Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners


Quotes of the Day:

"Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit."
-George Santayana

"You are wrong, my friend, if you think that a man who is worth anything weighs his chances of living or dying when deciding what to do. No, he considers only whether the action he is about to take is just or unjust, the work of a good man or bad."
 - Plato

We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech… The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way… The third is freedom from want… The fourth is freedom from fear.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt (1941)



1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 19 (PUTIN'S WAR)
2. By now it’s clear: Sanctions are not stopping Putin
3. Mechanisms of Coercion: Strategic Bombing Lessons for Economic Sanctions
4. A View of Past and Future Wars on Taiwan
5. US a ‘co-belligerent’ in Ukraine war, legal expert says
6. Sanctions Are Strangling Russia's Weapons Supply Chain
7. Ukraine's Ability To Withstand Russian Artillery Critical To Fight For Donbas
8. Pentagon: Russia has lost about 25% of its combat power originally used in the Ukraine invasion
9. Who has the advantage in the war for eastern Ukraine?
10. Biden’s cybersecurity budget good start; Congress needs to fill the gaps
11. How U.S.-Saudi Relations Reached the Breaking Point
12. Garuda Shield: Indonesia tilting to US against China
13. Analysis | Does Russia sell nearly $1 billion in uranium to the U.S. a year?
14. Guest Opinion: Another Ukraine crisis in Asia-Pacific?
15. Biden vows to send Ukraine more artillery as Congress pushes for military aid czar
16. Russia’s latest military failures polarise society even more
17. How Ukraine Won the Battle for Kyiv
18. Sweeter Carrots and Harder Sticks: Rethinking U.S. Security Assistance
19. Land Navigation Is Coming Back to the Army's Basic Leader Course
20. Russia's War on Ukraine - April 20, 2022 | SOF News
21. Chinese President Xi Jinping's New Role in Ukraine
22. U.S. 'strategic ambiguity' over Taiwan must end
23. Bring the Reforger exercises back to Europe
24. The Last Chapter in Putin's War
25. What If the War in Ukraine Doesn’t End?
26. Made in the Alliance
27.  Fahrenheit 2022: A Spasm of Book Banning
28. How Diverse Democracies Can Protect Their Citizens
29. AOC Running for President in 2024? Here's Why It Could Happen


1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 19 (PUTIN'S WAR)

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 19 (putin's war)
Apr 19, 2022 - Press ISW
Frederick W. Kagan, Kateryna Stepanenko, and Karolina Hird
April 19, 5:30 pm ET
Russian and Ukrainian officials announced that the next phase of the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on April 19. Russian forces conducted intensive artillery and air bombardments of many areas along the front line from around Izyum to Mykolaiv but relatively few ground offensive operations. Russian forces continue to receive personnel and equipment reinforcements as well as command-and-control and logistics capabilities even as they conduct air and artillery preparations and some mechanized advances.
The Russians have not fully set conditions for a large-scale offensive operation. The Russians have not had enough time to reconstitute forces withdrawn from the Battle of Kyiv and ready them properly for a new offensive in the east. The Russians appear to be still building logistics and command-and-control capabilities even as they start the next round of major fighting. The tempo of Russian operations continues to suggest that President Vladimir Putin is demanding a hasty offensive to achieve his stated objectives, possibly by “Victory Day” on May 9. The haste and partial preparation of the Russian attack will likely undermine its effectiveness and may compromise its success.
Russian forces appear to be attempting to conduct a wide encirclement of Ukrainian troops along axes from Izyum to the southeast and from Donetsk City to the north even as they push west from Popasna and positions north of Severodonetsk. Russian ground offensives in the last 24 hours occurred around Izyum, Kreminna (north of Severodonetsk), and from Donetsk City toward Avdiivka. Only the advance to and possibly through Kreminna made significant progress. An encirclement on this scale would likely take considerable time to complete against Ukrainian resistance. Even if the Russians did complete such an encirclement and trapped a large concentration of Ukrainian forces inside one or more pockets, the Ukrainian defenders would likely be able to hold out for a considerable period and might well be able to break out.
The Russians may alternatively try to complete several smaller encirclements simultaneously, each trapping fewer Ukrainian forces and therefore taking less time to complete and then reduce. Coordinating such operations is complicated and beyond the planning and execution capacities the Russian army has demonstrated in the conflict thus far.
Ukrainian forces continue to defend parts of the Azovstal complex in Mariupol, but Russian officials and media are gathering in and near the city, likely in preparation to declare victory in the coming days whether or not fighting continues.
Key Takeaways
  • The next phase of the Russian offensive in Ukraine’s east has reportedly begun, largely with artillery and air bombardments supporting a few small-scale ground offensives.
  • Russian officials and media are likely preparing to declare victory in Mariupol in the coming days, possibly before Ukrainian forces in the Azovstal facility have been fully defeated.
  • The Russians may be attempting a single wide encirclement of Ukrainian forces from Izyum to Donetsk City or a series of smaller encirclements within that arc. It is too soon to assess the intended Russian scheme of maneuver.
  • Russian operations continue to proceed hastily, as if President Vladimir Putin has set an arbitrary date by which they must succeed. Putin may have decided that he will announce a Russian success and the completion of the operation on Victory Day, May 9. The haste with which Russian forces are moving may compromise the success of their operations.

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.
ISW has updated its assessment of the four primary efforts Russian forces are engaged in at this time:
  • Main effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate supporting efforts);
  • Supporting effort 1—Kharkiv and Izyum;
  • Supporting effort 2—Southern axis;
  • Supporting effort 3—Sumy and northeastern Ukraine.
Main effort—Eastern Ukraine
Subordinate Main Effort—Mariupol (Russian objective: Capture Mariupol and reduce the Ukrainian defenders)
Russian forces continued to prioritize the capture of the Azovstal steel plant from the north but did not make any significant advances as of April 19. Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Head Denis Pushilin announced that the capture of Azovstal is the DNR’s main priority, and People’s Militia Spokesperson Eduard Basurin said that an assault with Russian forces began on April 19.[1] The advisor to the Ukrainian mayor of Mariupol, Petro Andryushenko, said that Russian forces gathered heavy weaponry and tanks in the city’s Left Bank District near the plant but continued to shell residential streets in the neighborhood.[2] Russian forces conducted an airstrike on the northern end of the plant on April 18.[3] Russian social media accounts published photos of Russian forces entering a warehouse near Azovstal, but ISW cannot confirm the authenticity or location of the images.[4]
Russia’s Defense Ministry made another demand for Ukrainian Azov Regiment fighters to surrender, which Mariupol’s defenders refused. Ukrainian forces maintained their positions at the plant and continued limited street fighting in central Mariupol.[5]
The Kremlin is likely attempting to accelerate the capture of Mariupol for the domestic Russian information space judging from the large presence of Kremlin-sponsored journalists in the area.[6] The Russians may announce success even if Ukrainian forces retain their hold on portions of Azovstal, or they may wait until Russian or proxy forces have secured the entire facility.

Subordinate Main Effort—Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
Russian forces intensified offensive operations in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts on April 19.[7] Russian artillery fire continued to target Popasna, Rubizhe, Lysychansk, and Severodonetsk and shell various settlements in Donetsk Oblast over the last 24 hours.[8] The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense stated that Russian troops are consolidating in the vicinity of Adviivka and Mariinka.[9] Ukrainian forces reportedly repelled attempted Russian advances into Avdiivka, Popasna, and Rubizhne on the night of April 18.[10] Pro-Russian sources additionally claimed that Russian troops entered Torske in order to encircle Ukrainian positions in Lysychansk, Severodonetsk, and Rubizhne, but ISW cannot independently verify this claim.[11]

Supporting Effort #1—Kharkiv and Izyum: (Russian objective: Advance southeast to support Russian operations in Luhansk Oblast; defend ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to the Izyum axis)
Russian forces continued to shell settlements in Kharkiv Oblast and maintain a partial blockade of Kharkiv city on April 19.[12] The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Russian troops mounted an unsuccessful offensive to the south of Izyum and are generally conducting offensive operations along the east bank of the Siversky Donets River.[13] Vyacheslav Zadorenko, the mayor of Derhachi—which is about 10 miles northwest of Kharkiv City, stated that Russian forces are likely blocking approximately six settlements around Derhachi as of April 10.[14]

Supporting Effort #2—Southern axis: (Objective: Defend Kherson against Ukrainian counterattacks)
Russian forces continued fighting outside Oleksandrivka on April 19 without any significant territorial changes.[15] Zaporizhia Oblast Head Oleksandr Staruckh reported that Russian units are concentrating in Polohy, central Zaporizhia Oblast.[16] Russian forces may intend to stop Ukrainian counteroffensives in this area or could be planning a more ambitious advance to reach the N15 highway running east from Zaporizhia City.

Supporting Effort #3—Sumy and Northeastern Ukraine: (Russian objective: Withdraw combat power in good order for redeployment to eastern Ukraine)
There was no significant change in this area in the past 24 hours.
Immediate items to watch
  • Russian forces will likely continue attacking southeast from Izyum, west from Kreminna and Popasna, and north from Donetsk City via Avdiivka.
  • Russian troops and aircraft will continue to pound the Azovstal facility, and Russian officials may declare victory in Mariupol even before the facility is fully cleared.
  • Russian forces will likely increase the scale of ground offensive operations in the coming days, but it is too soon to tell how fast they will do so or how large those offensives will be. It is also too soon to assess how the Russians will likely weight their efforts in the arc from Izyum to Donetsk City.
[2] https://t dot me/andriyshTime/329; https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ukraine-russia-putin-news-04-19-22/... https://hromadske dot ua/posts/u-mariupoli-okupanti-obstrilyuyut-azovstal-ta-zhitlovij-sektor-u-yakih-vchora-pustili-civilnih-radnik-mera
[8] https://t dot me/luhanskaVTSA/1758;
https://t dot me/pavlokyrylenko_donoda/3068; https://t dot me/pavlokyrylenko_donoda/3068; https://t dot me/guberniaband/3283
[9] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2022/04/19/okupanty-ne-prypynyayut-sprob-vstanovyty-povnyj-kontrol-nad-mistom-mariupol-ta-zoseredzheni-na-zahoplenni-popasnoyi-rubizhnogo-ta-syevyerodoneczka/
[14] https://ru.interfax dot com.ua/news/general/820747.html; https://24tv dot ua/okupanti-obstrilyali-selishhe-slatine-harkivshhini-5-lyudey-zaginulo_n1945900



2. By now it’s clear: Sanctions are not stopping Putin

A strong argument from LTG Dubik.

Excerpts:
As long as Ukraine is willing to fight for its right of self-determination, the allies should provide them with all they need — first to prevent success of the potential three-pronged Russian attacks, and then to allow the Zelensky government to transition to the offense and forcibly eject Russian units to their pre-February invasion positions. The allies should do this both to defend Ukraine’s right to succeed against illegal aggression and to reinforce a global norm.
Why can’t California produce a serious Democratic presidential candidate? One of the most-hated federal agencies deserves some love from Congress
Anyone who thinks Putin will stop in Ukraine, if he succeeds there, must open their ears: He is already talking about the “Nazi regime” in Moldova. Any who doubt Putin’s desire to conduct other “special military operations” in central Europe should talk to the Poles, Estonians, Lithuanians and Latvians — all countries in Putin’s crosshairs. And any who think Putin isn’t a future threat should listen to the prime ministers of Finland and Sweden. Those closest to Putin seem to see things more clearly, and more urgently.
The U.S., NATO and other allies must pull out all stops to ensure Ukraine’s success in the next two phases of the war. Doing so is not only the right thing to do; it’s also in the short- and long-term interest of every nation. No one should be fooled. The key lever of success in this war that, according to President Biden, “we must win,” is military force. Sanctions are ancillary.
By now it’s clear: Sanctions are not stopping Putin

BY JAMES M. DUBIK, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 04/19/22 9:00 AM ET
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL
The Hill · April 19, 2022
The massive, ever-expanding sanctions imposed on Russia in an attempt to halt the war in Ukraine have had some effect on the Russian economy, and perhaps on the internal politics in Moscow, but they have had little impact on the battlefield. What has had battlefield impact is Ukrainian resistance, with U.S., NATO and allied support.
Ukrainian resistance stopped the opening round of the Russian invasion. Russian President Vladimir Putin withdrew his forces from the Kyiv region, not because he wanted to but because he had to. Some of his forces will require months before they are fit again for combat. This has caused Putin to abandon his original goal of seizing Kyiv and replacing the Zelensky government — at least for now.
As Russia withdrew its forces from Kyiv, Ukraine has conducted aggressive, local counterattacks. But they were unable to go to a general counter-offense and eject Russian forces to their pre-invasion positions, mostly because they did not have the arms, ammunition and equipment to do so.
So, Putin has begun to execute Plan B: fight to permanently partition Ukraine. To do this, he is sending some forces to the East to join those already there and trying to finish his brutal assault on Mariupol. Ukrainian forces could not interdict this move — again, largely because they didn’t have the weaponry to do so. The Russian intent appears to be to conduct three attacks: one south from the general area of Kharkiv/Izyum, a second west from the Donbas area the Russians seized in 2014, and a third north from the area Putin took above Crimea. If these three attacks converge, Russia may be able to encircle a large number of Ukraine’s forces — a catastrophe for Ukraine. Putin has set the conditions for his Plan B despite the sanctions imposed on him.
Whether the Russian attacks are successful with this plan is an open question. Russian troop proficiency remains in doubt; morale is low in units returning to the fight; replacement soldiers are of poor quality; logistics snarls continue; and conducting integrated, combined arms attacks remains difficult for Russian commanders. Regardless, the sanctions will not be the primary mechanism that forces Putin back to his pre-February positions. That will depend on allied willingness and ability to provide the right equipment, arms and ammunition fast enough to the Ukrainians to be used in the fight.
Putin was clear in his latest speech that he has no intention of leaving Ukraine except by accomplishing the objectives he set from the start. We should believe him. If he’s successful at Plan B, he’ll likely revert to Plan A: conquer and subjugate Ukraine. That means continuing indiscriminate killing of non-combatants, using starvation as a tactic of war, preventing civilians from leaving the war zone, and other atrocities violating the Law of Armed Conflict as well as International Humanitarian Law.
Some may argue that the allies should give sanctions more time to work. But time in war comes at a cost and that cost is blood — the blood of innocent Ukrainians suffering Russian brutality and the blood of those who are actively fighting. Further, the potential and ultimate cost could be Ukraine’s sovereignty. After all, Putin’s aim is subjugation. Ukrainians are willing to fight and defend themselves against Moscow’s aggression. And international law, as well as the sense of the international community, permits the allies to assist Kyiv in their rightful defense. Such support is not a provocation or an escalation; it’s a strategic and moral necessity and a legal permission.
This war likely will end with some form of negotiation, but when that time comes, the Zelensky government should not have to negotiate away its territorial integrity and political sovereignty. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky should be in the position of strength, not Putin.
As long as Ukraine is willing to fight for its right of self-determination, the allies should provide them with all they need — first to prevent success of the potential three-pronged Russian attacks, and then to allow the Zelensky government to transition to the offense and forcibly eject Russian units to their pre-February invasion positions. The allies should do this both to defend Ukraine’s right to succeed against illegal aggression and to reinforce a global norm.
Anyone who thinks Putin will stop in Ukraine, if he succeeds there, must open their ears: He is already talking about the “Nazi regime” in Moldova. Any who doubt Putin’s desire to conduct other “special military operations” in central Europe should talk to the Poles, Estonians, Lithuanians and Latvians — all countries in Putin’s crosshairs. And any who think Putin isn’t a future threat should listen to the prime ministers of Finland and Sweden. Those closest to Putin seem to see things more clearly, and more urgently.
The U.S., NATO and other allies must pull out all stops to ensure Ukraine’s success in the next two phases of the war. Doing so is not only the right thing to do; it’s also in the short- and long-term interest of every nation. No one should be fooled. The key lever of success in this war that, according to President Biden, “we must win,” is military force. Sanctions are ancillary.
James M. Dubik, Ph.D., a retired lieutenant general of the U.S. Army, is a senior fellow at the Institute for the Study of War. He served in military command and operational roles in Bosnia, Haiti and Iraq, and helped train forces in Afghanistan, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Honduras, and many NATO countries.
The Hill · April 19, 2022


3. Mechanisms of Coercion: Strategic Bombing Lessons for Economic Sanctions

I offer this one following LTG Dubik's essay on sanctions. As far as I know this is the first time at the Small Wars Journal we have published something from a high school student. (note his bio below). Our philosophy is to publish authentic voices and provide a platform for new writers as well as established scholars and practitioners.

He makes a very provocative argument about sanctions and airpower theory- he has jumped into the pond with both feet!


Mechanisms of Coercion: Strategic Bombing Lessons for Economic Sanctions | Small Wars Journal
Tue, 04/19/2022 - 8:39pm
Mechanisms of Coercion: Strategic Bombing Lessons for Economic Sanctions
By Astor Lu
When Russian troops rolled into Ukraine in late February, economic sanctions quickly emerged as the U.S.’ retaliatory weapon of choice. On the surface, they appear to be a Goldilocks-esque option for President Biden and his administration — more punch than rhetoric and diplomacy, yet short of military intervention. The heart of the American response to the invasion is coercion: how can the U.S. and its allies compel Vladimir Putin to cease military operations in Ukraine? The answer may appear in the war-torn skies of eighty years ago. While the two may initially appear unrelated, the history of strategic bombing offers much-needed guidance on sanctions. Fundamentally, both have been misused. Rather than making sanctions the centerpiece of a coercive strategy, leaders should incorporate them as valuable but supporting components in a larger plan.
The use of coercive tools can be categorized into two groups: decisive and subordinate. The former entails using the tool as the main thrust, the action that is pivotal in achieving the desired effect. Clausewitz would describe it as a friendly “center of gravity.” In a mission to level an enemy city, for example, the decisive piece would be the bomber carrying the nuclear weapon. Other factors — fighter escort, command-and-control aircraft, and diversionary raids included — would be merely supporting. Those secondary tools are the subordinate group. They may be helpful or necessary to achieving the objective, but they are not the centerpiece of the effort. The effects-based nature of coercion is important; in Ukraine, military and political compromise by the Russians is the one and only indicator of success for Western compellence policies. The U.S. could wipe out 99% of Russia’s economy with sanctions and make a ruble worth a grain of sand, but if Putin did not withdraw from Ukraine the sanctions program would be considered a failure.
Similar to economic sanctions, strategic bombing appeared to be a relatively humane way of resolving conflicts during its early development after the First World War. Over the interwar years, theorists came to believe that strategic airpower could win wars alone. Airpower prophets such as Giulio Douhet, Billy Mitchell, and Hugh Trenchard spread the view that bombers could independently cause such pain to an enemy population — whether by directly striking them, starving them, or hurting their economy — that they would force their governments to sue for peace. More generally, the theorists believed that states could coerce enemy powers politically and militarily by applying pressure to their populace.
Those theories failed during the Second World War because airpower had little value as a decisive tool of coercion. Initially, American air planners believed that targeting certain nodes in German industry would collapse the economy. They targeted ball bearings and the electrical grid, for example, which were economically necessary, geographically concentrated, and vulnerable to disruption. The Germans responded by simply redistributing the stress to other sectors. “Morale bombing” of urban areas, meanwhile, failed to compel the Japanese to surrender. The specific reasons for their capitulation are disputed, but the decisive factor was certainly not popular pressure from U.S. firebombing. A cursory glance at a history textbook would show that neither economic breakdown nor mass protests ended the war in Europe or the Pacific.
Airpower was effective as a subordinate tool, though. The air campaign against German oil, for example, was hugely successful. When the Germans launched the Ardennes offensive in 1944, the Army High Command Quartiermeister had only twelve million liters of fuel, or three days’ supply. During their retreat, the commander of the Sixth SS Panzer Army left behind 180 tanks due to lack of fuel. Strategic bombing also ground down the Luftwaffe by forcing them into the air to fight. When Allied troops landed in Europe, one German general compared the resulting air superiority to being a chess player who could move once for every three moves by his opponent. Altogether, World War II airpower was strategically ineffective when deployed alone, but rewarding when used in a supporting role to a broader, ground-centric strategy.
What relevance does airpower in 1944 have for sanctions in 2022? Both strategies are intended to compel the enemy to change its behavior by indiscriminately causing pain to the population. The only difference is that the incendiary bombs of 1944 are the export controls and asset seizures of today. For both, the specific mechanism of how pressure on the populace translates to changes in policy is unclear and possibly nonexistent. Also, just like strategic bombing, sanctions have a weak historical record. Out of 105 cases between 1914-1990, according to political scientist Robert Pape, only five cases clearly demonstrate successful use of sanctions in political compellence. Yet airpower, despite originally being intended to be the decisive factor in the war, ultimately found success as a supporting function to a ground war. Perhaps sanctions could do the same.
On future policy, decision-makers must establish that using economic sanctions as they are currently being used — as a decisive tool of coercion — will likely be unsuccessful and merely demonstrative. In the case of Ukraine, they will probably not convince Putin to withdraw or make concessions. The West must use sanctions as a subordinate tool in a larger strategy oriented around a different “center of gravity”: making it difficult to fund or supply the Russian war machine, for example.
Naturally, the decision on whether to use sanctions is more nuanced than solely the question of their effectiveness. World leaders who want neither to sit on their hands (or appear to do so) nor send their citizens home in body bags often choose sanctions because it feels and looks like they are taking real action. Moreover, the fact that sanctions incur costs to the imposer demonstrates more commitment than sending “thoughts and prayers.” Above all, President Biden must weigh the costs and benefits of defending Ukraine with an accurate image of sanctions in his mind: that they cannot be relied upon to produce coercive gains on their own, just like strategic bombers could not be relied upon to independently rid the world of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Whether that conclusion equals the need for further action is a separate conversation. But policymakers must not trick themselves into thinking that placebos cure diseases. Unfortunately, they do not.
About the Author(s)


Astor Lu is an incoming first-year student at Princeton University, where he will be an Army ROTC cadet and pursue an A.B. in Public and International Affairs. He is currently a senior at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C.


4. A View of Past and Future Wars on Taiwan

Taiwan has a much different view of its history with Japan than Korea does.

This is the first time I have seen this "statistic." Who is demonstrating stronger strategic reassurance and strategic resolve?

Excerpt:


The surprising news is that for the first time, more Taiwanese think Japan will come to their island’s defense than that the U.S. will. Only about one-third of respondents now expect American assistance, a precipitous decline from six months ago, when 65% of those surveyed by the same organization believed the U.S. would fight alongside Taiwan.
A View of Past and Future Wars on Taiwan
WSJ · by Michael Meyer
The island Japan once colonized may receive its aid in an invasion.
By
Michael Meyer
April 18, 2022 6:20 pm ET

Tongxiao Shinto Shrine in Miaoli, Taiwan.
Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto

Tongxiao, Taiwan
From atop Tiger Head Mountain on Taiwan’s otherwise flat western coast, colonial Japanese soldiers once scanned the Taiwan Strait, which runs clear to the horizon. Their patience was rewarded in 1905 when the czar’s Baltic Fleet steamed into view, heading to fight in Chinese Manchuria. After a seven-month voyage to the Pacific, Russia’s mighty navy was sunk in less than two days.
Taiwan excels at recycling its trash but also has a penchant for repurposing its colonial monuments. After 1945 the concrete gun barrel atop Tiger Head Mountain, which commemorated Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War, was relabeled to celebrate its defeat in World War II and Taiwan’s retrocession to China. The nearby Shinto shrine looks unchanged but for a carved crown of the Taiwanese flag’s white sun added to its roof.
The seagull perched atop is the only other visitor here today. From the war memorial we really can see, as a Chinese poet once said, the silver waves clapping the sky. You can’t spy the mainland, some 100 miles across the turbulent strait. But the People’s Republic is always near. My phone lights up with an alert reporting yet another incursion by Chinese J-16 fighter jets into Taiwanese airspace.
It’s a near-daily occurrence, as are calls to extend mandatory military training from four months to at least a year. Another news alert bleats that 78% of Taiwanese in a March survey said it will be impossible to take on the People’s Liberation Army alone. Seventy percent are willing to try, nearly double the figure reported before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The surprising news is that for the first time, more Taiwanese think Japan will come to their island’s defense than that the U.S. will. Only about one-third of respondents now expect American assistance, a precipitous decline from six months ago, when 65% of those surveyed by the same organization believed the U.S. would fight alongside Taiwan.
While the poll reflects Taiwanese pragmatism (and Congress has since approved a $95 million sale of defensive Patriot missiles and sent a delegation to Taipei to pledge support), preparations here also illustrate Taiwanese fatalism. The government recently published a 28-page civil-defense handbook and posted a searchable online map showing Taiwan’s 105,000 bomb shelters. One, it turns out, is my Taipei apartment building’s tiny basement, which is already occupied by legions of cockroaches.
After World War II, Taiwan pulled down most of the island’s imperial Shinto shrines. Tiger Head Mountain’s cedar hall survived, rededicated as a memorial to soldiers killed fighting the Chinese Civil War. The former pillbox overlooking it has been festooned with a concrete lotus, the Buddhist symbol of enlightenment and rebirth. History, like mistakes, has a way of repeating itself. The headlines keep filling my phone’s screen. “New Chinese aircraft carrier sails in Taiwan Strait”; “9 out of 10 Japanese fear a war in Taiwan”; “China-Taiwan war would end in ‘miserable victory’—Taiwan minister.” The seagull and I stare at the turbulent sea. Some days there is nothing to do but wait.
Mr. Meyer is a Fulbright Scholar in Taiwan, a former Peace Corps volunteer to China, and author of “Benjamin Franklin’s Last Bet.”
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the April 19, 2022, print edition.




WSJ · by Michael Meyer

5. US a ‘co-belligerent’ in Ukraine war, legal expert says
We certainly are not neutral nor should be in the face of a brutal aggressor who has invaded a sovereign country. We must not be neutral unless we are going to forfeit our values. We need to stand up for what is right. That does not mean we have to commit troops (though that option should never be off the table) but we must mobilize all necessary support within the US and among the freedom loving nations of the world to give Ukraine the capabilities necessary to defend itself and defeat the Russian onslaught. Half measure will not work and trying o portray an illusion of neutrality or impartiality will do more harm than good.



US a ‘co-belligerent’ in Ukraine war, legal expert says
US and allies warned on ‘violations of a neutral’s duties of impartiality and non-participation in the conflict’
asiatimes.com · by More by James Carden · April 19, 2022
Conversations over the past week with current and former US officials about whether, to their knowledge, there is any real debate inside President Joe Biden’s administration over the approach it is taking in Ukraine has produced only slight variations of the same answer: “Not really.”
As of now, what the Biden policy amounts to is a replay along the lines of president Franklin D Roosevelt’s policy toward the war in Europe from 1939 to December 1941, during which the US was a co-belligerent all but in name.
In their public statements, Biden and his Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin seem intent on obfuscating the true extent of American involvement. A story in the defense-industry-sponsored Politico quoted unnamed US officials as saying “military options in Ukraine aren’t on the table – echoing Biden’s repeated position of not wanting to spark World War III.”

If taken at face value, Biden’s policy would seem to be at odds with itself. Not wanting to start a third World War is a prudent, appropriate policy objective, but if that’s the goal, the administration is taking the long way around, because whether they admit it or not, the US is, and has been for some time, a co-belligerent in the war.
“We have consistently been sharing intelligence that includes information the Ukrainians can use to inform and develop their military response to Russia’s invasion,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters in March.
On April 13, Biden authorized US$800 million in military assistance to Ukraine, bringing the total amount his administration has spent on aiding Ukraine to roughly $3 billion.
The open spigot of funding has naturally attracted the attention of the defense industry, and last week, the chief executives of Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and L3Harris Technologies met at the Pentagon with Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks.
But US involvement goes deeper than arms sales and intelligence sharing. A Pentagon official who requested anonymity told me it is “likely we have a limited footprint on the ground in Ukraine, but under Title 50, not Title 10,” meaning US intelligence operatives and paramilitaries – but not regular military.

Bruce Fein, a constitutional expert and former associate attorney general in the Ronald Reagan administration, told me this week that in his view, “the United States and several NATO members have become co-belligerents with Ukraine against Russia by systematic and massive assistance to its military forces to defeat Russia.”
According to Fein, the US and its NATO allies are now vulnerable to attack by “an enemy belligerent,” meaning Russia, because of their “systematic or substantial violations of a neutral’s duties of impartiality and non-participation in the conflict.”
“Neutrality,” continued Fein, “is violated by permitting a belligerent to violate its territorial integrity (as Belarus and Russia have done to Ukraine), or by supplying warships, arms, ammunition, military provisions or other war materials, directly or indirectly, or supplying military advisers to a belligerent,” as the US has done.
“Under the Declare War Clause of the constitution, co-belligerency, which displaces the status of the United States as neutral, requires a declaration of war by Congress,” said Fein. But instead of fulfilling its constitutional duties, Congress has been aggressively pushing the administration to deepen its involvement in what is clearly now a US-Russian proxy war.
On. March 2, the US House of Representatives voted 425-3 in favor of a non-binding resolution “Supporting the People of Ukraine.” The following week, on March 10, the House overwhelmingly voted to send $14 billion in military funding to Ukraine as part of an omnibus spending package.

And on April 7, the US Senate passed Republican Senator John Cornyn’s Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022, which “temporarily waives certain requirements related to the President’s authority to lend or lease defense articles if the defense articles are intended for Ukraine’s government and necessary to protect civilians in Ukraine from Russian military invasion.”
In the end, Congress and the Biden administration are wading into dangerous waters. Fein warns that the US has “employed the concept of co-belligerency to target for extermination any group or individual who provides material support to al-Qaeda or ISIS” – and there is a real risk that Russia may take a page out of America’s playbook.
asiatimes.com · by More by James Carden · April 19, 2022


6. Sanctions Are Strangling Russia's Weapons Supply Chain

Excerpts:
John Hardie, a research manager and research analyst for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told The War Zone he is skeptical of claims that sanctions will have a serious, near-term impact on Russia's war efforts.
"Western sanctions have and no doubt will continue to undermine Russia’s defense and related industries, for example by hindering Russian missile production and satellite programs," he said. "But I am skeptical about claims that sanctions affecting Russia’s defense industrial base will meaningfully limit Russia’s ability to prosecute the war, at least in the near term."
He cited the example of Russian tanks.
"The Ukrainian General Staff claimed on March 21 that a shortage of foreign-made components forced Russian UralVagonZavod (UVZ), which makes tanks and railway cars, among other things, to suspend operations," said Hardie. "It’s unclear to me whether sanctions have in fact slowed or stopped UVZ production and, if so, whether it’s affected its production of military vehicles or just civilian contracts."
"For one thing, building tanks obviously takes time, so any additional tanks built by UVZ might not make it onto the battlefield, depending on how long the war lasts," he said.
Previous sanctions imposed on Russia after it invaded Ukraine in 2014 have not proven bulletproof.

Sanctions Are Strangling Russia's Weapons Supply Chain
The good news for Ukraine is that sanctions are hurting Russia’s arms suppliers. The bad news is the effects aren’t immediate, for the most part.
BY
APR 18, 2022 6:43 PM
thedrive.com · by Howard Altman · April 18, 2022
A senior U.S. defense official confirmed to The War Zone Monday morning something Ukrainian officials have been saying for a while now about Russia's weapons supplies. Not only is Russia suffering tremendous losses on the battlefield, but its ability to resupply its forces has taken a beating thanks to punishing economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies.
Since the start of its war on Ukraine Feb. 24, Russia has lost thousands of major weapons systems, like tanks, armored personnel carriers, air defense systems, helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, ships and many other weapons that have been destroyed, damaged or captured, according to Oryxspioenkop, an independent open-source investigator.
Ukrainian servicemen walk next to destroyed Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers in Dmytrivka village, west of Kyiv, on April 2, 2022. (Photo by GENYA SAVILOV/AFP via Getty Images)
“There has been an effect on Putin's ability to restock and resupply, particularly in the realm of components to some of his systems and his precision-guided munitions,” the official said in response to a question from The War Zone. “They've already faced an issue in terms of replenishing their inventory because of components to some of those systems. And that's already had a practical effect on Putin.”
One example, according to Russian media, is the next-generation airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft, the A-100 Premier. Its progress has been stalled due to delays in the delivery of electronic components like microchips, thanks to sanctions imposed on Russia.
You can read more about that here.
The senior U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues, would not elaborate further on what systems are affected by sanction-imposed supply chain issues and how badly. However, the sanctions are exacerbating previous Russian supply chain issues, the official said.
A Kalibr cruise missile being launched. Guided munitions like Kalibr are among the Russian weapons production most impacted by foreign sanctions.
“We know that they're working through their replenishment efforts with their own defense contracting process and that they have concerns about how fast and how much they can ramp up their own domestic production of defense articles. And the sanctions are having an effect on their ability to do that.”
Among other things, Ukraine claims tank and air defense system resupply efforts are being affected by sanctions.
A Russian T-90MS tank made by Uralvagonzavod. Uralvagonzavod photograph.
They have huge problems with military infrastructure," Ukraine Brig. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, head of his nation’s Defense Intelligence Agency, or GUR, said on his agency’s Telegram channel recently. In a synopsis of his statements in Ukrainian, the Telegram channel said the problems resulted in the “freezing of the air defense production horde.” The synopsis added that Budanov said many companies have already closed and laid-off workers.
Russia is exhausting its stocks of missiles, according to the April 16 “War Bulletin” produced by the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, D.C. and shared with The War Zone. “Its military-industrial complex has to work 24/7 to replenish them.”
That issue of the War Bulletin claimed “over 20 Russian military enterprises were forced to suspend their activities in whole or in part due to shortage of parts and components, as well as rising prices due to sanctions.” Those companies include the research and production enterprise Vimpel, which produces aircraft missiles, and the only Russian company that makes tanks, Uralvagonzavod, the largest such firm in the world.
The GUR stated that Uralvagonzavod, which makes Russia’s T-72 main battle tank among others, “is facing rising interest rates on loans, rising prices on materials and components (including armored steel),” according to the Institute for the Study of War. ISW is a non-partisan, non-profit, public policy research organization focusing on military affairs.
We've reached out to the State Department for more information but have not heard back yet.
Sanctions have affected Russian tank manufacturer Uralvagonzavod. VASILY MAXIMOV/AFP via Getty Images
John Hardie, a research manager and research analyst for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told The War Zone he is skeptical of claims that sanctions will have a serious, near-term impact on Russia's war efforts.
"Western sanctions have and no doubt will continue to undermine Russia’s defense and related industries, for example by hindering Russian missile production and satellite programs," he said. "But I am skeptical about claims that sanctions affecting Russia’s defense industrial base will meaningfully limit Russia’s ability to prosecute the war, at least in the near term."
He cited the example of Russian tanks.
"The Ukrainian General Staff claimed on March 21 that a shortage of foreign-made components forced Russian UralVagonZavod (UVZ), which makes tanks and railway cars, among other things, to suspend operations," said Hardie. "It’s unclear to me whether sanctions have in fact slowed or stopped UVZ production and, if so, whether it’s affected its production of military vehicles or just civilian contracts."
"For one thing, building tanks obviously takes time, so any additional tanks built by UVZ might not make it onto the battlefield, depending on how long the war lasts," he said.
Previous sanctions imposed on Russia after it invaded Ukraine in 2014 have not proven bulletproof.
Disclose, for instance, reported that between 2015 and 2020, France “issued 76 export licenses to Russia for military equipment worth a total of 152 million euros.”
The deals, Disclose reported, “mostly involve thermal image cameras for tanks, and navigation systems and infrared detectors for Russian fighters and attack helicopters.”
Disclose reported that while the U.S. and allies pressured French president François Hollande to cancel a planned sale of two Mistral-class amphibious assault ships to Russia in 2015, “successive French governments under first President Hollande and then President Macron were to take advantage of a loophole in the European embargo: it was not retroactive.”
As a result, Disclose reported, “any contracts signed before the decision to impose an embargo could continue.
On top of that, the equipment was being exported under guarantee, in other words the French manufacturers were committed to carrying out any repairs for several years after delivery, as long as France did not suspend their export licence.”
The French military, however, rejected the notion that it violated the 2014 EU sanctions.
“When it comes to military equipment exports, France strictly complies with its international commitments, including the Arms Trade Treaty and the EU Common Position, French MOD spokesman Hervé Grandjean said in a March 14 tweet thread. “The execution of certain contracts signed before 2014 was allowed under the so-called "grandfather clause". A contract concluded before the annexation of Crimea can be fulfilled, and deliveries of equipment can be pursued.”
The 2021 report to parliament, Grandjean added, "shows that since 2014 the amount of equipment deliveries to Russia has been constantly declining, approaching zero in 2020. This is the result of the successive closures of these contracts."
There have been no new contracts with Russia since 2014, according to Grandjean.
"No deliveries have been made to Russia since the start of the #WarUkraine," he tweeted.
Still, some French components have been found on Russian equipment captured in Ukraine.
The end of these grandfathered deals under the 2022 sanctions would also impact Russia's ability to produce weapons.
France isn't the only nation to have its components found in Russian weapons.
A Russian drone shot down in 2017, for instance, was found to contain parts from a half-dozen Western companies, according to the Washington Post, citing a report from the Conflict Armament Research organization.
"The engine came from a German company that supplies model-airplane hobbyists," the newspaper reported on Feb. 11. "Computer chips for navigation and wireless communication were made by U.S. suppliers. A British company provided a motion-sensing chip. Other parts came from Switzerland and South Korea."
The defense sector isn’t the only segment of the Russian economy suffering under the sanctions, ISW said. The sanctions are “continuing to damage Russia’s already-fragile economy,” ISW noted in a recent situation report. Standard & Poor “announced on April 8 that Russia fell into selective debt default after Russia offered its required payment in rubles, not dollars.”
Meanwhile, the British Center for Economics and Business Research estimates that Russia will suffer 14% of lost Gross Domestic Product output over a two-year period compared to a scenario in which it did not invade Ukraine.
Though the U.S. and Ukraine say that the current sanctions are affecting Russia’s ability to restock its war materiel, its military is still devastating Ukrainian cities like Mariupol. And Russia, which the Pentagon believes is preparing for a major new attack in the Donbas, has recently poured an additional 11 battalion tactical groups into Ukraine’s east and south, the senior defense official told reporters Monday morning.
MARIUPOL, UKRAINE - A view of partially destroyed building in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol under the control of Russian military and pro-Russian separatists, on April 13, 2022. (Photo by Leon Klein/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
So while the good news for Ukraine is that the sanctions appear to be hitting Putin’s war machine, even Kyiv admits that it won’t have an instantaneous carryover on the battlefield.
“Taking into account Russian stocks of ammo and armor as well as old fashion style of war conducting we could not expect positive sanctions effects on war efforts in the short term,” a defense expert in Ukraine told The War Zone Monday afternoon. “It might happen in mid and long one.”
Putting the Kremlin under fiscal pressure will also make it so recapitalizing the Russian military will be less feasible even after its invasion of Ukraine ends or drastically deescalates.
Though time will tell how the post-Feb. 24 sanctions against Russia will play out on the battlefield, one thing seems likely.
With the new round of sanctions far more stringent, future Russian weaponry will have to rely on its own domestic production capabilities.


7. Ukraine's Ability To Withstand Russian Artillery Critical To Fight For Donbas

Yes, the King of Battle (artillery) will likely bring about a tremendous amount of death and destruction on both sides.
Ukraine's Ability To Withstand Russian Artillery Critical To Fight For Donbas
Russian and Ukrainian artillery will play a much more decisive role in the battle for Eastern Ukraine.
BY
APR 19, 2022 6:34 PM
thedrive.com · by Howard Altman · April 19, 2022
As Russia begins its push to capture a wider swath of the Donbas, the ability to mass and continue to supply its artillery and other long-range fires capabilities will play a huge role in the success of its latest campaign.
Indiscriminate massed fires, meant to kill, confuse, soften and destabilize an enemy ahead of an advance, has long been a key tenant of Soviet and Russian military doctrine. It was as true in World War II (in much of the same territory) as it is today.
"Anytime you fire any sort of projectile, you do want to inflict casualties on your enemy," Connor Crehan, a former Army artillery captain told The War Zone. "But I do think there are a lot of benefits to using artillery besides just trying to inflict pain on individual humans. You can destroy equipment. You can use it to destroy fighting positions. And there is the overall psychological impact you can have on your enemy if you can mass fires. It will really play a lot of head games with your enemy."
You can read more about the kinds of Russian artillery systems Ukraine will have to contend with here.
A senior U.S. defense official Tuesday morning could not offer The War Zone specifics on the number of long-range fires pieces Russia has amassed in its latest push. But, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues, the official told The War Zone that Russia has “more than 80%” of its artillery alone “still available to them.”
A 2S1 Gvozdika self-propelled gun during a counter-terrorism simulation exercise by the Baltic Fleet., Vitaly Nevar/TASS via Getty Images
It’s one thing to have the tubes, but feeding them, especially at a rate required to soften an enemy ahead of a push across a large swath of wide-open spaces, is something else altogether. The failed initial phase of Russia’s all-out invasion, in which its ground troops were sent in without the proper supplies or logistical tail is an example of how badly things can go even when you have superior firepower.
The Pentagon is seeing Russian ground movements “southwest of Donetsk and south of Izyum,” the senior U.S. defense official told reporters Tuesday morning. “These are actual ground offensives and they are being supported by some long-range fires, mostly artillery, which is right out of the Russian doctrine.”
In the early phase of the war, parts of Russia’s now-notorious 40-mile-long convoy getting ripped to shreds became symbolic of its planning and logistical failures that eventually resulted in an all-out-retreat.
A large deployment of Russian ground forces, containing hundreds of military vehicles, are seen in convoy northeast of Ivankiv, Ukraine on February 27, 2022. (Photo by Maxar/GettyImages)
But this time around, Ukraine will face greater challenges in the Donbas, where Russia has dug in over eight years of war in an area abutting its homeland with, in some cases, shorter and easier to secure supply lines.
Russia, said the senior U.S. defense official, “will have a shorter tooth-to-tail ratio, if you will, but it doesn't mean that they have overcome all their logistics and sustainment problems.”
Still, the official said, “we have seen them try to learn from the mistakes they made. Clearly, when I talk about shaping operations and the fact that they're moving in enabling capabilities even before they started limited offenses, it shows you that they're trying to learn from their mistakes and they will have shorter lines to deal with.”
In a Twitter thread, Mark Hertling, who retired in 2013 as an Army lieutenant general in charge of Army forces in Europe, noted that Russian artillery has a range upwards of 50 miles.
"RU artillery can fire ranges up to about 30 miles (if they use rocket assisted projectiles, or RAP) to 22-50 miles (like the Uragan multiple launched rocket systems)," he tweeted. Russia's largest rockets can reach up to the aforementioned 50 miles.
“The only way to stop: find them (through counter-fire radar or overhead drones), then fire at them,” he noted. “Ukraine also has artillery - tubed and rockets. Just not as much as the Russians.”
Ukraine, he added, also has AN/TPQ-36 counter-fire radars to "find" Russian artillery locations. And Ukraine “has proven themselves very competent in connecting intel to targeting.”
The U.S. recently sent Ukraine 10 additional AN/TPQ-36 systems as part of a recent $800 million aid package. You can read more about that here. The Ukrainian Army has been operating the AN/TPQ-36 for seven years in very limited numbers, but this has allowed them to become proficient in using it with deadly effect.
The AN/TPQ-36 counter-fire radar system has been used effectively by Ukraine since 2015.
Meanwhile, Hertling said, “Russian artillery prep can last hours, days, or weeks (depending on the amount of ammo).”
Russia will likely "stagger" those barrages “in different areas along the front line of the Donbas, so UA must be prepared for RU ground force breakthrough at many points along the front.”
Civilians watch a storage facility blazed on fire after it was hit by Russian artillery north of Kyiv, March 17th, 2022. (Photo by Narciso Contreras/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Adding to the challenges for Ukraine is the attrition of its air defense systems, combined with the distance of operations and greater density of Russian air defenses in Donbas, according to RUSI.
“As a result of these factors, the Ukrainian Air Force will have much less ability to influence the course of the ground war in Donbas over the coming weeks than it had around Kyiv or in the southwest around Mykolaiv,” RUSI reported.
A Ukrainian MiG-29 pilot, known as Juice, standing beside his aircraft. Juice/Ukrainian Air Force
“Airstrikes on Russian troop movements or frontline positions in the east will carry very high risk, and so are likely to be rare. Furthermore, the distances to the Donbas frontlines from relatively safe airstrips in the central and western parts of Ukraine will stretch the already short range of the Ukrainian Mig-29 fighters.”
It isn't clear exactly how much influence the Ukrainian Air Force has had on the ground war past the opening days of the conflict. At best it is limited.
You can read a Ukrainian MiG-29 pilot's account of the air war here.
But Ukraine is not without its ability to endure and defend against Russia’s long-range fires, the senior U.S. defense official told The War Zone.
“The Ukrainians also have a lot of their available combat power still accessible and still in the fight,” the official said. “And it's important to remember that they are getting replenished every single day with a variety of systems and weapons and that that flow is going to continue.”
While Ukraine is “certainly facing a numerically superior Russian force, that doesn't mean that they don't have advantages of their own, or the ability to actively defend themselves. You don't have to look any further than what they were able to do around Kyiv to see how capable they can be, even if they are outnumbered.”
The official added that the U.S. will “continue to get them the kinds of systems that they need to continue to defend themselves and defend their territory in the Donbas.”
And while Russia outguns Ukraine, has learned some lessons, and has a far deeper supply of ammunition, the official scoffed at any sense of a foregone conclusion of Russian victory.
“People speak about this as if it's inevitable,” the official said. “That Mariupol will fall. It's inevitable that Donbas will be taken by the Russians. We don't see it that way. And we're doing everything we can to make sure that it's not inevitable.”
Though the proximity to Russia makes supplying its Donbas attack easier, “it's also an area that the Ukrainians know well, “ said the officials.
While dwarfed by its Russian opponent, Ukraine has its own artillery capability that is being bolstered by allies. (Alexander KHUDOTEPLY/AFP via Getty Images)
“It’s their country and they've been fighting over this area for eight years,” the official said. “So they know the terrain. They know they have good interior lines of their own, and they're using them and we know that materiel is still getting to them every single day, even as they refocus their own defensive priorities on the Donbas and they still have good interior lines of communication and a strong ability to replenish their own stocks in their own forces.”
It is too early to say how successful Russia will be in this phase of the war.
“You've heard the chairman talk about the potential for this to become a prolonged fight,” the senior U.S. defense official said of concerns raised by Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “I don't know how long it could go. But certainly, there's a real possibility that this could go on for a while because both sides can be dug in fairly well.”
Such has been the case since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine.
The main difference is now there is an all-out war.
And that means long-range fires, and the ability to sustain them, will be even more important.
The senior U.S. defense official noted that’s one reason the U.S. is sending Ukraine 18 155 mm howitzers and 40,000 rounds of ammunition.
The U.S. is sending Ukraine 18 155mm howitzers, like the one seen here at Al Asad Air Base, Iraq, March 2, 2020. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Derek Mustard)
That supply of howitzers should prove helpful to Ukraine, said Crehan, the former Army artillery captain who left the service in 2011.
"If you were walking into a fight and your enemy had a bat and someone said, 'hey, here's a bat,' you certainly feel a lot more prepared for that fight," said Crehan, who commanded a Paladin 155 mm howitzer platoon in Iraq from June 2008 until June 2009. "So I think, certainly from a morale standpoint, that it will boost their confidence, they can do a better job of fending for themselves."
The 40,000 rounds of ammunition supplied by the U.S., he added, "is a significant amount of rounds for them to be able to impact damage on the Russian forces."
And that, said the senior U.S. defense official, is the goal of U.S. assistance to Ukraine.
“Our focus is on making sure that we get the Ukrainians the kinds of weapons and systems that they need to defend themselves in the moment they're in,” the official said. “That's why you saw howitzers and artillery rounds as part of this latest package. We're focusing on what their needs are now and we're in constant conversations with them about those capabilities and what they need going forward.”
Whether that’s enough remains to be seen.
Contact the author: Howard@thewarzone.com
thedrive.com · by Howard Altman · April 19, 2022

8. Pentagon: Russia has lost about 25% of its combat power originally used in the Ukraine invasion
I am not sure the aggregate number is that helpful. I would be interested in certain aspects of combat power and if they are attritted more than 25% while other areas are attritted less that 25%. Depending on the battlefield operating system the effects could be devastating. 

Pentagon: Russia has lost about 25% of its combat power originally used in the Ukraine invasion
Stars and Stripes · by Caitlin Doornbos · April 19, 2022
Russian military vehicles move on a highway in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces near Mariupol, Ukraine, Monday, April 18, 2022. Mariupol, a strategic port on the Sea of Azov, has been besieged by Russian troops and forces from self-proclaimed separatist areas in eastern Ukraine for more than six weeks. (Alexei Alexandrov/AP Photo)
WASHINGTON — Russia has lost about one-quarter of its troops, weapons and military equipment originally sent to invade Ukraine less than two months ago, a senior U.S. defense official said Tuesday.
“We believe that [Russian President Vladimir Putin’s] roughly at 75% of his combat power that he had originally when he started,” the official told reporters at the Pentagon. “This is across all functions: it's infantry, its artillery, its aviation – both fixed and rotary – it's ballistic missiles, cruise missiles [etc.]”
Putin spent months amassing more than 170,000 troops and military equipment along Ukraine’s borders with Russia and Belarus before launching the war on Feb. 24, U.S. officials have said.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, declined to further specify the losses, but the Ukraine Defense Ministry on Tuesday said its forces have killed roughly 20,800 Russian troops and destroyed 169 fighter jets, 802 tanks, 2,063 armored personnel vehicles and 132 multiple launch rocket systems.
As of Tuesday, Russia claims to have destroyed “140 [Ukrainian] aircraft, 490 unmanned aerial vehicles, 253 anti-aircraft missile systems, 2,367 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 256 multiple launch rocket systems and 1,021 field artillery and mortars,” according to a Russian Defense Ministry post on Telegram.
The post came a day after the ministry on the same platform said Ukraine had suffered “irretrievable losses” of 23,367 troops and other fighters in the conflict. The post did not say whether that total included injured personnel or prisoners of war.
The announcements of war losses followed Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s comments Monday that Russian forces have begun their renewed offensive in eastern Ukraine to capture the separatist Donbas region.
“The Russian troops have begun the battle for the Donbas," Zelenskyy said in a taped address. "[A] significant part of the entire Russian army is now concentrated on this offensive."
Pentagon officials have said Russia intends to refocus its efforts on the Donbas region after pulling its ground forces from the Ukraine capital of Kyiv and Chernihiv more than two weeks ago.
The U.S. official on Tuesday said Russia had started “some limited offensive operations” southwest of Donetsk and south of Izyum in eastern Ukraine, but cautioned more Russian operations are expected.
"We're not pushing back on the notion that offensive operations have begun, but we think that this is a prelude of larger offensive operations that are potentially still in the offing here,” the official said.
That’s because Russia is also conducting what the official called “shaping operations,” or preparations for a larger assault.
“In other words, they continue to reinforce to make sure they have logistics and sustainment supplies [and] continue to make sure that they have proper aviation and other enabling capabilities,” the official said. “So it's not binary – it’s not stop one thing and start another.”
Russia’s preparations could indicate its military is “trying to learn and adapt from some of the mistakes they made earlier in the war, particularly around Kyiv,” where Russian forces were stalled for weeks due in part to food and fuel shortages before retreating.
“They are trying to learn how to fix and overcome those logistics and sustainment challenges,” the official said.
The appointment on April 11 of Col. Gen. Alexander Dvornikov as commander of Russian forces in Ukraine might also indicate an attempt to overcome early challenges in the war, the official said.
“We also see in the appointment of an overall commander as an effort by the Russians to also try to learn from their mistakes with respect to command and control,” the official said.
Still, the U.S. does not believe Ukraine is doomed to fail in Russia’s renewed focus on eastern Ukraine, the official said.
"People speak about this as if it's inevitable that Mariupol's going to fall, that it's inevitable [that] Donbas will be taken by the Russians,” the official said. “We don't see it that way."
The official pointed to Ukraine’s success in defending Kyiv as evidence of their capabilities and noted the U.S. and other nations continue providing Ukraine additional weapons and other military equipment.
"While they're certainly facing a numerically superior Russian force, that doesn't mean they don't have their own advantages and the ability to actively defend themselves,” the official said.
The official did not say how many troops the U.S. estimates Ukraine and Russia have left in the fight.
“Even if they are outnumbered, we're going to continue to get them the kinds of systems that they need to continue to defend themselves and defend their territory in the Donbas."
The U.S. has given Ukraine about $2.5 billion in military aid since the war began, which is more than half of Ukraine’s annual defense budget of $4.2 billion, officials have said.
A second senior U.S. defense official on Tuesday said while multiple countries have also supplied Ukraine with weapons and equipment, the U.S. is “almost certainly” the largest provider of military aid to Ukraine.
The official also said the aid to Ukraine represents an “unprecedented” amount of successive military aid shipments “that we are moving at this speed.”
“I'm not sure I would want to compare this to, say, the Vietnam War or something, but this is certainly the largest recent [U.S.] supply to a partner country in a conflict,” the official said.
Stars and Stripes · by Caitlin Doornbos · April 19, 2022

9. Who has the advantage in the war for eastern Ukraine?

Large scale maneuver with mobile firepower and air support will certainly be a different fight. If the Russians can execute their transitional combined doctrine adequately then it will really be tough for the Ukrainians.

Who has the advantage in the war for eastern Ukraine?
The “battle of the Donbas” will be a very different fight than what we’ve seen so far.

Global Security Reporter
April 19, 2022
grid.news · by Joshua Keating
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once famously cautioned following a decisive battlefield victory in 1942, when the tide of World War II seemed to be turning in the allies’ favor, that it was “not the end, not even the beginning of the end but, possibly, the end of the beginning.”
It’s a phrase that may apply to the recent withdrawal of Russian forces from the areas around Kyiv: an “end of the beginning moment” for the war in Ukraine.
Russia launched a three-front invasion on Feb. 24, with the apparent goal of toppling the Ukrainian government. Nearly eight weeks into the war, that initial goal is almost certainly out of reach, thanks to stiffer-than-expected Ukrainian resistance, substantial international help and well-documented logistical and strategic difficulties for Russia. Now, Russia is focused on a more modest objective: an offensive aimed at taking over the contested region of southeastern Ukraine known as the Donbas.
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That offensive, focused on what Russia’s military calls the “liberation of Donbas,” has now begun. After the Russians began attacking along the entire 300-mile front line in the region Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced, “We can now say that Russian forces have started the battle of the Donbas, for which they have long prepared.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov acknowledged on Tuesday that “another stage” of Russia’s military operation had begun.
Two months ago, few outside analysts gave Ukraine’s forces much chance of withstanding the Russian onslaught. Many predicted a Russian victory within days. Now, few doubt Ukraine’s will or ability to fight back. But the battle of the Donbas will be a very different sort of fight and one that may play more to Russia’s strengths. Both sides are likely to face difficult military and political questions in the weeks to come.
The new war
In some ways, the war in Ukraine is returning to its roots. The Donbas, a predominantly Russian-speaking region comprised of two oblasts, or administrative districts — Donetsk and Luhansk — has been in a state of armed conflict since 2014, when Russian forces helped separatist rebels set up two autonomous “people’s republics” in the region. On the eve of war in February, Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized the two republics as independent; crucially, his declaration covered not only the areas controlled by separatists but all of Donetsk and Luhansk, a much larger area.
The Russian goal now appears to be to secure control over that larger area, before agreeing to a ceasefire. Though significantly less than the regime change Russia originally hoped for, this would allow Putin to declare victory in what he continues to call a “special military operation.” It would also give the Kremlin an area rich in natural resources, including vast reserves of coal. A secondary goal: If Russia can successfully take the city of Mariupol, on the sea of Azov (as of this writing, a last bastion of Ukrainian forces is holding out, but that battered city is mostly under Russian control), Russia will have largely succeeded in creating a “land bridge” between areas it controls in eastern Ukraine and the annexed peninsula of Crimea.
U.S. officials estimate there are now roughly 60,000 Russian troops in the Donbas. The fall of Mariupol could free up around 12 additional Russian battalion tactical groups — about 800 troops each.
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Standing in the Russians’ way is what’s known as Joint Forces Operation (JFO), considered the best-trained and equipped troops in the Ukrainian military, who’ve been fighting the separatists for years. Not much is known about the current condition of the JFO: Before the war, it numbered around 40,000 troops. Since then, it has undoubtedly suffered heavy losses but also been bolstered by reinforcements and volunteers. Russia’s immediate military priority, according to analysts, is to encircle these troops, cutting them off from the rest of Ukraine. Franz-Stefan Gady, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said this encirclement is theoretically possible, but that in order to pull it off, “Russian forces must show better tactical competence, underpinned by solid logistical support than has been the case in the first phase of this war.”
None of this means the rest of Ukraine is suddenly safe. At least seven people were killed on Monday in a missile strike on Lviv, the western Ukrainian city that has been a refuge for those fleeing other fighting in other parts of the country. Jeffrey Edmonds, an expert on the Russian military at the Center for Naval Analysis (CNA), said these strikes are likely to continue in order to keep up pressure on the Ukrainian government and population. “They are more coercive in nature than actually trying to achieve some kind of territorial gain,” he said. That will be cold comfort to those living with air raid sirens and the attacks that often follow.
Advantage Russia?
From a Russian perspective, the war may be about to get easier. In their offensives thus far, Russian forces have been stretched thin, deployed in many parts of the country and often relying on small raids that have left them vulnerable to Ukrainian ambush. Hence the frequent reports of Russian troops and armored vehicles taken out by Ukrainian snipers and missiles. Now, Russian forces are massed in one part of Ukraine and operating much closer to Russian territory. The war in Donbas is more likely to resemble traditional World War II-style combat with an established front line in which the Russians have advantages in both manpower and firepower.
Alex Vershinin, a recently retired U.S. Army officer with experience in war gaming, who correctly predicted many of Russia’s logistics and supply dilemmas in an article last year, said those dilemmas will be less of a factor in this new phase of the war. He noted in particular that Russian forces are operating closer to the railways they rely on for resupply.
The Donbas is also much better suited for Russia’s artillery-first style of fighting. “If you look at battles for Kyiv, they were urban battles where the Ukrainians had the advantage of knowing the terrain, and they outnumbered the Russian forces. And that gave Ukrainians advantage in a close fight,” Vershinin told Grid. “Donbas is an open steppe. It’s grasslands, similar to our Great Plains. Out there, there is no way to hide. So Ukrainian troops, fighting in the open, are going to be destroyed by the Russian superior firepower.”
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The battle for Donbas could also see more use of Russian air power, which has been conspicuous by its relative absence so far, said CNA’s Edmonds. “[Russian planes] would be flying over separatist areas to attack things just beyond the line of contact,” he told Grid. “And so much of your flight path would be secure as opposed to just flying all around Kyiv where every piece of terrain is enemy terrain.”
The changing nature of the fight is one reason why the Ukrainian government has been doubling down on requests for heavier weaponry. Zelenskyy detailed a wish list to Western countries last week including artillery systems and ammunition, rocket launchers, armored vehicles, air defense systems, combat aircraft and tanks. While NATO allies were reluctant to provide some of this type of offensive aid early in the conflict when it looked unlikely the Ukrainians would hold out for long, some of these systems, including tanks, are starting to arrive in Ukraine. Whether these will be enough or deployed to eastern Ukraine in time to make a serious difference, remains to be seen.
Meet the new boss
The war in Ukraine has not been kind to Russian generals. An eighth one — Maj. Gen. Vladimir Frolov — was killed in combat last week, a stunning toll for just two months of fighting. The heavy losses among Russia’s senior officers have revealed serious issues with Russia’s command structure. The Russian military has little in the way of a mid-level noncommissioned officer corps, meaning generals are often on the front lines commanding troops. Moreover, high-level strategic decisions appear to have been coming mostly from senior officials in Moscow rather than officers on the ground. That might make sense for the quick decapitation operation Putin envisioned back in February, but not for the prolonged, grinding war of attrition he’s facing now.
The Russians took steps toward addressing at least one of their major organizational issues on April 10 by finally appointing a single commander, Gen. Aleksandr Dvornikov, to oversee military operations in Ukraine. Dvornikov, who has been commanding Russian forces in Ukraine’s south and east, is considered one of the country’s most competent commanders. He also has a reputation for ruthless tactics and is perhaps best known for having been the first commander of Russian forces in Syria after the military intervention in 2015. U.S. officials have dubbed him the “butcher of Syria” for his role in the bombardment of civilians in Aleppo and other cities.
Aleppo-style tactics have already been on display in Mariupol, where the Russian siege has killed at least 10,000 civilians, according to the city’s mayor, and in Izyum, a city with a prewar population of 46,000. There is every reason to believe Dvornikov will use such tactics if he deems them necessary in the new campaign.
Advantage Ukraine?
Given the favorable terrain, Donbas might have been a relatively easy fight for Russia if it had concentrated all its forces there two months ago. It might have been that one-week war that many had anticipated. Now it’s a different story. “They’re not going into this fresh,” Edmonds noted. “They’ve really had their nose bloodied, and they’ve lost a lot of people.”
We don’t know exactly how many troops Russia has lost — NATO estimates it’s at least 7,000 — and many of those are likely among its most experienced and best-trained front-line fighters. Equipment losses have also been substantial.
“With current casualty and major equipment loss rates continuing, my guess is that Russia will not have the ability to take this fight into June,” IISS’s Gady told Grid. “If the war goes on with casualty rates similar to the first weeks of the war, Russia will need a longer operational pause in June and July, while reserves are being mobilized and additional reservists called up.”
Russia is fast burning through the available troops it has for the operation. U.S. officials say about 75 percent of its combat-ready forces are already deployed in Ukraine. Studies suggest troops should be cycled out of combat every 60 days maximum or they’ll lose combat effectiveness. There are probably about 1,000 mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner Group fighting in Ukraine, plus some Syrians and Chechens. But Russia will still need more troops from somewhere.
The Kremlin recently began its spring draft early, aiming to sign up about 134,000 conscripts. But the use of conscripts is controversial in Russia. Putin only reluctantly acknowledged conscripts were fighting in Ukraine at all, and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has assured skeptical families of the new recruits that they won’t be sent to hot spots. On paper, Russia has a reserve force of about 2 million former conscripts, but only a few thousand of them may be combat-ready. Plus, a mass mobilization would make even more clear to the Russian public that this is far more than a “special military operation.” Putin’s government has been remarkably successful at managing public opinion about the war so far, but that will get more difficult as more young Russian men are sent to the front line and many never return.
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It’s widely believed that Putin is hoping for a solid military achievement to celebrate by May 9 Russia’s all-important Victory Day celebration — but for all the above reasons, he’s unlikely to get one. All indications are this is going to be a much longer war.
Questions for Ukraine
One reason it’s difficult to make firm predictions about the battle for the east is that, as Edmonds put it, “We don’t have very clear picture into the Ukrainian army. We just haven’t concentrated on it as much, and a lot of information is purposely kept out of the mainstream media.”
Whatever its strength, Ukraine’s task is simple, if not easy, for the next few weeks: Fight back as hard as possible and push for as much foreign aid as possible. If its troops in the east are encircled or face heavy losses, the Ukrainian government will start to face difficult choices. Ukraine could withdraw its forces to more easily defensible positions farther west, but that could make Russian control of the Donbas effectively a “fait accompli.” If the Ukrainians defy the odds again and can hold out until Russia’s personnel problems start to bite, they face a different set of choices.
“Seized with a recent victory, are they going to try to push the Russians out of Ukraine writ large or are they going to try to hold them to where the separatist areas currently are?” asked Edmonds. In other words, will the Ukrainians be satisfied with merely preventing Russia from taking any new territory, or will they keep fighting until the “people’s republics” are also wiped from the map? (For now, Crimea is probably a lost cause.) And how long will Ukraine’s foreign backers continue to provide assistance if its goals expand?
Just a few weeks ago, these would have seemed like good problems to have. Ukraine’s forces still have to survive the next few weeks’ onslaught before they get to them.
Thanks to Alicia Benjamin for copy editing this article.
grid.news · by Joshua Keating


10. Biden’s cybersecurity budget good start; Congress needs to fill the gaps

Excerpts:
The administration is also moving in the right direction, albeit slowly, at the State Department. At the beginning of April, State officially launched its new Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy (CDP) diplomacy “to encourage responsible state behavior in cyberspace and advance policies that … uphold democratic values.” The CDP bureau is as much a realignment as a new creation, pulling together three existing teams that had evolved separately across the department. As such, in announcing its FY23 Budget, State added a new budget line retroactively announcing $6.4 million for the new bureau for FY22. The FY23 Budget increases this request by $2.6 million to support seven new positions within CDP. The FY23 Budget also sets aside $37 million for CDP in the Economic Support Fund, which the new bureau would likely spend as part of international cybersecurity capacity building projects. While that figure also likely includes a mix of realigned and new funding, it is encouraging to see the department recognize the importance of cybersecurity support for partners and allies. The new bureau has a lot more growing ahead of it, but the FY23 request is a step in the right direction.
Finally, FY23 Budget requests a 20 percent ($18 million) increase for NIST’s cybersecurity and privacy work. While this is a welcome increase after years of constrained growth, much more is needed to execute NIST’s growing mission. NIST not only maintains frameworks and resources that serve as keystones of global cybersecurity, it has taken on new responsibilities under EO 14028 and oversees a new workforce development grant program. In light of NIST’s pivotal role in enabling better cybersecurity nationwide, the congressionally mandated Cyberspace Solarium Commission previously recommended nearly doubling its cybersecurity and privacy budget to $142 million.
Despite the occasional misses, President Biden’s Budget request for FY23 is an overall win for cybersecurity. It is now up to congressional appropriators to carry forward the wins, address the gaps, and build on last year’s investments to further strengthen cybersecurity for all Americans.
Biden’s cybersecurity budget good start; Congress needs to fill the gaps
BY RETIRED REAR ADM. MARK MONTGOMERY, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 04/19/22 12:00 PM ET
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

The Hill · April 19, 2022
The White House released the President’s Budget Request for Fiscal Year 2023 on the heels of the recently passed Consolidated Appropriations Act, which provided a jolt of cybersecurity funding for 2022 but missed important opportunities. For its part, the FY23 Budget request contains a number of critical cybersecurity investments but falls short on cyber education and critical infrastructure resilience and does not adequately fund the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Congress should now move decisively to fill those gaps, as it often has in previous years.
The FY23 Budget prioritizes securing the federal government’s digital systems and networks with an 11 percent ($10.9 billion) increase in enterprise cybersecurity and IT funding for departments and agencies. For example, the White House requests an increase of $197 million “to protect and defend sensitive agency systems and information” at the Department of the Treasury. Similarly, the Budget cites improving the Pentagon’s network security and strengthening cybersecurity standards for the defense industrial base as priorities. This growth and prioritization align neatly with Executive Order 14028 on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity which, the Budget notes, emphasizes “enhancing the security of Government-procured software [and] improving detection of cyber threats and vulnerabilities on Federal systems.”
The White House also recognizes the need to expand the federal cybersecurity workforce, increasing funding for the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) “CyberCorps: Scholarship for Service” program by $12 million over the FY22 appropriation. CyberCorps is a critical pathway for post-secondary cybersecurity education and recruitment. The Budget, however, neglects K-12 cybersecurity education as it requests no funding for the Cybersecurity Education and Training Assistance Program (CETAP) housed at the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). The administration similarly marked CETAP for elimination in the FY22 request, but Congress ultimately appropriated $6.8 million for FY22 to continue this congressionally authorized program. The FY23 Budget provides no reason for eliminating CETAP funding other than suggesting NSF will take over some element of the work. As they have in the past, congressional appropriators should resolve the confusion by funding this critical cybersecurity education program in its current home at CISA and ensuring that any increased funding for K-12 education activities at NSF are truly additive, rather than coming at the expense of CETAP or existing NSF educational programs like CyberCorps.
While defending its own networks, the federal government must also protect Americans’ digital lives and livelihoods by supporting public-private collaboration to secure national critical infrastructure. This was an area where last year’s Budget request struggled, but to the White House’s credit, its newest funding request shows a growing recognition of the government’s role. For example, the Budget requests $22 million for the new Office of the National Cyber Director in part to “improve national coordination in the face of escalating cyber-attacks on Government and critical infrastructure.” The White House is also requesting an increase of $52 million for the Department of Justice to enhance its cyber investigative capabilities and efforts to combat ransomware.
One of the most important ways the federal government elevates critical infrastructure cybersecurity is through sector risk management agencies (SRMAs) — the links between government cybersecurity experts and critical infrastructure owners and operators. Here, the FY23 Budget is decidedly inconsistent. On the positive side, the Department of Energy requests a nearly 30 percent increase relative to FY21 spending for its Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response. The Department of Transportation requests a much needed $25 million increase for cybersecurity at the Federal Aviation Administration. And the Environmental Protection Agency requests $25 million within a grant program to improve cybersecurity in the water sector. These are all smart investments.
At the same time, however, the Department of the Treasury, the financial sector’s SRMA, requests an increase of less than $300,000 for the Office of Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection despite its own admission that its “staffing level is insufficient to handle the actual volume of incidents” targeting the financial sector. Three hundred thousand dollars will not fix much. Most problematically, CISA requests a $163,000 decrease for support to SMRAs compared to its FY22 request. Congress is likely to ignore this decrease given that appropriators doled out a $39 million increase for CISA’s SRMA support role in the FY22 appropriations bill last month.
The overall budget for CISA is $377 million higher than the FY22 budget request. The 18 percent increase is a clear signal that the administration is prioritizing the expansion of CISA’s work. As remarkable as that increase is, it is actually almost $82 million less than the amount Congress appropriated for FY22, making it appear as a budget cut rather than an increase. Given that the president signed the delayed FY22 appropriations bill into law only two weeks before submitting the FY23 Budget request, the White House had likely already finalized its request for FY23 and likely thought its request for CISA would be a significant increase, not an $80 million dollar decrease. The fact that the administration was functionally upstaged by Congress does not detract from the clear show of White House support for the cybersecurity agency. Congress itself now has the opportunity to reconcile the differences and produce a larger CISA budget for FY23.
The administration is also moving in the right direction, albeit slowly, at the State Department. At the beginning of April, State officially launched its new Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy (CDP) diplomacy “to encourage responsible state behavior in cyberspace and advance policies that … uphold democratic values.” The CDP bureau is as much a realignment as a new creation, pulling together three existing teams that had evolved separately across the department. As such, in announcing its FY23 Budget, State added a new budget line retroactively announcing $6.4 million for the new bureau for FY22. The FY23 Budget increases this request by $2.6 million to support seven new positions within CDP. The FY23 Budget also sets aside $37 million for CDP in the Economic Support Fund, which the new bureau would likely spend as part of international cybersecurity capacity building projects. While that figure also likely includes a mix of realigned and new funding, it is encouraging to see the department recognize the importance of cybersecurity support for partners and allies. The new bureau has a lot more growing ahead of it, but the FY23 request is a step in the right direction.
Finally, FY23 Budget requests a 20 percent ($18 million) increase for NIST’s cybersecurity and privacy work. While this is a welcome increase after years of constrained growth, much more is needed to execute NIST’s growing mission. NIST not only maintains frameworks and resources that serve as keystones of global cybersecurity, it has taken on new responsibilities under EO 14028 and oversees a new workforce development grant program. In light of NIST’s pivotal role in enabling better cybersecurity nationwide, the congressionally mandated Cyberspace Solarium Commission previously recommended nearly doubling its cybersecurity and privacy budget to $142 million.
Despite the occasional misses, President Biden’s Budget request for FY23 is an overall win for cybersecurity. It is now up to congressional appropriators to carry forward the wins, address the gaps, and build on last year’s investments to further strengthen cybersecurity for all Americans.
Retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery serves as senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation (CCTI) and is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (@FDD), a Washington, D.C.-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy. Montgomery also directs CSC 2.0, an initiative that works to implement the recommendations of the congressionally mandated Cyberspace Solarium Commission, where he served as executive director. Follow him on Twitter @MarkCMontgomery
The Hill · April 19, 2022


11. How U.S.-Saudi Relations Reached the Breaking Point

Certainly troubling:

During meetings last year at the seaside palace, Prince Mohammed and King Salman huddled with advisers about what punitive actions Mr. Biden might be planning and how best to pre-empt them, senior Saudi officials said.
They discussed such options as bowing to White House pressure by releasing more political prisoners. Prince Mohammed instead chose a more aggressive path—threatening to solidify nascent alliances with Russia and China, the officials said.
In September, the Saudis called off Mr. Austin’s visit, citing a scheduling conflict, and welcomed on the same night a senior Russian politician sanctioned by the U.S.
Two weeks later, Prince Mohammed, dressed in shorts, received Mr. Sullivan at the seaside palace and told him the Saudis would stick with a Russia-blessed oil production plan that didn’t significantly raise output.
Since then, Mr. McGurk and Amos Hochstein, the State Department’s energy envoy, have visited Saudi Arabia frequently for meetings with Prince Mohammed, Prince Khalid and their older half brother, energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman.
The White House resumed weapons sales for defensive purposes to Riyadh, agreeing to a $650 million sale of air-to-air missiles in November. That was followed by U.S. approval of a transfer from two other Persian Gulf countries of Patriot interceptors used to shoot down Houthi missiles. Last month, Saudi Arabia and the Houthis agreed to a rare truce in their seven-year-old conflict, following diplomacy by Mr. Biden’s special envoy to Yemen.
Messrs. McGurk and Hochstein led a U.S. delegation to Riyadh days before Russia invaded Ukraine and again three weeks later. As oil surged toward $140 a barrel, Saudi Arabia took no action. The U.S. delegation got a chilly reception. The Saudis seemed to be leaning closer to the Kremlin over the Ukraine invasion, according to a person briefed by the Biden administration.
In March, weeks after rebuffing the White House invitation to speak with Mr. Biden, Prince Mohammed took a call from Russian President Vladimir Putin and affirmed Riyadh’s commitment to maintaining its oil deal with Moscow.
I recall Prince Khalid bin Salman enrolling in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown in 2017. He told me it was his brother's intent for him to develop relationships with the US to ensure long term good relations between the US and Saudi Arabia. Khalid only stayed at Georgetown for a couple of months until he was called back to the Kingdom and then returned a short time later as the new Saudi Ambassador to the US.

How U.S.-Saudi Relations Reached the Breaking Point
The decadeslong alliance is at risk over disagreements regarding oil production levels, security concerns and the invasion of Ukraine

By Stephen KalinFollow
Summer SaidFollow
 and David S. CloudFollow
Apr. 19, 2022 11:52 am ET

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, wearing shorts at his seaside palace, sought a relaxed tone for his first meeting with President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, last September.
The 36-year-old crown prince ended up shouting at Mr. Sullivan after he raised the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The prince told Mr. Sullivan he never wanted to discuss the matter again, said people familiar with the exchange. And the U.S. could forget about its request to boost oil production, he told Mr. Sullivan.
The relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia has hit its lowest point in decades, with Mr. Biden saying in 2019 that the kingdom should be treated like a pariah over human-rights issues such as Mr. Khashoggi’s murder.
The political fissures have deepened since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, senior Saudi and U.S. officials said. The White House wanted the Saudis to pump more crude, both to tame oil prices and undercut Moscow’s war finances. The kingdom hasn’t budged, keeping in line with Russian interests.

Jamal Khashoggi speaking in December 2014 at a news conference in Bahrain.
PHOTO: HASAN JAMALI/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Prince Mohammed wants foremost to be recognized as the de facto Saudi ruler and future king. The crown prince runs the country’s day-to-day affairs for his ailing father, King Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud. But Mr. Biden hasn’t yet met or spoken directly with the prince. Last summer, the president told Americans to blame low Saudi oil output for rising gas prices.
After the publication of this article online, Adrianne Watson, a White House National Security Council spokeswoman, reiterated President Biden’s stated commitment that the U.S. would support the kingdom’s territorial defense. She cited diplomatic achievements in recent weeks, such as the condemnation by Persian Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She said Mr. Sullivan didn’t discuss oil production with Prince Mohammed at their September meeting and that “there was no shouting.”
A Saudi official at the kingdom’s Washington embassy said after publication of this article online that the relationship between the U.S. and the kingdom remains strong. He called the meeting between Mr. Sullivan and Prince Mohammed cordial and respectful.
“Over the course of the last 77 years of Saudi-U.S relations, there have been many disagreements and differing points of view over many issues, but that has never stopped the two countries from finding a way to work together,” the official said.
The risk for the U.S. is that Riyadh will align more closely with China and Russia, or at least remain neutral on issues of vital interest to Washington, as it has on Ukraine, Saudi officials said.
The U.S.-Saudi partnership was built on the premise that the American military would defend the kingdom from hostile powers to ensure the uninterrupted flow of oil to world markets. In turn, successive Saudi kings maintained a steady supply of crude at reasonable prices, with only occasional disruptions. But the economic underpinning of the relationship has changed. The Saudis no longer sell much oil to the U.S. and are instead the biggest supplier to China, reorienting Riyadh’s commercial and political interests.
U.S. officials, including White House Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk, have visited the kingdom repeatedly to try to heal the breach, with an eye to addressing Saudi concerns about security threats from Iran and the Houthi rebels Iran backs in Yemen. Yet with Mr. Biden opposed to any broad concessions to the Saudis, the officials acknowledge making only modest progress.
The White House has stopped asking the Saudis to pump more oil. Instead, it asks only that Saudi Arabia not do anything that would hurt the West’s efforts in Ukraine, a senior U.S. official said.
The Saudis cut short a high-level military delegation to Washington last summer and called off a visit last fall by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. A planned visit last month by Secretary of State Antony Blinken was canceled.

Saudi King Salman, with a cane, leaving the hospital after tests on March 16 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
PHOTO: SAUDI PRESS AGENCY/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Some close Biden aides, including Mr. McGurk, have been pushing for political detente with the Saudis, which they see as essential for the U.S. to advance its Middle East interests on everything from oil prices to establishing normal diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, according to officials in both countries.
Rapprochement won’t be easy. Mr. Biden faces staunch opposition to improving ties with the Saudis from Democratic and Republican lawmakers, especially since Prince Mohammed has shown little willingness to retreat from a lucrative alliance with Moscow to keep a lid on oil-production levels.
White House officials this year worked to set up a call between Mr. Biden, King Salman and Prince Mohammed, said people familiar with the matter. As the date for the Feb. 9 call approached, Saudi officials told the Biden administration that the crown prince wouldn’t take part, these people said.
The snub propelled simmering private frustrations into the open after The Wall Street Journal reported what happened.
Growing apart
The unlikely U.S.-Saudi marriage has endured over the past 75 years in part because of personal ties between the respective leaders of a democracy and a monarchy.
An ailing President Franklin Roosevelt traveled to the Middle East on a U.S. Navy cruiser in 1945 to launch the relationship with Saudi Arabia’s founder, King Abdulaziz ibn Saud. Decades later, former President George W. Bush and the late King Abdullah hosted each other at their respective ranches.
The strategic relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia has never been as difficult as it is now, said Norman Roule, a former senior U.S. intelligence official covering the Middle East and who maintains contact with senior Saudi officials.
Prince Mohammed doesn’t like his treatment by the Biden administration, which released an intelligence report last year about the crown prince’s alleged role in Mr. Khashoggi’s killing and dismemberment inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The Central Intelligence Agency concluded the prince likely ordered the killing. He denied directing the attack on one of his high-profile critics but has said he bears responsibility because it happened on his watch.
Saudi leaders are also upset about the U.S. approach to Yemen. The White House no longer classifies the Houthis as a terrorist organization and announced it was reducing support for the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen, imposing a freeze on the sale of precision-guided missiles. Saudi Arabia saw an uptick in cross-border drone and missile attacks by the Houthis and was alarmed by the Pentagon removing several antimissile systems from Saudi Arabia in June. The U.S. said the move was for maintenance.
The Saudis were dismayed by the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, as well as the Biden administration’s ongoing efforts to revive the Iran nuclear deal. They also have begun to question the U.S. military commitment to the Middle East and bristle at presumptions that the kingdom will fall in lockstep with Washington.
Prince Mohammed’s demand for acknowledgment by Mr. Biden of his claim to inherit the throne has grown more complicated, Saudi officials said. A few months ago, a phone call may have been enough. Now, Saudi officials are skeptical that even a state visit would suffice.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt meeting with King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia at Great Bitter Lake in Egypt on Feb. 14, 1945.
PHOTO: UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP/GETTY IMAGES

President George W. Bush in 2005 escorting then-Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah at Mr. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas.
PHOTO: ROD AYDELOTTE/PRESS POOL
The Saudi embassy in Washington called the idea that Prince Mohammed wanted such acknowledgment “nonsensical.”
The prince wants to put Mr. Khashoggi’s murder behind him—he faces civil lawsuits over the killing—and secure legal immunity in the U.S., Saudi officials said. Mr. Biden could facilitate that by directing the State Department to recognize Prince Mohammad as a head of state.
Saudi Arabia wants more support for its intervention in Yemen’s civil war and to bolster its defenses against cross-border attacks from Iran-allied Houthi fighters. Riyadh also wants help with its civilian nuclear capabilities and more investments in its economy by U.S. companies.
Mr. Biden is unable or unlikely to meet most of these demands, given the lack of support for Saudi Arabia in Congress, especially among Democrats. On April 13, 30 Democrats, including the leaders of the House foreign affairs and intelligence committees, called on the administration to take a tougher stance on Saudi Arabia, largely over the Saudi response to the Ukraine war and its refusal to boost oil production.
The U.S.-Saudi relationship has faltered before. The 1973 Arab oil embargo, led by Saudi Arabia in response to U.S. support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War, sparked the worst U.S. recession in 40 years.

A Patriot antimissile battery at the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia in 2020.
PHOTO: IMAN AL-DABBAGH FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks—in which the mastermind and 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens—Riyadh nearly cut ties with the U.S. over what it saw as Washington’s failure to rein in Israel during the Palestinian uprising known as the second intifada. Former President Barack Obama angered the Saudis with his support for the “Arab Spring” uprisings and Washington’s secret nuclear talks with Iran.
President Donald Trump, who stood by Prince Mohammed after the Khashoggi killing, proposed a joint military response to Iran’s attack on Saudi oil sites in 2019. The idea was shelved when Riyadh, fearing an escalating regional war, declined to take part, U.S. and Saudi officials said.
What is different this time is a breakdown at the highest level. When Mr. Biden spoke with King Salman last year, the White House said he viewed the 86-year-old monarch as his counterpart, not Prince Mohammed. The president designated Mr. Austin as the interlocutor for the crown prince, who also holds the title of defense minister.
The Saudis tried to accommodate the Biden administration by ending a three-year rift with Qatar before he took office and releasing several high-profile activists in the initial weeks of his administration. But the Saudis lost patience with what they viewed as too many U.S. demands.
When Mr. McGurk made an unannounced trip in February last year to lobby for the release of Prince Mohammed’s uncle and cousin, who had been detained for allegedly plotting a coup, he was rebuffed, Saudi officials said. Ms. Watson of the NSC denied Mr. McGurk went to Saudi Arabia for this purpose.

Brett McGurk, White House Middle East coordinator, at the Capitol in 2019.
PHOTO: ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES
In July, Prince Khalid bin Salman, who is Prince Mohammed’s younger brother, met Messrs. Austin and Sullivan in Washington to discuss bolstering Saudi air defenses, U.S. and Saudi officials said.
Prince Khalid, the most senior Saudi official to visit the U.S. during the Biden administration, canceled a dinner for U.S. officials at the ambassador’s Washington residence after being told he wouldn’t get the amount of time with Mr. Blinken he had requested, a Saudi official said.
The next day, the two men talked briefly one-on-one, said the official and a person familiar with the visit, but the Saudis cut the trip short and left empty-handed. Ms. Watson said they “spent the better part of an hour one-on-one.”
Favored nation
During meetings last year at the seaside palace, Prince Mohammed and King Salman huddled with advisers about what punitive actions Mr. Biden might be planning and how best to pre-empt them, senior Saudi officials said.
They discussed such options as bowing to White House pressure by releasing more political prisoners. Prince Mohammed instead chose a more aggressive path—threatening to solidify nascent alliances with Russia and China, the officials said.
In September, the Saudis called off Mr. Austin’s visit, citing a scheduling conflict, and welcomed on the same night a senior Russian politician sanctioned by the U.S.
Two weeks later, Prince Mohammed, dressed in shorts, received Mr. Sullivan at the seaside palace and told him the Saudis would stick with a Russia-blessed oil production plan that didn’t significantly raise output.
Since then, Mr. McGurk and Amos Hochstein, the State Department’s energy envoy, have visited Saudi Arabia frequently for meetings with Prince Mohammed, Prince Khalid and their older half brother, energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman.
The White House resumed weapons sales for defensive purposes to Riyadh, agreeing to a $650 million sale of air-to-air missiles in November. That was followed by U.S. approval of a transfer from two other Persian Gulf countries of Patriot interceptors used to shoot down Houthi missiles. Last month, Saudi Arabia and the Houthis agreed to a rare truce in their seven-year-old conflict, following diplomacy by Mr. Biden’s special envoy to Yemen.
Messrs. McGurk and Hochstein led a U.S. delegation to Riyadh days before Russia invaded Ukraine and again three weeks later. As oil surged toward $140 a barrel, Saudi Arabia took no action. The U.S. delegation got a chilly reception. The Saudis seemed to be leaning closer to the Kremlin over the Ukraine invasion, according to a person briefed by the Biden administration.
In March, weeks after rebuffing the White House invitation to speak with Mr. Biden, Prince Mohammed took a call from Russian President Vladimir Putin and affirmed Riyadh’s commitment to maintaining its oil deal with Moscow.
Dion Nissenbaum and Benoit Faucon contributed to this article.
Write to Stephen Kalin at stephen.kalin@wsj.com, Summer Said at summer.said@wsj.com and David S. Cloud at david.cloud@wsj.com
Appeared in the April 20, 2022, print edition as 'How U.S.-Saudi Ties Hit a Breaking Point'.

12. Garuda Shield: Indonesia tilting to US against China

Excerpts:
The last exercise between the Indonesian and Chinese militaries was in May 2021 when two Chinese guided-missile frigates took part in limited maneuvers with an Indonesian frigate and a smaller fast attack craft in waters north of Jakarta.
The exercise went ahead a month after fast-responding Chinese salvage ships unsuccessfully sought to raise the German-built Indonesian submarine KRI Nanggala 402, which mysteriously sank with all 53 hands north of Bali.
The only Chinese weapons in Indonesia’s inventory are C-802 and C-705 anti-ship missiles, the QW-3 man-portable surface-to-air missile, Giant Bow II anti-aircraft guns and a naval Type 730 Gatling gun.
Russia has supplied Indonesia with more than a dozen missile systems, plus two squadrons of Su-27/30 multirole jets whose operational status and spare parts supply may now be in jeopardy as a result of Ukraine-related US and European sanctions.
Ironically, Jakarta turned to Russia for weapons procurements during a 15-year US military embargo imposed following a 1991 massacre in then-East Timor and the bloodshed sparked by the territory’s vote for independence eight years later.
Indonesia recently felt compelled to finally cancel an order with Moscow for new-generation Su-35 fighters, rather than risk damaging US economic sanctions – and a loss of preferential trading rights – imposed under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA).The last exercise between the Indonesian and Chinese militaries was in May 2021 when two Chinese guided-missile frigates took part in limited maneuvers with an Indonesian frigate and a smaller fast attack craft in waters north of Jakarta.
Garuda Shield: Indonesia tilting to US against China
Expanded joint military exercise will include ten nations, skirt the contested South China Sea and inevitably stoke Beijing’s ire

asiatimes.com · by John McBeth · April 20, 2022
JAKARTA – While Indonesian foreign policy remains on a neutral track, the country’s military is tilting ever more towards the United States and the West with preparations underway for its biggest-ever combined arms exercise next August that for the first time will skirt the South China Sea.
The Indonesia-US Garuda Shield maneuvers, which began in 2009, are being expanded this year to accommodate eight other countries, including Australia, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Britain, Papua New Guinea and Timor Leste.
They will also involve land, sea and air components focused on southern Sumatra and East Kalimantan but with plans for an amphibious landing in the Natuna islands, south of where Chinese Coast Guard and Chinese research vessels breached Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) last year.

Not all of the eight nations will be active participants and several other countries will send observers to gauge the benefits of taking part in future exercises given Indonesia’s position astride key chokepoints for international trade.
Those include the Malacca Strait, through which as much as 80% of China’s crude imports pass. Analysts have noted those shipments could be easily blocked by the US or its allies in the event of a conflict, a strategic vulnerability often referred to as China’s “Malacca dilemma.”
One foreign military source described the exercises as a “litmus test,” which he said could lead to a permanent broadening of Garuda Shield, something the US and Indonesian militaries have both been anxious to do and is now likely to become a reality.
Analysts say a multinational Garuda Shield is certain to raise the ire of Beijing and will also complicate the government’s efforts, driven by perceived economic necessity and a history of non-alignment, to strike a balance between the two competing superpowers.
Australia, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore will field forces but it is not clear what their contributions will be in addition to Indonesia and the US, whose troops and supporting equipment will be flown from Hawaii aboard 15th Air Wing C-17 transport planes.

Apart from mentioning a role for the US, Indonesian and Japanese air forces, official statements have also given few details on what aircraft are taking part and whether they will be called on to support the planned maritime operation.
US and Indonesian troops in a Garuda Shield exercise in 2021. Image: US Embassy in Indonesia
In previous exercises, Garuda Shield has stayed clear of the southern reaches of the South China Sea, where China’s wide-ranging nine-dash line of claimed national sovereignty intrudes into the EEZ and outer parts of the 154-island Natuna archipelago.
This time, some of the exercise is expected to take place near a small group of islands south of Natuna Besar, the archipelago’s main island which boasts a newly-extended runway, ungraded port and refueling facilities, elements of a Marine battalion and a missile defense system.
The last major exercise there was in 1996 but it involved only Indonesian land, sea and air forces and was conducted during the final years of president Suharto’s rule when tensions with China over the nine-dash line were not an issue.
Beijing protested last year’s exercise, already a step-up from previous years with the involvement of more than 1,500 troops from the US 25th “Tropic Lightning” Infantry Division and 2,100 from the Army Strategic Reserve (Kostrad), Indonesia’s two-division combat force.

It was, however, confined to southern Sumatra’s Baturaja training ground for jungle warfare and live-firing drills and other locations in East Kalimantan and North Sulawesi where the two nations practiced parachute drops and beach landings.
Both of the latest Garuda Shield exercises are being staged during the tenure of US-educated General Andika Perkasa, who was promoted from army chief to armed forces commander last November and enjoys strong ties with the US Indo-Pacific Command. He has only seven months to go before retirement.
While the government strives to maintain its fence-sitting posture and Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto keeps his own careful counsel, there appears little doubt where much of the military leadership stands on the issue of China.
“We want to vary our exercises so we don’t do the same thing every year and also increase their complexity,” Maj-Gen Matthew McFarlane, deputy commander of US Army Pacific, said during a recent visit to Jakarta. “I think this is the beginning of a good thing.”
In fact, it is part of Washington’s new Indo-Pacific strategy, which seeks to build stronger links and boost security among Southeast Asian allies as China continues to expand its reach across the wider region and threaten what McFarlane calls a “free and open Pacific.”

Members of the Chinese Coast Guard stand in formation on board their vessel after it anchored at Manila port on January 14, 2020. Photo: AFP / Stringer
Australia, New Zealand and Micronesia have been alarmed at recent Chinese moves to establish a security treaty with the largely-neglected Solomon Islands, although Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare has ruled out a military base as part of the agreement.
Officials say there are now 235 separate military engagements between the US and Indonesia each year, ranging from education and training to exercises and high-level meetings, such as a visit last month by US Pacific Fleet commander Admiral John Aquilino.
Only a few days before Aquilino arrived, President Joko Widodo had signed a regulation aimed at strengthening security around the Natunas. While short on detail, it calls for improving infrastructure and other facilities “to support sovereignty and secure state boundaries.”
The Indonesian Navy was reportedly furious at being reduced to the role of an observer when a Chinese research ship and two armed escorts spent seven weeks inside Indonesia’s EEZ last August-October mapping the seabed around a natural gas exploration site.
Quietly posted on the Cabinet secretariat’s website, the new decree defines defense and security zones on both the western and eastern sides of the Natunas, where the navy’s Western Fleet plans to establish a forward combat support base.
Indonesia made no official complaint to Beijing over the incursion, in keeping with its policy of plotting a careful middle course between the US and China, which has become a major industrial investor and its foremost trading partner.
But Beijing’s subsequent protest over a military exercise far from its shores and its increasingly assertive actions at sea have made that position increasingly difficult to hold, especially with the military drawing closer to the West, both operationally and also in its weapons purchases.
Prabowo has proposed buying both French-made Rafale and US F-15EX jet fighters for Indonesia’s future frontline air defenses, along with Italian guided-missile frigates and possibly French submarines as part of a major modernization program.
Indonesia plans to acquire French-made Rafale jets to gradually replace its Russian fleet. Photo: Twitter
The last exercise between the Indonesian and Chinese militaries was in May 2021 when two Chinese guided-missile frigates took part in limited maneuvers with an Indonesian frigate and a smaller fast attack craft in waters north of Jakarta.
The exercise went ahead a month after fast-responding Chinese salvage ships unsuccessfully sought to raise the German-built Indonesian submarine KRI Nanggala 402, which mysteriously sank with all 53 hands north of Bali.
The only Chinese weapons in Indonesia’s inventory are C-802 and C-705 anti-ship missiles, the QW-3 man-portable surface-to-air missile, Giant Bow II anti-aircraft guns and a naval Type 730 Gatling gun.
Russia has supplied Indonesia with more than a dozen missile systems, plus two squadrons of Su-27/30 multirole jets whose operational status and spare parts supply may now be in jeopardy as a result of Ukraine-related US and European sanctions.
Ironically, Jakarta turned to Russia for weapons procurements during a 15-year US military embargo imposed following a 1991 massacre in then-East Timor and the bloodshed sparked by the territory’s vote for independence eight years later.
Indonesia recently felt compelled to finally cancel an order with Moscow for new-generation Su-35 fighters, rather than risk damaging US economic sanctions – and a loss of preferential trading rights – imposed under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA).
asiatimes.com · by John McBeth · April 20, 2022

13. Analysis | Does Russia sell nearly $1 billion in uranium to the U.S. a year?


I think this is a example of good journalism. I think it is a very fair treatment of a very complex issue and one that we obviously have to get a handle on.


Analysis | Does Russia sell nearly $1 billion in uranium to the U.S. a year?
The Washington Post · April 20, 2022
“We are still sending about $100 million every month to Russia to buy uranium.”
— Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), interviewed on Fox News, April 13
“In 2021 Russian imports [of uranium] cost almost $1 billion, money that helped underwrite Mr. Putin’s war machine.”
— Barrasso, in an opinion article in the Wall Street Journal, April 12
The Biden administration has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, including eliminating preferential trading privileges and banning imports of Russian oil, liquefied natural gas and coal. So we were surprised to hear these numbers from Barrasso — that Russia received nearly $1 billion for uranium products in 2021 and is on track to earn $1.2 billion this year. The uranium is generally used as fuel to generate electricity in nuclear power plants.
Barrasso, the senior Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, represents Wyoming, which has uranium mines that would benefit from a ban on Russian uranium. In fact, the domestic uranium mining industry has all but come to a halt, with production falling to an all-time low in 2019, as nuclear energy increasingly has relied on imports. That constituency might have made Barrasso a suspect source, though we have found that he does not routinely make up his numbers.
It turns out that it was unexpectedly hard to land on a solid answer. Different government agencies churn out data that cannot easily be added together. Moreover, uranium does not trade on an open market like other commodities, so buyers and sellers negotiate contracts privately. Barrasso’s number is difficult to verify and appears somewhat exaggerated. But he may be in the ballpark.
The facts
Readers may remember a controversy concerning the sale of a Canadian company called Uranium One during the Obama administration to a Russian state-owned company called Rosatom. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had a minor role in its approval, but during the 2016 presidential campaign, opponents falsely claimed the deal involved 20 percent of the U.S. uranium supply.
Not so. Uranium One represented just a tiny part of U.S. production. Rosatom was much more interested in the company’s holdings in Kazakhstan, the world’s leading uranium producer. In 2021, Rosatom sold all of its shares in the U.S. subsidiary.
In 2020, Canada just barely held its position as the No. 1 supplier of uranium to owners and operators of U.S. civilian nuclear power reactors, just ahead of Kazakhstan, according to the Energy Information Administration. Both countries supplied about 22 percent of the uranium purchased from abroad, while Russia was in third place, with 16 percent.
That’s a much higher percentage than products that have already been banned; 5 percent of U.S. coal imports and 8 percent of petroleum products come from Russia.
When we first studied EIA’s data, we realized it suggested the value of Russian uranium in that year was just $207 million. (EIA showed 8.054 million pounds of Russian uranium was purchased at an average price of $25.73 in 2020.) That’s much lower than $1 billion.
But then it turned out that the EIA numbers reflect the contracts for natural uranium in the nuclear fuel chain that were entered into by U.S. civilian nuclear power reactor operators during a calendar year.
In other words, this uranium may already be in the United States, may arrive in the country in future years, or may never physically ever arrive in the United States as material gets swapped at different points in the fuel chain. (These are “book transfers” because ownership in commodity markets is not the same as possession.)
Natural uranium often includes a uranium concentrate known as yellowcake. But the EIA figures do not include a significant amount of enrichment services purchased from Russia or other Russia-based entities that operate in the uranium industry, according to Morgan Butterfield, an EIA spokesman. Before uranium can be used as fuel for nuclear power, it must be enriched. (In between is another step in which the yellowcake is converted into uranium hexafluoride.)
So then we turned to a public database of trade statistics maintained by the International Trade Commission (ITC).
In 1992, the Commerce Department suspended an investigation into whether Russia was undercutting the price of U.S. domestic uranium, and in exchange Russia agreed to limit its sales to agreed-upon levels. The deal has been extended several times, most recently in 2020 during the Trump administration. The new agreement, which continues through 2040, allowed Russia to hike the sales in the initial years of the new agreement, to up to 24 percent of enrichment demand, before reducing the ceiling to 15 percent starting in 2028. The higher limits in some years were intended to grandfather previous contracts.
The Federal Register notice contained the trade code numbers, known as Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) statistical reporting numbers, for various types and forms of uranium, including enriched uranium. So we entered all of the codes in ITC’s public database. The search turned up a total of $645,489,213 in uranium imports from Russia for 2021, or 550,388 kilos. That appeared to be lower than the 596,682 kilos permitted in the extension of the anti-dumping agreement.
In 2016, the ITC database shows, the United States imported $1.033 billion in uranium, or 570,783 kilos. But then the value of imports dropped sharply as U.S. demand dropped. In 2020, for instance, about $568 million in Russian uranium was exported, or 452,947 kilos.
But this figure is not necessarily complete either. In a 2017 investigation of the uranium trade with Russia, the International Trade Commission pondered many of the same data sources that we consulted and concluded that “trade in natural uranium cannot be simply added to trade in enriched uranium to obtain a meaningful statistic, except possibly by value.”
We also contacted members of the Ad Hoc Utilities Group (AHUG), a trade group of nuclear energy companies, to see if they would reveal how much they plan to pay this year to Russia for uranium products. Most refused to answer, but Suzanne Hosn, a spokeswoman for Pacific Gas and Electric Company, said the company has most of the fuel it needs for now. “We are evaluating options for the small amount of fuel supply we need given the current international situation,” she said.
So how does Barrasso come up with nearly $1 billion for imports of Russian uranium products in 2021 and $1.2 billion this year?
Brian Faughnan, a spokesman for the minority staff of the Energy committee, provided a screenshot of a webpage showing U.S. sales for Rosatom’s subsidiary Techsnabexport, generally known as TENEX, which exports nuclear fuel cycle products. The website page has since been deleted, and no archived page appears to exist.
The webpage indicated that TENEX had $784 million sales in “America” in 2020 and 99 percent of those sales were in uranium products. So that would be about $775 million, a higher figure than the $568 million shown in the ITC database for enriched uranium sales from Russia that year.
Presumably, the TENEX sales figures combined enriched and natural uranium sales — something that supposedly could not be gleaned from government data. It’s probably just a coincidence, but if you combine the $207 million in the EIA accounting of natural uranium sales in 2020 and the $568 million in ITC database for other uranium product sales in 2020, you end up with exactly $775 million.
Fletcher Newton, president of TENEX-USA, declined to comment, saying the information is confidential.
Faughnan said the 2020 numbers on the webpage were used to estimate Russia’s uranium sales in 2021. Russia supplied 16 percent of uranium in 2020, according to the EIA, and was permitted to supply up to 24 percent in 2021, so that would be a 50 percent increase, he said. So the TENEX sales figure was increased by 50 percent, resulting in a calculation of $1.2 billion in 2021.
This math appears to be a bit fuzzy. The EIA figures focus on natural uranium, not enriched uranium. Moreover, in 2020, Russian enriched uranium imports were limited to as much as 20 percent, or even higher, not 16 percent. So the numbers are apples and oranges. According to the screenshot, “America” makes up 36 percent of TENEX’s 2020 revenue total of $2.1 billion. It does not make sense for the U.S. revenue to increase so much when the quota goes only from 20 percent to 24 percent.
Moreover, another U.S. company, Centrus Energy, markets Russian nuclear fuel and could account for one-third of the Russian enriched uranium trade.
Confusingly, in the Wall Street Journal, Barrasso wrote that Russian uranium imports were “almost $1 billion” in 2021. Then a day later he said on Fox that imports were a $100 million a month in 2022, or $1.2 billion. But under the logic presented by Faughnan, Russian uranium sales in 2022 should decline because the anti-dumping deal limits imports to 20 percent, a reduction from 24 percent in 2021. Faughnan did not respond to emails requesting an explanation of this discrepancy.
We noticed that at a March 31 Senate Energy Committee hearing that Barrasso attended, Scott Melbye, president of the Uranium Producers of America, testified that “more than $1 billion per year in nuclear fuel purchases are flowing from the United States to Rosatom.” He told The Fact Checker that the number for what he called “blood uranium” could be as high as $1.3 billion. He said it was also calculated by assuming Russia in 2021 hit the 24 percent export target. But he acknowledged “this isn’t a precise estimate.”
Since the TENEX document shows that its sales in 2020 were about 36 percent higher than the official trade figures, perhaps a better approach would be to increase the 2021 trade numbers by a similar percentage. That yields an estimate of $880 million in 2021. That’s much less than $1.2 billion, but relatively close to the “almost $1 billion” figure Barrasso used in his Wall Street Journal article.
Another complicating factor, noted by both Faughnan and Melbye, is that much of the uranium from Kazakhstan travels through Russia before it is exported to the United States. In 2020, Russia produced 38 percent of the worldwide supply of uranium hexafluoride, much of it from uranium from Kazakhstan. Russia also has 43 percent of global enrichment capacity.
There are other reasons to treat the figures with some skepticism. Jessica Sondgeroth, a reporter for Nuclear Intelligence Weekly, said that U.S. utilities often swap converted uranium for enrichment services provided by TENEX. Before the recent extension of the anti-dumping agreement, if the swapped converted uranium was enriched in Europe, it was then designated as a European product. Now it’s treated as “Russian-origin, even if it never spent any time in Russia, simply because it is a part of that transaction with Rosatom’s TENEX,” she said. “That puts a bigger restriction on Russian imports in 2021 compared with 2020.”
The Pinocchio Test
We found this to be a fascinating exploration, but we hope readers do not think we left them with a shaggy dog story.
Barrasso’s figures are probably exaggerated, especially claiming $100 million in sales a month, and his math does not make much sense. But getting a handle on the actual number is wildly complicated. Saying Russia earned “nearly $1 billion” for uranium sales to the United States in 2021 is probably good enough for government work. It’s certainly an astonishing figure that is worth noting, given the many other sanctions on Russia.
Given the difficulty of reaching a firm conclusion, we will leave this unrated.
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The Washington Post · April 20, 2022



14.  Guest Opinion: Another Ukraine crisis in Asia-Pacific?

I enjoy reading Chinese propaganda. This is from one of the CCP's propaganda mouthpieces, Xinhua.

It seems America's dirty roles and buck passing tricks are being exposed.

I think this is the money quote:
With an evolving geopolitical landscape and the changing balance of power in Asia featuring a rising China and declining U.S. influence, it seems to the United States that a strong and stable Asia will no longer allow the America to seize power and wealth from the region.
What is our message that offers an accurate perspective on how the US views the Asia-Pacific? No need to try to directly counter this or try to counter every propaganda message from China.  We have to offer superior messages (to include actions) that support our superior form of political warfare and strategic influence through information advantage.

And it is really smart to use comments from others who might be leaning toward the US like this one:

As Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said, "People will ask about what is the point of it if the Indo-Pacific strategy does not bring economic benefits to the people?"


Guest Opinion: Another Ukraine crisis in Asia-Pacific?

Photo taken on Feb. 21, 2022 shows the White House in Washington, D.C., the United States. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)
The Russia-Ukraine conflict has exposed to the world America's dirty roles and textbook-style "buck-passing" tricks to use Ukraine to counter and contain Russia.
by Xin Ping
BEIJING, April 20 (Xinhua) -- American Neorealism political scientist John Mearsheimer wrote in The Tragedy of Great Power Politics that "the U.S. has followed a 'buck-passing' strategy, remaining on the sidelines while getting others to bear the burden of deterring or fighting aggressors -- until it could no longer do so safely."
The Russia-Ukraine conflict has exposed to the world America's dirty roles and textbook-style "buck-passing" tricks to use Ukraine to counter and contain Russia. While the Ukraine crisis is still unfolding, there are various indications that Uncle Sam is repeating the whole playbook and offshore balancing strategy in Asia-Pacific. But the target this time is China.
With an evolving geopolitical landscape and the changing balance of power in Asia featuring a rising China and declining U.S. influence, it seems to the United States that a strong and stable Asia will no longer allow the America to seize power and wealth from the region.

Staff members work at the NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, March 24, 2022. (Xinhua/Zheng Huansong)
From the "Pivot to Asia" to the "Indo-Pacific Strategy," the United States has been teaming up its allies and regional countries to contain China, as it did by expanding NATO eastward against Russia. But the Cold-War and confrontational approach will only bring about conflicts and suffering to the Asian countries and their people.
Security-wise, the United States has been beefing up its military presence in Asia and tried to turn Asian countries into its outposts encircling China. Since November 2011 when then President Barack Obama unveiled the "Pivot to Asia" strategy, the United States has carried out joint military exercises from time to time with regional countries and played up the issue of the East China Sea and the South China Sea to provoke China.
Likewise, the United States deployed the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system in South Korea, and established QUAD and AUKUS, which has triggered a new round of arms race, and seriously aggravated tension and confrontation in the region. Don't forget Taiwan, a province of China, which has been turned into a political tool and military fortress by the United States to confront China.

Residents walk past a damaged building in Mariupol on April 18, 2022. (Photo by Victor/Xinhua)
However, as it did in the Ukraine crisis, the United States is apt at fanning the flame without getting directly involved to put out the fire. Once the powder keg is detonated, it is the people of Asia who suffer, not the Americans 10,000 km away.
Economically, Asian countries value economic cooperation with China as boosted by the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, known as the "world's largest free trade area," among others.
However, the United States tries to squeeze China out of the regional market with its own initiatives, first Obama's TPP and now Biden's Indo-Pacific economic framework, which focuses on forming a U.S.-led economic bloc excluding China.
Without any more added value, this framework of the Biden administration is more like a "stick" than a "carrot" to regional countries which want prosperity rather than being forced to take sides in the U.S.-China competition, let alone becoming a "bridgehead" against China. As Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said, "People will ask about what is the point of it if the Indo-Pacific strategy does not bring economic benefits to the people?"
When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. This adage is increasingly relevant today, as it reflects a sense of realistic anxiety of Asian countries. The people of Asia, who have suffered centuries of colonial plunder and oppression, are yearning for peace, cooperation and development, rather than bloc confrontation and a zero-sum game. That is perhaps the most valuable lesson from the Ukraine crisis for Asia.
(Xin Ping is a commentator on international affairs, writing regularly for Global Times, China Daily, etc. He can be reached at xinping604@gmail.com.)■



15. Biden vows to send Ukraine more artillery as Congress pushes for military aid czar


A "military aid czar?"

Excerpts:
Now, a bipartisan group of four high-profile senators is calling on the president to appoint a Ukraine Security Assistance Coordinator to oversee the disparate streams of military equipment Washington continues to transfer.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, last week wrote a letter to Biden calling for a coordinator to “synchronize our whole of government approach to arming Ukraine.” The Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, signed on, as did Sens. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., respectively the No. 2 Republican and Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.
“This person would also serve as the chief liaison between the United States government and our allies and partners abroad in matters relating to the transfer of existing stocks and assessment of partner capabilities, such as aircraft, heavy tanks and sophisticated weapons that could be made available to Ukraine,” the letter reads.


How about making this a Title 10 named operation Security Force Assistance mission that would subordinate the Title 22 Security Cooperation and Security Assistance processes to a military commander in order to help Ukraine defend themselves and defeat the Russians? . If ever there was a need for a large scale, borad, holistic Security Forces Assistance operation Ukraine would be it.

I fear a "military aid czar" will go the way of the Drug Czar and all the other Czars we have created. And we might want to come up with a new non-Russian term and not use Czar.


Biden vows to send Ukraine more artillery as Congress pushes for military aid czar
Defense News · by Joe Gould · April 19, 2022
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden on Tuesday promised more artillery to Kyiv amid a push among some key lawmakers for a czar to oversee the increasing flow of U.S. military aid to Ukraine.
Biden told reporters during a trip to New Hampshire he would send more artillery to Ukraine as it fends off Russia’s invasion. And White House press secretary Jen Psaki noted the president discussed procuring more ammunition and security assistance for Kyiv during a Tuesday video call with the leaders of several U.S. allies, including Poland, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Canada and Japan.
Additionally, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said Tuesday the U.S. would “very soon” be training a small number of Ukrainian troops on American heavy artillery that was part of a package approved last week. Kirby said Ukraine’s forces, which also get supplies from European allies, “have received additional aircraft and the aircraft parts to help them get more more aircraft in the air.”
Now, a bipartisan group of four high-profile senators is calling on the president to appoint a Ukraine Security Assistance Coordinator to oversee the disparate streams of military equipment Washington continues to transfer.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, last week wrote a letter to Biden calling for a coordinator to “synchronize our whole of government approach to arming Ukraine.” The Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, signed on, as did Sens. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., respectively the No. 2 Republican and Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.
“This person would also serve as the chief liaison between the United States government and our allies and partners abroad in matters relating to the transfer of existing stocks and assessment of partner capabilities, such as aircraft, heavy tanks and sophisticated weapons that could be made available to Ukraine,” the letter reads.
It noted the coordinator also “would be able to serve as a liaison to our domestic industry partners that are being called on to not only ensure the steady flow of defense articles to Ukraine but also to replenish United States and allied stockpiles.”
Since Feb. 24, the U.S. has provided $2.6 billion in security assistance to Ukrainian forces, most from U.S. military stockpiles. An $800 million package announced last week was the seventh such drawdown package.
The Pentagon has proposed a separate $300 million for Ukraine as part of the fiscal 2023 funding for its Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative account, but has not made public the details of that request. The Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative became DoD’s chief means for arming Ukrainian forces after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
But the Pentagon also now says said it wants more flexibility in spending from that account. It would like to stretch the pot of money from one year to two years — which could open the door to more advanced weaponry.
The Pentagon made the request to allocate the account’s annual funding over two years in a recent package of legislative proposals submitted for possible inclusion in the annual defense policy bill, the National Defense Authorization Act.
According to the Pentagon, the proposal would cut red tape that prevents it from providing more advanced systems, “including air defense, armaments for naval vessels, coastal defense, and counter-unmanned aerial systems.”
“Although these more advanced systems will likely require additional multi-year funding, [cross-fiscal year] authority, and a longer authorization period will enhance DoD’s ability to meet Ukraine’s capability needs, while also reducing programmatic risk,” the proposal notes.
Though the Pentagon has been speeding aid to Ukraine since Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine began Feb. 24, the plan was built as a bridge for unnamed “advanced systems” that can take longer to deliver.
“Extending the authorization period further reduces program risk and supports procurement of more complex, advanced equipment with longer delivery timelines,” the proposal reads.
Still, the Biden administration already obligated all $300 million in fiscal 2022 funding for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative earlier this month, mere weeks after Congress appropriated the funds through the government funding bill passed in March.
But that hasn’t stopped some Republicans from criticizing the Pentagon’s suggestion to spend future funds in the Ukraine initiative over two years.
“This proposal perfectly encapsulates why the administration’s Ukraine policy is so broken,” a senior Republican congressional aide who was not authorized to speak on the record told Defense News. “We need to focus on how to get capabilities into Ukraine now, not over the next couple of years.”
However, the American Enterprise Institute’s Dustin Walker said two-year money gives greater flexibility to DOD to support execution of larger-scale programs, especially those involving lethal assistance.
“Making 100% of Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative funds available for two years is a long overdue step that will better enable DOD to support Ukraine at this critical moment as well as over the long term,” Walker said. “The Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative has an excellent track record of executing funds available for one year. But that has come at the expense of many of the capabilities Ukraine needed before the war began rather than after.”
About Joe Gould and Bryant Harris
Joe Gould is senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry.
Bryant Harris is the Congress reporter for Defense News. He has covered the intersection of U.S. foreign policy and national security in Washington since 2014. He previously wrote for Foreign Policy, Al-Monitor, Al Jazeera English and IPS News.


16. Russia’s latest military failures polarise society even more
But will this lead to any real threat against Putin? And if it does will Putin be able to crush it? And if there is some kind of action resulting in Putin's downfall are we ready for what comes next? What if this leads to large scale internal instability? How wiil that play out if Putin cannot crush any resistance?

Russia’s latest military failures polarise society even more
War critics grow increasingly vocal while state media fuels hatred for the west
The Guardian · by Andrew Roth · April 20, 2022
Even Vladimir Soloviev, a state TV host, was having trouble swallowing the loss of Russia’s flagship cruiser Moskva last week as he took aim at a rare target: the Russian military.
“You just tell me how you were able to lose it,” he said in an extended temper tantrum on his talkshow, one of Russia’s most popular. “Tell me, what the hell were you doing in that particular area of the Black Sea at that moment?”
Soloviev remains pro-Putin and pro-war. But the rare outburst has pointed to how the stress of Russia’s war in Ukraine has grown as the invasion enters its third month, with both sides announcing a “new stage” in the conflict in the “battle for Donbas”.
Kremlin officials have shown no signs of contrition. Vladimir Putin decorated the 64th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade for its “mass heroism and courage” after the same unit had been accused by Ukraine of committing war crimes in Bucha.
But as the cost of the invasion has grown, some unlikely critics of the war have also grown more outspoken.
“I don’t see a SINGLE beneficiary of this mad war!” wrote the outspoken businessman Oleg Tinkov in a statement on Tuesday. “Innocent people and soldiers are being killed. Generals have woken up from their hangover to understand they have a shit army. And why would the army be good, if everything else in the country is shit and rife with nepotism, lackyism, and servility?
“Dear ‘collective west’, please give Mr Putin a clear exit to save his face and stop this massacre.”
Russian MPs have suggested charging him with discrediting the Russian armed forces.
On both sides of a polarised Russian society, the failures of the first stage of the war have raised the stakes of the conflict, turning what the Kremlin calls a “special operation” into an existential one.
“We are seeing that the fate of Putin, Russia and society as a whole is being merged into one,” said Greg Yudin, a sociologist. “I hear more often that while people think the war might have been a mistake, they say there is no way back; they say ‘we’ve got to finish the job.’”
Marina Litvinovich, an opposition activist and politician who has remained in Russia, said she saw the war as a stress test for the government that threatened to bring down the “colossus with clay feet” that Putin had built over 20 years in power.
But among ordinary Russians, she also sees clear signs of war fatigue brought on by a flood of information from the early days of the invasion. Apathy is on the rise.
“I see people becoming used to the war,” said Litvinovich. “From some kind of nightmare or horror, the war has become ordinary for many.”
People were “emotionally burnt out”, she said, and were increasingly turning away from the news even as the failures onboard the Moskva cruiser were exposed.
Meanwhile, the early economic shocks of the war had passed for many, and few were looking to the economic recession to come.
“Right now there’s this kind of false sense that life has normalised,” she said. “People think that the economic difficulties have passed.”
The government has taken extraordinary steps, including the introduction of capital controls, to prevent an economic collapse. Maxim Reshetnikov, the head of Russia’s Ministry of Economic Development, claimed on Tuesday that the country had “withstood the first blow of sanctions”.
But within the business community, there are clear signs of distress, as international companies continue to exit Russia on a daily basis. The Moscow mayor has predicted the loss of 200,000 jobs, proposing that out-of-work professionals can be retrained or temporarily employed, including doing “socially important” work in parks.
Several big names have voted with their feet. The Russian business daily Vedomosti reported on Monday that Lev Khasis, a former senior executive at the state-owned Sberbank, had left the country for the US.
But government officials have mostly remained in their posts. Temporary work stoppages at some large factories have not led to the kind of economic protests that the Kremlin is truly concerned about.
“Putting aside personal positions about the war (some are for, some are against), people are mobilising and working as hard and creatively as possible,” a senior director for a major metals company said. “They understand that they need to give it their all for the company and themselves to survive.”
New polling from the independent Levada Centre has indicated that Russian views on the west in particular grew more negative in March, likely due to sanctions and vocal western support for Ukraine.
Those thoughts have largely been encouraged by Russian state media, where remarks that would have been considered fringe and genocidal, including calls for the erasure of Ukrainian culture, have increasingly been made on print and in primetime.
“There are a lot of people who actually believe in this stuff,” said a senior manager in a state news agency. “And even if not, any Russian person at our level is apoliticised. It’s not for us to analyse the decisions … made by the bosses.”
The Kremlin may want to finish the war as soon as possible, aiming for 9 May Victory Day, which marks the defeat of Nazi Germany.
“But judging by the way the operation is going, he may prolong the hostilities, and 9 May will be just a day to achieve intermediate goals,” said Andrei Kolesnikov of the Carnegie Moscow Centre.
The Guardian · by Andrew Roth · April 20, 2022



17.  How Ukraine Won the Battle for Kyiv

I do not usually think of Rolling Stone for war reporting but this provides a view of the human domain. Photos at the link: https://www.rollingstone.co.uk/politics/features/how-ukraine-won-battle-kyiv-14872/

Ponder this conclusion:

Ukraine continues to fight, alone, against a revanchist dictatorship hellbent on its annihilation. The future of the free world and the post-war liberal world order rests almost solely on its shoulders while the great European powers continue to indulge their blood-soaked addiction to Russian oil and gas. By defeating Russia in Kyiv, Ukraine has already done the impossible. Today, it demands only that its allies do what is possible to help them win that fight. It is imperative for the future of European liberal democracy that this call is answered.

How Ukraine Won the Battle for Kyiv
Russia’s war on Ukraine continues to ravage the country. But it is far from the swift victory Putin no doubt anticipated. As Ukrainian resistance continues, Oz Katerji reports from deep within the Kyiv battlefield on a story that news headlines alone can’t begin to scratch the surface of: how the red beast was beaten into retreat from the capital city
rollingstone.co.uk · by Oz Katerji · April 19, 2022
Before Russia launched a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, intelligence assessments coming out of Washington and London were bleak about Kyiv’s chances of survival. It and the rest of Ukraine were set to be outmanned, outgunned and surrounded by one of the most powerful modern military forces ever assembled, they believed.
As Russian troops were advancing on the city, US officials even offered to evacuate Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky from Kyiv, only for him to shoot back: “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride” in what is now one of the most famous political quotes of the 21st century.
According to reports, Moscow’s plan was to encircle and capture Ukraine’s capital within a matter of days before carrying out a campaign of executions of Ukrainian politicians, journalists and human rights activists. But 37 days after the invasion began, Russian forces were driven out of the Kyiv Oblast in its entirety, with Ukrainian deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar releasing a statement on 2 April that Kyiv had been liberated from Russian invaders.
Ukraine’s decisive victory in the Battle for Kyiv was an audacious and impressive military accomplishment. Russia’s loss in Kyiv came not only as a surprise to Moscow, but also to Ukraine’s allies in western capitals. But how could Ukraine’s smaller army inflict such a humiliating blow against the Russian Goliath in Kyiv when so few thought it was possible?
A destroyed Russian armoured personnel carrier in Bucha. (Photo: Oz Katerji)
The day before the invasion felt like any other winter’s day in central Kyiv as I made my way through the throng of a bustling metropolis, the beautiful and vibrant capital of a fledgling Eastern European liberal democracy. But what followed was a night like no other. A dark foreboding hung heavy in the air as the streets emptied and late-night bars brought down their shutters as what little hope of averting a major European war was extinguished. The cacophony of artillery fire, air strikes and air-raid sirens that erupted in the early hours of 24 February left nobody in doubt: the invasion had begun.
Within hours, makeshift barricades had been erected across the famous cobblestone streets of Kyiv’s old town, and decrepit Soviet cars and shopping trolleys were reinforced with hurriedly filled sandbags. The boutique shops and international retail brands that sit in between the ancient blue-and-gold domes of Kyiv’s Orthodox churches were boarded up, and the streets that only hours before had been filled with such energy and life were now deserted.
Beneath them, in old Soviet bomb shelters and miles upon miles of central Kyiv’s metro network, tens of thousands of people sought shelter from the incoming Russian bombardment. A family could be found crammed into every corner of every station as – remarkably – the trains still ran. The highways out of the city were gridlocked as much of Kyiv’s population fled, but, as the Russians started cutting off the main arteries out of the city, the country’s railway network bravely kept running, shuttling millions of civilians across the country to the relative safety of the west. There the new arrivals faced the uncertainty and cruelty that comes with a life displaced.
A mass grave filled with bodies discovered behind the Church of St. Andrew and Pyervozvannoho All Saints in Bucha. (Photo: Oz Katerji)
Those who remained in Kyiv were met with an entirely different set of problems. Long queues formed quickly at ATMs and the few food stores and pharmacies that remained open. Shelves were emptied as supplies in the city dwindled. Very few had prepared for a military assault on Kyiv, a prospect many here thought utterly inconceivable mere hours before the first strikes landed. But as the days ground on, and the fear of encirclement and siege grew, the shelves were steadily restocked.
As we saw during the pandemic, the unsung heroes of this crisis, and of every crisis, were frontline transport and supply-chain workers who continued their labour, even in the most terrifying of conditions, even when presented with the chance to flee for their lives.
Not long after President Zelensky ordered the mass mobilisation of the Ukrainian people, garbage trucks loaded with rifles were driven into Kyiv’s residential suburbs as men of fighting age armed themselves for what was to come. Seemingly overnight, the people of Kyiv had organised themselves into decentralised territorial defence units, manning checkpoints, or as the Ukrainians called them “block posts”, aiming to thwart Russian sabotage operations inside the city and, if need be, dig in and engage advancing Russian troops in a guerrilla warfare campaign.
A destroyed Russian tank outside the village of Dmytrivka. The tank was part of a convoy ambushed by Ukrainian forces while retreating back to Belarus. (Photo: Oz Katerji)
Even in the opening hours of the war, as Russian troops advanced with lightning speed towards Kyiv, Ukraine’s resistance destroyed Putin’s plans. Russia had activated assassination squads and saboteurs inside the city to take out government officials and key infrastructure targets, but the speed of Ukrainian mobilisation rooted them out and neutralised the threats quickly.
Each night in those early days of the invasion felt darker than the last. The bombardment grew louder, creeping closer to the city centre, seemingly with each passing hour. Air-raid sirens pierced the sky, a sound that was punctuated by intermittent explosions. As the violence crept closer, Russian bombs began to fall on residential apartment buildings and shopping centres. Gripped by fear of what was to come, Kyiv’s residents were glued to their phones for news of how close Russian troops were to encircling them.
Within days the makeshift barriers had been replaced by prefab concrete blocks and Czech anti-tank hedgehogs. Underground bunkers had emptied as most of those seeking to flee the city had now escaped. The streets were now filled mostly with the men and women who had taken up arms to defend their city, and the sound of trucks loaded with concrete and sand working to reinforce Kyiv’s network of barricades. In the space of a week, Kyiv transformed from a cosmopolitan European capital into a formidable fortress that, it turns out, would not be penetrated.
Firefighters working to put out a blaze in a residential apartment building in Kyiv hit by a Russian missile. (Photo: Oz Katerji)
One thing that struck me as I travelled between Kyiv’s barricades and the frontlines of the border towns in the Kyiv Oblast, was the high morale of the men and women holding the line against the invasion. Even when the headlines were dominated by the imminent arrival of a 40-mile column of Russian armoured vehicles that was snaking its way towards them, the absolute determination and steadfastness of the Ukrainian people was evident. They didn’t just believe in the righteousness of their cause; they believed that they would win, even as the rest of the world doubted their ability and expected their defences to collapse.
As the days turned to weeks, the stories and images that emerged from the fighting raging outside Kyiv began to reinforce that confidence. That belief, the resolution and resolve, is the first reason Russia lost the Battle for Kyiv.
Vladimir Putin, cowering in his nuclear fallout bunker in the Ural Mountains, made not only a strategic error in trying to take Kyiv, but he fundamentally and fatally misunderstood the Ukrainian people and their desire to live as free citizens in a liberal democracy. While his army of conscripts and cowards, dubbed “Orcs” by Ukrainians, were brutalising and pillaging their way through civilian neighbourhoods, Ukrainians were defiantly and determinedly fighting back as free men, defending their homes and the future liberty of their children. For all the billions Putin pumped into his propaganda organs around the world, the wish for freedom remains an ideal that no tyrant can eradicate.
Refugees flee the Russian occupied town of Irpin in the Kyiv Oblast. (Photo: Oz Katerji)
Russia’s military might would be further undone by its incompetence and a failure to understand its own limitations. By the second week of the war, every highway leading out of the city was fortified by miles upon miles of trenches dug alongside, with thousands of men deployed across the network, ready to ambush encroaching Russian convoys. Russia would not be able to advance into the capital without meeting fierce resistance. Their advancing armoured columns became an easy target on the narrow roads of rural Ukraine, as Ukrainian forces undertook daring ambushes, destroying hundreds of tanks and armoured vehicles along the way. At the time of writing, more than 1,400 Russian armoured vehicles have been destroyed in Ukraine.
Putin also underestimated the resolve of Ukraine’s allies, who have enacted the most comprehensive sanctions campaign ever launched, damaging Russia’s ability to finance the conflict and isolating it on the world stage, while supplying Ukraine with the weaponry it needed to stay in the fight.
Visiting one of the trench networks on Kyiv’s frontlines in the opening days of the war, I found the men armed with British next generation light anti-tank weapons (NLAWs), which have had a decisive impact on the battlefield against Russian tanks. By the end of March, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said Ukraine had been sent more than 10 anti-tank systems for every Russian tank on Ukrainian soil.
Rolling Stone UK reporter Oz Katerji alongside Ukrainian territorial defence volunteers on a frontline near Hostomel. (Photo: Oz Katerji)
Ukraine’s fleet of Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones, popularised by a song written by Ukrainian soldier Taras Borovok, also devastated Russian convoys and artillery batteries. Ankara continued to supply TB2s to Ukraine even while trying to downplay its ongoing support of Kyiv to its Russian ally.
Russia’s biggest failure in the Battle of Kyiv was logistical. Through a combination of drone warfare, smart ambushes and the strategic targeting of Russian supply lines, Russia’s quick advance into the Kyiv suburbs soon ran into a quagmire of Ukrainian counter attacks. The Russians had sought to surround, bombard and starve Kyiv in the same way as they did in Mariupol in Ukraine’s southeast. Instead, Ukraine cut Russia’s Battalion Tactical Groups off from the fuel, food and ammunition required to continue their advance, starving them of the supplies they needed to secure victory.
Within weeks, Russia’s 40-mile convoy disappeared. Its troops had made no further gains in Kyiv after the opening days, and, after stabilising the frontlines, Ukraine started going on the offensive, eventually pushing beleaguered Russian troops out of the Kyiv Oblast and forcing Moscow into retreat. By the end of March, the Kremlin announced that it was ending its operations in Kyiv, a tacit admission of defeat, and shifted its war objectives to the east of the country. As Russian troops retreated from Kyiv, Ukrainian forces continued to ambush the fleeing Russian soldiers, inflicting heavy losses on the invading army. On 7 April, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted Russia had suffered “significant losses of troops” as Russian forces were routed in the suburbs surrounding Kyiv, and the Ukrainians celebrated the liberation of their territories.
However, those celebrations would be short-lived as the atrocities Russian soldiers left in their wake were uncovered. At the time of writing, the bodies of Ukrainian civilians are still being exhumed from mass graves in Kyiv’s suburbs. Survivors have testified to the barbarity inflicted upon them by Russia’s fascist death squads, raping and murdering their way through the country while leaving the bodies of their victims to rot in the streets.
Standing above the mass grave in the affluent Bucha neighbourhood in the Kyiv Oblast, it is disturbingly evident that the horrors these people have suffered were intended to be replicated in the capital, as they have been across Ukraine in the territories that have fallen under Russian occupation. The devastation wrought upon the civilian infrastructure in the towns surrounding Kyiv is absolute, and the torment unleashed upon its people will be passed down for generations.
Territorial defence volunteers in Brovary prepare food for their comrades. Olena, 47, (left) when asked if she was worried about the Russian offensive on Kyiv, said “the sound of shelling is like a lullaby.” (Photo: Oz Katerji)
Russia did not only aim to capture Kyiv and topple its government, but it has tried to destroy Ukraine as a nation state and to humiliate and subjugate its people in an attempt to erase the very existence of a Ukrainian national identity. Its genocidal intent cannot be doubted by anyone who has witnessed the slaughter its troops carried out here under the flag of the Russian Federation. It is a miracle of human strength that, despite the overwhelming might of its foe, Ukraine held the line and defended its capital. It is a damning indictment of the human condition that the Russian people have allowed such monstrosities to be carried out in their name.
Russia may have lost the Battle for Kyiv this time, but Ukraine is still fighting for survival as Moscow regroups and attempts to fully capture the east of the country. There should be no reason to believe that the Kremlin has abandoned its desires to subjugate the rest of Ukraine, either. The world is still yet to learn the true scope of the ongoing horrors in the occupied territories while the international community sits on its hands and refuses to increase support for a country many presumed would be crushed within days.
Ukraine continues to fight, alone, against a revanchist dictatorship hellbent on its annihilation. The future of the free world and the post-war liberal world order rests almost solely on its shoulders while the great European powers continue to indulge their blood-soaked addiction to Russian oil and gas. By defeating Russia in Kyiv, Ukraine has already done the impossible. Today, it demands only that its allies do what is possible to help them win that fight. It is imperative for the future of European liberal democracy that this call is answered.
rollingstone.co.uk · by Oz Katerji · April 19, 2022


18.  Sweeter Carrots and Harder Sticks: Rethinking U.S. Security Assistance

I would argue that peacetime security assistance and "wartime" security assistance procedures and processes should not be the same. Congress seems to have helped alleviate some of the bureaucracy with the passage of the lend lease legislation but I think we need to do more to streamline the process to ensure we can achieve the necessary strategic effects with security assistance that serve our interest while providing for sufficient oversight. 

I think we have to move from "peacetime programs" to named operations when we are supporting a friend, partner, or ally in active combat operations.

Although not the point of the author's article (apologies for hijacking it), I think the conclusion makes the important point - the Ukraine situation is not the same as the peacetime security assistance and security cooperation activities we are conducting as a matter of routine around the world.

But I would also acknowledge how these programs have helped Ukraine with its defense transformation in the past decade plus. I just think when war breaks out we need to adjust our thinking and actions (and processes). We need an "in extremis" security assistance concept of operation to support warfighting.

Conclusion:

While the current U.S. effort to arm and equip Ukrainian forces is the most visible example today, it is not representative of the day-to-day work of security assistance which the United States carries out around the world. In most cases, the greater threat facing these partners is not an invading army but rather defense institutions for which reform is needed but not properly incentivized. Modifying the U.S. approach to security assistance is one way to create that incentive and better align aid with policy goals.


Sweeter Carrots and Harder Sticks: Rethinking U.S. Security Assistance - War on the Rocks
warontherocks.com · by Jeremy Gwinn · April 19, 2022
Daily news coverage of burned-out Russian armor, as well as Russia’s eastward retreat, serves as tangible evidence that U.S. weapons and other military supplies being delivered to Ukraine — about $3.5 billion authorized so far this year — are having real effects. Less clear, however, are the results of the roughly $20 billion in military aid which the United States provides to other partners around the world annually. When evaluated in terms of U.S. national interests and partner-nation outcomes, a great deal of this security assistance fails to meet the mark.
History is marred with episodes such as the initial failure of U.S.-trained and equipped Iraqi forces against ISIL in 2014, the collapse of Afghan forces following coalition withdrawal in 2021, and others in the more distant past. As E. John Teichert recently argued, the U.S. security assistance enterprise is slow-moving, outmoded, and requires a major overhaul if the United States wants to remain the partner of choice vis-à-vis strategic competitors such as Russia and China. He is correct, but only addresses half of the problem. Currently, the United States uses an approach which prioritizes what are known as “capacity-building efforts” — mainly the unconditional provision of equipment and training — but fails to address underlying institutional weaknesses. Instead, the United States should use aid as leverage to achieve both reform in partner nations’ defense establishments and broader U.S. policy goals.
The What, Why, and How of Security Assistance
“Security assistance” refers to a specific set of programs authorized by the Foreign Assistance Act and Arms Export Control Act. These programs are overseen by the State Department in cooperation with the Department of Defense. “Security cooperation” describes separately authorized Defense Department-led activities such as “global train and equip” programs. The Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which has provided military aid to that country since 2016, is one such example of these programs run by the Pentagon. I will use the more common term here, security assistance, in reference to either type. When security assistance works well, it gives partner nations the tools to address internal instability and deter and defend against external adversaries, reducing the likelihood that direct U.S. intervention will be called for in the future. It also helps to ensure that the United States maintains access, basing, and overflight privileges, strengthens interoperability, and accrues the less tangible benefit of military-to-military personal relationships.
Though Congress authorizes security assistance programs each year, it provides little official direction as to how they ought to be carried out. The National Defense Authorization Act and other laws, though not perfectly enforced, impose some constraints. These include prohibitions on assisting human rights violators and various reporting requirements. Still, agencies are largely left alone to figure out the details of executing security assistance. In practice, security assistance programs are designed through a give-and-take process between the host nation, the U.S. embassy country team, combatant commands, and the Departments of State and Defense in Washington. On the leading edge are military officers assigned to embassy security cooperation offices around the world who interact with host-nation counterparts every day. Program implementation falls mainly to the Defense Security Cooperation Agency and a bevy of stateside offices that carry out the minutiae of program management, logistics, and contracting.
Security Assistance as Incentive
Security assistance generates a classic principal-agent problem. In such relationships between a principal and its agent or proxy, there exists an information asymmetry where the agent inherently has more information about their own capabilities, activities, and interests than the principal. Agents, being rational actors, place their own interests above those of the principal and, in the absence of other incentives, behave accordingly. The greater the degree of misalignment, the more problematic this becomes. U.S. frustration during its 20-year war in Afghanistan over Pakistan’s perceived failure to adequately confront extremist groups, despite significant military aid, is an example of principal-agent problems at work.
Fortunately, these are not insurmountable obstacles. Security assistance in the form of arms, equipment, or other support can be an effective incentive when it is used as a carrot to reward desired behavior, such as achieving a specific reform or taking some other action aligned with the interests of the principal. Alternately, such aid becomes a stick when it is withheld. An example of this carrot-and-stick approach being used effectively is described in Walter Ladwig’s study of U.S. assistance to the Philippines to combat the Hukbalahap rebellion in the decade following World War II. Heavy-handed tactics used by the local constabulary forces were a major factor driving support for the rebels. Recognizing this problem, U.S. advisors insisted on a series of reforms within the security forces as a precondition for further aid. These measures, along with the appointment of the reform-minded Ramon Magsaysay as defense chief, contributed to a far more effective counterinsurgency campaign and the eventual defeat of the rebel movement.
This approach of using aid as an incentive stands in sharp contrast to Ladwig’s other case study, Vietnam, where U.S. aid was used as an inducement in the hope that it would eventually change partner behavior. In this case, U.S. advisors tried in vain year after year to cajole prime minister Ngo Dinh Diem and successor regimes to implement reforms that would have broadened domestic political support and made the South Vietnamese forces more effective. All the while, massive U.S. assistance continued to flow in with the expectation that it would eventually bring about a change of heart in the host-nation government. Such change never came, and the United States and its South Vietnamese proxies lost the war.
The more recent U.S. experience in Iraq from 2003 until the withdrawal in 2011 contains echoes of Vietnam. David Lake’s study of that conflict suggests that provision of unconditional security assistance may still be America’s default setting. Despite massive volumes of military aid provided to the Iraqi government during this period, U.S. urging to reform the security forces and national government repeatedly failed. Nouri al-Maliki, prime minister during much of this period, resisted efforts to make the armed forces more broadly inclusive and apolitical, instead continuing to employ them as his own sectarian instrument. Again, the United States used an approach focused on training and equipping, known in the current lexicon as building partner capacity. The Iraqi government received assistance regardless of its effort, or lack thereof, to implement much-needed reform while the United States failed to use the leverage which hundreds of millions of dollars of assistance could buy. Several years later, the Iraqi military in which the United States had invested so much fell apart virtually upon first contact with the Islamic State’s irregular militia.
The “building partner capacity” approach has two main flaws. First, it ignores fundamental problems, such as corruption, coup-proofing, and otherwise weak defense institutions which additional military capacity cannot overcome and may even exacerbate. Paradoxically, a focus primarily on capacity-building often fails to build meaningful, long-term capacity because it neglects underlying institutional problems. Second, it ignores principal-agent problems by assuming that once in possession of highly capable security forces, the partner will wield them in a manner aligned with U.S. interests. U.S. advisors and diplomats may recognize the pressing need for security sector reform in the partner. Unfortunately, the ingrained culture of U.S. security assistance seemingly relies on the false premise that with enough U.S. training and relationship-building, other countries’ militaries will voluntarily reform even though it is often not in their personal interests to do so.
Hard Is Not Impossible
These failings notwithstanding, there exists no shortage of arguments in favor of the status quo and against shifting America’s focus in security assistance to security-sector reform and conditional aid. In an era of great-power competition, Russia, China, or regional competitors may simply step in to fill the gap with the partner nation if the United States insists upon unwelcome reforms in exchange for aid. I know this is a valid concern because I have sat in meetings where partners made thinly veiled reference to other nations which may provide assistance if the United States is unable or unwilling. Still, the quality and technological edge of U.S. kit and the total-package approach which includes training and follow-on support do provide the United States a competitive advantage. But the bureaucratic apparatus responsible for delivering aid is far too slow and, as a result, is a liability. To outcompete, the security assistance enterprise itself requires major reform to shorten typical lead times from years to months. The Pentagon and State Department need the agility to turn aid on and off like a switch or rheostat.
Another argument against placing preconditions on security assistance is that the stakes are too high to deny a partner a critical capability while waiting for reform to happen. This is the “we can’t let them fail” mentality. It is also valid — but only in certain crisis situations where aid is needed immediately, and reform truly cannot wait. Ukraine today is a good example. Rather than ceasing aid writ large until a condition is met, place conditions on discrete packages of aid. The intent should be to provide sufficient incentive to the host-nation government to modify behavior, not threaten national survival. During the years I spent in Afghanistan, the security threats faced by the government never appeared to afford the breathing space to withhold aid while institutional reform took place. In hindsight, doing so may have required coalition forces to carry a greater operational burden while the Afghan forces sorted themselves out, but it also would have been worth it. As the events of August 2021 demonstrated, 20 years of unconditional capacity-building built shockingly little capacity. Implementing this change requires a recurring review of Defense Department-led train and equip programs to determine which truly qualify as crisis situations. Those which do not should be moved under State Department control for more deliberate, reform-focused approach.
There is also the simple argument that instituting meaningful reform in a recalcitrant partner nation is hard. This is true. But hard is not impossible. The security assistance enterprise should approach reform not in broad, sweeping terms but incremental steps. Rather than requiring the partner to eliminate corruption wholesale across the security forces, perhaps require that a particularly corrupt commander be removed before providing assistance to that unit. In the case of Iraq in the late 2000s, the United States might have required Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to fire certain commanders guilty of sectarian excesses or modify the personnel policy to make the armed forces more broadly inclusive. In other cases, reform measures may be as mundane as switching to an electronic pay system to reduce the opportunity for graft. Such a change in approach would also require a change in how the United States prepares officers for security assistance duties. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency has made great strides in its educational program to professionalize the security assistance workforce in recent years. It could further improve this program by embedding security sector reform more deeply into the curriculum.
Better Rewards, Tougher Inducements
The United States is not getting the most for its security assistance dollars. Programs intended to build partner capacity tend to underperform because they fail to address underlying weakness in defense institutions or take principal-agent problems into account. To build meaningful, long-lasting capacity in partners and better align security assistance with policy goals, the United States should shift from a “building partner capacity” approach to a reform focus using conditional aid as leverage. Doing so in an environment where security assistance is yet another arena for strategic competition with Russia, China, and others will require internal reform of the U.S. security assistance apparatus. Rather than a slow-moving bureaucracy, the United States needs an agile and streamlined security assistance enterprise able to deliver aid rapidly when needed and be paused or turned off just as easily when conditions require. In short, the United States needs sweeter carrots and harder sticks.
While the current U.S. effort to arm and equip Ukrainian forces is the most visible example today, it is not representative of the day-to-day work of security assistance which the United States carries out around the world. In most cases, the greater threat facing these partners is not an invading army but rather defense institutions for which reform is needed but not properly incentivized. Modifying the U.S. approach to security assistance is one way to create that incentive and better align aid with policy goals.
Jeremy Gwinn is a U.S. Army infantry officer currently in the Office of Security Cooperation – Iraq. His previous experiences include multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq conducting counter-insurgency and security force assistance as well as teaching economics in the Department of Social Sciences at West Point. Gwinn has a Ph.D. in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy where his doctoral research focused on U.S. unconventional warfare post-9/11. He has published on a variety of security affairs topics. The views expressed herein are his own and do not reflect those of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.
warontherocks.com · by Jeremy Gwinn · April 19, 2022



19. Land Navigation Is Coming Back to the Army's Basic Leader Course


What? We took out land navigation? I am glad they are putting it back in but I had no idea this was removed from training. I guess we are now thinking about what happens when our adversaries take down the GPS system.



Land Navigation Is Coming Back to the Army's Basic Leader Course
military.com · by Steve Beynon · April 19, 2022
Land navigation is making a comeback as part of the Army's Basic Leader Course, or BLC, with a pilot program starting in the coming months and full return to active-duty schools planned for next year.
"Oh, it's coming. Soldiers need to know how to read a map," Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Grinston told Military.com.
BLC is a 22-day school for the Army's junior leaders and required to rise to the rank of sergeant. It mostly teaches soldiers about the service's policies, including sexual assault prevention, noncommissioned officers' legal authorities and how to submit soldiers for awards.
Land navigation was removed in 2018 to make room for more classroom instruction, with the idea being that the soldier's unit should be validating basic combat skills. While units will still train land navigation on their own, Army leaders hope that having it once again count as a graded event at a must-pass school will put a greater emphasis on navigation training. It's unclear what will be removed or scaled down from the curriculum.
"There was a significant shift from training to education; this is putting a premium back on a skill that's needed in various environments, including [those in] which GPS devices are jammed and soldiers have to rely on a compass to get around," Command Sgt. Maj. Jason Schmidt, the commandant of the NCO Leadership Center of Excellence and the Sergeants Major Academy, told Military.com.
The force in recent years has put a greater emphasis on combat tasks as it reorientates from the post-9/11 wars to conventional warfighting. Gen. David Thompson, Space Force's space operations vice chief, told NBC News last week that Russians are jamming GPS satellites in Ukraine -- something that can make the electronic navigation devices troops became accustomed to in Iraq and Afghanistan useless.
Schmidt said he hopes to get a pilot program, which will include day and nighttime land navigation, into at least four BLC schools by the end of the summer. Those schools are at Fort Bliss, Texas; Fort Drum, New York; Fort Stewart, Georgia; and one of the Army's training areas in Hawaii. There also might be a trial at one of the National Guard's schools, but those details haven't been finalized.
After that trial, Schmidt aims to fully implement land navigation into all 33 BLC schools next year. But it may take longer for the Reserve and National Guard courses to get the new curriculum.
Land navigation is a staple for virtually all of the Army's elite schools, such as Ranger and Special Forces Assessment and Selection, as well as qualifications for prestigious awards such as the expert soldier, infantry and medic badges -- and is one of the common reasons for a soldier to fail those tests.
Even without the threat of a future adversary jamming GPS signals, navigation errors have proven fatal.
The 507th Maintenance Company was part of the rapid advancement toward Baghdad during the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and was last in a column of 600 vehicles.
Over the course of roughly three days, the unit slowly became separated from the main force after encountering troubles with its heavy vehicles maneuvering on top of soft sand and numerous breakdowns on the cross-country route through Iraq's blistering heat.
With little rest after days of driving, fatigue set in, leading to a single navigation error of missing a turn in the complex urban jungle of the Iraq town An Nasiriyah, according to a Defense Department report of the ensuing ambush.
Of the 33 soldiers in the convoy, 11 were killed during fierce attacks from Iraqi troops and insurgents; seven were captured, including Pfc. Jessica Lynch.
"This isn't a combat-arms task; it's important for all [soldiers] to understand it," Schmidt said. "When you look at what the future battlefields may hold, there may not be [forward operating bases] and walls protecting them. Everyone might need to navigate. It's a skill all individual soldiers should have a baseline understanding of."
-- Steve Beynon can be reached at Steve.Beynon@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevenBeynon.
military.com · by Steve Beynon · April 19, 2022


20. Russia's War on Ukraine - April 20, 2022 | SOF News


Russia's War on Ukraine - April 20, 2022 | SOF News
sof.news · by SOF News · April 20, 2022

Curated news, analysis, and commentary about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, tactical situation on the ground, Ukrainian defense, and NATO. Additional topics include refugees, internally displaced personnel, humanitarian efforts, cyber, and information operations.
Photo: Destroyed Russian tanks in the Sumy region, Ukraine. Photo by Irina Rybakova, press service of the Ukrainian Ground Forces, March 7, 2022.
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Big Picture of the Conflict
The long anticipated Russian offensive to capture more territory in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine has begun. Initial reports began surfacing on social media on Tuesday (Apr 19) and confirmed by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense the same day. The Russians hope to defeat the Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine, capture more territory, and enter into negotiations from a position of strength. The Donbas region is known for its industrial assets, including coal mines, metals plants, and machine-building factories. The offensive is reported to be along a 3000 mile front extending from northeastern Ukraine to the country’s southeast.
“Another phase of this operation is beginning and I am sure it will be a very important moment in this entire special operation”.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
Specific Russian Goals. According to a NATO official the four main goals of Russia are: 1) capture the Donbas region, 2) control the ‘land bridge’ from Donbas to Crimea, 3) control Kherson on the Dnieper River ensuring a freshwater supply to Crimea, and to 4) acquire additional territory for use as a buffer zone or for bargaining chips in future negotiations.
Ground Situation
The Russians will likely advance on Ukrainian forces in the Donbas region from three sides: the north, east, and south. The best scenario for the Russians is to conduct a pincer movement that would encircle the Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine, cutting off their supply lines from the interior of Ukraine. The Ukrainians will need to launch a series of small spoiling attacks that will prevent Russia from building up forces that would then advance on the Ukrainian positions. The Pentagon reported that 11 more battalion tactical groups (BTGs) arrived in the Donbas region; bringing the total number of BTGs to 78. Of these 78, about twelve BTGs are committed to the defeat of the remaining defenders of Mariupol.
Read more in “How to Win the Battle in Eastern Ukraine”, by Benjamin Jensen, Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), April 14, 2022.
Battle of the Skies
Ukrainian Air Assets. According to a Pentagon briefing on Tuesday (Apr 19) the Ukraine air force has increased their available ‘operational’ aircraft due to the provision of ‘additional platforms and parts’ by other NATO countries. The U.S. assisted in part of the transportation of these aircraft parts and components. The Ukraine government has denied that it received ‘aircraft’, saying that it only received aircraft parts.
More Recon Drones. The Ukrainians will be receiving over 100 Quantix Recon Unmanned Aircraft Systems from AeroVironment. These drones and the associated training are being donated to Ukraine by the U.S. manufacturer. (BusinessWire, Apr 19, 2022).
“As the Ukraine military’s fight to protect their homeland and defend their nation’s freedom against Russia’s invasion intensifies, their need for solutions that can offer force protection and force multiplication capabilities continues. This donation will provide operators with a tool that can fly undetected by enemy forces and unaffected by radio frequency jammers to deliver accurate and rapid reconnaissance of remote, inaccessible areas of the dynamically changing battlefield.”
Wahid Nawabi, President and CEO of AeroVironment, Inc.
“Using the actionable intelligence gathered by the Quantix Recon, operators can conduct quick mission planning and verification to help keep Ukrainian ground forces out of harm’s way. AeroVironment is honored to support the people of Ukraine,” Nawabi added.
The Turkish Drone in Ukrainian Skies. The Turkish Bayraktar TB2 is making a name for itself in the Ukraine War. This lightweight low-tech armed drone carries four small laser-guided munitions and can cruise for about 24 hours. It costs about a sixth of the Reaper’s US$32 million price tag. The TB2 is wreaking havoc with Russian tanks, artillery pieces, and short-range air defense systems. The armed drone has also seen great success in the Nagorno-Karabakh War in Azerbaijan and the conflict in Ethiopia. Turkey has about 140 of the TB2s and is conducting research and tests on new drone prototypes. Read more in “Has Turkey become an armed drone superpower?”, The Strategist, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, April 19, 2022.
Norwegian MANPADS. The Norwegian Ministry of Defense announced on Wednesday (Apr 20) that it is providing 100 Mistral air defense missile systems to Ukraine. It is currently being used by the Norwegian Navy. It is a lightweight man-portable launcher and is operated by a one or two person crew. (Army Recognition, April 20, 2022).
Donbas and Russian Airpower. Compared to its initial operations around Kyiv and in the southwest of Ukraine, Russia likely has a measure of localized air superiority in the Donbas region. Ukraine’s medium- and short-range mobile surface to air missile systems have slowly been taken out. The Ukrainian SA-8s and SA-11s have to be positioned close to friendly lines to be effective and cover friendly troops; and they have been reduced by ground attacks and by drones as well. The Russians appear to lack sufficient stocks of precision-guided munitions for battlefield use. This means the Russian pilots will need to employ tactics requiring them to acquire targets visually and then to fly in a stable approach in a dive. This is a tactic that will expose them to the numerous MANPADS that the Ukrainian ground forces are employing.
The lack of ‘targeting pods’ (like the U.S. Sniper pod) and the limited training time afforded to Russian pilots will also detract from the Russian air force’s effectiveness. While the Russians will enjoy localized air superiority, it is unlikely to produce decisive results on the battlefield for Russia. Justin Bronk explains this in detail in “Russia Likely Has Local Air Superiority in Donbas, but it May Not Matter”, RUSI, April 19, 2022.
Maritime Activities
The United States is sending unmanned surface vessels (USVs) to Ukraine to beef up its coastal defense capabilities. The USVs are capable of a variety of missions. These include extending Ukraine’s surveillance out further away from the coastline, sweeping for mines in the waters, and possibly to directly attack Russian ships. Read more in “Mysterious American robotic ships headed to Ukraine”, FEDSCOOP, April 15, 2022. The topic of maritime neutrality in the Black Sea is explored by David Letts in “Maritime Neutrality in the Russia-Ukraine Conflict”, Articles of War, West Point, April 18, 2022.

Tactical Situation
Mariupol. The siege of the encircled coastal city of Mariupol continues with a small force of Ukrainians fighting from a defensive pocket. Most of the Ukrainian defense is centered above and below ground at the Mariupol Azovstal Iron and Steel Works. The plant occupies four square miles of the city’s waterfront. It was one of the largest metallurgical factories in Europe. The plant and its network of underground tunnels is serving as a shelter and base for fighters of the Azov Battalion, 36th Marines, and members from other Ukrainian ground units. The city had a pre-war population of 450,000; it is estimated that about 100,000 civilians remain in the city. “How a Mariupol steel plant became a holdout for the city’s resistance”, The Washington Post, April 19, 2022. See also “Surrounded Mariupol Commander Begs for International Help to Evacuate”, Daily Beast, April 19, 2022.
The Battle for Kyiv. How the Russian forces were beaten into retreat from the capital city is detailed by Oz Katerji. Moscow’s plan was to encircle and capture Ukraine’s capital within a matter of days. What would follow would be the apprehension, detention, and probable killing of Ukrainian politicians, journalists, human rights activist, government officials, and senior military officers. The author of this article, who was in Kyiv on the eve of the invasion, describes how Ukraine’s smaller army could inflict the humiliating blow against the Russian army. Read more in “How Ukraine Won the Battle for Kyiv”, Rolling Stone, April 2022.
Situation Maps. War in Ukraine by Scribble Maps. View more Ukraine SITMAPs that provide updates on the disposition of Russian forces.
General Information
Refugees, IDPs, and Humanitarian Crisis. View the UNHCR Operational Data Portal – Ukraine Refugee Situation (Updated daily), https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/ukraine.
Prisoner Exchange. A fifth prisoner swap has taken place. 76 Ukrainians were released – 60 service members and 16 civilians.
Russia’s Brain Drain. The Ukraine War and its associated sanctions are going to have a massive impact on the high-tech economy of Russia for years to come. The Russian Ministry of Defense has been heavily involved in research in the artificial intelligence field. This effort may come to a screeching halt due to lack of funds and human talent. “Russia’s Artificial Intelligence Boom May Not Survive the War”, Defense One, April 15, 2022.
The Importance of Morale. Daniel Karr and Jacob Ware collaborate in an article to highlight the role that morale plays in conflicts – whether it is a conventional fight or any insurgency. “Hearts Not Minds: Morale and Inspiration in Insurgency and Territorial Defense”, Modern War Institute at West Point, April 14, 2022.
“Understanding the history of morale’s role in insurgencies is essential for analyzing the ongoing war in Ukraine and developing sound policy options for what could be a drawn-out conflict. But one thing seems clear: Russia will struggle to win its war in Ukraine if its troops do not want to be there.”
Artillery – A Big Ukraine Requirement. With the shift of operations to warfare in open spaces – as opposed to defending cities – the Ukrainian military will find itself outclassed on the battlefields of eastern Ukraine. The NATO members states can fix this – if they provide Ukraine with the artillery and anti-air systems to correct this capability deficiency. Michael Jacobson, a Department of the Army civilian field artillery capability analyst and LTC in the U.S. Army Reserves, provides a detailed explanation in “What Artillery and Air Defense Does Ukraine Need Now?”, War on the Rocks, April 15, 2022. See also “Ukraine’s Ability to Withstand Russian Artillery Critical to Fight for Donbas”, The War Zone, April 19, 2022. And this as well . . . “Biden promises more artillery to Ukraine to fight off Russian invaders”, The Washington Times, April 19, 2022.
And More on Artillery. The Pentagon confirmed that it is sending 18 x 155 artillery pieces and 40,000 artillery rounds to Ukraine. In addition, a ‘training package’ will be conducted for Ukrainian military personnel in an adjacent country. This is a ‘train the trainer’ scenario. The training is expected to take place within ‘days’. The Pentagon believes that the training will be minimal as most artillery pieces are ‘the same’; the Ukrainians are familiar with the Soviet bloc 122-mm D-30 Howitzer. Read more in “Biden vows to send Ukraine more artillery as Congress pushes for military aid czar”, Defense News, April 19, 2022.
Canadian Troops to Poland. Ukrainian refugees may find themselves being provided assistance from humanitarian assistance efforts by Canada’s military. The Canadian unit is set to depart from the Canadian Forces Base Trenton in Ontario. Prior to February 24th (the day Russia invaded Ukraine) Canada had 260 military trainers in Ukraine. They were moved prior to the invasion to Poland and assisted for a few weeks with humanitarian assistance before being redeployed back to Canada. “Canadian troops heading to Poland to help Ukrainian refugees”, CP24, April 14, 2022.
Germany – Letting Others do the Heavy Lifting? A new chart that depicts government support to Ukraine by donor GNP shows that Germany is slacking off when compared to other nations. Germany ranks tenth among European nations in amount of aid provided. One would think, given its relative size and wealth, that it would contribute more. (Ukraine Support Tracker, March 27, 2022).
Militias in the Russia-Ukraine War. By now most observers of the Ukraine War have become familiar with the Wagner Group and the Azov Battalion (or brigade). Less well known are other groups on both sides of the conflict – such as the Dnipro Battalion, and Chechen Kadyrov militia. Read more in “Ukraine war: the key role played by volunteer militias on both sides of the conflict”, The Conversation, April 13, 2022.
NG to Eastern Europe? There are roughly about 2,000 National Guard troops currently in Europe. Many more may be headed that way. “National Guard discussing possible deployments to Eastern Europe”, Military Times, April 19, 2022.
Commentary
Three Future Scenarios for Ukraine. The next phase of the war may see some success for Russia. The country’s leaders are learning from their mistakes of the first six weeks of the conflict and making adaptations. Attritional warfare may favor the Russians – with their population base and numbers of artillery pieces and ballistic missiles. Frank Hoffman, a retired Marine infantry officer and defense analyst, envisions three possible scenarios for the future of the conflict in “What Comes Next in Ukraine: Three Scenarios”, Modern War Institute at West Point, April 14, 2022.
(1) The Ukrainians could embark on a general counter-offensive that would likely cost much in personnel and equipment and ultimately fail to achieve any strategic goals.
(2) The Russians could go on the offensive – striking from the north and south – with the aim to capture east Ukraine to include the city of Dnipro and encircling Ukrainian forces in the east. In addition, they would attempt to take Odessa, thus depriving Ukraine of a coastline and seaports.
(3) The conflict could settle into a war of attrition, resulting in a stalemate or ‘frozen conflict’ with Russia keeping the limited gains it has achieved along the coast of the Sea of Azov, areas north of Crimea, and in the Donbas region.
Report – Russia’s Nuclear Weapons: Doctrine, Forces, and Modernization. Congressional Research Service (CRS), April 18, 2022. (updated).
Russia’s Failure. The few decades have seen Russia announcing to the world the many areas where they have reformed and modernized their military forces. However, all that ‘modernization and reform’ hasn’t shown up on the battlefield. Alexander Crowther spells out the many deficiencies of the Russian military campaign in Ukraine. “Russia’s Military: Failure on an Awesome Scale”, Europe’s Edge, April 15, 2022.
Is the Tank’s Time Coming to An End? Probably Not. The successful employment of anti-armor weapons by the Ukrainians have blunted the usefulness of armor in the Ukraine War thus far. This has caused a reexamination of tank warfare and predictions of a big change in future warfare. David Johnson, a retired Army colonel, examines the history of the tank and the many predictions of the end of the tanks supremacy on the battlefield. “The Tank is Dead: Long Live the Javelin, the Switchblade, the . . .?”, War on the Rocks, April 18, 2022.
Russian Defense Industry. The war in Ukraine has damaged the reputation of Russian weapons manufacturers. It weapons have not performed up to standard. The Russian tanks have not performed well and neither have its aircraft or air defense systems. In the past, Russia has had good success in exporting its weapons systems. But now countries will find that the availability of Russian weapons for export will significantly decrease, the ‘moral stain of working with Moscow’ will push countries to other suppliers, and the performance of Russian weapons is now questionable. “The Russian Defense Industry: A Distressed Brand”, by Dr. Can Kasapoglu, Hudson Institute, April 15, 2022.
Justice in Ukraine? Maybe Not. Most wars end in a negotiated conclusion. The current Ukraine-Russia war is likely to have the same result. Most analysts see talks to end the war centered on strategic, political, and territorial issues. Russia is committing terrible war crimes and there is a worldwide call for accountability. The truth of the matter is most Russians from Putin down to the lowest-trigger puller will escape punishment. Hugh Smith, a retired professor of law and war ethics, explains why in “Justice may have to be sacrificed to end the war in Ukraine”, The Strategist, Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), April 20, 2022.
Panel Transcript – The Struggles of the Russian Military in Ukraine. Gen (Ret.) Philip Breedlove, Mark Galeotti, Beth Sanner, and Janine Davidson discuss the state of Russia’s military and the effect on the war in Ukraine. Council on Foreign Relations, April 14, 2022.
Upcoming Events and Videos
Online Panel Discussion – Russia’s War in Ukraine: Nukes, Negotiations, and Neutrality. As Russia’s offensive recalibrates towards eastern Ukraine, the stakes are continuing to grow between Russia and Ukraine . . . and the West. Register to listen to a panel discussion on the latest political developments in the Russia-Ukraine War and how these may impact future negotiations between the two parties. Brought to you by the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI). Event takes place on Tuesday, April 26, 2022 from 10:00 am to 11:00 am. Register here.
Online Event – The Crisis in Ukraine: Democracy and Allyship Tested. This event is provided by the Harvard Alumni Association and is scheduled for Wednesday, April 20, 2022 at 12:00 pm on YouTube.
Music Video – Kyiv Calling. Kyiv Calling – for a Free Ukraine. A cover version of The Clash’s London Calling to draw the world’s attention to the struggle of the Ukrainian people and raise money for the Free Ukraine Resistance movement.
Video – Does the Russian Air Force Stink? Alex Hollings, the host of Airpower on the Sandboxx News YouTube channel tells us why the Russian Air Force hasn’t been able to establish air superiority over Ukraine. The Team House, YouTube, April 14, 2022, 15 minutes.

SOF News welcomes the submission of articles for publication. If it is related to special operations, current conflicts, national security, defense, or the current conflict in Ukraine then we are interested.
Maps and Other Resources
UNCN. The Ukraine NGO Coordination Network is an organization that ties together U.S.-based 501c3 organizations and non-profit humanitarian organizations that are working to evacuate and support those in need affected by the Ukraine crisis. https://uncn.one
Maps of Ukraine
sof.news · by SOF News · April 20, 2022

21. Chinese President Xi Jinping's New Role in Ukraine

I would borrow Professor Feng Yujin's and Foreign Minister Wang Yi's words for the strategic influence campaign.

Excerpts:

A noted Fudan University professor, Feng Yujun, recently published an article saying, “What is certain, is that regardless of the outcome on the battlefield, Russia can be said to have failed politically, economically, and diplomatically.” He goes on to say that during Putin’s over 20 years in power, Russia’s comprehensive national strength has constantly declined; Russia’s way of thinking is backward and while the focus of the 21st century great power competition has shifted to technology, finance, and the ability to shape the global system, Russia’s concerns remain territorial expansion and monopolization of natural resources. Articles like this will have an impact in China, as more of these views are shared with the public.
China has always been a strong advocate for national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Munich Security Conference in February, stressed, “that the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries should be respected and safeguarded – and that applies equally to Ukraine.”
Time is of the essence. The war in Ukraine is getting uglier by the day. It’s time for China to intercede to help end this war. And Xi Jinping is the only world leader who can help persuade Putin to do it.
Chinese President Xi Jinping's New Role in Ukraine

April 18th, 2022 by Joseph DeTrani, |

Ambassador Joseph DeTrani is former Special envoy for Six Party Talks with North Korea and the U.S. Representative to the Korea Energy Development Organization (KEDO), as well as former CIA director of East Asia Operations. He also served as the Associate Director of National Intelligence and Mission Manager for North [...] Read more
And China’s Dissemination of Russian Disinformation
OPINION — On February 4th, President Xi Jinping signed a Joint Statement while in Beijing at the Winter Olympics, with Russian President Vladimir Putin, that committed China and Russia to a “friendship that has no limits”, a true strategic partnership. On February 24th, Russia invaded Ukraine. To date, the war has killed thousands of innocent people, displaced over five million Ukrainians, recently uncovered the massacre of 400 civilians in Bucha, with credible reporting of widespread rape and torture perpetrated by the invading Russian Army.
China’s initial reaction to the Russian invasion was an attempt to be neutral, publicly calling for dialogue and an end to hostilities, while permitting its government-controlled media to blame the West for the war while accusing the United States of funding and developing biological weapons in Ukraine and claiming that Ukraine staged the Bucha massacre. Hopefully, this disinformation campaign in China, parroting Russian disinformation, will cease, as more international news filters into China, documenting the truth about Russian atrocities in Ukraine.
It is likely that the leadership in Beijing, reliant on information from Moscow, thought that war with Ukraine would be a cakewalk – over in a few weeks – with the European Union in disarray and the United States disengaged. They were wrong.
The war continues and Russia is losing, badly. But as the war continues, more innocent people will die, and more villages, towns and cities will be destroyed. We know what Putin’s army did in the Chechen capital, Grozny, in 2003, when the city was destroyed, and thousands of people were killed. Russia and the Syrian Government did the same in Aleppo in 2016, with Russia bombing hospitals and schools, killing aid workers and civilians. If the war in Ukraine continues, it’s likely Putin will use similar brutal tactics.
Early in the war, Putin put his nuclear forces on high alert. Indeed, there are no assurances that an angered and desperate Putin wouldn’t use one or more nuclear weapons in the war with Ukraine. That would cross a horrific threshold.
Given developments with the war in Ukraine and the likelihood that Putin will persist, there must be concern in China that its alignment with Russia will profoundly affect its relationship with the European Union and the United States, its principal trading partners. Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen, in a recent speech, said, “The world’s attitude towards China and its willingness to embrace further economic integration may well be affected by China’s reaction to our call for resolute action on Russia.”
Today’s constant barrage of information makes it easy for countries to wage disinformation campaigns and your emotions are the weapon of choice. Learn how disinformation works and how we can fight it in this short video. This is one link you can feel good about sharing.
A noted Fudan University professor, Feng Yujun, recently published an article saying, “What is certain, is that regardless of the outcome on the battlefield, Russia can be said to have failed politically, economically, and diplomatically.” He goes on to say that during Putin’s over 20 years in power, Russia’s comprehensive national strength has constantly declined; Russia’s way of thinking is backward and while the focus of the 21st century great power competition has shifted to technology, finance, and the ability to shape the global system, Russia’s concerns remain territorial expansion and monopolization of natural resources. Articles like this will have an impact in China, as more of these views are shared with the public.
China has always been a strong advocate for national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Munich Security Conference in February, stressed, “that the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries should be respected and safeguarded – and that applies equally to Ukraine.”
Time is of the essence. The war in Ukraine is getting uglier by the day. It’s time for China to intercede to help end this war. And Xi Jinping is the only world leader who can help persuade Putin to do it.
Read more expert-driven national security news, insights and analysis in The Cipher Brief

Ambassador Joseph DeTrani is former Special envoy for Six Party Talks with North Korea and the U.S. Representative to the Korea Energy Development Organization (KEDO), as well as former CIA director of East Asia Operations. He also served as the Associate Director of National Intelligence and Mission Manager for North Korea and the Director of the National Counter Proliferation Center, while also serving as a Special Adviser to the Director of National Intelligence. He currently serves on the Board of Managers at Sandia National Laboratories. The views expressed represent those of the author.


22.  U.S. 'strategic ambiguity' over Taiwan must end


The subtitle says it all.
U.S. 'strategic ambiguity' over Taiwan must end
Ukraine has taught the world a lesson: There must be no uncertainty about the need to defend the island
japantimes.co.jp · by Shinzo Abe · April 19, 2022
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reminded many people of the fraught relationship between China and Taiwan. But while there are three similarities between the situation in Ukraine and Taiwan, there are also significant differences.
The first similarity is that there is a very large military power gap between Taiwan and China, just as there was between Ukraine and Russia. Moreover, that gap is growing larger every year.
Second, neither Ukraine nor Taiwan has formal military allies. Both countries are forced to confront threats or attacks alone.
Third, because both Russia and China are permanent, veto-wielding members of the United Nations Security Council, the U.N.’s mediation function cannot be relied upon for conflicts in which they are involved. This has been the case with the current Russian attack on Ukraine, and it would also be the case in any crisis over Taiwan.
But the situation surrounding Taiwan is even more uneasy. While Taiwan has no allies, it does have the Taiwan Relations Act, a 1979 U.S. law requiring the United States to provide Taiwan with the military equipment and supplies “necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capacity.” This law has functioned as a form of compensation for America’s unwillingness to say explicitly that it will “defend Taiwan” should it be attacked. This arrangement should now change.
In response to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, the U.S. stated early on that it would not deploy its troops in Ukraine’s defense. But when it comes to Taiwan, the U.S. has adopted a policy of “strategic ambiguity.” This is the second point of difference: It remains unclear whether the U.S. would intervene by force in a crisis involving Taiwan.
Because the U.S. prefers to leave undefined its position on how it would respond to an assault on Taiwan, China has (at least up to now) been discouraged from military adventurism. This is so because China’s rulers must account for the possibility that the U.S. would indeed intervene militarily. At the same time, U.S. ambiguity has forced Taiwan to consider the possibility that the U.S. will not intervene militarily, and this has deterred radical pro-independence groups on the island.
The U.S. has maintained its Janus-faced policy for decades. But the third, most important difference between Ukraine and Taiwan suggests strongly that it is time for the U.S. to reconsider its approach. Simply put, whereas Ukraine is an independent state beyond any doubt, Taiwan is not.
Russia’s invasion is not only an armed violation of Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty, but also an attempt to overthrow the government of a sovereign state with missiles and shells. On this point, there is no controversy in the international community over the interpretation of international law and the U.N. Charter. While the extent to which countries participate in sanctions against Russia has differed, no country has claimed that Russia is not in serious violation of international law.
By contrast, China claims that Taiwan is “part of its own country,” and the U.S. and Japanese position is to respect this claim. Neither Japan nor the U.S. has official diplomatic relations with Taiwan and most countries around the world do not recognize the island as a sovereign state. Unlike in Ukraine, Chinese leaders could claim that any invasion of Taiwan that China launches is necessary to suppress anti-government activities in one of its own regions, and that such acts therefore would not violate international law.
When Russia annexed Crimea, the international community ultimately acquiesced, even though Russia had violated Ukrainian sovereignty. Given this precedent, it is not surprising that Chinese leaders may very well expect the world to be more tolerant should they, too, adopt the logic of regional — rather than national — subjugation.
This logic has made strategic ambiguity untenable. The policy of ambiguity worked extremely well as long as the U.S. was strong enough to maintain it and as long as China was far inferior to the U.S. in military power. But those days are over. The U.S. policy of ambiguity toward Taiwan is now fostering instability in the Indo-Pacific region, by encouraging China to underestimate U.S. resolve, while making the government in Taipei unnecessarily anxious.
Given the change in circumstances since the policy of strategic ambiguity was adopted, the U.S. should issue a statement that is not open to misinterpretation or multiple interpretations. The time has come for the U.S. to make clear that it will defend Taiwan against any attempted Chinese invasion.
Whenever I met President Xi Jinping during my time as prime minister, I always made it a rule to convey clearly to him that he should not misjudge Japan’s intention to defend the Senkaku Islands and that Japan’s intentions were unwavering.
The human tragedy that has befallen Ukraine has taught us a bitter lesson. There must no longer be any room for doubt in our resolve concerning Taiwan and in our determination to defend freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
Abe Shinzo was Prime Minister of Japan from 2006-2007 and 2012-2020. © Project Syndicate, 2022
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japantimes.co.jp · by Shinzo Abe · April 19, 2022

23.  Bring the Reforger exercises back to Europe

Having participated in both rReforger in Germany and Team Spirit in Korea, I would recommend bringing both back. Unfortunately large scale maneuver exercises are not going to be the same as in the good old days with all the development that has taken place in both countries. But it is the deployment of large numebrs of forces that needs to be exercised.

Strategic reassurance and strategic resolve.

Bring the Reforger exercises back to Europe
militarytimes.com · by Lindsey Neas · April 19, 2022
At a summit in Brussels last month, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced that the alliance would reinforce its eastern flank by doubling the number of battle groups there from four to eight. Unfortunately, this number will still not be sufficient.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley was closer to what’s needed when he suggested during April 5 testimony to Congress that permanent installations should be built for rotational forces.
Ultimately, the proposed troop levels should be much higher than eight battle groups.
Doubling the number of battle groups from four to eight makes for a great sound bite — and that’s about it. A NATO battle group is a reinforced battalion, about 1,250 troops. With these eight battle groups — totaling roughly 10,000 soldiers — NATO now proposes to guard its 2,700-mile border from Norway and Estonia to Romania with about one soldier every 1,400 feet. That’s not a deterrent force; it’s a speed bump.
NATO’s member states have a collective gross domestic product of $43 trillion and a total population of 946 million. The decision to add only a token reinforcement of 5,000 soldiers was, therefore, not made for lack of resources. The problem is a question of priorities: guns versus butter. Eleven years after then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ famous address to his NATO counterparts, only 10 of the Alliance’s 30 member states spend the minimum 2% of gross domestic product on defense, some barely above that figure.
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The chairman of the Joint Chiefs suggested locally built bases in Eastern Europe, without permanently stationed U.S. troops.
In comparison with NATO’s planned force of 10,000 soldiers, Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine with 200,000 Russian, Chechen and separatist personnel, 20 times larger than what NATO currently plans to deploy. Much attention has focused on the inept performance of Russia’s northern push into Ukraine. But many of its southern units fought effectively in the war’s initial phase, failing through overextension and Ukrainian tenacity.
Russia will rebuild its military. That force in coming years will incorporate lessons learned from the fighting in Ukraine. Its political and military elite will harbor the same fears and animosities as does Putin. NATO, therefore, has a choice: capitulate to Russia’s territorial demands or adequately guard its borders.
Milley’s testimony before the House Armed Services Committee stating that NATO’s eastern flank must be reinforced is a welcome contribution to an important discussion over troop levels. His adamant support for an adequate force — hopefully the equivalent of at least 12 brigade combat teams plus all necessary support capabilities — is essential.
Even so, the lack of consensus on the need for an adequate defense budget, and the belief by some commentators that the U.S. must focus exclusively on China, will force compromise. The end result of this debate will be a force on NATO’s border with Russia and Belarus that’s too small.
There is, fortunately, a solution. The Defense Department should reinstitute the Reforger — REturn of FORces to GERmany — deployment exercises, last conducted in 1993.

Abrams tanks prepare to be loaded aboard a ship on Feb. 6, 2020, in Savannah, Georgia, for DEFENDER-Europe — a division-size deployment exercise from the United States to Europe. (Pfc. Carlos Cuebas Fantauzzi/Army)
For decades, the U.S. Army would annually deploy as many as 125,000 personnel to Germany by air, rail and sea, demonstrating NATO’s continuing commitment to the defense of Europe. Having participated in the final multi-division Reforger, I can attest to its training value. Every member of NATO should annually conduct such collective exercises, ideally in concert with one another, from home station to their sectors along NATO’s eastern flank.
Our current Defender exercises don’t accomplish this objective. Defender, while invaluable as a training exercise, is too limited in scope. Russia invaded Ukraine with the equivalent of about 13 divisions. The annual NATO exercise should be two to three times larger than at present. The entirety of the deployment process, from home station to forward battle positions, must replicate a wartime deployment to identify shortcomings and choke points.
It will take several years to build the installations to house, train and support these forces. That’s the easy part. It will likewise take years of training to forge these disparate units and their follow-on reinforcements into a competent, cohesive and rapidly deployable force.
If the politicians who collectively lead NATO are serious about maintaining peace along its eastern flank, they must demonstrate that resolve by committing the necessary resources, not through token troop deployments like those announced in Brussels.
Lindsey Neas is a former U.S. Army armor officer. He served for 15 years as a military aide to several members of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees.
This article is an Op-Ed and as such, the opinions expressed are those of the authors. If you would like to respond, or have an editorial of your own you would like to submit, please email Military Times Senior Managing Editor Kent Miller.



24. The Last Chapter in Putin's War


Excerpts:

With a sharp increase in missile attacks on Ukraine cities over the weekend and on Monday, it is clear the major Russian Donbas offensive will soon begin. A key question is what the U.S. and its NATO allies will do if Russian troops overwhelm the Ukraine forces in the Donbas region and attempt to continue on toward Kyiv, killing civilians and laying waste to cities, towns and villages in their wake?
Would public reaction to pictures and videos of Russian-perpetrated death and destruction force Biden or any NATO leaders to get more directly involved militarily?
CIA Director Burns said last week, “The [Russian] crimes in Bucha are horrific. The scenes of devastation in Mariupol and Kharkiv are sadly reminiscent of the images I saw in Grozny, in Chechnya, as a young diplomat in the winter of 1994-95: Forty square blocks in the center of the city flattened by Russian shelling and bombing, leaving thousands of civilian deaths.”
Burns also said, “The last chapter in Putin’s war has yet to be written as he grinds away at Ukraine.”
The Last Chapter in Putin's War
Fine Print
April 19th, 2022 by Walter Pincus, |

Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics that ranged from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders. [...] Read more
OPINION — After his speech at the Georgia Institute of Technology last Thursday, CIA Director William Burns was asked about the risks that President Biden is facing in helping Ukraine fight the Russian invaders against a background of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threats implying the possible use of nuclear weapons.
Burns responded, “I know President Biden is deeply concerned about avoiding a third world war, [and] avoiding a threshold in which you know, nuclear conflict becomes possible.”
That’s the world we must face today as Russia builds up its damaged forces to begin a new, major, military offensive in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
Last Tuesday, President Putin told a television audience, “Regrettably, neo-Nazism has become a fact of life in a big country [Ukraine] with which we had close affinity. What we are doing there is helping people, saving them from genocide, on the one hand, and at the same time, we are taking measures to ensure the security of Russia itself – it is obvious that we had no alternative and that it was the right step.”
Putin added, “And there is no doubt that we will definitely attain the goals set.”
Despite initial Russian losses, Putin has not given up on bringing Ukraine back into his orbit. In Putin’s world, a Nazi is a Ukrainian who refuses to admit being a Russian and therefore, Ukraine as a separate country, has to be eliminated.
The U.S., NATO and the European Union countries have responded to a new Russian build up by providing the Ukraine military with more sophisticated military equipment, some of which could be used for offensive operations.
The fact that President Biden’s latest $800 million worth of arms to Ukraine includes helicopters, 155-millimeter artillery, sophisticated radars, and armored personnel carriers caused Moscow last Tuesday, to deliver to Washington a threatening diplomatic note titled, “On Russia’s concerns in the context of massive supplies of weapons and military equipment to the Kiev regime.”
The note began, “We call on the United States and its allies to stop the irresponsible militarization of Ukraine, which implies unpredictable consequences for regional and international security,” according to The Washington Post’s Karen DeYoung.
Despite military setbacks and last week’s embarrassing loss of its Black Sea flagship, the missile cruiser Moskva, Putin remains determined to destroy Ukraine in a brutal fashion, starting this time in an area where Russia has advantages.
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Last Thursday, two Pentagon briefers described Russian preparations for what one called, “a heavier offensive in the Donbas region.” That involved, “putting in place artillery units, moving them in, moving in command-and-control enablers, moving in aviation support…we saw some more helicopters being staged to the north of the Donbas in Russia just in the last 24 hours. They’re doing the things that — that — that we believe they believe they need to do to set the proper conditions for a — a renewed ground offensive. But we have not seen a great influx of additional battalion tactical groups into the region yet.”
Russian units, part of the forces withdrawn from the northern part of Ukraine, are now in Belarus and/or Russia, refitting and resupplying, according to the Pentagon briefings. They could potentially reinforce troops already fighting in the Donbas region. “We’ve already seen that they’re pushing some of those forces back into Ukraine, just to the north of the Donbas,” one briefer said, “and we would expect that reinforcement to continue.”
Moscow has made another change, naming Gen. Aleksandr Dvornikov as the single military leader for all Russian forces in Ukraine. He ran the Russian air war in Syria and, according to Pentagon press secretary John Kirby, has a history of “utter disregard” for avoiding harm to civilians, as well as the laws of war. More recently, Dvornikov has commanded Russia’s own southern military district and since the February invasion, Moscow’s forces in the southern Ukraine.
The Pentagon briefers described his appointment as, “an effort to simply improve their command and control,” which has been a problem for the Russians up to now.
Unlike Russia’s earlier unsuccessful attempt to reach Kyiv from the north, starting a new offensive from the Donbas offers shorter supply route lines for Putin’s forces because that region is along the Russian border. Another advantage is that many of the Russian forces are familiar with the territory since they’ve been fighting there for eight years.
One Pentagon briefer pointed out that the topography had, “been described to me, that part of Ukraine is a bit like Kansas, so it’s a little bit flatter, it’s a little bit more open. And it’s the kind of place where we can anticipate that the Russians will want to use tanks and long-range fires, artillery, and rocket fire to achieve some of their objectives before committing ground troops.”
He also said, “The weather will certainly be a factor in war, as it always is, and the fact that the ground is softer will make it harder for them [the Russians] to do anything off of — off of paved highways. But — but again, we’ll just have to, you know, we’ll — we’ll have to see how this plays out.”
The Pentagon briefers discussed the U.S. military equipment in the latest $800 million package put together, they said, “in recognition of what the Russians are preparing to do.”
On the list, are 18, 155-millimeter howitzers and 40,000 artillery rounds. These artillery pieces can reach from 11 to 20 miles and are, “reflective of the kind of fighting that the Ukrainians are expecting to be faced with here in this little bit more confined geographic area,” Pentagon spokesman Kirby said last week, adding, “and if they need additional artillery rounds, clearly the United States will do what we can to fill those needs.”
Also on the list, are 10 TPQ-36 counter-artillery radars; which not only can locate enemy mortars, artillery, and rockets as they are fired, but also help adjust friendly fire against those weapons. Another radar in the package are two so-called Sentinel air surveillance radars, which provide not only persistent air surveillance, but also fire control data to the warfighter to defeat unmanned aerial systems, cruise missiles and fixed and rotary-wing aircraft threats up to 45 miles away.
Other items include: 200 M113 Armored Personnel Carriers that can carry two crew and 11 passengers; 100 Armored High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles, the so-called Humvee which supports combat and combat service support units; 300 Switchblade, miniature back-packable tactical drones that are ground-directed to targets and detonate when they crash into their targets, and 500 Javelin missiles and thousands of other anti-armor systems.
Kirby told Pentagon reporters last week, “We believe that we can put together appropriate training for some of these systems very, very quickly… It will probably require some additional training for…. the howitzers, the TPQ-36 counter artillery radar — not a very difficult system to operate…[and] the Sentinel air surveillance this is an air defense radar system, a 3-D phased array. And that also is going to require a little bit of training on for that.”
He added it would probably be a, “train-the-trainer’s program,” where they would, “pull a small number of Ukrainian forces out [of Ukraine] so that they can get trained on these systems,” not in the U.S., but in a European country “and then send them back in.”
Retired-U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, once Commanding General, U.S. Army Europe, described in Tweets last Thursday, what he would do if he were in command of the Ukraine Army force. The first thing would be to ensure the force was flexible and mobile. Hertling wrote, “To be flexible and mobile in the Donbas, there’s a need for up-armored wheeled vehicles rather than tracked vehicles (Hummers with Javelins and Stingers inside), [and] helicopters.”
Mobile units would have a lot of soldiers who knew how to use Javelins, Stingers, Switchblades, etc. and they would be supported by artillery in a centralized location with counter-fire radar. Hertling’s second thing would be to find “ways to establish Quick Reaction Forces (QRF’s) to counter any [Russian] breakthrough.” He wrote, “QRF mobile units would have a lot of soldiers who knew how to use Javelins, Stingers, Switchblades, etc and they would be supported by artillery in a centralized location with counter-fire radar.
With a sharp increase in missile attacks on Ukraine cities over the weekend and on Monday, it is clear the major Russian Donbas offensive will soon begin. A key question is what the U.S. and its NATO allies will do if Russian troops overwhelm the Ukraine forces in the Donbas region and attempt to continue on toward Kyiv, killing civilians and laying waste to cities, towns and villages in their wake?
Would public reaction to pictures and videos of Russian-perpetrated death and destruction force Biden or any NATO leaders to get more directly involved militarily?
CIA Director Burns said last week, “The [Russian] crimes in Bucha are horrific. The scenes of devastation in Mariupol and Kharkiv are sadly reminiscent of the images I saw in Grozny, in Chechnya, as a young diplomat in the winter of 1994-95: Forty square blocks in the center of the city flattened by Russian shelling and bombing, leaving thousands of civilian deaths.”
Burns also said, “The last chapter in Putin’s war has yet to be written as he grinds away at Ukraine.”
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief because National Security is Everyone’s Business
Fine Print
Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics that ranged from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders. Pincus won an Emmy in 1981 and was the recipient of the Arthur Ross Award from the American Academy for Diplomacy in 2010.


25. What If the War in Ukraine Doesn’t End?

An ominous warning. Are we prepared for the "long haul?"

Excerpts:
As the war drags on and the record of Russian brutality grows, sanctions will pile up and prices for commodities such as oil will continue to rise. The economic effects will be felt across Europe and be paid primarily by Europeans. Support for Ukraine may therefore wear thin the longer the war continues. Voices demanding that Ukraine should accept a cease-fire at any cost could become louder. Other conflicts, such as the war in Syria that has long faded from view, demonstrate that a never-ending war can become a nuisance to comfortable and distracted societies, receiving little more than neglect over time. Western politicians should take on this challenge proactively and explain why support for Ukraine is not just altruistic but actually fundamental to European security and to the future of free societies. This campaign in support of Ukraine will not be cost-free. But if Putin wins in Ukraine, he will be emboldened to expand the perimeter of Russian aggression.
Ukraine’s end goal is unambiguous. It is the preservation of Ukrainian independence and sovereignty. This is what the country deserves—and what Europe needs for its own security. Should Ukraine prevail, its sovereignty would set a crucial precedent for the advance of a stable, liberal international order. In no way should the United States and Europe push Kyiv toward a negotiated settlement. Nor should they block a settlement if Zelensky can find one acceptable to him and the Ukrainian population. But this may arise only after years of fighting. In the interim, U.S. and European leaders must explain to their publics what is at stake—for Ukrainians and for the world—in this war.
Most important, they need to articulate the value of a Ukrainian victory. The first eight weeks of war have occasionally brought to mind the motifs and stereotypes of a Hollywood movie. There is the villain—Putin—distant and pathologically alone at his long Kremlin table. There is a valiant hero—Zelensky—braving death to save his nation. There is the remarkable plot twist of Russian military incompetence and Ukrainian battlefield success. These moral and narrative arcs might suggest that there will be a happy ending—and perhaps there will be. If so, it will not come soon. Alert to the short attention spans of their constituents, political leaders in the countries supporting Ukraine should model their messages less on Hollywood screenplays, which traffic in instant gratification, and more on the wartime speeches of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, which counseled perseverance and never promised a quick victory. Kyiv will experience many setbacks in a war that will have far-reaching strategic, political, and humanitarian consequences. The United States and its allies must prepare to back Ukraine for the long haul.

What If the War in Ukraine Doesn’t End?
The Global Consequences of a Long Conflict
April 20, 2022
Foreign Affairs · by Liana Fix and Michael Kimmage · April 20, 2022
All wars end, and their closing moments are often vivid and memorable. Take, for instance, Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Union General Ulysses S. Grant in April 1865, which brought an end to the U.S. Civil War. Or the armistice that terminated World War I, signed by Germany and the Allies in a train car near Paris in November 1918. Or the end of the Cold War, symbolized by the toppling of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and, later, the lowering of the Soviet flag from the Kremlin on Christmas Day of 1991. These scenes loom large in the cultural imagination as decisive moments that provided the sense of a definitive ending.
But the spectacle around a war’s end can be misleading. The Confederate surrender at Appomattox Court House did not settle political or cultural tensions between the North and South, nor did it resolve the related racial prejudices and political differences, which lingered long after slavery had been abolished. The interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s in Europe was suffused with anxieties and tensions that culminated in another great war. The conclusion of World War II marked the dawn of the Cold War. And, despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cold War may not have ended—it may still be ongoing, as the historian Stephen Kotkin recently argued in these pages.
In the Russian war in Ukraine, there may not be a discrete moment marking the war’s end—at least, not for some time. After eight weeks of war—far longer, seemingly, than either side anticipated—it is a real possibility that neither country will achieve what it wishes to achieve. Ukraine may not be able to expel Russian forces fully from the territory they have taken since Moscow launched its invasion in February. Russia is likely unable to achieve its main political objective: control over Ukraine. Instead of reaching a definite resolution, the war may well usher in a new era of conflict characterized by a cycle of Russian wars in Ukraine. If the war does not end any time soon, the crucial question is: Whose side is time on?
BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES
Time could be on Russia’s side. A protracted war, lasting from months to years, might be an acceptable and perhaps even favorable outcome for Moscow. It would certainly be a terrible outcome for Ukraine, which would be devastated as a country, and for the West, which would face years of instability in Europe and the constant threat of a spillover. A long-term war would also be felt globally, likely causing waves of famines and economic uncertainty. A forever war in Ukraine also runs the risk of eroding support for Kyiv in Western societies, which are not well positioned to endure grinding military conflicts, even ones occurring elsewhere. Postmodern, commercially oriented Western societies accustomed to the amenities of a globalized peacetime world could lose interest in the war—unlike Russia’s population, which Russian President Vladimir Putin’s propaganda machine has agitated and mobilized into a wartime society.
Although the United States and its allies are justified in hoping for and working toward a rapid Ukrainian victory, Western policymakers must also ready themselves for an extended war. The policy tools at their disposal—such as military aid and sanctions—will not change relative to the war’s duration. Maximum military support for Ukraine is essential regardless of the war’s trajectory. Sanctions targeting Russia, particularly aimed at the energy sector, would ideally lead to changes in the Russian calculus over time, and are well suited to engineering the long-term decline of the Russian war machine.

The key challenge resides not so much in the nature of support for Ukraine. It resides in the nature of support for the war within the countries that are backing Ukraine. In an age of social media and of image-driven emotionality, public opinion can be fickle. For Ukraine to succeed, global public opinion will have to hold strong on its behalf. This will depend, more than anything, on adept and patient political leadership.
PLAYING THE LONG GAME
Putin has many reasons not to end the war that he has started. He is nowhere near meeting his key objectives. So far, his armies have not performed well enough for Russia to force Ukraine’s capitulation, and Russia is very far from toppling the Ukrainian government. His failures have been humiliatingly public. Having abruptly retreated from the regions around Kyiv, the Russian military must watch as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hosts foreign visitors in the capital city and as embassies reopen. The sinking of the Russian warship Moskva, likely by Ukrainian missiles, is another highly visible example of Russia’s military embarrassments at the hands of Ukrainian forces. Putin has already paid a steep price for his invasion. From his perspective, any future peace agreement that doesn’t win major concessions from Ukraine would be out of proportion with the loss of life, loss of materiel, and international isolation Russia has experienced. Having mobilized Russians for war—evoking symbolic conflicts such as the Soviet Union’s Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany in the process—Putin may not settle for an inglorious peace.
Although the war has been a strategic mistake for Russia, Putin would probably damage himself politically by admitting to his blunder. Prior to his invasion of Ukraine, Russia still had a relationship with Europe and the United States, as well as a functioning economy. Ukraine was a formally nonaligned state with many internal divisions and vulnerabilities. There were no imminent plans to expand NATO in any direction. Mere weeks later, the war in Ukraine has destroyed Russia’s relationship with Europe and the United States. It will devastate the Russian economy over time, while pushing Ukraine further West. Finland and Sweden will probably join NATO this summer. Fighting a war to prevent alleged encirclement, Russia has instead solidified NATO and strengthened transatlantic ties. That will make it harder—not easier—for Putin to cut his losses in Ukraine.

If the war does not end any time soon, the crucial question is: Whose side is time on?
Putin may resort to a war of attrition, which holds several advantages for him. If he is to be defeated, he can defer defeat with a long war, and perhaps even hand the doomed conflict off to a successor. A long war also plays to some of Russia’s innate strengths. It would allow Russia the time to conscript and train hundreds of thousands of new soldiers, which could shift the outcome. Should the war last for years, the Russian military could rebuild its depleted forces, especially if Russia’s state budget remains stable—that is, if energy payments from Europe and elsewhere continue. Nor does Russia necessarily need battlefield wins to exert pressure on Kyiv, particularly if the war is drawn out. The World Bank has assessed Ukraine’s GDP losses in 2022 at 45 percent. Ukraine’s economic ruin is one of the war’s important, if less visible, outcomes.
A war of attrition might help Putin exert pressure on the transatlantic alliance, especially if support for Ukraine starts to wane in the West. Putin sees Western democracies as unstable and inefficient, and may be betting on political transitions in Europe or the United States as the strain of the war grows over time. If Donald Trump is reelected in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, he might try again to strike a deal with Russia, likely at the expense of NATO. A victory for Marine Le Pen in the second round of the French presidential elections on April 24 would likewise open doors for Putin. He is a dictator. Convinced that their hold on power is eternal, dictators can often afford to play the long game. Or at least they think they can.
DON’T JUMP THE GUN
Ukraine also has many reasons not to end the war through a premature cease-fire on Russian terms. Its military has performed superbly. Faced with an unprovoked attack by one of the world’s major military powers, Ukrainian forces repulsed Russia in the north and the northeast of the country. Russia lost the battle for Kyiv, and it has been unable to push beyond the southern city of Mykolaiv toward Odessa. Ukraine has shown that tenacity and morale, augmented by drones and modern antitank weapons, can fortify a military’s defensive capacities. Russia stands a decent chance of losing this war; Ukraine therefore stands a decent chance of settling the war on better terms than the unacceptably large concessions that Moscow currently wants from Kyiv.

It would be difficult for the government in Kyiv not to strive for better terms through further battlefield advances and a repulsion of Russia’s offensive in eastern Ukraine. Russia’s brutal prosecution of the war has complicated negotiations on a potential future cease-fire. Russia has targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure across Ukraine. It has committed war crimes and atrocities, including widespread sexual violence and the deportation of Ukrainian citizens to Russia. This has been a war on the people of Ukraine. One has to assume that any territory that Russia keeps will be subject to a vicious occupation. The Ukrainian government cannot accept such atrocities against its own population within its territory. A premature cease-fire on Russian terms would see Ukraine hand over some of the territory Russia has taken since the invasion began on February 24. It would involve Russia seizing a larger section of the Donbas than the chunk Russia cordoned off in 2014, and would possibly also include the cities of Kharkiv and Mariupol. Russia would also seek greater concessions on Ukraine’s military status. Zelensky has already agreed to not joining NATO. But disarming and demilitarizing the Ukrainian forces would constrain Ukrainian sovereignty both in the abstract and on the ground. Having pocketed these concessions, Russia could later restart the war against a “demilitarized” Ukrainian army to finish what it started.

Dictators can often afford to play the long game. Or at least they think they can.
Any concessions made by Kyiv would also have to be endorsed by the Ukrainian population. Ukraine is paying in blood for this terrible war. A deal with the devil may be perceived as worse than no deal at all. Zelensky has been successful in unifying the Ukrainian people and rallying support for Ukraine internationally—Ukrainian flags are now ubiquitous outside of Ukraine. The government and the population have drawn closer together, and the country is more cohesive than it was before the war. If there is anyone who can convince Ukrainians of a negotiated settlement, it is the charismatic and popular Zelensky. But he will need to present a deal with terms that are acceptable to the general public. Those conditions—allowing Ukraine to safeguard as much of its sovereignty, integrity, and security as it can—likely depend on further Ukrainian battlefield advances. The costs of a quick end to this war might well be much higher for Ukraine than for Russia. For Russia, ending the war on Ukraine’s terms risks damaging a dictator’s pride. For Ukraine, rushing to accept Russian terms endangers the well-being of its citizens and its existence as an independent state.
A long-term war nonetheless poses political challenges for Ukraine. If the war drags on for years, Ukraine will have to keep its political system intact and its democracy alive. The next presidential elections in Ukraine are scheduled for spring of 2024—exactly when the next Russian presidential elections will be held. But Russia’s election will be fake, and Ukraine’s will be real. As the political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville warned, “No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.” Ukraine will have to prove him wrong.
A LONG WAY FROM HOLLYWOOD
A drawn-out war in Ukraine would have profound consequences for the European continent. Europe would not be whole, free, and at peace. It would contain within itself a war zone charged with the threat of escalation. Russia’s armies are not in any condition to advance into Poland or the Baltic republics, but a jagged line of danger will run north to south, much less stable than the Iron Curtain of the Cold War era, demanding novel methods of defense by NATO. The exodus of Ukrainian refugees will continue, and with time migrants may decide to settle in Europe permanently.
A long-term war in Ukraine would also have consequences on a global scale. Were it to become entrenched, it would certainly exacerbate global hunger, given that Ukraine and Russia are major producers of foodstuffs such as wheat. Global hunger is a lever of global instability. In Africa and the Middle East, populations seemingly distant from Ukraine might find themselves in political crises generated by the knock-on effects of the war in Ukraine. This ugly reality will interrupt dreams of an elegant exit from the COVID-19 pandemic. Discrepancies in the international response to the conflict have already begun to emerge. Many countries see a double standard in the West’s enthusiastic reception of Ukrainian refugees and in the punishment of Russia for a war of choice when, as some observers have alleged, the United States has fought several such wars in recent years. Only 37 countries have levied sanctions on Russia, while 141 countries have condemned the invasion at the United Nations, a discrepancy that shows that not all members of the international community see eye to eye on the war in Ukraine.

Ukraine is paying in blood for this terrible war.
As the war drags on and the record of Russian brutality grows, sanctions will pile up and prices for commodities such as oil will continue to rise. The economic effects will be felt across Europe and be paid primarily by Europeans. Support for Ukraine may therefore wear thin the longer the war continues. Voices demanding that Ukraine should accept a cease-fire at any cost could become louder. Other conflicts, such as the war in Syria that has long faded from view, demonstrate that a never-ending war can become a nuisance to comfortable and distracted societies, receiving little more than neglect over time. Western politicians should take on this challenge proactively and explain why support for Ukraine is not just altruistic but actually fundamental to European security and to the future of free societies. This campaign in support of Ukraine will not be cost-free. But if Putin wins in Ukraine, he will be emboldened to expand the perimeter of Russian aggression.
Ukraine’s end goal is unambiguous. It is the preservation of Ukrainian independence and sovereignty. This is what the country deserves—and what Europe needs for its own security. Should Ukraine prevail, its sovereignty would set a crucial precedent for the advance of a stable, liberal international order. In no way should the United States and Europe push Kyiv toward a negotiated settlement. Nor should they block a settlement if Zelensky can find one acceptable to him and the Ukrainian population. But this may arise only after years of fighting. In the interim, U.S. and European leaders must explain to their publics what is at stake—for Ukrainians and for the world—in this war.

Most important, they need to articulate the value of a Ukrainian victory. The first eight weeks of war have occasionally brought to mind the motifs and stereotypes of a Hollywood movie. There is the villain—Putin—distant and pathologically alone at his long Kremlin table. There is a valiant hero—Zelensky—braving death to save his nation. There is the remarkable plot twist of Russian military incompetence and Ukrainian battlefield success. These moral and narrative arcs might suggest that there will be a happy ending—and perhaps there will be. If so, it will not come soon. Alert to the short attention spans of their constituents, political leaders in the countries supporting Ukraine should model their messages less on Hollywood screenplays, which traffic in instant gratification, and more on the wartime speeches of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, which counseled perseverance and never promised a quick victory. Kyiv will experience many setbacks in a war that will have far-reaching strategic, political, and humanitarian consequences. The United States and its allies must prepare to back Ukraine for the long haul.

Foreign Affairs · by Liana Fix and Michael Kimmage · April 20, 2022

26. Made in the Alliance

Excerpts:
The Biden administration can also use the crisis in Ukraine as an opportunity to reshape the military landscape and revitalize U.S. leadership on the continent. One element of that should be an increase in the size of the U.S. military presence in Europe. That should include enhancing the U.S. posture in the Baltic States, Poland, and Romania, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley recently suggested. The United States should set up permanent bases on the eastern flank of NATO to help reassure allies on the front lines of Russian aggression, significantly bolstering the pre-crisis rotational presence that numbered only in the low thousands. This could include at least three additional U.S. Army brigade-equivalent units permanently stationed in Poland, Romania, and Germany that would continually rotate through other vulnerable eastern flank nations, including the Baltics. This should be coupled with enhancing U.S. naval presence in the waters of the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic, increasing both consistent deployments and naval exercises with our Western partners.
NATO, meanwhile, can be enhanced both by welcoming Sweden and Finland, which are newly considering membership, and by tightening NATO ties with critical Pacific allies—turning the NATO alliance into an essential hub of Western military cooperation around the globe. The recent NATO announcement on enhanced cooperation with Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea was a good step. This cooperation should be codified in NATO’s Strategic Concept at the upcoming Madrid Summit in June, and include more frequent military exercises and exchanges, both in Europe and the Pacific.
Such steps are necessary even as the war in Ukraine continues to rage. The opportunity that the United States has today—to revitalize the transatlantic alliance for the long haul—won’t last long. If used wisely, it can reinforce military cooperation while building a super bloc of Western economies. Letting it slip by would be a massive—and unforced—strategic error.

Made in the Alliance
How to Shore up the Foundations of Transatlantic Solidarity
April 20, 2022
Foreign Affairs · by William H. McRaven, Peter Orszag, and Theodore Bunzel · April 20, 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has reinvigorated the Western alliance and bolstered transatlantic solidarity. After being declared “brain dead” by French President Emmanuel Macron in 2019, NATO has sprung to life, deploying forces to its eastern flank and coordinating the provision of sophisticated weapons that have helped Ukraine impede Russia’s invasion. For the first time in its history, the European Union has financed the purchase and delivery of lethal aid. Western countries have vastly exceeded expectations in implementing coordinated financial sanctions that have crippled Russia’s economy. Even neutral Switzerland joined the fray.
But no matter how remarkable this solidarity may be in the short term, there is no guarantee that it will last: if policymakers are complacent, powerful trends predating the Ukraine crisis could overwhelm and ultimately derail it. Protectionist sentiment and self-defeating trade wars have pulled at the seams of Western economic integration. Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to pull out of NATO and the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 have chipped away at military trust between the United States and Europe. A Marine Le Pen victory later this month in France would pose additional challenges to the alliance, and looming concerns about the 2024 presidential election raise doubts about the United States’ commitment.
If not managed intelligently, the reawakening of Europe as a diplomatic and military actor and the reexamination of global economic interdependence catalyzed by Russia’s invasion could result not in a strengthened transatlantic alliance but in a more worrying outcome: the emergence of three distinct blocs, one centered around the United States, a second around Europe, and a third around China (which would include Russia). Such a world—with the United States and Europe often collaborating, but also at odds when their interests diverge—would make the management of China and Russia more difficult, as the two would have opportunities to trigger and exploit U.S.-European tensions. It would also represent a major missed opportunity for the United States and Europe.
To avert such an outcome, Washington must move quickly to reverse the troubling trends in the transatlantic relationship—and thereby seize this opportunity to lock in renewed Western unity for the long haul. On the economic front, that will mean curbing economic nationalism and accelerating integration within the Western world—going from a “Made in the U.S.A.” mindset to a “Made in the Alliance” one. On the military front, it will require reversing the steady pullback of the United States from Europe and redoubling the U.S. military presence on and commitment to the continent. The events of the past few months have demonstrated the strength of the transatlantic alliance when its members act together. It would be a historic misstep not to harness the potential of that collaboration, shoring up the foundations of transatlantic unity—ensuring, among other things, that strengthened ties can survive whatever happens in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
POLITICAL ECONOMY
In recent years, Washington seems to have forgotten how economic cooperation can serve geopolitical ends. Over the past decade, and during the Trump administration in particular, the United States has instituted protectionist measures—from steep tariffs on allied goods to domestic content rules—that have undermined Western solidarity just when it is needed most. After World War II, the Bretton Woods system and the Marshall Plan underwrote postwar recovery while tightening geopolitical ties between the United States and Europe. And European integration—first through the 1957 European Economic Community, and then through its successor, the European Union—has fostered peace on the continent and brought former Warsaw Pact countries into the West.

Washington’s blind spot on transatlantic trade is especially problematic. Despite Europe’s importance as a strategic ally, and the fact that it is the United States’ largest trading and investment partner, the United States and the EU do not have a dedicated free trade agreement in place and trade frictions abound: as of January 2022, according to the World Trade Organization, the United States has engaged in significantly more trade disputes with the EU (55) than with China (39). Tensions were exacerbated in 2017, when the United States halted efforts to forge the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and a year later when Trump launched a high-profile trade war with allies in Europe (and beyond), slapping tariffs on solar panels, washing machines, steel, and aluminum.
The United States has more recently made good progress in patching up trade ties with its allies. It resolved the 17-year dispute with the EU over subsidies to Boeing and Airbus; eased steel and aluminum tariffs on the EU and United Kingdom (as well as Japan); and in September 2021 launched the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council, a new body designed to coordinate policy on critical technologies and deepen transatlantic trade and economic relations. Yet many disputes remain unresolved. Washington, for example, still needs to implement the global minimum tax agreed to with OECD countries in October 2021, as part of a deal to end European digital taxes aimed at U.S. technology companies.

Washington’s blind spot on transatlantic trade is especially problematic.
Domestic content rules are another unnecessary source of tension. In March, the Biden administration announced expanded “Buy American” provisions that increased domestic content requirements for federal procurement from 55 percent today to 75 percent by 2029. These rules not only cause friction with U.S. allies; they also cost the U.S. government $100 billion annually, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
What such policies fail to take into account is that trade with most U.S. allies has a very different economic impact in trade with countries with markedly lower per capita GDP. Economists have debated the scale of the “China shock”—the role of Chinese exports in causing job loss in domestic manufacturing and dragging down wages—but whatever the outcome of that debate, it is not directly relevant to trade with NATO allies such as Canada, France, or the United Kingdom. These are developed economies with high wages and generally stringent labor and environmental standards, and so the effects of trade with them on low- and middle-income American workers is very different than the effects of trade with developing countries. The politics are different, as well: majorities of Americans view trade with the EU (as well as with Canada and Japan) as “fair,” while only 30 percent say same about trade with China.
TRUST CAN’T BE SURGED
“There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies,” British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said, “and that is fighting without them.” Even when their value is clear, alliances are hard to establish and even harder to maintain. The glue of any coalition is trust among its members, and trust can’t be surged in a crisis—it must be built up over time. For over 70 years, NATO’s members have built up trust; in spite of much political bickering and animosity, Washington’s NATO allies have trusted the United States and respected its leadership. Yet in the years before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this hard-won trust had begun to erode.
At the height of the Cold War, the U.S. military presence in Europe was around a half million troops. Today, the Ukraine crisis has temporarily pushed the U.S. military presence in Europe to 100,000 troops, but fewer than 40,000 soldiers are permanently stationed on the continent. Trump’s threats to withdraw from NATO and his administration’s effort to close military bases and reduce the U.S. presence in Europe were never fully executed, but the message it sent to U.S. allies was damning. More recently, the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan left NATO allies in the lurch, struggling to justify their involvement with the United States over the past 20 years after being caught off guard by the speed and timing of the pullout.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has steeled the Western military alliance and reinforced the importance of NATO. But despite the unity now on display, those ties could fray in the months and years ahead. Germany’s pledge to dramatically increase defense expenditure marks a fundamental turning point in European security, setting Berlin on the path toward becoming the world’s third-largest military spender, behind the United States and China. The EU, meanwhile, has taken tentative steps toward greater defense cooperation, with the creation of a rapid reaction force as part of its Strategic Compass concept. And Macron has used the Ukraine crisis to reiterate calls for “strategic autonomy,” declaring, “We cannot depend on others to defend us.”
Greater European defense spending and enhanced capabilities are good for the alliance and should be encouraged. But unless they are coupled with more vigorous U.S. engagement, they could sharpen disagreements between the United States and Europe, and even exacerbate tensions within the continent, as countries on the EU’s eastern flank still look to Washington, rather than Brussels, as the primary guarantor of their security.
BROADENING THE FRAME
The Ukraine crisis presents a generational opportunity to reinforce the economic foundations of the Western alliance and to begin building a super bloc of Western economic power. The United States and Europe together represent around 40 percent of global GDP; add U.S. allies such as Japan, the United Kingdom, and Canada and this bloc accounts for more than half of global GDP. Crushing financial sanctions on Russia have demonstrated the economic power of the alliance and its ability to inflict devastating costs on its adversaries. The war has also turbocharged transatlantic cooperation on energy, prompting an increase in natural gas exports from the United States to Europe: at one point in January, U.S. exports to Europe were even higher than those from Russia. This momentum should be harnessed to strengthen trade and economic ties that endure beyond the current crisis.
That will require broadening the frame of U.S. economic thinking, to encompass the broader alliance rather than just the United States. Policies to increase economic resilience and enhance competitiveness in key industries of the future—such as semiconductors and green technologies—should involve Western allies and partners, rather than prioritizing narrow U.S. economic interests. One way to encourage greater integration would be to strengthen coordination on screening related to national security concerns. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) plays a central role in facilitating foreign investment, requiring, for example, mandatory filings and review for investments in critical technologies. The current CFIUS “safe harbor” for investments from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom eases transactions with those countries by removing bureaucratic friction. This safe harbor should be extended to other key allies, such as France, Germany, and Japan.
Another way to enhance integration would be through a commitment to resolving outstanding trade disputes and removing economic irritants, including by rethinking the role of domestic content requirements. Federal procurement rules could encourage inputs from allied rather than just domestic suppliers, moving from “Buy American” to “Buy Allied.” This could be accomplished through a collective procurement agreement, which would reciprocally open allied government procurement to U.S. products. The electric vehicle tax credits currently under consideration in Congress, similarly, could be extended to apply to vehicles made in allied countries or with allied content, rather than just American content.
The reorganization of supply chains—given the shock of the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and growing tensions with China—presents a related opportunity. Some of this process is happening organically, but it is being shaped by public policy: the Biden administration’s 100-day supply chain review in June 2021, for example, resulted in a number of initiatives meant to shift production, of everything from critical medicines to advanced batteries, closer to home. As the world reconfigures supply chains, there is an opportunity to reinforce alliance relationships by incentivizing greater reliance on Western partners. The United States and the EU should accelerate supply chain cooperation initiated by the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Council, focusing, for example, on interalliance coordination on the mining and processing of critical minerals necessary for renewable technologies. And U.S. lawmakers should enhance allied partnership provisions in the innovation and competition bill currently under negotiation in Congress, including the creation of an interagency Technology Partnership office at the State Department to facilitate cooperation with allies and increasing funding for research in collaboration with other Western partners. As Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen noted recently, “Favoring the friend-shoring of supply chains to a large number of trusted countries …will lower the risks to our economy as well as to our trusted trade partners. We should also consider building a network of plurilateral trade arrangements to incorporate elements of the modern economy that are growing in economic importance, especially digital services.”
THE SUPER BLOC
The Biden administration can also use the crisis in Ukraine as an opportunity to reshape the military landscape and revitalize U.S. leadership on the continent. One element of that should be an increase in the size of the U.S. military presence in Europe. That should include enhancing the U.S. posture in the Baltic States, Poland, and Romania, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley recently suggested. The United States should set up permanent bases on the eastern flank of NATO to help reassure allies on the front lines of Russian aggression, significantly bolstering the pre-crisis rotational presence that numbered only in the low thousands. This could include at least three additional U.S. Army brigade-equivalent units permanently stationed in Poland, Romania, and Germany that would continually rotate through other vulnerable eastern flank nations, including the Baltics. This should be coupled with enhancing U.S. naval presence in the waters of the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic, increasing both consistent deployments and naval exercises with our Western partners.
NATO, meanwhile, can be enhanced both by welcoming Sweden and Finland, which are newly considering membership, and by tightening NATO ties with critical Pacific allies—turning the NATO alliance into an essential hub of Western military cooperation around the globe. The recent NATO announcement on enhanced cooperation with Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea was a good step. This cooperation should be codified in NATO’s Strategic Concept at the upcoming Madrid Summit in June, and include more frequent military exercises and exchanges, both in Europe and the Pacific.
Such steps are necessary even as the war in Ukraine continues to rage. The opportunity that the United States has today—to revitalize the transatlantic alliance for the long haul—won’t last long. If used wisely, it can reinforce military cooperation while building a super bloc of Western economies. Letting it slip by would be a massive—and unforced—strategic error.
  • WILLIAM H. MCRAVEN, a Senior Adviser at Lazard, is a retired Navy Admiral and was Commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command from 2011 to 2014.
  • PETER ORSZAG is the Chief Executive Officer of Financial Advisory at Lazard. He was Director of the Office of Management and Budget from 2009 to 2010 and Director of the Congressional Budget Office from 2007 to 2008.
  • THEODORE BUNZEL, the head of Lazard Geopolitical Advisory, has worked in the political section of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and at the U.S. Treasury Department.
  • MORE BY WILLIAM H. MCRAVENMORE BY PETER R. ORSZAGMORE BY THEODORE BUNZEL
Foreign Affairs · by William H. McRaven, Peter Orszag, and Theodore Bunzel · April 20, 2022

27. Fahrenheit 2022: A Spasm of Book Banning

Again what has become of us? Why all the book banning? Are we so afraid of controversial and contrary ideas?  

I wonder when these culture warriors are going to start going after online flames and online speech that children are exposed to. Most young people are not getting much exposure to these types of books but the information they can access online is unbelievable. Does anyone check and see what kind of YouTube videos children are accessing?

Banning books is a feel good experience for culture warriors and does nothing to positively influence the development of our youth.

Fahrenheit 2022: A Spasm of Book Banning
morningshots.thebulwark.com · by Charlie Sykes
(Shutterstock)
In Florida, state education officials have rejected dozens of math texts because they allegedly include prohibited references to race; bookstores refuse to carry novels by J.K. Rowling; legislatures continue to create lists of prohibited books; and in scenes that would make Mencken’s ghost howl, smut-hunting illiterati across the country have risen up against public libraries.
In one Texas town, reports the Washington Post, censorious activists “have taken works as seemingly innocuous as the popular children’s picture book ‘In the Night Kitchen’ by Maurice Sendak off the shelves, closed library board meetings to the public and … stacked [them] with conservative appointees — some of whom did not even have library cards.”
With these actions, Llano joins a growing number of communities across America where conservatives have mounted challenges to books and other content related to race, sex, gender and other subjects they deem inappropriate.
A movement that started in schools has rapidly expanded to public libraries, accounting for 37 percent of book challenges last year, according to the American Library Association. Conservative activists in several states, including Texas, Montana and Louisiana have joined forces with like-minded officials to dissolve libraries’ governing bodies, rewrite or delete censorship protections, and remove books outside of official challenge procedures.
We are indeed in the midst of aThe free speech advocates at PEN have documented 1,586 instances of individual books being banned in 86 school districts in 26 states. The group is also warning that bills banning “critical race theory” threaten free speech in schools.
“These bills appear designed to chill academic and educational discussions and impose government dictates on teaching and learning,” the report says. “In short: They are educational gag orders.”
“Taken together,” it continues, “the efforts amount to a sweeping crusade for content- and viewpoint-based state censorship.”
But, as I wrote earlier this year, the New York Times report includes this jarring line: “In invoking free speech, PEN is staking its approach on a principle that has lost its luster for some on the left, even while many on the right — including politicians advocating these bills — have invoked it as a mantra.”
Free speech has lost its luster for some on the left.
And, of course, thereby hangs a tale, but not an especially new one in the woolier precincts of the anti-liberal left, where speech codes, trigger warnings, and safe spaces have been a thing for some time now.
So, in Burbank, California, teachers “will no longer be able to teach a handful of classic novels” because of concerns over racism.
Until further notice, teachers in the area will not be able to include on their curriculum Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, Theodore Taylor's The Cay and Mildred D. Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.
In today’s New York Times, Sungjoo Yoon, a junior at Burbank High School, writes about the intellectual intolerance behind the proscription of those classic books, and notes:
One fact often overlooked in these disputes is that both conservatives and liberals engage in book banning and removal when it suits their political goals. Burbank is a liberal stronghold where the majority of voters in the last five presidential elections cast ballots for Democrats….
Cue the outrage for his flagrant act of bothsidesism. But the problem is real.
Just ask J.K. Rowling.
After the bestselling author of the Harry Potter series voiced support for a British tax specialist fired for “transphobic tweets,” a number of independent bookshops announced that they would no longer carry any of her books.
In response to what they regard as hate speech, three mission-driven indie bookstores have decided to stop stocking Rowling's books. While these stores acknowledge some impact upon their bottom line, all three owners speaking to PW emphasize that they have no obligation to provide shelf space to authors whose views contradict their personal philosophies and their stores' missions.
Their position won support from progressive librarians, including one writer for the “Intellectual Freedom Blog,” published by the (checks notes) “Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association,” who defended the unstocking of Rowling’s books.
“Once again,” she wrote of the Rowling book ban, “we have a case of private businesses choosing to not support a cause or belief that goes against their values…”
“Curation is the key. Independent bookstores are curators of literature. They are not libraries. If libraries were to remove Rowling’s books, that would certainly be considered censorship.”
But nota bene: the objection here is not to anything in the books themselves. The booksellers object to Rowling’s opinions that were expressed on Twitter and in a blog post — and decided to take their umbrage out on the books.
Sometimes the objections are more direct. Flashback to this episode of progressive illiberalism:
A few months ago, the American Booksellers Association issued this statement of performative groveling:

The “serious, violent incident” here was sending out copies of this book:

The author of the offending book, Abigail Shrier, writes for the Wall Street Journal and is a graduate of Columbia College, Oxford University, and Yale Law School. Her book is obviously controversial, but it was named one of the best books of the year by The Economist and one of the best of 2021 by the Times of London.
But her book triggered opponents, who demanded that it be suppressed.
After receiving two Twitter complaints, Target stopped selling the book (a decision they later reversed . . . and then reversed again). Hundreds of Amazon employees signed a petition demanding the company stop selling the book.
Even the ACLU seemed to break bad on the idea that the book should be available in the marketplace of ideas. Chase Strangio, the American Civil Liberties Union’s deputy director for transgender justice, tweeted: “Abigail Shrier’s book is a dangerous polemic with a goal of making people not trans. . . . We have to fight these ideas which are leading to the criminalization of trans life again.”
He declared: “Stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on.”
Shrier commented: “You read that right: Some in today’s ACLU favor book banning. Grace Lavery, a professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, went further, tweeting: ‘I DO encourage followers to steal Abigail Shrier’s book and burn it on a pyre.’
“This,” Shrier wrote, “is where leftist extremism, encouraged by cowardly corporations, leads.”
**
To be sure, there are crucial distinctions to be drawn here between state action and decisions by private actors. There is a legitimate distinction between the decisions made by public libraries and bookstores.
The First Amendment protects books only against government censorship. And so, the argument will go, there is no equivalency between the heavy-handed actions of legislatures and school boards and the opinions of individual booksellers.
This is all true.
But that misses the heart of the current danger: the absence of robust support for the idea that even offensive speech needs protection; that words are not violence; and that sensitivities should not be the basis of censorship.
Illiberal progressives have very different objections than the right-wing critics, but they unfortunately share the premise of the censor: that we need to be protected from dangerous/offensive ideas/books/speech.
As long as that is the case, the fight against illiberal attacks on books will continue to be a two-front war.

28. How Diverse Democracies Can Protect Their Citizens

Something we should ponder.

Excerpts:

To be truly free, citizens of diverse democracies must know that they will not experience hostility or discrimination based on the color of their skin; that they can worship as they please; and that they are, if they so wish, free to spend most of their lives within the ethnic or religious communities into which they were born. Guaranteeing their citizens’ freedom from oppression by an out-group is a key task of a liberal state. But citizens of diverse democracies must also know that they will be free to leave the group into which they were born; to violate its norms without fear of suffering destitution, violence, or death at the hands of their own elders; and to define themselves by the identities and associations they themselves choose. Any state that neglects its citizens’ freedom from coercion by their own group neglects an equally important precondition of meaningful self-determination.
Citizens need to benefit from all the institutional innovations that have historically proved capable of keeping a tyrannical state at bay and know that the communities to which they belong will be able to practice their customs in peace. And they must also be able to call upon the assistance of the state to defend them against any private groups that might, against their will, enclose them in a cage of norms. Only a diverse democracy built on the principles of philosophical liberalism is capable of protecting both of these core values at the same time.

How Diverse Democracies Can Protect Their Citizens
Only liberal values can ensure true freedom.
The Atlantic · by Yascha Mounk · April 19, 2022
Sometime in late 2017 or early 2018, Saif Ali Khan, a 22-year-old fruit vendor who made his living in the markets of Bikaner, in northwest India, met a young woman who lived in a nearby neighborhood. They fell in love and resolved to get married. Then the family of the would-be bride discovered the couple’s plans.
Horrified that their daughter, a Hindu, would start a relationship with Khan, a Muslim, the bride’s parents hastily arranged a more “suitable” match and sent her to stay with family in Rampura Basti, about two miles away. But Khan and his lover were not willing to give up so easily. They decided to elope.
This piece is excerpted from Mounk’s recent book.
The instant Khan arrived at the house in Rampura Basti, six men set upon him. After beating him bloody and unconscious, his lover’s relatives drove him to Karni Industrial Area, at the edge of Bikaner, and dumped him in a pool of wastewater. “They hit him mercilessly and broke his legs,” Khan’s brother, Asmal, would later tell a local journalist. “They drove their car over his legs and left him in the drain.” By the next morning, he had succumbed to his injuries.
The history of the 20th century has focused the minds of philosophers and social scientists on the oppressive powers of modern states. But a more long-standing, and equally potent, danger to individual liberty is the so-called cage of norms.
As Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson argue in The Narrow Corridor, the absence of a state need not result in a life of anarchy that is “nasty, brutish, and short.” To maintain some semblance of social order “in societies without centralized authority,” unwritten rules often exercise “a different but no less disempowering sort of dominance on people.” They tell people how they ought to worship and what they can wear, whether they may speak and what they should say, when they can have sex and whom they must marry.
Developed democracies have abolished many of the practices that Acemoglu and Robinson describe. But even today, members of tight-knit ethnic or religious communities can, like Saif Ali Khan, be subject to the power of their communities in horrific ways. In diverse democracies around the world, the cage of norms persists, entrapping fundamentalist Christians in Topeka who are forced to attend “conversion therapy,” Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn who lose the right to see their children if they leave their community, Somali women in northern Sweden who suffer genital mutilation, and Turkish women in Berlin who fear being murdered in an “honor killing.”
On what basis can diverse democracies protect their citizens from coercion—both by the state and by members of their own groups?
Absolute power, as they say, corrupts absolutely. That’s why the history of liberal democracy is, in good part, the history of imposing creative limits on the state.
Over the course of centuries, three kinds of limits on state power evolved. Regular elections allow citizens to remove leaders from office when they grow unpopular. The separation of powers helps make sure that elections will be free and fair. But these institutional innovations are not enough to ensure that citizens lead lives that are meaningfully free, because an intolerant majority can push even fairly elected governments to oppress minority groups. A third feature is therefore needed to protect minority groups from both the state and the tyranny of the majority: the recognition that there is a sphere of life in which everybody should be able to do what they like without having to worry about anyone else’s opinion.
Taken together, regular elections, the separation of powers, and individual rights go a long way toward protecting citizens against the dominant power of the state. But do these core institutions of liberal democracy also allow individuals to orient their lives around the deep ties many of them have to their own communities—or do they, as some critics of liberalism claim, assume too atomistic an understanding of human nature?
Communitarians believe that they are in a better position than liberals to respect the deep importance that cultural ties play in the lives of many people. Rather than thinking of diverse democracies as composed of individual citizens, communitarians propose, we should conceptualize them as loose federations of ethnic and religious communities.
A diverse democracy that embraces communitarianism would seemingly do well at upholding one plausible goal of diverse democracies: ensuring that cultural or religious communities can thrive. Recognizing, say, the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations as basic building blocks of society would grant them far-reaching rights and privileges.
But how should a diverse democracy go about determining which groups should enjoy official recognition and which are too new or too small or too “frivolous” to count as one of its basic building blocks? How can it ensure that the leaders of these groups actually speak for their members? And what happens to the many people who don’t neatly fit into any recognized group?
An even bigger problem is that such a communitarian conception would, even as it seemingly protects people from persecution and allows them to be true to their inherited identity, make it impossible for people to chart their own course through life. Individuals who do not agree with the customs of the communities into which they are born would, like Saif Ali Khan, be left at the mercy of an oppressive cage of norms.
States that conceive of themselves as a mere “association of associations” have no apparent justification for interfering in the “internal” affairs of such groups. This means that they would have to stand aside when groups fail to tolerate internal dissent, render their children incapable of living a self-determined life, or stop those who want to strike out on their own from exiting the group. If you are a gay man born into a Christian cult that believes homosexuality to be evil, or an intellectually curious child born into a Hasidic sect that discourages you from pursuing a secular education, you will have to get used to living within the cage constructed by “your” association.
Liberals can do better than communitarians and other rival philosophical traditions at reconciling the desire of many citizens to be true to their identity with their need to be free from the cage of norms. In the liberal view, diverse democracies are constituted by a broad variety of individuals, not a set of groups. They should be committed to protecting the core freedoms of these individuals. A just democracy has a legitimate reason, and even an obligation, to step in when ethnic or religious groups attempt to coerce their own members.
Critics claim that this emphasis on individuals makes classical liberals incapable of appreciating the importance that groups play in the lives of so many people. But liberals have deep respect for the importance of family, religion, and tradition in contemporary societies. They are fully aware that many citizens lead their lives in accordance with norms they consider dictates of conscience. In fact, this is precisely why liberals are so concerned with protecting the kinds of guarantees of personal liberty, such as freedom of speech and worship, that ensure that citizens won’t be forced to abdicate their innermost beliefs.
This is also why liberal states across the world should—and do—allow their citizens to structure their lives around their cultural and religious commitments in ways that the majority might at times feel to be extreme. So long as they provide pupils with enough secular education to give them genuine choices for how to lead their lives once they become adults, religious communities can establish schools that instruct children in the traditions of their faith. Citizens who genuinely feel that serving in the army would violate their conscience enjoy exemptions from compulsory military service. And when communities like the Amish decide to live in great isolation from the customs of mainstream society, nobody forces them to use modern technology or mingle with their neighbors.
But for liberals, this deep respect for cultural or religious communities ultimately derives from the commitments of their members. If liberals respect Baptist churches or the Muslim faith or the Humanist Union, they do so not because they regard these groups as the founding units of our society, but because these groups hold tremendous significance to millions of people.
To be truly free, citizens of diverse democracies must know that they will not experience hostility or discrimination based on the color of their skin; that they can worship as they please; and that they are, if they so wish, free to spend most of their lives within the ethnic or religious communities into which they were born. Guaranteeing their citizens’ freedom from oppression by an out-group is a key task of a liberal state. But citizens of diverse democracies must also know that they will be free to leave the group into which they were born; to violate its norms without fear of suffering destitution, violence, or death at the hands of their own elders; and to define themselves by the identities and associations they themselves choose. Any state that neglects its citizens’ freedom from coercion by their own group neglects an equally important precondition of meaningful self-determination.
Citizens need to benefit from all the institutional innovations that have historically proved capable of keeping a tyrannical state at bay and know that the communities to which they belong will be able to practice their customs in peace. And they must also be able to call upon the assistance of the state to defend them against any private groups that might, against their will, enclose them in a cage of norms. Only a diverse democracy built on the principles of philosophical liberalism is capable of protecting both of these core values at the same time.
This piece is excerpted from Mounk’s forthcoming book,
​​When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.
The Atlantic · by Yascha Mounk · April 19, 2022

29. AOC Running for President in 2024? Here's Why It Could Happen


I offer this not from a partisan perspective supporting any party or potential candidate. But I think both the Democratic and Republican parties suffer from too many old people in power (and I can say that since I am a senior citizen). Both would benefit from younger leadership. I think a good race in 2024 would be between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Adam Kinzinger.

We should also consider the average ages of some of the most brilliant thinkers in history, our Founding Fathers: 

As it turns out, many Founding Fathers were younger than 40 years old in 1776, with several qualifying as Founding Teenagers or Twentysomethings. And though the average age of the signers of the Declaration of Independence was 44, more than a dozen of them were 35 or younger.


AOC Running for President in 2024? Here's Why It Could Happen
19fortyfive.com · by ByW. James Antle III · April 19, 2022
AOC vs. Biden in 2024? A recent Quinnipiac poll was filled with bad news for President Joe Biden. His job approval rating among all Americans was at just 33 percent. Among registered voters alone, it was barely better at 35 percent. But two numbers should especially terrify Democrats.
Biden’s support among young voters was abysmal. Only 21 percent of the 18-34 age group approved of the job he was doing as president while an eye-popping 58 percent disapproved. Only 26 percent of Hispanics said they approved while 54 percent disapproved.
The president won both voting blocs in 2020. And even if you take these numbers with a grain of salt, it will be hard for the Democrats to avoid sweeping losses this November, much less two years from now, without strong turnout from younger and Hispanic voters.
Perhaps Democrats do have someone on their bench who could turn these numbers around: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or as the kids like to say, AOC.
The liberal Squad leader is young, but she will turn 35 shortly before the 2024 presidential election. The Democratic Party’s gerontocracy could be a reason for the slippage with the youths. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Majority Whip James Clyburn are all over 80; Biden will celebrate his 80th birthday shortly after the midterms this year.
Ocasio-Cortez is also Hispanic. She has been outspoken about what considers the party’s “really disgraceful” lack of Latino representation in leadership. There’s an obvious way for her to help rectify the problem.
Biden has reportedly already told former President Barack Obama that he is planning on running for reelection in 2024. He wouldn’t easily surrender the job he has been pining for since before Ocasio-Cortez was born. But unless his numbers rebound, a Democratic primary challenge cannot be ruled out.
It would be logical for that challenge to come from the left. That’s where the last serious primary bid against a sitting Democratic president came from, when Sen. Ted Kennedy took on the similarly inflation-plagued Jimmy Carter. Sen. Bernie Sanders has just mounted two consecutive progressive challenges to the party establishment, taking on Biden in 2020 and Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Progressives would like to build on that momentum, but should look to get younger at the position. Already 80, Sanders is older than Biden. An even semi-successful challenger would need to run a vigorous, youthful campaign in contrast with Biden, who has clearly lost a step. Even if Biden cannot be dislodged, the campaign would be a good movement-building exercise for an ascendant but frustrated wing of the party.
While Republicans hammer Biden for his liberal record, there is also an opening on the left to hit him for all the progressive things that remain undone. No Build Back Backer, no filibuster reform and therefore no voting bills. No Supreme Court expansion. Yes, a lot of that is because the Senate is evenly split and reliant on the votes of its least liberal Democrats. But left-wingers also regard Biden as unimaginative and too wedded to outdated concepts about bipartisanship and Washington institutions.
AOC is also a prodigious fundraiser and organizer. She could mobilize people Biden can’t. And while Biden or another establishment Democrat would likely have a convincing financial edge, she could raise enough money to stay competitive.
All this amounts to the case for AOC in 2024. The downsides of her running would be equally huge. She’s never run outside of a deep, blue district before. A national campaign is a very different animal.
While Ocasio-Cortez is adept at creating viral moments, it’s not clear how she would do under serious media scrutiny. Up until now, she has mostly gotten flattering press outside of conservative publications. That would change if she took on Biden.
Then there is the matter of what would happen if she won the nomination. At a fundamental level, her candidacy would be a rejection of the voters’ main reasons for turning on Biden — that he is too liberal — and leaning heavily into the position that he has failed because he hasn’t been left-wing enough.
AOC represents all the trends — wokeness, defunding the police, abolishing immigration enforcement, cultural radicalism — that have driven working-class voters, including a nontrivial number of Hispanics, away from the Democratic Party. But as an overt socialist, she has none of the guardrails that have made it safe for suburbanites to vote blue.
Democrats themselves have recoiled in horror at the prospect of such a nominee. When Sanders looked like he might have a real shot at heading into the general election, Democrats — especially black voters — turned out in droves, fearing the worst electoral drubbing since George McGovern’s 49-state landslide loss in 1972.
That’s how we ended up with Joe Biden.
Now a 1945 Contributing Editor, W. James Antle III is the Washington Examiner’s politics editor. He was previously managing editor of the Daily Caller, associate editor of the American Spectator, and senior writer for the American Conservative. He is the author of Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped? You can follow home on Twitter: @Jimantle.
19fortyfive.com · by ByW. James Antle III · April 19, 2022

V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Personal Email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
Web Site: www.fdd.org
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
VIDEO "WHEREBY" Link: https://whereby.com/david-maxwell
Subscribe to FDD’s new podcastForeign Podicy
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Personal Email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
Web Site: www.fdd.org
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Subscribe to FDD’s new podcastForeign Podicy
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

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

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