Quotes of the Day:
"Democracy refuses to think strategically unless and until compelled to do so for the purpose of defense."
- Sir Halford John Mackinder, British Strategist and Geographer
"Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do."
- Voltaire
"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for."
- Epicurus
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JUNE 15 (PUTIN'S WAR)
2. $1 Billion in Additional Security Assistance for Ukraine
3. More Than 50 Nations Pledge to Help Build Ukraine
4. One of President Zelenskyy's top advisers told NPR what Ukraine wants
5. Ukraine finds itself outnumbered as Russia advances in the Donbas
6. American veterans in Ukraine tell NATO how to end Russian "slugfest"
7. The U.S. overestimated Russia’s military might. Is it underestimating China’s?
8. The Defense Production Act is helping rebuild the US industrial base. Let’s keep it that way.
9. Russia's growing Ukraine occupation partisan resistance problem
10. Retired Army generals join nonprofit which urges public to recommit to democracy: "This is as dangerous a time as we've seen in our lifetime"
11. Who is Deterring Whom? The Place of Nuclear Weapons in Modern War
12. How Russia telegraphed invasion of Ukraine in space and online
13. Nighttime U.S. Helicopter Raid Captures 'Senior Daesh Leader' In Syria
14. Opinion | The U.S. Is Losing Its Military Edge in Asia, and China Knows It
15. Latvian foreign minister says European leaders should not fear provoking Putin and must not push Ukraine to make concessions
16. Russia Might Try Reckless Cyber Attacks as Ukraine War Drags On, US Warns
17. The UN continues Israel-bashing after Biden promised to stop it
18. What would a Chinese strategy of restraint look like?
19. Lawmakers order Army to create separate fitness standard for combat specialties
20. Why Do People Hate Realism So Much?
21. The Consequences of Conquest - Why Indo-Pacific Power Hinges on Taiwan
22. U.S. veterans missing in Ukraine, feared captured, families say
23. Military postal system plans to end mail privileges for overseas military retirees
24. Learning the Wrong Lessons: The Blind Spots in the US Approach to Foreign Military Training
25. The future of global security will be decided in Ukraine
26. Broadening the Quad’s appeal in the Indo-Pacific
27. When the Army Stopped Serving Beer, American Beer Barons Bought a Round for Freedom
28. The Army is asking for a new $34M gun range at Fort Bragg; here's why
29. What the invasion of Ukraine has revealed about the nature of modern warfare
30. Werner Herzog's new novel is a story of the jungle and obsession and delusion
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JUNE 15 (PUTIN'S WAR)
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JUNE 15
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 15
Karolina Hird, Kateryna Stepanenko, Mason Clark, and Grace Mappes
June 15, 6pm ET
Click here to see ISW's interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
Western officials announced additional military aid for Ukraine on June 15. US President Joe Biden pledged $1 billion worth of military aid, including coastal defense weapons, advanced rocket systems, artillery, and ammunition to support Ukrainian operations.[1] NATO members additionally announced they will additionally continue to provide Ukraine with heavy weapons and long-range systems and plan to agree on a new assistance package after consultations with Ukraine’s Defense Ministry.[2] This newest round of military aid will be invaluable to support Ukrainian operations, especially in the face of increasingly protracted and artillery-heavy fighting against Russian in Eastern Ukraine, though Ukraine will require further sustained support.
Key Takeaways
- Russian forces launched ground assaults in Severodonetsk and settlements in its vicinity but have not taken full control over the city as of June 15.
- Russian forces launched largely unsuccessful offensive operations around the T1302 Bakhmut-Lysychansk highway in an effort to cut Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Lysychansk.
- Russian forces continued efforts to advance along the E40 highway to Slovyansk and southeast of Izyum.
- Russian and Ukrainian forces continued to fight in northeastern settlements around Kharkiv City.
- Russian forces continued to fortify fallback positions in Zaporizhia and Kherson Oblasts, while undertaking defensive measures to strengthen Russian presence in the Black Sea.
- The Kremlin and proxy republics continue to pursuit ad hoc annexation policies in occupied territories.
We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because those activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.
- Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and three supporting efforts);
- Subordinate Main Effort—Encirclement of Ukrainian troops in the cauldron between Izyum and Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts
- Supporting Effort 1—Kharkiv City;
- Supporting Effort 2—Southern Axis;
- Activities in Russian-occupied Areas
Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine
Subordinate Main Effort—Southern Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk Oblasts (Russian objective: Encircle Ukrainian forces in Eastern Ukraine and capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
Russian forces continued ground assaults in and around Severodonetsk but have not yet captured the Azot industrial plant or taken full control of the city as of June 15.[3] Russian forces have largely isolated Ukrainian troops in Severodonetsk from their lines of communication and are attacking Severodonetsk from multiple directions.[4] Russia troops also conducted an unsuccessful assault in Toshkivka, likely to drive northwards towards Lysychansk instead of conducting an opposed river crossing after having destroyed bridge access to Lysychansk from Severodonetsk.[5] Russian forces continued to fire on settlements surrounding Severodonetsk to further isolate Ukrainian troops and complicate their withdrawal or re-supply efforts.[6]
Russian forces continued offensive operations towards Slovyansk from the southeast of Izyum and made incremental gains on June 15.[7] A Russian Telegram channel claimed that Russian forces captured Dolyna, about 20 kilometers northwest of Slovyansk along the E40 (also known as the M03) highway.[8] Russian forces additionally continued fighting in Dolyna in Krasnopillya and are likely using their positions around Bohorodychne to launch operations to the southeast along the E40 highway.[9]
Russian forces continued ground assaults east of Bakhmut and made marginal gains along the critical T1302 Bakhmut-Lysychansk highway on June 15. Russian forces reportedly broke through Ukrainian defenses in Vrubivka and are fighting for control of Mykolaivka, Yasylivka, Yakovlikva, and Berestove, all settlements within 10 kilometers of the T1302.[10] The Ukrainian General Staff additionally noted that Russian forces re-deployed one battalion tactical group (BTG) to the Bakhmut area from Kupyansk and deployed unspecified elements of the 8th Combined Arms Army to the Komyshuvakha-Popasna area.[11] This deployment to the Bakhmut area indicates that Russian forces are increasingly prioritizing their force grouping around Bakhmut in order to drive up the T1302 highway and complete the encirclement of Lysychansk and Severodonetsk.
Russian forces may be staging false flag attacks around Donetsk City to dissuade pro-Ukrainian sentiment. Local residents of Donetsk City and Makiivka reported heavy shelling of infrastructure within both cities.[12] Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) authorities accused Ukrainian forces of conducting the artillery strikes, but social media users and the Ukrainian Center for Counteracting Disinformation denied these claims and stated that they were likely perpetrated by Russian troops in order to foster anti-Ukrainian sentiments or encourage mobilization into proxy forces.[13] These potential false flag attacks may be a response to statements made by Western officials on June 15 announcing increasing military aid for Ukraine.[14]
Supporting Effort #1—Kharkiv City (Russian objective: Withdraw forces to the north and defend ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Izyum)
Russian forces continued ground assaults northeast of Kharkiv City to push Ukrainian troops away from occupied frontiers near the Russian border on June 15.[15] Russian forces are likely fighting in Rubizhne (in Kharkiv, not Luhansk Oblast), Tsupivka, Ternova, Staryi Saltiv, and Verkhnii Saltiv.[16] Russian troops continued to fire on settlements around Kharkiv City.[17]
Supporting Effort #2—Southern Axis (Objective: Defend Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts against Ukrainian counterattacks)
Russian forces continued to focus on defensive operations in preparation for potential Ukrainian counterattacks along the Southern Axis on June 15.[18] The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Russian forces are improving their engineering equipment around two settlements just southeast of Davydiv Brid, where Ukrainian forces are still conducting limited counterattacks.[19] Russian forces are additionally regrouping in Zaporizhia Oblast.[20] The Zaporizhia Regional Military Administration reported that Russian troops are fortifying positions in Dniprorudne (western Zaporizhia Oblast) with equipment from Crimea and regrouping around Vasylivka to support operations along the Vasylivka-Orikhiv-Huliapole line.[21] The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Russian forces additionally deployed an electronic warfare complex to Melitopol, likely to further support their defensive presence in Zaporizhia and counter ongoing partisan actions.[22]
Russian forces are likely attempting to strengthen their presence in the northwestern Black Sea. Satellite imagery from June 14 shows an increase in fortifications and military equipment on Snake Island.[23] The Russian-appointed Kherson occupation administration stated that the Kherson Commerical Sea Port has resumed operations and will begin cargo transport.[24] While Ukrainian forces still control the critical coastline location of Ochakiv, Mykolaiv Oblast, and can possibly interdict Russian shipping, Russian forces likely intend to strengthen control over port access in the Black Sea under the protection of a fortified naval presence on Snake Island.
Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of occupied areas; set conditions for potential annexation into the Russian Federation or some other future political arrangement of Moscow’s choosing)
Head of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Denis Pushilin continued attempts to establish economic partnerships between occupied areas of Donetsk Oblast with Russian territories. Pushilin met with the governors of Chelyabinsk Oblast and the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug in order to agree on a patronage framework for cooperation with occupied Volnovakha and Yasinuvata.[25] Pushilin additionally met with governor of St. Petersburg to arrange for the restoration of Mariupol.[26] Pushilin is likely seeking to arrange for infrastructure assistance to restore these cities, but his continuous pursuit of ad hoc arrangements with Russian territorial bodies indicates continued inconsistencies between annexation policies pursued by DNR authorities.
Russian authorities are continuing to face difficulties implementing their occupation agendas due to pro-Ukrainian pressure in occupied areas. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported that unidentified Ukrainian partisans targeted employees of the Russian Emergency Ministry in Mariupol on June 9 and 11.[27] The Ukrainian Resistance Center additionally claimed that Russian occupation authorities are unable to open schools in occupied Berdyansk due to resistance from Ukrainian teachers, who are refusing to teach under Russian curricula.[28] Such pro-Ukrainian action will likely continue to disrupt Russian efforts to consolidate full-scale administrative control of occupied areas and Russian annexation agendas.
[27] https://sprotyv dot mod.gov.ua/2022/06/15/v-mariupoli-partyzany-spalyly-tehniku-rosiyan/
[28] https://sprotyv dot mod.gov.ua/2022/06/15/v-berdyansku-praczivnyky-osvity-masovo-vidmovlyayutsya-spivpraczyuvaty-z-okupantamy/
2. $1 Billion in Additional Security Assistance for Ukraine
$1 Billion in Additional Security Assistance for Ukraine
Release
Immediate Release
June 15, 2022
Attributed to Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense (Media) J. Todd Breasseale:
This afternoon, the Department of Defense (DoD) announced $1 billion in additional security assistance for Ukraine. This includes an authorization of a Presidential Drawdown of security assistance valued at up to $350 million, as well as $650 million in Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) funds.
The PDA authorization is the twelfth drawdown of equipment from DoD inventories for Ukraine since August 2021. Capabilities in this package include:
- 18 155mm Howitzers;
- 36,000 rounds of 155mm ammunition;
- 18 Tactical Vehicles to tow 155mm Howitzers;
- Additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems;
- Four Tactical Vehicles to recover equipment;
- Spare parts and other equipment.
Under USAI, the DoD will provide Ukraine with near-term priority capabilities to defend against Russian aggression. Included in this package are:
- Two Harpoon coastal defense systems;
- Thousands of secure radios;
- Thousands of Night Vision devices, thermal sights, and other optics;
- Funding for training, maintenance, sustainment, transportation, and administrative costs.
Unlike Presidential Drawdown, USAI is an authority under which the United States procures capabilities from industry rather than delivering equipment that is drawn down from DoD stocks. This announcement represents the beginning of a contracting process to provide additional capabilities to Ukraine's Armed Forces.
The United States has now committed approximately $6.3 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden Administration, including approximately $5.6 billion since the beginning of Russia’s unprovoked invasion on February 24. Since 2014, the United States has committed more than $8.3 billion in security assistance to Ukraine.
The United States also continues to work with its Allies and partners to identify and provide Ukraine with capabilities to meet its evolving battlefield requirements. At today’s Ukraine Defense Contact Group hosted by Secretary Austin, 48 countries participated to discuss security assistance, generating new announcements of donations, including for high priority artillery and Multiple Launch Rocket Systems.
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3. More Than 50 Nations Pledge to Help Build Ukraine
"look into..."
Excerpt:
The group will look to deepen cooperation and coordination to get needed capabilities to Ukraine. "We'll bolster Ukraine's armed forces to help them repel Russian aggression now in the future," the secretary said. "So we'll continue working closely and intensively together with this contact group. We'll keep on strengthening our support for Ukraine's self-defense and will continue to stand up for the rules-based international order that protects us all."
More Than 50 Nations Pledge to Help Build Ukraine
Representatives from more than 50 nations pledged to get more military capabilities into the hands of Ukrainian forces battling Russian invaders, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said today in Brussels.
News Conference
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, hold a news conference following the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, June 15, 2022.
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Photo By: Chad J. McNeeley, DOD
VIRIN: 220616-D-TT977-0376A
Austin chaired the third meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group. The group is looking to get Ukraine what it needs to fight the battle developing in the Donbas region of the country.
Austin and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Army Gen. Mark A. Milley briefed the media at NATO headquarters following the meeting.
"I'm especially pleased that defense leaders from some 50 countries came together here today," Austin said. "It's a testament to the on-the-ground impact of this contact group that it continues to grow."
Austin announced that President Joe Biden had approved a $1 billion security assistance package for Ukraine. This will include multiple launch rocket system munitions, 18 more 155 mm M777 towed howitzers and the tactical vehicles to tow them, and 36,000 rounds of 155 mm ammunition.
"This package also includes $650 million in Ukraine security assistance initiative funds that will help Ukraine defend itself with two additional Harpoon Coastal Defense Systems and thousands of secure radios, night vision devices, thermal sights and other optics," the secretary said.
Press Conference
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley answer questions during a press conference at NATO headquarters, Brussels, June 15, 2022. Austin hosted the third meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group that brought together nearly 50 countries for continuing discussions on support to Ukraine in its war with Russia.
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VIRIN: 220616-D-TT977-0458
Allies and partners are also building Ukraine's military capabilities. Austin said Germany will provide three multiple-launch rocket systems and guided MLRS munitions to Ukraine. "Slovakia announced a significant donation of MI-series helicopters and urgently needed rocket ammunition," Austin said. "We also discussed important new artillery donations from many countries, including Canada, Poland and the Netherlands."
To have military capability, there needs to be a weapon system, a trained crew and munitions. The contact group is working on the training portion of this equation.
"To date, we have trained 420 Ukrainians on the M777 howitzer, 300 Ukrainians on the self-propelled M109 [howitzer], 129 on the M113 armored personnel carrier, 100 on unmanned aerial systems, and 60 most recently graduated today on the [High Mobility Artillery Rocket System]," Milley said.
The contact group works hand-in-glove with Ukrainian defense leaders. Today, the Ukraine Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov attended the meeting.
Milley said that since the start of the Russian invasion, the Ukrainians have asked for 10 battalions of artillery. "Twelve battalions of artillery were delivered," he said. The contact group has also delivered 97,000 anti-tank systems. "That's more than there are tanks in the world," he said.
35:18
"They asked for 200 tanks; they got 237 tanks," he continued. "They asked for 100 infantry fighting vehicles; they got over 300. We've delivered, roughly speaking, 1,600 or so air defense systems and about 60,000 air defense rounds."
The HIMARS, or High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, will be an important addition to Ukraine's arsenal. The U.S. military is training HIMARS crews one platoon at a time in Germany. "By the end of this month, we will transfer HIMARs systems, ammunition and trained crews for operational use in the defense of Ukraine," Milley said.
Ukraine is making incredible sacrifices in defense of their country. "In the media, you see reported that Ukraine is taking 100 killed and 100 or 200 or 300 wounded per day," he said. "I would say those are in the ballpark of our assessments."
He was asked if Ukraine could sustain the fight in light of such losses. "For Ukraine, this is an existential threat," Milley said. "They're fighting for the very life of their country. So, your ability to endure suffering — your ability to endure casualties — is directly proportional to the object to be attained. If the object to be attained is survival of the country, then you're going to sustain it — as long as they have leadership, and they have the means by which to fight."
The Ukraine Defense Contact Group first came together in April at a meeting at Ramstein Air Base, Germany. There was a virtual meeting of the group last month. "Since the contact group first came together nearly three months ago, we built tremendous momentum for donations and delivery of military assistance," Austin said. "And after this afternoon's discussions, we're not just going to maintain that momentum; we're going to move even faster and push even harder."
Press Conference
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley answer questions during a press conference at NATO headquarters, Brussels, June 15, 2022. Austin hosted the third meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group that brought together nearly 50 countries for continuing discussions on support to Ukraine in its war with Russia.
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VIRIN: 220616-D-TT977-0396
The group will look to deepen cooperation and coordination to get needed capabilities to Ukraine. "We'll bolster Ukraine's armed forces to help them repel Russian aggression now in the future," the secretary said. "So we'll continue working closely and intensively together with this contact group. We'll keep on strengthening our support for Ukraine's self-defense and will continue to stand up for the rules-based international order that protects us all."
4. One of President Zelenskyy's top advisers told NPR what Ukraine wants
Excerpts:
MYRE: So the longer this war goes on, Ukraine will be relying less on its old Soviet weapons and more on its modern NATO weapons.
SHAPIRO: All right. Well, the U.S. and Europe are starting to have conversations about how an end to this war could be negotiated. How is Ukraine receiving that?
MYRE: Ari, it's really a nonstarter. I asked Podolyak, and here's what he said about the Russians.
PODOLYAK: (Through interpreter) The reason that they do not want to negotiate anymore is because they're trying to get concessions from the West to freeze the conflict where it is so that they can claim victory.
MYRE: So we finished up our conversation with Podolyak. We were heading toward the door, and then he stopped us and offered one last comment. He said, if you get anything out of this interview, its weapons, weapons, weapons.
One of President Zelenskyy's top advisers told NPR what Ukraine wants
NPR · by Greg Myre · June 14, 2022
The leaders of Ukraine are gaming out where the war with Russia goes from here. One of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's top advisers at Kyiv's presidential compound weighed in on what Ukraine wants.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The leaders of Ukraine are gaming out where the war with Russia goes from here. Fighting in the east has slowed to a bloody slog. The capital is relatively safe from Russian attacks. So what does Ukraine want now? NPR's Greg Myre met with one of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's top advisers at Kyiv's presidential compound today and asked him that question. Hi, Greg.
GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.
SHAPIRO: Tell us about this adviser you met with. Who is he?
MYRE: Yeah, our NPR team sat down with a senior presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak. Now Kyiv, the city, feels more or less normal these days, but this ends the moment you enter the presidential compound. And it's not just the security outside. Inside the building, the sandbags are six feet high. They're stacked on windowsills, blocking out the sun from these tall windows. Most of the lights are off. The hallways are dark and mostly empty. When we finally got to Podolyak's office, he's like a lot of people in the Zelenskyy administration, young and casual. He's in a black T-shirt that reads fight like Ukrainians. He says he's working around the clock. There were several pairs of sneakers next to his desk cluttered with papers.
SHAPIRO: That is such a vivid scene. And what did he say to you? How did he feel about the state of the war right now?
MYRE: So Podolyak is the chief negotiator for Ukraine. So you think he might want to talk about possible peace negotiations, but he sees no prospect right now. So what he really wanted to talk about was weapons. Here he is.
MYKHAILO PODOLYAK: (Through interpreter) Now we see that this is truly a war of artillery, and we see that they are shooting by a ratio of 10 or 15 to 1. Again, the math is clear. We will need parity of weapons if we're going to be effective in any sort of counteroffensive.
MYRE: This Russian artillery advantage has allowed them to make some grinding progress in the Donbas region in the eastern part of the country. So the outgunned Ukrainians are making a big push right now for more weapons. And this comes on the eve of a NATO meeting Wednesday in Brussels.
SHAPIRO: All right. So Ukraine wants more artillery fast. What are the chances they're going to get it?
MYRE: Well, Podolyak tweeted out a wish list on Monday. It includes a thousand howitzers, a thousand drones, 500 tanks, and it goes on from there. So NATO is not going to meet those demands in full. The U.S. and others are still sending weapons but in much smaller quantities. Podolyak says Ukraine has a real problem right now. It's running low on ammunition for it's old Soviet-era weapons. Russia is really the only place that makes this kind of ammunition anymore. So here he is again.
PODOLYAK: (Through interpreter) Russia has the overwhelming majority of these artillery-type weapons. What there is no shortage of in the world are NATO standard weapon, whether it be in the U.S. or in Western Europe or in Asian countries.
MYRE: So the longer this war goes on, Ukraine will be relying less on its old Soviet weapons and more on its modern NATO weapons.
SHAPIRO: All right. Well, the U.S. and Europe are starting to have conversations about how an end to this war could be negotiated. How is Ukraine receiving that?
MYRE: Ari, it's really a nonstarter. I asked Podolyak, and here's what he said about the Russians.
PODOLYAK: (Through interpreter) The reason that they do not want to negotiate anymore is because they're trying to get concessions from the West to freeze the conflict where it is so that they can claim victory.
MYRE: So we finished up our conversation with Podolyak. We were heading toward the door, and then he stopped us and offered one last comment. He said, if you get anything out of this interview, its weapons, weapons, weapons.
SHAPIRO: That's NPR's Greg Myre in Kyiv. Thanks a lot.
MYRE: My pleasure.
NPR · by Greg Myre · June 14, 2022
5. Ukraine finds itself outnumbered as Russia advances in the Donbas
Excerpts of CJCS interview. I listened to his interview this morning but the transcript has not yet been posted. Some of the key excerpts from hi sinterview are below. It is going to be a long slog.
Excerpts:
At the time of the interview on Wednesday, Milley was visiting NATO headquarters in Brussels. He was meeting officials from allied nations to coordinate their efforts to make "the math problem" work out.
Ukrainians have been urging the U.S. and its allies to supply more weapons than they already have — and they too are thinking of the math problem. "The math is clear," Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told NPR's Greg Myre this week. "We will need parity of weapons if we're going to be effective in any sort of counteroffensive."
...
In the NPR interview, Milley nonetheless acknowledged that Russia's larger military has been advancing in the Donbas region. "It's a fair statement to say that they're gaining ground tactically, but it's very, very slow," he said. Many Russian attacks have gained only a few hundred meters of ground before stalling. The advances are not "strategically" important, he asserted. At the news conference, he called it a "very severe battle of attrition, almost World War I-like."
Attrition, of course, affects the math. Asked if Ukraine, with its smaller army and much smaller population, was running out of trained troops, Milley acknowledged the difficulty but expressed hope by using an equation. "The moral is to the physical as 3 is to 1, as the saying goes," he said. In other words, Ukrainians' higher morale will multiply their strength as they defend their homeland. Milley cited media estimates that Ukraine has raised as many as 700,000 troops, enough to greatly outnumber the original Russian invasion force.
Many are not properly armed or trained, however. Properly arming them was Milley's focus during the visit in Brussels. At one point in the NPR interview, he noted, "We're only 110 days into this thing" — and the word "only" suggested how many more days of ruthless destruction may remain before the war's end.
Ukraine finds itself outnumbered as Russia advances in the Donbas
NPR · by Steve Inskeep · June 16, 2022
Ukrainian troops repair an army tank in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region on June 7. Ukrainians have been urging the U.S. and its allies to supply them more weapons in their fight against Russia, and Gen. Mark Milley, President Biden's top military adviser, told NPR that Russia has massed greater numbers of combat units, as well as more artillery, than the local defenders in the Donbas have. Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images
Russia is advancing in eastern Ukraine by deploying its superior numbers. "The math problem is very difficult for the Ukrainians," Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview with NPR's Morning Edition. An army gains an advantage when it concentrates more forces at a decisive point than its enemy does.
In the war's early weeks, Russia scattered its forces, attacking multiple objectives at once and failing to capture Ukraine's capital, Kyiv. Russia then refocused, withdrawing some forces and placing heavier emphasis on the eastern Donbas region. Milley, President Biden's top military adviser, told NPR that Russia has massed greater numbers of combat units, as well as more artillery, than the local defenders have.
At the time of the interview on Wednesday, Milley was visiting NATO headquarters in Brussels. He was meeting officials from allied nations to coordinate their efforts to make "the math problem" work out.
Ukrainians have been urging the U.S. and its allies to supply more weapons than they already have — and they too are thinking of the math problem. "The math is clear," Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told NPR's Greg Myre this week. "We will need parity of weapons if we're going to be effective in any sort of counteroffensive."
U.S. officials used their visit to Brussels to reject claims that U.S. aid is too small or slow. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Ukrainian forces are training to use truck-fired rocket systems donated by the U.S. — and he emphasized the math. The U.S. is sending only a handful of the systems, but he said their effect is multiplied because they can simultaneously launch multiple precision-guided missiles.
Milley told reporters that the U.S. and its allies have contributed 97,000 Javelin missiles and other anti-tank weapons, which Milley calculated was "more anti-tank systems than there are tanks in the world."
In the NPR interview, Milley nonetheless acknowledged that Russia's larger military has been advancing in the Donbas region. "It's a fair statement to say that they're gaining ground tactically, but it's very, very slow," he said. Many Russian attacks have gained only a few hundred meters of ground before stalling. The advances are not "strategically" important, he asserted. At the news conference, he called it a "very severe battle of attrition, almost World War I-like."
Attrition, of course, affects the math. Asked if Ukraine, with its smaller army and much smaller population, was running out of trained troops, Milley acknowledged the difficulty but expressed hope by using an equation. "The moral is to the physical as 3 is to 1, as the saying goes," he said. In other words, Ukrainians' higher morale will multiply their strength as they defend their homeland. Milley cited media estimates that Ukraine has raised as many as 700,000 troops, enough to greatly outnumber the original Russian invasion force.
Many are not properly armed or trained, however. Properly arming them was Milley's focus during the visit in Brussels. At one point in the NPR interview, he noted, "We're only 110 days into this thing" — and the word "only" suggested how many more days of ruthless destruction may remain before the war's end.
NPR · by Steve Inskeep · June 16, 2022
6.
American veterans in Ukraine tell NATO how to end Russian "slugfest"
Excerpts:
"It's a bit of a slugfest," explained Martin Wetterauer, a former Marine Corps colonel who spent time in the Joint Special Operations Command and served tours in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iraq, and Afghanistan in his more than 30-year military career.
"If we can increase their skill set, then ultimately over time hopefully they'll get better and more advanced weapon systems," Wetterauer—now Mozart's chief operations officer—said of Ukrainian troops. "With the fighting spirit that they have, there's no doubt they will turn this war. It's just going to take a while."
...
"These sorts of things don't go well for a dictator, when you start losing on the front," Wetterauer said. "I think that's going to cause a huge amount of internal stress inside of Russia."
Newsweek has contacted the Russian Foreign Ministry to request comment.
Russia has changed tactics and achieved limited success. But the rot is deep, Steve said, suggesting a force with such problems cannot inflict a significant defeat on the Ukrainians.
"They expected to be welcomed with open arms," he said. "What kind of military plans for the easiest way to win a war? That is an unprofessional military force."
"We have American and NATO intelligence people who are eating crow because all these years of pumping everybody up in the American military saying how good the Russians were, and now we have a second rate Ukrainian army who's kicking their ass."
American veterans in Ukraine tell NATO how to end Russian "slugfest"
Newsweek · by David Brennan · June 14, 2022
American veterans training Ukrainian front-line troops have told Newsweek that U.S. and other NATO weapons can turn the tide against invading Russian forces, warning that defenders face a "dire" situation as Russia focuses on battles raging on the eastern front.
Two members of the American Mozart Group—founded by former Marine Corps Colonel Andy Milburn and a play on the name of the infamous Russian mercenary Wagner Group—speaking from Ukraine that locals there are motivated but risk being overwhelmed without more Western weapons; particularly modern and long-range artillery systems.
"It's a bit of a slugfest," explained Martin Wetterauer, a former Marine Corps colonel who spent time in the Joint Special Operations Command and served tours in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iraq, and Afghanistan in his more than 30-year military career.
"If we can increase their skill set, then ultimately over time hopefully they'll get better and more advanced weapon systems," Wetterauer—now Mozart's chief operations officer—said of Ukrainian troops. "With the fighting spirit that they have, there's no doubt they will turn this war. It's just going to take a while."
This combination image shows Mozart Group volunteers training Ukrainian troops at undisclosed locations in Ukraine, amid the Russian invasion of the country. Mozart Group
Wetterauer spoke by phone from the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia having just finished training a group of Azov Battalion fighters headed to the eastern front.
"These guys go from being civilians at the start of this war to now soldiers fighting in trench warfare against the Russians," he explained. "They believe they are all going to be Ukrainian heroes when this war is over, because they plan on taking every inch back."
Mozart Group volunteers are drawn from militaries around the world. Steve K—who did not want to share his full name—is one of Mozart's operations officers. He told Newsweek from Kyiv that the current crop of between 10 and 20 volunteers includes special forces veterans from the U.S., Australia, and Estonia.
Trainers, Steve said, are focusing on the basic fighting skills that will help Ukrainian troops survive. "You don't know the basics, you can't do anything," said the Marine Forces Special Operations Command veteran, whose combat tours included Iraq and Afghanistan during his 23 years in service.
Among the Mozart Group training is instruction on ambushes, trench warfare, and raids; all central elements of the fighting which speak to the intensity and varied nature of the combat in the east.
"If you're not thinking, you're dead," Steve said. "We try to get them to think, to know, and understand by giving them the basics and showing them different techniques and how they can apply them to different situations."
Attrition Warfare
Russia's invasion of Ukraine—now in its 111th day—has been concentrated on the eastern Donbas front, where the invaders hope to seize the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts that have been split between government and separatist forces since 2014.
There, Russia has massed artillery units and is seeking to overwhelm the defenders. Casualties are high on both sides. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that up to 100 defenders are being killed every day.
"What has really changed is Donetsk and Luhansk," Steve explained. "They have moved into areas and they've shortened their supply lines. They have they're moving through areas that since 2014 have been under Russian and separatists control...They have the ability to bring in as much artillery and rockets as they can."
The fighting has devolved into intense and costly attritional combat, the veterans explained.
"They'll attack and they'll do a frontal assault," Steve said of Russian units. "The Ukrainians will machine gun them down, World War One shit. The machine guns will all get identified by observers in tanks, they'll move the tanks up, they'll use artillery and they'll pummel all the machine gun positions."
"The Russians are sacrificing and they're doing this attrition warfare," he added. "They're sending these young kids and whoever else they have to be cannon fodder...It's attrition warfare. It's World War One. It can't win."
The Russian advance is slow but significant. Ukrainian forces are in a bind, their leaders constantly urging EU and NATO nations to send more potent and more regular military aid.
"The attrition is working against them," Steve said. "You can see the apprehension and the anxiety amongst some of the guys that you work with and you train...There is some fear that if they don't get what they need, it might not go the right way."
Artillery Duels
Artillery is particularly important. Russian guns largely outrange the Ukrainians, and the invaders reportedly have many more times the ammunition as the defenders. The lack of air cover for the Ukrainian side is also punishing.
"It has a pretty big effect on their morale," Steve said. "You sit in the trench, you've got artillery raining down on you. You don't know what the hell's happening. So I can only assume that it's pretty shitty up there."
Ukrainian servicemen run for cover during an artillery duel between Ukrainian and Russian troops in the city of Lysychansk, eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas, on June 11, 2022. The fighting in the east is being shaped by artillery. ARIS MESSINIS/AFP via Getty Images
"They need the artillery, they need rounds," Steve explained. "If we do not continue with that supply, they won't be able to hold them back," he added, noting the much-vaunted U.S.-made Multiple Launch Rocket System and High Mobility Artillery Rocket System would be "big game-changers."
Wetterauer concurred. "They can't stand the artillery," he said of the Ukrainians he has worked with "They know that's just devastating." NATO artillery systems and aircraft, he added, would be vital to root Russians out of prepared defensive positions in the dense Donbas treelines.
Both veterans said they think Ukraine can win, but only if it gets the support it needs.
"A lot of guys think that a lot of Russians that they're facing don't really want to be there," Wetterauer said. "They believe that the Russian soldiers are finally figuring out that they've been lied to."
"They know that the Russians are certainly as capable as they are. You know, and they certainly don't estimate that the Russians can't kill them, they've lost quite a few friends."
"Winter is going to be brutal if they're still slugging it out in the trenches," he added. "There's probably a good bit of truth to a fair amount of Russians probably aren't as motivated as they were 110 days ago."
Ukrainian soldier walks along a trench on the frontline with Russia-backed separatists, not far from town of Avdiivka, Donetsk region, on December 10, 2021
"These sorts of things don't go well for a dictator, when you start losing on the front," Wetterauer said. "I think that's going to cause a huge amount of internal stress inside of Russia."
Newsweek has contacted the Russian Foreign Ministry to request comment.
Russia has changed tactics and achieved limited success. But the rot is deep, Steve said, suggesting a force with such problems cannot inflict a significant defeat on the Ukrainians.
"They expected to be welcomed with open arms," he said. "What kind of military plans for the easiest way to win a war? That is an unprofessional military force."
"We have American and NATO intelligence people who are eating crow because all these years of pumping everybody up in the American military saying how good the Russians were, and now we have a second rate Ukrainian army who's kicking their ass."
Newsweek · by David Brennan · June 14, 2022
7. The U.S. overestimated Russia’s military might. Is it underestimating China’s?
Yes, I would rather overestimate than underestimate. But both are a problem. However, the real hard part is to assess intent and decision making as well as the most likely enemy courses of action and and the most dangerous courses of action.
The U.S. overestimated Russia’s military might. Is it underestimating China’s?
06/15/2022 03:00 PM EDT
Concerns about American blindspots on the Chinese military are a major factor driving reviews of U.S. assessments of foreign armed forces.
Soldiers from China's People's Liberation Army Navy march in formation during a parade to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the founding of Communist China in Beijing. | Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo
06/15/2022 03:00 PM EDT
The U.S. failure to correctly predict how the Russian and Ukrainian militaries would perform in the early stages of their ongoing war is fueling fears in Washington that America may have major blindspots when it comes to the fighting force of an increasingly powerful adversary: China.
The concerns are rising as American spy agencies are reexamining how they assess foreign militaries, and, according to a Biden administration official, are a key driver of a number of ongoing classified reviews. U.S. lawmakers are among those who’ve requested the intelligence reviews, and some have concerns about China in particular.
China’s communist government is secretive about many of its military capabilities, and it is believed to be closely watching and learning from Russia’s botched opening act in Ukraine. The post-9/11 U.S. emphasis on counterterrorism and the Arab world has undercut efforts to spy on China, former officials and analysts say, leaving some agencies with too few Mandarin speakers. Beijing also has dismantled some American intelligence networks, including reportedly executing more than a dozen CIA sources starting in 2010.
Growing U.S. worries that China will sooner rather than later attack Taiwan as part of a broader effort to eclipse American power in the Pacific make the topic of Beijing’s military prowess more salient than ever, said lawmakers and eight current and former officials interviewed for this story. The concerns about a lack of U.S. understanding of China’s military are compounded by the fact that the People’s Liberation Army has not fought in a war in more than 40 years.
China has undertaken an extraordinary modernization of its armed forces over the past decade. The country now has the world’s largest navy in terms of ship numbers, with an overall force of roughly 355 vessels including more than 145 large warships as of 2021, according to the Pentagon’s most recent annual report on China’s military power. Meanwhile, the People’s Liberation Army has grown to roughly 975,000 active-duty personnel, and the nation’s aviation force totals over 2,800 aircraft, including stealth fighters and strategic bombers. China began fielding its first operational hypersonic weapons system, the DF-17, in 2020, and its nuclear arsenal is projected to grow to at least 1,000 warheads by 2030.
The U.S. closely tracks developments in China’s military might. But what officials know less about is what Beijing intends to do with this increasingly powerful fighting force.
“This is hard, but at the end of the day, I do think there’s lots of scope for us to ask if we can learn,” said Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee. “It would have been nice, at least on the non-human factors, to have had a clearer view of what was going to happen in Ukraine, and there’s probably lessons to be learned there with respect to China.”
Added Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), another intelligence committee member concerned about the assessments: “I assume our military is going to school.”
‘Grossly wrong’
This past winter, as Russia appeared on the verge of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the widespread sense among U.S. officials was that Moscow’s modernized military would easily run over Ukraine’s forces, likely in days or weeks. These expectations were in part the result of intelligence reports, which, while rarely definitive and often full of caveats, apparently left an ominous impression of Russia’s abilities. Such views were echoed by outside analysts, some of whom have since admitted those initial assessments were incorrect.
Not only did the Ukrainian military hold ground and even push back the Russians, but the Russians appeared to make basic errors, such as failing to establish solid supply lines and undermining morale among the rank-and-file by not telling many of them about their true mission.
The twists and turns in the fight for Ukraine came months after the collapse of the U.S.-trained Afghan military during the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. American officials’ assessments of that military, too, were overly optimistic at times and are another reason lawmakers are interested in a review.
“Within 12 months … we overestimated the Afghans’ will to fight, underestimated the Ukrainians’ will to fight,” said Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), during a hearing earlier this year. “We had testimony … that Kyiv was going to fall in three or four days and the war would last two weeks. That turned out to be grossly wrong.”
King argued that, had the United States better assessed the situation, especially the Ukrainians’ will to fight, it might have sent them more assistance sooner.
In response, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines indicated that U.S. spy agencies were reviewing where they erred. “It’s a combination of will to fight and capacity, in effect, and the two of them are issues that are … quite challenging to provide effective analysis on,” Haines said. “We’re looking at different methodologies for doing so.”
When asked for comment for this story, Haines’ office referred to her remarks during that May 10 hearing.
China’s black box
Inside the U.S. defense establishment, China is described as America’s “pacing challenge,” meaning that Beijing’s military progress is the primary standard by which the United States should measure its own advances.
With that in mind, U.S. officials have to apply lessons learned elsewhere to how they assess China, said a Biden administration official who confirmed that concerns about Beijing’s military strength are key reason for the ongoing reviews.
“We’re learning lessons from what happened with Russia and Afghanistan, but we’re also cognizant of the differences between the challenges [China] poses and the crises we’ve experienced when it comes to Ukraine and Afghanistan,” said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue.
An array of U.S. spy shops — in particular the Defense Intelligence Agency, but also the CIA and others — assess the strengths and capabilities of foreign militaries. Those assessments are typically coordinated and fused into reports via the National Intelligence Council, which is part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The assessments include quantitative elements, such as the number of active duty troops a country has on hand, the strength of the national defense industry, and the quantity and capabilities of the armed forces’ weapons. They also evaluate aspects of a foreign military that are hard to quantify, such as what sort of doctrines they apply, the culture of their leadership and military, and how much of a “will to fight” exists within that military and the broader society.
In response to a POLITICO request for information about the process, a U.S. intelligence official said in a statement: “Using all-source analysis, intelligence analysts examine a wide variety of factors, to include contextual elements like the mission the foreign military is given and the opponent, to assess a foreign nation’s military power.”
At the moment, the United States has a relatively sophisticated understanding of the Chinese military’s technical capabilities and posture on any given day, current and former U.S. officials say. The information comes from sources such as satellite images, signals intelligence and human assets on the ground. U.S. officials believe they know, for instance, what’s in Beijing’s nuclear arsenal or when it is building a new aircraft carrier.
U.S. insight into Beijing’s military isn’t perfect, however. China reportedly surprised DoD officials last summer when it tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile. During the test, the Chinese military launched a rocket carrying a hypersonic glide vehicle that flew into space and circled the globe before flying toward its target.
At the time, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin did not deny reports that defense officials were caught off guard by the speed with which Beijing developed the weapon.
“I’m not going to comment on those specific reports. What I can tell you is that we watch closely China’s development of armaments and advanced capabilities, and systems that will only increase tensions in the region,” Austin said. “You heard me say before that China is a challenge, and we’re going to remain focused on that.”
Beyond military capability, American officials have limited insight into the inner workings of China’s communist leadership, how security-related decisions are made, and what moves could trigger what responses. As China takes aggressive steps, such as sending planes into Taiwan’s air defense zone, this lack of clarity is a problem.
“That is a key focus for the intelligence community: How do we understand when those red lines might be crossed on China’s side in terms of confronting Taiwan?” said Cristina Garafola, a former defense official now with the RAND Corporation.
The Chinese political-military system is opaque by design.
For instance, China has for years permitted the U.S. defense secretary to engage only with its minister of national defense, even though the person in that role — currently Gen. Wei Fenghe — has little operational control of the Chinese military and is the Pentagon chief’s counterpart in title only.
The Biden administration tried and failed to arrange a discussion between Austin and Gen. Xu Qiliang, the highest-ranking uniformed officer in the Communist Party military structure, resulting in a months-long communications impasse between the two militaries. (Austin met Wei on Friday on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.)
Beijing wants Wei to be the military’s external representative because he is trained in propaganda points the way other top generals are not, said Lyle Morris, who served in the Pentagon as the country director for China and now works at the RAND Corporation. Top Chinese officials worry that the commanders will stray from the party line.
“They have a barrier, a kind of wall around their operational commanders with external military leaders,” Morris said.
Knowledge gap
Meanwhile, in recent years the Department of Defense has quietly drawn down its Defense Attaché Service, withdrawing top military officers at embassies and downgrading the rank of defense attachés worldwide. Attachés in African countries, where much of the drawdown has taken place, provide key insights on Chinese and Russian activity in those nations.
“That meant less defense-focused eyes overseas in the more conventional countries, looking at what present-day military capabilities are,” said Ezra Cohen, Hudson Institute fellow and a former acting undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security in the Trump administration. “In the great power competition age, reduced resourcing for the Attache Service must be rectified.”
Another former Defense Department official was sharply critical of what they described as a longstanding lack of emphasis on analyzing open-source information from and about China. Such open-source material includes speeches delivered by top Chinese figures or documents on official Chinese doctrine.
U.S. assessments about Beijing’s intentions were off-base for years because they relied upon intelligence conclusions that did not adequately account for many of the communist government’s public announcements, asserted the former official, who specialized in China policy.
“We were reaching analytic conclusions that were just fantasy,” the former official said. “We felt like they were shapeable and on a trajectory for democracy. Now [there is a] recognition that China has got a plan — their own plan — and have had one for 40 years.”
A House Intelligence Committee report from September 2020, which concluded that U.S. spy agencies are failing to meet the China challenge, backs up the assertion that the West incorrectly assumed Beijing would become more democratic as it became more prosperous. It found that these assumptions “blinded observers to the Chinese Communist Party’s overriding objective of retaining and growing its power.”
The House committee report made other points that analysts and current and former officials echo today, including that the U.S. emphasis on counterterrorism undercut what should have been more focus on rising state powers such as China.
“Absent a significant realignment of resources, the U.S. government and intelligence community will fail to achieve the outcomes required to enable continued U.S. competition with China on the global stage for decades to come,” the report states.
While the agencies were recruiting Arabic speakers and cultivating experts on terrorism, many Cold War hands were retiring, creating a critical gap in analytic knowledge, Cohen said.
“The intelligence community needs to be able to figure out to a high degree of certainty what is simply posturing and what is true, and this can only be done by highly experienced analysts,” he said. “You need to be able to know from satellite imagery or intelligence reports … does this look real and operational, or is this something that’s just a prototype that’s years away from the battlefield?”
Island of uncertainties
Under China’s President Xi Jinping, who has consolidated power within the communist apparatus to an unusual degree, Beijing has been increasingly clear that it wants to bring Taiwan under control of the mainland by 2050, and that any threat to that goal could lead it to use force.
“Taiwan is clearly one of their ambitions. ... And I think the threat is manifest during this decade, in fact, in the next six years,” Adm. Philip Davidson, then-commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, told Congress last year.
Beijing’s statements suggest that China could move on Taiwan at any moment, if it believes the conditions are right. “It’s dangerous to say that 2027 or 2030 or 2035 is some heightened date,” the former Defense Department official said. “You are actually ignoring the risk that tomorrow something could happen.”
An invasion of Taiwan would likely begin with an air assault and amphibious landing, analysts and former officials say, but what happens next is a mystery.
How long can China continue launching missiles and aircraft, for example? What capacity does Beijing have to maintain and repair equipment in a fight? How will China’s military fare if the conflict turns into urban warfare? How will Beijing grapple with mass casualties or displaced civilians?
Unlike with Russia, which has been fighting in Ukraine and Syria over the past decade, there is less recent history to draw from for China. Beijing has not fought a war since 1979, and its air force has not participated in a major conflict since 1958, Garafola noted.
“The harder thing to measure, of course, is how they would perform in combat in a complex environment where things don’t go entirely as planned,” said Randy Schriver, a top Asia policy official in the Pentagon during the Trump administration. “It’s questionable that, even as they’ve improved their training, whether or not they are training at complex enough levels to be able to handle unintended or unknown developments.”
The United States also has limited insight into how the different arms of the Chinese military apparatus would work together in a high-end campaign, analysts said. The U.S. military long ago began emphasizing “jointness” in its training exercises and operations, meaning integrating its air, sea, space, maritime and cyber capabilities. It’s unclear Beijing can do the same in a real-world operation.
“There’s a lot of talk about cyber — we know how they use cyber for theft of information and intelligence, but we know less about how they might use cyber integrated into a war plan,” Schriver said.
One area which the current reviews of foreign military assessments are paying close attention to is China’s supply lines if it attacks Taiwan, the Biden administration official said. Taiwan is an island, making resupplying invading forces a tougher task than what Russia faces in its overland routes to Ukraine.
China’s economic and diplomatic initiatives across the Pacific also offer puzzles for American officials wondering if the efforts have a military angle.
Chinese military officers and diplomats recently gathered alongside their Cambodian counterparts for a groundbreaking ceremony at Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base on the Gulf of Thailand. China has pledged to upgrade the base, which sits near the South China Sea, in exchange for the Chinese military having access to part of it, a Chinese official confirmed to The Washington Post.
Chinese Ambassador to Cambodia Wang Wentian said at the ceremony that the work was “not targeted at any third party, and will be conducive to even closer practical cooperation between the two militaries.”
The deal recalls Beijing’s 2017 establishment of a logistics port in Djibouti in eastern Africa, a facility leased close to an American base in the tiny country at the mouth of the Red Sea. China has about 2,000 troops manning the base, which is a logistics hub for wider Chinese interests on the continent.
Wrong now, right later?
The U.S. intelligence community’s misjudgments of Russian and Ukrainian troops’ performance stood in stark contrast to what appeared to be far more accurate forecasts about Vladimir Putin’s plans to invade and some of the disinformation tactics he intended to use.
The United States appears to have better intelligence about top-level Russian decision-making than it has for China. President Joe Biden and his aides also chose to publicize some of the intelligence in a bid to thwart Putin’s plans.
When asked about why one aspect of the intelligence — Putin’s intentions — was right, while the other — his military’s battlefield performance — was off-base, some U.S. and foreign officials said it’s likely because it’s a safer bet for an analyst to forecast that a military will do well and be wrong than to say it will do poorly and be wrong.
And until that military is actually fighting, it’s impossible to know with absolute certainty how it will do.
“You err on the side of caution when it comes to defense intelligence,” James Cleverly, a top British official, said when POLITICO asked about the issue earlier this year.
Putin appeared to believe he could quickly take out Ukraine’s government, while his troops would be greeted as liberators as they stormed the whole country. His entire battle plan appeared premised on such notions. But in the face of Western-backed Ukrainian resistance, he’s had to recalibrate, focusing on Ukraine’s east and south for now.
Some Russia-focused analysts, while acknowledging that early expectations that Moscow would defeat Ukraine quickly were wrong, say that, as the war drags on, Russia could get its act together and ultimately prove correct some of their predictions about its capabilities.
“We overestimated the Russian military, but the jury is still out on the lessons from this war,” said Michael Kofman, a Russia analyst with CNA.
If anything, the United States should avoid the trap of underestimating Chinese abilities after overestimating that of the Russians, some foreign affairs hands say.
During the hearing earlier this year, senators asked Haines and Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, what lessons China was taking away from Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“We’re not really sure what lessons Xi Jinping is taking away from this conflict right now. We would hope they would be the right ones,” Berrier said, adding later that one lesson could be “just how difficult a cross-strait invasion might be and how dangerous and high risk that might be.”
Sen. Josh Hawley, however, wondered if that was optimistic. After all, efforts to deter the Russian invasion didn’t work.
“We pretty dramatically overestimated the strength of the Russian military,” the Missouri Republican acknowledged. He added, however, “Don’t you think we’re dealing with a significantly more formidable adversary in China?”
To which Berrier replied: “I think China is a formidable adversary.”
Paul McLeary contributed to this report.
8. The Defense Production Act is helping rebuild the US industrial base. Let’s keep it that way.
We must protect our superpower (e.g., the industrial base)
The Defense Production Act is helping rebuild the US industrial base. Let’s keep it that way.
By Bill Greenwalt, Jerry McGinn and Christopher Zember
Jun 15, 02:49 PM
Recently, the Biden administration has come under criticism for its use of a law which, until its application during the COVID-19 pandemic, was relatively unknown. The Defense Production Act has been on the books since 1950, but only in the past few years has its potential value been so broadly recognized, with both parties championing its use from the White House and Congress. However, recent claims that the president is abusing the DPA’s power in pursuit of partisan objectives are threatening the viability of this unique tool for rebuilding a robust, resilient and globally competitive American industrial base.
Sen. Patrick Toomey, R-Pa., recently noted that Congress may need to curtail the act in light of perceived misuse by the White House. Other nonpublic sources have cited more specific restrictions considered by Congress, which would broadly apply to the DPA, even in cases where its application isn’t in question.
This wouldn’t be the first time a perceived overreach resulted in broad-based restrictions that went beyond the offending action. And it wouldn’t be the first time it happened to the DPA. In 2014, Congress amended the DPA with several restrictions, following a changeover in control of Congress and in response to congressional frustration with the Obama administration’s use of the act to support a clean energy initiative focused on biofuels.
Instead of limiting how the DPA could be applied, they primarily made it more difficult to use, such as eliminating the ability to delegate signature authority below the president. The result was an increase in bureaucracy and a corresponding decrease in effectiveness.
Going forward, we encourage all parties to avoid any changes that impede the effective use of the DPA. To this end, we also strongly recommend an open dialogue between Congress and the Pentagon to understand and address current restrictions impeding the effective application of the DPA, and to ensure any future changes do not undermine the Defense Department’s ability to effectively and rapidly address legitimate defense requirements.
A legitimate debate may arise over the use of the DPA beyond traditional defense needs. As that debate unfolds, Congress may find that DPA authorities need to be expanded at the DoD while applying further oversight and restrictions at civilian agencies that are not as experienced with the use of this authority.
Over the past 70 years during which the DPA has been in effect, it has been reauthorized 53 times through bipartisan efforts. But at no time has it been more important than today, as we seek to give American industry an opportunity to rebuild and compete globally against China. This importance has been affirmed by the White House and Congress — through bipartisan calls to increase its strategic use in rebuilding domestic supply chains, combined with substantial funding increases.
Both the Trump administration, through executive order 13806, and the Biden administration, through executive order 14017, have directed an all-of-government approach to assessing vulnerabilities in — and strengthening the resilience of — critical supply chains. The reports resulting from these executive orders recognize the broad and dangerous reliance on China that is a fundamental characteristic across several industries critical to national defense, including microelectronics, batteries, and castings and forgings, among others.
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The mineral antimony is critical to the defense-industrial supply chain and is needed to produce everything from armor-piercing bullets and explosives to nuclear weapons as well as sundry other military equipment, such as night vision goggles.
The DPA is an unmatched tool in addressing these trends, sitting at the intersection of private industry and federal investment, with unique authorities that enable the government to strength American industry to better assure our economic and broader national security. Several DPA authorities can help counter Chinese government intervention in international markets, which has created an unfair advantage for Chinese companies.
Application of the DPA can also establish a more fair environment for U.S. industry to demonstrate and deliver the proven power of the free market. In this era of great power competition, the DPA is a unique and essential tool to ensure the competitiveness of U.S. industry in the global market, and to strengthen American economic security while reestablishing military security.
The DPA has consistently been upheld as a common ground for both Democrats and Republicans, and it aligns with bipartisan initiatives such as the House Armed Services Committee’s critical supply chain task force and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Working together, we can effectively and appropriately use the DPA as a strategic asset for shared American values and national interests.
For those interested in understanding the DPA, click here for a report by the Congressional Research Service, which provides a useful summary of the law’s history and current authorities.
Bill Greenwalt is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a former senior staffer on the Senate Armed Services Committee and a former deputy undersecretary of defense for industrial policy. Jerry McGinn is the executive director of the Center for Government Contracting at George Mason University’s School of Business. He is a former senior Pentagon acquisition official whose responsibilities involved the DPA. Christopher Zember has served as both a government and corporate executive, and was previously director of the Center for Technology and National Security Policy at the National Defense University. This commentary does not necessarily reflect the views of current or former employers of the authors.
9. Russia's growing Ukraine occupation partisan resistance problem
Military terms for $2000, Alex.
"... activities conducted to enable a resistance movement or insurgency to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow a government or occupying power..."
What is ________?
Russia's growing Ukraine occupation partisan resistance problem
Vive la résistance!
Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock
by
June 14, 2022
Russia is making slow, bloody progress in its campaign to capture Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. But Moscow's invasion of Ukraine was not popular in the country, and even many previously pro-Kremlin Ukrainians are outraged to see Russian forces and their allies flatten entire cities and commit war crimes against other Ukrainians.
In the areas of Ukraine that Russia has captured, violent and nonviolent resistance has blossomed. Here's what you need to know about Ukraine's partisan resistance and their guerrilla insurgency:
What is the resistance trying to accomplish?
Ukrainian partisans fill several roles, "from helping direct attacks on enemy forces in coordination with the Ukrainian military to posting leaflets on street corners to demoralize the occupiers," The New York Times reports. "They can be men pushing potato carts, or farmers, or a grandmother with a cellphone," along with the former soldiers you might more readily imagine as partisans, but their goal is always the same: "to make sure the enemy never feels safe."
"The idea is for the occupier to always feel the presence of the partisans and for them never to feel safe," Serhii Kuzan, head of the Ukrainian Center for Security and Cooperation think tank, tells The Guardian. "Recently, the partisan forces in Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions carried out a coordinated sticker and flyer campaign against the so-called Russian world."
The support of the scouts, especially, can also "prove crucial, both in southern Ukraine where Russia has captured territory, and in the east where Ukraine finds itself outgunned and fighting to hold onto its land," the Times adds.
Where is the resistance active?
Melitopol, a strategic railway hub in Ukraine's southern Zaporizhzhia oblast that Russia captured on its third day of invasion, "is the unofficial capital of Ukraine's resistance," and has been since mid-March, The Economist reports. "But it is far from the only place that has seen such operations." Resistance has spread throughout the Russian-occupied territories.
"In neighboring Kherson, a Russian-controlled airbase has been blown up nearly two dozen times," The Economist elaborates. "In Enerhodar, Andrii Shevchyk, the collaborationist mayor, was the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt. In Izyum, hungry Russian soldiers were purportedly given spiked pies by a seemingly friendly old lady, according to a telephone conversation between a Russian soldier and his girlfriend that was intercepted by Ukrainian intelligence; eight of them reportedly ended up dead."
Have the partisans had any other successes?
Reports of new guerrilla attacks come in daily — a trash can bomb exploded near the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Melitopol on Sunday, for example, injuring four, separatist officials said. And late last week, partisan scouts discovered two Russian military outposts in Kherson region and passed the coordinates on to a nearby Ukrainian artillery unit, which "pulverized" one base, killing about 200 fighters based on observed body bags, then hit a resort complex near the mouth of the Dnipro River, "killing dozens of enemy soldiers, including two generals," the Times reports, citing senior Ukrainian officials.
And when it comes to the main goal of the resistance, "it's likely that Ukrainian partisan activity has affected the morale of Russian soldiers, close to 200 of whom have been victims of fatal knifings and shootings," Alexander Motyl, a historian and Ukraine expert at Rutgers who compiles reports of partisan attacks, writes in the journal 1945. "It's also likely that several assassinations of pro-Russian Ukrainian civilians have dampened the spirits of actual and potential collaborators."
Still, "the real impact of the partisan movement will be felt if it spreads to most of southern Ukraine, intensifies its efforts, and — most important — coordinates its activities with the counteroffensive the Ukrainian armed forces, bolstered by deliveries of western heavy weaponry, are expected to launch in late July or August," Moytl writes. "The Ukrainians expect their counter-offensive to be successful," and "if the guerrillas can strike the Russian lines from behind, while the army attacks from the front, the effect could be tantamount to an encirclement of the Russian armed forces."
Why don't these attacks get more attention?
"The subject is one of the murkiest of the war in Ukraine," The Guardian reports. "Both sides have an interest in exaggerating its prevalence: the Russians to justify crackdowns in areas they occupy and the Ukrainians to demoralize Russian troops." But Russia has also tried to downplay the strikes on its military forces. And it is difficult or impossible for Western news organizations to verify attacks by clandestine partisans behind Russian lines.
How big is the partisan resistance?
As might be expected with clandestine resistance, "the exact shape and size of the insurgency in southern Ukraine is unclear," the Times reports. "Also complicating the issue is assessing the extent to which attacks are being carried out by Ukrainian military sabotage groups or homegrown resistance groups," The Guardian adds.
But Ukrainian officials and outside analysts say the insurgency is growing. "It is, of course, possible that Ukrainian special forces may have been involved in some of these actions; it is also likely that the data are incomplete," Moytl writes. "Even so, the number of guerrilla actions is impressive and bespeaks a trend toward ever-greater partisan activity."
As Russia ramps up "abductions" of civilians to counter the insurgency, loots houses and businesses, and imposes other instruments of occupation on locals, "even those citizens who had a neutral attitude to the invaders in the beginning are starting to show dissatisfaction with the Russian occupation," Dmytro Orlov, the Ukrainian-recognized mayor of Enerhodar, wrote on Telegram.
And adding to grievances in occupied Ukraine, "Russia seems to be looking to Donetsk and Luhansk conscripts to make up for some of its own personnel limitations," the Financial Times reports, "with residents saying men with no military experience are regularly plucked from the streets and immediately sent to the front. The escalation, and rising casualty rates, have begun to spark anger even among pro-Russian communities."
Is the resistance organized?
Yes, it is coordinated by a unit of the Ukrainian armed forces called the Special Operations Forces (SSO), The Economist reports, citing a former operative in the unit. "The division was formed in 2015 after attempts at partisan activity failed disastrously in the early stages of the war in the Donbas," and "the work is split into three parts: military action, support operations, and psychological warfare."
"Say the task is to stop the enemy from moving more reserves to Melitopol," the former operative explains. "The SSO assigns special forces the task of blowing up a bridge, it asks partisans to damage the railway, and it gets psy-ops to print leaflets to say we're on the watch. So in the end, only half the troops dare to come."
Vladimir Zhemchugov, a trainer and former partisan organizer in Luhansk in 2014 and 2015, tells The Economist the current resistance is a mix of professional soldiers and volunteers, "60-40, in that order," with secret arms dumps, safe houses, and potential sympathizers sprinkled across Ukraine. Ukrainian authorities set up the bones of the insurgency in the hectic months before Russia's invasion, but some officials flipped sides, he added. "The security services and police proved to be our weakest link."
How has Russia responded?
Soon after the invasion, "Russia's security services appear to have got their hands on secret military databases," The Economist reports. "In Kherson, Russian officers are visiting the homes of Ukrainians who served in the army. Those who haven't managed to switch addresses are detained, beaten, tortured, or worse."
And "amid continuing attacks by insurgents, witnesses have described increasingly draconian efforts to find possible rebels," the Times adds. "All traffic in and out of Kherson to Ukrainian-controlled land is now closed, and those who do move around can face a maze of checkpoints, with occupation forces checking cellphones for hints of pro-Ukrainian sympathies."
"Naturally, the Russian authorities will try to crack down on and neutralize the guerrillas," writes Motyl, the Rutgers historian. But "inasmuch as the local populations are almost uniformly supportive of the Ukrainian resistance movement, the authorities are unlikely to succeed, certainly in the short term. In any case, whether successful or not, a crackdown will divert needed resources from the front to the rear, thereby aiding the Ukrainian war effort."
As Russia uses partisan attacks to justify their crackdowns, though, Ukraine's armed forces have "warned that Russian forces were preparing for a series of false-flag attacks in occupied regions on Russia Day, likely to accuse Ukrainian forces of conducting attacks against civilians, harm public perception of Ukrainian partisan activity, and galvanize pro-Russian sentiments," the Institute for the Study of War wrote Sunday.
How is Ukraine's government trying to help?
Along with any covert organizing by the SSO, Ukraine's government has set up a Center of National Resistance website that gives restive citizens in occupied territory instructions on how to wage guerrilla warfare, including setting up ambushes and how to react if arrested by pro-Russian forces. "In order to become an invisible avenger whom the occupiers will fear, it is necessary to know tactics, medicine, internet security, homemade weapons, and nonviolent actions," the site says. One example of what you might learn, the Times notes, is how to hot-wire a Soviet-era tank or other armored vehicle, step by step.
10. Retired Army generals join nonprofit which urges public to recommit to democracy: "This is as dangerous a time as we've seen in our lifetime"
Excerpts:
"I actually think that this is as dangerous a time as we've seen in our lifetime," McChrystal told CBS News. "Because you see the symptoms of people who are disassociated from the legitimacy of the government. They are starting to question basic things, like was an election outcome valid."
...
"These tiny fractures, these small fractures, that because of our international experience, we understand can widen and can be, can divide America," Lute said. "It can actually present opportunities for our opponents."
Retired Army generals join nonprofit which urges public to recommit to democracy: "This is as dangerous a time as we've seen in our lifetime"
A new nonprofit group which calls itself Team Democracy is urging citizens, politicians and organizations to recommit to America's democratic core principles. The nonprofit includes Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, who have more than six decades of military and government service between them.
Both are now retired. McChrystal, who once led U.S. forces around the world, including in Afghanistan, sees the country's current divisions as an issue of national security.
"I actually think that this is as dangerous a time as we've seen in our lifetime," McChrystal told CBS News. "Because you see the symptoms of people who are disassociated from the legitimacy of the government. They are starting to question basic things, like was an election outcome valid."
Lute also served globally over a four-decade career, including as U.S. ambassador to NATO.
"These tiny fractures, these small fractures, that because of our international experience, we understand can widen and can be, can divide America," Lute said. "It can actually present opportunities for our opponents."
The two said they've experienced struggling democracies overseas, and see some of those warning signs in the U.S.
"Our enemies would like nothing more than to find us not unified, to find us fragmented and unable to be the kind of America that they have faced before, or relied on their if they're allies," McChrystal said.
As seasoned observers of conflict, they joined Team Democracy to highlight core principles.
"The idea is to give every American a reminder and a commitment that safe and fair elections are fundamental to our nation and democracy," McChrystal said.
They want everyone to step back and believe that our nation is a democracy.
"It starts with a grassroots movement. Every American has to step back and say 'What do I really believe in about our nation?' And that is that we are a democracy. What signals that fact that I believe and participate in the elections?" McChrystal said.
"The thing that unites us is that, before we were supporters of President Trump or President Biden or Obama, we were Americans. We are Americans," Lute said.
They argue that adversaries of the U.S. can use this information as a weapon to mislead, confuse and divide.
"If I were an adversary of the U.S., I want to go after two things," McChrystal said. "First would be our political unity, our ability to make unified decisions and execute things, but I also want to go after our legitimacy as a nation that other nations want to emulate."
When asked why Americans are so divided, McChrystal said, "When people get messages that are very direct, and often they are either intentionally or unintentionally incorrect, it changes their beliefs. And so they start to hold fundamental ideas that are contrary to facts."
"It actually opens opportunities for those who would do us harm," Lute added. "And eventually their aim is to make us so divided that we're internally consumed, we're self absorbed with our own problems, and we're unable to address issues overseas."
Recent CBS polling underscores these divisions, with most Americans expecting violence after future presidential elections.
"This is not the America that we've come to expect of ourselves," Lute said.
"I think if we look in cases where people think violence is an option, or even an obligation, then we are starting to have drifted somewhere that we see in other countries far away, but it suddenly comes home, and we need to pay close attention to it," McChrystal explained.
"And once that drift begins, it's very difficult to reverse it," Lute said. "So now is the time as a preventive measure, we need to get in front of these divides and try to cement ourselves back together."
The military men haven't announced a complete plan of action yet, but believe that simply asking people from across the political spectrum to recommit to core, democratic values is a good place to start.
The group cited research that public pledges can drive behavior, especially when paired with public accountability efforts.
Catherine Herridge is a senior investigative correspondent for CBS News covering national security and intelligence based in Washington, D.C.
11. Who is Deterring Whom? The Place of Nuclear Weapons in Modern War
Excerpts:
The fact that this is difficult, frustrating, and ultimately terrifying does not mean that nuclear deterrence is failing. Anticipating the Russian reaction to each increase in the lethal support given to Ukraine is not “self-deterrence.” It is simply deterrence.
On the contrary, the irreducible risk that things might go terribly wrong is necessary for nuclear deterrence to function and has held up well in this conflict. It is a feature, not a bug. And so we want to say clearly that nuclear deterrence has worked during this conflict — it has deterred direct conflict between two great powers when each has powerful reasons to escalate. We accept that it does not feel successful, because successful nuclear deterrence is both frustrating and terrifying. It is frustrating because it limits our freedom of action, as it limits theirs, and terrifying, because it could all fail unpredictably and catastrophically. This is not an accident. It is a mechanism by which the balance of terror functions and this basic reality cannot be wished away, or simply dismissed to support policies that intentionally dismiss what are very real threats to using nuclear weapons. Russia has the means to use these weapons and has explained how they could choose to use them. No human knows how — in that moment —a leader will respond. The goal of deterrence is to never get to that moment of choice and, at least thus far in this war, the two sides have managed to do just that.
Who is Deterring Whom? The Place of Nuclear Weapons in Modern War - War on the Rocks
In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, old questions about nuclear deterrence have been revisited by a broad swath of academics, scholars, and pundits who have spent the past three decades acclimated to a climate of dramatically reduced nuclear risk. For those of us working in what has been a niche subfield, the attention has been both validating and, at times, surprising.
What is not often said is that nuclear deterrence is working and, as a result, both the United States and Russia face constraints in how they approach conflict that involves the other. Nuclear deterrence has limited the escalation of the conflict in profound ways, despite brutal fighting, heavy casualties, and the supply of substantial amounts of Western weaponry to Ukraine. This is welcome news, but there is a caution: There is no guarantee that it will continue to do so, nor can there be. The management of escalation means that the United States and NATO will have to accept that it too faces limits in how to approach the conflict. It would be unwise to hand-wave away Russian nuclear threats, or to dismiss as so many have the Russian threat to use nuclear weapons, based on a warped understanding deterrence theory.
Nuclear deterrence has contained this conflict in profound ways. The existence of Russian nuclear weapons has thus far deterred the United States from directly intervening in the conflict — and this is exactly how this is all supposed to work. The threat of nuclear escalation can be deeply frustrating, especially for many in the United States that have never experienced any external limitation on how American military power can be used in support of declared foreign policy goals. Russia has nuclear weapons and, within minutes, can kill millions of people. This reality is far different from the circumstances leading up to the invasion of Iraq or the toppling of Moammar Gadhafi. These constraints have become increasingly frustrating for many advocates of greater American intervention in Ukraine.
For his part, President Joe Biden gets it, and has been clear from the outset of the conflict that he would not place U.S. ground forces in Ukraine. In rejecting a so-called “no-fly zone” over Ukraine that would require direct combat between the forces of both countries he explained,”that’s called World War III, okay? Let’s get it straight here, guys.”
At the same time, American nuclear weapons, as well as those of France and the United Kingdom, have deterred Russia from striking lethal arsenals piling up across the border in Poland for delivery into Ukraine. The Western weapons that have been so important in blunting Russia’s invasion are a perfectly legitimate military target, whether those weapons are in Poland or Ukraine. U.S. officials, however, have drawn a red line against Russian attacks on NATO states — and Russia, to date, has been deterred from striking equipment and supplies on the Polish side of the border.
Many observers have expressed frustrations with the constraints imposed by nuclear deterrence, particularly in the United States, and have sought to dismiss the role of nuclear weapons to support more aggressive policy suggestions. In one such example, former commander of U.S. European Command, Gen. (ret.) Phillip Breedlove, quipped:
We are constantly reacting to Putin. We should be the ones dictating the substance and tempo of this engagement. We are almost fully deterred, while Putin is almost fully undeterred.
Deterrence, by definition, frustrates the objectives of the combatants. And the way in which nuclear deterrence enforces these limits is through the risk of catastrophic harm. A deterrent relationship is one in which our choices are sharply constrained by existential fear. Nuclear deterrence is supposed to feel awful, because it relies on a cruel assessment of human nature: People respond best of all not to love, joy, or pleasure but to the threat of unyielding pain. “There’s a logic to deterrence,” the historian Alex Wellerstein has argued, “but it is always coupled, in the end, with raw terror.”
The success, to date, of nuclear deterrence in containing escalation has been obscured by the vocal frustration of those who believed that the existence of U.S. nuclear weapons might somehow have prevented Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, despite the fact that the United States had no defense obligation (comparable to NATO’s Article 5) to come to Kyiv’s aid. This seems to reflect a profound misunderstanding of what nuclear deterrence is and how it functions. Nuclear weapons have never provided a blanket protection for all states from conventional violence. The Cold War began with a Soviet-sponsored invasion of South Korea, after all. And there were numerous instances of conflict throughout the Cold War, including cases when states without nuclear weapons attacked those with the bomb. Nuclear deterrence provides no guarantee, merely an incentive in favor of caution. Sometimes a leader may believe that the risk of escalation constrains an opponent more than it does her. In this case, there is the possibility of greater conventional violence beneath the nuclear threshold. Scholars know this problem as the security-insecurity paradox, although its root causes aren’t paradoxical at all. It is simply down to the confidence and risk tolerance of the combatants.
There is, therefore, no guarantee that deterrence will continue to hold. Indeed, much of the rhetoric among a certain segment of the chattering class indicates an unreasonable level of confidence that escalation to nuclear war is impossible. As Anne Applebaum wrote, “There is no indication right now that the nuclear threats so frequently mentioned by Russian propagandists, going back many years, are real.” Eliot Cohen is of the same mindset, writing that it is “Unforgivable — truly unforgivable — if the wealthy and powerful West yields to a much weaker enemy.” These analyses share an absolute certitude that Vladimir Putin would never, under any circumstances, initiate the use of nuclear weapons, or that, if he would, this decision would have nothing to do with his perception of his adversaries’ actions.
We find such certitude baffling.
It is, of course, true that both Russian and American officials manipulate risk, and that both have powerful interests in avoiding a nuclear war. But that does not mean the risk is a figment of our imaginations. Our reading of most nuclear crises from the Cold War is that, while both Washington and Moscow sought to avoid the use of nuclear weapons, there were always opportunities — by misperception, accident, or simply chance — for the nuclear powers to stumble into a nuclear war neither side wanted. Many officials in the Kennedy administration were confident that Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev would seek to avoid nuclear war under any circumstances, even if the United States were to invade Cuba. They were also certain that there were no Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba. On the latter point, they were wrong. These kinds of historical near-misses may send a shiver down one’s spine, but that is precisely the point. Without the risk that something might go horribly wrong, nuclear deterrence would cease to function. For a world leader to feel the pinch of nuclear deterrence restraining her, she must believe that at some point things might go catastrophically wrong.
Tom Schelling argued that analysts were mistaken to talk of the brink of nuclear war as if it were the “sharp edge of a cliff where one can stand firmly, look down, and decide whether or not to plunge.” A better description, he argued, was a “curved slope.” A leader might edge his or her country out onto this slope, but “the slope and the risk of slipping are rather irregular; neither the person standing there nor the onlookers can be quite sure quite how great the risk is, or how much it increases when one takes a few steps downward.”
The United States and Russia have edged, ever so carefully, out onto this slope. The Biden administration, for example, carefully weighed the risks of providing rocket systems to Ukraine that can strike targets on the Russian side of the border before deciding, correctly in the authors’ view, that such systems should be provided. This step seems safe enough. But we should acknowledge that we do not really know and that there remains a risk of slipping. Tread carefully.
What about the next step? Will Biden hazard another footfall? Will Putin? And then there is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It is possible that Ukraine will use these longer-range systems to strike targets inside Russia. It is possible that Putin, frustrated in his designs on Ukraine, might choose to target Western weapons as they pile up across the border in NATO countries. There are frequent calls for Biden to attack Russian aircraft over Ukraine or sink Russian ships in the Black Sea. What would the reaction to such escalations be? As onlookers, we simply do not know where the slope becomes too steep or if Putin or Biden might put a foot wrong — and neither do they.
In the face of uncertainty, leaders can try to infer what the other might be thinking. One way to do this is to listen to what an opponent says. It is tempting to dismiss statements by our adversaries and their red lines as cynical efforts to manipulate our fear of escalation for their political gain. There is, of course, some of that in their rhetoric, and in ours. And yet they do have red lines, as do we. Knowing where the slope becomes too steep is a very interesting game of chance.
The fact that this is difficult, frustrating, and ultimately terrifying does not mean that nuclear deterrence is failing. Anticipating the Russian reaction to each increase in the lethal support given to Ukraine is not “self-deterrence.” It is simply deterrence.
On the contrary, the irreducible risk that things might go terribly wrong is necessary for nuclear deterrence to function and has held up well in this conflict. It is a feature, not a bug. And so we want to say clearly that nuclear deterrence has worked during this conflict — it has deterred direct conflict between two great powers when each has powerful reasons to escalate. We accept that it does not feel successful, because successful nuclear deterrence is both frustrating and terrifying. It is frustrating because it limits our freedom of action, as it limits theirs, and terrifying, because it could all fail unpredictably and catastrophically. This is not an accident. It is a mechanism by which the balance of terror functions and this basic reality cannot be wished away, or simply dismissed to support policies that intentionally dismiss what are very real threats to using nuclear weapons. Russia has the means to use these weapons and has explained how they could choose to use them. No human knows how — in that moment —a leader will respond. The goal of deterrence is to never get to that moment of choice and, at least thus far in this war, the two sides have managed to do just that.
Jeffrey Lewis is a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.
12. How Russia telegraphed invasion of Ukraine in space and online
Indications and warnings.
Excerpts:
“What Ukraine has shown us well is that things will begin in [the] cyber and space domain before beginning on the ground,” he said Wednesday. “The cyberattack against Viasat was done the day before the beginning of the ground invasions. This is very significant. And this is very interesting. This is a big lesson. I would say it’s something we were thinking but now it’s real.”
Last month, U.S. and European leaders blamed Russia for a Feb. 24 cyberattack that disrupted internet service for tens of thousands of people in the critical moments that preceded the invasion of Ukraine. The attack on Viasat, a California-based provider of high-speed satellite broadband services and secure networking systems covering military and commercial markets worldwide, was meant to cripple Ukrainian command and control as Russian forces advanced, U.S. and U.K. officials said May 10.
How Russia telegraphed invasion of Ukraine in space and online
PARIS — In the weeks leading up to its invasion of Ukraine, Russia telegraphed its intentions by destroying one of its own satellites in orbit and then hacking U.S.-based communications company Viasat, according to France’s top military space officer.
The move confirmed for European military leaders how they had long suspected that future conflicts with Russia could play out.
While the discussion of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at Europe’s largest army tradeshow being held this week near Paris focused on how militaries fight on the ground, Major Gen. Michel Friedling, the head of France’s Space Command, said Russia’s use of cyber and space weapons sent a critical message.
“What Ukraine has shown us well is that things will begin in [the] cyber and space domain before beginning on the ground,” he said Wednesday. “The cyberattack against Viasat was done the day before the beginning of the ground invasions. This is very significant. And this is very interesting. This is a big lesson. I would say it’s something we were thinking but now it’s real.”
Last month, U.S. and European leaders blamed Russia for a Feb. 24 cyberattack that disrupted internet service for tens of thousands of people in the critical moments that preceded the invasion of Ukraine. The attack on Viasat, a California-based provider of high-speed satellite broadband services and secure networking systems covering military and commercial markets worldwide, was meant to cripple Ukrainian command and control as Russian forces advanced, U.S. and U.K. officials said May 10.
A few months earlier, on Nov. 15, Russia destroyed one of its own satellites in an anti-satellite weapon test, according to the U.S. State Department, creating more than 1,500 pieces of orbital debris that led astronauts on the International Space Station to take cover on several occasions. Space debris-tracking company LeoLabs identified the satellite in question as Cosmos 1408.
The anti-satellite test showed Russia was “ready to deny us space capabilities to other players, even if it creates some debris,” Friedling said. “And even if it denies, to [Russia, themselves] the use of space capabilities.”
Friedling also said as companies such as Viasat or Maxar Technologies, which provided satellite imagery of Russian equipment before and during the conflict, or Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which offered communications services within Ukraine, become more entwined in the day-to-day events and provide military-like offerings, their role becomes blurry to adversaries.
“This is a question of the future,” he said.
Mike Gruss is the editor in chief of Sightline Media Group.
13. Nighttime U.S. Helicopter Raid Captures 'Senior Daesh Leader' In Syria
Excerpt:
U.S. forces were involved in both planning and conducting the raid and U.S. aircraft were used in the operation, a senior coalition leader tells The War Zone. That leader would not comment about whether the 160th SOAR was involved, saying "for operational security reasons, we do not go into specifics of our missions."
Nighttime U.S. Helicopter Raid Captures 'Senior Daesh Leader' In Syria
The helicopters were seen flying fast and very low with their lights off over northwestern Syria.
BY
JUN 15, 2022 9:38 PM
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Forces from the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State jihadi group detained what officials say is a “senior Daesh leader" in an operation in Syria today that had no civilian casualties.
Daesh is an Arabic pejorative for ISIS, widely used by the coalition.
“The detained individual was assessed to be an experienced bomb maker and facilitator who became one of the group’s top leaders in Syria,” officials from Combined Joint Task Force - Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) said in a media release Wednesday evening.
Earlier this evening, video began emerging on social media showing helicopters, likely those from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), better known as the Night Stalkers, flying blacked-out at high speed and very low altitude over northwest Syria.
It was not immediately clear what role U.S. forces played in the mission beyond airborne transportation and support. The coalition consists of dozens of nations. We've reached out to CJTF-OIR for answers and will update this story.
The mission “was meticulously planned to minimize the risk of collateral damage, particularly any potential harm to civilians,” the release stated. “There were no civilians harmed during the operation nor any damage to Coalition aircraft or assets.”
Coalition forces, said CTFT-OIR “will continue to hunt the remnants of Daesh wherever they hide to ensure their enduring defeat.”
This is a breaking story. Stay with The War Zone for updates.
Contact the author: Howard@thewarzone.com
Update: 9:42 p.m.
U.S. forces were involved in both planning and conducting the raid and U.S. aircraft were used in the operation, a senior coalition leader tells The War Zone. That leader would not comment about whether the 160th SOAR was involved, saying "for operational security reasons, we do not go into specifics of our missions."
14. Opinion | The U.S. Is Losing Its Military Edge in Asia, and China Knows It
Despite our words for the past three administrations:
America has long neglected its defense strategy in Asia, viewing China’s challenge as important but not urgent. The scenes now playing out in Europe are a stark reminder of what can happen when deterrence fails.
Opinion | The U.S. Is Losing Its Military Edge in Asia, and China Knows It
By Ashley Townshend and James Crabtree
Mr. Townshend is a senior fellow for Indo-Pacific security at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Mr. Crabtree is executive director of the Asia office of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Guest Essay
The U.S. Is Losing Its Military Edge in Asia, and China Knows It
June 15, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET
Credit...John Custer
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By Ashley Townshend and
Mr. Townshend is a senior fellow for Indo-Pacific security at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Mr. Crabtree is executive director of the Asia office of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
A Chinese fighter jet veered in front of an Australian military surveillance aircraft over international waters in the South China Sea last month and released metallic debris that was sucked into the Australian plane’s engines.
As China’s armed forces grow in strength, sophistication and confidence, U.S.-led military deterrence in the Indo-Pacific is losing its bite.
Take the United States’ military presence in the region. It has about 55,000 military personnel in Japan and 28,000 in South Korea. Several thousand more are deployed across Australia, the Philippines, Thailand and Guam. This posture has barely changed since the 1950s. But plans to reinvigorate the U.S. presence have been stymied by inadequate budgets, competing priorities and a lack of consensus in Washington on how to deal with China.
The Pentagon has increased investments in cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence, and cyber- and space-based systems to prepare for a possible high-tech conflict with China in the 2030s. But the balance of power is likely to shift decidedly in China’s favor by the time they are deployed unless the United States brings new resources to the table soon.
While the U.S. military is globally dispersed, China can concentrate its forces on winning a future conflict in its own neighborhood. It now has the capability. China has the world’s largest navy and Asia’s biggest air force and an imposing arsenal of missiles designed to deter the United States from projecting military power into the Western Pacific in a crisis. China’s third and most advanced aircraft carrier is nearing completion, and other new hardware is being developed or is already in service.
Beijing is also raising alarm with its readiness to project that strength.
America’s military position in Asia, by contrast, has been hampered by decades of preoccupation with Middle East conflicts. The war in Ukraine has morphed into a long-term $54 billion commitment and forced Mr. Biden to delay and redraft his administration’s National Defense Strategy and National Security Strategy — critical documents that lay out global priorities and resource needs — as officials grapple with how to manage China and Russia at the same time.
Mr. Biden’s team ended the lengthy and costly U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, but that has not freed up many resources for the Indo-Pacific. Washington must not lose sight of the fact that China is a far greater security threat than Russia, now and in the long term.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said “the Indo-Pacific is at the heart of American grand strategy” during a speech last week at the Shangri-La Dialogue defense summit in Singapore, but he offered little in the way of new resources or commitments.
To turn things around, the United States must prioritize the threat from China, reinforce its military strength in Asia and provide Australia, Japan and India more sophisticated military and technological capabilities to bolster a strategy of collective defense.
It should urgently expand the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, which would direct additional spending toward strengthening the U.S. military presence west of Hawaii by distributing forces more widely through the region, improving logistics and air defenses, and other measures. These are necessary to reduce exposure of U.S. forces to China’s long-range missiles and increase the locations from which they could operate in a crisis. But this initiative has suffered from insufficient funding and criticism that its top priorities were not being met.
The United States could also strengthen its military posture in the region by increasing from five to six the number of attack submarines home-ported in Guam, expanding maritime operations in the Pacific and deploying more advanced fighters, warships, drones and long-range missiles to the region.
But all of that may still not be enough. The challenge posed by China is becoming so great that the United States can no longer maintain a balance of military power in Asia by itself.
Washington took a bold first step toward sharing more of the burden through the AUKUS agreement announced last year, under which it will work with Britain to supply Australia with nuclear-powered submarines and codevelop other advanced military technologies in the interim. But the submarines won’t enter service until the late 2030s, and AUKUS’s other collaborative efforts will require difficult reforms to longstanding U.S. restrictions on sharing sensitive national security technology.
America has long neglected its defense strategy in Asia, viewing China’s challenge as important but not urgent. The scenes now playing out in Europe are a stark reminder of what can happen when deterrence fails.
Ashley Townshend (@ashleytownshend) is a senior fellow for Indo-Pacific security at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. James Crabtree (@jamescrabtree) is executive director of the Asia office of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
15. Latvian foreign minister says European leaders should not fear provoking Putin and must not push Ukraine to make concessions
We must not fear provoking Russia (or China, or Iran, or north Korea).
Latvian foreign minister says European leaders should not fear provoking Putin and must not push Ukraine to make concessions
CNN · by Jennifer Hansler, CNN
Washington (CNN)Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs on Wednesday said European leaders must not be deterred by a fear of provoking Russian President Vladimir Putin and the international community must not pressure Ukraine into making concessions to end the war.
In an exclusive interview with CNN in Washington, DC, Rinkēvičs also outlined Latvia's key goals for NATO's approach to the eastern flank -- namely, a long-term military presence -- and expressed concern about the mounting food crisis caused by Russia's blockade of Ukrainian ports.
Rinkēvičs' visit to DC came as US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that "Ukraine is facing pivotal moment on the battlefield" and the Biden administration unveiled a new tranche of military assistance to Ukraine -- a move to bolster Kyiv as the war nears the end of its fourth month. The Latvian foreign minister will meet with lawmakers and Biden administration officials while in the nation's capital ahead of the NATO Summit in Madrid later this month.
'Not rational'
Although Rinkēvičs did not name names in his critique of European leaders who he says maintain a "fear" of vexing Putin, he told CNN he was referencing "those who are well-known from time to time openly saying that they don't want to see him humiliated or that we need to provide some off-ramp" -- a seeming swipe at French President Emmanuel Macron, who in early June said "we must not humiliate Russia so that the day when the fighting stops we can build an exit ramp through diplomatic means."
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Rinkēvičs said such an approach is "not rational," telling CNN that the "mentality in many of the capitals needs to be changed." He also noted that diplomatic outreach by world leaders to Putin in an attempt to get him to end the war had not yielded results, and said he believed the Russians "can be stopped only by Ukrainians, only by them fighting."
The foreign minister said the war in Ukraine was bigger than the Russian leader, noting that they wouldn't be able to commit the war "without the support of the population ... without this kind of brainwashing of the people via propaganda channels."
He praised the United States for its military support for Ukraine, and said that European allies ought to scale up their wartime industrial production, noting that "we had those nice 20-plus years of downsizing militaries, getting rid of all this stuff, and then now suddenly, we need for our own defense, we need to arm Ukraine."
Moreover, Rinkēvičs told CNN that "nobody should push Ukraine to provide concessions to Russia" -- concessions like ceding territory to Moscow in order to stop the war. Although this might work for some time, the foreign minister cast doubt that it would be a permanent deterrent to future Russian aggression.
"Let's not make this mistake again. Russia is not making this war about NATO expansion or keeping Ukraine out of NATO or EU. It's about destroying Ukraine, getting land, restoring empire," he said.
In order to prevent future military aggression by Moscow, Rinkēvičs said that "Russia needs to be in a situation where its war and economic machine is in such a state that it cannot launch any military offensive operation," and although he does not see sanctions ending the current war, they could help deter a future one.
Send a 'clear message to Russia'
As NATO leaders prepare to meet in the Spanish capital later this month, Rinkēvičs said Latvia, which borders both Russia and Belarus, sees very specific measures that should be carried out to enhance security in the Baltics, the foremost of which is a long-term NATO troop presence.
The foreign minister told CNN it was crucial to send "a clear message to Russia" that it is NATO territory, and "not an inch" will be ceded, acknowledging that Madrid would only be the start of the discussion and decision process.
"What we want to avoid is the situation where parts of the Baltics that's all of a sudden occupied and then they are liberated by NATO troops and then we get new Buchas or Mariupols," Rinkēvičs said, referencing the names of areas of Ukraine were mass atrocities have been committed.
"So what we are talking (about) internally, this is a change of the kind of deterrence and defense sort of (through) punishment to defense and deterrence through denial, denial to get into the Baltics," he said.
CNN · by Jennifer Hansler, CNN
16. Russia Might Try Reckless Cyber Attacks as Ukraine War Drags On, US Warns
Excerpts:
“You have seen the Russians excel in cyber in relatively static operations against moderately prepared network structures where they've had significant time to develop a campaign weeks in seven months,” said Rogers, a retired admiral. “What what the situation in Ukraine shows is that they are not strong against well-prepared dynamic networks whose security dimensions are changing regularly and fairly rapidly with high levels of preparedness, with high levels of defensive capability.”
The Ukrainians have also shown themselves adept in areas where even the United States continues to struggle, Rogers said, like building coalitions among groups that normally have nothing to do with one another, such as foreign military partners, global IT corporations and even cyber vigilante groups like Anonymous. “I think there's some interesting revelations in the U.S. and others as we ask ourselves: what's the best cybersecurity model for us moving forward? I think there's some great takeaways for us here.”
Russia Might Try Reckless Cyber Attacks as Ukraine War Drags On, US Warns
Ground commanders have been unable to capitalize on at least one previous cyber strike.
As the Ukraine war continues, U.S. officials worry that Russia might resort to new sorts of cyber attacks that could have big unintended consequences.
“I do think there there is a risk that the deeper you get into this conflict that the Russians will…be pressed to resort to more aggressive operations,” Neal Higgins, the deputy national cyber director for national cybersecurity at the White House’s Office of the National Cyber Director, said on Tuesday during the Defense One Tech Summit. If you're acting quickly and desiring a large impact, there is a risk that you lose control and that that did occur. It certainly is a risk that we continue to monitor across the government.”
Higgins was alluding to the 2017 NotPetya attacks, which spread beyond their intended targets—Ukrainian power companies—and went on to be the most destructive cyber event in history, infecting computers across the globe, including in Russia.
Five years on, Higgins said, the United States government is much better prepared for such an attack—particularly since last fall, when Russia began to mass troops along the Ukrainian border. He highlighted better coordination between the public and private sectors and infrastructure providers.
“When we had more detailed tactical information, that allowed them to take the necessary steps to defend their network,” he said. But he also warned that some private network providers still haven’t taken simple steps to better protect their networks.
Russia has already launched cyber attacks in Ukraine to support its invasion, Crowdstrike founder Dmitri Alperovitch said on Tuesday. Hours before tanks crossed the border in February, Russian hackers struck the Viasat communications network. But Russian ground commanders were too uncoordinated to take advantage of the disruption.
“If you don't follow through on that, you're going to lose that advantage. Because the one problem of course with cyber is that it's hard to have lasting effects,” Alperovitch said in a separate Tech Summit session.
Another thing that’s changed from 2017 is the level of Ukrainian preparedness, thanks in part to partnership with U.S. Cyber Command and other entities. Mike Rogers, who led U.S. Cyber Command and the NSA, said at the Tech Summit the Ukrainians have learned how to quickly identify and re-constitute networks that are hit by cyber attacks, which makes even novel and potentially destructive attacks a lot less damaging.
“You have seen the Russians excel in cyber in relatively static operations against moderately prepared network structures where they've had significant time to develop a campaign weeks in seven months,” said Rogers, a retired admiral. “What what the situation in Ukraine shows is that they are not strong against well-prepared dynamic networks whose security dimensions are changing regularly and fairly rapidly with high levels of preparedness, with high levels of defensive capability.”
The Ukrainians have also shown themselves adept in areas where even the United States continues to struggle, Rogers said, like building coalitions among groups that normally have nothing to do with one another, such as foreign military partners, global IT corporations and even cyber vigilante groups like Anonymous. “I think there's some interesting revelations in the U.S. and others as we ask ourselves: what's the best cybersecurity model for us moving forward? I think there's some great takeaways for us here.”
17. The UN continues Israel-bashing after Biden promised to stop it
Excerpts:
The administration, unfortunately, has signaled it may not leave the council even if the mandate continues, claiming the body “plays a crucial role in promoting respect for human rights as well as fundamental freedoms all around the world.”
Tell that to the Uighurs of Xinjiang, the Tibetan people and the citizens of Hong Kong, particularly in the wake of UN human-rights chief Michelle Bachelet’s much-criticized visit to China, in which Beijing media quoted her praising the Communist Party’s work to alleviate poverty and calling its role within international institutions “crucial.”
There’s no shame in admitting the Human Rights Council is broken beyond repair. Blinken could take credit for trying his best to end its systemic anti-Semitism — even if his strategy was naïve and the effort doomed from the start.
But if the Biden team fails to terminate the commission’s mandate this month, it will have to face the realization that its continued presence in the council would make the United States complicit in UN-sponsored anti-Semitism and erode America’s moral leadership in combating this global scourge.
At that point, it will be up to Congress to prohibit US participation in the Human Rights Council — just as it has done for other international organizations that run afoul of US values and foreign-policy interests.
The UN continues Israel-bashing after Biden promised to stop it
When the Biden administration last year reversed its predecessor’s decision to abandon the UN Human Rights Council, Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged his team would use diplomatic engagement to stop its focus on delegitimizing Israel. That promise remains unfulfilled — and the administration stands on the verge of complicity in UN-sponsored anti-Semitism.
If US diplomats can’t put an end to the council’s anti-Semitic circus in Geneva this month, Congress should put an end to US participation in the council.
Why does the mandate rise to the level of anti-Semitism? It meets the criteria of the US State Department-adopted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition. The alliance cites two prime examples of modern anti-Semitism: “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”
The Human Rights Council has long applied a double standard to Israel — the only country for which it has a dedicated agenda item. But its new commission’s mandate goes even further, aiming to produce a UN document that countries can cite to justify anti-Semitic claims that Zionism is racism.
Former United Nations human rights chief Navi Pillay presenting a report into alleged crimes committed by Israel.
Photo by FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images
And, unlike the mandates of other commissions of inquiry, which the council must renew annually, this one comes without an expiration date.
To its credit, the Biden administration recognizes the commission’s appalling nature. When late last year the UN General Assembly considered the commission’s budget, including millions of dollars and dozens of staff, Washington spoke out in opposition. But it turns out an engagement-only strategy at the United Nations doesn’t work. The UN in December handed the commission $4.2 million, and America officially joined the Human Rights Council days later, pledging to use its membership and influence to terminate the commission’s mandate.
Despite congressional calls to follow through, Team Biden hasn’t met its promise. When the council met in March, Washington was understandably distracted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and mustering diplomatic support to suspend Moscow from its seat on the council. The Biden administration celebrated a diplomatic victory — but at what cost? That same session, the council passed four anti-Israel resolutions and left the commission’s mandate untouched.
This month, the commission published its first report, which largely rehashed previous UN denunciations of Israel. The absence of fresh analysis likely reflects circumstantial limitations: The UN had approved the commission’s budget and staff only a few months prior. The commission vows its investigation is about to expand to “preserve and analyze information and evidence on international crimes with a view to identifying those bearing individual criminal responsibility” and “ensuring individual, State and corporate accountability.”
The Biden administration previously vowed to stop the council from attempting to delegitimize Israel.
EPA/VALENTIN FLAURAUD
Biden’s ambassador in Geneva this week issued a statement, with 21 other countries, denouncing the report. But words alone won’t derail the commission; that requires a resolution passed by the 47-member council.
The administration, unfortunately, has signaled it may not leave the council even if the mandate continues, claiming the body “plays a crucial role in promoting respect for human rights as well as fundamental freedoms all around the world.”
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Tell that to the Uighurs of Xinjiang, the Tibetan people and the citizens of Hong Kong, particularly in the wake of UN human-rights chief Michelle Bachelet’s much-criticized visit to China, in which Beijing media quoted her praising the Communist Party’s work to alleviate poverty and calling its role within international institutions “crucial.”
There’s no shame in admitting the Human Rights Council is broken beyond repair. Blinken could take credit for trying his best to end its systemic anti-Semitism — even if his strategy was naïve and the effort doomed from the start.
But if the Biden team fails to terminate the commission’s mandate this month, it will have to face the realization that its continued presence in the council would make the United States complicit in UN-sponsored anti-Semitism and erode America’s moral leadership in combating this global scourge.
At that point, it will be up to Congress to prohibit US participation in the Human Rights Council — just as it has done for other international organizations that run afoul of US values and foreign-policy interests.
Richard Goldberg is a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He served on Capitol Hill, on the US National Security Council, as the Illinois governor’s chief of staff and as a Navy Reserve intelligence officer.
18. What would a Chinese strategy of restraint look like?
Excerpts:
Ultimately, the goal of any Chinese strategy of restraint would be to disrupt U.S. dominance in all the world’s major regions to create a global sanctuary for China, even as Chinese power peaks and Beijing’s bid to move to center stage of world politics falters.
Will China adopt such a grand strategy? Only time will tell. And if it does, will it change the “great game” of Sino-American rivalry for better or for worse? Again, only time will tell.
What would a Chinese strategy of restraint look like?
BY ANDREW LATHAM, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 06/15/22 11:33 AM ET
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL
What if China is not a rising power on course to displace the United States as the world’s leading power, but a plateauing power. In other words, what if China has peaked — what if the economic, demographic and geopolitical headwinds it is now encountering are likely to preclude any future bid for global primacy. What if China’s rise has stalled and it is destined to become nothing more than another great power with a major, but not predominant, role in global affairs?
In these circumstances, what strategic path is Beijing likely to follow? Or, put slightly differently, what grand strategy would a rational actor such as China adopt as it sees its window of opportunity for pursuing primacy – for “moving to center stage of world politics,” as President Xi Jinping once put it – start to close?
It is impossible, of course, to know precisely how China’s leaders would answer these questions. But one option available to Beijing would be to adopt a grand strategy of restraint. As originally conceived, restraint was envisioned as a specifically American strategy — as an alternative to what its advocates considered to be the self-defeating postwar American grand strategy liberal hegemony.
The argument was that this maximalist strategy ultimately undercut U.S. primacy by driving Washington to ever more counterproductive expenditures of blood and treasure in an ultimately futile effort to remake the world in America’s liberal image. Restraint was advocated as a more prudent way of using limited resources to achieve a more limited goal — sustainable American security rather than unsustainable liberal empire. It was explicitly not about the U.S. abandoning its position as the world’s sole superpower or retreating to some sort of “Fortress America.” It was about sustaining American primacy through prudent rebalancing and retrenchment.
On the face of it, then, restraint – at least as it has come to be conceptualized in the U.S. literature – would seem to be a uniquely American strategic option. But there is nothing inherent in the logic of the strategy that limits its applicability solely to an existing hegemon like the U.S. Indeed, with a few minor modifications, it might also meet the needs of any great power. If that is the case, it is worth asking what such a variant – a grand strategy of “restraint with Chinese characteristics” – might look like.
To begin with, such a Chinese variant would share with its American counterpart a fundamental commitment to local dominance. As restrainers typically assume with respect to the United States, America’s global hegemony has always rested on its dominance in the Western Hemisphere — on excluding any extra-hemispheric great powers and preventing the rise of a potential hegemonic challenger within the hemisphere. Historically, once the U.S. had established its hemispheric supremacy, it was able to project its power confidently around the world. Absent that hemispheric dominance, the restrainers argue, the U.S. would have been too distracted by local threats to assert itself globally. Put more generically, the theory of restraint holds that primacy in one’s own neighborhood is a necessary precondition for global supremacy.
In China’s case, a grand strategy of restraint would begin with establishing its primacy in the Western Pacific or Northeast Asia. This does not mean physically occupying neighboring countries, as the Soviets did in Eastern Europe following World War II. But it does mean that China would have to make itself the dominant player at least out to the first island chain (which runs from Japan to Taiwan to the Philippines). And that, in turn, would require that it disrupt America’s alliance system in the region and push the U.S. military out all the way to the third island chain (which begins at the Aleutian Islands, runs through the central Pacific to Oceania, and includes Hawaii).
Failing this, regional powers – from Vietnam to Taiwan to Japan – would feel able to count on U.S. support and would thus be emboldened to resist Chinese power rather than accommodate themselves to it. Simply put, the theory holds that China cannot be an effective restrainer if it remains on the permanent defensive in its own neighborhood, hemmed in by American bases, naval forces, allies and partners. It must have regional supremacy.
Additionally, the two variants would share a commitment to countering hegemons in regions they deemed to be critically important. For American restrainers, these regions include Europe, Northeast Asia and the Persian Gulf – Europe and Northeast Asia because they are the major industrial centers of the world and contain all of the other great powers, and the Persian Gulf because of its oil.
For a Chinese restrainer, in addition to its home base in Northeast Asia, the regions crucial to Beijing would likely also include Europe and the Persian Gulf. But the Indian Ocean region might also be considered crucial because of its importance as a maritime trade route, and the Arctic might make the list because of its increasingly accessible minerals and hydrocarbon deposits — and because, as the polar ice melts, it promises to provide an alternative sea route between East Asia and Europe.
Finally, like the U.S. version, a grand strategy of restraint with Chinese characteristics would eschew permanent military deployments around the globe, resting instead on a strategy of buck-passing and vanishingly rare interventions undertaken only when friendly local countries proved incapable of maintaining a stable regional balance.
But there the similarities would end. Given China’s distinctive geopolitical situation, Beijing’s version of restraint would necessarily differ from Washington’s in at least one important way. In the U.S. case, the focus of such a strategy would be on preventing the emergence of regional hegemons. In China’s case, it would be on disrupting already existing regional power balances favoring, and backed by, the U.S.
It would, for example, doubtless involve disrupting the balance of power in the Persian Gulf, perhaps by backing Iran’s bid to challenge the U.S.-Saudi domination of the region. It might also entail a concerted effort to undermine U.S. influence in Europe through the use of overt and covert means to exert its influence on political and economic elites and on academia. Taken to its logical conclusion, a Chinese strategy of restraint would even necessarily involve efforts to upend – or at least undermine – American dominance in the Western Hemisphere.
Ultimately, the goal of any Chinese strategy of restraint would be to disrupt U.S. dominance in all the world’s major regions to create a global sanctuary for China, even as Chinese power peaks and Beijing’s bid to move to center stage of world politics falters.
Will China adopt such a grand strategy? Only time will tell. And if it does, will it change the “great game” of Sino-American rivalry for better or for worse? Again, only time will tell.
Andrew Latham is a professor of international relations at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minn., and a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities in Washington, D.C. Follow him on Twitter @aalatham.
The Hill · by Rebecca Beitsch · June 15, 2022
19. Lawmakers order Army to create separate fitness standard for combat specialties
Excerpts:
Officials said the revisions were designed to provide “an assessment for the physical domain of the Army’s Holistic Health and Fitness System” and not an predictor of battlefield success. Leaders also discussed whether the word “combat” should be dropped from its name, although it was ultimately kept in.
The changes have been in place for only about two months, but members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday voted in closed-door deliberations over the annual defense authorization bill to create a requirement for a supplemental test in addition to the ACFT’s baseline standards.
“Servicemembers in military occupational specialties requiring close enemy combat must meet rigorous physical fitness requirements to ensure operational mission success,” report language in the authorization bill stated.
The amendment calls for Army officials to provide new “sex-neutral high fitness standards” for Army combat jobs by next summer, if the NDAA passes, as usual, this winter. The new requirements would be “higher than those for non-combat [jobs].”
Lawmakers order Army to create separate fitness standard for combat specialties
Senate lawmakers unhappy with the newly revised Army Combat Fitness Test want service leaders to develop stronger fitness standards for soldiers most likely to see combat, congressional sources told Military Times Wednesday.
The move would also require all of the armed services to consider separate fitness standards for troops in non-combat jobs, to ensure that a more difficult fitness test wouldn’t force out, for example, medical and cyber specialists whose jobs may call for different physical skills.
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In the long-term, the changes could mean a radical rethinking of military fitness requirements across the services.
But short-term, the provision is a rebuke for Army officials who have spent the last several years tweaking their fitness test in response to previous criticism from Congress that the events were overly strenuous for service members in support roles.
Army officials launched the revised test in the spring, following an independent review ordered by Congress into shortcomings with the test. All active-duty and Guardsmen are scheduled to transition to the new test this fall, and Reservists are scheduled to switch next spring.
The new test includes new age- and gender-specific scoring tables similar to the old Army Physical Fitness Test; a 2.5-mile walk has been added as an alternate aerobic event for troops whose medical profiles prevent them from running; and the elimination of the leg tuck as a core event.
The current ACFT is somewhat pared down from its predecessor, which was specifically designed as an age- and gender-neutral test with different standards based on whether a soldier’s job requires “heavy,” “significant” or “moderate” physical effort.
But after large numbers of women were unable to meet the minimum requirements, the Army amended the events and created a new scoring system with different standards for age and gender, changing its messaging to describe ACFT as an elevated fitness test, rather than a readiness evaluation.
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The Expert Soldier Badge is one gender-neutral way the Army can measure combat readiness.
Officials said the revisions were designed to provide “an assessment for the physical domain of the Army’s Holistic Health and Fitness System” and not an predictor of battlefield success. Leaders also discussed whether the word “combat” should be dropped from its name, although it was ultimately kept in.
The changes have been in place for only about two months, but members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday voted in closed-door deliberations over the annual defense authorization bill to create a requirement for a supplemental test in addition to the ACFT’s baseline standards.
“Servicemembers in military occupational specialties requiring close enemy combat must meet rigorous physical fitness requirements to ensure operational mission success,” report language in the authorization bill stated.
The amendment calls for Army officials to provide new “sex-neutral high fitness standards” for Army combat jobs by next summer, if the NDAA passes, as usual, this winter. The new requirements would be “higher than those for non-combat [jobs].”
Accompanying report language also requires that the Defense Department come up with a separate list of close-combat jobs, briefing SASC on the physical requirements for them and their reasoning behind selecting those jobs no later than Feb. 1.
The provision — introduced by Sens. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, and Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas — was approved by a bipartisan voice vote with several Democratic members speaking in support of abandoning the new Army test, according to congressional sources.
Committee officials would not comment on the ongoing deliberations over the authorization bill.
Whether the provision will become law remains unclear. The full Senate is expected to vote on the sprawling defense authorization bill next month, and then begin negotiations with House lawmakers on a compromise version for consideration later this fall.
House Armed Services Committee leaders have not said whether they plan to include similar language in their authorization bill when they mark up their initial draft next week.
Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.
Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members. Follow on Twitter @Meghann_MT
20. Why Do People Hate Realism So Much?
There is no one size IR theory that fits all. And all are useful in trying to explain and understand IR phenomena but no one theory can explain everything.
I wonder if we spend too much effort in trying to prove or justify a theory rather than dealing with the conditions and situation as it really is?
Why Do People Hate Realism So Much?
An expert's point of view on a current event.
The school of thought doesn’t explain everything—but its proponents foresaw the potential for conflict over Ukraine long before it erupted.
Stephen M. Walt
By Stephen M. Walt, a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.
NEW FOR SUBSCRIBERS: Click + to receive email alerts for new stories written by Stephen M. Walt Stephen M. Walt
A worker cuts the nose off the last Ukraine's Tupolev-22M3, the Soviet-made strategic aircraft able to carry nuclear weapons at a military base in Poltava, Ukraine on Jan. 27, 2006. A total of 60 aircraft were destroyed according to the USA-Ukrainian disarmament agreement.
A worker cuts the nose off the last Ukraine's Tupolev-22M3, the Soviet-made strategic aircraft able to carry nuclear weapons at a military base in Poltava, Ukraine on Jan. 27, 2006. A total of 60 aircraft were destroyed according to the USA-Ukrainian disarmament agreement. SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images
The political scientist Robert Gilpin once wrote that “no one loves a political realist.” His lament seems especially apt today, as the ongoing tragedy in Ukraine has spawned an uptick of realism-bashing. A small sample: Anne Applebaum and Tom Nichols of the Atlantic, Columbia University professor and fellow FP columnist Adam Tooze in the New Statesman, University of Toronto professor Seva Gunitsky, and Michael Mazarr of Rand Corp. Even Edward Luce of the Financial Times, who is consistently one of the most insightful observers on U.S. and global policy, recently opined that “the ‘realist’ school of foreign policy … has had a terrible press recently, most of it richly deserved.”
Much of this ire has been directed at my colleague and occasional co-author John J. Mearsheimer, based in part on the bizarre claim that his views on the West’s role in helping to cause the Russia-Ukraine crisis somehow make him “pro-Putin” and in part on some serious misreadings of his theory of offensive realism.
Another obvious target is former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, whose recent comments urging peace talks with Moscow, a territorial compromise in Ukraine, and the need to avoid a permanent rupture with Russia were seen as a revealing demonstration of realism’s moral bankruptcy. As I explain below, Kissinger is an outlier within the realist tradition, but he’s still a convenient foil for its critics.
The political scientist Robert Gilpin once wrote that “no one loves a political realist.” His lament seems especially apt today, as the ongoing tragedy in Ukraine has spawned an uptick of realism-bashing. A small sample: Anne Applebaum and Tom Nichols of the Atlantic, Columbia University professor and fellow FP columnist Adam Tooze in the New Statesman, University of Toronto professor Seva Gunitsky, and Michael Mazarr of Rand Corp. Even Edward Luce of the Financial Times, who is consistently one of the most insightful observers on U.S. and global policy, recently opined that “the ‘realist’ school of foreign policy … has had a terrible press recently, most of it richly deserved.”
Much of this ire has been directed at my colleague and occasional co-author John J. Mearsheimer, based in part on the bizarre claim that his views on the West’s role in helping to cause the Russia-Ukraine crisis somehow make him “pro-Putin” and in part on some serious misreadings of his theory of offensive realism.
Another obvious target is former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, whose recent comments urging peace talks with Moscow, a territorial compromise in Ukraine, and the need to avoid a permanent rupture with Russia were seen as a revealing demonstration of realism’s moral bankruptcy. As I explain below, Kissinger is an outlier within the realist tradition, but he’s still a convenient foil for its critics.
Realists of various stripes repeatedly warned that Western policy toward Russia and Ukraine would lead to serious trouble.
The irony here is hard to miss. Realists of various stripes repeatedly warned that Western policy toward Russia and Ukraine would lead to serious trouble, warnings that were blithely ignored by those who claimed that NATO’s open-door policy would lead to lasting peace in Europe. Now that war has broken out, lives are being lost, and Ukraine is being destroyed, you would think proponents of open-ended NATO enlargement would have set aside their idealistic illusions and think about these issues in a hard-nosed, realist fashion. Yet the opposite has occurred: The people who got it right are singled out for attack, while those who believed that enlarging NATO would create a vast zone of peace in Europe are insisting that the war continue until Russia is totally defeated and greatly weakened.
This phenomenon isn’t all that surprising, insofar as realism has never been popular in the United States. It is recognized as an important tradition in the study of international relations, but it is also the object of considerable animosity. In 2010, for example, University of California, San Diego professor David Lake’s presidential address to the International Studies Association criticized realism and other paradigms as “sects” and “pathologies” that divert attention from “studying things that matter.” Back in the 1990s, when many believed liberal values were spreading around the world, the political scientist John Vasquez published a lengthy article in American Political Science Review claiming that realism was a “degenerative” research program that ought to be discarded.
So why do so many people dislike realism so intensely? I might not be the most objective judge on this issue, but here’s what I think is going on.
Realism is a rather gloomy perspective on politics, even in its more benign versions. It assumes that people are irredeemably flawed and that there is no way to eliminate all conflicts of interest among individuals or the social groups they form. Moreover, all versions of realism highlight the insecurity resulting from the absence of an overarching global authority that can enforce agreements and prevent states from attacking one another. When violence is a possibility, human groups of all sorts—be they tribes, city-states, street gangs, militias, nations, states, etc.—will look for ways to make themselves more secure, which means they will be strongly inclined to compete for power.
Contrary to what some critics maintain, realists do not see these features as iron laws that determine every move a state might make. Nor do they believe that cooperation is impossible or that international institutions are of no value, and they certainly don’t think that humans lack agency or the ability to make different choices as they strive to protect their interests. Realists simply maintain that international anarchy (i.e., the absence of an overarching central authority) creates powerful incentives for rivalry and competition among states—incentives that are difficult to manage or overcome.
It’s not hard to understand why many people are reluctant to embrace such a pessimistic view of the human condition, especially when it appears to offer no clear escape from it. But the real question is this: Is this is an accurate view of international politics? When you consider the conflict and strife that have occurred throughout human history and continue to this day, and the tendency for states to worry about their security, the prima facie case for realism is strong.
Second, realism’s emphasis on power politics leads many people to assume its proponents as overly fixated on military power and inclined to favor hawkish solutions. But this view is simply false: Apart from Kissinger (who was a hawk during the Vietnam War and backed the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003), the most prominent realists have generally leaned dovish. George F. Kennan, Reinhold Niebuhr, Walter Lippmann, Hans J. Morgenthau, and Kenneth Waltz were all early critics of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and their scholarly successors were among the more prominent voices opposing the Bush administration’s march to war against Iraq in 2003.
Third, realism is also seen as indifferent or even hostile to ethical or moral considerations. There is a grain of truth in this charge, insofar as realism’s theoretical framework does not incorporate values or ideals in any explicit way. As the name implies, realism tries to engage with the world “as it really is,” not as we might like it to be. Yet as Michael Desch and others have pointed out, most realists are also guided by profound moral commitments, and they are conscious of both the tragic nature of international politics and the importance of trying to act morally despite the pressures to act otherwise. For realists, noble aims and good intentions are not enough if the resulting choices lead to greater insecurity or human suffering.
Fourth, realism is unpopular in the United States because it runs counter to the widespread belief in American exceptionalism—the idea that the United States is uniquely moral and always acts for the greater good of humanity. For realists, the need to remain secure and independent in a world lacking a central authority often leads states with very different characteristics to act in strikingly similar ways. The United States and the former Soviet Union could not have been more different in terms of their domestic orders, political ideologies, and economic systems, for example, but the pressures of competition during the Cold War led each to form and lead large alliances, promote their respective ideologies wherever they could, build tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, intervene in many other countries, fight destructive proxy wars, and assassinate foreign leaders. Locked in competition, these two very different countries produced rather similar foreign policies.
Realism recognizes that even well-established democracies will do horrible things to others when they believe their vital interests are at stake.
To be sure, realists recognize that domestic politics are not irrelevant and that there are important differences between, say, Nazi Germany on the one hand and Edwardian Britain on the other. But where idealists are quick to divide the world into “good” and “bad” states—and to blame the world’s problems almost entirely on the latter—realism recognizes that even well-established democracies will do horrible things to others when they believe their vital interests are at stake.
Back in the 1960s, for example, the Johnson administration was so worried that South Vietnam would become part of the communist world that it sent nearly half a million troops across the Pacific to fight there; 58,000 of those soldiers didn’t return. The U.S. military used napalm and Agent Orange and dropped some 8 million tons of ordnance on the country. When that didn’t work, the Nixon administration invaded Cambodia, undermining its fragile government and unwittingly helping the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime to gain power. Vietnam was a weak country and more than 8,000 miles from the continental United States, yet its leaders managed to convince themselves these actions were necessary for U.S. national security.
In July 1979—less than a decade later—the Carter administration became alarmed when a popular uprising in Nicaragua toppled pro-American dictator Anastasio Somoza, much as the Maidan uprising in Ukraine toppled pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014. When it came to power in January 1981, the Reagan administration responded by organizing and arming a rebel army—the Contras—much as Russia has backed separatist militias in Ukraine. Nicaragua was a poor country with a population of barely 4 million people, yet U.S. officials saw it as a serious threat. Some 30,000 Nicaraguans died in the Contra War—equivalent to losing approximately 2.5 million Americans as a percentage of the country’s population.
These examples of past U.S. misconduct do not justify what Russia is doing today in the slightest. If we are consistent, all these actions (to include the invasion of Iraq) should be roundly condemned on both strategic and moral grounds. Nonetheless, they are a reminder that governments of all types will do brutal things when they feel threatened, even if their fears are sometimes illusory. But in a country like the United States, which sees itself as uniquely virtuous and where top officials rarely admit mistakes or accept responsibility for them, reminding people that U.S. leaders have sometimes acted much as Russian President Vladimir Putin is acting today is probably not be the best way to win them over.
This phenomenon is especially powerful in wartime, when the understandable desire to rally popular support encourages governments to describe their own cause as wholly just and to portray their opponents as the embodiment of evil. To suggest that prior U.S. actions might have had something to do with the tragedy in Ukraine does not excuse Putin’s decision to invade or the conduct of the Russian armed forces, but it is bound to trigger a harsh reaction from those seeking to frame the conflict as a simple morality play between a brutal aggressor and an innocent victim and the latter’s well-intentioned and equally innocent friends.
21. The Consequences of Conquest - Why Indo-Pacific Power Hinges on Taiwan
Excerpts:
Over the longer term, U.S. allies in the region would also likely fear the growing Chinese threat to shipping routes and worry that a stronger sea-based Chinese nuclear deterrent would reduce the credibility of U.S. commitments to defend them from attack. Anticipation of these dangers would almost certainly drive U.S. allies to seek greater reassurance from the United States in the form of tighter defense pacts, additional military aid, and more visible U.S. force deployments in the region, including of nuclear forces on or near allies’ territory and perhaps collaborating with their governments on nuclear planning. East Asia could come to look much like Europe did in the later stages of the Cold War, with U.S. allies demanding demonstrations of their U.S. patron’s commitment in the face of doubts about the military balance of power. If the Cold War is any guide, such steps could themselves heighten the risks of nuclear escalation in a crisis or a war.
Finally, the United States might pursue a strategy that ends its commitment to Taiwan and also reduces its military presence in Asia and other alliance commitments in the region. Such a policy might limit direct U.S. military support to the defense of Japan or even wind down all U.S. commitments in East Asia. But even in this case, Taiwan’s potential military value to China would still have the potential to create dangerous regional dynamics. Worried that some of its islands might be next, Japan might fight to defend Taiwan, even if the United States did not. The result might be a major-power war in Asia that could draw in the United States, willingly or not. Such a war would be devastating. Yet upsetting the current delicate equilibrium by ceding this militarily valuable island could make such a war more likely, reinforcing a core argument in favor of current U.S. grand strategy: that U.S. alliance commitments and forward military presence exert a deterring and constraining effect on conflict in the region.
Ultimately, however, Taiwan’s unique military value poses problems for all three U.S. grand strategies. Whether the United States solidifies its commitment to Taiwan and its allies in Asia or walks them back, in full or in part, the island’s potential to alter the region’s military balance will force Washington to confront difficult tradeoffs, ceding military maneuverability in the region or else risking an arms race or even an open conflict with China. Such is the wicked nature of the problem posed by Taiwan, which sits at the nexus of U.S.-Chinese relations, geopolitics, and the military balance in Asia. Regardless of what grand strategy Washington pursues, the island’s military value will present some hazard or exact some price.
The Consequences of Conquest
Why Indo-Pacific Power Hinges on Taiwan
July/August 2022
Foreign Affairs · by Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Caitlin Talmadge · June 16, 2022
Of all the intractable issues that could spark a hot war between the United States and China, Taiwan is at the very top of the list. And the potential geopolitical consequences of such a war would be profound. Taiwan—“an unsinkable aircraft carrier and submarine tender,” as U.S. Army General Douglas MacArthur once described it—has important, often underappreciated military value as a gateway to the Philippine Sea, a vital theater for defending Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea from possible Chinese coercion or attack. There is no guarantee that China would win a war for the island—or that such a conflict wouldn’t drag on for years and weaken China. But if Beijing gained control of Taiwan and based military assets there, China’s military position would improve markedly.
Beijing’s ocean surveillance assets and submarines, in particular, could make control of Taiwan a substantial boon to Chinese military power. Even without any major technological or military leaps, possession of the island would improve China’s ability to impede U.S. naval and air operations in the Philippine Sea and thereby limit the United States’ ability to defend its Asian allies. And if, in the future, Beijing were to develop a large fleet of quiet nuclear attack submarines and ballistic missile submarines, basing them on Taiwan would enable China to threaten Northeast Asian shipping lanes and strengthen its sea-based nuclear forces.
Clearly, the island’s military value bolsters the argument for keeping Taiwan out of China’s grasp. The strength of that case, however, depends on several factors, including whether one assumes that China would pursue additional territorial expansion after occupying Taiwan and make the long-term military and technological investments needed to take full advantage of the island. It also depends on the broader course of U.S. China policy. Washington could remain committed to its current approach of containing the expansion of Chinese power through a combination of political commitments to U.S. partners and allies in Asia and a significant forward military presence. Or it might adopt a more flexible policy that retains commitments only to core treaty allies and reduces forward deployed forces. Or it might reduce all such commitments as part of a more restrained approach. Regardless of which of these three strategies the United States pursues, however, Chinese control of Taiwan would limit the U.S. military’s ability to operate in the Pacific and would potentially threaten U.S. interests there.
But the issue is not just that Taiwan’s tremendous military value poses problems for any U.S. grand strategy. It is that no matter what Washington does—whether it attempts to keep Taiwan out of Chinese hands or not—it will be forced to run risks and incur costs in its standoff with Beijing. As the place where all the dilemmas of U.S. policy toward China collide, Taiwan presents one of the toughest and most dangerous problems in the world. Simply put, Washington has few good options there and a great many bad ones that could court calamity.
TAIWAN IN THE BALANCE
A Chinese assault on Taiwan could shift the military balance of power in Asia in any number of ways. If China were to take the island swiftly and easily, many of its military assets geared toward a Taiwan campaign might be freed up to pursue other military objectives. China might also be able to assimilate Taiwan’s strategic resources, such as its military equipment, personnel, and semiconductor industry, all of which would bolster Beijing’s military power. But if China were to find itself bogged down in a prolonged conquest or occupation of Taiwan, the attempt at forced unification might become a significant drag on Beijing’s might.
Any campaign that delivers Taiwan to China, however, would allow Beijing to base important military hardware there—in particular, underwater surveillance devices and submarines, along with associated air and coastal defense assets. Stationed in Taiwan, these assets would do more than simply extend China’s reach eastward by the length of the Taiwan Strait, as would be the case if China based missiles, aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, or other weapons systems on the island. Underwater surveillance and submarines, by contrast, would improve Beijing’s ability to impede U.S. operations in the Philippine Sea, an area that would be of vital importance in many possible future conflict scenarios involving China.
The most likely scenarios revolve around the United States defending its allies along the so-called first island chain off the Asian mainland, which starts north of Japan and runs southwest through Taiwan and the Philippines before curling up toward Vietnam. For example, U.S. naval operations in these waters would be essential to protecting Japan against potential Chinese threats in the East China Sea and at the southern end of the Ryukyu Islands. Such U.S. operations would also be important in most scenarios for defending the Philippines, and for any scenario that might lead to U.S. strikes on the Chinese mainland, such as a major conflagration on the Korean Peninsula. U.S. naval operations in the Philippine Sea will become even more important as China’s growing missile capabilities render land-based aircraft and their regional bases increasingly vulnerable, forcing the United States to rely more heavily on aircraft and missiles launched from ships.
If a war in the Pacific were to break out today, China’s ability to conduct effective over-the-horizon attacks—that is, attacks targeting U.S. ships at distances that exceed the line of sight to the horizon—would be more limited than commonly supposed. China might be able to target forward-deployed U.S. aircraft carriers and other ships in a first strike that commences a war. But once a conflict is underway, China’s best surveillance assets—large radars located on the mainland that allow China to “see” over the horizon—are likely to be quickly destroyed. The same is true of Chinese surveillance aircraft or ships in the vicinity of U.S. naval forces.
Chinese satellites would be unlikely to make up for these losses. Using techniques the United States honed during the Cold War, U.S. naval forces would probably be able to control their own radar and communications signatures and thereby avoid detection by Chinese satellites that listen for electronic emissions. Without intelligence from these specialized signal-collecting assets, China’s imaging satellites would be left to randomly search vast swaths of ocean for U.S. forces. Under these conditions, U.S. forces operating in the Philippine Sea would face real but tolerable risks of long-range attacks, and U.S. leaders probably would not feel immediate pressure to escalate the conflict by attacking Chinese satellites.
If China were to wrest control of Taiwan, however, the situation would look quite different. China could place underwater microphones called hydrophones in the waters off the island’s east coast, which are much deeper than the waters Beijing currently controls inside the first island chain. Placed at the appropriate depth, these specialized sensors could listen outward and detect the low-frequency sounds of U.S. surface ships thousands of miles away, enabling China to more precisely locate them with satellites and target them with missiles. (U.S. submarines are too quiet for these hydrophones to detect.) Such capabilities could force the United States to restrict its surface ships to areas outside the range of the hydrophones—or else carry out risky and escalatory attacks on Chinese satellites. Neither of these options is appealing.
Washington has few good options on Taiwan and a great many bad ones that could court calamity.
Chinese hydrophones off Taiwan would be difficult for the United States to destroy. Only highly specialized submarines or unmanned underwater vehicles could disable them, and China would be able to defend them with a variety of means, including mines. Even if the United States did manage to damage China’s hydrophone cables, Chinese repair ships could mend them under the cover of air defenses China could deploy on the island.
The best hope for disrupting Chinese hydrophone surveillance would be to attack the vulnerable processing stations where the data comes ashore via fiber-optic cables. But those stations could prove hard to find. The cables can be buried on land as well as under the sea, and nothing distinguishes the buildings where data processing is done from similar nondescript military buildings. The range of possible U.S. targets could include hundreds of individual structures inside multiple well-defended military locations across Taiwan.
Control of Taiwan would do more than enhance Chinese ocean surveillance capabilities, however. It would also give China an advantage in submarine warfare. With Taiwan in friendly hands, the United States can defend against Chinese attack submarines by placing underwater sensors in key locations to pick up the sounds the submarines emit. The United States likely deploys such upward-facing hydrophones—for listening at shorter distances—along the bottom of narrow chokepoints at the entrances to the Philippine Sea, including in the gaps between the Philippines, the Ryukyu Islands, and Taiwan. At such close ranges, these instruments can briefly detect even the quietest submarines, allowing U.S. air and surface assets to trail them. During a crisis, that could prevent Chinese submarines from getting a “free shot” at U.S. ships in the early stages of a war, when forward-deployed U.S. naval assets would be at their most vulnerable.
If China were to gain control of Taiwan, however, it would be able to base submarines and supporting air and coastal defenses on the island. Chinese submarines would then be able to slip from their pens in Taiwan’s eastern deep-water ports directly into the Philippine Sea, bypassing the chokepoints where U.S. hydrophones would be listening. Chinese defenses on Taiwan would also prevent the United States and its allies from using their best tools for trailing submarines—maritime patrol aircraft and helicopter-equipped ships—near the island, making it much easier for Chinese submarines to strike first in a crisis and reducing their attrition rate in a war. Control of Taiwan would have the added advantage of reducing the distance between Chinese submarine bases and their patrol areas from an average of 670 nautical miles to zero, enabling China to operate more submarines at any given time and carry out more attacks against U.S. forces. Chinese submarines could also make use of the more precise targeting data collected by hydrophones and satellites, dramatically improving their effectiveness against U.S. surface ships.
UNDER THE SEA
Over time, unification with Taiwan could offer China even greater military advantages if it were to invest in a fleet of much quieter advanced nuclear attack and ballistic missile submarines. Operated from Taiwan’s east coast, these submarines would strengthen China’s nuclear deterrent and allow it to threaten Northeast Asian shipping and naval routes in the event of a war.
Currently, China’s submarine force is poorly equipped for a campaign against the oil and maritime trade of U.S. allies. Global shipping has traditionally proved resilient in the face of such threats because it is possible to reroute vessels outside the range of hostile forces. Even the closure of the Suez Canal between 1967 and 1975 did not paralyze global trade, since ships were instead able to go around the Cape of Good Hope, albeit at some additional cost. This resiliency means that Beijing would have to target shipping routes as they migrated north or west across the Pacific Ocean, likely near ports in Northeast Asia. But most of China’s current attack submarines are low-endurance diesel-electric boats that would struggle to operate at such distances, while its few longer-endurance nuclear-powered submarines are noisy and thus vulnerable to detection by U.S. outward-facing hydrophones that could be deployed along the so-called second island chain, which stretches southeast from Japan through the Northern Mariana Islands and past Guam.
Similarly, China’s current crop of ballistic missile submarines do little to strengthen China’s nuclear deterrent. The ballistic missiles they carry can at best target Alaska and the northwest corner of the United States when launched within the first island chain. And because the submarines are vulnerable to detection, they would struggle to reach open ocean areas where they could threaten the rest of the United States.
Seizing Taiwan would offer Beijing the kind of military option that previous great powers found very useful.
Even a future Chinese fleet of much quieter advanced nuclear attack or ballistic missile submarines capable of evading outward-facing hydrophones along the second island chain would still have to pass over U.S. upward-facing hydrophones nestled at the exits to the first island chain. These barriers would enable the United States to impose substantial losses on Chinese advanced nuclear attack submarines going to and from Northeast Asian shipping lanes and greatly impede the missions of Chinese ballistic missile submarines, of which there would almost certainly be fewer.
But if it were to acquire Taiwan, China would be able to avoid U.S. hydrophones along the first island chain, unlocking the military potential of quieter submarines. These vessels would have direct access to the Philippine Sea and the protection of Chinese air and coastal defenses, which would keep trailing U.S. ships and aircraft at bay. A fleet of quiet nuclear attack submarines deployed from Taiwan would also have the endurance for a campaign against Northeast Asian shipping lanes. And a fleet of quiet ballistic missile submarines with access to the open ocean would enable China to more credibly threaten the continental United States with a sea-launched nuclear attack.
Of course, it remains to be seen whether China can master more advanced quieting techniques or solve a number of problems that have plagued its nuclear-powered submarines. And the importance of the anti-shipping and sea-based nuclear capabilities is open for debate, since their relative impact will depend on what other capabilities China does or doesn’t develop and on what strategic goals China pursues in the future. Still, the behavior of past great powers is instructive. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union both invested heavily in attack submarines, and the latter made a similar investment in ballistic missile submarines. The democratic adversaries of those countries felt deeply threatened by these undersea capabilities and mounted enormous efforts to neutralize them. A Chinese seizure of Taiwan would thus offer Beijing the kind of military option that previous great powers found very useful.
NO GOOD OPTIONS
A fuller understanding of Taiwan’s military value clearly bolsters the argument in favor of keeping the island in friendly hands. Yet just how decisive that argument should be depends, in part, on what overall strategy the United States pursues in Asia. And whatever approach Washington adopts, it will have to contend with challenges and dilemmas stemming from the military advantages that Taiwan has the potential to confer on whoever controls it.
If the United States maintains its current strategy of containing China, retaining its network of alliances and forward military presence in Asia, defending Taiwan could be extremely costly. After all, the island’s military value gives China a strong motive for seeking unification, beyond the nationalist impulses most commonly cited. Deterring Beijing would therefore probably require abandoning the long-standing U.S. policy of strategic ambiguity about whether Washington would come to the island’s defense in favor of a crystal-clear commitment of military support.
But ending strategic ambiguity could provoke the very crisis the policy is designed to prevent. It would almost certainly heighten pressures for an arms race between the United States and China in anticipation of a conflict, intensifying the already dangerous competition between the two powers. And even if a policy of strategic clarity were successful in deterring a Chinese attempt to take Taiwan, it would likely spur China to compensate for its military disadvantages in some other way, further heightening tensions.
Alternatively, the United States might pursue a more flexible security perimeter that eliminates its commitment to Taiwan while still retaining its treaty alliances and some forward-deployed military forces in Asia. Such an approach would reduce the chance of a conflict over Taiwan, but it would carry other military costs, again owing to the island’s military value. U.S. forces would need to conduct their missions in an arena made much more dangerous by Chinese submarines and hydrophones deployed off the east coast of Taiwan. As a result, the United States might need to develop decoys to deceive Chinese sensors, devise ways to operate outside their normal range, or prepare to cut the cables that connect these sensors to onshore processing centers in the event of war. Washington would almost certainly want to ramp up its efforts to disrupt Chinese satellites.
Taiwanese jets doing a flyover of Taipei, October 2021
Chris Stowers / Panos Pictures / Redux
Should the United States take this approach, reassuring U.S. allies would become a much more arduous task. Precisely because control of Taiwan would grant Beijing significant military advantages, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea would likely demand strong demonstrations of a continuing U.S. commitment. Japan, in particular, would be inclined to worry that a diminished U.S. ability to operate on the surface of the Philippine Sea would translate into enhanced Chinese coercion or attack capability, especially given the proximity of Japan’s southernmost islands to Taiwan.
Over the longer term, U.S. allies in the region would also likely fear the growing Chinese threat to shipping routes and worry that a stronger sea-based Chinese nuclear deterrent would reduce the credibility of U.S. commitments to defend them from attack. Anticipation of these dangers would almost certainly drive U.S. allies to seek greater reassurance from the United States in the form of tighter defense pacts, additional military aid, and more visible U.S. force deployments in the region, including of nuclear forces on or near allies’ territory and perhaps collaborating with their governments on nuclear planning. East Asia could come to look much like Europe did in the later stages of the Cold War, with U.S. allies demanding demonstrations of their U.S. patron’s commitment in the face of doubts about the military balance of power. If the Cold War is any guide, such steps could themselves heighten the risks of nuclear escalation in a crisis or a war.
Finally, the United States might pursue a strategy that ends its commitment to Taiwan and also reduces its military presence in Asia and other alliance commitments in the region. Such a policy might limit direct U.S. military support to the defense of Japan or even wind down all U.S. commitments in East Asia. But even in this case, Taiwan’s potential military value to China would still have the potential to create dangerous regional dynamics. Worried that some of its islands might be next, Japan might fight to defend Taiwan, even if the United States did not. The result might be a major-power war in Asia that could draw in the United States, willingly or not. Such a war would be devastating. Yet upsetting the current delicate equilibrium by ceding this militarily valuable island could make such a war more likely, reinforcing a core argument in favor of current U.S. grand strategy: that U.S. alliance commitments and forward military presence exert a deterring and constraining effect on conflict in the region.
Ultimately, however, Taiwan’s unique military value poses problems for all three U.S. grand strategies. Whether the United States solidifies its commitment to Taiwan and its allies in Asia or walks them back, in full or in part, the island’s potential to alter the region’s military balance will force Washington to confront difficult tradeoffs, ceding military maneuverability in the region or else risking an arms race or even an open conflict with China. Such is the wicked nature of the problem posed by Taiwan, which sits at the nexus of U.S.-Chinese relations, geopolitics, and the military balance in Asia. Regardless of what grand strategy Washington pursues, the island’s military value will present some hazard or exact some price.
Foreign Affairs · by Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Caitlin Talmadge · June 16, 2022
22. U.S. veterans missing in Ukraine, feared captured, families say
U.S. veterans missing in Ukraine, feared captured, families say
Two U.S. military veterans have gone missing in Ukraine, and it is feared they have been captured by Russian forces, family members of the missing Americans said Wednesday.
Alexander J. Drueke, 39, and Andy Tai Huynh, 27, both of Alabama, went missing in the last few days near Kharkiv, a Ukrainian city not far from the Russian border, according to their families. Drueke had served in the U.S. Army and Huynh is a Marine Corps veteran, they said.
In phone interviews, both families shared similar accounts in which the men had contacted them June 8 to say they would be unreachable during a multiday mission. Neither has been heard from since, they said.
Drueke’s mother, Lois Drueke, said she received a phone call Monday from another U.S. citizen who indicated he was in Ukraine with her son. The caller, whom she did not identify, told her that intercepted communications suggested Russian forces had detained two Americans, she said.
The Russian Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Alexander Drueke had told family that he was teaching Ukrainian troops how to use American-made weapons, his mother said.
“Alex felt very strongly that he had been trained in ways that he could help the Ukrainians be strong and push [Russian President Vladimir] Putin back,” Lois Drueke said. “He went over there not to fight, but to train.”
Joy Black, who identified herself as Huynh’s fiancee, said he had volunteered to fight alongside Ukrainian forces. She received a phone call Monday also from someone appearing to be American who told her that Huynh was missing.
“The response that we’ve gotten from our government has been very helpful,” Black said. “They have been taking it very seriously. We got the call on Monday morning, and this has just gone up so high, so quickly.”
News of the Americans’ disappearance was first reported Wednesday by the Telegraph of London. The State Department said the Biden administration, which has discouraged Americans from joining the war effort, was “aware of unconfirmed reports of two U.S. citizens captured in Ukraine” but declined to comment further.
“We are closely monitoring the situation and are in contact with Ukrainian authorities,” the statement said. “ … We also once again reiterate U.S. citizens should not travel to Ukraine due to the active armed conflict and the singling out of U.S. citizens in Ukraine by Russian government security official.”
Speaking to the media Wednesday afternoon, White House spokesman John Kirby said he had no information to share about the missing Americans or whether the U.S. government believes they have been taken captive.
It’s unclear how many Americans have joined the war. Soon after the conflict began in late February, Ukrainian officials said about 4,000 had expressed interest in doing so.
At least one American citizen, Marine Corps veteran Willy Joseph Cancel, 22, has been killed in action.
Drueke served two tours in Iraq with the U.S. Army, leaving around 2010 as a staff sergeant, his mother said. He had struggled with post-traumatic stress since leaving the military but seemed to find purpose in the mission in Ukraine, she added.
Huynh served in the Marine Corps for a few years, including on the Japanese island of Okinawa, his fiancee said.
The Washington Post could not immediately verify either man’s military service histories.
Lois Drueke said she last spoke with her son by phone on June 5, and then received a message three days later on the encrypted communications platform Signal. His message said he would be “going dark” and unreachable for a few days, and that he would be in contact again after completing an assignment.
Alice Crites and Missy Ryan contributed to this report.
23. Military postal system plans to end mail privileges for overseas military retirees
I wonder why they call them retirees and not veterans? Every retiree is a veteran but when we want to save money and reduce services we do it to retirees.
Excerpt:
Sunsetting mail privileges for overseas military retirees would force many of them to rely on their host nation postal services for their mail delivery. Some overseas retirees, for example, rely on the military mail service to provide timely delivery of medications from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Military postal system plans to end mail privileges for overseas military retirees
Petty Officer 3rd Class Richard Reddick scans and sorts mail at the Navy post office at Kadena Air Base, Japan, on Dec. 2, 2021. (David R. Krigbaum/U.S. Navy)
CAMP HUMPHREYS, South Korea — Military retirees, Red Cross workers and some government employees living and working overseas will lose access to the military mail service starting Aug. 24, a postal service superintendent said Wednesday.
The Defense Department in May directed the Military Postal Service Agency to end service for those customers, James Groff, the postal superintendent at Camp Humphreys, told Stars and Stripes by phone. He said he did not know what categories of government employees would also be affected.
The change is scheduled to affect all Air/Army Post Office, or APO, and Fleet Post Office, or FPO, addresses worldwide.
Groff said his office received notice of the looming changes on Friday and that the guidance could still change.
Meanwhile, the reaction in the military postal service community, which employs dozens of military retirees, has been fierce, he said.
“There’s other retirees that are affected all over the place,” Groff said. “I spoke to one retiree, and you wouldn’t want to quote the language he used.”
The overseas military post offices provide mail service for service members, civilian Defense Department employees and some contractors. Groff said he was unaware of any changes to service for those people. Mail sent to U.S. military bases overseas is handled exclusively by the U.S. Postal Service, which charges domestic postage rates regardless of its destination.
Sunsetting mail privileges for overseas military retirees would force many of them to rely on their host nation postal services for their mail delivery. Some overseas retirees, for example, rely on the military mail service to provide timely delivery of medications from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The Military Postal Service Agency, an extension of the Postal Service, was created in 1980 to consolidate postal operations from all military services, according to the U.S. Postal Service handbook. The agency operates in 63 countries and on 626 ships.
24. Learning the Wrong Lessons: The Blind Spots in the US Approach to Foreign Military Training
"Unit cohesion can militate against liberal values?" Quite a thesis.
Excerpts:
When US-trained militaries abuse human rights or interfere in politics, the US solution is often to double down on training as a tool of reform. As General Carter Ham said after the 2012 coup in Mali, “We didn’t spend, probably, the requisite time focusing on values, ethics, and military ethos.” But more training might just make the problem worse by increasing soldiers’ prioritization of cohesion under pressure. Instead of throwing more training at the problem, US policymakers should focus on addressing the blind spots in the US approach.
These blind spots do not have easy fixes, but there are some steps policymakers can take to improve outcomes. First, although the United States cannot design training to avoid imparting cohesion (nor should it seek to do so), policymakers should recognize that training does more than just impart technical skills and liberal norms. Policymakers should consider how these additional factors, particularly cohesion, might affect the military’s decision-making calculus. Taking account of other interests or norms, such as cohesion, that can militate against liberal values will help to create more realistic expectations about what norms training can accomplish.
Learning the Wrong Lessons: The Blind Spots in the US Approach to Foreign Military Training - Modern War Institute
This training ranges from tactical and operational instruction to regional seminars and courses in US professional military education institutions. It is designed to build partner militaries’ capacity by imparting technical skills and expertise to increase their ability to fight independently. It’s also supposed to transmit professional norms, or ideas about appropriate behavior, that shape when and how these militaries fight—norms that include respect for human rights and civilian control of the military.
At least, that’s the theory. But in the last decade, US-trained soldiers have launched coups in Mali, Egypt, and Guinea (while in the middle of training with US Army Special Forces); raped children in the Congo; and otherwise abused human rights or defied civilian control. In response, observers have questioned whether US efforts to impart norms work. Others have pointed to cases where the United States encouraged militaries to violate norms, for example, by teaching Latin American militaries how to torture during the Cold War. Most scholars accept that the United States, all else being equal, would prefer to promote liberal norms, but suggest that for one reason or another, trainees fail to adopt these norms, which is why norm-abiding behavior fails to materialize. Instead, divergent interests lead the United States’ partners to defy its wishes.
My research suggests that the answer is more complicated. The United States, for the most part, is trying to impart liberal norms through military training—an expectation that is codified in US law. In many countries, including almost every country in Africa, respect for human rights and civilian control of the military are primary foreign policy objectives for US training (according to the Foreign Military Training Reports produced jointly by the Department of Defense and Department of State). And some of those norms are in fact transmitted to partner militaries. But there are three key blind spots in the US approach that can lead to the very outcomes that training was supposed to prevent—even when soldiers buy into liberal views of human rights and civilian control of the military.
Blind Spots in the US Approach
The first blind spot is failure to recognize that training imparts more than just technical skills and liberal norms. Training also cultivates the norm of cohesion, or the bonds that help militaries to operate in a unified, mission-oriented way. The fact that training enhances cohesion is, in many ways, a desirable feature. The United States wants its partner militaries to be cohesive, because this contributes to combat effectiveness. The problem is that US policymakers fail to consider how this otherwise beneficial byproduct of training might affect adherence to liberal norms. In particular, policymakers assume that cohesion will make militaries more unified in doing the right thing. But this is not necessarily the case: cohesive militaries may simply commit human rights abuses or launch coups more effectively.
The second blind spot is that US foreign military training overlooks the potential for conflict between liberal norms. The US approach teaches partner militaries both to obey political leaders and to protect populations. When political leaders order the military to repress human rights, it creates a conflict between the two liberal norms of respect for human rights and civilian control of the military. US policymakers largely ignore this dilemma. When they do consider it, they expect—mistakenly, I argue—that militaries will prioritize human rights.
My research, recently published in International Security, uses experimental evidence from a survey of the Liberian military to explore how militaries actually respond to liberal norm conflict. Counter to US policy expectations, I find that when soldiers hear a scenario in which the political leader orders the military to repress a protest, they are less willing to prioritize human rights. Instead, they become more concerned with maintaining cohesion in their units. Caring more about cohesion than liberal norms does not automatically lead to norm violations, but it creates the conditions under which norm violations can occur. Under pressure, soldiers care about doing what is best for the military, which may involve violating human rights, civilian control, or both.
The third blind spot is the tendency to privilege individual training over institution building, even though my research shows that individual attitudes are swayed under pressure. When individual support for liberal norms falters, norm violations are more likely to occur unless there are institutional guardrails in place to regulate behavior. In established democracies, defense institutions include things like military justice systems and bodies of doctrine that help to evaluate the legality of orders and regulate the military’s behavior. Strong institutions can constrain behavior when norm conflicts create incentives to violate norms. The United States has recently invested in defense institution building (also called “institutional capacity building”) but these efforts are often divorced from the machinery of foreign military training.
Addressing the Blind Spots
When US-trained militaries abuse human rights or interfere in politics, the US solution is often to double down on training as a tool of reform. As General Carter Ham said after the 2012 coup in Mali, “We didn’t spend, probably, the requisite time focusing on values, ethics, and military ethos.” But more training might just make the problem worse by increasing soldiers’ prioritization of cohesion under pressure. Instead of throwing more training at the problem, US policymakers should focus on addressing the blind spots in the US approach.
These blind spots do not have easy fixes, but there are some steps policymakers can take to improve outcomes. First, although the United States cannot design training to avoid imparting cohesion (nor should it seek to do so), policymakers should recognize that training does more than just impart technical skills and liberal norms. Policymakers should consider how these additional factors, particularly cohesion, might affect the military’s decision-making calculus. Taking account of other interests or norms, such as cohesion, that can militate against liberal values will help to create more realistic expectations about what norms training can accomplish.
Second, policymakers should acknowledge that the potential exists for conflict between liberal norms. Expressing a clear preference-ordering for norms (e.g., “people first, governments second”) might help to minimize the risk that militaries will avoid making hard choices between liberal norms and default to prioritizing cohesion. This blueprint for behavior could be conveyed through training curricula and candid conversations between US trainers, advisers, and their foreign counterparts.
Finally, while my research shows that training can impart liberal norms, it also shows that training is not a sufficient solution. US policymakers should prioritize building strong, transparent, and accountable defense institutions that can regulate behavior and lock in protections for human rights as well as legitimate civilian control. Institutional change is challenging because it takes time and resources, can’t be measured in widgets delivered or people trained, and requires partners that are motivated to change. But without institutional change, norm violations are likely to persist.
Renanah Miles Joyce is an assistant professor of politics at Brandeis University and a 2022 nonresident fellow at the Irregular Warfare Initiative.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: Staff Sgt. Sidney Sale, US Army
25. The future of global security will be decided in Ukraine
Oleksii Reznikov is the Ukrainian Minister of Defense.
The future of global security will be decided in Ukraine
By Oleksii Reznikov
NATO leaders will gather in the Spanish capital at the end of June for a potentially historic summit. They are expected to approve a landmark new Strategic Concept at a time when the Russian invasion of Ukraine has created the most dramatic international security challenges for a generation. The choices made in Madrid will likely shape the geopolitical agenda for decades to come.
Europe is currently witnessing its largest conflict since WWII. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians have been killed. Dozens of Ukrainian cities have been razed to the ground. Millions of Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homeland and seek safety in neighboring EU countries.
The impact of the war is not restricted to the European continent alone. Russia also blackmails the world with the possibility of global hunger and energy shortages. Kremlin officials openly intimidate the international community with threats of nuclear escalation.
This is a time for NATO to lead. The alliance’s highly anticipated Strategic Concept will serve as a roadmap for the future of the free world. It will be the first major document of its kind to be officially adopted since the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine shattered the international security system which had been established in the aftermath of WWII.
Other key international institutions have already been found wanting. The Russian rocket attack on Kyiv in April while UN Secretary-General António Guterres visited the city was intended as a show of open contempt for the United Nations. Clearly, the UN Security Council is incapable of upholding peace as long as one of its permanent members retains veto power while committing genocide in Ukraine. The OSCE has suffered a similarly grave loss of legitimacy since the outbreak of hostilities on February 24. Unless these institutions undergo radical reform, they will disappear.
With the international security system in crisis, NATO’s new Strategic Concept will acquire a status and symbolism that far exceeds earlier expectations. It will provide a vision for the future of international relations. If this vision is defined by inertia and empty expressions of concern, it will signal that the free world is no longer able to stand up to international aggression. This would be interpreted by authoritarian regimes as an open invitation to act with impunity. If the Strategic Concept demonstrates genuine leadership, this will send an altogether different message.
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It is crucial to recognize that today’s authoritarian regimes depend on the inertia of the international community. Autocracies are able to act faster than democracies and much faster than international alliances. This enables them to establish facts on the ground before others are able to react. The negotiations that then follow are typically in the aggressor’s interests and to the detriment of the victim. Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova have all experienced this to their cost.
The democratic world urgently needs to regain the initiative. For far too long, Western leaders have allowed authoritarians like Putin to set the international agenda and make the first move while they remain reactive.
Ukrainians can confirm that this is the wrong approach. The international community is currently debating exactly the kinds of sanctions that Ukrainian officials were calling for more than a year ago when Russia first massed troops along the Ukrainian border and threatened a full-scale invasion. Instead of sanctions, the Western response in spring 2021 was to reward Putin with more dialogue.
Similarly, every current conversation with our international partners focuses on how to defend Ukraine’s skies with enhanced aviation and missile defense systems, but this is nothing new. I recall addressing the need for Western air defense systems back in August 2021 while in the US. Nor was I the first Ukrainian official to do so.
President Zelenskyy then enjoyed a successful White House meeting with President Biden, which saw the adoption of a framework document lending new meaning to our defense partnership. Nevertheless, cooperation continued to lack of sense of urgency. Discussions dragged on for some months over the delivery of Stinger missiles, with authorization only coming as reports began to mount of an imminent Russian invasion.
Despite widespread warnings that Moscow was poised to invade, Ukraine received nothing but infantry weapons for close combat or guerilla warfare. Instead of tough Western sanctions that could have served to deter Russia, we were confronted with predictions that Kyiv would fall within three days.
We did not share this fatalism. While we had access to the same intelligence data as our partners, we were confident that our ongoing preparations would make it impossible to take Kyiv in three weeks, never mind three days. Military units were repositioned to mirror the deployment of the Russian and Belarusian armies. Aviation and air defense systems were moved. Supplies were gathered that would allow Kyiv to survive a three-month siege. Needless to say, such reserves were not accumulated overnight.
As we readied to defend our country, our partners continued to hesitate. At the Munich Security Conference just days before the war began, the Ukrainian delegation had a series of memorable conversations with our partners. If our colleagues were so certain of an imminent invasion, why were they not ready to impose deterrent measures? Again and again, we were told that this could lead to an escalation.
Efforts are now underway to persuade Ukraine of the need to enter into negotiations. These negotiations are not intended to establish the amount of Russian reparations or determine which Ukrainian city will host a future Russian war crimes tribunal. Instead, Ukrainians are being encouraged to negotiate how much of our land we should gift to Moscow in order to avoid “humiliating” Putin. Such thinking will not bring about a lasting peace. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Many observers describe the Western response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as inadequate. I personally believe the key problem is inertia. At every stage of the crisis, the West has handed the initiative to Russia and allowed Moscow to dictate the pace.
Will the new NATO Strategic Concept echo the inertia that has brought us to the current crisis, or will it demonstrate the kind of leadership that will allow the democratic world to reassert its authority? I remain fundamentally optimistic. After all, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, and UK Secretary of State for Defense Ben Wallace are not just great friends of Ukraine; they are all also proof that leadership can still overcome inertia on the international stage. There are many more similarly inspirational leaders among our EU partners.
The challenges we face can only be overcome together. Ukraine is now looking for a clear signal from NATO regarding our future role in European security. During the past four months, Ukrainians have demonstrated conclusively that we can serve as Europe’s eastern shield.
The signal Ukraine expects must go beyond mere words of encouragement. We must develop a common strategy that looks forward and anticipates the practical security issues that lie ahead. For example, it is evident that Ukraine and NATO have a shared interest in defending our skies. Which planes should Ukrainian pilots train with? Should they be flying F-15 and F-16 jets, or perhaps they should immediately jump to the F-35? Could it be Gripens? The same dialogue is needed on everything from missile defense and tank units to naval forces and cyber security.
If NATO’s new Strategic Concept has no clear place in it for Ukraine, the document will be divorced from today’s security realities and dead on arrival. This would be a victory for inertia and a green light for dictators like Putin to pursue aggressive foreign policies. The entire world would become a far more dangerous place.
By the time the NATO summit gets underway in Spain, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine will have entered its fifth month. This invasion has already imposed staggering costs on the Ukrainian people and transformed the geopolitical landscape. By demonstrating strong leadership, NATO members can determine the outcome of the war and define the future of global security.
Oleksii Reznikov is the Ukrainian Minister of Defense.
26. Broadening the Quad’s appeal in the Indo-Pacific
Excerpts:
In August 2022, Indonesia and United States will hold military exercises near the Natuna Islands, where Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone overlaps with China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. Quad members Australia and Japan, as well as Malaysia, Singapore and the United Kingdom, are also reported to be
participating in the exercises.
The bottom line is that no country would be willing to be corralled into a formal network under the FOIP and Quad banner for fear of riling China unnecessarily. But many regional countries are willing to support shared principles — such as freedom of navigation, not resorting to the threat or use of force and the rule of law — if the erosion of these principles affects their survival.
Instead of working outside of the
regional institutional framework, success for the Quad lies in securing ASEAN’s cooperation first and foremost, after which other Asian partners will follow. To gain traction, the Quad should invert former US president John F Kennedy’s famous aphorism — ask not what regional countries can do for the Quad, ask what the Quad can do for regional countries.
Broadening the Quad’s appeal in the Indo-Pacific | East Asia Forum
Authors: William Choong and Sharon Seah, ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute
The wilderness years of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad), after its initial inception during the 2004 Asian tsunami, are over. The latest summit in Tokyo reaffirmed its mission as a ‘force for good’ while promising a broad array of Indo-Pacific cyber security, maritime awareness, pandemic recovery, space, climate change and infrastructure initiatives.
At the recent IISS Shangri-La Dialogue held in Singapore, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin emphasised the importance of the Quad in promoting a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ and the need to cooperate with ASEAN to achieve these goals. But the group will need to consider the region’s needs to get support for its vision.
Meeting for their fourth leaders’ summit in just over a year, the Quad appears to have finally turned a corner with more coherent and cohesive language directed at upholding the so-called rules-based order. Compared with previous joint statements, the May 2022 Tokyo summit was replete with China-directed ‘code’ — the settlement of disputes without the threat of use of force, no ‘unilateral attempt to change the status quo’ and a regional order free from all forms of coercion. Quad members also advocated the ‘Free and Open’ Indo-Pacific (FOIP) strategy.
The Quad’s forward momentum is driven in part by China’s continued assertiveness. Having rejected the 2016 arbitral tribunal ruling on the South China Sea, China has upped the pace of its military modernisation and continued its terraforming enterprise in the South China Sea. China has also deployed the same aggressive tactics along the Line of Actual Control — the boundary separating Chinese-controlled territory from Indian-controlled territory in the Chinese–Indian border dispute.
There is now premature talk of an ‘Asian NATO’ which threatens China as evidenced by China’s questioning about the Quad and AUKUS at the recent Shangri-La Dialogue. Within the region, the idea is dead-on-arrival based on the failure of SEATO, a defunct international organisation for collective defence in Southeast Asia signed in 1954.
In a public show that China is seeking to break Washington’s containment strategy, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi recently completed a ten-nation tour of the Pacific. His tour included the Solomon Islands, where China has reportedly signed a security cooperation pact enabling security personnel and PLA Navy ships to visit the island.
If the United States and its Quad partners play their cards right, there are several ways to secure a regional order framed by Quad principles. Although many states are wary of formally joining any Quad-related framework that smacks of anti-China sentiment, they can ‘plug and play’ into initiatives that tangibly benefit their national interests. An open ‘plug and play’ approach to Quad-related activities may promote regional acceptance of the organisation’s principles.
The Quad should involve itself in the provision of public goods like climate cooperation and COVID-19 vaccines — both of which have earned it brownie points in Southeast Asia. ASEAN had initial misgivings about the Quad, but the tangible benefits of pandemic and environmental assistance may be moving the needle. ASEAN gave an unprecedented nod to the Quad by acknowledging the Quad Vaccine Partnership in its US–ASEAN Joint Vision Statement.
The Quad should do more to boost the maritime security capabilities of Southeast Asian states by providing more coast guard ships to those challenged by Chinese maritime entities. Coast guards are less threatening than navy ships in the disputed South China Sea. The United States has already provided Vietnam with two coast guard cutters, while also promising ASEAN US$60 million to expand maritime security cooperation with the US Coast Guard.
Enter the Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) initiative announced on 24 May 2022. The satellite-based initiative will help Indo-Pacific countries track illegal fishing and maritime militias by giving them readily available maritime information across the Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands. Information is power for regional states dealing with altercations with Chinese fishing trawlers and maritime militia in the South China Sea.
The Quad should also work with like-minded regional navies to keep sea lanes of communication open. While some regional navies are reticent to work with the Quad for fear of riling China, they are more open to doing so if it enhances their national interests. A two-week joint exercise between the armed forces of Indonesia and the United States, called Garuda Shield, is a good example of this.
In August 2022, Indonesia and United States will hold military exercises near the Natuna Islands, where Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone overlaps with China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. Quad members Australia and Japan, as well as Malaysia, Singapore and the United Kingdom, are also reported to be participating in the exercises.
The bottom line is that no country would be willing to be corralled into a formal network under the FOIP and Quad banner for fear of riling China unnecessarily. But many regional countries are willing to support shared principles — such as freedom of navigation, not resorting to the threat or use of force and the rule of law — if the erosion of these principles affects their survival.
Instead of working outside of the regional institutional framework, success for the Quad lies in securing ASEAN’s cooperation first and foremost, after which other Asian partners will follow. To gain traction, the Quad should invert former US president John F Kennedy’s famous aphorism — ask not what regional countries can do for the Quad, ask what the Quad can do for regional countries.
William Choong is Senior Fellow of the Regional Strategic and Political Studies Programme at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.
Sharon Seah is Senior Fellow and Coordinator of the ASEAN Studies Centre at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.
27. When the Army Stopped Serving Beer, American Beer Barons Bought a Round for Freedom
I want to argue the decline of the US military began with the end of the beer ration in the Korean War. However, we did airlift beer to troops in the field in Vietnam. That said, the loss of the beer ration in the Korean War foreshadowed the rise of the general Order No 1 phenomena in the 1990s which I think has contributed to the decline of the military. Has general order number 1 helped us to win any war?
When the Army Stopped Serving Beer, American Beer Barons Bought a Round for Freedom
When North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950, the U.S. military was doing everything it could to stop the communists from pushing the defenders into the Sea of Japan. They formed a defensive perimeter around Pusan (called Busan today), and made a desperate stand against the North Korean offensive.
The Americans and South Koreans did not fare well in the first months of the war, but the tide turned in September of that year when the United States launched a daring, surprise landing behind enemy lines at Incheon. The North Koreans were caught completely off-guard. The communist front fell apart as American and South Korean troops broke out of Pusan and began to push the invaders north.
Then, even more devastating news: the U.S. military announced it would not provide beer rations for the men fighting the war in Korea.
Beer brewing during World War II saved the beer industry. During World War I, anti-alcohol crusaders launched a campaign to label beer makers in America, many of whom were German immigrants, as anti-American and wasters of U.S. resources. It helped the passage of the 18th Amendment, which banned the manufacture and import of alcoholic beverages.
After Prohibition was repealed, breweries went right back to doing what they knew best, but the industry was still on shaky ground. Then World War II broke out, and the U.S. government saw beer as what we would today call a "force multiplier." It declared beer production an essential wartime industry, with 15% of its output reserved for the military.
When the Korean War started, some of the old "dry" politicians and activists were still around, fighting against the evils of alcohol. The teetotalers somehow managed to convince the Department of Defense that troops could do without the two-beer ration. When the news hit headlines, it sparked a nationwide debate.
A U.S. representative, Democrat Andrew J. Biemiller, who represented Milwaukee, demanded on the House floor that the Army explain its rationale for cutting off its soldiers' taps. He argued that beer could be used in place of water when necessary and had "as much alcohol as a good pudding."
While the war raged in Korea, the war at home between beer lovers and anti-alcohol groups like the Woman's Christian Temperance Union was fought to keep beer out of the hands of the GIs. Then, a couple of brewing heavyweights escalated the conflict.
Milwaukee's own Jos. Schlitz Brewing Company and Blatz Brewing Company offered to buy the troops a round and see what might happen. The companies volunteered 600,000 cans or bottles (apiece) of their products to be sent to the Korean Peninsula and handed out to the Americans fighting there.
Pfc. Nicholas Phillips next to a beer can Christmas tree in Korea. (Library of Congress)
It's hard to argue with American companies offering to get 1.2 million beers to a fight without using taxpayer money. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union would have a hard time competing with that offer. Army Secretary Frank Pace agreed to the donation, so long as the beer was less than 3.2% alcohol by volume.
The first cans of Schlitz, which was America's top beer at the time, rolled away from Milwaukee on Sept. 28, 1950. Blatz wasn't far behind, shipping theirs out on Oct. 4, 1950. The beer made it to the troops in time for Christmas.
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28. The Army is asking for a new $34M gun range at Fort Bragg; here's why
The Army is asking for a new $34M gun range at Fort Bragg; here's why
| The Fayetteville Observer
Fort Bragg stands to receive about $34 million for a new gun range as the Senate Armed Service Committee is scheduled on Wednesday to mark up the Départment of Defense’s proposed $773 billion budget for fiscal year 2023.
The Fort Bragg project is in the Army’s proposed $178 billion budget.
According to budget documents, the range would be used to "train and test crews and dismounted infantry squads on the skills necessary to detect, identify, engage and defeat stationary infantry and stationary and moving armor targets.”
“This (range) will support training requirements of the U.S. Army on mounted machine guns, grenade launchers and next-generation squad weapons,” budget documents state.
Units currently travel off-post to train for mounted gunnery training, according to the budget documents.
Fort Bragg is required to have four multi-purpose training ranges, “but has zero on hand,” budget documents state.
“Current ranges cannot support the training requirement due to the number of mounted units stationed at Fort Bragg,” the documents say.
The range would serve for soldiers to meet qualifications and pre-validation if they are with deploying units, documents state and construction of the range would reduce costs associated with soldiers traveling out of state for the training.
“The lack of sufficient training on the weapons systems utilized on (a multi-purpose training range) contributes to increased risk of soldiers being unfamiliar with the operation of these platforms,” budget documents state. “Soldiers unfamiliar with their weapon systems will result in an increased incidence of malfunctions and possible damage.”
Budget documents state that the range would include a downrange site preparation area; an armor range operations control area; a staging and bivouac area; a range control tower; an operations and storage building; a building where leaders would provide assessments after training; a covered bleacher; and an eating area and a field latrine.
If Congress approves the National Defense Authorization Act that contains the Army’s budget proposal, construction for the Fort Bragg project would tentatively start in April 2023 and be completed by September 2024, according to documents.
Other proposals, according to documents, decreasing regular Army personnel from 485,000 soldiers to 473,000 Army-wide; increasing basic pay by 4.6%; increasing basic housing allowance by 3.9%; and increasing basic allowance for food by 3.4%.
In an Army news release, Army Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo said the decision to reduce personnel ensures that standards aren’t lowered when addressing “gaps” in recruiting projections.
“For the Army to keep momentum on our modernization programs, and to transform to the Army of 2030, it’s absolutely important that we maintain our emphasis on high-quality talent we need for our cutting-edge formations,” Camarillo said.
Camarillo also said the proposed budget maintains readiness and allows the Army to pivot from its past two decades of focusing on counterterrorism to adapting to prepare for the “pacing challenge in China and the acute threat of Russian aggression.”
The Army’s overall proposed budget is a $2.8 billion increase from the current fiscal year.
After the Senate Armed Services Committee meets this week for its markup of the proposed National Defense Authorization Act, the House Armed Services Committee is scheduled for its markup June 22.
Staff writer Rachael Riley can be reached at rriley@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3538.
29. What the invasion of Ukraine has revealed about the nature of modern warfare
Or the character of modern warfare.
Seven interesting "conclusions" from the father of soft power. Discuss!
First, nuclear deterrence works, but it depends on relative stakes more than on capabilities.
Second, economic interdependence doesn’t prevent war. While this lesson used to be widely recognised—particularly after World War I broke out among the world’s leading trade partners—it was ignored by German policymakers such as former Chancellor Gerhard Schroder.
Third, uneven economic interdependence can be weaponised by the less dependent party, but when the stakes are symmetrical, there’s little power in interdependence.
Fourth, while sanctions can raise the costs for aggressors, they don’t determine outcomes in the short term.
Fifth, information warfare makes a difference. As RAND’s John Arquilla pointed out two decades ago, the outcomes of modern warfare depend not only on whose army wins, but also on ‘whose story wins’.
Sixth, both hard and soft power matter.
Seventh, cyber capability isn’t a silver bullet. Russia had used cyber weapons to intervene in Ukraine’s power grid since at least 2015, and many analysts predicted a cyber blitz against the country’s infrastructure and government at the start of the invasion.
What the invasion of Ukraine has revealed about the nature of modern warfare | The Strategist
When Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, he envisaged a quick seizure of Kyiv and a change of government analogous to Soviet interventions in Budapest in 1956 and Prague in 1968. But it wasn’t to be. The war is still raging, and no one knows when or how it will end.
While some observers have urged an early ceasefire, others have emphasised the importance of punishing Russian aggression. Ultimately, though, the outcome will be determined by facts on the ground. Since it’s too early to guess even when the war will end, some conclusions are obviously premature. For example, arguments that the era of tank warfare is over have been refuted as the battle has moved from Kyiv’s northern suburbs to the eastern plains of the Donbas.
But even at this early stage, there are at least eight lessons—some old, some new—that the world is learning (or relearning) from the war in Ukraine.
First, nuclear deterrence works, but it depends on relative stakes more than on capabilities. The West has been deterred, but only up to a point. Putin’s threats have prevented Western governments from sending troops (though not equipment) to Ukraine. This outcome doesn’t reflect any superior Russian nuclear capability; rather, it reflects the gap between Putin’s definition of Ukraine as a vital national interest and the West’s definition of Ukraine as an important but less vital interest.
Second, economic interdependence doesn’t prevent war. While this lesson used to be widely recognised—particularly after World War I broke out among the world’s leading trade partners—it was ignored by German policymakers such as former Chancellor Gerhard Schroder. His government increased Germany’s imports of, and dependence on, Russian oil and gas, perhaps hoping that breaking trade ties would be too costly for either side. But while economic interdependence can raise the costs of war, it clearly doesn’t prevent it.
Third, uneven economic interdependence can be weaponised by the less dependent party, but when the stakes are symmetrical, there’s little power in interdependence. Russia depends on revenue from its energy exports to finance its war, but Europe is too dependent on Russian energy to cut it off completely. The energy interdependence is roughly symmetrical. (On the other hand, in the world of finance, Russia is more vulnerable to Western sanctions, which may hurt more over time.)
Fourth, while sanctions can raise the costs for aggressors, they don’t determine outcomes in the short term. CIA director William Burns (a former US ambassador to Russia) reportedly met with Putin last November and warned, to no avail, that an invasion would trigger sanctions. Putin may have doubted that the West could maintain unity on sanctions. (On the other hand, Chinese President Xi Jinping has offered only limited support to Putin despite having proclaimed a ‘no limits’ friendship with Russia, perhaps owing to his concerns about China becoming entangled in US secondary sanctions.)
Fifth, information warfare makes a difference. As RAND’s John Arquilla pointed out two decades ago, the outcomes of modern warfare depend not only on whose army wins, but also on ‘whose story wins’. America’s careful disclosure of intelligence about Russia’s military plans proved quite effective in ‘pre-debunking’ Putin’s narratives in Europe, and it contributed greatly to Western solidarity when the invasion occurred as predicted.
Sixth, both hard and soft power matter. While coercion trumps persuasion in the near term, soft power can make a difference over time. Smart power is the ability to combine hard and soft power so that they reinforce rather than contradict each other. Putin failed to do that. Russia’s brutality in Ukraine created such revulsion that Germany decided finally to suspend the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline—an outcome that US pressure over several years had failed to achieve. By contrast, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a former actor, used his professionally honed dramatic skills to present an attractive portrait of his country, securing not just sympathy but also the military equipment that is essential to hard power.
Seventh, cyber capability isn’t a silver bullet. Russia had used cyber weapons to intervene in Ukraine’s power grid since at least 2015, and many analysts predicted a cyber blitz against the country’s infrastructure and government at the start of the invasion. Yet while there have reportedly been many cyberattacks during the war, none has determined broader outcomes. When the Viasat satellite network was hacked, Zelensky continued to communicate with world audiences through the many small satellites provided by Starlink.
Moreover, with training and experience, Ukrainian cyber defences have improved. Once the war had begun, kinetic weapons provided greater timeliness, precision and damage assessment for commanders than cyber weapons did. With cyber weapons, you don’t always know if an attack has succeeded or been patched. But with explosives, you can see the impact and assess the damage more easily.
Finally, the most important lesson is also one of the oldest: war is unpredictable. As Shakespeare wrote more than four centuries ago, it’s dangerous for a leader to ‘cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war’’ The promise of a short war is perilously seductive. In August 1914, European leaders famously expected the troops to ‘be home by Christmas’. Instead, they unleashed four years of war, and four of those leaders lost their thrones. Immediately following America’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, many in Washington predicted a cakewalk (‘Mission Accomplished’ read the warship banner that May), but the effort bogged down for years.
Now it is Putin who has let slip the dogs of war. They may yet turn on him.
30. Werner Herzog's new novel is a story of the jungle and obsession and delusion
A historical fiction novel I look forward to reading. The story of Hiro Onoda is. fascinating one. What gives a man this kind of commitment?
Excerpts:
HERZOG: He was the last soldier to surrender 29 years after the end of the Second World War.
SHAPIRO: In late 1944 Onoda was stationed on a small island in the Philippines. When the Japanese army evacuated, Onoda was ordered to stay and fight. And so when the Japanese surrendered in 1945...
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Here just offshore from bloody Okinawa, the town No. 1 carrying part of the Japanese surrender delegation...
SHAPIRO: ...Onoda's private war went on. For 29 years, he waged a guerrilla campaign from the jungle, first with a few other soldiers and ultimately on his own. He stole food from local villagers. He killed civilians and fought gun battles with police officers he believed were enemy agents. And he resisted all attempts to convince him of the truth - leaflets dropped from planes, copies of current newspapers, even a personal appeal from his own brother. Onoda was sure they were all fabricated enemy propaganda.
Werner Herzog's new novel is a story of the jungle and obsession and delusion
NPR · by Ari Shapiro · June 14, 2022
NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with filmmaker Werner Herzog about his debut novel, The Twilight World. It tells the story of Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese soldier who kept fighting decades after the end of WWII.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Renowned filmmaker Werner Herzog has published his first novel, and the story behind it starts in 1997. Herzog was in Tokyo to direct an opera, and his hosts informed him that the Japanese emperor might be open to meeting him.
WERNER HERZOG: When this was reported to me, I said to my Japanese friends, for God's sake, it will be only formulaic and pleasantries and not a real conversation. I shouldn't do it.
SHAPIRO: A private audience with the emperor is an enormous honor, and Herzog knew instantly that he'd committed a massive faux pas.
HERZOG: It was so embarrassing that there was silence, silence, silence. And then somebody asked into the silence, whom else, if not the Emperor, would you like to meet in Japan? And I said, Onoda. And they asked, Onoda, Onoda? And I said, yeah, Hiro Onoda.
SHAPIRO: Hiro Onoda was an icon in Japan, an officer in the Imperial Japanese Army with a story stranger than fiction.
HERZOG: He was the last soldier to surrender 29 years after the end of the Second World War.
SHAPIRO: In late 1944 Onoda was stationed on a small island in the Philippines. When the Japanese army evacuated, Onoda was ordered to stay and fight. And so when the Japanese surrendered in 1945...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Here just offshore from bloody Okinawa, the town No. 1 carrying part of the Japanese surrender delegation...
SHAPIRO: ...Onoda's private war went on. For 29 years, he waged a guerrilla campaign from the jungle, first with a few other soldiers and ultimately on his own. He stole food from local villagers. He killed civilians and fought gun battles with police officers he believed were enemy agents. And he resisted all attempts to convince him of the truth - leaflets dropped from planes, copies of current newspapers, even a personal appeal from his own brother. Onoda was sure they were all fabricated enemy propaganda.
HERZOG: His story is so big. There are very, very few stories that we have in our cultural history like, let's say, Jeanne d'Arc or Hiro Onoda or - a few more, and that's about it.
SHAPIRO: And so nearly 20 years after their meeting in Japan, Werner Herzog turned Onoda's story into a novel called "The Twilight World." It's a work of fiction based on the real story of a man who built his reality out of a fictional story. Herzog and I discussed how similar it is to the kinds of stories Herzog has told throughout his decades-long career.
Whether you're creating films or books or operas, you so often zero in on characters like Onoda, who are kind of single-minded in their pursuit of a belief. They are quixotic. They're in extreme situations. And so when you said, I want to meet Onoda, did any part of your brain think, because he is a Herzogian (ph) character; he's the kind of person who I've spent my life thinking and writing and creating about?
HERZOG: No, of course not. I'm not planning that way. Things come with me with a certain vehemence, and then at the end, I don't question much. And I go directly for the very hard core of the story. And this is why I met Onoda quite a few times. And we immediately had a rapport because I had been in the jungle under difficult circumstances for something entirely different, of course.
SHAPIRO: Do you mean for filmmaking?
HERZOG: Yes, sure. I did, for example, "Aguirre" and "Fitzcarraldo," where I had to move a 360-ton steamship over a mountain in the jungle. That was pretty wild. And he immediately nodded to me and acknowledged something I must have gone through as well. But, of course, you can't compare war action and doing a movie. That would be silly.
SHAPIRO: In the book, you write that - you say, I had worked under difficult conditions in the jungle myself and could ask him questions that no one else had asked him. Like what? What were those questions?
HERZOG: For example, the idea of time - that in the jungle, sometimes time does not occur. And then a drop of water drips down from a banana frond to the ground, and five months suddenly have passed. It goes in convulsions.
SHAPIRO: You write about this so beautifully. You say, a night bird shrieks, and a year passes. A fat drop of water on the waxy leaf of a banana plant glistens briefly in the sun, and another year is gone.
HERZOG: Thank you for correcting me. It's just - you are reading from the very text. And it's - I like that you do it because people think this is only some sort of part of my filmmaking. No. It's literature. I've always been a writer from the very earliest days.
SHAPIRO: Onoda's story is well-known, particularly in Japan. And he's often treated as a metaphor for blind loyalty or for disconnection from reality. As somebody who met and is writing about a real flesh-and-blood person, how do you balance the allegory with the nuanced, three-dimensional human that he was?
HERZOG: Well, there was so much evidence for him that he accumulated that it's almost like a religious belief system that he created. And we have to ask ourselves, how do we believe in, too, let's say, the belief systems of a crazy sect? People do believe in it, and they live their lives according to the dogma.
SHAPIRO: You're saying his farfetched beliefs may not actually have been that more extreme or disconnected from reality than the farfetched beliefs that millions of people subscribe to today.
HERZOG: I would say yes. And, of course, since it was a fictitious war, I'm asking myself, how much of a fiction do I live myself in my life? And, of course, we all do. We are performative. We are bound by cultural norms.
SHAPIRO: Your book treats Onoda as sort of a mythic figure, which is how he's often regarded. But for the islanders who lived under his shadow, he was a terror, a real-life monster hiding in the jungle.
HERZOG: Yeah.
SHAPIRO: Did you have any qualms about venerating someone who took so much innocent life?
HERZOG: You have to stop a moment to venerate him or not. I do not. I describe his war, and I describe the unique situation in which he was. And as everybody on the island was an enemy combatant for him, he would fight them. And this was the reason why, after he surrendered, the Philippine president immediately granted him amnesty. He declared him an enemy combatant who performed his role as a soldier.
SHAPIRO: You told The New Yorker that you had this story in you for 20 years, not quite as long as Onoda spent fighting his imaginary war but a long time. Why do you think you held off writing it until now?
HERZOG: You see; I'm a working man. In these 20 years, I made 28 films.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
HERZOG: So that's the problem. And only during the pandemic, my wife said to me, why don't you write it down now?
SHAPIRO: Werner Herzog's new book is called "The Twilight World." Thank you so much.
HERZOG: You're very welcome. Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF DJ MAKO'S "LOOK")
NPR · by Ari Shapiro · June 14, 2022
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
