Quotes of the Day:
"Paymasters come in only two sizes: one sort shows you where the book says that you can't have what you've got coming to you; the second sort digs through the book until he finds a paragraph that lets you have what you need even if you don't rate it."
- Robert Heinlein - The Door into Summer
"You called yourself and everyone else patriots, but that's not patriotism. Patriotism is loyalty to country, loyalty to the Constitution, not loyalty to a head of state. That is the tyranny we rejected on July 4."
- Judge Amy Berman Jackson
"An ignorant mind is precisely not a spotless, empty vessel, but one that’s filled with the clutter of irrelevant or misleading life experiences, theories, facts, intuitions, strategies, algorithms, heuristics, metaphors, and hunches that regrettably have the look and feel of useful and accurate knowledge. . .What’s curious is that, in many cases, incompetence does not leave people disoriented, perplexed, or cautious. Instead, the incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence, buoyed by something that feels to them like knowledge."
- by Justin Kruger and David Dunning
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JULY 4 (Putin's War)
2. New details emerge about the 2020 Bonhomme Richard fire, ahead of censure of three-star
3. Ukraine's shadow: Deadly crises like Somalia starved of aid
4. US to send Ukraine advanced NASAMS air defense weapons in $820 million package
5. Sons of Liberty: Case Study for Information Advantage in Resistance Movements
6. Army Bases That Honor Confederate Traitors Could Soon Be Renamed for These Heroes
7. Opinion | Think democracy isn’t endangered? Just look what happened in Hong Kong.
8. Cyber Yankee: The Marine Corps Is Laser Focused On Cyberwar
9. Are we witnessing a military revolution on Ukraine battlefields?
10. How a Military Base in Illinois Helps Keep Weapons Flowing to Ukraine
11. 'Hell on earth': Ukrainian soldiers describe eastern front
12. High cost of Russian gains in Ukraine may limit new advance
13. US Sues to Block Spy-Tech Deal
14. US and Russian ambassadors to China clash over Ukraine war at Beijing forum
15. ‘If Putin Was a Woman . . .’
16. A Modern-Day Frederick the Great? The End of Short, Sharp Wars
17. The Myth of the Global
18. Millions more sent into lockdown after Covid-19 'flare up'
19. The Best Evidence of a Future Ukrainian Victory is the Country’s Valiant Past: Part II - Ukraine’s warrior farmer roots
20. Opinion | Nearly every American has a foreboding the country they love is losing its way
21. America Is in Denial by Mitt Romney
22. Are US Weapons Supplied To Ukraine Ending Up On DarkNet Marketplaces?
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JULY 4 (Putin's War)
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JULY 4
Karolina Hird, George Barros, Grace Mappes, and Frederick W. Kagan
July 4, 7:00 pm 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.
Russian President Vladimir Putin celebrated the Russian seizure of Lysychansk and the Luhansk Oblast border and appeared to direct the Russian military to conduct an operational pause. Putin met with Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu on July 4 to discuss recent Russian gains in Luhansk Oblast and presented Colonel General Alexander Lapin and Major General Esedulla Abachev with the “Hero of Russia” award for their leadership during the Lysychansk operation.[1] Putin and Shoigu presented the capture of Lysychansk and Luhansk Oblast as a major victory for Russian forces in Ukraine. Putin also stated that the Russian units that participated in the battle for Lysychansk should rest to increase their combat capabilities.[2] Putin‘s public comment was likely meant to signal his concern for the welfare of his troops in the face of periodic complaints in Russia about the treatment of Russian soldiers. His comment was also likely accurate—Russian troops that fought through Severodonetsk and Lysychansk very likely do need a significant period in which to rest and refit before resuming large-scale offensive operations. It is not clear, however, that the Russian military will accept the risks of a long enough operational pause to allow these likely exhausted forces to regain their strength.
Former Russian military commander Igor Girkin, an ardent Russian nationalist who commanded militants during the 2014 war in Donbas, posted a scathing critique of the Kremlin’s handling of the war on his Telegram channel and questioned the significance of the seizure of Lysychansk. He suggested that Russian forces had paid too high a price for a limited gain. In a series of Telegram posts published prior to Putin’s meeting with Shoigu on July 4, Girkin complained that Russian forces have failed to meet the announced goals of the “second stage of the special operation” (the operations in eastern Ukraine following Russia’s retreat from Kyiv) to his nearly 400,000 subscribers.[3] Girkin noted that the Ukrainian defense of Lysychansk was deliberately designed to inflict maximum damage on Russian troops and burn through Russian manpower and equipment. He strongly suggested that accepting battle on the Ukrainians‘ terms was a significant misstep by the Russian leadership.[4] Girkin stated (before Putin’s remarks were made public) that Russian troops need time to rest and replenish in order to recover their offensive potential and noted that the lack of individual soldier replacements and unit rotations is severely degrading morale. He warned, however, that taking time to reconstitute offensive capability would allow Ukrainian troops to seize the initiative and further threaten Russian gains.[5] Girkin additionally claimed that Russian forces have limited prospects of advancing elsewhere in Ukraine due to Ukrainian personnel and equipment superiority.[6]
Girkin’s critique is a noteworthy example of the way Russian milbloggers and military enthusiasts have become disillusioned with the Kremlin’s handling and execution of operations in Ukraine, particularly after the dramatic failed river crossing attempt at Bilohorivka in early May.[7] Girkin’s statements directly undermine the Kremlin’s efforts to frame Lysychansk as a significant victory or turning point and show that the disillusionment amongst ultra-nationalist elements in the Russian information space continues to run deep. Girkin’s assessment of Russian military failures notably aligns with much of ISW’s (and other Western agencies’ and experts’) analysis, suggesting that he and some other milbloggers continue to make and publish assessments of the situation and forecasts independent of the Kremlin line. Girkin likely hopes to use his status as a prominent former participant in the war in Donbas in 2014 to persuade Putin to take certain measures to secure Russian success in a war that Girkin still thinks is justified and necessary—specifically mobilizing the Russian population for war on a much larger scale.[8] Girkin, along with other members of the Russian nationalist milblogger space, will likely continue to offer critiques of the Kremlin’s line on operations in Ukraine to advocate for general mobilization and more competent Russian military leadership.
Ukrainian forces are increasingly targeting Russian military infrastructure with indirect fire and US-provided HIMARS systems deep in occupied territory. Ukrainian forces reportedly struck Russian ammunition depots in Dibrivne, Kharkiv Oblast, (close to the frontline) on July 4 and Snizhne, Donetsk Oblast, (approximately 75 km from the frontlines) overnight on July 3-4 following a strike on one of four Russian ammunition depots in Melitopol on July 3.[9] The Ukrainian General Staff also published a video on July 4 of a Ukrainian HIMARS (high mobility artillery rocket system) operating in an unspecified area of Zaporizhia Oblast.[10] The increased ability of Ukrainian forces to target critical Russian military facilities with Western-provided HIMARS demonstrates how Western military aid provides Ukraine with new and necessary military capabilities.
Key Takeaways
- Russian leadership may be setting conditions for an operational pause following the seizure of Lysychansk and the Luhansk Oblast boundary.
- Russian forces are consolidating territorial and administrative control over Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.
- Russian forces continued offensive operations to the east of Bakhmut to prepare for advances on Bakhmut and Siversk.
- Russian forces continued limited and unsuccessful assaults north of Kharkiv City.
- Ukrainian partisan activity is targeting Russian railway lines around Melitopol and Tokmak.
- Russian leadership may be setting conditions for the conscription of Ukrainian citizens living in occupied territories.
We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because those 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 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.
- Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and three supporting efforts)
- Subordinate Main Effort—Encirclement of Ukrainian troops in the cauldron between Izyum and Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts
- Supporting Effort 1—Kharkiv City
- Supporting Effort 2—Southern Axis
- Mobilization and force generation efforts
- Activities in Russian-occupied Areas
Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine
Subordinate Main Effort—Southern Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk Oblasts (Russian objective: Encircle Ukrainian forces in Eastern Ukraine and capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
Russian forces took measures to consolidate control of captured territory around Severodonetsk and Lysychansk on July 4.[11] The Russian Ministry of Defense announced that Russian forces completed the capture of Luhansk Oblast with the capture of Lysychansk.[12] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops are fortifying their positions around Lysychansk and Bilohorivka.[13] Severodonetsk Mayor Oleksandr Stryuk also noted that Russian forces are trying to establish an administrative presence in Severodonetsk and have established a commandant’s office to replace the local government.[14] Russian forces will likely begin to institute administrative occupational control over Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.
Russian forces continued offensive operations to the east of Bakhmut on July 4 to prepare for subsequent offensive operations toward Bakhmut and Siversk.[15] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted a reconnaissance in force on the outskirts of Berestove and undertook offensive operations around the Vuhledar Power Plant, Vasylivka, Spirne, Klynove, and Mayorsk.[16] Russian forces will likely continue efforts to move west of the T1302 Bakhmut-Lysychansk highway to eventually drive on Bakhmut and Siversk, although their ability to do so successfully following losses sustained during attempts to take Lysychansk is questionable.[17] NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) remotely sensed data showed fires near Spirne, Klynove, and the Vuhledar Power Plant on July 4, consistent with the Ukrainian General Staff’s reports.
[Source: NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System, July 4]
Russian forces conducted limited ground assaults southwest of Donetsk City to improve their tactical position in the Donetsk City-Avdiivka area on July 4.[18] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted assaults in the direction of Pobeda and Mariinka, just southwest of Donetsk City. Russian forces have reportedly occupied the dominant heights surrounding Novoselivka Druha (10km northeast of Avdiivka) and are using this position to exert fire control over Avdiivka.[19]
Russian forces continued offensive operations northwest of Slovyansk near the Kharkiv-Donetsk Oblast border and made incremental gains on July 4.[20] The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Russian forces had “partial success” in Mazanivka, about 20 km northwest of Slovyansk, and fought in Bohorodychne and Dolyna.[21] Russian forces also reportedly redeployed a battalion tactical group (BTG) from Izyum to Snizhkivka- just south of Izyum in the direction of Barvinkove, which may suggest that Russian forces are preparing for renewed offensives southeast of Izyum towards Barvinkove. NASA FIRMS data for July 4 showed large concentrations of heat anomalies in the wooded areas to the southeast of Izyum indicating probable locations for Russian indirect fire and Ukrainian counterbattery fires.
[Source: NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System, July 4]
Supporting Effort #1—Kharkiv City (Russian objective: Defend ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Izyum and prevent Ukrainian forces from reaching the Russian border)
Russian forces did not make any territorial gains on the Kharkiv City Axis on July 4. Ukrainian sources reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults on Prudyanka along the T2117 highway and Sosnivka, less than 10 km from the Russian border.[22] Russian forces continued air, artillery, and rocket strikes on Ukrainian military infrastructure and settlements north, northeast, and east of Kharkiv City.[23] Russian Telegram channel Rybar claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted spoiling attacks, likely small reconnaissance in force operations, on Russian positions near Kozacha Lopan, east of Udy.[24] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian ground forces with aviation support on the Kharkiv City Axis are focusing on restraining any Ukrainian offensive operations.[25] The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that Russian forces destroyed the temporary deployment points of the Ukrainian 92nd Mechanized and 40th Artillery Brigades in Kharkiv City.[26]
Supporting Effort #2—Southern Axis (Russian objective: Defend Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts against Ukrainian counterattacks)
Russian forces focused on regaining lost positions in northeastern Kherson Oblast on July 4. The Ukrainian General Staff reported Russian attacks on Ivanivka, Potemkyne, and Myrne.[27] Russian forces reportedly deployed 17 railway wagons with ammunition from Crimea to northern Kherson Oblast, likely to resupply Russian artillery units.[28] NASA’s FIRMS data showed abnormally high numbers of fires along the Mykolaiv-Kherson Oblast frontline on July 4, indicating intense indirect fire attacks. Russian and Ukrainian forces continued shelling across the line of contact along the entire Southern Axis on July 4.[29]
[Source: NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System, July 4]
[Source: NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System, July 4]
A Ukrainian partisan campaign may be targeting Russian rail lines near Melitopol in Zaporizhia Oblast. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported that Ukrainian partisans blew up a railway bridge near occupied Lyubimivka between Melitopol and Tokmak, Zaporizhia Oblast on July 3, likely obstructing Russian resupply efforts from Crimea to the Zaporizhia Oblast front line.[30] Ukrainian partisans derailed a separate Russian armored train carrying ammunition near Melitopol on July 2.[31] Ukrainian partisans had previously targeted Russian armored trains and locomotives in Melitopol in late April and mid-May.[32] This pattern of reported activity may indicate a coordinated partisan campaign targeting Russian rail lines.
Mobilization and Force-generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)
Russian leaders may be preparing to mobilize Ukrainian citizens in occupied areas. The Representative of the Ukrainian President in Crimea stated on July 3 that the Russian administration in Crimea issued a decree creating a “conscription commission for the mobilization of citizens in the Republic of Crimea,” which would allow Russian authorities to forcibly mobilize residents of Crimea to fight against Ukraine.[33] While the status of Crimea under Russian Federation law (but not under Ukrainian or international law) is distinct from the areas of eastern and southern Ukraine that have been occupied since February 24, this decree may set an internal Russian precedent for Russian authorities to begin forced mobilization campaigns throughout occupied parts of Ukraine to support force generation efforts in the coming months.
Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of occupied areas; set conditions for potential annexation into the Russian Federation or some other future political arrangement of Moscow’s choosing)
Russian authorities continued to set conditions for various annexation scenarios on July 4. Director of Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Kyrylo Budanov stated that Russia is preparing several annexation scenarios before September 11, the suggested date for the annexation of Ukrainian territory into the Russian Federation.[34] Budanov claimed that Russia may be preparing to join Ukrainian territories to Russia, create one large ”People’s Republic,” or annex individual territories to Russia. The suggestion of a singular, large ”People’s Republic” is novel and has not yet been discussed by Ukrainian or Russian authorities. A single ”People’s Republic” likely indicates that the Kremlin continues to hold territorial aspirations beyond the Donbas.
[34] https://www.rbc dot ua/ukr/news/kirill-budanov-voyna-zakonchitsya-sleduyushchem-1656837517.html
2. New details emerge about the 2020 Bonhomme Richard fire, ahead of censure of three-star
What if????
The Navy is a complex organization. This is quite a sad story. What saddens me is that instead of saying "what do you need, how can I help?" we actually had senior leaders basically saying not my job.
New details emerge about the 2020 Bonhomme Richard fire, ahead of censure of three-star
WASHINGTON — The initial response to the July 2020 fire that destroyed the multibillion-dollar amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard was uncoordinated and hampered by confusion as to which admiral should cobble together Navy and civilian firefighters, according to new information from the then-head of Naval Surface Forces.
The discombobulation in those early hours meant sailors may have missed a small window to contain the fire in a storage area. One admiral who said he lacked authority to issue an order pleaded with the ship’s commanding officer to get back on the ship and fight the fire, when the CO and his crew were waiting on the pier. And when that admiral — now-retired Vice Adm. Rich Brown — found the situation so dire that he called on other another command to intervene, it refused, Brown said in an interview.
Brown, who led Naval Surface Forces and Naval Surface Force Pacific from January 2018 to August 2020, told Defense News in June he set up an ad hoc chain of command to coordinate trying to save the ship that Sunday morning, after seeing lower-level leaders struggle to communicate or to fight the fire aggressively. The move came after the fleet’s operational chain of command declined to step in due to confusion over who had control over the ship.
An investigation into the fire, released in October 2021, outlined several failures leading up to the fire and during the response. But Brown’s comments offer additional details and a new perspective on how the fire response came together and what was left out of the formal investigation.
Brown said he is sharing his story with Defense News now as he faces a secretarial letter of censure. He was named in the investigation as contributing to the loss of the ship, but was cleared by what’s known as a Consolidated Disposition Authority in December. He said he was not interviewed for the investigation into the fire.
Capt. J.D. Dorsey, a spokesman for Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro, told Defense News “the secretary is still in the process of reviewing the command investigation and has not yet made any final decisions on actions beyond what the CDA has imposed.”
The morning of the fire
Brown, as the type commander for surface ships, said he should have played a supporting role the morning the fire broke out. He scrambled to his Naval Base San Diego office that morning and began making calls, including to Naval Sea Systems Command to understand what risk the ship’s fuel tank posed and whether the ship needed to be towed out to sea.
In this U.S. Navy-released handout, sailors and federal firefighters combat a fire onboard USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6) at Naval Base San Diego, July 12. On the morning of July 12, a fire was called away aboard the ship while it was moored pierside at Naval Base San Diego. Local, base and shipboard firefighters responded to the fire. (Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Christina Ross/U.S. Navy)
But he grew concerned the ship’s crew and federal firefighters were squandering a limited opportunity to contain the fire in the lower vehicle storage area, where it originated. The investigation into the fire noted the ship’s crew was slow to call for help and did not take actions to prevent the fire from spreading to other areas of the ship.
So Brown called ship commanding officer, Capt. Gregory Scott Thoroman, who said he and the crew had left the ship and were on the pier. The investigation into the fire noted the crew pulled out of the ship twice during the firefight that morning.
Thoroman should have been coordinating with the base’s Federal Fire Department and the Southwest Regional Maintenance Center, collectively forming the incident command team, according to a 2018 Navy instruction laying out fire prevention and fire response responsibilities for ships in maintenance. Bonhomme Richard had been undergoing maintenance at the pier at the naval base.
Instead, Brown said, “I could just tell in his responses that he was unsure on how to coordinate the resources that were at his disposal. It was clear to me there was friction that was developing” between the Navy and civilian commands, with the federal firefighters having been pulled out of the ship multiple times and the Navy firefighters lacking the gear they needed to fully tackle the fire on their own.
With the Navy’s organization falling apart, he called the Expeditionary Strike Group 3 commander, Rear Adm. Phil Sobeck, around 11 a.m.
“Phil, you can tell me to eff off, because I’m not in your chain of command, but you have to get down to that pier and provide leadership and guidance because they’re all sitting at the end of the pier watching the ship burn,” Brown said he told Sobeck. “And he goes, ‘Admiral, I’m getting in the car, I’m on my way.’”
Brown took other actions during that time, including some outside his typical authorities as a type commander. He ordered destroyers Fitzgerald and Russell to leave the pier they shared with Bonhomme Richard, even if it meant damaging brows and cables, so no other ships would suffer fire damage.
But the firefighting itself was still disorganized, he said.
Brown directed his staff to contact U.S. 3rd Fleet around 12:30 p.m., but 3rd Fleet’s position was, “The ship’s in maintenance, it’s not our problem.”
Brown argues it was the fleet’s responsibility: During weekly meetings with PACFLT leadership, 3rd Fleet routinely briefed on the manning, training and equipping status of all the ships in maintenance, with Brown on the call in a supporting role.
A retired flag officer, who previously served in the San Diego region and understands the command and control structure there, also told Defense News 3rd Fleet should have been the organization to manage the failing efforts by the ship captain. The flag officer did not wish to speak on the record.
Navy instruction OPNAVINST 3440.18, dated Nov. 13, 2018, lays out the chain of command for responding to a fire on a ship in maintenance. (Navy image)
After the staff-level call failed, Brown set up a call with 3rd Fleet Commander Vice Adm. Scott Conn, for the two three-stars to hash it out directly.
“I said, hey, Phil’s down there, but we have to formally establish a new command structure. And he told me he wasn’t going to do it because the ship was in maintenance and it’s not his problem. And I said fine.”
Defense News reached out to Conn to clarify his position that the Bonhomme Richard, as a ship in maintenance, was not under his command. Rear Adm. Charlie Brown, U.S. Navy Chief of Information, told Defense News that two policies — the OPNAVINST 3440.18 and the NAVSEA 8010 manual — “were not fully consistent, but they placed command and control responsibility on the administrative chain of command for a ship in this configuration. Third Fleet was the operational commander two echelons above the BHR.”
Vice Adm. Rich Brown said his staff reviewed these same two documents again in the weeks following the fire and again concluded that they were expected to play a supporting role, but that Pacific Fleet should have taken responsibility for the ship via its operational chain of command.
All the relevant leaders were already connected in a teleconference, so Brown went into the ad hoc command center in his office and told everyone Sobeck was in charge and made sure they all understood their supporting roles to assist Sobeck.
He then called the then-Pacific Fleet commander, Adm. John Aquilino.
“I told him what I had done, what I was seeing: the C2 degrading on the pier, there’s no focus of effort, people are off doing their own things. And I told him that I had asked Scott to take command and he said no. And I said ... ‘Phil now works for me, and I’ve got it.’”
“Absolutely, Rich, you got it, put the fire out,” the admiral replied, according to Brown.
Brown didn’t dispute the Navy’s accounting of the rest of the five days of firefighting as laid out in the investigation, but said the investigation’s accounting of how the command and control fell apart during a crisis is incomplete and the investigation itself was “fatally defective” without interviewing him or including a full picture of what will be a key lesson learned.
Flawed chain of command structures
The retired three-star said one of the reasons he wanted to share his perspective about the fire is because the same command and control flaw played a role in the 2017 collisions of destroyers Fitzgerald and McCain and the 2020 fire on Bonhomme Richard. Brown led the McCain investigation and participated in the Fitzgerald investigation, and he said one of the recommendations he made at the time was to reinstate a Cold War-era command structure that had two chains of command: one for ships in maintenance and the basic phase, led by a one-star admiral focused on ensuring they built up their readiness, and one for ships in advanced training and deployments, led by a one-star focused on employing their warfighting capability.
Brown said this setup could have prevented the Fitzgerald and McCain tragedies, and that he had urged the Navy to revamp the command and control setup in 2017.
“I was told, ‘It’s not going to happen; there’s one chain of command.’ That’s what they all kept saying to me, there’s one chain of command, and that’s the operational chain of command, which the [type commanders] are not in.”
Brown said that, with the operational chain of command in charge of the ships in maintenance, his job as the type commander was to ensure ships were up to date on their certifications — which Bonhomme Richard was. Still, he said the operational chain of command had made clear in the past the ship was always their ship, regardless of what phase of maintenance, training or operations it was in.
Had the Navy made Brown’s recommended change in 2017, Bonhomme Richard would have been clearly under Brown’s control in 2020 and he could have taken more aggressive measures when the fire broke out.
Brown said the Navy must learn from this disaster and make the proper reforms to prevent another ship from being destroyed — and the right lessons can’t be learned or the right reforms made if the Navy is working off an incomplete and inaccurate investigation.
Vice Adm. Rich Brown, then the commander of Naval Surface Forces, addresses the crew of the Independence-class littoral combat ship USS Coronado (LCS 4) from the bridge over the ship's intercom system on March 16, 2018. (MC1 Marcus Stanley/U.S. Navy)
Other Navy leaders agreed command and control was an issue the day of the fire, but disagreed that 3rd Fleet should have taken a bigger role.
Conn was appointed to lead the investigation — the Navy was clear at the time that he was given the assignment not in his capacity as 3rd Fleet commander but as an individual three-star admiral in the San Diego area with the experience to lead a command investigation.
Conn told Defense News in a media roundtable in October, when the fire investigation was released, that Navy policy was for ships in maintenance to go through the administrative chain of command, through the type commander. He added that “one of our recommendations going forward is to review where should the operational chain be aligned as part of the oversight in a lengthy availability.”
Rear Adm. Paul Spedero, who led the major fires review that accompanied the Bonhomme Richard fire investigation, added during the roundtable that there had been confusion and inconsistency in the past between administrative control and operational control of ships in maintenance. He said that issue had been largely solved as the Navy made reforms following the Fitzgerald and McCain collisions.
But, he agreed, the Bonhomme Richard fire response “certainly had issues. … There was a lack of clarity in [administrative control] and [operational control] responsibilities.”
Rear Adm. Charlie Brown, the Navy spokesman, added in his statement that “there were multiple contributing factors that caused confusion on the [command and control]. First, there was a failure to adequately train for a fire in an industrial environment, and more specifically, exercise the various supporting and supported command relationships. Second, some of the policies in place were in conflict or unnecessarily redundant with one another. Finally, practices and procedures had developed over time that were accepted and followed but were inconsistent with written policies, which allowed the [command and control] in the circumstances of the industrial environment to become varied.”
Accountability actions
Brown said, despite the major role he played while the ship was on fire, he was never interviewed. Conn emailed him about a potential interview and to ask five specific questions related to the roles and functions of the type commander. Brown answered the questions, but said Conn never followed up to arrange a formal interview.
Brown said he had no indication he would be named as contributing to the loss of the ship until the report came out.
“I am convinced that there was undue command influence on that investigation at the end, because when you look at the findings of facts, in the findings of facts behind my name, they just don’t make any sense. And why won’t they talk to me?” he added.
Brown led the investigation into the COVID-19 outbreak on aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, in addition to the McCain investigation. “If you’re going to consider anybody for any type of disciplinary action, you need to, at the very least, interview them,” he said.
Rear Adm. Charlie Brown, the spokesman, said retired Vice Adm. Rich Brown’s input via email was included in the investigation and “it is not uncommon for an investigation to use written questions to gather information.”
Overall, he added, “the investigation was thorough, is being reviewed by all echelons of the chain of command, and has been extremely valuable in helping to identify corrections across the fleet to help get at the challenges of shipboard fires.”
Pacific Fleet Commander Adm. Sam Paparo serves as the consolidated disposition authority for this incident and sent Brown a short letter in December stating that “I have determined your case warrants no action.”
Brown said he thought the issue was resolved until his lawyer in early June warned him Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro would be sending a letter of censure.
“I just don’t know what facts changed in the last six months,” he said.
Lauren Hanzel, a former Navy judge advocate general who currently works in private practice as a military defense attorney, told Defense News that Conn and his team not interviewing Brown in the first place was unusual, particularly when it started to look like Brown was turning into a subject of the investigation and might be named as accountable.
Sending a censure after the CDA cleared Brown, she said, is even more unusual.
The process Brown described “is about as unique as us losing a capital ship. It’s unconventional, and I’m a little bit disappointed because if you look at due process and the appearance of fairness,” the Navy will come out looking bad in this case, she said.
Hanzel noted censures are often a tool to block future promotions for someone in the military who can’t be successfully prosecuted for wrongdoing, but she said Brown’s retirement in 2020 makes the benefit of censure less clear and appear political.
Brown told Defense News the Navy postponed sending him the censure letter in early June as he recovered from a medical procedure but that he expects to receive it in July.
Asked what he hoped would happen by talking to the media, Brown said the Navy has a pattern of punishing three-stars for political expediency without examining root causes and making reforms.
Though he planned to let it go before, “now I don’t think I can, because I think the Navy is destined just to make the same mistakes again and again, especially the surface navy, because we don’t have the [command and control] right.”
Megan Eckstein is the naval warfare reporter at Defense News. She has covered military news since 2009, with a focus on U.S. Navy and Marine Corps operations, acquisition programs, and budgets. She has reported from four geographic fleets and is happiest when she’s filing stories from a ship. Megan is a University of Maryland alumna.
3. Ukraine's shadow: Deadly crises like Somalia starved of aid
Surely other threats around the world are planning how to use Ukraine to their advantage. Food crises, violence, refugees, etc., are going to create security problems, vulnerabilities for regions and governments, and opportunities for hostile actors.
Ukraine's shadow: Deadly crises like Somalia starved of aid
AP · by CARA ANNA and OMAR FARUK · July 5, 2022
July 5, 2022 GMT
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — More than two dozen children have died of hunger in the past two months in a single hospital in Somalia. Dr. Yahye Abdi Garun has watched their emaciated parents stumble in from rural areas gripped by the driest drought in decades. And yet no humanitarian aid arrives.
Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, a donor who was preparing to give a half-million dollars to a Somali aid group told its executive director Hussein Kulmiye it was redirecting the money to help Ukrainians instead.
And now, as Somalis fleeing the drought fill more than 500 camps in the city of Baidoa, aid workers make “horrific” choices to help one camp and ignore 10 others, Norwegian Refugee Council Secretary General Jan Egeland said, telling The Associated Press he is “angry and ashamed.” His group’s Ukraine appeal was fully funded within 48 hours, but its Somalia appeal is perhaps a quarter funded as thousands of people die.
The war in Ukraine has abruptly drawn millions of dollars away from other crises. Somalia, facing a food shortage largely driven by the war, might be the most vulnerable. Its aid funding is less than half of last year’s level while overwhelmingly Western donors have sent more than $1.7 billion to respond to the war in Europe. Yemen, Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Congo and the Palestinian territories are similarly affected.
The $2.2 billion appeal for Ukraine is almost 80% funded, according to United Nations data, an “exceptional” level for any crisis at the midway point of the year, said Angus Urquhart, humanitarian and crisis lead for the Development Initiatives consultancy. The smaller appeal for Somalia is just 30% funded.
This year’s global shift in money and attention is perhaps most urgently felt in the Horn of Africa, including Ethiopia and Kenya, where some areas could be declared in famine within weeks. The United States Agency for International Development says regional authorities haven’t seen anything on this scale in well over 100 years. Millions of livestock, families’ source of wealth and nutrition, have died.
People are next.
To the shock of some exhausted Somalis who walk for days through parched landscapes to places like Mogadishu in search of aid, there is often little or none.
Hawa Osman Bilal sat outside her makeshift tent holding the clothes of her daughter Ifrah, who like many vulnerable Somalis died after the difficult journey to seek help.
“She was skinny and emaciated, and she died in front of me,” Bilal said. The girl was buried nearby, one in a growing number of tiny graves.
The crowded camp’s caretaker, Fadumo Abdulkadir Warsame, told the AP that about 100 families had arrived in the past week alone, swelling the population to 1,700 families. There is no food to give them. “The only thing we can afford for them is bread and black tea,” he said. “There is no aid from the donors yet.”
At a nearby storeroom run by the local organization Peace and Development Action, supported by the U.N. World Food Program, the stock has shriveled. “The world has turned its back on Somalia to focus on Ukraine,” manager Shafici Ali Ahmed said.
The White House acknowledged the problem in a June 28 statement on global food security, saying that “while the entire globe will continue to be affected by Russia’s actions, the most immediate needs will present in the Horn of Africa,” where Somalia once sourced 90% of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine but now struggles to find supplies amid soaring prices.
“We’re really trying to stave off mass deaths at this point,” Sarah Charles, assistant to the administrator for USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, told the AP, adding that “unfortunately, the nature of these crises is such that they go slow and then go very fast.”
Nimo Hassan, director of the Somalia NGO Consortium, and several others said they believe donor countries’ representatives on the ground understand the urgency, but decision-makers in capitals like Brussels and London appear distracted by the war in Europe.
“They’re not saying openly, ‘We’re focused on Ukraine,’ but you can see what they’re doing in Ukraine,” Hassan said. “It should be based on need, not a political decision, you know?”
Less than 30% of the new arrivals at camps for those fleeing drought in Somalia were receiving immediate food or other assistance as of April, the U.N. humanitarian agency has said.
“Not all emergencies are born equal,” said Victor Aguayo, the UNICEF director of nutrition and child development, speaking from the Somali region of Ethiopia, where he reported a “very significant increase” in the number of children under 2 with severe wasting.
“Some emergencies all of a sudden grab the attention,” Aguayo said, adding that UNICEF is not receiving enough money to contain the Horn of Africa crisis as 1.8 million children need urgent treatment.
The World Food Program, like UNICEF, must shift limited resources from preventing acute hunger to focusing on the desperately hungry. That means more than a half-million children under 2 in Somalia have lost prevention help “at the peak of famine prevention efforts,” WFP spokesman Altan Butt said.
Across Somalia, where a weak humanitarian response to the 2010-12 drought was in part to blame as a quarter-million people died, humanitarian workers watch this one with fear as a fifth straight rainy season might fail for the first time in memory.
The southern district of Dollow near Ethiopia is “overwhelmed” by new arrivals, and at least 40 people died from April through June, district commissioner Mohamed Hussein Abdi said. Displaced people now outnumber residents.
At mother-child health centers in Somalia’s northern Puntland region, nearly every other patient was severely malnourished, said Justus Liku, a food security adviser with the aid group CARE.
“We can see places where there’s not a drop of water,” said Ahmed Nasir, deputy director of Save Somali Women and Children, speaking to the AP from the field. “If those people in decision-making offices could see what we see now, they would just release the funds immediately.”
___
Anna reported from Nairobi, Kenya and Kyiv, Ukraine.
AP · by CARA ANNA and OMAR FARUK · July 5, 2022
4. US to send Ukraine advanced NASAMS air defense weapons in $820 million package
Air defense systems and long range artillery. (note the importance of Harpoon missiles)
Excerpts:
NASAMS, developed by Norway’s Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace as well as American company Raytheon Technologies, marks a shift from the Russian-made air defense systems, like the S-300, that Ukraine had used. The U.S. coordinated donations of Russian-made systems from Ukraine’s neighbors, but maintaining those systems are expected to grow more difficult as Russia’s invasion continues.
...
The new aid also included $50 million worth of ammunition drawn from U.S. stockpiles for American-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems that arrived in Ukraine last week. Ukrainian forces have used the systems successfully against Russian command posts and other targets, the official said.
US to send Ukraine advanced NASAMS air defense weapons in $820 million package
WASHINGTON ― The Pentagon on Friday announced $820 million in new Ukraine military aid that includes advanced mid- to long-range air defense systems and counter-artillery radars to respond to Russia’s heavy use of long-range strikes in the war.
The announcement for the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System, or NASAMS, marks the start of a contracting process for $770 million worth of equipment, including four more counter-artillery radars and up to 150,000 rounds of 155mm artillery ammunition, through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.
NASAMS, developed by Norway’s Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace as well as American company Raytheon Technologies, marks a shift from the Russian-made air defense systems, like the S-300, that Ukraine had used. The U.S. coordinated donations of Russian-made systems from Ukraine’s neighbors, but maintaining those systems are expected to grow more difficult as Russia’s invasion continues.
“This system, co-produced by Norway and the U.S., is a NATO system, so for us it’s important to start to help the Ukrainians transition their air defense systems from what is a now a Soviet-type system, to introduce some of this modern technology,” a senior defense official said Friday.
Contracts for NASAMS are expected to be finalized within weeks or months, and Ukrainian forces will need to receive training to operate the systems, a senior defense official said.
NASAMS, which is used to guard airspace over the White House and the Pentagon, were exported to Hungary and India in recent years, among other territories.
The new aid also included $50 million worth of ammunition drawn from U.S. stockpiles for American-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems that arrived in Ukraine last week. Ukrainian forces have used the systems successfully against Russian command posts and other targets, the official said.
“What you see is the Ukrainians are actually systematically selecting targets and accurately hitting them, thus providing this precise method of degrading Russian capabilities,” the official said.
The official credited the retreat of Russian forces from Snake Island this week not to Russia’s goodwill, as Moscow claimed, but to Ukrainian forces armed by American Harpoon missiles. The U.S. official confirmed that Ukraine had used Harpoon missiles to take out a Russian supply ship on the Black Sea that was headed to Snake Island.
The U.S. has provided more than $8.8 billion in weapons and other military training to Ukraine, $6.9 billion of it since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.
Joe Gould is senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry.
5. Sons of Liberty: Case Study for Information Advantage in Resistance Movements
Just as an aside to this we should keep in mind that despite all the legends the first use of a "challenge coin" or medal for identification and to show membership in a unit or organization can be traced to the great resistance organization, the Sons of Liberty.
"It was essential that their meetings were should be kept secret, so every time they met, each man swore upon the Bible not to divulge their information to any but their leaders. These Sons of Liberty used secret passwords and signs as protection against loyalist spies. On public occasions members wore medals, that had been designed by Paul Revere in his capacity as a silversmith and copperplate engraver. (Paul Revere also produced the engraving shown at the top of this page) On one side of the medal was a figure of a stalwart arm, grasping in its hand a pole, surmounted with a cap of liberty, and surrounded by the words, "Sons of Liberty." On the reverse side was a representation of Liberty Tree where their public meetings in Boston were held."
https://www.landofthebrave.info/sons-of-liberty.htm
Sons of Liberty: Case Study for Information Advantage in Resistance Movements
(Editor's Note: Originally published last fall, but in the spirit of American Independence and growing interest in the evolution of modern information forces that support resistance movements, we are republishing it for the 4th of July)
By Robert Schafer and Shafi Saiduddin
In 1765, the British Parliament authorized the Stamp Act, which is recognized today as one of the catalysts of the American Revolution. This act imposed a direct tax on stamped papers that were produced in London but mandated for use in the American colonies for printing legal documents, newspapers, and magazines. The purpose was to increase revenue for the British to pay for their soldiers garrisoned in the colonies, but the colonists claimed to have no foreign enemies and thus held the presence of foreign soldiers to be unnecessary. The resistance generated by the Stamp Act would soon be immortalized in the famous slogan “no taxation without representation.” The Stamp Act fueled the growth of the Sons of Liberty, one of the first organized resistance movements in the colonies.
The British either did not account for, or did not care about, colonial resolve in matters pertaining to harsh governance policies dictated by the Crown, which was over three thousand miles away and unable to govern the colonies effectively as a normal state would be expected to govern its populace. The British considered the colonies as their possessions and felt no compunction about enforcing taxes that made lives easier for those back in London. Lacking the capacity or will to understand the civil environment and engage civil networks, Britain yielded information advantage to the Sons of Liberty.[1] Thus, the purpose of this article is to add to the discussions about information related capabilities consolidating gains in the information environment where irregular warfare, if not unconventional warfare, is being waged by resistance movements.
It is important to understand that the Sons of Liberty were not the shadow government prior to the Revolutionary War. That was the function of the Continental Congress. That said, this case study demonstrates that within a disgruntled, literate populace, conditions were ripe for a burgeoning insurgency to exploit grievances through targeted propaganda to gain an information advantage. This holds lessons for modern information forces like Psychological Operations and Civil Affairs in terms of integrating efforts. The case here is that during unconventional warfare operations, all lines of efforts to defeat the current regime need to be mutually supported. This means that Civil Affairs, as subject matter experts of civil considerations, must also understand how to influence the populace as well as leverage civil networks to conduct resistance activities.
The Civil and Political Environment
Philadelphia was the largest city in the American colonies.[2] The British considered Philadelphia as the center of gravity for colonial politics, but it was in Boston, where British mishandling of the populace would eventually seal their fate in the colonies. The Sons of Liberty having representation in each of the larger cities, like Philadelphia and New York, essentially grew from the local resistance movement in Boston.
In October of 1768, British General Thomas Gage arrived in Boston at the request of the English Parliament to quell the unrest in the American colonies. Gage’s initial actions, which were considered heavy-handed to the colonists, solidified the resolve of those colonists who sought to end the perceived injustice of King George III’s colonial policies. There were many colonial Tories sympathetic to the English Crown, but the increasing mob violence did little to give Gage sufficient reason to trust anyone.
John Hancock was a wealthy colonial Loyalist and merchant with secretive trade deals with Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson, until his loyalty was questioned by Hutchison, then later by Gage. It is important to note that if the British government had not humiliated Hancock by impounding his trading ship Liberty and confiscating its entire cargo, the early stages of the American Revolution would have gone largely unfinanced, and the Sons of Liberty would have earned a mere footnote in history as a failed resistance movement.
The British were looking for more specific opportunities to recoup expenses incurred in the Seven Years War, to some degree at the cost of colonial labor and sacrifice. Still, Hancock was paying a price for his associations with Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty.[3] This demonstrates how colonial powers, legitimately empowered in their own minds to preside over the domestic affairs of colonies, may ignore the importance of potentially powerful influencers like Hancock. Failure to engage and develop Loyalist networks, combined with policies that negatively affected neutral segments of society, set the conditions for the resistance to gain and maintain information advantage.
The Stamp Act was an unsuccessful and highly unpopular attempt by the British to squeeze more money from the colonies. Its repeal in 1766 did not end the growing mistrust and antagonism between Crown and colonials as taxation continued. Other streams of taxation on colonial labor, imports and exports increased the already growing discontent in the New World. The colonists saw this as a matter of principle: “a tax on a penny is the same as a tax on a pound.”[4]
The British maintained their authority through the appointment of governors, military officers, and customs officials. In cities such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, local politics were delegated to elected colonial officials, but their decisions seldom mattered to the British government or even to their Tory supporters. The response to the Stamp Act was swift as mobs were formed and often went to the homes of the customs administrators intent on destroying property or even murdering these officials and their families. Unpopular colonial policies, frequently dictated from England, continued long after the Stamp Act was repealed.
The Quartering Act, signed into law by King George III on March 24th, 1765, added further insult to the already irritated colonists as the Act now required the colonists to house and feed British soldiers in barracks constructed at the expense of the colonists. The colonists had been more than willing to quarter the soldiers between long marches during the Seven Years War, but as it was now peacetime and it seemed an unnecessary burden imposed upon them by the Crown.
Informational Power and Information Advantage
The modern U.S. military may soon adopt the terms Informational Power and Information Advantage to describe how information is used to fight an adversary, however, these concepts are timeless and have been used in warfare for centuries. Colonial America possessed a number of characteristics that made fighting in the information domain particularly appealing for a resistance movement. Most of the colonists, especially in the larger cities, like Boston, were literate. The Sons of Liberty took full advantage of this literacy through the publication of handbills that were meant to incite anger against unpopular British policies or the frequent misconduct of British soldiers now occupying these large urban centers. The handbills could be prepared and disseminated quickly giving the resistance the advantage of speed in the information environment compared to the British who relied on communications through Loyalist newspapers and statements by government officials. Sons of Liberty actively developed networks among printers and many of the influential newspapers were printed by members of the Sons of Liberty, denying the Crown a platform, and allowing the resistance to dominate the narrative space.[5] The Sons of Liberty maintained an extensive network that included multiple classes of society. This mass base strategy enabled them to develop narratives that resonated across colonies with diverse political agendas.[6]
The British ultimately could not satisfy the colonists. Hostilities between the populace and the soldiers grew quickly and it was a mistake to think that quartering soldiers amongst a hostile populace was a good idea. On March 5th of 1770, fistfights broke out in Boston and some soldiers ended up shooting into an angry crowd that had been assembling throughout the evening, protesting the boorish behavior displayed by the British soldiers. The Boston Massacre, as it came to be known, gave Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty the information advantage they sought, yet Adams had no desire for further violence as that “would only support the claims of the loyalists that Boston was an ungovernable nest of radicals and firebrands.”[7]
The call for revolution and the expulsion of British troops would soon be a common theme, printed in the press, but in Boston, the colonial shadow government was already in place. If there was one thing the Sons of Liberty did well, as any successful insurgency should seek to do, was that they moved freely among the populace. Their identities were unknown to the local British forces, with the assurance that through careful selection of its members, information and disinformation would eventually reach the targeted individuals for whom the information was intended.
While the Sons of Liberty operatives worked clandestinely, the organization was very open about its actions, publicizing activities and even publicly reporting the accounts of their meetings.[8] Subversion is often thought of as a clandestine activity, however, with subversion in the information environment too much secrecy can be counterproductive, The Sons of Liberty appeared to only use secrecy to the extent that it protected their operatives.[9] Further, much of their work was attributable to them.
Nonviolent Civil Resistance
The role of nonviolent resistance in the Revolutionary War is often forgotten or marginalized.[10] However, the response to the Stamp Act was an example of nonviolent civil resistance that not only effectively targeted a particular regime program, but also united diverse segments of society and set the conditions for continued resistance. A hallmark of nonviolent resistance is that it allows for maximum participation from elements of society that would not normally be able to participate in a violent uprising. The refusal to use stamps was widespread and included lawyers and judges who forced courts to close by refusing to use stamps. Boycotts of stamps also affected the shipping industry which had widespread effects on commerce.[11] These types of actions were also very low risk to the individual participants.
The almost universal dislike of the Stamp Act combined with the ease of resistance, i.e., refusing to use stamped products, helped to attract both elites and commoners to the Sons of Liberty’s cause and insured wider dissemination of their handbills and other products. The colonies at the time were very diverse in terms of regional cultures.
Nonviolent campaigns combined with a narrative of shared economic hardship helped unite colonies against the Crown.[12] While the American Revolution in modern popular culture is focused on the violent aspects such as battles fought in the latter part of the campaign, it could be argued that the earlier nonviolent campaigns set the conditions for victory. By the time the colonists were fighting a kinetic campaign, the widespread support to the resistance developed through nonviolent means ensured that victory was a foregone, though still hard-fought, conclusion.
Lessons for Army Special Operations Forces in Unconventional Warfare
The information campaigns waged by the Sons of Liberty offer a number of lessons for modern special operations forces, both from British failures and the revolutionaries’ success. British failure to understand the social and political dynamics was exploited by the resistance. Activities similar to civil reconnaissance and civil network development and engagement could have informed British decision-makers about the effects of British policies. Even if they were unwilling to change the policies, this information would have helped the British to develop mitigation strategies and narratives. While the Sons of Liberty utilized some clandestine techniques, the grievances of the population could have been discovered through open-source collection.
Shortsighted governance policies helped to feed a resistance narrative and drew multiple elements of society to the side of the resistance. The Sons of Liberty leveraged both social networks and the technology of that era to wield informational power. Handbills, allied newspaper printers, and word of mouth helped the resistance seize and maintain the initiative because populace sentiment mattered in colonial affairs, an error overlooked by Britain, which would ultimately bind the thirteen colonies together in collectively resisting the will of King George III.
The Sons of Liberty’s information campaign also illustrates the use of nonviolent civil resistance to support an information campaign. While there were violent incidents, the response to the Stamp Act was primarily nonviolent and economic. Refusal to use stamped products resulted in a loss of expected revenue of thousands of pounds for the Crown. This technique of resistance was low risk and ensured maximum participation leading to mobilization of the mass base. Effective nonviolent civil resistance requires both the development of civil networks and expertise in governance to organize resistance activities in the economic sphere.
Conclusion
The concept of resistance as a whole of society effort has gained interest lately and is illustrated by the development of the Resistance Operating Concept, a collaborative effort between Special Operations Command Europe and European partners to study resistance and resilience.[13] The Sons of Liberty as a case study highlights the relationship between information, governance, and civil networks in a resistance environment, and provides a model for unifying diverse segments of society against an occupying power.
Activities by the Sons of Liberty illustrate the character of resistance as a long-term, mostly nonviolent effort that relies heavily on using informational power. It could be argued that by the time kinetic campaigns started in 1775, the conflict had already reached a point where it was unwinnable for the British. The Sons of Liberty operated effectively in the information environment, seizing the initiative through the speed of communication, denying communication platforms to their adversaries, and developing compelling narratives that resonated with multiple segments of society. The information advantage gained during resistance to the Stamp Act set the conditions for continued resistance and the development of a shadow government, the Continental Congress, that was able to successfully transition into a national government.
About the Authors
Robert Schafer is a retired Civil Affairs senior non-commissioned officer who has over a decade of experience in governance and populace-centric network engagement and development activities in the CENTCOM and EUCOM Theaters. He is currently a strategic plans analyst for the Center for Army Lessons Learned, where his portfolio focuses on security force assistance. He holds a Master’s degree in Strategic Security Studies from National Defense University, as well as a Master of Education degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in International Relations from Salve Regina University in Rhode Island. He is a co-editor-in-chief for Eunomia Journal and a member of the advisory board for Third Order Effects.
Lieutenant Colonel Shafi Saiduddin is a Civil Affairs officer currently serving as an instructor at the Joint Special Operations University. He has two decades of experience in Army Special Operations Forces, including service in a Foreign Internal Defense/Unconventional Warfare (FID/UW) Civil Affairs battalion, and deployment experience in the CENTCOM, AFRICOM, EUCOM, and PACOM theaters. In his civilian career, he served in law enforcement and the intelligence community and now owns a risk advisory and investigations firm. Shafi is also a co-editor-in-chief for Eunomia Journal.
The views presented are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Defense or any of its components, including the Joint Special Operations University and the Center for Army Lessons Learned.
[1] Information advantage is the operational advantage gained through the joint force’s use of information for decision making and its ability to leverage information to create effects on the information environment. [2] Standiford, Les. 2012. Desperate Sons. New York: Harper Collins, 28. [3] Ibid, 128. [4] Ibid, 138. [5] Maier, Pauline. 1991. From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial radicals and the development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765-1776. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 91. [6] Ibid, 88-89. [7] Ibid, 163. [8] Ibid, 90. [9] Ibid, 89. [10] Bartkowski, Maciej J. 2013. Recovering Nonviolent History: Civil Resistance in Liberation Studies. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 299. [11] Ibid, 300-301. [12] Ibid, 300.
[13] Fiala, Otto. 2020. Resistance Operating Concept. Tampa: Joint Special Operations University Press, 2020. xv–xvi.
6. Army Bases That Honor Confederate Traitors Could Soon Be Renamed for These Heroes
I still think Fort Liberty is a mistake and a missed opportunity. It should be named for a great paratrooper.
Army Bases That Honor Confederate Traitors Could Soon Be Renamed for These Heroes
The names “embody the best of the United States Army and America,” a commission established by Congress wrote in announcing its choices.
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Fort Bragg in North Carolina would be renamed Fort Liberty if the recommendations are approved by Congress.Credit...Kenny Holston for The New York Times
By
July 4, 2022
WASHINGTON — During the Jim Crow era, nine Southern Army bases were named for treasonous Confederate generals who fought to preserve slavery and white supremacy. Now a commission established by Congress has suggested new names for the bases that “embody the best of the United States Army and America.”
Fort Bragg in North Carolina would be renamed Fort Liberty, if the recommendations are approved by Congress. The other bases would honor some of the Army’s most distinguished heroes. These are their stories:
Fort Johnson (Fort Polk, La.)
Sgt. Henry Johnson
That put Private Johnson and his unit at the front lines, “against all odds — Black Americans wearing French uniforms,” in the predawn hours of May 15, 1918, as German troops swarmed his sentry post at the edge of the Argonne Forest, according to a biography provided by the naming commission.
Private Johnson threw grenades until he had no more left to throw. Then he fired his rifle until it jammed. Then he clubbed enemy soldiers with the butt of his rifle until it split apart. Then he hacked away at the enemy with his bolo knife.
After the Germans retreated, daylight revealed that Private Johnson had killed four enemy soldiers and wounded an estimated 10 to 20. He suffered 21 wounds in combat.
For their actions, Private Johnson and his sentry-mate on duty that night were the first Americans to be awarded the Croix du Guerre, one of France’s highest military honors. Almost a century later, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Sergeant Johnson the Medal of Honor.
Fort Walker (Fort A.P. Hill, Va.)
Dr. Mary Edwards Walker
She served near the front lines at Fredericksburg and Chattanooga, and routinely crossed battle lines to treat civilians. She was arrested by Confederate forces in 1864 and exchanged for a Confederate surgeon four months later. After she was denied an honorary military rank at the end of the war, Union generals successfully petitioned for her to receive the Medal of Honor for “patriotic zeal to the sick and wounded.”
Throughout her life, Dr. Walker proudly presented herself as a feminist who did not conform to gender norms. She refused to agree to “obey” her husband in her wedding vows and kept her last name, according to the National Park Service. She wore men’s clothing during the war, arguing that doing so made her job easier. After the war, she posed for photographs in suits and a signature top hat, often with her Medal of Honor pinned to her lapel.
Fort Barfoot (Fort Pickett, Va.)
Col. Van Barfoot
On May 23, 1944, in the foothills of the Italian Alps, Sgt. Van Barfoot single-handedly silenced three machine-gun nests, disabled a German tank with a bazooka, blew up an artillery cannon with a demolition charge and took 17 enemy soldiers prisoner.
In addition to everything else that day, he rescued two grievously wounded American soldiers, leading them about a mile to safety.
He served 34 years in the Army, including tours in Korea and Vietnam. Later in life he again drew national attention for successfully fighting his homeowners association to keep an American flag flying in his front yard.
Fort Gregg-Adams (Fort Lee, Va.)
Lt. Gen. Arthur J. Gregg & Lt. Col. Charity Adams Earley
At the height of his career, an article in The Washington Post said, General Gregg was the highest-ranking Black officer in the military, serving as logistics director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and as deputy chief of staff for logistics for the Army in the late 1970s and early ’80s. He also participated in the desegregation of the military installation that would partially bear his name and was one of the first Black officers to join its officers’ club.
Fort Cavazos (Fort Hood, Texas)
Gen. Richard E. Cavazos
In Vietnam in 1967, Colonel Cavazos again “completely disregarded his own safety” and led a charge “with such force and aggressiveness” that the enemy fighters fled their positions, earning his second Distinguished Service Cross. Throughout his career, General Cavazos also earned other awards and citations, including two Legions of Merit, five Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart.
Credit...AP Photo
Fort Eisenhower (Fort Gordon, Ga.)
Dwight D. Eisenhower, general of the Army
Eisenhower soared through the Army ranks during the war, going from lieutenant colonel at the beginning of 1941 to a four-star general by February 1943. A year later, he became one of only five officers ever appointed as a five-star “general of the Army.”
Credit...via Congressional Medal of Honor Society
Fort Novosel (Fort Rucker, Ala.)
Chief Warrant Officer Michael Novosel Sr.
In two tours of duty in Vietnam, Michael Novosel Sr. rescued more than 5,500 wounded soldiers as a medevac pilot, earning the Medal of Honor for one particularly heroic episode. One of those rescued soldiers was his own son, Michael Novosel Jr., an Army aviator whose helicopter was shot down in 1970. (A week later, Michael Jr. returned the favor, rescuing his father from a disabled helicopter.)
In one rescue mission in 1969, Mr. Novosel rescued 29 South Vietnamese soldiers under heavy enemy fire. He and his crew were forced out of the landing zone six times and had to “circle and return from another direction to land and extract additional troops,” according to his Medal of Honor citation.
By the end of the day, his helicopter had been riddled with bullets. In his own retelling of the episode during an interview with the Library of Congress, Mr. Novosel said he was shot in his right hand and leg during his last rescue of the day — momentarily causing him to lose control of the helicopter — but escaped along with his crew and the last of his evacuees.
Credit...Associated Press
Fort Moore (Fort Benning, Ga.)
Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore and Julia Moore
On Nov. 14, 1965, Colonel Moore led his 450 troops to the infamous Landing Zone X-Ray, where they were ambushed by North Vietnamese soldiers who outnumbered the Americans 12 to 1. Bloody hand-to-hand combat ensued, but Colonel Moore and his men held their positions for three days. Colonel Moore had vowed that he would leave no one behind. He kept his promise, and his actions earned him the Distinguished Service Cross.
At the same time, Ms. Moore offered emotional support to the families of the dead and wounded at Fort Benning. Death and injury notices were sent by telegram at the time, delivered by taxi drivers. Ms. Moore began accompanying the drivers and offering her condolences to the families. Her complaints and concerns led to the creation of the Army’s casualty notification teams, and uniformed soldiers now deliver the news of death or injury to families.
7. Opinion | Think democracy isn’t endangered? Just look what happened in Hong Kong.
This is not a partisan OpEd. It is all about the threat to democracy and illustrates how the one country two systems concept is really a Chinese CCP lie.
Hong Kong is the canary in the coal mine. My belief is China seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, and displace democratic institutions.
Russia may use artillery, tanks, and planes. China uses lawfare, psychological warfare, and media warfare backed by guns.
Opinion | Think democracy isn’t endangered? Just look what happened in Hong Kong.
It was no accident that Chinese leader Xi Jinping repeatedly used the word “chaos” to describe Hong Kong as he marked the July 1 anniversary of the 1997 handover of the former British colony. Mr. Xi vowed that Hong Kong would move “from chaos to control.” But what he was really affirming is that China’s leaders will not tolerate democracy and its discontents, and intend to finish off Hong Kong as a beacon of free thinking and openness.
The sight of citizens in the streets demanding their rights to speak freely — which played out in Hong Kong demonstrations in 2019 — frightens Mr. Xi and the leadership of one of the most sophisticated authoritarian systems in the world. “People have learned the hard way that Hong Kong must not be destabilized and cannot afford to see chaos,” Mr. Xi declared at the swearing-in of John Lee, the new Hong Kong chief executive, who had overseen the harsh police response to protests in recent years.
Once upon a time, Hong Kong earned respect for its rule of law and a lively public square. When China took over in 1997, it pledged “one country, two systems,” under which Hong Kong would retain many freedoms absent on the mainland, including free speech. The autonomy of Hong Kong was supposed to last 50 years, but at the halfway mark, China has brought Hong Kong much closer to the stifling unfreedom that rules the rest of the country.
The turning point was introduction of a bill on criminal extradition in 2019, under which, it was feared, anyone could be grabbed and sent to the mainland, lacking rule of law and guarantees of due process. The bill unleashed massive protests, including one in August in which 200,000 Hong Kongers linked hands to form human chains that stretched for miles. While the bill was eventually shelved, a new national security law was imposed on Hong Kong in 2020 with provisions making it easier to prosecute protest and dissent. According to the Economist, nearly 200 people have been arrested under the national-security law, including the prominent newspaper mogul Jimmy Lai. “Almost every prominent Democrat in Hong Kong is now either in jail or exile,” the magazine reports. “A culture of fear and reporting has seeped into the civil service and schools, courts and universities.” Hong Kong residents are encouraged to inform on one another through a tip line, and a “once outspoken legal profession has been neutered.” Teachers, social workers and labor unions have been brought to heel.
As a financial hub and gateway to China, Hong Kong might yet bounce back from pandemic setbacks and closures. But politically, China has smothered it. There’s a tendency to dismiss warnings that democracy is threatened around the world, to think that it just can’t happen. Take a look at Hong Kong under China’s rule. A once-vibrant freedom vanished in only a few years. That is alarmingly real.
8. Cyber Yankee: The Marine Corps Is Laser Focused On Cyberwar
Cyber Yankee: The Marine Corps Is Laser Focused On Cyberwar
The Marine Corps’ Cyber Yankee exercises are meant to simulate a cyber attack on the nation’s critical infrastructure.
During a conflict with the United States, an opponent could try to disrupt power and water supplies by knocking regional power supplies off-line or cutting off access to running water. In response to this challenge, the Marine Corps is working with National Guard units to prepare for this challenge.
The cyberwarfare exercise, called Cyber Yankee, is “a joint effort between the national guards of the New England states,” the Marine Corps explained in a statement.
“They try to build up their capabilities and respond to any attacks to the critical infrastructure in New England while building a partnership between the National Guard, industry partners and the other branches of the United States military,” said L Cpl. Miles Young, a data systems administrator for Defensive Cyberspace Operations-Internal Defensive Measures Company B, 6th Communication Battalion.
“The Marine Corps’ role in this is to simulate an attacker so that the defense can clearly evaluate how they are doing,” Young added.
During Cyber Yankee, the participants were divided into red and blue teams, with the Marines acting as an attacking force and the blue team defending.
“Each one of the four actors have different end state objectives,” said M Sgt. Mike McAllister, cyberspace operations chief of the Marine Innovation Unit.
“They vary in levels of sophistication from a cyber-criminal or hacktivist that is doing nothing more than low risk access attempts that can be mitigated by very simple security controls and elevate all the way up to the most advanced threat act or using sophisticated means of initiating access with stealthy movement throughout the IT enclave and into the operational technology enclave where the critical infrastructure is located,” McAllister continued.
“Marines participate in regional exercises and provide red team capabilities to the Joint Force Reserve, National Guards, and industry professionals [as they] interface for regional utilities which means we’re going in and helping the blue teams refine their play books so if they are called to support utility companies or in disasters of cyber nature,” said S Sgt. Sean Sarich, an innovation laboratory specialist with the Marine Innovation Unit.
This latest cyberwarfare exercise comes on the heels of the U.S. Marine Corps’ latest publication, MCDP 8, which is a guide to fighting and winning the informational battle. The document laid out the importance of the informational domain and established how the Marine Corps would control the informational space.
Together, Cyber Yankee 2022 and MCDP 8 shine the spotlight on the Marine Corps’ focus on the next war—and the outsized role the information and cyber domains will play. And, as always, the United States’ force-in-readiness is preparing to fight—and to win.
Caleb Larson is a multimedia journalist and defense writer with the National Interest. A graduate of UCLA, he also holds a Master of Public Policy and lives in Berlin. He covers the intersection of conflict, security, and technology, focusing on American foreign policy, European security, and German society for both print and radio. Follow him on Twitter @calebmlarson.
9. Are we witnessing a military revolution on Ukraine battlefields?
We love to tout every new situation as a revolution.
Excerpts:
Asymmetric weapons systems employed during the Ukraine war have diminished the mobility and intimidation factor of the modern-day tank to the status of the post-WWII battleship. RMA has relegated decisive tank battles on the plains of Europe to the past — the same as aircraft carriers in WWII put an end to decisive naval armada battles envisioned by Alfred Thayer Mahan.
Now, with the introduction of U.S.-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), RMA may be on the verge of changing how artillery is employed on the battlefield. While counter-battery fires aren’t new, large lethargic artillery formations found at the regiment, division and corps levels, the staple of Russian tactics, present themselves as lucrative targets. Their prolonged exposure on the battlefield ensures their destruction. The mobility, range and accuracy of HIMARS is a game changer, and certainly will alter how Russia fights.
Revolution comes fast — hopefully, a little too fast for Putin.
Are we witnessing a military revolution on Ukraine battlefields?
BY JONATHAN SWEET AND MARK TOTH, OPINION CONTRIBUTORS - 07/01/22 7:00 AM ET
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL
The Hill · by Alexander Bolton · July 1, 2022
President Volodymyr Zelensky and his Ukrainian warriors have unleashed a “Red Dawn”-like response against Russian troop advances in nearly every part of the country. Russian tanks — the much-heralded T-72, T-80 and T-90 — are no match for the Javelin, Next-generation Light Anti-tank Weapon (NLAW), Baykar Bayraktar TB2 and Switchblade drones. Their turrets litter the Ukraine landscape. Neither composite armor, explosive reactive armor, nor countermeasure suites have been effective against the modern weapon systems designed to destroy them.
These defensive weapons, supplied by the United States and NATO, are dramatically altering the battlefield and providing a much-needed shot in the arm to a president in Kyiv unwilling to “take a ride.” Ukraine has marginalized the once vaunted Russian War Machine. As the combat continues, the Ukraine Defense Ministry recently reported they have inflicted 34,430 casualties and destroyed 1,504 tanks, 3,632 armored personnel carriers, 756 artillery pieces, 240 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, 216 aircraft and 183 helicopters.
Ukrainian resiliency and Russian ineptness aside, are we witnessing a revolution in military affairs (RMA) moment?
The Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus introduced us to the reality that “change is the only constant.” That applies to warfare as well, from tactics and strategy to weapons systems and protective equipment. When change fundamentally reshapes how we fight, it is known as an RMA — a hypothesis in military theory about the future of warfare, often connected to technological and organizational recommendations for military reform.
Broadly stated, RMA claims in certain periods of the history there were new military doctrines, strategies, tactics and technologies that led to irrecoverable changes in the conduct of warfare. Furthermore, those changes compel an accelerated adaptation of novel battlefield doctrines and strategies. Examples include the machine gun from World War I, blitzkrieg from World War II, long-range precision missile fires from Desert Storm, and communications and network-centric warfare.
The war in Ukraine is continually introducing high-tech weapon systems to the battlefield that are fundamentally marginalizing armor — tanks and armored personnel carriers — by utilizing centuries-old tactics that have fundamentally marginalized, while ingeniously also exploiting, the manner in which the Russian military employs them. Russian President Vladimir Putin exposed himself to this possible RMA moment by fighting a war using WWII tactics with modern-day armor; the Ukrainian military is winning by destroying them wholesale with modern weapon systems using infantry tactics as old as the French and Indian War.
In Ukrainian hands, $175,000 Raytheon FGM-148 Javelins and their “fire and forget” technology are acting as long-range snipers, while the $40,000 UK Thales NLAW are serving as close-in brass knuckles. Both have easily destroyed Russian armor, including Russia’s $2.8 million T-72 tanks, by homing in on their manned turrets from the topside — structurally their weakest defensive armor link. Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones, pricier at $5 million each, provide 24-hour air cover and have been highly effective at destroying a variety of Russian armor, command posts, surface-to-air missile (SAM) batteries and multiple rocket launchers. Perhaps the most revolutionary are the U.S. AeroVironment Switchblade 300s and 600s. These $6,000 loitering drones, capable of staying airborne for 30 minutes and ranging seven miles, are carried in a backpack and provide infantrymen over-the-horizon intelligence. They also are kinetic and can destroy Russian armor and artillery.
But are we witnessing an RMA? Yes, but it’s a culmination of bad Russian strategy, the Kremlin’s overreliance on antiquated tactics, poor training, abysmal execution and Ukraine’s adaptation to asymmetric armor tactics. Poor operations security contributed as well. The modern-day tank has lost its “fear factor”; its presence makes everything around it vulnerable.
It is certainly akin to long-range precision fires and network-centric warfare. These new weapon systems provide stand-off precision fires on smaller, more lethal platforms and the ability for soldiers on the ground to geo-locate and target enemy forces using social media and cell towers. The infantryman can now deliver accurate, lethal fires, unseen, miles away from the target — a modern-day bogeyman to the Russian soldier. The WWII saying that “loose lips sink ships” is still relevant, but in 2022, social media posts sideline tanks and general officers — bad operations security still has deadly consequences.
The Javelin anti-tank missile and Switchblade drone have exposed weaknesses in armor, and not just Russian tanks and APCs. Air defense security from drone strikes has taken on increased significance, as does enhanced armor protection on the top of tanks and APCs. Armor is vulnerable, and it’s much harder to hide on today’s battlefield. Much as blitzkrieg tactics defeated the Maginot line, the principles of speed and security will be needed to overcome advances in today’s weapons technology.
Asymmetric weapons systems employed during the Ukraine war have diminished the mobility and intimidation factor of the modern-day tank to the status of the post-WWII battleship. RMA has relegated decisive tank battles on the plains of Europe to the past — the same as aircraft carriers in WWII put an end to decisive naval armada battles envisioned by Alfred Thayer Mahan.
Now, with the introduction of U.S.-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), RMA may be on the verge of changing how artillery is employed on the battlefield. While counter-battery fires aren’t new, large lethargic artillery formations found at the regiment, division and corps levels, the staple of Russian tactics, present themselves as lucrative targets. Their prolonged exposure on the battlefield ensures their destruction. The mobility, range and accuracy of HIMARS is a game changer, and certainly will alter how Russia fights.
Revolution comes fast — hopefully, a little too fast for Putin.
Jonathan Sweet, a retired Army colonel, served 30 years as a military intelligence officer. His background includes tours of duty with the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and the Intelligence and Security Command. He led the U.S. European Command Intelligence Engagement Division from 2012-14, working with NATO partners in the Black Sea and Baltics. Follow him on Twitter @JESweet2022.
Mark Toth is a retired economist, historian and entrepreneur who has worked in banking, insurance, publishing and global commerce. He is a former board member of the World Trade Center, St. Louis, and has lived in U.S. diplomatic and military communities around the world, including London, Tel Aviv, Augsburg and Nagoya. Follow him on Twitter @MCTothSTL.
The Hill · by Alexander Bolton · July 1, 2022
10. How a Military Base in Illinois Helps Keep Weapons Flowing to Ukraine
The US superpower has always been industrial production and logistics. Do we still have what it takes?
How a Military Base in Illinois Helps Keep Weapons Flowing to Ukraine
Thousands of logisticians are responsible for making sure that U.S. military aid reaches its destination, on planes, trains and ships.
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At Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, military servicemembers and civilians with the U.S. Transportation Command decide whether military aid to Ukraine will travel by air or sea.Credit...Michael B. Thomas for The New York Times
By
July 3, 2022
SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. — In a room dimly lit by television screens, dozens of airmen tapped away at computers and worked the phones. Some were keeping watch over a high-priority mission to move a Russian-made Mi-17 helicopter from a base in Arizona to a destination near Ukraine’s border.
Earlier that day, a civilian colleague had checked a spreadsheet and found a C-17 transport plane in Washington state that was available to pick up the helicopter and begin a daylong trip.
It was up to the airmen to give the plane’s crew its orders, make sure the plane took off and landed on time and handle any problems along the way.
The C-17 would fly from McChord Air Force Base near Tacoma to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base outside Tucson, where the helicopter was parked in a repository for retired military airplanes known as “the boneyard.”
“So it’s two and a half hours from McChord to Davis-Monthan,” said Col. Bob Buente, reviewing the first leg of the journey. “Then four hours to load, then they’ll take off about 7:30 tonight. Then five hours to Bangor, then we’ll put them to bed because of the size of the next leg.”
From Bangor, Maine, the cargo flight — call sign: Reach 140 — would leave for Europe, the colonel said.
The Pentagon has drawn many of the items from its own inventory. But how they reach Ukraine often involves behind-the-scenes coordination by teams at a military base in Illinois, about 25 miles east of St. Louis.
There at Scott Air Force Base, where a half-dozen retired transport planes are on display just outside the main gate, several thousand logisticians from each branch of the armed forces work at the United States Transportation Command — or Transcom. In military parlance, it is a “combatant command,” equal to better-known units that are responsible for parts of the globe — like Central Command and Indo-Pacific Command — and takes its orders directly from the secretary of defense.
Transcom has worked out the flow of every shipment of military aid from the United States to Ukraine, which began in August and kicked into high gear after the Russian invasion.
The process begins when the government in Kyiv sends a request to a call center on an American base in Stuttgart, Germany, where a coalition of more than 40 nations coordinates the aid. Some of the orders are filled by a U.S. partner or ally, and the rest are handled by the United States — routed through U.S. European Command, which is also in Stuttgart, to Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who discuss them in weekly meetings with the service chiefs and combatant commanders.
Ukrainian soldiers firing an M777 howitzer, which was supplied by the United States, in the Donetsk region in June.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
If the desired items are available, and the combatant commanders decide that giving them to Ukraine will not unduly harm their own war plans, General Milley makes a recommendation to Mr. Austin, who in turn makes a recommendation to President Biden. If the president signs off, Transcom figures out how to move the aid to an airfield or port near Ukraine.
The order to move the Russian helicopter zipped across the base in Illinois from Transcom’s headquarters to a one-story brick building housing the 618th Air Operations Center, where red-lit clocks offered the local time at major military aviation bases in California, Alaska, Hawaii, Japan, Qatar and Germany.
Better Understand the Russia-Ukraine War
Colonel Buente runs the day-to-day operations at the 618th Air Operations Center, where about 850 active-duty airmen, reservists and civilians spend their days planning missions like the helicopter’s trip, he said. Making sure those plans are carried out falls to a smaller group — working in shifts of 60 people, 24 hours a day, every day of the year — that follows the stream of missions posted on a constantly updated screen centered on the back wall all the way to completion.
It is the same center that orchestrated the mass evacuation of Americans and Afghans from Afghanistan’s capital in August. On the busiest day then, 21,000 passengers were flown out of the Kabul airport, with planes taking off or landing every 90 minutes, officials said.
That was a busy time for Transcom, which on an average day not only plans and coordinates about 450 cargo flights but also oversees about 20 cargo ships, along with a network of transcontinental railroads and more than a thousand trucks — all of which routinely carry war matériel.
The flights also transport humanitarian assistance and other supplies when needed, including shipments of baby formula in May to alleviate a shortage in the United States.
Commanding all of it is Gen. Jacqueline D. Van Ovost of the Air Force, who is just the second female officer to lead one of the Pentagon’s 11 combatant commands.
“We create plans that are sitting at the ready,” said Gen. Jacqueline D. Van Ovost, the commander of Transcom.Credit...Michael B. Thomas for The New York Times
For the aid shipments to Ukraine, the planning begins long before the White House announces a new aid package, she said.
“We cannot wait until the president signs or the secretary gives an order before we do the necessary planning,” General Van Ovost said in an interview in her office, where a photo of Amelia Earhart hung on the wall. “We’re watching it evolve,” the general said of the discussions about aid, “and we create plans that are sitting at the ready.”
Mr. Biden authorized the first U.S. military equipment and weapons for Ukraine — a $60 million package — on Aug. 27. At the time, it took about a month to get the items onto a plane after they were approved, according to General Van Ovost, a test pilot who flew cargo planes.
The White House has announced 13 subsequent aid packages for Ukraine, and the planning process has advanced enough that it now takes less than a day from the president approving a shipment to having the first items loaded onto a plane, she said. Three of the packages in the war’s first 29 days totaled $1.35 billion. As of Friday, the United States has committed $6.9 billion in military aid to Kyiv since Russia invaded.
Transcom’s operations center decides whether to send aid via cargo plane or by ship based on how quickly European Command needs it to arrive. Though military cargo planes like C-17s offer the fastest delivery option, they incur the highest costs. About half of Transcom’s airfreight is handled by a fleet of contracted, commercially owned aircraft, including 747s, each of which can carry double the weight a C-17 can.
Whenever possible, though, military planners send goods on cargo ships, a less expensive option.
“We’ve activated two vessels and used multiple liner service vessels to deliver cargo bound for Ukraine,” said Scott Ross, a spokesman for the command. The vessels and more than 220 flights had delivered just over 19,000 tons of military aid to Ukraine since August, he said.
On one of the large screens in Colonel Buente’s operations center, about a dozen missions were listed in order of importance. At the top were two “1A1” missions supporting some of the command’s most important customers: the president, vice president, the secretaries of state and defense as well as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Immediately below those missions was Reach 140, the C-17 flying to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona. Thousands of aircraft have baked there in the sun, including 13 Russian-made Mi-17 helicopters that the United States had bought for Afghanistan before Kabul fell to the Taliban.
On an average day, Transcom not only plans and coordinates about 450 cargo flights but also oversees around 20 cargo ships, along with a network of transcontinental railroads and more than a thousand trucks.Credit...Michael B. Thomas for The New York Times
In recent months, 12 of the helicopters were shipped to countries near Ukraine, returned to flying condition and handed over to Ukrainian pilots for the fight with Russia.
As the airmen tracked the C-17, a handful of soldiers and civilians in a small Army-run section of Transcom monitored a separate mission: four cargo trains moving across the United States as well as several cargo ships, some of which were owned by the Navy.
One of the Navy vessels was heading from Norfolk, Va., to a military port in North Carolina, where it would be loaded with ammunition for M142 HIMARS rocket launchers long desired by the Ukrainian military. The rockets, packed in bundles of six and loaded into 20-foot shipping containers, were also en route to the port. Cranes would soon lift the metal boxes off tractor-trailers and rail cars, stack them aboard the ship and lock them into place for a journey at sea lasting about two weeks.
Most of the Pentagon’s military aid sent to Ukraine on ships goes to two German ports — one on the North Sea and the other on the Baltic.
To keep potential adversaries from closing off routes for Ukraine military aid, Army planners can set up operations at any one of dozens of ports on the two seas. Russian warships have largely shut down the most direct routes for resupply missions — Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea.
At the 618th, where presidents and secretaries of defense can reassign planes in a heartbeat for emergencies around the world, a screen that usually displays a classified map of global threats to military air and sea shipments was blacked out for security reasons while a reporter was in the room.
And three of the televisions were set to cable news because, as Colonel Buente explained, “we usually end up reacting to breaking news.”
11.
There is a photo at the link of a Ukrainian platoon commander. Look into her eyes. She has the look of a hardened soldier who will do whatever is necessary to defend her country.
Excerpt:
Mariia, a 41-year-old platoon commander who joined the Ukrainian army in 2018 after working as a lawyer and giving birth to a daughter, explained that the level of danger and discomfort can vary greatly depending on a unit’s location and access to supply lines.
'Hell on earth': Ukrainian soldiers describe eastern front
AP · by FRANCESCA EBEL · July 4, 2022
BAKHMUT, Ukraine (AP) — Torched forests and cities burned to the ground. Colleagues with severed limbs. Bombardments so relentless the only option is to lie in a trench, wait and pray.
Ukrainian soldiers returning from the front lines in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region — where Russia is waging a fierce offensive — describe life during what has turned into a grueling war of attrition as apocalyptic.
In interviews with The Associated Press, some complained of chaotic organization, desertions and mental health problems caused by relentless shelling. Others spoke of high morale, their colleagues’ heroism, and a commitment to keep fighting, even as the better-equipped Russians control more of the combat zone.
Lt. Volodymyr Nazarenko, 30, second-in-command of the Ukrainian National Guard’s Svoboda Battalion, was with troops who retreated from Sievierodonetsk under orders from military leaders. During a month-long battle, Russian tanks obliterated any potential defensive positions and turned a city with a prewar population of 101,000 into “a burnt-down desert,” he said.
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“They shelled us every day. I do not want to lie about it. But these were barrages of ammunition at every building,” Nazarenko said. “The city was methodically leveled out.”
At the time, Sievierodonetsk was one of two major cities under Ukrainian control in Luhansk province, where pro-Russia separatists declared an unrecognized republic eight years ago. By the time the order to withdraw came on June 24, the Ukrainians were surrounded on three sides and mounting a defense from a chemical plant also sheltering civilians.
“If there was a hell on Earth somewhere, it was in Sievierodonetsk,” Artem Ruban, a soldier in Nazarenko’s battalion, said from the comparative safety of Bakhmut, 64 kilometers (40 miles) to the southwest of the since-captured city. “The inner strength of our boys allowed them to hold the city until the last moment.”
“Those were not human conditions they had to fight in. It is difficult to explain this to you here, what they feel like now or what it was like there,” Ruban said, blinking in the sunlight. “They were fighting until the end there. The task was to destroy the enemy, no matter what.”
Nazarenko, who also fought in Kyiv and elsewhere in the east after Russia invaded Ukraine, considers the Ukrainian operation in Sievierodonetsk “a victory” despite the outcome. He said the defenders managed to limit casualties while stalling the Russian advance for much longer than expected, depleting Russia’s resources.
“Their army incurred huge losses, and their attack potential was obliterated,” he said.
Both the lieutenant and the soldier under his command expressed confidence that Ukraine would take back all occupied territories and defeat Russia. They insisted morale remained high. Other soldiers, most with no combat experience before the invasion, shared more pessimistic accounts while insisting on anonymity or using only their first names to discuss their experiences.
Oleksiy, a member of the Ukrainian army who started fighting against the Moscow-backed separatists in 2016, had just returned from the front with a heavy limp. He said he was wounded on the battlefield in Zolote, a town the Russians also have since occupied.
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“On the TV, they are showing beautiful pictures of the front lines, the solidarity, the army, but the reality is very different” he said, adding he does not think the delivery of more Western weapons would change the course of the war.
His battalion started running out of ammunition within a few weeks, Oleksiy said. At one point, the relentless shelling kept the soldiers from standing up in the trenches, he said, exhaustion visible on his lined face.
A senior presidential aide reported last month that 100 to 200 Ukrainian troops were dying every day, but the country has not provided the total number killed in action. Oleksiy claimed his unit lost 150 men during its first three days of fighting, many from a loss of blood.
Due to the relentless bombardments, wounded soldiers were only evacuated at night, and sometimes they had to wait up to two days, he said.
“The commanders don’t care if you are psychologically broken. If you have a working heart, if you have arms and legs, you have to go back in,” he added.
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Mariia, a 41-year-old platoon commander who joined the Ukrainian army in 2018 after working as a lawyer and giving birth to a daughter, explained that the level of danger and discomfort can vary greatly depending on a unit’s location and access to supply lines.
Front lines that have existed since the conflict with pro-Russia separatists began in 2014 are more static and predictable, whereas places that became battlegrounds since Russia sent its troops in to invade are “a different world,” she said.
Mariia, who refused to share her surname for security reasons, said her husband is currently fighting in such a “hot spot.” Everyone misses and worries about their loved ones, and though this causes distress, her subordinates have kept their spirits high, she said.
“We are the descendants of Cossacks, we are free and brave. It is in our blood,” she said. “We are going to fight to the end.”
Two other soldiers the AP interviewed — former office-workers in Kyiv with no prior battle experience — said they were sent to the front lines in the east as soon as they completed their initial training. They said they observed “terrible organization” and “illogical decision-making,” and many people in their battalion refused to fight.
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One of the soldiers said he smokes marijuana daily. “Otherwise, I would lose my mind, I would desert. It’s the only way I can cope” he said.
A 28-year-old former teacher in Sloviansk who “never imagined” he would fight for his country described Ukraine’s battlefields as a completely different life, with a different value system and emotional highs as well as lows.
“There is joy, there is sorrow. Everything is intertwined,” he said.
Friendship with his colleagues provide the bright spots. But he also saw fellow soldiers succumbing to extreme fatigue, both physical and mental, and displaying symptoms of PTSD.
“It’s hard to live under constant stress, sleep-deprived and malnourished. To see all those horrors with your own eyes — the dead, the torn-off limbs. It is unlikely that someone’s psyche can withstand that,” he said.
Yet he, too, insisted that the motivation to defend their country remains.
“We are ready to endure and fight with clenched teeth. No matter how hard and difficult it is,” the teacher said, speaking from a fishing store that was converted into a military distribution hub. “Who will defend my home and my family, if it is not me?”
The center in the city of Sloviansk provides local military units with equipment and provisions, and gives soldiers a place to go during brief respites from the physical grind and horrors of battle.
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Tetiana Khimion, a 43-year-old dance choreographer, set up the center when the war started. All kinds of soldiers pass through, she says, from skilled special forces and war-hardened veterans to civilians-turned-fighters who signed up only recently.
“It can be like this: For the first time he comes, smiles widely, he can even be shy. The next time he comes, and there is emptiness in his eyes,” Khimion said. “He has been through something, and he is different.”
Behind her, a group of young Ukrainian soldiers on rotation from the front lines sit sharing jokes and a pizza. The thud of artillery can be heard a few miles away.
“Mostly they hope for the better. Yes, sometimes they come in a little sad, but we hope to raise their spirits here, too,” Khimion said. “We hug, we smile at each other and then they go back into the fields.”
On Sunday, Russian forces occupied the last Ukrainian stronghold in Luhansk province and stepped up rocket strikes on Donetsk, the Donbas province where the center is located.
___
Valerii Rezik contributed to this story.
___
AP · by FRANCESCA EBEL · July 4, 2022
12. High cost of Russian gains in Ukraine may limit new advance
Excerpts:
If Russia wins in the Donbas, it could build on its seizure of the southern Kherson region and part of the neighboring Zaporizhzhia to try to eventually cut Ukraine off from its Black Sea coast all the way to the Romanian border. If that succeeded, it would deal a crushing blow to the Ukrainian economy and also create a corridor to Moldova’s separatist region of Transnistria that hosts a Russian military base.
But that is far from assured. Mykola Sunhurovsky of the Razumkov Center, a Kyiv-based think tank, predicted that growing supplies of heavy Western weapons, including HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, will help Ukraine turn the tide of the war.
“The supplies of weapons will allow Ukraine to start a counteroffensive in the south and fight for Kherson and other cities,” Sunhurovsky said.
But Ukraine has also faced massive personnel losses: up to 200 soldiers a day in recent weeks of ferocious fighting in the east, according to officials.
“Overall, local military balance in Donbas favors Russia, but long term trends still favor Ukraine,” wrote Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military and program director at the Virginia-based CNA think tank. “However, that estimate is conditional on sustained Western military assistance, and is not necessarily predictive of outcomes. This is likely to be a protracted war.”
High cost of Russian gains in Ukraine may limit new advance
AP · by The Associated Press · July 5, 2022
After more than four months of ferocious fighting, Russia claimed a key victory: full control over one of the two provinces in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland.
But Moscow’s seizure of the last major stronghold of Ukrainian resistance in Luhansk province came at a steep price. The critical question now is whether Russia can muster enough strength for a new offensive to complete its capture of the Donbas and make gains elsewhere in Ukraine.
“Yes, the Russians have seized the Luhansk region, but at what price?” asked Oleh Zhdanov, a military analyst in Ukraine, noting that some Russian units involved in the battle lost up to a half their soldiers.
Even President Vladimir Putin acknowledged Monday that Russian troops involved in action in Luhansk need to “take some rest and beef up their combat capability.”
That raises doubts about whether Moscow’s forces and their separatist allies are ready to quickly thrust deeper into Donetsk, the other province that makes up the Donbas. Observers estimated in recent weeks that Russia controlled about half of Donetsk, and battle lines have changed little since then.
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What happens in the Donbas could determine the course of the war. If Russia succeeds there, it could free up its forces to grab even more land and dictate the terms of any peace agreement. If Ukraine, on the other hand, manages to pin the Russians down for a protracted period, it could build up the resources for a counteroffensive.
Exhausting the Russians has long been part of the plan for the Ukrainians, who began the conflict outgunned — but hoped Western weapons could eventually tip the scales in their favor.
They are already effectively using heavy howitzers and advanced rocket systems sent by the U.S. and other Western allies, and more is on the way. But Ukrainian forces have said they remain badly outmatched.
Ukraine’s Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said recently that Russian forces were firing 10 times more ammunition than the Ukrainian military.
After a failed attempt at a lightning advance on the capital of Kyiv in the opening weeks of the war, Russian forces withdrew from many parts of northern and central Ukraine and turned their attention to the Donbas, a region of mines and factories where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014.
Since then, Russia has adopted a slow-and-steady approach that allowed it to seize several remaining Ukrainian strongholds in Luhansk over the course of recent weeks.
While Ukrainian officials have acknowledged that their troops have withdrawn from the city of Lysychansk, the last bulwark of their resistance, the presidential office said Tuesday the military was still defending small areas in Luhansk.
Zhdanov, the analyst, predicted that the Russians would likely rely on their edge in firepower to “apply the same scorched earth tactics and blast the entire cities away” in Donetsk. The same day that Russia claimed it had taken the last major city in Luhansk, new artillery attacks were reported in cities in Donetsk.
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But Russia’s approach is not without drawbacks. Moscow has not given a casualty count since it said some 1,300 troops were killed in the first month of fighting, but Western officials have said that was just a fraction of real losses. Since then, Western observers have noted that the number of Russian troops involved in combat in Ukraine has dwindled, reflecting both heavy attrition and the Kremlin’s failure to fill up the ranks.
The limited manpower has forced the Russian commanders to avoid ambitious attempts to encircle large areas in the Donbas, opting for smaller maneuvers and relying on heavy artillery barrages to slowly force the Ukrainians to retreat.
The military has also relied heavily on separatists, who have conducted several rounds of mobilization, and Western officials and analysts have said Moscow has increasingly engaged private military contractors. It has also tried to encourage the Russian men who have done their tour of duty to sign up again, though it’s is unclear how successful that has been.
While Putin so far has refrained from declaring a broad mobilization that might foment social discontent, recently proposed legislation suggested that Moscow was looking for other ways to replenish the ranks. The bill would have allowed young conscripts, who are drafted into the army for a year and barred from fighting, to immediately switch their status and sign contracts to become full professional soldiers. The draft was shelved amid strong criticism.
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Some Western officials and analysts have argued that attrition is so heavy that it could force Moscow to suspend its offensive at some point later in the summer, but the Pentagon has cautioned that even though Russia has been churning through troops and supplies at rapid rates it still has abundant resources.
U.S. director of national intelligence Avril Haines said Putin appeared to accept the slow pace of the advance in the Donbas and now hoped to win by crushing Ukraine’s most battle-hardened forces.
“We believe that Russia thinks that if they are able to crush really one of the most capable and well-equipped forces in the east of Ukraine ... that will lead to a slump basically in the Ukrainian resistance and that that may give them greater opportunities,” Haines said.
If Russia wins in the Donbas, it could build on its seizure of the southern Kherson region and part of the neighboring Zaporizhzhia to try to eventually cut Ukraine off from its Black Sea coast all the way to the Romanian border. If that succeeded, it would deal a crushing blow to the Ukrainian economy and also create a corridor to Moldova’s separatist region of Transnistria that hosts a Russian military base.
But that is far from assured. Mykola Sunhurovsky of the Razumkov Center, a Kyiv-based think tank, predicted that growing supplies of heavy Western weapons, including HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, will help Ukraine turn the tide of the war.
“The supplies of weapons will allow Ukraine to start a counteroffensive in the south and fight for Kherson and other cities,” Sunhurovsky said.
But Ukraine has also faced massive personnel losses: up to 200 soldiers a day in recent weeks of ferocious fighting in the east, according to officials.
“Overall, local military balance in Donbas favors Russia, but long term trends still favor Ukraine,” wrote Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military and program director at the Virginia-based CNA think tank. “However, that estimate is conditional on sustained Western military assistance, and is not necessarily predictive of outcomes. This is likely to be a protracted war.”
___
Associated Press journalists Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Ukraine, and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.
___
AP · by The Associated Press · July 5, 2022
13. US Sues to Block Spy-Tech Deal
Excerpts:
“The two companies are the only competitors for this project, and if the merger is not quickly blocked, NSA and American taxpayers likely will be harmed in the form of higher prices, lower quality, and less innovation for this crucial service,” the Justice Department stated in its filing.
The government’s complaint is redacted because of the classified nature of the NSA project, but according to the filing, the NSA surveyed industry while planning the five-year contract for “operational modeling and simulation services” to the spy agency and found that Booz Allen and EverWatch were the only expected bidders.
US Sues to Block Spy-Tech Deal
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
The Justice Department opposes Booz Allen’s bid to acquire a rival ahead of a five-year signals intelligence procurement.
|
July 3, 2022 08:00 AM ET
Executive Editor
The Department of Justice filed a civil antitrust lawsuit on Wednesday to block Booz Allen Hamilton’s planned acquisition of signals intelligence vendor EverWatch because of competition concerns. The two firms were rivals in a planned National Security Agency services procurement called Optimal Decision.
“The two companies are the only competitors for this project, and if the merger is not quickly blocked, NSA and American taxpayers likely will be harmed in the form of higher prices, lower quality, and less innovation for this crucial service,” the Justice Department stated in its filing.
The government’s complaint is redacted because of the classified nature of the NSA project, but according to the filing, the NSA surveyed industry while planning the five-year contract for “operational modeling and simulation services” to the spy agency and found that Booz Allen and EverWatch were the only expected bidders.
According to the filing, EverWatch emerged as a competitor to Booz Allen’s long incumbency on NSA’s signals intelligence modeling and simulations services contract. The lawsuit cites Booz Allen’s internal documents rating its rival’s chances of winning the five-year service contract. Details on the ceiling value of the NSA contract and of Booz Allen’s estimation of EverWatch’s chances of winning were redacted in the DOJ complaint.
"We strongly disagree with the DOJ’s characterization of the proposed transaction," a Booz Allen spokesperson told FCW in an emailed statement. "The transaction would bring together two companies with complementary capabilities to enhance delivery of mission-critical services in support of our collective national security interests. We continue to believe the transaction would deliver significant benefits to our government clients in an industry that is highly competitive."
Booz Allen announced its plans to acquire EverWatch in March. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Subsequent to that, EverWatch pulled back from its plans to lead a bid for the Optimal Decision contract and reassigned that role to a subcontractor – a move that the complaint states was done in an effort to evade antitrust scrutiny.
“Even if it makes this transition, EverWatch has no incentive to offer a competitive price for its own services as a subcontractor,” the DOJ's filing states. “The prime contractor/subcontractor shell game that EverWatch is playing will thus do nothing to restore the competition that has already been lost as a result of this transaction.”
In a press release accompanying the complaint, Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter said that the planned deal “imperils competition in a market that is vital to our national security” adding that “both the acquisition agreement and the underlying transaction violate federal antitrust law.”
14. US and Russian ambassadors to China clash over Ukraine war at Beijing forum
Russia propaganda and talking points certainly are in the Stalin and Goering tradition and sound eerily similar to what we hear in the US.
"No one understood better than Stalin that the true object of propaganda is neither to convince nor even to persuade, but to produce a uniform pattern of public utterance in which the first trace of unorthodox thought immediately reveals itself as a jarring dissonance."
-- Alan Bullock, British historian
Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas. Joseph Stalin
The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic. Josef Stalin
Of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship . . . Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. (at the Nuremberg Trials, shortly before being sentenced to death)
Hermann Goering
US and Russian ambassadors to China clash over Ukraine war at Beijing forum
By Amber Wang South China Morning Post3 min
Published: 10:30pm, 4 Jul, 2022
The US ambassador Nicholas Burns accused Russia of waging an illegal and unprovoked war. Photo: AP
The US and Russian ambassadors clashed over Ukraine in a rare joint appearance in Beijing on Monday.
Nicholas Burns, the United States ambassador, told the World Peace Forum in Beijing that Russia’s “unprovoked” invasion was “the greatest threat to the world order”.
“Russia’s war in Ukraine, the fact that Russia crossed the border with an armed force, unprovoked, and has started this war with so much human suffering, so many innocent civilians dead – this is a direct violation of the UN Charter,” the ambassador told the event, which was hosted by Tsinghua University.
“There’s a food security crisis. It’s been compounded by this illegal, unjust and brutal war of the Russian Federation against Ukraine,” he said.
But Andrey Denisov, the Russian ambassador, who spoke after Burns, said he “totally disagreed” with the comments and his American counterpart had ignored the backdrop of Nato expansion.
“Nato, in essence, is involved in the war with Russia through proxies,” Denisov said.
Snake Island, a critical outpost for controlling Black Sea shipping lanes, was abandoned by Russian forces last week in what Moscow said was a gesture of goodwill. Ukraine said the Russians had been forced to retreat under a heavy barrage of artillery and missile fire.
Denisov praised Beijing for its “reasonable and balanced” approach, adding: “Basically, our colleagues here in China say that they clearly know where the roots of the Ukraine crisis are.”
China has so far refused to condemn Russia’s invasion and has criticised the imposition of sanctions and Nato’s eastward expansion, saying the alliance has created more conflict rather than resolving problems.
Densiov said China had been calling on all sides to take a constructive position, and suggested it may be able to “play a role” as mediator.
“China has a good relationship with Ukraine. And that’s where I hope that in one way, China can send some kind of signal to our neighbours to be more realistic,” he said.
02:37
Russia promises to open sea route for Ukrainian wheat, says Indonesian president
The British and French ambassadors also spoke at the event, with the UK’s Caroline Wilson joining Burns to dismiss claims that Nato, which she described as a “pure defensive alliance”, was a threat to Russia.
“Russia has a border of 20,000km, and it is an extremely big country,” she said. “One 16th of that border is with Nato countries, so the prime responsibility of the war is clear, the prime responsibility is with Russia.”
Burns had earlier said: “You [Russia] accepted Nato enlargement. You dealt with all these countries, and now you try to say that somehow they don’t have a right to their own independence and sovereignty.”
Meanwhile, French ambassador Laurent Bili said China and Europe both wanted a peaceful solution and should work together to stop the fighting and increase humanitarian assistance to help “alleviate the consequences of the war”.
“For example, China can join in Food and Agriculture Organization activities to get Russia to stop blocking food exports from Ukraine and to solve the problem of the food crisis,” he said.
Burns also accused China of spreading “Russian propaganda” and urged the foreign ministry to “stop accusing Nato of starting the war”.
He said: “I would hope the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson would also stop telling lies about American bioweapons labs, which do not exist in Ukraine … These lies are the behaviour of an authoritarian regime that routinely doesn’t tell the truth.”
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian rejected Burns’s criticisms, telling a press briefing on Monday: “It is the US official that has been spreading disinformation.”
Jia Qingguo, an international relations professor at Peking University, told the event that although Nato had not threatened Russia, Moscow felt that countries trying to join the bloc were hostile towards it.
“The fact is, you can say that Nato has not threatened Russia,” he said. “But the problem is Russia feels that way.”
Amber Wang is a reporter for the China desk, and focuses on Chinese politics and diplomacy. She joined the Post in 2021, and previously worked for The New York Times and Southern Metropolis Daily.
Laura Zhou joined the Post's Beijing bureau in 2010. She covers China's diplomatic relations and has reported on topics such as Sino-US relations, China-India disputes, and reactions to the North Korea nuclear crisis, as well as other general news.
15. ‘If Putin Was a Woman . . .’
Excerpts:
Only a strong ruler, exempted from the restraints of conventional morality and armed with a powerful internal security apparatus that is free to use harsh measures can keep Russia safe. The burden of absolute power and the necessity of making hard and often soul-killingly ugly decisions isolate the ruler. But to bear this burden and make those ugly choices is the highest form of sacrificial idealism. The people give themselves to the ruler; the ruler gives up hope of private happiness for the people.
It doesn’t always work out well. Catherine’s armies faced many setbacks owing to endemic corruption, poor leadership and, often, the technological superiority of her enemies’ weapons. There was never enough money in the treasury. But successful rulers do not give up when the going gets tough. They, and the Russian people with them, dig in for a long, ugly war.
This is the picture Mr. Putin wants the Russian people to have of their current situation, and to a significant degree it is likely how he sees himself.
To your couches, Americans! Those who do not understand their enemies must brace for defeat. As long as G-7 leaders allow cheap gender stereotypes to fog their brains, Vladimir Putin can still hope to grind out a victory in Ukraine.
‘If Putin Was a Woman . . .’
WSJ · by Walter Russell Mead
To grasp the Russian president’s worldview, just binge-watch ‘Catherine the Great.’
July 4, 2022 3:06 pm ET
An image from the streaming series ‘Ekaterina: The Rise of Catherine the Great’ on Amazon Prime.
Photo: Amazon
We live in an age of bad gender punditry, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has contributed to the confusion. Speaking to German media between the Group of Seven and NATO summits late last month, he offered the following wisdom: “If Putin was a woman, which he obviously isn’t, but if he were, I really don’t think he would have embarked on a crazy, macho war of invasion and violence in the way that he has. If you want a perfect example of toxic masculinity, it’s what he is doing in Ukraine.”
One hopes this was the reflexive and insincere pandering of a career politician, because if Mr. Johnson and his G-7 colleagues actually believe this nonsense, the West is in even greater trouble than it appears.
Vladimir Putin isn’t trying to be more like Rambo. Among other heroes of Russian history, he is trying to imitate Catherine the Great. The most successful of a line of 18th-century rulers, mostly female, who expanded the empire of Peter the Great and made Russia the greatest land power in Europe, Catherine conquered the Crimea and western Ukraine. She won naval battles in the Black Sea and ruthlessly suppressed rebellions at home. Having installed a former lover as king of Poland, she gleefully took the lion’s share of that unhappy country while partitioning it three times.
Americans hoping to get beyond stereotypes to grasp Mr. Putin’s worldview should spend some time on the couch binge-watching “Ekaterina: The Rise of Catherine the Great.” This lushly produced costume drama, made with funding from the Russian Ministry of Information and presented in Russian with English subtitles on Amazon Prime, lets viewers see Russia the way Mr. Putin wants Russians to see it. It provides more insight into Putinist thinking than all the bloviations of the G-7 leaders.
In the series, Catherine overthrows her feckless husband, Peter III, and secures power by ordering the murder of a young ex-emperor and sanctioning Peter’s murder at the hand of her lover. When Peter, a slavish admirer and imitator of Prussian King Frederick the Great, came to power, he recalled Russian troops then occupying Berlin and conceded huge territories to Frederick in hope of building an alliance of values with Russia’s former foe. Like the liberals of the Yeltsin era, he sought to provide Russia with a modern Western-style constitution and generally to make Russia a European country. The hero who helps Catherine seize the throne—an officer from the Russian occupation force in Germany disgusted with Peter’s abject weakness in the face of Western arrogance—could remind Russian viewers of ex-KGB agent Vladimir Putin returning to the chaos of post-Soviet Russia from his German posting. In subsequent seasons, Catherine goes on to crush domestic opposition and defeat Russia’s eternal enemies to the west and south.
All the key beliefs of Putinism, represented as eternal truths about Russia and its place in the world, are on display in a series that is as entertaining as it is educational. All other countries hate and seek to ruin Russia. Talk of “values” in international relations is a cynical con by which the hostile West seeks to confuse and disarm Russia.
Russia is also threatened from within. Greedy officials, populist discontent and pretenders to power would pull Russia to bits if left to themselves. Foreign enemies are eager to join forces with domestic ones, constantly probing to weaken Russia. Corruption is chronic; no government can ever root it out. But some corrupt officials are loyal to Russia; others are paid agents of foreign powers.
Only a strong ruler, exempted from the restraints of conventional morality and armed with a powerful internal security apparatus that is free to use harsh measures can keep Russia safe. The burden of absolute power and the necessity of making hard and often soul-killingly ugly decisions isolate the ruler. But to bear this burden and make those ugly choices is the highest form of sacrificial idealism. The people give themselves to the ruler; the ruler gives up hope of private happiness for the people.
It doesn’t always work out well. Catherine’s armies faced many setbacks owing to endemic corruption, poor leadership and, often, the technological superiority of her enemies’ weapons. There was never enough money in the treasury. But successful rulers do not give up when the going gets tough. They, and the Russian people with them, dig in for a long, ugly war.
This is the picture Mr. Putin wants the Russian people to have of their current situation, and to a significant degree it is likely how he sees himself.
To your couches, Americans! Those who do not understand their enemies must brace for defeat. As long as G-7 leaders allow cheap gender stereotypes to fog their brains, Vladimir Putin can still hope to grind out a victory in Ukraine.
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the July 5, 2022, print edition.
16. A Modern-Day Frederick the Great? The End of Short, Sharp Wars
Excerpts:
Finally, the American people ought to be prepared for the realities of a war like that in Ukraine. We may assess we are better, but we should accept the reality that the capacity to inflict large casualties at range from Russian systems is very much present.
None of these options would be likely to sustain sufficient replacements for casualties in a long war of attrition. Nevertheless, they are measures the Department of Defense could begin taking action on in the near term that could provide time for the resuscitation of the Selective Service System in response to a crisis. They might buy the year needed to start the flow of replacements into the war zone.
The long-term demands of a protracted war with China or Russia will demand a modern-day American levée en masse with implications far beyond reinstituting conscription. As we are seeing again for the first time since World War II or Korea, the dogs of war have insatiable appetites for people, munitions, and materiel. We are also witnessing in real time the sacrifices this has demanded from Ukraine and Russia. The final question for us as a nation, as we ponder the realities of great power competition and conflict, is this: Are we up for the same?
A Modern-Day Frederick the Great? The End of Short, Sharp Wars
A Modern-Day Frederick the Great? The End of Short, Sharp Wars - War on the Rocks
National security.
For insiders. By insiders.
July 5, 2022
How would the high-tech U.S. military fare in a war against China or Russia? The ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War may provide some answers. It may call into question some deeply held U.S. military axioms. Two of these are particularly important. First, is the belief that future wars will be short, decisive affairs. Second, the complexities of modern warfare demand professional forces in being. The second point is a corollary of the first: If wars are short, then only the forces available at, or shortly after, their inception have utility.
As we shall see, this has become a self-fulfilling prophecy that, if proven false, has potentially disastrous consequences for the United States. Specifically, if future wars with peers are protracted and involve significant attrition, can countries with relatively small, all-volunteer armies and no ready and robust personnel replacement systems prevail?
Although it is too early to tell what the war in Ukraine heralds, the West may be witnessing the end of short wars between states by professional armies. A similar transition last occurred as a result of the French Revolution. This was a real revolution: Power arrangements were forever changed in France, most obviously by the regicide of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. The guillotine was the final political arbiter. Killing nobility was obviously a bad precedent for European monarchies and they mobilized to restore the French monarchy and eradicate the revolution lest it spread. To meet this threat, the French instituted the levée en masse that mobilized the totality of the French nation.
The Frederick the Great Model
The Frederician system of warfare relied on highly trained professional armies made up principally of paid volunteers that were augmented by conscription depending on the practices of the country. These were the days of soldiering for the king’s shilling. The costs of armies coupled with the fact that they were financed by the king meant that they were small. In 1772, Frederick’s peacetime army was the third largest in Europe at 190,000, behind those of Austria (297,000) and Russia (224,000).
Losses in battles, given the tactics and weapons of the day, were high and could be equivalent on both sides. At the April 1741 Battle of Mollwitz, Frederick’s 21,600 soldiers faced 16,000 Austrians. Despite their victory, the Prussians suffered 4,850 casualties to the Austrians’ 4,550. Frederick’s instructions to his officers show why combat in his era was such a deadly affair:
battalions must attack when they are within twenty paces, or better still, within ten paces (at the commander’s discretion), and give the enemy a strong volley in the face. Immediately thereafter they should plunge the bayonet into the enemy’s ribs, at the same time shouting at him to throw away his weapon and surrender.
In Frederick’s day, the solution to sustaining expensive, hard to replace armies was to constrain the demands of war. As Gregory Fremont-Barnes writes, the wars of the anciens régimes were intentionally limited, a “quest for territorial spoil or economic advantage without radically upsetting the existing balance of power between great empires.” Given the limited means of the various monarchies, this was unavoidable. Even so, armies were constantly scouring Europe for new recruits — foreign mercenaries at one point made up over one-third of the Prussian army. Like today’s modulated recruiting bonuses, the supply-and-demand dynamics of the marketplace in Frederick’s day determined how much it took to hire soldiers.
A Real Revolution in Military and Political Affairs
The French Revolution changed everything. Within a year after the August 1793 National Convention issuance of the levée en masse, the French army swelled to an unprecedented 1,500,000 citizens under arms. The Republic was the model of a nation of arms with a citizen-based and self-sustaining military, supported by a mobilized population and industrial base.
Napoleon wielded this instrument ferociously, rampaging across Europe until other states adopted his methods, if not the empowerment of their citizenry, to survive his onslaught. Ironically, responding to France eventually ended the absolute monarchies kings were endeavoring to preserve and changed politics in Europe, as well as military and mobilization methods, forever. Importantly, the levée en masse meant casualties could be replaced annually as a new class of young men came of age. This was the meaning of the refrain in La Mareillaise known by every French citizen: “If they fall, our young heroes, will be produced anew from the ground.”
Conscription enabled Napoleon to regenerate his army despite horrendous casualties. The famous Russia campaign is the starkest example. In June 1812, although accurate numbers are still elusive, some 600,000 men of the Grand Armée marched into Russia. Roughly 120,000 made their way out in December. Nevertheless, the levée en masse responded. By 1815 France had a reconstituted army of 300,000 and Napoleon took 73,000 soldiers into the fateful Battle of Waterloo.
The levée en masse became a universal model across European nations. They had to adopt the system or be woefully outmanned and unable to replace their considerable losses in a timely and predictable manner. These methods of war, organizations, and means of mobilization continued to develop after the Napoleonic wars. Mass armies manned with conscripts and armed by robust industrial bases were the new normal. On the eve of the Great War, armies were of a size Frederick and even Napoleon would have had difficulty imagining. In 1914, France had 4,000,000 men under arms; Germany 3,800,000; and Russia 5,971,000. These armies, whose enormous losses could be replaced with annual classes of new conscripts, would feed the near-insatiable appetites of two protracted world wars.
When the State Is Not in Jeopardy
Until the Vietnam War conscription was viewed as necessary in the United States — given the threats citizens that were being drafted to deter or fight. That war did not pose an existential threat, and sending Americans’ sons off to be killed or maimed in an increasingly unpopular war lost the support of the U.S. people. The war and the draft also ignited public unrest and protest became a political liability until it ended in 1973.
Relatively small (by Cold War standards) volunteer armies now constitute the norm in the United States. Following the end of the Cold War, most Western states have also ended or restricted their conscription practices. This includes China and Russia, who are also transitioning to professional forces, although both maintain active conscription systems. China has not had to rely on conscription, filling its ranks with volunteers. Russia still registers its citizens that come of draft age twice a year, but is moving (unevenly) toward a contract-based active force to increase professionalism. Draftees, after a year of service, enter the reserves to provide a mobilization capacity if needed.
Could the U.S. military stay in the fight with similar losses? The first logical place to look for personnel replacements in the event of a national emergency would be the Selective Service System. Since the end of the draft in 1973, the U.S. selective service infrastructure has atrophied. First, there is no demand from the Department of Defense for a draft. A 2018 Government Accountability Office report noted, “There are no operational plans that envision mobilization at a level that would require a draft.” Those supporting the all-volunteer force believe that “it is far more experienced, motivated, disciplined, and committed than the draft army during Vietnam. It is also considered the most effective fighting force the world has ever seen.” Thus, a return to the draft would reduce military effectiveness.
Furthermore, in its current state, the Selective Service System principally manages the registration of eligible males, because, despite occasional efforts to include women, they are currently exempt. Indeed, legislation is occasionally put forward in Congress to completely abolish selective service, including even registration by eligible males. More importantly, even if the system works as intended, it cannot begin conscription until Congress and the president authorize a draft. The first inductees would not report for processing until day 193 following the passage of the authorization law. It is worth noting that as of the date of the drafting of this essay, the Russo-Ukrainian War at day 125 is short of that 193-day mark by 68 days and replacing casualties trained personnel is already an issue for both countries. Finally, soldiers are not ready for service until they have successfully completed their initial training. In the case of an infantry soldier, One Station Unit Training is a 22-week program. In a best case, the first group of infantry soldiers would be available in approximately one year to ship out to combat.
There are also those who doubt whether the system could actually accomplish even this modest effort. The services are responsible for training inductees. During interviews for a 2018 Government Accountability Office review of the Selective Service System, military officials expressed doubts about the availability of adequate “training facilities, uniforms or funding to receive, train, equip, and integrate a large influx of inductees in the event of a draft.”
What is the Russo-Ukrainian War Showing?
A first-order observation coming out of the war in Ukraine is that modern major combat operations may not necessarily be short. Even though this war has gone on less than five months, it is still short by the standards of any major large-scale conflict between relatively equally matched adversaries. This suggests that what needs to be fundamentally reexamined is the new American way of war that has emerged since the end of the Cold War: that overwhelming American high-tech capabilities, wielded by superb professionals, will result in unstoppable offensives that will make wars “short, decisive, and accomplished with a minimum of casualties.”
What if this is wrong? Might future great power wars look like Ukraine, or worse?
We are witnessing a grinding war of attrition taking place primarily on land over territory that both sides covet. This only strengthens the resolve of both combatants. Furthermore, the longer the war continues, it appears the deeper the commitment of both Russia and Ukraine to victory becomes. And the more casualties each will suffer. Ukrainian Brig. Gen. Oleksiy Hromo told ABC News on June 17 that his military is losing 1,000 casualties per day in the heavy fighting in Donbas, with 200 to 500 of those killed on average in action daily. Ukrainian sources (which may not be reliable) hold that 35,000 Russians have been killed between the invasion and June 27, with many more wounded.
Consequently, force preservation, reconstitution of units, and casualty replacement are turning out to be crucial as both sides fight to endure and outlast the other. Accordingly, both Russia and Ukraine are combining depleted units and reaching back into their less well trained reserves and will surely look to its conscripts if the war continues.
Although it is beyond the scope of this current essay, the ongoing high levels of materiel wastage and the insatiable demand for munitions are also daunting challenges in a high-intensity protracted war. Conrad Crane’s article in these pages about the fragility of the U.S. military in attrition warfare is an important warning.
Furthermore, given the geostrategic realities in NATO, might U.S. forces, like the Ukrainian forces, have to operate on the defensive rather than offensive? If so, none of the emerging service and joint warfighting concepts emphasize defensive operations, nor are capabilities being developed to create a U.S. anti-access and area-denial capability. This is clearly at odds with the principal U.S. mission in NATO: to deter aggression. I have suggested that such an approach would demand a strategy of deterrence through denial and supporting concepts and capabilities, which conflicts with the fundamental preference of the U.S. military for offensive operations.
As Crane notes, “When I walk the halls of the Pentagon today, I still hear discussions about the importance of winning the first battle decisively.” More importantly, he believes (as I have also written) that there is a belief “that nothing like that [what is happening to the Russians] could ever happen to them.” This is a toxic mix of hubris and denial that could result in losing not just the first battle, but the war.
Thus far, as I have written in these pages, there seems to be a consensus that the central cause of Russian failures is attributable to a lack of professionalism, resulting from their untrained troops, lack of noncommissioned officers, and incompetent officers. If this is correct, then the U.S. military is in great shape. Move along, nothing to see here. These assessments are not only premature, but they are also exceedingly dangerous. There is a reason the U.S. military loses its first battles. It is not because it planned to do so. It is because it was prepared to fight the war it wanted, not the one that the enemy visited upon it.
That first battle may be protracted and the only one of a war if the United States cannot maintain adequate forces in the fight. Politically, one can only imagine what the NATO reaction would be to losing anywhere near what the Russians or Ukrainians have in just in a few short months of a war that still shows no signs of lessening its intensity. It is a battle the militaries modeled after Frederick the Great could not win until they woke up to the necessity of becoming Napoleonic.
Consequently, we have to look critically at the lessons from Ukraine as a catalyst to make the necessary changes to enable us to prevail against countries who are preparing to defeat us in the next first battle, banking on our inability to continue beyond that initial failure. The inability to keep units in the fight after significant attrition and to replace large numbers of casualties rapidly are in my view the Achilles’ heels of the all-volunteer professional U.S. military.
What to Do, Absent a Modern-Day Levée en Masse?
If in fact the possibility of protracted wars with significant personnel attrition are a possibility identified by the war in Ukraine, then the Department of Defense needs to understand how to meet the demands of force preservation, unit reconstitution, and personnel replacement. Putting one’s hopes in the renewal of the draft is almost surely not, given current national perceptions of the threats facing our country, a realistic near-term solution.
Although there are occasionally calls to institute a system of national service, the goal is to create better citizens and instill national unity, not meet the potential demands of replacing mass casualties. Regardless, these efforts have all failed to gain traction. Even in the face of a growing threat, it is an open question whether U.S. citizens would support conscription. It is worth recalling that the August 1941 bill to extend selective service to begin preparing the U.S. Armed Forces for World War II passed by only one vote in the House of Representatives. This was after Germany had conquered most of continental Europe and was driving deep into the Soviet Union. One could reasonably ask if Congress would authorize conscription before NATO was actually attacked.
Furthermore, increased recruiting efforts are not likely the answer. The services are already having difficulty meeting current goals peacetime objectives. The Army has met only 40 percent of its annual goal and recently announced that it would accept recruits without a high-school diploma or a General Educational Development certificate. This comes after already relaxing its tattoo standards.
How the American people would respond to a new draft as a hedge against great power war is unknowable. In any case, it is not a viable course of action for the U.S. military to rely upon absent its institution by authorization in law. Therefore, the Department of Defense needs to take steps to reduce its vulnerability to mass casualties. Below are several suggestions that, although certainly not comprehensive, are a necessary beginning.
Systems of rotational readiness should be abandoned and the individual replacement system and tiered-unit readiness reinstituted. As Robert Rush convincingly argues in his pathbreaking study Hell in Hurtgen Forest: The Ordeal and Triumph of an American Infantry Regiment, the individual replacement model enabled the U.S. Army to keep units in action. German forces did not have a similar system and their units eventually suffered attrition to the point of combat ineffectiveness. This will once again raise the argument that unit replacement systems result in more cohesive units. That is correct, all things being equal — but they are not. In a protracted war of attrition where battalions are being decimated as they are in Ukraine, the ability to man, train, and equip units will soon fall behind the demands of the war. Finally, replacements can be sent where they are most needed.
The maximum number of forces available at all times at a deployable level of readiness should be the goal for U.S. forces. This had been the enduring model in the Army with the exception of the decision to “modularize” into brigade combat teams to sustain the never-ending deployments to protracted counterinsurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Forces should be permanently based in key areas in Europe and the Pacific. Where there is not adequate infrastructure for families, military members should be assigned on short tours, as they were in Korea for decades.
The focus of combat medical care should be on returning soldiers as rapidly as possible to the fight. The U.S. military also needs to come to grips with two realities. First, its capacity is woefully inadequate for the numbers of casualties being sustained by either side in Ukraine. I led a RAND effort that came to a similar conclusion about conventional combat operations before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Second, in an environment with a significant air defense threat, evacuation by air will likely be impossible. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, praising the heroism of Ukrainian helicopter pilots flying supplies into Mariupol and evacuating wounded, stressed, “We lost a lot of pilots.” As David Barno and Nora Bensahel recently noted in these pages, “The war in Ukraine raises very serious questions about whether and how helicopters can be used effectively — or even survive — on the modern battlefield.” Consequently, there may be no “Golden Hour,” the current U.S. standard for getting wounded to medical treatment in a war, unless major advances are made in unmanned casualty evacuation.
Finally, the American people ought to be prepared for the realities of a war like that in Ukraine. We may assess we are better, but we should accept the reality that the capacity to inflict large casualties at range from Russian systems is very much present.
None of these options would be likely to sustain sufficient replacements for casualties in a long war of attrition. Nevertheless, they are measures the Department of Defense could begin taking action on in the near term that could provide time for the resuscitation of the Selective Service System in response to a crisis. They might buy the year needed to start the flow of replacements into the war zone.
The long-term demands of a protracted war with China or Russia will demand a modern-day American levée en masse with implications far beyond reinstituting conscription. As we are seeing again for the first time since World War II or Korea, the dogs of war have insatiable appetites for people, munitions, and materiel. We are also witnessing in real time the sacrifices this has demanded from Ukraine and Russia. The final question for us as a nation, as we ponder the realities of great power competition and conflict, is this: Are we up for the same?
David Johnson is a retired Army colonel. He is a principal researcher at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and an adjunct scholar at the Modern War Institute at West Point. He is the author of Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers: Innovation in the U.S. Army, 1917-1945. From 2012 to 2014 he founded and directed the Chief of Staff of the Army Strategic Studies Group for Gen. Raymond T. Odierno.
17. The Myth of the Global
Excerpts:
And as the U.S. government rolls out industrial policies to increase the resilience of and access to a host of critical supply chains, its neighbors can help. Geographic diversification can offset the risks that natural disasters and accidents pose to stockpiles and production capacity. Regional manufacturing can lower the public financial burden of subsidies, as goods are more likely to attain a higher quality at lower cost when drawing on a cross-border network of suppliers.
North America’s regional trade has recovered, albeit slightly, from a 2009 nadir of just 39 cents of every dollar thanks to expanding textile, machinery, and produce supply chains. But no North American leader is prioritizing a continental commercial future. Mexico is turning inward, with energy and natural resource nationalism threatening its manufacturing base. Canada is looking to diversify its international commercial ties by reaping the benefit of trade deals with the United Kingdom and the European Union and in Asia as a member of the CPTPP. And the Biden administration is guided by another repeated but unsubstantiated refrain, that NAFTA and other trade agreements hurt, rather than help, U.S. workers. That is misguided: most of the studies trashing NAFTA don’t calculate the better-paid export-oriented jobs gained as a result of more favorable terms in the United States’ two biggest export markets; nor do they consider how lower North American production costs kept industries, such as auto manufacturing, alive and even allowed them to thrive in the face of global price competition from vehicles manufactured in other, rival regional hubs.
Through integration, a more competitive North American economy is possible. Three decades of freer trade, the existence of sophisticated supply chains in specific sectors, and widespread cross-border ties between communities and workers due to the movement of tens of millions of people could be energized and expanded. But deeper, more sustainable regionalization will also require a change in mindset. It will require recognizing that the United States’ middle and working class would prosper more from engagement in the global economy than they would from a retreat to the domestic market. Americans could gain more jobs, profits, and financial security if their country decided to take what is on offer: a slice of a large and growing economic pie.
The Myth of the Global
Why Regional Ties Win the Day
Foreign Affairs · by The Globalization Myth: Why Regions Matter · July 5, 2022
A constant and largely unquestioned refrain in foreign policy is that the world has globalized. Closets are full of clothes stitched in other countries; electronics and cars are often assembled far from where consumers live. U.S. investment flows into Asian markets, and Indians decamp to the United States for graduate school. The numbers show the magnitude of international exchange. Trade among all countries hovers around $20 trillion, a nearly tenfold increase from 1980. International capital flows also grew exponentially during that period, from $500 billion a year to well over $4 trillion. And nearly five times as many people are traveling across borders compared with four decades ago.
It is, however, misleading to claim that this flow of goods and services and people is always global in scale. Globalization, as commonly understood, is mostly a myth; the reality is far closer to regionalization. When companies, supply chains, and individuals go abroad, they don’t go just anywhere. More often than not, they stay fairly close to home.
Consider trade. If long distances didn’t affect international sales, the typical journey for any given purchase would be some 5,300 miles (the average distance between two randomly selected countries). Instead, half of what is sold abroad travels less than 3,000 miles, not much farther than a flight across the United States, and certainly not far enough to cross oceans. A study by the logistics company DHL and scholars at the NYU Stern School of Business concluded, “If one pair of countries is half as distant as another otherwise similar pair of countries, this greater physical proximity alone would be expected to increase the merchandise trade between the closer pair by more than three times.”
Companies’ forays abroad have been more regional than global, as well. A study of the Fortune Global 500, a list of the world’s largest companies, shows that two of every three dollars of their sales come from their home regions. A study of 365 prominent multinationals found that just nine of them were truly global, meaning that Asia, Europe, and North America each accounted for at least 20 percent of their sales.
Additionally, the oft-repeated term “global supply chains” is a misnomer. The making of things across borders tends to be even more regional than the buying and selling of finished products: the pieces and parts that come together in modern manufacturing are more likely to be shipped between neighboring countries than from farther away.
International capital flows are also more regional than global. Cross-border buyers of stocks, bonds, and other financial instruments don’t invest as far away as one would expect given how global their options are, on average going no more than the distance between Tokyo and Singapore. Foreign direct investment tends to follow trade. Over half of all cross-border financing circulates solely within the European Union. And lending, borrowing, and foreign direct investment in Asia by Asian banks and companies is on the rise.
People tend to orient their lives regionally, as well. Most people never leave their own countries. And for those who do travel abroad, well over half never leave their regions. The vast majority of travelers taking European vacations are European. The same goes for people in Asia and North America. Those who move permanently abroad also tend to stick close to their countries of origin; the majority don’t leave their immediate region. And although students who venture internationally tend to go farther than other travelers, 40 percent don’t leave the geographic area in which they were born.
Over half the international flows of goods, money, information, and people occurs within three main regional hubs: Asia, Europe, and North America. The economic rise of China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam began with regional investments and inputs. Eastern Europe’s fast-paced growth came from linking to western Europe. Between 1993 and 2007, Mexico’s economy more than doubled in size, thanks in large part to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), reached in 1993 with Canada and the United States.
The overlooked reality of regionalization has implications for U.S. policy. Although NAFTA was revised in 2020—it is now the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA)—the North American hub is still not as integrated as that of its East Asian and European counterparts. In industries for which North American regional supply chains developed and solidified, such as vehicles and aerospace, local production maintained its edge. But in other sectors, including electronics and textiles, North America’s more limited regionalization led whole industries to move wherever regional links provided a leg up.
Ideally, the United States would be inking international trade deals to expand its market access and pursue its geopolitical aims, such as countering China’s rise. That does not appear politically possible at the moment, however. A more viable policy would be to fortify and tap the United States’ regional network. That would allow Washington to access a broader swath of the global marketplace and stave off losing more of its competitive advantage to countries that are expanding their own regional footprints.
Why Regional Trumps Global
The major reason networks skew regional is simple: geography matters. Even with massive container ships, moving things across oceans still costs time and money. A transatlantic voyage adds a week to delivery, and a trip across the Pacific Ocean adds a month before parts or goods show up in U.S. warehouses and factories. That means producers and stores need to maintain larger inventories of goods that come from far away.
And it is not only cargo that can be delayed or lost when trade takes place over great distances. Even with virtually free calls, video, and file sharing, the inherent difficulty of communicating and coordinating across space and time can add to the costs of doing business. Language and cultural cues vary by country, and these differences often grow with distance. (This is one reason that a quarter of trade happens among countries that share a language.) Legal codes and administrative norms also tend to be more similar the closer countries are, eliminating the need for duplicate teams of lawyers, accountants, and human resources specialists. And the intangible but vital task of finding things in common and building trust and understanding for teamwork can get harder as the distance between people grows.
The oft-repeated term “global supply chains” is a misnomer.
Trade pacts as well tend to be regional. Although the 1990s saw the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the expansion of its membership and oversight powers, what has been as important, if not more so, over the last 30 years has been the proliferation of bilateral and multilateral free-trade agreements, which tend to involve countries in the same region. European countries turned first to each other for trade. Brazil joined with Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. After reaching a bilateral trade deal with Israel, the United States turned to Canada and Mexico and later to ten other nations in the Western Hemisphere. Asian nations banded together through the free-trade area of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and later the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Global arrangements such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the successor to a pact that was engineered by Washington but that the United States later abandoned, are so far more the exception than the rule.
Companies see differences in their bottom lines depending on their geographic dispersion. Many have gone abroad to boost their earnings, benefiting from the cross-country advantages of differential skills and wage costs. Yet go too far, and costs begin to rise again. In 2010, an academic study of 123 U.S. multinationals found that returns on assets improved as companies expanded internationally within their region but declined when they ventured farther from home. The management consulting group McKinsey & Company dubs this “the globalization penalty,” finding in a survey of 500 multinational corporations that earnings diminished as operations spread out. It seems the optimal distance for private-sector profits is a Goldilocks zone: not too close but not too far.
The Rule of Three
The strength of the regional networks that a country belongs to are therefore particularly important. And in this regard, European countries are well situated. Although Brexit and mounting populist Euroskepticism may make the EU appear fragile, the European continent is, in fact, the most integrated region in the world. The deep ties that connect its countries are rooted in over a half century of diplomatic bargains that created a single market, a common passport, and a shared currency. Today, Europeans make things together and sell to one another, with nearly two-thirds of EU trade staying within the union. Similarly, internal European investment exceeds that from the rest of the world by 50 percent.
Asia is not far behind in its integration. According to the Asian Development Bank, the proportion of the region’s trade that takes place internally has risen from 45 percent in 1990 to nearly 60 percent today, surpassing North America and closing in on Europe. Decades of export-oriented development propelled by Asian business leaders and backed by bureaucrats tied country after country together through production supply chains. Asian countries make things together and increasingly buy from one another: nearly one-third of Asian finished goods are sold to consumers in the region.
Extreme weather will upend logistics as ports flood and rails buckle.
North America’s countries have also deepened their economic ties to one another. In the wake of NAFTA, trade between Canada, Mexico, and the United States rose fourfold, outpacing that between those countries and ones outside the region. Investment, too, became more regional, particularly for Mexico, where since NAFTA’s signing in 1993, one of every two dollars flowing in has come from its neighbors. In particular, North America’s agricultural and advanced-manufacturing supply chains expanded and strengthened over the course of the 1990s, leading regional commerce to jump by more than a quarter.
This integration didn’t last, however; after China’s 2001 accession to the WTO, regional exchanges dwindled, falling from around 47 percent of the continent’s total trade in 2000 to a low of 39 percent in 2009, before recovering slightly to around 40 percent by 2018. Still, although North America’s internal connections remain significantly less robust than those in Asia and Europe, they far outstrip those among the countries of Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and South Asia—regions where less than a quarter of trade and investment occurs between neighbors.
Just in Time
During the COVID-19 pandemic, border closures and rising transportation costs have prompted companies to consider bringing production closer to home. Governments have suddenly become keen to exercise more control over international supply chains for pharmaceutical and medical products. At the same time, ongoing technological innovation has made it easier for the private sector to expand production in different geographic neighborhoods. Automation, in particular, is making far-flung factories and supply chains less vital and less profitable than in the past. As sensors increasingly monitor assembly lines and equipment and robots and other forms of mechanization take over many manufacturing processes and tasks, wages make up a smaller part of operating costs. That development has diminished, at least in part, the once strong draw of locations with cheap labor.
New ways of making things, such as 3-D or additive printing, are also changing manufacturing processes, making small-batch production runs more affordable and reducing the need for specialized factories. These advances lower the numbers of workers that companies need and change the skill sets they seek: in many sectors, skilled (and higher-paid) technicians have become far more important than line workers. That shift diminishes the advantages of economies of scale, enabling at least some companies to move production closer to consumers without sacrificing profits.
The value of time is growing, too. As consumers expect faster delivery and near-immediate gratification, the longer lead times for goods produced by factories thousands of miles away can mean lost sales. The popularity of customized products also makes mass-producing facilities abroad less relevant than in the past.
Moreover, demographic shifts are raising the low wages that once drew so many companies to developing countries. In China, the great migration that brought over 200 million workers from the hinterlands to manufacturing centers has largely ended. After decades of strict family planning, more workers are now exiting the labor market than entering it. This trend looks set to accelerate: the national workforce is expected to shrink by 100 million people over the next 20 years. Working-age populations are contracting throughout much of Asia, limiting labor pools and driving up wage rates across electronics and other supply chains. In Europe, working-age populations are in decline or appear to be headed that way. Millions of Hungarians, Romanians, and other eastern Europeans have headed to their western neighbors in search of better pay and opportunities, and an influx of migrants—and, more recently, refugees—is only partly replenishing workforces.
Another factor curbing globalization is climate change. Extreme weather will increasingly upend logistics as ports flood, rails buckle, and airplanes are more frequently grounded by storms. Longer supply chains increase these vulnerabilities and potential costs. Meanwhile, policies designed to slow the planet’s warming by cutting emissions are raising global transportation prices, incentivizing companies to manufacture goods closer to consumer markets.
The Power of Politics
It’s not just technological and demographic shifts and climate change that will curb globalization and favor more regionalization; political change is playing a role, as well. After decades of opening up to the world economy, many countries are pulling back. The Global Trade Alert, a nonprofit that tracks and collates trade policies from official sources around the world, has calculated that since the 2008 global financial crisis, new protectionist measures have outpaced liberalizing ones three to one.
Meanwhile, the WTO has been sidelined. It is no longer the forum to negotiate new trade rules. Its efforts to reshape global trade ended in 2015, when the so-called Doha Round of talks sputtered to a close. More niche efforts, such as attempts to reduce fishing subsidies in mostly rich nations, are struggling. Since 2018, the WTO has been unable to punish countries that break the rules, as the United States, under both the Trump and the Biden administrations, has refused to approve new judges to its Appellate Body.
Instead, regional accords have stepped in to govern international trade. The USMCA regulates North America’s trade ties and arbitrates disputes. In Asia, the RCEP now governs commercial exchanges among 15 countries, removing most tariffs and combining rules of origin requirements to favor regional supply chains. The African Continental Free Trade Area agreement aspires to do something similar, replacing a tangle of bilateral rules and regulations with a single, almost continent-wide commercial system. Regional accords now set the rules for more than half the world’s trade.
Regionalization, not globalization, will set the corporate agenda in the coming decades.
Geopolitical tensions threaten to fragment international commerce even further. Economic competition has become a pillar of great-power rivalry. With industrial policy back in vogue, many countries, including the United States, are throwing up protectionist barriers. The U.S. government has identified semiconductors, large-capacity batteries, pharmaceuticals, and dozens of critical minerals as vital to national security and is now implementing policies and spending tens of billions of dollars to expand stockpiles, beef up manufacturing capacity at home and in friendly nations, and redraw global supply chains in these designated sectors. Countries everywhere are drawing up their own lists, some of them adding information and data flows, fragmenting cross-border flows of services. As governments work to reshape the business environment across more industries, they are also implicitly or explicitly asking other countries to choose sides through export controls and other mechanisms. This will further limit international ties.
The push to reshore critical products and services is underway almost everywhere. But what most countries will find is that outside of a few highly sensitive or vital products, companies can’t or won’t bring production back home. Those that try to do so are more likely to go bust as costs rise and innovation falls. The most probable scenario is that multinationals will turn away from globalized supply chains in favor of shorter, more duplicative regional ones. Regionalization, not globalization, will set the corporate agenda in the coming decades.
America's Advantage
Many of these technological, demographic, and policy shifts favor the United States. The declining importance of cheap wages and the rising role of skilled labor should advantage better-paid U.S. workers. A trove of intellectual property and intangible assets, including several of the new technologies transforming work and workplaces, will allow many U.S.-based companies to reap outsize benefits. Abundant financing means more discoveries, more patents, and more products. The United States also boasts clear laws and regulatory regimes—which is why so many investors prefer stocks and bonds issued under New York law—and a generally receptive and entrepreneurial business environment. For all these reasons, the U.S. economy should fare well in this next round of globalization.
Still, Washington’s advantages aren’t immutable. Other countries are also investing in education, research, and development and advancing their own technologies and national corporate champions. Moreover, the next billion new buyers of cars, clothes, and computers will be in Asia, where middle classes are growing faster than in any other region. To tap into this growth, U.S. multinationals and exporters will need to adapt.
To effectively compete, the United States should pursue reforms at home to take better care of its people and workers and to prepare them for a more fluid and volatile economic future. This will require expanding safety nets, ensuring labor rights, and improving educational opportunities that upgrade Americans’ skills. Domestic infrastructure also needs an upgrade to lower logistical costs that weigh down American-made goods. The $1.2 trillion set aside in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to pay for improvements to highways, bridges, electric grids, and broadband is a good start. More public spending for basic science and research and development should follow to usher in cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs and technologies.
In addition to getting its own house in order, the United States needs a more strategic approach to trade. One of the country’s challenges is the eroding price competitiveness of its exports in an increasing number of international markets. The countries to which the United States enjoys preferred access account for less than 10 percent of the world’s GDP, and few of them are among the fastest-growing markets. As other countries have formed and joined trade accords, the cost of U.S. exports has risen in relative terms. Because of the RCEP, cars assembled in Japan and South Korea no longer face the double-digit tariffs that U.S.-manufactured alternatives still confront in the region, and Chinese steel, chemicals, and machines all face lower levies than options made in the United States.
In an ideal world, the United States would pursue a robust and comprehensive trade agenda. Joining the CPTPP; restarting negotiations over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which would have linked the U.S. and EU markets; and revitalizing the WTO would open up more markets to U.S. goods and services and reinforce more transparent, fair, and environmentally friendly ways of doing business. The United States would also do well to regain its leadership in international standard-setting bodies, restoring its traditional role as a rule-maker and not just rule-taker.
A production line in production line in Shenzhen, China, September 2019
Jason Lee / Reuters
But until the politics of trade change in the United States, none of that is likely to occur. In the meantime, Washington can benefit by turning to its neighbors. Canada and Mexico have preferred access to many global markets where the United States pays full fare. Their respective portfolios of free-trade agreements each cover some 1.5 billion consumers, representing nearly 60 percent of global GDP. Feeding into Canadian or Mexican manufacturing supply chains can give U.S. producers and parts makers preferential access to the world’s consumers, which they currently lack on their own. For instance, Mexican-made cars sold in Europe dodge the ten percent tariff U.S.-made models face, lowering the sticker price by some $3,000 on a Ford Focus and by over $4,000 on an Audi Q5, a savings that makes it hard for U.S. carmakers to compete. The opposite is true for U.S.-based parts makers: Mexican plants can source up to 40 percent of their Europe-bound models from suppliers in countries that are not part of the bargain. That means imported Mexican-made cars sold in France or Germany also keep U.S. factories humming.
In today’s more regionally focused world, exports are more competitive when countries make them together. Much of Germany’s touted international commercial success has resulted from its regional manufacturing ties. By seeding plants and operations throughout eastern Europe, Germany’s private companies—the famed Mittelstand—have bolstered the country’s manufacturing base and created jobs at home as their products have thrived on global markets. China’s spectacular rise and export dynamism similarly has depended largely on its incorporation into regional supply chains.
If the United States wants to help its companies replicate these successes, it also needs a regional approach. Regionalization brings competitive advantages that a single country, even one as large and wealthy as the United States, cannot match on its own. To make products as good, affordable, and fast as the competition, U.S. companies need to be able to source parts from many places and complete some tasks and processes in other countries.
A regional commercial strategy will also help more work stay on the continent—and thus in the United States. When part of production is located in Canada or Mexico, U.S. suppliers are more likely to keep or gain contracts and remain in business than when production moves overseas. And when orders rise, so do jobs all along the supply chain. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates that, on average, nearly 40 percent of the value of U.S. imports from Mexico is created in the United States. For Canada, that figure is just over 25 percent. Conversely, U.S. input into imports from the rest of the world averages just 4.4 percent, reflecting how few U.S.-based suppliers are part of the global production process.
To enhance North America’s regionalization, the continent needs to improve its linking infrastructure. This means adding land crossings, upgrading thoroughfares that lead to and away from the border, expanding rail lines and depots, and investing in people and technology to staff and to support ports of entry. With faster connections and lower logistical costs, manufacturers in North America can make products that are more globally competitive.
A more competitive North American economy is possible.
As parts and components move between the three countries, workers must be able to follow. More and easier legal work-based migration paths are needed to make the region as a whole more productive, and they will require transferable credentials, licenses, and diplomas; business visas; and longer-term migration avenues. Greater coordination in education and training can help address gaps in skill and improve work environments to ensure that North America’s population growth, already a bright spot for the region, continues. Educational exchanges, language learning, and cross-border apprenticeships and skill development programs can all help build a continental workforce better able to entice new businesses and investment. Stiffening migration barriers will just lead more firms to go elsewhere.
And as the U.S. government rolls out industrial policies to increase the resilience of and access to a host of critical supply chains, its neighbors can help. Geographic diversification can offset the risks that natural disasters and accidents pose to stockpiles and production capacity. Regional manufacturing can lower the public financial burden of subsidies, as goods are more likely to attain a higher quality at lower cost when drawing on a cross-border network of suppliers.
North America’s regional trade has recovered, albeit slightly, from a 2009 nadir of just 39 cents of every dollar thanks to expanding textile, machinery, and produce supply chains. But no North American leader is prioritizing a continental commercial future. Mexico is turning inward, with energy and natural resource nationalism threatening its manufacturing base. Canada is looking to diversify its international commercial ties by reaping the benefit of trade deals with the United Kingdom and the European Union and in Asia as a member of the CPTPP. And the Biden administration is guided by another repeated but unsubstantiated refrain, that NAFTA and other trade agreements hurt, rather than help, U.S. workers. That is misguided: most of the studies trashing NAFTA don’t calculate the better-paid export-oriented jobs gained as a result of more favorable terms in the United States’ two biggest export markets; nor do they consider how lower North American production costs kept industries, such as auto manufacturing, alive and even allowed them to thrive in the face of global price competition from vehicles manufactured in other, rival regional hubs.
Through integration, a more competitive North American economy is possible. Three decades of freer trade, the existence of sophisticated supply chains in specific sectors, and widespread cross-border ties between communities and workers due to the movement of tens of millions of people could be energized and expanded. But deeper, more sustainable regionalization will also require a change in mindset. It will require recognizing that the United States’ middle and working class would prosper more from engagement in the global economy than they would from a retreat to the domestic market. Americans could gain more jobs, profits, and financial security if their country decided to take what is on offer: a slice of a large and growing economic pie.
Foreign Affairs · by The Globalization Myth: Why Regions Matter · July 5, 2022
18. Millions more sent into lockdown after Covid-19 'flare up'
Will COVID bring down China? Probably not. But perhaps its zero-COVID policy will.
Millions more sent into lockdown after Covid-19 'flare up'
Sun, 3 July 2022 at 6:28 pm·3-min read
Cities in the nation's east responded to emerging coronavirus clusters that pose a new threat to China's economic recovery under the government's strict zero-COVID policy.
Wuxi, a manufacturing hub in the Yangtze Delta on the central coast, halted operations at many public venues located underground, including shops and supermarkets. Dine-in services in restaurants were suspended, and the government advised people to work from home.
Unverified video shows hundreds of pandemic workers descending on Wuxi after a spike in Covid-19 cases. Source: Weibo
City authorities urged residents not to leave Wuxi unless necessary, after reporting 42 new asymptomatic cases on Saturday.
Social media videos show waves of China's 'big white' pandemic workers taking to the streets and residential buildings.
Several Weibo users sympathised with the workers donning full PPE gear as temperatures surpassed 33C.
State media tried to reassure on Sunday the "flare ups" had little impact on economic activity, with the Global Times reporting businesses had learnt how to continue as the virus "lingers".
China continues to try to stamp out new infections as part of the strict approach taken in the country where the coronavirus was first detected in late 2019.
No new deaths reported
But the lockdowns and other measures have taken a heavy toll on the world's second-biggest economy, particularly in Shanghai where 26 million fatigued residents faced weeks of lockdown earlier this year.
Si county in Anhui province has locked down its 760,000 residents and suspended public traffic as it reported 288 cases on Saturday. Anhui accounted for most of China's new infections, reporting 61 symptomatic and 231 asymptomatic cases for Saturday.
Mainland China recorded 473 new Covid-19 cases, of which 104 were symptomatic and 369 were asymptomatic, the National Health Commission said on Sunday. That compares with 268 new cases a day earlier - 72 symptomatic and 196 asymptomatic infections, which China counts separately.
Xi Jinping has refused to budge on his Covid strategy despite the rest of the world opening up. Source: Getty
Yiwu, China's export capital for small commodities, cancelled flights to the capital, Beijing, for an unspecified period, state TV said, citing COVID prevention measures. Yiwu has reported three Covid-19 cases in the past week.
Shanghai, China's most populous city and financial hub, reported one positive case outside of quarantine areas in the city from midnight to 5pm on Sunday (local time).
The city lifted a lockdown on Friday after two months of shutdown that hit output and consumer spending. China's industrial production fell 2.9 per cent in April from a year earlier.
There were no new deaths, keeping the nation's death toll to 5,226. As of Saturday, mainland China had confirmed 225,851 cases with symptoms.
For Saturday, Beijing reported no new local cases, and Shanghai reported two local symptomatic cases, according to local government data.
19. The Best Evidence of a Future Ukrainian Victory is the Country’s Valiant Past: Part II - Ukraine’s warrior farmer roots
Excerpts:
Armed with insights culled from the just elaborated episodes of Ukrainian history, it would not be difficult to envision a credible construct for forecasting the end result of the war – a final narrative, if you will. It is clear from the evidence that Ukrainians are capable of fighting above – and often well above – their weight class. It is also abundantly clear that they have always possessed that capacity.
Staying with the boxing analogy, the Ukrainians can be said to be a lot like their great featherweight champion Lomachenko, who, because of his speed, dexterity and fight-smarts, has been able to conquer the junior lightweight and lightweight classes. Now add two more items to the stated thought process. First, note the latest news indicating that the US is presently (after some initial hesitation) pouring a large number of weapons into Ukraine.
And then switch back to more boxing imagery. Just think of Lomachenko acquiring the arms and fists of a Ukrainian heavyweight champion, Vitaly or Volodymyr Klitchko. At that moment, a likely outcome of Russia’s gambit in Donbas should begin to emerge distinctively into view. Oh and yes – so should the fate of DNR, LNR and Crimea. Oh and yes again, so should the analogous relationship between the Russo-Japanese War and Russo-Ukrainian War.
So let give credit to Ukraine where credit is due, and all else will follow: that is, if Vlad the Bad does not try to become Vlad the Mad.
The Best Evidence of a Future Ukrainian Victory is the Country’s Valiant Past: Part II - Ukraine’s warrior farmer roots - KyivPost - Ukraine's Global Voice
If for a time Russian bravado prevailed and recaptured the headlines, the war, presently in its fourth month, has seen the sheen dramatically fade from Russia’s blustering pronouncements of its phase-two war aims, severely eroded by the sinking of the Russian Black Sea flagship Moskva, continuing reports of Russian generals getting killed, Russian command posts being turned into rubble as well as the very uneven or tepid progress in Donbas, even in cratered Mariupol.
In its stead, interestingly enough, a tweaked version of the Ukrainian resilience theme has quietly reappeared as a serious nightly-news talking point, with the critical issue being whether the Ukrainians possess the reserve fortitude to do a repeat of their Kyiv victory in Donbas. Equally interesting, Western media has focused once more on a historical perspective in attempting to measure the capacity of Ukrainians for sustained tenacity.
In a particularly poignant case in point, a recent interview featured a Donbas farmer working in an armored tractor with his combat class helmet on, trying to get his seeds planted despite all the devastation around him. He is shown beaming with pride at doing his duty to the homeland and professing that his Cossack ancestors would have expected no less.
Indeed, the Ukrainian resilience theme deserves to be heartily lauded and energetically pursued. In fact, it should be recognized as offering real hope for finally reaching beyond flavor-of-the-week discussion cues and getting a handle on the general direction of a conflict that is already defining the early 21st century and may end up determining much more.
For one, few observers of the struggle (including the Russians themselves) would now deny that a reprise by the Ukrainians of their victory in Kyiv, which constitutes a confirmation of their capacity for sustained resilience, could effectively change the parameters or nature of the war. Even DNR, LNR and Crimea, still considered by most of the world as Ukrainian territory, could be in play from a military point of view. And the blowback into Russia could equal that generated in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, where a perceived weaker power also bested a perceived stronger power.
Freedom loving Cossacks
Two, Ukrainian history is precisely the place where one would explore the reprise matter. It possesses a very rich record with regard to the issue of a national predilection for persistent perseverance in the face of frightening odds – actually, much too rich. For purposes of example, four key episodes in the story of Ukraine would probably suffice.
The first episode involves the descendants of medieval Kyiv who found shelter in Zaporizhzhia and whom the contemporary Ukrainian farmer deemed worth mentioning as his spiritual mentors – The Cossacks. The Zaporizhzhian Host, as the Cossacks came to be known collectively, developed in the 15th and 16th century into a free-wheeling, land owning elite military caste on the frontier of Europe. They eventually helped create the second iteration of the Ukrainian state (medieval Kyiv Rus being the first) known as the Hetmanate (1647) and then withdrew back to their home region to let the Hetmanate find its own firm ground without their interference.
Lo and behold, in 1683, the Ottoman Empire decided to make a major move on Europe. In an attempt to conquer its very heartland, Turkish forces arrived at the gates of Vienna, seat of the Holy Roman Empire, the responsibility of the Habsburgs at the time. The Habsburgs wisely put the defense of the city in the able hands of the head of another powerful European state, Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth ruler Jan Sobieski. He, in turn, turned to the Zaporizhhians for help, having engaged them earlier in friendly and less than friendly circumstances.
The Zaporizhzhians arrived in Vienna too late to make an impact on lifting the Turkish siege that Sobieski and the Polish cavalry brilliantly managed, but they were given the task of rooting out the Ottoman forces in Hungary, which they did to tremendous effect. After the double defeat, the Ottomans never ventured back to Europe in a serious way. As a wonderfully anecdotally token of appreciation, one of the Zaporizhzhians (actually, a Western Ukrainian accomplice), Mykhailo Kulchytsky, was awarded the entire supply of coffee the Turks left behind and ended up opening Vienna’s first coffeehouse.
Ukrainian freedom fighters in the 20th Century
The second episode would see the Ukrainians and Poles once again working in tandem against an existential threat from the East – this time, Russian imperialism in its various stripes. In early 1919, Simon Petliura, head of the third iteration of the Ukrainian state, the Ukrainian National Republic, having lost control of Kyiv as a result of attacks by Russian armies of both the White Guard and Red Guard, turned to a fellow European Social Democrat, Polish leader Josef Pilsudski, to beat back the forces of Russian imperialism, whatever the color, and regain control of the Ukrainian capital.
The two went to work quickly and did precisely what Petliura had intended, taking back Kyiv in mid May. However, the Reds (Bolsheviks), having defeated the (Czarist) Whites and received reinforcements from Siberia, began a new offensive in the summer, first driving Petliura and Pilsudski out of Kyiv and then heading for Warsaw.
Petliura and his army had the possibility of remaining in Ukraine and turning into an insurgent force, but instead they decided to stay with Pilsudski and prepare for the defense of Warsaw. The Ukrainians under the generalship of Marko Bezruchko took the southern (or right) front and deftly kept the Bolshevik army from turning the said Polish flank at a critical point in the Battle of Warsaw, also known as the Miracle on the Vistula. The ensuing victory kept Poland and, for that matter, a large number of newly minted central and eastern European nation states, from Bolshevik domination for another two decades, allowing them to more strongly develop their national identities.
The Ukrainians, unfortunately, did not benefit from the Miracle, having being splintered by 1920 into four parts. Worse still, the largest splinter was taken by the Bolsheviks, with all the consequences that fact entailed, including the genocidal Holomodor.
The third episode would continue with a Bolshevik component but add another genocidal regime, Nazi Germany, into the mix – with the Ukrainians stuck in the middle. For all of Russia’s present day talk of chasing Nazis away from Ukraine, it was one of Putin’s predecessors in the Kremlin, Josef Stalin, who made a “Pact of Steel” deal in 1939 with his maniacal Nazi counterpart, Adolph Hitler, to pick up real
estate that Moscow had not managed to pick up in 1920, after the Miracle. Within two years, Hitler, having used Stalin’s steel and wheat (taken from Ukraine) to conquer European lands north, west and south, decided to betray his naive buddy and head east. The “Great Patriotic War” ensued.
The Ukrainians from the three western splinters, unencumbered by the trappings of a Bolshevik mindset, took to opposing both totalitarian systems equally, despite the Cold War Soviet dezinform ops that claimed otherwise. An armed underground resistance movement that morphed into a more formally structured Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) emerged to do battle, first with the Nazis in 1943-1944 and then the Bolsheviks from 1944 until 1952. The valiant struggle received no outside aid, no Lend Lease.
When captured and sent to either Nazi KZs or Gulag camps, the Ukrainians were reputed to be among the toughest nuts to crack. The Ukrainians from the eastern splinter, trapped in a Bolshevik framework of reality, chose to do battle with only the brown (i.e. Nazi) version of totalitarianism. But here too, the Ukrainians shined. After June 1944, Ukrainians made up 40% of the Soviet forces plowing through East Europe, and it was the First Ukrainian Front armies that took Berlin from Hitler in 1945.
The final episode would begin in the aftermath of the mentioned Ukrainian struggles of the 40s and early 50s. While Nazism was extinguished, Bolshevism lingered, expanding its grip for four decades on to all of eastern Europe. In the process; it took all of Ukraine’s splintered pieces and glued them together. By doing so, the red brand of Russian imperium made a terrible mistake. Western Ukrainians, finally able to live together and embrace their eastern brothers and sisters, slowly but with great purpose, brought home (using the dissident movement in the 60s & 70s) the idea of ending the last prison of nations.
21st Century Revolution
Once an opportunity presented itself with the Kremlin’s crisis of faith (in Bolshevism) in 1989-1991, the Ukrainians bolted for the door. In a referendum in December 1991, they voted 91% in favor of leaving the USSR and living in an independent Ukrainian polity. In the 2004 Orange Revolution and the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, an additional message was sent to the northern neighbor, which was increasingly sporting a (KGB) blue version of Russian imperium: the fourth iteration of the Ukrainian state intended to get as far away from the Russian World, of whatever stripe, as it possibly could.
The reigning ruler in the Kremlin, a self-styled restorer of the glory of the USSR, got the message and struck back with an invasion of Crimea and a hybrid war in Donbas. The move caught Ukrainians short handed in as much as the pro-Putin Yanukovych regime ousted in 2014 had reduced the actual number of regular troops available for defense of the homeland to less than 10,000. Undeterred, the new Ukrainian government turned to the veterans of the Revolution of Dignity and organized them into volunteer battalions. These battalions, eventually organized as a National Guard, stepped into the breach and stopped Putin cold in his tracks. Donbas devolved into a trench war, a terribly frustrating result for Vlad the Restorer. More frustrating still, contemporary Ukrainian heroes were born out of the Donbas fight. The story of the vastly outnumbered and outgunned Cyborgs defending Donetsk airport for several months filled many Ukrainian 13-year-olds with pride and a desire to emulate.
Armed with insights culled from the just elaborated episodes of Ukrainian history, it would not be difficult to envision a credible construct for forecasting the end result of the war – a final narrative, if you will. It is clear from the evidence that Ukrainians are capable of fighting above – and often well above – their weight class. It is also abundantly clear that they have always possessed that capacity.
Staying with the boxing analogy, the Ukrainians can be said to be a lot like their great featherweight champion Lomachenko, who, because of his speed, dexterity and fight-smarts, has been able to conquer the junior lightweight and lightweight classes. Now add two more items to the stated thought process. First, note the latest news indicating that the US is presently (after some initial hesitation) pouring a large number of weapons into Ukraine.
And then switch back to more boxing imagery. Just think of Lomachenko acquiring the arms and fists of a Ukrainian heavyweight champion, Vitaly or Volodymyr Klitchko. At that moment, a likely outcome of Russia’s gambit in Donbas should begin to emerge distinctively into view. Oh and yes – so should the fate of DNR, LNR and Crimea. Oh and yes again, so should the analogous relationship between the Russo-Japanese War and Russo-Ukrainian War.
So let give credit to Ukraine where credit is due, and all else will follow: that is, if Vlad the Bad does not try to become Vlad the Mad.
About the Author: Walter Zaryckyj is executive director of the Center for US-
Ukrainian Relations. Zaryckyj completed his undergraduate and graduate work at
Columbia University and taught political science at New York University for nearly three decades. He is now engaged in postdoctoral research on Eastern Europe.
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20. Opinion | Nearly every American has a foreboding the country they love is losing its way
Excerpts:
Part of America’s DNA is the idea that our problems are fixable. I’m still in that party of optimists. But I found Mazarr’s conclusions chilling. When countries begin to fail, he argues, “it is a negative-feedback loop, a poisonous synergy.” The energy that could reverse decline becomes sapped by mistrust and misinformation. Some people get so angry they want to burn the house down and start over.
We’re not at that cataclysmic point yet. I see positive signs in the slow but growing Republican willingness to challenge Donald Trump, and in the broad, bipartisan anger at the extremism of recent Supreme Court decisions. But bad things can happen to good countries, as our modern history shows.
The American character was once easy to define. We were a young, optimistic nation, fusing “one out of many,” as the Latin phrase engraved on our coins puts it. Wherever Americans had come from, they embraced the aspiration for “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” written in the Declaration of Independence. May it ever be so.
Opinion | Nearly every American has a foreboding the country they love is losing its way
John F. Kennedy, a young war hero running in his first congressional campaign, delivered a speech on July 4, 1946, at Faneuil Hall in Boston. It was mostly patriotic bromides about God and country. But it included a haunting meditation on the American soul.
“A nation’s character, like that of an individual, is elusive,” Kennedy said. “It is produced partly by things we have done and partly by what has been done to us. It is the result of physical factors, intellectual factors, spiritual factors. … In peace, as in war, we will survive or fail according to its measure.”
What does our national portrait look like on this Independence Day? Many of us see an angry, traumatized face, rather than the radiant glow of the Founders. That’s the odd thing about this hyperpartisan moment: Nearly every American, whatever their political perspective, has a foreboding that the country they love is losing its way.
How great is the danger of national decline? The Pentagon’s in-house think tank, which has the mysterious name “Office of Net Assessment,” commissioned a study of the problem by Michael J. Mazarr, a senior political scientist at the Rand Corp. It was just published, under the title, “The Societal Foundations of National Competitiveness.” It’s hardly upbeat summer reading, but it can be downloaded free online, and it’s well worth the time.
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Mazarr’s disturbing conclusion is that America is losing many of the seven attributes he believes are necessary for competitive success: national ambition and will; unified national identity; shared opportunity; an active state; effective institutions; a learning and adaptive society; and competitive diversity and pluralism.
Let’s start with American ambition and confidence, once our most notable trait. “Writers and scholars alike … have argued that the spirit of adventurousness, experimentation and determination to remake the future have all ebbed in the American character,” Mazarr writes.
He notes polling that three-quarters of those surveyed in 2019 were unhappy about where the country is headed. A 2018 study reported that more than 60 percent of those polled had “more fear than hope.” And Americans across party lines don’t trust our country’s institutions. A 2018 poll registered only 10 percent who were “very satisfied” with how democracy is working; it also found that two-thirds of respondents agree that “public officials don’t care what I think.”
National unity and cohesion are declining, Mazarr believes. A country that was effective (sometimes brutally so) at assimilating diverse groups is more fragmented, and the idea of America as a “melting pot” seems archaic to many people. But our separate identities come at a cost: “A country with a rapidly diversifying population — though it gains competitive advantages from this diversity — will also face greater hurdles to sustaining a sense of coherent national identity,” Mazarr writes.
America remains an opportunity society, in principle, but Mazarr sees growing constraints. He cites the evidence of rising inequality. Between 2001 and 2016, the median net worth of the middle class fell 20 percent, and that of the working class plummeted 45 percent. He notes evidence that in each generation since 1945, children have been less likely to make more money than their parents.
These problems are obvious, but government hasn’t been willing or able to correct them. Mazarr quotes a World Bank assessment of gradually declining “governance effectiveness” in the United States over the past 20 years. It isn’t just a government problem, though. Private-sector productivity has been stagnant for decades, and corporations struggle with bureaucracy and bloat. Universities spend nearly as much on administration as teaching, and administrative costs account for a third of total health-care spending.
Part of America’s DNA is the idea that our problems are fixable. I’m still in that party of optimists. But I found Mazarr’s conclusions chilling. When countries begin to fail, he argues, “it is a negative-feedback loop, a poisonous synergy.” The energy that could reverse decline becomes sapped by mistrust and misinformation. Some people get so angry they want to burn the house down and start over.
We’re not at that cataclysmic point yet. I see positive signs in the slow but growing Republican willingness to challenge Donald Trump, and in the broad, bipartisan anger at the extremism of recent Supreme Court decisions. But bad things can happen to good countries, as our modern history shows.
The American character was once easy to define. We were a young, optimistic nation, fusing “one out of many,” as the Latin phrase engraved on our coins puts it. Wherever Americans had come from, they embraced the aspiration for “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” written in the Declaration of Independence. May it ever be so.
21. America Is in Denial by Mitt Romney
Excerpt:
I hope for a president who can rise above the din to unite us behind the truth. Several contenders with experience and smarts stand in the wings; we intently watch to see if they also possess the requisite character and ability to bring the nation together in confronting our common reality. While we wait, leadership must come from fathers and mothers, teachers and nurses, priests and rabbis, businessmen and businesswomen, journalists and pundits. That will require us all to rise above ourselves—above our grievances and resentments—and grasp the mantle of leadership our country so badly needs.
America Is in Denial
Too many Americans are blithely dismissing threats that could prove cataclysmic.
Even as we watch the reservoirs and lakes of the West go dry, we keep watering our lawns, soaking our golf courses, and growing water-thirsty crops.
As inflation mounts and the national debt balloons, progressive politicians vote for ever more spending.
As the ice caps melt and record temperatures make the evening news, we figure that buying a Prius and recycling the boxes from our daily Amazon deliveries will suffice.
When TV news outlets broadcast video after video of people illegally crossing the nation’s southern border, many of us change the channel.
And when a renowned conservative former federal appellate judge testifies that we are already in a war for our democracy and that January 6, 2021, was a genuine constitutional crisis, MAGA loyalists snicker that he speaks slowly and celebrate that most people weren’t watching.
What accounts for the blithe dismissal of potentially cataclysmic threats? The left thinks the right is at fault for ignoring climate change and the attacks on our political system. The right thinks the left is the problem for ignoring illegal immigration and the national debt. But wishful thinking happens across the political spectrum. More and more, we are a nation in denial.
I have witnessed time and again—in myself and in others—a powerful impulse to believe what we hope to be the case. We don’t need to cut back on watering, because the drought is just part of a cycle that will reverse. With economic growth, the debt will take care of itself. January 6 was a false-flag operation. A classic example of denial comes from Donald Trump: “I won in a landslide.” Perhaps this is a branch of the same delusion that leads people to feed money into slot machines: Because I really want to win, I believe that I will win.
Bolstering our natural inclination toward wishful thinking are the carefully constructed, prejudice-confirming arguments from the usual gang of sophists, grifters, and truth-deniers. Watching angry commentators on cable news, I’m reminded of H. L. Mencken’s observation: “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
When entire countries fail to confront serious challenges, it doesn't end well. During the past half century, we Americans have lived in a very forgiving time, and seeing the world through rose-colored glasses had limited consequences. The climate was stable, our economy dwarfed the competition, democracy was on the rise, and our military strength made the U.S. the sole global hyperpower. Today, every one of those things has changed. If we continue to ignore the real threats we face, America will inevitably suffer serious consequences.
What clears the scales from the eyes of a nation? Pearl Harbor did. 9/11 did. A crisis can shake the public consciousness. But a crisis may come too late for a course correction that can prevent tragedy. The only cure for wishful thinking is leadership. Winston Churchill emboldened a complacent Britain and rallied the world. Abraham Lincoln held the Union together. Ronald Reagan shook us from our malaise. Lech Wałęsa inaugurated a movement that brought down the Iron Curtain. Martin Luther King Jr. inspired us to “believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.” And Volodymyr Zelensky’s stunning display of courage—“I need ammunition, not a ride”—showed us what real character looks like.
President Joe Biden is a genuinely good man, but he has yet been unable to break through our national malady of denial, deceit, and distrust. A return of Donald Trump would feed the sickness, probably rendering it incurable. Congress is particularly disappointing: Our elected officials put a finger in the wind more frequently than they show backbone against it. Too often, Washington demonstrates the maxim that for evil to thrive only requires good men to do nothing.
I hope for a president who can rise above the din to unite us behind the truth. Several contenders with experience and smarts stand in the wings; we intently watch to see if they also possess the requisite character and ability to bring the nation together in confronting our common reality. While we wait, leadership must come from fathers and mothers, teachers and nurses, priests and rabbis, businessmen and businesswomen, journalists and pundits. That will require us all to rise above ourselves—above our grievances and resentments—and grasp the mantle of leadership our country so badly needs.
22. Are US Weapons Supplied To Ukraine Ending Up On DarkNet Marketplaces?
Are US Weapons Supplied To Ukraine Ending Up On DarkNet Marketplaces? | ZeroHedge
The lack of oversight for billions of dollars in US weapons pumped into Ukraine has concerned the Pentagon. They're worried about anti-tank missiles and explosive drones ending up in the "wrong hands."
A new investigation allegedly found some of these weapons are being sold on the dark web.
RT journalists pretended to be weapons buyers and claimed to have come in contact with Ukrainian arms smugglers offering machine guns, body armor, and some of the US/West's most advanced weapons, such as Javelin and NLAW anti-tank systems or Phoenix Ghost and Switchblade explosive drones.
Another Ukrainian arms smuggler offered US-made body armor sets for $1,500 and M4 carbines with suppressors and hundreds of 5.56×45mm NATO rounds for $2,400 per set.
Besides US weapons, Ukrainian arms smugglers were selling British-made NLAW anti-tank systems for $15,000. Acquiring the anti-tank weapon legally would cost between $30,000 to $40,000.
Since the journalist never completed transactions with the sellers, RT said, "it's not possible to completely rule out that the sellers actually did not have the said weapons in stock, as the RT investigators did not complete the purchase. Scamming schemes are common for dark web marketplaces."
"We have fidelity for a short time, but when it enters the fog of war, we have almost zero. It drops into a big black hole, and you have almost no sense of it after a short time."
The European police agency Europol has also warned about the massive amount of weapons being pumped from the West into Ukraine. Once the weapons hit the ground, there's no tracking the weapons from there, and some end up in criminal gangs' hands.
"The weapons from this war are still being used by criminal groups today," Europol Director Catherine De Bolle told the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag in June.
Last Thursday, the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) issued a statement urging US military leaders to send weapons inspectors into the war-torn country to monitor where the billions of dollars in arms are being handed out.
RT's investigation sheds important light on the Pentagon's worst fears of high-tech weapons ending up in the wrong hands and some of the weapons for sale on the darknet. There may never be oversight and accountability of the weapons on the ground because, as the NYTimes recently said, the CIA has had a presence on the battlefield since the start of the invasion. When it comes to the CIA's covert arms programs, they usually like to keep where the weapons are being sent a secret.
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
