceptors,” Austin said. “And right now, in the heat of the battle, we must also keep pushing to get Ukraine the ammunition that it needs to keep up the fight, including 155mm ammunition.”

Since the last contact group meeting in July, the United States has pledged more than $2 billion in additional security aid to Ukraine, including air defense systems, ammunition and mine-clearing equipment, Austin said.

Austin also announced that F-16 training of Ukrainian pilots will take place in the United States. Ukrainian news outlets reported Tuesday that training stateside is expected to start this month.

Ukrainian pilots with combat experience began training on F-16s in Denmark in June.

This story will be updated.

Stars and Stripes · by Jennifer H. Svan · September 19, 2023

10. India, Canada expel diplomats over accusations Delhi killed Sikh activist

India, Canada expel diplomats over accusations Delhi killed Sikh activist

By Gerry Shih and Karishma Mehrotra

Updated September 19, 2023 at 6:50 a.m. EDT|Published September 19, 2023 at 3:12 a.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Gerry Shih · September 19, 2023

NEW DELHI — India on Tuesday expelled a Canadian diplomat in a tit-for-tat move after Canadian officials accused Indian government operatives of gunning down a Sikh leader in British Columbia and threw out an Indian diplomat they identified as an intelligence officer.

The alleged assassination, disclosed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during an explosive speech before parliament on Monday, sent bilateral relations between the two nations tumbling toward its lowest point, but also held broader ramifications for ties between the U.S.-led alliance and India, which the Biden administration has assiduously courted as a strategic counterweight to China.

The expelled Canadian diplomat was not named in an Indian government statement but was identified by the Hindustan Times as the Canadian intelligence station chief in New Delhi.

The Indian government issued a statement Tuesday rejecting Trudeau’s allegations as “absurd and motivated.” India’s Foreign Ministry went on to say Trudeau’s allegations “seek to shift the focus from Khalistani terrorists and extremists, who have been provided shelter in Canada and continue to threaten India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The inaction of the Canadian Government on this matter has been a long-standing and continuing concern.”

Hardeep Singh Nijjar was designated a terrorist by Indian security agencies in 2020 and accused of planning attacks inside India’s Punjab state, which is home to about 16 million Sikhs. The Khalistan movement he was part of seeks to form a breakaway state in the Punjab region called Khalistan and has supporters both within India and among the large global Sikh diaspora.

Months before Nijjar was shot by masked gunmen in the parking lot of a Sikh temple outside Vancouver on June 18, India ratcheted up a campaign to pressure countries including Canada, Australia, Britain and the United States, home to significant Sikh communities and frequent pro-Khalistan protests, to crack down on the movement.

In London and San Francisco, protesters stormed the grounds of Indian diplomatic missions to raise their movement’s flag, angering the New Delhi government.

Trudeau on Monday said he had recently expressed “deep concerns” to Indian security and intelligence officials about the killing and also conveyed them “personally and directly” and “in no uncertain terms” to Modi at the Group of 20 summit in New Delhi this month. He said Canada was looking into the killing with allied nations.

Trudeau’s India visit was fraught, with Modi’s office announcing at the time that the two leaders had discussed the Khalistan issue and Modi conveying “India’s strong concerns about continuing anti-India activities of extremist elements in Canada.”

Trudeau stayed a day longer than planned in New Delhi, which the Canadian embassy attributed to a technical problem in his airplane.

The Washington Post · by Gerry Shih · September 19, 2023

11. When will China invade Taiwan? The answer lies in West Africa

Interesting. I had no idea.

Excerpts:

One limitation on Xi is that an attack across the Taiwan Strait might well be seen by China itself as bringing a recalcitrant province to heel, but in the Western world it would be seen rather differently. It is likely that at least some supplies of raw materials into the Chinese economy would be cut off if it does happen.

Possibly the most vital of these would be the iron ore with which China is building itself. Constructing version 1.0 of a modern society requires vast amounts of iron and steel. Our own situation, where building something new usually means tearing down something else first, produces a lot of steel scrap. This is why the recent Tata and Port Talbot issue in Wales is being resolved with £500 million to build scrap reprocessing furnaces, rather than ones to make new steel. This is why Nucor, American’s largest steel company, is mainly engaged in reprocessing the scrap from taking down the last version of society to make the next. In the West we mostly do not need to make new, we can be green and reprocess old. But building for the first time, as China very often is, cannot be done that way.

Therefore China is reliant upon imports of iron ore: that’s the only way it can continue to develop. The imports come mainly from Australia, and a war over Taiwan would interdict that. Currently there are, quite literally, mountains of iron oxide in the Pilbara and other parts of Western Australia that get shipped off to make China’s new cities. The likelihood is that would stop upon hostilities. So, China will probably only feel free to initiate those hostilities when it can replace those supplies.

When will China invade Taiwan? The answer lies in West Africa

The Port Talbot solution won't cut it when you’re building Industrial Society 1.0

By Nick Squires, William Whittington, Joe Barnes, Jamie Bullen, Tim Worstall The Telegraph5 min

September 18, 2023

View Original

When will China be ready to invade Taiwan? Perhaps never. But Xi Jinping is talking a lot about war, and a huge military and naval buildup is underway. It’s definitely something to think about.

One limitation on Xi is that an attack across the Taiwan Strait might well be seen by China itself as bringing a recalcitrant province to heel, but in the Western world it would be seen rather differently. It is likely that at least some supplies of raw materials into the Chinese economy would be cut off if it does happen.

Possibly the most vital of these would be the iron ore with which China is building itself. Constructing version 1.0 of a modern society requires vast amounts of iron and steel. Our own situation, where building something new usually means tearing down something else first, produces a lot of steel scrap. This is why the recent Tata and Port Talbot issue in Wales is being resolved with £500 million to build scrap reprocessing furnaces, rather than ones to make new steel. This is why Nucor, American’s largest steel company, is mainly engaged in reprocessing the scrap from taking down the last version of society to make the next. In the West we mostly do not need to make new, we can be green and reprocess old. But building for the first time, as China very often is, cannot be done that way.

Therefore China is reliant upon imports of iron ore: that’s the only way it can continue to develop. The imports come mainly from Australia, and a war over Taiwan would interdict that. Currently there are, quite literally, mountains of iron oxide in the Pilbara and other parts of Western Australia that get shipped off to make China’s new cities. The likelihood is that would stop upon hostilities. So, China will probably only feel free to initiate those hostilities when it can replace those supplies.

Sadly iron ore is not just iron ore – nothing in mining is ever quite that simple. There’s plenty of magnetite around – China mines tens of millions of tonnes a year of it at home. The trouble with magnetite is that it requires considerable processing from rock to furnace, and there isn’t enough to meet China’s requirements. There’s another type of ore, a step further back, called taconite which is also common – iron itself is very common of course. But what people actually want is hematite (or haematite) which is also known as direct shipping ore, DSO. It’s not quite true, but almost, that mining this stuff is as simple as scooping it into a railroad car and sending it off. This is also what’s available in the hundreds of millions of tonnes quantities necessary to build that new China.

Well, it’s currently available as long as those Australian mines keep shipping. Even in Australia there’s not quite enough: one Chinese company also mines magnetite in that country.

So, if China invades Taiwan it’ll lose – at least for a time, until bruised egos give way to money again – access to those Australian iron ores. But if iron’s that common around the world then possibly it can be purchased from elsewhere? There is substantial mining of hematite in Brazil but simply not enough to feed those furnaces. Nor is it feasible to ramp up supplies from there.

But there is one other source. The last – last known at least – vast hematite deposit is in Guinea in West Africa. This is like those vast Australian deposits. Shovel the mountains into the rail cars and ship them off. It’s large enough to keep China going for a time, too. The Chinese government has insisted that it wants to reduce dependence upon the Land of Kangaroos. The Chinese government has encouraged investment in that iron ore project in Guinea.

The whole thing is called “Simandou”. It’s divided into four pieces, but 1 and 2 are let to one group of companies, 3 and 4 to another. The first is a Singapore logistics company, a Chinese miner and the government of Guinea. The second is Rio Tinto, a Chinese company and the government again. The involvement of the logistics company is important.

That’s because this type of iron ore mining is a lot less about mining than it is about transporting the stuff, which means building a railway to get it to the coast and a harbour to get it aboard ships to China. So the opening of Simandou depends on how quickly 600km of railroad line can be built, with port facilities at the end. Progress on the project was delayed for many years by accusations and counter-accusations of corruption, and changes of government in Guinea.

The most recent government change was a military coup in 2021. Everything stopped again for a year – was stopped for a year. The more cynical observers (me) put this down to the colonels deciding how many Rolexes everyone should get. This is West Africa. But now there’s a declaration from the new government: Simandou will be producing by March 2025, with the railroad and port ready by the end of 2024.

I would say: not a chance. If the project does meet that timescale it’ll fall apart. As with all engineering you can get it fast, cheap, good – pick any two. The whispering, perhaps muttering, around the industry is that 2028 looks like a better date for something that could work reliably for the desired decades.

It could be, of course, that cheap doesn’t matter when there’s military glory to be had. Xi Jinping is an old man and those with political power do have that disturbing habit of wanting to do something famous before they pop off themselves. Good sense and the lives of others aren’t fully part of that calculation before the long good night. Some China watchers, too, think that Xi may need a war soon in order to unite the country and stand off internal forces which are possibly plotting to oust him.

But China would find it very troublesome to invade Taiwan without a replacement iron ore supply. That can really only come from this project in Guinea. Which might, maybe, start shipping in 2025 if cost truly isn’t a worry but later is more likely.

Now, because I’m a realist, not a cynic, what I would not be surprised to see is a substantial spend on Rolexes in the Taiwanese military budget. This is West Africa after all.

However things play out, it’s true to say that Taiwan will be a lot less safe as and when Simandou ore starts to ship. Those who are interested in Taiwan, whether that’s because it’s a righteous democracy or because it makes much of the world’s supply of microchips (often making big money for designers such as UK-based Arm as it does so) – such people and their navies, air forces and marines might do well to keep an eye on events in Guinea and specifically the Simandou project.

Tim Worstall is a former metals trader

12. Opinion | Meet Putin’s Ghostwriter

Excerpts:

This is how, for example, Mr. Putin’s infamous essay of 2021 came about, in which he wrote for the first time that the West was deliberately turning Ukraine into “anti-Russia.” It was replete with outlandish claims: that Russians and Ukrainians are one people; that Ukraine was the creation of Bolsheviks; that the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union never infringed upon the rights of Ukrainians. The article, published on the president’s official website, was sent to all of the defense ministry’s military units, and Mr. Putin still regularly repeats its central points in his public speeches. Almost the entire article was included in the new history textbook.

The textbook, with the power to shape an entire generation of Russian students, is perhaps Mr. Medinsky’s biggest achievement yet. According to colleagues, he sees himself as akin to the conservative intellectuals of the Russian Empire — like Konstantin Pobedonostsev, the infamous ideologue of Nicholas II’s reign. Other models are Andrei Zhdanov, Stalin’s right-hand man after World War II, and Mikhail Suslov, Brezhnev’s chief ideologue who advocated the persecution of dissidents.

Mr. Medinsky, of course, is a parody of the above — just like his version of Russian history. It’s such an unconvincing and undisguised lie that in practice, it serves to indict the entire imperial narrative of Russian history. For all his success, Mr. Medinsky may yet become the gravedigger of Russian imperial ideology. Because after him, it should no longer be possible to talk about Russia’s past without shame, horror and disgust.

Opinion | Meet Putin’s Ghostwriter

The New York Times · by Mikhail Zygar · September 19, 2023

Guest Essay

Meet Putin’s Ghostwriter

Sept. 19, 2023, 1:00 a.m. ET

Credit...Harol Bustos

Mr. Zygar is a Russian journalist and the author of “War and Punishment: Putin, Zelensky and the Path to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine.”

Starting this month, all high school students in Russia have a new history textbook. On its pages, they’ll find a strikingly simplistic account of the past 80 years — from the end of World War II to the present — that all but comes with the Kremlin’s signature.

Revisionism doesn’t begin to cover it. Stalin, in contrast to the standard depiction in Russian textbooks over the past 30 years, is presented as a wise and effective leader thanks to whom the Soviet Union won the war and ordinary people began to live much better. Repressions are mentioned, but in an accusatory way. The reader is left with the feeling that Stalin’s victims were guilty and suffered a well-deserved punishment.

The telling of the end of the Soviet Union is similarly distorted. Previous textbooks analyzed the collapse of the Soviet system and the inefficiency of the planned economy, writing about the arms race and the irrationality of the elderly Soviet leaders. The new tome blames everything on Mikhail Gorbachev, castigating him as an incompetent bureaucrat who succumbed to pressure from the United States. Then there’s the 28 pages on the war in Ukraine. They contain, of course, no history and only outright propaganda — a set of clichés recycled from Russian television.

The book was written, along with others, by Vladimir Medinsky, Russia’s former culture minister and now a presidential aide. Mr. Medinsky has another, more secret role: He is President Vladimir Putin’s ghostwriter. Working with a team of assistants, he writes texts about history under Mr. Putin’s name. Given the president’s obsession with history and use of it to justify his regime, Mr. Medinsky occupies an important position in Russia today. From the shadows, he has helped construct the ideological and historical edifice on which much of Mr. Putin’s rule rests.

But who is he?

Mr. Medinsky was born in the Cherkasy region of Ukraine in 1970. But he is not Ukrainian at all. His father was a military man and his childhood was spent traveling across the Soviet Union, from garrison to garrison. In this peripatetic environment, according to close acquaintances, Mr. Medinsky was brought up with very conservative values and as a sincere patriot of the Soviet Union. Education was important too — his mother was a schoolteacher — and, in time, led him to the Moscow Institute of International Relations. A model student, he excelled in the School of Journalism and was a member of Komsomol, the Communist Party’s youth organization.

But by the time he graduated, the Soviet Union had collapsed. Mr. Medinsky had no difficulty adjusting. In 1992, with a group of classmates, he created his own advertising company, Ya Corporation. Its clients were mostly financial firms and tobacco companies. He soon became a P.R. man for the tobacco lobby — a bit like the unscrupulous main character in Christopher Buckley’s 1994 book “Thank You for Smoking.” Even so, he didn’t neglect his studies, continuing to work toward a doctorate.

That’s when I met Mr. Medinsky, when I was as an undergraduate at the institute in the late ’90s. He was 10 years older than me, aloof, and had just started to teach public relations. It was a new and very fashionable discipline, and many of my classmates, who wanted to become “P.R. people,” dreamed of learning from him. Something of a star on campus, Mr. Medinsky was considered a successful businessman and willingly supported students, taking the best of them for internships at his company.

In 2000, Mr. Putin became president of Russia, taking over from Boris Yeltsin. As any P.R. man should, Mr. Medinsky adapted to the change in atmosphere, parlaying a job in the civil service into a political career. By 2004, he was a member of parliament for Mr. Putin’s United Russia party. Despite accusations that he continued as an elected official to lobby for tobacco companies and casinos, Mr. Medinsky was a man on the rise.

It helped that he started trading in patriotism. In 2007, this former tobacco lobbyist began to write books about history — or, rather, he began to create historical P.R. In a series of books called “Myths About Russia,” he set out to debunk Russian stereotypes and to put new stories in their place. There were volumes on “Russian drunkenness, laziness and cruelty,” “Russian theft, soul and patience” and “Russian democracy, dirt and imprisonment.”

In each of the books, Mr. Medinsky argued that everything bad in Russia’s history is the slander of enemies. For example, Ivan the Terrible was not really an insane tyrant — because, for one thing, he was always motivated by the interests of his people and did everything possible for the good of Russia. For another, Western rulers at that time were even crueler. And, in any case, all his supposed atrocities were actually fantasies of European historians.

From the start, Mr. Medinsky’s work was criticized by real Russian historians. But he never hid that his work was not based on facts. They were not important to him; the real goal was to create a persuasive narrative. “Facts by themselves don’t mean very much,” Mr. Medinsky wrote in one of his books. “Everything begins not with facts, but with interpretations. If you love your homeland, your people, then the story you write will always be positive.”

Armed with such an approach, Mr. Medinsky fashioned a myth of Russia as benevolent and powerful, always justly triumphant over supposedly lesser countries. It clearly caught the president’s eye and, in 2012, Mr. Putin appointed him minister of culture. According to a source close to the Kremlin, he was given a clear task by the president: to carry out the militarization of Russian society.

That is exactly what he did. In 2013, Mr. Medinsky headed up the Russian Military Historical Society, a charitable organization that, in events and exhibitions, glorified past military victories. As minister, Mr. Medinsky channeled funding to movies creating patriotic myths about World War II, such as “Maria. Save Moscow” and “Panfilov’s 28 Men.” Art was disdained — in one meeting, Mr. Medinsky said that he did not consider anything he could draw himself as art — in favor of blockbusters. His entire cultural policy can be described as the propaganda of war and violence.

They were successful years. Yet in early 2020, Mr. Putin changed the composition of his government; along with most members of the administration, Mr. Medinsky was dismissed, and he was made an assistant to the president. This was a rather big drop in status, according to acquaintances, and the demotion rankled. (He was apparently especially annoyed not to get the new car usually enjoyed by employees of the presidential administration.)

But the pandemic helped him bounce back. In the summer of 2020, Mr. Putin was self-isolating in his residence in Valdai. He had always been interested in history; there, with time on his hands, he became noticeably obsessed with it. He began to speak on historical topics, but he needed an assistant, someone who could hone his ideas and give them full expression. Mr. Medinsky was the obvious choice.

True, Mr. Medinsky doesn’t exactly write his own texts. Mr. Putin’s ghostwriter has his own extensive staff of ghostwriters. He still heads the Russian Military Historical Society, whose employees work on his articles and books. In general, the process looks like this: The president dictates his theses to Mr. Medinsky, who develops them and dictates in turn to his assistants. They write the essays, and then the texts goes in the opposite direction — to Mr. Medinsky and, finally, to Mr. Putin — to be edited.

This is how, for example, Mr. Putin’s infamous essay of 2021 came about, in which he wrote for the first time that the West was deliberately turning Ukraine into “anti-Russia.” It was replete with outlandish claims: that Russians and Ukrainians are one people; that Ukraine was the creation of Bolsheviks; that the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union never infringed upon the rights of Ukrainians. The article, published on the president’s official website, was sent to all of the defense ministry’s military units, and Mr. Putin still regularly repeats its central points in his public speeches. Almost the entire article was included in the new history textbook.

The textbook, with the power to shape an entire generation of Russian students, is perhaps Mr. Medinsky’s biggest achievement yet. According to colleagues, he sees himself as akin to the conservative intellectuals of the Russian Empire — like Konstantin Pobedonostsev, the infamous ideologue of Nicholas II’s reign. Other models are Andrei Zhdanov, Stalin’s right-hand man after World War II, and Mikhail Suslov, Brezhnev’s chief ideologue who advocated the persecution of dissidents.

Mr. Medinsky, of course, is a parody of the above — just like his version of Russian history. It’s such an unconvincing and undisguised lie that in practice, it serves to indict the entire imperial narrative of Russian history. For all his success, Mr. Medinsky may yet become the gravedigger of Russian imperial ideology. Because after him, it should no longer be possible to talk about Russia’s past without shame, horror and disgust.

Mikhail Zygar (@zygaro) is a former editor in chief of the independent TV news channel Dozhd (TV Rain) and the author of “War and Punishment: Putin, Zelensky and the Path to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine” and “All the Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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The New York Times · by Mikhail Zygar · September 19, 2023

13. Opinion | The Ukraine war showcases new military technologies. Whoever masters them wins.

Ukraine: "a laboratory of warfare."

Excerpts:

Stephen Biddle, a professor of international relations at Columbia University, argued recently in Foreign Affairs that the war has been characterized more by tactical continuity than by change. “Although the Ukraine war has seen plenty of new equipment, its use has not yet brought transformational results,” he wrote.

Biddle has a point: The war in Ukraine shows that the age of industrial warfare hasn’t passed. Countries still need lots of artillery, tanks and other old-fashioned weapons. The war has been a wake-up call to Western countries, which have not been producing enough artillery ammunition and other munitions in recent years. The U.S. Army is now ramping up its production of artillery rounds.

But the war has also shown the limitations of sheer mass in warfare: If having lots of troops and tanks were enough to win, the Russians would have taken Kyiv long ago. Ukraine’s success in holding them off, initially employing handheld weapons systems such as Javelin and Stinger missiles, highlights the profound changes underway.

T.X. Hammes, a distinguished research fellow at the National Defense University, argues that, although about 90 percent of the weapons systems being employed by both sides — aircraft, tanks, artillery, armored personnel vehicles and the like — were developed and often produced in the 20th century, the other 10 percent will have a transformational impact.

Analysts who believe that we are seeing revolutionary developments point, first and foremost, to the extensive use of drones in the Ukraine war — far more than in any previous conflict. This has, in fact, turned into the war of the drones. “We may well one day look at the Ukraine war and unmanned systems (‘drones’) in much the same way history looks back at the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s as a historic proving ground for the Blitzkrieg to come,” writes Peter Warren Singer, a senior fellow at the New America think tank.

...

No matter how widespread drones have become, the human element will remain of central importance in warfare. Both sides in Ukraine have drones; the question is which side can use them more effectively. Technology alone seldom confers a long-lasting advantage. What counts is how successfully militaries create strategies, training and bureaucratic structures to harness cutting-edge weapons systems — whether it’s rifles and railroads in the 19th century, tanks and aircraft in the 1930s, or drones and precision-guided missiles today.

Despite some problems with their own lumbering Soviet-style bureaucracy, the Ukrainians have shown themselves to be highly adaptive — it is, in fact, their ability to innovate from the bottom up that has enabled them to stymie the Russian onslaught. Can the U.S. military be as nimble facing threats from China, Iran, North Korea, Russia and other adversaries? There is much that the Ukrainians can teach Western armed forces — which is why Western analysts will continue to closely study this laboratory of warfare.

Opinion | The Ukraine war showcases new military technologies. Whoever masters them wins.

Columnist

September 18, 2023 at 6:15 a.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Max Boot · September 18, 2023

The war in Ukraine — Europe’s biggest conflict since 1945 — features a bewildering combination of old and new technologies and tactics. The artillery duels, minefields and trench warfare are straight out of World War I, and yet much of the Ukrainian artillery fire is now being spotted by drones and adjusted on tablet computers linked via satellite to the internet. It sometimes feels like a mash-up of “All Quiet on the Western Front” and “Blade Runner.”

Militaries around the world are closely following the fighting to gain insights into 21st-century warfare, knowing that they are watching a trial run of technologies that will become more ubiquitous and important in future conflicts. “We are studying deeply not just Ukraine but also the Indo-Pacific and what’s happening with technology like artificial intelligence and machine learning,” Gen. James E. Rainey, commander of the Army Futures Command, told me. “The key is figuring out what won’t change, what is changing fundamentally and how to apply those insights.”

It’s not easy to draw conclusions while the war is still going on and both sides have an incentive to keep secret basic information about casualties, ammunition expenditures and other vital metrics. This helps explain the wide divergence of opinions among military analysts about the conflict and its lessons.

Stephen Biddle, a professor of international relations at Columbia University, argued recently in Foreign Affairs that the war has been characterized more by tactical continuity than by change. “Although the Ukraine war has seen plenty of new equipment, its use has not yet brought transformational results,” he wrote.

Biddle has a point: The war in Ukraine shows that the age of industrial warfare hasn’t passed. Countries still need lots of artillery, tanks and other old-fashioned weapons. The war has been a wake-up call to Western countries, which have not been producing enough artillery ammunition and other munitions in recent years. The U.S. Army is now ramping up its production of artillery rounds.

But the war has also shown the limitations of sheer mass in warfare: If having lots of troops and tanks were enough to win, the Russians would have taken Kyiv long ago. Ukraine’s success in holding them off, initially employing handheld weapons systems such as Javelin and Stinger missiles, highlights the profound changes underway.

T.X. Hammes, a distinguished research fellow at the National Defense University, argues that, although about 90 percent of the weapons systems being employed by both sides — aircraft, tanks, artillery, armored personnel vehicles and the like — were developed and often produced in the 20th century, the other 10 percent will have a transformational impact.

Analysts who believe that we are seeing revolutionary developments point, first and foremost, to the extensive use of drones in the Ukraine war — far more than in any previous conflict. This has, in fact, turned into the war of the drones. “We may well one day look at the Ukraine war and unmanned systems (‘drones’) in much the same way history looks back at the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s as a historic proving ground for the Blitzkrieg to come,” writes Peter Warren Singer, a senior fellow at the New America think tank.

Most of the drones employed by both sides were built not for conflict but to film weddings and vacations. Produced primarily in China (and readily available to purchase online), these cheap drones can be adapted to conduct surveillance of enemy positions and even fitted with grenades or other crude explosives to drop on enemy soldiers. At a higher level of sophistication, Ukraine has received strike drones from the West — e.g., the Turkish Bayraktar TB2, the U.S. Switchblade 300 and Phoenix Ghost, and Australia’s ultracheap, hard-to-detect Corvo Precision Payload Delivery System made of cardboard. The Russians, for their part, have become reliant on Iranian-made Shahed self-detonating drones and their own Lancet drones and GPS-guided glide bombs.

Because drones fly slowly, produce a lawnmower-like noise and depend on communications links that can be jammed, they are easy to bring down with bullets, missiles or electronic jamming devices. According to the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank, a quadcopter drone lasts an average of only three flights in combat; a fixed-wing drone, six flights. RUSI estimates that Ukraine has been losing 10,000 drones a month. But unmanned systems are so cheap — they generally cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, compared with millions for manned aircraft — that both sides can readily buy or build more of them.

The war is already seeing “drone swarms,” and more are likely in the future, as countries such as China and the United States mass-produce sophisticated autonomous systems. (The Pentagon recently announced the Replicator initiative to buy thousands of drones over the next two years.) Eventually, Hammes told me, the game changer will be AI-enabled drones “hunting autonomously for targets”: “How can you maneuver if the defender can put up 1,000 drones over a brigade frontage?” This technology, which raises difficult ethical issues, is only starting to make an appearance in Ukraine.

Drone technology is evolving as rapidly today as aircraft technology did during World War I, as Ukraine and Russia struggle to gain an edge. Reports of drone-on-drone dogfights recall the World War I battles between biplanes. “The ultimate goal is that we will have a new type of army,” a Ukrainian official told the Wall Street Journal. “Like there is the air force and there are artillery forces, there will be drone forces. A different army within the army.”

In small workshops, Ukrainian companies are modifying commercial drones to defeat Russian electronic jammers and also building their own drones, sometimes employing 3D printers, with longer ranges and greater payloads. In the past year, the Ukrainians have trained more than 10,000 new drone pilots and plan to train 10,000 more.

Ukraine has produced long-range aerial drones that have been able to reach Moscow and damage military aircraft at a Russian air base near the borders of Estonia and Latvia. Still more revolutionary have been Ukraine’s successful sea-drone attacks: On Oct. 29, 2022, a flotilla of unmanned Ukrainian boats put a Russian frigate out of commission in Sevastopol harbor on the occupied Crimean Peninsula.

Whenever the Ukrainians score an impressive hit, they are quick to publicize the results by releasing videos to win the “battle of the narrative.” They are pioneers in weaponizing social media to boost morale at home and support for the war effort abroad.

Space operations are also making a significant contribution to the war. Both sides rely on imagery from satellites, as well as drones, to surveil the battlefield; satellites are able to provide a broader picture and peer far behind enemy lines, while drones offer a more granular view that addresses the specific needs of front-line units. The Ukrainians don’t have their own satellites, but they do have access to U.S. intelligence imagery as well as commercial satellite imagery. All this technology — whether in low-flying drones or satellites in space — makes it harder than ever for either side to achieve the crucial element of surprise in battle.

“The battlefield is much more transparent,” said Lawrence Freedman, an emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College in London. “You can’t gather vast numbers of tanks to press ahead because everyone knows where they are and what they’re doing.” For now, at least, that is reinforcing the advantage of whichever side is on the defensive — as the Russians learned during their initial invasion and the Ukrainians are now discovering during their counteroffensive.

The largest and most important satellite service is Starlink, owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which provides internet access all over the world, including in Ukraine. As of July, SpaceX had some 4,500 satellites in orbit, with plans to eventually expand to as many as 42,000 satellites.

Starlink represents a “breakthrough” in military communications, said Andrey Liscovich, a Ukrainian former Uber executive who is helping supply the Ukrainian military with nonlethal technology. Starlink signals are much harder to disrupt or trace than radio communications, and they allow the most remote units to connect with anyone on the planet.

The ubiquity of Starlink has enabled the Ukrainian military to run the war from chatrooms, creating on the fly a more rudimentary version of the advanced command and control systems that the Pentagon has spent billions to develop. In military parlance, the Ukrainians are rapidly able to close “kill chains” by identifying targets and getting that information to “shooters” before the Russians can react. They have developed their own apps to enable information sharing — for example, a program called Kropyva, developed by a small Ukrainian nonprofit, allows forward-deployed units to use tablet computers to continuously track both enemy and friendly units.

Of course, the importance of Starlink puts a vast amount of power into the hands of its owner. Musk reportedly refused to turn on Starlink service around Crimea to stymie a Ukrainian sea drone attack in September 2022. Such capricious disruptions are less likely in the future because the Pentagon has begun contracting with Starlink to offer its service to the Ukrainian military.

While drones and Starlink garner most of the public attention, another transformational aspect of the war has been taken almost for granted: the success of Ukrainian air defenses. I happened to be in Kyiv in May during what was then the biggest air attack on the city to date: The Russians reportedly fired six hypersonic Kinzhal missiles, nine Kalibr cruise missiles, three Iskander ballistic missiles and numerous Shahed attack drones. Yet, miraculously, there were no casualties. The Russian attack was stopped by Ukraine’s mishmash of old Soviet air defenses and sophisticated new Western air defenses, including the American Patriot, the American-Norwegian NASAMS and the German IRIS-T and Gepard Flakpanzer, each optimized for different kinds of air and missile threats.

Russian missiles are still able to get through, particularly when fired at areas that lack the density of air defenses deployed around Kyiv. On Sept. 6, for example, a horrific Russian missile strike on a crowded market in Kostiantynivka, in the eastern Donetsk region, killed at least 17 people and injured 32 more. But Ukraine’s Air Force claims that, in recent months, it has been able to intercept about 90 percent of Russian cruise missiles and drones and 80 percent of air- and ground-launched ballistic missiles.

“It’s been the most successful battlefield use of missile defense to date,” Tom Karako, a missile defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told me. From Karako’s perspective, the Ukraine experience shows that “a little air defense goes a long way” and that “you don’t have to be perfect to have a strategic effect.” Case in point: Last winter, the Russians failed to render Ukrainian cities uninhabitable by targeting their heating and electrical systems, even though they did manage to temporarily disable some utilities. The Russians might try again this winter, and the key to stopping them will be to keep Ukraine supplied with ammunition for its air-defense systems.

It’s important not to exaggerate the impact of advanced technology. Much of the war in Ukraine remains low-tech and old-fashioned. Many higher-end technologies such as artificial intelligence, hypersonics and cyberwarfare have barely made an impact, and manned aircraft have not played much of a role — in part because of the strength of air defenses on both sides. The war would look very different if it were being fought by the United States rather than Ukraine: U.S. aircraft would first try to “suppress” Russian air defenses and then, assuming they were successful, pummel Russian troops from the air, as they did with Iraqi forces in 1991 and 2003. Ukraine lacks the modern aircraft to do that. It is scheduled to receive F-16s soon, but stealthy, next-generation F-35s, which would be needed to take down the most Russian advanced air defenses, remain off the table. That is why Ukraine has to rely on drones.

No matter how widespread drones have become, the human element will remain of central importance in warfare. Both sides in Ukraine have drones; the question is which side can use them more effectively. Technology alone seldom confers a long-lasting advantage. What counts is how successfully militaries create strategies, training and bureaucratic structures to harness cutting-edge weapons systems — whether it’s rifles and railroads in the 19th century, tanks and aircraft in the 1930s, or drones and precision-guided missiles today.

Despite some problems with their own lumbering Soviet-style bureaucracy, the Ukrainians have shown themselves to be highly adaptive — it is, in fact, their ability to innovate from the bottom up that has enabled them to stymie the Russian onslaught. Can the U.S. military be as nimble facing threats from China, Iran, North Korea, Russia and other adversaries? There is much that the Ukrainians can teach Western armed forces — which is why Western analysts will continue to closely study this laboratory of warfare.

The Washington Post · by Max Boot · September 18, 2023

14. Analysis | The main storylines at a gloomy United Nations

Analysis | The main storylines at a gloomy United Nations

Columnist

September 19, 2023 at 12:00 a.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Ishaan Tharoor · September 19, 2023

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NEW YORK — The scene outside the United Nations on Monday morning was a snapshot of global disorder. As the rain poured on Turtle Bay, delegates and dignitaries from around the world jostled between checkpoints and security barriers. Umbrellas poked into turbans and dripped onto suits. Bodyguards to foreign ministers fumed as their security details got caught in the soggy scrum to proceed into the U.N. complex.

Inside, though, the friction may end up being equally palpable. The annual grand conclave of international diplomacy kicks into high gear Tuesday, when the General Debate of world leaders speaking at the famous dais of the U.N. General Assembly gets underway. Per custom, Brazil’s leader, in this case President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, will speak first, followed by President Biden.

As in recent years, the deliberations are taking place amid a profound gloom. The war in Ukraine may smolder on, but so, too, do the intractable crises posed by climate change and the aftershocks of the coronavirus pandemic. Efforts to reach the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals are faltering, with governments no longer on track to eradicate global poverty by 2030, among other commitments made in 2015. And more and more diplomats openly grumble that the United Nations, as an institution, is no longer fit for purpose to meet an array of challenges.

The organization’s top official still vouches for its merits. “It is a one-of-a-kind moment each year for leaders from every corner of the globe to not only assess the state of the world but to act for the common good,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres told reporters last week. “And action is what the world needs now.”

The war in Ukraine

The most eye-catching set piece of the week may take place Wednesday, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will attend in-person a special Security Council session on the war ravaging his country. He may be joined at the table by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, making for a dramatic showdown 19 months after Russia launched its ruinous full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

But, as my colleague John Hudson noted, Zelensky does not come to the United Nations with the wind behind his sails. Kyiv’s long-running counteroffensive against Russian positions in Ukraine’s south and east is beset by difficulties, with Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, saying last week that Ukrainian troops may have only “30 to 45 days’ worth of fighting weather left.”

U.S. and NATO officials continue to talk tough, affirming their enduring commitment to Ukraine’s defense while hoping for peace under conditions favorable to Kyiv. “Our job from our perspective is to provide Ukraine with the tools it needs to be in the best possible position on the battlefield, so that it can be in the best possible position at the negotiating table,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters last week.

But the war’s tremendous drain of Western resources and attention has irked onlookers elsewhere, many of whom want a swifter resolution of the conflict. There’s also widespread frustration at the collapse of Russian participation in the Black Sea grain deal, which had unlocked tens of millions of tons in staple crops for the global market.

“The default position among the majority of U.N. members is we need to negotiate an end to the war,” Richard Gowan, a U.N. expert at the International Crisis Group, told my colleagues. “If Zelensky sits down at the U.N. Security Council and says we will keep fighting forever, then that will create a clear dissonance with a lot of non-Western countries struggling with debt and poverty who feel that their problems are being overshadowed.”

Focus on the ‘Global South’

Biden will be the only leader from one of the Security Council’s permanent five members to be present in New York this week, an outcome that reflects the busy geopolitical calendar of recent weeks but also raises questions about the U.N.’s relevance. Still, more than 140 other world leaders are also in attendance and their disparate concerns will get an airing.

This week, the United Nations has also structured in specific summits and conversations about climate change, buttressing global development goals since the disruption of the pandemic, and action on sovereign debt relief — with numerous developing countries on the hook to international lenders on terms that are jeopardizing their ability to invest in their own societies.

“If it were up to us we would spend more time discussing Ukraine,” said Olof Skoog, the European Union’s ambassador to the United Nations, to the New York Times. But, he added, Western governments are keen to avoid the perception of a “north-south” rift with countries in the developing world.

A broader geopolitical dynamic looms, as China has also embarked on a series of initiatives to position itself as a champion of the non-West. “The U.S. and other Western countries are clearly increasing their efforts to win over the ‘Global South,’ but it is evident that this is not about granting developing countries a more equal status and development opportunities, but rather an attempt to continue to confine them to the periphery of the ‘center-periphery’ system,” said an editorial in Beijing’s state-run Global Times this week.

Whither ‘multilateralism’

The boring word that gets trotted out each year at the U.N. General Assembly is “multilateralism.” The United Nations itself, the efforts of its constituent members, the ethos of collective action it is supposed to inculcate — all of this reflects its central role as a linchpin in a multilateral world order, built on institutions set up in the wake of World War II.

But the world is much transformed since then and some of the United Nations’ current structures — in particular, the Security Council — have proved more dysfunctional than helpful. The veto-wielding influence of the five permanent members has made the body the repeated source of global opprobrium. On the economic front, countries in the developing world have been clamoring for a greater stake in institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

But amid great power tussles, the likelihood for significant reforms seems remote. “The gap between the demand for international cooperation and its supply is widening. Humanity is grappling with simultaneous, compounding, and rapidly evolving challenges,” wrote Stewart Patrick and Minh Thu Pham of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, listing out a range of crises including economic inequity, climate change, global refugee spikes, fraying democracies and the fallout from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“On these and other issues, the U.N. has fallen short, both because it is no longer fit for purpose and because its member states do not trust one another,” they added.

The Washington Post · by Ishaan Tharoor · September 19, 2023

15. President Zelenskyy Goes to Washington (Again)

Excerpts:

An Important Visit for Ukraine

While much of the focus of this article has been on President Zelenskyy, this is an important visit for all Ukrainians. Notwithstanding the massive amounts of assistance provided by America and dozens of other nations, it is only the Ukrainians who have suffered and sacrificed as a result of the many appalling Russian actions since 2014. They have earned ongoing support from America and other nations.

The ultimate success of the visit will be judged by whether U.S. support is continued (or enhanced) and whether Ukraine is in a better position to defend its people and its territory into 2024 and beyond. It will be an interesting few days in Washington DC.

President Zelenskyy Goes to Washington (Again)

MICK RYAN

SEP 19, 2023

mickryan.substack.com · by Mick Ryan

Image: Politico

This week, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy will travel from Ukraine for meetings in Washington DC. It will be Zelenskyy’s second visit there since the the large-scale Russian invasion commenced in February 2022.

The situation in Ukraine is quite different from when Zelenskyy last came to Washington DC.

Then, in December 2022, Ukraine had just completed two successful and very important offensive campaigns. The Kharkiv campaign, in September 2022, shocked the Russian Army and saw the Ukrainian Armed Forces liberate large portions of Luhansk oblast. Around the same time, the Ukrainian offensive in Kherson eventually saw the Russians conduct a deliberate withdrawal from the territory they occupied in Western Kherson.

While these were military successes, they also had political impacts.

In Russia, Putin announced a partial mobilization that was needed to backfill the huge losses in personnel that the Russian Army had sustained since February 2022. At the same time, a new overall commander was appointed. General Surovikin, who has since gone on to be a character in the Prigozhin drama, stabilized the Russian situation and commenced the construction of the Surovikin Line in southern Ukraine. And in the eyes of western politicians and publics, the Ukrainians proved they were capable of the offensive operations to liberate their territory occupied by Russia.

Ukraine was then subjected to a systemic Russian attack using missiles and drones on its critical infrastructure, including power, water and heating, from late 2022. This saw many Ukrainians endure a colder and more miserable winter than normal. It did however prompt the provision of additional western military assistance for air defence of key Ukrainian cities.

Since Zelenskyy’s last Washington visit, Ukraine was also forced to defend against an early 2023 Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine. This offensive, launched in January by newly installed Russian commander, Valery Gerasimov, achieved little in the way of securing additional territory. The Russians, with the help of Wagner mercenaries and newly recruited convicts, did capture Bakhmut, although it possesses little military value. This Russian offensive however did force the Ukrainians to commit formations and resources they probably would have preferred to keep training and preparing for their summer offensive.

Over the past ten months, Ukraine has also broadened its strategic strike campaign against targets in Russia. There have been two broad targets sets. The first has been political targets. Generally these have been attacks that have avoided civilian casualties but have generated large scale media attention. It includes attacks in Moscow, the Belgorod incursions and the multiple attacks on the Kerch Bridge (this, admittedly, is also a legitimate military target). Ultimately, with these attacks the Ukrainians are focused on placing political pressure on Putin, and showing the Russian people that this is no longer a limited or special military operation.

The second target set has been military. This has included spectacular attacks on Russian airfields, destroying strategic bombers and transport aircraft. But it has also including multiple attacks on targets in occupied Crimea. This has included air defence sites, airfields, logistics depots and on ships either in the Black Sea or in the vicinity of Sevastopol. This week, in perhaps the most spectacular and successful attack, Ukraine destroyed a landing ship and a Kilo-class submarine in a Sevastopol dry dock.

But the key event since Zelenskyy’s last Washington visit, and one most are focused upon, is the continuing Ukrainian offensive campaign in southern Ukraine. While a stunning, Kharkiv-like breakthrough was the hope of many, those hopes were dashed early in the offensive. Ukraine’s early attacks against the Surovikin Line demonstrated how well the Russians had prepared their defensive scheme of maneuver in the south. Early problems with the southern offensive necessitated Ukrainian adaptation in its battlefield tactics - and in its strategic influence campaign. Even the Ukrainian President has admitted it has gone slower than hoped.

Therefore, many will be viewing Zelenskyy’s visit to Washington primarily through the lens of this current Ukrainian southern offensive. It is moving slowly. But, it has chewed through the Russian first line of defence and is well into the second (some reports have it through this as well in places). In doing so, the Ukrainians have caused very significant casualties to Russian personnel and have caused significant destruction of Russian artillery (including its supporting counter battery radars and EW support).

While combat exhaustion will start to play a larger role soon, we could still see the Ukrainians achieve a more decisive penetration of the Surovikin Line before Christmas. But even we’re this to eventuate, it is clear to even the most exuberant of Ukraine’s supporters that this is a war likely to continue into 2024 and probably 2025 as well.

While Ukraine is probably in a better strategic position now than it was in December 2022, it is perceptions of success (and failure) in Washington DC and other western capitals that are just as vital. With this as context for President Zelenskyy’s 2023 visit to Washington DC, what might the Ukrainians and Americans be seeking from the visit.

Zelenskyy’s Visit Objectives

While President Zelenskyy has made multiple visits to western capitals in the last few months, none have been as vital as his trip to Washington DC this week. The magnitude of American military, diplomatic, economic and moral support makes this so. He has four likely objectives.

First, Zelenskyy will want to reassure American legislators that their massive investment in Ukraine over the past 18 months is paying off, even if the velocity of liberating Ukrainian territory isn’t what many had hoped for. So far, the U.S. has committed tens of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine. This comprises economic, humanitarian and intelligence assistance as well as regular military assistance packages. American assistance comprises about a half of all foreign assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the war.

Zelenskyy’s meetings and speeches are certain to describe how vital this American assistance has been and how grateful Ukraine is for that help. He will want to talk about how the assistance has been well managed, with corruption minimized, and that American weapons have reached the right troops at the right time for the right purpose. Well, perhaps not always the right time. This could be a key point that Zelenskyy makes; aid is important, but rapid aid is better.

A second objective for Zelenskyy will be to convince American voters that they should remain interested and engaged, and that the United States should continue to support Ukraine in this war begun by Russia. While the Ukrainian President will be sure to describe how American aid is helping defend against the brutal, rampaging Russians, he will also be mounting his argument that supporting this war is not just about defending Ukraine. The larger purpose of supporting a Ukrainian victory is to defend the international system, largely established and underpinned by the U.S. since the end of the Second World War.

Because a world where predatory authoritarian regimes feel free to coerce, invade and subjugate their neighbours is one not only dangerous for small and mid-sized countries. It would be a world where American national security and economic prosperity are endangered. As such, Zelenskyy will want to re-make the case to the American people that while Ukraine is grateful for their support, this is a struggle not only about Ukraine.

A third objective for the Ukrainian President will be to assess for himself the sentiment in the US capital, particularly in the lead up to the 2024 US Presidential election year. You can read all the reports you want, but nothing beats walking the ground yourself. It is one of the reasons Zelenskyy makes so many battlefield visits. Getting the ground truth is important.

By and large, there is widespread support for Ukraine in the US Congress. But over the last year, different interest groups have argued for reducing or even stopping assistance. There are a range of imperatives quoted by advocates for such action, including a focus on ‘China first’ to much less noble and more isolationist reasons. Zelenskyy will be keen to gain a sense of the political atmosphere in Washington, and how the pro- and anti-Ukraine support sentiments might evolve during a U.S. Presidential election year.

Finally, Zelenskyy will be requesting further American assistance. This includes military equipment and munitions, economic assistance as well as enhanced military training assistance (individual, technical and collective). And he will be seeking continued U.S. assistance in multinational fora. The difference in G20 joint statements between last year and 2023 will have worried the Ukrainian government. The lack of a clear pathway for Ukraine to join NATO is also a concern. As such, Ukraine will be keen to gain U.S. reassurances about support in international meetings and institutions.

American Objectives

It is not only the Ukrainian President who will arrive in Washington DC with strategic objectives for the visit. The Biden administration will also be seeking to kick some goals with Zelenskyy coming to the U.S. capital.

First, they will be providing Zelenskyy a platform to make his case to the Congress and the American people for ongoing support to Ukraine. While the Biden administration has supported Ukraine throughout the war, their strategic messaging on the purpose for the assistance has not always cut through. President Zelenskyy is a fine orator, and the U.S. administration will be keen for him to use those skills to assist them in securing additional appropriations from Congress to assist Ukraine.

Second, the administration - unfairly or not - will want to communicate direct to Zelenskyy that the clock on U.S. support to Ukraine may be ticking. Notwithstanding Biden’s commitment to support Ukraine for as long as it takes, the quantity and duration of that support is subject to Congress and possible changes in the U.S. administration at the beginning of 2025. Biden and key staff will probably be quietly urging more speed from the Ukrainians because of this. It is grossly unfair to the Ukrainians, but it is also the nature of politics in Washington DC and other western capitals. And as part of these discussions, President Zelenskyy may telegraph Ukraine’s war plans for the coming winter and for 2024.

Finally, the Biden administration will be keen for Zelenskyy to speak with as many members of Congress as possible. While some with anti-Ukraine sentiments may not shift their positions, others might. Open discussions between Zelenskyy and representatives, where both can express their views and concerns, provides the opportunity for legislators to consider - or reconsider - their views on U.S. assistance to Ukraine.

An Important Visit for Ukraine

While much of the focus of this article has been on President Zelenskyy, this is an important visit for all Ukrainians. Notwithstanding the massive amounts of assistance provided by America and dozens of other nations, it is only the Ukrainians who have suffered and sacrificed as a result of the many appalling Russian actions since 2014. They have earned ongoing support from America and other nations.

The ultimate success of the visit will be judged by whether U.S. support is continued (or enhanced) and whether Ukraine is in a better position to defend its people and its territory into 2024 and beyond. It will be an interesting few days in Washington DC.

Futura Doctrina is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

mickryan.substack.com · by Mick Ryan

16. Former Biden official at the heart of Pentagon culture wars launches House campaign

Former Biden official at the heart of Pentagon culture wars launches House campaign

By MELANIE MASON

09/18/2023 09:01 AM EDT

Politico

Fresh off a stint at the Pentagon, Gil Cisneros is making another run at Congress.

Gil Cisneros was a philanthropist and political outsider when he won his first campaign in 2018 as part of the anti-Trump wave and a historic Democratic sweep in Orange County, the state’s longtime conservative bastion. | Francis Chung/E&E News / Francis Chung/E&E News

09/18/2023 09:01 AM EDT

LOS ANGELES — Gil Cisneros has a mixed record in a purple district. Now, he’s testing his hand at securing a seat that’s deep blue.

Cisneros, who won a $266 million lottery jackpot and then another major sweepstakes by wresting Orange County’s congressional seat from Republicans in 2018, is jumping into the race to succeed Democratic Rep. Grace Napolitano in a neighboring district.

Napolitano is retiring after representing her San Gabriel Valley seat for 25 years.

“She’s someone I very much respect,” Cisneros said in an interview. “I want to go on and continue her legacy in the 31st [district]. But I want to build upon my own too.”

Cisneros was a philanthropist and political outsider when he won his first campaign in 2018 as part of the anti-Trump wave and a historic Democratic sweep in Orange County, the state’s longtime conservative bastion. This time, he is running as a Washington veteran whose work has put him squarely at the center of national culture war battles. The race will test the resonance of the partisan culture clashes with voters in a solidly Democratic district.

After losing reelection in 2020 to now-Rep. Young Kim (R-Yorba Linda), Cisneros was appointed to serve in Biden’s Defense Department, overseeing the military’s personnel and readiness. He has implemented the Pentagon’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in that role, making him a GOP target.

Colorado firebrand Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) sought to slash his salary to $1, accusing him and other officials, including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, of weakening the military with their “woke agenda.” Cisneros also clashed with Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), who is blocking key military promotions to protest a Pentagon’s policy that helps service members access abortion and other reproductive health care.

“What Senator Tuberville is doing right now is putting our nation at risk. And that’s an issue that needs to be talked about,” he said.

Safe, open Democratic seats are rare in California, where incumbents can build decades-long careers with little opposition. Already there is a crowded field vying for Napolitano’s San Gabriel Valley district, where Democrats have a 27-point registration advantage. Among the contenders are the two state senators from the area, Susan Rubio and Bob Archuleta, whom Napolitano endorsed.

Rubio’s Senate seat overlaps with roughly 70 percent of the congressional district, while Archuleta’s represents 17 percent. There is very little overlap between the area and Cisneros’ old seat.

While he may be unfamiliar to voters there, his campaign rollout emphasizes his roots in Eastern Los Angeles, including his philanthropic work in Pico Rivera, just outside the district’s lines. He launched his race with backing from other California delegation members, including Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Nanette Barragán (D-Hermosa Beach). He also has the advantage of his lottery winnings, which he’s tapped to finance previous campaigns.

POLITICO

Politico

17. Republican Army veteran to run for Democratic-controlled Virginia U.S. House seat

The former Green Beret

Republican Army veteran to run for Democratic-controlled Virginia U.S. House seat

pilotonline.com · by Sarah Rankin · September 18, 2023

By SARAH RANKIN (Associated Press)

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Derrick Anderson, a U.S. Army combat veteran and attorney, announced plans Monday to again seek the Republican nomination for a Virginia congressional seat that could be a key to determining party control of the U.S. House.

The former Green Beret pledged in a statement to run a “tireless, heartfelt, and genuine” campaign to represent the 7th District in the Fredericksburg area, where he grew up.

“As your voice in Washington, I’ll stand up to the big spenders in both parties, get inflation under control and fight for a balanced budget,” Anderson said in a video announcement, casting himself as an outsider with a “fighting spirit.”

Anderson previously sought his party’s nomination in the 2022 primary, finishing about 5 percentage points behind the winner, Yesli Vega. Vega went on to lose to Democratic U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, who has represented the 7th District since 2018.

Speculation has swirled for months that Spanberger, seen by Democrats as a rising star and by Republicans as a formidable opponent, will run for Virginia governor in 2025.

If she opts not to seek reelection, it would leave open two of Virginia’s most competitive House seats, now both represented by Democrats. U.S. Rep. Jennifer Wexton on Monday announced she would not run again in northern Virginia’s 10th District, saying she learned she has a more severe form of Parkinson’s disease than initially thought.

Connor Joseph, a spokesperson for Spanberger, declined to comment Monday on Anderson’s candidacy or Spanberger’s plans. Spanberger has previously declined to comment to news outlets, saying she’s focused on this fall’s legislative elections in Virginia.

The 7th District was overhauled during the redistricting process that ended in late 2021. While it used to be centered in central Virginia, including the Richmond suburbs, it’s now anchored around the Interstate 95 corridor in exurban Washington and includes rural communities to the east and west.

Anderson’s campaign said in a statement that he is a Spotsylvania County native who attended Virginia Tech and graduated from Georgetown Law. He served six tours of duty overseas, including in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Several other Republicans have filed paperwork candidacy-related paperwork and announced campaigns: Bill Moher, Cameron Hamilton, Jon Myers and Shaliek Tarpley.

Also in the race is Craig Ennis, who is running as an independent.

If Spanberger does not seek reelection, political observers expect a crowded Democratic primary as well.

pilotonline.com · by Sarah Rankin · September 18, 2023

18. FBI chief says China has bigger hacking program than the competition combined

FBI chief says China has bigger hacking program than the competition combined

Reuters · by Raphael Satter

WASHINGTON, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Beijing has a cyberespionage program so vast that it is bigger than all of its major competitors combined, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Wray told a conference on Monday.

THE TAKE

U.S. officials have been sounding the alarm about Chinese hackers for years. But even after decades of handwringing over the theft of American secrets, Wray's comments were unusually stark.

KEY QUOTE

"China already has a bigger hacking program than every other major nation combined," Wray said. "If each one of the FBI's cyber agents and intelligence analysts focused on China exclusively, Chinese hackers would still outnumber our cyber personnel by at least 50 to 1."

THE RESPONSE

Beijing's embassy in Washington did not immediately return a message seeking comment, but China has repeatedly denied using hackers to spy on the United States. Last month the embassy said that American officials and media frequently "hyped up" allegations of China-linked espionage.

THE CONTEXT

*Wray was speaking at mWISE, a Washington conference hosted by Mandiant, the cybersecurity company bought in 2022 by Alphabet's Google Inc. (GOOGL.O)

*His comments follow a spate of high-profile hacks blamed on China, including the recent theft of hundreds of thousands of emails from senior U.S. government officials.

*Mandiant Chief Executive Kevin Mandia told Reuters at the conference that Chinese hackers were increasingly among the best spies out there. "The top innovator on offense is China," he said.

Reporting by Raphael Satter; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Raphael Satter

Thomson Reuters

Reporter covering cybersecurity, surveillance, and disinformation for Reuters. Work has included investigations into state-sponsored espionage, deepfake-driven propaganda, and mercenary hacking.

Reuters · by Raphael Satter

19. Watch Out for Backroom Warmongers Urging NATO Entanglement in Ukraine

Who wants to get us into a war in Ukraine?

Conclusion:

It looks like there is prodding to get the U.S. military into harm's way yet again by welcoming Ukraine into a "sticky and binding" treaty. But with Ukraine, add in the baggage of a historically corrupt, agrarian and unstable country that lies right on Russia's border. That just doesn't sound like a good idea -- unless you're still coveting that big but elusive European land battle, want to maintain a large standing Army, or are significant players in the defense industry.

Watch Out for Backroom Warmongers Urging NATO Entanglement in Ukraine

military.com · by 18 Sep 2023 Military.com | By Anthony Mitchell · September 18, 2023

The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Military.com. If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@military.com for consideration.

Recent proposals encouraging initiatives to increase NATO membership for Eastern European nations are antagonistic, ill-timed and of questionable strategic value to the U.S. Specifically, any Ukrainian Road to NATO in the foreseeable future is, at a minimum, dangerous.

It appears a few resurfacing Neocons are back and quietly lining up behind a new crew of presidential candidates and whispering in their ears, with the likely "salute" of an Army-dominated Defense Department. Think of Chris Christie stating he supports NATO membership for Ukraine, and Nikki Haley's recent comments advocating adding Ukraine to NATO now. Those bizarre statements should give one a chill. However, it's a good bet that an inflated Army and the defense industry are likely getting very excited.

A NATO admission of Ukraine will almost certainly suck us into another European war -- the one that our post-1947 Army has trained, equipped and maybe hoped for. Current events and political winds illustrate just why Article I; Section 8; Clauses 12 & 13 of our Constitution were so prescient, and the writers so prophetic. Clauses 12 & 13 carefully provided for solid national defense while preventing the existence of, and funding for, a large standing Army. However, the framers did provide for Congress to "raise an Army" when required, envisioning the Department of the Navy keeping enemies and hostilities off our shores and thereby buying the necessary time for diplomatic or economic options/solutions before Congress was fully prepared to employ a battle-ready Army.

That time could potentially allow for non-warfare solutions. Was/is that ridiculous or naive thinking? Admittedly, the world was much larger in the late 1700s, and rapidly striking another continent was inconceivable in the early 1800s. However, the concept of defense in depth is still in our strategy and is still relevant. Could a strong Navy and Marine Corps, Air Force/Space Force, and Air Defense Artillery accomplish those same 1788 goals and objectives in the 21st century?

The Cold War gave general, albeit questionable justification for maintaining a big standing Army. Furthermore, it also gave that big, new Army and the defense industry incentive to pursue efforts to override the spirit and intent of Article I; Section 8; Clause 12. Through those unintended consequences, we've created the current bloated, competitive and improperly balanced military.

In Vietnam, because of a "status quo" strategy, the best we could do was to contain open hostilities (warfare) to the rural areas. That sounds a bit like Afghanistan operations, where we ultimately witnessed an eerily similar finale. Unlike in Iraq, at least our diplomats were allowed to participate in the attempted societal shift in Afghanistan where there were some successes, especially in building a functional police force and civil law system before we hastily and dismally departed from that theater. But have we actually won a war since 1947, or allowed the Department of the Navy to function as the State Department's "Big Stick" to facilitate diplomatic solutions before mobilizing and employing an Army?

We undisputedly beat Iraq militarily led by the Army. But the Army combat arms hierarchy demanded, finagled and bullied its way to dominate the supposed policing, stabilization, rebuilding and political reformation in post-hostilities planning and operations -- a clearly defined State Department mission. Marine Corps leaders certainly played a key role in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it was the Army that dictated strategy.

Diplomatically and logistically challenged "careerist" Army generals blocked or eroded any progress by our diplomats, eventually losing the war they had won. A combat arms approach to civilian crime and complete eradication of the Iraqi military was a big factor in turning the bulk of the Iraqi population against us.

All the while, an Army-centric Defense Department created the elusive self-licking ice cream cone that kept the Army big, bloated, engaged and overfunded whilst conducting operations where it clearly wasn't experienced -- or even willing to consider adjusting or targeting necessary leadership changes for civil operations aside from counterinsurgency.

What message was received in Iraqi neighborhoods when an infantry division was replaced by an armored division shortly after the day President George W. Bush announced the end of combat operations? Would a seasoned diplomat with experience in the region have better understood the implications and made the same decision?

Instead of empowering diplomatic and law enforcement professionals to do what they do best, the wrong people were put in charge in post-hostility operations. Combat arms generals were inserted to rule the roost, instead of the critically needed logisticians, military police and JAG general and flag officers to work with professional diplomats planning, executing and overseeing a reconstruction mission. The combat arms leadership running most of the country appears to have had little experience, education or training in law, logistics or police functions.

Do you need infantry generals to reestablish and reconstruct a civil society? The correct military specialists might well have been able to pull off our national goals and objectives supporting diplomats, and not just further "big Army" objectives. Intentionally or unintentionally, reconstruction efforts in Iraq were sabotaged by misplaced priorities, thereby losing opportunities for post-hostility successes. Is the same table being set for Ukraine?

Now, there appear to be backroom efforts to bring an already unstable, hostile and somewhat corrupt Ukraine into NATO. Will NATO be enticed to fight, or be obligated to provide personnel to secure and/or reconstruct the devastated country if the Ukrainians are eventually successful in pushing out the invaders?

It looks like there is prodding to get the U.S. military into harm's way yet again by welcoming Ukraine into a "sticky and binding" treaty. But with Ukraine, add in the baggage of a historically corrupt, agrarian and unstable country that lies right on Russia's border. That just doesn't sound like a good idea -- unless you're still coveting that big but elusive European land battle, want to maintain a large standing Army, or are significant players in the defense industry.

-- Anthony (Tony) Mitchell is a retired military officer with a 34-year career retiring as a captain in the U.S. Navy. Between at-sea assignments, he was assigned as the federal executive fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, where he published numerous policy and energy op-eds and articles, and was later detailed to the Department of State, where he served as the first military adviser to the then newly established Office of Iraqi Affairs.

military.com · by 18 Sep 2023 Military.com | By Anthony Mitchell · September 18, 2023

20. Norms at Home, Norms Abroad: Security Force Assistance and Civil-Military Relations

One of the many challenges:

Moreover, these dynamics are occurring in a region where the United States and its Western allies have faced critical challenges from revisionist states like Russia and China—both willing to invest with “no strings attached”—and several regimes in the region are thirsty for non-Western security alternatives. In Mali, for instance, the Wagner Group has now fully replaced the French, though the private military firm’s future is unclear following the death of its leader.

In contrast to competitors like Russia that have offered viable SFA options without preconditions, the United States is bound by institutional constraints, like the Leahy amendment and coup-related aid restrictions, that limit the choice of available partner nations and further require that would-be recipients rectify human rights issues and civil-military challenges for eligibility. In such an environment, it is incumbent on the United States to develop creative ways to compete against malign influencers. Losing out on cooperative security arrangements in the Sahel only guarantees further degradation of civil-military norms in the region as alternative SFA providers do not adhere, even superficially, to the same anticoup norms as the West. Furthermore, pitching the importance of healthy civil-military norms to states across the Sahel while the United States wrestles with its own civil-military relations challenges can degrade American credibility and adds opportunity for China and Russia to contest the United States and allied partners’ legitimacy.

Norms at Home, Norms Abroad: Security Force Assistance and Civil-Military Relations - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Jaclyn Johnson, Christopher M. Faulkner, Salah Ben Hammou, Jonathan M. Powell · September 18, 2023

Editor’s note: This is the latest article in “Rethinking Civ-Mil,” a series that endeavors to present expert commentary on diverse issues surrounding civil-military relations in the United States. Read all articles in the series here.

Special thanks to MWI’s research director, Dr. Max Margulies, and MWI research fellow Dr. Carrie A. Lee for their work as series editors.

While the health of civil-military relations has important domestic implications, including the overall strength and durability of our democracy, it is simultaneously important to consider how the status of civil-military relations at home influences the United States’ ability to promote healthy civil-military norms abroad. In other words, it is possible that internal degradation of civil-military relations, or at least the perception thereof, can have serious implications for external relations—particularly at the nexus of security force assistance and great power competition. This is all the more important to consider given that the United States has long been an exporter of military- and security-related services. Moreover, central features of security force assistance programs include imparting the importance of civilian control over the military and respect for human rights in recipient countries.

What is Security Force Assistance and Why Does it Matter?

The challenges of effective security force assistance (SFA) are well documented. Despite the success of US SFA to the Ukrainian armed forces, efforts to rebuild forces in Afghanistan and Iraq are illustrative of the difficulties of the SFA enterprise. Defining the concept is no easy task either. The Joint Center for International Security Force Assistance defines SFA as “the set of DoD activities that support the development of the capacity and capability of foreign security forces and their supporting institutions.” We find this definition to be good in the sense that it highlights the importance of enhancing partner nations’ capability and capacity across the spectrum of their security forces. We especially like the precision in Joint Publication 3-20, Security Cooperation, which stresses the “strict legal authorities” in the realm of security cooperation—including the requirement that US activities in this space are designed to enhance the capacity of partners in exercising responsible civilian control of the military.

Here, the idea of professionalism is crucial—not only in the ways that the United States and its allies train foreign militaries in the deployment of military force, but also in imparting the value of healthy civil-military relations. While the United States’ SFA track record has not always been perfect, the diffusion of healthy norms of civil-military relations—particularly the tenets of civilian control of the military and the military’s faithful execution of civilian orders—has largely been seen as a given. This is both because US legal constraints, specifically elements in 10 USC § 333, dictate SFA packages be designed to promote the importance of civilian control of the military and because since its founding, the United States has been a beacon of stable civil-military relations, even if it has had its challenges.

Such an assumption may hold weight, but a reckoning is needed on whether the optics of the potential degradation in the United States’ own civil-military norms in recent years has undermined its ability to impart the right message on the value of professional and healthy civil-military relations in partner nations. Whether the participation by active duty service members in the January 6 insurrection, elected officials using the military to “score political points,” or attitudinal challenges such as military or civilian leaders believing they are superior to their respective counterparts, cracks in the health of US civil-military norms certainly do not help efforts to transmit them abroad. Any incongruence between the norms the US military promotes internationally and adherence to those norms domestically can create real challenges in ensuring the right message is communicated.

Problems in SFA

It is important here to understand that SFA is not a panacea for projecting or protecting healthy civil-military norms abroad. Even when well intentioned, SFA does not guarantee the successful transmission of healthy civil-military norms. In some cases, researchers have found it might do the opposite. There is also concern, as highlighted by Renanah Miles Joyce, that efforts to impart norms like civilian control of the military and respect for human rights fail to consider how recipient militaries will respond when these norms come into conflict. While US service members may expect recipient militaries to prioritize human rights over civilian control (e.g., when civilian leaders issue orders that are illegal or immoral), that does not always appear to be the case.

Such findings underscore why the optics surrounding weakening civil-military norms in the United States matter for the legitimacy of SFA programs. While we may be saying the right things in the execution of SFA programs, actions speak louder than words. Recipient states may find it sanctimonious to have lectures about the importance of civil-military norms if the messengers appears to have their own civ-mil challenges.

Examining the Sahel

The concerns surrounding the establishment of healthy civil-military norms are especially relevant in contested theaters across the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa, where civil-military relations have been volatile in recent years. After a period of historically low coup activity, the region has witnessed a dramatic resurgence of coups and Niger’s recent putsch has posed a direct threat to US interests in the region, including lingering questions about the durability of negotiations with the junta that have enabled the resumption of US counterterrorism operations. In the last two years, Sahelian states have experienced the perfect storm, with conditions combining to set a ripe environment for civil-military crises. Acute food shortages, a rise in insurgent violence, and a dramatic rise in the number of internally displaced persons represent proximate causes spurring coup activity. But underlying these proximate causes are two important sources of norm degradation, within the military and within civilian populations, that run parallel to those seen in the United States. The first concerns professionalism and partisanship within the military and the second is related to civilian attitudes on the military’s role in politics.

Analysts point to a critical need for security force assistance in the Sahel to prioritize civil-military relations. Doing so can have cascading effects as it can not only improve the overall security environment, but also enhance the prospects for military professionalism, regime durability, and deterring adversaries from gaining traction and influence. The problem is that our current efforts (along with those of our allies) to cultivate effective civil-military relations fail to consider local context and historical challenges in the region. In other words, even some minor stressors like increased partisanship within the armed forces can yield more severe outcomes like the willingness among soldiers to seize power.

Recent scholarship by Sharan Grewal found that members of the Tunisian military do indeed absorb norms indirectly, meaning through passive observation or socialization arising from their interactions with US personnel, regardless of the norms that trainers are formally teaching. Although the United States may very well be teaching norms of an apolitical military, Tunisian military personnel who trained in the United States were more likely to support members of the military taking an active role in politics by voting or holding office after retirement.

On the surface, these may seem like nonissues, particularly for a country where the military has been intentionally kept out of politics. And in certain cases, they probably should not be interpreted as cause for serious concern. However, in states with a history—especially a recent history—of military interference in politics, it is worth considering the wider implications.

There is also a concern about increasing civilian tolerance—or even overt support—for military intervention in politics by local populations in the Sahel. To explore shifts in civilian attitudes across the region, one can find evidence of concerning trends from the Afrobarometer survey project. In the most recent survey wave, 50 percent of Burkinabes, 26 percent of Malians, and 31 percent of Nigeriens invoked support for military rule. When asked how much they trust the military, 56 percent of Burkinabes, 62 percent of Malians, and 70 percent of Nigeriens responded with “a lot.” These Sahelian attitudes are not altogether concerning in isolation. However, given the context where civilian control—the central norm that offers protection from civil-military crises—is hardly observable, these patterns are potential indicators of prolonged, repeated crises.

Moreover, these dynamics are occurring in a region where the United States and its Western allies have faced critical challenges from revisionist states like Russia and China—both willing to invest with “no strings attached”—and several regimes in the region are thirsty for non-Western security alternatives. In Mali, for instance, the Wagner Group has now fully replaced the French, though the private military firm’s future is unclear following the death of its leader.

In contrast to competitors like Russia that have offered viable SFA options without preconditions, the United States is bound by institutional constraints, like the Leahy amendment and coup-related aid restrictions, that limit the choice of available partner nations and further require that would-be recipients rectify human rights issues and civil-military challenges for eligibility. In such an environment, it is incumbent on the United States to develop creative ways to compete against malign influencers. Losing out on cooperative security arrangements in the Sahel only guarantees further degradation of civil-military norms in the region as alternative SFA providers do not adhere, even superficially, to the same anticoup norms as the West. Furthermore, pitching the importance of healthy civil-military norms to states across the Sahel while the United States wrestles with its own civil-military relations challenges can degrade American credibility and adds opportunity for China and Russia to contest the United States and allied partners’ legitimacy.

It’s helpful to remember that the military is only one part of this larger constellation of actors needed to uphold healthy civil-military norms. Indeed, elected officials in the United States have a responsibility to consider the implications of their actions for US legitimacy abroad. The public, both in the United States and in SFA recipient states, is also a critical piece of the civil-military puzzle. Attitudinal shifts that support military rule or undercut support for democracy are particularly pernicious patterns. In the Sahel, where democratic governance has faced serious challenges because of domestic threats to sovereignty from insurgent groups and steep humanitarian problems, American foreign policy makers must carefully consider how to promote attitudes that lay the foundation for healthy civil-military relations now and in the future.

Norms do not exist in isolation. Norm diffusion, or the spreading of domestic norms beyond borders, are critically important to global civil-military relations. Norms generally diffuse because they are promoted by entrepreneurs that hold influence in the international community. But should we expect that norm entrepreneurs can promote norms abroad that they themselves are struggling to uphold domestically? Furthermore, what happens when norm entrepreneurs are challenged by competitors that have far fewer commitments to normative conditions? Challenges in norm promotion, and to US credibility in this space, are only compounded when the United States chooses pragmatism over principles in responding to coups. US government waffling on labeling Niger’s coup a coup is a case in point. The time for self-reflection on the health of US civil-military relations is now, lest the United States risks transmitting the wrong values at best, and a crisis of legitimacy at worst.

Jaclyn Johnson is a visiting assistant professor at the University of Kentucky. Her research focuses on civil-military relations with specific attention on military mutinies. She developed the first quantitative, global sample of mutinies and her research has been published in the Journal of Peace Research and the Journal of Conflict Resolution.

Christopher M. Faulkner is an assistant professor of national security affairs in the College of Distance Education at the United States Naval War College. His research areas include human security and irregular warfare, civil-military relations, and private military companies. His work has been published in outlets such as African Security, Democratization, and International Studies Quarterly.

Salah Ben Hammou is a PhD candidate in security studies at the University of Central Florida and a Minerva Peace and Security Scholar with the United States Institute of Peace. His research focuses on civil-military relations, military coups, and democratization. His work has been published in peer-reviewed journals like Armed Forces & Society, Africa Spectrum, International Studies Review, and the Journal of Global Security Studies as well as popular outlets like the Washington Post, Just Security, and Political Violence at a Glance.

Jonathan M. Powell is an independent scholar specializing in political instability and human security. His work has appeared in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, the Journal of Peace Research, Armed Forces & Society, and African Affairs.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense, or those of any institution the authors are affiliated with, including the US Naval War College and Department of the Navy.

Image credit: Master Sgt. Michael Matkin, US Air Force

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Jaclyn Johnson, Christopher M. Faulkner, Salah Ben Hammou, Jonathan M. Powell · September 18, 2023

21. It’s Time for a Special Inspector General for Ukraine Assistance

It’s Time for a Special Inspector General for Ukraine Assistance - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Patrick Sullivan · September 19, 2023

The recent removal of Ukraine’s defense minister reminds us of an important, if uncomfortable, reality—Ukraine has a corruption problem. Although it seems prosaic in comparison to the profile in courage that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has embodied since the Russian invasion, he was originally elected as an anti-corruption reformer. The various exigencies of the invasion have understandably drawn Zelenskyy’s attention elsewhere, but it would be a mistake to not hold him and the Ukrainian government to task for delivering on the needed reforms. It would also be a mistake to conflate the Ukrainians’ well-earned status as noble warriors for a righteous cause with nobility in the whole; righteousness and corruption can coexist. These are mistakes that the United States made in Afghanistan, an experience which shows the existential danger of repeating them in Ukraine.

Twenty Years of Lessons from Afghanistan

While not the singular cause of the strategic failure in Afghanistan, the kleptocratic character of the Kabul government was at least a major contributor. Corruption was the defining feature of Afghan ministries, reducing effectiveness in the provision of essential services as well as causing a loss of legitimacy at the local level, the traditional locus of political power in Afghanistan. This loss of legitimacy created influence space for the Taliban to exploit as an alternative governing solution for an Afghan polity that had been suffering under forty years of near-constant conflict and just simply wanted a little bit of security and justice. Given that the Taliban had their own legitimacy challenges, their ascension at the expense of the Kabul government was more an indictment of Kabul than a credit to the Taliban. Moreover, corruption in the Kabul government created an Afghan army that was almost entirely dependent on US firepower, despite almost two decades’ and several hundred billion dollars’ worth of security sector assistance. When the firepower left with the US withdrawal, the residually hollow Afghan army proved impotent in the face of a determined, countrywide Taliban assault that had been gathering strength in the rural areas for several years.

Like in Ukraine, the potential corruption problems in Afghanistan were known from the beginning, but political and military expediency precluded them from being addressed. Although the first Afghan president to take office after the 2001 US-led invasion, Hamid Karzai, was invested with executive powers of the US presidential mold, he ruled in a way befitting his experience as a tribal warlord, exchanging power through patronage networks rather than through democratic mechanisms. Participants in these patronage networks included the Northern Alliance warlords, who brought their illicit revenue-generating practices to the government with their assumption of various Afghan ministries. If the United States and its NATO partners were concerned about these practices and their negative implications, there was not much they could do since the United States lacked the force structure to disarm the Northern Alliance militias, and the warlords’ placement in the Afghan government was a return on the Faustian bargain for their support to Operation Enduring Freedom.

Despite the installation of a US-style, strong central government in a place that had never really had one, the administration of President George W. Bush did not commit to a proper nation-building effort in Afghanistan. This lack of commitment, coupled with the migration of the Global War on Terrorism to Iraq, resigned Afghanistan to economy-of-force status for the rest of Bush’s time in office. By the time Barack Obama assumed the US presidency and adjusted course in Afghanistan, Karzai’s patronage practices had metastasized into outright corruption, with the Kabul government becoming a full-on kleptocracy.

Although well-intentioned, Obama’s surge of resources in December 2009 to fix Afghan security, governance, and economic and social development proved to be an accelerant to the smoldering embers of corruption in Afghanistan. Corruption requires money to flourish, and the United States brought a lot in—much more than had propped up Karzai’s patronage networks over the preceding seven years. Additionally, the eighteen-month time limitation placed on the resources pressured the US executive agencies—primarily the Departments of Defense and State, as well as the United States Agency for International Development—to spend recklessly in Afghanistan, with little consideration for risk analysis in program designs. Progress was measured as spending, not in how a particular program’s measurable outputs supported the overall strategy.

Countering corruption in Afghanistan was itself a program, but lack of capacity at the US embassy, DoD disinterest in assuming program operating responsibilities, and reliance on corrupt Afghan ministries for program delivery all combined to ensure the program’s ineffectiveness. This indicated an overall lack of political will on the part of the United States to counter corruption, a deficiency that the Afghans matched. Although Karzai’s successor, Ashraf Ghani, proved to be a better partner and more committed to democratic processes, Afghan ministerial corruption was far too entrenched by the time he took office for him to realistically address on his own.

The programs that the Obama administration had surged into Afghanistan remained after the United States and NATO reduced their force structure with the transition from the International Security Assistance Force to the Resolute Support Mission at the end of 2014. This reduction significantly constrained what little monitoring and evaluation was being performed on the programs, which invited even more corruption. In order to stay ahead of this potentially fatal negative reinforcement loop, several US executive agencies and international donors experimented with direct assistance to their partnered Afghan ministries, which would have enabled the Afghans to budget donor monies against their own programming. Unfortunately, the direct assistance schemes did not incorporate best practices for risk analysis (only demonstrably reliable ministries or subministries should have been allowed to budget on their own) or conditionality—the threat of pulling monies if certain anti- or counter-corruption benchmarks were not met.

Those Who Cannot Learn from History . . .

Direct assistance is basically what is occurring in Ukraine, with similar pathologies to Afghanistan that may allow corruption to grow unchecked. Much like the reckless spending of the Obama administration’s surge, the United States and NATO are rushing arms and material assistance into Ukraine with less-than-ideal oversight and end-use monitoring. While speed and volume of these deliveries are probably acceptable measures of effectiveness for what the Ukrainians need on the battlefield, they aggravate what the coalition will need to stay intact and what domestic audiences in the United States and other NATO countries will need to continue to support the assistance effort.

The overwhelming complexity of the corruption problem in Afghanistan—and how it played out over time—suggests that there is only a narrow window of opportunity to solve the problem. Moreover, Ukraine and its sponsors have not yet had to address postconflict reconstruction and demining, which promise to bring in even more money, material assistance, and corruption potential (with the warm glow of an anticipated Ukrainian victory perhaps causing donors to turn even more of a blind eye than they already do). As such, the United States and NATO need to learn the lessons from corruption in Afghanistan and pay attention to the current indicators and warnings in Ukraine.

Notwithstanding the fact that the lessons were not applied in stride in the Afghanistan experience, they were very clearly, completely, and conveniently identified by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the primary auditing authority for the programs brought in by and succeeding the Obama administration’s surge. SIGAR auditors and field personnel followed all of the money and assessed the programs—to include where corruption manifested—to identify strategic effect and whether legislative intent was being met. SIGAR’s findings and recommendations were published publicly in a series of quarterly and lessons-learned reports, with US executive agencies having a statutory responsibility to implement corrective actions in response. Their routine failure to do so (and Congress’s failure to enforce said implementation) is a failure of their parts of the oversight exchange, not SIGAR’s.

In the context of the corruption risk that may be repeated from the Afghanistan experience, the actual SIGAR (the position is eponymous with the organization)—the Honorable John Sopko—has called for a special inspector general to be appointed for Ukraine assistance. Sopko no doubt knows that a repeat of the Afghanistan pattern is not inevitable in Ukraine, but also that the United States, NATO, and the international donor community should perhaps not be wholly trusted to avoid it. There needs to be a strong external oversight agent, empowered with all the authorities of the Inspector General Act of 1978 and SIGAR’s enabling legislation, to coordinate efforts, follow the money in Ukraine, assess the programs, and, most importantly, help the coalition leaders—including Zelenskyy—to find corruption and ruthlessly stamp it out. If history is a guide, failure to do so will result in strategic failure.

We are at the end of the beginning in Ukraine. The time is now to address the corruption problem through the proven special inspector general model. It is unlikely that there will be another opportunity.

Colonel Patrick Sullivan, PhD, is the director of the Modern War Institute at West Point. His doctoral work focused on how oversight of military operations can potentially improve strategic outcomes.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Spc. Adrian Greenwood, US Army

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Patrick Sullivan · September 19, 2023

22. Making Military Service More Attractive for Modern Spouses

Conclusion:

The Recommendation

While it may be too late for us to benefit, we recommend changing Department of Defense and individual service policies to give greater preference to joint couples serving across the military enterprise, not just within each individual service. In addition to the reasons noted previously — to increase retention, to address spousal employment issues, bring the department in line with modern financial needs and societal norms — there is also a budgetary benefit. While other recruitment and retention policies can be costly, this type of policy is not and would likely save money. In our case, for example, it would have likely saved three change-of-stations and all the costs associated with them. An easy solution would be to slow the rate of moves and allow homesteading, which would provide benefits for spousal employment as well as stabilization for children.

We recognize that there are some challenges to such a policy. For one, the individual services and the department would have to work together to accommodate joint spouses. To this, we respond that there might be little effort needed on the administrative end. As the talent management portal is increasingly utilized, all a servicemember would need to do is preference those jobs that keep them near their spouse’s employment. The presence of a joint spouse could then be considered during the matching process. Alternatively, servicemembers can seek out positions on their own that can accommodate family needs. It is this route that we are currently attempting ourselves, with little help or understanding.

A second challenge is the requirement in many career fields to move every two to three years for professional development. While we understand the reasoning, those leaving military service because of spousal employment issues are being developed only to leave prior to the service seeing the realization of their investment. Other broadening experiences are now possible as well given the increasing use of remote work. Further, there are some servicemembers who have had the ability to homestead for their careers at bases such as Fort Liberty or Fort Moore. What we are suggesting does have precedent.

Changing Department of Defense and service policies to accommodate joint spouses not only increases the chances that a servicemember will stay but raise the overall level of talent throughout the department. Living and serving together shouldn’t have to be this hard.

Making Military Service More Attractive for Modern Spouses - War on the Rocks

JOSHUA COBB AND WENDY WHITMAN COBB

warontherocks.com · by Joshua Cobb · September 19, 2023

Editor’s Note: This article was written in response to our unofficial support for the Department of Defense’s innovation challenge for talent management. We want to help with this effort and have asked for original, creative ideas that reconsider the status quo, shake widely held assumptions, and take on the conventional wisdom about recruitment and retention.

In 13 years of being married, we have only lived in the same household for three of those years. Why? Army talent management policies.

To be sure, part of this has been our own choice. One of us is a career Army officer, beginning in the infantry with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, and now in the acquisitions field contributing to major Army programs such as hypersonics and missile defense. The other is an accomplished tenured professor, who chose some years ago to leave civilian academia to teach at one of the U.S. Air Force’s premier educational institutions not only to be closer to the other but in the hope that we might one day live in the same city. We have chosen to prioritize our individual careers because of our success individually, including the decision to not have children, which would further complicate our situation — we admit this and have no regrets. However, along the way, we have found that Army and Department of Defense policies on spouses serving in different branches of service, let alone within the larger department, are severely lacking, giving no preference in assignments to these types of joint marriages. We believe that if the entire enterprise is to attract and retain quality individuals in the pivotal years ahead, these types of policies should change.

Become a Member

We argue that the Department of Defense should change its policies to adapt to the reality that both spouses are now often working full-time. Not only has cost of living increased, necessitating dual-income families, but more women are entering the workforce and contributing significantly to their household. As a result, military spouses experience high levels of unemployment and underemployment, often leading to couples living separately for job-related reasons. With service-specific policies limited, unstandardized, and not taking into account those working for the department as civilians, the U.S. armed forces should update talent management policies so that spouses can live, work, and earn together, making military service more attractive and realistic for modern spouses.

Current State of Affairs

Individual services do offer programs to help married service members, but they only apply to within-service couples. The Married Army Couples Program mandates that Army couples enrolled in the program must be stationed within 50 miles or one hour of each other (but not necessarily at the same installation) in order to establish a joint domicile. Meanwhile the Air Force offers the assignment of military couples option or, more informally, the “joint spouse” assignment and the Navy has the military couple and single parent assignment policy.

While the parameters of each program vary, they generally prioritize the needs of the service rather than the benefit to servicemembers. These caveats include requirements that the servicemember takes a valid assignment where they are eligible that will not adversely affect career progression and fits within a templated timeline. Required permanent changes-of-station every two to three years further complicates the process for dual military families despite Government Accountability Office findings that fewer moves save the Department of Defense money and increase job satisfaction. Servicemembers are encouraged to participate in the programs but at the mid-career point fewer assignments are available to eligible servicemembers, forcing couples to make hard decisions to sacrifice one career or pursue jobs based on the probability of a joint domicile. This limits the ability for services to truly manage talent with dual-military couples.

The Department of Defense does provide preferential hiring opportunities to military spouses, but spouses must recompete with each permanent change-of-station increasing the instances of unemployment or underemployment, including lost income and delayed career progression. Since the department gives preference to spouses and recognizes the value in keeping families together through their various joint domicile programs, it is logical to include defense civilians and interservice marriages to allow career progression for spouses as well as stability within the department workforce.

Initiatives such as the Army’s Assignment Interactive Module 2.0 have been beneficial to soldiers in picking their own assignments but are not adequate to ensure that talent is properly managed. For one, not everyone is eligible to use this Army program for their next assignment because it is currently restricted to officers. But, perhaps more importantly, most branches maintain that duty station should not be a priority when choosing an assignment, with homesteading frequently frowned upon.

The Department of Defense has also recognized the increased costs of education and housing over the past 50 years and the need for dual-income streams for military families but has yet to propose real solutions to spousal unemployment and underemployment. While this problem does impact retention of current servicemembers, it will also have an impact on recruiting for future generations of servicemembers.

Spousal Unemployment

The problem of military spousal employment is well known. The Biden administration’s June 2023 executive order addressing this issue sums it up succinctly: There is a 21 percent unemployment rate among military spouses, one in five military families cite challenges with spousal employment as a reason for leaving, and regular changes of station significantly impact the ability of non-military spouses to advance their own careers. Another study shows that military spouse income is negatively impacted with each change-of-station. Further, these issues are not isolated to active-duty spouses — those in the National Guard and Reserves face challenges as well.

The June executive order introduces several policies aimed at alleviating these concerns. Among them, it mandates the creation of a strategic plan to address spousal employment issues, reinforces telework policies across the federal government for military spouses, increases the number of positions available for preferential spousal hiring, and enhances childcare options. Additionally, it “encourage[es] agencies to collaborate so that a military spouse or military caregiver Federal employee may be placed in another Federal agency position when arrangements to retain a military spouse or military caregiver — including following changes to support continuity of care or relocation due to permanent change-of-station orders for the active-duty service member — are unavailable to allow them to continue in their existing position.”

This is no doubt a good start, but several issues are immediately apparent. For one, it encourages but does not require agencies to collaborate. Second, the requirement seems to care little about what the military spouse prefers in their own career. While it is nice to have the option to move to a different agency if possible, not all career paths are amenable to such moves, nor should the spouse be forced into such a move. With 88 percent of respondents in one study reporting that the military lifestyle impacts their ability to find jobs and 90 percent reporting that it negatively impacted their career, this is a widespread problem across the services and across families. If the Department of Defense wants to address this problem, encouraging federal employment is a good start, but making it easier for couples within the department to stay together would be even better. In some cases, these jobs require clearances that provide an additional layer of bureaucracy for spouses to navigate as they seek out new jobs with each move.

Modernization of Social Norms

It is this last point that is perhaps the biggest obstacle to more significant policy changes. The military is an inherently conservative enterprise that, by neglecting the needs of spouses, employment and otherwise, in talent management decisions reinforces traditional family structures that are increasingly strained in the 21st century.

While the military does have excellent pay and benefit packages (particularly for officers), there is an increasing need for two incomes to support a household. When spousal careers are continually interrupted or have never begun, the financial health of the military member may in turn suffer. In an era where the secretary of the Air Force has warned his department about Chinese recruiting efforts, this problem becomes particularly more acute.

Connected to this is a continued assumption about who the breadwinner in a family is and in turn whose career is more important, particularly as we see an increase in well-educated men marrying women with similarly high education levels. We have continually faced such pressures. When one of us (Josh) was in command, the rest of the unit was surprised and a bit confused as to why the other one of us (Wendy) left to take a university position. Wendy has also had to repeatedly correct the assumption that she would leave her current job when her spouse left or that her spouse was in the Air Force generally. And it’s not just on Wendy’s part — Josh’s co-workers are often surprised to hear that he is a geographical bachelor just as much as they are to hear what it is that she does.

We no longer live in a society that must have a male breadwinner or a designated breadwinner at all. Increasingly, both incomes and careers are as important as the other. Modernizing military talent management programs to recognize this is as important to attracting and retaining military members as it is to bring Department of Defense policies into the 21st century. No family should have to be punished because both people want to pursue rewarding and enriching careers.

Recruitment and Retention

It is imperative to modernize joint spouse policies to bring the Department of Defense in line with modern work-life requirements to improve both recruitment and retention. One of the most significant sources of recruitment come from within the military community itself — 79 percent of new recruits report having a family member who served and nearly 30 percent report one of those family members being a parent. However, as a result of the difficulty families and couples have in staying together, military families are now less likely to recommend service to their children because of challenges in spousal employment.

Another factor recruits consider in deciding whether to join the military or not is pay. In a labor market with low unemployment, potential recruits — both officers and enlisted — can make more money in the private sector than in the military. This is especially true in career fields like cyber operations that are desperately needed throughout the Department of Defense today. The military can respond in one of two ways: increase base pay or make it easier for dual income families to live together. With increasing budgetary challenges across the federal government, higher pay is unlikely to come. Therefore, adapting policies is far more cost-efficient in enabling recruitment. While it would be nice for recruits to sacrifice things such as pay to serve their country, it is unrealistic and clearly harmful to recruitment efforts.

More joint spouse friendly policies would also improve retention. Approximately one in five servicemembers leaves their service because of spousal employment issues. We have personally known several Army couples who, after several years, had to make a choice about whose career to prioritize because the ability to serve together was becoming far more challenging. What’s more, in all the cases we know, it was the female spouse who left the service. While we recognize that this is anecdotal evidence (which highlights the dearth of data the services or the department collect on this issue), it still supports the notion that current policies are failing to provide the necessary support to same-service couples, let alone cross-service couples.

The exit of female spouses of military couples not only hurts retention but continues to point out the deficiencies the military has in terms of recruitment of women more generally. Women today generally achieve a higher education and are more physically fit than their male peers, making them excellent recruitment targets. Even if the military can fix this problem and recruit more women, the lack of joint spouse policies that are more effective will still likely decrease their retention later in their careers.

The military’s ability to recruit eligible service members changed dramatically in 1973 with the dissolution of the draft as the department shifted from conscription to an all-volunteer force. This is rather startling when only 23 percent of young Americans are qualified to serve and the services fail to meet recruiting goals. Being able to sustain a viable military is dependent on having qualified service members while only about 0.4 percent of the American population are currently serving on active duty and around 7 percent of the American population have served in the military total. While the recruiting issues have been well documented, if it remains unchanged it could threaten national security. Adopting new joint spouse policies across the Department of Defense would not only help families currently serving but likely increase their propensity to recommend service to their children, enable the recruitment of needed subject-matter experts across the department, and assist in recruiting and retaining women.

The Recommendation

While it may be too late for us to benefit, we recommend changing Department of Defense and individual service policies to give greater preference to joint couples serving across the military enterprise, not just within each individual service. In addition to the reasons noted previously — to increase retention, to address spousal employment issues, bring the department in line with modern financial needs and societal norms — there is also a budgetary benefit. While other recruitment and retention policies can be costly, this type of policy is not and would likely save money. In our case, for example, it would have likely saved three change-of-stations and all the costs associated with them. An easy solution would be to slow the rate of moves and allow homesteading, which would provide benefits for spousal employment as well as stabilization for children.

We recognize that there are some challenges to such a policy. For one, the individual services and the department would have to work together to accommodate joint spouses. To this, we respond that there might be little effort needed on the administrative end. As the talent management portal is increasingly utilized, all a servicemember would need to do is preference those jobs that keep them near their spouse’s employment. The presence of a joint spouse could then be considered during the matching process. Alternatively, servicemembers can seek out positions on their own that can accommodate family needs. It is this route that we are currently attempting ourselves, with little help or understanding.

A second challenge is the requirement in many career fields to move every two to three years for professional development. While we understand the reasoning, those leaving military service because of spousal employment issues are being developed only to leave prior to the service seeing the realization of their investment. Other broadening experiences are now possible as well given the increasing use of remote work. Further, there are some servicemembers who have had the ability to homestead for their careers at bases such as Fort Liberty or Fort Moore. What we are suggesting does have precedent.

Changing Department of Defense and service policies to accommodate joint spouses not only increases the chances that a servicemember will stay but raise the overall level of talent throughout the department. Living and serving together shouldn’t have to be this hard.

Become a Member

Joshua Cobb is an active-duty Army acquisitions officer currently assigned to Fort Liberty, NC.

Wendy N. Whitman Cobb, Ph.D., is professor of strategy and security studies at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies. She is the co-author of the forthcoming space policy textbook, Space Policy for the 21st Century.

All views are the authors’ own and not reflective of those of the Department of Defense or any of its entities.

Special Series, Talent Management

warontherocks.com · by Joshua Cobb · September 19, 2023

23. American Hatred Goes Global

Excerpts:

Because today’s right-wing extremism is first and foremost an American problem, solving it will depend on American leadership. To start, the White House should direct the State Department to designate foreign neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups as foreign terrorist organizations. Of the 73 such groups on the State Department’s current list, no relevant neo-Nazi or white supremacist groups are included. This is especially surprising because the most recent National Strategy for Counterterrorism, released in October 2018, named two violent far-right extremist organizations: the Nordic Resistance Movement in Scandinavian countries and the National Action group in the United Kingdom.

Congress should also consider passing a domestic terrorism law to formally criminalize plots and violence targeting individuals on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, national identity, sexuality, gender, political affiliation, and other protected categories. Today, violent American extremists cannot be charged for providing material in support of patently violent domestic groups or for plotting acts which are otherwise classified as terrorist attacks when a foreign terrorist entity is involved. This omission in the law reinforces a perception that foreign terrorists, often only distinguishable by skin color or religion, are treated more harshly by the judicial system than domestic terrorists. The absence of domestic terrorism laws has also led to an inequity in sentencing depending on whether the crimes were committed on behalf of a designated foreign terrorist organization or a domestic violent extremist group.

Providing the U.S. Department of Justice with the ability to designate violent extremist groups and individuals as domestic terrorists is both controversial and challenging. Critics of this proposal have argued that the designation of domestic violent extremist groups as terrorist organizations would inevitably become dangerously politicized and partisan. Those fearing overbearing legal remedies should remember that in 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant created the Department of Justice specifically to counter the terrorism being carried out by the Ku Klux Klan and other violent groups that were active in Southern states. But a new domestic terrorism law seems a small step by comparison, and it would send a resounding message: there is no place for political violence in a democracy.

American Hatred Goes Global

How the United States Became a Leading Exporter of White Supremacist Terrorism

By Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware

September 19, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware · September 19, 2023

In its decades-long fight against terrorism, the United States regularly criticized countries such as Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia for exporting extremist ideologies and violence. Ironically, today the United States stands accused of doing the same. The spread of homegrown American conspiracy theories, beliefs in racial superiority, antigovernment extremism, and other manifestations of hate and intolerance has become such a problem that some of the United States’ closest allies—Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom—have designated both American groups and citizens as foreign terrorists.

Although little reported by the U.S. press, the October 2022 killing of two people at a gay bar in Bratislava, Slovakia, by a man espousing racist and homophobic views is an example of the pernicious effects of this “made in America” ideology. In a now all-too-common pattern, the gunman posted a manifesto explaining his intent just before the attack. Written in English, the document displayed all the racist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic justifications that have become de rigueur for this type of hate-filled violence. More significant, the manifesto expressed a solidarity and affinity with a U.S.-centric white supremacist ideology that has gained greater currency in both the United States and other countries in recent years. “The number of non-White invaders in America continues to grow and grow, unchecked,” the killer wrote. The gunman also cited a white supremacist terrorist attack earlier that year on a supermarket in a Black community in Buffalo, New York, as having inspired him. After decades of insufficient and ineffective efforts to suppress a racist antigovernment fringe, the United States has become the exemplar of far-right extremism and terrorism.

Far-right violence today is increasingly fueled by a deadly combination of ideology and strategy imported from the United States. The “great replacement” theory, which claims that nonwhite individuals are purposefully being brought into Western countries to undermine the political power of white voters, got its start in France, but this kind of thinking has long been a fixture of American white supremacism. These days, it is making its way into mainstream rhetoric in the United States and is acquiring an increasingly international audience. These American extremists have also adopted from Marxism the strategic goal of “accelerationism,” meaning hastening the collapse of society by fomenting chaos and bloodshed. The United States’ exportation of these two ideas is radicalizing men and women across the globe, prompting foreign governments to take steps to protect their citizens. But at base, this is an American problem, and it therefore requires American leadership to solve it.

INVASIVE ROOTS

In the United States, the great replacement conspiracy theory has been supercharged over the past decade by social media and the backlash to the election of President Barack Obama. Once a fringe theory popular among white supremacists, the theory developed deeper roots in the United States as it also spread further abroad. At the same time, the far right in the United States promoted the idea that violence is needed to kick-start the collapse of U.S. institutions and society.

The great replacement theory holds that there is an ongoing diminution of white people and culture as part of a deliberate strategy by Jews and liberal elites. The theory claims that this goal is being achieved by generous immigration laws and uncontrolled illegal cross-border migration, the vigorous enfranchisement of minority groups, and the erasure or fundamental recalibration of traditional cultural norms. The French nationalist Renaud Camus popularized the theory in the early 2010s, but it in fact has deep American roots, dating back to at least the Reconstruction Era. After the Civil War, as the country integrated millions of newly freed African Americans, segments of the country’s white population adopted replacement rhetoric, citing race riots, allegations of rapes of white women by Black men, and fears that the Black population was being granted constitutional rights in order to dilute the existing white vote.

In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan sent delegations to the national presidential conventions of both the Democratic and Republican parties and helped the Republicans’ 1924 presidential nominee, Calvin Coolidge, win election that year. It lobbied for the infamous Immigration Act of 1924, which was designed to deter Asians, Italians, and Jews from settling in the United States. These racist views gained a renewed lease on life in the 1980s, when a succession of white supremacists embraced replacement arguments. Robert Mathews, the founder and leader of the Order, a neo-Nazi terrorist group active in 1983-84, boasted of having drunk deeply from this well of white supremacy, racism, and anti-Semitism. In a membership form distributed during the 1980s and 1990s, Richard Butler, the leader of Aryan Nations, another neo-Nazi group, similarly used replacement theory to attract new adherents to the movement. “Aliens are pouring over as a flood into each of our ancestral lands, threatening dispossession of the heritage, culture, and very life blood of our posterity,” he explained.

The United States has become the exemplar of far-right extremism.

Then came the election of Obama, the country’s first African American president, which for racists provided fresh evidence that tyranny and electoral malfeasance had occurred. Meanwhile, populist movements were gaining momentum across the democratic world, in no small part in response to refugee flows stemming from wars in the Middle East and to Black Lives Matter activism in the United States. Right-wing parties won elections in the United States in 2016 and Brazil in 2022 and triumphed in the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom in 2016. During the administration of Donald Trump, these nativist fears gained even greater currency in the United States. His campaign had repeatedly caricatured both nonwhites and non-Christians as threats to U.S. national security and indeed to Americans themselves. In 2017, after an activist was killed in Charlottesville, Virginia, after a “Unite the Right” rally in which white supremacists and neo-Nazis paraded through the University of Virginia campus with torches chanting slogans like “Jews will not replace us” and “Blood and soil,” Trump declared that there had been “very fine people on both sides.” The far right embraced the president’s statement as an endorsement, and the movement was suddenly given a new lease on life, with the most powerful supporter of all sitting in the White House.

The great replacement theory’s spread was abetted by the terrorist strategy known as accelerationism, an effort to foment cataclysmic violent chaos as a means to seize power. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels initially articulated the idea in their seminal 1848 pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto. In the United States, the term “accelerationism” first surfaced as a concept for a white supremacist revolution in the 1980s-era newsletter Siege, which was written by James Mason, a dedicated acolyte of William Luther Pierce, an even more influential white supremacist ideologue. Pierce wrote arguably the most influential book of American white supremacist literature, a 1978 call to arms titled The Turner Diaries. The novel tells the story of a 35-year-old electrical engineer named Earl Turner who joins “The Organization,” a white nationalist movement, and takes part in its two-year terrorist campaign after a predatory government attempt to seize all legally held firearms, forcing him and his “fellow patriots” underground. Among the more noteworthy moments in the book is the “Day of the Rope,” when the Organization carries out a public mass execution by hanging alleged “race traitors.” The book details a bombing of the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., a particularly important passage given its chilling similarity to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Both of these scenes from The Turner Diaries perfectly captured the accelerationist ethos by detailing acts of violence against the government that brought on an apocalyptic race war.

Accelerationism has provided both a stunningly simple and seductively attractive ideological and strategic model for would-be terrorists. Few twenty-first-century terrorists have more emphatically embodied accelerationism and its American roots than Dylann Roof, the gunman responsible for the mass shooting at a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. “It is far from being too late for America or Europe,” his manifesto declared. “I believe that even if we made up only 30 percent of the population we could take it back completely. But by no means should we wait any longer to take drastic action.” John Earnest, a gunman who attacked a synagogue in Poway, California, in April 2019, was similarly inspired by a desire to accelerate a new civil war. “In case you haven’t noticed we are running out of time,” Earnest wrote. “If this revolution doesn’t happen soon, we won’t have the numbers to win it.” Indeed, echoes of The Turner Diaries and its accelerationist credo are also found in the treatises of today’s anti-government extremists. The Boogaloo movement, which attracted increasing attention during the chaotic summer of 2020, takes its name from its ambition to spark a sequel civil war. And a scaffold and hangman’s noose symbolically erected outside the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, showed the “Day of the Rope” was far too close to becoming reality.

BAD EXAMPLE

Thanks to technology, these isolated expressions of racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and homophobia can rapidly acquire a global audience and play to an international constituency. The ideology bounces across oceans through networks brought together by central marketplaces on social media. In March 2019, Brenton Tarrant, a white supremacist terrorist animated by these dangerous ideologies and strategies, murdered 51 worshipers in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. He linked his choice of weapons, primarily an AR-15 assault rifle, to the impact it might have in the United States, declaring to have chosen “firearms for the affect it would have on social discourse, the extra media coverage they would provide, and the affect it could have on the politics of United states and thereby the political situation of the world.” Scrawled across the stock of his semi-automatic weapons were several key terms from the history of far-right violence, including references to the “14 words,” a credo of U.S. origin extolling the importance of protecting the white race for future generations. Tarrant was also an outspoken proponent of accelerationist doctrine, proudly declaring, “True change and the change we need to enact only arises in the great crucible of crisis.”

The dark shadow of the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol has also inspired others similarly seeking to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power in their countries. Earlier this year in Brazil, a mob motivated by grievances similar to those of the Trump supporters in Washington sought to emulate the January 2021 rioters by storming their capital city’s government center in hopes of overturning an election outcome. Their preferred candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, watched the events unfold on television from his self-imposed exile in Florida. The United States’ stature as a pillar and exemplar of democracy had been overtaken by the Trump administration’s election denialism playbook. Bolsonaro’s supporters even sought guidance and advice from senior former White House officials, including the former senior Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

“We have become exporters of right-wing extremism, damaging one of our best weapons in securing our international standing—our example,” the terrorism expert Matthew Levitt wrote after January 6, 2021. And such violence has profound implications for the United States’ place in the world: it contributes to the United States’ being viewed as weak, divided, and vulnerable. It also diverts American resources and energy to healing divisions at home rather than to confidently engaging the world on key issues such as climate change, pandemic prevention, and protecting the international order.

Knowing this, adversaries of the United States have exploited this vulnerability in their own influence and information operations. Russia, for instance, has supported neo-Nazi groups such as the Russian Imperial Movement, which was designated a global terrorist group by the Trump administration in 2020. The group maintains an open symbiotic relationship with the Russian government and American and European officials believe it carried out a letter bomb campaign in Spain toward the end of 2022. Iran has also taken steps to encourage far-right terrorism in the West. In December 2020, FBI Director Christopher Wray and at least 11 other senior U.S. officials were put on an online hit list targeting U.S. government officials who publicly backed the integrity of the 2020 election results. They were deemed “Enemies of the People,” and their home addresses and other personal information were shared. Later that month, the FBI announced that it had linked Iran to the site.

Iran has taken steps to encourage far-right terrorism in the West.

As right-wing extremism spreads, partners of the United States have taken steps to try to stop it. The Canadian government, for instance, has designated one of the groups involved in the January 6 attack, the Proud Boys, as a terrorist entity, noting, “The group and its members have openly encouraged, planned, and conducted violent activities against those they perceive to be opposed to their ideology and political beliefs.” The United States’ closest ally now singles out American groups and individuals as threats to their country the same way the United States has targeted entities with ties to al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Canada has also designated other U.S.-based neo-Nazi movements as terrorist entities, including Atomwaffen and the Base as well as Mason, the American author of Siege.

Because today’s right-wing extremism is first and foremost an American problem, solving it will depend on American leadership. To start, the White House should direct the State Department to designate foreign neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups as foreign terrorist organizations. Of the 73 such groups on the State Department’s current list, no relevant neo-Nazi or white supremacist groups are included. This is especially surprising because the most recent National Strategy for Counterterrorism, released in October 2018, named two violent far-right extremist organizations: the Nordic Resistance Movement in Scandinavian countries and the National Action group in the United Kingdom.

Congress should also consider passing a domestic terrorism law to formally criminalize plots and violence targeting individuals on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, national identity, sexuality, gender, political affiliation, and other protected categories. Today, violent American extremists cannot be charged for providing material in support of patently violent domestic groups or for plotting acts which are otherwise classified as terrorist attacks when a foreign terrorist entity is involved. This omission in the law reinforces a perception that foreign terrorists, often only distinguishable by skin color or religion, are treated more harshly by the judicial system than domestic terrorists. The absence of domestic terrorism laws has also led to an inequity in sentencing depending on whether the crimes were committed on behalf of a designated foreign terrorist organization or a domestic violent extremist group.

Providing the U.S. Department of Justice with the ability to designate violent extremist groups and individuals as domestic terrorists is both controversial and challenging. Critics of this proposal have argued that the designation of domestic violent extremist groups as terrorist organizations would inevitably become dangerously politicized and partisan. Those fearing overbearing legal remedies should remember that in 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant created the Department of Justice specifically to counter the terrorism being carried out by the Ku Klux Klan and other violent groups that were active in Southern states. But a new domestic terrorism law seems a small step by comparison, and it would send a resounding message: there is no place for political violence in a democracy.

BRUCE HOFFMAN is the Shelby Cullom and Kathryn W. Davis Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security at the Council on Foreign Relations.
JACOB WARE is a Research Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he studies domestic and international terrorism and counterterrorism.
They are the authors of the forthcoming book God, Guns, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America.

Foreign Affairs · by Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware · September 19, 2023

24. Department of Defense Enters an Agreement to Expand Domestic Manufacturing to Strengthen U.S. Supply Chains for Rare Earth Magnets

RELEASE

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Department of Defense Enters an Agreement to Expand Domestic Manufacturing to Strengthen U.S. Supply Chains for Rare Earth Magnets

https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3529874/department-of-defense-enters-an-agreement-to-expand-domestic-manufacturing-to-s/

Sept. 19, 2023 |

The Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy, through its Manufacturing Capability Expansion and Investment Prioritization (MCEIP) office, issued an award to E-VAC Magnetics, LLC (E-VAC) to establish a domestic rare earth permanent magnet manufacturing capability. E-VAC is part of VAC Group, a manufacturer of rare earth permanent magnets

The agreement will provide $94.1 million to E-VAC to acquire and install manufacturing equipment, operationalize technical infrastructure, and engineer production lines. E-VAC will perform this work to establish high volume rare earth permanent magnet production by 2025.

Rare earth permanent magnets are essential components in the F-35, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, and numerous other defense systems. These national security related uses, represent a small part of the US commercial need for rare earth element magnets. As a result, MCEIP is dedicated to using its resources to help stimulate private capital as evidenced by the E-VAC investment.

"We're building on previous DoD awards, that augment or complement other Agency investments for rare earth minerals to help establish an integrated, domestic rare earth supply chain from mine to magnet," said Dr. Laura Taylor-Kale, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy. "IBP is reinforcing the Administration's goal to build a rare earth industrial base fully capable of meeting our national defense requirements."

About the Department of Defense's Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy

The Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy is the principal advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment (USD(A&S)) for developing Department of Defense policies for the maintenance of the United States defense industrial base (DIB), executing small business programs and policy, and conduction geo-economic analysis and assessments. The office also provides the USD(A&S) with recommendations on budget matters related to the DIB, anticipates and closes gaps in manufacturing capabilities for defense systems, and assesses impacts related to mergers, acquisition, and divestitures. IBP monitors and assesses the impact of foreign investments in the United States and executes authorities under sections 2501 and 2505 U.S.C. Title 10.

25. China is edging out the US military’s advantage on tech

China is edging out the US military’s advantage on tech

BY MARK MONTGOMERY, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 09/18/23 2:00 PM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/4207022-china-is-edging-out-the-us-militarys-advantage-on-tech/

The future of warfare and military capability is taking center stage as the war in Ukraine rages, Moscow looks to reload its high-tech missile inventory and, in a possible portent of future conflict, the U.S. and China escalate geopolitical maneuvering against one another. As a result, American policymakers should be constantly assessing how to maintain the country’s technological advantages over adversaries.

One plank of that strategy should center on the advanced technology that powers our military. Beijing, for one, has committed to establishing a fully modern military by 2027 even as Washington takes steps to limit Beijing’s access to the U.S. technology that would help make that possible. To truly make a difference, however, America needs to grapple with the role of open-source design development in the semiconductor industry.

One concerning example is the development by U.S. adversaries of RISC-V, an open-source chip design architecture that can serve a variety of end-use applications. RISC-V technology has dual-use applications, powering tools like artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous systems and surveillance technology.

So far, there has been little attention given to open-source chip infrastructure or to Beijing’s interest in leading in open-source chip production, which would ultimately reduce its reliance on Western-controlled chips. While recent U.S. competitive actions against China, such as export controls and outbound investment screening, have taken some steps to control Beijing’s access to advanced semiconductor technology, there is still an urgent need for the U.S. government to outline a strategy to close existing loopholes around open-source technology.

First, the stakes.

Semiconductor chips are foundational in everyday electronics, and the same can be said for their importance to military systems. From drones and fighter jets to autonomous vehicles to communications devices, chips are the tool powering it all. An independent commission established by Congress recently concluded that “if a potential adversary bests the United States in semiconductors over the long term or suddenly cuts off U.S. access to cutting-edge chips entirely, it could gain the upper hand in every domain of warfare.” Getting this wrong is not an option.

China is openly seeking to evade U.S. export rules on semiconductors by investing in RISC-V to develop homegrown chips, undercutting years of bipartisan and international work in this space. This backdoor access to chip design technology that China is pursuing is potentially the biggest threat to U.S. military dominance since the Cold War.

This is not just a hypothetical. Last year it was reported that as “[t]he US is threatening to cut off microchip supplies to Russia […] Russian companies that include Yadro and Elbrus are developing capable RISC-V cores.” Yadro has since been added to the Treasury Department’s Specially Designated Nationals List as a part of the U.S. effort to impose costs on Russia’s war machine. Elbrus has not yet been designated by the U.S., despite the reported use of its chips in some Russian military and security services computing applications.

Further, “[t]he Chinese Academy of Sciences, which is on the U.S. Entity List of trade-restricted organizations, has developed 64-bit RISC-V cores while drawing on open-source blueprints made available by companies in America and Europe.”

Since RISC-V gives chip developers the ability to configure and customize their designs in an open-source environment, it is subject to few trade and export regulations and restrictions, posing a major threat in situations where security is paramount.

Chips have very real battlefield implications. While Ukraine may be outmanned and overpowered in a traditional sense, it’s developed an advantage with the utilization of AI to determine the location of Russian troops.

According to a recent article by the Special Competitive Studies Project, a European tech company engineer working with the Ukrainian government said they “absolutely get how to make AI operational.” They’re able to “get our software to run right on the edge, meaning on tiny little computer chips on the back of a rusty old vehicle, or in the backpack of a soldier, or on the payload of a drone.”

In any future conflict, the U.S. will want to maintain its edge on these complicated chips that power military technology — and prevent potential adversaries like China and Russia from further developing them. The creation of the semiconductor chip was driven by funding and support of the U.S. government and defense, military and aerospace industries; as such, the global race to produce the most advanced chips and secure the supply chain needs to be viewed through a national security lens.

China knows this. Its semiconductor industry exploded from 1,300 registered companies in 2011 to 22,800 by 2020. While these companies are mostly focused on manufacturing, open-source technology opens the door to the domestic production and development of advanced chips critical to the development of modern weapons systems. Given the forced collaboration between China’s tech sector and its military, this should be deeply concerning.

And these broader trends map onto the longstanding tensions in Taiwan. Many experts expect China to invade Taiwan within the next decade under the banner of its “One-China Principle,” and it just so happens that Taiwan produces over 60 percent of the world’s semiconductors and over 90 percent of the most advanced ones. That is a very real strategic reason for China to act.

How can lawmakers prevent U.S. adversaries from having unfettered access to this strategic technology?

First, Congress should work to educate the public and press the U.S. national security apparatus on the national security and defense implications of open-source technology being developed and exploited by U.S. adversaries.

Second, the U.S. Departments of Commerce and Defense should work together on a strategy to close existing loopholes in export controls and prevent U.S. persons from contributing to the development of RISC-V technology by China and Russia, in particular.

Luckily, Congress is keenly aware of Beijing’s desire to become less reliant on the West for chips and has taken some meaningful steps forward, and discussion about how to balance against the China threat is likely to dominate Washington for the foreseeable future. For that process to be truly meaningful, however, we need to tackle open-source chip design before it is too late.

Adm. Mark Montgomery (Ret.) is senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

Access NSS HERE

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