Quotes of the Day:

“People who claim to be absolutely convinced that their stand is the only right one are dangerous. Such conviction is the essence not only of dogmatism, but of its more destructive cousin, fanaticism. It blocks off the user from learning truths, and it is a dead giveaway of unconscious doubt.” 

- Rollo May

"He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper."

 - Edmund Burke

“The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.” 

– Marcus Aurelius

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 16 (Putin's War)

2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (16.10.22) CDS comments on key events

3. Chinese nationals in Ukraine sign up for evacuation after call from FM

4. Joe Biden's New 'National Security Strategy' Has an Intense Focus on China

5. Russia is making excuses for why it can't stop US-made HIMARS from shredding its military in Ukraine

6. New app lets civilians help shoot down drones and missiles in Ukraine

7.  Rogue States Like North Korea Win if Putin Uses Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine

8. Army injustice: Thousands of soldiers, veterans slapped with misleading criminal record

9. ‘Dangerously Depleted’: The US Is Sending So Many Weapons To Ukraine That Experts Are Starting To Worry

10. Special Operations News Update, Oct 17, 2022

11. The Five Reasons Wars Happen

12. The Renaming of Military Bases - What is Past is Not Prologue

13. Tracking Competition in Cyberspace: Announcing the Dyadic Cyber Incident Dataset Version 2.0

14. Ukraine war: Kyiv attacked by 'kamikaze' drones

15. The Civilian and the State: Politics at the Heart of Civil-Military Relations

16. Analysis: Xi's new generals face tough military challenges post-congress

17. An obsession with control is making China weaker but more dangerous

18. Pentagon exploring communications options for Ukrainian military as Starlink service threatens pullout

19. The Sources of Russian Misconduct

20. The Decline of the City Upon a Hill

21. Kerch Bridge, Nord Stream the handiwork of top-tier saboteurs

22. Chip war policy hurting US firms more than China

23. American technology boosts China’s hypersonic missile program

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 16 (Putin's War)

Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-16

Key inflections in ongoing military operations on October 16:

• Several Russian sources reported renewed Ukrainian assaults in the Kherson direction and Ukrainian sources reported higher-than-average numbers of daily shelling and missile strikes, but Ukrainian forces are maintaining operational silence about any operations.[1]
• Ukrainian military officials stated on October 16 that Russian forces are falsely claiming to have captured several towns near Bakhmut in the past several days, but Ukrainian forces have held their lines against Russian attacks.[2] Russian forces are likely falsifying claims of advances in the Bakhmut area to portray themselves as making gains in at least one sector amid continuing losses in northeast and southern Ukraine.
• Ukraine's Main Intelligence Directorate announced a $100,000 bounty for the capture of prominent Russian milblogger and former proxy commander Igor Girkin and confirmed his presence in Ukraine, stating “it is known that one of the most famous Russian terrorists has decided to renew his participation in the war against our state.”[3]
• Russian and Belarusian sources continued to report Russian men and material entering Belarus.[4]
• Ukrainian sources reported Russian occupation officials in Kherson City are stepping up filtration measures against Ukrainian partisans and accelerating efforts to evacuate key materials and personnel from Kherson to Crimea.[5]
• Unknown assailants attacked a military commissariat in the suburbs of Moscow with a Molotov cocktail on October 16.[6]
• Local Russian authorities in Krasnodar Krai reportedly intend to mobilize 1,000 more people by December 2022 and discussed proposals to redirect funding from entertainment events so supply mobilized personnel, seemingly contradicting Putin’s announcement that mobilization will conclude by the end of October 2022.[7]
• Poor medical care in both frontline and rear-area Russian units is exacerbating already dire morale problems.[8]

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 16

Oct 16, 2022 - Press ISW

understandingwar.org

Special Edition on Key Terrain in the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Frederick W. Kagan

October 16, 4:45pm ET

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

This campaign assessment special edition focuses on the specific parts of Ukrainian territory currently under Russian occupation that are important for the long-term viability of an independent Ukraine. Ukrainian forces are currently conducting a counteroffensive push in Kherson Oblast as of October 16. We will update our maps after information about the new front lines unambiguously enters the open-source environment.

Ukraine must regain certain specific areas currently under Russian occupation to ensure its long-term security and economic viability. Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against a future Russian attack requires liberating most of Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts. Ukraine’s economic health requires liberating the rest of Zaporhizia Oblast and much of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, including at least some territory Russia seized in 2014. Ukraine’s security would be materially enhanced by liberating Crimea, which would also benefit NATO’s ability to secure its southeastern flank.

Ukraine has every right to fight to liberate all the territory Russia has illegally seized, particularly in light of the continued atrocities and ethnic cleansing Russia is perpetrating in the areas it occupies. Kyiv’s insistence on regaining control of Ukrainian territory to the internationally-recognized borders is not an absolutist or extremist demand—it is the normal position of a state defending itself against an unprovoked attack as part of a war of conquest. It is also the default position of the international community under international law, as it should be. Nothing in the following discussion should be construed as supporting any attempt to encourage, let alone coerce, Ukraine to abandon either its claims or its efforts to free all its land and people.

However, Ukraine also requires the liberation of the areas mentioned above for purely strategic military and economic reasons. ISW continues to assess that Putin’s intentions toward Ukraine are unlikely to change whether or not a ceasefire or some other settlement occurs. The Kremlin would use any suspension of hostilities to consolidate its gains and freeze the frontline in the best configuration Putin can get to prepare for future coercion and aggression against Ukraine. Those seeking enduring peace in Ukraine must resist the temptation to freeze the lines of combat short of Ukraine’s international borders in ways that set conditions for renewed conflict on Russia’s terms. The purpose of this brief essay is to consider why specific parts of Ukrainian territory still under Russian occupation are so important for the long-term viability of an independent Ukraine that is not a financial ward of the international community and can effectively defend itself against a renewed Russian invasion.

The Dnipro River is a formidable obstacle for its entire course in Ukraine. Any military would struggle to cross it in the face of prepared defenders. The current Russian lodgment on the west bank in Kherson Oblast is therefore a vital piece of terrain. If a ceasefire or any sort of agreement suspends fighting with the Russians still in possession of that lodgment, the prospects for a renewed Russian offensive in southern Ukraine would be vastly improved. If Ukraine regains control of the entire west bank of the river, on the other hand, the Russians would likely find ground attacks against southwestern Ukraine extraordinarily difficult. The long-term defensibility of Mykolayiv, Odesa, and the entire Ukrainian Black Sea coast thus rests in no small part on the liberation of western Kherson.

Parts of Kherson Oblast on the east bank of the Dnipro are also strategically critical, however. The oblast follows the line of the river to its mouth and then juts out into the Black Sea, coming to within about 40 miles of Odesa. The tip of the Kinburn Spit, the northwesternmost point of this part of Kherson Oblast, is less than 2.5 miles from the city of Ochakiv on the west bank of the Dnipro. Russian military positions in these areas allow Russian forces to bring artillery, drone, and missile fire against much of the Ukrainian Black Sea coast from many short-range systems without having to use expensive longer-range capabilities that will always be in shorter supply. These short distances also make the prospect of amphibious operations far more plausible and easier to support by fire than if the Russians had to conduct them from bases in Crimea. Ukraine’s hold on its entire western Black Sea coast will remain tenuous as long as Russia holds territory in southwestern Kherson much further north than the 2014 lines.

Tracing defensible lines requires constantly referring to the roughly 25-kilometer maximum effective range of the 152mm artillery system. All modern armies have ground-based systems with much longer ranges, to be sure. But 152mm guns are relatively easy and inexpensive to mass produce, as are the rounds they fire. They are also effectively impossible to defend against when used at scale. Systems exist that can shoot down individual artillery rounds (as well as missiles and drones), but not that can shoot down thousands of them at a time. The Russians showed how effective massed bombardments by such weapons can be in their seizures of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, where they pounded Ukrainian troops with artillery and enabled relatively weak Russian ground forces to advance. Planners must assume that Ukrainian positions within 25 kilometers of Russian lines may be subjected to massive artillery barrages from the outset of a renewal of hostilities.

Sound military doctrine also teaches that one does not attempt to defend a position by standing on it—reliable defenses must be established well forward of the points or lines that must be held. The Dnipro River should not be Ukraine’s first line of defense, but rather its last. Contested river crossings are very difficult but can be made easier if the attacker can make all preparations right at the river, including establishing protected artillery positions, pre-positioning bridging equipment, amassing necessary supplies, and generally laying in all the infrastructure needed to get across a wide river while the defenders fight back. The river is most reliable as a defense if the Russians must first advance to it and then prepare to cross it while Ukrainian defenders disrupt their efforts.

Ukraine must therefore be able to establish and hold positions on the eastern bank of the river. Those positions cannot be in a narrow strip along the river, however. They must be far enough away from the river that a concerted Russian attack cannot easily throw them back against the river itself—a potentially disastrous position for the defender. They must also be far enough east to keep the Russians out of artillery range (about 25 kilometers) of the west bank to prevent the Russians from bombarding Ukrainian defenders on that bank from the outset of a renewed invasion. The 2014 line of contact north of Crimea was close to the limit of how far Russian forces can be allowed to hold ground in the south without beginning to put the Ukrainian defense of the Dnipro and what lies behind it at risk. The distance from the northwesternmost part of those lines to the river at closest approach is about 70 kilometers, which is far enough to allow Ukraine to establish front-line defenses at the line of contact and then a main defensive area out of tube artillery (152mm) range, from which Ukrainian defenders could retreat some distance if necessary while still keeping the Russians out of artillery range of the river and avoiding finding themselves pressed right up against the river.

Consideration of key terrain in eastern Kherson and western Zaporizhia Oblasts must integrate security and economic concerns because of the location of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) at Enerhodar. The plant provided a significant proportion of Ukraine’s electricity before the 2022 invasion, and its loss would require considerable investment to replace the generating capacity and possibly redesign elements of Ukraine’s electrical grid. The liberation of Enerhodar in a way that allows the plant to come back online is therefore central to containing the costs in time and money of the restoration of Ukraine’s economy, which is in turn central to allowing Ukraine to avoid becoming an expensive ward of the international community.

Russia’s demonstrated irresponsibility toward nuclear facilities in Ukraine also makes restoring the ZNPP to Ukrainian control essential from a security perspective. Russian forces damaged the inactive Chernobyl facilities, kicking up radioactive dust and irradiating themselves in the process. Russian false-flag operations and the use of the ZNPP grounds as a base for conventional military operations show a similarly cavalier attitude toward the dangers of bringing war to a massive nuclear power plant. Allowing Moscow to retain control of the ZNPP puts Ukraine and all Black Sea states at permanent risk of the downstream consequences of Russia’s willingness to play with nuclear fire. The Russians must therefore also be kept out of artillery range of Enerhodar. Taking an approach to calculating required positions similar to the one used above would bring the line required to allow Ukrainian forces to reliably defend the ZNPP about 50 kilometers south of Enerhodar in principle. That line would be about 40 kilometers northwest of Melitopol, the next major geographical feature to consider.

Melitopol is a critical junction of roads that run from the Dnipro around the Nova Kakhovka Dam to the Sea of Azov coast and ultimately Mariupol on the one hand and that run from Crimea north to the city of Zaporizhia on the other. If the Russians retain control of Melitopol and the roads running south and east of it, they can and likely will turn it into a major militarized base from which to launch mechanized attacks across the largely flat steppe land to its north and west. Such a base, which could come to be similar to Belgorod, Russia, in the extent of military facilities and capabilities it houses, would be a permanent threat to the ZNPP, Ukrainian positions on the east bank of the Dnipro River, and the major cities of Zaporizhia and Dnipropetrovsk as well. If Ukraine regains control of Melitopol, on the other hand, the Russians would be confined to Crimea and the narrow and vulnerable road and rail connections across the Perekop Isthmus that separates Crimea from the mainland. Defense against such an attack is far easier than would be a defense against an attack that could use Melitopol as a well-stocked and fully prepared forward base.

Further east the weight of consideration becomes more economic. The Donbas—the area of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts divided by the line of control since 2014—had been a single integrated economic unit for centuries. Its mineral deposits were extracted and sent by rail to the port of Mariupol, on the one hand, and to Ukrainian industries in the west on the other. The 2014 Russian seizure of large parts of Donetsk Oblast disrupted this economic activity to Ukraine’s detriment. Permanently removing the entire Donbas would do far more serious economic damage to Ukraine. The reconstruction of a viable Ukrainian economy that does not require large amounts of long-term international financial assistance requires restoring the Donbas economic region to Kyiv’s control.

The military requirement for that restoration includes the Ukrainian liberation of Mariupol and the road and rail networks north via Volnovakha toward Donetsk City and to the west toward Melitopol and Zaporizhia City. Establishing secure Ukrainian control over Mariupol requires liberating at least some of the land the Russians had seized in 2014. The line of control resulting from that invasion was too close to the city to allow its defenders to avoid encirclement in the face of determined attacks. The same calculations used above regarding 152mm artillery ranges would argue that Ukraine must actually recapture all its land to the internationally recognized border, in fact.

Similar economic arguments hold for the historically industrial cities of Donetsk, Severodonetsk, and Luhansk. In the remaining areas of occupied northeastern Ukraine, the balance of concern shifts primarily to the agricultural sector. Grain plays such a critical part in Ukraine’s economy that one could straightforwardly calculate the cost of each lost hectare and consider the requirements to offset that loss over the long term as part of the price of ceding any of this land to Russia.

Northeastern Ukraine does contain some strategically important areas, however. The towns of Svatove, Starobilsk, and Bilovodsk sit on major road junctions, control of which determines in part which bases in Russia proper the Russians can use to support future attacks in Ukraine directly. Russia has major mechanized bases at Valuiki and Boguchar to the northwest and northeast of Luhansk Oblast. Russian forces have been flowing from their bases around Belgorod via Valuiki into northern Luhansk Oblast on the road that runs to Starobilsk and thence westward via Svatove to Kharkiv Oblast. The railway that runs from just north of Luhansk via Starobilsk to the Russian border is particularly important because Russian forces are heavily dependent on rail to move equipment and supplies. The base at Boguchar can also flow forces into Ukraine along a road that runs through Bilovodsk, however. Allowing Russia to retain control of these key junctions and the road and rail networks on which they sit would give Moscow a significant advantage in building up for a renewed invasion from the northeast.

The Crimean Peninsula, finally, is strategically important for NATO as well as Ukraine. Russian possession of the peninsula allows Russia to base anti-air and anti-shipping missiles 325 kilometers further west than it could using only the territory it legally controls. It lets Russia position aircraft in Sevastopol, about 300 kilometers further west than airbases on the territory of the Russian Federation. These differences matter greatly to the scale and scope of the air and missile threat Russia can pose to NATO’s southeastern flank as well as to Russia’s ability to prepare and support future invasions of Ukraine. Of all the Ukrainian lands NATO should desire Ukraine to regain for NATO’s own interests, Crimea should be at the top of the list.

Principled legal, moral, and ethical considerations require supporting Ukraine’s efforts to regain its lost lands and people and should not be dismissed. The aim of this essay has been to show that purely military realities and strategic considerations lead to the same conclusion. If Ukraine is to emerge from this war able to defend itself against a future Russian attack and with a viable economy that does not rely on long-term international financial support, it must liberate almost all its territory.

Key inflections in ongoing military operations on October 16:

• Several Russian sources reported renewed Ukrainian assaults in the Kherson direction and Ukrainian sources reported higher-than-average numbers of daily shelling and missile strikes, but Ukrainian forces are maintaining operational silence about any operations.[1]
• Ukrainian military officials stated on October 16 that Russian forces are falsely claiming to have captured several towns near Bakhmut in the past several days, but Ukrainian forces have held their lines against Russian attacks.[2] Russian forces are likely falsifying claims of advances in the Bakhmut area to portray themselves as making gains in at least one sector amid continuing losses in northeast and southern Ukraine.
• Ukraine's Main Intelligence Directorate announced a $100,000 bounty for the capture of prominent Russian milblogger and former proxy commander Igor Girkin and confirmed his presence in Ukraine, stating “it is known that one of the most famous Russian terrorists has decided to renew his participation in the war against our state.”[3]
• Russian and Belarusian sources continued to report Russian men and material entering Belarus.[4]
• Ukrainian sources reported Russian occupation officials in Kherson City are stepping up filtration measures against Ukrainian partisans and accelerating efforts to evacuate key materials and personnel from Kherson to Crimea.[5]
• Unknown assailants attacked a military commissariat in the suburbs of Moscow with a Molotov cocktail on October 16.[6]
• Local Russian authorities in Krasnodar Krai reportedly intend to mobilize 1,000 more people by December 2022 and discussed proposals to redirect funding from entertainment events so supply mobilized personnel, seemingly contradicting Putin’s announcement that mobilization will conclude by the end of October 2022.[7]
• Poor medical care in both frontline and rear-area Russian units is exacerbating already dire morale problems.[8]

[2] https://www.unian dot ua/war/bahmut-novini-v-armiji-ukrajini-vkazali-na-brehnyu-zagarbnikiv-shchodo-bojiv-bilya-mista-12013569.html; https://armyinform.com dot ua/2022/10/16/informacziya-rashystiv-pro-zahoplennya-selyshh-poblyzu-bahmuta-ne-vidpovidaye-dijsnosti-sergij-cherevatyj/.

[3] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/hur-harantuie-100000-za-polonenoho-hirkina.html.

[7] https://t.me/Taygainfo/35410; https://ria dot ru/20221014/mobilizatsiya-1824084115.html?utm_source=yxnews&utm_medium=desktop.

[8] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/skazhy-spasybo-nashemu-hlavnokomanduiushchemu-kotoryi-nakh-esyl-tut-delov.html; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid021D3Zpu7LfUDk7mqibB....

understandingwar.org

2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (16.10.22) CDS comments on key events

CDS Daily brief (16.10.22) CDS comments on key events

Humanitarian aspect:

According to the data of the Oblast military administrations (OMA), 10 civilians were killed and 14 injured in Ukraine as a result of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation on October

15. 9 Ukrainian oblasts came under Russian shelling.

Russian forces continue shelling Ukrainian cities, killing people and damaging civilian infrastructure.

-               Two schools were ruined in Zaporizhzhia Oblast [by Russian shelling] on the night of October 16. One in the village of Vozdvyzhivka and one in Dobropillya, of Polohy district, the head of Zaporizhzhia OMA Oleksandr Starukh said.

-               On the evening of October 16, Russian forces again struck the Marganets community in the Nikopol district with MLRS. According to preliminary data, no one was injured. A 47- year-old man was wounded in Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Almost 30 high-rise and private buildings, 13 commercial buildings, an industrial enterprise, cars, several gas pipelines and power lines were damaged in the city.

-               In Sumy Oblast, part of one of the territorial communities was left without electricity due to the Russian shelling, Dmytro Zhivytskyi, the head of the Sumy OMA, reported. As of 18:00 on October 16, 2,151 customers remain without electricity.

-               Over the past day, Russian troops attacked 7 towns and villages in Donetsk Oblast. 20 civilian objects were destroyed and damaged - 14 residential buildings, a kindergarten, a medical facility, the territory of a food industry enterprise, cars, and a garage. Bakhmut continues to get hit by the Russian artillery. During the day, the Russian forces shelled the city five times, killing and wounding civilians. As a result of enemy hits, 11 private homes were damaged.

In the liberated Lyman of Donetsk Oblast, the bodies of six more people who died during the occupation by Russian troops were discovered, Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk Oblast Military Administration, said.

Occupied territories

Ukraine's General Staff reports that the Russian occupation authorities are intensifying filtering measures in Kherson Oblast and have begun evacuating so-called "government" institutions. According to available information, banks and pension fund employees and property are being taken from Kherson to the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.

The Center of National Resistance, set up by the Special Operations Forces of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, reported that Russian occupiers constantly increase security on the territory of the Zaporizhzhia NPP, and the number of security posts has increased, which indicates that they feel insecure. It is known that part of the station is controlled by Kadyrov's gang - SWAT "Akhmat". It has placed its equipment and weapons directly in turbine halls #1 and #2". The

center also reports that Russia is trying to connect the Zaporizhzhia NPP to its power grid as soon as possible.

Chechen fighters in Rubizhne, Luhansk Oblast, evict local residents from homes so their "officers" can live there. Kadyrov's people constantly change their housing because they are afraid, the head of Luhansk OMA Serhiy Haidai said. According to him, collaborators inform the invaders about "good" houses.

Operational situation

(please note that this part of the report is mainly on the previous day's (October 15) developments)

It is the 235th day of the strategic air-ground offensive operation of the Russian Armed Forces against Ukraine (in the official terminology of the Russian Federation – "operation to defend Donbas"). The enemy tries to maintain control over the temporarily captured territories. It concentrates its efforts on disrupting the counteroffensive actions of the Ukrainian troops, and continues the offensive in the Bakhmut and Avdiivka directions.

The Russian military shells the positions of the Ukrainian troops along the entire contact line, fortifies defensive positions and frontiers in certain directions, and conducts aerial reconnaissance. In violation of the norms of international humanitarian law, the laws and customs of war, it strikes critical infrastructure and residential quarters.

Over the past 24 hours, the Russian forces have launched 5 missile and 23 air strikes and fired 60 MLRS rounds. Civilian targets and residents in more than 40 Ukrainian towns and villages were hit by the Russian fire, including Nikopol and Shakhtarske of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Glushkivka in Kharkiv Oblast, Orihiv and Mali Shcherbaky in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Dmytrivka in Kyiv Oblast, Bilohirka in Kherson Oblast and Vuhledar in Donetsk Oblast. Near the state border, Mykolaivka of Chernihiv Oblast, Pokrovka of Sumy Oblast, Strilecha, Ohirtseve, Staritsa, Gatyshche, Pischane, Kam'yanka and Dvorichna of Kharkiv Oblast were shelled. The threat of missiles and airstrikes and the use of "Shahed-136" attack UAVs from the territory of the Republic of Belarus persists.

The aviation of the Ukrainian Defense Forces made 32 strikes over the past day. Hits on 24 areas of enemy weapons and military equipment concentration and on 8 Russian anti-aircraft missile systems are confirmed. In addition, Ukrainian air defense units shot down 6 Russian UAVs and 1 helicopter.

Over the past day, Ukrainian missile forces and artillery hit three areas of enemy manpower, weapons and military equipment concentration, and 1 ammunition depot, 7 Russian air defense objects and other military targets.

The morale and psychological state of the personnel of the invasion forces remain low. Kharkiv direction

• Zolochiv-Balakleya section: approximate length of combat line - 147 km, number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 10-12, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 13.3 km;

• Deployed enemy BTGs: 26th, 153rd, and 197th tank regiments, 245th motorized rifle regiment of the 47th tank division, 6th and 239th tank regiments, 228th motorized rifle regiment of the 90th tank division, 1st motorized rifle regiment, 1st tank regiment of the 2nd motorized rifle division, 25th and 138th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 6th Combined Arms Army, 27th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 1st Tank Army, 275th and 280th motorized rifle regiments, 11th tank regiment of the 18th motorized rifle division of the 11 Army Corps, 7th motorized rifle regiment of the 11th Army Corps, 80th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 14th Army Corps, 2nd and 45th separate SOF brigades of the Airborne Forces, 1st Army Corps of so-called DPR, PMCs.

The Russian command formed a tactical group of troops (up to 3-4 BTGs) in Belgorod Oblast with a high readiness to be used in Ukraine. The group was formed out of the units of the 61st separate marines brigade of the Northern Fleet, the 138th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 6th Army, and the 11th tank regiment of the 18th motorized rifle division of the 11th Army Corps.

The forces and means of the 29th separated railway brigade (Smolensk) are deployed in the area of Tyotkino, Volfino, and Popovo-Lezhachi (Kursk Oblast, Russian Federation). A separate rifle battalion was formed to perform tasks in the destination area.

Kramatorsk direction

● Balakleya - Siversk section: approximate length of the combat line - 184 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 17-20, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 9.6 km;

●  252nd and 752nd motorized rifle regiments of the 3rd motorized rifle division, 1st, 13th, and 12th tank regiments, 423rd motorized rifle regiment of the 4th tank division, 201st military base, 15th, 21st, 30th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 2nd Combined Arms Army, 35th, 55th and 74th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 41st Combined Arms Army, 3rd and 14th separate SOF brigades, 2nd and 4th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 2nd Army Corps, 7th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 1st Army Corps, PMCs.

The Russian military fired tanks and artillery of various calibers along the entire line of contact, particularly in Bilohorivka, Charivne, Mala Tokmachka, Novoyehorivka, Rozdolivka, and Serebryanka. Over the past day, units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces have repelled enemy attacks in the areas of Torske and Spirne.

Donetsk direction

● Siversk - Maryinka section: approximate length of the combat line - 235 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 13-15, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 17 km;

●  Deployed BTGs: 68th and 163rd tank regiments, 102nd and 103rd motorized rifle regiments of the 150 motorized rifle division, 80th tank regiment of the 90th tank division, 35th, 55th, and 74th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 41st Combined Arms Army, 31st separate airborne assault brigade, 61st separate marines brigade of the Joint Strategic Command "Northern Fleet," 336th separate marines brigade, 24th separate SOF brigade, 1st, 3rd, 5th, 15th, and 100th

separate motorized rifle brigades, 9th and 11th separate motorized rifle regiment of the 1st Army Corps of the so-called DPR, 6th motorized rifle regiment of the 2nd Army Corps of the so-called LPR, PMCs.

The Russian military fired from tanks, mortars, barrel and rocket artillery along the entire contact line.

Over the past day, units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces have repelled enemy attacks in the areas of Berestove, Soledar, Bakhmut, Maryinka, Pobieda and Nevelske.

During the past day, the Russian forces attacked:

-               Pokrovske, Bakhmutske with up to 2 platoons of the 2nd separate motorized rifle brigade of the 2nd Army Corps;

-               Vesela Dolyna, Ivangrad, Pokrovske, Bakhmut, Stryapivka and Soledar with a detachment of the "Wagner" PMC;

-               Berestove, Spirne with a reinforced company of the 4th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 2nd Army Corps;

-               Horlivka, Mayorsk with a platoon of the 131st rifle battalion of the mobilization reserve of the 1st Army Corps.

Units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces pushed the enemy from Opytne with two counterattacks, knocking them out of several key points near the village.

Zaporizhzhia direction

●  Maryinka – Vasylivka section: approximate length of the line of combat - 200 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 17, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 11.7 km;

●  Deployed BTGs: 36th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 29th Combined Arms Army, 38th and 64th separate motorized rifle brigades, 69th separate cover brigade of the 35th Combined Arms Army, 5th separate tank brigade, 37 separate motorized rifle brigade of the 36th Combined Arms Army, 135th, 429th, 503rd and 693rd motorized rifle regiments of the 19th motorized rifle division of the 58th Combined Arms Army, 70th, 71st and 291st motorized rifle regiments of the 42nd motorized rifle division of the 58th Combined Arms Army, 136th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 58 Combined Arms Army, 46th and 49th machine gun artillery regiments of the 18th machine gun artillery division of the 68th Army Corps, 39th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 68th Army Corps, 83th separate airborne assault brigade, 40th and 155th separate marines brigades, 22nd separate SOF brigade, 1st Army Corps of the so-called DPR, and 2nd Army Corps of the so-called LPR, PMCs.

The Russian forces shelled more than 15 towns and villages, including Vuhledar, Vremivka, Paraskoviivka, Prechystivka, and Shcherbaky.

Ukrainian Defense Forces' artillery, with precise strikes

-               destroyed an enemy ammunition depot and wounded 20 enemy personnel in Marfopil,

-               destroyed 10 units of military equipment and wounded up to 40 enemy personnel in Tokmak,

-               wounded up to 30 enemy personnel in Pology,

-               destroyed 7 units of military equipment and wounded about 40 enemy personnel in Kamyanets-Dniprovskiy

Tavriysk direction

-    Vasylivka – Stanislav section: approximate length of the battle line – 296 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 42, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 7 km;

-   Deployed BTGs: 114th, 143rd, and 394th motorized rifle regiments, 218th tank regiment of the 127th motorized rifle division, 57th and 60th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 5th Combined Arms Army, 37th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 36th Combined Arms Army, 429th motorized rifle regiment of the 19th motorized rifle division, 33rd and 255th motorized rifle regiments of the 20th motorized rifle division, 34th and 205th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 49th Combined Arms Army, 70th, 71st and 291st motorized rifle regiments of the 42nd motorized rifle division, 10th, 16th, 346th separate SOF brigades, 239th air assault regiment of the 76th Air assault division, 217th and 331st parachute airborne regiments of the 98th airborne division, 108 air assault regiment, 171st separate airborne assault battalion of the 7th Air assault division, 11th and 83rd separate airborne assault brigade, 4th military base of the 58 Combined Arms Army, 7 military base 49 Combined Arms Army, 224th, 237th and 126th separate coastal defence brigades, 127th separate ranger brigade, 1st and 3rd Army Corps, PMCs.

Areas around more than 25 towns and villages along the contact line suffered artillery fire damage.

The Russian military employed the reinforced company of the 247th parachute airborne regiment of the 7th air assault division in an attempt to attack in the direction of Kostromka - Sukhy Stavok. However, when they attacked from the starting line, they came under Ukrainian artillery fire, suffered losses, and were forced to withdraw.

The Russian military units of the 205th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 49th Army withdrew to the defense area near the village of Chkalove (up to two motorized rifle companies). Enemy units, which previously held defense in the area of Ishchenko, also retreat to the same area.

Azov-Black Sea Maritime Operational Area:

The forces of the Russian Black Sea Fleet continue to project force on the coast and the continental part of Ukraine and control the northwestern part of the Black Sea. The ultimate goal is to deprive Ukraine of access to the Black Sea and to maintain control over the captured territories.

In the open sea, the Russian naval group has decreased. Six enemy ships and boats remain along the southwestern coast of Crimea. Among them are 2 cruise missile carriers, namely two corvettes of project 21631 carrying a total of up to 10 missiles.

In the Sea of Azov waters, patrol ships and boats are located on the approaches to the Mariupol and Berdyansk seaports to block the Azov coast.

Russian aviation continues to fly from the Crimean airfields of Belbek and Hvardiyske over the northwestern part of the Black Sea. Over the past day, 8 Su-27, Su-30, and Su-24 aircraft from Belbek and Saki airfields were involved.

The "Grain Initiative": on October 16, 4 vessels with 140,000 tons of Ukrainian agricultural products left the ports of "Odesa" and "Pivdenny" for the countries of Africa, Asia and Europe. Among them is the bulk carrier EAUBONNE, which will deliver 53,300 tons of wheat to Kenya. This is the second bulker going to this country. The first SUPER HENRY bulk carrier with 51,400 tons of wheat was unloaded in the port of Mombasa (Kenya) today.

Since the launch of the Grain Initiative, 1.1 million tons of food have been sent to Africa. In particular, 5 ships chartered by the United Nations World Food Program have already left the ports of Greater Odesa. They have more than 120,000 tons of grain on board for the residents of Ethiopia, Yemen and Somalia.

On October 16, Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine Oleksandr Kubrakov met with Minister of Defense of Turkey Hulusi Akar at the Joint Coordination Center in Istanbul. The focus of the negotiations is the implementation of the "Grain Initiative" and its extension after November 22, 2022.

The participating parties of the "Initiative" - the UN, Turkey, and Ukraine - expressed their readiness to continue its operation and assured that they would make maximum efforts for its successful implementation. Currently, there is no doubt that the "grain corridor" work will continue after November 22.

Also, during the meeting, the Ukrainian side emphasized the importance of speeding up the ship inspection process by the Joint Coordination Center. Therefore, it will be possible to significantly increase the volume of grain exports to the countries of Africa, Asia and Europe, as well as prevent the formation of queues at inspections.

Russian operational losses from 24.02 to 16.10

Personnel - almost 65,000 people (+300);

Tanks 2,529 (+5);

Armored combat vehicles – 5,193 (+14);

Artillery systems – 1,589 (+7);

Multiple rocket launchers (MLRS) - 365 (0); Anti-aircraft warfare systems - 186 (0); Vehicles and fuel tanks – 3,959 (+8); Aircraft - 268 (0);

Helicopters – 242 (0);

UAV operational and tactical level – 1,224 (+14);

Intercepted cruise missiles - 316 (0);

Boats / ships - 15 (0).

Ukraine, general news

Arup Banerjee, the World Bank's regional director for Eastern Europe, estimates that twenty- five percent of Ukraine's population will live in poverty by the end of the year, compared to just over 2% before the war, and that figure could rise to 55% by the end of next year. Banerjee adds that the winter period can be especially difficult for Ukrainians. Ruined homes and missing critical infrastructure could trigger another wave of internal migration for the winter.

Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, believes that for Russia, the war has reached the stage of strategic zugzwang, i.e. when each move makes the situation worse and brings it closer to an end. He cited the fleeing of 500 thousand of Russian citizens and political destabilization, international support for Ukraine, increased readiness of NATO, risk of losing China and India as strategic partners, and the rise of a unified Ukrainian nation as facts supporting his thesis.

International diplomatic aspect

"The Islamic Republic of Iran has not and will not provide any weapon to be used in the war in Ukraine," said the Iranian Foreign Minister. The top Iranian diplomat does not care that his opponents know he is lying. Beyond the intelligence sources, the UAF has already downed Iranian-made kamikaze drones out of the Ukrainian skies. The Washington Post reports that in addition to UAV supply, the Mullahs' regime secretly agreed to provide Russia with Fateh-110 and Zolfaghar short-range ballistic missiles with a range of 300 and 700 km. Being squeezed by sanctions and having wasted up to two-thirds of missiles and rockets' stockpiles, Russians found their ability to replenish precision-guided weapons diminished. Pretending to be a mighty military power, Russia has been conducting meaningless, from a military point of view, bombardments of the Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure.

The Western export control policies work pretty well. Last week's meeting of the US Treasure with some three dozen affiliated institutions to coordinate their activities in fighting restrictions and sanctions evasion is a step in the right direction in the long run.

However, the Iran-Russia deal poses a great danger in the near future. The West should study the option of blocking the dangerous shipment's delivery.

The US might also reconsider its self-imposed limitation on certain weapons it can provide Ukraine with, i.e., ATACMS, naval UAVs, etc. Though the recent Ramstein meeting was dedicated to the issue of boosting Ukraine's air defense capabilities, it showed that it requires too much precious time. Instead of watching civilians' indiscriminate and deliberate targeting [by Russians], it makes sense to provide UAF with capabilities to eliminate the platforms for those missiles and rockets.

For the first time, an acting Israeli minister calls on the government to send security aid to Ukraine. "This morning it was reported that Iran is transferring ballistic missiles to Russia. There is no longer any doubt where Israel should stand in this bloody conflict. The time has come for Ukraine to receive military aid as well, just as the USA and NATO countries provide," twitted Nachman Shai. It's high time for Israel to start supporting Ukraine's existential struggle.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was a lone voice in the "traffic-light" government arguing for sending weapons to Ukraine, which it had asked Germany for. But now, she sides with the Chancellor and his no-tanks-for-Ukraine policy. She says that the tanks issue isn't pressing now, but air defense is. In the meantime, she says that Ukraine receives tanks by the swap scheme (Germany sends modern tanks to allies while they send Soviet/Russian tanks to Ukraine) and from Russians, who have been the leading supplier of tanks so far (Ukraine captured about 400 Russian tanks).

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3. Chinese nationals in Ukraine sign up for evacuation after call from FM

From the Chinese paper the Global Times. 

Chinese NEO.

Why now? Why 8 months after the war started is China calling for evacuation? Is this an indicator? Do the Chinese know something is coming?

Chinese nationals in Ukraine sign up for evacuation after call from FM - Global Times

globaltimes.cn · by GT staff reporters

Chinese nationals in Ukraine sign up for evacuation after call from FM

Published: Oct 16, 2022 10:15 PM

Students evacuated from eastern Ukraine's Sumy city pose with the Chinese Ambassador to Ukraine Fan Xianrong (center) for a photo in Lviv, Ukraine on March 9, 2022. Photo: Courtesy of the Chinese Embassy in Ukraine

Some Chinese nationals still in Ukraine have signed up for evacuation from the country, with most registering for organized evacuations, while others are preparing to leave Ukraine on their own, the Global Times learned on Sunday, after the Chinese Foreign Ministry urged Chinese citizens to leave Ukraine, citing the grave security situation.

The move, following the large-scale evacuation in March that safely returned some 6,000 Chinese nationals in Ukraine back to their motherland, represents the Chinese government's greatest efforts to protect its citizens, as the Russia-Ukraine conflict further escalated, experts noted.

As of press time on Sunday, 161 people had registered on the form the embassy sent out for organized evacuation, and another 27 people registered on the form for self-evacuation, according to a Global Times' count of the registration on the embassy's WeChat account.

In a notice issued on Saturday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that given the grave security situation in Ukraine, it calls upon Chinese nationals still in the country to strengthen security precautions and evacuate the country. The Chinese embassy will assist the organization of evacuation for those in need, the notice said, while urging them to register their personal information to the embassy as soon as possible.

Later on Saturday, the Chinese Embassy in Ukraine said via its WeChat account that it will offer assistance and help coordinate relevant evacuation matters such as emergency document processing.

The official calls came as the Russia-Ukraine conflict continued to escalate after the attack on the Crimean Bridge earlier this month, which prompted a harsh response from Russia, including missile strikes in Ukrainian cities.

"After the attack on the Crimean Bridge, civilian infrastructure became the target of military conflicts, which is clearly an escalation on the battlefield. Our evacuation this time is more of an early warning, making the greatest efforts to avoid damage on our citizens' property and lives," Cui Heng, an assistant research fellow from the Center for Russian Studies of East China Normal University, told the Global Times on Sunday.

After the evacuation mission in March this year that moved some 6,000 Chinese nationals out of Ukraine, a small number of Chinese nationals have returned for business or for school. Those who are still in the country are mostly students, businessmen or enterprise staffers stationed in Ukraine.

This time, it is easier and safer to organize evacuation now, as communication has not been cut off and flights are normal, observers said.

While hearing the sirens sounding all night long, Chinese nationals reached by the Global Times said they are remaining relatively calm after the months of conflict, and have learned to protect themselves amid escalating tensions.

Gio Guo, a Chinese national based in Kiev with his Ukrainian wife and children, told the Global Times on Sunday that he and his family do not intend to leave at the moment. "It has remained quiet and calm in recent days and we do not feel particularly different from days before the war," he said.

However, uncertainties remain, as the conflict continues to escalate and the US and its NATO allies are still fanning the flame, experts noted.

In the latest development, 11 people were killed during a shooting training session at a military training ground in Russia's Belgorod Region, with another 15 more wounded, TASS reported on Saturday, citing the Russian Defense Ministry.

According to TASS, the attack was carried out by two citizens of "a CIS country" who "committed an act of terror," the Russian Defense Ministry said.

Zhu Haoning contributed to this story.

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4. Joe Biden's New 'National Security Strategy' Has an Intense Focus on China

Excerpts:

Meanwhile, the Ukraine war has had the inadvertent effect of strengthening the NATO and expanding the alliance to include key countries like Finland and Sweden. At the same time, it has persuaded two major allies – Germany and Japan to enhance their defence spending.

The Biden NSS actually follows the strategy set by Donald Trump’s NSS issued in December 2017.

In fact, the real break in American policy towards China came with the Trump administration which took on Beijing, first through a trade war by imposing tariffs on Chinese imports, and then by a steadily increasing set of restrictions on export of high technology to China.

Joe Biden's New 'National Security Strategy' Has an Intense Focus on China

thequint.com · by Manoj Joshi · October 17, 2022

In its new National Security Strategy (NSS) released last week, the Biden administration has declared that China is the “most consequential geopolitical challenge” that the US confronts along with constraining a rampant Russia.

In the much-delayed NSS drafted by the National Security Council with inputs from other agencies, Biden said that the United States would adopt of strategy of boosting American competitiveness, partner with countries that shared American values, and resolutely oppose autocracy.

But what is clear from the document is the intense focus on China.

'China the Only Competitor With Intent & Power To Reshape International Order': US

“The PRC is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly the diplomatic, military and technological power to do it,” the NSS document has elucidated.

The document also referred to Russia as an “immediate and persistent threat to international peace and stability.” Attacking the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the document said that the invasion had been an act of “strategic miscalculation” on the part of Moscow.

Besides China and Russia, the new NSS has zeroed in on Iran and other “smaller autocratic powers” and declared that it would not allow Tehran to obtain nuclear weapons through “other means” if diplomacy failed. At the same time, it has upheld the US support for Israel.

What About India?

India is not a major presence in the Biden administration's NSS. There is the conventional reference to India is as “the world’s largest democracy and a Major Defense Partner” with whom the US will work bilaterally and multilaterally “to support our shared vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

The document claims that Putin’s war has diminished Russia’s standing in China, India and Japan.

Unlike, say, India which still has no published NSS, the United States routinely issues one. The goal is to provide and over-arching vision of the country’s longer term plans in the military, economic, and diplomatic spheres; suggest ways of operationalizing them; and importantly, reconciling the ends and means available to the country for the task.

What Is the NSS?

The document is a serving president’s vision statement prepared by the US National Security Council which is headed by the president’s National Security Adviser (NSA).

It is likely that the current NSA Jake Sullivan authored the current document.

The US began to publish an NSS as part of its emerging Cold War posture in 1947, mandated to do so by the US Congress’ National Security Act. But it was only the major defence reform of the Goldwater-Nichols Act that has gotten various administrations to provide an NSS document with a certain regularity.

An important aim of the document is to bring the sprawling US national security apparatus into the same page in relation to the larger goals of the administration.

In March 2021, the Biden administration had issued what it said was an “Interim” Security Guidance whose core proposition was that the US needed to focus on renewing itself economically and politically to engage the world, and that it needed to do so in common cause with its allies and partners.

Thereafter, Biden succeeded in pushing for the $1.2 trillion infrastructure investment and Jobs Act to overhaul America’ degraded highways and transportation systems. Then came the legislation that will provide for nearly $437 billion investment in energy security, affordable care extension, drought resiliency within the US.

In addition the CHIPS and Science Act would provide $52 billion subsidy for chip manufacturers to build plants in the US and another $200 billion to revitalize US science institutions.

Quad, Ukraine War & Donald Trump's NSS

Biden also devoted significant time in promoting the Quad and creating a new Indo-Pacific Economic Forum (IPEF) which will support the economic component of a complex military, political, and diplomatic framework of the US-led policy of containing China.

Meanwhile, the Ukraine war has had the inadvertent effect of strengthening the NATO and expanding the alliance to include key countries like Finland and Sweden. At the same time, it has persuaded two major allies – Germany and Japan to enhance their defence spending.

The Biden NSS actually follows the strategy set by Donald Trump’s NSS issued in December 2017.

In fact, the real break in American policy towards China came with the Trump administration which took on Beijing, first through a trade war by imposing tariffs on Chinese imports, and then by a steadily increasing set of restrictions on export of high technology to China.

In his NSS, Trump rejected the notion, popular since the 1990s, that the US could change its rivals through a process of engagement. Instead he made it clear that the US was involved in a global contest where it had to preserve itself against the actions of “revisionist” powers like China and Russia who had no intention of becoming “benign actors and trustworthy.”

It offered a bleak vision of a global battleground where the US had to preserve itself from the actions of “revisionist” powers like China and Russia who were “attempting to erode American security and prosperity” and had no intention of becoming “benign actors and trustworthy partners.”

The Biden administration has not only refused to lift the tariffs imposed by Trump, but it has doubled down on the technology restriction regime by instituting a new and draconian set of restrictions on the export of semiconductors and their technology to China. Differences over Taiwan have helped to steel the Biden administration’s resolve.

Following the publication of the NSS, the US Department of Defence or the Pentagon will now publish the US national defence strategy and a nuclear posture review.

An important aspect of this is likely to be a restatement of the American belief that nuclear weapons will have a lesser role in US strategy than before, notwithstanding the Russian sabre rattling over Ukraine.

Nevertheless, there is a clear understanding in the NSS that the war in Ukraine has introduced a high level of uncertainty to the emerging global situation and could result in unforeseen changes in the future.

(The writer is a Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)

(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)

thequint.com · by Manoj Joshi · October 17, 2022

5. Russia is making excuses for why it can't stop US-made HIMARS from shredding its military in Ukraine

Russia is making excuses for why it can't stop US-made HIMARS from shredding its military in Ukraine

Business Insider · by Michael Peck

Footage of a US-made HIMARS published by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry in July.

Ukraine Ministry of Defense

• Russian forces have struggled to counter Ukraine's use of US-made HIMARS rockets.
• Some Russians have an explanation: HIMARS has a secret feature that makes it harder to target them.
• That's probably bluster meant to distract from Russian military failings, one expert told Insider.

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Why can't Russia destroy Ukraine's US-made HIMARS rocket launchers?

One Russian defense blog has an explanation: HIMARS has a secret feature that prevents Russian artillery from targeting it.

Not quite, Western defense experts say. The more likely reason is Russian incompetence.

In September, Russian defense blog Avia wrote about why Russian artillery has been not able to knock out Ukraine's M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, which fire GPS-guided rockets that have savaged vital Russian targets such as ammunition dumps, command posts, and bridges.

A HIMARS during an exercise in Latvia in September.

GINTS IVUSKANS/AFP via Getty Images

In theory, Russia's huge arsenal of howitzers and multiple-launch rocket systems should be able to destroy HIMARS by using counter-battery radar to track the trajectory of the rockets it fires back to their launch point.

Ah, but those clever Americans have a trick, according to Avia's unsigned blog post: They designed HIMARS so its rockets would change trajectory and fool counter-battery radars.

"This can be seen from the missile's flight path, which, in fact, shifts the coordinates set by counterbattery means of combat by hundreds of meters, making it impossible to deliver accurate strikes," the post says, pointing to videos of Ukraine firing the rockets.

"Experts draw attention to video footage published by the Ukrainian military, which shows that after launch, the rocket changes its flight path almost immediately," the post says, according to a translation done by Google.

"This greatly distinguishes American systems from conventional MLRS [multiple launch rocket systems], where the projectiles fly along a ballistic trajectory. With a high degree of probability, it is this fact that prevents the establishment of the exact location of the coordinates of the launchers," it adds.

A HIMARS is fired on the flight deck of the amphibious ship USS Anchorage in October 2017.

US Navy/Mass Comm Specialist 2nd Class Matthew Dickinson

Do HIMARS rockets really alter their trajectory after launch, in the same way that NASA rockets pivot their engines to change course during their ascent to orbit?

In response to a query from Insider, HIMARS manufacturer Lockheed Martin deferred comment to the US Army. The US Army's response was simply that "the missile attains the ballistic trajectory it's assigned to reach the target."

Counter-battery fire — using artillery to knock out other artillery — is a difficult process even under the best of circumstances. But poor Russian counter-battery capabilities are compounding the problem.

"The article is probably grasping at straws," Samuel Cranny-Evans, a land-warfare expert at Britain's Royal United Services Institute think tank, told Insider.

For example, Russia's Zoopark-1 counter-battery radar can detect rockets at a ranges of 9 to 13 miles, but HIMARS rockets have a range of about 50 miles.

"The radar needs to pick the projectile up as it is launched to try and predict its trajectory and plot its likely approach before extrapolating backwards to reach a probable launch point," Cranny-Evans said. "So if it doesn't pick the rocket up from its launch point because it's not within range, it can't provide a targeting solution."

US soldiers set up an AN/TPQ-53 Q-53 counter-fire target acquisition radar during an exercise in Hawaii in June.

US Army/1st Lt. Steph Sweeney

In addition, counter-battery radars are set to scan for incoming shells and rockets passing through a specific sector at a specific height.

"Unless the radar happens to be looking in the right place at the right time, it will not detect a HIMARS launch," Cranny-Evans said. "I doubt the Russians have enough counter-battery radars to provide continuous coverage and so would be limited in their ability to provide persistent monitoring even if they could get within range of the rockets."

Counter-battery radars also give an approximate location of the firing battery. While this may be good enough to lay down a general barrage and hope to hit something, it's not accurate enough for a precise shot.

This is especially true for mobile artillery, such as truck-mounted HIMARS and armored self-propelled howitzers, that use "shoot and scoot" tactics to fire a salvo and relocate within minutes.

That tactic requires counter-battery fire to be launched within minutes of detecting incoming fire – and Russia's command structure has been too slow to do this.

Ukrainian troops with a captured Russian self-propelled gun in Izium on September 14.

Viacheslav Mavrychev/Suspilne Ukraine/JSC "UA:PBC"/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images

"The Russians appear to have a very slow targeting process that is often unable to take account of moving targets or a changing situation," Cranny-Evans said. "If they do not immediately fire on the suspected HIMARS location, or the fire mission gets allocated a low priority for whatever reason, they will not be able to engage."

While this Avia article appears groundless, Russian defense blogs — which often have links to the Russian government and military — can be quite illuminating.

The HIMARS article reveals the depth of Russian frustration with Ukraine's new Western-supplied weapons. When Russian forces invaded in February, their more modern artillery outranged Ukraine's older Soviet-era arms. Now the shoe is on the other foot.

The article also suggests that someone in Moscow is looking for scapegoats. Rather than fixing poor equipment or ineffective procedures, they find it easier to blame defeat on enemy secret weapons. Sour grapes don't win wars.

Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds a master's in political science. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Business Insider · by Michael Peck

6. New app lets civilians help shoot down drones and missiles in Ukraine

New app lets civilians help shoot down drones and missiles in Ukraine

The ePPO application is currently available for the Android platform, developers are working on creating a version for iOS, which is expected to ship in a few weeks.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF Published: OCTOBER 17, 2022 05:44

Jerusalem Post

Ukraine has created an application for mobile devices that will help air defense units supplement radar information about an air target to better the chances of taking it down, according to Ukraine's Strategic Communications Department.

"The Android version of the "ePPO" application is already available to download. Now every citizen of Ukraine can join the anti-missile and anti-aircraft defense of our skies," the Strategic Communications Department of the Office of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said.

To use the app, all that is needed is to install the "ePPO" application on your smartphone, pass a quick authorization process, click "Test" to make sure that everything works, and be ready to notify anti-aircraft fighters about perceived threats.

How the app works

If you see an air target, for example, a cruise missile or a suicide drone, you need to open "ePPO" on your smartphone, select the type of air target, point your smartphone in the direction of the target and press the big red button.

Air defense specialists will see a mark on the map, it will complement the radar information and the threat will be shot down.

The ePPO application is currently available for the Android platform, developers are working on creating a version for iOS, which is expected to ship in a few weeks.

"Enemy attack unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are causing significant damage to our critical infrastructure. They also pose a significant danger to civilians: suicide drones can carry several tens of kilograms of explosives and create a powerful shock wave when hit," The Ministry of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine said in a Telegram post.

"Enemy attack unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are causing significant damage to our critical infrastructure. They also pose a significant danger to civilians: suicide drones can carry several tens of kilograms of explosives and create a powerful shock wave when hit."

The Ministry of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine

The Ministry offered advice on how to recognize UAVs and protect yourself from these weapons . In particular, the suicide drone engine is loud. When approaching, a sound similar to the operation of a moped or chainsaw engine is heard in the air.

"When you hear such a sound, try to get into a specially equipped shelter. Use basements, basement floors of buildings, underground parking lots, passageways or follow the "two walls" rule, the Ministry said.

You should also not stay in any vehicle: get out, run as far away from the road as possible and try to locate a suitable shelter. Places for shelter should be chosen as far as possible from military strategic objects and administrative institutions.

"Do not hide in entrances, under arches on stairwells, in basements of panel buildings, near automobile equipment, gas stations, etc.," the Ministry of Reintegration stressed.

Jerusalem Post

7. Rogue States Like North Korea Win if Putin Uses Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine

Excerpts:

But if Russia did take this step, other states would benefit from Putin’s breaking of the ‘nuclear taboo.’

Russia itself would be severely penalized. China, India, and third-world neutral states would drift away from it. NATO would almost certainly enter the fight, potentially in direct ground conflict with Russia if it nuked a city and killed hundreds of thousands of people. Russia would be expunged from much of the global economy, and its citizens would be pariahs around the world. Its isolation would last a decade or more.

Strong states too would not benefit from the breaking of the taboo. Powerful states like the US, China, Europe’s largest countries, Japan, and so on, do not need nuclear weapons for many purposes. Indeed, they have them really for one purpose – to deter other states from using nukes against them. (Germany and Japan live under the US nuclear umbrella, ‘borrowing’ deterrence from the Americans.) There is no other point in possessing these weapons.

Rogue States Like North Korea Win if Putin Uses Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine

19fortyfive.com · by Robert Kelly · October 16, 2022

Rogue States Win if Russia uses Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine: Great anxiety has arisen because of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s oblique nuclear threats in the Ukraine war. There has been much talk of an escalating nuclear conflict with the West. Even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky seems to think this possibility is substantial. Such a strike would have major implications around the world, particularly for weaker countries with – or considering – nuclear weapons. If Russia normalized the use of nuclear weapons on the battlefield, these weaker states, who suffer from major conventional disadvantages, could see an opening to use their own nuclear weapons in conflict to equalize the playing field with their competitors.

Putin is Unlikely to use Nuclear Weapons

Scenarios about the ‘day after’ a nuclear strike – what ramifications there would be for future conflict – depend on first use by a major nuclear power, which all have pledged to avoid barring existential threats to the homeland. Russia does not face this in Ukraine. Defeat in Ukraine, and national and personal humiliation for Putin, is not the same as a Ukrainian threat to the integrity of the Russian state. Were Putin to go nuclear anyway, the geopolitical blowback would be massive.

Further, it is not clear what target in Ukraine is large and important enough to run such a risk. To affect the course of the actual conflict, the Russians would need to hit a target near the frontlines. That in turn would endanger Russian forces themselves. Finally, only a massive, strategic nuclear strike on a Ukrainian city would terrorize Ukraine into surrender. In the face of a low-yield battlefield nuclear use, Zelensky would likely keep fighting.

Only a move akin to nuclear genocide might actually push the Ukrainians to give up.

Great Powers like the Nuclear Taboo

But if Russia did take this step, other states would benefit from Putin’s breaking of the ‘nuclear taboo.’

Russia itself would be severely penalized. China, India, and third-world neutral states would drift away from it. NATO would almost certainly enter the fight, potentially in direct ground conflict with Russia if it nuked a city and killed hundreds of thousands of people. Russia would be expunged from much of the global economy, and its citizens would be pariahs around the world. Its isolation would last a decade or more.

Strong states too would not benefit from the breaking of the taboo. Powerful states like the US, China, Europe’s largest countries, Japan, and so on, do not need nuclear weapons for many purposes. Indeed, they have them really for one purpose – to deter other states from using nukes against them. (Germany and Japan live under the US nuclear umbrella, ‘borrowing’ deterrence from the Americans.) There is no other point in possessing these weapons.

The great powers, by definition, are already conventionally powerful. They can fight traditional conflicts reasonably well and hope for victory. They are also strong enough that they can survive a defeat – such as the American loss in Vietnam and Iraq – and move on. Conventional conflicts are rarely existential for great powers. So they are content with the nuclear taboo, as it sidelines all sorts of frightening escalatory possibilities, and buttresses their conventional dominance in world politics.

The Nuclear Taboo Punishes Rogue and Weak States

By contrast, the countries which would benefit the most from a Russian nuclear strike are the weakest ones who nonetheless have nukes (or want them) – specifically North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran. All of these countries in locked in contests with conventionally superior opponents:

South Korea alone outweighs North Korea economically and conventionally militarily; with US alliance assistance, the power gap is yawning.

Pakistan faces a massive challenger in India. It is conventionally outgunned, and it is political riven and economically sclerotic in comparison.

Iran, as a Shiite state in a mostly Sunni region, faces a massive counter-coalition, plus the hostility of Israel and the US.

Given these intense security dilemmas, North Korea and Pakistan have built nuclear weapons, and Iran is close. These powerful weapons help equalize conventional inequalities, plus they deter a first strike by the other side.

Normalization of Battlefield Nuclear Weapons Helps Rogue States

Nuclear weapons could also help rogues win a battlefield conflict if nukes could be used like traditional weapons. If North Korea could nuke massed formations of the South Korean army, it might conceivably win a second Korean war before the Americans could arrive in large numbers and without a strategic strike on the United States.

North Korean Missile Launch. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Here the nuclear taboo harms the rogue state. It acts as a powerful disincentive to use a battlefield nuclear weapon. Who knows what will happen on the day after? Rogues are relatively weak and do not want to run the risk. But if Russia uses one first, Russia will suffer the (assumed massive) first mover penalties. Russia will be the first state to normalize nuclear weapons use on the battlefield, a condition which these countries could then exploit.

Putin likely does not care about any of this. He has been unhelpful on the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs, and Russia’s strategic needs will drive his decision to go nuclear or not in Ukraine. But there will likely be many changes in world politics on the day after. One of those will a greater willingness by other states to use nukes too. And the world’s weak nuclear states will benefit the most from that.

Expert Biography: Dr. Robert E. Kelly (@Robert_E_Kelly; RoberEdwinKelly.com) is a professor of international relations in the Department of Political Science at Pusan National University and 19FortyFive Contributing Editor.

19fortyfive.com · by Robert Kelly · October 16, 2022

8. Army injustice: Thousands of soldiers, veterans slapped with misleading criminal record

Army injustice: Thousands of soldiers, veterans slapped with misleading criminal record

foxnews.com · by Hannah Ray Lambert | Fox News

Video

Army injustice: Thousands of soldiers slapped with misleading criminal record | Digital Originals

Soldiers and veterans say the Army's investigation of a now-defunct recruiting program left them with a criminal record even though they were never charged.

A decade after the Army ended a recruiting program embroiled in accusations of fraud and mismanagement, more than 2,400 soldiers who were never charged with wrongdoing are likely shackled by a misleading flag on their criminal records.

"We are branded as criminals," Army Capt. Gilberto De Leon told Fox News. "There was times where I broke down on my knees … My career ruined, about to lose my pension. How am I gonna support my family of eight?"

Soldiers and veterans say they’ve lost jobs, been denied bank loans or weapons permits, and suffered other consequences because of an obscure Army process that treats anyone who is merely investigated for wrongdoing as guilty.

"I did nothing wrong," said South Carolina Army National Guard Capt. Benjamin Sternemann, who was several years into a career as a police officer when the flag popped up on his background check. "I was never arrested and never charged. And I lost my job anyway."

NATIONAL GUARD TROOPS LEAVING FASTER THAN NEW ENLISTMENTS

Army Capt. Gilberto De Leon poses for a photo with his family. De Leon was selected to promote to major in 2019, but his promotion packet stalled because of a misleading flag on his record. (Courtesy of Gilberto De Leon)

‘Illegal from the beginning’

The soldiers’ saga started in 2005, at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. military needed more bodies, so it started the National Guard Recruiting Assistance Program (G-RAP) and its smaller Army Reserve counterpart (AR-RAP).

The programs created thousands of temporary recruiters overnight, offering $2,000 for each person they steered toward the Guard.

"All they had to do was talk to somebody for a few minutes and submit their name so that an actual recruiter could get them in the door," Sternemann said. If they shipped to basic training, the recruiting assistants got paid.

Sternemann said he referred three people and was paid $6,000 while attending the University of South Carolina around 2010. De Leon participated between 2007 and 2009, collecting $11,000 for six recruits.

"The programs, by all accounts, worked fantastic," lawyer and retired Green Beret Doug O’Connell said.

The Army enlisted more than 150,000 new recruits and reported spending around $459.4 million on the programs.

Benjamin Sternemann pictured in 2011 while still a student at the University of South Carolina. (Courtesy of Benjamin Sternemann)

But G-RAP came under scrutiny in 2012, and the Army ended the program. Federal investigators found the Army had contracted with a company called Docupak to run the programs in a process that met "almost none" of the federal acquisition requirements, USA Today reported. The National Guard Bureau officer who awarded the contract later went to work for Docupak.

An Army audit found "thousands … of participants who were associated with payments that are at high or medium risk for fraud," Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri, said during a scathing 2014 hearing demanding answers from the Army.

"As if all that was not bad enough, the Army has determined in its investigation that the entire program was illegal from the beginning," McCaskill said in the hearing, noting that the payments exceeded limits Congress had placed on bonuses the Army could pay. "All of the money spent on the program … was illegal."

AS SUICIDES RISE, US MILITARY SEEKS TO ADDRESS MENTAL HEALTH

The Army vowed to investigate all 106,364 people paid by the recruiting program and launched Task Force Raptor, believed to be its biggest investigation in history.

Critics of the probes argue that the Army's Criminal Investigation Division (CID) agents made sloppy cases against the recruiting assistants, accusing them of stealing personal information from recruits they had never met and collecting payment as if they had referred them to the Guard. Former recruiting assistants and their lawyers say CID cold-called troops as much as a decade after the fact and asked if they remembered who referred them to the guard.

"If they didn’t say the recruiting assistant’s name, the investigators assumed the recruiting assistant was guilty of criminal misconduct which is absolutely ridiculous," said O’Connell, who has represented around 225 G-RAP participants in both civil and criminal cases. "In many cases that I've worked on, we've been able to prove the recruiting assistant didn't do anything wrong once they were shown a picture of my client."

Lawyer and former Green Beret Doug O'Connell says he's represented more than 200 current and former soldiers as they fight the Army's titling system. (Fox News Digital)

Army leadership told Congress in 2014 that Task Force Raptor might uncover as much as $100 million in fraud. Three years later, the Army revised that estimate to $6 million, after spending around $28 million on the investigation.

As of 2022, Task Force Raptor resulted in just $478,002 repaid to the U.S. Treasury and $58,403 in fines and fees, according to Army data.

The Army referred 1,503 cases to civilian authorities. Prosecutors pursued charges in 137 of those cases.

"Most district attorneys would not touch these cases because they were so tainted with cookie cutter interrogations, phone interviews and poor documentation," Sternemann said.

But thousands of soldiers who were never charged with a crime — and in many cases had no idea they’d been under investigation — became unexpected casualties of Task Force Raptor.

'Branded as criminals'

Sternemann was several years into a career as a police officer when he applied for a concealed weapon permit in 2018. He received a denial notice by mail and contacted licensing officials to ask why.

When he received a copy of his background check, he stared in shock at the single entry: "ARREST DATE 2016-03-02."

Three charges followed: aggravated identity theft, wire fraud and fraud.

"I was never arrested, never charged," he told Fox News. "I had no idea that this had occurred."

During Task Force Raptor the Army "titled" 2,580 soldiers, according to the data shared with Fox News. Titling is a process within CID that creates a permanent record showing a soldier was the subject of an investigation regardless of whether they are ever charged with a crime.

Then the Army forwarded that information to the FBI’s criminal database where the titles show up as an arrest, O’Connell said.

"This is one of the most tragic parts of this entire debacle," O’Connell said. "All these people who are simply titled … now have a criminal history that is wrong and illegal, because they've said that these soldiers and former soldiers were actually arrested or received into custody. And of course, they were never arrested."

Fifty-three soldiers and veterans affiliated with G-RAP asked CID to remove the title from their record as of 2021. The Army denied every single request, according to data an adviser for a U.S. senator shared with Fox News on the condition of anonymity.

Army spokesman Matt Leonard said 10 more people asked the Army to remove their titles in Fiscal Year 2022.

ARMY PENALIZING SOLDIERS SEEKING RELIGIOUS ACCOMMODATION TO VAX MANDATE: 'TECHNIQUE OF COERCION'

"The soldiers and former soldiers who stood up and volunteered to serve and protect our Constitution are now being treated as criminals without any kind of due process rights," O’Connell said.

The presence of what looks like a pending felony charge on Sternemann’s record meant he couldn’t renew his police credentials. His department fired him in 2019.

"There was nothing they could do," he said. "They could no longer employ me because they had to have a credentialed law enforcement officer with a clean record."

National Guard Capt. Benjamin Sternemann was a police officer until 2019. He says the Army's investigation into G-RAP resulted in a false arrest record showing up on his background check. (Courtesy of Benjamin Sternemann)

Many jobs and professional licenses require applicants to pass a background check. O’Connell says he’s represented real estate agents, physician assistants, police officers and other professionals who have had their lives upended by the titling system.

"These former soldiers that are now trying to get on with a different career are still having to deal with the horrors of G-RAP," he said.

If a soldier is still in the Army, the title often makes it difficult — if not impossible — to promote.

De Leon should have donned the golden oak leaf pin of a major three years ago, but his promotion packet was flagged in 2019 for a fraud investigation linked to G-RAP. He jumped through endless bureaucratic hoops and even gained the support of six Republican congressmen who implored Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to intervene. But on April 1, De Leon’s promotion packet expired.

"It’s very sad. I saw myself as a lifer on active duty, retired 20 years, just like my father did," he said. The father of six will leave the Army on Feb. 1, without a pension and knowing that the title on his record could hinder future employment opportunities.

Army CID launches review of its own investigations

Army CID revealed in July that it would review more than 880 Task Force Raptor investigations to determine whether soldiers were titled appropriately.

Fox News has repeatedly contacted Army CID since August asking for an update on the review. On Friday, a spokesman said in an email that a "comprehensive review of all investigations" related to the recruiting programs was ongoing but "CID cannot provide specific data on rates of review completion."

Army CID officials would not comment on De Leon or Sternemann’s cases, citing privacy concerns, and declined to be interviewed for this story.

"I do not have a whole lot of hope for CID reviewing their own cases," Sternemann said. "It feels a lot like a fox in the henhouse."

O’Connell agreed, saying the cases deserve an independent review by "real, professional law enforcement."

Lawyer Doug O'Connell says this redacted background check shows how a title can be misrepresented as an arrest record. (Doug O'Connell)

De Leon’s case was re-opened prior to the larger review, after a flurry of publicity surrounding his scuttled promotion. An agent interviewed De Leon in May, with his lawyer Jeffrey Addicott present.

In a recording of the CID interview De Leon shared with Fox News, Addicott can be heard asking the CID agent if he has experience with G-RAP cases.

"This is actually my first," the agent replied.

Addicott and De Leon can be heard getting frustrated several times in the conversation with the agent’s apparent lack of knowledge of G-RAP, the titling system and its ramifications. The agent apparently requested that they explain G-RAP to him at the start of the conversation.

Toward the end of the interview, the agent can be heard saying, "Like I said, my first question, I had it written down in my notes—"

"’What the F is G-RAP?’" Addicott interjects.

"Please explain G-RAP to me," the agent repeats, more diplomatically.

VICTIM SPEAKS OUT AFTER NAVY DENIES FUEL-CONTAMINATED WATER CAUSED INJURIES: 'AFFECTED IN NEARLY EVERY WAY'

On July 6, Army CID closed the case while maintaining its original determination that probable cause existed that De Leon committed larceny, identity theft and wire fraud.

"In the CID report there is not a single mention of any GRAP rule that was allegedly violated by CPT DeLeon, only a vague fraud allegation," Addicott told Fox News in an email. Addicott is a retired Army lieutenant colonel who has represented numerous former recruiting assistants in G-RAP cases.

Agents appear to have only interviewed one person during their review, whose name is redacted. That individual said De Leon did direct him to a recruiter.

Several dozen soldiers connected to the recruiter assistance programs have asked the Army to scrub a misleading mark from their permanent records. The Army has not approved any requests. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Spc. Hassani Ribera)

Former National Guardsman Corey Thompson confirmed to Fox News that he was one of the six people De Leon referred to the National Guard between 2007 and 2009. Thompson said he remembers getting a "random" call from someone around 2014 asking about De Leon.

"I mentioned to them about him recruiting me to get into the guard," Thompson said.

He forgot about it after that, and said CID never contacted him during its latest review. He had no idea what De Leon was going through until his college buddy reached out over the summer.

"He's telling me people were saying that he stole my identity," Thompson said. "That’s not factual … We went to Eastern Kentucky together. We ate food together. We had multiple drinks together. We know each other."

Thompson described De Leon as a very motivated, enthusiastic person who made people like him look forward to joining the National Guard.

"To smear his name like this is just completely wrong," he said.

'There’s cowardice in our leadership'

As De Leon prepares to leave the Army, he says he’s furious at the lack of justice.

"Why does it seem like accountability stops at the Pentagon? There’s cowardice in our leadership," he said. "Not one leader is electing to fight for the innocent soldiers."

Addicott said it's high time for congressional hearings into the CID "witch-hunts that have ruined the lives of hundreds of innocent soldiers over the years."

Benjamin Sternemann holds his son's hand in 2015. (Courtesy of Benjamin Sternemann)

Sternemann said CID’s actions have caused constant stress and anxiety for his whole family, all over $6,000 he received more than 10 years ago.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

"I wish I hadn’t have helped them out," Sternemann told Fox News. "I still love my country. I still love the South Carolina Army National Guard. But this isn’t worth it."

He smiles bitterly at the irony of it all.

"This situation is showing that those of us in the military are not being afforded the rights that we were fighting for," he said.

Ramiro Vargas contributed to the accompanying video.

Hannah Ray Lambert is an associate producer/writer with Fox News Digital Originals.

foxnews.com · by Hannah Ray Lambert | Fox News

9. ‘Dangerously Depleted’: The US Is Sending So Many Weapons To Ukraine That Experts Are Starting To Worry

‘Dangerously Depleted’: The US Is Sending So Many Weapons To Ukraine That Experts Are Starting To Worry

The Daily Caller

• The U.S. has sent billions in military aid to Ukraine, depleting its own stocks of some weapons and munitions that some fear could weaken the American military should conflict erupt in other parts of the globe.
• While it’s not too late for the U.S. to adapt to increased demand for weapons, doing so will require increased investment in production to maintain U.S. military preparedness, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
• “If we get this right, we would not only accelerate the end of the war in Ukraine, but meaningfully change Beijing’s willingness to engage in aggression in the future,” Oklahoma Republican Senator Jim Inhofe told the DCNF.

The U.S. needs to seriously invest more in weapons and ammunition if it wants to continue supporting Ukraine and brace for conflict with other great powers, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Global efforts to support Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion have triggered billions in spending to bolster Ukraine’s military, depleting U.S. stocks and raising concerns that the West may cripple its military opposite the rising threat from China. The U.S. will have to dramatically ramp up production, or otherwise risk further weakening the U.S. arsenal and adversely affecting America’s ability to react to dangers from China and other potential foes, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“For U.S. policy makers, the critical question regarding our policy towards Ukraine is quickly becoming more a what we can do for Ukraine, not necessarily what we should do,” Dan Caldwell, a senior advisor to Concerned Veterans for America and vice president for foreign policy at Stand Together, told the DCNF. “U.S. stockpiles of munitions are becoming dangerously depleted and it will take years for U.S. production capacity to catch up.” (RELATED: NATO Can’t Keep Up With Ukraine’s Latest Weapons Demand After Putin Once Again Escalates Attacks: REPORT)

As of Oct. 14, the U.S. has committed $17.6 billion in security assistance since the Russian invasion; since August, the Pentagon has withdrawn $10.5 in weapons and equipment directly from U.S. stocks via the president’s executive drawdown privilege.

That includes over 1,400 Stingers, over 8,500 Javelins, 38 coveted High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and eight National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS), according to a fact sheet dated Oct. 4. It also includes thousands of electronic communications and surveillance systems as well as “funding for training, maintenance, and sustainment.”

All of that aid has put the largest strain on the defense-industrial base since the Korean War, experts told the DCNF.

The U.S. has “pretty much run out of 155 millimeter Howitzers and 155 millimeter ammunition” after sending roughly 900,000 of the highly effective rounds to Ukraine, Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who formerly worked on defense budget and acquisition issues for the Department of Defense (DOD), told the DCNF.

“The problem isn’t that there isn’t money,” Cancian said to the DCNF. “The problem is that the [DOD] is a bit slow putting that money on contract, and then of course the equipment will have to be produced.”

Accelerated production for systems like Javelins should have begun in May, not in September, when the Pentagon finally put in a funding request to Congress, said Cancian. “They were just late, slow to react to events,” he added.

The Pentagon’s latent preparation for long-term conflict in Ukraine won’t immediately impact the progress of the war itself, as the U.S. can continue with substitutions while the defense industry catches up on production of the latest, most advanced systems, Cancian said. However, it does increase the amount of risk the U.S. takes on by sustaining lower inventories in the meantime.

“We are making real tradeoffs against other national security priorities,” Caldwell also told the DCNF.

Unusual aggression from China and North Korea has brought home the concern that the U.S. might find itself engaged in great power conflict, which would put very different strains on the U.S. economy and defense industry than those the U.S. has grown familiar with during the 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, experts explained.

A land-based conflict with North Korea, for example, would require the same types of equipment the U.S. has sent to Ukraine, Cancian told the DCNF. “The risk would be a Korean War kind of situation,” he said, because “ground forces participate heavily.”

Upgrading production capacity is “crucial for our ability to deter China, sell more munitions to allies and partners and maintain our unique industrial workforce in this area,” Oklahoma Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe, Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said to the DCNF.

Soldiers of Ukraine’s 5th Regiment of Assault Infantry put ammunition into a crate before setting a US-made MK-19 automatic grenade launcher towards Russian positions in less than 800 metres away at a front line near Toretsk in the Donetsk region on October 12, 2022, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP via Getty Images)

To make up for a shortage in some munitions, the U.S. has substituted alternatives, such as 105 mm artillery rounds for the 155 mm, which is not likely to have much effect on the battlefield, Cancian explained to the DCNF. The U.S. could also purchase more weapons off the international market, as well as continue pressuring allies to uphold their verbal commitments.

The latter option may be exemplified in the latest Ukrainian aid package, announced Friday, which includes $725 million mostly for ammunition rather than the long-range weapons platforms Ukraine has requested, according to Reuters. Other allies, such as Germany and Spain, have supplied the additional air defense platforms in high demand following Russia’s renewed missile campaign against Ukraine.

Congress should also authorize a supplemental warfighting budget of around $20 billion for 2023, keeping pace with the current rate of spending on Ukraine, Center for American Progress senior fellow and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence Korb explained to the DCNF.

The U.S. could also more aggressively employ the Defense Production Act, implemented during the Korean War, which experts said was the last time the U.S. defense industry experienced the level of heightened demand felt today. That could further exacerbate supply chain issues and increase the burden on taxpayers, however, Caldwell explained.

Korb disagreed.

“In the overall scheme of things, it’s not that expensive,” Korb said, especially given that the Senate’s version of the defense budget for 2023, currently under debate, clocked in at $847 billion. “This is a horrible war, but compared to Iraq and Afghanistan or Vietnam, it’s not, in terms of expenditures.”

Congress authorized $147 billion in procurement spending in the defense budget for 2022; spending on defense articles in 2023 could be even larger, with the Senate seeking $157 billion for procurement.

Rebuilding the U.S. military’s arsenal is critical to its ability to meet future challenges, according to Inhofe. “If we get this right, we would not only accelerate the end of the war in Ukraine, but meaningfully change Beijing’s willingness to engage in aggression in the future,” he said.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

The Daily Caller

10. Special Operations News Update, Oct 17, 2022

Special Operations News Update, Oct 17, 2022 | SOF News

sof.news · by SOF News · October 17, 2022

Curated news, analysis, and commentary about special operations, national security, and conflicts around the world.

Photo: German and Dutch paratroopers conduct jump training during Swift Response 22 at a Military Training Area Lest, Lithuania, May 9, 2022. Exercise Swift Response 2022 is an annual multinational training exercise, which takes place in Eastern Europe, the Arctic High North, Baltics and Balkans from May 2-20. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Tamillyah Jo)

Do you receive our daily newsletter? If not, you can sign up here and enjoy it five (almost) days a week with your morning coffee (or afternoon tea depending on where in the world you are).

SOF News

LTG (Ret) Fran Beaudette Now With Warrior Sportsmen. The former commander of the United States Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) will now lead Warrior Sportsmen as the newly elected President and Chairman of the Board of Directors. The mission of Warrior Sportsmen is to provide US Army Special Forces (Green Berets) a means to enhance recovery from the physical, mental, and emotional stress caused by injury or long-term overseas deployments.

NSWC Report on Trainee Death. Naval Special Warfare Command released its Line of Duty investigation into the death of Seaman Kyle Mullen. He was a Navy SEAL candidate who died on February 4, 2022 immediately after completing “Hell Week”, during BUD/S training. His death was in the line of duty and Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) were not a contributing cause of death. According to the autopsy report, Mullen died of acute pneumonia with cardiomegaly as a contributing factor in the hours after successfully completing Hell Week. A separate investigation is being conducted by the Commander, Naval Education and Training Command (NETC). Members of the Navy SEAL community have been reprimanded (Los Angeles Times, 14 Oct 2022) over the death of the trainee. Read the NSWC press release dated 12 Oct 2022. Another article on the death of Mullen provides more information not provided in the NSWC press release. Read “Instructed Not To Call 911: Report Reveals Confusion, Failure and Fear in SEAL Candidate Death”, Military.com, October 12, 2022. See also an article by The Washington Post.

JSOC Brief. Read about the creation, history, purpose, organization, and missions of the Joint Special Operations Command. Jordan Smith provides a detailed brief on JSOC and its missions of counterterrorism, counter proliferation, AFO, hostage rescue, HVT kill or capture, and more. “JSOC: America’s Joint Special Operations Command”, Grey Dynamics, October 14, 2022.

USSOCOM’s Deployed SOTFs. An article by Walter Pincus provides information of the various Special Operations Tasks Forces that are deployed worldwide. “Change is in the Mission for U.S. Special Operations Command”, The Cipher Brief, October 12, 2022.

Defense Strategies Institute presents SOF & Worldwide Operations, December 7-8, 2022, Tampa, Florida. The 11th Annual SOF & Worldwide Symposium will convene senior level leaders and decision makers from across the Special Operations Community, regional combatant commands, Department of State, intelligence community, academia, and industry.

Gen (Ret) Scott Miller with Sig Sauer. The former commander of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and last commanding general of NATO’s Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan has joined Sig Sauer, Inc. as Defense Advisor. The firm provides weapons and other equipment for military, law enforcement, and commercial users.

EOD Soldiers Support SF. U.S. Army EOD technicians are training at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Read more in “Explosive Ordnance Disposal Soldiers sharpen Special Forces support skills in Danger Zone”, Army.mil, October 14, 2022.

Ranger Deaths. Three Army Rangers of 1st Ranger Battalion have died since July 2022. Two of them were suicides and a third death is under investigation. The most recent death occurred on October 6th. “Two Army Rangers have died by suicide at Hunter Army Airfield since the end of July”, Task & Purpose, October 15, 2022.

7th SFGA Gets Child Care Center – Finally. A child development center will be located on Camp Bull Simons in Florida. Families of the 7th Special Forces Group have been asking for this for years. Child care locations are sparse in the area. “These Florida military families will finally get a child care center”, Army Times, October 14, 2022.

International SOF

Qatar Naval SOF Training Centre. Qatar has a new training facility for its naval special forces. It has been established on the eastern side of the Bay of Zekreet in western Qatar. The facility can train 200 personnel at time and consists of a indoor range, urban warfare training area, and other facilities. “Qatar shows new naval special forces training centre”, Janes.com, October 12, 2022.

British and Swedish Rangers Train Together. Two elite units took part in Exercise Jagare in Arvidsjaur, Sweden. The British Army’s Ranger Regiment and Sweden’s Norrland Dragoon Regiment took part in long range distance patrols and reconnaissance missions. “New bonds forged between British and Swedish Rangers”, UK Army, October 14, 2022.

SOF History

Project 404 – Air Advising in Laos. In the mid-1960s the U.S. Air Force began the mission of providing the Kingdom of Laos with covert air support. The project changed codenames frequently, which made it difficult to track this secret effort. A great history of the air advisory and support effort can be found in “Project 404: United States Air Force Advisory Mission and the CIA’s Secret War in Laos”, Grey Dynamics, October 3, 2022.

Air Force’s Brown Beret is Retired. A unit that played a major role in building up friendly air forces for decades has been inactivated. “The end of the brown beret: Air Force special ops squadron shuts down after 28 years advising allied aviators”, Task & Purpose, October 10, 2022.

Commentary

Navy SEAL Training – It’s Supposed to be Hard. Commander (Ret) Dan O’Shea, a former U.S. Navy SEAL, provides his perspective on outsiders weighing in on the difficult training candidates at BUD/S experience. He provides the historical background on why the training is so demanding and worries about attempts to ‘soften’ the training. “Navy SEAL Training is Brutal for a Reason”, Armed Forces Press, September 14, 2022.

Don’t Nerf SEAL Training. A retired Navy SEAL officer has come out against softening up BUD/S training despite the recent training death of a Navy SEAL candidate. The Silver Star recipient and book author says that the BUD/S training pales in comparison to combat and making it less grueling would ultimately weaken the SEAL teams. “Jocko Willink Warns Against Nerfing ‘Brutal’ SEAL Training”, by Mac Caltrider, Coffee or Die Magazine, October 12, 2022.

SOF: Total Defense and Resistance. Dr. Kevin D. Stringer has penned a paper entitled “Special Operations Forces (SOF): The Integrators for Total Defense and Resistance”, Journal on Baltic Security, Volume 8, Issue 1, October 3, 2022, PDF, 11 pages. He states that two key components for any effective Total Defense concept are national special operations forces and volunteer, citizen-soldier territorial defense forces.

USAF and SFA – Not So Much. Apparently, the Air Force believes that it no longer needs units dedicated to the air advisor mission. It is inactivating units like the 6th Special Operations Squadron that conducted Aviation Foreign Internal Defense (AvFID) with its Combat Aviation Advisors. AFSOC CAAs have deployed to more than 45 partner nations and engaged with more than 40 different types of aircraft to carry out their mission. However, there are some concerns raised with this apparent shift away from maintaining a dedicated security force assistance capability. Read “Integrated by Design: Building a Partner Air Force”, War on the Rocks, October 14, 2022.

National Security

10 U.S.C. 127e – CT Funding Authority. For the past two decades DoD has used a little-known counterterrorism funding structure to create and ‘control’ proxy forces across the world; primarily in Africa and Asia. These countries include Afghanistan, Iraq, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Niger, Somalia, Yemen, and others. 127e allows U.S. forces to provide support to foreign militaries, paramilitaries, and private individuals that are supporting US CT operations. While 127e provides a tool for conducting operations, it is not itself a legal authorization for operations. The two authorities that allow DoD to conduct CT opns are the 2011 AUMF and Article II of the Constitution. Katherine Yon Ebright explains 127e, the AUMF, and Article II in greater detail in “What Can a Secretive Funding Authority Tell Us About the Pentagon’s Use of Force Interpretations?”, Lawfare Blog, October 11, 2022.

Haiti in Crisis. A food and fuel shortage are contributing to a crisis in Haiti that is aggravated by gangs that have stymied efforts by the government to alleviate the problems facing Haitian citizens. The Haitian government has appealed to the international community for armed military forces to intervene and help restore order and stability. A U.S. interagency delegation visited the Caribbean nation on a two-day trip and met with government officials about the ongoing crisis. Canada is assisting with equipment. “Canada delivers long-awaited armored vehicles for Haiti police as gang attacks escalate”, Miami Herald, October 15, 2022. The equipment was transported from Canada by the Royal Canadian Air Force and U.S. Air Force. See also “U.S. Air Force delivers Haitian National Police equipment to Haiti”, U.S. Southern Command Press Release, October 15, 2022.

New Search and Rescue Helicopter. The Air Force’s HH-60W Jolly Green II combat search-and-rescue chopper has deployed overseas for the first time. The Air Force has declared initial operational capability of the chopper. (Lockheed Martin, Oct 2022). The aircraft came from the 347th Rescue Group based in Georgia. It is unknown where the Airman deployed to. “Air Force’s new search-and-rescue helicopter heads to first deployment”, Air Force Times, October 12, 2022.

U.S.-Africa Partnerships. There is an awareness within the U.S. military and political community that the two nations posing the most threat to U.S. interests in Africa is China and Russia. This is one of the reasons that the U.S. maintains a military presence on the continent. That . . . and the efforts to enhance Africa’s peace and prosperity and to bolster Africa’s ability to solve regional and global problems. There is no doubt that there is a competition underway between the major powers to shape events in Africa. It is the United States Africa Command’s mission to build U.S.-Africa partnerships that will assist Africa in the coming years as well as advance America’s national interest. “U.S. National Security Strategy: Build 21st century U.S.-Africa partnerships”, AFRICOM, October 14, 2022.

Afghanistan Update. The Department of State has issued an Inspector General report on Afghan Special Immigrant Program Metrics and has imposed visa restrictions on Taliban members. Read Afghanistan news updates on immigration, resettlement, humanitarian crisis, commentary, books, podcasts, events, and more about Afghanistan (Afghan Report, Oct 14, 2022).

U.S. IO Efforts – Overt and Covert. The United States military has had an on and off again approach to the use of social media to spread conduct influence operations. The efforts have been met with criticism. “U.S. Influence Operations: The Military’s Resurrected Digital Campaign for Hearts and Minds”, Lawfare, October 11, 2022.

Ukraine, ROC, and Info War. At the Association of the United States Army conference in Washington, D.C. military leaders, including the USASOC commander, spoke of the importance of info war training in future conflicts. They pointed to the resistance operating concept employed by the Ukrainians in the fight against Russia as well as the importance of being able to get ‘the message out’. “Ukraine’s experience spurs allies’ interest in ‘resistance,’ info war training”, Breaking Defense, October 11, 2022.

Arrow Security & Training, LLC is a corporate sponsor of SOF News. AST offers a wide range of training and instruction courses and programs to include language and cultural services, training, role playing, and software and simulation. https://arrowsecuritytraining.com/

Upcoming Events

November 8-9, 2022. Fort Bragg, NC

Modern Warfare Week

Global SOF Foundation

November 17-18, 2022

33rd Annual NDIA SO/LIC Symposium

NDIA

December 7-8, 2022

SOF & Worldwide Operations

Defense Strategies Institute (DSI)

Podcasts, Books, Videos, and Movies

Podcast – Hope in the Trenches. Former Green Beret Ryan Hendrickson, the author of Tip of the Spear, is interviewed by Chaplain Wayne Clyne. DVIDS, October 15, 2022, one hour.

https://www.dvidshub.net/audio/70825/hope-trenches-sn2ep14-ryan-hendrickson-author-tip-spear

Video – Special Ops Contractor Training Afghan Partners, The Team House, October 10, 2022. Joan Barker talks about her time with the Peace Corps, as a contractor in Afghanistan, assisting in language training on USSOCOM contracts, and her work helping at-risk Afghans evacuate Afghanistan after the Taliban took power. 2 hours.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzCL8ZgVjfs

Video – Romania’s Special Operations Forces in Action, NATO, September 26, 2022, 2 minutes.

https://shape.nato.int/news-archive/2022/romanias-special-operations-forces-in-action

sof.news · by SOF News · October 17, 2022

11.  The Five Reasons Wars Happen

Excerpts:

Five Reasons for War

Consider Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. What do these five tell us about why peace broke down?

1. Unaccountable. A personalized autocrat, Putin doesn’t have to weigh the interests of his soldiers and citizens.

2. Ideological. Consider Putin again. Most accounts of the current war dwell on his nationalist obsessions and desires for a glorious legacy.

3. Biased. Most accounts of Russia’s invasion stress Putin’s isolation and insulation from the truth. 

4. Uncertain. Too much focus on bias and misperception obscures the subtler role of uncertainty.

5. Unreliable. When a declining power faces a rising one, how can it trust the rising power to commit to peace? 

The Five Reasons Wars Happen - Modern War Institute

mwi.usma.edu · by Christopher Blattman · October 14, 2022

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Whether it is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threats of nuclear strikes or Chinese belligerence in the Taiwan Strait, the United States seems closer to a great power war than at any time in recent decades. But while the risks are real and the United States must prepare for each of these conflicts, by focusing on the times states fight—and ignoring the times they resolve their conflicts peacefully and prevent escalation—analysts and policymakers risk misjudging our rivals and pursuing the wrong paths to peace.

The fact is that fighting—at all levels from irregular warfare to large-scale combat operations—is ruinous and so nations do their best to avoid open conflict. The costs of war also mean that when they do fight countries have powerful incentives not to escalate and expand those wars—to keep the fighting contained, especially when it could go nuclear. This is one of the most powerful insights from both history and game theory: war is a last resort, and the costlier that war, the harder both sides will work to avoid it.

When analysts forget this fact, not only do they exaggerate the chances of war, they do something much worse: they get the causes all wrong and take the wrong steps to avert the violence.

Imagine intensive care doctors who, deluged with critically ill patients, forgot that humanity’s natural state is good health. That would be demoralizing. But it would also make them terrible at diagnosis and treatment. How could you know what was awry without comparing the healthy to the sick?

And yet, when it comes to war, most of us fall victim to this selection bias, giving most of our attention to the times peace failed. Few write books or news articles about the wars that didn’t happen. Instead, we spend countless hours tracing the threads of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, America’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, or the two world wars. When we do, it distorts our diagnosis and our treatments. For if we follow these calamitous events back to their root causes and preceding events, we often find a familiar list: bumbling leaders, ancient hatreds, intransigent ideologies, dire poverty, historic injustices, and a huge supply of weapons and impressionable young men. War seems to be their inevitable result.

Unfortunately, this ignores all the instances conflict was avoided. When social scientists look at these peaceful cases, they see a lot of the same preceding conditions—bumblers, hatreds, injustices, poverty, and armaments. All these so-called causes of war are commonplace. Prolonged violence is not. So these are probably not the chief causes of war.

Take World War I. Historians like to explain how Europe’s shortsighted, warmongering, nationalist leaders naively walked their societies into war. It was all a grand miscalculation, this story goes. The foibles of European leaders surely played a role, but to stop the explanation here is to forget all the world wars avoided up to that point. For decades, the exact same leaders had managed great crises without fighting. In the fifteen years before 1914 alone, innumerable continental wars almost—but never—happened: a British-French standoff in a ruined Egyptian outpost in Sudan in 1898; Russia’s capture of Britain’s far eastern ports in 1900; Austria’s seizure of Bosnia in 1908; two wars between the Balkan states in 1912 and 1913. A continent-consuming war could have been ignited in any one of these corners of the world. But it was not.

Likewise, it’s common to blame the war in Ukraine overwhelmingly on Putin’s obsessions and delusions. These surely played a role, but to stop here is to stop too soon. We must also pay attention to the conflicts that didn’t happen. For years, Russia cowed other neighbors with varying degrees of persuasion and force, from the subjugation of Belarus to “peacekeeping” missions in Kazakhstan. Few of these power contests came to blows. To find the real roots of fighting, analysts need to pay attention to these struggles that stay peaceful.

Enemies Prefer to Loathe One Another in Peace

Fighting is simply bargaining through violence. This is what Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung meant in 1938 when he said, “Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed.” Mao was echoing the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz who, a century before, reminded us that war is the continuation of politics by other means.

Of course, one of these means is far, far costlier than the other. Two adversaries have a simple choice: split the contested territory or stake in proportion to their relative strength, or go to war and gamble for the shrunken and damaged remains. It’s almost always better to look for compromise. For every war that ever was, a thousand others have been averted through discussion and concession.

Compromise is the rule because, for the most part, groups behave strategically: like players of poker or chess, they’re trying hard to think ahead, discern their opponents’ strength and plans, and choose their actions based on what they expect their opponents to do. They are not perfect. They make mistakes or lack information. But they have huge incentives to do their best.

This is the essential way to think about warfare: not as some base impulse or inevitability, but as the unusual and errant breakdown of incredibly powerful incentives for peace. Something had to interrupt the normal incentives for compromise, pushing opponents from normal politics, polarized and contentious, to bargaining through bloodshed.

This gives us a fresh perspective on war. If fighting is rare because it is ruinous, then every answer to why we fight is simple: a society or its leaders ignored the costs (or were willing to pay them). And while there is a reason for every war and a war for every reason, there are only so many logical ways societies overlook the costs of war—five, to be exact. From gang wars to ethnic violence, and from civil conflicts to world wars, the same five reasons underlie conflict at every level: war happens when a society or its leader is unaccountable, ideological, uncertain, biased, or unreliable.

Five Reasons for War

Consider Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. What do these five tell us about why peace broke down?

1. Unaccountable. A personalized autocrat, Putin doesn’t have to weigh the interests of his soldiers and citizens. He can pursue whatever course helps him preserve his regime’s control. When leaders go unchecked and are unaccountable to their people, they can ignore the costs of fighting that ordinary people bear. Instead, rulers can pursue their own agendas. That is why dictators are more prone to war.

2. Ideological. Consider Putin again. Most accounts of the current war dwell on his nationalist obsessions and desires for a glorious legacy. What costs and risks he does bear, Putin is willing to pay in pursuit of glory and ideology. This is just one example of intangible and ideological incentives for war that so many leaders possess—God’s glory, freedom, or some nationalist vision.

Societies have ideological incentives too. Unlike the people of Belarus or Kazakhstan, the Ukrainians refused to accept serious restrictions on their sovereignty despite what (at first) seemed to be relative military weakness. Like liberation movements throughout history—including the American revolutionaries—they have been willing to undertake the ruin and risks of fighting partly in pursuit of an ideal.

3. Biased. Most accounts of Russia’s invasion stress Putin’s isolation and insulation from the truth. He and his advisors grossly underestimated the difficulty of war. This is a story of institutional bias—a system that is unwilling to tell its leader bad news. Autocrats are especially prone to this problem, but intelligence failures plague democracies too. Leaders can be psychologically biased as well. Humans have an amazing ability to cling to mistaken beliefs. We can be overconfident, underestimating the ruin of war and overestimating our chances of victory. And we demonize and misjudge our opponents. These misperceptions can carry us to war.

4. Uncertain. Too much focus on bias and misperception obscures the subtler role of uncertainty. In the murky run-up to war, policymakers don’t know their enemy’s strength or resolve. How unified would the West be? How capably would Ukrainians resist? How competent was the Russian military? All these things were fundamentally uncertain, and many experts were genuinely surprised that Russia got a bad draw on all three—most of all, presumably, Putin himself.

But uncertainty doesn’t just mean the costs of war are uncertain, and invasion a gamble. There are genuine strategic impediments to getting good information. You can’t trust your enemy’s demonstrations of resolve, because they have reasons to bluff, hoping to extract a better deal without fighting. Any poker player knows that, amid the uncertainty, the optimal strategy is never to fold all the time. It’s never to call all the time, either. The best strategy is to approach it probabilistically—to occasionally gamble and invade.

5. Unreliable. When a declining power faces a rising one, how can it trust the rising power to commit to peace? Better to pay the brutal costs of war now, to lock in one’s current advantage. Some scholars argue that such shifts in power, and the commitment problems they create, are at the root of every long war in history—from World War I to the US invasion of Iraq. This is not why Russia invaded Ukraine, of course. Still, it may help to understand the timing. In 2022, Russia had arguably reached peak leverage versus Ukraine. Ukraine was acquiring drones and defensive missiles. And the country was growing more democratic and closer to Europe—to Putin, a dangerous example of freedom nearby. How could Ukraine commit to stop either move? We don’t know what Putin and his commanders debated behind closed doors, but these trends may have presented a now-or-never argument for invasion.

Putting the five together, as with World War I and so many other wars, fallible, biased leaders with nationalist ambitions ignored the costs of war and drove their societies to violent ruin. But the explanation doesn’t end there. There are strategic roots as well. In the case of Russia, as elsewhere, unchecked power, uncertainty, and commitment problems arising from shifting power narrowed the range of viable compromises to the point where Putin’s psychological and institutional failures—his misperceptions and ideology—could lead him to pursue politics by violent means.

The Paths to Peace

If war happens when societies or their leaders overlook its costs, peace is preserved when our institutions make those costs difficult to ignore. Successful, peaceful societies have built themselves some insulation from all five kinds of failure. They have checked the power of autocrats. They have built institutions that reduce uncertainty, promote dialogue, and minimize misperceptions. They have written constitutions and bodies of law that make shifts in power less deadly. They have developed interventions—from sanctions to peacekeeping forces to mediators—that minimize our strategic and human incentives to fight rather than compromise.

It is difficult, however, to expect peace in a world where power in so many countries remains unchecked. Highly centralized power is one of the most dangerous things in the world, because it accentuates all five reasons for war. With unchecked leaders, states are more prone to their idiosyncratic ideologies and biases. In the pursuit of power, autocrats also tend to insulate themselves from critical information. The placing of so much influence in one person’s hands adds to the uncertainty and unpredictability of the situation. Almost by definition, unchecked rulers have trouble making credible commitments.

That is why the real root cause of this current war is surely Putin’s twenty-year concentration of power in himself. And it is why the world’s most worrisome trend may be in China, where a once checked and institutionalized leader has gathered more and more power in his person. There is, admittedly, little a nation can do to alter the concentration of power within its rivals’ political systems. But no solution can be found without a proper diagnosis of the problem.

Christopher Blattman is a professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. This article draws from his new book, Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace, published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.

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

Image credit: Oles_Navrotskyi, via depositphotos.com

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mwi.usma.edu · by Christopher Blattman · October 14, 2022

12. The Renaming of Military Bases - What is Past is Not Prologue

The Renaming of Military Bases - What is Past is Not Prologue | Small Wars Journal

Small Wars Journal

The Renaming of Military Bases - What is Past is Not Prologue

By Hy Rothstein

“What is past is prologue" is a quotation by William Shakespeare from his play The Tempest. In contemporary use the phrase means that history sets the context for the present. This phrase does not apply to the decision to rename U.S. military bases. While Congressional and military leaders may have good reasons to take these actions today, we are very fortunate that the leaders of the post-Civil War period did not think like today’s leaders. If they did, it is very likely that the country would have been racked by insurgency and the Union would have not survived after winning the war.

Calls to rename military bases and other military assets began in earnest after the 2020 murder of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis and the ensuing national reckoning on racial injustice. The 2021 National Defense Authorization Act called for a commission to identify military assets that commemorate the Confederacy. As a result of the commission’s report to Congress, the services are moving to rename nine Army posts, two Navy ships, and remove or modify a host of monuments and tributes to the Confederacy.

History means more than simply what happened in the past. The full story behind the history reveals the truth. Equally as important, understanding past decisions requires one to walk in the shoes of those decision makers, to think in time. What we know and feel today about slavery is very different than what people knew and felt in 1860. Ignoring the story behind what was done more than a century ago and holding past leaders to contemporary standards is mistaken. Today’s standards will likely not hold in the next century either.

The ”Lost Cause” was a bad cause. Confederate claims that the Civil War was just, heroic, and not centered on slavery are incorrect. Even most of the Founders knew slavery was wrong. But the forging and adoption of the U.S. Constitution required “bargain and compromise” leaving imperfections in the document that were necessary to become a nation. President Lincoln personally favored immediate emancipation, but he also deeply supported the Constitution. The mainstream anti-slavery position of the new Republican party argued that the Constitution should be used to eventually end slavery, but the Constitution gave the President no authority to abolish slavery directly. Ending slavery was the goal but doing so was complex and politically challenging.

Many of the men who bases are named for were loathsome individuals by contemporary standards, perhaps some of them even by the standards of their time. And maybe some bases and other federal properties should be renamed, to include those named after undeserving people not associated with the Confederacy. But the story that ultimately allowed southern leaders to name forts in their states after the war is important, specifically the circumstances surrounding the surrender at Appomattox and the reconciliation that followed. It is also important to examine more closely the charge of “treason” that is vigorously used to justify renaming these bases.

On the surface, the charge of “treason” seems unequivocal. But in the mid-19th century reality was more complicated. The story can be traced to the 1787 Constitutional Convention. The Convention was dominated by debate over the power, rights, and sovereignty of states versus the power to be allocated to a federal government. Edmund Randolph’s early proposal for a “national” government was followed by silence on the Convention floor. State representatives were stunned. Two of the three delegates from New York quit the Convention. Randolph’s proposal was viewed as an attempt to overthrow state governments. State loyalty had been American loyalty from the beginning.

The term “federal” replaced national but the states-rights issue remained front and center. The delegates ultimately acknowledged the need for a strong central government after James Madison helped alleviate some of the concerns by advocating the federal congress be granted distinct, enumerated, and hence restricted powers only. Madison also made it clear that using force against a state was impractical and unjust and would look “like a declaration of war.”

From the ratification of the Constitution through the Civil War loyalty to state almost always superseded loyalty to the federal government. The states effectively granted the federal government its authority and for many of the nation’s political leaders that authority could be withdrawn. Dual sovereignty allowed this. Today it is easy to claim the attack on Ft. Sumter was a treasonous act. But in 1861, the sovereign rights of states versus the supremacy of the federal government was still an open question. Therefore, for the South Carolinians, attacking Ft. Sumter was an act of securing the state, not treason. The Union’s victory partially settled the dual sovereignty issue.

The more important issues that are either underappreciated, unknown, or willfully ignored in current discussions are the decisions affecting surrender and reconciliation. The war’s termination and securing the country’s future was a remarkable achievement that required the active support of defeated Southerners. Obtaining this support was a non-trivial matter. It is not inconceivable to imagine that the Union might have failed in its goal to bring the country back together if shortsighted leaders had prevailed.

Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, 701 words long, contains some of the most memorable phrases in American political oratory. The war was near its end, along with the institution of slavery. Lincoln did not speak of happiness, but of sadness. He did not judge the South. It offered Lincoln’s most profound reflections on the causes and meaning of the war. The "scourge of war," he explained, was best understood as divine punishment for the sin of slavery, a sin in which all Americans, North and South, were complicit.

The President sought to avoid harsh treatment of the defeated rebels by reminding everyone of how wrong both sides had been in imagining what lay before them when the war began four years earlier. The speech was a call for compassion and reconciliation and a justification for his pragmatic approach for binding the nation’s wounds. Lincoln rejected triumphalism while recognizing the unmistakable evil of slavery.

The President’s words provided the direction for Gen Grant when he met with Gen Lee in Appomattox a month after the inauguration. Lee’s aide de camp, Col Marshall, provides an account of the famous scene. The mood was solemn but friendly. There was small talk between Lee and Grant and their parties. The terms of surrender were exceedingly generous. Grant instructed his quartermaster to deliver food to the hungry Confederates. The next day many Union officers rode over to Lee’s headquarters to pay their respects. The leaders had begun to bind the wounds of war and start down the road to reunion. The scene was like an estranged family coming back together.

Gen Chamberlain, the hero of “Little Round Top,” was designated to receive the formal surrender on behalf of Gen Grant. As the defeated Confederate Army stood before him, he was deeply moved and took it upon himself to call the Union forces to attention and render a salute of arms as a token of recognition to a worthy foe. Chamberlain’s own words best describe the scene. “Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood; men whom neither toils and suffering, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond;--was not such manhood to be welcomed back into the Union so tested and assured?...How could we help falling on our knees, all of us together, and praying to God to pity and forgive us all!”

Lee's military career ended, and his civilian life began when he returned to Richmond and his family on April 15th. The solitude did not last long. He was asked to become president of Washington College in Lexington. Lee was the perfect choice. He had been superintendent of West Point earlier in his military career, and he had a very recognizable name in 1865. Lee hesitated, but eventually accepted the position. He wrote to the college’s trustees that he believed, "it is the duty of every citizen, in the present condition of the Country, to do all in his power to aid in the restoration of peace and harmony." Lee's personal involvement with many of his students reflected his desire to create a new generation of Americans.

In response to the bitterness of a Confederate widow, Lee wrote, "Dismiss from your mind all sectional feeling, and bring [your children] up to be Americans." Lee’s efforts after the war were genuine, necessary, and critical for the future of our country.

In a letter to Thurlow Weed a few days after he delivered his Second Inaugural Address, Lincoln stated that his message would not be “immediately popular,” with its inclusive message and refusal to lay blame. For Lincoln, “It is a truth which I thought needed to be told.”

The truth needs to be told today too. The wholesale renaming of everything linked to the Confederacy ignores the legitimate decisions of the past. The decisions and actions of many of the key Civil War leaders laid the foundation for reconciliation, reconstruction, and the very visible and tangible presence of African Americans today in the commercial, political, cultural, and social fabric of our society. Today’s leaders are not more virtuous than yesterdays. Renaming the bases will not erase centuries of racism. History must be studied with all its twists and turns to understand the context of its times. Doing so improves our ability to navigate the future. Now, “What is past is prologue" may become a reality when even more “virtuous” future leaders find fault with the people whose names will soon adorn many military bases replacing those names selected a century ago. Even Fort Liberty may someday require a name change.

About the Author(s)

Hy Rothstein

Hy Rothstein recently retired from the faculty of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. He is a graduate of West Point and holds a Ph.D. from Tufts University in International Relations. He has written and edited numerous books on war as well as book chapters and journal articles on national security topics.

Small Wars Journal

13.  Tracking Competition in Cyberspace: Announcing the Dyadic Cyber Incident Dataset Version 2.0

Excerpts:

Currently, our team is thinking how to incorporate information operations more fully into the data, eventually transforming the dataset into a Dyadic Information Incidents Dataset (DIID). This expansion cannot come at a more crucial time with the new Joint Publication 3-04, Information in Joint Operations approved in September 2022. Assessing new DoD joint operations in the information environment, where cyber operations will play a crucial role, will become increasingly important, and the DCID will be able to assist.

We are also actively coding cyber operations during the Russo-Ukrainian War using different data source collection methods to maintain active awareness of the war and to provide multiple sources of incident data on this important conflict, hopefully avoiding bias in data collection.

We encourage readers to get in contact with any of the authors if they wish to contribute, note mistakes and errors, or provide suggestions for future efforts. Ultimately, we hope DCID version 2.0 serves as a valuable resource for the entire cybersecurity community. As we noted at the outset, answering difficult questions about security, escalation, and deterrence in the cyber domain requires data in pursuit of answers to critical ongoing security challenges.

As an aside I would note the Joint Doctrine on Information in Joint Operations, JP 3-04 is not for public distribution. It is not classified but distribution is limited. That means it cannot be used by think tanks and academia (I guess the Joint Staff could deem it as needed for academia and think tanks but that would seem to defeat the purpose of making it limited release.)

6. Releasability

LIMITED. This JP is approved for limited release. The authors of this publication have concluded that information in this publication should be disseminated on an as-needed basis and is limited to common access cardholders.  Requests for distribution to non- common access cardholders should be directed to the Joint Staff J-7.

Tracking Competition in Cyberspace: Announcing the Dyadic Cyber Incident Dataset Version 2.0 - Modern War Institute

mwi.usma.edu · by Ryan C. Maness · October 14, 2022

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What does cyber conflict actually look like? Do adversary states exhibit patterns of behavior in the cyber domain that make them susceptible to deterrence efforts? And are cyber operations better understood as a constellation of one-off events, or are there rhythms and discernible trends that connect these operations into a defined landscape?

These are questions researchers have long grappled with, and they have implications for both planners, policymakers, and the public. We can speculate and hypothesize—and there is value in doing so in an informed fashion—but answering these questions with the maximum degree of detail and nuance requires a very specific input: data.

That’s why our research team recently published version 2.0 of the Dyadic Cyber Incident Dataset (DCID). We explain in detail why we believe this dataset is important in an upcoming article in The Cyber Defense Review, to appear early in 2023, (available now on SSRN). We believe there is an immediate need for this data in the policy and strategic community, and we invite others to use the data to further their own research.

This comprehensive interstate interactions dataset extends from 2000 to 2020 and can be used by military analysts and practitioners to inform the behavioral patterns of the United States’ four main nation-state adversaries—China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea—at the strategic level. Specific operations and tactics can be developed for each adversary in order to better deter in cyberspace, which is an important domain in the integrated deterrence concept put forth by DoD in 2022.

What is DCID?

The cybersecurity and national defense communities requires an open-source resource of cyber actions as they become an ever-increasing threat to global stability. The DCID is the only peer-reviewed source of cybersecurity conflict incident data. This dataset is focused on state action during ongoing rivalry to enable data collection.

First demonstrated in a Foreign Affairs article in 2012 by two of our authors, the initial version of the data was published in the Journal of Peace Research in 2014. The data was further updated to support the books Cyber War versus Cyber Realities in 2015 and Cyber Strategy in 2018.

Since its initial publication, the data has been used in multiple peer-reviewed publications and has provided a wealth of information on nation-state cyber security activities. After an initial major expansion to version 1.5, the newly released version 2.0 represents another dramatic expansion and a rebuild of the data enabled by collaboration with external parties, including US Army Cyber Command and the Naval Postgraduate School, that seek to examine the domain through advanced social science methods.

Why Data Matters

All too often pundits rely on guesswork to make empirical claims about cyber interactions without demonstrating that their theories can be examined using recent historical examples. We hope to avoid prognostication in the field of cybersecurity and push the community toward verification of empirical claims. This is critical for the military community, which cannot rely on fictions to outline practice.

Yet, the collection of international security data is always an ongoing process. No dataset is ever final or complete; rather, there are only different versions of the data. We constantly strive to update and maintain this data as it represents an important independent resource to the community. That’s why we have published DCID version 2.0.

What is Included in DCID?

While collecting cybersecurity interaction data was said to be nearly impossible by some because cyber interactions are secret. Yet, there have been many efforts to collect such data because operations in covert domains are not precluded from coding and identification. It only becomes increasingly difficult over time as nation-state actors seek to avoid attribution for cybersecurity actions. Here, we focus on actions between active international rivals to manage data collection efforts. Eventually, our goal is to produce automated versions of the data leveraging machine-learning algorithms, but the current state of the art remains human-enabled data collection efforts.

The DCID represents a full dataset with over twenty variables. Other cybersecurity dataset collection efforts that have popped up over the years were consulted and this data represents the most advanced accounting of legitimate nation-state action in the cyber domain. While there might be terabytes of data available on the technical aspects of cyberattacks, DCID focuses on identified cyber operations between nation-states, which can include many different cyberattacks within one operation. For now, we exclude nonstate actor incidents and criminal incidents, focusing instead on interstate interactions as they relate to international security. However, we have added a binary indicator to account for initiation by third-party actors.

The data has been collected by multiple parties to ensure redundancy using various sources. Each data point includes a summary news article by an external source and now, new for version 2.0, a technical report associated with the incident. This allows for both technical and political forms of identification. The team leads then examined each data point for accuracy and standards, finally conducting reliability examinations of the data to ensure consistent standards over time.

While the United States government does not own or produce the data, numerous state agents contributed to the project. We cannot remove this bias and can only seek to moderate it by openness, consistent standards, and collaboration with the community to maintain constant updates. DCID version 2.0 contains more US cyber incidents than existing collection efforts. Our researchers used the same open-source data efforts to gather information on US incidents as all other states in the database. In other words, US incidents in the database were included based on public attribution and do not represent a government attribution.

What Do We Find?

Version 2.0 of DCID now contains 433 incidents. This new version expands the timeline and adds new variables for such factors as nation-state-enabled ransomware, supply chain attacks, critical infrastructure sector attacks, and connections to ongoing information operations. The key variables include the actor, incident type, target, method, severity, and objectives. (The forthcoming Cyber Defense Review article and the codebook we published along with the dataset provide a complete accounting of methods and variables.)

Analyzing the dataset yields several important findings. First, espionage attacks continue to make up most of the dataset at 61 percent of all incidents. Simple disruptions make up 28 percent of the data, while more serious degradation attacks make up only 10.7 percent of the total incidents.

Second, it is no surprise that China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and the United States represent the most active states in the data, but other actors such as Pakistan, Israel, Iran, and Ukraine have a part to play in the domain as either a target or attacker. Three notable target increases include the United Kingdom (333 percent increase from DCID 1.5), Turkey (175 percent increase), and Vietnam (100 percent increase).

Third, with the expansion in total incidents from 266 in version 1.5 of the data to version 2.0 of the data concessions as a percentage of the data declines overall from 4.5 percent to 2.8 percent. Concessions are very rare in cyber interactions and have become rarer in time as the data expands to cover more incidents. We also noted that in total, 22.4 percent of the cyber operations contain associated information operations which indicates the clear association between cyber and information operations over time.

Finally, we developed a ten-point scale to identify the severity of individual incidents, ranging from the low end of one (probing/packet sniffing without kinetic cyber) to the high end of ten (massive death as a direct result of cyber incident). There remain few incidents at the level of five or six, with none above. However, there are many more level-four incidents, representing an increase of 117 percent since version 1.5, to now include 115 incidents.

What Comes Next?

In short, this dataset update enables cybersecurity researchers to examine their theories with greater accuracy, or to dive down and conduct more fine-grained analysis on a constellation of cases that is well defined. This data enables rich quantitative analysis while at the same time supporting thick qualitative analysis.

With this data one can explore, for instance, which states leverage cyber operations and their success rate, or the targets, sectors, and impact of cyber operations by type and time. In the past, we have demonstrated that there can be a foreign policy impact from cyber operations, predicting the Albanian reaction to Iran’s recent attack. In this notable incident, Albania weighed invoking NATO Article 5 and swiftly banned Iranian diplomats from the country after Iran launched destructive cyber operations because Albania hosted a conference with banned Islamic political group MEK. Other researchers can also explore claims of attribution, escalation, coordination, and cross-domain dynamics. Recently, William Akoto even explored the cyber implications of international trade using the DCID data.

Currently, our team is thinking how to incorporate information operations more fully into the data, eventually transforming the dataset into a Dyadic Information Incidents Dataset (DIID). This expansion cannot come at a more crucial time with the new Joint Publication 3-04, Information in Joint Operations approved in September 2022. Assessing new DoD joint operations in the information environment, where cyber operations will play a crucial role, will become increasingly important, and the DCID will be able to assist.

We are also actively coding cyber operations during the Russo-Ukrainian War using different data source collection methods to maintain active awareness of the war and to provide multiple sources of incident data on this important conflict, hopefully avoiding bias in data collection.

We encourage readers to get in contact with any of the authors if they wish to contribute, note mistakes and errors, or provide suggestions for future efforts. Ultimately, we hope DCID version 2.0 serves as a valuable resource for the entire cybersecurity community. As we noted at the outset, answering difficult questions about security, escalation, and deterrence in the cyber domain requires data in pursuit of answers to critical ongoing security challenges.

Ryan C. Maness is an assistant professor in the Department of Defense Analysis and the director of the DoD Information Strategy Research Center at the Naval Postgraduate School.

Brandon Valeriano is a distinguished senior fellow at the Marine Corps University and a senior advisor to Cyberspace Solarium 2.0.

Kathryn Hedgecock is an assistant professor of international affairs at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

Jose M. Macias is an incoming master of public policy student at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy and a Pearson fellow with the Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts.

Benjamin Jensen is a professor at the School of Advanced Warfighting at the Marine Corps University and a senior fellow for future war, gaming, and strategy in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense, or that of any organization the authors are affiliated with.

Image credit: Sgt. Tom Lamb, US Army National Guard

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mwi.usma.edu · by Ryan C. Maness · October 14, 2022

14. Ukraine war: Kyiv attacked by 'kamikaze' drones

Ukraine war: Kyiv attacked by 'kamikaze' drones

BBC · by Menu

Watch: People flee Kyiv building after explosion

By Paul Adams in Kyiv and Merlyn Thomas in London

BBC News

Russia has hit Ukraine with a wave of attacks, dive-bombing the capital, Kyiv, with what appear to be Iranian-made "kamikaze" drones.

Air strikes hit critical infrastructure in three regions, cutting off electricity in hundreds of villages across the country, according to Prime Minister Denys Shmygal.

At least eight people were killed, four in Sumy and four in Kyiv.

Calls have mounted for sanctions on Iran, which denies supplying drones.

A week ago, the Ukrainian capital was hit by Russian missiles at rush hour, part of nationwide attacks which left 19 dead.

Mr Shmygal said the new strikes had hit regions of Kyiv, Dnipro and Sumy.

Four people were killed when an energy-generating facility was hit in Sumy, according to Ukraine's Deputy Interior Minister, Yevhen Yenin.

"Russia is hunting for all energy-related facilities," Mr Yenin warned. "They want to cause chaos in the energy industry."

"It shows their desperation," said Andriy Yermak, head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's staff.

In the port city of Mykolaiv, sunflower oil tanks were set on fire by the suicide drones, said the city's mayor, Oleksandr Senkevich.

Mr Senkevich said three drones had ignited the tanks at Mykolaiv late on Sunday evening, hours before the attack in Kyiv.

A Ukrainian air force official said since last night, 37 drones had been destroyed, which had all flown into the country from the south.

Image source, Telegram

Image caption,

Tanks at the port city of Mykolaiv were set on fire by Russian drone attacks, according to the city's mayor

The low buzzing of the slow-moving drones is becoming familiar across the country.

The city reverberated to the rattle of gunfire as anti-aircraft batteries frantically tried to shoot them down. Video on social media appeared to show one interception.

National Police officers shooting down an Iranian drone.

WE NEED AIR DEFENSE! pic.twitter.com/AvdviH6RhE

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) October 17, 2022

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.View original tweet on Twitter

The explosions on Monday began at about 06:30 local time (03:30 GMT). The most recent was at about 08:10 local time.

Two were close to the city centre, with sirens and car alarms heard across the area.

"The enemy can attack our cities, but it won't be able to break us," said President Zelensky, describing the attacks as "terrorising the civilian population".

Kyiv's mayor, Vitaliy Klitschko, described the attacks as a "genocide of the Ukrainian people. The Russians need a Ukraine without Ukrainians."

Mr Klitschko said that the city authorities were expecting soon the arrival of air defence systems to protect the capital from drone attacks.

One Reuters news agency journalist reported seeing fragments of a drone used in the attack that bore the words "For Belgorod".

The Russian border city of Belgorod has been hit several times since Russia invaded Ukraine. Moscow blames Kyiv for the attacks.

Two gunmen - who had volunteered to fight in Ukraine - killed 11 people on Saturday at a Russian military training camp in the Belgorod region.

Writing on the Telegram social media site, Mr Klitschko said there were four strikes in Kyiv, although residents heard five or six explosions. He also told people to stay in air raid shelters.

But despite the warnings, the streets were far from deserted. Between the first and second set of strikes, plenty of people seemed to be going about their Monday morning business.

Mr Yermak described the kamikaze attacks as Russia's "death throes" and said Ukraine needed more air defence systems "as soon as possible".

Some EU foreign ministers, including those from France and Germany, are calling for new sanctions against Iran for supplying drones to Russia.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the bloc would investigate Tehran's participation in the conflict.

Despite the mounting evidence of Iranian drones being used, Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanani insisted his country was not a "party in the war", adding: "We have not supplied any weapons to the sides of the Ukraine war."

Russia said it had hit Ukrainian military command facilities and energy systems "in the course of 24 hours" with long-range air- and sea-based weapons on Sunday.

What are 'kamikaze drones'?

• Believed to include an Iranian-supplied weapon called the Shahed-136
• These drones loiter above a target before attacking
• Packed with explosives which detonate upon impact, destroying the drone
• Often sent in waves and difficult to spot on radar
• The US said Iran planned to send hundreds to Russia, costing just $20,000 (£17,800) each
• Ukraine has also used 'kamikaze drones' - including the US-made Switchblade model

Image source, Telegram

Image caption,

Mayor Klitschko shared a photo of what he said were fragments of a kamikaze drone on Telegram

Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week's strikes were in retaliation for the bombing of a key bridge linking Russia to occupied Crimea, which he blamed on Ukraine.

It was the first time during the war that the centre of Kyiv had been directly targeted.

Earlier this week, Mr Putin said there was no need for more large-scale strikes on Ukraine. Most designated targets had been hit, he said, adding that it was not his aim to destroy the country.

Image source, YASUYOSHI CHIBA

Image caption,

A drone seen in Kyiv on Monday

Image source, YASUYOSHI CHIBA

Image caption,

A Ukrainian in Kyiv fires at a drone

Additional reporting by Elsa Maishman and Patrick Jackson in London

BBC · by Menu

15. The Civilian and the State: Politics at the Heart of Civil-Military Relations

Conclusion:

The civil-military relationship cannot fix our political processes, but it can recognize the profound effects those processes have on the relationship and acknowledge that the party most responsible for them is civilian. The signers of the September letter said the most they could, given what knowledge we have about what it takes to maintain the civil-military relationship. But we need to know more, especially about how politics — about how civilians — factor into defense policymaking.

The Civilian and the State: Politics at the Heart of Civil-Military Relations - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Alice Hunt Friend · October 17, 2022

In September 2022, a remarkable thing happened: War on the Rocks published an open letter about American civil-military relations signed by almost every living former secretary of defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The letter was important not just for what it said, but what it did not — and, crucially, what it could not — say. It revealed how little we know about civilians in civil-military relations and how much practitioners’ retreat from politics has harmed our ability to protect the military profession from partisanship.

Like much of the literature on civil-military relations, and despite being signed by 8 secretaries of defense, the letter adopts the military gaze. 10 of its 16 points address what the military may and may not do during presidential elections and transitions, the military’s relationship to law enforcement, the military’s relationship to partisan politics, and how the military “reinforces effective civilian control.” Even those items that explain what civilians do are not explaining how they do it, just what the military may and may not do in response. The points that discuss orders are not about what good and legal orders look like, but that orders, so long as they are legal, must be obeyed. The receiver’s perspective is what is important here.

To be clear, the letter does not ignore the civilian role. For one, the first few points are about civilian control and how it is structured in American government. Throughout the text, “civil-military teams” and “civilian and military leaders” are the explicit subjects of best practices. And even as the points move on to focus on the military, one could argue that civilians need to know what the military is supposed to do with their orders. In a sense, the letter discusses what civilian control looks like, or at least what it produces.

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So, it was not that civilians weren’t addressed in the letter. But if civilians are part of the intended student body, what do the teachers expect them to learn about what they are supposed to do? If, for example, revelations about Gen. Mark Milley were part of the motivation for the letter, then a description of what civilians should have done differently — in the first place or in response — would be helpful. But that is not what we get. The text explains that civilian control is designed to be a democratic mechanism. “Ultimately, civilian control is wielded by the will of the American people as expressed through elections,” the letter says. This is both true and not terribly actionable. Elections are certainly a key accountability mechanism for a representative democracy, giving civilians the legitimacy they need to exercise control over the military. But that is just a predicate — a necessary condition but not sufficient as an owner’s manual. But then, there is no owner’s manual for civilians, because existing work on civil-military relations doesn’t supply one. The letter went as far as it could with the norms and knowledge we have now.

Elections determine who is in power but not exactly what those people should do nor how they should do it. Voters delegate judgment about specific policies or use-of-force decisions to civilians. How should these elected officials and their political appointees at the Pentagon apply the average voter’s will to quotidian choices, like whether to require that an undersecretary approve a combatant commander’s proposal before the secretary sees it? For what reasons should a senator vote against confirming a military officer for promotion to one-star general or admiral? More pointedly and certainly more relevant, when a president of the United States suggests the military should use force against American citizens protesting on American streets, what should the secretary of defense do? What should members of the president’s party in Congress do? And when members of Congress are being attacked by a mob, what role should the military play in protecting them? These are fundamentally political questions about political choices. And for all the wisdom of American civil-military relations law and theory, those disciplines have little to say about politics.

As Risa Brooks describes in her 2020 article, “Paradoxes of Professionalism: Rethinking Civil-Military Relations in the United States,” we have Samuel Huntington to blame for why politics are a neglected part of civil-military relations study and practice. Brooks explains that in his 1957 book, The Soldier and the State, Huntington describes civil-military relations as an exchange between two separate social groups with two separate spheres of influence. Civilians handle politics and leave the military to its expertise. Huntington cemented the “apolitical military” norm in the United States, which Brooks tells us, “shape[s] how U.S. officers are socialized to their roles as professionals.” The letter reaffirms this principle, emphasizing the importance of “keeping the military separate from partisan politics.”

But somehow, perhaps because the military is a more coherent institution and therefore easier to treat as a unit of analysis for academic study, practitioners of civil-military relations also often act like the entire relationship has an apolitical status. The consequence of avoiding politics in the civil-military context is that we do not know very much about what civilians are supposed to do to manage politics so that military officers don’t have to.

You can see this challenge in the way that recent secretaries of defense talk about their relationship with politics. Robert Gates expresses a genuine repugnance toward it in his memoir of his time as secretary of defense. Referring to his attendance at the State of the Union address, Gates says, “Being part of a political cheering squad was embarrassing for me, especially standing to applaud highly controversial domestic initiatives and views.” Jim Mattis, when on tour for his own book, insisted that his duty as a retired general officer was to remain out of politics — without reference to whether his most-recent job as secretary of defense carried any such standards of its own. In February 2020, then-Secretary Mark Esper issued a memo to all Department of Defense personnel, military and civilian, that asserted, “We uphold DoD’s longstanding tradition of remaining apolitical.” In June of that year, Esper told Politico, “I do everything I can to try to stay apolitical and to try and stay out of situations that may appear political.”

Of course, secretaries of defense are political. They are presidential appointees, members of a political party and an administration. As for more junior civilian employees of the Defense Department, although they are subject to the Hatch Act, which prevents active support for “the success or failure” of political parties or candidates for office, they are not as constrained as military personnel. Nor are civilians prevented from other political activities like advocating for the defense budget or discussing public opinion about military operations with White House personnel or members of Congress. But as Esper’s letter demonstrated, the notion that the military must be apolitical has evolved into the idea that the entire Defense Department should claim to be apolitical as well.

A major part the problem is the conflation of partisan politics with governing politics. While partisan politics involves seeking power for political parties, governing politics is about institutions and actors in government competing for power, prioritizing and choosing policies, and directing resources toward organizations and programs. The difference between partisan and governing politics is especially dicey for the secretary, whose role is to advance the president’s governing political agenda as a member of the cabinet. Other Department of Defense political appointees are in a similar position. Although they are constrained from working toward partisan campaigns for political office, they are expressly in place to engage in work that is fundamentally political.

The difficulty is partly that embracing politics these days can feel like an unnatural act. Think about the negative connotations many people ascribe to the very idea of “politics,” partisan or otherwise. “I don’t mean to be political” is a common way for someone to assure a listener that they are not trying to be controversial or upsetting. Being political is not just unprofessional for military personnel; it’s also distasteful. At the same time, the increase in partisan polarization in the United States has developed in parallel with a tendency for partisans to see themselves as honest and to see their political opposites as unethical. The belief that politics in general are repugnant, but one’s own politics are simply common sense has made it possible for many in the military to think of their views not as political but moral. This, I believe, is why so many in the military have been politicized in recent years while continuing to think that they are immune from politics.

And here is where we should go back to another basic idea, because lost in these trend lines is what the word “politics” really means. Strip away the layers of recent disrepute and separate out the partisan distrust, and politics merely describes the process of making the choices necessary to govern — and who controls that process. Certainly, politics can be waged cruelly and destructively, but that is not the fault of politics itself. Instead of dismissing all politics as bankrupt, we should want a cadre of people who are very good at engaging constructively in both partisan and governing political processes.

Losing the more procedural and productive definition of politics is bad for civil-military relations, not just because it blinds military personnel to what is and is not political — including what is and is not partisan politics — but because expertise in politics is the core of civilians’ role in the civil-military relationship. When we neglect politics in the civil-military relations context, we also neglect civilians. And as a consequence, neither military personnel nor many civilian defense leaders know how to manage the intersections of partisan politics and military policies.

And that is why the letter did not grapple more squarely with the politicization of the military, with the implications of Milley’s walk across Lafayette Square, or with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. People who are embedded in the civil-military relationship do not know what to say because they think they have to distance themselves from politics. But someone has to engage with partisan discourse and it cannot be the military. This is not to say that it is easy leading political experts in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and nonpartisan military professionals in the services at the same time, all while engaging in debates with partisan actors. But the secretary’s job has not been made easier by the civil-military relations subfield or by practitioners themselves pretending that secretaries and chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have similar job descriptions.

That American politics are dysfunctional is hardly breaking news, but it is the context in which former leaders of the Defense Department felt they needed to remind military officers not to follow illegal orders and to remind civilian leaders not to issue them. American politics are breaking down so profoundly that the “regular order” of policymaking is also breaking down — leaders’ frequent inability to resolve issues in public and on the floors of the House and the Senate makes the job of integrating military policies into national politics nearly undoable.

Consider recent personnel debates: To some politicians and the current presidential administration, the military should embrace antiracism and remove extremists from the ranks. To others, these policies are too “woke” and aimed at purging particular political views from the services. The recent controversy over an Army major general’s use of social media to rebut politicians’ and media personalities’ attacks on soldiers is another case in point. Was the general being “political” by disputing claims made about women in military service? Was he being partisan? The use of force is another area where unresolved politics plague civil-military relations. Successive presidents wanted to align policy with public opinion that no longer supported the war in Afghanistan but faced substantial opposition to withdrawal from military advisers and members of Congress for years.

The civil-military relationship cannot fix our political processes, but it can recognize the profound effects those processes have on the relationship and acknowledge that the party most responsible for them is civilian. The signers of the September letter said the most they could, given what knowledge we have about what it takes to maintain the civil-military relationship. But we need to know more, especially about how politics — about how civilians — factor into defense policymaking.

Become a Member

Alice Hunt Friend is vice president for research and analysis at the Institute for Security and Technology, and an adjunct professor at the School of International Service, American University, where she received her PhD. She has served at many levels as a civilian in the Department of Defense, most recently as the deputy chief of staff to the deputy secretary of defense.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Alice Hunt Friend · October 17, 2022

16. Analysis: Xi's new generals face tough military challenges post-congress

Will international exchanges (especially PRC-US) resume?

Excerpt:

Christopher Twomey, a security scholar at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in California, said it was important to resume international exchanges to better understand Beijing's evolving nuclear doctrine, despite the growing role of habitually suspicious commissars on the commission.

"The new CMC will have an important voice on whether to engage the U.S. on ensuring the U.S. on ensuring the stability in the strategic nuclear arena," Twomey said. "One suspects that leaders from the political side of the force would be most suspicious, whereas more international minded officers might have some awareness of the dangers of spirals and inadvertent escalations."

Analysis: Xi's new generals face tough military challenges post-congress

Reuters · by Greg Torode

HONG KONG, Oct 17 (Reuters) - In his first two terms as commander of the world's largest military, Chinese President Xi Jinping has unleashed sweeping changes to its structure, posture and potency.

Over those 10 years, China has rapidly expanded and advanced its naval and rocket forces, purged thousands of officers over corruption, reformed its command operations and built bases deep in the maritime heart of Southeast Asia.

Now come the tricky next steps for his Central Military Commission: implementing sweeping changes to its leadership, which commands China's two million-strong People's Liberation Army, potentially tightening Xi's grip over the military and its modernisation.

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On Sunday, China's Communist Party kicked off its once-in-five-years congress, where it is expected to name replacements for four retirees among the six senior officers who serve under Xi on the commission. Among those expected to step down are the body's vice chairmen, Generals Xu Qiliang and Zhang Youxia, both 72. Zhang is widely viewed as a close Xi ally.

Their replacements must integrate increasingly complex forces that would be vital for a Taiwan invasion, say eight Asian and Western military attaches and seven security analysts, fulfilling Xi's long-held demand that the military can "fight and win wars".

Opening the meeting, Xi called for accelerating the building of a world-class military, saying China had to "be prepared for danger in times of peace".

Diplomatic challenges are also mounting, as China's military modernisation confronts the traditional U.S. strategic dominance in East Asia.

The military envoys and three of the analysts say the commission will need to secure foreign base and port access for its expanding naval fleet as well as tackle possible external pressure to deepen international engagement over its arsenal of nuclear weapons. A slowing economy could also complicate modernisation.

Amid all those challenges, most of the incoming generals are likely to lack one element that marked at least some of their commission predecessors: combat experience.

Zhang and commission member General Li Zuocheng, who is also expected to retire, are some of the last serving officers to have fought in the bloody border conflict with Vietnam that started with a troubled Chinese invasion in 1979 but rumbled on until the late 1980s.

Potential replacements include recent commanders from the reformed Eastern and Western theatre commands, responsible for Taiwan and the Indian border respectively, eight envoys say. Promotions also could come from the Southern Theatre command, home to vital naval bases.

Who is chosen could shed light on Xi's military priorities. Any operational choices are almost certainly to be balanced by political commissar promotions, given their on-going role to ensure the military serves the Communist Party rather than the country.

Operating out of an imposing and well-protected command building in western Beijing, the commission sits nominally under the party's Central Committee but in practice works closely under the Politburo's Standing Committee. Xi heads both bodies.

That overlap means has led some analysts caution against predictions of a Taiwan invasion based on any new commission lineup. The Standing Committee, not ambitious generals, would make such a momentous decision, they say.

"There is no shortage of senior military officers who internally parrot Xi's 'fight and win' mantra, but the conundrum for the PLA is the lack of operational experience," said Alexander Neill, a private military analyst.

James Char, a security scholar at Singapore's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said the PLA suffered from "shortcomings" in combined arms and joint operations.

"Its capacity for sustained power projection also remains limited at present," Char said.

China's Defence Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

LOYALTY

The importance of absolute loyalty to Xi is crucial.

Four diplomats scrutinising developments expect to see the continued rise of veteran commissar Admiral Miao Hua, head of the commission's Political Work Department, to one of the Vice Chair positions.

Miao, who has early links to Xi when both were posted in coastal Fujian province opposite Taiwan, will almost certainly be balanced by a more operational commander, possibly Army general Liu Zhenli. read more

Two officers recently promoted to staff roles at the commission are also being watched, recent Eastern and Western commanders He Weidong and Xu Qiling. Xu Qiling also has experience in Taiwan operations.

The August drills around Taiwan after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taipei showed the PLA still had only limited abilities to fully integrate its forces within and across commands - the so-called "jointness" that Xi is eager to promote.

Senior Pentagon officials recently reiterated assessments that they did not think China would invade Taiwan in the next two years.

U.S. officials have privately said that they do not believe China will be militarily ready to fully take Taiwan by even 2027.

NUCLEAR FOCUS

For some diplomats and scholars, the growing importance of the commission is highlighted by China's nuclear forces, which Pentagon assessments say are expanding at a faster-than-expected rate.

Over Xi's next five-year term, China is expected to have up to 700 deliverable nuclear warheads, and 1,000 by 2030, according the Pentagon's latest annual report on China's military modernisation.

More of those weapons are expected to be kept in an advanced stage of readiness in modernised silos. China now appears to operate a "nuclear triad", capable of launching missiles from land, aircraft and submarines, the report notes.

Christopher Twomey, a security scholar at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in California, said it was important to resume international exchanges to better understand Beijing's evolving nuclear doctrine, despite the growing role of habitually suspicious commissars on the commission.

"The new CMC will have an important voice on whether to engage the U.S. on ensuring the U.S. on ensuring the stability in the strategic nuclear arena," Twomey said. "One suspects that leaders from the political side of the force would be most suspicious, whereas more international minded officers might have some awareness of the dangers of spirals and inadvertent escalations."

Reporting By Greg Torode. Editing by Gerry Doyle

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Reuters · by Greg Torode

17. An obsession with control is making China weaker but more dangerous

Excerpts:

That China is weaker than it appears is scant comfort. Even much weaker powers can be dangerous, as Russia has shown under President Vladimir Putin. A more isolated, inward-looking China could become even more belligerently nationalistic.

The West’s best course is to stand up to China where necessary, but otherwise allow collaboration. Restrict exports of the most sensitive technology, but keep the list short. Resist China’s attempts to make the global order more autocrat-friendly, but avoid overheated martial rhetoric. Welcome Chinese students, executives and scientists, rather than treat them all as potential spies. Remember, always, that the beef should be with tyranny, not with the Chinese people. It will be a hard balance to strike. But handling the most powerful dictatorship in history was always going to require both strength and wisdom. ■

An obsession with control is making China weaker but more dangerous

The Communist Party’s five-yearly congress will further tighten one man’s grip

The Economist

It will be an orderly affair. From October 16th the grandees of China’s Communist Party will gather in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing for their five-yearly congress. Not a teacup will be out of place; not a whisper of protest will be audible. The Communist Party has always been obsessed with control. But under President Xi Jinping that obsession has deepened. After three decades of opening and reform under previous leaders, China has in many ways become more closed and autocratic under Mr Xi. Surveillance has broadened. Censorship has stiffened. Party cells flex their muscles in private firms. Preserving the party’s grip on power trumps any other consideration.

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This is evident in Mr Xi’s response to covid-19. China’s initial lockdown saved many lives. However, long after the rest of the world has learned to live with the virus, China still treats every case as a threat to social stability. When infections crop up, districts and cities are locked down. Compulsory movement-tracking apps detect when citizens have been near an infected person, and then bar them from public spaces. It goes without saying that no one thus tagged may enter Beijing, lest they start an outbreak at a politically sensitive time.

Some hope that, once the congress is over, a plan for relaxing the zero-covid policy may be unveiled. But there is no sign yet of the essential first steps to avoid mass deaths, such as many more vaccinations, especially of the old. Party propaganda suggests that any loosening is a long way off, regardless of the misery and economic mayhem that lockdowns cause. The policy has failed to adapt because no one can say that Mr Xi is wrong, and Mr Xi does not want China to be dependent on foreign vaccines, even though they are better than domestic ones.

Such control-freakery has wider implications for China and the world. At home Mr Xi makes all the big calls, and a fierce machinery of repression enforces his will. Abroad, he seeks to fashion a global order more congenial for autocrats. To this end, China takes a twin-track approach. It works to co-opt international bodies and redefine the principles that underpin them. Bilaterally, it recruits countries as supporters. Its economic heft helps turn poorer ones into clients; its unsqueamishness about abuses lets it woo despots; and its own rise is an example to countries discontented with the American-led status quo. Mr Xi’s aim is not to make other countries more like China, but to protect China’s interests and establish a norm that no sovereign government need bow to anyone else’s definition of human rights. As our special report argues, Mr Xi wants the global order to do less, and he may succeed.

Rightly, the West finds this alarming. No despotic regime in history has had resources to match modern China’s. And unlike the leader of a democracy, Mr Xi can snap his fingers and deploy them. If he wants China to dominate technologies such as artificial intelligence or drugs, public and private funds pour into research. Size and single-mindedness can produce results: China is probably ahead of the West in such fields as 5G and batteries. The more powerful its economy grows, the greater its geopolitical muscle is likely to be. This is especially so if it can dominate certain key technologies, make other countries depend on it and set standards that lock them in.

This is why Western governments now treat Chinese innovation as a national-security issue. Many are boosting subsidies for industries such as chipmaking. President Joe Biden’s administration has gone much further, seeking openly to cripple the Chinese tech industry. On October 7th it banned the sale of high-end chips to China, both by American firms and by foreign ones that use American kit. This will slow China’s advances in fields America considers threatening, such as ai and supercomputers. It will also harm Chinese consumers and foreign firms, which may ultimately find ways around the new rules. In short, it is too blunt a tool.

It also suggests that Mr Biden overestimates the strengths of China’s top-down model and underestimates the democratic world’s more freewheeling one. Mr Xi’s obsession with control may make the Communist Party stronger, but it also makes China weaker than it would otherwise be. Throwing resources at national goals can work but is often inefficient: American firms produce roughly twice as much innovation for the same outlay as their Chinese peers, by some estimates. Having a leader who hates to admit mistakes makes it harder to correct them.

Even as Mr Xi strives to make China a superpower, his and the party’s authoritarian urges have isolated it. The great firewall slows the inflow of foreign ideas. Zero-covid has curbed movement in and out of the country: Chinese scholars have all but stopped attending conferences abroad; Chinese executives barely travel; the number of European expats in China has halved. A less connected China will be less dynamic and creative. And the government is aggravating China’s isolation by making it less hospitable for foreigners to live or work in. For example, foreign firms must make sensitive data they send abroad accessible to the state, which often owns their main competitors. This is an incentive to do research and development outside China. Finally, China’s dire human-rights record ensures that it has few real friends, and limits co-operation with countries at the cutting edge of technology.

Know your rival and yourself

That China is weaker than it appears is scant comfort. Even much weaker powers can be dangerous, as Russia has shown under President Vladimir Putin. A more isolated, inward-looking China could become even more belligerently nationalistic.

The West’s best course is to stand up to China where necessary, but otherwise allow collaboration. Restrict exports of the most sensitive technology, but keep the list short. Resist China’s attempts to make the global order more autocrat-friendly, but avoid overheated martial rhetoric. Welcome Chinese students, executives and scientists, rather than treat them all as potential spies. Remember, always, that the beef should be with tyranny, not with the Chinese people. It will be a hard balance to strike. But handling the most powerful dictatorship in history was always going to require both strength and wisdom. ■

Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Drum Tower newsletter, to understand what the world makes of China and what China makes of the world, or to our weekly Cover Story newsletter, to see how we design each week’s cover

The Economist

18. Pentagon exploring communications options for Ukrainian military as Starlink service threatens pullout

There is a lot to consider here for future conflicts and non standard communications among military and irregular forces as well as the population.

Pentagon exploring communications options for Ukrainian military as Starlink service threatens pullout

Stars and Stripes · by Svetlana Shkolnikova · October 14, 2022

The Pentagon from Dec. 26, 2011. (AFP via Getty Images/TNS)

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is exploring strategic communications options for Ukraine’s military amid fears that the vital satellite internet system Starlink could be pulled from the battlefield.

A senior U.S. defense official said Friday that the Pentagon was in ongoing talks with SpaceX, the rocket company that operates Starlink, and is also discussing partnerships with other satellite communication companies to keep Ukraine online as it tries to beat back Russia’s invasion.

SpaceX has indicated it could stop funding Starlink due to mounting costs, raising alarm that Ukrainian troops’ main mode of communication could be in jeopardy.

“I don’t think you can overestimate or overemphasize the impact that being able to communicate has,” said a senior U.S. military official speaking on condition of anonymity. “One of the first things you try to do in a fight is to reduce your opponent’s ability to communicate.”

Russian forces have repeatedly jammed signals and phone service on front lines in Ukraine’s eastern and southern regions to disrupt communication and hamper Ukrainian defense operations.

Elon Musk, SpaceX’s owner, said Friday that his company cannot indefinitely fund its Starlink internet service in Ukraine, pointing to expenses of nearly $20 million a month. The 20,000 Starlink satellite units donated to Ukraine have cost $80 million for SpaceX and will exceed $100 million by the end of the year, he said.

A batch of 60 Starlink test satellites are seen stacked atop a Falcon 9 rocket, just prior to being put in orbit. ((WikiMedia Commons/SpaceX))

"SpaceX is not asking to recoup past expenses, but also cannot fund the existing system indefinitely *and* send several thousand more terminals that have data usage up to 100X greater than typical households. This is unreasonable," Musk wrote on Twitter.

The U.S. military official said the Starlink communications network has been "exceptionally effective on the battlefield” and is a “huge” tool for planning and coordination. It also serves as a crucial lifeline for civilians in combat zones where cell phone and internet service have been destroyed.

“Let’s be honest. Like it or not, @elonmusk helped us survive the most critical moments of war,” Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wrote Friday on Twitter. “[Urkaine] will find a solution to keep #Starlink working. We expect that the company will provide stable connection till the end of negotiations.”

Pentagon officials declined to disclose whether discussions with SpaceX are related to payment but said talks with the company predate Thursday’s report by CNN that SpaceX is asking the military to contribute tens of millions of dollars per month for Starlink.

“We’re assessing our options and trying to do what we can to help keep these SATCOM communications, to ensure that these communications remain for the Ukrainian forces,” the senior defense official said. “There’s not just SpaceX, there are other entities that we can certainly partner with.”

The official said she was “unaware” if the U.S. government has paid for Starlink since the war began in February. SpaceX has implied it donated the service to Ukraine as a charitable gesture.

The Pentagon is scrambling to shore up Ukrainian communication capabilities as Kyiv’s forces continue to press multiple counteroffensives, most notably in the Kherson region. Troops are advancing toward the southern city on three lines and are forcing Russians to “make some decisions in terms of how they choose to defend,” said the senior military official.

The Kremlin continues to retaliate this week for its military setbacks with hundreds of missile attacks on civilian targets across Ukraine, including electricity substations, bridges and other infrastructure, the official said. Ukraine has managed to intercept much of the barrage and on Thursday either partially or fully shot down four missiles fired from Russian ships in the Black Sea.

Stars and Stripes · by Svetlana Shkolnikova · October 14, 2022

19. The Sources of Russian Misconduct

Excerpts:

If Putin is kicked out office, Russia’s future will be deeply uncertain. It’s entirely possible his successor will try to carry on the war, especially given that Putin’s main advisers hail from the security services. But no one in Russia commands his stature, so the country would likely enter a period of political turbulence. It could even descend into chaos.

Outside analysts might enjoy watching Russia undergo a major domestic crisis. But they should think twice about rooting for the country’s implosion—and not only because it would leave Russia’s massive nuclear arsenal in uncertain hands. Most Russians are in a tricky mental space, brought about by poverty and huge doses of propaganda that sow hatred, fear, and a simultaneous sense of superiority and helplessness. If the country breaks apart or experiences an economic and political cataclysm, it would push them over the edge. Russians might unify behind an even more belligerent leader than Putin, provoking a civil war, more outside aggression, or both.

If Ukraine wins and Putin falls, the best thing the West can do isn’t to inflict humiliation. Instead, it’s the opposite: provide support. This might seem counterintuitive or distasteful, and any aid would have to be heavily conditioned on political reform. But Russia will need financial help after losing, and by offering substantial funding, the United States and Europe could gain leverage in a post-Putin power struggle. They could, for example, help one of Russia’s respected economic technocrats become the interim leader, and they could help the country’s democratic forces build power. Providing aid would also allow the West to avoid repeating their behavior from the 1990s, when Russians felt scammed by the United States, and would make it easier for the population to finally accept the loss of their empire. Russia could then create a new foreign policy, carried out by a class of truly professional diplomats. They could finally do what the current generation of diplomats has been unable to—make Russia a responsible and honest global partner.

The Sources of Russian Misconduct

A Diplomat Defects From the Kremlin

Foreign Affairs · by Boris Bondarev · October 17, 2022

For three years, my workdays began the same way. At 7:30 am, I woke up, checked the news, and drove to work at the Russian mission to the United Nations Office in Geneva. The routine was easy and predictable, two of the hallmarks of life as a Russian diplomat.

читать статью по-русски (Read in Russian)

February 24 was different. When I checked my phone, I saw startling and mortifying news: the Russian air force was bombing Ukraine. Kharkiv, Kyiv, and Odessa were under attack. Russian troops were surging out of Crimea and toward the southern city of Kherson. Russian missiles had reduced buildings to rubble and sent residents fleeing. I watched videos of the blasts, complete with air-raid sirens, and saw people run around in panic.

As someone born in the Soviet Union, I found the attack almost unimaginable, even though I had heard Western news reports that an invasion might be imminent. Ukrainians were supposed to be our close friends, and we had much in common, including a history of fighting Germany as part of the same country. I thought about the lyrics of a famous patriotic song from World War II, one that many residents of the former Soviet Union know well: “On June 22, exactly at 4:00 am, Kyiv was bombed, and we were told that the war had started.” Russian President Vladimir Putin described the invasion of Ukraine as a “special military operation” intended to “de-Nazify” Russia’s neighbor. But in Ukraine, it was Russia that had taken the Nazis’ place.

“That is the beginning of the end,” I told my wife. We decided I had to quit.

Resigning meant throwing away a twenty-year career as a Russian diplomat and, with it, many of my friendships. But the decision was a long time coming. When I joined the ministry in 2002, it was during a period of relative openness, when we diplomats could work cordially with our counterparts from other countries. Still, it was apparent from my earliest days that Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was deeply flawed. Even then, it discouraged critical thinking, and over the course of my tenure, it became increasingly belligerent. I stayed on anyway, managing the cognitive dissonance by hoping that I could use whatever power I had to moderate my country’s international behavior. But certain events can make a person accept things they didn’t dare to before.

The invasion of Ukraine made it impossible to deny just how brutal and repressive Russia had become. It was an unspeakable act of cruelty, designed to subjugate a neighbor and erase its ethnic identity. It gave Moscow an excuse to crush any domestic opposition. Now, the government is sending thousands upon thousands of drafted men to go kill Ukrainians. The war shows that Russia is no longer just dictatorial and aggressive; it has become a fascist state.

But for me, one of the invasion’s central lessons had to do with something I had witnessed over the preceding two decades: what happens when a government is slowly warped by its own propaganda. For years, Russian diplomats were made to confront Washington and defend the country’s meddling abroad with lies and non sequiturs. We were taught to embrace bombastic rhetoric and to uncritically parrot to other states what the Kremlin said to us. But eventually, the target audience for this propaganda was not just foreign countries; it was our own leadership. In cables and statements, we were made to tell the Kremlin that we had sold the world on Russian greatness and demolished the West’s arguments. We had to withhold any criticism about the president’s dangerous plans. This performance took place even at the ministry’s highest levels. My colleagues in the Kremlin repeatedly told me that Putin likes his foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, because he is “comfortable” to work with, always saying yes to the president and telling him what he wants to hear. Small wonder, then, that Putin thought he would have no trouble defeating Kyiv.

The war shows that decisions made in echo chambers can backfire.

The war is a stark demonstration of how decisions made in echo chambers can backfire. Putin has failed in his bid to conquer Ukraine, an initiative that he might have understood would be impossible if his government had been designed to give honest assessments. For those of us who worked on military issues, it was plain that the Russian armed forces were not as mighty as the West feared—in part thanks to economic restrictions the West implemented after Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea that were more effective than policymakers seemed to realize.

The Kremlin’s invasion has strengthened NATO, an entity it was designed to humiliate, and resulted in sanctions strong enough to make Russia’s economy contract. But fascist regimes legitimize themselves more by exercising power than by delivering economic gains, and Putin is so aggressive and detached from reality that a recession is unlikely to stop him. To justify his rule, Putin wants the great victory he promised and believes he can obtain. If he agrees to a cease-fire, it will only be to give Russian troops a rest before continuing to fight. And if he wins in Ukraine, Putin will likely move to attack another post-Soviet state, such as Moldova, where Moscow already props up a breakaway region.

There is, then, only one way to stop Russia’s dictator, and that is to do what U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin suggested in April: weaken the country “to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.” This may seem like a tall order. But Russia’s military has been substantially weakened, and the country has lost many of its best soldiers. With broad support from NATO, Ukraine is capable of eventually beating Russia in the east and south, just as it has done in the north.

If defeated, Putin will face a perilous situation at home. He will have to explain to the elite and the masses why he betrayed their expectations. He will have to tell the families of dead soldiers why they perished for nothing. And thanks to the mounting pressure from sanctions, he will have to do all of this at a time when Russians are even worse off than they are today. He could fail at this task, face widespread backlash, and be shunted aside. He could look for scapegoats and be overthrown by the advisers and deputies he threatens to purge. Either way, should Putin go, Russia will have a chance to truly rebuild—and finally abandon its delusions of grandeur.

PIPE DREAMS

I was born in 1980 to parents in the middle strata of the Soviet intelligentsia. My father was an economist at the foreign trade ministry, and my mother taught English at the Moscow State Institute of Foreign Relations. She was the daughter of a general who commanded a rifle division during World War II and was recognized as a “Hero of the Soviet Union.”

We lived in a large Moscow apartment assigned by the state to my grandfather after the war, and we had opportunities that most Soviet residents did not. My father was appointed to a position at a joint Soviet-Swiss venture, which allowed us to live in Switzerland in 1984 and 1985. For my parents, this time was transformative. They experienced what it was like to reside in a wealthy country, with amenities—grocery carts, quality dental care—that the Soviet Union lacked.

As an economist, my father was already aware of the Soviet Union’s structural problems. But living in Western Europe led him and my mother to question the system more deeply, and they were excited when Mikhail Gorbachev launched perestroika in 1985. So, it seemed, were most Soviet residents. One didn’t have to live in western Europe to realize that the Soviet Union’s shops offered a narrow range of low-quality products, such as shoes that were painful to wear. Soviet residents knew the government was lying when it claimed to be leading “progressive mankind.”

Russia’s bureaucracy discourages independent thought.

Many Soviet citizens believed that the West would help their country as it transitioned to a market economy. But such hopes proved naive. The West did not provide Russia with the amount of aid that many of its residents—and some prominent U.S. economists— thought necessary to address the country’s tremendous economic challenges. Instead, the West encouraged the Kremlin as it quickly lifted price controls and rapidly privatized state resources. A small group of people grew extremely rich from this process by snapping up public assets. But for most Russians, the so-called shock therapy led to impoverishment. Hyperinflation hit, and average life expectancy went down. The country did experience a period of democratization, but much of the public equated the new freedoms with destitution. As a result, the West’s status in Russia seriously suffered.

It took another major hit after NATO’s 1999 campaign against Serbia. To Russia, the bombings looked less like an operation to protect the country’s Albanian minority than like aggression by a large power against a tiny victim. I vividly remember walking by the U.S. embassy in Moscow the day after a mob attacked it and noticing marks left by paint that had been splattered against its walls.

As the child of middle-class parents—my father left the civil service in 1991 and started a successful small business—I experienced this decade of turbulence mostly secondhand. My teenage years were stable, and my future seemed fairly predictable. I became a student at the same university where my mother taught and set my sights on working in international affairs as my father had. I benefited from studying at a time when Russian discourse was open. Our professors encouraged us to read a variety of sources, including some that were previously banned. We held debates in class. In the summer of 2000, I excitedly walked into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for an internship, ready to embark on a career I hoped would teach me about the world.

A man walking with his daughter after away from the site of a NATO missile strike in Pristina, Kosovo, April 1999

Goran Tomasevic / Reuters

My experience proved disheartening. Rather than working with skilled elites in stylish suits—the stereotype of diplomats in Soviet films—I was led by a collection of tired, middle-aged bosses who idly performed unglamorous tasks, such as drafting talking points for higher-level officials. Most of the time, they didn’t appear to be working at all. They sat around smoking, reading newspapers, and talking about their weekend plans. My internship mostly consisted of getting their newspapers and buying them snacks.

I decided to join the ministry anyway. I was eager to earn my own money, and I still hoped to learn more about other places by traveling far from Moscow. When I was hired in 2002 to be an assistant attaché at the Russian embassy in Cambodia, I was happy. I would have a chance to use my Khmer language skills and studies of Southeast Asia.

Since Cambodia is on the periphery of Russia’s interests, I had little work to do. But living abroad was an upgrade over living in Moscow. Diplomats stationed outside Russia made much more money than those placed domestically. The embassy’s second-in-command, Viacheslav Loukianov, appreciated open discussion and encouraged me to defend my opinions. And our attitude to the West was fairly congenial. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs always had an anti-American bent—one inherited from its Soviet predecessor—but the bias was not overpowering. My colleagues and I did not think much about 

NATO, and when we did, we usually viewed the organization as a partner. One evening, I went out for beers with a fellow embassy employee at an underground bar. There, we ran into an American official who invited us to drink with him. Today, such an encounter would be fraught with tension, but at the time, it was an opportunity for friendship.

Yet even then, it was clear that the Russian government had a culture that discouraged independent thought—despite Loukianov’s impulses to the contrary. One day, I was called to meet with the embassy’s number three official, a quiet, middle-aged diplomat who had joined the foreign ministry during the Soviet era. He handed me text from a cable from Moscow, which I was told to incorporate into a document we would deliver to Cambodian authorities. Noticing several typos, I told him that I would correct them. “Don’t do that!” he shot back. “We got the text straight from Moscow. They know better. Even if there are errors, it’s not up to us to correct the center.” It was emblematic of what would become a growing trend in the ministry: unquestioned deference to leaders.

YES MEN

In Russia, the first decade of the twenty-first century was initially hopeful. The country’s average income level was increasing, as were its living standards. Putin, who assumed the presidency at the start of the millennium, promised an end to the chaos of the 1990s.

And yet plenty of Russians grew tired of Putin during the aughts. Most intellectuals regarded his strongman image as an unwelcome artifact of the past, and there were many cases of corruption among senior government officials. Putin responded to investigations into his administration by cracking down on free speech. By the end of his first term in office, he had effectively taken control of all three of Russia’s main television networks.

Within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, however, Putin’s early moves raised few alarms. He appointed Lavrov to be foreign minister in 2004, a decision that we applauded. Lavrov was known to be highly intelligent and have deep diplomatic experience, with a track record of forging lasting relationships with foreign officials. Both Putin and Lavrov were becoming increasingly confrontational toward NATO, but the behavioral changes were subtle. Many diplomats didn’t notice, including me.

Even limited displays of opposition make Moscow nervous.

In retrospect, however, it’s clear that Moscow was laying the groundwork for Putin’s imperial project—especially in Ukraine. The Kremlin developed an obsession with the country after its Orange Revolution of 2004–5, when hundreds of thousands of protesters prevented Russia’s preferred candidate from becoming president after what was widely considered to be a rigged election. This obsession was reflected in the major Russian political shows, which started dedicating their primetime coverage to Ukraine, droning on about the country’s supposedly Russophobic authorities. For the next 16 years, right up to the invasion, Russians heard newscasters describe Ukraine as an evil country, controlled by the United States, that oppressed its Russian-speaking population. (Putin is seemingly incapable of believing that countries can genuinely cooperate, and he believes that most of Washington’s closest partners are really just its puppets—including other members of NATO.)

Putin, meanwhile, continued working to consolidate power at home. The country’s constitution limited presidents to two consecutive terms, but in 2008, Putin crafted a scheme to preserve his control: he would support his ally Dmitry Medvedev’s presidential candidacy if Medvedev promised to make Putin prime minister. Both men followed through, and for the first few weeks of Medvedev’s presidency, those of us at the foreign ministry were uncertain which of the two men we should address our reports to. As president, Medvedev was constitutionally charged with directing foreign policy, but everybody understood that Putin was the power behind the throne.

We eventually reported to Medvedev. The decision was one of several developments that made me think that Russia’s new president might be more than a mere caretaker. Medvedev established warm ties with U.S. President Barack Obama, met with American business leaders, and cooperated with the West even when it seemed to contradict Russian interests. When rebels tried to topple the regime of Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya, for example, the Russian military and foreign ministry opposed NATO efforts to establish a no-fly zone over the country. Qaddafi historically had good relations with Moscow, and our country had investments in Libya’s oil sector, so our ministry didn’t want to help the rebels win. Yet when France, Lebanon, and the United Kingdom—backed by the United States—brought a motion before the United Nations Security Council that would have authorized a no-fly zone, Medvedev had us abstain rather than veto it. (There is evidence that Putin may have disagreed with this decision.)

Workers attaching election posters featuring Medvedev and Putin to an office building in Krasnodar, Russia, November 2011

Eduard Korniyenko / Reuters

But in 2011, Putin announced plans to run for president again. Medvedev—reluctantly, it appeared—stepped aside and accepted the position of prime minister. Liberals were outraged, and many called for boycotts or argued that Russians should deliberately spoil their ballots. These protesters made up only a small part of Russia’s population, so their dissent didn’t seriously threaten Putin’s plans. But even the limited display of opposition seemed to make Moscow nervous. Putin thus worked to bolster turnout in the 2011 parliamentary elections to make the results of the contest seem legitimate—one of his earlier efforts to narrow the political space separating the people from his rule. This effort extended to the foreign ministry. The Kremlin gave my embassy, and all the others, the task of getting overseas Russians to vote.

I worked at the time in Mongolia. When the election came, I voted for a non-Putin party, worrying that if I didn’t vote at all, my ballot would be cast on my behalf for Putin’s United Russia. But my wife, who worked at the embassy as chief office manager, boycotted. She was one of just three embassy employees who did not participate.

A few days later, embassy leaders looked through the list of staff who cast ballots in the elections. On being named, the other two nonvoters said they were not aware that they needed to participate and promised to do so in the upcoming presidential elections. My wife, however, said that she did not want to vote, noting that it was her constitutional right not to participate. In response, the embassy’s second-in-command organized a campaign against her. He shouted at her, accused her of breaking discipline, and said that she would be labeled “politically unreliable.” He described her as an “accomplice” of Alexei Navalny, a prominent opposition leader. After my wife didn’t vote in the presidential contest either, the ambassador didn’t talk to her for a week. His deputy didn’t speak to her for over a month.

BREAKING BAD

My next position was in the ministry’s Department for Nonproliferation and Arms Control. In addition to issues related to weapons of mass destruction, I was assigned to focus on export controls—regulations governing the international transfer of goods and technology that can be used for defense and civilian purposes. It was a job that would give me a clear view of Russia’s military, just as it became newly relevant.

In March 2014, Russia annexed Crimea and began fueling an insurgency in the Donbas. When news of the annexation was announced, I was at the International Export Control Conference in Dubai. During a lunch break, I was approached by colleagues from post-Soviet republics, all of whom wanted to know what was happening. I told them the truth: “Guys, I know as much as you do.” It was not the last time that Moscow made major foreign policy decisions while leaving its diplomats in the dark.

Among my colleagues, reactions to the annexation of Crimea ranged from mixed to positive. Ukraine was drifting Westward, but the province was one of the few places where Putin’s mangled view of history had some basis: the Crimean Peninsula, transferred within the Soviet Union from Russia to Ukraine in 1954, was culturally closer to Moscow than to Kyiv. (Over 75 percent of its population speaks Russian as their first language.) The swift and bloodless takeover elicited little protest among us and was extremely popular at home. Lavrov used it as an opportunity to grandstand, giving a speech blaming “radical nationalists” in Ukraine for Russia’s behavior. I and many colleagues thought that it would have been more strategic for Putin to turn Crimea into an independent state, an action we could have tried to sell as less aggressive. Subtlety, however, is not in Putin’s toolbox. An independent Crimea would not have given him the glory of gathering “traditional” Russian lands.

Creating a separatist movement in and occupying the Donbas, in eastern Ukraine, was more of a head-scratcher. The moves, which largely took place in the first third of 2014, didn’t generate the same outpouring of support in Russia as did annexing Crimea, and they invited another wave of international opprobrium. Many ministry employees were uneasy about Russia’s operation, but no one dared convey this discomfort to the Kremlin. My colleagues and I decided that Putin had seized the Donbas to keep Ukraine distracted, to prevent the country from creating a serious military threat to Russia, and to stop it from cooperating with NATO. Yet few diplomats, if any, told Putin that by fueling the separatists, he had in fact pushed Kyiv closer to his nemesis.

The West’s 2014 sanctions substantially weakened the Russian military.

My diplomatic work with Western delegations continued after the Crimean annexation and the Donbas operation. At times, it felt unchanged. I still had positive relations with my colleagues from the United States and Europe as we worked productively on arms control issues. Russia was hit with sanctions, but they had a limited impact on Russia’s economy. “Sanctions are a sign of irritation,” Lavrov said in a 2014 interview. “They are not the instrument of serious policies.”

But as an export official, I could see that the West’s economic restrictions had serious repercussions for the country. The Russian military industry was heavily dependent on Western-made components and products. It used U.S. and European tools to service drone engines and motors. It relied on Western producers to build gear for radiation-proof electronics, which are critical for the satellites Russian officials use to gather intelligence, communicate, and carry out precision strikes. Russian manufacturers worked with French companies to get the sensors needed for our airplanes. Even some of the cloth used in light aircraft, such as weather balloons, was made by Western businesses. The sanctions suddenly cut off our access to these products and left our military weaker than the West understood. But although it was clear to my team how these losses undermined Russia’s strength, the foreign ministry’s propaganda helped keep the Kremlin from finding out. The consequences of this ignorance are now on full display in Ukraine: the sanctions are one reason Russia has had so much trouble with its invasion.

The diminishing military capacity did not prevent the foreign ministry from becoming increasingly belligerent. At summits or in meetings with other states, Russian diplomats spent more and more time attacking the United States and its allies. My export team held many bilateral meetings with, for instance, Japan, focused on how our countries could cooperate, and almost every one of them served as an opportunity to say to Japan, “Don’t forget who nuked you.”

I attempted some damage control. When my bosses drafted belligerent remarks or reports, I tried persuading them to soften the tone, and I warned against warlike language and constantly appealing to our victory over the Nazis. But the tenor of our statements—internal and external—grew more antagonistic as our bosses edited in aggression. Soviet-style propaganda had fully returned to Russian diplomacy.

HIGH ON ITS OWN SUPPLY

On March 4, 2018, former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned, almost fatally, at their home in the United Kingdom. It took just ten days for British investigators to identify Russia as the culprit. Initially, I didn’t believe the finding. Skripal, a former Russian spy, had been convicted for divulging state secrets to the British government and sent to prison for several years before being freed in a spy swap. It was difficult for me to understand why he could still be of interest to us. If Moscow had wanted him dead, it could have had him killed while he was still in Russia.

My disbelief came in handy. My department was responsible for issues related to chemical weapons, so we spent a good deal of time arguing that Russia was not responsible for the poisoning—something I could do with conviction. Yet the more the foreign ministry denied responsibility, the less convinced I became. The poisoning, we claimed, was carried out not by Russia but by supposedly Russophobic British authorities bent on spoiling our sterling international reputation. The United Kingdom, of course, had absolutely no reason to want Sergei dead, so Moscow’s claims seemed less like real arguments than a shoddy attempt to divert attention away from Russia and onto the West—a common aim of Kremlin propaganda. Eventually, I had to accept the truth: the poisonings were a crime perpetrated by Russian authorities.

Many Russians still deny that Moscow was responsible. I know it can be hard to process that your country is run by criminals who will kill for revenge. But Russia’s lies were not persuasive to other countries, which decisively voted down a Russian resolution before the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons meant to derail the prominent intergovernmental organization’s investigation into the attack. Only Algeria, Azerbaijan, China, Iran, and Sudan took Moscow’s side. Sure enough, the investigation concluded that the Skripals had been poisoned by Novichok: a Russian-made nerve agent.

Moscow wanted to be told what it hoped to be true—not what was actually happening.

Russia’s delegates could have honestly conveyed this loss to their superiors. Instead, they effectively did the opposite. Back in Moscow, I read long cables from Russia’s OPCW delegation about how they had defeated the numerous “anti-Russian,” “nonsensical,” and “groundless” moves made by Western states. The fact that Russia’s resolution had been defeated was often reduced to a sentence.

At first, I simply rolled my eyes at these reports. But soon, I noticed that they were taken seriously at the ministry’s highest levels. Diplomats who wrote such fiction received applause from their bosses and saw their career fortunes rise. Moscow wanted to be told what it hoped to be true—not what was actually happening. Ambassadors everywhere got the message, and they competed to send the most over-the-top cables.

The propaganda grew even more outlandish after Navalny was poisoned with Novichok in August 2020. The cables left me astonished. One referred to Western diplomats as “hunted beasts of prey.” Another waxed on about “the gravity and incontestability of our arguments.” A third spoke about how Russian diplomats had “easily nipped in the bud” Westerners’ “pitiful attempts to raise their voices.”

Putin attending a wreath laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow, February 2017

Sergei Karpukhin / File Photo / Reuters

Such behavior was both unprofessional and dangerous. A healthy foreign ministry is designed to provide leaders with an unvarnished view of the world so they can make informed decisions. Yet although Russian diplomats would include inconvenient facts in their reports, lest their supervisors discover an omission, they would bury these nuggets of truth in mountains of propaganda. A 2021 cable might have had a line explaining, for instance, that the Ukrainian military was stronger than it was in 2014. But that admission would have come only after a lengthy paean to the mighty Russian armed forces.

The disconnect from reality became even more extreme in January 2022, when U.S. and Russian diplomats met at the U.S. mission in Geneva to discuss a Moscow-proposed treaty to rework NATO. The foreign ministry was increasingly focused on the supposed dangers of the Western security bloc, and Russian troops were massing on the Ukrainian border. I served as a liaison officer for the meeting—on call to provide assistance if our delegation needed anything from Russia’s local mission—and received a copy of our proposal. It was bewildering, filled with provisions that would clearly be unacceptable to the West, such as a demand that NATO withdraw all troops and weapons from states that joined after 1997, which would include Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Poland, and the Baltic states. I assumed its author was either laying the groundwork for war or had no idea how the United States or Europe worked—or both. I chatted with our delegates during coffee breaks, and they seemed perplexed as well. I asked my supervisor about it, and he, too, was bewildered. No one could understand how we would go to the United States with a document that demanded, among other things, that NATO permanently close its door to new members. Eventually, we learned the document’s origin: it came straight from the Kremlin. It was therefore not to be questioned.

I kept hoping that my colleagues would privately express concern, rather than just confusion, about what we were doing. But many told me that they were perfectly content to embrace the Kremlin’s lies. For some, this was a way to evade responsibility for Russia’s actions; they could explain their behavior by telling themselves and others that they were merely following orders. That I understood. What was more troubling was that many took pride in our increasingly bellicose behavior. Several times, when I cautioned colleagues that their actions were too abrasive to help Russia, they gestured at our nuclear force. “We are a great power,” one person said to me. Other countries, he continued, “must do what we say.”

CRAZY TRAIN

Even after the January summit, I didn’t believe that Putin would launch a full-fledged war. Ukraine in 2022 was plainly more united and pro-Western than it had been in 2014. Nobody would greet Russians with flowers. The West’s highly combative statements about a potential Russian invasion made clear that the United States and Europe would react strongly. My time working in arms and exports had taught me that the Russian military did not have the capability to overrun its biggest European neighbor and that, aside from Belarus, no outside state would offer us meaningful support. Putin, I figured, must have known this, too—despite all the yes men who shielded him from the truth.

The invasion made my decision to leave ethically straightforward. But the logistics were still hard. My wife was visiting me in Geneva when the war broke out—she had recently quit her job at a Moscow-based industrial association—but resigning publicly meant that neither she nor I would be safe in Russia. We therefore agreed that she would travel back to Moscow to get our kitten before I handed in my papers. It proved to be a complex, three-month process. The cat, a young stray, needed to be neutered and vaccinated before we could take him to Switzerland, and the European Union quickly banned Russian planes. To get from Moscow back to Geneva, my wife had to take three flights, two cab rides, and cross the Lithuanian border twice—both times on foot.

In the meantime, I watched as my colleagues surrendered to Putin’s aims. In the early days of the war, most were beaming with pride. “At last!” one exclaimed. “Now we will show the Americans! Now they know who the boss is.” In a few weeks, when it became clear that the blitzkrieg against Kyiv had failed, the rhetoric grew gloomier but no less belligerent. One official, a respected expert on ballistic missiles, told me that Russia needed to “send a nuclear warhead to a suburb of Washington.” He added, “Americans will shit their pants and rush to beg us for peace.” He appeared to be partially joking. But Russians tend to think that Americans are too pampered to risk their lives for anything, so when I pointed out that a nuclear attack would invite catastrophic retaliation, he scoffed: “No it wouldn’t.”

The only thing that can stop Putin is a comprehensive rout.

Perhaps a few dozen diplomats quietly left the ministry. (So far, I am the only one who has publicly broken with Moscow.) But most of the colleagues whom I regarded as sensible and smart stuck around. “What can we do?” one asked. “We are small people.” He gave up on reasoning for himself. “Those in Moscow know better,” he said. Others acknowledged the insanity of the situation in private conversations. But it wasn’t reflected in their work. They continued to spew lies about Ukrainian aggression. I saw daily reports that mentioned Ukraine’s nonexistent biological weapons. I walked around our building—effectively a long corridor with private offices for each diplomat—and noticed that even some of my smart colleagues had Russian propaganda playing on their televisions all day. It was as if they were trying to indoctrinate themselves.

The nature of all our jobs inevitably changed. For one thing, relations with Western diplomats collapsed. We stopped discussing almost everything with them; some of my colleagues from Europe even stopped saying hello when we crossed paths at the United Nations’ Geneva campus. Instead, we focused on our contacts with China, who expressed their “understanding” about Russia’s security concerns but were careful not to comment on the war. We also spent more time working with the other members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization—Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan—a fractured bloc of states that my bosses loved to trot out as Russia’s own NATO. After the invasion, my team held rounds and rounds of consultations with these countries that were focused on biological and nuclear weapons, but we didn’t speak about the war. When I talked with a Central Asian diplomat about supposed biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine, he dismissed the notion as ridiculous. I agreed.

A few weeks later, I handed in my resignation. At last, I was no longer complicit in a system that believed it had a divine right to subjugate its neighbor.

SHOCK AND AWE

Over the course of the war, Western leaders have become acutely aware of Russia’s military’s failings. But they do not seem to grasp that Russian foreign policy is equally broken. Multiple European officials have spoken about the need for a negotiated settlement to the war in Ukraine, and if their countries grow tired of bearing the energy and economic costs associated with supporting Kyiv, they could press Ukraine to make a deal. The West may be especially tempted to push Kyiv to sue for peace if Putin aggressively threatens to use nuclear weapons.

But as long as Putin is in power, Ukraine will have no one in Moscow with whom to genuinely negotiate. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will not be a reliable interlocutor, nor will any other Russian government apparatus. They are all extensions of Putin and his imperial agenda. Any cease-fire will just give Russia a chance to rearm before attacking again.

There’s only one thing that can really stop Putin, and that is a comprehensive rout. The Kremlin can lie to Russians all it wants, and it can order its diplomats to lie to everyone else. But Ukrainian soldiers pay no attention to Russian state television. And it became apparent that Russia’s defeats cannot always be shielded from the Russian public when, in the course of a few days in September, Ukrainians managed to retake almost all of Kharkiv Province. In response, Russian tv panelists bemoaned the losses. Online, hawkish Russian commentators directly criticized the president. “You’re throwing a billion-ruble party,” one wrote in a widely circulated online post, mocking Putin for presiding over the opening of a Ferris wheel as Russian forces retreated. “What is wrong with you?”

Putin responded to the loss—and to his critics—by drafting enormous numbers of people into the military. (Moscow says it is conscripting 300,000 men, yet the actual figure may be higher.) But in the long run, conscription won’t solve his problems. The Russian armed forces suffer from low morale and shoddy equipment, problems that mobilization cannot fix. With large-scale Western support, the Ukrainian military can inflict more serious defeats on Russian troops, forcing them to retreat from other territories. It’s possible that Ukraine could eventually best Russia’s soldiers in the parts of the Donbas where both sides have been fighting since 2014.

A child siting outside a damaged building in Kyiv, February 2022

Umit Bektas / Reuters

Should that happen, Putin would find himself in a corner. He could respond to defeat with a nuclear attack. But Russia’s president likes his luxurious life and should recognize that using nuclear weapons could start a war that would kill even him. (If he doesn’t know this, his subordinates would, one hopes, avoid following such a suicidal command.) Putin could order a full-on general mobilization—conscripting almost all of Russia’s young men—but that is unlikely to offer more than a temporary respite, and the more Russian deaths from the fighting, the more domestic discontent he will face. Putin may eventually withdraw and have Russian propagandists fault those around him for the embarrassing defeat, as some did after the losses in Kharkiv. But that could push Putin to purge his associates, making it dangerous for his closest allies to keep supporting him. The result might be Moscow’s first palace coup since Nikita Khrushchev was toppled in 1964.

If Putin is kicked out office, Russia’s future will be deeply uncertain. It’s entirely possible his successor will try to carry on the war, especially given that Putin’s main advisers hail from the security services. But no one in Russia commands his stature, so the country would likely enter a period of political turbulence. It could even descend into chaos.

Outside analysts might enjoy watching Russia undergo a major domestic crisis. But they should think twice about rooting for the country’s implosion—and not only because it would leave Russia’s massive nuclear arsenal in uncertain hands. Most Russians are in a tricky mental space, brought about by poverty and huge doses of propaganda that sow hatred, fear, and a simultaneous sense of superiority and helplessness. If the country breaks apart or experiences an economic and political cataclysm, it would push them over the edge. Russians might unify behind an even more belligerent leader than Putin, provoking a civil war, more outside aggression, or both.

If Ukraine wins and Putin falls, the best thing the West can do isn’t to inflict humiliation. Instead, it’s the opposite: provide support. This might seem counterintuitive or distasteful, and any aid would have to be heavily conditioned on political reform. But Russia will need financial help after losing, and by offering substantial funding, the United States and Europe could gain leverage in a post-Putin power struggle. They could, for example, help one of Russia’s respected economic technocrats become the interim leader, and they could help the country’s democratic forces build power. Providing aid would also allow the West to avoid repeating their behavior from the 1990s, when Russians felt scammed by the United States, and would make it easier for the population to finally accept the loss of their empire. Russia could then create a new foreign policy, carried out by a class of truly professional diplomats. They could finally do what the current generation of diplomats has been unable to—make Russia a responsible and honest global partner.

BORIS BONDAREV worked as a diplomat in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2002 to 2022, most recently as a counsellor at the Russian Mission to the United Nations Office in Geneva. He resigned in May to protest the invasion of Ukraine.

Foreign Affairs · by Boris Bondarev · October 17, 2022

20. The Decline of the City Upon a Hill

I believe John Winthrop used "city on a hill" some time ago. :-) 

Excerpts:

Americans have long prided themselves that their government was, in Ronald Reagan’s words: a “shining city on a hill,” blessed with a political system that all nations aspired to emulate. That was an exaggeration in 1988, and it is even less accurate today. The soft power exerted by the American democratic model is waning. The cost to America’s influence in the world could be substantial.

As President Biden said in 2021 at the Summit for Democracy: “Democracy doesn’t happen by accident. We have to defend it, fight for it, strengthen it, renew it.” Biden was addressing the global struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. But his plea will ring hollow if the United States does not renew its own democracy to make it more responsive to the will of the people, to make it easier to vote, to reduce the influence of money in politics, to adapt an 18th-century constitution to governing in the 21st century, and to be more effective in legislating and governing. These were once purely domestic challenges. But now the country’s success in overcoming these challenges has implications for the U.S. role in the world. Those who care about U.S. stature and influence in the world must engage in strengthening American democracy at home. To paraphrase former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill: “All foreign policy is now local.”

The Decline of the City Upon a Hill

As American Democracy Loses Its Shine, American Power Suffers

Foreign Affairs · by Bruce Stokes · October 17, 2022

American global leadership faces a crisis—not of economic vitality, diplomatic prowess, or military strength but of legitimacy. Around the world, polls and interviews show that publics and elites in countries that consider themselves U.S. allies harbor doubts about the state and direction of American democracy. They no longer see it as a model, and they worry whether the American political system can still produce trustworthy outcomes.

Such sentiments are cause for alarm. In the past, the U.S. image abroad rose and fell depending on who was in the White House or what actions the United States was taking overseas, but views about American democracy remained steady, albeit less positive than many Americans might have supposed. Now, that is starting to change. Behind the constantly fluctuating popularity of U.S. presidents, there is a steady decline in the international assessment of the strength of the U.S. political system. The United States ranks 26th, between Chile and Estonia, in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s most recent Democracy Index, which first labeled the United States a “flawed democracy” in 2016. Freedom House ranks the United States one notch below Argentina and Mongolia in access to political rights and civil liberties. If people around the world can no longer rely on American democracy to lead by example and to deliver decisive U.S. action on shared challenges, Washington will lose its moral authority to lead.

Americans intuitively sense their loss of standing: for the last two decades roughly two-thirds have believed that the United States is less respected internationally than it was in the past, according to a Pew Research Center survey. And such respect is likely to deteriorate further. While a median of 61 percent of publics in 13 transatlantic countries polled in 2022 by the German Marshall Fund thought the United States was the most influential actor in global affairs today, just 35 percent expect it to be the most influential in five years.

To regain that lost stature, American democracy must overcome the challenges of partisan politics, institutional gridlock, and instability. The U.S. government will need to prove that it is able to produce sustainable international policies that the United States’ friends and foes alike can count on. This job is too important to be left solely to those preoccupied with domestic issues. The foreign policy establishment needs to see the revival of American democracy as the cornerstone of future U.S. global leadership. This will require direct engagement with the American public, not unlike the concerted effort to promote the Marshall Plan to reluctant Americans in 1947 and 1948. It is not simply a sales job; policymakers must first listen to Americans to try to understand and alleviate their frustrations with their democracy in the interest of maintaining and strengthening U.S. influence in the world.

DO YOU LIKE ME?

Foreigners’ assessments of the United States are driven largely by their perceptions of the U.S. president. The most comprehensive public opinion data on foreign views of the United States began in 2002 with the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project. And the United States’ image has been on a rollercoaster ride ever since.

In 2000, 83 percent of people in the United Kingdom, 78 percent in Germany, 77 percent in Japan, 76 percent in Italy, 62 percent in France, and 50 percent in Spain held a positive view of the United States, according to a U.S. State Department survey. This assessment slid dramatically during the administration of President George W. Bush; at its low point in 2008, the global image of the United States was down 47 percentage points in Germany, 30 points in the United Kingdom, and 27 points in Japan. Public sentiment then rebounded markedly when President Barack Obama took office in 2009, with approval of the United States up 33 percentage points in France and Germany, and 25 points in Spain. Favorable views of the United States spiraled downward again during the presidency of Donald Trump, reaching record lows, down 32 points in France, 31 points in Germany and Japan, and 30 points in Canada. In the first years of the Biden administration, U.S. favorability rebounded to levels comparable to that in the Obama years in most countries, up 34 points in France (to 65 percent), 33 points in Germany (to 59 percent), and up 30 points in Japan (to 71 percent).

For the most part, foreign publics, especially those in Europe, where the data is most comprehensive, liked Bill Clinton, grew to dislike George W. Bush, loved Obama, and hated Trump. What has been striking is the increasing volatility in such sentiments, meaning that the pendulum is swinging much farther and more quickly from presidency to presidency. For example, between 2008, before the U.S. election, and 2009, after the election, confidence in the U.S. president in France went from 13 percent to 91 percent, in Germany from 14 percent to 93 percent, in Japan from 25 percent to 85 percent. The reverse happened between 2016, before the election, and 2017, after the election: confidence fell in France from 84 percent to 14 percent, in Germany from 86 percent to 11 percent, and in Japan from 78 percent to 24 percent. One German official commented to me in early 2017, “Isn’t it interesting? It took Bush eight years to get to this low level. It took Trump three months!”

Who happens to be sitting in the Oval Office clearly colors international views of American democracy. A 2020 Eurasia Group Foundation survey found that 26 percent of German respondents believe that American-style democracy would be more attractive if a different person were U.S. president. But the international challenge facing U.S. stature in the world transcends personalities. Foreigners have growing worries about the health and direction of American democracy—its deepening partisanship, its dysfunctionality—that predate the Trump presidency. Such worries bedeviled the Bush administration, lingered in the background of the Obama administration, and now raise doubts about the Biden administration.

A MORE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM

In 2012, Pew Research found that a median of 45 percent of those surveyed in 20 countries across the globe said they liked American ideas about democracy, including 64 percent of Japanese, 60 percent of Tunisians, 58 percent of Italians, and 52 percent of Chinese. Such appeal was up in every country that had been surveyed in 2002.

Today, however, few people around the world express much faith in American democracy. According to a Pew survey of 16 countries conducted in 2021, just 11 percent of respondents in Australia, 14 percent in Germany and Japan, and 20 percent in the United Kingdom said democracy in the United States is a good model. A median of 57 percent said American democracy used to be a good example but has not been in recent years. As one Green Party German Bundestag member told me in an interview in 2021, “I trust America. But I don’t trust the political system.”

The Eurasia Group Foundation has similarly analyzed foreign perceptions of U.S. democracy. In a 2022 survey of nine countries, 55 percent of respondents held a favorable view of American democracy, largely unchanged since 2019. But as shown in the Pew surveys, publics in the countries most closely allied with the United States feel the least optimistic about American democracy. Only 20 percent of Japanese and 29 percent of Germans have a positive view of U.S. democracy in the Eurasia Group Foundation survey. In comparison, 84 percent of Nigerians and 81 percent of Indians admire American ideas about democracy. And by similar margins, Japanese and German publics do not want their system of government to become more like that of the United States, while Nigerians and Indians do.

The number of countries surveyed by both Pew and the Eurasia Group Foundation is admittedly small. But both are geographically diverse and include major economies and U.S. allies.

Foreigners have growing worries about the health and direction of American democracy.

There is also evidence that foreign publics have lost faith in what many once perceived to be a strength of American democracy: that it protects the rights of its own people. In 2008, a median of 71 percent of people surveyed by Pew, in seven countries in Europe and Asia, believed that the United States protects Americans’ freedoms. But revelations by National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden in 2013 that the U.S. government was listening in on the phone calls of foreign leaders, notably German Chancellor Angela Merkel, led to a sharp decline in such positive sentiment. By 2018, the median in those same countries that saw the United States as a protector of individual freedom had fallen to 43 percent. International public sentiment has rebounded since then, to 60 percent in 2021. But the damage done to this important aspect of American soft power, thanks to NSA spying and subsequent actions by the Trump administration, persists.

And there is evidence that many foreign publics do not believe that U.S. democracy delivers on its promise of a better life for Americans. For example, foreigners harshly judge how the United States handled the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, Pew found that only 37 percent of the publics in 16 countries thought Washington had done a good job of dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak, trailing the assessments of Germany (61 percent), China (49 percent), and the EU (48 percent). And foreign publics have adversely judged more systemic issues in U.S. society. When asked what would improve their assessment of American democracy, respondents in the Eurasia Group Foundation survey suggested a decrease in the gap between the rich and the poor and better treatment of minorities, immigrants, and refugees.

Many Americans agree with such criticism. More than half (53 percent) believe that U.S. democracy is in danger or somewhat bad, up from 38 percent in 2021, according to the 2022 German Marshall Fund Transatlantic Trends survey. By comparison, a median of just 41 percent in 13 other nations surveyed judged their own democracy negatively.

YOU CAN’T COUNT ON ME

Such public unease about the state and future of American democracy crops up again and again in discussions with European officials. Over the past three years, as the executive director of the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Taskforce, I interviewed roughly 100 European foreign policy experts and politicians. In nearly every discussion, they voiced concern about the trajectory of the U.S. political system, how it functions, and what it produces.

Critical views of American democracy are grounded in foreigners’ perceptions of what they see happening in the United States: institutional instability and partisanship. Early in the post–World War II era, the policy positions of the two major political parties were, in retrospect, quite similar. Today, power frequently changes hands between quite disparate political parties, and the United States is increasingly unreliable in delivering on its foreign policy pledges.

In the 12 federal elections held in the United States from 1952 through 1974, the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, or the White House changed hands from one party to another only four times. In the 11 elections between 2000 and 2020, control has changed nine times, and there is a good chance it will change a tenth time after the 2022 election, if current polling showing the Republicans winning the House of Representatives is accurate. Such biennial swings in power lead to abrupt policy and budgetary changes and to the disruption of personal relationships that are so crucial in the informal conduct of an effective U.S. foreign policy.

Trump’s scuttling of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord are all examples of how one U.S. president can cancel the international pledges made by the preceding one. In the wake of such dramatic shifts in U.S. policy, why, in the future, should allies rely on U.S. commitments or count on Washington as a dependable partner? Foreigners have every reason to question whether international commitments President Joe Biden has made—pledging more money to slow climate change, returning to the Paris climate accord, rejoining the World Health Organization, reaffirming U.S. commitment to NATO, and standing up to Russian aggression—might all be reversed by a future president.

Moreover, other countries are well aware that the U.S. Congress is increasingly paralyzed by partisan gridlock. By mid-2022, a year and a half into the Biden administration, 27 percent of ambassadorial positions, including major posts in India and Saudi Arabia, were without a Senate-confirmed official. The Trump administration fared far worse, with 28 percent of ambassadorial positions going unfilled for his entire presidency. More broadly, from 1987 to 1988, Congress enacted 225 substantive laws, but from 2021 to 2022, it passed 129. Little wonder that the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked the United States no better than Italy in its functioning of government.

The United States is increasingly unreliable in delivering on its foreign policy pledges.

As a result of these stalemates, recent presidents have come to rely on executive orders to push through their agendas. While George W. Bush averaged 36 such orders per year during his two terms and Obama averaged 35, Trump averaged 55 and Biden is now averaging 59 executive orders a year. This signals a return to an earlier era: Jimmy Carter averaged 80 per year, Richard Nixon 62, Lyndon Johnson 63. Nevertheless, the growing use of executive orders is a troubling development, reflecting increasing dysfunctionality in the legislative process. To their dismay, foreign governments have learned that American policies promulgated by executive order—such as Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which set the first-ever limits on carbon pollution from U.S. power plants—can be easily undone by a successor. So much for stability and predictability in U.S. policy.

Small wonder, then, that Americans hold their government in such low esteem. According to the most recent Gallup poll, just 43 percent trust and have confidence in the executive branch and 38 percent in Congress. Why should U.S. allies be any more confident in the U.S. government to live up to its responsibilities than are the American people?

Much of the gridlock in Washington reflects the growing partisan nature of U.S. public opinion. Partisanship both drives and has become a rationale for dramatic shifts in U.S. foreign policy. The neo-isolationism of the Trump era is, in part, a product of the fact that only a third (33 percent) of Republicans (compared with 71 percent of Democrats) believe that many of the nation’s problems can be solved by working with other countries. Trump’s insistence that U.S. allies pay for more of their own security and his threats to pull out of NATO reflected his voters’ beliefs, with 57 percent of Republicans versus 30 percent of Democrats in a Pew survey believing that getting others to share the costs of maintaining world order should be a U.S. foreign policy priority. According to a Gallup poll in early February 2022, on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, 50 percent of Republicans thought the United States should decrease its commitment to NATO or withdraw from the alliance entirely. Only 13 percent of Democrats agreed.

While the gap between such partisan views may have narrowed with the advent of the Ukraine war and the major role NATO has played in blunting Russian aggression, the underlying differences over multilateral defense commitments may likely reemerge once the conflict is over. The German Marshall Fund’s survey, conducted four months into the Ukraine war, found that while 86 percent of Democrats thought NATO plays an important role in U.S. security, fewer Republicans (70 percent) and Independents (65 percent) agreed. Moreover, such partisanship extends to differences over other issues of major concern to non-Americans, such as dealing with climate change: 70 percent of Democrats but only 14 percent of Republicans think curbing global warming should be a top foreign policy priority, according to a 2021 Pew survey. This comes at a time when the Marshall Fund has found that climate change ranked equal to war and Russia as security threats in the eyes of transatlantic publics.

Foreigners see this partisanship and its impact on American international policies, and it influences their view of the U.S. political system. “The big issue is: even if the Democrats are trustworthy, it is a problem that the other party is not,” a Swedish politician told me in a 2020 interview.

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Declining faith in American democracy hurts the United States’ authority and legitimacy, which it needs to convince other countries to do difficult things that support U.S. interests. And this is not new. In 2003, the Turkish parliament refused to allow U.S. troops to invade Iraq from the north, through Turkish territory. Turkish legislators could read the polls: at the time, 12 percent of Turks held a favorable view of the United States according to a Pew survey. Similarly, Berlin refused to join Washington in the U.S. invasion of Iraq, in part because it was a tough sell to German voters. Just 25 percent of Germans had a positive view of the United States at the time.

At the tail end of the Trump administration, Europe’s signing of a comprehensive agreement on investment with China, against Washington’s wishes, was testimony to the importance of the Chinese market but also evidence of weakening American influence. In the future, Washington may need allies’ support in restraining China if it invades Taiwan. But the recent German Marshall Fund survey found that a median of only 37 percent of transatlantic allies would be willing to work diplomatically to end the conflict and only 36 percent would support imposing economic sanctions on China.

Americans have long prided themselves that their government was, in Ronald Reagan’s words: a “shining city on a hill,” blessed with a political system that all nations aspired to emulate. That was an exaggeration in 1988, and it is even less accurate today. The soft power exerted by the American democratic model is waning. The cost to America’s influence in the world could be substantial.

As President Biden said in 2021 at the Summit for Democracy: “Democracy doesn’t happen by accident. We have to defend it, fight for it, strengthen it, renew it.” Biden was addressing the global struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. But his plea will ring hollow if the United States does not renew its own democracy to make it more responsive to the will of the people, to make it easier to vote, to reduce the influence of money in politics, to adapt an 18th-century constitution to governing in the 21st century, and to be more effective in legislating and governing. These were once purely domestic challenges. But now the country’s success in overcoming these challenges has implications for the U.S. role in the world. Those who care about U.S. stature and influence in the world must engage in strengthening American democracy at home. To paraphrase former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill: “All foreign policy is now local.”

• BRUCE STOKES is Visiting Senior Fellow at the German Marshall Fund.

Foreign Affairs · by Bruce Stokes · October 17, 2022

21. Kerch Bridge, Nord Stream the handiwork of top-tier saboteurs

Conclusion:

As the Kerch Bridge and Nord Stream blasts indicate, war by other means involving highly secret operations with significant organizational and technological skill is now underway. And there are few nations that have the experience, resources and capability, including the organizational skills, to manage and successfully launch such attacks.

Kerch Bridge, Nord Stream the handiwork of top-tier saboteurs

Big blast attacks required highly sophisticated technology and ultra-skilled secret operators that only a few nations possess

asiatimes.com · by Stephen Bryen and Shoshana Bryen · October 15, 2022

It is increasingly clear that the destruction of part of the Kerch-Crimea bridge and the destruction of three strands of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines required highly sophisticated technology and the skill of secret operators.

According to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) investigation, the truck bomb that destroyed part of the Kerch Strait Crimea bridge “was concealed in 22 pallets of plastic film rolls weighing a total of 22,770 kilos.”

The Russians blame the Secret Service of Ukraine (SSU), but Kiev would have needed considerable professional help to design such a huge weapon. The biggest bunker buster in the US inventory, for example, is the GBU-57 A/B at 14,000 kilograms. Experts would have known that to knock out the bridge they needed something even more powerful.

The investigative journalism site Greyzone said on October 10 that the British Secret Service (MI-6) drew up a plan last April to blow up the Kerch Bridge and shared the plan with Ukraine.

As Greyzone reported, the British plan was to bring in explosives by sea, perhaps using underwater vehicles or divers, and blow away the main bridge supports. An alternative, the British allegedly recommended, was to use cruise missiles – but doing so would remove any possibility of plausible deniability.

The Russians may have known about the plan. Interestingly, they positioned a special force to guard against an underwater attack and moved an S-300 air defense system from Syria to Crimea to deal with a possible cruise missile strike.

Assuming Greyzone is accurate, the Russian countermeasures forced an alternative plan. Perhaps, though with no evidence yet to support the thesis, UK or US experts were commissioned to determine the scale of the explosion needed to blow the bridge from the roadway.

Screenshot showing a burning tanker train on the Kerch Bridge’s rail span during the attack. Image: Twitter / Screengrab

For the record, Ukrainian cruise missiles lack both the accuracy and destructive power needed for such an attack. HIMARS, which has been supplied to Ukraine, might be capable of damaging the bridge (but not destroying it) and is accurate.

But its 90-kilogram warhead is too small to demolish a structure as large as the Kerch Bridge. Any sensible Russian should have spotted the cruise missile part of the British proposal as a possible fake if Moscow managed to get its hands on the report.

Little is known about how the massive amount of explosives was assembled, exactly where, and how it was done in secret – other than the FSB statement that the shipment originated in the nearby Ukrainian city of Odesa.

While the Russians appear to have been reading Ukraine’s mail, they entirely missed the possibility of a truck bomb. Is it possible that the Greyzone-reported British-devised plan was, in its entirety, a ruse intended to mislead the Russians?

A deception operation like this has its roots in the famous World War II British Operation Mincemeat, in which incorrect information was strategically placed on the body of a fake UK officer for the Germans to find. If so, the ruse worked again, and brilliantly.

The organizers of the bridge bombing put together a concealed but highly sophisticated operation.

Working backward, it looks like this: There were two trucks. The first went from Ukraine across Turkey, through Armenia and Georgia, and to the border of Russia. The explosives were inside, wrapped to hide from Russia’s X-ray inspection system on the border.

At the Russian border, trailers must have been attached to different, Russian trucks. If the explosives were in the first truck and the trailer was detached and hitched to the second but not again X-rayed – although Russian sources say it was later searched by security guards when coming onto the bridge – then the Russian inspection at the bridge’s approach appears to have been poorly handled and perfunctory.

There is a general belief that the trucker who picked up the load had no idea he was hauling explosives, meaning that the bomb in the truck was detonated by radio from a remote location. The truck driver was killed in the blast.

The Ukrainians put out a story that the blast came from the sea and not from the bridge span. There is no hard evidence to support the theory.

Nord Stream operation

The attack on the Nord Stream pipelines also suggests a sophisticated operation but one that could have gone partly wrong. The raw facts: The first explosion, near the Danish island of Bornholm, happened at approximately 2:03 am local time on September 26.

Gazprom, the Russian pipeline operator, reported the possibility of a leak when pipeline pressure dropped at 8:30 am. It was not until approximately 1:00 pm that the Danish air force sent F-16s to investigate. Those jets spotted the gas leak on the sea’s surface.

The first explosion was relatively small and picked up seismically, as was the sound of escaping methane gas.

At 7:04 pm a much larger explosion occurred along the pipeline route in the Swedish Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). According to seismic experts, this blast was greater than 100 kilograms and less than 200 kilograms, equivalent to a 2.3 magnitude earthquake.

There is a possibly related story. In November 2015, Gazprom discovered a device adjacent to Bornholm sitting up against one of the two Nord Stream 1 pipes.

The device, it turned out, was a SeaFox mine-disposal unmanned underwater vehicle manufactured by the German company Atlas Elektronik’s division located in Maine. It was controlled by a fiber optic cable, part of which was discovered connected to it.

A Seafox. Photo: US Navy

The battery-powered SeaFox carries a 1.4-kilogram-shaped charge to blow up mines and has a limited endurance of about 100 minutes. The drone was recovered and disarmed by Danish authorities. The US Navy admitted it had been lost, but never explained why it was found parked next to the pipeline.

Fast forward to the present, SeaFox has a small explosive charge that is more than adequate to punch a hole in a pipeline or blow up a sea mine. Its blast would have been more than adequate to create the first hole in the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.

But why was the second explosion, hours later, so large when a smaller explosion clearly had already compromised the pipeline?

Possibly, the results of the Bornholm explosion were not enough to satisfy the perpetrators and they tried again, this time in the Swedish ADIZ. The second mission could conceivably have consisted of a larger bomb – or could have created what was, in fact, a third explosion by hitting an old sea mine lingering on the seabed near the pipeline.

The Baltic Sea is a disaster area when it comes to unexploded mines and munitions, including chemical weapons, left there after World War I and II. Approximately 80,000 German and Russian-moored sea mines, most in unknown locations, litter the sea bottom.

This created serious concerns when the first Nord Stream pipeline was under development. While care was taken to try to avoid them, many are buried under sand and still others have broken free from their moorings and moved far from where they were originally sited.

Northern Europeans have spent a great deal of effort trying to remove ordnance from the Baltic Sea, but what they recover is a tiny fraction of what remains. Denmark is now complaining that its effort to investigate the first underwater explosion off Bornholm is being hindered by old unexploded mines and ordnance.

Like the operation carried out against the Kerch Bridge, the sabotage attacks of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines were a sophisticated operation that almost certainly involved underwater devices or professional divers.

SeaFox, for example, can be launched from a surface vessel including the rapidly inflated boats (RIB) often used by US Navy SEALS. The British, Germans, Swedes, Danes, Poles and others have similar systems; even the Ukrainians have frogmen.

Since it is unlikely any saboteur stayed around to witness the explosions, the devices used for both attacks had to have been planted earlier, equipped either with timing devices or capable of receiving remote signals. That suggests significant planning and advanced technological capabilities executed by experienced operators.

A US Navy P-8 antisubmarine aircraft flew from Naval Air Station Keflavik over the blast area at 3:00 am local time on the day of the blast. The plane proceeded to Poland where it was air-refueled by a C-130. It returned to Bornholm at 4:44 am.

A US Air Force P-8 turned off its transponder around the time of the Nord Stream pipeline explosion. Credit: Handout.

According to tracking data, it made a number of loops around the area and then headed toward the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. There is no flight data available between 5:39 am and 8:20 am local time, probably because the P-8’s transponder was turned off.

The US Navy acknowledged the first overflight of Bornholm and said it was a normal mission and had nothing to do with the pipelines. But whoever carried out the attacks, which is still unclear, launched their assaults with the utmost secrecy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin claims it was an operation by the “Anglo-Saxons” (meaning the US and UK). The Russians are complaining that they have been deliberately excluded from the Swedish-run investigation, although the Swedes invited the US to participate. Sweden has also cut off the Germans and Danes from a planned joint investigation, citing “secrecy.”

As the Kerch Bridge and Nord Stream blasts indicate, war by other means involving highly secret operations with significant organizational and technological skill is now underway. And there are few nations that have the experience, resources and capability, including the organizational skills, to manage and successfully launch such attacks.

Follow Stephen Bryen on Twitter at @stevebryen

asiatimes.com · by Stephen Bryen and Shoshana Bryen · October 15, 2022

​22. Chip war policy hurting US firms more than China

Chip war policy hurting US firms more than China

New Commerce Department chip and equipment bans against China are hitting US semiconductor company shares hardest

asiatimes.com · by Scott Foster · October 16, 2022

On October 7, the US Department of Commerce expanded licensing requirements for exports of advanced semiconductors and the equipment that’s used to make them to cover all shipments to China and not just shipments to particular companies.

The share prices of companies expected to be affected had already dropped, discounting previously announced sanctions and the downturn in the semiconductor cycle that was already underway.

From their 52-week highs to recent 52-week lows:

• Intel (INTC) was down 56%;
• Micron (MU) was down 50%;
• Nvidia (NVDA) was down 69% (its products having been directly targeted by the Biden administration); and
• AMD (AMD) (also directly targeted) was down 67%.

Among US semiconductor equipment companies:

• Applied Materials (AMAT) was down 57%;
• Lam Research (LRCX) was down 59%; and
• KLA (KLAC) was down 45%.

Outside the United States, ASML (ASML) of the Netherlands was down 59% from 52-week high to 52-week low. Japanese equipment makers Tokyo Electron (TYO 8035) and Screen Holdings (TYO 7735) were down 50% and 44%, respectively.

Japanese semiconductor makers Renesas (TYO 5723) and Rohm (TYO 6963) were down only 27% and 28%, but they focus on automotive and industrial semiconductors, not the artificial intelligence and high-performance computing devices that obsess the Biden administration. Their 52-week lows were last March.

SMIC (HKG 0981), China’s top IC foundry, was down 40% while TSMC (TPE 2330) was down 43% – a relatively strong performance under the circumstances.

An SMIC sign at an exhibition booth. Photo: AFP / dyc / Imaginechina

In terms of share price performance and investor returns, American companies and ASML have been hit harder than the Chinese. That might seem ironic considering the measures target China, but it is the market’s discounting mechanism at work.

US government policy is aggravating what was already shaping up to be a severe industry downturn – and friendly fire is a real problem.

On its earnings call on October 13, TSMC announced that it had decided to reduce 2022 capital spending to US$36 billion from about $40 billion due to falling global demand for semiconductors and rising costs.

Management had planned to spend $40 billion to $44 billion this year but said in July that actual spending would be at the bottom of that range. Compared with the $30 billion spent in 2021, projected growth has dropped from a maximum of 47% to 33% and is now 20%.

Mitigating factors for TSMC include a one-year authorization from the US government to continue with the expansion of its facilities in Nanjing and the possibility of a rebound in demand when China’s Covid restrictions are loosened. But TSMC CEO C C Wei also told the media that “We expect probably in 2023 the semiconductor industry will likely decline.”

At the end of September – when announcing results for its fiscal year 2022, which ended on September 1 – US memory chip maker Micron told investors that the company’s capital spending would be cut by a third, from $12 billion to about $8 billion, in the year ahead.

Construction spending should more than double, “to support demand for” the second half of the decade, “but spending on wafer fab production equipment is likely to decline by nearly 50% due to “a much slower ramp of our 1-beta DRAM and 232 layer NAND [the company’s newest and most advanced products] versus prior expectations.”

Furthermore, “To immediately address our inventory situation and reduce supply growth, we are selectively reducing utilization in both DRAM and NAND.” Reports from Micron and its South Korean and Japanese competitors indicate that memory chip production has been cut by about 30%.

Samsung’s approach to capital spending is similar to Micron’s. Its “shell first” strategy is to build clean rooms first so it can install equipment flexibly and rapidly when the time comes. On October 4, Samsung announced plans to launch a 2-nanometer foundry process (matching TSMC) by 2025 and a 1.4-nanometer process by 2027.

As the global economy weakens and US high-end decoupling from China accelerates, the outlook for semiconductor capital spending continues to deteriorate. Last March, market research organization IC Insights forecast a 23.5% increase to $190 billion in calendar 2022.

That industry capital spending figure was reduced to $185.5 billion in August but the announcements from TSMC and Micron point to a sharper decline. Handel Jones, CEO of American consulting firm International Business Strategies, estimates the figure at $160 billion, an increase of only 4% over last year’s $153.9 billion.

Source: IC Insights data from public sources

IC Insights itself qualified its August forecast, writing that “a menacing cloud of uncertainty looms on the horizon. Soaring inflation and a rapidly decelerating worldwide economy caused semiconductor manufacturers to re-evaluate their aggressive expansion plans at the midpoint of the year. Several (but not all) suppliers – particularly many leading DRAM and flash memory manufacturers – have already announced reductions in their capex budgets for this year.

“Many more suppliers have noted that capital spending cuts are expected in 2023 as the industry digests three years of robust spending and evaluates capacity needs in the face of slowing economic growth.”

When the dot.com bubble burst in 2000, semiconductor capital spending dropped 55% in two years. The Lehman Shock triggered a 57% decline, also over two years. Now, capital expenditure is dropping back from an all-time record high, suggesting a decline of similar magnitude and perhaps duration.

On October 12, The Wall Street Journal reported that US equipment makers including KLA and Lam Research have halted installation and support of equipment at China’s Yangtze Memory Technologies Co (YMTC) while assessing the new US Commerce Department rules. The share price of Japanese NAND flash memory maker Toshiba (TYO 6502), which competes with YMTC, jumped 10% on the news.

YMTC’s NAND flash memory is good enough for Apple and there is no evidence that its technology was stolen, so this can be considered an escalation of US policy from the punishment of bad actors to an all-out attempt to stifle Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing and thus roll back the development of China’s economy.

Commencing immediately, the withdrawal of American support staff will crimp Chinese semiconductor production.

In addition, a new Commerce Department regulation that “restricts the ability of US persons to support the development, or production, of ICs at certain PRC-located semiconductor fabrication ‘facilities’ without a license” is already disrupting the operations of Chinese companies.

By forcing numerous executives and engineers of Chinese extraction to choose sides, it brings decoupling down to the personal level.

Data from Tokyo Electron show the company’s total sales of semiconductor production equipment up 2.6 times in the five years to March 2022 (the company’s fiscal year ends in March). The increase was led by a 5.7x increase in China, which grew from 12% to 26% of total sales.

In the two years to March 2022 alone, sales in China increased by 2.7x. That suggests that the Chinese semiconductor industry has purchased enough equipment to see it through the next two or three years, at least.

Tokyo Electron’s performance in other regional markets was not exceptional. Sales were up 2.7x in Korea, 2.6x in the US, 2.5x in Japan, 1.8x in Europe, 1.6x in Taiwan (which started at a high level), and 2.1x in Southeast Asia and other regions.

As Japan’s largest and the world’s third-largest maker of semiconductor production equipment, with a diversified product portfolio, Tokyo Electron is representative of the industry as a whole.

Source: data from Tokyo Electron

The Chinese can no longer rely on US equipment suppliers and European and Japanese suppliers must follow US rules if their products incorporate US technology, so China will step up its import substitution campaign.

Sanctions on China have already caused large losses for American semiconductor and equipment companies, and more are probably on the way. Furthermore, in the next up-cycle, the China opportunity for foreign suppliers is likely to be much diminished.

Follow this writer on Twitter: @ScottFo83517667

asiatimes.com · by Scott Foster · October 16, 2022

23. American technology boosts China’s hypersonic missile program

Steal to leap ahead?

American technology boosts China’s hypersonic missile program

​ By Cate Cadell and Ellen Nakashima

October 17, 2022 at 3:00 a.m. EDT​

The Washington Post · by Cate Cadell · October 17, 2022

Military research groups at the leading edge of China’s hypersonics and missile programs — many on a U.S. export blacklist — are purchasing a range of specialized American technology, including products developed by firms that have received millions of dollars in grants and contracts from the Pentagon, a Washington Post investigation has found.

The advanced software products are acquired by these military organizations through private Chinese firms that sell them on despite U.S. export controls designed to prevent sales or resales to foreign entities deemed a threat to U.S. national security, the investigation shows.

Scientists who work in the sprawling network of Chinese military research academies and the companies that aid them said in interviews that American technology — such as highly specialized aeronautical engineering software — fills critical gaps in domestic technology and is key to advances in Chinese weaponry.

“In this case the American technology is superior — we can’t do certain things without foreign technology,” said one Chinese scientist who works in a university lab that conducts testing for hypersonic vehicles. “There isn’t the same technical foundation.”

Some of the U.S. firms whose products are reaching Chinese military research groups have been the beneficiaries of Defense Department grants to spur cutting-edge innovation, according to a federal program database, creating the specter of the Pentagon subsidizing Chinese military advances.

“It’s very disturbing, because the bottom line is that technology that can be used for military hypersonics was funded by U.S. taxpayers, through the U.S. government, and ended up in China,” said Iain Boyd, director of the Center for National Security Initiatives at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who conducts experimental research on hypersonics.

The Washington Post mapped more than 300 sales since 2019 of U.S.-origin technology to dozens of entities involved in China’s hypersonics or missile programs by analyzing contract solicitation and award documents issued by the groups, as well as speaking to six Chinese scientists working in military labs and universities who described almost unfettered access to American technology with applications in the design and testing of missiles. The scientists spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive research.

The steady stream of high-end software flowing to a critical area of research in which the Chinese military threatens to outpace the United States highlights the challenge Washington has in trying to prevent China’s military from exploiting American innovation.

Hypersonics refers to a range of emerging technologies that can propel missiles at greater than five times the speed of sound and potentially evade current defenses. Pentagon officials have said the United States and China are locked in an arms race to develop the most potent hypersonic weapons.

To build a hypersonic missile, scientists need to solve advanced physics problems relating to missile flight. Wind tunnel tests and live launches such as a highly publicized one China undertook in 2021 are costly. Using commercial American software, the result of years and sometimes decades of research and development, minimizes the time and resources needed for such tests, Chinese scientists told The Post. The American products also have applications in commercial aerospace, as well as in other fields where China and the United States compete, including aircraft engine design.

The technology being purchased includes various forms of computer-aided engineering software, such as aeroelasticity software, which can be used to simulate and analyze the extreme physical conditions experienced by airborne vehicles. It allows scientists to test designs virtually without relying solely on more costly wind tunnel tests and live drills. Other sales include hardware such as interferometers, which can be used by scientists to capture highly accurate data in wind tunnel tests.

U.S. scientists said computer-aided simulation is a critical step before advancing to wind tunnel and live tests for weapons such as hypersonic missiles.

“I’m going to design [a hypersonic missile] with these software tools,” said one U.S. researcher who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity. “I’m going to fly it in a computer and analyze it with these tools. And once I’ve gotten the model to the point where it flies my mission, I can go test it in a wind tunnel.”

U.S. export controls ban any sales of American products to China — and their resale inside China — if there is knowledge that they will be used for developing a missile or if they are destined for a restricted entity. But some of the technology, which also has applications in civilian aerospace research, is finding its way to Chinese military groups and restricted entities through Chinese middlemen firms — some of which openly advertise relationships with weapons and military groups on their websites, The Post found.

Exporters are responsible under Commerce Department guidance to determine whether their distributor is selling to a restricted party or for a barred use. “What we’ve always told companies is you cannot self-blind,” said Matthew S. Borman, the department’s deputy assistant secretary for export administration, in an interview. “You can’t just say, ‘Oh, I’m selling it to a distributor, I don’t know what they’re going to do with it.’ Especially if it’s a party where it’s readily ascertainable that they are a supplier to the Chinese military.”

“The first responsibility is on the company,” Borman added. “And if they don’t exercise that responsibility, they run the risk that they will be committing a violation.”

The blanket export restriction applies to companies or organizations on a blacklist known as the Entity List, which prohibits sales without prior U.S. government permission to entities deemed a risk to national security. The ban on selling products for use in developing a missile is known as the “missile catchall,” Borman said. That’s because it doesn’t matter if the item can otherwise be shipped to China without a Commerce Department export license. Even an exporter seeking to ship a pencil made in the United States to a known missile end user in China would be denied a license, he said.

A ‘bright, bright, bright red flag’

Using Chinese government procurement databases and other contract documents, The Post identified almost 50 U.S. firms whose products were sold through intermediaries since 2019 to Chinese military groups that work on missile technology. The aerodynamics simulation software of two companies — Arizona-based Zona Technology and California-headquartered Metacomp Technologies — was sold through resellers to the Chinese Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics (CAAA), contract solicitation and award documents show. CAAA was instrumental in the design of China’s 2021 hypersonic missile test, according to two Chinese military scientists familiar with the program.

The Post could not determine whether the software was used in the missile design process for that test. But its potential uses include the simulation of conditions in preparation for a real-life test such as the one in 2021, American and Chinese scientists said.

The test, which sent a hypersonic vehicle hurtling around the Earth, shocked U.S. military and intelligence officials, and led Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to call it “very close to” a “Sputnik moment.”

China in recent years has made rapid advances in missile technology, part of a broader national drive to build a “world-class military” on par with leading defense powers like the United States by 2049, the centenary of the People’s Republic of China.

Though CAAA is not on the Entity List, the “missile catchall” provision should bar American software from being sent to it if the exporter or one of its resellers had knowledge that the software was going to be used for missile development, experts said.

“U.S. export controls require a license for the export of any type of software, hardware or technology to China if there is knowledge that it would be used to develop a missile or other item used for weapons of mass destruction,” said Kevin Wolf, a former senior official at the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) who is now a partner at Akin Gump and advises clients on export controls. “And that license would generally be denied.”

Other experts said CAAA should be on the Entity List.

“For at least the past seven years, CAAA has been a core contributor to the development of China’s hypersonic and other advanced missile programs as a hub of rocket design, test and wind tunnel expertise in China,” said Nathan Picarsic, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and co-founder of the geostrategic consulting firm Horizon Advisory. “Simply put, CAAA helps the Chinese military develop advanced missiles.”

Zona chief executive P.C. Chen said he had no knowledge of a sale of its aeroelasticity simulation software — a type of aerodynamics software — directly to CAAA. He said that Zona had in the past sold the software to Hifar Technologies, the Beijing-based military technology supplier that, according to a contract award document, resold it to CAAA. Zona’s China distributor, Jon Ding, who runs Georgia-based 2D Technology, said he licensed Zona software to Hifar in 2019.

Hifar makes no secret that it sells software and consulting services to Chinese missile groups. It lists more than 50 military groups and suppliers as “cooperation partners” on its website, including CAAA, the China Air to Air Missile Research Institute, the Chinese Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, and the People’s Liberation Army’s missile group, the China Aerodynamics Research and Development Center.

Asked whether he checked that all the clients Hifar has sold Zona software to weren’t military entities, Ding said, “I didn’t, because they promised me and I trust them, so I don’t do this kind of tracking.” He said he warned Hifar not to sell to restricted groups.

Wolf, the former BIS official, said that if a distributor listed a number of military groups, including missile groups, in China as partners, that would be a “bright, bright, bright red flag.” If the company shipped software to such a distributor without addressing the red flags or getting a license, there could be a violation of the regulation, he said.

“An additional question is whether the distributors in China had knowledge that the software would be used to help develop a missile,” Wolf said. “If so, they could be liable because even foreign persons are required to comply with the U.S. export control rules when dealing with U.S.-origin items.”

Experts said U.S. exporters should not rely on Chinese resellers to conduct due diligence and obtain the licenses required. “If your distributor, frankly, is in China, take what they tell you with a grain of salt and ensure you do your own due diligence,” said Marwa Hassoun, a national security lawyer at ArentFox Schiff law firm who specializes in export controls.

Hifar did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The Post was unable to reach CAAA and other Chinese military groups named in this article.

David Habib, legal counsel for Metacomp, said the firm has “no knowledge of whether or how those companies have acquired Metacomp software or transferred it to others,” referring to CAAA and another military group that government contract awards show received the technology, as well as two Chinese intermediaries that, according to award notices, sold the software. He said the firm is “scrupulous in complying with U.S. export control laws and demands its customers comply as well.”

The Commerce Department, citing business confidentiality regulations, would not comment on any specific firm and whether it sought or was granted a license to export, or whether it was being investigated for a violation.

Both Zona and Metacomp have contracts for research and development services with the U.S. Air Force, according to federal documents. Defense Department contractors are required to comply with applicable export controls and sanctions or risk losing the contract or even being blacklisted as a contractor.

Both companies have received grants from the Pentagon’s Small Business Innovation Research program (SBIR), which awards money to help develop technologies that the department hopes one day will aid America’s own defense capabilities. Most of the SBIR-funded technologies are “dual use,” or have both civilian and military applications. Most SBIR contracts are for a three-month or up to two-year period, which covers the research and development phase and typically expires before the technologies go to market, according to officials at the Air Force, which runs the U.S. government’s largest SBIR program. Zona and Metacomp have received $31.6 million and $13.9 million, respectively, from the program, according to award records.

In a phone interview, Zona CEO Chen said he founded the company in 1988. In the mid-1990s, he said, with the help of SBIR grants, Zona began developing aeroelasticity software that is now marketed as Zaero and Zonair, the same technology that was sold through military supplier Hifar to CAAA.

A ‘technical blockade’

The Post’s analysis found that at least 50 purchasers in China were on Commerce’s Entity List. Several of the sales were made through China intermediaries such as Hifar that acknowledge supplying Chinese military clients, according to an examination of their websites.

Some transactions involved software from the most prominent American companies in commercial aerospace design technology.

In 2020, software made by the Pennsylvania firm Ansys Inc. was sold to the Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT) through a subsidiary of its Chinese partner, Pera Global, according to procurement documents and company filings.

BIT is one of China’s top defense universities and was placed on the Entity List shortly before the sale occurred. In December, its research on the advanced physics of hypersonic vehicles was designated a “key research and development project” by China’s Science and Technology Ministry.

The Pera Global subsidiary, Beijing Iwintall Technology Co. Ltd., won the contract to sell Ansys technology to BIT, according to contract award documents. On its website, Iwintall states that the computer-aided engineering technology it sells helps Chinese researchers, including those involved in hypersonics, more quickly develop domestic versions of foreign technology that is currently restricted under a “technical blockade” by “developed” nations.

The software, Iwintall states, “can support research and development at a product’s conceptual design stage and greatly expand the innovative solutions.” The company also states that it has a “cooperation alliance” with Ansys and lists BIT as a client.

Pera and its subsidiary did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The Post reviewed procurement documents related to seven other sales since 2020 of Ansys technology to Chinese groups that are either on the export blacklist or have known missile links, including through three other Chinese intermediaries that had no apparent link to Pera Global. These groups include the National University of Defense Technology, which is on the Entity List, and the China Air to Air Missile Research Institute in Luoyang, which develops long-range, high-precision missiles.

In a statement to The Post, Ansys said it and its subsidiaries “have no records of the indicated sales or shipments of our software products to, nor have we authorized the end-use by, the National University of Defense Technology, Luoyang Air to Air Missile Research group, or the Beijing Institute of Technology.”

Ansys “is committed to complying with all applicable U.S. export control laws and regulations” and “maintain[s] a rigorous global trade compliance program,” it said. The company said, however, that software “piracy has unfortunately become an industry-wide problem,” suggesting that theft is one way the software might be winding up in the hands of unauthorized users.

Another major firm in this specialized industry is Siemens Digital Industries Software, an American unit of the German firm Siemens. Some of its software was purchased by the Beijing Institute of Technology in December 2020 through a Chinese reseller that is a Siemens partner, Transemic Information Technology Ltd., procurement documents show. The announcement that Transemic had won the contract for the sale was made a few days after the entity listing, according to a contract awards database. Beihang University, which like BIT is on Commerce’s blacklist, also purchased Siemens technology in 2021 through a different reseller, according to the documents.

Transemic, like Hifar, openly advertises its work with China’s military, and on its website said it is Siemens’s “first military industry partner” in China to pass the company’s certification process. It posted images of an August 2017 “Military Industry Digitization Seminar” it hosted for defense industry clients in Chengdu, which featured a speech from a Siemens China sales director.

Siemens declined to comment on its relationship with Transemic, the conference or sales to specific customers in China. In a statement, Siemens said it “is committed to compliance with applicable national export controls regimes. We monitor our customer base to facilitate compliance with these regulations and proactively and routinely discontinue selling our software portfolio to entities subject to U.S. government restrictions.”

Siemens Digital Industries Software announced an agreement in July to acquire Zona. In an email this month, Siemens said the sale was still pending. “All we can say at this time is all of our sales are governed by Siemens’ comprehensive export compliance practices and our commitment to comply with U.S. export laws,” the company said in a statement.

‘Controls need to be expanded’

A second Chinese scientist involved in hypersonics research said that foreign technology acquired by one military research institute or private military supplier often flows freely to other research institutes, circumventing commercial transactions with U.S. suppliers. “So if one [researcher] says, ‘Hey, I need some [software] for this project or this time period,’ it’s easy to share,” the scientist said.

The Post also found evidence of high-end optical hardware going to Chinese missile and military groups. Arizona-based 4D Technology Corp. makes interferometers — devices used to capture extremely accurate measurements in turbulent conditions. American researchers say they are used to gather data in hypersonic tests.

“There’s a bunch of different techniques in hypersonics where you use an interferometer to basically make measurements of turbulence and high-speed flow,” said Chris Combs, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio who specializes in hypersonic aerodynamics and wind tunnel testing.

The company — which received more than $2.5 million in Pentagon SBIR grants from 2010 to 2017, according to the program’s database — sold interferometer technology to the China Air to Air Missile Research Institute in January through its China distributor Opturn Company Ltd., according to a notice posted by the institute. The institute is not on the Entity List.

4D and Opturn did not respond to requests for comment.

“It’s clear that controls need to be expanded for software and technology with uses in hypersonics,” said Ian Stewart, executive director of Middlebury College’s Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Washington. “More strategic entities need to be placed on the Entity List. And as a rule, sensitive goods or technology should never be sent to or sold through distributors.”

The use of American software is also documented in presentations at military industry conferences in China.

At a 2019 hypersonics conference in Inner Mongolia, a group of Chinese scientists listened to a Hifar Technologies representative give a keynote presentation on recent advances in Zona’s aeroelasticity software Zonair and Zaero, according to a participant and an event description posted on Hifar’s website.

The conference was hosted by the China Aerodynamics Research and Development Center, a secretive organization headed by a PLA general that houses 18 wind tunnels. CARDC, which is located in a zone off-limits to foreigners in Mianyang, a city in southwest China known for nuclear weapons research, was placed on the Entity List in 1999 for aiding missile proliferation.

Members of the Chinese Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics — one of the groups behind the 2021 hypersonic test — were at the event, according to the participant. A month after the conference, the group purchased Zona aeroelasticity software through Hifar.

Alice Crites and Razzan Nakhlawi contributed to this report.

The Washington Post · by Cate Cadell · October 17, 2022

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De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com