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- John F. Kennedy

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1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 14, 2023

2. China’s Defense Minister Being Removed From Post, U.S. Officials Say

3. Missing Chinese defense chief signals turmoil in Xi's government

4. 'Good, healthy debate': Eyeing the Indo-Pacific, Army leaders grapple with force structure shake up

5. Ukraine’s Zelenskyy expected to visit Washington next week

6. With eye toward Russia and China, NORTHCOM concludes special mission in the Arctic

7. China appears to have suspended spy balloon program after February shootdown, US intel believes

8. US military is scouting more Philippine bases for shared access, admiral says

9. Personnel Recovery in Horn of Africa | SOF News

10. War Books: Resistance

11. Opinion | A Trip to Ukraine Clarified the Stakes. And They’re Huge. by Thomas L. Friedman

12. Unclassified space strategy outlines how DOD will defend satellites in orbit

13. Department of Defense Releases Space Policy Review and Strategy on Protection of Satellite

14. The Army’s Most Important Warfighting Tool Isn’t A Weapon, It’s A Network

15. When is our 9/11 Moment with China?

16. How a Native Alaskan became a legendary Navy SEAL

17. Two Cheers for the Cold War Liberals (book review)

18. The Myth of Chinese Diversionary War

19. Alongside Military Threats, China Promotes Economic ‘Integration’ With Taiwan

20. Elon Musk’s Starlink service denial in Ukraine war operation prompts Senate scrutiny over his ‘outsized role’

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 14, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-14-2023

Key Takeaways:

Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast and around Bakhmut and reportedly advanced south of Bakhmut on September 14.
Ukrainian forces struck a Russian air defense system near occupied Yevpatoria, Crimea, on September 14, suggesting that there may be systemic tactical failures with Russian air defense systems in occupied Crimea.
Russian forces conducted another series of Shahed-131/136 drone strikes targeting Ukrainian port infrastructure on September 14.
The commander of the Russian 247th Guards Air Assault (VDV) Regiment (7th VDV Division) Vasily Popov was reportedly killed in combat in Ukraine.
Some Russian sources suggested that ongoing tensions between the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and the Wagner Group are diminishing Wagner’s ability to operate across the African theater.
Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced in some areas on September 14.
Ukrainian forces also advanced along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line.
The Kremlin is reportedly trying to censor Russian media coverage of a possible second wave of reserve mobilization in order to prevent protests and voter discontent ahead of the 2024 Russian presidential elections.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

Sep 14, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 14, 2023

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

September 14, 2023, 7:20pm ET

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

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

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 12:30pm ET on September 14. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the September 15 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast and around Bakhmut and reportedly advanced south of Bakhmut on September 14. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces achieved unspecified partial successes near Bakhmut, Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut), Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut), and Kurdyumivka (13km southwest of Bakhmut).[1] Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar prematurely announced the Ukrainian liberation of Andriivka but later clarified that heavy fighting for the settlement is still ongoing.[2] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Ilya Yevlash stated on September 13 that Ukrainian forces pushed Russian forces out of positions near Minkivka (15km northwest of Bakhmut) and Dubovo-Vasylivka (6km northwest of Bakhmut).[3] The Ukrainian General Staff and Malyar stated that Ukrainian forces continue to gradually advance in the Melitopol direction (western Zaporizhia Oblast).[4]

Ukrainian forces struck a Russian air defense system near occupied Yevpatoria, Crimea, on September 14, suggesting that there may be systemic tactical failures with Russian air defense systems in occupied Crimea. The Department of Strategic Communications of the Ukrainian Armed Forces stated that Ukrainian forces struck the location of a Russian surface-to-air missile system near Yevpatoria (68km northwest of Sevastopol).[5] Ukrainian news outlet Ukrainska Pravda reported that a source affiliated with the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) stated that the SBU and the Ukrainian Navy conducted a “unique special operation” that destroyed a Russian S-400 “Triumf” system near Yevpatoria.[6] Ukrainian forces reportedly struck the S-400 system’s radar and antennas with drones and struck the launch complexes with two Neptune cruise missiles.[7] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported that Russian air defenses intercepted 11 Ukrainian drones over Crimea but did not mention any Ukrainian missile strikes.[8] Geolocated footage published on September 14 shows an explosion near Yevpatoria and subsequent smoke plumes in the area.[9] Additional geolocated footage shows that Russian forces had recently deployed an S-400 battery outside of Yevpatoria and that the explosion occurred in the same location where a Russian S-400 system had been deployed in August 2022.[10] The strike suggests that Russian forces were unprepared to intercept missiles with the system or were unable to do so. Ukrainian forces struck a Russian S-400 air defense system near Olenivka, Crimea (117km northwest of Sevastopol) on August 23, and the second Ukrainian strike on a significant Russian air defense system in recent weeks indicates that such tactical failures may reflect a wider systemic issue with Russian air defenses in occupied Crimea.[11]

Russian forces conducted another series of Shahed-131/136 drone strikes targeting Ukrainian port infrastructure on September 14. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russian forces launched 22 drones in the direction of Mykolaiv, Zaporizhia, Dnipropetrovsk, and Sumy oblasts and that Ukrainian air defenses shot down 17 of the drones.[12] Ukrainian Air Force Spokesperson Colonel Yuriy Ihnat stated that Russian forces primarily targeted port infrastructure in Odesa Oblast.[13] Ukrainian Minister for Communities, Territories, and Infrastructure Development Oleksandr Kubrakov stated that Russian strikes from July 18 to September 12 have damaged or partially destroyed 105 Ukrainian port facilities and that the monthly export of Ukrainian grain has decreased by almost three million tons as a result.[14] The Russian strike campaign against Ukrainian grain and port infrastructure is likely meant to support the Kremlin’s effort to leverage international desire for Russia’s return to the Black Sea Grain Initiative to exact extensive concessions.[15] The Kremlin may have no intention of returning to the deal, however, and may instead aim to increase the market share and attractiveness of Russian grain by degrading Ukraine’s grain export potential.[16] The Kremlin also likely intends for continued strain on Ukrainian grain export routes to intensify divisions between Ukraine and its Central European partners as Ukraine and the West continue to work on re-routing Ukrainian grain exports along land corridors.[17]

The commander of the Russian 247th Guards Air Assault (VDV) Regiment (7th VDV Division) Vasily Popov was reportedly killed in combat in Ukraine.[18] Vasily Popov likely recently replaced Pyotr Popov as commander of the 247th VDV Regiment in August or September 2023, and Vasily Popov is the second commander of the 247th Regiment to be killed in action in Ukraine after Colonel Konstantin Zizevsky died in February 2022.[19] Elements of the 247th Regiment are reportedly operating in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area.[20] ISW has previously assessed that relatively elite VDV forces are conducting limited counterattacks in critical sectors of the front, and Vasily Popov’s death supports ISW’s assessment that these counterattacks will likely attrit these units further.[21]

The European Parliament adopted a resolution on September 13 recognizing Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko as complicit in Russian crimes committed in Ukraine and called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue an arrest warrant for him. The European Parliament’s resolution stated that Belarus is complicit in the war in Ukraine and is involved in the deportation of Ukrainian children to Belarus, Russia, and occupied areas of Ukraine.[22] ISW continues to assess that Belarus is a co-belligerent in the war and is involved in the deportation of Ukrainian children.[23] ISW has also assessed that Belarus may be facilitating sanctions evasion schemes for Russia.[24] Russian President Vladimir Putin and Lukashenko will meet in Sochi, Russia on September 15.[25]

Russian State Duma and Federation Council members proposed blocking WhatsApp likely as part of the Kremlin’s broader initiative to establish central control over the Russian information space. Facebook’s parent company Meta announced on September 13 that WhatsApp launched a channel feature to over 150 countries, likely including Russia, that will function similarly to Telegram channels.[26] Russia designated Meta as an extremist organization in March 2022 and banned its Facebook and Instagram services in Russia.[27] Federation Council Committee on Defense and Security Head Viktor Bondarev, State Duma Committee on Information Policy Head Alexander Khinshtein, and State Duma Deputy Anton Gorelkin said that Russia should consider blocking WhatsApp in Russia if WhatsApp launches Russian language channels.[28] Russian state media censor Roskomnadzor reported that Russia could block WhatsApp if it disseminates prohibited information.[29] Russian authorities are likely attempting to funnel the Russian information space onto a limited number of closely monitored or controlled social media platforms.

Some Russian sources suggested that ongoing tensions between the Russian MoD and the Wagner Group are diminishing Wagner’s ability to operate across the African theater. A Russian insider source claimed on September 12 that “difficult logistics” are forcing Wagner forces in Africa to “make do with local reserves” to continue operations after the rebel coalition Coordination of the Movement of Azawad (CMA) claimed to have captured Bourem, Gao Region, Mali.[30] Russian sources, including a prominent Kremlin-affiliated milblogger, claimed that the Russian MoD and Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) deliberately disrupted Wagner's logistics by preventing Wagner from using Russian airbases in Syria to reinforce the Wagner contingent in the Central African Republic (CAR) — reports consistent with ISW’s recent observations.[31] The milblogger claimed that the CMA took advantage of destabilization fueled in part by tensions resulting from the MoD’s ongoing effort to subsume Wagner.[32] The milblogger warned that other armed groups may also take advantage of the destabilization and that the MoD will have to invest resources in the region to avoid reputational fallout.[33] Wagner forces in Africa notably conduct counterterrorism operations, but these operations are often ineffective, and the current Wagner group contingent in MENA is likely insufficient to conduct counterterrorism operations at a scale that could meaningfully contain new or escalating conflicts.[34]

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) declared two US diplomats persona non grata and expelled them from Russia on September 14.[35] The Russian MFA accused the US Embassy’s first and second secretaries of illegally maintaining contact with an arrested former US Consulate employee and ordered the diplomats to leave Russia within the next seven days.

Western defense sources reportedly stated that a Russian fighter jet intentionally fired at a British surveillance plane in September 2022 due to ambiguous commands rather than because of a missile malfunction as the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed at the time. The BBC reported that three senior Western defense sources stated that a Russian Su-27 fighter jet pilot intentionally fired a missile at a British Royal Air Force (RAF) plane but missed on September 29, 2022.[36] The Western defense sources reportedly stated that the Russian pilot believed he had permission to fire after receiving an ambiguous command from a Russian ground station and fired a second missile, which reportedly either malfunctioned or was aborted.[37] A second Russian pilot flying another Su-27 reportedly interpreted the order differently and did not fire at the British aircraft.[38] The Russian MoD claimed in October 2022 that the Su-27 jet fired the missile due to a “technical malfunction.”[39]

Key Takeaways:

Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast and around Bakhmut and reportedly advanced south of Bakhmut on September 14.
Ukrainian forces struck a Russian air defense system near occupied Yevpatoria, Crimea, on September 14, suggesting that there may be systemic tactical failures with Russian air defense systems in occupied Crimea.
Russian forces conducted another series of Shahed-131/136 drone strikes targeting Ukrainian port infrastructure on September 14.
The commander of the Russian 247th Guards Air Assault (VDV) Regiment (7th VDV Division) Vasily Popov was reportedly killed in combat in Ukraine.
Some Russian sources suggested that ongoing tensions between the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and the Wagner Group are diminishing Wagner’s ability to operate across the African theater.
Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced in some areas on September 14.
Ukrainian forces also advanced along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line.
The Kremlin is reportedly trying to censor Russian media coverage of a possible second wave of reserve mobilization in order to prevent protests and voter discontent ahead of the 2024 Russian presidential elections.

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

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

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian forces continued offensive operations on the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on September 14 and recently advanced. Geolocated footage published on September 13 shows that Russian forces advanced west of Lyman Pershyi (12km northeast of Kupyansk) as of September 12.[40] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces made unspecified advances between Petropavlivka (7km east of Kupyansk) and Synkivka (9km northeast of Kupyansk) on September 13 and continued assaults near Synkyvka, Novoyehorivka (16km southwest of Svatove), and the Serebryanske forest area (11km south of Kreminna) on September 14.[41] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continued offensive operations northeast of Berestove (20km northwest of Svatove) and near Bilohorivka (10km south of Kreminna).[42] Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar stated that the intensity of fighting and the number of recent combat engagements in the Kupyansk and Lyman directions has decreased because Russian forces are gathering forces presumably for further operations.[43]

Russian military officials claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Synkivka, Torske (15km west of Kreminna), and Dibrova (7km southwest of Kreminna) on the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on September 14.[44]

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

Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations near Bakhmut on September 14 and recently advanced. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces achieved unspecified partial successes near Bakhmut, Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut), Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut), and Kurdyumivka (13km southwest of Bakhmut).[45] Several Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces are advancing near Klishchiivka and occupying areas on the southwestern outskirts of the settlement.[46] Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar prematurely announced Ukraine’s liberation of Andriivka and swiftly retracted her statement on September 14.[47] Malyar clarified that Ukrainian forces achieved some unspecified success in Andriivka but that heavy fighting is ongoing in the settlement.[48] Several Russian milbloggers claimed that Klishchiivka and Andriivka are contested.[49] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Ilya Yevlash reported on September 13 that Ukrainian forces are forcing Russian forces to withdraw from positions near Minkivka (15km northwest of Bakhmut) and Dubovo-Vasylivka (6km northwest of Bakhmut).[50] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces attacked elements of the 200th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade (14th Army Corps, Northern Fleet) in the Bakhmut area.[51]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations near Bakhmut on September 14 but did not make confirmed gains. Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) Head Denis Pushilin denied reports that Ukrainian forces liberated Andriivka and claimed that Russian forces “improved” unspecified positions near Andriivka.[52] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful attacks near Bohdanivka (7km northwest of Bakhmut).[53] Another milblogger claimed that Russian forces defending south of Bakhmut do not have enough personnel to conduct rotations.[54]

Ukrainian forces recently conducted offensive operations along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City front and advanced. Geolocated footage published on September 13 shows that Ukrainian forces recently advanced east of the rail line north of Krasnohorivka (9km north of Avdiivka).[55] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted attacks near Opytne (3km southwest of Avdiivka) on September 13.[56]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line on September 14 but did not advance. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful attacks near Avdiivka, Lastochkyne (4km northwest of Avdiivka), and Marinka (on the southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City).[57] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted 14 unsuccessful attempts to push Ukrainian forces out of positions near Marinka.[58] Malyar reported on September 13 that Russian forces have significantly increased the number of attacks around Avdiivka and Marinka.[59]

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

Ukrainian forces conducted assaults along the administrative border between Donetsk and Zaporizhia oblasts on September 14 but did not make any confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued assaults in the Shakhtarske direction in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area.[60] The Russian MoD claimed that naval infantry elements of the Russian Pacific Fleet repelled Ukrainian assaults near Novomayorske (18km southeast of Velyka Novosilka) and Novodonetske (12km southeast of Velyka Novosilka) and that elements of the Russian Eastern Grouping of Forces repelled a Ukrainian attack near Pryyutne (15km southwest of Velyka Novosilka).[61] Russia milbloggers claimed that elements of the 40th Naval Infantry Brigade (Pacific Fleet) repelled a Ukrainian assault near Urozhaine (9km south of Velyka Novosilka).[62] Another Russian milblogger claimed that the arrival of unspecified Russian ”reserves” in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area has stabilized the tactical situation in the area, although ISW has not yet observed the recent arrival of elements of new Russian units on this sector of the front.[63]

Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 14 but did not make any confirmed gains. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in the Melitopol direction (western Zaporizhia Oblast).[64] Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued assaults near Robotyne (10km south of Orikhiv), Novoprokopivka (13km south of Orikhiv), and Verbove (18km southeast of Orikhiv).[65] A Russian milblogger claimed that elements of the 7th Guards Mountain Airborne (VDV) Division repelled a Ukrainian attack towards Novoprokopivka.[66]

Russian forces counterattacked in western Zaporizhia Oblast but did not make confirmed advances on September 14. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive actions near Mala Tokmachka (7km southeast of Orikhiv) and Verbove.[67] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces conducted a series of successful counterattacks near Verbove and Robotyne in the past three days, although ISW has not observed visual confirmation of these claims.[68]

A prominent Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces continued limited activity in the left (east) bank of Kherson Oblast on September 14. The milblogger claimed that small Ukrainian landing groups unsuccessfully tried to land north of Oleshky (7km southeast of Kherson City), near Kozachi Laheri (23km east of Kherson City), and on Kozatskyi Island (west of Nova Kakhovka).[69] The milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces continue to operate on Kozatskyi Island but are not trying to advance further inland due to heavy Russian artillery fire in the area.[70]

The Russian MoD claimed on September 14 that the Russian Black Sea Fleet patrol ship Sergey Kotov destroyed five Ukrainian naval drones targeting the ship in the Black Sea.[71]

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

The Kremlin is reportedly trying to censor Russian media coverage of a possible second reserve mobilization wave in order to prevent discontent ahead of the 2024 Russian presidential elections.[72] Russian opposition outlet Meduza reported that the Russian Presidential Administration issued “urgent requests” to pro-government Russian media outlets to not amplify rumors about a possible second wave of reserve mobilization or official government denials of these rumors.[73] The Kremlin reportedly told the media outlets to instead focus on the alleged success of the Russian contract recruitment campaign.[74]

Russian authorities are reportedly creating new drone production facilities across Russia. A Russian enterprise is reportedly repurposing a shopping center in Izhevsk, Udmurt Republic, into a drone research and production facility.[75] Russian enterprises also reportedly plan to open new drone development centers in Tomsk, Samara, and St. Petersburg oblasts.[76] ISW has previously assessed that Russia likely aims to develop a long-term capability to produce and use drones in the war in Ukraine.[77]

The US government imposed new sanctions on September 14 against over 150 entities for helping Russia circumvent sanctions, including five Turkish companies and one Turkish citizen.[78] Reuters reported that the newly-sanctioned Turkish entities helped Russia circumvent Western sanctions by helping repair sanctioned naval vessels and helping transfer dual-use goods to Russia.[79]

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

The Ukrainian Crimean-based “Atesh” partisan group claimed that it provided Ukrainian forces with information that aided the Ukrainian strike on the Russian Ropucha class landing ship and the Kilo class submarine in Sevastopol, Crimea on September 13.[80] “Atesh” claimed that its partisans from multiple different operations, including Sevastopol civilians, Russian Black Sea Fleet personnel, and employees of a maritime repair facility, gathered and delivered information on important Russian military targets in the past week.[81]

Russian authorities continue to deport Ukrainian children from occupied areas of Ukraine. Ukrainian Mariupol Mayor Advisor Petro Andryushenko stated that Russian occupation authorities removed children from frontline areas in occupied Donetsk Oblast under an evacuation scheme.[82] ISW has previously reported on Russian and occupation authorities’ usage of evacuation schemes to forcibly deport Ukrainian children to occupied Crimea and Russia.[83] The Kherson Oblast occupation administration stated that Russian authorities took 37 children from Skadovsk Raion to the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic under the guise of “health retreats.”[84]

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

Wagner Group forces reportedly continue to train Belarusian forces as of September 13. Some Russian sources amplified footage of Wagner forces training Belarusian forces and claimed that Wagner forces continue training Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) forces.[85]

The Belarusian Ministry of Defense (MoD) held the “Voenkor-2023” military exercises to train Belarusian military correspondents to cover military operations. The Belarusian MoD announced the conclusion of the “Voenkor-2023” exercises on September 14 and stated that military correspondents practiced skills relating to military topography, basic field survival skills, and filming Belarusian soldiers conducting operations.[86]

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

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

2. China’s Defense Minister Being Removed From Post, U.S. Officials Say

China’s Defense Minister Being Removed From Post, U.S. Officials Say

Li Shangfu, who hasn’t appeared in public since late August, is latest of several senior Chinese officials to disappear without explanation

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chinas-defense-minister-has-been-removed-from-post-u-s-officials-say-ae0761f4?utm

By Chun Han Wong

in Singapore, Lingling Wei

in New York and Nancy A. Youssef

in Washington

Updated Sept. 15, 2023 5:44 am ET

Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu in Singapore earlier this year. PHOTO: ROSLAN RAHMAN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu was taken away last week by authorities for questioning, according to a person close to decision making in Beijing, while U.S. officials say he is being removed from his post.

Li hasn’t made a public appearance since late August. The U.S. officials cited unspecified intelligence as the basis for their assessment that he has been relieved of his duties.

China’s Ministry of Defense didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment submitted through the State Council Information Office, which handles media inquiries on behalf of the government.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, asked at a routine briefing on Friday to comment on whether Li was under investigation, said she wasn’t aware of the situation.

One U.S. official said the trouble surrounding Li pointed to deep-seated issues that Beijing continues to grapple with years into leader Xi Jinping’s campaign to shake up China’s military, known as the People’s Liberation Army, with anticorruption purges and structural reforms.

“Some of the PLA’s enduring problems may be too big for Xi to solve, and they have a real impact on the PLA’s ability to achieve what he wants them to,” a U.S. official said. “We know that corruption in the PLA runs deep enough for this to be a factor. And we know it’s had a profound effect on what they’re able to do, and how they do it.”

The 65-year-old Li’s unexplained absence mirrors the recent disappearances of other senior officials. In July, Beijing abruptly removed Qin Gang as foreign minister after he vanished without explanation a month earlier. Days later, Xi named a new commander for China’s strategic-missile force, ousting a general who hadn’t been seen in public for months.

Missing Chinese defense chief signals turmoil in Xi's government

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/09/15/asia-pacific/politics/china-defense-minister-li-shangfu/?utm_source=pianodnu&utm

Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu (far left) attends the 20th IISS Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in June. | REUTERS

BY JESSE JOHNSON

STAFF WRITER

Sep 15, 2023

The United States believes Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu has been placed under investigation and relieved of his command, reports said Friday, in what could be the latest sign of turmoil in Chinese leader Xi Jinping's government, just over six months after he installed a collection of loyalist leaders in his Cabinet.

Three U.S. officials and two people briefed on intelligence surrounding Li told the Financial Times that Washington has concluded that the defense chief, who took up his post in March, had been stripped of his responsibilities. They did not offer further insights into the probe.

Li, who has not been seen in public since Aug. 29, would be the latest senior Chinese official to lose his post, following Xi’s abrupt purge last month of two generals leading the country’s Rocket Force, which oversees the country’s nuclear and land-based missile arsenal, and the still-unexplained-disappearance of then-Foreign Minister Qin Gang, who was stripped of his position in July, seven months into the job.

Also in July, the Chinese military launched an inquiry and sought clues from the public on graft cases during the military’s procurement process dating back to October 2017. It did not elaborate on why that month and year had specifically been chosen, but Li headed the equipment procurement department from September 2017 to October 2022.

Li also currently serves as one of China's five state councilors, a Cabinet post that ranks higher than a regular minister. As defense chief, his position is typically less visible than top diplomats and some other officials who hold regular meetings with foreign officials.

If Li is formally removed from his post, he would be the second state councilor, following Qin, to be fired from a ministerial position in three months.

“It could be even worse than that,” one U.S. official told The Washington Post in a separate report on Li, alluding to the potential for further purges.

Friday’s news comes a day after Reuters reported that Li had abruptly pulled out of an annual meeting with Vietnamese defense officials last week, with Beijing citing a "health condition” as the reason. The explanation was similar to one given for Qin’s absence ahead of his removal.

The Post, citing an unidentified Chinese official, reported that Li’s dismissal was imminent, with the official saying it was for “health issues,” not corruption. Two people involved with the Chinese defense industry, however, told The Post that there is broad consensus that Li’s absence is related to graft charges linked to his previous procurement position.

During a military inspection last week, Xi called for “a high level of integrity and unity” in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), further stoking speculation about Li’s disappearance.

In his second social media post in a week on the subject of Li, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel on Friday questioned whether the defense chief had been put under house arrest.

“As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.’ 1st: Defense Minister Li Shangfu hasn’t been seen or heard from in 3 weeks. 2nd: He was a no-show for his trip to Vietnam. Now: He’s absent from his scheduled meeting with the Singaporean Chief of Navy because he was placed on house arrest???...Might be getting crowded in there,” Emanuel posted to X, formerly known as Twitter.

Last week, the tough-talking U.S. envoy, who has routinely lambasted China on the social media site, said Xi’s Cabinet line up was “now resembling Agatha Christie’s novel And Then There Were None.”

Li attends a meeting with the Russian leadership in Moscow in April. | POOL / SPUTNIK / VIA REUTERS

But despite the apparent faltering of Xi’s long-running anti-corruption drive to wipe the PLA clean of graft, experts believe he still retains a strong grip on the military.

“If the alleged purge is true, then judging from the fact that Xi can remove several top-level military officials merely months into their new terms, Xi Jinping's control over the military remains solid,” said Wen-ti Sung, a political scientist with the Australian National University.

“However, it also reveals inadequacies in the PLA's personnel promotion and vetting apparatus, for if these officials are truly so problematic as to warrant purges rather than lower-key lateral moves out of the limelight, then they should not have been promoted in the first place,” he added.

Queried Friday about the report of Li’s removal, the Pentagon referred questions to China, but stressed the need for open communications and transparency between the U.S. and Chinese militaries.

“What I will say is that the (Department of Defense) continues to believe in the importance of maintaining open lines of military-to-military communication between the United States and the (People's Republic of China) across multiple levels, including the senior-most levels,” a Pentagon spokesperson told The Japan Times.

Any purge of Li could remove an obstacle to improving bilateral U.S.-China military ties. The Chinese defense chief has been subject to sanctions by Washington since 2018 in connection with China’s purchase of Russian weapons, and Beijing has refused to allow any meeting between him and his U.S. counterpart while the measures remain in place.

The sanctions have prevented a restart in high-level military-to-military contacts, which were halted after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August last year. That visit was followed by a number of massive military exercises around the self-ruled island, which China says is a renegade province that must be united with the mainland, by force if necessary.

China’s military was holding large-scale military drills around Taiwan this week, sending 13 warplanes — including heavy bombers — into the democratic island’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) and across the so-called median line that separates both sides of the Taiwan Strait on Friday.

Those drills came a day after China sent 68 warplanes and other military aircraft near Taiwan, including 40 that flew inside the ADIZ and across the median line, possibly as part of exercises held in coordination with warships, including China’s Shandong aircraft carrier, east of Taiwan in the western Pacific that have lasted for several days.

The dearth of communication has raised concerns about an accident between the Chinese and U.S. militaries — which routinely operate in the area — spiraling out of control.

4. 'Good, healthy debate': Eyeing the Indo-Pacific, Army leaders grapple with force structure shake up

The buried lede:

Nominated to be the next Army chief, George has been serving as the service’s top uniformed officer in an acting capacity since Gen. James McConville retired in early August. Since taking the reins temporarily while he awaits Senate confirmation, he unveiled his four focus areas — warfighting, delivering ready combat formations, undergoing continuous transformation and strengthening the profession of arms — and said he recently wrapped up meetings with four-star commanders and sergeant majors about how to implement changes.

Second buried lede here (I am reminded of how we used to describe the nKPA - an artillery army supported by a scheme of maneuver - are we going to be a "fires first" army in INDOPACOM?).

For his part, Rainey said he does not envision a future where the service is simply division-centric or brigade-centric as in the past. Instead, he said he’s trying to look through the maneuver lens and figure out what it will take to win in a different theater.

“Over the last 20 years of fighting… we kind of got into thinking about fires as something you do to condition maneuver,” Rainey said Wednesday at the maneuver conference. “I think the future, especially in the Indo-Pacific…is going to be about maneuvering to position fires.”

“That’s a big fundamental change, because that will have changes to force structure,” he added. “We only got so many people. Do you need three ABCTs [armored brigade combat teams] supported by one fire brigade? Or should we maybe look at some kind of balanced combination or is the future going to be a couple BCTs and three, integrated firing formations with organic air and missile defense?”

My question is, was there a discussion about irregular warfare? (There probably was but it was just not reported by the media) My fear is that in listening to some senior leaders some seem to equate IW with the GWOT and Iraq and Afghanistan and the mantra is "we ain't doing that sh*t again." I would argue that IW is even more important in the INDOPACIFIC than ever as we operate in the gray zone of strategic competition with China (and the other axis of authoritarians). Security Force Assistance is not IW (though it can contribute to it). We need to ask where are the IW proficient campaign HQ and how do we develop IW proficient campaign HQ? (Joint Force Commands because per JP 1 we have to conduct IW campaigns).

'Good, healthy debate': Eyeing the Indo-Pacific, Army leaders grapple with force structure shake up - Breaking Defense

“My brigade combat team was responsible for a third of Iraq, hell, everything from drinking chai to chasing Iranians. That's not the future,” said Army Futures Command Gen. James Rainey.

breakingdefense.com · by Ashley Roque · September 14, 2023

An M2A3 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle prepares to fire on a range at Camp Shelby Joint Force Training Center, Miss., Feb 26, 2021. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Sgt. Jovi Prevot)

WASHINGTON — There is currently a “good, healthy debate” going on inside the Army about some force structure and training changes the service may need to make to be able to fight a modern war, according to some of its most senior commanders.

“We’re going to have to change how we’re organized…. That’s one of the things that we have to go down the focus areas and ask four-star commanders and sergeant majors to take a look at and review,” Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George told an audience Tuesday at a Maneuver Warfighter Conference. “How are we structured and what needs to adjust based on the advances that we’re seeing? We are [also] going to have to change how we train.”

“The character of war has probably changed more in the last couple of years, and it’s a more complex environment, than certainly I’ve seen for 35 years,” George said.

Nominated to be the next Army chief, George has been serving as the service’s top uniformed officer in an acting capacity since Gen. James McConville retired in early August. Since taking the reins temporarily while he awaits Senate confirmation, he unveiled his four focus areas — warfighting, delivering ready combat formations, undergoing continuous transformation and strengthening the profession of arms — and said he recently wrapped up meetings with four-star commanders and sergeant majors about how to implement changes.

While those changes have not been finalized and Geoge did not detail possible force structure changes, the head of Army Futures Command Gen. James Rainey and US Army Pacific commander Gen. Charles Flynn did preview some options under consideration.

For his part, Rainey said he does not envision a future where the service is simply division-centric or brigade-centric as in the past. Instead, he said he’s trying to look through the maneuver lens and figure out what it will take to win in a different theater.

“Over the last 20 years of fighting… we kind of got into thinking about fires as something you do to condition maneuver,” Rainey said Wednesday at the maneuver conference. “I think the future, especially in the Indo-Pacific…is going to be about maneuvering to position fires.”

“That’s a big fundamental change, because that will have changes to force structure,” he added. “We only got so many people. Do you need three ABCTs [armored brigade combat teams] supported by one fire brigade? Or should we maybe look at some kind of balanced combination or is the future going to be a couple BCTs and three, integrated firing formations with organic air and missile defense?”

When it comes to the composition of those BCTs, Rainey said everything is pre-decisional, but changes will likely come. Although he dubbed the infantry BCTs as the service’s “best formation,” Rainey noted that they have 14 vehicles, and a mix of “light and motorized” formations might be better.

Meanwhile, the ABCTs outfitted with both M1 Abrams tanks and M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, are currently “way too heavy,” and “complex” to be sustained and an overhaul will need to be made, Rainey told the audience.

“We built brigade combat teams, I commanded one, I commanded a division full of them,” Rainey said. “My brigade combat team was responsible for a third of Iraq, hell, everything from drinking chai to chasing Iranians. That’s not the future.

“A 30-day fight against a good enemy trying to get across a river to try to breach a five [kilometer] minefield, I think our BCT will be consumed by the flight they’re in, and if they’re not in a fight, they’re going to be consumed by staying alive,” he added.

In addition to ongoing discussions about BCT competition, Flynn said service leaders are also weighing the roles of four newer “transformative efforts”— the multi-domain task force, security force assistance brigade, theater fires elements, and the theater information advantage directorate.

“These organizational adjustments… are things that we in the army are having to have a good, healthy debate about,” Flynn told reporters via phone on Wednesday. Some of that ongoing “important work” includes deciding what echelon do those four units and elements belong to, how many should there be, where they are placed, and roles and missions, he added.

“Everybody pays a lot of attention to a new weapons system or a new ammunition,” Flynn said. “A lot of times they’re not paying attention to the organizational adjustments that are going on, and I believe that the organizational adjustments are, maybe, more important, or equally as important.”

breakingdefense.com · by Ashley Roque · September 14, 2023

5. Ukraine’s Zelenskyy expected to visit Washington next week

Ukraine’s Zelenskyy expected to visit Washington next week

militarytimes.com · by Stephen Groves, The Associated Press · September 14, 2023

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 7:55 p.m. EST with additional information.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected on Capitol Hill and at the White House next week as he visits the U.S. during the United Nations General Assembly.

Zelenskyy’s trip comes as Congress is debating providing as much as $24 billion in military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine as it fights the Russian invasion.

An administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive visit, said Zelenskyy will meet with Biden at the White House next Thursday. The trip to the Capitol was confirmed by two congressional aides granted anonymity to discuss the plans.

In his speech to cheering lawmakers, Zelenskyy thanked Americans for helping to fund the war effort and said that the money is “not charity,” but an “investment” in global security and democracy.

Details of Zelenskyy’s visit next week were not yet being made public. It was first reported by Punchbowl News.

The White House National Security Council declined to comment on Zelenskyy’s plans, including whether he would meet with Biden at the White House.

Congress is increasingly divided over providing additional funding for Ukraine as the war is well into its second year. Biden has sought a package of $13.1 billion in additional military aid for Ukraine and $8.5 billion for humanitarian support. It also includes $2.3 billion for financing and to catalyze donors through the World Bank.

But conservative Republican lawmakers have been pushing for broad federal spending cuts and some of those allied with Donald Trump, the former president, are specifically looking to stop money to Ukraine.

Congress is working to pass its annual appropriations bills before a Sept. 30 deadline to keep the U.S. government running.

Associated Press writer Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.

6. With eye toward Russia and China, NORTHCOM concludes special mission in the Arctic

The headline editor may have omitted the word "operations." The headline should be "...NORTHCOM concludes special {operations] mission in the Arctic

With eye toward Russia and China, NORTHCOM concludes special mission in the Arctic

defenseone.com · by Patrick Tucker

Two combatant crafts assault are launch from the well deck of amphibious transport dock ship USS John P. Murtha (LPD 26) during Operation POLAR DAGGER, Aug. 23, 2023. U.S. Navy / Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Joshua Samoluk

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Threats

“It's really both competitors we see operating up there, routinely,” commander says.

September 14, 2023 03:47 PM ET

By Patrick Tucker

Science & Technology Editor, Defense One

September 14, 2023 03:47 PM ET

Last month, just days after four Russian military aircraft flew in Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone, teams of U.S. special operations forces conducted a mission on St. Lawrence island in the Bering Sea, just 50 miles away from continental Russia, as well as on Shemya Island, which sits in Alaska’s remote Aleutian island chain. The objective of what NORTHCOM is calling Operation Polar Dagger was to extend U.S capabilities to monitor the air and sea domain in the Arctic and showcase how well special operator air, land, and sea teams work together in harsh, long-distance environments like the Bering Sea.

“We have an airfield on Shemya Island that allows us to push our joint capability between our conventional U.S. Air Force and Navy partners and the special operations forces. to out to the farthest reaches of the NORTHCOM AOR. Pushing the forces out there allows us to demonstrate our operational reach in ways that are unique to anywhere in the homeland,” Special Operations Command Northern Command or SOCNORTH commander Col. Matthew Tucker told Defense One in an exclusive interview. St. Lawrence, meanwhile, “is set in the middle of key strategic terrain that sits astride the Bering Strait. It is in close proximity to one of our strategic competitors,” namely Russia.

This was the second iteration of Operation Polar Dagger and this year’s version of the operation was larger than last year’s, bringing in the John P. Murtha LPD 26 transport ship and an AC-130 plane in order to build out faster intelligence, communications and operations between the air, sea and ground. One of the chief goals of the operation was to show improved “domain awareness,” said Tucker, “to understand what's being seen in the air is effectively communicated to the forces on the ground. And then the opposite of that, that the forces on the ground are able to communicate their perception of domain awareness to the forces in the air … The second aspect would be our ability to deliver effects kinetic or nonkinetic, from air to ground, in support of the ground forces, or ultimately in supporting the mission of the air components.”

Tucker said that while SOCNORTH was assessing the operation and the ability to operate at such distances and under such conditions, Polar Dagger projected still presence in the Arctic. “In this operation we are competitor focused, demonstrating real-world operational reach to both defend critical infrastructure, enhance our all domain awareness, and better understand some of our competitor activity in the Arctic.”

Those competitors, Russia and China, have been increasing their own activity in the Arctic. That increased activity prompted the Pentagon to establish a new Arctic strategy and global resilience office in 2022, following the publication of a DOD Arctic Strategy in 2019.

“In different ways, Russia and China are challenging the rules-based order in the Arctic. Russia regulates maritime operations in the (Northern Sea Route), contrary to international law, and has reportedly threatened to use force against vessels that fail to abide by Russian regulations … China is attempting to gain a role in the Arctic in ways that may undermine international rules and norms, and there is a risk that its predatory economic behavior globally may be repeated in the Arctic,” that strategy reads.

Russia and China have been coordinating more in the Arctic as well, said Tucker. “Both of our strategic competitors are increasing their activity. Obviously, one strategic competitor maintains a tremendous amount of shoreline up there and has some very direct economic interest. Another strategic competitor recently declared themselves a near Arctic nation, and they are working in conjunction with Russia to better understand the environment, the economic opportunities, and other positions of advantage they might be able to seize by becoming more active in the Arctic. I would say it's really both competitors we see operating up there, routinely.”

7. China appears to have suspended spy balloon program after February shootdown, US intel believes

So what has replaced it? Or did they not need it at all and it was just a deliberate part of the PRC/CCP's political warfare strategy.

I do not think China is suspending the program in pursuit of better relations with the US, though perhaps that is what they would like us to think.

Excerpts:

The US assessed at the time that the spy balloon was part of an extensive surveillance program run by the Chinese military, CNN has previously reported. The balloon fleet had conducted at least two dozen missions over at least five continents in recent years, according to US officials.

The suspension of the program is likely China’s way of trying to stabilize its relations with the United States in the run-up to a potential meeting between President Biden and Xi in November at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco, said Christopher Johnson, a former senior China analyst at the CIA and now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Although China is unlikely to publicly acknowledge that the balloon was part of an espionage program or announce it will no longer conduct such surveillance on the United States, Johnson said, quietly suspending the program is “a positive step” and likely Beijing’s way of showing the US it is trying to address some of the friction points in the relationship.

“This would be the first signal we’ve seen from the Chinese saying, ‘we know your concerns on this,’” Johnson said.

China appears to have suspended spy balloon program after February shootdown, US intel believes | CNN Politics

CNN · by Katie Bo Lillis,Natasha Bertrand · September 15, 2023

CNN —

China appears to have suspended its surveillance balloon program following a major diplomatic incident earlier this year, when one of the country’s high-altitude spy balloons transited the United States, multiple sources familiar with US intelligence assessments told CNN.

US officials believe that Chinese leaders have made a deliberate decision not to launch additional balloons since the one over the US was shot down by American fighter jets in February, the sources said. The US has not observed any new launches since the episode occurred.

The apparent suspension of the program comes as both the US and China have sought to stabilize an increasingly tense relationship. Asked for comment on the balloon program, Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu told CNN that the February episode was “unexpected” and “isolated.”

“Since the incident happened, China has stated repeatedly that the balloon is found to be an unmanned civilian airship used for meteorological and other research purposes, and that its accidental entry into US airspace is entirely an unexpected, isolated incident caused by force majeure,” Liu said. “The facts are clear and shall not be distorted or misrepresented. We hope relevant parties can stop hyping up on this.”

The US intelligence community believes that Chinese Communist Party leaders did not intend for the balloon to cross over the United States, and even reprimanded the operators of the surveillance program over the incident, one of the sources said.

President Joe Biden indicated in June that Chinese leader Xi Jinping was caught off guard by the balloon’s whereabouts, telling guests at a political fundraiser that Xi “got very upset” after the US shot down the balloon because “he didn’t know it was there.” He then compared Xi to “dictators” who become embarrassed when they don’t know what’s going on.

Still, the episode was also embarrassing for the Biden administration, which at the time of the incident was preparing to dispatch Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing in an effort to reopen lines of communication with Chinese leaders. US-Chinese relations had reached a new low months earlier, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the self-governing island of Taiwan, enraging Xi.

The US ultimately postponed Blinken’s trip as a direct result of the spy balloon, which was first spotted by US officials in January as it lifted off from the small Chinese province of Hainan. The balloon then crossed into Alaska, Canada, and then downward, reentering the US through northern Idaho and moving towards Montana, where it hovered over sensitive sites.

The US assessed at the time that the spy balloon was part of an extensive surveillance program run by the Chinese military, CNN has previously reported. The balloon fleet had conducted at least two dozen missions over at least five continents in recent years, according to US officials.

The suspension of the program is likely China’s way of trying to stabilize its relations with the United States in the run-up to a potential meeting between President Biden and Xi in November at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco, said Christopher Johnson, a former senior China analyst at the CIA and now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Although China is unlikely to publicly acknowledge that the balloon was part of an espionage program or announce it will no longer conduct such surveillance on the United States, Johnson said, quietly suspending the program is “a positive step” and likely Beijing’s way of showing the US it is trying to address some of the friction points in the relationship.

“This would be the first signal we’ve seen from the Chinese saying, ‘we know your concerns on this,’” Johnson said.

Unclear how long halt will last

But how long the suspension might last, Johnson said, is likely an open question and may depend on how – and if – the November meeting goes.

China has repeatedly claimed the device was a civilian research airship that was blown off course by accident and after its detection issued a rare statement of “regret” over the incident.

“It is a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes. Affected by the Westerlies and with limited self-steering capability, the airship deviated far from its planned course,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said at the time.

The FBI concluded its analysis of the balloon’s remnants earlier this year, and the Pentagon announced in June that the US government assessed that the balloon did not collect intelligence while flying over the country.

“We believe that (the balloon) did not collect while it was transiting the United States or flying over the United States, and certainly the efforts that we made contributed,” Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder Ryder told reporters at a briefing, referring to counterintelligence measures the US took to conceal sensitive sites as the balloon crossed over them.

In the wake of the incident, the US widened the aperture of its radar systems so that they could better detect objects traveling above a certain altitude and at certain speeds. The aim was to fix a “domain awareness gap” that had allowed three other suspected Chinese spy balloons to transit the continental United States undetected under the Trump administration, Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, said at the time.

The more sensitive radar systems led the US military to spot more unidentified objects in US airspace, however, leading to three additional shootdowns of unidentified high-altitude objects in the weeks following the Chinese balloon incident.

CNN · by Katie Bo Lillis,Natasha Bertrand · September 15, 2023

8. US military is scouting more Philippine bases for shared access, admiral says

I would look for logistics support bases among the 400 or so tunnels/caves throughout Luzon and use them to stockpile ammunition and supplies for contingencies in the region. The ROK and Japan could produce common ammunition to support friends, partners, and allies during major contingencies.

US military is scouting more Philippine bases for shared access, admiral says

Stars and Stripes · by Seth Robson · September 15, 2023

Adm. John Aquilino, left, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, and the Philippines' military chief, Lt. Gen. Romeo Brawner, recently visited three sites being developed to support U.S. forces in the Philippines. (U.S. Indo-Pacific Command)

The U.S. military is seeking access to more bases in the Philippines, the head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command told reporters during a press conference Thursday.

U.S. forces already have access to nine sites in the country, including four announced in February, under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement.

The U.S. is looking for more locations, Adm. John Aquilino said in the Philippines alongside that country’s armed forces chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Romeo Brawner, according to a Friday report by NHK.

“General Brawner and I made recommendations to our senior leaders for the consideration of additional sites, but there’s still work to do there,” the INDOPACOM commander said.

INDOPACOM posts Friday on X, formerly known as Twitter, show Aquilino and Brawner visiting three sites being developed to support U.S. forces in the northern Philippines: Cagayan North International Airport, also known as Lal-lo; Camilo Osias Naval Base; and Cesar Basa Air Base.

The main purpose of the base-sharing agreement is training and disaster response, not for responses to regional security threats, Brawner said in the NHK report.

However, recent clashes between Chinese and Philippines coast guard vessels in disputed areas of the South China Sea and an exercise this week by the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong carrier off the Philippines’ northern coast are driving Washington and Manila closer, according to Leland Bettis, director of the Pacific Center for Island Security on Guam.

The threat posed by Chinese missiles to large operating bases has spurred efforts by U.S. forces to develop skills needed to fight from many smaller locations throughout the region.

“All the U.S. services are looking for more ‘places’ to operate from in the first (and second) island chain to support their distributed and dispersed operating concepts,” Bettis said in an email Friday. “The Philippines is no doubt looking to bolster more U.S. operational support for enforcement of their national claims” in the South China Sea.

A candidate for another shared base is in the Batanes islands, where a U.S. team recently assessed a port less than 125 miles from Taiwan, Jay Batongbacal, director of the University of the Philippines’ Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea, said Friday in an X message to Stars and Stripes.

The U.S. is looking to enhance its ability to respond to contingences in the South China Sea and involving Taiwan, according to Ralph Cossa, president emeritus of the Pacific Forum think tank in Hawaii.

Adm. John Aquilino, right, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, and the Philippines' military chief, Lt. Gen. Romeo Brawner, far left, recently visited three sites being developed to support U.S. forces in the Philippines. (U.S. Indo-Pacific Command)

Rumors suggest the Navy seeks to regain access to Subic Bay and a return by the Air Force to nearby Clark Air Base can’t be ruled out, he said by email Friday.

Subic and Clark formed America’s largest overseas military presence before both were damaged in the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo and soon after returned to the Philippines.

“A US return to either Clark or Subic would be a real attention-getter both positively (as a message to China) and negatively (as a rallying cry for anti-US elements),” Cossa wrote.

Seeking access to smaller facilities still sends a message to China but would likely draw less attention and complaints, he added.

Discussions over access to smaller Philippine bases is consistent with the direction the two allies have taken, Ian Chong, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore, said by email Friday.

“As for candidates for bases, I think the U.S. has for some time been working with the Philippines to develop a network of dispersed, smaller bases rather than massive ones like a Clark or a Subic,” he said.

Stars and Stripes · by Seth Robson · September 15, 2023

9. Personnel Recovery in Horn of Africa | SOF News

Personnel Recovery in Horn of Africa | SOF News

sof.news · by DVIDS · September 15, 2023

Story by Dhruv Gopinath.

Wherever U.S. service members may find themselves, Air Force rescue squadrons stand ready to rapidly mobilize, deploy and employ to provide combat and peacetime search and rescue in support of U.S. national security interests. In the Horn of Africa and the 449th Air Expeditionary Group’s area of responsibility, that task falls on members of the 303rd Expeditionary Rescue Squadron and their HH-60W Jolly Green IIs.

“Our role in supporting airpower in East Africa includes providing a continuous 24/7 personnel recovery capability for all U.S. and allied air-assets,” says Capt. John Rudy, 303d ERQS director of operations. “If any emergency occurs, we can respond immediately to rescue those downed aircrew members.”

The geography and situation on the ground in the Horn of Africa create challenges that members of the 303d ERQS plan meticulously around to make sure they can complete their missions.

Photo: U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Justin Frawley, center right, is a special missions aviator assigned to the 303rd Expeditionary Rescue Squadron in the Horn of Africa. (Photo by Tech. Sgt. Dhruv Gopinath).

“East Africa is massive, which creates time, distance, and fuel considerations which impact the mission and require quick coordination to ensure we have what we need to get to the survivor,” says Tech. Sgt. Justin Frawley, an HH-60W Special Mission Aviator with the 303d ERQS. “This forces us to be critical thinkers and come up with sound game plans on the fly.”

When the mission relies on saving lives, it’s critical for members of the 303rd ERQS to maintain not only a high level of readiness but to also be on the same page as their mission partners.

“We work hard to maintain a high level of proficiency with our aircraft and to keep up with current events in our area of responsibility,” says Frawley. “We integrate with multiple units from different services, so every situation we encounter is unique and must be solved differently in order to achieve mission success. Since we deal in lives, our mission cannot fail.”

Working in service of others is a key theme for members of the 303rd, something which is often a family tradition.

Photo: A U.S. Air Force HH-60W Jolly Green II assigned to the 303rd Expeditionary Rescue Squadron sits on the flightline at an undisclosed location in the Horn of Africa, Sept. 4, 2023. (Courtesy photo, Tech. Sgt. Dhruv Gopinath)

“My family has been serving in the military since World War II,” says SrA Bryan Estes, an electrical and environmental journeyman assigned to the 303d ERQS. “To carry on that tradition, I chose this job and I felt this position would allow me to contribute the most toward the mission.”

For Estes, whose home station is Moody Air Force Base, Georgia, being deployed to East Africa has been an eye-opening experience and provided him with a different perspective on the job he performs.

“Out here, there is a heightened sense of purpose because we directly witness the impact of our work we’re a much smaller group of maintenance personnel, so every career field gets to see and learn first-hand how everyone else works,” says Estes. “Seeing the results of what we do first-hand is one of the most rewarding things I have ever experienced in my career.”

The 303rd has been kept busy, not only working with joint forces but with local partners as well.

Photo: U.S. Air Force Capt. John Rudy, 303rd Expeditionary Rescue Squadron director of operations, pilots an HH-60W Jolly Green II over the Horn of Africa, Sept. 5, 2023. (Courtesy photo by Tech. Sgt. Dhruv Gopinath)

“Along with maintaining our personnel recovery alert, our primary task here has been casualty evacuation for local forces in their fight against violent extremist organizations,” says Rudy. “Our ability to launch immediately following the report of injuries and capability to land directly at the point of injury with our highly-skilled pararescue brethren gives our partner force members the best chances of survival after sustaining life-threatening injuries.”

No matter how far from home the members of the 303d ERQS may find themselves, their unique mission and the close bonds they share make the deployment experience incredibly memorable.

“We get to fly, shoot guns and save lives with our best friends,” says Frawley. “Out here I’m a part of the best community the DOD has to offer!”

*********

This story by Tech. Sgt. Dhruv Gopinath of the 406th Air Expeditionary Wing was first published on September 8, 2023, by the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service. Image derived from CIA map and photos courtesy of DVIDS (photos by Tech. Sgt. Dhruv Gopinath, Sep 2023).

sof.news · by DVIDS · September 15, 2023

10. War Books: Resistance

A useful list. Must have been thought to keep to the limit of only 5!

War Books: Resistance - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Sandor Fabian · September 15, 2023

Editor’s note: Welcome to another installment of our weekly War Books series! The premise is simple and straightforward. We invite a participant to recommend five books and tell us what sets each one apart. War Books is a resource for MWI readers who want to learn more about important subjects related to modern war and are looking for books to add to their reading lists.

This week’s installment comes from Sandor Fabian. A former Hungarian Special Forces officer with twenty years of military experience, his research examines how small states can best defend against the threats posed by larger aggressor states. He is also the author of an important book on the subject, Irregular Warfare: The Future Military Strategy For Small States, which is built around the premise that the best defense strategy for a small state is deterrence and denial through the implementation of an irregular warfare–based national homeland defense strategy. For this edition of War Books, we gave him the following prompt: What books would you recommend for readers to better understand the concept of resistance?

Insurgents, Raiders and Bandits: How Masters of Irregular Warfare Have Shaped Our World, by John Arquilla (2011)

A remarkable account of the history of irregular warfare over the past 250 years, this book provides both a detailed overview of the individual backgrounds of the greatest masters of irregular warfare and an engaging analysis of their campaigns. The book is not only a thoroughly researched historical account, but a rigorous analysis of the most important characteristics of irregular warfare. Arquilla`s book is a must-read for those interested in history and alternative methods of warfighting and are not afraid of harvesting ideas from the edges of strategic thought.

Britain’s Secret Defences: Civilian Saboteurs, Spies and Assassins during the Second World War, by Andrew Chatterton (2022)

With Britain fearful of an imminent German invasion at the beginning of World War II, a top secret and highly trained “guerrilla” army was born. Saboteurs and guerrilla fighters emerging from secret underground hideouts supported by swaths of spies and observers, this resistance army was designed to fight against potential Nazi occupiers. This book takes the reader on a fascinating journey of discovery about who the members of this army were, how they were selected, organized, and trained, and how they were supposed to conduct what would have in many cases been unavoidably suicidal missions.

Resistance Operating Concept, by Otto C. Fiala (2020)

The book is based on the idea that resistance, as a form of warfare, might be conceptualized as part of a layered, in-depth national defense. It provides a foundational blueprint for the development of a nationally and internationally legitimate resistance capability. After delineating the concept of resilience in a precrisis environment the book develops resistance requirements and planning considerations in the event of an occupation by an adversary. Regardless of its limited case selection of idealized Western examples of resistance this book can serve as a cornerstone publication for policymakers and practitioners involved in the development of national resistance capabilities.

Stalin’s Guerrillas: Soviet Partisans in World War II, by Kenneth Slepyan (2006)

The book provides an analysis of the social and political history of the Soviet partisan movement. Tapping into recently opened Soviet archives, records of wartime radio broadcasts, and Communist Party memoirs, the book recounts the origins, internal struggles, and evolution of this movement throughout the war. The book paints a detailed picture of the complexity of the partisans’ lives and underscores their vital contributions to the defense of their homeland.

How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict, by Ivan Arreguín-Toft (2005)

Using both qualitative and quantitative research methods this book analyzes the asymmetric conflicts of the last 150 years. The book arrives at the conclusion that although many variables can affect the final outcomes of such conflicts (for example, the relative power of the actors, their weapons technology, and outside support), it is best determined by the interaction of the strategies of each participant. The author suggests that confronting strategies can be reduced to two distinctive forms: direct and indirect approaches. Direct strategies focus on the destruction of the enemy’s armed forces and, through this, its capacity to continue fighting. The indirect strategy aims for the destruction of the enemy’s will to fight. When weak actors use an indirect strategy against strong actors’ direct strategy their probability of success is significantly higher.

The Insurgent’s Dilemma: A Struggle to Prevail, by David Ucko (2022)

This book examines innovation in insurgent strategy and options for response. Its key argument is that insurgents seeking political change are diversifying their approach away from the steady buildup of military capability and aim instead to exploit the vulnerabilities of the contemporary nation-state. This leads the author to explore three methods of attack: localization within undergoverned areas of the state, infiltration of democratic party systems, and ideational attack on society through online mobilization. These approaches are mapped out using several case studies, historical as well as contemporary. The implication for state response is that military means are becoming less relevant and that other instruments of power must be involved.

Dr. Sandor Fabian is a former Hungarian Special Forces officer with twenty years of military experience, to include heading the Assessment and Evaluation Branch at NATO Special Operations Headquarters. He is a graduate of the Miklos Zrinyi Hungarian National Defense University, holds a master’s degree in defense analysis from the US Naval Postgraduate School, and earned his PhD in security studies from the University of Central Florida. Dr. Fabian is the author of Irregular Warfare: The Future Military Strategy for Small States.

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

Image credit: Staff Sgt. Rodney Roldan, US Army

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Sandor Fabian · September 15, 2023

11. Opinion | A Trip to Ukraine Clarified the Stakes. And They’re Huge. by Thomas L. Friedman

Excerpts:

Indeed, as I’ve thought about what could be the most meaningful and painful punishment for Putin and his war crimes, I decided it would be for him to be sentenced to sit in the Kremlin for the rest of his life, hiding from coup plotters and having to look out at a Ukraine that is a secure and flourishing member of the single largest democratic, free market/free travel zone in the world — the E.U — while Putin’s citizens would be left with the freedom to vacation and invest in North Korea and Iran.

That would be Vladimir Putin’s nightmare. Our job is to help make it come true.

By pure accident, I was reminded of just how important this could be on my trip home. As I sat at Warsaw’s Chopin Airport, I watched German Lufthansa planes land on Polish tarmacs. I saw three Hasidic Jews saunter by in their distinctive black coats and hats, the fringes of their prayer shawls dangling from their white shirts. With Poland now in the E.U., I could overhear chatter in several languages, some of which I couldn’t identify, in 360 degrees.

In 1939, the arrival of a German plane in Warsaw meant death and mayhem would soon follow, especially for my ancestors. Now, it’s just a fast way to Frankfurt.

We forget what a political miracle this whole scene is. We forget what it took for European diplomats, with the help of American presidents and American power, to create this scene of multireligious, multinational normality that is today’s European Union.

So, dear reader, you can be for more Western intervention in Ukraine, or you can be against it. But either way, have no doubt that Vladimir Putin’s savaging of Ukraine is a direct attack on this whole scene, this taken-for-granted normality, this ordinary miracle.

Opinion | A Trip to Ukraine Clarified the Stakes. And They’re Huge.

The New York Times · by Thomas L. Friedman · September 15, 2023

Thomas L. Friedman

A Trip to Ukraine Clarified the Stakes. And They’re Huge.

Sept. 15, 2023, 5:03 a.m. ET

Rusting hulks of tanks and other vehicles sit in a square between a statue and a monastery building.Credit...Emile Ducke for The New York Times

Opinion Columnist, reporting from Kyiv.

While visiting Kyiv last week, my first trip to Ukraine since Vladimir Putin’s invasion in February 2022, I tried to get my exercise every morning by walking the grounds of St. Michael’s Golden Domed Monastery. Its serenity, though, has been disrupted by a jarring exhibit of destroyed Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers. During my walks, I’d poke my head into these jagged, rocket-pierced hulks, wondering what a terrible death must have come to the Russian soldiers operating them.

But the shock of this tangled mass of rusting steel, sitting in the middle of this grand, whitish-stone piazza, evoked a different image in my mind’s eye: a meteor.

It looked as if a giant meteor had plummeted from space, disrupting life as we knew it — nearly eight decades without a “great power” war in Europe, a continent where centuries of invasions and conquest had given way to security and prosperity. Now we have this ugly pile sitting here in our midst, smoldering, and we, both Ukrainians and the world community, are struggling with how to deal with it.

Nearly every Ukrainian I spoke to in Kyiv was at once exhausted by the war and passionately determined to recover every inch of their Russian-occupied territory — but no one had clear answers about the road ahead, the painful trade-offs that await, only certainty that defeat would mean an end to Ukraine’s democratic dream and a smashing of the post-World War II era that had produced a Europe more whole and free than ever before in its history.

What Putin is doing in Ukraine is not just reckless, not just a war of choice, not just an invasion in a class of its own for overreach, mendacity, immorality and incompetence, all wrapped in a farrago of lies. What he is doing is evil. He has trumped up any number of shifting justifications — one day it was removing a Nazi regime in power in Kyiv, the next it was preventing NATO expansion, the next it was fending off a Western cultural invasion of Russia — for what ultimately was a personal flight of fancy that now requires his superpower army turning to North Korea for help. It’s like the biggest bank in town having to ask the local pawnshop for a loan. So much for Putin’s bare-chested virility.

Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

What is so evil — beyond the death and pain and trauma and destruction he has inflicted on so many Ukrainians — is that at a time when climate change, famine, health crises and so much more are stressing Planet Earth, the last thing humanity needed was to divert so much attention, collaborative energy, money and lives to respond to Putin’s war to make Ukraine a Russian colony again.

Putin lately has stopped even bothering to justify the war — maybe because even he is too embarrassed to utter aloud the nihilism that his actions scream: If I can’t have Ukraine, I’ll make sure Ukrainians can’t have it, either.

“This is not a war in which the aggressor has some vision, some outline of the future. Rather, on the contrary, for them, everything is black, formless, and the only thing that matters is force,” Timothy Snyder, the Yale historian, remarked on a panel we did together at a conference in Kyiv last weekend.

Being in the city has been clarifying for me in three regards. I understand even better just how sick and disruptive this Russian invasion is. I understand even better just how hard, maybe even impossible, it will be for Ukrainians to evict Putin’s army from every inch of their soil.

Perhaps most of all, I understand even better something that the former U.S. national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski observed almost 30 years ago: “Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.”

Most Americans don’t know a lot about Ukraine, but I say this without any hyperbole: Ukraine is a game-changing country for the West, for better or for worse depending on the war’s outcome. Its integration into the European Union and NATO someday would constitute a power shift that could rival the fall of the Berlin Wall and German unification. Ukraine is a country with impressive human capital, agricultural resources and natural resources — “hands, brains and grains,” as Western investors in Kyiv like to say. It’s full-fledged integration into Europe’s democratic security and economic architecture would be felt in Moscow and Beijing.

Putin knows that. His war, in my view, has never been primarily about countering NATO expansion. It has always been much more about stopping a Slavic Ukraine from joining the European Union and becoming a successful counter example to Putin’s Slavic thieving autocracy. NATO expansion is Putin’s friend — it allows him to justify militarizing Russian society and to present himself as the indispensable guardian of Russia’s strength. E.U. expansion to Ukraine is a mortal threat — it exposes Putinism as the source of Russia’s weakness. And the Ukrainians I met, to a person, seemed to understand that they and Europe were bound up together in an epochal moment against Putinism — a moment, though, that cannot succeed without a steadfast United States. Which is why one of the most frequent — and worried — questions I got on my visit were variations of “Do you think Putin’s pal Trump can be president again?”

Credit...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

One need only look into the eyes of Ukrainian soldiers back from the front, or talk to parents in the streets of Kyiv, to be stripped of any illusions about the moral balance of this war. I was in the country for just three days — far shorter than my Times colleagues and other war journalists who have borne remarkable witness to this fighting and suffering. But my relatively brief interactions brought to life the photos we see of bomb-ravaged cities and villages in Eastern Ukraine, and the chilling findings we read from the United Nations documenting cases in which children have been “raped, tortured and unlawfully confined” by invading Russians.

This is as obvious a case of right versus wrong, good versus evil, as you find in international relations since World War II.

Yet the closer you come to this conflict and think about how to resolve it, that stark black-and-white moral balance sheet doesn’t offer an easy road map to a solution.

It is clear as day what defines a just outcome. It’s a Ukraine that is whole and free — with reparations paid by Russia. But it isn’t at all clear how much such justice is attainable, and at what price, or whether some dirty compromise will be the least-worst option, and if so, what kind of compromise, just how dirty, when and guaranteed by whom.

In other words, the minute you step out of the justice framework of this war — and into the realm of realpolitik diplomacy — the whole picture turns from black-and-white to different shades of gray. Because the bad guy is still powerful and still has friends and therefore a say. Ukraine, too, has lots of friends committed to helping it fight as long it wants to — until “as long as it wants to” becomes too long in Washington and other capitals of the West.

It is very hard to stop a leader who has no shame or conscience. On Tuesday Putin told an economic conference in Russia that the 91 felony counts filed against Donald Trump in four different U.S. jurisdictions represent the “persecution of one’s political rival for political motives” and show “the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach democracy to others.” The hall erupted in applause for a leader renown for using poison underwear, an exploding airplane and Siberian labor camps to “teach democracy” to his rivals.

The shamelessness is breathtaking. And while his beseeching of North Korea for military help is pathetic, the fact that he’s prepared to seek it underscores that he intends to continue this war until he can come away with some chunk of Ukraine that he can hold up as a face-saving success.

Credit...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

I went to Kyiv to participate in the annual meeting of the Yalta European Strategy, organized in partnership with the Victor Pinchuk Foundation. (Pinchuk is a Ukrainian businessman.) The first speaker was Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who right from the top argued that if we abandon considerations of justice, and do a dirty deal with Putin, we will sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.

“Human morality must win this war,” Zelensky said. “Everyone in the world who values freedom, who values human life, who believes that people must win. And our success, the specific success of Ukraine, depends not only on us, on Ukrainians, but also on the extent to which the entire vast moral space of the world wants to preserve itself.”

But securing justice in war almost always requires the total defeat and occupation of the aggressor. Russia has more than three times the population of Ukraine. And when you listen to Ukrainian soldiers speak, you hear a cocktail of Zelensky-like defiance, mixed with admissions of exhaustion.

The conference featured a panel of four male Ukrainian soldiers, one missing a forearm and one an eye, and a woman soldier. All had fought at the front. Here is how Dmytro Finashyn, an intelligence officer of the National Guard of Ukraine, whose left forearm was a black prosthetic, put it: “Our best people are dying, those who should shape the future of Ukraine. That is why it is necessary to reduce our losses. The world must help us, because we are fighting for global democracy.”.

Alina Mykhailova, an officer who has been in the field for well over a year, started to cry during her presentation, mourning the loss of a beloved commander. “We are suffering huge casualties; there is no romanticizing battle and war. It is dirty, it is nasty and bad,” she said. “Every time you go to bed you should remind yourself how hard it is” for the soldiers at the front. “What we see at the front lines today, you would not learn from TV.” She added, “Each of us needs personal support, every soldier should have support: a family or a loved one, or any person who does not avert their eyes and understands what we are fighting for.”

Don’t get me wrong, this is a Ukrainian army ready to fight on — and any politician in this country, including Zelensky, who just hints at a territorial compromise will be run out of office. But the math is cruel. Everyone who volunteered, right after the invasion, has gone to the front, which means more and more Ukrainians will have to be drafted. While many show up, they often look to join drone units — not the trench warfare infantry — and more and more have been trying to bribe or flee their way out of the draft. That is why Zelensky recently had to fire the entire top leadership of his regional military recruitment centers.

It gets back to that meteor. No one in this modern European country was ready to have his or her life turned upside down by this kind of all-out war that, despite all the threats from Russia, always seemed a remote possibility. One mother remarked to me that her social life now is occasional dinners with friends, kids’ birthday parties “and funerals.” That was not the plan.

You know a country has been at war a long time when the fight starts spawning its own language. When the Ukrainian fund-raising platform United24 seeks donations to buy the army more drones, it now asks for a “dronation,” and everyone knows what it means.

Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

What preoccupies so many Ukrainians are the same two issues that preoccupy so many officials in Washington: Kyiv’s counteroffensive against the Russians in the immediate term and the security needs of Ukraine in the longer term. I have been an advocate of the U.S. standing with Ukraine for as long as Ukrainians want to fight. Being in Ukraine did not change my mind as much as it underscored the need for both urgency and pragmatism.

On urgency: Ukraine needs to inflict as much damage on Putin’s army as fast as possible. That means we need to massively and rapidly deliver the weaponry Ukraine needs to break Putin’s lines in the country’s southeast. I’m talking the kitchen sink: F-16s; mine-clearing equipment; more Patriot antimissile systems; MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile Systems, which could strike deep behind Russian lines — whatever the Ukrainians can use effectively and fast.

Rustem Umerov, making his first public appearance as Ukraine’s new defense minister, told the strategy conference: “Our army today is one of the strongest and most motivated in the world, because we know what we fight for. But we need more military equipment. We need it today, we need it tomorrow, we need it now.”

The faster Putin faces a collapse of his forces in Ukraine, the more he might have to either flee or be ready to negotiate a face-saving deal today, and not wait to see if Trump is re-elected and throws him a lifeline.

But have no illusions — any cease-fire or peace deal will bring a whole new set of policy dilemmas to the fore.

If the war drags on, the way it has been, through this coming winter, with a bloody stalemate because the Ukrainian Army can’t penetrate the huge minefields and trenches the Russians have dug along the crescent zone of Eastern Ukraine they occupy, Zelensky could face quiet pressures at home to negotiate and loud ones from his European allies. And Putin could run out of pariah states, like North Korea and Iran, from which to secure more ammunition.

Any kind of formal or informal cease-fire is possible. But what’s impossible is this: Ukraine agreeing to any permanent or temporary end to this conflict without the promise of a NATO Article 5 security guarantee (or some equivalent from the U.S. and Europe). Such a security guarantee would signal to exhausted Ukrainians, foreign investors and the millions of Ukrainian refugees abroad that the war is basically over and Putin can’t just rearm and reinvade without the U.S. and Europe defending Ukraine.

Oh, you didn’t think that was coming — that we’d just be able to share in Ukraine’s victory, walk away and leave an angry Putin licking his wounds? Sorry, but let me state this as bluntly as I can: No Western security guarantees for Ukraine, no end to this war.

Therefore, once the diplomacy begins, “the two strong arms of the West — that is the E.U. and NATO — which have become so much closer because of this war, will have to bring Ukraine into both NATO and the E.U.,” the European historian Timothy Garton Ash, author of the recently released “Homelands: A Personal History of Europe,” remarked to me. “A durable, lasting peace requires Ukraine in NATO as soon as possible and in the E.U. incrementally.”

What if Putin decides he wants a forever war in Ukraine and will not play along with a quiet border with Ukraine for NATO to defend? I don’t know. That’s why I say that some wrenching geopolitical dilemmas await us down the road.

Credit...Gleb Garanich/Reuters

Early Sunday morning, Russia launched nearly three dozen drones at Kyiv. Air raid sirens wailed in the distance — or so I am told, because I slept through the whole thing. This prompted two of my Times colleagues in Kyiv, Andrew Kramer and Marc Santora, to immediately introduce me to an iPhone app: Air Alarm Ukraine. It’s tied in with Ukraine’s air defense system, and when an attack is imminent it blares out a warning: “Attention. Air raid alert! Proceed to the nearest shelter!”

But the voice is not Ukrainian. It’s the baritone of Mark Hamill, or Luke Skywalker of “Star Wars” fame.

“Don’t be careless,” Hamill cautions. “Your overconfidence is your weakness.”

The app comes with a Ukrainian-language setting as well, voiced by a woman, but according to an Associated Press article, some Ukrainians prefer to hear Hamill because of how he punctuates the all-clear: “The air alert is over. … May the Force be with you.”

I mention this for several reasons. The first is to highlight that Ukraine, like Israel, is a real “start-up nation” — a country with a lot of creativity and innovative prowess, not only in creative apps but homegrown drones and cruise missiles, on top of all of its natural resources and agriculture supply. According to military experts, it was Ukraine’s homegrown Neptune cruise missile flying just above the waves that sunk the cruiser Moskva, the flagship of Putin’s Black Sea fleet, last year.

Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

“Despite the ongoing war, Ukrainian start-ups brought in more than $6 billion in revenue in 2022 — $542 million more than in 2021 — and have tripled in valuation since 2020,” according to an April 2023 report by Michał Kramarz, head of Google for Startups, Central and Eastern Europe. In a normal year, Ukraine was graduating 130,000 engineers — more than Germany and France.

While in Kyiv, I interviewed Brian Best, who runs the investment banking department at Dragon Capital, an investment firm in Ukraine that funds start-ups. In recent years, he told me, changes in Ukrainian relations with the E.U. have enabled young Ukrainian techies to travel without visas to Western Europe and “they brought back a lot of new skills on how to do business. The war has just accelerated that.” Besides military and cyber start-ups, Best said, “the street I live on has three or four new restaurants that are very European in feeling. It is a cultural revolution.”

Moreover, according to the European Commission, Ukraine, before the war, accounted for 10 percent of the world wheat market, 15 percent of the corn market and 13 percent of the barley market. Today it also has the most experienced standing army in Europe and, after Russia, the biggest — with arguably the most expertise in next-generation drone warfare in the world.

There’s just a scrappy feel to this society, particularly the rising young generation that has come of age in a post-Soviet Ukraine. It bodes well for Ukraine if it can just get free of Putin’s dead hand. I like the way the renowned Ukrainian poet and artist Serhiy Zhadan explained it at the conference:

“Let’s use a metaphor to compare Ukrainian society with Russian society: Ukrainian society is a young punk band that is going to fill stadiums. And we will definitely do this. For us, everything just has started, there is a huge reserve of strength, energy and, most importantly, there is an understanding of strategy and where to go. Russia is a jaded, slightly elderly cabaret singer, who has lost his audience and popularity but tries to create an illusion of success and glamour.”

Credit...Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times

Back in the early 1990s, I opposed NATO expansion after the fall of the Berlin Wall, because I thought our priority should be trying to nurture a democratic Russia. I don’t regret that for a second. Now, 30 years later, though, when the prospects for a democratic Russia feel utterly remote, I would gladly use NATO and the E.U. to nurture and secure a democratic Ukraine.

Because if Ukraine can escape this war — even if it has to temporarily cede some territory to Putin — and can complete the anti-corruption and other regulatory reforms that are required for it to join the European Union, the brainpower, agricultural power and military power that Ukraine represents would serve as an important model and magnet for Russians wanting a different future, not to mention other shaky Balkan states.

“What Ukraine is doing has the potential to be so transformative for the region as a whole — for all the countries trying to consolidate democracy,” Anastasia Radina, 39, chair of the anti-corruption committee in the Ukraine Parliament, told me. Putin is watching closely, she added, even denouncing anti-corruption institutions in Ukraine before the war. “He could not stand Ukraine being a success story of breaking with the Soviet legacy and with Russia,” because “we are right on his doorstep. It would stand as an example of success of another civilizational model contrary to Putin’s.”

Which is why, as much as I value NATO as a security alliance, I have never lost sight of how the European Union — which Americans tend to know little about — has managed to quietly build itself into its own kind of United States of Europe, another great center of free markets, free people democracy and the rule of law. To be sure, the E.U. has plenty of its own problems managing day to day. But considering Europe’s long history of fratricide, the E.U. is a quiet, boring miracle. Adding Ukraine to it would make it only stronger.

Indeed, as I’ve thought about what could be the most meaningful and painful punishment for Putin and his war crimes, I decided it would be for him to be sentenced to sit in the Kremlin for the rest of his life, hiding from coup plotters and having to look out at a Ukraine that is a secure and flourishing member of the single largest democratic, free market/free travel zone in the world — the E.U — while Putin’s citizens would be left with the freedom to vacation and invest in North Korea and Iran.

That would be Vladimir Putin’s nightmare. Our job is to help make it come true.

By pure accident, I was reminded of just how important this could be on my trip home. As I sat at Warsaw’s Chopin Airport, I watched German Lufthansa planes land on Polish tarmacs. I saw three Hasidic Jews saunter by in their distinctive black coats and hats, the fringes of their prayer shawls dangling from their white shirts. With Poland now in the E.U., I could overhear chatter in several languages, some of which I couldn’t identify, in 360 degrees.

In 1939, the arrival of a German plane in Warsaw meant death and mayhem would soon follow, especially for my ancestors. Now, it’s just a fast way to Frankfurt.

We forget what a political miracle this whole scene is. We forget what it took for European diplomats, with the help of American presidents and American power, to create this scene of multireligious, multinational normality that is today’s European Union.

So, dear reader, you can be for more Western intervention in Ukraine, or you can be against it. But either way, have no doubt that Vladimir Putin’s savaging of Ukraine is a direct attack on this whole scene, this taken-for-granted normality, this ordinary miracle.

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

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

Thomas L. Friedman is the foreign affairs Op-Ed columnist. He joined the paper in 1981, and has won three Pulitzer Prizes. He is the author of seven books, including “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” which won the National Book Award.

The New York Times · by Thomas L. Friedman · September 15, 2023

12. With LTG Braga's new triad of Space, Cyber, and SOF, SOF operators will need to be well versed in space strategy.

Future wars will turn on space-cyber-special operations triad: Army SOF chief

https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2023/08/space-cyber-special-operations-triad-critical-future-wars-says-army-special-operations-head/389243/

But this strategy is only about defense of satellites and I cannot find much in terms of SOf in this effort. I think the SOF effort is more aligned with the use of satellites in support of operations in conjunction with cyber. After reviewing the 19 page document I do not see an obvious connection for SOF. But SOF planners can likely work the issues and find what I cannot.

Unclassified space strategy outlines how DOD will defend satellites in orbit

The congressionally mandated strategy emphasizes resilient architectures, space domain awareness and defending against adversaries' space-enabled capabilities as keys to protecting U.S. assets.

MIKAYLA EASLEY

SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

defensescoop.com · by measley · September 14, 2023

The Department of Defense’s office for space policy has published a new document defining the threats posed to U.S. space-based assets and how the Pentagon plans to keep them out of harm’s way.

Released on Thursday, the congressionally mandated report is an unclassified version of the DOD’s top-secret space strategy. During a call with reporters Wednesday ahead of the report’s publication, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy John Plumb called the document “the clearest and most comprehensive unclassified articulation yet of our approach to protecting national security interests in space.”

The unclassified version is in response to two separate directives from Congress — one in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act to conduct an unclassified space policy review and another in the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act that called on the Pentagon and Office of the Director of National Intelligence to publish an unclassified space defense strategy.

“It made the most sense to bundle these two responses together because how we’re going to protect and defend our satellites and our interests in space is really inextricably linked with our policy,” Plumb said.

He emphasized that the strategy’s release to the public aims to help both the department and lawmakers disseminate the Pentagon’s missions and acquisitions related to space, as well as normalize the domain as an operating environment. As head of space policy, he has advocated against overclassification of programs and is pushing for continued reviews of declassification policies, he said.

The strategy elaborates on the three major lines of effort to the Defense Department’s approach to defending national security assets in space — mission assurance, space domain awareness and protecting the joint force from hostile actions.

“Space provides the U.S. military with indications and warnings of threats or attacks, command and control of forces across the globe, and monitoring of adversary activities,” the unclassified document states. “Competitors have seen U.S. military advantages enhanced and enabled by space capabilities for more than three decades. Competitors therefore seek to deny the U.S. ability to leverage space in crisis and conflict and are developing a range of capabilities to do so.”

The Pentagon is prioritizing more resilient architectures and developing strategies to best defend against counterspace threats, the report notes. Plumb emphasized those capabilities aren’t just satellites and payloads in orbit, but also the critical ground segments and links that connect them.

“We need to make sure the joint force continues to have access to needed space-based services to be able to fight and win,” he told reporters. “Deterrence requires combat credible forces, and our combat credible forces are underwritten by access to space.”

The strategy highlights a number of approaches the Pentagon can take to achieve space resilience — disaggregation, distribution, diversification, proliferation, protection and deception — but emphasized that different mission sets may require different single approaches or some combination.

For example, the Space Force has been focused on proliferating satellites carrying warfighting capabilities in low-Earth orbit with its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture constellation. By deploying hundreds of satellites of the same type, one satellite being attacked or neutralized is unlikely to affect operations.

The department has already redeveloped its space missile warning and missile tracking capability through new “resilient-by-design” approaches to architectures that resulted in a number of satellites carrying a range of capabilities across orbital regimes, the report notes.

Other force design studies are underway, including fire control to address long-range threats; tactical ISR to enable forward operations; a space data network to ensure data throughput for decision-making and battle management; and protect-and-defend operations to protect vital infrastructure and space-based capabilities, per the strategy.

Resilience is also achieved through protecting space systems from adversary counterspace threats, and the department is in the process of developing capabilities to defend its own platforms, as well as those from allies, partners and the commercial space sector when directed, according to the report.

Although the unclassified strategy does not explicitly apply to commercial systems that are used to support operations, Plumb said the Defense Department will protect and defend those commercial platforms if ordered to by U.S. political leadership. He emphasized that a reduction in overclassification can mitigate risk for commercial industry working with the department.

“One of the best ways it’s become clear is to help share threat information with industry partners so they can react,” Plumb noted. “That gets back to this issue of classification and making sure that we share information at the speed of relevance with our industry partners, so they can attend to their own systems.”

The Pentagon is focused on advancing its space domain awareness capabilities as its second line of effort. The mission set is a top priority for the Space Force, especially as that area becomes increasingly crowded with additional systems and debris.

Plumb noted that space domain awareness isn’t just about knowing what’s in space, but also what those systems are doing and how the environment is constantly changing. It requires fusing sensor data in order to provide a clear common operating picture.

“The ability to protect and defend our space systems relies heavily on our ability to detect, track and characterize objects in space, both routine activity and any hostile actions,” Plumb said in response to questions from DefenseScoop. “That drives us towards more investments in space domain awareness, which rely on an integrated system of sensors and data processing.”

The strategy’s third line of effort details how the department is protecting the joint force from adversaries’ deployment of space-enabled capabilities. The Pentagon is looking to diminish an enemy’s ability to attack U.S. assets by denying those threats “using a variety of reversible and irreversible means,” the report says. Those options could come from any domain and target any part of a hostile space architecture, it notes.

The strategy pointed to China’s work in developing space-based command-and-control systems and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance networks that enhance their operations, as examples of concern.

“In conflict, this may necessitate ensuring that our adversaries are unable to rely on their space-based services to find and strike our forces. We will leverage a breadth of options across all operational domains to do so if required,” Plumb said.

Meanwhile, Plumb said he’s been chairing quarterly meetings for a new body known as the Space Warfighting Activities Group. It serves as a venue for leaders across the Pentagon — such as Frank Calvelli, head of space acquisition and integration at the Department of the Air Force — and the intelligence community to discuss current challenges and opportunities for space warfighting policy and strategy.

Most of the content of those meetings is classified, but Plumb noted they serve a couple of purposes.

“One is to clear obstacles to individual components or satellites or systems that we’re trying to make sure succeed,” he explained. “A second one is, inside the building there are many, many different … components that work on space and have space interests, and having a place to bring all of these information together and socialize is really proving valuable.”

While the Pentagon will work to deter and deny hostile actions in space, the department still seeks to promote “responsible behavior” there, Plumb said. This is especially critical as space becomes more accessible and, in turn, more crowded.

“We have the responsibility to ensure we are moving forward in a way that focuses on deterring conflict and reinforcing the safety, security, stability and long-term sustainability of the space domain,” Plumb said.

defensescoop.com · by measley · September 14, 2023

13. Department of Defense Releases Space Policy Review and Strategy on Protection of Satellite

The 19 page strategy can be downloaded here: https://media.defense.gov/2023/Sep/14/2003301146/-1/-1/0/COMPREHENSIVE-REPORT-FOR-RELEASE.PDF

Department of Defense Releases Space Policy Review and Strategy on Protection of Satellite

defense.gov

Release

Immediate Release

Sept. 14, 2023 |×

The Department of Defense recently released to Congress a combined response to the Fiscal Year 2022 NDAA requirement for a Space Policy Review and the Fiscal Year 2023 NDAA requirement to make publicly available an unclassified strategy for the protection and defense of on-orbit assets.

Space plays a critical role in American security, prosperity, and way of life and is critical to overall military effectiveness across the entire Joint Force. The Department of Defense is investing in space at the highest level ever to deter aggression and, if deterrence fails, to be prepared to prevail in conflict.

Informed by the 2022 National Defense Strategy and other Department- and national-level guidance, the response to Congress communicates the strategy of the Department of Defense to defend its national security interests in space from the growing scope and scale of counterspace threats by:

Assuring critical space-based missions by accelerating the transition to more resilient architectures and by protecting and defending critical systems against counterspace threats;
Strengthening the ability to detect and attribute hostile acts in, from, and to space; and
Protecting the Joint Force from adversary hostile uses of space.

To do so, DoD will leverage a breadth of options across all operational domains to deter aggression and, if deterrence fails, to prevail in conflict.

As the Department defends U.S. national security interests in space, it will continue to demonstrate leadership in both the responsible use of space and stewardship of the space environment.

The unclassified report can be found here.

space

defense.gov

14. The Army’s Most Important Warfighting Tool Isn’t A Weapon, It’s A Network

Of course the focus is on the technical network and how it can be exploited by soldiers and organizations.

But some of us have a different view of "networks" and it is in the human domain. It is about the people who are connected - whether they are friends, partners or allies, key personnel in key locations or key militaries, or key communities. These are the important networks; it is the network and the people in them that must be developed, nurtured, protected, and properly employed to support strategy and campaigns.

And of course we need the best technical means to sustain connectivity though it is likely that it will not be provided in whole by the technical network described in this article which is designed to support the Army as the main effort (and rightly so).

The Army’s Most Important Warfighting Tool Isn’t A Weapon, It’s A Network

Forbes · by Loren Thompson · September 15, 2023

Soldiers at the "tactical edge" desperately need a resilient, secure network.

Wikipedia

The U.S. Army is in the midst of a technological transformation that is transporting its culture from the industrial age into the digital era.

Every facet of the institution is being rebuilt in the belief that success in future conflicts will be determined by who controls information and can exploit it to maximum advantage.

At the center of this transformation is a high-speed, high-capacity network, without which the service’s future posture cannot function.

The network connects all of the force’s pieces—not just the infantry, aviation, artillery and armor, but the logisticians and intelligence organizations that support tactical operations.

Because battlefield success in what the Army calls “multi-domain operations” will depend on the network to provide critical data faster than adversaries can keep up, some planners have taken to describing the network as a weapon. See, for example, the service’s 2021 Unified Network Plan.

However, this adds to the confusion of a process that is already awash in jargon and abstractions. A better approach is to think about the network is as a critical enabler, without which the service would be hard-pressed to use weapons such as tanks and rotorcraft effectively.

The easiest way to get a granular grasp of what the Army’s network is, or soon shall be, is to visit the website of its program executive office for tactical command, control, and communications—PEO C3T in service nomenclature. The website contains an unusually detailed portfolio of all the network projects currently underway.

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Fortunately, the portfolio includes a capsule description of each of the two dozen projects it is currently funding. It doesn’t cover network-related initiatives managed by other offices, such the cybersecurity aspects of the Army’s enterprise network, but you can get a good idea of where the Army is placing its bets for the battlefield network by perusing PEO C3T’s compendium.

The bottom line here is that the Army is counting on its tactical network to provide situational awareness, a common operating picture, timely target information and diverse communications across a scattered force—even in the midst of intense combat.

Without the network, individual units might not know where enemy and friendly forces are, which weapons are best suited to defeating specific threats, or even how to alert high command that they are under attack.

A lot of this depends on links to communications satellites, which are increasingly being deployed by the Space Force in low earth orbit. Some of the most critical information might arrive from line-of-sight connections to the aircraft of other services, such as the F-35 fighter and various drones.

The Pentagon’s vision of a future networked force calls for all of the military services to one day be seamlessly connected, so that they can function as an integrated entity in wartime.

At the moment, though, the Army is struggling just to connect its own units. It has conducted experiments in which soldiers received vital data from other services, but it will be some time before that becomes routine practice. In the meantime, here are the six paramount features it hopes its future tactical network can deliver for all soldiers in the field.

Accessibility. At the very least, every soldier must be able to tap into the network, no matter how parlous his or her circumstances. That requires robust technology, but also a simple design that can be intuitively grasped by users.
Immediacy. In fast-paced combat, information needs to arrive quickly to be useful. One reason for putting transport satellites in low earth orbit is to minimize latency—the time it takes for signals to reach intended recipients.
Capacity. Some tactical messages, such as video, require a lot of bandwidth to transmit. So, in addition to being fast and accessible, the tactical network must have the capacity to carry the full range of potential data and voice messages.
Flexibility. It isn’t enough to deliver the above features from fixed locations. In combat, fixed assets are likely to be targeted. Critical elements of the network therefore must be mobile and able to utilize multiple channels to sustain links.
Resiliency. The tactical network must be durable enough to survive kinetic and non-kinetic attacks. Kinetic attacks utilize munitions like bombs and rockets, non-kinetic attacks typically use electronic signals to disrupt transmissions.
Security. Tactical messages will need to be encrypted to avoid interception and exploitation by adversaries. Army planners are especially concerned about malware and other cyber intrusions into the network by adversaries like China.

Satisfying all six of these design criteria in an integrated tactical network is a herculean task. Past efforts to create suitable links such as the Joint Tactical Radio System and Warfighter Information System-Tactical faltered due to technical constraints or lack of functionality.

Occasionally a breakthrough appears that eases the challenge, such as the TRAX software application that enables radios with disparate features to communicate. A big part of the Army’s network modernization plan involves generating agile software to replace hardware.

The service is increasingly drawn to commercial products and services to meet its needs, partly because they are more affordable than military-unique solutions, and partly because so much innovation in relevant fields occurs outside the defense industry.

However, when China is the pacing threat, there are limitations to exploiting commercial technology. In many cases, commercial products will be well understood in China, and may even be manufactured there. So, depending heavily on commercial technology is no way to stay ahead of China’s military.

In the end, what Army planners want is a network that will enable soldiers to see first and act first when fighting an adversary like China. The service uses terms like “decision dominance” and “overmatch” to describe its desired end-state.

It isn’t certain that achieving a durable technological edge over other great powers will be feasible. Without a flexible, resilient, secure tactical network, though, it is likely to be impossible.

Forbes · by Loren Thompson · September 15, 2023

15. When is our 9/11 Moment with China?

Excerpts:

After 9/11 we agreed that if we “see something, say something.” We need a version for today: when you see something, do something. Governments need to act.

Today’s threat requires unity and a vigorous, coordinated response. Share information widely and swiftly across governments and the private sector; educate multinational corporations and institutions about the threats; push for consensus on the norms of international behaviors and repercussions for violations; and perhaps most importantly, follow through on commitments to red lines.

If we continue to sacrifice our values, ingenuity, and institutions for short-term profits and wishful thinking about peaceful evolution, we will soon have nothing but regret that we had not acted sooner.

When is our 9/11 Moment with China?

https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column/opinion/when-is-our-9-11-moment-with-china?mc_cid=d87f97c126

SEPTEMBER 14TH, 2023 BY TOM LYONS | 0 COMMENTS

Tom Lyons is a former senior Operations Officer with CIA. He has more than 20 years of experience in the U.S. government and the private sector, focused on counterterrorism and China-related issues. He left government in 2021, to help found the 2430 Group, a non-profit, non-partisan research institution that focuses on state-sponsored espionage against Western businesses.

View all articles by Tom Lyons

9/11 fundamentally shifted US foreign policy priorities towards the Middle East. When will we have a similar reckoning with China?

OPINION — This year marks the 22nd anniversary of 9/11. For those of us old enough to still know where we were that awful morning, we can recall the overwhelming sense of loss and the desire for an immediate response to the unprovoked attacks. 9/11 was not simply an assault on our loved ones and sense of being, it marked a strategic shift in U.S. policy that prompted drastic changes and a two-decade commitment of resources focused on counterterrorism. (As a mark of different times, the first leader to call President Bush was Vladimir Putin.)

Where al-Qaeda destroyed innocent lives and sowed fear through shocking acts of terrorism, the antagonist of today’s generation, the Communist Party of China (CCP), approaches their goals in more subtle ways. The CCP undermines global norms, obstructs international law, sows misinformation, steals intellectual property, and is pushing to align existing international institutions toward its own priorities, not to mention establishing parallel Chinese-led international organizations as a counterweight to existing structures.

Ultimately, the CCP aims to replace the current world order with one aligned with “Chinese characteristics,” a CCP term that combines a Leninist party system, autocracy, repression, and widespread state control of society.

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What makes the CCP a more enduring threat than anything we face today, is that their tactics lack any exigency. Their gradual infringements have lulled both companies and governments away from establishing firm boundaries.

While 9/11 presented a clear moment that necessitated action, the CCP’s challenge to U.S. security has so far failed to precipitate a similar response. When it comes to the CCP, the U.S. needs to ask itself a crucial and unanswered, question: where are our redlines?

Some point toward Taiwan as that red line. A Chinese invasion of the island would spur the U.S. into action and would galvanize allies against China. Economic sanctions, isolation, and possibly military action would likely follow.

However, launching a Taiwan invasion with uncontrolled consequences, does not align with China’s legacy, mindset, or strategy of moving only when victory is certain. So, what happens when China does not invade, but instead continues to erode the established boundaries?

For the sake of argument, let us assume that the CCP agenda has never included plans for an invasion of Taiwan. In this scenario, the CCP’s rhetoric is a pointed effort to captivate our focus and our resources, to strengthen our resolve – and even over-rotate – around the Taiwan issue, as well as to fortify the international consensus around that redline. In that scenario, we can proudly claim we deterred the PRC, but as the invasion fails to materialize, what have we allowed in the meantime?

There will be no 9/11 moment with China that launches the U.S. into action. Rather, we will continue to suffer the steady drip of state sponsored subversion, bribery, disinformation, theft, hacking, infrastructure attacks, dismissal of international law, weakening of international institutions, and broken norms of behavior.

As that drip becomes a trickle, and eventually a flood, we will not notice that we are drowning, until it is too late. The lack of a global consensus around what constitutes responsible state behavior has already advanced China’s agenda.

Al-Qaeda’s eventual defeat was not America’s doing alone. It was the international community, businesses, and governments alike, that rallied and supported an effort that the U.S. led. Multinational corporations and multinational institutions acted together. We need that same unity to counter China’s weaponization of the very structures that undergird these institutions.

This 22nd anniversary of that horrid day should serve as a wakeup call to governments and businesses around the world. As we examine today’s biggest threat, it is not a non-state actor, working outside norms and conventions. Rather, we are dealing with something much more dangerous: a state actor that revels in shattering norms and ignoring established conventions.

After 9/11 we agreed that if we “see something, say something.” We need a version for today: when you see something, do something. Governments need to act.

Today’s threat requires unity and a vigorous, coordinated response. Share information widely and swiftly across governments and the private sector; educate multinational corporations and institutions about the threats; push for consensus on the norms of international behaviors and repercussions for violations; and perhaps most importantly, follow through on commitments to red lines.

If we continue to sacrifice our values, ingenuity, and institutions for short-term profits and wishful thinking about peaceful evolution, we will soon have nothing but regret that we had not acted sooner.

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals.

Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

16. How a Native Alaskan became a legendary Navy SEAL

Another great American. Where do we find such men and women?

How a Native Alaskan became a legendary Navy SEAL

Solomon Atkinson grew up in an Alaskan fishing village before becoming an original Navy SEAL, earning a Purple Heart and training astronauts.

BY JOSHUA SKOVLUND | PUBLISHED SEP 12, 2023 6:34 PM EDT

taskandpurpose.com · by Joshua Skovlund · September 12, 2023

In a Vietnam jungle in 1968, a team of US Navy SEALs set up a claymore to trigger a jungle ambush. But they didn’t realize they’d attached the explosive charge to a rotten tree.

When a patrol of Vietcong entered the ambush zone, the SEALs set off the claymores and opened fire with machine guns. But the rotten tree sent shrapnel and wood pieces flying, knocking two SEALs unconscious on the short leg of an L-ambush.

One of them was Solomon Atkinson.

Though Atkinson retired in 1973 and died in 2019, the Navy recently announced plans to name a ship after the SEAL. The USNS Solomon Atkinson will be a Navajo-class towing and salvage ship, a class the Navy has taken to naming after notable sailors who have Native American roots.

Though being the namesake of a ship is one of the Navy’s highest honors, Atkinson was never the kind to brag, according to Lowell “Bo” Burwell, a SEAL who served with Atkinson.

“If someone else didn’t tell you something about Sol, you’d never know it. He was not one to go pat his own shoulder. He just did things, and I think that was just his professionalism,” Lowell told Task & Purpose. “He did things because they needed to be done, not because he looked to gain some reward or pat on the back or his name on a plaque or something like that.”

Even among SEALs, Atkinson’s accomplishments stand out. He was one of the Navy’s first 60 SEALs, making him a “plank holder” for SEAL Team 1. He worked as a stunt double for the 1958 movie, “Underwater Warrior,” and trained the secret teams that carried portable nukes, known as Special Atomic Demolition Munition units.

Throughout his career, he received a Purple Heart, Bronze Star, and a Navy Commendation Medal with Combat “V.”

Small Town Alaska To SEAL Team 1

Atkinson’s journey to the Navy and combat as a SEAL was a long one. He grew up in the Metlakatla Indian Community, Annette Islands Reserve in Alaska, swimming, fishing, and diving in the cold waters.

He joined the Army National Guard on Nov. 1, 1951, but immediately requested a transfer to the Navy. As an Engineman, he served one rotation aboard the USS Washburn on a Korean deployment but immediately volunteered for the rigorous Underwater Demolition Teams (UDT) training course at Naval Base Coronado, California, in 1953.

Dale McCleskey arrived at UDT-12 after Atkinson was one of the unit’s senior divers. He remembered him as patient and resolute in whatever he set his mind to.

“Sol was the epitome of the fearless warrior and the protector of the innocent. I deeply respected him for his calmness under stress and his consideration of others,” McCleskey said. “He was always cheerful. He undertook any commitment with enthusiasm and always got excellent results.”

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The two deployed with UDT-12 to Vietnam for beach reconnaissance in preparation for increased US involvement but rotated back early for a special assignment:

They would be among the 60 sailors to establish the first SEAL Teams, 1 and 2, in 1962.

At Team 1, McCleskey and Atkinson deployed to Vietnam again, training Vietnamese special operations forces.

Atkinson, McCleskey remembered, had a “sterling reputation” as an instructor. His youth spent in a native fishing village made Atkinson excellent at connecting with and training the local soldiers. McCleskey said, “Sol stood out as someone special in a community of special people.”

After his second deployment, Atkinson moved his wife, JoAnn, and their two daughters to Key West, Florida, as a dive instructor at the famously difficult Army Special Forces dive school. There, Atkinson earned the nickname “the mean machine.”

Rick Woolard was one Atkinson’s students at Key West in 1967. He recalls days when Atkinson was in charge of PT, flutter kicks were one of his favorite exercises to have the trainees do — except he picked a grassy area infested with ants and glass to do them in.

“I think he got a kick out of it. He would count while we did it, and we’d lie there and do the exercise while the ants feasted on us,” Woolard said. “He had a little bit of, you know, a little bit of sadism in him, like most of us do.”

Solomon Atkinson early in his Navy career (left). A magazine that once chronicled Atkinson’s missions on Navy Underwater Demolition Teams. (Courtesy photo/Atkinson family).

The Key West facility had another group of students under Atkinson’s training: NASA astronauts. All 64 astronauts in the Apollo and Gemini programs, including Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

Atkinson’s third and final deployment to Vietnam came in June 1968. Atkinson, Woolard, and Burwell were all in SEAL Team 2 for this deployment, and their mission was to keep a shipping channel to Saigon open in the Rung Sat Special Zone.

This area sits inSác Forest, which became known to troops who fought there as the “forest of assassins.” Woolard headed up one team, while Silver Star recipient Lt. John Brewton led the other team that Atkinson and Burwell were on.

Atkinson would be the platoon chief for this deployment.

It was on a patrol on this deployment that the SEALs’ ambush accidentally used the dead tree for a claymore.

The blast momentarily knocked out both Atkinson and Burwell. When Burwell came to, he saw Atkinson had taken a worse hit than he had.

“We got right back up and started shooting, but Sol had a lot of blood on his face and lost some teeth, but he got right back on it. Sol wasn’t going to just lay there,” Burwell said. “He was serious about everything, and we had some enemy out there. He was wanting to get back on to that for sure.”

After his third deployment, Atkinson took on perhaps the strangest, and certainly most secret, mission of his career, training members of the Green Light Teams. The hand-picked teams were charged with an operation that was part James Bond, part suicide mission. The teams were trained to carry portable nuclear bombs — B-54 Special Atomic Demolition Munition — into Eastern Europe, plant them, and, should war erupt, blow them up — hopefully after getting clear of the blast zone.

Overcoming Addiction and Service To Veterans

Atkinson retired from the Navy in 1973 and returned to Metlakatla. He struggled with alcoholism but met a pastor who was also a Vietnam veteran and brought him into a local church. Soon, Atkinson and his wife became born-again Christians and Atkinson went on to champion his fellow veterans in his community and across Alaska. He became the Mayor of Metlakatla in 1978, serving until 2001.

Burwell had always known Atkinson as a man of few words. Learning that Atkinson had become a devout Christian and mayor blew Burwell away. Where he was once quiet and stoic, he now would pray with friends over the phone.

“He would pray some of the most beautiful prayers for people,” Burwell said.

Caitlin Steinberg, a historian and executive director of Operation Green Faces, met Atkinson in his later years and grew close to his family while interviewing Atkinson for a book on his life.

“His work with the church impacted, I cannot tell you how many lives. The people he helped have spoken to me and said, ‘Sol pulled me out of drugs,’ and ‘Sol would go find me at parties and bring me home because he knew I was struggling,’” Steinberg said.

Sol told Steinberg that Christianity saved him and was the only reason he pulled out of addiction and PTSD. He continued his mission to help his fellow veterans and helped found the first veterans association in the area, the Metlakatla Veterans Association.

Helping local vets file VA paperwork, including obtaining VA home loans.

Atkinson died in 2019 and was transported from Ketchikan’s morgue back to Metlakatla via a fleet of 22 fishing vessels. The lead ship transporting Atkinson’s casket was his grandson’s boat. SEALs from SEAL Team 1 carried Atkinson’s casket for 2 miles to his final resting place, refusing to allow anyone else to help because it was Atkinson’s last request.

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taskandpurpose.com · by Joshua Skovlund · September 12, 2023

17. Two Cheers for the Cold War Liberals (book review)

Excerpt:

Conclusion

Moyn has important messages for today’s liberals. In the face of increasing challenges from within and without, they cannot simply keep returning to the well of past glories to revive themselves. They cannot keep asking the American people, and the world, to entrust them with power because “the other guy is worse,” whether the other guy is Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping. They have to adapt liberalism to changing circumstances and new challenges.

But Cold War liberalism still has much to offer today’s thinkers and policymakers. An emphasis on restraint, humility, irony, and pluralism is invaluable for a nation that has recently been bewitched by its own power and self-righteousness. And yet, as Cold War liberals demonstrated, this cautious temperament need not be an obstacle to taking bold steps in domestic and global affairs.

Moyn errs when he concludes that Cold War liberals “foreclosed” on “a future of freedom and equality.” Instead, what they really foreclosed on is something Judith Shklar called “the essence of radicalism … the idea that man can do with himself and with his society whatever he wishes.” There is much to be said for opposing this mirage while remaining open to justice, reform, and an active but prudent global role.

Two Cheers for the Cold War Liberals - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Joseph Stieb · September 15, 2023

Samuel Moyn, Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023).

U.S. liberals have been in a defensive crouch for the past decade. Their champion Barack Obama left domestic and foreign critics alike unsatisfied with his attempt to refashion American foreign policy. Now, with authoritarianism on the rise, they have come under fire from those on both the left and right who want to reduce the country’s global role. In response, some liberal thinkers have looked back nostalgically to the early days of the Cold War, seeking inspiration from a time when robust liberal internationalism seemed capable of saving the world.

In his latest book, Samuel Moyn jumps into this conversation to argue that nothing could be worse for modern liberals than lionizing Cold War liberalism. This tradition, he claims, has constrained the liberal imagination, rendering it politically uninspiring and vulnerable to conservative critique. Liberals must instead rediscover earlier traditions of “perfectionism and progressivism” and the use of the state for positive ends.

There are certainly good grounds to criticize Cold War liberalism. But Moyn’s book, like other similar critiques, has a classic baby-bathwater problem. Cold War liberals had many strengths, and their insights remain relevant to contemporary foreign policy debates. Revisiting their legacy is an opportunity to reconsider the enduring challenge of wedding humility and action.

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Cold War thinkers like the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr fully appreciated the limits of human nature and the tragic pitfalls of trying to remake the world according to theoretical prescriptions. Reeling from totalitarianism, world war, and genocide, they contended that people had an endless capacity for self-righteousness and self-delusion. The United States could still play a positive role in the world, they argued, but only if it remained critical about its own power.

These thinkers did not mutilate liberalism “almost beyond recognition,” but rather drew on key liberal traditions that emphasized pluralism and opposition to concentrated power. It is odd that Moyn, a critic of liberal overreach in U.S. foreign policy, would dismiss the cautious Cold War liberals, who opposed utopian visions as the roads to hell. Far from being mere apologists for U.S. might, they encouraged Americans to recognize that their power, idealism, and hubris could inflict great harms on the world. In the wake of disasters like the Iraq War, today’s liberals should build on these insights rather than canning them.

Moyn vs. Cold War Liberals

To develop his argument that Cold War liberalism represents “a betrayal of liberalism itself,” Moyn profiles six thinkers: Judith Shklar, Isaiah Berlin, Karl Popper, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Hannah Arendt, and Lionel Trilling. He argues that the horrors of mid-century history, which many of them experienced as refugees, led them to adopt an extremely dark view of human nature and abandon ideals of progress and emancipation for fear that idealistic mass politics led to totalitarianism.

The most compelling parts of this book examine how these liberals reinvented their own intellectual lineage. They reformed their worldviews by articulating an “anti-canon” of proto-totalitarian thinkers, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Georg Hegel, and Karl Marx to serve as foils. Cold War liberals such as Karl Popper warned that these figures were proto-totalitarians who believed they had “discovered laws of history which enable them to prophesy the course of historical events.” Their totalitarian descendants in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union then established themselves as elite vanguards seeking to force society toward utopian ends while re-educating or liquidating any resistors.

Moyn argues that after rejecting the intellectual legacy of these thinkers, Cold War liberals formed a new canon that emphasized defenders of liberty and restrained government, including John Locke and Adam Smith. They also adopted a mix of Freudian and Christian ideas on self-denial and sin. These shifts, as Moyn and others argue, forged a liberalism more akin to libertarianism, which sidelined collective action, the common good, and the benevolent state in favor of merely resisting evils such as totalitarianism.

Many historians have explored how totalitarianism chastened liberal thought and pushed it toward the political center. Moyn adds to this conversation by showing how some liberal thinkers were already altering their own tradition from within before forces like the Vietnam War and economic stagnation undermined the liberal consensus. Neoconservatism and free-market neoliberalism filled the gap and ushered in a more unequal society and a more conservative political landscape.

The Need for Niebuhr

To reverse these setbacks, Moyn hopes that liberals will rediscover strains of their history that emphasize the power of reason to positively shape human affairs, individual emancipation, and the importance of mass political action for a healthy democracy. This challenge merits consideration, but his dismissal of Cold War liberalism as a “catastrophe” is overstated, and carries risks of its own. As Cold War liberalism’s defenders have argued, there is a lot worth salvaging in this tradition, especially its ethos of restraint, caution, and humility. This tradition is particularly valuable for rethinking the premises of U.S. foreign policy after decades of liberal fantasies and overreach.

No figure better elucidated than the influential Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. Moyn omitted Niebuhr from this book in order to highlight less-known but equally interesting figures. Dodging Niebuhr, however, weakens the case against Cold War liberalism as a whole by avoiding its most profound thinker.

Niebuhr not only exemplified the strengths of Cold War liberal thought but demonstrated that its appreciation of human weaknesses was no obstacle to positive action. In his early career, he aligned with the progressive Social Gospel movement, but Niebuhr subsequently moved away from this optimistic creed beginning in the 1920s. He built a philosophy that he called “Christian realism” on the premise that the selfishness, pride, and lust for power embedded in human nature placed limits on idealistic plans to improve the world.

For Niebuhr, nothing exemplified this tendency more than the Soviet Union, which in 1952 he described as “a system which has, demonically, distilled injustice and cruelty out of its original promise of a higher justice.” Communism’s cruelty derived from “the fanatic certainty that it knows the end toward which history must move; and by its consequent readiness to sacrifice every value of life for the achievement of this end.” Recognizing the Soviet system’s inhumanity, Niebuhr and many of his liberal contemporaries became committed if critical Cold Warriors.

Communism, for Niebuhr, was particularly dangerous because it was so appealing to liberals. Niebuhr lamented that prewar liberalism was “too enamored of the function of reason in life,” naive about human nature, and overly sympathetic to the Soviet idea that life could be managed by centralized, rational planning. Furthermore, he believed that idealists like Henry Wallace and many liberal Protestants needed to recognize that institutions like the United Nations and a conciliatory foreign policy could not defend the free world from aggressors like the Nazis or Soviets.

As the United States achieved a position of unprecedented power in the Cold War, Niebuhr argued that it needed a more realistic view of human nature, world affairs, and itself. Eschewing the Social Gospel’s pacifism, he asserted that exercising power was unavoidable in the anarchic international system where truly evil forces lurked. Foreign policy required occasional ethical compromises: “we take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.”

Nonetheless, Americans’ belief in their own innocence and exceptionalism, which Niebuhr called a “Messianic consciousness,” was perilous because it could deceive them into thinking they were uniquely virtuous and incapable of causing evil. While he supported containment and the rebuilding of Europe, he criticized both McCarthyite hysteria and reckless foreign interventions, especially the Vietnam War. Crucially, he questioned the idea that the United States could remake distant societies in its own image, viewing this as an egotistic belief that theory and reason could orchestrate change in complex societies.

The crux of Niebuhr’s thought is that any nation or person is capable of generating great evil, and the more they convince themselves that they cannot do so, the more likely that they will. To play a responsible global role, Americans’ idealism should come to terms with “the limits of all human striving, the fragmentariness of all human wisdom … and the mixture of good and evil in all human virtue.”

In the domestic realm, these principles guided Niebuhr’s views but did not make him a reactionary. He defended social welfare programs and government regulation of business, advocated for labor and civil rights, and even influenced Martin Luther King Jr.’s worldview. This undercuts Moyn’s argument that “political optimism and possibility were exhausted.” To the contrary, thinkers like Niebuhr helped fuel a period of postwar liberal creativity, which advanced transformative social programs, supported social justice movements, and helped to build lasting international institutions.

A Tradition Worth Salvaging

Moyn has been calling for new thinking to counter liberal and neoconservative excesses, but his banishing of Cold War liberalism eschews an opportunity to build a more judicious foreign policy. As Christopher Chivvis has argued, the Cold War liberal emphasis on restraint, caution, and humility can also inspire fresh thinking in contemporary U.S. foreign policy. Moyn is a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute, a restraint-oriented think tank that seeks to end what it sees as the disastrous post-Cold War pursuit of liberal hegemony. Why, then, not draw on aspects of Cold War liberalism, as some of his colleagues have done, to critique the triumphalist ideology and exceptionalism that have distorted recent U.S. policy? After all, not only neoconservatives but many liberals endorsed the Iraq War on the grounds that the United States had the right — if not the duty — to control global affairs and alter the course of history.

Some liberal supporters of the Iraq War cited the Cold War liberal tradition to justify new crusades while ignoring their predecessors’ cautious ethos. Paul Berman declared that U.S. policy should operate from the premise that “everyone, all over the world, would some day want to live according to the same fundamental values, and ought to be helped to do so.” They endorsed long-term nation-building projects both for security reasons and to foster liberal democracy in places with no experience of it. George Packer, for instance, hoped invading Iraq might break “the seal of tyranny in the Arab world” and let in “fresh liberal air.” Some, like Michael Ignatieff, backed “imperial policing” for the United States, including imposing peace over vast swathes of unstable territory.

This spirit of complacent universalism and hyper-ambition permeated the policy establishment in the 1990s and 2000s. When one thinks of Secretary of State Madeline Albright declaring the United States as the “indispensable nation” or George W. Bush’s talking of U.S. power “ending tyranny in our world” or that “history has a visible direction,” one can almost hear the Cold War liberals’ objections from beyond the grave.

A nation with a more Niebuhr-ian sense of tragedy, irony, and its own capacity to do wrong might have eschewed the lengthy crusades in Iraq and Afghanistan. It might have been more attuned to much of the world’s resentment of U.S. power rather than insisting upon its innocence.

Drawing on Cold War liberalism would suggest a foreign policy based more on resisting aggression and cruelty, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, rather than transforming foreign societies and maintaining hegemony. In addition, this ethos would suggest fostering openness and building institutions that encourage cooperation and help restrain U.S. action. Democratization, in this approach, would be best pursued by supporting openness and exchange, constraining authoritarian aggression, and by setting an example of a thriving, inclusive democracy.

Moyn maintains that institutions don’t restrain U.S. power, and plenty of examples support his case. But he misses the point that institutions provide incentives for large nations to legitimize their power and reduce other countries’ fears by constraining themselves, however inconsistently, within predictable rules and procedures. As the George H. W. Bush administration demonstrated in the Gulf War and the reunification of Germany, even a superpower at the height of unipolarity can benefit from operating through institutions and working with both allies and rivals. As many commentators have observed, the first Bush administration, if not its successors, restrained itself by eschewing regime change in Iraq and pledging not to expand NATO into the Soviet backyard.

But even a more prudent foreign policy requires significant U.S. power, as the Cold War liberals would have acknowledged. Power remains the coin of the realm in world politics, and China’s menacing of Taiwan or Russia’s open aggression cannot be countered by norms and institutions alone. As Obama, a fan of Niebuhr, said in his 2009 Nobel Prize Speech, “Evil does exist in the world … a non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies … To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.”

Liberal Legacies

What about Moyn’s claim that Cold War liberals betrayed liberalism itself? It would be more accurate to say that they adapted an alternate set of longstanding liberal themes for a new age. For one, liberals and republicans have long emphasized the perils of concentrated power in any person, class, race, gender, or branch of government, which they believe leads to corruption and abuse because of humanity’s “flawed nature.” Abigail Adams put this point succinctly: “All men would be tyrants if they could.” This principle is usually applied to domestic concepts like federalism and the separation of powers, but in foreign affairs it suggests that no country, the United States included, should be trusted (or trust itself) with overwhelming power — hence the need for rules, institutions, and a self-interrogating ethos.

Moreover, Cold War liberalism reflected a lineage of pluralism that is also worth defending today. James Madison argued in Federalist 10 that a free society would always generate “factions,” or groups “united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest.” These could be based on class, religion, or political conviction, but their origins were “sown in the nature of man.” Niebuhr similarly held that “the limitations of the human imagination, the easy subservience of reason to prejudice and passion, and the consequent persistence of irrational egoism, particularly in group behavior, make social conflict an inevitability.”

The solution was to defend individual freedom while creating norms and institutions that mitigate factionalism’s harmful effects and protect minorities.

In the foreign policy realm, a pluralistic outlook might chasten U.S. assumptions that their ideals represent the “single sustainable model for national success.” It might help Americans better understand why societies with different value systems often resent the influence of U.S. culture.

Moyn wants liberalism to “redeem itself as a framework for the realization of universal freedom and equality” and the collective pursuit of “the highest life.” But Cold War liberals recognized that agreement about this lofty concept is fleeting and that achieving such agreement might require a dangerous concentration of power. Moyn should treat them not as traitors to liberalism’s essence but as fraternal participants in a family quarrel.

Conclusion

Moyn has important messages for today’s liberals. In the face of increasing challenges from within and without, they cannot simply keep returning to the well of past glories to revive themselves. They cannot keep asking the American people, and the world, to entrust them with power because “the other guy is worse,” whether the other guy is Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping. They have to adapt liberalism to changing circumstances and new challenges.

But Cold War liberalism still has much to offer today’s thinkers and policymakers. An emphasis on restraint, humility, irony, and pluralism is invaluable for a nation that has recently been bewitched by its own power and self-righteousness. And yet, as Cold War liberals demonstrated, this cautious temperament need not be an obstacle to taking bold steps in domestic and global affairs.

Moyn errs when he concludes that Cold War liberals “foreclosed” on “a future of freedom and equality.” Instead, what they really foreclosed on is something Judith Shklar called “the essence of radicalism … the idea that man can do with himself and with his society whatever he wishes.” There is much to be said for opposing this mirage while remaining open to justice, reform, and an active but prudent global role.

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Joseph Stieb is an assistant professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. He is the author of The Regime Change Consensus: Iraq in American Politics, 1990–2003. He has published articles in Diplomatic History, Modern American History, The International History Review, War on the Rocks, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, American Purpose, and elsewhere.

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warontherocks.com · by Joseph Stieb · September 15, 2023

18. The Myth of Chinese Diversionary War

Excerpts:

Even if diversion as a tactic is rare—and perhaps unlikely in the future—domestic unrest in China can create incentives to use force for other reasons. Chinese analysts often refer to the idea of “internal troubles, external aggression” (neiyou waihuan) to describe the “century of national humiliation,” a period that began in the mid-nineteenth century when the Qing dynasty’s decline and internal turmoil allowed foreign powers to seize land through “unequal treaties” and establish spheres of influence in the country. Later Chinese leaders have often feared that other countries would similarly seek to profit from China’s weakness, so the government has become sensitive to perceived external challenges or threats in periods of domestic duress. Historically, Chinese leaders have used force in such moments as a way to signal resolve to China’s adversaries, not to divert the public’s attention or increase social cohesion.

In October 1962, for example, China attacked India during the calamity of the Great Leap Forward after India had increased its military presence along the contested border, including in areas across from Tibet where the Chinese government had just suppressed a revolt. According to a senior Chinese general at the time, India strengthened its presence on the border because it saw China as “weak and easily bullied” amid famine, revolt, and tensions with the United States and the Soviet Union. Mao’s goal was not to divert the public’s attention but to stabilize the border by destroying the new Indian positions and correct any perception that China was weak.

China reacted similarly in September 2012, when Japan purchased three of the disputed islands in the group known as the Diaoyu in China and the Senkaku in Japan. China likened the purchase to “an atomic bomb dropped on China,” launched regular maritime patrols within the territorial seas of the islands to challenge Tokyo’s control, greenlit anti-Japan protests in numerous cities, and froze high-level relations with Japan for several years. At the time, the party was preparing for a contentious, once-in-a-decade transfer of power at the upcoming 18th Party Congress. From Beijing’s perspective, Japan’s move on the islands appeared to be designed to exploit this instability in the highest levels of the leadership, which warranted a tough reaction.

If China’s economic woes get worse, its leaders will probably become more sensitive to perceived external challenges, especially on issues such as Taiwan. Increased pressure on China could easily backfire and motivate Beijing to become more aggressive in order to demonstrate its resolve to other states despite its internal difficulties. In times of domestic unrest, China may lash out, but that reflects the logic of deterrence, not diversion.

The Myth of Chinese Diversionary War

Domestic Turmoil Won’t Make Beijing Launch an Attack—But Will Make It More Likely to React to External Threats

By M. Taylor Fravel

September 15, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by M. Taylor Fravel · September 15, 2023

As the growth of China’s economy slows, politicians in the West are increasingly concerned that Beijing will lash out to deflect domestic attention from its internal problems. In August 2023, for example, U.S. President Joe Biden described China’s economic difficulties as a “ticking time bomb,” suggesting that China’s woes might propel its leaders to “do bad things.”

Scholars and analysts have reached similar conclusions. Richard Haass, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, has argued that in response to China’s economic slowdown, Beijing could embrace “even more aggressive nationalism” as a basis for legitimacy and accelerate efforts to unify Taiwan with China. Scholars Michael Beckley and Hal Brands have offered a similar analysis, suggesting that China will likely pursue expansion in response to slowing growth, “making nationalism a crutch for a wounded regime.” Indeed, concerns about China using aggression as a diversionary tactic are perennial. In 2015, Robert Blackwill, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Kurt Campbell, a co-founder of the Center for a New American Security, assessed that Chinese President Xi Jinping may “even seek to escalate territorial disputes against Japan or South China Sea claimants as a way of redirecting domestic attention away from the economic situation.”

Such predictions draw on the idea of “diversionary wars,” conflicts primarily fought to defend the parochial interests of leaders who seek to stay in power. According to the theory, citizens often rally around the flag and increase their support for their government in times of conflict with external powers. Knowing this, political leaders who believe they are losing popular support and fear ouster might start a war either to distract the population from domestic problems and increase social cohesion, or to appear more competent as a successful commander in chief, thus strengthening their hold on power.

Yet Chinese leaders have rarely, if ever, started a conflict purely as a diversion, even during moments of domestic crisis. That is, in part, because the Chinese state has more control over public opinion and society, including protests, than do other governments. When the Chinese economy falters, the danger is not diversionary war. It is that China’s leaders will feel weak and become more sensitive to external challenges, potentially lashing out to show strength and deter other countries from taking advantage of their insecurity.

PLENTY OF OPPORTUNITY

Since 1949, China has frequently suffered from significant ethnic and political unrest and economic shocks. But virtually no leaders have started crises or wars to distract the Chinese public—even when they should have been quite likely to do so according to the logic of diversionary war.

In 1958, Mao Zedong created an economic disaster when he sought to rapidly industrialize the country during the Great Leap Forward. Tens of millions of Chinese people starved to death while the economy collapsed. Around the same time, revolts rocked the Tibetan areas of China and the Dalai Lama fled to India. Yet despite such upheaval, Chinese leaders did not initiate conflict to divert attention and increase unity but instead stabilized relations with neighboring countries. In 1960, Beijing signed mutual nonaggression treaties with several neighbors and a defense pact with North Korea. From 1960 to 1963, China settled some of its disputed boundaries in treaties with six states, compromising over contested land. It even offered a “package deal,” or swap of territorial claims, to India in April 1960 to resolve their territorial dispute. Although China attacked India in 1962 over the disputed border, diversionary motives played no role in Beijing’s decision-making. China merely wanted to show India its resolve and deter future challenges on the border in a time of internal weakness.

Starting in the mid 1960s, China once again suffered significant unrest during Mao’s Cultural Revolution and the economic contraction it created, potentially motivating Chinese leaders to find ways to distract the public from the unfolding chaos. In 1965, China did dispatch troops to help North Vietnam fight the United States (with troop levels peaking in 1967), but its support for Hanoi began in 1950, far predating China’s domestic unrest. China’s leaders increased their support for Hanoi as a reaction to U.S. escalation in the Vietnam War and as a way to compete with the Soviet Union for clout among socialist states.

During the Tiananmen protests, Beijing attacked Chinese citizens, not foreign powers.

In 1969, China ambushed Soviet forces on the disputed island known as Zhenbao in China and as Damansky in Russia—perhaps the only crisis in modern Chinese history that could count as a diversionary conflict. Some scholars, such as the Chinese Communist Party historian Danhui Li, contend that Mao authorized the ambush to unite the party and end the radical phase of the Cultural Revolution at the Ninth Party Congress in April 1969. But if Mao wanted to divert attention and increase unity through heightened tensions with a foreign adversary, he would have acted a year or two earlier, such as in 1967, when he ordered the military to quell unrest in many provinces. Instead, the growing threat from the Soviet Union probably motivated Mao to attack the island. The Soviet Union had doubled its troops on China’s northern border, the two countries were skirmishing along the Amur and Ussuri Rivers, and in 1968 Moscow intervened in Czechoslovakia, declaring that it had the right to intervene in the internal affairs of other socialist states, a statement with chilling implications for China.

Chinese leaders could have used a diversion in 1989 during the Tiananmen demonstrations, which coincided with a significant slowdown in economic growth. Yet Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, used violence against Chinese citizens, not against foreign powers. Moreover, after the government violently suppressed protesters, China adopted a conciliatory posture abroad to help stabilize the party and society at home. In international affairs, Deng called for China to be “calm, calm, and more calm,” which meant avoiding external conflict—the opposite of diversion. From 1990 to 1992, China normalized relations with many countries from which it had become estranged during the Cold War, including Indonesia, Singapore, South Korea, and Vietnam. China also signed compromise boundary agreements to settle territorial disputes with Laos, Vietnam, and the Soviet Union—again, the opposite of what diversionary logic would predict.

China’s 2015 stock market crash might have been another ideal moment for diversionary action. From June 2015 to February 2016, the Shanghai index dropped by almost 45 percent, creating discontent among retail investors seeking to ride the market’s rise before the bubble burst. Yet China did not initiate a violent crisis in response to these economic shocks but focused internally on stabilizing equity markets and capital flows.

LASHING OUT?

China’s behavior presents a conundrum. Its leaders have encountered strong domestic incentives to engage in diversionary crises or wars but almost never do so. Contrary to diversionary logic, they have often engaged in conciliatory and cooperative behavior abroad when faced with significant unrest at home. The answer lies in China’s Leninist institutions, which penetrate society, and the government’s strong control over its population. The party also shapes public opinion by controlling information through censorship, news directives for the media, and propaganda. All else equal, China is less vulnerable to domestic unrest, especially after 1989, than other authoritarian states.

The government is adept at selectively permitting protests that do not target the party. In the early years of the twenty-first century, local protests over economic issues such as land use steadily grew. A permissive approach toward these kinds of protests likely helped the central government identify poor governance in the provinces. Anti-foreign protests, although infrequent, usually receive tacit permission from the government but seldom last for long.

China’s increasingly sophisticated social surveillance network helps the government stamp out threats to the party. In November 2022, widespread protests erupted in China over the government’s “zero COVID” policy. Although the protests were remarkable, they were also short-lived, lasting only a few days, because police could use cellphone location data to identify and detain participants. Even if discontent with the party grows, China has many tools to quell domestic unrest before the government ever feels compelled to resort to a diversionary conflict.

China’s lack of diversionary behavior also highlights a flaw in the logic of waging a diversionary war. According to such a rationale, leaders looking to boost their popular support should start a conflict with a stronger adversary—because prevailing over a worthy opponent highlights a leader’s acumen—or over a nationalist issue that the public cares greatly about. Yet both are dangerous gambits because if leaders initiate a diversionary crisis or war that fails to produce the desired results, they risk expediting the collapse of their government.

In other words, it is difficult for a leader to find a target that carries minimal risk but can also boost popular support. China could easily start and win a conflict with the Philippines over the disputed Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea, where Manila beached a naval vessel in the late 1990s to underscore Philippine sovereignty over the reef. Yet the Chinese public would likely be unimpressed—they would expect China to defeat a much weaker state. And although the Chinese public views Taiwan as a much more salient issue, a conflict over the island would be costly, and the result uncertain. The worst outcome for any Chinese leader would be to try to take the island but fail, which induces caution.

DETERRENCE, NOT DIVERSION

Even if diversion as a tactic is rare—and perhaps unlikely in the future—domestic unrest in China can create incentives to use force for other reasons. Chinese analysts often refer to the idea of “internal troubles, external aggression” (neiyou waihuan) to describe the “century of national humiliation,” a period that began in the mid-nineteenth century when the Qing dynasty’s decline and internal turmoil allowed foreign powers to seize land through “unequal treaties” and establish spheres of influence in the country. Later Chinese leaders have often feared that other countries would similarly seek to profit from China’s weakness, so the government has become sensitive to perceived external challenges or threats in periods of domestic duress. Historically, Chinese leaders have used force in such moments as a way to signal resolve to China’s adversaries, not to divert the public’s attention or increase social cohesion.

In October 1962, for example, China attacked India during the calamity of the Great Leap Forward after India had increased its military presence along the contested border, including in areas across from Tibet where the Chinese government had just suppressed a revolt. According to a senior Chinese general at the time, India strengthened its presence on the border because it saw China as “weak and easily bullied” amid famine, revolt, and tensions with the United States and the Soviet Union. Mao’s goal was not to divert the public’s attention but to stabilize the border by destroying the new Indian positions and correct any perception that China was weak.

China reacted similarly in September 2012, when Japan purchased three of the disputed islands in the group known as the Diaoyu in China and the Senkaku in Japan. China likened the purchase to “an atomic bomb dropped on China,” launched regular maritime patrols within the territorial seas of the islands to challenge Tokyo’s control, greenlit anti-Japan protests in numerous cities, and froze high-level relations with Japan for several years. At the time, the party was preparing for a contentious, once-in-a-decade transfer of power at the upcoming 18th Party Congress. From Beijing’s perspective, Japan’s move on the islands appeared to be designed to exploit this instability in the highest levels of the leadership, which warranted a tough reaction.

If China’s economic woes get worse, its leaders will probably become more sensitive to perceived external challenges, especially on issues such as Taiwan. Increased pressure on China could easily backfire and motivate Beijing to become more aggressive in order to demonstrate its resolve to other states despite its internal difficulties. In times of domestic unrest, China may lash out, but that reflects the logic of deterrence, not diversion.

M. TAYLOR FRAVEL is Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and Director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Visiting Scholar at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University.

Foreign Affairs · by M. Taylor Fravel · September 15, 2023

19. Alongside Military Threats, China Promotes Economic ‘Integration’ With Taiwan

Alongside Military Threats, China Promotes Economic ‘Integration’ With Taiwan

Beijing unveiled a plan for a “integrated development demonstration zone” in Fujian, the Chinese province closest to Taiwan, even as it steps up military activities in the Taiwan Strait.

By Simina Mistreanu and Huizhong Wu

September 14, 2023

thediplomat.com · by Simina Mistreanu and Huizhong Wu · September 14, 2023

China is promoting new economic opportunities for Taiwanese people while at the same time ramping up military activity around the island it claims as its own.

Experts say the “carrots and sticks” approach, which Beijing has employed for years, signals a choice between peaceful “reunification” and military aggression ahead of a Taiwanese presidential election next year.

This week, China unveiled a plan for an “integrated development demonstration zone” in its southeastern Fujian province, the closest to self-governed, democratic Taiwan. Taipei strongly rejects China’s sovereignty claims.

As part of the plan, Beijing is encouraging Taiwanese companies to list on Chinese stock exchanges and is promising better conditions for Taiwanese investors and a more “relaxed” environment for travel, according to a statement Tuesday by the Communist Party’s Central Committee and the State Council, China’s Cabinet.

“The goal is to build an integrated development demonstration zone in the entire area of Fujian province to fully show the effect of Fujian as the first-choice destination for Taiwanese people and enterprises to pursue development on the mainland,” Pan Xianzhang, deputy director of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, said at a news conference Thursday.

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The economic overture comes at a time of increased Chinese military activity around Taiwan. On Thursday, Taiwan’s defense ministry said it spotted 68 Chinese warplanes and 10 warships near the island over the previous 24 hours. It said 40 of the aircraft entered Taiwan’s air defense zone, in the latest of near-daily incursions meant to threaten Taiwan’s government, which Beijing deems “separatist.”

Earlier this week, China sailed an aircraft carrier 70 miles (110 kilometers) to Taiwan’s southeast.

Pairing economic incentives with military coercion of Taiwan “is a very old playbook on China’s part,” said Drew Thompson, a research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

Many of the policies underlined in the Fujian plan, such as easy access for Taiwanese to the mainland, were already in place, making the initiative more performative than substantive, he added.

“At the end of the day, this is not an actual economic plan for integration of China with Taiwan,” Thompson said. “It’s a political tool that seeks to drive a wedge between the ruling party and that portion of the electorate that probably doesn’t support the ruling party anyway.”

Taiwan is set to have presidential elections in January. The front-runner, current Vice President William Lai, is considered by Beijing a separatist. China has refused to hold talks with Lai’s party, the Democratic Progressive Party, which has been in power since 2016.

Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council said the document was a compilation of existing policies and measures.

“It is completely one-sided wishful thinking to try and seduce our members of the public and enterprises to the mainland and integrate into their system, laws, and norms and accept the leadership of the Communist Party,” it said.

The council also urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s “insistence” on freedom and democracy.

Some of the measures zero in on outlying Taiwanese islands that are closer to Fujian province than to Taiwan’s main island, such as Matsu and Kinmen, which Chinese state media have said should play “an even more prominent role” in boosting ties.

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According to Xinhua, China’s state news agency, the plan calls for Matsu and Kinmen to be linked with the mainland via “pair cities”: Matsu with Fuzhou, and Kinmen with Xiamen. Residents of Matsu and Kinmen “can enjoy the same treatment as local residents” when living in Fuzhou and Xiamen, respectively. China also plans to pursue joint infrastructure projects, including supplying electricity and gas to the outlying islands from the mainland.

Depending on the results of Taiwan’s presidential election, the proposal from China could find support in Taipei. Presidential candidate Ko Wen-je has voiced support for expanding links between Kinmen and China, including the controversial proposal of a bridge linking Kinmen and Xiamen.

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Simina Mistreanu and Huizhong Wu

Simina Mistreanu and Huizhong Wu reported for the Associated Press from Taipei, Taiwan. The Diplomat provided additional reporting.

thediplomat.com · by Simina Mistreanu and Huizhong Wu · September 14, 2023

20. Elon Musk’s Starlink service denial in Ukraine war operation prompts Senate scrutiny over his ‘outsized role’

Elon Musk’s Starlink service denial in Ukraine war operation prompts Senate scrutiny over his ‘outsized role’

BYSTEVEN T. DENNIS, ROXANA TIRON AND BLOOMBERG

September 14, 2023 at 5:53 PM EDT

Fortune

Chairman Jack Reed said in a statement Thursday the reports on the use of Starlink exposed “serious national-security liability issues and the committee is engaged on this issue.”

“The committee is aggressively probing this issue from every angle,” he said.

Musk’s SpaceX also has become a major US contractor, launching spy satellites for the Defense Department and operating the Starlink network. The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reed said the committee will look at the broader satellite market, government contracting and “the outsized role Mr. Musk and his company have taken here.”

Reed and other senators have questioned why the decision wasn’t made by a government official.

“Neither Elon Musk, nor any private citizen, can have the last word when it comes to U.S. national security,” Reed said.

Other Democratic senators on the committee, including Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, have pressed the Defense Department for answers on why it was Musk — and not a US government official — deciding when Ukraine can use the satellite network.

Shaheen and Warren plan to send a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin asking for details on Starlink and Musk’s work in Ukraine, said a congressional aide who asked not to be named to discuss internal deliberations. The panel is not yet launching a formal investigation but rather gathering information, the aide said.

Shaheen said in a brief interview she has asked administration officials during classified briefings about control over the use of Starlink in Ukraine and has not gotten answers.

At the time of Ukraine’s request last year, Musk wasn’t getting any US funding for Starlink’s operations in Ukraine, although it currently is supported with Pentagon funds.

— With assistance by Loren Grush

Fortune

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

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