Quotes of the Day:
"The worst difficulties from which we suffer do not come from without. They come from within. They do not come from the cottages of the wage-earners. They come from a peculiar type of brainy people always found in our country, who, if they add something to its culture, take much from its strength.
Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals. They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion of our politicians.…Nothing can save England if she will not save herself. If we lose faith in ourselves, in our capacity to guide and govern, if we lose our will to live, then indeed our story is told.”
-Winston S. Churchill, vol. 5, pages 486-87
"People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically… No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."
- Rosa Parks
"It is the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) that those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed."
- Charles Darwin
1. Opinion | Distinguished persons of the week: A professional intelligence community pays dividends
2. A Uyghur Skier Became the Face of China’s Winter Olympics. The Next Day, She Vanished From the Spotlight.
3. Ghost Army, a World War II Master of Deception, Finally Wins Recognition
4. Long Live Ukraine, Taiwan and the Nation-State
5. Military Reporters & Editors Association calls for the resumption of embeds
6. Olympics Opening Ceremony draws record-low ratings: Why aren't Americans tuning in?
7. “It’s not about Russia. It’s about Putin”: An expert explains Putin’s endgame in Ukraine
8. Eric Hoffer warned us about 'true believers'
9. Opinion: Remember reading the paper?
10. Think tank pulls report saying China would suffer more in US tech decoupling
11. Reigniting the Pentagon and Silicon Valley partnership
12. As U.S. predicts Russia could seize Kyiv in days, Moscow calls assessment ‘scaremongering’
13. Why Taiwan is not the next UkraineWhy Taiwan is not the next Ukraine
14. NBC talks politics, human rights in Beijing Olympics opening ceremony coverageNBC talks politics, human rights in Beijing Olympics opening ceremony coverage
15. Sullivan: China will "end up owning some of the costs" if Russia invades UkraineSullivan: China will "end up owning some of the costs" if Russia invades Ukraine
16. For America and Russia, Deadly Perceptions Can Lead to WarFor America and Russia, Deadly Perceptions Can Lead to War
1. Opinion | Distinguished persons of the week: A professional intelligence community pays dividends
Excerpts:
No one should take for granted the intelligence tradecraft needed to carry out a Special Forces raid or to expose Russian disinformation. Just as important as finding the information is the administration’s willingness to share the intelligence, albeit carefully. In doing so, it recognizes it must cultivate support from the public and lawmakers to sustain expensive, high-risk operations. Public diplomacy and communication is especially critical in the case of Russia, which depends on intricate disinformation campaigns.
For their technical proficiency, professionalism devoid of partisanship and skillful use of intelligence findings to build support for national security missions, we can say, well done to the men and women in our intelligence community.\
Note the 11th Special Operations Imperative:
11. Provide sufficient intelligence. The success of SO depends on executors receiving detailed, near-real-time, all-source intelligence products. Unique to SOF is the requirement for national and theater intelligence at the tactical level.
Opinion | Distinguished persons of the week: A professional intelligence community pays dividends
The Washington Post · by Jennifer RubinColumnist |AddFollowToday at 7:45 a.m. EST · February 6, 2022
Gone are the days when political hacks such as John Ratcliffe and Richard Grenell occupied the post of director of national intelligence. And we can put behind us suspicions that our intelligence findings had been infected with the defeated former president’s personal agenda.
Now, we can be sure we have a professional, reliable intelligence operation that, unique for such organizations, knows when to release information to the public. For proof, look to the raid in Syria this past week that took out Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi and the revelations about Russia’s complex operation to create a false-flag video that would justify its aggression in Ukraine, complete with corpses and military props.
In the case of the raid, which took months of planning, the New York Times reported: “Intelligence officials appear to have located him sometime last year, following a trail of couriers in Syria. They were able to evaluate the house where he was living, determine that a family living downstairs knew nothing about his operations, and design a plan to eliminate him focused on reducing the chances of civilian casualties.”
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Senior administration officials revealed during a background briefing on Thursday that the United States worked “in concert with a global coalition of over 80 partners who are working to share intelligence, repatriate foreign fighters, prosecute ISIS leaders, and perhaps most importantly, de-escalate regional conflicts and stabilize former ISIS safe havens to ensure these groups cannot — never again resurge and threaten the American people.” Moreover, precise intelligence helped minimize civilian casualties.
Meanwhile, the intelligence community ferreted out Russia’s propaganda scheme, briefed members of Congress and shared it with the public. The Senate received a briefing on Thursday from Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines. The result was bipartisan consensus and support. As the Times reports:
After lawmakers were briefed on Thursday, Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Russia was in the process of producing movies and other “false proof” that Ukraine was doing something to provoke Moscow. It is important, he said, “that the world understands that this is a false operation to try to justify them in an invasion.”
Such false-flag operations are “out of the Putin playbook,” said Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina. He said that if Russia tried to “create some pretext, it will be rejected by the global community.”
The Russian plan seems like something straight from a spy thriller. Defense Department press secretary John Kirby during a news briefing on Thursday described “a very graphic propaganda video, which would include corpses and actors that would be depicting mourners and images of destroyed locations, as well as military equipment at the hands of Ukraine or the West, even to the point where some of this equipment would be made to look like it was Western-supplied.” Without credible intelligence officials, the Russian ruse might have convinced some in Congress and the public.
No one should take for granted the intelligence tradecraft needed to carry out a Special Forces raid or to expose Russian disinformation. Just as important as finding the information is the administration’s willingness to share the intelligence, albeit carefully. In doing so, it recognizes it must cultivate support from the public and lawmakers to sustain expensive, high-risk operations. Public diplomacy and communication is especially critical in the case of Russia, which depends on intricate disinformation campaigns.
For their technical proficiency, professionalism devoid of partisanship and skillful use of intelligence findings to build support for national security missions, we can say, well done to the men and women in our intelligence community.
The Washington Post · by Jennifer RubinColumnist |AddFollowToday at 7:45 a.m. EST · February 6, 2022
2. A Uyghur Skier Became the Face of China’s Winter Olympics. The Next Day, She Vanished From the Spotlight.
There may be one good thing about the Olympics in Beijing. Everyday the press can expose the human rights issues. While the leaders likely believed (and may still believe or at least hope\) the Olympics would solidify its role as a leader in the world but perhaps it will turn into a PR nightmare that no amount of its "three warfares" can overcome.
A Uyghur Skier Became the Face of China’s Winter Olympics. The Next Day, She Vanished From the Spotlight.
Chinese athlete and Olympic torch carrier Dinigeer Yilamujiang finished 43rd in her Olympic debut
WSJ · by Liza Lin and Elaine Yu
The catapulting of Ms. Yilamujiang into the global spotlight, followed by a low-key retreat, marked a remarkable 24-hour whirlwind for the hitherto-unknown athlete.
On Friday night, as Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin watched from the VIP booth at the Beijing National Stadium, Ms. Yilamujiang was the surprising—and immediately contentious—choice for what acclaimed Chinese film director and opening ceremony maestro Zhang Yimou had promised would be “a bold and unprecedented way of lighting the Olympic flame.”
In the end, it was less about how Ms. Yilamujiang carried the flame—hand in hand with Zhao Jiawen, a Chinese athlete in the Nordic combined—as it was about her identity.
Torch bearers Dinigeer Yilamujiang and Zhao Jiawen carried the Olympic flame during the opening ceremony.
Photo: Cao Can/Zuma Press
Ms. Yilamujiang is a Uyghur, a member of the Turkic minority group native to China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang that has become the main focus of allegations in the U.S. and the West about Chinese human rights violations.
The decision to choose Ms. Yilamujiang, rather than a more accomplished or widely known athlete, and to pair her with a member of China’s Han majority, was interpreted as Mr. Xi’s act of defiance against the global pressure campaign and decried as “offensive” by overseas Uyghur human rights groups.
Ms. Yilamujiang’s selection for such a prestigious task was notable for another reason: She was set to make her Olympic sporting debut 18 hours after her star turn.
It didn’t go particularly well. By the first checkpoint of Saturday’s race, Ms. Yilamujiang had fallen behind more than half of the field of 65 competitors, eventually finishing 42 places behind the eventual gold medalist, Norway’s Therese Johaug.
Afterward, Ms. Yilamujiang and the three other Chinese athletes competing in the event slipped away, leaving more than a dozen Chinese and foreign journalists waiting for more than an hour in frigid temperatures.
Dinigeer Yilamujiang competed in the cross-country skiathon, finishing 43rd.
Photo: Aaron Favila/Associated Press
Ms. Yilamujiang’s escape, if that’s what it was, appeared to be in contravention of International Olympic Committee rules that require all athletes to pass through a “mixed zone” where they can—but aren’t obliged to—answer journalists’ questions.
The IOC confirmed in an emailed response to questions that mixed-zone rules remain in place despite the pandemic, but it declined to comment on Ms. Yilamujiang’s no-show. Ms. Yilamujiang couldn’t be reached for comment through China’s National Olympic Committee, which didn’t reply to requests for comment.
The 20-year-old from Xinjiang’s northern Altay prefecture is one of six athletes from the Chinese region competing in the Winter Games, and the only one of Uyghur heritage.
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With the opening ceremony, Ms. Yilamujiang became an overnight celebrity in China, touted as a symbol of national unity. State-run media published videos on social media of her family back home in Xinjiang, beaming with pride.
“China has done everything it can for me, and what is left for me to do now is to train hard and bring glory to the country,” Ms. Yilamujiang was quoted as saying in an article published by the Communist Party-run Xinjiang Daily. The article also highlighted her personal story, as a teenage talent groomed by her father—himself a decorated skier and national cross-country ski coach.
In a separate video posted by the newspaper, Ms. Yilamujiang’s mother praised Beijing: “Thanks to the country for giving my daughter such an important mission.”
To human rights activists overseas, the choice of Ms. Yilamujiang for the opening ceremony was a pointed rebuttal by Mr. Xi.
The Chinese government has targeted the Xinjiang region’s mostly Muslim ethnic minorities with mass-detention internment camps and omnipresent surveillance as part of a yearslong campaign of forcible assimilation.
Concerns over China’s human rights record, and especially its ethnic-assimilation efforts in Xinjiang, have clouded the run-up to the Games, and overshadowed other aspects of the opening ceremony.
In a news briefing on Saturday, Beijing Olympic organizers declined questions about Ms. Yilamujiang’s selection, preferring to discuss instead the opening ceremony’s snowflake motif.
They told the Journal in separate emailed comments that there were stringent selection criteria for torchbearers, each of whom boasted outstanding achievements. The IOC declined to answer specific questions on her selection.
Though Ms. Yilamujiang wasn’t available to answer journalists’ questions after Saturday’s race, China’s state-run broadcaster did have an exclusive interview, in which she expressed incredulity at having been entrusted with the role of torchbearer.
“Since the country gave me such an important mission, I had to fulfill it,” Ms. Yilamujiang said in the interview, which was broadcast Sunday but which appeared to have been taped prior to her race.
Ms. Yilamujiang’s silence on her ethnic identity was a contrast with fellow athlete Adake Ahenaer, a speedskater from Xinjiang who was also making her Olympic debut.
“As an ethnic minority fighting in our home court, to represent my country and represent my ethnic group, gave me honor,” Ms. Adake told reporters after competing in the women’s 3,000-meter speedskating event on Saturday, where she came in 17th. “This honor is indescribable.”
The 22-year-old Ms. Adake, a member of China’s Kazakh minority, another of the country’s 56 officially recognized indigenous groups, said she got emotional seeing her close friend Ms. Yilamujiang appear on television as one of the surprise final torchbearers.
“She is representative of us young athletes in her spirit,” she said. Asked what she thought of Western media reports about Xinjiang, Ms. Adake sighed audibly.
—Laine Higgins contributed to this article.
WSJ · by Liza Lin and Elaine Yu
3. Ghost Army, a World War II Master of Deception, Finally Wins Recognition
It is great to see the contributions of deception operations recognized. I recently conducted an interview with a researcher who is working on a project on military deception. I do not think we could conduct deception on the scale of the Ghost Army again in the modern era. But it is also that thinking that may paralyze our thinking about deception. We need to be able to conduct deception in new ways and in this very complex information and communications environment.
Ghost Army, a World War II Master of Deception, Finally Wins Recognition
President Biden signed a bill that bestows the Congressional Gold Medal to the members of “a traveling roadshow of deception” that built inflatable tanks and trucks to trick the Germans.
A Ghost Army soldier with an inflatable rubber Sherman tank. It took about 30 minutes to inflate a single tank.Credit...National Archives
By
Feb. 3, 2022
The Ghost Army had one goal: Deceive Hitler’s forces and their allies.
Credited with fine-tuning the ancient art of deceptive warfare, the American military units of the Ghost Army used inflatable tanks and trucks to cloak the true size and location of American forces. They played ear-piercingly loud recorded sounds to mimic troop movement. They sent out misleading radio communications to scramble German intelligence.
The objective was to trick the Germans into thinking the Allies were in the neighborhood in force, so that actual units elsewhere had time to maneuver.
The Ghost Army, described as “a traveling roadshow of deception,” was composed of engineers and artists, designers and architects, radio operators and truck drivers. The work was so secretive that group members, who are credited with saving thousands of Allied lives, were unsung heroes for several decades after the war. But a grassroots effort in recent years culminated this week in the ultimate recognition from the U.S. government.
On Tuesday, President Biden signed a bill that grants the Congressional Gold Medal — Congress’s equivalent of the Presidential Medal of Freedom — to members of the Ghost Army for “their unique and highly distinguished service in conducting deception operations” during World War II.
“Through their courageous, creative and innovative tactics, the top-secret Ghost Army outmaneuvered and deceived the Nazis, saving thousands of Allied lives during World War II,” Representative Annie Kuster, Democrat of New Hampshire, who sponsored the legislation, said in a statement. “More than 75 years after defeating fascism in Europe, it’s time these soldiers receive the highest honor we can award: the Congressional Gold Medal.”
Bernie Bluestein, in an undated photo, is one of a handful of surviving members of the Ghost Army. “It’s really a great feeling to have people acknowledge that I had a job to do in the service and it was helpful in our winning the war,” he said.Credit...via Bernie Bluestein
Bernie Bluestein, of Schaumberg, Ill., is one of only 10 known surviving members of the Ghost Army, an unofficial term for the two U.S. Army units involved in the subterfuge. The 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, Mr. Bluestein’s unit, carried out more than 20 deception campaigns close to the front, including in France and Germany. A sister unit, the 3133rd Signal Company Special, executed two campaigns in Italy in 1945.
In an interview on Tuesday night, Mr. Bluestein, 98, said the award gave him an indescribable feeling of satisfaction, but he expressed sadness that so few veterans were alive to enjoy the honor with him. The other surviving members of the group range in age from 97 to 99.
“Something we did was appreciated by so many people and at the time we didn’t realize that,” Mr. Bluestein said. “It’s really a great feeling to have people acknowledge that I had a job to do in the service and it was helpful in our winning the war.”
A half-track outfitted with playback equipment and a 500-pound speaker with a range of 15 miles, used by the Ghost Army for sonic deception.Credit...National Archives
In one of the 23rd’s most elaborate feats of trickery, during the critical Rhine River campaign to finally crush Germany, the unit set up 10 miles south of the spot where two American Ninth Army divisions were to cross the river. To draw attention away from the actual divisions, the Ghost Army conjured up a decoy force of inflated tanks, cannons, planes and trucks; sent out misleading radio messages about the American troops’ movements; and used loudspeakers to simulate the sound of soldiers building pontoon boats.
The Germans fell for the ruse. They fired on the 23rd’s divisions, while Ninth Army troops crossed the Rhine with nominal resistance.
During that campaign, Mr. Bluestein and other soldiers would visit bars and gathering spots and pretend to be senior officers to create scuttlebutt among the locals that the Americans were up to something. The hope was that German spies would eventually be misdirected.
But Mr. Bluestein was an artist at heart. Before the unit began using inflatable tanks, he would paint on cloth draped over wooden tanks to make them look authentic. He stenciled insignia for 23rd members, and he produced posters to distribute around towns — anything to create an authentic flourish.
“Like, Coca-Cola signs, so they’ll say, ‘Oh, yeah, the Americans are here,’” Mr. Bluestein said.
Mr. Bluestein had a long career after the war as an industrial designer for companies that made household appliances like refrigerators and toasters, but in retirement he found himself embracing art again. These days, his favorite objects to sculpt are pins and needles, a tribute to his father, a tailor, and his mother, a seamstress.
About half of the soldiers in Mr. Bluestein’s unit, the 603rd Camouflage Engineer Battalion, were artists, said Rick Beyer, a documentarian who has chronicled the story of the Ghost Army and pushed for the gold medal.
The Army took existing units and “mashed them together, Frankenstein style,” to create the 23rd, he said, but it also recruited from art schools like the Cleveland Institute of Art and the Cooper Union. Some members became famous after the war, like the fashion designer Bill Blass and the painter Ellsworth Kelly.
In addition to Mr. Bluestein, the other nine surviving members of the Ghost Army are Bill Anderson, 97, of Kent, Ohio; James T. Anderson, 99, of Dover, Del.; John Christman, 97, of Leesburg, N.J.; George Dramis, 97, of Raleigh, N.C.; Manny Frockt, 97, of West Palm Beach, Fla.; Nick Leo, 99, of Brentwood, N.Y.; Mark Mallardi, 98, of Edgewater, Fla.; Bill Nall, 97, of Dunellon, Fla.; and Seymour Nussenbaum, 98, of Monroe Township, N.J.
Bill Blass, of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, who became a fashion designer.Credit...National Archives
Mr. Beyer, who produced a 2013 documentary that aired on PBS about the Ghost Army and later co-wrote a book with Elizabeth Sayles, “The Ghost Army of World War II,” said the effort to bestow a Congressional Gold Medal on the group was the product of a grassroots campaign that required two-thirds of each congressional chamber to co-sponsor the legislation.
“We had to convince literally 350 congressional offices, one by one, of doing this,” Mr. Beyer said. The end result was a rare bipartisan feat at a time of intense partisan rancor. “Sometimes, it’s good to take a breath and say maybe there are some things we don’t have to be completely cynical about,” he said.
“The Ghost Army in some ways is still helping to keep our country safe,” Mr. Beyer said, “because people are still studying what they did and are learning from it and use it today.”
Although warfare has evolved since then, and advanced reconnaissance technology makes fooling enemy forces with inflatable tanks a bigger challenge, the principles and innovation of the Ghost Army live on today in the work of soldiers who practice psychological operations, Gen. Edward G. Burley, a retired Army brigadier general who commanded the Joint Psychological Operations Task Force in Iraq, said in an interview.
General Burley said soldiers today are taught about the imagination employed by the Ghost Army to “think outside the box” to make military deception more believable.
“These are giants, and we’re standing on their shoulders,” he said. “Their techniques are still being used today. We’re just adding additional elements to adjust for technology.”
4. Long Live Ukraine, Taiwan and the Nation-State
Of course if you follow north Korean indoctrination you would learn that in the 1990s the Economist did a surreptitious survey of Koreans in the north asking them how many countries there are in the world. The answer was 5. Respondents listed China, Russia, the United States, Japan, and north Korea. Only north Korea has protected its independence and the other 190 or so pseudo nations are simply puppets of the other 4 major nations. The belief was those four countries maintained the near monopoly on violence as well as controlled the majority of wealth in the world ;therefore, all countries but north Korea were subservient to those four.
But I digress.
The big question is if the nation-state system collapses what comes next? What will replace the nation-state system?Is it in our interest to protect the nation-state system?
Long Live Ukraine, Taiwan and the Nation-State
A critical achievement of modern civilization may rest on the fate of these two small countries, in danger of being swallowed by imperial neighbors.
WSJ · by Christopher DeMuth
The bellicose Russian and Chinese overtures have provoked wide fear and revulsion. Fear because either military resistance or successful annexations could lead to further aggression by Russia and China and wider wars involving other European or Asian nations and the U.S. Revulsion because Taiwan and Ukraine are free democracies in the crosshairs of murderous dictatorships.
These are vital considerations for understanding and responding to the emergency. But there is another, more elemental consideration. Whatever their covetous neighbors say, Taiwan and Ukraine have the essential features of independent nationhood. Provenance and their own exertions have given them the moral right to national self-determination, for three reasons.
First, they occupy and police clearly defined territories inhabited and cultivated by millions of citizens. Their territorial boundaries involve a few incidental disputes, like those that pepper hundreds of other national borders; these are matters for routine diplomatic negotiation and are irrelevant to their neighbors’ designs on their entire territories.
Second, they are self-conscious polities with their own histories, traditions and institutions of government, commerce and civil society. Their diversities of ethnicity, language and religion are typical of many modern nations. People with ties of language and heritage to Russia and China enjoy full rights of citizenship. Most important, sundry group loyalties are thoroughly entwined with patriotic identity and allegiance: Large majorities regard Ukraine and Taiwan as their national homes, familiar and admirable, and are ready to fight and sacrifice alongside their countrymen to preserve their independence.
Third, they are peaceable. They have no interest, not to mention ability, in invading China or Russia (or any other neighbor), or to rule their peoples, subvert their institutions or interfere with their corresponding prerogatives as independent nations. Their militaries, and military alliances with other nations, are strictly defensive, with no purpose other than to counter manifest external aggression. The threats to national self-determination are wholly one-sided.
The national status of Ukraine and Taiwan is critical because the nation-state is a critical achievement of modern civilization. It is the product of centuries of social evolution and has proved the most productive, beneficial form of human politics yet devised. It is the indispensable building block of efforts to address regional and global problems. The order of self-governing nations deserves our attention and respect as a stupendous inheritance, one that needs our protection if we wish to keep it.
These assertions may sound strange. The nation-state was born in strife and bloodshed and has been the scene of horrific ethnic and religious conflict. Nationalism is said to have been the root cause of major wars. More than a few nation-states are brutal dictatorships indifferent to the welfare of their citizens. And who among us cannot recite a litany of objections to our own nation’s government and political system? No wonder that progressive idealism, once attached to “national self-determination,” has shifted to globe-spanning agencies and human-rights movements that transcend parochial national interests.
But these constructions are myopic and misleading. Folly, pride and malevolence are constants of our species, but so are reason, piety and benevolence—and the rise of the nation-state is thanks to its relative success in managing the former and making space for the latter. Nation building, beginning in the 16th century and gathering steam in the 18th, promoted diversity, equity and inclusion—and freedom to boot.
As Boston University’s Liah Greenfeld has demonstrated, the modern idea of social equality grew from efforts to transform class-ridden societies into inclusive national communities and to convert aristocracy-ridden governments into meritocratic ones.
The canonical freedoms of religion, speech, inquiry, association and enterprise were instituted to solve problems—wars of religion, out-of-touch ruling elites, static commerce, dogmatic science—that stood in the way of effective nationhood.
Whatever philosophers may declare, in practice there is no such thing as a supernational right: Rights of legal process, political participation, minority protection and security of hearth and home are enjoyed only by those who are part of a political community with the will and wherewithal to enforce them.
Most of today’s successful nation-states are conglomerations of racial, ethnic and religious groups that have become, on balance, sources of dynamism rather than conflict.
Each of these developments was spurred by competition with other countries that were learning the arts of nationhood and reaping commensurate rewards of wealth, independence, cultural achievement and mastery of the physical world. In premodern times, when “nations” meant racial, ethnic or religious groups, rivalry was based on immutable personal characteristics and tended to turn violent and zero-sum. When “nations” became geographic territories with diverse and overlapping population groups, rivalry shifted, productively, to institutional arrangements, management of domestic divisions and cultivation of the spirit of shared identity and purpose.
These tendencies aren’t the whole story, and we see a wide variety of practices and traditions among the world’s nearly 200 nation-states. That variety is itself a strength, akin to that of American federalism. Ukraine is said to be a “fledgling democracy” with a ways to go to meet supposedly high Western standards—but it is a conservative, relatively religious nation with a brave fighting spirit that is impressing friend and foe alike. Older and richer Taiwan features raucous conflict between progressive and conservative parties—yet they have mastered the art of regular, peaceful transfers of government. Fun fact: Taiwan’s constitution has a unique fourth branch, conceived by Sun Yat-Sen, that independently polices government performance and corruption with powers of censure and impeachment. Both major parties would like to be rid of this nettlesome innovation, but I hope that they keep it and that others take note.
For all its variety and many flaws, modern nationhood is in a class of its own and recognized as such. In the 1930s, Germany and Japan talked the talk of aggrieved nationhood—but they walked the walk of race-based, imperial conquest and had to be put back in their place at terrible cost by real nation-states of diverse traditions and interests. Today Russia and China conflate aggrieved nationhood with empire and subjugation and, for China, racial destiny. If they were normal nation-states, with the three essential features I have described, the world would be vastly more secure, peaceful and prosperous (even more so if Iran were to join the club). And their own great cultural achievements would be much more widely admired and studied.
The Russian and Chinese threats focus the mind on how the order of nation-states is to be protected. The “collective security” template at the heart of the League of Nations and United Nations, in which all member nations pledge to take seriously aggression against any other, is too wide and shallow to be effective. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s much firmer pledge has worked better but is limited to a restricted group of similar nations. But all three institutions undermined the national order by obscuring security responsibilities. The league and U.N. oxymoronically made “national self-determination” a dispensation from an “international community,” and NATO transferred significant European security responsibilities from its own nations to the U.S.
I think there is no better alternative than leaving security challenges to the judgement of individual nations from case to case, weighing their own national interests and their collective interest in protecting the national order. That, in any event, seems to be how things work in practice, as in the current crisis. Japan and Australia have effectively pledged to help defend Taiwan militarily in league with the U.S., while South Korea has demurred (it says it won’t fight alongside Japan). France, the U.K. and Poland, along with the U.S., have been outstanding supporters of Ukraine, while Germany has gone to extraordinary lengths to deny support.
Why is the Taiwan coalition planning on joining actively in military defense, while the Ukraine coalition is limiting itself to providing military supplies and intelligence and logistical support? Taiwan, excluded from most international organizations at China’s behest, has carefully cultivated bilateral political, commercial and cultural ties with the U.S. and other powerful nations, and it has been a conspicuously better world citizen than China, as during the Covid pandemic. Self-determination takes time, and Taiwan, which has been effectively independent since 1949, has had more time than Ukraine, which withdrew from the Soviet Union only in 1991. But the decisive reason is that the U.S. correctly sees China as a far more serious threat to American interests and menace to world peace and stability than Russia.
Whatever the upshot, I would like to see, in these and future cases, greater recognition of the integrity of the nation-state and its value to others. If Ukraine’s plight is judged less important than Taiwan’s to the interests of other nations, so be it. But that is no excuse for the disparagement of Ukraine, in some European and American quarters, as less than a “real” nation worthy of our attentions. The Ukrainians’ astonishing defiance in the face of massive military mobilization is an object lesson in the value of the nationalist spirit to international order. It is unmasking Russian ruthlessness while others equivocate, and may itself be a sufficient deterrent unto the day.
Here is a parting thought for giving nationhood a rhetorical boost in the councils of government and public opinion. The word genocide, meaning the extermination of a people for their race or ethnicity, describes an act so monstrous that its very application can influence debate and action. It could be useful to have a cognate, perhaps nationcide, to describe the extermination of the national civilization a people have built—customs, traditions, civil associations and practices of self-government—which many of them will deem as precious as life itself.
Mr. DeMuth is a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute.
WSJ · by Christopher DeMuth
5. Military Reporters & Editors Association calls for the resumption of embeds
i did not realize there was no longer a policy allowing embeds.
Military Reporters & Editors Association calls for the resumption of embeds
FEB. 5, 2022 | WASHINGTON, D.C.–Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin: The recent deployment of American forces to Europe provides an opportunity for the U.S. military to showcase how the men and women in uniform undertake the mission asked of them by the U.S. government and the nation.
The Military Reporters & Editors Association is formally asking the Defense Department to allow journalists to embed with the U.S. troops that have been selected to deploy to NATO’s eastern flank.
By allowing reporters and photographers to show what life is like for U.S. troops on the ground, in the air, and at sea, the Pentagon will allow the American public to understand the responsibilities and sacrifices that both service members and their families make.
It has been several years since Americans have had such an opportunity to see and hear directly from troops in the field. We at the Military Reporters & Editors Association look forward to working with you to facilitate embeds going forward. Thank you.
6. Olympics Opening Ceremony draws record-low ratings: Why aren't Americans tuning in?
I admit that we did not watch. We have watched a couple of events to try to see Americans competing (even curling) but we have not seen even the highlights of the opening ceremony,
Olympics Opening Ceremony draws record-low ratings: Why aren't Americans tuning in?
NBC is facing a cataclysmic loss of audience for the 2022 Winter Olympics as viewership tanked for Friday’s Opening Ceremony, averaging just 16 million.
It is a record low for the Opening Ceremony (20.1 million for 1988 in Calgary was the previous record) and a whopping 43 percent below the 2018 Games in South Korea that notched 28.3 million viewers despite also dealing with a less than advantageous Asian time zone for American audiences.
It comes on the heels of Thursday’s ratings disaster that saw just 7.7 million people tune in, dramatically below same-night audiences of 2018 (16 million) and 2014 from Russia (20.02 million).
NBC said the 16 million is a “total audience delivery” and includes all of its networks and streaming. The television-only average audience was below 14 million for the day, per the preliminary data released by the network.
While ratings tend to increase over the first week, as more viewers get caught up in the action, NBC will have to work out of a ratings hole.
The host country, China, is a serious problem.
Numerous countries, including the United States, are staging a “diplomatic boycott” of these Games due to what they say is China’s active campaign of genocide against the Uyghurs, a minority ethic group of mostly Muslims in the far northwest part of the country.
China denies the charge but has also banned United Nations human rights officials from entering the region.
In issues more directly related to the Games, China’s drastic anti-COVID measures have made life inside its “closed loop” a high-stress and near joyless experience for the athletes and a massive challenge for NBC.
Athletes have complained about the fear of positive tests, substandard conditions in unnecessary “isolation centers” and the need to guard against China hacking into their phones and computers to mine data and steal identities.
Friday’s Opening Ceremony from the famed Bird’s Nest in Beijing was scaled back (just over two hours) and rich with politics and propaganda, including a speech from International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach that might as well have been written by the Chinese Communist Party.
While the use of a massive LED screen on the floor produced some impressive visuals, it was a far cry from an expansive, welcoming, celebratory, over-the-top show China delivered to open the 2008 Summer Games.
An outdoor screen shows live broadcast of the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games on February 4, 2022 in Tianjin, China. (VCG/VCG via Getty Images)
It ended with China using cross country skier Dinigeer Yilamujiang, who the state run media said has Uyghur heritage, as one of the cauldron lighters. It was a clear counter to the claims of genocide — see, look at this smiling, celebrated Uyghur.
It was a disturbing and dispiriting moment, a young athlete and an iconic moment in every Olympics used as a propaganda prop to cover up a campaign of slavery, torture, forced abortions and internment in reeducation camps. It did nothing to build good feelings toward the competition.
As such, rather than a celebration, this feels, and looks, like a grind of hardship, isolation and suspicion.
The lack of fans in attendance doesn’t help either. Thursday’s ice skating competition was surreal, a performative event where the connection between competitor and crowd is paramount. Instead, with just 800 in attendance, it looked and sounded like a practice session, complete with music rattling around within the poor acoustics of the facility.
Then there is a measure of “Olympic fatigue.” These Games are taking place less than six months after the COVID-delayed Summer Olympics from Tokyo that itself struggled to draw ratings (an average nightly audience of just 15.5 million).
All of this is a nightmare for NBC, which is paying the IOC $7.75 billion to broadcast the Olympics through 2032.
NBC is doing almost all it can but its reporters and crews are stuck in the “closed loop.” That eliminates live shots with mountains or historic buildings as backdrops as well as stories about the culture, architecture and people of China that can make the Olympics about more than just sport.
Host Mike Tirico broadcast from a set designed like a mountain chalet, but that could have been in Breckenridge, not Beijing. And Tirico, the face of the broadcast, will be leaving in the coming days to anchor NBC’s coverage of the Super Bowl, which due to the lengthening of the NFL season has spilled into the Olympic calendar and further siphoned off interest and outside media coverage.
Meanwhile, most of NBC’s play-by-play broadcasters are calling the Games remotely from studios in Connecticut rather than risk China’s COVID policies.
While that may be mostly indistinguishable to the viewer, it means the network can’t have the “Today Show” and its “Nightly News” broadcast live from the city for additional promotion. There are no segments with Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir, say, shopping in Beijing. Or Al Roker trying to luge. Or whatever.
It all adds up.
And right now it subtracts into fewer and fewer viewers, who so far have too many other options than to tune into a passionless, fanless, overly political event from a country trying to use the Olympics to brush aside the horrors occurring inside its border.
To the IOC, this is great. Thus far, the American viewer is less accepting.
7. “It’s not about Russia. It’s about Putin”: An expert explains Putin’s endgame in Ukraine
What say the Russian experts?
Excerpts:
The real thing that we could do that would absolutely devastate the Russian economy is not buy any Russian [natural] gas or oil, which is fine, except that it would mean massive increases in prices and massive shortages, particularly of gas in Europe. It’s winter now. How many people are willing to say I’m perfectly happy for granny to freeze to death so long as I show that nasty Mr. Putin what I think of his policies towards Ukraine?
I think there is a point where we have to be realistic. We can do harm to Putin. Absolutely. And if he escalates, we can and we should. But on the other hand, if he is absolutely willing to take that hit, there’s nothing we can do. The reason why he probably won’t escalate in Ukraine is not so much because of Western sanctions. It’s because the Ukrainians will fight, the Ukrainian military is stronger than it has ever been. The Russians will win, but if they’re going to try and occupy territory and particularly go into cities, you know, they’re going to face a nation up in arms against them.
The Russians would absolutely hate [this parallel], but the only real parallel I can draw is what happened in Ukraine during World War II. The Germans invaded and they faced this massive mobilized Partizan resistance. Well, okay, this is going to be a slightly different war. But nonetheless, that’s the kind of challenge.
“It’s not about Russia. It’s about Putin”: An expert explains Putin’s endgame in Ukraine
According to Mark Galeotti, Putin wants to cement his place in history by restoring Russian control over its neighbor.
Vox · by Dylan Matthews · February 6, 2022
Russian Southern Military District servicemen are seen on T-72B3 tanks as they take part in a cross-country driving exercise in the Rostov region of Russia, near Ukraine, on February 3.
Erik Romanenko/TASS via Getty Images
Since December, the biggest question facing foreign policymakers in the US and Europe has been as simple as it has been hard to really believe: Is Russia going to invade Ukraine?
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered massive numbers of troops, tanks, artillery, and more to the border with Ukraine, as well as in Crimea (a region that Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014) and in Belarus (a close ally of Russia and northern neighbor of Ukraine). He has also issued demands that Ukraine not be admitted into NATO, and that NATO not deploy forces to member states close to Russia like Poland and the Baltic states. These are bold demands that some view as designed for Ukraine and the West to reject, allowing Putin to claim that diplomacy has failed and an invasion is necessary.
For the moment, though, diplomatic efforts between the US, EU members, Ukraine, and Russia continue, and some experts are more optimistic that the situation can resolve without what could be Europe’s first major land war in decades. One of them is Mark Galeotti, director of Mayak Intelligence, a professor at University College London, and an expert on Russian security affairs. We spoke on Zoom recently for an episode of Vox’s podcast The Weeds. A transcript, heavily truncated and edited for length and clarity, follows.
Dylan Matthews
Let’s start with the actual situation on the ground right now. What has Russia been doing in recent months militarily? Is what it’s doing now different from things that it’s done in the past?
Mark Galeotti
It is different. What we’ve seen is a pretty huge buildup of materiel around Ukraine’s borders.
First of all, it’s a lot more than we’ve seen in the past. There was another big buildup last spring. This time, though, it’s much more substantial.
There are people talking about 120,000, 130,000 troops. That’s not entirely accurate. There are a lot of troops there, but also the kit for these troops. It’s the tanks, it’s the armored fighting vehicles, and so forth. So you might say it’s the skeleton of a force of 130,000.
Also what we’ve seen that is different from past such buildups is what you might call “the backup.” Soldiers talk about “the teeth and the tail.” Last [spring] it was essentially all teeth, no tail. So yes, it was all very scary, there were tanks and guns there.
But there weren’t the field hospitals. There weren’t the fuel bowsers, the big stocks of ammunition, all the stuff that you actually need to have a real offensive. This time they have all that, which means either they are absolutely planning for a definite military operation, or they might plan military operation, and they’re giving themselves the option. Or they realized that when they tried to bluff the last time, people pointed to the lack of all this backup and said, “Ah ha, that’s why it’s a bluff,” and they are just making damn sure that this time it’s going to be a really good bluff.
Dylan Matthews
Why is Putin doing this? What is in it for Russia in a military invasion of Ukraine — or, alternately, a feint of a military invasion of Ukraine that is sufficiently serious that people have to respond to it?
Mark Galeotti
The thing is, we’re not talking about Russia. If you look at the opinion polls, Russians themselves have no enthusiasm for any kind of a war.
Crimea was a particular chunk of territory that pretty much every Russian, whether they love or hate Putin, thought was rightfully Russian. It was Russian until the 1950s when it was transferred to Ukrainian control. But that was a one-off. Everyone thought that [annexing Crimea] was right and proper. Frankly, most Crimeans actually genuinely wanted to become part of Russia.
Supporters of Russian President Vladimir Putin gather for a rally to celebrate the fourth anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea at Nakhimov Square in Sevastopol, Crimea, on March 14, 2018.
Yuri Kadobnov/AFP via Getty Images
This is totally different. Donbas [the eastern region of Ukraine where Russia is backing separatist militias] isn’t special for them. Instead, they do see the Ukrainians as their ... I don’t know ... cousins, part of the family. And the idea of seeing Ukrainian cities burn is really not something that people are enthusiastic about.
So it’s not about Russia. It’s about Putin. And it’s about this small circle of people around him who dominate this country. If you look at them, they are essentially the last gasp of Soviet elites, the people who didn’t just have their early childhood education in the Soviet times, but also their early career experiences. They were made. They thought they knew the way their life was going to be. And then all of a sudden the whole thing collapsed.
And the end of empire is hard. I mean, one can question whether Britain’s really fully internalized the end of empire after, what, 50 odd years. France likewise, and probably soon enough, America is going to have to go through this and in a different way. We shouldn’t be surprised that it’s difficult, but the trouble is for this particular generation, these increasingly paranoid old men, it’s metastasized from “what have we lost?” to “who took it from us?”
These are people who genuinely believe the West is hostile, who genuinely believe that the West is denying Russia its proper place in the world, that it’s trying to hold Russia down and trying to undermine the regime. When we support, for example, anti-corruption activists like the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who Putin had poisoned and then put in prison, they don’t see that as us standing up for what we think of as natural human rights. They see that as a sign that the West is trying to use [the situation] to undermine the regime.
And let’s be honest, when you are a corrupt kleptocratic authoritarian, then support for anti-corruption activists, support for a free press — all of that does subvert the regime. So they see themselves as defending Russia.
When it comes to Ukraine, look, Putin is a product of his era. He doesn’t really think that Ukraine is a different country. Of course it can’t go. But he’s still got this old Cold War mentality that if it’s lost to [Russia], it’s gained by the others. He’s worried about the thought of NATO’s forces being based in Ukraine, of NATO’s missiles. He talks about missiles near the [Ukrainian] city of Kharkiv that could hit Moscow in five minutes.
In reality, these are very, very implausible scenarios. But the point is, this is a view of a bunch of old men who can’t quite get over the fact that they’re no longer running a superpower, and who also are increasingly surrounded by people who tell them what they want to hear. One of the scary things about the Putin system is that Putin himself is a rational actor. He’s a rational human being — not a nice one, but a rational one. But the trouble is, if what he’s being told is misleading and inaccurate, he can make some really stupid and dangerous decisions, even while being rational about it.
As fears grow of a potential invasion by Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s border, a military instructor teaches civilians holding wooden replicas of Kalashnikov rifles during a training session at an abandoned factory in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv on January 30.
Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
A final point is we know that Putin is obsessed with his historical legacy. History is one of the few things he reads. When he meets historians, he asks them, “How are they going to be writing about me in 100 years time?” Which, first of all, what a deeply uncomfortable question to be asked by the despots of your country, a man who has people poisoned or put in prison! But secondly, it gives us a sense of where his head is at.
I think from his point of view, you know, he’s 69. He can rule for only some years to come politically, but he’s probably getting old and he’s getting tired. It’s fairly obvious that he is tired and bored with much of the job. The last thing he wants is for his legacy in the history books to be the guy who lost Ukraine, the guy who rolled over and let NATO and the West have their way.
So I think this is also about him feeling this is … I wouldn’t say his last chance, but one of his last chances to stand up for Russia and make sure that Russia asserts its real place in the world, forces the West to acknowledge that and in the process, that’s what gets him into the history books, [so] he’s a chapter rather than just a paragraph.
Dylan Matthews
Where things are today, how likely do you think an actual Russian incursion into Ukrainian territory is?
Mark Galeotti
I’m still optimistic. The military wonks are very pessimistic. They think it’s almost certain that there will be an invasion. The political wonks tend to be much more optimistic. I reckon it’s about 30 percent. It’s absolutely a possibility, but I don’t think [a military escalation is] Putin’s Plan A. It’s his Plan B or his Plan C, if he can’t get what he wants or enough of what he wants by political means, means which include the intimidating presence of a large number of Russian troops and heavy metal on Ukraine’s border.
Dylan Matthews
If Russia is partially doing this to try to extract concessions, what are the kind of concessions they want? Is there a deal that could be made with with Ukraine and with the United States that would satisfy them and avert conflict here?
Mark Galeotti
The only honest answer I could possibly give is, I don’t know.
We’re still trying to divine Putin’s real goals and above all, his appetite for risk. He’s trying to give the impression that he has this very maximalist list of demands. What he wants is Ukraine to be forced into a state of neutrality, which means that it will always be vulnerable to Russia, and guarantees that it’ll never join NATO, even though back in 2009, NATO had promised that Ukraine and Georgia would become members.
Also, he wants NATO basically rolled back to where it was in 1997. Countries which have already become members of NATO [such as Poland, Hungary, and Czechia] would either be kicked out or more likely would become second-class NATO members or something.
My view is that he must know that he’s not going to get that. To some people, that proves that war will definitely happen. But we can reassure Russia without giving away things that we shouldn’t be giving away. We can’t, for example, actually say Ukraine will no longer be allowed to join NATO, even though, if we’re honest, Ukraine is not going to join NATO for at least another decade.
But maybe what we can do is say, “Well, look, it’s going to take time anyway, but we will guarantee that we will not put NATO troops or security architecture on Ukrainian soil. Ukraine might come under the NATO’s umbrella of defense, but in peacetime, at least you’re not going to have to worry about that.”
There’s ways of trying to package things that are actually relatively reasonable. We’re going to have to package them up nicely in really big flowery wrapping paper with a nice silver bow because Putin is going to have to both feel that he’s made some kind of advances and also has to be able to tell his own people that he has triumphed.
Putin meeting in the Kremlin in Moscow on January 31.
Mikhail Metzel/TASS via Getty Images
Dylan Matthews
A deal does seem preferable to war, but I think there’s a fear that we can’t trust Putin. If we offer him a concession, next time he will do a similar ramp up, or attack Georgia again, or otherwise lash out to try to extract additional concessions. Is there a way to avoid it becoming a blackmail cycle, as opposed to a lasting settlement?
Mark Galeotti
It’s a fair point, and I think in some ways the answer is that there is a there is a strange and perverse legalism to Putin. This is a man who absolutely is willing to lie, cheat, blackmail and murder — not personally, but he’ll have people do it.
On the other hand, this is a man who does feel the need to observe the forms. He may rig elections, but he will hold elections. He won’t just simply declare that he will change the constitution to allow him to to stay in power. There will have to be a constitutional process and debates and a referendum and so forth.
It’s interesting that his demand, at the moment, is precisely that he wants pieces of paper. He wants formal written guarantees precisely because he doesn’t trust the West. Well, this gives us the opportunity also to look for full guarantees from Putin.
The honest answer is that actually our leverage on Putin is quite limited. Putin has spent the last seven and a half years turning Russia into as sanction-proof an economy as he can manage. And they’ve done a pretty good job of it. They have massive financial reserves in the West. They made a decision to favor security over economic growth. The Russian economy is pretty stagnant. But on the other hand, it’s also really hard to knock over.
The real thing that we could do that would absolutely devastate the Russian economy is not buy any Russian [natural] gas or oil, which is fine, except that it would mean massive increases in prices and massive shortages, particularly of gas in Europe. It’s winter now. How many people are willing to say I’m perfectly happy for granny to freeze to death so long as I show that nasty Mr. Putin what I think of his policies towards Ukraine?
I think there is a point where we have to be realistic. We can do harm to Putin. Absolutely. And if he escalates, we can and we should. But on the other hand, if he is absolutely willing to take that hit, there’s nothing we can do. The reason why he probably won’t escalate in Ukraine is not so much because of Western sanctions. It’s because the Ukrainians will fight, the Ukrainian military is stronger than it has ever been. The Russians will win, but if they’re going to try and occupy territory and particularly go into cities, you know, they’re going to face a nation up in arms against them.
The Russians would absolutely hate [this parallel], but the only real parallel I can draw is what happened in Ukraine during World War II. The Germans invaded and they faced this massive mobilized Partizan resistance. Well, okay, this is going to be a slightly different war. But nonetheless, that’s the kind of challenge.
Vox · by Dylan Matthews · February 6, 2022
8. Eric Hoffer warned us about 'true believers'
I am a true believer in Eric Hoffer's writing!
Eric Hoffer warned us about 'true believers'
In summary
The “true believers” that philosopher Eric Hoffer defined seven decades ago threaten to undermine civic and political life.
Eric Hoffer was a former migrant farm worker who achieved praise and fame in the 1950s and 1960s as a writer and philosopher.
Hoffer’s first of many books,“The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements,” was published in 1951, while he was a longshoreman in San Francisco. He continued to labor on the docks and continued to write for another 13 years, before becoming an adjunct professor at UC-Berkeley, but “True Believer” remains his most cogent work.
Hoffer applied the term “mass movements” to “revolutionary parties, nationalistic movements, and religious movements” and added, “A movement is pioneered by men of words, materialized by fanatics and consolidated by men of actions.”
As summarized in Wikipedia, “Hoffer argues that fanatical and extremist cultural movements, whether religious, social, or national, arise when large numbers of frustrated people, believing their own individual lives to be worthless or spoiled, join a movement demanding radical change. But the real attraction for this population is an escape from the self, not a realization of individual hopes.” Thus, a mass movement attracts followers “not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation.”
The phenomenon, Hoffer importantly concluded, is not confined to any one religious or ideological belief, noting that in post-World War I Germany, communists and Nazis competed for allegiance among the same frustrated, marginalized and angry slices of the population.
Although published seven decades ago, Hoffer’s observations strike home today in a nation that might more accurately be called the Disunited States of America. True believers abound and they see others with differing views as an evil scourge that must be eradicated.
The most obvious example occurred 13 months ago, when hundreds of Donald Trump followers, believing — without a shred of evidence — that his re-election bid was stolen, invaded the Capitol to prevent Joe Biden’s election as president from being confirmed.
However, it was not an isolated example of mindless movements, nor are they confined to the right side of the political ledger. On the left, some members of the so-called “anti-fascist” movement have engaged in street violence directed at just about anyone and anything its followers choose to target, at times making some big city neighborhoods virtually uninhabitable.
The “if-you’re-not-with-us-you’re-our-enemy syndrome is also evident in non-violent political situations, as two current events in California underscore.
The left wing of the California Democratic Party has declared war on members who do not 100% hew to its agenda. It was demonstrated four years ago when progressive activists denied long-serving U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein a re-election endorsement because she was seen as too moderate and too willing to work across the partisan aisle.
Now the same activists are fuming because legislation that would have declared California’s intention to create a single-payer health care system stalled without a vote in the state Assembly. The coalition backing the legislation threatened to bar party endorsements for any legislator who voted against the bill and now promises to cancel support for any who fail to publicly endorse it, even though the measure is half-baked at best.
North of Sacramento, in Shasta County, the ideological cousins of those who invaded the U.S. Capitol last year launched a recall campaign against a county supervisor, former Redding Police Chief Leonard Moty, whom they deemed not right-wing enough, and it may have succeeded. Initial returns last week indicated that Moty, by any rational standard a conservative Republican, will lose his seat, giving the right-wing ideologues control of the board.
Hoffer warned us about mindless true believers undermining civic stability and democracy itself.
9. Opinion: Remember reading the paper?
I now only read the Sunday paper. I only have a subscription for the Sunday Washington Post (because it comes with my digital subscription) and every other day I read the papers online. But I subscribe to most of the outlets below (and a number of others as well ) so I guess you do not have to.
Opinion: Remember reading the paper?
NPR · by Scott Simon · February 5, 2022
A worker at a San Francisco Chronicle printing plant arranges stacks of freshly printed newspapers in 2007. Its digital version, like that of so many newspapers', is behind a paywall. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
The road to free information and opinions seems to run into a lot of paywalls.
Want to finish reading an article? You can, but only if you subscribe for just $1 for 3 months, which becomes $11.99 a month thereafter, and into perpetuity, until your credit card expires. Even if it's after you do.
I have a strong, even personal interest in paying journalists fairly. But the cost most people have to pay these days if they want to try to stay informed and enrich their minds with a range of opinions is pretty steep.
It's become harder to read more than an article or two in most publications, which may no longer be the word. News sites, from The New York Times and The Washington Post to The Des Moines Register, insist you subscribe. So do Ebony, The New Yorker, The Economist, Rolling Stone and opinion journals, including The Nation and National Review, and sports-reporting sites. And of course, there are proliferating newsletters and extra-access-plus plans, as news broadcasters begin their own subscription services. They don't crave an audience, so much as what they call a "customer base."
"You can't do much web grazing of quality content these days without a paywall clanging shut on you," Jack Shafer wrote last year in Politico. "What delights publishers about subscriptions is what everybody from Amazon to Spotify to the Dollar Shave Club to Netflix love — the annuity-like reliability of steady revenue."
The political and social divides, which so many decry, may begin between those who can and those who can't afford access to a wide range of fact-checked, accurate information.
Disinformation, of course, is utterly free.
Newspapers and magazines often got ink on your fingers. But they were cheap. Anyone with pocket change, rich, poor, students or job-seekers, could buy a copy of a magazine with Princess Diana or Oprah Winfrey on the cover or a newspaper when the headline said MAN WALKS ON MOON, or, yes, HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR.
The internet has made news and views of all kinds, from all over the world, available on screens we can keep in our pockets. But so many paywalls have pulled costly shades over those screens.
NPR · by Scott Simon · February 5, 2022
10. Think tank pulls report saying China would suffer more in US tech decoupling
Excerpt:
A think-tank at China’s prestigious Peking University has pulled a report that concluded China would likely suffer more in a tech decoupling from the US.
Think tank pulls report saying China would suffer more in US tech decoupling
US-China tech war: Top Chinese university pulls report that concluded China would suffer more from tech decoupling with US
- A key finding from the analysis was that both the US and China would suffer from a tech decoupling, but China’s losses would likely be bigger than those of the US
- The report compared the development of China and the US in areas such as information technology, artificial intelligence (AI) and aerospace technology
Register and follow to be notified the next time content from US-China tech war is published.
Published: 7:00pm, 4 Feb, 2022
Updated: 7:00pm, 4 Feb, 2022
A think-tank at China’s prestigious Peking University has pulled a report that concluded China would likely suffer more in a tech decoupling from the US.
The 7,600-character report was published on the official WeChat account of the school’s Institute of International and Strategic Studies on Sunday, and was subsequently shared by Chinese media outlets and analysts.
A key finding from the analysis was that both the US and China would suffer from a tech decoupling, but China’s losses would likely be bigger than those of the US.
The South China Morning Post reported the findings of the study on Monday. Lianhe Zaobao, a Chinese language newspaper in Singapore, and Taiwan’s Central News Agency, also covered the report, which was penned by a research team at the institute headed by Wang Jisi, a renowned Chinese scholar in US-China relations.
The report was “deleted by the author”, according to a message seen on WeChat when trying to access the content on Friday.
The institute, which did not provide a reason for removing the report, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday, which was a holiday in China for the Lunar New Year.
The release and subsequent removal of the report, which compared the development of China and the US in areas such as information technology, artificial intelligence (AI) and aerospace technology, came amid intensified competition between Beijing and Washington for leadership in key technology areas.
“While the current US administration has not yet determined the boundaries of decoupling, certain consensus has already been formed in key tech areas such as chip manufacturing and AI,” the researchers said. “Industries that are still ‘linked’ will only be those that are low-tech or have low added value.”
“In the future, China can narrow its gap with the US in more technological areas and China can achieve ‘self-sufficiency’ in some core technologies, but it remains a long way off before China comprehensively surpasses the US,” according to the report.
Visitors view the SenseTime booth during the 2021 World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, July 7, 2021. Photo: CNS/AFP
As tech rivalry becomes a central element of geopolitical competition between the US and China, researchers from both countries are trying to assess its impact.
In December, the Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, forecast that in the next decade China would catch up to the US – if it has not already overtaken it – in foundational technologies such as AI, 5G, quantum information science, semiconductors, biotechnology and green energy.
Separately, a Chinese state think tank last month listed “targeted decoupling of supply chains” as one of the top 10 global risks for China in 2022, along with mutations of the Covid-19 virus, underlining how serious the issue is viewed by top scholars in the country.
The risk list was compiled by the National Institute for Global Strategy and the Institute of World Economics and Politics, both under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). It revealed that Chinese academics see a partial decoupling between China and the Western world as a realistic threat, as Washington continues to restrict China’s access to strategic technologies such as advanced semiconductors.
A think-tank at China’s prestigious Peking University has pulled a report that concluded China would likely suffer more in a tech decoupling from the US.
The 7,600-character report was published on the official WeChat account of the school’s Institute of International and Strategic Studies on Sunday, and was subsequently shared by Chinese media outlets and analysts.
Josh joined the Post in 2016 to cover politics and business in mainland China and Hong Kong. Since 2018, he has covered China's emerging tech sector. Having graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in English and philosophy, he is now pursuing a master's degree in law at the University of Hong Kong.
11. Reigniting the Pentagon and Silicon Valley partnership
Excerpts:
These three areas may seem obvious but overcoming long-established processes in defense planning and Congressional approval is not easy. And ensuring we can make the sound business case to technology firms of supporting work in national security is essential since there are large markets to serve outside of defense
Accelerating the pace of change and removing barriers cannot be done solely inside the DoD or with a select few commercial companies participating. We need all sides of the triangle of business, academia and government actively engaged, providing different ideas and approaches to accelerate our pace of modernization. Rebuilding the connection between DoD and commercial industry — from exchanging talent, acquiring products, having open communications on key issues — is critical.
DoD leadership recognizes that we are living through a technological moment unlike any other in our nation’s history. DIU has a unique and important role to play in bringing commercial technology and methodologies to modernize both critical parts of the military’s infrastructure. Together, like we have done in the past with the birth of Silicon Valley, we can ensure a secure and prosperous future for our nation.
Reigniting the Pentagon and Silicon Valley partnership – TechCrunch
Mike Brown Contributor
Mike Brown is the director of the Defense Innovation Unit. Prior to DIU, Mike served as CEO of Symantec Corporation and Chairman and CEO of Quantum Corporation. Mike also served for two years as a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow at DoD where he co-authored a Pentagon study on China’s participation in the U.S. venture ecosystem. The views expressed in the article reflect those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.
On November 15, 2021 Russia launched an anti-satellite missile into low-earth orbit without warning, successfully destroying a Russian satellite. Projectile debris from this event not only endangered the astronauts aboard the International Space Station, but also could cause severe damage to satellites that support critical infrastructure here on Earth, such as GPS and power grids, for many years to come.
Just one month prior, China launched a hypersonic missile that circled the Earth and would be impossible to defend against with current technology.
These events are a wake-up call: The United States’ technological leadership is not assured, and the global standards we developed and maintained with our partners and allies are being rewritten, as new technological advancements give rise to new threats to our nation’s security.
But these new threats are not insurmountable. In fact, these events should serve as a clarion call for entrepreneurs and investors at the forefront of emerging technology domains, including artificial intelligence, space, cybersecurity and autonomous systems.
To meet the rising challenges posed by asymmetric and cyber warfare, we need to work together – Pentagon, academia, and industry – as we did more than 60 years ago to build Silicon Valley and our nation’s technological leadership of today. Government investments helped to create the internet and semiconductors, as well as map the human genome.
I came to the Department of Defense after 30 years in the commercial technology sector to help rebuild the ties that underwrote much of our country’s economic strength and global leadership over the past half century.
Why rekindle the DoD-Silicon Valley connection?
The DoD is actively pursuing a technology modernization agenda that not only reflects the changing nature of warfare but also engenders a series of necessary business process reforms. For example, in commercial space, companies are already deploying small satellites to provide more ubiquitous internet access and pioneer rapid launch capability to deliver payloads to various geospatial layers; self-driving cars are providing transportation options; swarming drones are surveilling oil pipelines and inspecting commercial buildings and infrastructure.
These innovations are all dual-use technologies, meaning they have military applications as well. Networking these solutions together is supported by global cloud options that are cost-effective, secure and scalable. Just like companies do, the military needs to harness the insights contained in voluminous data to generate predictive capabilities through AI and machine learning that yield faster and better decision-making.
Business process reforms are equally important to improving our defense posture. Most of the DoD’s business processes were established in the 1960s and focused on building large weapons platforms such as tanks, ships and planes. Rapid advancements in the commercial sector, which promise to enhance our military’s technological edge, mean that the Pentagon now needs to buy many more technologies that complement the large weapons platforms we continue to buy.
It’s clear the coming decade will be one characterized by intense competition among nations for preeminence in technology. For an increasing number of commercial vendors, this will represent an unprecedented opportunity to tackle complex problems together with the Defense Department.
For instance, with assets in air, space, undersea, on land and in cyberspace, the national security apparatus is effectively the largest collection of sensors in the world. To date, however, these sensors are not designed to seamlessly integrate; rather, they are typically built and operated in silos, making it challenging to implement updates and develop a common operating picture. Building an Internet of Things in space—a global sensor network – would provide real-time situational awareness, a resilient communications infrastructure as a backbone for operational decisions— and the basis for an autonomous force of sea, land, air and space systems that are small, numerous and agile.
These systems will generate immense amounts of data requiring increased storage, management and analytics, and technology modernization means building better tools to collect information, analyze it, understand it, and make better decisions in the interest of national security. It will also involve more sophisticated protection from cyber vulnerabilities.The physical manifestation of these new capabilities will require greener energy use.
Commercial companies are developing these technologies today, and the DoD must increase its capacity to quickly assess and efficiently procure these solutions — enhancing our national security and driving commercial prosperity. Executing this vision means more companies than ever before can participate in a once-in-a-generation economic opportunity that likewise enhances national security in the 21st Century.
Defense Innovation Unit: DoD’s startup
To deliver the best technology to our military, then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter recognized the need to break down institutional barriers and inject fresh ideas, technologies, and methodologies from the commercial sector. In 2015, he announced the opening of the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to rebuild this connection. DIU was designed to bring innovative and faster contracting mechanisms to bear, making it easier, more desirable and more profitable to do business with the DoD.
At DIU we’ve already seen how powerful this collaboration can be, from providing ongoing investment at key points of hardware and software lifecycles, uninterrupted access to testing facilities, and showing commercial companies a path to linear growth in the defense sector. This collaboration can accelerate a product’s development or stimulate a company’s growth, showing investors access to new markets.
But maintaining U.S. leadership in key technologies requires changing the 60-year-old acquisition system. DoD is no longer the first mover, the primary investor, or market maker for many technologies today. DoD needs to become a fast follower, adapting and integrating commercial technology not developed by the DoD, to solve defense problems. To do this, DIU is advocating action in three areas:
- Solving problems directly with available commercial solutions instead of being bound by defense-specified requirements for custom military solutions
- Streamlining acquisitions, moving at commercial speed, and scaling opportunities
- Building flexibility into the budgeting process, which today takes up to three years to program and spend a dollar for defense needs
These three areas may seem obvious but overcoming long-established processes in defense planning and Congressional approval is not easy. And ensuring we can make the sound business case to technology firms of supporting work in national security is essential since there are large markets to serve outside of defense
Accelerating the pace of change and removing barriers cannot be done solely inside the DoD or with a select few commercial companies participating. We need all sides of the triangle of business, academia and government actively engaged, providing different ideas and approaches to accelerate our pace of modernization. Rebuilding the connection between DoD and commercial industry — from exchanging talent, acquiring products, having open communications on key issues — is critical.
DoD leadership recognizes that we are living through a technological moment unlike any other in our nation’s history. DIU has a unique and important role to play in bringing commercial technology and methodologies to modernize both critical parts of the military’s infrastructure. Together, like we have done in the past with the birth of Silicon Valley, we can ensure a secure and prosperous future for our nation.
12. As U.S. predicts Russia could seize Kyiv in days, Moscow calls assessment ‘scaremongering’
Excerpts:
Putin, meanwhile, has been reinforcing his own diplomatic support network. After a meeting Friday with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the opening of the Winter Olympics, the two leaders issued a lengthy communique affirming their mutual grievances over global issues including NATO expansion and security alliances in the Asia-Pacific region.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to travel to Australia and the Pacific this week for talks, including a gathering of his counterparts from India, Australia and Japan, who are part of an emerging partnership, known as the Quad, united in their misgivings about China.
A Russian invasion of Ukraine could “embarrass Beijing,” because “it suggests that China is willing to tolerate or tacitly support Russia’s efforts to coerce Ukraine,” Daniel Kritenbrink, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia, told reporters Friday in a briefing ahead of the visit.
As U.S. predicts Russia could seize Kyiv in days, Moscow calls assessment ‘scaremongering’
Today at 1:15 a.m. EST|Updated today at 9:54 a.m. EST
A senior Russian diplomat dismissed new U.S. military and intelligence assessments — which estimated Russia could seize Kyiv in days and leave up to 50,000 civilians killed or wounded — as alarmist and as unlikely as an attack by Washington on London.
“Madness and scaremongering continues. ... what if we would say that US could seize London in a week and cause 300K civilian deaths?” Russia’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Dmitry Polyanskiy, tweeted Sunday.
And parliamentary deputy Artem Turov, a member of President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, accused the United States of disseminating fake information and of “doing everything possible to fan a new conflict.”
The updated U.S. military and intelligence assessments briefed to lawmakers and European partners over the past several days were U.S. officials’ bleakest assessment yet of the deteriorating security situation in Ukraine. They came as the Biden administration was also warning that Moscow was considering filming a fake attack against Russian territory or Russian-speaking people by Ukrainian forces as a pretext to invade its neighbor — a claim the Kremlin has strenuously denied.
Seven people familiar with the assessments said Russian President Vladimir Putin now has 70 percent of the combat power he needs for an assault that — under the most extreme scenario — could quickly take out the capital, Kyiv, and remove the country’s democratically elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Such an invasion, they said, could trigger a refugee crisis in Europe as up to 5 million people flee.
As of Friday, there were 83 Russian battalion tactical groups, with about 750 troops each, arrayed for a possible assault. That is up from 60 two weeks ago.
The White House has said the United States does not have information that Putin has made a decision to invade. But satellite imagery and other intelligence indicate he has amassed more than 100,000 troops and equipment on the border with Ukraine — one Western security official put the number at 130,000 — potentially positioning for what could become the largest military land offensive in Europe since World War II.
“Our worry would be that you don’t park battle groups … on the border of another country twice and do nothing,” one European official said, referring to an earlier buildup last year. “I think that’s the real fear that I have. [Putin’s] now put them all out there. If he does nothing again … what does that say to the wider international community about the might of Russia?”
The European official and others familiar with the assessments spoke on the condition of anonymity about intelligence matters.
The Conflict Intelligence Team, a Russian analytical team that uses open-source data to track Russian military movements, reported Sunday that some Russian forces had moved from a base in Yelnya, in the Smolensk region of southern Russia, closer to the Ukrainian border.
According to CIT, a “massive” Russian base at Yelnya was nearly empty, in what it described as a “dangerous” development. CIT said this suggested that “one scenario of a Russian attack is a deep thrust south towards Chernihiv and possibly Kyiv.”
Chernihiv is a city in northern Ukraine close to the Belarusian border, less than 90 miles north of the capital, Kyiv. The group said that transfers of Russian troops to the Crimea, Rostov and Kursk regions in southern Russia were also worrying.
As the United States moved to strengthen NATO defenses in Eastern Europe, the head of the Belarusian Security Council, Alexander Volfovich, said there would be “very large” military maneuvers with Russian forces in southern Belarus in coming days, in response to tensions between NATO and Russia over Ukraine. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has been playing a key role in Russia’s saber-rattling against Ukraine.
U.S. officials are concerned that the massive military exercise with Russia and Belarus, set to begin Thursday, could be used as part of a multi-pronged invasion of Ukraine. The exercise has seen Russian troops and equipment travel more than 6,000 miles to Belarus, and the deployment of advanced missile systems, fighter planes and bombers.
U.S.-based company Maxar Technologies on Sunday published satellite images from Friday showing deployments of Russian forces in Belarus.
Moscow has denied that it intends to invade Ukraine but has made clear it considers the presence of Western troops and weapons in the former Soviet sphere an unacceptable security threat. Putin has accused the United States and its European allies of ignoring his key demands to bar Ukraine from joining NATO, rule out putting offensive strike weapons on Russia’s borders and roll back NATO’s weaponry and force posture to its 1997 boundaries.
Russia also has attempted to paint Ukraine as the aggressor in the crisis, warning that a NATO-backed Kyiv could try to take back Crimea, which was annexed by Moscow in 2014. Meanwhile, some Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, have taken issue with Washington’s description of Russian deployments and the likelihood of an “imminent” attack, fearing it will cause panic and hurt Ukraine’s economy.
Volfovich accused Ukraine of threatening Belarus in comments reported on BelTA state news agency Sunday. “We did not consider the southern direction as a threat to the country’s security before, but today, based on the assessment of the military-political, strategic situation, we are forced to consider the southern direction as well,” Volfovich said.
Volfovich’s comments came after 2,000 U.S. troops arrived in Poland and Germany Sunday to bolster European security, amid Russia’s massive military build-up on Ukraine’s borders and inside Belarus.
Lukashenko, Russia’s closest ally, echoed Russian claims throughout the crisis that the threat of war comes not from Russia but from Ukraine and NATO. Still, he boasted that Ukraine could not afford to risk a war with Russian and Belarusian forces because “such a war would last a maximum three or four days.” He added that NATO was also afraid of a military confrontation with Russia and Belarus.
“They (NATO) would still be getting ready to deploy there and send some troops there, while we would already standing at the English Channel, and they know it,” Lukashenko said in an interview with Russian state television anchor Vladimir Solovyov. “They understand that it is futile to fight with us, first of all with Russia.”
Although U.S. officials believe an assault could be launched any day, optimal conditions are believed to come between mid-February and the end of March, when Ukraine’s flat, open terrain and the rivers cross-crossing it are frozen and armored vehicles can maneuver easily.
One possibility is that Putin may delay until after the Winter Olympics in Beijing conclude Feb. 20, in order not to upset China by overshadowing the games and threaten Chinese financial assistance in response to U.S. sanctions.
An association of retired military officers led by retired Colonel General Leonid Ivashov, the All-Russian Officers’ Assembly, called on President Vladimir Putin to avoid a war, arguing there were no critical external threats to Russia. Ivashov predicted a war would lead to a crisis in Russia, and potentially an uprising.
“Attempts to make people ‘love’ the Russian Federation and its leadership using ultimatums and threats of force are pointless and extremely dangerous,” Ivashov said in a statement. “The use of military force against Ukraine would, first, call into question the existence of Russia itself as a state; second, it would make Russians and Ukrainians mortal enemies forever,” said the letter.
The association called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to “renounce his criminal policy of provoking a war, in which Russia would be alone against the united forces of the West.”
The latest grim assessment from U.S. officials indicates the window for negotiating a diplomatic solution to the crisis is closing.
President Biden is set to meet this week with new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who has been accused of not doing enough to respond to Russian aggression. Germany has been reluctant to export arms to Ukraine, much to the consternation of Kyiv, though Scholz has recently indicated that “all options” — including the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline that would deepen Berlin’s reliance on Moscow for energy — are on the table for sanctions in the case of a renewed Russian invasion.
Putin, meanwhile, has been reinforcing his own diplomatic support network. After a meeting Friday with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the opening of the Winter Olympics, the two leaders issued a lengthy communique affirming their mutual grievances over global issues including NATO expansion and security alliances in the Asia-Pacific region.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to travel to Australia and the Pacific this week for talks, including a gathering of his counterparts from India, Australia and Japan, who are part of an emerging partnership, known as the Quad, united in their misgivings about China.
A Russian invasion of Ukraine could “embarrass Beijing,” because “it suggests that China is willing to tolerate or tacitly support Russia’s efforts to coerce Ukraine,” Daniel Kritenbrink, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia, told reporters Friday in a briefing ahead of the visit.
Shane Harris in Washington and Amy Cheng in Seoul contributed to this article.
13. Why Taiwan is not the next UkraineWhy Taiwan is not the next Ukraine
Excerpts:
Russia’s calculus on Ukraine is thus largely driven by insecurity and some say paranoia, which reflects its structural weakness in a NATO-dominated Europe.
China’s situation vis-a-vis Taiwan, on the other hand, could be any more different. Over the past two decades, China has become the largest trading partner of practically all its neighbors. Between 1990 to 2014, its share of regional GDP expanded from only 8% to 51%, while its share of regional trade similarly boomed from only 8% to 39%.
At the same time, via its Belt and Road Initiative, China has also become a major source of public infrastructure investments in a host of neighboring countries, reaching from Central Asia to Southeast Asia to the Middle East.
Fueled by an economic boom, China has rapidly modernized its armed forces, which now boast the world’s largest maritime fleet, multiple fifth-generation fighter programs, cutting-edge hypersonic missiles and “carrier killer” anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMS) which have radically altered the balance of military power in Asia.
Over the next decade, China is largely expected to become the world’s largest economy, further enhancing the Asian powerhouse’s influence and military capabilities. As such, China and Xi can bide their time on Taiwan, just as Putin panics over the possibility of a post-Soviet Ukraine slipping from Russia’s long-term grip.
Russia’s calculus on Ukraine is thus largely driven by insecurity and some say paranoia, which reflects its structural weakness in a NATO-dominated Europe.
China’s situation vis-a-vis Taiwan, on the other hand, could be any more different. Over the past two decades, China has become the largest trading partner of practically all its neighbors. Between 1990 to 2014, its share of regional GDP expanded from only 8% to 51%, while its share of regional trade similarly boomed from only 8% to 39%.
At the same time, via its Belt and Road Initiative, China has also become a major source of public infrastructure investments in a host of neighboring countries, reaching from Central Asia to Southeast Asia to the Middle East.
Fueled by an economic boom, China has rapidly modernized its armed forces, which now boast the world’s largest maritime fleet, multiple fifth-generation fighter programs, cutting-edge hypersonic missiles and “carrier killer” anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMS) which have radically altered the balance of military power in Asia.
Over the next decade, China is largely expected to become the world’s largest economy, further enhancing the Asian powerhouse’s influence and military capabilities. As such, China and Xi can bide their time on Taiwan, just as Putin panics over the possibility of a post-Soviet Ukraine slipping from Russia’s long-term grip.
Why Taiwan is not the next Ukraine
While China’s growing wealth and power will ease the eventual absorption of Taiwan, Russia sees post-Soviet Ukraine slipping awayWhile China’s growing wealth and power will ease the eventual absorption of Taiwan, Russia sees post-Soviet Ukraine slipping away
“First and foremost it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” lamented Russian President Vladimir Putin in his 2005 state of the nation address.
“As for the Russian people, it became a genuine tragedy. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory,” the Russian leader added, referring to the traumatic economic shocks following the USSR’s collapse.
Back then, the Russian leader was full of resentment and his country’s military capabilities were in a state of destitution. As a Russian defense minister said in the 1990s, “no army in the world is in as wretched a state as ours.”
Fast forward 15 years, the Russian leader has effectively leveraged his country’s booming energy exports to steadily build up and modernize his armed forces, turning the nation into a major military power in Europe, Central Asia and beyond.
Last December, Putin reverted to the same theme he raised in his early years in office by describing the fall of the Soviet Union as “the collapse of historical Russia,” which marked “a tragedy for the vast majority of the country’s citizens.”
As Harvard historian Serhii Plokhy explained, “Ukraine has become the first testing ground” for Putin’s new model of nation-building, which “has switched its focus to the idea of forming a single Russian nation not divided into branches and unifying the Eastern Slavs on the basis of the Russian language and culture.”
This could be precisely why Russia has amassed close to 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders has raised fears of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the near future.
Russian troops are camped on the border of Ukraine. Photo: Twitter / Fars News Agency
Russia’s last two major military offensives took place on the first day of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing – against Georgia – and toward the end of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi – against Ukraine.
For some experts, a Russian invasion is probable in the latter half of February, as China’s Winter Olympics winds down and the Ukrainian eastern regions turn muddy ahead of spring.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has reportedly asked Putin to postpone any potential invasion until after the finish of the ongoing Winter Olympics in China.
Crucially, Russia’s latest maneuver came only months after the Biden administration’s ignominious withdrawal from Afghanistan, which has appeared to embolden America’s rivals.
With Europe bracing for a potential war, there are now growing concerns that China, perhaps Putin’s top ally, may contemplate a similar, if not simultaneous, move against Taiwan, a self-governing island that Beijing considers a renegade province.
Xi and his top Chinese defense officials have also adopted similarly bellicose rhetoric on Taiwan in recent years, vowing to reintegrate the island into a Greater China by “all means necessary,” including a possible amphibious invasion.
With Putin and Xi displaying a common front in recent days amid deepening bilateral defense and economic ties, some fear the two authoritarian powers may simultaneously launch invasions against Ukraine and Taiwan.
A Taiwanese Special Forces soldier during a drill. Photo: Agencies
As the drumbeat of war in Europe intensifies, influential Chinese academic Jin Canrong fueled new concerns over China’s next move by suggesting Beijing eyes “armed reunification” with Taiwan by 2027.
The reality, of course, is that no one knows for sure what’s going on inside the heads of Putin and Xi, and what their decisions on high-stakes issues will be in the near future, never mind in the coming years. Indeed, it’s not clear that either leader has a clear vision of their next moves.
What’s certain, however, is that Ukraine and Taiwan face radically different circumstances despite their shared vulnerability to foreign invasion by an authoritarian power.
For starters, the Ukrainian crisis is partly the product of naïve illusions that sprung up in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. On one hand, Ukraine agreed to give up its ultimate deterrence – nuclear weapons – under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances in exchange for diplomatic guarantees from major powers.
Moreover, as prominent political scientists such as John Mearsheimer have argued, the West pressed ahead with the rapid expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) without anticipating blowback from Russia.
In stark contrast to Europe, East Asia has largely preserved its Cold War security architecture, with the conflicts in the Korean Peninsula and the Taiwan Strait remaining essentially frozen without any clear resolution.
In that realpolitik realm, Japan and South Korea maintain large-scale US bases, while Taiwan has steadily expanded its defensive military capabilities to deter any future aggression by China.
Since the end of the Cold War, the US has expanded its defense cooperation with Australia as well as with new strategic partners such as Singapore.
The Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Antietam was one of two US Navy warships that passed through the Taiwan Strait on October 22, 2018. Photo: AFP / William Carlisle / US Navy
That raises a second key issue, namely the institutionalized and robust defense cooperation between the US and Taiwan over the decades.
Unlike Ukraine, which has no significant history of defense cooperation with the West, Taiwan used to enjoy a mutual defense treaty with Washington, which militarily intervened on the island’s behalf on at least three occasions throughout the post-war period.
Even when the US adopted a “One China policy,” it maintained a bipartisan commitment to defending Taiwan against forced integration with China under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act.
During the Third Taiwan Straits Crisis in the mid-1990s, the Clinton administration underscored that commitment by deploying two aircraft carrier battle groups to dissuade Beijing from any further military threats against Taipei.
From the Bush and Obama to the Trump administration, multiple US governments have successively backed the transfer of large-scale and advanced weaponry to Taiwan over the past two decades, despite Beijing’s strong opposition.
Third, Taiwan boasts well-organized and modern armed forces, which in terms of size are among the biggest in Asia. The self-governing island is also a thriving democracy and a major technological powerhouse, which has made it increasingly vital to the West for key supplies amid a rising tech war with China.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Taiwan also flexed its manufacturing power by becoming one of the world’s largest exporters and donors of masks and basic medical equipment.
Crucially, Taiwan has also dominated the global semiconductor industry, which has become pivotal to next-generation technological innovations and armed conflicts. The island was responsible for more than 60% of global foundry revenue in 2020, with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) accounting for 54% of total global revenue.
Given Taiwan’s vibrant democracy and outsized geopolitical and geo-economic relevance, US President Joe Biden has emphasized on multiple occasions that Washington has defense treaty obligations to the self-governing island, even if such commitments aren’t clearly spelled out in the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act.
Finally, Taiwan’s fate is also dependent on China’s strategic calculus too. In the case of Ukraine, Putin’s Russia is largely acting from a position of diminishing strength, given the country’s growing economic isolation and demographic decline. Despite robust energy exports, Russia’s economy is still smaller than Italy’s.
Throughout his two decades in power, Putin helplessly watched NATO expand from Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary (1999) to Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltic states (2004), to Croatia and Albania (2009), to Montenegro (2017) and most recently to North Macedonia (2020).
US President Joe Biden has tried to reassure NATO allies. Photo: AFP / Olivier Hoslet
Drawing a red line around Ukraine, which has been rapidly drifting towards the West, has become an existential issue to the aging Russian leader, who has warily watched pro-democracy protests erupt across Central Asia and Belarus in recent years.
Russia’s calculus on Ukraine is thus largely driven by insecurity and some say paranoia, which reflects its structural weakness in a NATO-dominated Europe.
China’s situation vis-a-vis Taiwan, on the other hand, could be any more different. Over the past two decades, China has become the largest trading partner of practically all its neighbors. Between 1990 to 2014, its share of regional GDP expanded from only 8% to 51%, while its share of regional trade similarly boomed from only 8% to 39%.
At the same time, via its Belt and Road Initiative, China has also become a major source of public infrastructure investments in a host of neighboring countries, reaching from Central Asia to Southeast Asia to the Middle East.
Fueled by an economic boom, China has rapidly modernized its armed forces, which now boast the world’s largest maritime fleet, multiple fifth-generation fighter programs, cutting-edge hypersonic missiles and “carrier killer” anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMS) which have radically altered the balance of military power in Asia.
Over the next decade, China is largely expected to become the world’s largest economy, further enhancing the Asian powerhouse’s influence and military capabilities. As such, China and Xi can bide their time on Taiwan, just as Putin panics over the possibility of a post-Soviet Ukraine slipping from Russia’s long-term grip.
14. NBC talks politics, human rights in Beijing Olympics opening ceremony coverageNBC talks politics, human rights in Beijing Olympics opening ceremony coverage
Good for NBC. Perhaps I should have watched this.
NBC talks politics, human rights in Beijing Olympics opening ceremony coverage
Feb 4 (Reuters) - During the opening ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Olympics on Friday, hosts and experts on U.S. network NBC spoke in stark terms about China's alleged rights violations and Russia's conflict with Ukraine, directly addressing the geopolitical tensions underpinning the Games.
Coverage of the political backdrop comes as human rights groups and lawmakers have pressured NBC and broadcasters around the world to incorporate China's treatment of minority Muslim Uyghurs and crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong into the coverage of the Olympics.
NBC featured China experts who discussed the status of Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups in China's northwest region of Xinjiang, among other controversies facing the host country.
Those experts joined host Mike Tirico in an interview from the opening ceremony stadium. Savannah Guthrie co-hosted the broadcast from NBC Sports headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut.
The opening ceremony culminated with Uyghur cross-country skier Dinigeer Yilamujiang lighting the Olympic cauldron, a "stunning decision," by the host nation as other countries have deemed China's treatment of the Uyghurs to be genocide, Guthrie said. read more
"It's so striking and so provocative by (Chinese president) Xi Jinping, and a real message," Guthrie said.
China denies allegations of genocide or other human rights abuses, and says its camps in Xinjiang provide vocational training and are needed to fight extremism.
Throughout the opening ceremony, NBC turned to experts to explain the gravity of Western governments' and human rights groups' allegations against China for its treatment of ethnic minorities.
"They allege that this is a massive program of social engineering aimed at suppressing Muslim Uyghur culture, language, tradition, identity," said Andy Browne, editorial director of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum and one of two China experts hired by NBC for its broadcast. "They allege a host of human rights abuses, forced labor, coercive birth control practices, indoctrination, and that this all adds up to a form of cultural genocide."
NBC also showed Russian President Vladimir Putin in the stands of the Beijing stadium as the commentators discussed the escalating conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which has led to fears of war in the region.
The United States and many Western nations staged a diplomatic boycott of the Games, declining to send political delegations to the opening. That stands in sharp contrast to the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, which were attended by U.S. President George Bush.
Human rights advocates have shone a spotlight on NBC's coverage because the network's contract to air the Olympics is by far the world's largest. In 2014, Comcast-owned NBCUniversal paid $7.65 billion to extend its exclusive U.S. broadcasting rights for the Olympics through 2032.
Rights and press freedom groups have voiced concerns about the ability of NBC and journalists in general to freely report during the Olympics, citing Beijing's clampdowns.
In a presentation to reporters last month, NBC said its broadcast coverage of the Games would include the "geopolitical context" of China as the host nation. read more
Reporting by Helen Coster in New York, Sheila Dang in Dallas and Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles; editing by Mark Heinrich and Bill Berkrot
15. Sullivan: China will "end up owning some of the costs" if Russia invades UkraineSullivan: China will "end up owning some of the costs" if Russia invades Ukraine
Sullivan: China will "end up owning some of the costs" if Russia invades Ukraine
Two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi made a show of reinforcing their unity against Western "interference," National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the two would also be tied together in some manner if the Kremlin decides to invade Ukraine.
Driving the news: “We believe that Beijing will end up owning some of the costs of a Russian invasion of Ukraine and that they should calculate that as they consider their engagements with the Russian government,” Sullivan told host Chuck Todd on NBC's "Meet the Press."
State of play: "The two authoritarian powers have fostered deeper ties, including in military cooperation, as tensions with the U.S. have soared over the past several years," Axios' Zachary Basu writes.
- When asked on Sunday whether China would "be in line for any punishment if they help Russia get around sanctions?" Sullivan said sanctions would impact Beijing "because they will go at the financial system of Russia which, of course, engages the Chinese economy as well."
- "China will have a choice whether or not it complies with the sanctions or if it chooses not to comply then of course there are penalties that accrue to that," he added.
16. For America and Russia, Deadly Perceptions Can Lead to WarFor America and Russia, Deadly Perceptions Can Lead to War
Assumptions, assumptions, assumptions. Perhaps the one thing that leads to strategic failure. It is not necessarily erroneous assumptions. it is a failure to recognize when an assumption is flawed and then adjusting the tragedy.
Excerpts:
The Russians also suffer from flawed assumptions. Putin may be at least partially correct that Washington will only negotiate when faced with the prospect of force. But he is wrong if he believes that Washington would continue to negotiate if that force is applied. The current escalatory spiral between the United States and Russia would intensify, not diminish, in the aftermath of even a limited Russian invasion of Ukraine. Any exchange of attacks on critical Russian and American infrastructure could have profound consequences.
There is still time for diplomacy to avert such an escalation. But it will only be possible if Washington and Moscow recognize the need to move past mutual threats and find a face-saving compromise on their core concerns: the Russians’ demand that NATO back away from their periphery, and the West’s insistence that Eastern Europe be safe from Russian attack.
For America and Russia, Deadly Perceptions Can Lead to War
Understanding the nature of our burgeoning conflict with Russia is critical to containing its dangers.
Understanding the nature of our burgeoning conflict with Russia is critical to containing its dangers. Many Americans perceive it as a clear matter of aggression, a case of a revanchist leader intent on restoring Moscow’s bygone empire, snuffing out democracy, and even evicting the United States from Europe. They are convinced that the situation cries out for deterrence rooted in Churchillian resolve. The only question is how strong our deterrent measures must be to sober up our adversary. Will the prospect of punitive sanctions be enough, or must we threaten proxy warfare or even direct combat with Russia to defend Ukraine and what we once called the “free world?”
Wars are not always the product of offensive ambitions, however. Some begin when one state’s defensive measures are perceived as threatening by another state and produce a spiral of action and reaction. Each side believes its own actions are reasonable and necessary. Each blames the other for aggression and demands respect for its security redlines. In such situations, relying solely on deterrence and punishment can reinforce the other side’s threat perceptions and fan the flames of conflict.
The starkly contrasting U.S. and Russian narratives about the looming crisis in Ukraine fit this pattern. Through the eyes of the West, NATO enlargement has been driven by local demand rather than Western recruitment, as Eastern Europeans all too familiar with Moscow’s heavy hand have sought protection inside the alliance. Russia’s insistence that NATO forswear further eastward expansion is seen as both a threat to its neighbors’ security and a destabilizing challenge to the principle that all states should be free to join defensive alliances. NATO has done nothing remotely comparable to Russia’s massing of some 100,000 combat forces near Ukrainian borders, its ongoing support for pro-Russian proxies fighting in eastern Ukraine, and its annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.
To say that Russia sees the situation differently would be a vast understatement. NATO’s post-Cold War expansion looks like an aggressive encirclement of Russian borders undertaken at a time of Russian weakness. Western support for perceived democratizers in ex-Soviet republics comes across as the cynical empowerment of ethno-nationalists intent on de-Russifying and disenfranchising significant parts of their polities. From Moscow’s perspective, America asserts its right to intervene in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Syria to protect local populations from abusive central governments but denies Russia the same right in Ukraine and Georgia.
Each side’s actions are consistent with these perceptions. Growing concerns about NATO have prompted the expansion of Russian military activities opposite the alliance and near U.S. borders. President Vladimir Putin recently opined that Americans only respond to Russian concerns when confronted with military force. In 2018, he punctuated the unveiling of new, advanced nuclear weapons by saying they were a reaction to many years in which Washington had ignored Russia’s security concerns. “Listen to us now,” he demanded. In turn, Russian actions have fueled American concerns about Russian revanchism and spurred NATO to step up naval and air patrols near Russian borders in Eastern Europe. The view that Russia only understands the language of force has grown increasingly popular in Washington.
Such deepening action-reaction cycles can be quite difficult to break. They demand mutual introspection, empathy, and moral courage, which are rare enough among individuals, let alone governments. They often require tacking against the winds that are blowing in domestic politics. President Joe Biden is acutely aware that his political opponents would be quick to level charges of appeasement should he deign even to discuss Moscow’s demand to end NATO’s military involvement in Ukraine. Surprising as it may seem to Americans, many Russians believe Putin has long been too eager for deals with the West and too soft in defending Russia’s security against American encroachment. For Putin, abandoning his insistence that NATO back away from Russia’s borders would not only jeopardize Russia’s national security, but also risk stoking discontent in Russia’s nationalist ranks.
Despite these difficulties, breaking the dangerous escalatory spiral with Russia is critically important to U.S. national security. Few Americans believe we should defend Ukraine directly with conventional military forces, but many in our government and media advocate unconventional warfare: crippling the Russian economy through draconian sanctions, arming and training Ukrainians to kill Russian invaders, and using cyber weapons to damage or disable Russian operations. The belief that we should bloody Putin’s nose is premised on the assumption that he would not strike back.
That is a potentially perilous assumption. Putin has threatened a complete break in relations with the United States in response to severe American sanctions, and he has tacked hard toward China in recent months to show that he has alternatives should push become shove with the West. A former Russian general now serving in the State Duma has warned that Russia might strike NATO forces in Eastern Europe if necessary. Just a few months ago, Russia conducted a successful test of an anti-satellite missile, and its state television announced that it had the ability to disable America’s entire Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite constellation—on which our stock markets, bank payments, power grids, digital television, and cloud computing all depend. Unlike Russia, the United States has not built a land-based backup that could function if GPS is lost.
The Russians also suffer from flawed assumptions. Putin may be at least partially correct that Washington will only negotiate when faced with the prospect of force. But he is wrong if he believes that Washington would continue to negotiate if that force is applied. The current escalatory spiral between the United States and Russia would intensify, not diminish, in the aftermath of even a limited Russian invasion of Ukraine. Any exchange of attacks on critical Russian and American infrastructure could have profound consequences.
There is still time for diplomacy to avert such an escalation. But it will only be possible if Washington and Moscow recognize the need to move past mutual threats and find a face-saving compromise on their core concerns: the Russians’ demand that NATO back away from their periphery, and the West’s insistence that Eastern Europe be safe from Russian attack.
George Beebe is Vice President and Director of Studies at the Center for the National Interest, a former director of Russia analysis at the CIA, and author of The Russia Trap: How America’s Shadow War with Russia Could Spiral into Catastrophe.
Image: Reuters.
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
