Quotes of the Day:
"Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence."
- Vince Lombardi
"There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded."
- Mark Twain
"If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance."
- Samuel Johnson
1. Russia has surrounded Ukraine on three sides. Here's where an invasion could be launched
2. Military operations in a more transparent world
3. Options to Address Disinformation as a Cognitive Threat to the United States
4. The TikTok buildup: Videos reveal Russian forces closing in on Ukraine
5. Former CIA Director Gina Haspel ramped up HUMINT, human-intelligence gathering
6. Enemies of My Enemy: How Fear of China Is Forging a New World Order
7. U.S. officials won't confirm reports on possible Russia invasion of Ukraine on Wednesday
8. 'It is past time to leave': U.S. tells Americans to flee Ukraine and evacs embassy staff
9. Opinion | Washington is still ignoring Afghans’ suffering
10. Florida National Guard troops ordered out of Ukraine by SECDEF
11. Why a Russian invasion of Ukraine would hurt Americans too
12. The dictator’s gambit: What Putin is after on Ukraine by Garry Kasparov
13. Center for Defense Strategies: Can Ukraine really be invaded? Scenarios for a Russian attack (analysis)
14. Tripwire for real war? Cyber’s fuzzy rules of engagement
15. Nearly 4,000 More 9/11 Vets Have Died in the Past 20 Years Than Anticipated, Study Finds
16. In Russia's Ukraine plans, how much does the mud matter?
17. Revisiting the 'Asian values' debate
18. FDD | Embattled Erdogan Signals Turkish-Israeli Thaw
19. The Army and the Indo-Pacific
20. Ukraine Is a Distraction From Taiwan
1. Russia has surrounded Ukraine on three sides. Here's where an invasion could be launched
By Wednesday are some of the reports I am hearing from the administration.
Russia has surrounded Ukraine on three sides. Here's where an invasion could be launched
CNN · by Rob Picheta and Eliza Mackintosh, CNN
(CNN)Russia has amassed more than 100,000 troops near Ukraine's border in recent weeks, according to US estimates, raising fears from Western and Ukrainian intelligence officials that an invasion could be imminent.
As frantic diplomatic efforts are made to avert war, analysts are warning that Russia's military poses an immediate threat to Ukraine.
But if an invasion were to occur, it is not clear where it would begin. Russia has created pressure points on three sides of Ukraine -- in Crimea to the south, on the Russian side of the two countries' border, and in Belarus to the north.
Here are the three fronts Ukraine and the West are watching, and the recent Russian movements detected in each.
Eastern Ukraine
Read More
Most attention has been paid to the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, where Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists have been in conflict since 2014.
The foremost assumption of those watching Russian movements is that Moscow could boost the military might it already possesses in the region, therefore making eastern Ukraine the easiest position from which to launch an invasion.
Satellite imagery obtained by CNN shows that a large base at Yelnya, which held Russian tanks, artillery and other armor, has been largely emptied, with the equipment apparently being moved much closer to the frontier in recent days.
Large amounts of weaponry were moved to the base late in 2021 before disappearing -- including some 700 tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and ballistic missile launchers. Social media videos since show some of that equipment on trains and roads much further south in the Bryansk region, which is close to Ukraine. The armor and vehicles are identifiably from the same units that had pre-positioned at Yelnya.
Stephen Wood, senior director at satellite imagery company Maxar, told CNN: "It looks to me like a considerable amount of the vehicles [tanks, self-propelled artillery and other support vehicles] have departed from the northeastern vehicle park; additional armored vehicles departed from the more central vehicle park."
Meanwhile, heightened activity in the Kursk and Belgorod Oblasts, which border northeastern Ukraine, has added to concerns.
"We are seeing a massive influx of vehicles and personnel in Kursk," Konrad Muzyka, an expert in tracking military movements with Rochan Consulting, warned on Twitter.
Phillip Karber of the Potomac Foundation in Washington, who has also studied Russian troop movements in detail, told CNN this month: "Russia's strongest offensive formation -- the First Guards Tank Army, which is normally stationed in the Moscow area -- has moved south 400 kilometers (250 miles) and is assembling in the optimum area for a rapid armored offensive on the Khursk-Kyiv invasion route."
Belarus
Concerns have also grown over a vast build-up of Russian troops in Belarus, a country closely allied to Moscow that could provide another way into Ukraine.
Moscow's deployment into Belarus is believed to be its biggest there since the Cold War, with "an expected 30,000 combat troops, Spetsnaz special operation forces, fighter jets including SU-35, Iskander dual-capable missiles and S-400 air defense systems," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on February 3.
It is also the largest exercise the Belarusian armed forces have conducted at any time of year, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Russia's Ministry of Defense claimed the purpose of the drills, called "Allied Resolve-2022," included repelling "external aggression."
Maxar's satellite images show that for the first time several tent encampments have been created at Rechitsa, in the Gomel region of Belarus.
Some fear the build-up points to a Russian plan to surge towards Kyiv from the north. One European diplomat told CNN earlier this month that the massing of forces is a "big, big worry," noting this would be the missing piece that Moscow would need to launch a quick attack on the Ukrainian capital.
The joint drills would also provide cover for a flanking movement through Belarus and into northern Ukraine, CSIS warns.
And satellite images released by Maxar appear to show that Russia's military has advanced deployments at several locations in Belarus. The deployments are likely linked to the joint exercises, but other photographs show camps being established close to the border with Ukraine, hundreds of miles from where the exercises are taking place.
However, if Russia were to focus on the Belarusian border as its entry point to Ukraine, the route would be fraught with difficulties.
Russian soldiers would have to negotiate the Pinsk Marshes, also known as the Pripet Marshes, one of Europe's largest wetlands, which straddles the border between Belarus and Ukraine -- a dense, waterlogged and densely forested terrain stretching across 104,000 square miles.
That region impeded Nazi forces during Operation Barbarossa, Germany's doomed invasion of the Soviet Union, in 1941.
According to the Institute for the Study of War, "the marshes can be difficult, in some places likely impossible, for mechanized forces to traverse when wet."
Crimea
The peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014 would provide a natural staging ground for any new operation, but it is unclear whether Moscow would attempt to launch a move into Ukraine from Crimea.
Then a new deployment was identified by Maxar for the first time Thursday near the town of Slavne on the northwest coast of Crimea, including armored vehicles.
Those new deployments were observed on the same day that several Russian warships arrived in Sevastopol, Crimea's main port. The Russian Defense Ministry posted images Thursday of six large amphibious landing ships at the port.
Ukraine's Navy responded that "Russia continues to militarize the Black Sea Region, transferring additional landing ships to put pressure on Ukraine and the world."
Ukraine's naval forces "are ready for development of any scenarios and provocations, to defend the country from the sea," it added.
Any move into southern Ukraine could be aided by troops in Transnistria, the Russian-supported breakaway region of Moldova, where build-up has also been reported.
CSIS analysts say Russian troops could attempt a coup de main on Odessa, a Ukrainian port city the northwest of Crimea, by "sailing its amphibious ships straight into Odessa's port and moving directly into the city."
It calls such a move "a high gain but also a high-risk operation." Odessa is a well-populated city and urban combat there would favor those defending it, while Russian forces would need to eliminate Ukraine's air defenses and then link up with troops arriving from the east of the country.
CNN's Tim Lister, Gianluca Mezzofiore and Olga Voitovych contributed reporting.
CNN · by Rob Picheta and Eliza Mackintosh, CNN
2. Military operations in a more transparent world
Can we hide in plain sight?
Excerpts:
What do these developments mean for military operations – especially major ones involving much materiel? Overall, the veil of high-level secrecy is likely gone for good. Any point on the world can be imaged, for a pittance, multiple times per day, rain, hail or shine. And while satellites still need know where to look, how likely is concealment in a world with billions of phones, the internet, and OSINT communities scouring all types of media for hints of new activity?
Of course, nations might ban the photography of any military activity, but this would seem difficult to enforce due to the sheer scale of the problem. And while decoys and camouflage have a long history in thwarting IMINT the extent of surveillance (orbital and personal) will make effective deception more difficult, especially for equipment movements of any size.
Alternatively, countries might seek to temporarily blind satellites that pass over them. But this risks contention with asset operators and requires advanced technologies to know which satellites are where, and to precisely control energy beams. Also, nations could request that imagery providers blur sections of their countries. But this incites the Streisand effect, and would companies in competing states always agree, noting OSINT allows officials to publicly discuss security issues without revealing classified intelligence?
Perhaps the most that can be said with certainty is that concealment, and implausible deniability, will become more difficult. And in a world of otherwise increasing disinformation, this might just help stop some conflicts before they start.
Military operations in a more transparent world
VICTOR ABRAMOWICZ
Russia’s Ukraine build-up is the latest example of how some information can no longer be kept secret.
In the past eight years, little short of a revolution has occurred in the world of “OSINT” – that is, Open Source Intelligence, information gathered from publicly accessible data – and especially Imagery Intelligence (IMINT), which analyses images gathered by assets from satellites to spies. Indeed, writing as a former Defence Imagery Analyst, the resources now available to individual citizens approaches those once reserved for the superpowers.
The changes in publicly available (in contrast to government-used) OSINT and IMINT are highlighted by comparing Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in 2014 with the Kremlin’s current build‑up against Kyiv.
Eight years ago, limited satellite pictures were briefed to the media, and while sourced from commercial firms, so as not to reveal classified capabilities, they were still mainly provided by official sources such the US State Department, Intelligence Community, and NATO. Further, relatively little hand-held imagery was available and useful, although Russian soldiers did reveal themselves in Ukraine with geotagged selfies. Finally, the public OSINT community was underdeveloped, with instead various journalists often bringing shadowy matters to light.
Today, 6.6 billion smartphones are in use, meaning about 84 per cent of the world’s population are potential intelligence collectors.
The contrast to today is stark. A plethora of satellite imagery providers generate detailed views of Moscow’s deployment of more than 100,000 troops to Ukraine’s borders. In turn, despite Russia banning soldiers from using smartphones on duty, now TikTok, Youtube and more provide data allowing for the identification of individual units as everyday people share events that capture their interest – and military deployments clearly fit the bill.
These changes have been driven by cultural, technological and commercial trends. So, as noted above, some OSINT cooperatives arose, ironically, due to Russia’s actions, including Putin’s implausible denials on the presence of his forces.
Russian military MI24 and MI8 helicopters at Kirovskoye airbase, Crimea, in April 2021 (Satellite image Maxar Technologies via Getty Images)
In turn on the IMINT front, once only the superpowers could afford assets such as the 11 tonne KH‑9 satellites. Such enormity was necessary for the bulky equipment to allow a official resolution of better than 60cm – i.e. being able to detect objects less than 60 centermetres across – enabling the recognition of missiles, tanks and groups of soldiers.
Yet the quality of smaller sensors improved, and access to space became cheaper – as too did the satellites as they miniaturised, which also allowed more to be deployed per launch. So, in 2014 the three tonne Worldview satellite was launched with a 30cm resolution, as were 28 five kilogram “Doves” providing three metre resolution. These were followed by hundreds more satellites, allowing any point on the globe to now be imaged at least twice per day, and including assets that can provide a “radar picture” at night or through cloud.
While decoys and camouflage have a long history in thwarting IMINT the extent of surveillance, orbital and personal, will make effective deception more difficult.
The decreasing cost of satellites, and the improved data quality they provided, led to dozens of firms competing for market share, driving down prices such that today anyone with a few hundred dollars can order imagery of a quality once was reserved for national security. And with some 2000 further imaging satellites coming, yet more and better data will be available at ever cheaper prices.
Similarly, in 2014 around 1.5 billion people had a smartphone. Today, 6.6 billion such devices are in use, meaning about 84 per cent of the world’s population are potential intelligence collectors, with the four billion active mobile social media users able to immediately distribute information.
What do these developments mean for military operations – especially major ones involving much materiel? Overall, the veil of high-level secrecy is likely gone for good. Any point on the world can be imaged, for a pittance, multiple times per day, rain, hail or shine. And while satellites still need know where to look, how likely is concealment in a world with billions of phones, the internet, and OSINT communities scouring all types of media for hints of new activity?
Of course, nations might ban the photography of any military activity, but this would seem difficult to enforce due to the sheer scale of the problem. And while decoys and camouflage have a long history in thwarting IMINT the extent of surveillance (orbital and personal) will make effective deception more difficult, especially for equipment movements of any size.
Alternatively, countries might seek to temporarily blind satellites that pass over them. But this risks contention with asset operators and requires advanced technologies to know which satellites are where, and to precisely control energy beams. Also, nations could request that imagery providers blur sections of their countries. But this incites the Streisand effect, and would companies in competing states always agree, noting OSINT allows officials to publicly discuss security issues without revealing classified intelligence?
Perhaps the most that can be said with certainty is that concealment, and implausible deniability, will become more difficult. And in a world of otherwise increasing disinformation, this might just help stop some conflicts before they start.
3. Options to Address Disinformation as a Cognitive Threat to the United States
Excerpt:
Due to the nature of disinformation, this cognitive threat poses a risk to U.S. foreign and domestic policy-making, undercuts a foundational principle of democracy, and has already caused significant disruption to the U.S. political process. Disinformation can be used tactically alongside military operations, operationally to shape the information environment within a theater of conflict, and strategically by potentially sidelining the U.S. or allies from joining international coalitions.
Options to Address Disinformation as a Cognitive Threat to the United States
Joe Palank is a Captain in the U.S. Army Reserve, where he leads a Psychological Operations Detachment. He has also previously served as an assistant to former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson. He can be found on Twitter at @JoePalank. Divergent Options’ content does not contain information of an official nature nor does the content represent the official position of any government, any organization or any group.
National Security Situation: Disinformation as a cognitive threat poses a risk to the U.S.
Date Originally Written: January 17, 2022.
Date Originally Published: February 14, 2022.
Author and / or Article Point of View: The author is a U.S. Army Reservist specializing in psychological operations and information operations. He has also worked on political campaigns and for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He has studied psychology, political communications, disinformation, and has Masters degrees in Political Management and in Public Policy, focusing on national security.
Background: Disinformation as a non-lethal weapon for both state and non-state actors is nothing new. However the rise of the internet age and social media, paired with cultural change in the U.S., has given this once fringe capability new salience. Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and violent extremist organizations pose the most pervasive and significant risks to the United States through their increasingly weaponized use of disinformation[1].
Significance: Due to the nature of disinformation, this cognitive threat poses a risk to U.S. foreign and domestic policy-making, undercuts a foundational principle of democracy, and has already caused significant disruption to the U.S. political process. Disinformation can be used tactically alongside military operations, operationally to shape the information environment within a theater of conflict, and strategically by potentially sidelining the U.S. or allies from joining international coalitions.
Option #1: The U.S. focuses domestically.
The U.S. could combat the threat of disinformation defensively, by looking inward, and take a two-pronged approach to prevent the effects of disinformation. First, the U.S. could adopt new laws and policies to make social media companies—the primary distributor of disinformation—more aligned with U.S. national security objectives related to disinformation. The U.S. has an asymmetric advantage in serving as the home to the largest social media companies, but thus far has treated those platforms with the same laissez faire approach other industries enjoy. In recent years, these companies have begun to fight disinformation, but they are still motivated by profits, which are in turn motivated by clicks and views, which disinformation can increase[2]. Policy options might include defining disinformation and passing a law making the deliberate spread of disinformation illegal or holding social media platforms accountable for the spread of disinformation posted by their users.
Simultaneously, the U.S. could embark on widescale media literacy training for its populace. Raising awareness of disinformation campaigns, teaching media consumers how to vet information for authenticity, and educating them on the biases within media and our own psychology is an effective line of defense against disinformation[3]. In a meta-analysis of recommendations for improving awareness of disinformation, improved media literacy training was the single most common suggestion among experts[4]. Equipping the end users to be able to identify real, versus fake, news would render most disinformation campaigns ineffective.
Risk: Legal – the United States enjoys a nearly pure tradition of “free speech” which may prevent the passage of laws combatting disinformation.
Political – Passing laws holding individuals criminally liable for speech, even disinformation, would be assuredly unpopular. Additionally, cracking down on social media companies, who are both politically powerful and broadly popular, would be a political hurdle for lawmakers concerned with re-election.
Feasibility – Media literacy training would be expensive and time-consuming to implement at scale, and the same U.S. agencies that currently combat disinformation are ill-equipped to focus on domestic audiences for broad-scale educational initiatives.
Gain: A U.S. public that is immune to disinformation would make for a healthier polity and more durable democracy, directly thwarting some of the aims of disinformation campaigns, and potentially permanently. Social media companies that are more heavily regulated would drastically reduce the dissemination of disinformation campaigns worldwide, benefiting the entire liberal economic order.
Option #2: The U.S. focuses internationally.
Strategically, the U.S. could choose to target foreign suppliers of disinformation. This targeting is currently being done tactically and operationally by U.S. DoD elements, the intelligence community, and the State Department. That latter agency also houses the coordinating mechanism for the country’s handling of disinformation, the Global Engagement Center, which has no actual tasking authority within the Executive Branch. A similar, but more aggressive agency, such as the proposed Malign Foreign Influence Response Center (MFIRC), could literally bring the fight to purveyors of disinformation[5].
The U.S. has been slow to catch up to its rivals’ disinformation capabilities, responding to disinformation campaigns only occasionally, and with a varied mix of sanctions, offensive cyber attacks, and even kinetic strikes (only against non-state actors)[6]. National security officials benefit from institutional knowledge and “playbooks” for responding to various other threats to U.S. sovereignty or the liberal economic order. These playbooks are valuable for responding quickly, in-kind, and proportionately, while also giving both sides “off-ramps” to de-escalate. An MFIRC could develop playbooks for disinformation and the institutional memory for this emerging type of warfare. Disinformation campaigns are popular among U.S. adversaries due to the relative capabilities advantage they enjoy, as well as for their low costs, both financially and diplomatically[7]. Creating a basket of response options lends itself to the national security apparatus’s current capabilities, and poses fewer legal and political hurdles than changing U.S. laws that infringe on free speech. Moreover, an MFIRC would make the U.S. a more equal adversary in this sphere and raise the costs to conduct such operations, making them less palatable options for adversaries.
Risk: Geopolitical – Disinformation via the internet is still a new kind of warfare; responding disproportionately carries a significant risk of escalation, possibly turning a meme into an actual war.
Effectiveness – Going after the suppliers of disinformation could be akin to a whack-a-mole game, constantly chasing the next threat without addressing the underlying domestic problems.
Gain: Adopting this approach would likely have faster and more obvious effects. A drone strike to Russia’s Internet Research Agency’s headquarters, for example, would send a very clear message about how seriously the U.S. takes disinformation. At relatively little cost and time—more a shifting of priorities and resources—the U.S. could significantly blunt its adversaries’ advantages and make disinformation prohibitively expensive to undertake at scale.
Other Comments: There is no reason why both options could not be pursued simultaneously, save for costs or political appetite.
Recommendation: None.
Endnotes:
[3] Kavanagh, J. & Rich, M.D. (2018) Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life. RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org/t/RR2314
4. The TikTok buildup: Videos reveal Russian forces closing in on Ukraine
Video and maps at the link below.
The TikTok buildup: Videos reveal Russian forces closing in on Ukraine
February 11, 2022 at 5:52 p.m. EST
Russian President Vladimir Putin and top Russian officials for months have been denying that Moscow is preparing to mount an invasion of neighboring Ukraine. But videos posted to TikTok and other social media platforms tell another story.
Sites where Russian forces are concentrated
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Note: Data as of Feb. 7
Source: Rochan Consulting
THE WASHINGTON POST
In areas of Russia and Belarus near the Ukrainian border, onlookers have uploaded hundreds of videos showing sophisticated Russian weaponry and military vehicles speeding by on railways, highways and local roads toward positions near Ukraine.
In recent days, those videos have begun worrying military analysts. The scenes, the military analysts say, appear to indicate that the Russian buildup could be entering its final stages before an invasion. Here is what they are watching.
Movement to final staging areas
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Video posted to TikTok between Feb. 8 and Feb. 9 shows Russian armored fighting vehicles traveling along roads near Ukraine. (pahan1103 and natalinka...n / TikTok)
Videos have emerged of Russian armored fighting vehicles driving on roads. Generally, tanks and other armored vehicles are transported long distances by train and then shorter distances by flatbed truck. “You don’t see mechanized units driving down the road unless they are getting near final staging areas,” said Michael Kofman, a Russian military analyst at the Virginia-based research group CNA. “Once you see tanks and infantry fighting vehicles under their own power driving down a road, it means they are not far from where they are intending to be.”
Videos posted on social media also appear to show units from Russia’s 41st Combined Arms Army — which had been gathering in Yelnya, about 160 miles from the Ukrainian border — moving south toward Ukraine in the area around the Russian city of Klintsy, less than 62 miles from the border. “They are deploying toward what we call a final staging area,” Kofman said. “That’s important.”
Russian warships moving toward Ukraine
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Video posted by the Russian Ministry of Defense shows landing ships and other vessels moving toward the Black Sea. (Russian Ministry of Defense)
The Russian navy has been moving landing ships and other vessels into the Black Sea. On Thursday, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said six landing ships spotted moving through the Black Sea had arrived at the home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, in Crimea, after traveling 7,000 nautical miles from the Baltic Sea. Moscow has called the vessel movements part of a naval exercise.
Russian forces aboard the ships potentially could make an amphibious landing to invade Ukraine from the water, Kofman said. In 2008, when Russia invaded Georgia, naval vessels were used to attack the Georgian port city of Poti. Other Russian vessels are being moved strategically to places in the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea to deter NATO from intervention, he said.
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Video shared on TikTok on Feb. 5 showed Russian forces moving missile launchers near the Ukrainian border. (aleksandrsmoke / TikTok)
In one video posted to TikTok on Feb. 5, a man walking his dog in a Russian town a few hours’ drive from the Ukrainian border captured what appear to be launchers for Iskander ballistic missiles passing by on a snowy street. According to Scott Boston, a Russian military analyst at the Rand Corporation, Iskander systems are particularly concerning, because ballistic missiles are fast, probably very accurate and can carry an extremely large warhead.
“We would expect them to be used against high-value targets like headquarters, airfields and logistics nodes,” Boston said. “It is still at least somewhat difficult to discern Russian operational intentions from a system like Iskander because one could fire from Crimea against targets anywhere in southern Ukraine or from Belarus anywhere against northern Ukraine. The 400 to 500 kilometers (249 to 311 miles) range of the system means they can hold a great many targets at risk.”
Other footage posted to social media has captured heavy multiple rocket launchers — such as the BM-30 Smerch — moving on roads near the Russian city of Kursk and elsewhere. Unlike Iskander missiles, heavy artillery rockets are generally fired in salvos by the dozen — and a single battalion of six launchers could cause 72 rockets with tens of thousands of submunitions to rain down on a target, all arriving within seconds of one another, Boston said.
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Experts told The Post that video shared Feb. 7 showed a Russian MiG-31K carrying a Kinzhal ballistic missile landing at the Kaliningrad Chkalovsk air base. (Status-6 / Twitter)
In a video shared on Feb. 7, a Russian MiG-31K fighter jet carrying what appeared to be a Kinzhal ballistic missile was spotted landing at Kaliningrad Chkalovsk air base — a concerning development, because such jets are not based there, according to Rob Lee, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia program. From Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave between Lithuania and Poland, such a missile could put practically every European capital in range, Lee said. He noted on Twitter that this show of force was probably “designed to deter NATO from getting involved if Russia escalates in Ukraine.”
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Video posted to TikTok on Feb. 6 shows vehicles and soldiers that appear to be from Russia's National Guard driving from Russia to Ukraine. (tod8885 / TikTok)
Russia’s version of the National Guard, known as Rosgvardiya, appears to be deploying in areas near Ukraine, according to videos posted to social media. It is generally seen as a follow-on force that would hold territory seized by more specialized troops and secure ground communication lines back to military headquarters.
“It’s hard to get a sense of the numbers, but this force is better suited to crowd control and urban cordon, more so than the army,” said Dara Massicot, a Russian military expert at the Rand Corporation. Massicot noted the Russian authorities said they were undertaking an unannounced out-of-cycle exercise after the appearance of Russian guard units in areas of Russia near Ukraine began alarming locals and prompting social media posts.
Russian troops on the move
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Video posted to TikTok on Feb. 5 shows Russian troops at a train station in Buynaksk, in Russia’s southwestern Dagestan region. (_dobro_100 / TikTok)
Video posted online shows Russian troops gathering at a train station in the city of Buynaksk in Russia’s southern Dagestan region. The soldiers are almost certainly from the 136th Motor Rifle Brigade, based in Buynaksk, Kofman said, and were probably heading to Crimea, where much of their equipment, including armored vehicles, had already been prepositioned.
The soldiers appear to be about to board a civilian Russian Railways passenger train. Though soldiers often travel on civilian trains, the footage is particularly concerning, Kofman said, because if troops are moving toward Ukraine in typical Russian Railways cars, there wouldn’t necessarily be any indications of those movements on satellite imagery or social media, he said.
In the initial stages of the buildup, observers were pointing out that equipment was moving but troops were not. Michael Sheldon, a research associate at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, said troops can be moved far more inconspicuously than weapons— and civilian trains is one method.
“They charter them. There are no civilian passengers on the train,” Sheldon said. He noted, “Now we’re seeing military personnel moving in trains separate from that which accompany their equipment.”
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Videos reportedly from Feb. 5 show Russian special operation forces and paratroopers in Belarus. (MotolkoHelp)
Russia has deployed various forces to take part in “Allied Resolve-2022” military exercises held jointly with its ally Belarus, further raising alarm over Russia’s potential invasion plans as Belarus also shares a border with Ukraine. Videos posted on social media appear to show those units include special operations forces.
According to Ruslan Leviev, an analyst with the Conflict Intelligence Team, an independent Russian open-source investigative organization that monitors Russia’s military, in any large-scale attack on Ukraine, the Airborne Forces, as well as special forces, probably would play a decisive role: either in an assault-landing operation to capture strategic objects or as shock infantry.
“In Syria, the special operations forces were engaged in complex tasks on the front line and were tasked to eliminate particularly persistent pockets of resistance. This is the only type of Russian troops that have up-to-date experience in urban combat,” Leviev said.
Dylan Moriarty contributed to this report.
5. Former CIA Director Gina Haspel ramped up HUMINT, human-intelligence gathering
Former CIA Director Gina Haspel ramped up HUMINT, human-intelligence gathering
Former CIA Director Gina Haspel said that within the Intelligence Community, CIA is the keeper of the human intelligence mission. Technical forms of collection are vital, but a good human source is unique and can deliver decisive intelligence on our adversaries’ secrets — even their intent. There is good reason for Haspel to value on-the-ground, human agents, for she handled CIA assets inside Russia during the Cold War days.
In her CIA career, Haspel collected vital information from human sources. That, basically, is what HUMINT is. It can be done openly, as when CIA operatives interview witnesses or make contact with the spies (assets) that they recruited. Or it may be done through clandestine or covert means (espionage). It involves interpersonal contact between the CIA case officer and his/her sources- perhaps, in a casual conversation in a bar, an interview or debriefing in a secure safe house, or from someone being waterboarded at a clandestine black site. BTW, the latter no longer happens.
HUMINT plays a vital role in most intelligence agencies around the world. In fact, it remains the backbone of their intelligence collection activities. It has proved invaluable to the US, UK, Soviet Union, and Australia throughout history, especially during World War II and the Cold War Era. The basic principles of HUMINT remain constant and relevant in today’s world of international and domestic terrorism.
America’s counterintelligence teams are well-versed in the art of HUMINT, especially after Gina Haspel’s drive to recruit and train more undercover operatives.
The MISSION OF VENGEANCE spy thriller highlights skirmishes between Russian GRU and American CIA human intelligence agents. Here’s a snippet, where CIA Spymaster Corey Pearson reads a letter from a Former KGB agent who was murdered after defecting to the U.S.:
Snippet: I know who murdered me. He goes by the nickname Nevidljiva Ubica and worked alongside Boris Markov and Vladimir Putin in the Cold War era. He’s an expert in HUMINT spy craft and is now embedded under deep cover somewhere inside the United States. I know this because I overheard Boris Markov talking to him on an encrypted phone at my estate.
He is a dangerous man and during the cold war, he specialized in recruiting and inserting moles inside the West German government. I highly suspect that he has been carrying out his specialty inside America for decades.
Beware of Russia’s human intelligence gathering capabilities. Let me explain. I told you at my defection briefing at the embassy in Santo Domingo that I worked alongside Putin and Markov as KGB agents assigned to East Berlin. Our HUMINT abilities were unmatchable. We targeted and befriended people of interest, then recruited them. Many were professors, journalists and skilled professionals who had plausible reasons to travel to the United States. We trained them in spy craft, and they stole much of your intelligence secrets and technology. We were quite good, at least we thought we were, until a young recruit named Andrei Vavilova was assigned to work with us.
Vavilova surpassed all of us in the art of HUMINT. He was in his mid-twenties; the rest of us were in our thirties, but he was a genius at the art of recruitment. Moscow recruited him out of a Spetsnaz training unit after he scored highest in English language training and because he outsmarted his teachers. During student training, he was assigned a sector in Moscow where he had to invent and live his own fake identity and background. He evaded his instructors on the streets of Moscow as he plotted fake meetings with contacts assigned to him and penetrated a few high-security facilities by befriending people who worked in them, persuading them to get him entry permits.
End of Snippet
Lastly, this video reveals what spy life is really like- gathering human intelligence. Seasoned intelligence officer Warren Reed doesn’t hold back in this video: The Life of an Intelligence Officer.
Robert Morton is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), enjoys writing about the U.S. Intelligence Community, and relishes traveling to the Florida Keys and Key West, the Bahamas and Caribbean. He combines both passions in his Corey Pearson- CIA Spymaster series. Check out his latest spy thriller: MISSION OF VENGEANCE.
6. Enemies of My Enemy: How Fear of China Is Forging a New World Order
Conclusion:
If there is any hope, it lies in a renewed commitment to democratic values. The United States and its allies share a common aspiration for an international order based on democratic principles and enshrined in international agreements and laws. The core of such an order is being forged in the crucible of competition with China and could be built out into the most enlightened order the world has ever seen—a genuine free world. But to get there, the United States and its allies will have to embrace competition with China and march forward together through another long twilight struggle.
Enemies of My Enemy
How Fear of China Is Forging a New World Order
March/April 2022
Foreign Affairs · by Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the World’s Sole Superpower · February 14, 2022
The international order is falling apart, and everyone seems to know how to fix it. According to some, the United States just needs to rededicate itself to leading the liberal order it helped found some 75 years ago. Others argue that the world’s great powers should form a concert to guide the international community into a new age of multipolar cooperation. Still others call for a grand bargain that divides the globe into stable spheres of influence. What these and other visions of international order have in common is an assumption that global governance can be designed and imposed from the top down. With wise statesmanship and ample summitry, the international jungle can be tamed and cultivated. Conflicts of interest and historical hatreds can be negotiated away and replaced with win-win cooperation.
The history of international order, however, provides little reason for confidence in top-down, cooperative solutions. The strongest orders in modern history—from Westphalia in the seventeenth century to the liberal international order in the twentieth—were not inclusive organizations working for the greater good of humanity. Rather, they were alliances built by great powers to wage security competition against their main rivals. Fear and loathing of a shared enemy, not enlightened calls to make the world a better place, brought these orders together. Progress on transnational issues, when achieved, emerged largely as a byproduct of hardheaded security cooperation. That cooperation usually lasted only as long as a common threat remained both present and manageable. When that threat dissipated or grew too large, the orders collapsed. Today, the liberal order is fraying for many reasons, but the underlying cause is that the threat it was originally designed to defeat—Soviet communism—disappeared three decades ago. None of the proposed replacements to the current order have stuck because there hasn’t been a threat scary or vivid enough to compel sustained cooperation among the key players.
Until now. Through a surge of repression and aggression, China has frightened countries near and far. It is acting belligerently in East Asia, trying to carve out exclusive economic zones in the global economy, and exporting digital systems that make authoritarianism more effective than ever. For the first time since the Cold War, a critical mass of countries face serious threats to their security, welfare, and ways of life—all emanating from a single source.
This moment of clarity has triggered a flurry of responses. China’s neighbors are arming themselves and aligning with outside powers to secure their territory and sea-lanes. Many of the world’s largest economies are collectively developing new trade, investment, and technology standards that implicitly discriminate against China. Democracies are gathering to devise strategies for combating authoritarianism at home and abroad, and new international organizations are popping up to coordinate the battle. Seen in real time, these efforts look scattershot. Step back from the day-to-day commotion, however, and a fuller picture emerges: for better or worse, competition with China is forging a new international order.
ORDERS OF EXCLUSION
The modern liberal mind associates international order with peace and harmony. Historically, however, international orders have been more about keeping rivals down than bringing everyone together. As the international relations theorist Kyle Lascurettes has argued, the major orders of the past four centuries were “orders of exclusion,” designed by dominant powers to ostracize and outcompete rivals. Order building wasn’t a restraint on geopolitical conflict; it was power politics by other means, a cost-effective way to contain adversaries short of war.
Fear of an enemy, not faith in friends, formed the bedrock of each era’s order, and members developed a common set of norms by defining themselves in opposition to that enemy. In doing so, they tapped into humanity’s most primordial driver of collective action. Sociologists call it “the in-group/out-group dynamic.” Philosophers call it “Sallust’s theorem,” after the ancient historian who argued that fear of Carthage held the Roman Republic together. In political science, the analogous concept is negative partisanship, the tendency for voters to become intensely loyal to one political party mainly because they despise its rival.
For the first time since the Cold War, a critical mass of countries face serious threats to their security, welfare, and ways of life.
This negative dynamic pervades the history of order building. In 1648, the kingdoms that won the Thirty Years’ War enshrined rules of sovereign statehood in the Peace of Westphalia to undermine the authority of the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire. Great Britain and its allies designed the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht to contain France by delegitimizing territorial expansion through royal marriages and the assertion of dynastic ties, Louis XIV’s preferred method of amassing power. The Concert of Europe, the post-Napoleonic peace established in Vienna in 1815, was used by conservative monarchies to forestall the rise of liberal revolutionary regimes. The victors of World War I built the interwar order to hold Germany and Bolshevik Russia in check. After World War II, the Allies initially designed a global order, centered on the United Nations, to prevent a return of Nazi-style fascism and mercantilism. When the onset of the Cold War quickly hamstrung that global order, however, the West created a separate order to exclude and outcompete Soviet communism. For the duration of the Cold War, the world was divided into two orders: the dominant one led by Washington, and a poorer one centered on Moscow.
The main features of today’s liberal order are direct descendants of the United States’ Cold War alliance. After the Soviets decided not to join the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (gatt), these institutions were repurposed as agents of capitalist expansion—first, to rebuild capitalist economies and, later, to promote globalization. The Marshall Plan laid the foundation for the European Community by lavishing U.S. aid on governments that agreed to expel communists from their ranks and work toward an economic federation. NATO created a united front against the Red Army. The chain of U.S. alliances ringing East Asia was constructed to contain communist expansion there, especially from China and North Korea. U.S. engagement with China, which lasted from the 1970s to the 2010s, was a gambit to exploit the Sino-Soviet split.
Each of these initiatives was an element of an order designed first and foremost to defeat the Soviet Union. In the absence of the Cold War threat, Japan and West Germany would not have tolerated prolonged U.S. military occupations on their soil. The British, the French, and the Germans would not have pooled their industrial resources. The United States—which had spent the previous two centuries ducking international commitments and shielding its economy with tariffs—would not have thrown its weight behind international institutions. Nor would it have provided security guarantees, massive aid, and easy market access to dozens of countries, including the former Axis powers. Only the threat of a nuclear-armed, communist superpower could compel so many countries to set aside their conflicting interests and long-standing rivalries and build the strongest security community and free-trade regime in history.
buckling under the pressure
For decades, the United States and its allies knew what they stood for and who the enemy was. But then the Soviet Union collapsed, and a single overarching threat gave way to a kaleidoscope of minor ones. In the new and uncertain post–Cold War environment, the Western allies sought refuge in past sources of success. Instead of building a new order, they doubled down on the existing one. Their enemy may have disintegrated, but their mission, they believed, remained the same: to enlarge the community of free-market democracies. For the next three decades, they worked to expand the Western liberal order into a global one. NATO membership nearly doubled. The European Community morphed into the EU, a full-blown economic union with more than twice as many member countries. The Gatt was transformed into the World Trade Organization (WTO) and welcomed dozens of new members, unleashing an unprecedented period of hyperglobalization.
But it couldn’t last. The liberal order, like all international orders, is a form of organized hypocrisy that contains the seeds of its own demise. To forge a cohesive community, order builders have to exclude hostile nations, outlaw uncooperative behaviors, and squelch domestic opposition to international rule-making. These inherently repressive acts eventually trigger a backlash. In the mid-nineteenth century, it came in the form of a wave of liberal revolutions, which eroded the unity and ideological coherence of the monarchical Concert of Europe. During the 1930s, aggrieved fascist powers demolished the liberal interwar order that stood in the way of their imperial ambitions. By the late 1940s, the Soviet Union had spurned the global order it had helped negotiate just a few years prior, having gobbled up territory in Eastern Europe in contravention of the UN Charter. The Soviet representative at the UN derided the Bretton Woods institutions as “branches of Wall Street.” Exclusionary by nature, international orders inevitably incite opposition.
Many in the West had long assumed that the liberal order would be an exception to the historical pattern. The system’s commitment to openness and nondiscrimination supposedly made it “hard to overturn and easy to join,” as the political scientist G. John Ikenberry argued in these pages in 2008. Any country, large or small, could plug and play in the globalized economy. Liberal institutions could accommodate all manner of members—even illiberal ones, which would gradually be reformed by the system into responsible stakeholders. As more countries joined, a virtuous cycle would play out: free trade would generate prosperity, which would spread democracy, which would enhance international cooperation, which would lead to more trade. Most important, the order faced no major opposition, because it had already defeated its main enemy. The demise of Soviet communism had sent a clear message to all that there was no viable alternative to democratic capitalism.
Through a surge of repression and aggression, China has frightened countries near and far.
These assumptions turned out to be wrong. The liberal order is, in fact, deeply exclusionary. By promoting free markets, open borders, democracy, supranational institutions, and the use of reason to solve problems, the order challenges traditional beliefs and institutions that have united communities for centuries: state sovereignty, nationalism, religion, race, tribe, family. These enduring ties to blood and soil were bottled up during the Cold War, when the United States and its allies had to maintain a united front to contain the Soviet Union. But they have reemerged over the course of the post–Cold War era. “We are going to do a terrible thing to you,” the Soviet official Georgi Arbatov told a U.S. audience in 1988. “We are going to deprive you of an enemy.” The warning proved prescient. By slaying its main adversary, the liberal order unleashed all sorts of nationalist, populist, religious, and authoritarian opposition.
Many of the order’s pillars are buckling under the pressure. NATO is riven by disputes over burden sharing. The EU nearly broke apart during the eurozone crisis, and in the years since, it has lost the United Kingdom and has been threatened by the rise of xenophobic right-wing parties across the continent. The WTO’s latest round of multilateral trade talks has dragged on for 20 years without an agreement, and the United States is crippling the institution’s core feature—the Appellate Court, where countries adjudicate their disputes—for failing to regulate Chinese nontariff barriers. On the whole, the liberal order looks ill equipped to handle pressing global problems such as climate change, financial crises, pandemics, digital disinformation, refugee influxes, and political extremism, many of which are arguably a direct consequence of an open system that promotes the unfettered flow of money, goods, information, and people across borders.
Policymakers have long recognized these problems. Yet none of their ideas for revamping the system has gained traction because order building is costly. It requires leaders to divert time and political capital away from advancing their agendas to hash out international rules and sell them to skeptical publics, and it requires countries to subordinate their national interests to collective objectives and trust that other countries will do likewise. These actions do not come naturally, which is why order building usually needs a common enemy. For 30 years, that unifying force has been absent, and the liberal order has unraveled as a result.
ENTER THE DRAGON
There has never been any doubt about what China wants, because Chinese leaders have declared the same objectives for decades: to keep the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in power, reabsorb Taiwan, control the East China and South China Seas, and return China to its rightful place as the dominant power in Asia and the most powerful country in the world. For most of the past four decades, the country took a relatively patient and peaceful approach to achieving these aims. Focused on economic growth and fearful of being shunned by the international community, China adopted a “peaceful rise” strategy, relying primarily on economic clout to advance its interests and generally following a maxim of the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping: “Hide your strength, bide your time.”
In recent years, however, China has expanded aggressively on multiple fronts. “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy has replaced friendship diplomacy. Perceived slights from foreigners, no matter how small, are met with North Korean–style condemnation. A combative attitude has seeped into every part of China’s foreign policy, and it is confronting many countries with their gravest threat in generations.
Police officers in Shanghai, January 2022
Aly Song / Reuters
This threat is most apparent in maritime East Asia, where China is moving aggressively to cement its vast territorial claims. Beijing is churning out warships faster than any country has since World War II, and it has flooded Asian sea-lanes with Chinese coast guard and fishing vessels. It has strung military outposts across the South China Sea and dramatically increased its use of ship ramming and aerial interceptions to shove neighbors out of disputed areas. In the Taiwan Strait, Chinese military patrols, some involving a dozen warships and more than 50 combat aircraft, prowl the sea almost daily and simulate attacks on Taiwanese and U.S. targets. Chinese officials have told Western analysts that calls for an invasion of Taiwan are proliferating within the CCP. Pentagon officials worry that such an assault could be imminent.
China has gone on the economic offensive, too. Its latest five-year plan calls for dominating what Chinese officials call “chokepoints”—goods and services that other countries can’t live without—and then using that dominance, plus the lure of China’s domestic market, to browbeat countries into concessions. Toward that end, China has become the dominant dispenser of overseas loans, loading up more than 150 countries with over $1 trillion of debt. It has massively subsidized strategic industries to gain a monopoly on hundreds of vital products, and it has installed the hardware for digital networks in dozens of countries. Armed with economic leverage, it has used coercion against more than a dozen countries over the last few years. In many cases, the punishment has been disproportionate to the supposed crime—for example, slapping tariffs on many of Australia’s exports after that country requested an international investigation into the origins of COVID-19.
China has also become a potent antidemocratic force, selling advanced tools of tyranny around the world. By combining surveillance cameras with social media monitoring, artificial intelligence, biometrics, and speech and facial recognition technologies, the Chinese government has pioneered a system that allows dictators to watch citizens constantly and punish them instantly by blocking their access to finance, education, employment, telecommunications, or travel. The apparatus is a despot’s dream, and Chinese companies are already selling and operating aspects of it in more than 80 countries.
ACTION AND REACTION
As China burns down what remains of the liberal order, it is sparking an international backlash. Negative views of the country have soared around the world to highs not seen since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. A 2021 survey by the Pew Research Center found that roughly 75 percent of people in the United States, Europe, and Asia held unfavorable views of China and had no confidence that President Xi Jinping would behave responsibly in world affairs or respect human rights. Another survey, a 2020 poll by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, revealed that about 75 percent of foreign policy elites in those same places thought that the best way to deal with China was to form coalitions of like-minded countries against it. In the United States, both political parties now support a tough policy toward China. The EU has officially declared China to be a “systemic rival.” In Asia, Beijing faces openly hostile governments in every direction, from Japan to Australia to Vietnam to India. Even people in countries that trade heavily with China are souring on it. Surveys show that South Koreans, for example, now dislike China more than they dislike Japan, their former colonial overlord.
Anti-Chinese sentiment is starting to congeal into concrete pushback. The resistance remains embryonic and patchy, mainly because so many countries are still hooked on Chinese trade. But the overall trend is clear: disparate actors are starting to join forces to roll back Beijing’s power. In the process, they are reordering the world.
The Chinese threat could usher in the most consequential changes to global governance in a generation.
The emerging anti-Chinese order departs fundamentally from the liberal order, because it is directed at a different threat. In particular, the new order flips the relative emphasis placed on capitalism versus democracy. During the Cold War, the old liberal order promoted capitalism first and democracy a distant second. The United States and its allies pushed free markets as far as their power could reach, but when forced to choose, they almost always supported right-wing autocrats over left-wing democrats. The so-called free world was mainly an economic construct. Even after the Cold War, when democracy promotion became a cottage industry in Western capitals, the United States and its allies often shelved human rights concerns to gain market access, as they did most notably by ushering China into the WTO.
But now economic openness has become a liability for the United States and its allies, because China is ensconced in virtually every aspect of the liberal order. Far from being put out of business by globalization, China’s authoritarian capitalist system seems almost perfectly designed to milk free markets for mercantilist gain. Beijing uses subsidies and espionage to help its firms dominate global markets and protects its domestic market with nontariff barriers. It censors foreign ideas and companies on its own internet and freely accesses the global Internet to steal intellectual property and spread CCP propaganda. It assumes leadership positions in liberal international institutions, such as the UN Human Rights Council, and then bends them in an illiberal direction. It enjoys secure shipping around the globe for its export machine, courtesy of the U.S. Navy, and uses its own military to assert control over large swaths of the East China and South China Seas.
The United States and its allies have awoken to the danger: the liberal order and, in particular, the globalized economy at its heart are empowering a dangerous adversary. In response, they are trying to build a new order that excludes China by making democracy a requirement for full membership. When U.S. President Joe Biden gave his first press conference, in March 2021, and described the U.S.-Chinese rivalry as part of a broader competition between democracy and autocracy, it wasn’t a rhetorical flourish. He was drawing a battle line based on a widely shared belief that authoritarian capitalism poses a mortal threat to the democratic world, one that can’t be contained by the liberal order. Instead of reforming existing rules, rich democracies are starting to impose new ones by banding together, adopting progressive standards and practices, and threatening to exclude countries that don’t follow them. Democracies aren’t merely balancing against China—increasing their defense spending and forming military alliances—they are also reordering the world around it.
under construction
The architecture of the new order remains a work in progress. Yet two key features are already discernible. The first is a loose economic bloc anchored by the G-7, the group of democratic allies that controls more than half of the world’s wealth. These leading powers, along with a rotating cast of like-minded states, are collaborating to prevent China from monopolizing the global economy. History has shown that whichever power dominates the strategic goods and services of an era dominates that era. In the nineteenth century, the United Kingdom was able to build an empire on which the sun never set in part because it mastered iron, steam, and the telegraph faster than its competitors. In the twentieth century, the United States surged ahead of other countries by harnessing steel, chemicals, electronics, aerospace, and information technologies. Now, China hopes to dominate modern strategic sectors—including artificial intelligence, biotechnology, semiconductors, and telecommunications—and relegate other economies to subservient status. In a 2017 meeting in Beijing, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang told H. R. McMaster, then the U.S. national security adviser, how he envisioned the United States and other countries fitting into the global economy in the future: their role, McMaster recalled Li saying, “would merely be to provide China with raw materials, agricultural products, and energy to fuel its production of the world’s cutting-edge industrial and consumer products.”
To avoid becoming a cog in a Chinese economic empire, leading democracies have started forming exclusive trade and investment networks designed to speed up their progress in critical sectors and slow down China’s. Some of these collaborations, such as the U.S.-Japan Competitiveness and Resilience Partnership, announced in 2021, create joint R & D projects to help members outpace Chinese innovation. Other schemes focus on blunting China’s economic leverage by developing alternatives to Chinese products and funding. The G-7’s Build Back Better World initiative and the EU’s Global Gateway, for example, will provide poor countries with infrastructure financing as an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Australia, India, and Japan joined forces to start the Supply Chain Resilience Initiative, which offers incentives for their companies to move their operations out of China. And at the behest of the United States, countries composing more than 60 percent of the world’s cellular-equipment market have enacted or are considering restrictions against Huawei, China’s main 5G telecommunications provider.
The liberal order has unleashed all sorts of nationalist, populist, religious, and authoritarian opposition.
Meanwhile, democratic coalitions are constraining China’s access to advanced technologies. The Netherlands, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States, for example, have colluded to cut China off from advanced semiconductors and from the machines that make them. New institutions are laying the groundwork for a full-scale multilateral export control regime. The U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council creates common transatlantic standards for screening exports to China and investment there in artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge technologies. The Export Controls and Human Rights Initiative, a joint project of Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States that was unveiled in late 2021, is intended to do the same for technologies that could support digital authoritarianism, such as speech and facial recognition tools. The United States and its democratic allies are also negotiating trade and investment deals to discriminate against China, putting in place labor, environmental, and governance standards that Beijing will never meet. In October 2021, for example, the United States and the EU agreed to create a new arrangement that will impose tariffs on aluminum and steel producers that engage in dumping or carbon-intensive production, a measure that will hit no country harder than China.
The second feature of the emerging order is a double military barrier to contain China. The inside layer consists of rivals bordering the East China and South China Seas. Many of them—including Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam—are loading up on mobile missile launchers and mines. The goal is to turn themselves into prickly porcupines capable of denying China sea and air control near their shores. Those efforts are now being bolstered by an outside layer of democratic powers—mainly Australia, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These democracies are providing aid, arms, and intelligence to China’s neighbors; training together so they can conduct long-range missile strikes on Chinese forces and blockade China’s oil imports; and organizing multinational freedom-of-navigation exercises throughout the region, especially near Chinese-held rocks, reefs, and islands in disputed areas.
This security cooperation is becoming stronger and more institutionalized. Witness the reemergence of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad—a coalition made up of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States that had gone dormant shortly after its founding in 2007. Or look at the creation of new pacts, most notably AUKUS, an alliance linking Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The overarching goal of all this activity is to maintain the territorial status quo in East Asia. But a more explicit aim is to save Taiwan, the frontline democracy most at risk of Chinese conquest. Japan and the United States have developed a joint battle plan for defending the island, and in November 2021, Peter Dutton, Australia’s defense minister, said it was “inconceivable” that his country would not also join the fight. The European Parliament, for its part, has adopted a comprehensive plan to boost Taiwan’s economic resilience and international recognition.
Running a Chinese military drill in the South China Sea, April 2018
China Stringer Network / Reuters
Viewed individually, these efforts look haphazard and reactive. Collectively, however, they betray a positive vision for a democratic order, one that differs fundamentally from China’s mercantilist model and also from the old international order, with neoliberal orthodoxy at its core. By infusing labor and human rights standards into economic agreements, the new vision prioritizes people over corporate profits and state power. It also elevates the global environment from a mere commodity to a shared and jointly protected commons. By linking democratic governments together in an exclusive network, the new order attempts to force countries to make a series of value judgments and imposes real penalties for illiberal behavior. Want to make carbon-intensive steel with slave labor? Prepare to be hit with tariffs by the world’s richest countries. Considering annexing international waters? Expect a visit from a multinational armada.
If China continues to scare democracies into collective action, then it could usher in the most consequential changes to global governance in a generation or more. By containing Chinese naval expansion, for example, the maritime security system in East Asia could become a powerful enforcement mechanism for the law of the sea. By inserting carbon tariffs into trade deals to discriminate against China, the United States and its allies could force producers to reduce their emissions, inadvertently creating the basis for a de facto international carbon tax. The Quad’s success in providing one billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Southeast Asia, an effort to win hearts and minds away from Beijing, has provided a blueprint for combating future pandemics. Allied efforts to prevent the spread of digital authoritarianism could inspire new international regulations on digital flows and data privacy, and the imperative of competing with China could fuel an unprecedented surge in R & D and infrastructure spending around the world.
Like the orders of the past, the emerging one is an order of exclusion, sustained by fear and enforced through coercion. Unlike most past orders, however, it is directed toward progressive ends.
THE CLASH OF SYSTEMS
The history of international order building is one of savage competition between clashing systems, not of harmonious cooperation. In the best of times, that competition took the form of a cold war, with each side jockeying for advantage and probing each other with every measure short of military force. In many cases, however, the competition eventually boiled over into a shooting war and ended with one side crushing the other. The victorious order then ruled until it was destroyed by a new competitor—or until it simply crumbled without an external threat to hold it together.
Today, a growing number of policymakers and pundits are calling for a new concert of powers to sort out the world’s problems and divide the globe into spheres of influence. But the idea of an inclusive order in which no one power’s vision prevails is a fantasy that can exist only in the imaginations of world-government idealists and academic theorists. There are only two orders under construction right now—a Chinese-led one and a U.S.-led one—and the contest between the two is rapidly becoming a clash between autocracy and democracy, as both countries define themselves against each other and try to infuse their respective coalitions with ideological purpose. China is positioning itself as the world’s defender of hierarchy and tradition against a decadent and disorderly West; the United States is belatedly summoning a new alliance to check Chinese power and make the world safe for democracy.
Disparate actors are starting to join forces to roll back Beijing’s power. In the process, they are reordering the world.
This clash of systems will define the twenty-first century and divide the world. China will view the emerging democratic order as a containment strategy designed to strangle its economy and topple its regime. In response, it will seek to protect itself by asserting greater military control over its vital sea-lanes, carving out exclusive economic zones for its firms, and propping up autocratic allies as it sows chaos in democracies. The upsurge of Chinese repression and aggression, in turn, will further impel the United States and its allies to shun Beijing and build a democratic order. For a tiny glimpse of what this vicious cycle might look like, consider what happened in March 2021, when Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the EU sanctioned four Chinese officials for human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The sanctions amounted to a slap on the wrist, but Beijing interpreted them as an assault on its sovereignty and unleashed a diplomatic tirade and a slew of economic sanctions. The EU returned fire by freezing its proposed EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment.
In the coming years, the trade and technology wars between China and the United States that began during the Trump administration will rage on as both sides try to expand their respective spheres. Other countries will find it increasingly difficult to hedge their bets by maintaining links to both blocs. Instead, China and the United States will push their partners to pick sides, compelling them to reroute their supply chains and adopt wholesale the ecosystem of technologies and standards of one side’s order. The Internet will be split in two. When people journey from one order to the other—if they can even get a visa—they will enter a different digital realm. Their phones won’t work, nor will their favorite websites, their email accounts, or their precious social media apps. Political warfare between the two systems will intensify, as each tries to undermine the domestic legitimacy and international appeal of its competitor. East Asian sea-lanes will grow clogged with warships, and rival forces will experience frequent close encounters.
The clash of systems between China and the United States will define the twenty-first century and divide the world.
The standoff will end only when one side defeats or exhausts the other. As of now, the smart money is on the U.S. side, which has far more wealth and military assets than China does and better prospects for future growth. By the early 2030s, Xi, an obese smoker with a stressful job, will be in his 80s, if he is still alive. China’s demographic crisis will be kicking into high gear, with the country projected to lose roughly 70 million working-age adults and gain 130 million senior citizens between now and then. Hundreds of billions of dollars in overseas Chinese loans will be due, and many of China’s foreign partners won’t be able to pay them back. It is hard to see how a country facing so many challenges could long sustain its own international order, especially in the face of determined opposition from the world’s wealthiest countries.
Yet it is also far from guaranteed that the U.S.-led democratic order will hold together. The United States could suffer a constitutional crisis in the 2024 presidential election and collapse into civil strife. Even if that doesn’t happen, the United States and its allies might be rent by their own divides. The democratic world is suffering its greatest crisis of confidence and unity since the 1930s. Nationalism, populism, and opposition to globalism are rising, making collective action difficult. The East Asian democracies have ongoing territorial disputes with one another. Many Europeans view China as more of an economic opportunity than a strategic threat and seriously doubt the United States’ reliability as an ally, having endured four years of tariffs and scorn from President Donald Trump, who could soon be back in power. Europeans also hold different views from Americans on data security and privacy, and European governments fear U.S. technology dominance almost as much as they do Chinese digital hegemony. India may not be ready to abandon its traditional policy of nonalignment and back a democratic order, especially when it is becoming more repressive at home, and an order built around democracy will struggle to form productive partnerships with autocracies that would be important partners in any alliance against China, such as Singapore and Vietnam. Fear of China is a powerful force, but it might not be potent enough to paper over the many cracks that exist within the emerging anti-Chinese coalition.
If that coalition fails to solidify its international order, then the world will steadily slide back into anarchy, a struggle among rogue powers and regional blocs in which the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Some scholars assume—or hope—that an unordered world will sort itself out on its own, that great powers will carve out stable spheres of influence and avoid conflict or that the spread of international commerce and enlightened ideas will naturally maintain global peace and prosperity. But peace and prosperity are unnatural. When achieved, they are the result of sustained cooperation among great powers—that is, of an international order.
doubling down on democracy
History shows that eras of fluid multipolarity typically end in disaster, regardless of the bright ideas or advanced technologies circulating at the time. The late eighteenth century witnessed the pinnacle of the Enlightenment in Europe, before the continent descended into the hell of the Napoleonic Wars. At the start of the twentieth century, the world’s sharpest minds predicted an end to great-power conflict as railways, telegraph cables, and steamships linked countries closer together. The worst war in history up to that point quickly followed. The sad and paradoxical reality is that international orders are vital to avert chaos, yet they typically emerge only during periods of great-power rivalry. Competing with China will be fraught with risk for the United States and its allies, but it might be the only way to avoid even greater dangers.
To build a better future, the United States and its allies will need to take a more enlightened view of their interests than they did even during the Cold War. Back then, their economic interests dovetailed nicely with their geopolitical interests. Simple greed, if nothing else, could compel capitalist states to band together to protect private property against a communist onslaught. Now, however, the choice is not so simple, because standing up to China will entail significant economic costs, especially in the short term. Those costs might pale in comparison to the long-term costs of business as usual with Beijing—Chinese espionage has been estimated to deprive the United States alone of somewhere between $200 billion and $600 billion annually—to say nothing of the moral quandaries and geopolitical risks of cooperating with a brutal totalitarian regime with revanchist ambitions. Yet the ability to make such an enlightened calculation in favor of confronting China may be beyond the capacities of any nation, especially ones as polarized as the United States and many of its democratic allies.
If there is any hope, it lies in a renewed commitment to democratic values. The United States and its allies share a common aspiration for an international order based on democratic principles and enshrined in international agreements and laws. The core of such an order is being forged in the crucible of competition with China and could be built out into the most enlightened order the world has ever seen—a genuine free world. But to get there, the United States and its allies will have to embrace competition with China and march forward together through another long twilight struggle.
Foreign Affairs · by Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the World’s Sole Superpower · February 14, 2022
7. U.S. officials won't confirm reports on possible Russia invasion of Ukraine on Wednesday
U.S. officials won't confirm reports on possible Russia invasion of Ukraine on Wednesday
WASHINGTON, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Senior U.S. officials on Sunday said they could not confirm reports that U.S. intelligence indicates that Russia is planning to invade Ukraine on Wednesday, but said they would try to prevent any "surprise attack" by sharing what they knew of Russia's plans.
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan repeated that a Russian invasion could begin any day and President Joe Biden has said he will support Ukraine after any invasion and defend NATO territory.
"We cannot perfectly predict the day, but we have now been saying for some time that we are in the window, and an invasion could begin -- a major military action could begin -- by Russia in Ukraine any day now. That includes this coming week before the end of the Olympics," Sullivan told CNN's "State of the Union" when asked about the possible Wednesday timing.
"We will defend every inch of NATO territory, every inch of Article Five territory and Russia we think fully understands that message," Sullivan said in a separate interview with CBS' "Face the Nation" program.
Ukraine is not part of the NATO alliance.
Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby also on Sunday declined to confirm reports on the Wednesday timing.
"I'm not in a position to confirm those reports," Kirby said during an interview on "Fox News Sunday".
"And again, these assessments are coming from a variety of sources. And not, not exclusively just inside intelligence, but also what we're seeing in plain sight," Kirby said. "More than 100,000 troops now continue to be arrayed against Ukraine's border."
Their comments came amid a flurry of diplomatic activity aimed at trying to resolve the West's standoff with Moscow over Ukraine to avoid military action.
U.S. President Joe Biden, who spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday, was due to speak with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, U.S. and Ukrainian officials said.
Both Sullivan and Kirby repeated warnings for Americans to leave Ukraine.
"What we've seen just in the last 10 days or so is an acceleration of that buildup and movement of Russian forces of all varieties, closer to the border with Ukraine, in a position where they could launch a military action very, very rapidly," Sullivan said.
He added that the United States and its allies "will defend NATO territory, we will impose costs on Russia," in the event of a Russian attack.
Reporting by David Lawder and Katharine Jackson; additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and David Morgan; Editing by Lisa Shumaker
8. 'It is past time to leave': U.S. tells Americans to flee Ukraine and evacs embassy staff
We do not want to have to conduct a NEO under duress or in extremis.
'It is past time to leave': U.S. tells Americans to flee Ukraine and evacs embassy staff
As fears of a Russian invasion mount, the U.S. diplomatic presence is being immediately reduced to core functions.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks about Ukraine during his visit to Nadi, Fiji, Saturday, Feb. 12, 2022. | Kevin Lamarque/AP Photo
02/12/2022 08:23 AM EST
Updated: 02/12/2022 10:20 AM EST
The U.S. has begun evacuating its embassy in Kyiv as fears mount over a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The State Department said Saturday that almost all of its 200 staff based in Kyiv will be required to leave “due to the continued threat of Russian military action,” as the U.S. continues to work “intensively” to prevent Ukraine from becoming a war zone. The embassy will keep a small number of “core” diplomats in Kyiv and will maintain a small consular service in Lviv, which is further away from a potential conflict zone.
“Now these developments mean for private American citizens that it isn’t just time to leave Ukraine. It is past time for private citizens to leave Ukraine,” a senior State Department official said on Saturday. “We have no higher priority than the safety and security of our fellow citizens, including our fellow U.S. government employees. And we do a great deal to provide support for our fellow citizens, but as you know, there are real limits to what we are able to do in a war zone.”
The State Department official wouldn’t confirm the number of staff members who will stay behind in Ukraine for security reasons, but said their focus will be on working with the Ukrainian government and collecting valuable information for senior leaders and the Biden administration. The majority of embassy staff departing Kyiv will return to the United States and continue their work on Ukraine, the official said, while others may be based in neighboring countries depending on how things unfold.
Saturday’s evacuation order follows a series of warning signs on Friday, from Biden administration officials saying an invasion could happen before the conclusion of the Olympics on Feb. 20 and the Pentagon sending 3,000 more troops to Poland.
President Joe Biden is scheduled to hold a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday morning from Camp David.
Family members of U.S. embassy staff had already been ordered to depart Kyiv, but the State Department had left it up to nonessential staff if they wanted to leave.
The State Department again on Saturday urged Americans to evacuate Ukraine through private and commercial means, warning that the government would not be able to help U.S. citizens leave if Russia moves forward with military action.
“Our ability to help them through that crisis, during that crisis, is going to be extremely limited, and they cannot have any reasonable expectation that the U.S. government is going to be able to rescue them if they find themselves in harm’s way in a war zone,” a senior State Department official said.
In the past 24 hours, multiple other countries — including Israel, Germany and the U.K. — have been encouraging their citizens to leave and reducing their diplomatic presence. Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Saturday that Russia intends to “optimize” its embassy staff in Ukraine — an indication Moscow, too, was reducing its diplomatic presence in Ukraine for now.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken had a phone call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Saturday, reiterating that “a diplomatic path to resolving the crisis remained open” if Moscow decided to deescalate and engage in diplomatic discussions.
“He reiterated that should Moscow pursue the path of aggression and further invade Ukraine, it would result in a resolute, massive, and united Transatlantic response,” the readout said.
9. Opinion | Washington is still ignoring Afghans’ suffering
Regardless of causes, we are facing a very complex set of threats and conditions around the world.
Opinion | Washington is still ignoring Afghans’ suffering
The Washington Post · by James DownieDigital opinions editor Today at 4:33 p.m. EST · February 13, 2022
On Sunday, the White House deployed national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Pentagon spokesman John Kirby to the Sunday talk shows for interviews on the urgent Russian threat to Ukraine. But as one war looms, those shows still had a few questions regarding the end of another: last summer’s disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. CNN’s Jake Tapper even ended “State of the Union” with a commentary on a U.S. Army review of the exit, first reported by The Post.
More of that is needed. America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan deserves all the attention and study it can get. The Army report provides pages and pages of evidence that policymakers badly misread conditions on the ground. But U.S. politicians and media frequently treat Afghanistan these days like a TV series that had its finale in 2021. Even the stories most focused on Afghans, such as George Packer’s must-read feature for the Atlantic, usually end their tales when American boots leave the ground.
But Afghans’ suffering is very much ongoing, and American decisions continue to make it worse.
“Afghanistan has become the world’s largest humanitarian crisis,” the New Yorker’s Jane Ferguson reported last month. “Half of the country’s population needs humanitarian assistance to survive, double the number from 2020. More than twenty million people are on the brink of famine.” The U.N. World Food Program estimates that 95 percent of Afghan families lack enough to eat. The U.N. Development Program projects that by the summer, the poverty rate could be as high as 97 percent.
Of course, much of the blame must fall on the Taliban: As its members commit widespread human rights violations, the government denies the scale of the famine. But that famine is a direct consequence of the United States’ failure to create a self-sustaining economy there over two decades. More recently, the Biden administration’s decision to freeze billions in Afghan government assets as the United States withdrew exacerbated the resulting economic crash. Since then, humanitarian groups have begged the White House to release the money as aid. Last week, Biden finally ordered the release of the $7 billion held in U.S. banks — except he also ordered half held for Sept. 11 victims’ legal claims against the Taliban.
That decision is indefensible both logically and morally. First, that money doesn’t belong to the Taliban — indeed, that was the Biden administration’s argument for freezing it in the first place. To now say that it should go to Sept. 11 victims, deserving as they are, is a complete flip-flop. Second, with half the money going to Afghanistan in aid anyway, there’s no possible argument that this arrangement is about keeping money out of the Taliban’s hands. Finally, and most important, however many lives $3.5 billion in aid will save, $7 billion would save that many more.
But neither Sullivan nor Kirby fielded a question on the Sunday talk shows about the seized funds.
This American-centric framing isn’t just an abstract failing. A wider view may have led to better decisions from policymakers. One goal of the United States was to help rebuild a stable government for the Afghan people. By that standard, the situation on the ground was almost never acceptable. But politicians and media outlets perpetuated the incompatible view that Afghanistan was only in crisis when America’s soldiers and image were in imminent danger. That helped the war drag on long past any chance of stopping the Taliban, supporting a functioning Afghan state or any other measure of success. The everyday signs of failure were kept out of sight and out of mind for most Americans. A different approach, one that treated Afghan suffering like American suffering, would have almost certainly brought a quicker end to the quagmire.
Sadly, if a new way of thinking is ever to come out of the Afghanistan disaster, it seems unlikely to come from this White House. “Did you learn the lessons of Afghanistan?” CBS’s Margaret Brennan asked Sullivan on “Face the Nation.” “Are you applying them now?” Rather than answer the question, Sullivan disputed The Post’s story. On “Fox News Sunday,” Kirby was more respectful toward the Army report but still played down its findings. And no wonder, when the president flat-out rejected the report’s conclusions.
“Did you learn the lessons of Afghanistan?” is a question many American institutions — politicians, military, media — should continue to ask themselves for the foreseeable future. And no lesson can be learned if the true cost is downplayed. If the United States is to avoid the next great quagmire, if some yet-unknown country’s people is to avoid the terrible fate that has befallen millions of innocent Afghans, the Biden administration — and the rest of these institutions — will need a better answer.
The Washington Post · by James DownieDigital opinions editor Today at 4:33 p.m. EST · February 13, 2022
10. Florida National Guard troops ordered out of Ukraine by SECDEF
What about our SOF elements and the contractors we have advising Ukrainian forces?
Florida National Guard troops ordered out of Ukraine by SECDEF
The 160 soldiers of the Florida National Guard deployed to Ukraine since November have been ordered by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to leave Ukraine amid increasing concern of a Russian attack, according to Pentagon spokesman John Kirby.
The soldiers, assigned to the 53rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, have been ordered to reposition elsewhere in Europe, according to Kirby in a media release. They have been advising and mentoring Ukrainian forces as part of Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine.
RELATED
Satellite images released Thursday show new military deployments in Crimea, Belarus, and western Russia near Ukraine.
By Jessica Edwards
Austin made this decision “out of an abundance of caution — with the safety and security of our personnel foremost in mind — and informed by the State Department’s guidance on U.S. personnel in Ukraine,” according to the media release.
“This repositioning does not signify a change in our determination to support Ukraine’s Armed Forces, but will provide flexibility in assuring allies and deterring aggression,” the release states.
Task Force Gator soldiers, joined by NATO allies and partners, “mentor and advise Armed Forces of Ukraine Observer Controller / Trainers at the Combat Training Center located near Yavoriv, according to the JMTG-U website. They do this, according to the website, by employing a “train-the-trainer” approach, enabling Ukrainians to take the lead in training rotational brigades.
They also work to “develop and implement systems to improve combat training and increase training center capacity,” according to the website. “Combat Training Center - Yavoriv delivers Brigade-and-below collective training for Armed Forces of Ukraine Brigades.”
RELATED
The second wave of 82nd Airborne soldiers brings the total mobilized so far to 6,000.
Earlier Saturday, State Department officials in Kyiv announced they were suspending consular services at the embassy in Kyiv and moving some personnel to Lviv in the west of the country.
“It appears increasingly likely that this is where this this situation is headed, towards some kind of active conflict,” a senior State Department official told reporters Saturday morning.
Friday, President Joe Biden ordered 3,000 members of the 82nd Airborne Division to join 3,000 troops already mobilized to Poland, Germany and Romania.
There are more than 130,000 Russian troops arrayed around Ukraine.
Also on Saturday, Austin spoke with Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoygu, according to Kirby.
“They discussed Russia’s force build-up in Crimea and around Ukraine,” he said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden are to hold a high-stakes telephone call on Saturday as tensions over a possibly imminent invasion of Ukraine escalated sharply, according to The Associated Press. Before talking to Biden, Putin is to have a call with French President Emmanuel Macron, who met with him in Moscow earlier in the week to try to resolve the crisis.
This is a developing story. Stay with Military Times for updates.
Howard Altman is an award-winning editor and reporter who was previously the military reporter for the Tampa Bay Times and before that the Tampa Tribune, where he covered USCENTCOM, USSOCOM and SOF writ large among many other topics.
11. Why a Russian invasion of Ukraine would hurt Americans too
The American people need more reporting on why Ukraine and all foreign policy and national security issues we face are important to them. We need to know how these threats and issues will affect us. The public needs to be infromed tso they can be engaged.
Why a Russian invasion of Ukraine would hurt Americans too
CNN · by Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
If President Vladimir Putin orders his tanks into Russia's smaller, democratic neighbor, he would send shockwaves around the world and trigger one of the worst and most dangerous national security crises since the Cold War.
And while it is not his prime intention, Putin would cause significant damage to Biden's prestige and inflict real-time consequences on Americans in an already tense midterm election year -- including with likely new hikes to already soaring gasoline prices that often act as an index of voter anger and perceptions about the economy.
The President's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, on Sunday encapsulated a weekend in which the tone of Western governments warning of a possible invasion became more alarming, exacerbating a sense that the weeks-long Russian buildup around Ukraine might be racing to a decisive moment.
"The way they have built up their forces, the way they have maneuvered things in place, makes it a distinct possibility that there will be major military action very soon," Sullivan told Jake Tapper on CNN's "State of the Union."
Read More
Conjuring a frightening scenario of mass conflict in Europe, Sullivan warned that an invasion would likely start with a prolonged barrage of missile and bomb attacks that could cause significant civilian casualties.
"If Russia moves forward, we will defend NATO territory, we will impose costs on Russia, and we will ensure that we emerge from this as the West stronger, more determined, more purposeful than we have been in 30 years, and that Russia ultimately suffers a significant strategic cost for military action," Sullivan told Tapper.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby added to the impression that this could be a fateful week, saying on Fox on Sunday that the US had good intelligence sources that pointed to a "crescendo opportunity for Mr. Putin."
Domestic blowback
The United States will not send troops into Ukraine to defend it. The former Soviet federated republic is not a member of NATO, the alliance that has defended the Western world since soon after World War II. So direct conflict between Russian and US soldiers is unlikely. Biden has, however, ordered several thousand troops to frontline NATO states to deter any further Russian adventurism -- including to Romania and Poland, two countries that were once behind the Iron Curtain but are now members of the alliance -- much to Putin's fury.
A Russian invasion of Ukraine would crush democratic principles and the idea that people can chose their leaders for themselves -- principles on which the United States had built decades of foreign policy. It could embolden China to take action against the democratic island of Taiwan, which it considers Chinese territory, in a conflict far more likely to draw the US into a major war than an invasion of Ukraine.
But more immediately, a Russian invasion could have a significant domestic blowback inside the United States in a way that would impose more economic pain and ultimately hurt the prospects of Biden and his Democrats in November's elections.
The President promised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday that the US would impose measures that would "swiftly and decisively" punish Russia. This response would transform American foreign policy and add yet another crisis to Biden's crowded plate.
For the first time in 30 years, the United States and Russia -- the two countries with the biggest nuclear arsenals -- would be locked in a direct standoff. Tensions could further ratchet up if the United States gets back into the business of killing Russians. There have been calls in Congress for a US-funded insurgency in Ukraine to mirror the one led by Washington that helped eject Moscow from Afghanistan in the 1980s and hastened the fall of the Soviet Union. Russia would respond to such a campaign -- and has the capacity to disrupt US goals and diplomacy worldwide, including on vital issues like the nuclear challenges posed by Iran and North Korea, which both have the potential to soon cause a direct threat to American national security.
A Russian invasion of Ukraine could also cause oil prices to shoot up and translate into direct pain at the pump for US drivers. High gas prices, currently averaging $3.48 according to the American Automobile Association, have been a contributing factor to Biden's fall in popularity. The President cannot afford a crisis with the potential to push them even higher just days after key data on Thursday showed that inflation rose 7.5%, in the worst such figures since 1982.
A Russian invasion could also cause stocks to tumble in a way that would hit voter perceptions of economic security and prosperity, deepening worries that would further bite into Democratic hopes of staving off a rout in an election that could hand the House of Representatives and the Senate to Republicans. Then there is a psychological and political backlash that Biden could face with an already disgruntled electorate if a Russian invasion of Ukraine added to the impression of a world racing out of control in ways that make him, and the US, look outmaneuvered.
Republicans have already been trying to paint Biden as weak and give the impression that what have been robust US efforts to convince Putin not to invade -- including the readying of the most painful sanctions the US and the West have ever imposed on Moscow -- have failed to influence the Russian leader. Ex-President Donald Trump is making an argument that will become familiar if an invasion does occur. He claimed in a Fox interview on Saturday that Putin had been encouraged to challenge the United States because of the Biden's team's chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan.
"When they watched all of that I think they got emboldened," Trump said. The former President also claimed that he would have prevented Putin from taking such a stand, adding, "I know him very well, got along with him very well. We respected each other." Trump claimed that no administration had been tougher on Russian than the one he led. While his administration did have a robust policy toward Moscow -- including the dispatch of weapons to Ukraine -- Trump often seemed to be following his personal approach, which involved fawning in front of Putin and adopting the Russian leader's point of view on key questions -- including Putin's denial of meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.
A second Trump presidency would raise real questions about the future of NATO that would again play into Putin's goal of dividing or even destroying the alliance. The New York Times reported, for instance, in 2019 that Trump had privately spoken about withdrawing from the organization that he frequently criticized -- a move that, if it went ahead, would represent a massive victory for Russia. Any action in Ukraine that hurts Biden might help Trump and his campaign-in-waiting, a factor that could play into the calculations of a Russian leader who has already interfered in US elections with the goal of helping the 45th President.
A presidency already in trouble
Trump's comments over the weekend were clearly intended as signal to Republicans of how to go after Biden should a Russian invasion take place. The GOP has spent months building a midterm election message centered on the idea that Biden is weak and incompetent and that the world has lost respect for the US with the departure of the strongman Trump.
Biden conveyed a direct caution to Putin about the US actions -- including sanctions that could cripple the Russian economy if an invasion goes ahead -- in a telephone call on Saturday. But his frequent contacts with the Russian leader risk leaving him open to accusations of appeasement if Putin ignores US warnings and marches into Ukraine anyway.
Republican leaders also want to stress high prices for gasoline and basic goods, mostly brought on by the pandemic, to portray Biden's economic management as a disaster despite some of the strongest jobs numbers in decades. So many of the cascading events that would result from a Russian invasion of Ukraine could play into their hands.
Biden's presidency is already reeling. His approval rating dipped to 41% in a new CNN/SSRS poll released last week, and a Russian invasion of Ukraine would deepen the sense of crisis that is already tightening its grip on the White House. History suggests that presidents in that much trouble suffer stinging defeats in midterm elections in their first term. The CNN survey, conducted in January and February, found that only 45% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters wanted to see the party renominate Biden in 2024, while 51% preferred a different candidate. There was not much better news for Trump, however, with 50% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters wanting the GOP to nominate him again and 49% wanting an alternative candidate.
Biden is unlikely to get much credit from voters for what has, despite a few rhetorical missteps, been a multi-front and successful effort to unite America's NATO allies and build a punishing set of consequences for Moscow if it invades Ukraine.
Any decision by Putin to stop at the brink of an invasion and stand down his forces would allow the President to argue in the run-up to the midterms that his strength and statesmanship had caused Russia to back down. But the Russian leader is unlikely to let up pressure on Ukraine -- even if he doesn't mount a full invasion -- and no doubt plans to be a constant headache for the US and Biden.
CNN · by Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
12. The dictator’s gambit: What Putin is after on Ukraine by Garry Kasparov
Excerpts:
If Putin plays it safe, he will look for deniability, to claim victory without risk to his power and status. The modern hybrid war model his Russia invented will expand, with cyber-attacks, disinformation, and the weaponization of refugees and energy supplies. Belarus may lose the little independence it had while eyes are elsewhere. That will also allow cowardly Western leaders to claim that their tough talk did the job while Ukraine still suffers under debilitating occupation. They will all declare victory from well-appointed tables and at well-attended press conferences, while the real losers are those living under Putin’s violence and repression.
Meanwhile, Russian gas and oil will continue to flow out and the rivers of cash will continue to swirl, filling the pockets of Putin’s oligarchs, their corrupt enablers in the West, and loading the guns of Russia’s security and military forces so they’ll be better prepared next time. And there will be a next time, and a next, until Putin goes too far — or until the world decides he has gone far enough.
Ukraine has already suffered a high price and anything is possible in the coming days. The only thing we can be sure of is that if we fail to stand up to Putin now, the price will keep going up.
The dictator’s gambit: What Putin is after on Ukraine
There is much in the news today about the “Ukraine crisis,” and while I’m glad to see that this major threat to the world order is finally worthy of attention, the naming gets it wrong. Ukraine doesn’t have a civil war, an insurgency or a separatist movement. Ukraine’s crisis is also Europe’s and America’s and now the world’s. It is a Russia crisis, or, more accurately, a Vladimir Putin crisis.
The United States and the rest of the world must get this right, because you cannot treat a disease if you start from the wrong diagnosis. You end up only treating the symptoms as they worsen, a downward spiral of reaction while the patient declines. What we need instead is a cure, a vaccine if you will.
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President Biden and his predecessors have varied in rhetoric on Putin, but have had a pathetically similar track record when it comes to action, or inaction. Instead of addressing the bear in the room, Putin’s rogue mafia state, U.S. presidents and their peers in Europe prefer to fend off the worsening symptoms year after year.
Since I have been warning about the danger of allowing Putin’s cancer to spread for two decades, allow me a few “I told you sos” before getting to his latest appearance in the headlines. It was obvious to me that Putin would turn his aggression abroad as soon as he finished destroying Russian democracy and civil society. It’s the path of every dictator who runs out of scapegoats inside the country to blame for declining freedom and standard of living.
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Putin’s invasions of neighboring Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 were attacks on their nascent democracies, which he correctly saw as bad examples for the people of Russia. From assassinations in Europe with nuclear isotopes and nerve agents to election interference backing Brexit, Trump and extremist candidates across Europe, Putin has not stuck with his supposed ex-Soviet sphere of influence. This is what I meant when I wrote in 2007 that “Putin is our problem to solve, yes, but if he is unopposed, he will soon be a regional problem and then everyone’s problem.”
That was back when the leaders of the free world were still happy to pose in photos with “President Putin,” a few years before acknowledging he no longer deserved that democratic title. After rewarding his invasion of Georgia with Obama’s reset in 2008, it took another six long years and his attack on Ukraine and illegal annexation of Crimea to rouse the world to the fact he had become “Dictator Putin” and that there was no turning back.
Then came Trump, whose envy of and admiration for authoritarians was possibly his only sincere and consistent sentiment. Biden’s victory was supposed to herald a return to more traditional American foreign policy values after four years of Trump trying to drag the U.S. down to the amoral quid pro quo level of autocratic regimes.
Instead, Biden repeated his former boss Obama’s attempts to unilaterally declare peace with the man Biden accurately called “a killer” in March 2021. Instead of forceful deterrence, he elevated Putin with an early in-person summit, never explaining what exactly the U.S. needed from Russia other than to stop its campaign of aggression. Then the Biden administration came out on Putin’s side in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline deal between Russia and Germany, a lifeline for Putin and an energy garotte around Europe’s neck.
Biden is supposedly more concerned about China, an actual superpower competitor, but Putin has proved again he will stamp about until he receives the attention he craves. Now he is preparing a blow that has forced Europe and the U.S. to cease their policy of “We don’t talk about Vladimir.” He has amassed a huge invasion force on all sides of Ukraine, a sovereign democratic nation, geographically the largest country in Europe (discounting Russia), parts of which have been occupied by Russia since it first invaded in 2014.
Ukraine also contains 44 million Ukrainians, who are often forgotten during all these talks, exactly as Putin intends. He wants to be seen as the big boss making threats and deals, while Ukraine, which he doesn’t even acknowledge as an independent country, is little more than a buffer, a poker chip on the geopolitical table.
That Russia has to resort to brute force to buy a place at the table indicates how far the country has fallen under Putin’s misrule. Russia has become a gas station with nukes, with record numbers of the young and educated population running for the exits. Its disastrous COVID-19 response, arguably the worst in the world — yes, even worse than America’s — has crushed the population from the other demographic end thanks to an understandable lack of trust in the government and a lack of concern for human life by the regime.
(It’s no small irony that Putin’s disinformation army spreads anti-vaccine propaganda in the U.S. and all over the world to stir up strife while being unable to convince Russians to get vaccinated.)
Putin’s threat isn’t just to Ukraine, although he still has his defenders abroad. He has even succeeded in uniting Tucker Carlson and Bernie Sanders, who both want Russia’s fictional security concerns to be addressed.
Instead of negotiating over what Putin wants, the free world must unite and fight hard to make sure he doesn’t get anything he wants. Do not wait to retaliate for his next invasion; go after him and his oligarch mafia hard now to show him that this time he won’t be able to evade, weaken and wait out sanctions.
Reduce Putin’s leverage by substituting the energy he uses for blackmail. Kick Putin’s mafia state out of the international institutions it uses and abuses to spread corruption. Seize the hundreds of billions in assets he and his cronies hide in the West and kick out the oligarchs and their families. They use their looted money to buy friends and influence in the West, but it also gives these havens, especially the United Kingdom, tremendous leverage — should they have the courage to use it.
Putin, always the gambler and bluffer, is betting they don’t. He’s been right so many times in the past, after all. This isn’t to say Putin is some master strategist. He’s no chess player, as I’m qualified to say with confidence. He reads people, not the board, and he won’t move until he’s sure he will be able to claim victory thanks to his feckless opponents folding their superior hands. Putin relies on Europe and the U.S., despite their overwhelming military, financial and legal advantages, continuing their policy of “do nothing until you can say there’s nothing you can do.”
That’s why Putin is still occupying Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, not to mention parts of Georgia. Instead of acting quickly to defend his victims, the West dithered and blathered until they could say it was impossible to change things on the ground. Putin uses force first, then switches to calls for diplomacy and negotiation to solidify his gains. You could call it “a piece, then peace,” a tactic of 20th-century dictators.
But eventually the dictator goes too far. His finely tuned animal instincts of self-preservation and danger become blunted by too much success and he oversteps, leading to catastrophe. You never know when that moment may come, which is why the concept of deterrence during the Cold War was based on standing up to every small advance, so that little conflicts did not turn into big wars. And it worked.
More Russian forces are arriving from all sides every day. Putin has even brandished the unthinkable specter of nuclear weapons, the ultimate ploy to convince everyone he’s mad, and to just give him whatever he wants. His success with these tactics is how we got to this perilous point.
But Putin is a KGB man, a bully and a spy who traffics in shadows and doubt, not open war. As he has in Syria, Moldova and so many other places, he wants influence and chaos, not an open conflict he may lose. For as he well knows, that is how dictatorships fall, by looking fallible, vulnerable.
If Putin plays it safe, he will look for deniability, to claim victory without risk to his power and status. The modern hybrid war model his Russia invented will expand, with cyber-attacks, disinformation, and the weaponization of refugees and energy supplies. Belarus may lose the little independence it had while eyes are elsewhere. That will also allow cowardly Western leaders to claim that their tough talk did the job while Ukraine still suffers under debilitating occupation. They will all declare victory from well-appointed tables and at well-attended press conferences, while the real losers are those living under Putin’s violence and repression.
Meanwhile, Russian gas and oil will continue to flow out and the rivers of cash will continue to swirl, filling the pockets of Putin’s oligarchs, their corrupt enablers in the West, and loading the guns of Russia’s security and military forces so they’ll be better prepared next time. And there will be a next time, and a next, until Putin goes too far — or until the world decides he has gone far enough.
Ukraine has already suffered a high price and anything is possible in the coming days. The only thing we can be sure of is that if we fail to stand up to Putin now, the price will keep going up.
Kasparov is chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative.
13.Center for Defense Strategies: Can Ukraine really be invaded? Scenarios for a Russian attack (analysis)
Perhaps this can be used to keep score.
Center for Defense Strategies: Can Ukraine really be invaded? Scenarios for a Russian attack (analysis)
The drills of the Ivan Sirko 92nd Mechanised Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces take place in Kharkiv Oblast, northeastern Ukraine, on Feb. 10, 2022. (Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy/ Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Editor’s Note: This is an analysis by experts from the Center for Defense Strategies: Andriy Zagorodnyuk, Alina Frolova, Oleksiy Pavliuchyk, and Viktor Kevlyuk. It was originally published in Ukrainian by Ukrainska Pravda on Feb. 12. The Kyiv Independent has translated it and is republishing it with permission.
On Feb. 11, reports from U.S. officials of a possible large-scale Russian offensive in the coming days added to the tense news cycle.
The officials even named the date of a possible offensive – Feb. 16. The U.S. and more than 20 other countries are urging their citizens to leave Ukraine.
So does this mean the attack is inevitable, and what are the real risks? What to do, and how to interpret this flood of reports?
Let’s analyze the current situation and the positions of the involved parties to draw conclusions and make cautious forecasts. In this article, we will provide a brief analysis of the following issues:
- General operational situation around Ukraine
- The most and least likely scenarios
- The situation in the Black and Azov Seas
- Defending Kyiv
- Readiness of security and defense forces
- Rationale behind the statements of the world leaders
- What to do now?
Current situation around Ukraine
As of Feb. 12, the total number of Russian troops along Ukraine’s borders, including those in Belarus and in the occupied territories of eastern Ukraine and Crimea is 87 battalion-tactical groups – about 147,000 service personnel. This figure includes air and naval personnel.
These troops are equipped with the appropriate weapons and vehicles, as well as logistical and medical support units. However, so far there are no signs that they have the additional reinforcements needed for a large-scale offensive. A joint command and control system has been established and is functioning in both Belarus and Russia.
Russian forces are actively carrying out operational and combat training activities. Joint drills of the Armed Forces of Russia and Belarus, named “Allied Determination 2022,” are currently underway. They are scheduled to end on Feb. 20.
About 15 Russian battalion tactical groups and other units are in Belarus. Additionally, troops of the Eastern Military District (VO) of Russia have been deployed to Belarus, including units of Russia’s 103rd Missile Brigade, armed with the Iskander short-range ballistic system.
In recent weeks, the combat readiness of Russian units stationed on the border with Ukraine has increased significantly. The possible reasons include drills, an intimidation operation, or preparing to start an actual military operation.
Most and least likely scenarios
The strength of Russian forces near the border, including those stationed on the territory of Belarus, does not exceed previous predictions. We previously discussed the possibility of the Russian Armed Forces near the borders of Ukraine swelling to 160,000, but currently the total number does not exceed 150,000.
At present, the accumulated forces on the border are insufficient for a large-scale operation aimed at capturing all or a significant part of Ukraine. Therefore, predictions about the probability of such scenarios in the near future cannot be confirmed.
Moreover, we believe that such scenarios are unlikely in the foreseeable future due to the factors we have described in our previous article. In short, there is currently no active action in Russia to prepare the hundreds of thousands of troops needed for such a large-scale offensive.
At the moment, there are also no significant measures to create strategic reserves and mobilization on the basis of the Russian army’s centers for mobilization deployment.
In addition, such an operation will have extremely negative consequences for Russia. If the formula for a failed attack on Ukraine includes non-military components, international isolation and sanctions, the outcome of such an operation will be catastrophic for all of Russia, not just the Kremlin.
We also believe that most local scenarios to capture separate cities and territories are unlikely due to a lack of political expediency. At the same time, some hostilities in certain areas are possible in order to distract Ukraine’s defense forces.
We continue to believe that the scenarios of massive bombing and missile strikes, which could lead to large-scale civilian casualties, are unrealistic. Such actions could thwart Russia’s political leadership’s plans to win the “hearts and minds” of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking population. As a result, even his few sympathizers may lose their desire for hypothetical support for Putin in Ukraine.
However, individual missile and air strikes on military or infrastructure facilities are possible only as a means of supporting ground operations or as a means of psychological pressure.
At the same time, the Kremlin’s attempt to organize a trigger event – a planned provocation, for example, in eastern Ukraine – remains plausible. The purpose of these actions is to legitimize the entry of Russian troops into the territory of Ukraine or an armed escalation on the front line. In general, the aggravation in eastern Ukraine is highly probable.
Scenarios of various kinds of hybrid invasion without a military component remain high in many areas due to misinformation, political turmoil, undermining of trust and physical actions – terrorist attacks, sabotage operations, cyber attacks on critical infrastructure.
Overall, we believe that the general assessment of the scenarios has not changed compared to our assessment three and two weeks ago.
A separate question is the likelihood of a potential attack on Kyiv. We will address this issue below, after assessing the situation in our seas.
Black and Azov seas
The situation in the Black Sea continues to change due to the strengthening of the capabilities of the Russian Black Sea Fleet by ships of the Pacific and Northern Fleets.
Since February 9, there are 12 large landing ships in the Black Sea from all fleets of the Russian Federation. It is estimated that two brigades of marines with military equipment can be loaded onto these landing ships. It is also estimated that up to 4,000 troops and up to 250 armored vehicles may pose a threat of landing on the Black Sea coast of Ukraine, in particular in the Kherson region.
Together with airmobile and airborne troops concentrated in Crimea, this could pose a threat of Russian operations in southern Ukraine.
Using the significant military advantage at sea and in violation of international law, Russia will carry out an almost complete blockade of the Black Sea, and probably the Azov Sea, from 13 to 19 February under the pretext of training in combat fire.
This provocation is a test of Russia’s capabilities and the consequences of such actions. These actions, as well as the possibility of forming a landing force, will be a distraction to stretch the attention of both the military and political leadership of Ukraine and the international community.
So far, the forecast for the development of the situation in the Black and Azov Seas is negative, but it will very much depend on the reaction of Ukraine and, especially, the international community to the blockade. If the world does not react harshly to such a provocation, it is only a matter of time before it is repeated.
Defending Kyiv
Today, most of the attention is focused on the prospects of Kyiv’s defense.
It is clear that for Kremlin strategists, the key goal of aggression is to regain full control over Ukraine. It will look easier to them if they capture the capital.
Indeed, Russian military units on the territory of Belarus, together with troops on the territory of the Russian Federation, pose a threat to the northern regions of Ukraine and Kyiv. The number of forces and means is theoretically sufficient for the implementation of the “Kyiv scenario”. But only theoretically.
In the event of an attempt to break through the border in Chernihiv, Zhytomyr and Kyiv oblasts, Russian troops will suffer huge losses. This scenario looks too risky for Russia, considering the current situation.
First, the scenario of capturing Kyiv, both in terms of material and human losses, is not a “more budget-friendly” version of a full-scale invasion, given the quantity and quality of troops and resources involved in defending the Ukrainian capital.
To capture communications nodes – airports, railway stations, bridges – Russia needs to use its tactical airborne troops from the assault units of its armed forces, which can be neutralized by the existing security and defense forces of Ukraine. But even these actions don’t make sense without the movement of Russia’s National Guard and general military units to maintain the occupied territory.
Such an offensive will be very slow, as it will be necessary to get through the multi-level defense of the Northern Operational Command, 100 km from the border. These troops are ready to counter.
Second, gaining control of a metropolis with a population of more than 3 million people, many of whom are ready to resist the enemy, is a difficult and unrealistic task, given the required number of troops, which is currently not observed near the border.
In addition, Kyiv is very difficult to isolate due to its complex topography, and it will be joined by resistance groups from all over Ukraine. This will make it impossible for the enemy to hold the capital for a long time and, accordingly, strongly influence the expediency of the decision to attempt an offensive.
Third, hopes for support for Russia’s offensive by a domestic “fifth column” are in vain – this is not 2014. Ukraine already knows what to do with Kremlin allies professionally, firmly, and quickly. In addition, after the occupation of Crimea and the blockade of temporarily occupied territories in Donbas, Russia has deprived itself of the opportunity to supply “mobilization resources” in the form of paid pro-Russian thugs. Moscow’s mouthpieces do not have the advantages they had 8 years ago.
Fourth, only strategists with an authoritarian mindset can count on the benefits of capturing Kyiv. In fact, a democratic Ukraine will be able to survive even if the capital is seized. Any potential “puppet” government will not be recognized by Ukrainians or the world. It is futile to suggest that having captured Kyiv, the Russian Federation will establish control over Ukraine.
But the main thing is – any scenarios of capturing Kyiv, both in general and with the use of “special operations”, will not be unexpected.
Readiness of the security and defense forces of Ukraine
Ukraine is currently ready to defend the country and Kyiv. In preparation for this article, we spoke to a large number of officials and can confirm that none of them are ignoring the invasion threat. Attempts to further push into the territory of Ukraine will be met with significant resistance from our forces.
According to our estimates, the level of Ukraine’s readiness has increased significantly in recent times.
First, the level of armament has increased significantly, including through recently received weaponry from allies.
Second, some Ukrainian troops have been redeployed closer to the Belarusian border, and we could see the training of units in the country’s northern regions.
Third, large-scale exercises are currently taking place in Ukraine, the aim of which is precisely to coordinate actions in case of any invasion scenario. Ukraine’s troops are currently in a state of increased combat readiness.
All this confirms that Ukraine’s military and political leadership takes potential threats seriously and works to counter them. In addition, the newly-created Territorial Defense Force has recently begun to be actively deployed and trained.
Of course, we can’t talk about the maximum readiness of territorial defense units, but tens of thousands of people are ready to resist, both morally and physically. They know what to do in an emergency and will act in concert.
Details about training have been provided in a joint statement of the Minister of Defense and the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.
This level of preparation indicates that the implementation of any of the above scenarios, and especially the capture of Kyiv, has become much more difficult for Russia.
If such an operation is attempted, they will have significant problems with the movement of heavy equipment – thanks to the warm weather and mud, and the number of losses will certainly be visible to the general public, including Russians, thanks to social networks.
Whether Russians are ready to see pictures of burning vehicles and bear hundreds or thousands of dead compatriots is a rhetorical question.
The popularity of Russia’s ruling elite is periodically declining, and support for the “necessity” of war with Ukraine by Russian citizens is consistently low due to the “fear of a great war.” In addition, “hellish” sanctions will be activated immediately, and assistance to Ukraine will be intensified. The presence of such sanctions will create, inter alia, preconditions for inter-elite conflicts in Russia.
All these factors make the scenario of an attack on Kyiv unlikely.
Rationale for the statements of world leaders
Why, then, are U.S. officials warning of an imminent invasion?
First, among Russia’s many intentions may be operational plans for an offensive with various scenarios, including on Kyiv. Russia could use these plans in the event of an absence of unity of the Ukrainian population, unpreparedness of the defense forces, and/or lack of international support.
Russia is constantly adjusting and adapting its plans based on the changing situation, the reaction of Ukraine and the international community.
Let us not forget that we are in a state of hybrid warfare, in which information narratives are part of an attack or defense. Obviously, our Western partners see the disclosure of information about the intentions of the Russian leadership as an opportunity for pressure and restraint: we know about your plans and are preparing for them.
Intercepting the Kremlin’s initiative for the next steps and the absolute and unshakable rejection of the idea of starting a large-scale war, and Western readiness to enforce punitive consequences – this is what’s holding Putin back.
What should the civilian population do in these conditions?
Our willingness to resist, our composure, and lack of panic play a significant role. Sometimes such things decide the course of history. So far, we are seeing a good reaction from the population. No panic.
Polling data consistently indicates the inadmissibility of any potential occupation and readiness to resist among the people, even under such a severe wave of negative news.
To the private sector and businesses that want to help – you can always do so by responding to the call of the Command of the Territorial Defense Forces. They need help. Don’t delay, if you have this possibility.
It is important to stay calm and collected. It is important to participate in civil defense activities. We must prepare for the possible self-defense of neighborhoods and streets, and watch out for provocateurs.
Ukrainians are proving to themselves, and to the world, a serious and determined readiness to defend themselves. This is the key element of a successful resistance strategy.
Author: Center for Defense Strategies is an independent think tank that brings together leading Ukrainian and international experts to address Ukraine’s pressing security and defense issues and develop its respective strategies to advance key reforms.
14. Tripwire for real war? Cyber’s fuzzy rules of engagement
Cyber attacks are supposedly already underway in Ukraine.
Tripwire for real war? Cyber’s fuzzy rules of engagement
Now tensions are soaring over Ukraine with Western officials warning about the danger of Russia launching damaging cyberattacks against Ukraine’s NATO allies. While no one is suggesting that could lead to a full-blown war between nuclear-armed rivals, the risk of escalation is serious.
The danger is in the uncertainty about what crosses a digital red line. Cyberattacks, including those that cripple critical infrastructure with ransomware, have been on the rise for years and often go unpunished. It’s unclear how grave a malicious cyber operation by a state actor would have to be to cross the threshold to an act of war.
“The rules are fuzzy,” said Max Smeets, director of the European Cyber Conflict Research Initiative. “It’s not clear what is allowed, what isn’t allowed.”
The United States and other NATO members have threatened crippling sanctions against Russia if it sends troops into Ukraine. Less clear is whether such sanctions, whose secondary effects could also hurt Europe, would be imposed if Russia were to seriously damage Ukrainian critical infrastructure — power, telecommunications, finance, railways — with cyberattacks in lieu of invading.
And if the West were to respond harshly to Russian aggression, Moscow could retaliate against NATO nations in cyberspace with an intensity and on a scale previously unseen. A major cyberattack on U.S. targets would almost certainly unleash a muscular response. But what of lesser cyberattacks? Or if Russian President Vladimir Putin restricted them to a NATO member in Europe?
Under Article 5 of the organization’s treaty, an attack on any of its 30 members is considered an attack on all. But unclear is what it would take to unleash full-scale cyber retaliation. Or how bad an attack would have to be to trigger retaliation from NATO’s most potent cyber military forces, led by the U.S. and Britain.
Cyberspace is exceptionally unruly. No arms control treaties exist to put guard rails on state-backed hacking, which is often shielded by plausible deniability as it’s often difficult to quickly attribute cyberattacks and intelligence-gathering intrusions. The technology is cheap and criminals can act as proxies, further muddying attribution. Freelancers and hacktivists compound the problem.
Hacking is now a core component of great power conflict. In 2016, NATO formally designated cyberspace a “domain” of conflict, alongside land, sea and air.
dark grey keyboard red enter button target crosshair
Nowhere has the militarization of cyberspace been more clear than in Putin’s bid to return Ukraine to Moscow’s orbit.
To Serhii Demediuk, the No. 2 official on Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, a noisy cyberattack last month was “part of a full-scale Russian operation directed at destabilizing the situation in Ukraine, aimed at exploding our Euro-Atlantic integration and seizing power.”
The attack damaged servers at the State Emergency Service and at the Motor Transport Insurance Bureau with a malicious “wiper” cloaked as ransomware. The damage proved minimal, but a message posted simultaneously on dozens of defaced government websites said: “Be afraid and expect the worst.”
Such attacks are apt to continue as Putin tries to “degrade” and “delegitimize” trust in Ukrainian institutions, the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said in a blog on Russian military cyber wreckage in the former Soviet republic: Winter attacks on the power grid in 2015 and 2016 were followed by NotPetya, which exacted more than $10 billion in damage globally.
Michele Markoff, the U.S. State Department’s deputy coordinator for cyber issues, thinks “muscular diplomacy” is the only way to end such “immoral, unethical and destabilizing behavior.”
But how? Unlike nuclear arms, cyberweapons can’t easily be quantified, verified and limited in treaties. Nor are violators apt to be held accountable in the United Nations, not with Russia and China wielding veto power on its Security Council.
“We’ve wallowed kind of in a quagmire for years now on making transgressors accountable,” said Duncan Hollis, a Temple Law professor and former State Department legal adviser.
NATO’s doctrinal shift followed a pair of seismic cyberespionage shocks — the highly targeted 2020 SolarWinds supply chain hack by Russia that badly rattled Washington and the reckless March 2021 Microsoft Exchange hack attributed to Chinese state security that set off a criminal hacking free-for-all.
FILE - The sign outside the National Security Administration (NSA) campus where U.S. Cyber Command is located in Fort Meade, Md., June 6, 2013. Tensions are soaring over Ukraine with Western officials warning about the danger of Russia launching major cyberattacks against its NATO allies. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
In response, U.S. Cyber Command developed a strategy in 2018 it calls “persistent engagement” to counter rivals who “operate continuously below the threshold of armed conflict to weaken institutions and gain strategic advantages.”
The aim: deny foes the chance to breach U.S. systems by operating “across the interconnected battlespace, globally, as close as possible to adversaries,” Cybercom commander Gen. Paul Nakasone wrote.
That has sometimes meant penetrating not just adversaries’ networks but also those of allies — without asking permission, said Smeets, the European cyber conflict analyst.
Disinformation campaigns have also muddied the definition of a “cyber threat.” No longer do they merely encompass malware like NotPetya or the the Stuxnet virus that wrecked Iranian nuclear centrifuges, an operation widely attributed to the U.S. and Israel and discovered in 2010.
During the 2018 U.S. midterm elections, Cybercom temporarily knocked offline a key Russian disinformation mill.
Most major powers have the equivalent of a U.S. Cyber Command for both offense and defense.
Hollis compares the current messy cyber moment to the early 19th century when U.S. and European navies were so small they often relied on privateers — we know them now as pirates— for high-seas dirty work.
The U.S. and other NATO partners are, meantime, helping Ukraine stand up a separate cyber military unit, said Demediuk, the Ukrainian security official. Since Russia seized Crimea in 2014, NATO has closely and systematically coordinating cyber actions with Ukraine, including joint missions, he said.
In November, Ukraine exposed an eight-year espionage operation by agents of Russia’s FSB in Crimea involving more than 5,000 attempted hacks. The main goal: to gain control over critical infrastructure, including power plants, heating and water supply systems, Ukraine’s state news agency said.
This month, Microsoft said the operation, dubbed Armageddon, persists with attempts to penetrate Ukraine’s military, judiciary and law enforcement. Microsoft detected no damage, but that doesn’t mean Russian cyber operators haven’t gained undetected footholds.
That’s where hackers hide until they are ready to pounce.
Associated Press writer Yuras Karmanau in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed to this report.
15. Nearly 4,000 More 9/11 Vets Have Died in the Past 20 Years Than Anticipated, Study Finds
Excerpts:
Howard said much of the research shows "essentially, when you get these serious injuries, it effectively changes your physiology and accelerates the aging process, which leads not only to cardiovascular disease but even some other chronic diseases."
But, he added, it's not all bad news for veterans. Calling his study "an awareness-generating article," he said he hopes it places attention on the deaths among vetearns that are preventable, such as accidents, suicide and homicide, through non-medical interventions.
"It shouldn't be just all doom and gloom, 'Oh, my gosh, I have a TBI, I'm destined to have one of these bad outcomes.' I don't think that's the message," Howard said.
"The takeaway is that having these exposures puts individuals at greater risk for a variety of outcomes, so, what we need to be focused on -- as a whole, not only within the military, within the VA, but as a society in general -- is supporting individuals who served our country and doing everything we can to help them transition from military service to civilian life," Howard said.
Nearly 4,000 More 9/11 Vets Have Died in the Past 20 Years Than Anticipated, Study Finds
Post-9/11 veterans are dying at higher rates than Americans overall, particularly through accidents, suicide and homicide, new research has found. The numbers are even higher for veterans who have suffered a traumatic brain injury.
Veterans who have served since Sept. 11, 2001, are dying via suicide at twice the rate of Americans overall, with homocide claiming retired service members at one-and-a-half times the rate of the general population.
The death rates were significantly higher for those with a history of traumatic brain injury: Veterans who experienced a mild traumatic brain injury died at nearly twice the general rate for accidents from 2002 to 2018 and three times the rate by suicide, while those with moderate to severe brain injuries were five times as likely to die by suicide and faced a threefold risk of being murdered or dying in an accident.
The study is the first to look at "excess deaths" among veterans who have served since Sept. 11, 2001, examining the number of deaths over and above what normally would have been expected during the 17-year study period.
The researchers, led by Jeffrey Howard, an associate professor of public health at the University of Texas at San Antonio, reviewed records of more than 2.5 million post-9/11 veterans to catalog their long-term health outcomes with a focus on those with a history of a brain injury.
They found an estimated 3,858 excess deaths among post-9/11 veterans. Compared with the general population, more of those deaths were attributed to accidents and homicides.
Those veterans also died at much higher rates of suicide, cancer and cardiovascular disease when compared with civilians the same age, gender and ethnic and racial makeup.
The particularly elevated rates for those who suffered a mild, moderate or severe traumatic brain injury while serving were striking, the researchers said.
"We already knew that suicide was high among this group, but we didn't necessarily know these other causes of death," Howard said during an interview with Military.com about the research.
"The risks are higher across all of these different causes of death, especially for the individuals who were exposed to TBI," Howard said.
The research found that the excess deaths were concentrated among younger veterans, ages 18 to 44, and those who have suffered a TBI, with suicide and accidental deaths accounting for the bulk of the deaths.
While the study didn't explain why veterans may be more vulnerable to accidental deaths and homicide, Howard said prior research shows that younger veterans who are newly separated from the military are susceptible toward engaging in risky behaviors like substance abuse, speeding, or placing themselves in dangerous situations.
They also may suffer from impulse control, anger or post-traumatic stress, increasing their risk of being placed in dangerous situations.
Data from research published Feb. 11, 2022, shows that post 9/11 veterans, especially those with traumatic brain injuries, died at higher rates from several causes than their civilian counterparts when adjusted for age, gender and ethnicity. (JAMA Network Open)
"What this indicates is that there is a multidimensional set of risk factors that are not necessarily medical that need to be addressed in this population, especially for those with TBI," Howard said.
The research also showed higher-than-expected deaths from cardiovascular disease and cancer among post-9/11 veterans.
Howard said the deaths from heart disease, especially among those with brain injuries, are not surprising given that earlier research indicates that combat injuries place veterans at risk for hypertension, coronary artery disease, diabetes and other chronic illnesses.
"There are several possible mechanisms in these associations, including accelerated cellular aging, chronic inflammation, behavioral factors and neurological and cognitive decline," the study stated.
The authors also noted that environmental exposures such as burn pits and other chemicals "may help explain the higher cancer mortality rates" in the population.
Howard said much of the research shows "essentially, when you get these serious injuries, it effectively changes your physiology and accelerates the aging process, which leads not only to cardiovascular disease but even some other chronic diseases."
But, he added, it's not all bad news for veterans. Calling his study "an awareness-generating article," he said he hopes it places attention on the deaths among vetearns that are preventable, such as accidents, suicide and homicide, through non-medical interventions.
"It shouldn't be just all doom and gloom, 'Oh, my gosh, I have a TBI, I'm destined to have one of these bad outcomes.' I don't think that's the message," Howard said.
"The takeaway is that having these exposures puts individuals at greater risk for a variety of outcomes, so, what we need to be focused on -- as a whole, not only within the military, within the VA, but as a society in general -- is supporting individuals who served our country and doing everything we can to help them transition from military service to civilian life," Howard said.
16. In Russia's Ukraine plans, how much does the mud matter?
As a former mechanized infantryman in the early 1980s in Germany, I would fear the mud!
Perhaps Russia's intermediate objectives will include wash racks on the way to Kyiv.
Excerpts:
“They say that Russia is waiting for the ground to freeze like a stone so that tanks could easily roll into Ukrainian territory,” Lavrov told reporters. “The ground was like that with our British colleagues, with numerous facts we cited bouncing off them.”
Konstantin Sivkov, a Russian military analyst, said even if there were a ground incursion, Russian battle tanks are significantly lighter than Western armored vehicles and don’t get bogged down.
“Our tanks are much better suited for advancing on muddy terrain, there is nothing to worry about,” Sivkov said in remarks carried by the FAN news outlet. “A thaw can only stop Western tanks.”
In Russia's Ukraine plans, how much does the mud matter?
AP · by VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV and YURAS KARMANAU · February 14, 2022
MOSCOW (AP) — The Russian expression “tanks don’t fear mud” is common enough that it’s been the title of a short-lived Russian television series and can be found stenciled on car windows.
And it’s yet another reason why any Russian decision to invade Ukraine is likely to depend very little upon fears that a spring thaw will hinder tanks from crossing boggy ground. Russia’s military has, in addition to tanks and other armored vehicles that are well equipped for mud, a range of fighter jets and missiles that are the hallmarks of any modern military.
U.S. President Joe Biden has said that Russia is essentially in position for an invasion of Ukraine “assuming that the ground is frozen above Kyiv,” the Ukrainian capital that is only 75 kilometers (47 miles) from the border of Belarus, a key Russian ally. It’s not the first time an American official has invoked Russia’s need for frozen ground to stage an invasion.
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“If (Russian President Vladimir) Putin agrees to an invasion, then it won’t be tanks or ships in the vanguard, but rather aircraft and missile forces. The first targets for them will be air defense systems and the missile defense force, command posts, critical infrastructure, after which the advantage of Russian forces in the air and upper hand on land and sea are guaranteed,” said Mykola Sunhurovskyi, a military analyst at the Kyiv-based Razumkov Center think tank.
Some Ukrainian analysts have acknowledged that the country’s air defenses are insufficient in case of a massive Russian assault. Kyiv has prodded its Western allies to provide the country with modern air defense systems in addition to ground combat weapons provided by the U.S., Britain and others.
Sunhorovskyi said “the only deterrent is the West’s position and the readiness of millions of Ukrainians to fight to the end.”
The Kremlin, which has denied having any Ukraine invasion plans, has scoffed at an argument that it wants to see the ground frozen to launch an attack on Ukraine. Ukrainian officials agree that frozen ground or mud isn’t an issue.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov pointed at the argument to taunt British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss following their icy talks in Moscow on Thursday.
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“They say that Russia is waiting for the ground to freeze like a stone so that tanks could easily roll into Ukrainian territory,” Lavrov told reporters. “The ground was like that with our British colleagues, with numerous facts we cited bouncing off them.”
Konstantin Sivkov, a Russian military analyst, said even if there were a ground incursion, Russian battle tanks are significantly lighter than Western armored vehicles and don’t get bogged down.
“Our tanks are much better suited for advancing on muddy terrain, there is nothing to worry about,” Sivkov said in remarks carried by the FAN news outlet. “A thaw can only stop Western tanks.”
___
Yuras Karmanau reported from Kyiv, Ukraine.
___
AP · by VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV and YURAS KARMANAU · February 14, 2022
17. Revisiting the 'Asian values' debate
I agree with the author that this debate is very much worth revisiting. I had a lot of disagreement with Kim Dae Jung's policies toward north Korea but I agreed with his analysis in his essay.
Excerpts:
Lee held that it was necessary to restrict individual rights to preserve social and political harmony. Against Western individualism, he pitted the institution of the family as the essential "building brick" of society. He argued that political regimes come and go, dynasties rise and fall, but throughout these upheavals, the family serves as the "life raft" for preserving civilization.
...
Against Lee's defense of collective well-being, the future president of Korea, countered that Asian cultures themselves contain the roots for sustaining freedom and democracy. The philosophy of Meng-tzu, the teachings of Confucianism and Buddhism, and the "Tonghak" movement of the late Joseon period all stress the need for the government to be accountable to the people.
Permitting social mobility and equality of opportunity, symbolized by the civil service examination, was recognized by emperors and kings as indispensable to the legitimacy of their rule. In Confucian philosophy, criticizing the sovereign whenever he acts wrongly constitutes a "paramount duty" of the scholar-official. The aspirations of the people of Asia for freedom and equality are genuine, and find ample support in their philosophical traditions.
I have pasted both articles below which are very much worth rereading.
Is Culture Destiny?
The Myth of Asia’s Anti-Democratic Values
November/December 1994
A Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew
By Fareed Zakaria
March/April 1994
Revisiting the 'Asian values' debate
gettyimagesbankBy Peter Y. Paik
In light of the rise of China and the severe divisions ― political and social ― afflicting the United States, it is instructive to reflect back on the "Asian values" debate of the mid-1990s.
That debate pitted Lee Kuan Yew, who had just stepped down as the prime minister of Singapore, against Kim Dae-jung, who, four years later, would be elected president of Korea. It was sparked by an interview given by Lee in 1994 where he defended the "soft" authoritarian regime he had established in Singapore against calls for greater freedom and democracy.
Lee held that it was necessary to restrict individual rights to preserve social and political harmony. Against Western individualism, he pitted the institution of the family as the essential "building brick" of society. He argued that political regimes come and go, dynasties rise and fall, but throughout these upheavals, the family serves as the "life raft" for preserving civilization.
The founder of Singapore thus reproached the West for adopting a worldview that he characterized as both naive and destructive. Western individualism is based on a fundamentally faulty philosophical premise, namely the illusion that society can thrive without a shared view of what is right and wrong. "There is a certain thing called evil," Lee observed, "and it is not the result of being the victim of society."
The severity of crime, illegal drug use, homelessness, and social disintegration in American society can be traced back to the decision of Westerners to "abandon an ethical basis for society" and to allow the individual to behave as he pleases, without regard for the common good, Lee argued.
Against Lee's defense of collective well-being, the future president of Korea, countered that Asian cultures themselves contain the roots for sustaining freedom and democracy. The philosophy of Meng-tzu, the teachings of Confucianism and Buddhism, and the "Tonghak" movement of the late Joseon period all stress the need for the government to be accountable to the people.
Permitting social mobility and equality of opportunity, symbolized by the civil service examination, was recognized by emperors and kings as indispensable to the legitimacy of their rule. In Confucian philosophy, criticizing the sovereign whenever he acts wrongly constitutes a "paramount duty" of the scholar-official. The aspirations of the people of Asia for freedom and equality are genuine, and find ample support in their philosophical traditions.
This debate unfolded against the backdrop of the end of the Cold War, when there was widespread confidence that democratization would be the wave of the future. The majority of Asian countries had then become democracies. Lee and Singapore struck many as being outliers on the wrong side of history. A regime based on invasive social engineering, where chewing gum was illegal, seemed an eccentric oddity when individual freedom appeared to be advancing everywhere, now that communism had fallen.
But what are we to take from this debate today, when an authoritarian state, China, is poised to overtake the U.S. as the world's top economy by 2030, when democracy has failed to take hold across the Middle East, and when the social disintegration Lee decried in the U.S. has grown so much worse?
Kim appears to have been correct in his view that Asian nations can become successful democracies. Indeed, in certain respects, democracy appears to be healthier in (South) Korea than in the U.S. There is an active culture of protest and a certain degree of respect for freedom of speech. While political differences evoke strong emotions among Koreans, the belief that it is necessary to censor views with which one disagrees is becoming less widespread among the public.
Thus, Lee appears to have been prescient in questioning the view that democracy, cultural diversity, political stability and economic prosperity automatically go together. When the differences in culture and viewpoint become too great, a society may well decide to sacrifice freedom for the sake of peace. Its economic well-being becomes curtailed as well, as more of its wealth must go towards providing security to the people.
But there is one area in which both Lee, the founder of an economically successful and ethnically and religiously diverse city-state, and Kim, the longtime fighter for democracy, would find themselves on the same side. Both espouse a basic moral principle that would make them targets of cancel culture if they had been Americans living today.
For Lee and Kim base their differing political views on the Confucian maxim, "Xiushen qijia zhiguo pingtianxia," according to which, good government follows from the individual keeping himself and his household in order. But liberals in the West today reject any call for individual responsibility, insisting that it can only be a devious trick aimed at preventing the political changes that will save the oppressed.
One thus discovers what I argue is a sharp fault line between Asian culture and contemporary Western liberalism. Asians will wonder, how could developing a greater sense of individual responsibility and personal discipline ever be a bad thing, no matter what regime is in power? Would not cultivating moral and political virtue enable the oppressed to gain power and exercise it responsibly? Such common sense, however, is threatened in the West by what can only be considered a cultural revolution, which will be the subject of a future article.
Peter Y. Paik (pypaik@gmail.com) is a professor in the English Department at Yonsei University. The views expressed in the article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.
Is Culture Destiny?
The Myth of Asia’s Anti-Democratic Values
By Kim Dae Jung
November/December 1994
In his interview with Foreign Affairs (March/April 1994), Singapore's former prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, presents interesting ideas about cultural differences between Western and East Asian societies and the political implications of those differences. Although he does not explicitly say so, his statements throughout the interview and his track record make it obvious that his admonition to Americans "not to foist their system indiscriminately on societies in which it will not work" implies that Western-style democracy is not applicable to East Asia. Considering the esteem in which he is held among world leaders and the prestige of this journal, this kind of argument is likely to have considerable impact and therefore deserves a careful reply.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, socialism has been in retreat. Some people conclude that the Soviet demise was the result of the victory of capitalism over socialism. But I believe it represented the triumph of democracy over dictatorship. Without democracy, capitalism in Prussian Germany and Meiji Japan eventually met its tragic end. The many Latin American states that in recent decades embraced capitalism while rejecting democracy failed miserably. On the other hand, countries practicing democratic capitalism or democratic socialism, despite temporary setbacks, have prospered.
In spite of these trends, lingering doubts remain about the applicability of and prospects for democracy in Asia. Such doubts have been raised mainly by Asia's authoritarian leaders, Lee being the most articulate among them. They have long maintained that cultural differences make the "Western concept" of democracy and human rights inapplicable to East Asia. Does Asia have the philosophical and historical underpinnings suitable for democracy? Is democracy achievable there?
SELF-SERVING SELF-RELIANCE
Lee stresses cultural factors throughout his interview. I too believe in the importance of culture, but I do not think it alone determines a society's fate, nor is it immutable. Moreover, Lee's view of Asian cultures is not only unsupportable but self-serving. He argues that Eastern societies, unlike Western ones, "believe that the individual exists in the context of his family" and that the family is "the building brick of society." However, as an inevitable consequence of industrialization, the family-centered East Asian societies are also rapidly moving toward self-centered individualism. Nothing in human history is permanent.
Lee asserts that, in the East, "the ruler or the government does not try to provide for a person what the family best provides." He cites this ostensibly self-reliant, family-oriented culture as the main cause of East Asia's economic successes and ridicules Western governments for allegedly trying to solve all of society's problems, even as he worries about the moral breakdown of Western societies due to too much democracy and too many individual rights. Consequently, according to Lee, the Western political system, with its intrusive government, is not suited to family-oriented East Asia. He rejects Westernization while embracing modernization and its attendant changes in lifestyle - again strongly implying that democracy will not work in Asia.
FAMILY VALUES (REQUIRED HERE)
But the facts demonstrate just the opposite. It is not true, as Lee alleges, that Asian governments shy away from intervening in private matters and taking on all of society's problems. Asian governments intrude much more than Western governments into the daily affairs of individuals and families. In Korea, for example, each household is required to attend monthly neighborhood meetings to receive government directives and discuss local affairs. Japan's powerful government constantly intrudes into the business world to protect perceived national interests, to the point of causing disputes with the United States and other trading partners. In Lee's Singapore, the government stringently regulates individuals' actions - such as chewing bubble-gum, spitting, smoking, littering, and so on - to an Orwellian extreme of social engineering. Such facts fly in the face of his assertion that East Asia's governments are minimalist. Lee makes these false claims to justify his rejection of Western-style democracy. He even dislikes the one man, one vote principle, so fundamental to modern democracy, saying that he is not "intellectually convinced" it is best.
Opinions like Lee's hold considerable sway not only in Asia but among some Westerners because of the moral breakdown of many advanced democratic societies. Many Americans thought, for example, that the U.S. citizen Michael Fay deserved the caning he received from Singaporean authorities for his act of vandalism. However, moral breakdown is attributable not to inherent shortcomings of Western cultures but to those of industrial societies; a similar phenomenon is now spreading through Asia's newly industrializing societies. The fact that Lee's Singapore, a small city-state, needs a near-totalitarian police state to assert control over its citizens contradicts his assertion that everything would be all right if governments would refrain from interfering in the private affairs of the family. The proper way to cure the ills of industrial societies is not to impose the terror of a police state but to emphasize ethical education, give high regard to spiritual values, and promote high standards in culture and the arts.
LONG BEFORE LOCKE
No one can argue with Lee's objection to "foisting" an alien system "indiscriminately on societies in which it will not work." The question is whether democracy is a system so alien to Asian cultures that it will not work. Moreover, considering Lee's record of absolute intolerance of dissent and the continued crackdown on dissidents in many other Asian countries, one is also compelled to ask whether democracy has been given a chance in places like Singapore.
A thorough analysis makes it clear that Asia has a rich heritage of democracy-oriented philosophies and traditions. Asia has already made great strides toward democratization and possesses the necessary conditions to develop democracy even beyond the level of the West.
Democratic Ideals. It is widely accepted that English political philosopher John Locke laid the foundation for modern democracy. According to Locke, sovereign rights reside with the people and, based on a contract with the people, leaders are given a mandate to govern, which the people can withdraw. But almost two millennia before Locke, Chinese philosopher Meng-tzu preached similar ideas. According to his "Politics of Royal Ways," the king is the "Son of Heaven," and heaven bestowed on its son a mandate to provide good government, that is, to provide good for the people. If he did not govern righteously, the people had the right to rise up and overthrow his government in the name of heaven. Meng-tzu even justified regicide, saying that once a king loses the mandate of heaven he is no longer worthy of his subjects' loyalty. The people came first, Meng-tzu said, the country second, and the king third. The ancient Chinese philosophy of Minben Zhengchi, or "people-based politics," teaches that "the will of the people is the will of heaven" and that one should "respect the people as heaven" itself.
A native religion of Korea, Tonghak, went even further, advocating that "man is heaven" and that one must serve man as one does heaven. These ideas inspired and motivated nearly half a million peasants in 1894 to revolt against exploitation by feudalistic government internally and imperialistic forces externally. There are no ideas more fundamental to democracy than the teachings of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Tonghak. Clearly, Asia has democratic philosophies as profound as those of the West.
Democratic Institutions. Asia also has many democratic traditions. When Western societies were still being ruled by a succession of feudal lords, China and Korea had already sustained county prefecture systems for about 2,000 years. The government of the Chin Dynasty, founded by Chin-shih huang-ti (literally, the founder of Chin), practiced the rule of law and saw to it that everyone, regardless of class, was treated fairly. For nearly 1,000 years in China and Korea, even the sons of high-ranking officials were not appointed to important official positions unless they passed civil service examinations. These stringent tests were administered to members of the aristocratic class, who constituted over ten percent of the population, thus guaranteeing equal opportunity and social mobility, which are so central to popular democracy. This practice sharply contrasted with that of European fiefdoms of that time, where pedigree more or less determined one's official position. In China and Korea powerful boards of censors acted as a check against imperial misrule and abuses by government officials. Freedom of speech was highly valued, based on the understanding that the nation's fate depended on it. Confucian scholars were taught that remonstration against an erring monarch was a paramount duty. Many civil servants and promising political elites gave their lives to protect the right to free speech.
The fundamental ideas and traditions necessary for democracy existed in both Europe and Asia. Although Asians developed these ideas long before the Europeans did, Europeans formalized comprehensive and effective electoral democracy first. The invention of the electoral system is Europe's greatest accomplishment. The fact that this system was developed elsewhere does not mean that "it will not work" in Asia. Many Asian countries, including Singapore, have become prosperous after adopting a "Western" free-market economy, which is such an integral part of a democracy. Incidentally, in countries where economic development preceded political advancement - Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain - it was only a matter of time before democracy followed.
The State of Democracy in Asia. The best proof that democracy can work in Asia is the fact that, despite the stubborn resistance of authoritarian rulers like Lee, Asia has made great strides toward democracy. In fact, Asia has achieved the most remarkable record of democratization of any region since 1974. By 1990 a majority of Asian countries were democracies, compared to a 45 percent democratization rate worldwide.[1] This achievement has been overshadowed by Asia's tremendous economic success. I believe democracy will take root throughout Asia around the start of the next century. By the end of its first quarter, Asia will witness an era not only of economic prosperity, but also of flourishing democracy.
I am optimistic for several reasons. The Asian economies are moving from a capital- and labor-intensive industrial phase into an information- and technology-intensive one. Many experts have acknowledged that this new economic world order requires guaranteed freedom of information and creativity. These things are possible only in a democratic society. Thus Asia has no practical alternative to democracy; it is a matter of survival in an age of intensifying global economic competition. The world economy's changes have already meant a greater and easier flow of information, which has helped Asia's democratization process.
Democracy has been consistently practiced in Japan and India since the end of World War II. In Korea, Burma, Taiwan, Thailand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and other countries, democracy has been frustrated at times, even suspended. Nevertheless, most of these countries have democratized, and in all of them, a resilient "people power" has been demonstrated through elections and popular movements. Even in Thailand, after ten military governments, a civilian government has finally emerged. The Mongolian government, after a long period of one-party dictatorship, has also voluntarily accepted democracy. The fundamental reason for my optimism is this increasing awareness of the importance of democracy and human rights among Asians themselves and their willingness to make the necessary efforts to realize these goals. Despite many tribulations, the torch of democracy continues to burn in Asia because of the aspirations of its people.
WE ARE THE WORLD
As Asians increasingly embrace democratic values, they have the opportunity and obligation to learn from older democracies. The West has experienced many problems in realizing its democratic systems. It is instructive, for example, to remember that Europeans practiced democracy within the boundaries of their nation-states but not outside. Until recently, the Western democracies coddled the interests of a small propertied class. The democracies that benefited much broader majorities through socioeconomic investments were mostly established after World War II. Today, we must start with a rebirth of democracy that promotes freedom, prosperity, and justice both within each country and among nations, including the less-developed countries: a global democracy.
Instead of making Western culture the scapegoat for the disruptions of rapid economic change, it is more appropriate to look at how the traditional strengths of Asian society can provide for a better democracy. In Asia, democracy can encourage greater self-reliance while respecting cultural values. Such a democracy is the only true expression of a people, but it requires the full participation of all elements of society. Only then will it have legitimacy and reflect a country's vision.
Asian authoritarians misunderstand the relationship between the rules of effective governance and the concept of legitimacy. Policies that try to protect people from the bad elements of economic and social change will never be effective if imposed without consent; the same policies, arrived at through public debate, will have the strength of Asia's proud and self-reliant people.
A global democracy will recognize the connection between how we treat each other and how we treat nature, and it will pursue policies that benefit future generations. Today we are threatening the survival of our environment through wholesale destruction and endangerment of all species. Our democracy must become global in the sense that it extends to the skies, the earth, and all things with brotherly affection.
The Confucian maxim Xiushen qijia zhiguo pingtianxia, which offers counsel toward the ideal of "great peace under heaven," shows an appreciation for judicious government. The ultimate goal in Confucian political philosophy, as stated in this aphorism, is to bring peace under heaven (pingtianxia). To do so, one must first be able to keep one's own household in order (qijia), which in turn requires that one cultivate "self" (xiushen). This teaching is a political philosophy that emphasizes the role of government and stresses the ruling elite's moral obligation to strive to bring about peace under heaven. Public safety, national security, and water and forest management are deemed critical. This concept of peace under heaven should be interpreted to include peaceful living and existence for all things under heaven. Such an understanding can also be derived from Gautama Buddha's teaching that all creatures and things possess a Buddha-like quality.
Since the fifth century B.C., the world has witnessed a series of revolutions in thought. Chinese, Indian, Greek, and Jewish thinkers have led great revolutions in ideas, and we are still living under the influence of their insights. However, for the past several hundred years, the world has been dominated by Greek and Judeo-Christian ideas and traditions. Now it is time for the world to turn to China, India, and the rest of Asia for another revolution in ideas. We need to strive for a new democracy that guarantees the right of personal development for all human beings and the wholesome existence of all living things.
A natural first step toward realizing such a new democracy would be full adherence to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948. This international document reflects basic respect for the dignity of people, and Asian nations should take the lead in implementing it.
The movement for democracy in Asia has been carried forward mainly by Asia's small but effective army of dedicated people in and out of political parties, encouraged by nongovernmental and quasi-governmental organizations for democratic development from around the world. These are hopeful signs for Asia's democratic future. Such groups are gaining in their ability to force governments to listen to the concerns of their people, and they should be supported.
Asia should lose no time in firmly establishing democracy and strengthening human rights. The biggest obstacle is not its cultural heritage but the resistance of authoritarian rulers and their apologists. Asia has much to offer the rest of the world; its rich heritage of democracy-oriented philosophies and traditions can make a significant contribution to the evolution of global democracy. Culture is not necessarily our destiny. Democracy is.
FOOTNOTE
[1] Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991.
A Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew
MEETING THE MINISTER
"One of the asymmetries of history," wrote Henry Kissinger of Singapore’s patriarch Lee Kuan Yew, "is the lack of correspondence between the abilities of some leaders and the power of their countries." Kissinger’s one time boss, Richard Nixon, was even more flattering. He speculated that, had Lee lived in another time and another place, he might have "attained the world stature of a Churchill, a Disraeli, or a Gladstone." This tag line of a big man on a small stage has been attached to Lee since the 1970s. Today, however, his stage does not look quite so small. Singapore’s per capita GNP is now higher than that of its erstwhile colonizer, Great Britain. It has the world’s busiest port, is the third-largest oil refiner and a major center of global manufacturing and service industries. And this move from poverty to plenty has taken place within one generation. In 1965 Singapore ranked economically with Chile, Argentina and Mexico; today its per capita GNP is four or five times theirs.
Lee managed this miraculous transformation in Singapore’s economy while maintaining tight political control over the country; Singapore’s government can best be described as a "soft" authoritarian regime, and at times it has not been so soft. He was prime minister of Singapore from its independence in 1959 (it became part of a federation with Malaysia in 1963 but was expelled in 1965) until 1990, when he allowed his deputy to succeed him. He is now "Senior Minister" and still commands enormous influence and power in the country. Since his retirement, Lee has embarked on another career of sorts as a world-class pundit, speaking his mind with impolitic frankness. And what is often on his mind is American-style democracy and its perils. He travels often to East Asian capitals from Beijing to Hanoi to Manila dispensing advice on how to achieve economic growth while retaining political stability and control. It is a formula that the governing elites of these countries are anxious to learn.
The rulers of former British colonies have been spared the embarrassment of building grandiose monuments to house their offices; they simply occupy the ones that the British built. So it is with Singapore. The president, prime minister and senior minister work out of Istana (palace), the old colonial governor’s house, a gleaming white bungalow surrounded by luxuriant lawns. The interior is modern, light wood paneling and leather sofas. The atmosphere is hushed. I waited in a large anteroom for the "SM," which is how everybody refers to Lee. I did not wait long. The SM was standing in the middle of a large, sparsely furnished office. He is of medium build. His once-compact physique is now slightly shrunken. Still, he does not look 70.
Lee Kuan Yew is unlike any politician I have met. There were no smiles, no jokes, no bonhomie. He looked straight at me, he has an inexpressive face but an intense gaze, shook hands and motioned toward one of the room’s pale blue leather sofas (I had already been told by his press secretary on which one to sit). After 30 awkward seconds, I realized that there would be no small talk. I pressed the record button on my machine.
FZ: With the end of the Cold War, many Americans were surprised to hear growing criticism of their political and economic and social system from elites in East Asia, who were considered staunchly pro-American. What, in your view, is wrong with the American system?
LKY: It is not my business to tell people what’s wrong with their system. It is my business to tell people not to foist their system indiscriminately on societies in which it will not work.
FZ: But you do not view the United States as a model for other countries?
LKY: As an East Asian looking at America, I find attractive and unattractive features. I like, for example, the free, easy and open relations between people regardless of social status, ethnicity or religion. And the things that I have always admired about America, as against the communist system, I still do: a certain openness in argument about what is good or bad for society; the accountability of public officials; none of the secrecy and terror that’s part and parcel of communist government.
But as a total system, I find parts of it totally unacceptable: guns, drugs, violent crime, vagrancy, unbecoming behavior in public, in sum the breakdown of civil society. The expansion of the right of the individual to behave or misbehave as he pleases has come at the expense of orderly society. In the East the main object is to have a well-ordered society so that everybody can have maximum enjoyment of his freedoms. This freedom can only exist in an ordered state and not in a natural state of contention and anarchy.
Let me give you an example that encapsulates the whole difference between America and Singapore. America has a vicious drug problem. How does it solve it? It goes around the world helping other anti-narcotic agencies to try and stop the suppliers. It pays for helicopters, defoliating agents and so on. And when it is provoked, it captures the president of Panama and brings him to trial in Florida. Singapore does not have that option. We can’t go to Burma and capture warlords there. What we can do is to pass a law which says that any customs officer or policeman who sees anybody in Singapore behaving suspiciously, leading him to suspect the person is under the influence of drugs, can require that man to have his urine tested. If the sample is found to contain drugs, the man immediately goes for treatment. In America if you did that it would be an invasion of the individual’s rights and you would be sued.
I was interested to read Colin Powell, when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, saying that the military followed our approach because when a recruit signs up he agrees that he can be tested. Now, I would have thought this kind of approach would be quite an effective way to deal with the terrible drug problem you have. But the idea of the inviolability of the individual has been turned into dogma. And yet nobody minds when the army goes and captures the president of another state and brings him to Florida and puts him in jail. I find that incomprehensible. And in any case this approach will not solve America’s drug problem. Whereas Singapore’s way, we may not solve it, but we will lessen it considerably, as we have done.
FZ: Would it be fair to say that you admired America more 25 years ago? What, in your view, went wrong?
LKY: Yes, things have changed. I would hazard a guess that it has a lot to do with the erosion of the moral underpinnings of a society and the diminution of personal responsibility. The liberal, intellectual tradition that developed after World War II claimed that human beings had arrived at this perfect state where everybody would be better off if they were allowed to do their own thing and flourish. It has not worked out, and I doubt if it will. Certain basics about human nature do not change. Man needs a certain moral sense of right and wrong. There is such a thing called evil, and it is not the result of being a victim of society. You are just an evil man, prone to do evil things, and you have to be stopped from doing them. Westerners have abandoned an ethical basis for society, believing that all problems are solvable by a good government, which we in the East never believed possible.
FZ: Is such a fundamental shift in culture irreversible?
LKY: No, it is a swing of the pendulum. I think it will swing back. I don’t know how long it will take, but there’s already a backlash in America against failed social policies that have resulted in people urinating in public, in aggressive begging in the streets, in social breakdown.
THE ASIAN MODEL
FZ: You say that your real concern is that this system not be foisted on other societies because it will not work there. Is there another viable model for political and economic development? Is there an "Asian model"?
LKY: I don’t think there is an Asian model as such. But Asian societies are unlike Western ones. The fundamental difference between Western concepts of society and government and East Asian concepts, when I say East Asians, I mean Korea, Japan, China, Vietnam, as distinct from Southeast Asia, which is a mix between the Sinic and the Indian, though Indian culture also emphasizes similar values, is that Eastern societies believe that the individual exists in the context of his family. He is not pristine and separate. The family is part of the extended family, and then friends and the wider society. The ruler or the government does not try to provide for a person what the family best provides.
In the West, especially after World War II, the government came to be seen as so successful that it could fulfill all the obligations that in less modern societies are fulfilled by the family. This approach encouraged alternative families, single mothers for instance, believing that government could provide the support to make up for the absent father. This is a bold, Huxleyan view of life, but one from which I as an East Asian shy away. I would be afraid to experiment with it. I’m not sure what the consequences are, and I don’t like the consequences that I see in the West. You will find this view widely shared in East Asia. It’s not that we don’t have single mothers here. We are also caught in the same social problems of change when we educate our women and they become independent financially and no longer need to put up with unhappy marriages. But there is grave disquiet when we break away from tested norms, and the tested norm is the family unit. It is the building brick of society.
There is a little Chinese aphorism which encapsulates this idea: Xiushen qijia zhiguo pingtianxia. Xiushen means look after yourself, cultivate yourself, do everything to make yourself useful; Qijia, look after the family; Zhiguo, look after your country; Pingtianxia, all is peaceful under heaven. We have a whole people immersed in these beliefs. My granddaughter has the name Xiu-qi. My son picked out the first two words, instructing his daughter to cultivate herself and look after her family. It is the basic concept of our civilization. Governments will come, governments will go, but this endures. We start with self-reliance. In the West today it is the opposite. The government says give me a popular mandate and I will solve all society’s problems.
FZ: What would you do instead to address America’s problems?
LKY: What would I do if I were an American? First, you must have order in society. Guns, drugs and violent crime all go together, threatening social order. Then the schools; when you have violence in schools, you are not going to have education, so you’ve got to put that right. Then you have to educate rigorously and train a whole generation of skilled, intelligent, knowledgeable people who can be productive. I would start off with basics, working on the individual, looking at him within the context of his family, his friends, his society. But the Westerner says I’ll fix things at the top. One magic formula, one grand plan. I will wave a wand and everything will work out. It’s an interesting theory but not a proven method.
BACK TO BASICS
FZ: You are very skeptical of government’s ability to solve deeper social issues. But you’re more confident, certainly than many Americans are, in the government’s ability to promote economic growth and technological advancement. Isn’t this a contradiction?
LKY: No. We have focused on basics in Singapore. We used the family to push economic growth, factoring the ambitions of a person and his family into our planning. We have tried, for example, to improve the lot of children through education. The government can create a setting in which people can live happily and succeed and express themselves, but finally it is what people do with their lives that determines economic success or failure. Again, we were fortunate we had this cultural backdrop, the belief in thrift, hard work, filial piety and loyalty in the extended family, and, most of all, the respect for scholarship and learning.
There is, of course, another reason for our success. We have been able to create economic growth because we facilitated certain changes while we moved from an agricultural society to an industrial society. We had the advantage of knowing what the end result should be by looking at the West and later Japan. We knew where we were, and we knew where we had to go. We said to ourselves, "Let’s hasten, let’s see if we can get there faster." But soon we will face a different situation. In the near future, all of us will get to the stage of Japan. Where do we go next? How do we hasten getting there when we don’t know where we’re going? That will be a new situation.
FZ: Some people say that the Asian model is too rigid to adapt well to change. The sociologist Mancur Olson argues that national decline is caused most fundamentally by sclerosis, the rigidity of interest groups, firms, labor, capital and the state. An American-type system that is very flexible, laissez-faire and constantly adapting is better suited to the emerging era of rapid change than a government-directed economic policy and a Confucian value system.
LKY: That is an optimistic and attractive philosophy of life, and I hope it will come true. But if you look at societies over the millennia you find certain basic patterns. American civilization from the Pilgrim fathers on is one of optimism and the growth of orderly government. History in China is of dynasties which have risen and fallen, of the waxing and waning of societies. And through all that turbulence, the family, the extended family, the clan, has provided a kind of survival raft for the individual. Civilizations have collapsed, dynasties have been swept away by conquering hordes, but this life raft enables the civilization to carry on and get to its next phase.
Nobody here really believes that the government can provide in all circumstances. The government itself does not believe it. In the ultimate crisis, even in earthquakes and typhoons, it is your human relationships that will see you through. So the thesis you quote, that the government is always capable of reinventing itself in new shapes and forms, has not been proven in history. But the family and the way human relationships are structured, do increase the survival chances of its members. That has been tested over thousands of years in many different situations.
THE CULTURE OF SUCCESS
FZ: A key ingredient of national economic success in the past has been a culture of innovation and experimentation. During their rise to great wealth and power the centers of growth, Venice, Holland, Britain, the United States, all had an atmosphere of intellectual freedom in which new ideas, technologies, methods and products could emerge. In East Asian countries, however, the government frowns upon an open and free wheeling intellectual climate. Leaving aside any kind of human rights questions this raises, does it create a productivity problem?
LKY: Intellectually that sounds like a reasonable conclusion, but I’m not sure things will work out this way. The Japanese, for instance, have not been all that disadvantaged in creating new products. I think that if governments are aware of your thesis and of the need to test out new areas, to break out of existing formats, they can counter the trend. East Asians, who all share a tradition of strict discipline, respect for the teacher, no talking back to the teacher and rote learning, must make sure that there is this random intellectual search for new technologies and products. In any case, in a world where electronic communications are instantaneous, I do not see anyone lagging behind. Anything new that happens spreads quickly, whether it’s superconductivity or some new life-style.
FZ: Would you agree with the World Bank report on East Asian economic success, which I interpret to have concluded that all the governments that succeeded got fundamentals right, encouraging savings and investment, keeping inflation low, providing high-quality education. The tinkering of industrial policies here and targeting sectors there was not as crucial an element in explaining these countries’ extraordinary economic growth as were these basic factors.
LKY: I think the World Bank had a very difficult job. It had to write up these very, very complex series of situations. But there are cultural factors which have been lightly touched over, which deserved more weightage. This would have made it a more complex study and of less universal application, but it would have been more accurate, explaining the differences, for example, between the Philippines and Taiwan.
FZ: If culture is so important, then countries with very different cultures may not, in fact, succeed in the way that East Asia did by getting economic fundamentals right. Are you not hopeful for the countries around the world that are liberalizing their economies?
LKY: Getting the fundamentals right would help, but these societies will not succeed in the same way as East Asia did because certain driving forces will be absent. If you have a culture that doesn’t place much value in learning and scholarship and hard work and thrift and deferment of present enjoyment for future gain, the going will be much slower.
But, you know, the World Bank report’s conclusions are part of the culture of America and, by extension, of international institutions. It had to present its findings in a bland and universalizable way, which I find unsatisfying because it doesn’t grapple with the real problems. It makes the hopeful assumption that all men are equal, that people all over the world are the same. They are not. Groups of people develop different characteristics when they have evolved for thousands of years separately. Genetics and history interact. The Native American Indian is genetically of the same stock as the Mongoloids of East Asia, the Chinese, the Koreans and the Japanese. But one group got cut off after the Bering Straits melted away. Without that land bridge they were totally isolated in America for thousands of years. The other, in East Asia, met successive invading forces from Central Asia and interacted with waves of people moving back and forth. The two groups may share certain characteristics, for instance if you measure the shape of their skulls and so on, but if you start testing them you find that they are different, most particularly in their neurological development, and their cultural values.
Now if you gloss over these kinds of issues because it is politically incorrect to study them, then you have laid a land mine for yourself. This is what leads to the disappointments with social policies, embarked upon in America with great enthusiasm and expectations, but which yield such meager results. There isn’t a willingness to see things in their stark reality. But then I am not being politically correct.
FZ: Culture may be important, but it does change. The Asian "model" may prove to be a transitional phenomenon. After all, Western countries also went through a period in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when they were capitalist and had limited participatory democracy. Elites then worried, as you do today, that "too much" democracy and "too many" individual rights would destabilize social order. But as these societies modernized and as economic growth spread to all sections of society, things changed. Isn’t East Asia changing because of a growing middle class that demands a say in its own future?
LKY: There is acute change in East Asia. We are agricultural societies that have industrialized within one or two generations. What happened in the West over 200 years or more is happening here in about 50 years or less. It is all crammed and crushed into a very tight time frame, so there are bound to be dislocations and malfunctions. If you look at the fast-growing countries, Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Singapore, there’s been one remarkable phenomenon: the rise of religion. Koreans have taken to Christianity in large numbers, I think some 25 percent. This is a country that was never colonized by a Christian nation. The old customs and religions, ancestor worship, shamanism, no longer completely satisfy. There is a quest for some higher explanations about man’s purpose, about why we are here. This is associated with periods of great stress in society. You will find in Japan that every time it goes through a period of stress new sects crop up and new religions proliferate. In Taiwan, and also in Hong Kong and Singapore, you see a rise in the number of new temples; Confucianist temples, Taoist temples and many Christian sects.
We are all in the midst of very rapid change and at the same time we are all groping towards a destination which we hope will be identifiable with our past. We have left the past behind and there is an underlying unease that there will be nothing left of us which is part of the old. The Japanese have solved this problem to some extent. Japan has become an industrial society, while remaining essentially Japanese in its human relations. They have industrialized and shed some of their feudal values. The Taiwanese and the Koreans are trying to do the same. But whether these societies can preserve their core values and make this transition is a problem which they alone can solve. It is not something Americans can solve for them. Therefore, you will find people unreceptive to the idea that they be Westernized. Modernized, yes, in the sense that they have accepted the inevitability of science and technology and the change in the life-styles they bring.
FZ: But won’t these economic and technological changes produce changes in the mind-sets of people?
LKY: It is not just mind-sets that would have to change but value systems. Let me give anecdotal evidence of this. Many Chinese families in Malaysia migrated in periods of stress, when there were race riots in Malaysia in the 1960s, and they settled in Australia and Canada. They did this for the sake of their children so that they would get a better education in the English language because then Malaysia was switching to Malay as its primary language. The children grew up, reached their late teens and left home. And suddenly the parents discovered the emptiness of the whole exercise. They had given their children a modern education in the English language and in the process lost their children altogether. That was a very sobering experience. Something less dramatic is happening in Singapore now because we are not bringing up our children in the same circumstances in which we grew up.
FZ: But these children are absorbing influences different from your generation. You say that knowledge, life-styles, culture all spread rapidly in this world. Will not the idea of democracy and individual rights also spread?
LKY: Let’s not get into a debate on semantics. The system of government in China will change. It will change in Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam. It is changing in Singapore. But it will not end up like the American or British or French or German systems. What are we all seeking? A form of government that will be comfortable, because it meets our needs, is not oppressive, and maximizes our opportunities. And whether you have one-man, one-vote or some-men, one vote or other men, two votes, those are forms which should be worked out. I’m not intellectually convinced that one-man, one-vote is the best. We practice it because that’s what the British bequeathed us and we haven’t really found a need to challenge that. But I’m convinced, personally, that we would have a better system if we gave every man over the age of 40 who has a family two votes because he’s likely to be more careful, voting also for his children. He is more likely to vote in a serious way than a capricious young man under 30. But we haven’t found it necessary yet. If it became necessary we should do it. At the same time, once a person gets beyond 65, then it is a problem. Between the ages of 40 and 60 is ideal, and at 60 they should go back to one vote, but that will be difficult to arrange.
MULTICULTURAL SCHISMS
FZ: Change is often most threatening when it occurs in multiethnic societies. You have been part of both a multiethnic state that failed and one that has succeeded. Malaysia was unwilling to allow what it saw as a Chinese city-state to be part of it and expelled Singapore from its federation in 1965. Singapore itself, however, exists peacefully as a multiethnic state. Is there a solution for those states that have ethnic and religious groups mixed within them?
LKY: Each state faces a different set of problems and I would be most reluctant to dish out general solutions. From my own experience, I would say, make haste slowly. Nobody likes to lose his ethnic, cultural, religious, even linguistic identity. To exist as one state you need to share certain attributes, have things in common. If you pressure-cook you are in for problems. If you go gently, but steadily, the logic of events will bring about not assimilation, but integration. If I had tried to foist the English language on the people of Singapore I would have faced rebellion all around. If I had tried to foist the Chinese language, I’d have had immediate revolt and disaster. But I offered every parent a choice of English and their mother tongue, in whatever order they chose. By their free choice, plus the rewards of the marketplace over a period of 30 years, we have ended up with English first and the mother tongue second. We have switched one university already established in the Chinese language from Chinese into English. Had this change been forced in five or ten years instead of being done over 30 years, and by free choice, it would have been a disaster.
FZ: This sounds like a live-and-let-live kind of approach. Many Western countries, particularly the United States and France, respectively, have traditionally attempted to assimilate people toward a national mainstream, with English and French as the national language, respectively. Today this approach is being questioned, as you know, with some minority groups in the United States and France arguing for "multiculturalism," which would allow distinct and unassimilated minority groups to coexist within the nation. How does this debate strike you as you read about it in Singapore?
LKY: You cannot have too many distinct components and be one nation. It makes interchangeability difficult. If you want complete separateness then you should not come to live in the host country. But there are circumstances where it is wise to leave things be. For instance, all races in Singapore are eligible for jobs and for many other things. But we put the Muslims in a slightly different category because they are extremely sensitive about their customs, especially diet. In such matters one has to find a middle path between uniformity and a certain freedom to be somewhat different. I think it is wise to leave alone questions of fundamental beliefs and give time to sort matters out.
FZ: So you would look at the French handling of their Muslim minorities and say "Go slow, don’t push these people so hard."
LKY: I would not want to say that because the French having ruled Algeria for many years know the kind of problems that they are faced with. My approach would be, if some Muslim girl insists on coming to school with her headdress on and is prepared to put up with that discomfort, we should be prepared to put up with the strangeness. But if she joined the customs or immigration department where it would be confusing to the millions of people who stream through to have some customs officer looking different, she must wear the uniform. That approach has worked in Singapore so far.
IS EUROPE’S PAST ASIA’S FUTURE?
FZ: Let me shift gears somewhat and ask you some questions about the international climate in East Asia. The part of the world you live in is experiencing the kind of growth that the West has experienced for the last 400 years. The West has not only been the world’s great producer of wealth for four centuries, it has also been the world’s great producer of war. Today East Asia is the locus of great and unsettling growth, with several newly rising powers close to each other, many with different political systems, historical animosities, border disputes, and all with ever-increasing quantities of arms. Should one look at this and ask whether Europe’s past will be East Asia’s future?
LKY: No, it’s too simplistic. One reason why growth is likely to last for many years in East Asia, and this is just a guess, is that the peoples and the governments of East Asia have learned some powerful lessons about the viciousness and destructiveness of wars. Not only full-scale wars like in Korea, but guerrilla wars as in Vietnam, in Cambodia and in the jungles of Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. We all know that the more you engage in conflict, the poorer and the more desperate you become. Visit Cambodia and Vietnam; the world just passed them by. That lesson will live for a very long time, at least as long as this generation is alive.
FZ: The most unsettling change in an international system is the rise of a new great power. Can the rise of China be accommodated into the East Asian order? Isn’t that kind of growth inevitably destabilizing?
LKY: I don’t think we can speak in terms of just the East Asian order. The question is: Can the world develop a system in which a country the size of China becomes part of the management of international peace and stability? Sometime in the next 20 or 30 years the world, by which I mean the major powers, will have to agree among themselves how to manage peace and stability, how to create a system that is both viable and fair. Wars between small countries won’t destroy the whole world, but will only destroy themselves. But big conflicts between big powers will destroy the world many times over. That’s just too disastrous to contemplate.
At the end of the last war what they could foresee was the United Nations. The hope was that the permanent five would maintain the rule of law or gradually spread the rule of law in international relations. It did not come off because of Stalin and the Cold War. This is now a new phase. The great powers, by which I mean America, Western Europe as a group if they become a union, Japan, China and, in 20 to 30 years time, the Russian republic, have got to find a balance between themselves. I think the best way forward is through the United Nations. It already has 48 years of experience. It is imperfect, but what is the alternative? You can not have a consortium of five big powers lording it over the rest of mankind. They will not have the moral authority or legitimacy to do it. Are they going to divide the world into five spheres of influence? So they have to fall back on some multilateral framework and work out a set of rules that makes it viable. There may be conflicts of a minor nature, for instance between two Latin American countries or two small Southeast Asian countries; that doesn’t really matter. Now if you have two big countries in South Asia like India and Pakistan and both with nuclear capabilities, then something has to be done. It is in that context that we have to find a place for China when it becomes a major economic and military power.
FZ: Is the Chinese regime stable? Is the growth that’s going on there sustainable? Is the balancing act between economic reform and political control that Deng Xiaoping is trying to keep going sustainable after his death?
LKY: The regime in Beijing is more stable than any alternative government that can be formed in China. Let us assume that the students had carried the day at Tiananmen and they had formed a government. The same students who were at Tiananmen went to France and America. They’ve been quarreling with each other ever since. What kind of China would they have today? Something worse than the Soviet Union. China is a vast, disparate country; there is no alternative to strong central power.
FZ: Do you worry that the kind of rapid and unequal growth taking place in China might cause the country to break up?
LKY: First, the economy is growing everywhere, even in Sichuan, in the heart of the interior. Disparate growth rates are inevitable. It is the difference between, say, California before the recession and the Rust Belt. There will be enormous stresses because of the size of the country and the intractable nature of the problems, the poor infrastructure, the weak institutions, the wrong systems that they have installed, modeling themselves upon the Soviet system in Stalin’s time. Given all those handicaps, I am amazed that they have got so far.
FZ: What about the other great East Asian power? If Japan continues on the current trajectory, should the world encourage the expansion of its political and military responsibilities and power?
LKY: No. I know that the present generation of Japanese leaders do not want to project power. I’m not sure what follows when leaders born after the war take charge. I doubt if there will be a sudden change. If Japan can carry on with its current policy, leaving security to the Americans and concentrating on the economic and the political, the world will be better off. And the Japanese are quite happy to do this. It is when America feels that it’s too burdensome and not worth the candle to be present in East Asia to protect Japan that it will have to look after its own security. When Japan becomes a separate player, it is an extra joker in the pack of cards.
FZ: You’ve said recently that allowing Japan to send its forces abroad is like giving liquor to an alcoholic.
LKY: The Japanese have always had this cultural trait, that whatever they do they carry it to the nth degree. I think they know this. I have Japanese friends who have told me this. They admit that this is a problem with them.
FZ: What if Japan did follow the trajectory that most great powers have; that it was not content simply to be an economic superpower, "a bank with a flag" in a writer’s phrase? What if they decided they wanted to have the ultimate mark of a great power, nuclear weapons? What should the world do?
LKY: If they decided on that the world will not be able to stop them. You are unable to stop North Korea. Nobody believes that an American government that could not sustain its mission in Somalia because of an ambush and one television snippet of a dead American pulled through the streets in Mogadishu could contemplate a strike on North Korean nuclear facilities like the Israeli strike on Iraq. Therefore it can only be sanctions in the U.N. Security Council. That requires that there be no vetoes. Similarly, if the Japanese decide to go nuclear, I don’t believe you will be able to stop them. But they know that they face a nuclear power in China and in Russia, and so they would have to posture themselves in such a way as not to invite a preemptive strike. If they can avoid a preemptive strike then a balance will be established. Each will deter the others.
FZ: So it’s the transition period that you are worried about.
LKY: I would prefer that the matter never arises and I believe so does the world. Whether the Japanese go down the military path will depend largely on America’s strength and its willingness to be engaged.
VIVE LA DIFFERENCE
FZ: Is there some contradiction here between your role as a politician and your new role as an intellectual, speaking out on all matters? As a politician you want America as a strong balancer in the region, a country that is feared and respected all over the world. As an intellectual, however, you choose to speak out forcefully against the American model in a way that has to undermine America’s credibility abroad.
LKY: That’s preposterous. The last thing I would want to do is to undermine her credibility. America has been unusual in the history of the world, being the sole possessor of power, the nuclear weapon, and the one and only government in the world unaffected by war damage whilst the others were in ruins. Any old and established nation would have ensured its supremacy for as long as it could. But America set out to put her defeated enemies on their feet, to ward off an evil force, the Soviet Union, brought about technological change by transferring technology generously and freely to Europeans and to Japanese, and enabled them to become her challengers within 30 years. By 1975 they were at her heels. That’s unprecedented in history. There was a certain greatness of spirit born out of the fear of communism plus American idealism that brought that about. But that does not mean that we all admire everything about America.
Let me be frank; if we did not have the good points of the West to guide us, we wouldn’t have got out of our backwardness. We would have been a backward economy with a backward society. But we do not want all of the West.
A CODA ON CULTURE
The dominant theme throughout our conversation was culture. Lee returned again and again to his views on the importance of culture and the differences between Confucianism and Western values. In this respect, Lee is very much part of a trend. Culture is in. From business consultants to military strategists, people talk about culture as the deepest and most determinative aspect of human life.
I remain skeptical. If culture is destiny, what explains a culture’s failure in one era and success in another? If Confucianism explains the economic boom in East Asia today, does it not also explain that region’s stagnation for four centuries? In fact, when East Asia seemed immutably poor, many scholars, most famously Max Weber, made precisely that case, arguing that Confucian-based cultures discouraged all the attributes necessary for success in capitalism. Today scholars explain how Confucianism emphasizes the essential traits for economic dynamism. Were Latin American countries to succeed in the next few decades, we shall surely read encomiums to Latin culture. I suspect that since we cannot find one simple answer to why certain societies succeed at certain times, we examine successful societies and search within their cultures for the seeds of success. Cultures being complex, one finds in them what one wants.
What explains Lee Kuan Yew’s fascination with culture? It is not something he was born with. Until his thirties he was called "Harry" Lee (and still is by family and friends). In the 1960s the British foreign secretary could say to him, "Harry, you’re the best bloody Englishman east of the Suez." This is not a man untouched by the West. Part of his interest in cultural differences is surely that they provide a coherent defense against what he sees as Western democratic imperialism. But a deeper reason is revealed in something he said in our conversation: "We have left the past behind, and there is an underlying unease that there will be nothing left of us which is part of the old."
Cultures change. Under the impact of economic growth, technological change and social transformation, no culture has remained the same. Most of the attributes that Lee sees in Eastern cultures were once part of the West. Four hundred years of economic growth changed things. From the very beginning of England’s economic boom, many Englishmen worried that as their country became rich it was losing its moral and ethical base. "Wealth accumulates and men decay," wrote Oliver Goldsmith in 1770. It is this "decay" that Lee is trying to stave off. He speaks of the anxious search for religion in East Asia today, and while he never says this, his own quest for a Confucian alternative to the West is part of this search.
But to be modern without becoming more Western is difficult; the two are not wholly separable. The West has left a mark on "the rest," and it is not simply a legacy of technology and material products. It is, perhaps most profoundly, in the realm of ideas. At the close of the interview Lee handed me three pages. This was, he explained, to emphasize how alien Confucian culture is to the West. The pages were from the book East Asia: Tradition and Transformation, by John Fairbank, an American scholar.
18. FDD | Embattled Erdogan Signals Turkish-Israeli Thaw
Excerpts:
Any normalization of Israeli-Turkish relations won’t happen as quickly as it did between Israel and, say, the UAE, which had been closely cooperating for many years. Given Erdogan’s poisoning of relations with Israel over the last two decades and his frequent U-turns, it will take time and effort to rebuild trust. Ankara similarly has reservations. On Tuesday, Cavusoglu said that “any step we take with Israel regarding our relations, any normalization, will not be at the expense of the Palestinian cause.” But Ankara knows that Israel is now, thanks in part to the Abraham Accords, less isolated in the Eastern Mediterranean than Turkey, and it has less to lose if normalization attempts with Turkey fail. The onus is thus on the Erdogan government to be proactive in improving relations.
Ultimately, a real rapprochement built on trust might have to wait for a new Turkish government. A big-tent opposition bloc appears poised to defeat Erdogan in the 2023 presidential and parliamentary elections. But as an embattled Erdogan seeks to undo some of the economic and foreign-policy damage he has wrought, setting in motion a return to better relations with Israel would be a good way to start.
FDD | Embattled Erdogan Signals Turkish-Israeli Thaw
The ground in the Middle East is shifting yet again.
fdd.org · by Aykan Erdemir Turkey Program Senior Director · February 11, 2022
The diplomatic map of the Middle East is shifting yet again. A surprising thaw seems to be afoot between Israel and Turkey, former close partners whose relations nosedived under Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Last week, Erdogan announced that Israeli President Isaac Herzog will visit Ankara in mid-March, which would make Herzog the first Israeli president to visit Turkey since Shimon Peres’s 2007 trip. (The Israeli government has yet to confirm the trip but has acknowledged a “possible visit.”) Hopes for a Turkish-Israeli rapprochement were bolstered further by a phone call last month between Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu—the first publicly acknowledged conversation between the two countries’ foreign ministers in 13 years.
That Erdogan is looking for new partners—and appears willing to mend relations—is understandable. He faces a collapsing economy, rising domestic opposition to his rule, conflict with Arab neighbors and traditional Western allies, and new turmoil in the region as Russia prepares to invade Ukraine.
Turkey was the first Muslim-majority country to recognize the new Jewish state in 1949, and the two enjoyed robust diplomatic, security, and intelligence cooperation over many years. However, since Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party rose to power in 2002, bilateral relations have turned into a roller-coaster ride. Now, the Turkish leader’s growing isolation in the Eastern Mediterranean and economic woes at home are forcing him to reach out to his sworn enemy.
Israel is treading carefully, given Erdogan’s frequent antisemitic and anti-Israeli vitriol, which the U.S. State Department called out as “reprehensible” and “incendiary” as recently as May 2021. “I have no illusions with regard to Turkey,” Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett recently told Haaretz. “We are very familiar with all the dynamics.”
High on the list of Israel’s concerns is Erdogan’s unwavering support for Hamas, the U.S.-designated terrorist group in control of Gaza. Among other kinds of support, Ankara has granted Turkish citizenship and passports to senior Hamas operatives, including one who “oversaw a plot to assassinate the [then] mayor of Jerusalem, as well as other Israeli public figures,” according to a 2020 Telegraph report. Erdogan has flaunted hosting two senior Hamas leaders, Saleh al-Arouri and Ismail Haniyeh, both of whom are on Washington’s list of global terrorists. It is therefore no surprise that Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency “stressed in the internal discussions about Turkey that any normalization process must include limiting Hamas activity in Turkey,” as Axios recently reported.
What adds to Israeli suspicion—and gives Erdogan’s overtures to Israel an ironic twist—is his industrious efforts in 2020 to undermine the Abraham Accords, the U.S.-brokered agreement to normalize relations between Israel and several of its erstwhile Arab adversaries. The Turkish government joined Iran and Hamas in condemning the agreement and went as far as threatening to suspend diplomatic ties with the United Arab Emirates as punishment for joining Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan in making peace with Israel.
Any normalization of Israeli-Turkish relations won’t happen as quickly as it did between Israel and, say, the UAE.
Since then, Erdogan has walked back that threat against the UAE, apparently as part of a wider effort to mend relations with the UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab countries with which Turkey has clashed in recent years—and now, with Israel. The diplomatic flurry included a November 2021 visit to Ankara by Emirati Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, whom Turkish state media demonized as a “dark prince” as recently as 2020. Erdogan clearly hopes to tap into Emirati capital to help stem Turkey’s economic meltdown. Since their rapprochement, Abu Dhabi and Ankara have signed a $4.9 billion currency swap agreement, while Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund has pledged to invest $10 billion in Turkey. The UAE, for its part, not only expects a good return on its investment but also sees Turkey as a potential hedge against Iran as the Biden administration reaches out to Tehran for a new nuclear deal.
While Israel doesn’t have state-controlled petrodollars to shower on Turkey, it does have financial, economic, and technological power in the region. Improved relations with Israel could also help burnish Turkey’s tarnished global image, not least as an investment destination. An unprecedented exodus of Western capital from Turkey over the last few years has risked Turkey’s designation as an emerging market by leading financial institutions and could result in its demotion into the category of so-called frontier markets, which would make Turkish bonds and equities uninvestable for most of the world’s funds. That would hasten Turkey’s economic implosion—and compound Erdogan’s political worries.
There is also the enticing future possibility of building an Eastern Mediterranean pipeline to bring Israeli natural gas to Turkey and from there to Europe. Even talk of such a pipeline—still theoretical given various difficulties—could help boost morale for Turkish businesses and households in revolt over paralyzing power cuts and skyrocketing utility bills. During the Turkish-Israeli rift that followed the 2010 Gaza flotilla crisis, Turkey regularly snubed possible energy deals with Israel, but Erdogan revamped the pipeline project earlier this month and appears enthusiastic about getting back to business. Following the Biden administration’s withdrawal of its support to an envisioned Israel-Cyprus-Greece pipeline last month, which Ankara has spun as Turkish victory, Erdogan has another reason to capitalize on the Israel-Turkey alternative.
At least as importantly, Erdogan also hopes that mending relations with Israel and Egypt will help reverse Turkey’s growing isolation in the Eastern Mediterranean. The region has witnessed an astonishing and unprecedented diplomatic and military partnership among Israel, Egypt, the UAE, Greece, and Cyprus, which have all been alarmed by Turkey’s growing assertiveness in the region; the group is also enticed by the prospects of energy cooperation under the umbrella of the East Mediterranean Gas Forum, an organization Ankara hopes to join one day. Turkey has long seen Greece and Cyprus as archrivals, and another purpose of Erdogan’s diplomatic flurry might be to try to dislodge them from the region’s fast-evolving network of partnerships. As of now, that does not appear to be a price Israel is willing to pay. The Jerusalem Post reported that, according to an Israeli government source, “improvements in Jerusalem-Ankara relations will not come at the expense of Israel’s alliance with Greece and Cyprus.”
While Erdogan’s sudden about-face with Israel has raised suspicions among Israeli analysts, there is a cautious optimism among Israeli officials for a gradual improvement of ties with Turkey. That could allow not only an exchange of ambassadors but also tactical cooperation against Iran and its proxies in the Middle East. Policymakers in Ankara are “no great friends of Iran, to put it mildly, and we can’t afford to assume some mantle of purity that will prevent us from creating alliances,” an unnamed Israeli diplomat recently told Haaretz.
Any normalization of Israeli-Turkish relations won’t happen as quickly as it did between Israel and, say, the UAE, which had been closely cooperating for many years. Given Erdogan’s poisoning of relations with Israel over the last two decades and his frequent U-turns, it will take time and effort to rebuild trust. Ankara similarly has reservations. On Tuesday, Cavusoglu said that “any step we take with Israel regarding our relations, any normalization, will not be at the expense of the Palestinian cause.” But Ankara knows that Israel is now, thanks in part to the Abraham Accords, less isolated in the Eastern Mediterranean than Turkey, and it has less to lose if normalization attempts with Turkey fail. The onus is thus on the Erdogan government to be proactive in improving relations.
Ultimately, a real rapprochement built on trust might have to wait for a new Turkish government. A big-tent opposition bloc appears poised to defeat Erdogan in the 2023 presidential and parliamentary elections. But as an embattled Erdogan seeks to undo some of the economic and foreign-policy damage he has wrought, setting in motion a return to better relations with Israel would be a good way to start.
Aykan Erdemir is the senior director of the Turkey program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former member of the Turkish parliament. Twitter: @aykan_erdemir. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Aykan Erdemir Turkey Program Senior Director · February 11, 2022
19. The Army and the Indo-Pacific
February 11, 2022 | Foreign Podicy
The Army and the Indo-Pacific
General Charles A. Flynn
U.S. Army Pacific Commander
About
Beijing is conducting the most ambitious military modernization and expansion effort in the history of the People’s Republic of China. And the more powerful the People’s Liberation Army becomes, the more aggressively Beijing is behaving.
Given the vast distances and expanses of ocean, when Americans think of the Indo-Pacific and the Pentagon’s role there, they may think first of the U.S. Navy and Air Force. Those services will, indeed, play a pivotal role in deterring and defeating aggression in the Indo-Pacific. Fully funding and supporting a modernized, capable, and forward-positioned U.S. Navy and Air Force is vital.
But what about the U.S. Army? That service plays a vital role in Europe and on the Korean peninsula, for example. But what role does the U.S. Army currently play in the larger Indo-Pacific? And what role could and should the Army play there going forward in terms of defending U.S. interests, building partner capacity, and defeating adversaries?
As Congress allocates finite resources to and within the Pentagon, and as the Department of Defense conducts its own generational modernization effort and develops new operational concepts, these questions are fundamental.
General Charles A. Flynn serves as commander of U.S. Army Pacific. He has served in a variety of important leadership positions, from platoon leader to division commander in operational units and as a deputy chief of staff for Army operations, plans, and training at the Pentagon. He has deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and now he focuses on the Indo-Pacific, leading the Army’s largest service component command.
20. Ukraine Is a Distraction From Taiwan
We are a global power with global interests and responsibilities. It seems as iof the authors see a fight with China as inevitable. Is that the case?
Excerpts:
There is a viable alternative for Europe’s defense: The Europeans themselves can step up and do more for themselves, especially with regard to conventional arms. This is well within Europe’s capacity, as the combined economic power of the NATO states dwarfs that of Russia. NATO allies spend far more on their militaries than Russia. To aid its European allies, the U.S. can provide various forms of support, including lethal weapons, while continuing to remain committed to NATO’s defense, albeit in a more constrained fashion, by providing high-end and fungible military capabilities. The U.S. can also continue to extend its nuclear deterrent to NATO.
The U.S. should remain committed to NATO’s defense but husband its critical resources for the primary fight in Asia, and Taiwan in particular. Denying China the ability to dominate Asia is more important than anything that happens in Europe. To be blunt: Taiwan is more important than Ukraine. America’s European allies are in a better position to take on Russia than America’s Asian allies are to deal with China. The Chinese can’t be allowed to think that America’s distraction in Ukraine provides them with a window of opportunity to invade Taiwan. The U.S. needs to act accordingly, crisis or not.
Ukraine Is a Distraction From Taiwan
Getting bogged down in Europe will impede the U.S.’s ability to compete with China in the Pacific.
WSJ · by Elbridge Colby and Oriana Skylar Mastro
Soldiers of 98th Training Division conduct Rifle Marksmanship Qualification at Fort Benning, Ga., Jan. 29
Photo: U.S. Army Reserve
A Russian invasion of Ukraine would be the most consequential use of military force in Europe since World War II and could put Moscow in a position to threaten U.S. allies in Europe. Many in the American foreign-policy establishment argue that the appropriate U.S. response to any such invasion is a major American troop deployment to the Continent. This would be a grave mistake.
The U.S. can no longer afford to spread its military across the world. The reason is simple: an increasingly aggressive China, the most powerful state to rise in the international system since the U.S. itself. By some measures, China’s economy is now the world’s largest. And it has built a military to match its economic heft. Twenty-five years ago, the Chinese military was backward and obsolete. But extraordinary increases in Beijing’s defense budget over more than two decades, and top political leaders’ razor-sharp focus, have transformed the People’s Liberation Army into one of the strongest militaries the world has ever seen.
China’s new military is capable not only of territorial defense but of projecting power. Besides boasting the largest navy in the world by ship count, China enjoys some capabilities, like certain types of hypersonic weapons, that even the U.S. hasn’t developed.
Most urgently, China poses an increasingly imminent threat to Taiwan. Xi Jinping has made clear that his platform of “national rejuvenation” can’t be successful until Taiwan unifies with the mainland—whether it wants to or not. The PLA is growing more confident in its ability to conquer Taiwan even if the U.S. intervenes. Given China’s military and economic strength, China’s leaders reasonably doubt that the U.S. or anyone else would mount a meaningful response to an invasion of Taiwan. To give a sense of his resolve, Mr. Xi warned that any “foreign forces” standing in China’s way would have “their heads . . . bashed bloody against a Great Wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people.”
The U.S. must defend Taiwan to retain its credibility as the leader of a coalition for a free and open Indo-Pacific. From a military perspective, Taiwan is a vital link in the first island chain of the Western Pacific. If Taiwan falls into Chinese hands, the U.S. will find it harder to defend critical allies like Japan and the Philippines, while China will be able to project its naval, air and other forces close to the U.S. and its territories. Taiwan is also an economic dynamo, the ninth-largest U.S. trading partner of goods with a near-monopoly on the most advanced semiconductor technology—to which the U.S. would most certainly lose access after a war.
The Biden administration this month ordered more than 6,000 additional U.S. troops deployed to Eastern Europe, with many more potentially on the way. These deployments would involve major additional uncounted commitments of air, space, naval and logistics forces needed to enable and protect them. These are precisely the kinds of forces needed to defend Taiwan. The critical assets—munitions, top-end aviation, submarines, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities—that are needed to fight Russia or China are in short supply. For example, stealthy heavy bombers are the crown jewel of U.S. military power, but there are only 20 in the entire Air Force.
The U.S. has no hope of competing with China and ensuring Taiwan’s defense if it is distracted elsewhere. It is a delusion that the U.S. can, as Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said recently, “walk and chew gum at the same time” with respect to Russia and China. Sending more resources to Europe is the definition of getting distracted. Rather than increasing forces in Europe, the U.S. should be moving toward reductions.
There is a viable alternative for Europe’s defense: The Europeans themselves can step up and do more for themselves, especially with regard to conventional arms. This is well within Europe’s capacity, as the combined economic power of the NATO states dwarfs that of Russia. NATO allies spend far more on their militaries than Russia. To aid its European allies, the U.S. can provide various forms of support, including lethal weapons, while continuing to remain committed to NATO’s defense, albeit in a more constrained fashion, by providing high-end and fungible military capabilities. The U.S. can also continue to extend its nuclear deterrent to NATO.
The U.S. should remain committed to NATO’s defense but husband its critical resources for the primary fight in Asia, and Taiwan in particular. Denying China the ability to dominate Asia is more important than anything that happens in Europe. To be blunt: Taiwan is more important than Ukraine. America’s European allies are in a better position to take on Russia than America’s Asian allies are to deal with China. The Chinese can’t be allowed to think that America’s distraction in Ukraine provides them with a window of opportunity to invade Taiwan. The U.S. needs to act accordingly, crisis or not.
Mr. Colby is a principal at the Marathon Initiative and author of “The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict.” Ms. Mastro is a center fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
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WSJ · by Elbridge Colby and Oriana Skylar Mastro
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
