Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“There is but one thing of real value - to cultivate truth and justice, and to live without anger in the midst of lying and unjust men.”
- Marcus Aurelius


"Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring." 
- Marilyn Monroe

“To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.”
- Theodore Roosevelt


1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JUNE 16 (PUTIN'S WAR
2. Netherlands says Russian spy caught seeking war crimes court internship
3. China launches third aircraft carrier, named after province opposite Taiwan
4. 3rd American veteran reported missing in Ukraine
5. FDD | Iran Further Inhibits IAEA Monitoring in Possible ‘Fatal Blow’ to the Nuclear Deal
6. Inside the US military’s modern ‘island hopping’ campaign to take on China
7. The Bay of Bengal Could Be the Key to a Free and Open Indo-Pacific
8. A Chinese Invasion of Taiwan Could Unleash an Economic Disaster
9. Preparing Army Leaders for Future War
10. Opinion | China’s military expansion is reaching a dangerous tipping point
11. How Ukraine Will Win – Kyiv’s Theory of Victory
12. Ukraine’s losses are China’s gains
13. Iran on the Nuclear Brink
14. Biden tries to climb down from Ukraine ledge
15. Biden ‘to stay the course’ in Ukraine
16. Trilateral – Not Quad – Is the Best Chance for Indo-Pacific Defense
 




1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JUNE 16 (PUTIN'S WAR)

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JUNE 16
Jun 16, 2022 - Press ISW

Kateryna Stepanenko, Mason Clark, George Barros, and Grace Mappes
June 16, 7:00 pm ET
Click here to see ISW's interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
The leaders of Germany, France, Italy, and Romania committed to Ukrainian officials that the West would not demand any concessions from Ukraine to appease Russia and will support Ukraine to the end of the war during a visit to Kyiv on June 16. French President Emmanuel Macron declared that France, Germany, Italy, and Romania are “are doing everything so that Ukraine alone can decide its fate.”[1] Macron added that Ukraine “must be able to win” and pledged to provide six more self-propelled howitzers.[2] German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated that Germany will continue to provide financial, humanitarian, and weapons assistance for “Ukraine’s war of independence.”[3] Macron, Scholz, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, and Romanian President Klaus Iohannis additionally vowed to back Ukraine’s bid to become an official candidate for European Union membership.[4] Sustained Western military support to Ukraine will be essential to enable Ukrainian forces to liberate Russian-occupied territory.
Ukrainian defense officials explicitly requested Western heavy artillery, unmanned aerial vehicles, and multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS) ahead of a protracted war. Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Denys Sharapov and Land Force Command Logistics Commander Volodymyr Karpenko stated that Ukrainian forces need hundreds of artillery systems, including infantry fighting vehicles and tanks, as Ukrainian forces have suffered 30% to 50% equipment losses in active combat.[5] Sharapov and Karpenko noted that Ukrainian forces need Predator drones and loitering munitions to accurately strike Russian forces. Sharapov and Karpenko also asked for long-range precision weapons such as MLRS to defend the entire 2,500 km frontline in Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials stated that Russian forces have already committed about 330,000 servicemen to their invasion of Ukraine without conducting partial or full-scale mobilization in Russia. Ukrainian General Staff Main Operations Deputy Chief Oleksiy Gromov stated that Russian forces grouped 150,000 servicemen into battalion tactical groups (BTGs) and other formations and involved additional 70,000 troops from air and sea elements, with the remaining personnel staffing non-combat support units.[6] Gromov noted that Russian forces committed more than 80,000 servicemen of the mobilized reserve, up to 7,000 reservists of the Russian Combat Army Reserve (BARS-2021), up to 18,000 members of the Russian National Guard (Rosguardia), and up to 8,000 troops from private military companies. Gromov did not specify if Ukrainian officials included information about forcibly mobilized servicemen in the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR) in these numbers. Gromov noted that the Kremlin may still increase the number of Russian military personnel in Ukraine by executing covert or full mobilization.[7] Gromov noted that while it is unknown if the Kremlin will declare mobilization, Russian forces will still need time to execute the deployment and training of the new personnel whether or not the Kremlin announces full mobilization.
Key Takeaways
  • Russian forces continued to launch ground assaults on Severodonetsk and settlements along the Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Lysychansk. Ukrainian military intelligence reported that Russian forces are no longer operating as concrete battalion tactical groups (BTGs), as ISW previously assessed.
  • Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations northwest of Slovyansk, while Ukrainian forces reportedly resumed preparations for counteroffensives west of Izyum.
  • Russian and Ukrainian forces engaged in clashes north and northeast of Kharkiv City, though no significant territory changed hands.
  • Russian forces continued to fortify fallback positions in northwestern Kherson Oblast, likely in anticipation of Ukrainian counteroffensives in the region.
  • Head of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Denis Pushilin continued to discuss and sign patronage agreements with Russian regional officials.

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 are prioritizing operations to disrupt Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Lysychansk from several directions. Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Valeryi Zalyzhnyi said that Russian forces are simultaneously launching assaults in Donbas in nine directions, presented as a two-part direction including the main location Russian forces are attacking from and their intended objective: Popasna-Komyshuvakha, Popasna-Mykolaivka, Popasna-Berestove, Bohorodychne-Slovyansk, Izyum-Slovyansk, Popasna-Svitlodarsk, Severodonetsk-Lysychansk, Severodonetsk-Metolkine, and Komushuvakha-Toshkivka.[8] Ukrainian General Staff Main Operations Deputy Chief Oleksiy Gromov noted that Russian forces are committing smaller elements (company or platoon-sized assault groups) rather than full-fledged battalion tactical groups (BTGs) for offensive operations.[9] Gromov added that Russian forces are not conducting offensive operations at night. The UK Defense Ministry also stated that Russian forces are operating in “increasingly ad hoc and severely undermanned groupings” in Donbas that typically advance by foot.[10]

Russian forces conducted ground assaults in Severodonetsk in a grinding effort to establish control over the city.[11] Gromov reported that Ukrainian forces continue to resist Russian attacks in Severodonetsk and are halting Russian operations to capture Metolkine and Syrotyne, just southeast of Severodonetsk.[12] Russian forces likely intend to capture Metolkine and Syvrotyne, rather than strictly concentrating on Severodonetsk, to push back Ukrainian forces on the western bank of Siverskyi Donets River and secure access to the eastern riverbank. Gromov clarified that Ukrainian forces retain several logistics routes to Severodonetsk despite the destruction of four bridges over the Siverskyi Donets River, pushing back on recent media reports and Russian claims that Ukrainian forces in the city are completely cut off.[13] Head of the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Leonid Pasechnik stated that Ukrainian forces still control the territory of the Azot Chemical Plant but that Russian and proxy forces entered the premises of the facility on June 16.[14]
Russian forces continued to attack Ukrainian GLOCs around Popasna on June 16. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repulsed Russian assaults on Berestove, situated on the T1302 Bakhmut-Lysychansk highway.[15] Pro-Russian milblogger and Russian military journalist Yevgeniy Poddubnyi claimed that Russian forces control unspecified segments along the T1302 and have interdicted transfer of Ukrainian reserves from Bakhmut but ISW cannot independently confirm this claim.[16] The Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Territorial Defense additionally claimed to have established control over Novoluhanske, Luhanske, Rozsadky, and Shakhtarsk, southeast of Bakhmut.[17]
Russian forces launched unsuccessful assaults northwest of Slovyansk and made incremental territorial advances southeast of Izyum. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces failed to seize Dolyna (on the E40 highway to Slovyansk) and retreated to previously occupied positions.[18] Geolocated footage shows Ukrainian forces targeting Russian heavy artillery attempting to advance from the east and the northwestern outskirts of Bohorodychne, approximately 25 km southeast of Izyum.[19] Ukrainian forces may be resuming counteroffensive operations west of Izyum. Pro-Russian Telegram channel Rybar claimed that Ukrainian forces established a pontoon bridge over the Siverskyi Donets River, approximately 26 km west of Izyum, on June 15.[20] Continued Russian artillery fire west and northwest of Izyum is also likely an indicator of Ukrainian counteroffensives in the area.[21] If confirmed, this Ukrainian counteroffensive is likely intended to sever Russian lines of communication to the Izyum and Lyman areas.

Supporting Effort #1—Kharkiv City (Russian objective: Withdraw forces to the north and defend ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Izyum)
Russian forces reportedly continued to engage in localized clashes with Ukrainian elements to maintain their occupied positions near the international border on June 16.[22] Pro-Russian Telegram channel Rybar claimed that Russian forces fought Ukrainian units in Dementiivka and Ruska Lozova along the Belgorod-Kharkiv City highway and in Rubizhne and Ternova, approximately 45 km northeast of Kharkiv City.[23] NASA FIRMS data observed significant high-temperature anomalies in Dementiivka but did not confirm any anomalies in Ruska Lozova.

[Source: NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System over Dementiivka for June 16]
Supporting Effort #2—Southern Axis (Objective: Defend Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts against Ukrainian counterattacks)
Russian forces continued to fortify fallback positions in Kherson and Mykolaiv oblasts, likely in response to local Ukrainian counterattacks. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian engineering elements improved defensive positions around Bezvodne and Ishchenka, just southeast of the contested town of Davydiv Brid on the Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) in northwestern Kherson Oblast.[24] Ukrainian General Staff Main Operations Deputy Chief Oleksiy Gromov noted that Russian forces are also dismantling concrete irrigation structures in Kherson Oblast to conceal heavy artillery from Ukrainian strikes.[25] Russian forces reportedly shelled Ukrainian positions on the Kherson-Mykolaiv and Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast borders, likely in a counter-battery attempt to hinder Ukrainian advances.[26] Odesa Oblast Civil-Military Administration Spokesperson Serhiy Bratchuk claimed that Ukrainian forces had unspecified successes on the Southern Axis, but ISW cannot independently verify this claim.[27]
Russian forces may be staging false flag attacks around Kherson City to discourage civilian support for Ukrainian counteroffensive operations. The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command reported civilian casualties during an explosion on June 15 at a local market in Chornobaivka, a settlement just north of Kherson City known for Ukrainian strikes against Russian ammunition depots in the area.[28] The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command stated that Russian forces seek to destabilize public opinion in Kherson City and blame Ukrainian forces for launching strikes on civilian infrastructure.[29]
Russian forces reportedly performed demonstrative assaults on settlements in eastern Zaporizhia Oblast to fix Ukrainian units in place.[30] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces eliminated a Russian sabotage and reconnaissance group operating on the Zaporizhia-Donetsk Oblast border on June 16.[31]

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 to pursue ad hoc cooperation arrangements with Russian regional officials at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum on June 16.[32] Pushilin signed a Memorandum of Cooperation with Moscow Oblast Governor Andrey Vorobyov under which Moscow Oblast will offer patronage to Tel’manivskyi and Novoazovsk districts, just east of Mariupol.[33] Pushilin signed another memorandum with Tula Governor Alexei Dyumin for the restoration of Mariupol’s Left Bank district.[34] Pushillin also discussed patronage over occupied Khrestivka (northeast of Donetsk City) with the Republic of Sakha Head Aisen Nikolaev and unspecified Donetsk Oblast settlements with the Tver Oblast Governor Igor Rudenya.[35] Pushilin is likely attempting to secure Russian financial assistance to restore occupied settlements in Donetsk Oblast, but his cooperation agreements with Russian local officials further indicate the DNR‘s lack of coherent annexation policies.
The Kremlin is introducing more measures to establish permanent societal control over occupied Ukrainian territories. Self-proclaimed Deputy Head of the Kherson Military-Civil Administration Kiril Stremousov announced that all children born in Kherson Oblast after February 24 will automatically receive Russian citizenship.[36] The Russian Internal Ministry also announced that Ukrainian “refugees” (many of whom were likely forcibly relocated to Russia) from occupied territories must receive proper documentation before August 17 to remain in Russia.[37] The Kremlin likely seeks to coerce illegally deported Ukrainian citizens in Russia to accept Russian citizenship or return to Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine.
[6] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2022/06/16/u-vijni-proty-ukrayiny-berut-uchast-blyzko-330-tysyach-vijskovyh-zs-rf-oleksij-gromov/
[7] https://lb dot ua/society/2022/06/16/520271_narazi_zagrozi_novogo_nastupu_rosii.html
[8] https://news dot liga.net/ua/politics/news/zalujnyy-rf-odnovremenno-atakuet-na-devyati-napravleniyah-severodonetsk-klyuchevaya-tochka
[9] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2022/06/16/u-genshtabi-zsu-rozpovily-pro-osoblyvosti-taktyky-vijsk-rf/
[12] https://news dot liga.net/ua/politics/news/mosty-razrusheny-no-puti-snabjeniya-est-genshtab-o-situatsii-v-severodonetske-i-planah-rf
[13] https://news dot liga.net/ua/politics/news/mosty-razrusheny-no-puti-snabjeniya-est-genshtab-o-situatsii-v-severodonetske-i-planah-rf
[14] https://t.me/readovkanews/36858https://tass dot ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/14927491?utm_source=google.com&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=google.com&utm_referrer=google.com; https://t.me/milinfolive/85216
[25] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2022/06/16/rosarmiya-znyshhuye-irygaczijnu-systemu-na-pivdni-ukrayiny/
[36] https://t.me/readovkanews/36838; https://ria dot ru/20220616/grazhdanstvo-1795637224.html; https://t.me/readovkanews/36861
[37] https://tass dot ru/politika/14924557?


2. Netherlands says Russian spy caught seeking war crimes court internship

I wonder if this is a result of the Russians being worried about the war crimes charges and they prematurely activated this operative, despite the long time they had been supposedly working to develop his cover (some 12 years).


Netherlands says Russian spy caught seeking war crimes court internship
Reuters · by Anthony Deutsch
  • Summary
  • Russian agent accused of posing as intern to infiltrate court
  • ICC is investigating allegations of war crimes in Ukraine
  • False Brazilian ID included tastes for trance music, bean stew
AMSTERDAM, June 16 (Reuters) - The Dutch intelligence service said on Thursday it had uncovered a Russian military agent attempting to use a false identity to infiltrate the International Criminal Court (ICC) which is investigating accusations of war crimes in Ukraine.
Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov created an elaborate cover story dating back years to try and enter the Netherlands as a Brazilian national for an internship at the Hague-based ICC in April, the agency's head told Reuters.
"This was a long-term, multi-year GRU operation that cost a lot of time, energy and money," said Dutch intelligence agency chief Erik Akerboom, using the acronym for Russia's military intelligence service.
No GRU representative could be immediately reached for comment, though President Vladimir Putin's government has in the past frequently denied spying accusations as a Western smear campaign against Moscow.
The Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) said in a statement that the man, who went by the alias Viktor Muller Ferreira, was picked up at a Dutch airport. He was declared an undesirable alien and put on the next flight back to Brazil, it added.
Brazil's federal police said Cherkasov was taken into custody and is being prosecuted for the use of false documents.
"It clearly shows us what the Russians are up to - trying to gain illegal access to information within the ICC. We classify this as a high-level threat," Akerboom added, saying the ICC had accepted him for an internship.
There was no immediate comment on the case from the Russian government, or the ICC.
'WELL-CONSTRUCTED COVER'
The Dutch agency said it had taken the unusual step of releasing detailed information on the case to expose the workings of Russian intelligence and threat to other international institutions.
It distributed a four-page document outlining what it said was Cherkasov's invented cover story. That included a supposed troubled family history and details from a club where he liked to listen to electronic trance music and his favourite restaurant in Brasilia where he would eat cheap brown bean stew.
"Cherkasov used a well-constructed cover identity by which he concealed all his ties with Russia in general, and the GRU in particular," the statement said.
Brazilian police said Cherkasov entered Brazil in 2010 and assumed the false identity of a Brazilian whose parents had died. Passing for a Brazilian, he lived in Ireland and the United States for several years, the police statement said, and had returned to Brazil to prepare his move to the Netherlands.
The ICC, a permanent global war crimes tribunal with 123 member states, opened an investigation in Ukraine just days after Putin sent his troops in on Feb. 24. It is examining allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
The Dutch have expelled more than 20 Russians accused of spying in recent years.
They include four people accused in 2018 of hacking the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), two accused of spying in the corporate, high-tech sector in 2020, and 17 suspected operatives accredited as diplomats who were thrown out after this year's invasion of Ukraine.
Russia has denied all the charges and responded to the latest expulsions by also kicking out 15 Dutch embassy and consulate staff from Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Reporting by Anthony Deutsch; Additional reporting by Anthony Boadles in Brasilia; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Michael Perry
Reuters · by Anthony Deutsch

3. China launches third aircraft carrier, named after province opposite Taiwan

Now they have one (three to make one).
China launches third aircraft carrier, named after province opposite Taiwan
Reuters · by Martin Quin Pollard
BEIJING, June 17 (Reuters) - China launched its third aircraft carrier on Friday, the Fujian, named after the province opposite self-ruled Taiwan, sending a statement of intent to rivals as it modernises its military.
President Xi Jinping has made overhauling the world's largest armed forces a central part of his agenda, seeking to project power well beyond China's shores, though the government says it has no hostile intent.
Champagne, colourful ribbons, water cannons and smoke were deployed to celebrate the carrier's launch and official naming at a ceremony at the Jiangnan shipyard in Shanghai, state media reported.

Dozens of navy personnel lined up in front of the ship and sang the national anthem at the ceremony, which was attended by senior officials including Xu Qiliang, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission.
The aircraft carrier features a full-length flight deck with a catapult launch system, according to state media.
The Fujian will join the Shandong, commissioned in late 2019, and the Liaoning, which China bought second-hand from Ukraine in 1998 and refitted domestically.
China is still honing its ability to operate the carriers, and integrate them into battle groups, something the United States has been doing for decades.
Only the United States, with 11 aircraft carriers, has more of the vessels.
The Fujian's launch demonstrates the military's increasing capability at a time of rising tension with the United States over Chinese-claimed Taiwan and Beijing's claims to the South China Sea.
The coastal province of Fujian is just across the Taiwan Strait from Taiwan and home to the Eastern Theatre Command of the People's Liberation Army.
Taiwan is a thriving democracy but China considers the island its own territory and has never renounced the use of force to bring it under its control.
A senior Taiwan official familiar with the island's security planning told Reuters that with the new carrier China was flagging to the region its intentions about projecting power well into the Pacific.
"In the future, they want to directly penetrate to the east of the first island chain, which includes Japan's Ryukyu Islands and the Pacific waters off Taiwan's east," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"Any regional cooperation is seen by Beijing as an intervention in the Taiwan issue or a challenge to China. The launch of the new carrier is a defiant statement."
Taiwan has been modernising its own armed forces, including putting into service a new class of highly agile stealth warships, which Taiwan refers to as an "aircraft carrier killer" due to its missile complement.
Taiwan's defence ministry said in a statement sent to Reuters about the new carrier that it "attaches great importance" to China's military developments and "incorporates this into enemy situation research in a forward-looking manner".

Reporting by Ryan Woo and Martin Pollard; Additional reporting by Yimou Lee and Ben Blanchard in Taipei; editing by Richard Pullin, Stephen Coates and Kim Coghill
Reuters · by Martin Quin Pollard

4. 3rd American veteran reported missing in Ukraine
I fear this will only get worse. More will likely be captured.

3rd American veteran reported missing in Ukraine
Axios · by Rebecca Falconer · June 17, 2022
A third American who traveled to Ukraine during Russia's military invasion appears to have gone missing, the State Department confirms.
The big picture: The families of Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh, 27, and Alexander Drueke, 39, said Wednesday that the two U.S. veterans from Alabama had gone missing in Ukraine. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said at a briefing Thursday that there were "reports of one additional American whose whereabouts are unknown."
  • "Unfortunately we don't know the full details of that case," Price said.
Details: CNN reported that the third missing American is U.S. Marine veteran Grady Kurpasi, citing his wife and close friends. He was living in Wilmington, North Carolina, before leaving for Ukraine in March, according to CNN.
  • The State Department did not immediately respond to Axios' request to confirm the identity of the missing American.
Axios · by Rebecca Falconer · June 17, 2022


5. FDD | Iran Further Inhibits IAEA Monitoring in Possible ‘Fatal Blow’ to the Nuclear Deal
Excerpts:

Thus, the IAEA has not been able to guarantee that Iran is not diverting nuclear assets to clandestine facilities, where several hundred advanced centrifuges would be adequate for a breakout to atomic weapons. The IAEA’s June 9 report underscored the situation’s gravity, stating that Tehran’s reductions in monitoring “could have detrimental implications … for the Agency’s ability to provide assurance of the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear [program].”
The Biden administration should not lift sanctions on Iran. Instead, Washington should work to implement the snapback of prior UN sanctions resolutions on Iran and restore a multilateral pressure campaign to deter, contain, and penalize Tehran’s atomic infractions. Such a campaign should continue until the Islamic Republic enacts permanent nuclear limits, allows full transparency, and restores monitoring.


FDD | Iran Further Inhibits IAEA Monitoring in Possible ‘Fatal Blow’ to the Nuclear Deal
fdd.org · June 16, 2022
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed last week that Iran had begun removing 27 IAEA cameras monitoring its nuclear program. Tehran’s step, which came in retaliation to a formal admonishment of the regime by the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors, further hinders the agency’s ability to detect Iranian advances toward atomic weapons.
Iran had installed the 27 cameras under the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). According to a June 9 IAEA report, Tehran has so far taken down cameras at facilities where Iran conducts mechanical testing of centrifuges, produces centrifuge components, and mines and mills uranium. On Monday, the regime stated that these steps are reversible, suggesting that Tehran seeks to blackmail Washington to make further concessions to Iran.
Some 40 other cameras remain in operation. They must do so pursuant to Tehran’s nuclear safeguards agreement with the IAEA, which stays in effect so long as Iran is a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The 40 devices monitor activities related to Iran’s production and handling of nuclear material.
In response to the board’s admonishment, the IAEA reported that Iran has reduced monitoring and is escalating its nuclear activities in other ways as well. At the Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP), Tehran is ending operation of an online enrichment measurement device, which measures the amount and purity of enriched uranium that Iran produces. The device sends the information, within hours, to the IAEA headquarters in Vienna.
Similarly, Iran is halting operation of a flow meter that tracks production of heavy water, a coolant used in nuclear reactors. Tehran is also increasing its capacity to quickly enrich uranium by installing hundreds more IR-6 centrifuges at the Natanz FEP.
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi stated last week that within three to four weeks, the agency would no longer be able to ensure its continuity of knowledge about Iran’s nuclear activities, even if Iran restored monitoring later. This could deal the JCPOA “a fatal blow,” he said. Grossi further explained that during a short window, the agency could reliably estimate and reconstruct what Iran may have done at nuclear sites. However, he added, “these projections are something that you do for a relatively short period of time. You cannot go for months and months without any access, without any information.”
Iran’s restrictions not only inhibit future IAEA monitoring of its nuclear program. Rather, they also cast doubt on the agency’s ability to receive and review past footage and data collected under JCPOA monitoring provisions by cameras and measurement devices. Since February 2021, Iran has denied the IAEA access to this material. In December 2021, in an apparent attempt at extortion, Tehran said it would only turn over the footage and data once it receives relief from U.S. sanctions. Still, Grossi said last week he is unaware of what Iran will ultimately do with past footage and data.
Thus, the IAEA has not been able to guarantee that Iran is not diverting nuclear assets to clandestine facilities, where several hundred advanced centrifuges would be adequate for a breakout to atomic weapons. The IAEA’s June 9 report underscored the situation’s gravity, stating that Tehran’s reductions in monitoring “could have detrimental implications … for the Agency’s ability to provide assurance of the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear [program].”
The Biden administration should not lift sanctions on Iran. Instead, Washington should work to implement the snapback of prior UN sanctions resolutions on Iran and restore a multilateral pressure campaign to deter, contain, and penalize Tehran’s atomic infractions. Such a campaign should continue until the Islamic Republic enacts permanent nuclear limits, allows full transparency, and restores monitoring.
Andrea Stricker is a research fellow and deputy director of the Nonproliferation and Biodefense Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). She also contributes to FDD’s Iran ProgramInternational Organizations Program, and Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP). For more analysis from Andrea, the Nonproliferation and Biodefense Program, Iran Program, International Organizations Program, and CMPP, please subscribe HERE. Follow Andrea on Twitter @StrickerNonpro. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_Iran and @FDD_CMPP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · June 16, 2022


6. Inside the US military’s modern ‘island hopping’ campaign to take on China

I wonder why there is no discussion of Nimitz and MacArthur. I would like to see how we are going to organize for operations throughout the Pacific and compare it to the operational art the Army and Navy conducted during the war in the Pacific. It may take quite a bit more force than the MArines to do some "island hopping." And then I would like to see how we can incorporate the power and capabilities of allied forces.


Inside the US military’s modern ‘island hopping’ campaign to take on China
History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
BY JEFF SCHOGOL | PUBLISHED JUN 16, 2022 9:00 AM
taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol · June 16, 2022
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In a war against China, tiny islands could become strategic strong points for the U.S. military’s advance across the Pacific Ocean for the first time since World War II.
The Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations concept, for example, calls for putting small numbers of forces on “a series of austere, temporary locations ashore or inshore,” an August 2021 Marine Corps story explaining the concept says. The story includes a diagram showing how Marines would move from ships onto islands using MV-22B Ospreys and CH-53 heavy-lift helicopters.
Once again, U.S. troops could be called upon to land on East Asian islands if a war with China broke out, Task & Purpose has learned.
But there are also several key differences between the island-hopping campaign from 1942 and 1945 and how the U.S. military would respond to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, which is often cited as the likeliest scenario that would spark a war between the United States and China.
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Rather than invading and clearing islands such as Saipan and Tinian, U.S. troops would likely set up airfields and air defense systems on them and then defend those islands against Chinese air and missile attacks, said Dean Cheng, a China expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, D.C.
“These are islands that aren’t even defended,” Cheng told Task & Purpose. “It’s an interesting way of thinking about it: Island hopping, not so much storming the beaches of Iwo Jima as trying to keep an airbase open,” Cheng said.
BEIHAI, CHINA – JANUARY 4, 2022 – Members of special operations forces train in beihai, North China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on January 4, 2022. (Yu Haiyang / Costfoto/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
First, however, U.S. ships and troops would have to fight their way across the Pacific Ocean, and they would likely take casualties along the way, Cheng said. Just to get from Hawaii to Guam, U.S. forces would have to brave Chinese DF-26 intermediate ballistic missiles, air-launched cruise missiles, submarines, and possibly Chinese merchant ships armed with missiles.
Chinese special operators could infiltrate Saipan and other islands before U.S. troops landed to provide reconnaissance, identify targets for missile strikes, and even launch their own attacks on airfields to kill as many pilots and maintainers as possible, he said.
“The Marines lost more aircraft and aircrew in Afghanistan from that one attack on the airbase than in all of the fighting of the previous seven years,” Cheng said, referring to the Taliban’s 2012 attack against Camp Bastion, which killed two Marines, injured 17 others, and severely damaged six AV-8B Harriers and one C-130.
During World War II’s island-hopping campaign, soldiers, Marines, and sailors had to annihilate Japanese resistance on a series of progressively better-fortified islands.
The Marine Corps in particular faced hard fights on Pacific islands such as Iwo Jima, where nearly 7,000 Marines were killed and another 20,000 were wounded in the bloodiest battle in the Corps’ history.
When Task & Purpose asked the commander of Marine Corps Combat Development Command in February how many U.S. troops would be killed and wounded in a war against China, he indicated that he did not expect the number of casualties to rise to World War II levels.
“We’re not doing an Iwo Jima again, right – that needs to be clear,” said Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl, who is also deputy commandant for combat development and integration. “It’s not what we’re talking about.”
U.S. Marines of the 28th Regiment, 5th Division, raise the U.S. flag on Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima, Feb. 23, 1945. (AP Photo/Joe Rosenthal, File)
Instead, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger’s plan to redesign the force calls for Marines to operate from Expeditionary Advanced Bases inside the range of enemy missiles and other defenses.
The term “Expeditionary Advanced Bases” is intentionally vague so that adversaries cannot be sure which forces are ashore and which are embarked on ships, according to a 2018 Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, Concepts & Plans Division paper about the concept.
“Historically, advanced naval bases have frequently been found astride straits or on islands,” the paper says. “It is appropriate to think of future EABs being similarly situated, but the expeditionary advanced ‘base’ is purposefully ill-defined in terms of its perimeter and specific geographic location. ‘Amorphous’ is an apt description of how we wish EABs to appear to adversaries.”
The Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations concept envisions small numbers of Marines managing to operate undetected from islands, from which they can fire anti-ship missiles, collect intelligence, and possibly coordinate long-range strikes from ships and aircraft, said Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Studies think tank in Washington, D.C.
Unlike World War II, the Marines would not have to fight for the islands that they would use as bases, and they would likely come ashore in small units such as companies rather than divisions, Pettyjohn told Task & Purpose. The Marines would also not occupy islands indefinitely.
In this photo provided by the U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Marines walk away from a Japanese foxhole after blowing it up with explosives, during the invasion at Saipan, in the Mariana Islands, in July 1944. (AP Photo/U.S. Marines)
“They might want to be on an island for a while because they want to control this particular water or be able to have the ability to keep controlling it, but they would be trying to move around and make sure that they are hidden and hard to target,” Pettyjohn said.
Should the United States go to war with China, the Marines could try to establish expeditionary bases in the Philippines or on the Ryukyu Islands between Taiwan and Japan, she said.
“They’re not going to be able to reach Taiwan itself, but those are chokepoints and gateways to the broader Pacific, where they might want to bottle up the Chinese fleet and make sure the PLAN [People’s Liberation Army Navy] doesn’t get out into the open ocean, where it could move towards Guam and Hawaii and the West Coast,” Pettyjohn said.
While the Marines are looking at how they could occupy islands as part of a future military campaign, it is clear they want to avoid any comparisons to the Corps’ bloody slog through the Pacific in World War II.
“The historical comparison to the World War II island-hopping campaign, while appealing, is inaccurate,” Marine Corps spokesman Maj. Jim Stenger told Task & Purpose. However, an August 2021 Marine Corps news release made a direct connection between island hopping during World War II and EABO, calling it a “modern island hopping campaign.”
“Force Design 2030 is an iterative process and through our campaign of learning we are developing a host of capabilities that will support the Joint Force throughout the world,” Stenger said. “A future conflict will require a Marine Corps that can conduct distributed operations, while sensing and making sense of the operating environment for the Joint Force.”
Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations also represent part of the Marine Corps’ capabilities to support the entire U.S. military, including Amphibious Ready Groups and Marine Expeditionary Units (MEUs), Stenter said.
“In the future, MEUs will possess both traditional and Expeditionary Advanced Base capabilities that can deploy with non-standard Amphibious Ready Groups,” Stenger said.
It’s also worth noting that there is a popular saying: History never repeats itself, but it often rhymes. In that vein, there are some parallels between Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations and World War II, if not the island-hopping campaign, specifically.
Navy strategy expert Steven Wills said he sees similarities between Expeditionary Advanced Bases and the Marine Corps’ base defense forces on Wake Island and Midway in 1941 and 1942.
At Wake Island, for example, the Marines had 5-inch naval guns and a few aircraft to attack the Japanese, said Wills, a retired Navy lieutenant commander who is now with CNA, a federally funded research and development center.
“The Marines envision today an aviation component to Expeditionary Advanced Base ops and some sort of a modern artillery component – in this case, surface-to-surface cruise missiles: some way that they can get into a maritime fight and sink ships, create strongpoints that an opponent’s maritime forces would have to go around or engage,” Wills told Task & Purpose. “I think that looks a lot like those base defense forces that were created before the Second World War. The Marines haven’t strayed too far from the heritage here. They’ve just got more modern concepts and systems to go with it.”
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Jeff Schogol is the senior Pentagon reporter for Task & Purpose. He has covered the military for 15 years. You can email him at schogol@taskandpurpose.com, direct message @JeffSchogol on Twitter, or reach him on WhatsApp and Signal at 703-909-6488. Contact the author here.

taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol · June 16, 2022
7. The Bay of Bengal Could Be the Key to a Free and Open Indo-Pacific

Conclusion:
For decades, the significance of the Bay of Bengal remained underappreciated due to the absence of great powers’ interest and lack of economic vitality, but this has changed as strategic competition in the area intensifies according to its own dynamic. The Bay of Bengal now has considerable — and growing — strategic importance for Asia, and for the world as a whole. In many ways, the Bay of Bengal lies at the core of the Indo-Pacific region — a centerpiece of the broader Indo-Pacific concept and the place where the strategic interests of the major powers of East and South Asia intersect. As the Bay will become a test case for a nascent multipolar world order, it is of the utmost importance to establish governance frameworks that can facilitate the integration of rising powers in regulating this order and upholding the principles of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific.

The Bay of Bengal Could Be the Key to a Free and Open Indo-Pacific - War on the Rocks
warontherocks.com · by Anu Anwar · June 17, 2022
Over the past decade or so, with the winds of geopolitical change sweeping Asia, the Indo-Pacific has emerged as a focal point in global economics, diplomacy, and security. With its more than half of the global population, fast-rising prosperity, and the challenges of rising regional powers, the Indo-Pacific is the prime strategic hub for deciding the future of existing global order. To maintain the status quo in the region and keep China’s assertiveness in check, the United States, Japan, and Australia, among others, have advanced the idea of a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific.” Although each of these countries has its own vision, the general aspiration to keep the region free from coercion and open for all is the benchmark that they share. Within the Indo-Pacific theater, the Bay of Bengal — situated at the intersection between South and Southeast Asia — is a divider, a connector, and one of the prime battlegrounds. The tumultuous strategic environment of the Bay — driven by traditional and nontraditional security concerns, and a rising economy mainly powered by infrastructure — suggests this subregion is fast becoming one of the key emerging hotspots for the Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy. This, combined with the fact that climate change poses an existential threat to several states in the region, calls not only sustained focus by extraregional powers, but also for governance structures that can facilitate a rules-based order.
The Bay of Bengal in the Indo-Pacific Fulcrum
Roughly three-quarters of the Indo-Pacific region’s entire surface is water. Yet apart from the South China Sea, the great majority of geopolitical studies concern not those maritime spaces — including the vast Pacific and Indian oceans or critical bays such as the Bay of Bengal — but rather land areas that cover a much smaller share of the whole.
However, after decades of being regarded as an international backwater, the Bay of Bengal is fast becoming a key area of strategic competition as the Indo-Pacific strategy continues to evolve. It is the largest bay in the world, bookended by India on its western side and Thailand to its east, with Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka as its prominent littoral states. Together they host fully one-quarter of the world’s population with sustained growth in its gross domestic product, which currently is $3 trillion. A quarter of the world’s traded goods cross the Bay, including huge volumes of Persian Gulf oil and liquefied natural gas, providing energy-scarce countries with a corridor to securing resources.
The states around the Bay of Bengal have exhibited a pattern of cooperation based on rule of law and free from coercion, reinforcing the aspiration of a free and open Indo-Pacific. Two major regional organizations — the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation — lie on the border of the Bay of Bengal. In addition, key nations of the Bay joined in establishing the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation in 1997. In 2012, Bangladesh and Myanmar settled their maritime boundary disputes in the Bay of Bengal through the International Tribunal for the Laws of the Sea, setting a precedent of respecting the rule of law. In contrast, in the contested South China Sea, China disregarded the tribunal’s verdict when it overruled Beijing’s territorial claims over the Philippine’s exclusive economic zone.
Economy at the Center
With the exception of Thailand, countries surrounding the Bay of Bengal largely missed the economic miracle that took place in Asia in the latter part of the twentieth century. This, however, is now changing. Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, South Asia had experienced the world’s fastest growth of 7.3 percent on average per annum throughout the last decade. Low-cost, labor-intensive, export-manufacturing industries such as garments, coupled with rapid urbanization, have been the driver of this fast growth.
Just as industrial economies such as China, Korea, and Japan moved toward high-tech, capital-intensive growth models, Bay of Bengal countries have the potential to benefit from offshoring labor-intensive industries from developed countries. With relatively young workforces, for example — in Bangladesh, 20 percent of the population falls between age 15 and 24 — labor-intensive industries will likely continue to flourish in the coming decades. An important factor in the growing strategic importance of the area is the relatively bright economic prospects of many littoral states.
The Bay of Bengal is also believed to have significant gas reserves. Some unofficial estimates have put Bangladesh’s reserves alone at 200 trillion cubic feet, which would make it the largest source of supply in the Asia-Pacific. Another Bay of Bengal state, Myanmar, is also a significant natural-gas producer and consumer. Myanmar has the fourth-largest proven natural-gas reserves in the Asia-Pacific, and currently the highest reserves-to-production ratio in the region, at 63 years. It exports petroleum gas to both Thailand and China, customers accounting for 75 percent of its production.
The two Asian giants, China and India, have become major consumers and are among the top three oil importers in the world. China’s and India’s dependency on oil imports are expected to rise to 75 percent and 95 percent, respectively, of their total oil consumption by 2030. Japan and Korea are also highly dependent on energy imports, particularly oil and gas — importing primarily across sea lanes passing through the Bay. In addition to energy, the Bay of Bengal region is also critical for commercial shipping routes. About half the world’s container traffic passes through this region, and its ports handle approximately 33 percent of world trade, thus becoming an important economic highway.
However, the full economic potential of the region is currently constrained by the low level of regional economic integration and a dearth of infrastructure, especially transport connections within those countries, to neighboring states and the rest of the world. For example, intraregional trade in Southeast Asia is 25 percent of total trade, while it is only 5 percent in South Asia. This, however, creates a window of opportunity in which major powers’ focus on the Indo-Pacific could catalyze infrastructure development and connectivity in the Bay of Bengal.
Infrastructure and Connectivity
The ever-growing economic activities around the Bay have prompted efforts to build new ports, roads, pipelines, and railways throughout the region, largely sponsored by China and Japan. These projects have been accompanied by considerable competition for political and strategic influence over the Bay states as these powers seek to establish infrastructure connections and production chains to benefit their own economies. In broad terms, this competition might be seen as reflecting the intersection of growing areas of strategic influence of major powers in Asia: China, Japan, and India, as well as extraregional powers such as the United States. This competition concerns but also benefits the infrastructure-hungry countries around the Bay.
South Asia clearly illustrates the pressing infrastructural needs that economic growth is generating within the Bay, and the potential dangers that procuring needed capital investment can entail. According to an Asian Development Bank report, in South Asia, the gap between existing infrastructure investments and the need is $160 billion per year. These needs include physical infrastructure such as ports, bridges, highways, railways, airports, as well as digital infrastructure.
For example, even though Bangladesh has become the second-largest clothing and apparel exporter in the world in recent years, with potential to become the largest producer, it has yet failed to complete a single deep-water port in its 50 years of independence. The construction of the Sonadia deep seaport was long on the national agenda, but the absence of consensus among development partners regarding funding sources led the project to be scrapped altogether. Recognizing geopolitical realities, Bangladesh is currently building a deep seaport in Matarbari funded by Japan.
Explosive growth in China’s Yunnan Province to the northeast is generating demand in Myanmar for transit infrastructure in the pipeline, road, and rail sectors, with the Kyaukphyu-Kunming gas and oil pipelines already completed. Meeting those transit needs would substantially deepen Myanmar’s interdependence with China’s southwest, especially Yunnan. The China-Myanmar Economic Corridor — one of six Belt and Road Initiative economic corridors — is a testimony to this and reflects a potential for Bay of Bengal connectivity on an even greater scale.
The most dynamic areas of infrastructural development in the Bay of Bengal over the past five years have belonged to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, unveiled in the fall of 2013. Its specific applications in the Bay of Bengal region, especially two important projects in Sri Lanka and Myanmar, and aspiration for a Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor, are critical. All nations bordering the Bay except India have joined the Belt and Road Initiative, and it holds great potential to significantly transform the political economy of the region — not least by deepening economic interdependence with China. Such a scenario warrants America’s proposed Indo-Pacific Economic Framework to include more Bay of Bengal countries and allocate investment for infrastructure and connectivity to reduce over-reliance on China and ensure plurality in the region. Investing in infrastructure and connectivity will also help the United States and its allies to strengthen ties with the countries in the region, as this is indeed a priority for these countries.
A Multilayered Geopolitical Competition
The geopolitical maneuvering of the regional powers and competition among extraregional powers will further accelerate the geostrategic significance of the Bay of Bengal. The competition will take place in two tiers — both conflicting and converging in nature. The first tier is among regional powers — primarily between China and India and among the mid-size states of the Bay such as Bangladesh and Myanmar, whose relations largely remain competitive and conflictual in nature. The second tier of this competition will be between and among extraregional powers such as Australia, European countries, Japan, and the United States. In this tier, competition is more complementary with each other, but more in conflict with China. These countries are building new types of security architecture such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and AUKUS, and we aresome strengthening of bilateral ties throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Under such frameworks, the division between the United States and its friends with China will sharpen further.
While the United States may seem like the leader or driver of this competition, in fact, the traditional rivalry between India and China may become far more prominent. India is the traditionally dominant regional power in the Bay of Bengal. The influence of China, however, is rising rapidly, driven primarily by the massive financial support it offers and its proactive infrastructure programs under the Belt and Road Initiative. India and China both view the Bay of Bengal as a crucial frontier in their competition over energy resources, shipping lanes, and cultural influence. The competition stemming from the two countries expanding their regional spheres of influence in each other’s backyards may result in skirmishes over energy and sea lanes of communications, not to mention confrontation over political influence in the more fragile states such as Myanmar and non-Bay of Bengal littoral state Nepal.
So far, the strongest manifestation of Sino-Indian rivalry in the Bay of Bengal has been situated in Myanmar, where both countries need overland transit to connect their economically weaker regions, namely India’s northeast and China’s Yunnan province, with the Bay of Bengal. However, between 2011 and 2021, Myanmar opened its economy to the Western world after the United States and Europe lifted sanctions, creating more partnership options as the reforms attracted a wave of foreign investors. This in turn reduced Sino-Indian competition by making space available to new actors, creating more balance in the previously polarized scenario. However, after last year’s military coup, the country has now taken a backslide to the status quo ante as Western investors are leaving and the regime is under strict sanctions, leaving Naypyidaw at the mercy of Beijing.
Competition in the security realm is greater than ever. In recent years, the only multilateral military exercise of this region, the naval Malabar exercise held among India, Japan, the United States, and more recently Australia, has also taken place in the Bay several times. China, the largest supplier of military hardware to Bangladesh and Myanmar, provided two Ming-class submarines to Bangladesh’s navy, which aims, under its “Forces Goal-2030” plan, to modernize its armed forces. In response, India gave a submarine to Myanmar. Under the rubric of Beijing’s “Look South” strategy, the People’s Liberation Army Navy has increased its deployment of warships in the Bay of Bengal and Chinese vessels have even entered India’s special economic zone. Chinese submarine patrols in the Indian Ocean have also increased, particularly near the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which are considered critical to New Delhi’s regional intelligence and monitoring operations. To counter China’s increasing presence in the Bay of Bengal region, India is setting up coastal surveillance radar systems in the neighborhood, such as in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. In short, China and India are doubling down on their efforts to reshape the strategic security environment of the Bay of Bengal in their own favor.
Domestic Politics as Underlying Factors
The domestic political constraints on Bay of Bengal states such as political instability, ethno-religious tensions, urbanization, and the coronavirus pandemic will have a knock-on effect on this subregion. To tackle these emerging challenges and establish a rules-based order in the region, the United States, along with its regional allies and partners and international organizations, will need to provide technical, financial, and humanitarian assistance to the Bay countries. Leadership succession in domestic politics in both Myanmar and Bangladesh further complicates the prospect of a sound resolution. Sri Lanka poses the highest risk, as it is currently facing an unprecedented economic crisis in addition to its decadelong ethno-religious and political impasse. India’s responses have been instrumental in ameliorating the recent crisis in Sri Lanka. However, a collective regional response of major Indo-Pacific proponents — India, Japan, and the United States — could change the trajectory of the Bay of Bengal.
The Rohingya issue is a major political problem for Bangladesh and Myanmar, with spillover effects on Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia, and thus has significant geopolitical consequences. It is also a humanitarian priority for the international community, due to the human suffering involved, the tensions it provokes between Myanmar and Bangladesh, and the long-term security implications for the region. Bangladesh hosts millions of refugees despite its limited capacity, but as the solution is beyond its control, there should be strong support from United Nations Security Council members, especially from regional countries that may have some leverage over the Burmese military junta.
China and India are on the top of that list, but considering their own national interests in Myanmar, the role they play in resolving this issue has been rather limited. Bangladesh also had high expectations of Japan, its long-time development partner, but it, too, is prioritizing its own national interest. The United States, Europe, and international organizations, however, have a critical role to play in this crisis, from providing assistance to pressuring Myanmar, which resonates with the spirit of the Indo-Pacific vision of establishing a rules-based order for all.
Nontraditional Security — No Less Significant
While traditional security concerns are mostly along or around national boundaries, nontraditional security issues pertaining to the Bay such as climate change, natural disaster, terrorism, refugees, drugs, piracy, and illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing transect boundaries and affect the region as a whole. The negative impacts of climate change, especially rising sea levels and an alarming level of salinity, pose existential threats to several Bay states, including Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Two-thirds of Bangladesh is less than five meters above the sea level rise. The latest projection says that if there is a 50-centimeter rise by 2050, 11 percent of Bangladesh might be underwater, making millions homeless. Thus, the issue of potential climate refugees is more salient in the Bay of Bengal region than anywhere else in the world. This demands cooperation, as well as assistance from Indo-Pacific promoters such as the United States. This is particularly critical as the Biden administration made tackling climate change a top priority — an area where the Bay of Bengal could play a leading role, which would ultimately yield stronger ties between Indo-Pacific promoters and the countries in the region.
While strategic interests often dictate conflicting positions, a consensus over the principle of mare liberum (free seas for everyone) as one of the four global commons is required for the protection of marine resources. Since the Indo-Pacific vision aspires to establish international rules and norms, these nontraditional security concerns in the Bay of Bengal could give impetus to other regional organizations, such as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation and the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical Economic Cooperation, to bring countries to work together on common challenges.
Conclusion
For decades, the significance of the Bay of Bengal remained underappreciated due to the absence of great powers’ interest and lack of economic vitality, but this has changed as strategic competition in the area intensifies according to its own dynamic. The Bay of Bengal now has considerable — and growing — strategic importance for Asia, and for the world as a whole. In many ways, the Bay of Bengal lies at the core of the Indo-Pacific region — a centerpiece of the broader Indo-Pacific concept and the place where the strategic interests of the major powers of East and South Asia intersect. As the Bay will become a test case for a nascent multipolar world order, it is of the utmost importance to establish governance frameworks that can facilitate the integration of rising powers in regulating this order and upholding the principles of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific.
Anu Anwar is a fellow at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, an associate in research at the John K. Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University, and a Ph.D. student at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Previously, he worked as a research fellow at the U.S. Department of Defense’s Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, as an affiliate scholar at the East-West Center and as a visiting scholar at Edwin O. Reischauer Center at SAIS and the University of Tokyo.
warontherocks.com · by Anu Anwar · June 17, 2022

8. A Chinese Invasion of Taiwan Could Unleash an Economic Disaster


​That would seem for certain. Or a BFO (blinding flash of the obvious)

Excerpts:

The “One China” policy is the cornerstone of Chinese-U.S. relations. It is a diplomatic recognition that there is only one Chinese government and that Taiwan is an “inalienable” part of China.
“We believe he is actually paying lip service to this One China policy,” Zhou Bo said recently. It was not clear, however, what the Chinese academic meant by “we.”
U.S. undersecretary for defense policy Colin Kahl, however, made it clear this week that any Chinese “act of aggression” in Taiwan would draw a similar response as Russia has seen over the last three months.
“Where the world is now, the Ukraine scenario is a much more likely outcome,” Kahl said.
China’s decision in Taiwan will ultimately depend on several major diplomatic, economic, and geopolitical factors ranging from the United States’ commitment to the One China Policy and the likelihood of Western military involvement in a future invasion, as well as the potential economic damage that could hit China.


A Chinese Invasion of Taiwan Could Unleash an Economic Disaster
19fortyfive.com · by ByJack Buckby · June 16, 2022
China Invading Taiwan Would Unleash a New Wave of Economic Uncertainty, Political Turbulence – China could be planning its own Russia-style “special military operation” in Taiwan, an island that the Chinese Communist Party insists is Chinese territory, according to reports from China.
This week, the Chinese Communist Party government declared that President Xi Jinping had laid the legal basis for the expansion of the Chinese military’s role in foreign countries. It means that the Chinese government could technically initiate invasions of foreign territory while claiming that the operations are not actually war.
According to a report by the state-run Global Times newspaper, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army now has the legal authority to “safeguard China’s national sovereignty, security and development interests.”
“Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, recently signed an order to promulgate a set of trial outlines on military operations other than war, which will take effect on Wednesday,” The Global Times reports.
“The outlines will standardize, and provide the legal basis for Chinese troops to carry out, missions like disaster relief, humanitarian aid, escort, and peacekeeping, and safeguard China’s national sovereignty, security and development interests, experts said.”
The tactic seems remarkably similar to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to justify his invasion of Ukraine, first signing a decree that recognized the independence of the self-styled people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine. The Russian president also first described his so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine that soon followed the decree as a “peacekeeping” mission.
Global Economic Impact Bigger Than Ukraine War
If China goes ahead with an invasion of Taiwan, regardless of whether China officially considers it an invasion, it could have a substantial impact on global trade.
Speaking to Reuters on Tuesday, Taiwan’s top trade negotiator John Deng warned that the move would have a bigger impact on global trade than the Russian invasion of Ukraine for one simple reason: microchips.
While the Russian invasion of Ukraine has driven up the cost of fuel, with the United States and several NATO countries implementing sanctions against Russian energy, the invasion of Taiwan could worsen an already serious semiconductor shortage globally.
During the interview, Deng said that the economic impact of a Chinese invasion would be “much more significant” than the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“The disruption to international supply chains; disruption on the international economic order; and the chance to grow would be much, much (more) significant than this one,” Deng said. “There would be a worldwide shortage of supply.”
How China Could Make the Semiconductor Shortage Worse
Taiwan presently accounts for 92% of the world’s semiconductor manufacturing capacity, and should China invade the sovereign territory, those manufacturing facilities may wind up destroyed.
Last year, American academics recommended that Taiwan threaten to destroy its own factories to deter a Chinese invasion.
Describing the move as a “broken nest” strategy, academics Jared McKinney and Peter Harris argued in a piece published in the U.S. Army War College Quarterly “Parameters” that Taiwan should prevent a full-scale war with China by threatening to destroy its own factories.
Such a move would cause significant economic turbulence, hurting the global economy including China. It would also remove perhaps the second-biggest motivating factor for China’s plans to invade.
If China calls Taiwan’s bluff, however, the move would make the global semiconductor shortage even more impactful than it already is. The global semiconductor shortage impacts virtually every industry in the world, with low-margin processors – used in toasters and washing machines – becoming harder for manufacturers to find. It doesn’t just mean a shortage of products, but higher prices for consumers.
The semiconductor shortage has hit the automotive sector the hardest, too. Ford, Jaguar Land Rover, and Volkswagen – three of the biggest car manufacturers in the world – have shut down factories over the last year, reduced vehicle production, and laid off thousands of workers.
Taiwan Warns Of Missile Strike On China
In response to the news from China, Taiwanese officials warned that the country is armed with missile systems capable of striking Chinese territory.
Speaking to Taiwanese media outlet Liberty Times Net, the president of Taiwan’s Legislative Assembly, You Si Kun, said that the country wouldn’t shy away from a conflict with China and would use its Yun Feng supersonic cruise missiles to defend its borders.
The most recent variant of the Taiwanese Yung Feng missiles is capable of striking targets as far away as 1,200 miles, meaning Taiwan could theoretically strike Beijing – just 50 miles short of the maximum range of the missile.
You told Taiwanese media that, unlike in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, China would need to cross the Taiwan Strait to invade the country, meaning soldiers would ultimately “fight on the beachhead.”
“If the landing is successful, everyone in Taiwan must be as determined to die as Ukraine,” You said. “Go out and never let China swallow Taiwan.”
Should China go ahead with an invasion of Taiwan, the country may also receive military support from the United States – not only making the conflict more dangerous but potentially worsening the economic impact of an invasion even more.
“I believe that the U.S. would help Taiwan in a robust manner far beyond what the Biden Administration is doing for Ukraine right now,” explained Harry J. KazianisPresident of the Rogue States Project and author of the book the Tao of A2/AD, a look at China’s vast military modernization. “That would put China in a position of having to consider unleashing its vast weapons arsenal against U.S. convoys and aircraft trying to bring aid into Taiwan.”
Kazianis continued: “My gut tells me Beijing would be hard pressed not to strike U.S. forces hard, going far beyond just ships and planes bringing in aid. That means actually launching a full-out assault to lay waste to U.S. command and control assets in a sort of Chinese style ‘shock and awe’ to get Washington to back down or pay a high cost.”
It is not clear, however, how seriously the Chinese Communist Party takes President Joe Biden’s repeated claims that he remains committed to the One China Policy, and his support of Taiwan’s independence.
Zhou Bo, a senior fellow at the Tsinghua University’s Center for International Strategy and Security Studies, said recently that the United States is merely paying “lip service.”
The “One China” policy is the cornerstone of Chinese-U.S. relations. It is a diplomatic recognition that there is only one Chinese government and that Taiwan is an “inalienable” part of China.
“We believe he is actually paying lip service to this One China policy,” Zhou Bo said recently. It was not clear, however, what the Chinese academic meant by “we.”
U.S. undersecretary for defense policy Colin Kahl, however, made it clear this week that any Chinese “act of aggression” in Taiwan would draw a similar response as Russia has seen over the last three months.
“Where the world is now, the Ukraine scenario is a much more likely outcome,” Kahl said.
China’s decision in Taiwan will ultimately depend on several major diplomatic, economic, and geopolitical factors ranging from the United States’ commitment to the One China Policy and the likelihood of Western military involvement in a future invasion, as well as the potential economic damage that could hit China.
Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
19fortyfive.com · by ByJack Buckby · June 16, 2022

9. Preparing Army Leaders for Future War

This should stimule some critical thought.

Conclusion:

Leadership practices in the US Army developed over two and a half centuries by optimizing for the principal problem facing tactical commanders: controlling their land forces on confined, two- to three-dimensional battlefields. The resulting managerial styles of command were not due to egotistical tendencies of individual leaders, but because the hierarchical, command-centric style best allowed Army officers to manage their forces during battles. But as battlefields geographically expand due to the tremendous range and lethality of weapons systems, and domains like space and cyber increasingly influence ground combat, war is becoming more complex. This change in the context of war, along with generational changes in the people who populate the Army’s ranks, require a commensurate change in the Army’s approach to leadership. The Army’s future leaders must be more innovative, adaptive, and agile than ever before, and they must be at least as adept at building strong and trusting teams as they are at preparing themselves as individuals. Effective leadership has historically been one of the greatest strengths of the US Army, a critical advantage held over its battlefield rivals. But without adapting leadership practices to changes in the character of war and new generations of soldiers, Army leadership may become an Achilles’ heel in future war.

Preparing Army Leaders for Future War - Modern War Institute
Cole Livieratos and Tyler Skidmore | 06.17.22
mwi.usma.edu · by Cole Livieratos · June 17, 2022
Editor’s note: This article is the last article in a five-part series on educating Army leaders for future war. Read parts onetwothree, and four in the series.
Nearly four months into Russia’s escalated war in Ukraine, an astounding number of Russian generals have reportedly been killed in Ukraine. Western officials have confirmed at least seven of these deaths, while Ukraine claims to have killed twelve general officers—either of these figures would represent a historically high number. There is no singular explanation for why so many Russian generals have been killed in combat, with poor tactics and poor electronics and communications discipline each serving as contributing factors. But the larger reason likely lies in the Russian military’s overly centralized decision-making processes and lack of strong junior leaders—especially noncommissioned officers—in tactical formations. Because Russian generals do not delegate decisions to lower levels, they are often physically located with lower echelons and therefore vulnerable to enemy targeting. Viewed another way, the lack of trust between senior officers and subordinates created a culture of micromanagement, resulting in both operational failures and the death of senior Russian officers.
Battlefield leadership has traditionally been a strength for democratic militaries compared to more authoritarian ones. A subfield of security studies literature has examined this topic in depth, arguing that democratic militaries often display better wartime innovation and allow their junior leaders to exercise more initiative, contributing to battlefield success. The US Army in particular prides itself on strong leadership, with senior Army officials often describing the Army as a “people first” organization that employs the philosophy of “mission command.” Indeed, the US Army has a professional NCO corps unmatched in its capabilities and, compared to other militaries, the Army empowers its junior officers and takes their development seriously. Based on these principles and the scholarship on democratic military advantages, it would seem as if there were no cause for concern when it comes Army leadership.
But as previous articles in this series have pointed out, US Army commanders have struggled to fully implement mission command. Army leaders exacerbated some of their worst tendencies during the post-9/11 wars, including centralizing decision-making echelons above where it should have been and using unsecured communications, often on personal cell phones. Russia’s recent experience in Ukraine shows just how catastrophic these tendencies can be. Although the US Army’s leadership allows for far more delegation and subordinate initiative than the Russian military, Army leaders are not fully prepared for war against a state with advanced technological capabilities. As the 2018 National Defense Strategy bluntly states, “America’s military has no preordained right to victory on the battlefield.” Army leadership will not automatically be effective in a future war just because it has been effective in the past and because the Army says it places people first.
For Army leaders to succeed in future wars, they must adapt the character of their leadership to the changing character of warfare and to the new generations of soldiers populating the Army’s ranks. While not nearly an exhaustive list, the following recommendations are immediate steps the Army can take to better prepare its leaders for the future.
Redefining Leadership
The first thing the Army should do to better prepare leaders for future war is redefine leadership by directly linking it to context. While the core of the doctrinal definition of leadership can remain, it should be modified to “leadership is the application of contextually appropriate tools to influence people by providing purpose, direction, and motivation to accomplish the mission and improve the organization.” ADP 6-22, Army Leadership and the Profession, should be updated to distinguish the evergreen qualities associated with the nature of leadership from leadership practices and styles that are contextually specific and sensitive to the changing character of warfare. While the leadership requirements for successfully running a rifle range in 2040 will be the same as they are in 2022, the managerial practice used in garrison will not be effective on a dynamic, complex, and multidomain battlefield. Future generations of leaders will need to develop the skills to change their leadership style to fit the proper context, understanding that some situations may be more suited to their individual and generational preferences whereas other contexts may require approaches that come less naturally.
What is currently a single chapter of ADP 6-22, “Leadership in Practice,” should become the core of the entire doctrine. One way to do this would be to separate leadership into the categories of simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic contexts rather than parse leadership into three levels—direct, organizational, and strategic—as the doctrine currently does. In addition to a new definition and framing of leadership, the doctrine should consider changing or adding to the attributes and competencies for leaders, as described in the third article in this series. These attributes should be clearly tied to different contexts. Ideally, leaders would demonstrate high degrees of all attributes and competencies, but that is neither realistic nor practical. By tying these traits directly to context, various attributes and competencies could therefore be prioritized accordingly in different types of military education and training.
Military Education
More significant changes to better prepare Army leaders for future war include new approaches to professional military education (PME) and training. PME does not currently include enough focus on the changes in warfare, instead relying primarily on examinations of the same few historical wars and battles that do not always project into future wars. While the study of history is necessary to provide context for and understanding of the current and future character of war, it is insufficient for providing the tools leaders need to thrive on the complex battlefields of the future. All PME needs to include more focus on how electronic warfare, cyber, disinformation, space, and several other technological developments are shaping future battlefields.
This focus must begin at the start of an officer’s career, during their precommissioning education program like West Point and ROTC. A well-rounded education is important for intellectual development by exposing young people to a broad range of ideas, but all graduates of West Point will be leaders in the US military expected to fight America’s wars and lead America’s sons and daughters. These responsibilities mean every opportunity to prepare for future war must be taken, especially when it can be done in conjunction with cadets’ degree-earning coursework. Curriculums currently fall short of educating future officers about the challenges of future warfare. For example, at West Point, many mandatory general education courses such as computer coding, philosophy, and psychology could be used to create an awareness of the trends that will influence the future character of warfare and what young officers will be asked to do. However, these courses are seldom thematically tied to military leadership applications of their respective disciplines. Rather than requiring cadets to learn how to code or build technological systems purely for the sake of learning, detached from practical military application, technical courses should devote time to the effects these systems could have on Army formations and how to properly employ these capabilities. Humanities courses should provide an opportunity to instruct cadets on information literacy, the weaponization of social media, and the role it will play in future war, but these lessons are largely absent from the current curriculum. The newly developed Defense and Strategic Studies course on Leadership in Future War, which affords cadets a guided opportunity to learn about and reflect on their future leadership environment, is a promising first step, but because it is not a required course, too few cadets are exposed to its ideas.
As a service academy, the West Point case is distinct in many regards, but the tendency to divorce education from trends in contemporary and future warfare exists throughout PME. Education on electronic warfare, cyber, space, and disinformation are each lacking in most PME courses. More importantly, there are not unifying lessons or exercises to help students understand how these fit into and change the character of combined arms warfare. Even if many of these capabilities exist at higher echelons than those where junior officers will lead, all military leaders need to understand the effects adversaries can bring to bear against their formations. Furthermore, mid-grade officers will likely find themselves working on staffs that have a role in synchronizing and employing these capabilities. It is therefore essential that each branch’s Captains Career Course, the Army’s Intermediate Level Education, and the Army War College all place more direct emphasis on the capabilities officers need to understand and on the skills they need to succeed on increasingly complex battlefields.
Military Training
Along with PME, training must also do a better job incorporating the full range of capabilities that can be requested and employed by tactical leaders as well as accounting for all the effects adversaries can employ against Army formations. Without routine practice on how to request and use electronic warfare, space, cyber, and information capabilities, and how to protect against these effects from the adversary, Army forces will never be able to synchronize their capabilities, especially in situations with degraded communications.
The purpose of training is to give soldiers practice and repetition to master the skills they will need in combat. However, rather than training models based on repetition, units need to train to failure, intentionally changing scenarios and forcing participants to be adaptive rather than repetitive. Training must be agile, be adaptive, and require resiliency, just like the future battlefield. With limited time in a training calendar, some may argue that individuals and units first need to master basic skills before focusing on adaptation. This is undoubtedly true, but what comprises “basic skills” should be reexamined. Decreasing a unit’s electromagnetic signature, spoofing a unit’s location through physical and electronic decoys, and properly employing drone swarms may be just as important as tank live fires or infantry battle drills in the future. Moreover, if soldiers do not train their ability to adapt, improvise, and look outside established courses of action in a controlled training environment, it is wishful thinking to believe that this ability will appear in combat. This skill will not materialize the instant it is required; Army training must take deliberate steps to cultivate it.
Personnel Policies
One final way the Army can build leaders for future war is by continuing to improve its personnel policies to attract and retain the type of innovative leaders required in future warfare. Future wars will place a premium on adaptability and innovation over repetition and tradition. Leaders who eschew convention and buck the trend while acting ethically and legally should be rewarded rather than punished. The Army should consider changing the evaluation and promotion system to require diversity among various paths and experiences for upward mobility to reverse the trend of officers selecting those most like them for promotion to higher ranks. As the third article in the series discussed, success in future wars will require an officer corps with a diverse set of skills rather than rigid leadership molds. Evaluations could get rid of block checking entirely and promotion boards could include joint and civilian members, which would provide more diverse experiences and a broader pool that would allow those under consideration to be reviewed more thoroughly. Single-page officer and enlisted record briefs could be eliminated altogether or adapted to account for different skills and experiences not currently captured. The Army is taking some promising steps with things like the Assignment Interactive Module and the Battalion Command Assessment Program. All personnel policies moving forward should mirror the spirit of these programs to retain the most diverse, well-rounded, and innovative leaders possible rather than ones who fit the traditional command mold.
Future Leadership for Future Wars
Just as important as recommending changes for the Army to better prepare leaders for future war is providing members of the Army profession with a framework to continually assess how leadership should adapt as warfare changes. This series of articles is an attempt to provide such a tool through the paradoxical trinity of leadership composed of context, leaders, and followers. For leaders to maximize their performance, they need to understand when and how the character of leadership should adjust to the changing character of war. As warfare becomes more complex and new generations of soldiers populate the Army’s ranks, leaders need to prioritize trust, communication, and team building over individually oriented traits that have traditionally dominated the Army’s approach to leadership.
Leadership practices in the US Army developed over two and a half centuries by optimizing for the principal problem facing tactical commanders: controlling their land forces on confined, two- to three-dimensional battlefields. The resulting managerial styles of command were not due to egotistical tendencies of individual leaders, but because the hierarchical, command-centric style best allowed Army officers to manage their forces during battles. But as battlefields geographically expand due to the tremendous range and lethality of weapons systems, and domains like space and cyber increasingly influence ground combat, war is becoming more complex. This change in the context of war, along with generational changes in the people who populate the Army’s ranks, require a commensurate change in the Army’s approach to leadership. The Army’s future leaders must be more innovative, adaptive, and agile than ever before, and they must be at least as adept at building strong and trusting teams as they are at preparing themselves as individuals. Effective leadership has historically been one of the greatest strengths of the US Army, a critical advantage held over its battlefield rivals. But without adapting leadership practices to changes in the character of war and new generations of soldiers, Army leadership may become an Achilles’ heel in future war.
Cole Livieratos is an Army strategist currently assigned to the Directorate of Concepts at Army Futures Command. He holds a PhD in international relations, is a nonresident fellow at the Modern War Institute, and is a term member at the Council on Foreign Relations. Follow him on Twitter @LiveCole1.
Tyler Skidmore is an Army engineer officer and 2021 graduate of the United States Military Academy. He holds a BS in systems and decision sciences with a minor in Eurasian area studies, and he is completing an MS in engineering and public policy from Carnegie Mellon University as a GEM Fellow.
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Army Futures Command, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
mwi.usma.edu · by Cole Livieratos · June 17, 2022


10. Opinion | China’s military expansion is reaching a dangerous tipping point

Excerpts:
China is working on a shorter timeline. Aquilino wouldn’t volunteer an exact date for when China might surpass U.S. military power in Asia, but he called the 2020s “the decade of concern.” His predecessor at Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Philip S. Davidson, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in March that the threat of China invading Taiwan will become critical in “the next six years.” With 2027 being the final year of Xi’s expected (and unprecedented) third five-year term, it gives him a personal deadline for attempting reunification.
Indo-Pacific Command estimated in a May report to Congress that the region needs about $67 billion in new military investment between 2024 and 2027 to maintain the U.S. comparative military advantage over China. The budget is already behind schedule. In April, Indo-Pacific Command submitted a list of unfunded items that totals $1.5 billion for 2023 alone.
Maintaining the U.S. military advantage in the Indo-Pacific region will be neither easy nor cheap. Urgent tasks include dispersing more equipment and personnel to more places, hardening existing outposts such as Guam, increasing training and equipping of allies, and drastically increasing military support to Taiwan for its self-defense.
Meeting military escalation with escalation brings real risks that must be managed, not ignored. But the costs of war if China concludes it can take Taiwan easily would be exponentially higher. The United States doesn’t have the luxury of waiting until the next decade to counter China’s military expansion in Asia. As George Washington said in his first speech to Congress in 1790, “To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.”

Opinion | China’s military expansion is reaching a dangerous tipping point
The Washington Post · by Josh Rogin · June 16, 2022
Top military leaders from the United States and China met last weekend at a forum in Singapore, where they attempted to manage mounting tensions between the superpowers. But throughout Asia, there’s growing fear that China’s drastic military expansion will soon result in Chinese regional military superiority, which could embolden Beijing to start a war over Taiwan.
That sense of urgency was palpable at last week’s Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual conference of diplomats, officials and experts from across Asia, organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. Over three days of discussions a common sentiment emerged: China is racing to become the dominant military power in Asia in the next few years — and if it succeeds, Beijing is likely to use force to attempt to subdue Taiwan’s democracy. Russia’s attack on Ukraine has dispelled any notion that revisionist dictatorships can be deterred by anything short of a superior opposing military force.
In recent years, Chinese President Xi Jinping has said that China plans to achieve military parity with the United States in Asia by 2027. As the Chinese military advances in both technology and territorial presence, leaders in the People’s Liberation Army are now openly threatening to attack Taiwan and promising to fight anyone who attempts to intervene. Beijing is speeding up its plans, and the United States risks falling behind.
In Singapore, I interviewed Adm. John C. Aquilino, the head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, who described what he’s seeing as “the largest military buildup in history” — with growing Chinese arsenals of both conventional and nuclear weapons. Aquilino said Beijing is attempting to establish regional hegemony and change the international order in Asia. China wants to be in a position to dictate the rules and use its military without fearing any constraints.
“I only see their efforts accelerating,” he said. “I see advanced capabilities that are being delivered more quickly than we would have expected. … Their goal is to have parity with the United States to ensure that they can’t be deterred.”
China is building the capability to use nuclear blackmail to deter a U.S. intervention if it invades Taiwan, following Russia’s model. China’s regional military presence is expanding, including a secret naval base in Cambodia and a secret military cooperation agreement with the Solomon Islands. China has developed new technologies, including hypersonic missiles and antisatellite lasers, to keep the U.S. military at bay in a Taiwan scenario. And now, China no longer recognizes the Taiwan Strait as international waters.
China’s increased military confidence is reflected in its ever more belligerent rhetoric. After meeting with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in Singapore, China’s Minister of Defense Wei Fenghe gave a speech in which he promised, “China will definitely realize its reunification” with Taiwan. If anyone tries to stand in the way, he went on, “We will not hesitate to fight. We will fight at all costs.”
In his speech, Austin attempted to reassure the region that the United States was committed to maintaining its leadership in Asia. But diplomats and experts in Singapore could not help noticing a gap between what the United States is saying and the resources Washington is committing to the effort.
New research investments the Pentagon is making today won’t bear fruit for several years. U.S. shipbuilding plans are woefully underfunded. The United States’ new trilateral alliance with Australia and the United Kingdom (known as AUKUS) won’t result in providing Australia with nuclear submarines until the late 2030s.
China is working on a shorter timeline. Aquilino wouldn’t volunteer an exact date for when China might surpass U.S. military power in Asia, but he called the 2020s “the decade of concern.” His predecessor at Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Philip S. Davidson, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in March that the threat of China invading Taiwan will become critical in “the next six years.” With 2027 being the final year of Xi’s expected (and unprecedented) third five-year term, it gives him a personal deadline for attempting reunification.
Indo-Pacific Command estimated in a May report to Congress that the region needs about $67 billion in new military investment between 2024 and 2027 to maintain the U.S. comparative military advantage over China. The budget is already behind schedule. In April, Indo-Pacific Command submitted a list of unfunded items that totals $1.5 billion for 2023 alone.
Maintaining the U.S. military advantage in the Indo-Pacific region will be neither easy nor cheap. Urgent tasks include dispersing more equipment and personnel to more places, hardening existing outposts such as Guam, increasing training and equipping of allies, and drastically increasing military support to Taiwan for its self-defense.
Meeting military escalation with escalation brings real risks that must be managed, not ignored. But the costs of war if China concludes it can take Taiwan easily would be exponentially higher. The United States doesn’t have the luxury of waiting until the next decade to counter China’s military expansion in Asia. As George Washington said in his first speech to Congress in 1790, “To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.”
The Washington Post · by Josh Rogin · June 16, 2022

11. How Ukraine Will Win – Kyiv’s Theory of Victory

The theory of victory from the Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs. Has a US SECSTATE (or SECDEF) ever presented a theory of victory in any of our wars since WWII?

Before Congress declares war or authorizes the use of military force, perhaps it should demand a theory of victory the administration

The Foriegn Mininster offers us some advice:
Instead of focusing on Putin’s feelings, the United States and Europe should focus on practical steps to help Ukraine prevail. They should remember that a Ukrainian victory would make the world more secure. It would deplete Russian forces, making it harder for Moscow to meddle in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the western Balkans. It would promote global stability more broadly by strengthening international law and demonstrating to other would-be aggressors that barbarism ends poorly. The West, then, must give Kyiv what it needs to push Russian invaders back.
Committing to Ukraine’s victory will have one final advantage: it will eliminate the uncertainty in the long-term strategies of the United States and Europe toward Russia, girding them for the long haul and helping them no longer be plagued by war fatigue. They will see that our mission—substantially weakening Russia—will enable them, and the rest of the world, to seriously negotiate with a humbled and more constructive Moscow.
We look forward to this day; any war ends with diplomacy. But that moment has not yet come. Right now, it is clear that Putin’s path to the negotiating table lies solely through battleground defeats.


How Ukraine Will Win
Kyiv’s Theory of Victory
June 17, 2022
Foreign Affairs · by Dmytro Kuleba · June 17, 2022
As Russia’s all-out war of aggression in Ukraine drags on for a fourth consecutive month, calls for dangerous deals are getting louder. As fatigue grows and attention wanders, more and more Kremlin-leaning commentators are proposing to sell out Ukraine for the sake of peace and economic stability in their own countries. Although they may pose as pacifists or realists, they are better understood as enablers of Russian imperialism and war crimes.
It is only natural that people and governments lose interest in conflicts as they drag on. It’s a process that has played out many times throughout history. The world stopped paying attention to the war in Libya after former leader Muammar al-Qaddafi was toppled from power, in 2011. It disengaged from Syria, Yemen, and other ongoing conflicts that once generated front-page news. And as I know well, the rest of the world lost interest in Ukraine after 2015, even as we continued to fight Russian forces for control over the eastern part of the country.
But Russia’s current invasion is graver than its past one, and the world cannot afford to turn away. That’s because Russian President Vladimir Putin does not simply want to take more Ukrainian territory. His ambitions don’t even stop at seizing control of the entire country. He wants to eviscerate Ukrainian nationhood and wipe our people off the map, both by slaughtering us and by destroying the hallmarks of our identity. He is, in other words, engaged in a campaign of genocide.
To avoid growing weary of the war and falling for misleading narratives, the West needs to understand exactly how Ukraine can win, and then support us accordingly. This war is existential, and we are motivated to fight. Properly armed, our forces can stretch Putin’s troops—which are already exhausted—past the breaking point. We can counterattack Russian forces in both Ukraine’s south and Ukraine’s east, pressuring Putin to decide which of his gains to protect. To succeed, however, the United States and its European allies must swiftly supply our country with appropriate numbers of advanced heavy weapons. They must also maintain and increase sanctions against Russia. And, critically, they need to ignore calls for diplomatic settlements that would help Putin before he makes serious concessions.
Compromising with Russia may seem tempting to some abroad, especially as the costs of the war grow, but bowing to Putin’s aggression will help him destroy more of our nation, embolden his government to carry out attacks elsewhere in the world, and allow him to rewrite the rules of the global order. His approach to talks could change; if we succeed in pushing back Russian troops far enough, Putin may be compelled to come to the table and deal in good faith. But getting there will require that the West exercise patient dedication to one outcome: a complete and total Ukrainian victory.
WON’T BACK DOWN
From the minute Russian forces poured across Ukraine’s borders, some Western commentators have called for a compromise with Moscow. We are used to these kinds of suggestions and heard them many times between 2014 and 2022. But today’s war is different from the war that raged before February, and in recent weeks these calls have started coming from prominent foreign policy elites. In early June, French President Emmanuel Macron told journalists that the West “must not humiliate Russia” so that it can “build an exit ramp” for the country to end the war. Speaking to the World Economic Forum in May, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger went further, arguing that Ukraine should cede territory to Russia in exchange for peace.

These declarations are premised on the idea that Ukrainians, no matter how well they fight, cannot defeat Moscow’s forces. But that notion is wrong. Ukraine has proved its mettle by achieving important victories in the battles of Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Kyiv, and Sumy, causing Putin’s blitzkrieg to fail spectacularly. Winning these fights has come at a huge price for Ukrainians, but we understood that the price of losing them would have been far, far higher. We know what Russian victory means for our villages and towns. Look no further than Bucha, where hundreds of Ukrainians were brutally slaughtered by occupying Russian troops in March.
Unfortunately, Putin’s sick imperialism means that Moscow also remains committed to the war despite the shockingly high costs. Russia has already lost three times as many soldiers as the Soviet Union did during ten years in Afghanistan, but it is continuing to sacrifice its troops in an attempt to seize the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk (together known as the Donbas) and to maintain control over the south of Ukraine. The death count may soon extend beyond just Russia, Ukraine, and even Europe. By blockading Ukrainian grain to try to force sanctions relief, Putin could provoke famines across the developing world.

Ukraine urgently need more heavy weapons to turn the tide.
Despite the carnage, Russia’s president appears to be in a good mood. According to leaders who have recently spoken to Putin, he is sure that his “special operation” will, as we heard he told one European leader, “achieve its goals.” It isn’t hard to see why: Russian invaders have been able to crawl forward in the Donbas by resorting to total artillery terror. Putin has begun comparing himself to Peter the Great—perhaps the Russian empire’s most famous conqueror. It’s an ominous declaration, one that suggests that Putin will not settle for control over the Donbas or for control over Ukraine as a whole.
The most effective way to end Putin’s expansionism, of course, is to stop it in eastern Ukraine, before he can go further, and to kick his occupying forces out of southern Ukraine, which he plans to annex. This fact requires helping Ukraine defeat Putin on its own battlefield. U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has made some groundbreaking decisions that can help us accomplish this task, including a historic new lend-lease program that makes it easier for the United States to supply Ukraine with weapons. Answering Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s call, the United States decided in May to also provide us with four multiple-launch rocket systems. My counterpart and friend U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been closely engaged in crafting these steps, and Ukraine’s military leaders have been in active contact with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. General Mark Milley, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, has also been very supportive of our cause.
This assistance has been a crucial first step, for which we are grateful. Yet we wish it had been provided much earlier, and it is still too little. Now it is time to turn political decisions into real game-changing actions. Russian artillery outguns ours by one to 15 at the most crucial parts of the frontline, so a few U.S. rocket systems will not be nearly enough for us to gain the upper hand. We urgently need more heavy weapons from various sources to turn the tide in our favor and save lives. Our most pressing needs are for hundreds of multiple-launch rocket systems and various 155-mm artillery pieces. These weapons would allow us to suppress Russia’s artillery barrage. But stopping artillery is not Ukraine’s only concern. We also need antiship missiles, tanks, armored vehicles, air defense, and combat aircraft to be able to launch effective counterattacks.

In short, we need weapons that prove that the West is committed to helping us actually win—rather than to just not letting us lose.
LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD
Since the invasion began, Ukraine has repeatedly tried to find a diplomatic settlement with Russia. But Putin has rejected any meaningful talks because he expects that Western support for Ukraine will wane as the war grinds on. It’s natural to feel worn out by months of full-scale war. But Russia’s war is driven by genocidal intent, and so Ukraine and the whole of the West simply cannot agree to Russia’s demands. As Putin declared two days before the invasion, Ukraine’s very existence is a mistake—the Soviet Union, he said, “created” Ukraine by casually drawing boundaries on a map—and our country must be erased. In his view, Ukrainians can either become Russians or die.
Putin has made good on this promise. After taking territory, Russian forces have looked through kill lists drawn up by the Federal Security Service and knocked on doors. They have tortured and executed people who teach Ukraine’s language and history, civil society activists, human rights defenders, former Ukrainian soldiers, local authorities, and plenty of others. They have changed road signs from Ukrainian to Russian, destroyed Ukrainian monuments, banned Ukrainian television, and prohibited the Ukrainian language from being used in schools.

In Putin’s view, Ukrainians can either become Russians or be killed.
We in Ukraine are not surprised by this brutal campaign. We have a deep knowledge of Russia and have watched for centuries as Russian intellectuals and state-controlled media incited hatred toward our nation. We have also seen how Moscow’s animosity extends beyond our borders. Russian media routinely condemns other neighboring states, the West more broadly, and a variety of minority groups—including Jews and LGBTQ people. The Russian political elite has a generalized, deep-seated loathing of others.
This hatred is yet another reason why the West cannot afford to wave the white flag. A Russian military victory would not just enable the torture, rape, and murder of many more thousands of innocent Ukrainians. It would undermine liberal values. It would free up Russia to menace central Europe. Indeed, it would allow Russia to threaten the Western world at large. There is nothing more dangerous for the European Union and NATO than having an emboldened Russia or pro-Russian proxy across more of its eastern borders.
Thankfully for Europe and the United States, Ukraine is fighting this dark force, and it is motivated to keep doing so until it wins. But we cannot succeed alone, and the West must understand the stakes and consequences of our failure. If we lose, there will not just be no more Ukraine; there will be no prosperity or security in Europe.
BAD TO WORSE
It is unrealistic to suggest that Ukraine sacrifice its people, territory, and sovereignty in exchange for nominal peace, and these recent calls for compromise are merely a byproduct of a growing fatigue. I have spoken with a number of decision-makers in African, Arab, and Asian states. Some of them started our conversations by affirming their support for our cause before making a hard pivot, politely proposing that we simply stop resisting. It’s an unthinkable proposition, but their reasoning is simple: they want the grain trapped in our ports by Russia’s naval blockade, and they are willing to sacrifice Ukrainian independence to get it. Other policymakers peddling concessions have expressed concerns about similar Russian-provoked economic crises, including spiraling inflation and energy prices.
But although rising food and energy costs are serious problems, giving in to Moscow is no solution—and not only because of what it will mean for Ukrainians. Russia is a revanchist country bent on remaking the entire world through force. It actively works to destabilize African, Arab, and Asian states both through its own military and through proxies. These conflicts have created their own humanitarian crises, and if Ukraine loses they will only grow worse. In victory, Putin would be emboldened to stir up more unrest and create more disasters across the developing world.


The West must cut off Russian access to the international maritime shipping industry.
Putin’s increased aggression wouldn’t be limited to the developing world. He would meddle with more vigor in U.S. and European politics. If he succeeds in conquering Ukraine’s south, he may march deeper into the continent by invading Moldova, where Russian proxies already control a slice of territory. He could even trigger a new war in the western Balkans, where increasingly antagonistic Serbian elites have looked to Russia for inspiration and support.
The West must therefore not suggest peace initiatives with unacceptable terms and instead help Ukraine win. That means not just providing Ukraine with the heavy weaponry it needs to fight off Moscow’s forces; it also means maintaining and increasing sanctions against Russia. Critically, the West must kill Russian exports by imposing a full energy embargo and cutting off Russian access to the international maritime shipping industry. The latter step may seem difficult to carry out, but it is, in fact, highly achievable: Russia’s export-oriented economy relies heavily on foreign fleets to deliver its goods abroad, and the fleets could stop serving the country.
These economic measures are key. Sanctions have undermined the Russian economy and impeded its ability to continue the war. But Moscow still feels confident about its decision, and so the West cannot afford any sanctions fatigue—regardless of the broader economic costs.
THE PATH TO VICTORY
Despite Ukraine’s early successes, it may be hard for Western policymakers to envision how we can defeat Russia’s larger and better-equipped forces. But we have a pathway to victory. With sufficient support, Ukraine can both halt Russia’s advance and take back more of its territories.
In the east, Ukraine can gain the upper hand with more advanced heavy weapons, allowing us to gradually stall Moscow’s crumbling invasion in the Donbas. (The Kremlin’s gains in this region may make headlines, but it is important to remember that they are limited and have resulted in extremely high Russian casualties.) The pivotal moment will come when our armed forces use Western-provided multiple launch rocket systems to destroy Russia’s artillery, turning the tide in Ukraine’s favor along the entire frontline. Afterward, our troops will aim to take back pieces of land, forcing Russians to retreat here and there.
On the battlefront in the south, the armed forces of Ukraine are already carrying out counterattacks, and we will use advanced weapons to further cut through enemy defenses. We will aim to put the Russians on the edge of needing to abandon Kherson—a city that is key to the strategic stability of Ukraine. If we advance in both the south and the east, we can force Putin to choose between abandoning southern cities, including Kherson and Melitopol, in order to cling onto the Donbas, and abandoning newly occupied territories in Donetsk and Luhansk so he can hold the south.

The author, right, with Blinken at the Ukrainian-Polish border crossing in Korczowa, Poland, March 2022
Olivier Douliery / Pool / Reuters
When we reach this moment, Putin will likely become more serious about cease-fire negotiations. Our goal will still be to get Russian forces out of Ukraine, and keeping up the pressure may push Putin to accept a negotiated solution that entails Russian troops withdrawing from all occupied territories. Putin, after all, pulled Russian troops from the areas around Kyiv after encountering enough setbacks at the hands of our forces. If our military grows stronger and more successful, he will have good reasons to do so again. For example, it will be easier to present a retreat as an act of goodwill before further negotiations, instead of as an act of embarrassing necessity, if it is organized rather than hasty. Putin could even claim that the “special operation” has successfully achieved its goals of demilitarizing and denazifying Ukraine, whatever this means for him. By publishing images of destroyed Ukrainian units and equipment, Putin’s propaganda machine will reinforce a message of success. Propaganda can also help Putin present the withdrawal as a sign of his humane treatment of Russian soldiers and as a wise step toward peace in general.

But if Putin remains intransigent, Ukraine can proceed farther into Luhansk and Donetsk until he is willing to negotiate in good faith or until our army reaches and secures Ukraine’s internationally recognized border. And whether Russian troops choose to retreat or are forced to, Ukraine will be able to speak with Russia from a position of strength. We can seek a fair diplomatic settlement with a weakened and more constructive Russia. It ultimately means that Putin will be forced to accept Ukrainian terms, even if he denies it publicly.
THE ONLY THING TO FEAR IS FEAR ITSELF
Some Western decision-makers are also wary of doing too much to help Ukraine because they are scared of what Putin might do if he is roundly defeated on the battlefield. In their view, an angry, isolated Russian president might start new campaigns of international aggression. They worry that he will generally become more dangerous and difficult to deal with. Some fear that he might even use his country’s formidable nuclear arsenal.
But Putin is not suicidal; a Ukrainian victory will not lead to nuclear warfare. Such fears may be deliberately fueled by the Kremlin itself for strategic purposes. Putin is a master of gaslighting, and I am sure that Russians themselves are peddling worries of a cornered Putin in order to weaken Western support for Ukraine.
The United States and Europe shouldn’t fall for it. Actual experience shows that whenever Putin faces a failure he opts to downplay and conceal it, not to double down. Finland and Sweden’s applications for NATO membership, for example, were a clear political defeat for Putin, who claimed that he launched his invasion of Ukraine to prevent further NATO enlargement. But it wasn’t followed by any escalation. Instead, Russian propaganda minimized its significance. The Kremlin claimed that the withdrawal from Kyiv, another clear failure, was a gesture of “goodwill” to facilitate negotiations. The same pattern will apply to a broader battleground defeat. (The strength of his propaganda apparatus will help minimize the domestic backlash Putin faces for losing in Ukraine.)

We can force Putin to choose between abandoning southern cities and abandoning the Donbas.
Instead of focusing on Putin’s feelings, the United States and Europe should focus on practical steps to help Ukraine prevail. They should remember that a Ukrainian victory would make the world more secure. It would deplete Russian forces, making it harder for Moscow to meddle in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the western Balkans. It would promote global stability more broadly by strengthening international law and demonstrating to other would-be aggressors that barbarism ends poorly. The West, then, must give Kyiv what it needs to push Russian invaders back.
Committing to Ukraine’s victory will have one final advantage: it will eliminate the uncertainty in the long-term strategies of the United States and Europe toward Russia, girding them for the long haul and helping them no longer be plagued by war fatigue. They will see that our mission—substantially weakening Russia—will enable them, and the rest of the world, to seriously negotiate with a humbled and more constructive Moscow.
We look forward to this day; any war ends with diplomacy. But that moment has not yet come. Right now, it is clear that Putin’s path to the negotiating table lies solely through battleground defeats.
  • DMYTRO KULEBA is Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.
Foreign Affairs · by Dmytro Kuleba · June 17, 2022


12. Ukraine’s losses are China’s gains

interesting analysis from Moscow.

Excerpts:

The military lessons of the war for China are too early and too difficult to assess based on available data. One characteristic of the Ukrainian conflict is an unprecedented scale of propaganda and misinformation from all sides.
But two clear lessons have emerged from the war so far. First, US and NATO allies will always try to avoid a direct military confrontation with a major nuclear power. Even if a power is fighting a full-scale war at their doorstep. Second, economic war on Russia has caused significant problems for Western economies, including rising inflationary pressures and falling growth rates. Any comparable actions against China, an economy ten times bigger, will devastate much of the world economy. This makes any such action extremely unlikely.


Ukraine’s losses are China’s gains | East Asia Forum
eastasiaforum.org · by Vasily Kashin · June 16, 2022
Author: Vasily Kashin, Higher School of Economics (Moscow)
The conflict in Ukraine will have major strategic consequences for Chinese foreign policy in the Indo-Pacific. It will promote the deepening of Russian–Chinese economic cooperation that will make both countries more resilient to Western economic pressure. Long-term instability in Europe will make it more difficult for the United States to boost its Pacific presence for years to come with significant US financial and military resources being drawn toward supporting Ukraine.

The conflict has demonstrated that the West is not able to impose sanctions on a major economy without damaging its own stability. The war has also shown the effectiveness of the Russian nuclear deterrent, making even a limited Western intervention unthinkable.
China will be the main beneficiary of the Ukraine crisis. But this is not reflected in China’s political rhetoric which has been carefully calculated to avoid any major fallout with the European Union and other developed countries, while also maintaining close cooperation with Russia.
The official Chinese position has remained consistent with the statement made by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in February 2022 at the outbreak of the war: China is concerned with the violence and wants it to stop. It maintains that the territorial integrity and security interests of all parties need to be respected. China also maintains that NATO enlargement is partially responsible for the crisis.
On the economic front, China has seized the major strategic opportunities provided by the war. During the first four months of 2022, trade between Russia and China increased by 25.9 per cent. Russian exports to China grew by 37.8 per cent, to US$30.85 billion. The physical volume of natural gas exports also jumped 15 per cent.
China is in line to supplant the European Union as Russia’s main economic partner. The Chinese Ambassador to Russia Zhang Hanhui has called upon Chinese businesspeople to ‘fill the void’ left in the Russian market by outgoing Western businesses. Cooperation with China has contributed to Russia’s federal budget surplus between January–April 2022 despite the war. Maintaining this financial and economic stability appears to be Russia’s strategy as it continues to press in Ukraine.
By 2023, most or all bilateral trade is expected to be conducted in renminbi. Chinese companies and brands will likely dominate large segments of the Russian consumer market and will become Russia’s key industrial and technological partners. There is also a growing trend towards a large part of Russian trade being conducted with third countries in renminbi.
With the expected expansion of the logistical infrastructure, China will obtain a major source of strategic commodities. China will be able to procure these commodities at significant discounts because Russia will be isolated from many other markets and China will be using its own currency. This will significantly reduce the West’s ability to leverage economic pressure points against China.
Some of China’s top-tier global companies are visibly reducing their presence in Russia because secondary sanctions could affect their operations in international markets. But cooperation in many areas will be overtaken by second-tier corporations with limited or no global exposure. Such companies will still be powerful enough to operate in the Russian market. Their operations will be serviced by specialised banks with no exposure in the West, like in Iran.
Strategically, this transition — coupled with deep internal changes in the Russian political economy — will make Russia largely immune to economic warfare. For the foreseeable future, the West will have no other means to deter Russia in Europe except for costly military options. In turn, this will provide major strategic opportunities for China in the Pacific.
The military lessons of the war for China are too early and too difficult to assess based on available data. One characteristic of the Ukrainian conflict is an unprecedented scale of propaganda and misinformation from all sides.
But two clear lessons have emerged from the war so far. First, US and NATO allies will always try to avoid a direct military confrontation with a major nuclear power. Even if a power is fighting a full-scale war at their doorstep. Second, economic war on Russia has caused significant problems for Western economies, including rising inflationary pressures and falling growth rates. Any comparable actions against China, an economy ten times bigger, will devastate much of the world economy. This makes any such action extremely unlikely.
Vasily Kashin is Director of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at the Higher School of Economics, Moscow.
eastasiaforum.org · by Vasily Kashin · June 16, 2022


13. Iran on the Nuclear Brink

Excerpts:

The most impactful step the United States could take, however, would be to shorten military response time. This step might also be the hardest. One option would be increasing readiness and ensuring that all capabilities required for a strike, such as refueling aircraft, would be available on short notice. Another would be positioning aircraft, missile defense systems, and other support assets in the region. U.S. B-2 bombers, for instance, periodically deploy outside the United States but have no sustained overseas presence. Washington would need to examine the requirements, and risks, of more frequent deployments or permanent stationing abroad. Still, these steps would give the United States more flexibility should a crisis arise and would signal to partners in the region as well as to Iran that the United States is prepared to act if needed.
The United States must properly communicate and sequence these diplomatic and military moves. Washington needs to monitor intelligence about Iran’s threat perceptions closely and think carefully about which steps to disclose and which to keep secret so that it does not inadvertently trigger a scenario it hopes to avoid: an Iranian dash to a nuclear weapon. Although Iran may well reject it the idea, the United States should also push to establish a direct line of communication with Tehran to help with crisis management. Finally, the United States should be open to holding off on some military steps in the unlikely event that Iran opts for nuclear restraint and transparency. The goal, after all, is not to bomb Iran but to prevent an Iranian bomb.
This approach would be compatible with U.S. efforts to reach a diplomatic settlement. But it would also require the United States to confront the uncomfortable reality that it cannot pin its hopes solely on the eventual revival of the Iran nuclear deal to solve the current dilemma. These options are not ideal, but in the absence of a restored nuclear agreement, they may be all Washington has left to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran.


Iran on the Nuclear Brink
The End of the Deal Would Leave Only Bad Options to Thwart a Dash for the Bomb

Foreign Affairs · by Eric Brewer · June 17, 2022
Last month, Iran’s nuclear program entered dangerous new territory: Tehran now possesses enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb. That material, enriched to 60 percent, would need to be further enriched to roughly 90 percent—so-called weapons-grade uranium—before it could be used in a nuclear weapon. But that process, known as “breakout,” will now take just weeks due to Iran’s advances since 2019, when Tehran began casting off the constraints of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal following the U.S. withdrawal from the agreement. Although this action alone would not give Iran a bomb, it is the most important step in building one.
The consequences of this milestone are profound. Until now, the international community has had months, if not years, to prevent any Iranian dash to bomb-grade material—plenty of time to resolve the crisis diplomatically. Should that fail, the United States has always kept military options as a last resort. Indeed, this fact has helped deter Iran from trying to build a bomb. But as U.S. envoy Robert Malley noted last month, Iran’s capabilities have reached the point where Tehran “could potentially produce enough fuel for a bomb before we could know it, let alone stop it.” Given that Democrats and Republicans have long maintained that they will not allow Iran to produce nuclear weapons, the fact that the United States might not be able to prevent an Iranian dash should be deeply worrying.
The easiest solution to this problem, and the one the United States appears to still be banking on, would be a return to the Iran nuclear deal. This would buy time by rolling back many of these nuclear gains, putting Iran’s breakout timeline at roughly six months. But talks to revive the accord have stalled over Iran’s demand that the U.S. State Department remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from its designated terrorist list—apparently a bridge too far for the Biden administration. The problem with waiting for a bargain to materialize, however, is that the longer the stalemate drags on, the less likely a deal becomes as its benefits diminish for both Tehran and Washington.
Unfortunately, the international community might be faced with an Iran at the threshold of a nuclear weapon for the foreseeable future. Washington will have to think creatively about how to manage this state of affairs if it wants to avoid an Iranian bomb and the negative consequences that would follow.
Breaking Down Breakout
It is useful to think about the challenges posed by breakout as being governed by three clocks. The first clock measures the time it would take Iran to produce enough material for a bomb. The second, the time it would take international inspectors or Western capitals to detect those activities. And the third, the amount of time required for the international community to respond. Historically, the time on the first clock has been sufficiently longer than the time on the second and third clocks. But today that is no longer the case.

According to U.S. officials, Iran would need “a matter of weeks” to produce enough material for a bomb, while some outside experts have estimated that it could be done in about ten days (the first clock). This timeline will probably continue to shrink as Iran’s program advances. Inspectors visit Iran’s enrichment sites about once a week (the second clock). Thus, Iran could time a breakout so that inspectors arrive and find out too late or with just days left before Iran produces enough material for a bomb. Iran could also fabricate an excuse to deny inspectors their normal access and complete production in their absence.
Inspectors would report the situation back to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) leaders, but that information would then need to reach Washington. It is also possible, although by no means certain, that the United States or one of its allies would detect preparations for a breakout through their own intelligence collection. Even so, the United States would want to analyze the information and convene senior officials to discuss and debate options—a process that would take more time.
With Iran at or near the end of its breakout, Washington would have to quickly respond (the third clock). Unfortunately, there would be no time for diplomacy, and the United States would need to intervene militarily. Whether a military option is available in that time frame would depend on a range of other factors. The United States would probably want to use the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, reportedly the weapon most capable of reaching the deeply buried Iranian nuclear facilities where this breakout would be taking place, which is carried by B-2 bombers based in Missouri. Flight time to Iran could be over 30 hours, possibly too long to prevent a breakout in this scenario. That flight would also require refueling aircraft and presumably multiple B-2s: would those planes be available at a moment’s notice?

Iran may be at the threshold of a nuclear weapon for the foreseeable future.
Things get even more complicated—and potentially more time-consuming—from there. The United States might want to strike multiple nuclear sites, target Iran’s radar and air defense systems to minimize the risk of U.S. aircraft being shot down, or have missile defense and other capabilities in place in the region to defend against Iranian retaliation. Some of these options would be impossible to execute in such narrow time frames, which could dissuade the United States from acting at all.
Rather than trying to break out at known sites, Iran could also try to divert its nuclear material to a covert facility between inspections for further enrichment to 90 percent. To do so, Iran would need to have a clandestine enrichment facility, and there are no indications that it does (although a lack of inspector access to cameras monitoring Iran’s centrifuge production since February 2021 makes that harder to confirm). But unlike in the past, when Iran would be starting from slower, first-generation centrifuges and low-enriched uranium, Iran now has growing stockpiles of 60 and 20 percent enriched material and has mastered more advanced centrifuges. This means that Iran could build a smaller enrichment plant that would be harder to detect, enabling it to enrich the material to 90 percent much faster than before. The United States would need to know the location of the covert facility and the missing nuclear material were Washington to use military power to stop Iran’s march toward a nuclear weapon.
Of course, having the fissile material for a bomb is not a bomb itself. Iran would need longer—perhaps a year or two—to build a nuclear device and mount it on a missile. But fissile material production remains the most heavily monitored, and therefore the most detectable, part of building a bomb. Weaponization activities can take place at a variety of scattered facilities, which are not subject to any robust monitoring and carry fewer telltale signatures. The United States may struggle to detect the remaining weaponization processes after Iran produces the requisite fissile material.

Even if Iran never produces a bomb or the necessary fissile material, a nuclear-capable Tehran would still generate serious policy challenges. Iranian foreign policy would grow bolder and more aggressive if Tehran believes it can hang the nuclear breakout sword of Damocles over the head of the international community. Iran could also consolidate its nuclear hedge in ways that do not require a full-fledged nuclear weapons program, including by developing intercontinental ballistic missiles. Finally, faced with an Iran on the cusp of a bomb and doubts about Washington’s ability to stop it, countries in the region could embark on their own nuclear hedging efforts or bomb programs, posing a further challenge to the global nonproliferation regime. Those same allies and partners might try to leverage the threat of going nuclear to press the United States for stronger security assurances and defense assistance—a strategy that has been used by U.S. allies in Asia. Washington would find itself caught between two unpalatable options: deeper military commitments in the Middle East at a time when it would prefer to allocate attention elsewhere, or remaining at a distance and risking further nuclear and missile proliferation.
Winding Back the Clock
With the fate of the Iran nuclear deal hanging in the balance, Tehran has little incentive to halt its nuclear advances, which it believes put pressure on the West. That becomes doubly true if talks to revive the deal collapse. While it waits on diplomacy, Washington should therefore focus on what it can control: clocks two and three—speeding up detection and its response.
To increase the odds that the international community would detect an Iranian breakout, the United States, its allies, and, if possible, China and Russia should push Iran to allow daily IAEA visits to Iran’s two enrichment sites and nuclear material storage locations. In addition, Iran should resume using online enrichment monitors—an automated technology that continuously monitors enrichment levels when IAEA officials are not present. These measures were in place under the Iran nuclear deal, but Iran has since discarded them. In addition, the United States should increase its own intelligence collection efforts and coordinate with allies to help provide as much warning time as possible. When just days might separate Iran and enough material for a bomb, every second counts. These measures would provide valuable time and help deter a breakout.
There are reasons to believe that Iran might adopt such conditions. First, there is a powerful, apolitical argument that these added precautions are necessary for the IAEA to do its monitoring job since Iran is the only country producing highly enriched uranium that does not possess nuclear weapons. Second, these measures could help provide vital assurance to the international community that Iran was not sprinting for a bomb and therefore reduce the chances of a military strike, something Iran would presumably see as in its interests. With such a narrow margin of error, any delay in inspector access to Iran’s sites—even if genuinely rooted in a misunderstanding or accident and not a breakout attempt—could lead to a miscalculation that Iran should be keen to avoid. Finally, none of these steps would require Tehran to halt any of its nuclear advances, such as 60 percent enrichment, increasing its stockpile of material, or adding advanced centrifuges, which it believes provide important negotiating leverage.

A nuclear-capable Tehran would generate serious policy challenges.
The United States and its allies would also need to speed up their ability to respond. The National Security Council should establish a modified committee at the principal level that would convene immediately upon receiving information indicating an Iranian breakout. As in any crisis, indicators may be ambiguous and data points may be conflicting. To simulate that reality, this group should practice convening, assessing likely types of information they might receive, and game out options beforehand.
The most impactful step the United States could take, however, would be to shorten military response time. This step might also be the hardest. One option would be increasing readiness and ensuring that all capabilities required for a strike, such as refueling aircraft, would be available on short notice. Another would be positioning aircraft, missile defense systems, and other support assets in the region. U.S. B-2 bombers, for instance, periodically deploy outside the United States but have no sustained overseas presence. Washington would need to examine the requirements, and risks, of more frequent deployments or permanent stationing abroad. Still, these steps would give the United States more flexibility should a crisis arise and would signal to partners in the region as well as to Iran that the United States is prepared to act if needed.
The United States must properly communicate and sequence these diplomatic and military moves. Washington needs to monitor intelligence about Iran’s threat perceptions closely and think carefully about which steps to disclose and which to keep secret so that it does not inadvertently trigger a scenario it hopes to avoid: an Iranian dash to a nuclear weapon. Although Iran may well reject it the idea, the United States should also push to establish a direct line of communication with Tehran to help with crisis management. Finally, the United States should be open to holding off on some military steps in the unlikely event that Iran opts for nuclear restraint and transparency. The goal, after all, is not to bomb Iran but to prevent an Iranian bomb.
This approach would be compatible with U.S. efforts to reach a diplomatic settlement. But it would also require the United States to confront the uncomfortable reality that it cannot pin its hopes solely on the eventual revival of the Iran nuclear deal to solve the current dilemma. These options are not ideal, but in the absence of a restored nuclear agreement, they may be all Washington has left to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran.
Foreign Affairs · by Eric Brewer · June 17, 2022


​14. Biden tries to climb down from Ukraine ledge


Excerpts:
It’s possible that Biden’s instincts for political survival may take precedence over the ideological priorities of his Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, the architect of the 2014 Maidan Square coup that set the present tragedy in motion.
We do not know what the Biden Administration will do in the face of this double disaster, to be sure. At this point, it probably doesn’t know, either. The choices, though, are stark and clear: Either climb down off the ledge or plunge into a world recession and a spiraling strategic crisis.
Biden tries to climb down from Ukraine ledge
Twin strategic and economic crises prompt search for a way out of Ukraine trap


asiatimes.com · by David P. Goldman · June 16, 2022
The Biden Administration faces a double disaster after its Ukraine miscalculation, namely a US recession and a second strategic humiliation in the space of a year.
The United States economy is almost certainly in recession, while oil prices drive inflation that has cut workers’ real pay by about 6% year on year.
Washington’s earlier boasts of driving Putin from power, destroying Russia’s capacity to make war and halving the size of the Russian economy look ridiculous in retrospect.

The world economy is reeling from supply shocks in energy and food provoked by Western sanctions on Russia. Monetary policy can reduce inflation only by forcing consumers to stop buying, which forces retailers to liquidate inventory at lower prices and crushes demand for raw materials – a cure that is worse than the disease.
Russia meanwhile earned a record EUR 93 billion from energy exports during the first 100 days of the war, a Finnish study concluded. China and India, which refused to join G-7 sanctions against Russia, reportedly are buying oil at a $30 to $40 per barrel discount, while American and European consumers are paying the full price.
Energy prices have become the main driver of G-7 inflation. Changes in the oil price lagged by one to four months explain 70% of the monthly change in the CPI, according to an Asia Times study. The sensitivity of the US Consumer Price Index to the oil price, moreover, was about twice as high during the February 2020 to May 2022 period than it had beenduring the preceding fifteen years, the study shows.
US GDP contracted at a 1.9% annual rate during the first quarter. The surprise drop in May retail sales that was reported June 15 by the Commerce Department and the 14.4% month-on-month fall in US housing starts reported June 16 point to a second quarter of contraction – that is, a recession according to the standard criterion. That spells catastrophe for the Democrats in next November’s election.

More dire than an American recession is the risk of a financial disaster among the weaker G-7 economies.

Japan’s yen has been in free fall as the Federal Reserve has tightened credit. Government debt is 270% of GDP, and half of it is owned by Japan’s central bank, up from about 5% in 2011. With an aging population that is spending its retirement funds rather than saving, the world’s third-largest economy is financing itself by the printing press. The cost of hedging Japanese government bonds spiked this week to the highest level since the 2008 financial crisis.
Italy, Europe’s weakest economy, suffered a jump in government debt risk almost as severe.
The European Central Bank convened an emergency meeting June 15 to address the deterioration of its weakest members and promised yet-to-be-specified measures to prevent the “fragmentation” of the European Union.

The Biden Administration vastly underestimated the inflationary impact of the $6 trillion COovid stimulus package, which began under the Trump Administration but doubled under Biden.
It underestimated the resilience of the Russian economy and the capabilities of the Russian military.

Climbing down off this ledge won’t be easy. It may be impossible. Biden denounced Russia’s leader as a war criminal, averred that he couldn’t be allowed to remain in office and bragged that US sanctions would cut the Russian economy in half. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin claimed that the US would destroy Russia’s capacity to make war.
A compromise in Ukraine with significant territorial concessions to Russia – the only conceivable way to end the war – would humiliate Washington.
A negotiated solution to the Ukraine war, though, is not impossible. Washington could continue to portray itself as the defender of Ukraine’s sovereignty while encouraging European leaders to do the dirty work and force Ukraine into negotiations with Moscow.
A possible hint in this direction came on June 14 from the US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin H. Kahl, who declared: “We’re not going to tell the Ukrainians how to negotiate, what to negotiate and when to negotiate. They’re going to set those terms for themselves.”
Kahl was Joe Biden’s national security adviser during Biden’s term as Vice-President under the Obama Administration, and one of Biden’s most controversial appointees. Republican Senators unanimously rejected his nomination to the Pentagon post, and Vice President Harris cast the tie-breaking vote to confirm him. it is noteworthy that the statement came from him, rather than from Secretary of State Blinken or National Security Adviser Sullivan.

Kahl’s statement, to be sure, is mendacious in the extreme. France and Germany on February 15 asked Ukrainian President Zelensky to comply with the Minsk II agreement, then supported by Moscow, which would have given autonomy to Russian-speaking regions in the Donbas within a sovereign Ukraine.
At Washington’s prompting, Zelensky rejected a February 19 proposal from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to avoid war. Michael Gordon reported April 1 in the Wall Street Journal:
Mr Scholz made one last push for a settlement between Moscow and Kyiv. He told Mr. Zelensky in Munich on February 19 that Ukraine should renounce its NATO aspirations and declare neutrality as part of a wider European security deal between the West and Russia. The pact would be signed by Mr Putin and Mr Biden, who would jointly guarantee Ukraine’s security. Mr Zelensky said Mr Putin couldn’t be trusted to uphold such an agreement and that most Ukrainians wanted to join NATO.
The hapless Zelensky did not invent the idea of NATO membership for Ukraine. He was given assurances by Washington and London, which stepped up weapons deliveries to Ukraine.
The United States won’t tell Ukraine what to do, Undersecretary Kahl declared. But that doesn’t prevent other governments from making Zelensky an offer he can’t refuse. Zelensky adviser Oleksiy Arestovych told Germany’s Bild-Zeitung on June 16 that German Chancellor Scholz, French President Macron and Italian President Draghi might deliver such a demand to Zelensky during their current visit to Kyiv.
The Zelensky aide said he feared that Scholz, Macron and Draghi “will try to get a Minsk III. They will say that we need to end the war that is causing food problems and economic problems, that Russians and Ukrainians are dying, that we need to save Mr Putin’s face, that the Russians made mistakes and that we need to forgive and give them a chance to return to world society.”
Germany’s leading center-right daily Die Welt commented: “Kyiv is beginning to have doubts about the solidarity of the West. Voices are being raised calling for peace efforts. In particular, a statement by NATO chief Stoltenberg points to a change of course.”
Die Welt referred to a June 12 speech in which NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg stated: “The question is: what price are you willing to pay for peace? How much territory? How much independence? How much sovereignty? How much freedom? How much democracy are you willing to sacrifice for peace? And that’s a very difficult moral dilemma.”
It’s possible that Biden’s instincts for political survival may take precedence over the ideological priorities of his Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, the architect of the 2014 Maidan Square coup that set the present tragedy in motion.
We do not know what the Biden Administration will do in the face of this double disaster, to be sure. At this point, it probably doesn’t know, either. The choices, though, are stark and clear: Either climb down off the ledge or plunge into a world recession and a spiraling strategic crisis.
asiatimes.com · by David P. Goldman · June 16, 2022


​15. Biden ‘to stay the course’ in Ukraine

Excerpts:

So where are we now? Goldstein, who is also a scholar at the realist think-tank Defense Priorities, tells me that in his view “the propaganda is now running aground on the shoals of stark reality.”

“My interpretation is that Ukraine won Phase 1. Russia is now winning Phase 2. But we don’t know how Phases 3 and 4 will turn out,” Goldstein says. Part of the rude awakening of which the New York Times and Newsweek stories were manifestations has to do perhaps with a misunderstanding of what really happened during Phase 1, in which the Russian advance on Kiev was repelled.

Chivvis, now director of the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment, tells me that Phase 1, in addition to being a story of Ukrainian courage and determination, was “also a story of poor Russian performance. It was less evidence of Ukrainian fighting prowess than it was of Russian mistakes.”

Right now, says Goldstein, “Ukraine faces the possibility of defeat across the board. Their best forces were in Donbas and Mariupol. It will be interesting to see if Russia tries again for Kharkiv. I would be surprised to see the Russian army stop at the Donbas and say ‘we’re done.’”




Biden ‘to stay the course’ in Ukraine
US experts insist Russian gains in the conflict will not result in a significant change in the White House’s stance

asiatimes.com · by More by James Carden · June 15, 2022
The situation on the ground in the Donbas “is reminiscent of Verdun,” says Brown University visiting professor Lyle Goldstein. The casualty estimates that have come out of Kiev in recent weeks, which have 700 Ukrainian soldiers wounded or dead each day, are, says Goldstein, “probably in the realm of accurate.”
Low morale and command dysfunction are coupled with what is said to be an overwhelming disadvantage in artillery ammunition, and quickly evaporating stocks of Soviet-era weaponry are creating an “unsustainable situation” for the Ukrainian forces holding on in the Donbas.
The deteriorating situation in eastern Ukraine has caught the attention of Washington. Over the past week, reports have surfaced that might be taken as signs that Washington is planning to cut bait and perhaps drive its client, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, to the negotiating table.

On June 8, The New York Times quoted former Central Intelligence Agency official Beth Sanner as expressing frustration with the lack of candor about the actual situation on the ground coming out of Kiev. This was followed by a Newsweek report that President Joe Biden himself, speaking at a fundraiser in Los Angeles, seemed to be backing away from his full-throated support for the Ukrainian leader.
Biden reportedly said that in the run-up to the February 24 invasion,” I know a lot of people thought I was maybe exaggerating and Zelensky didn’t want to hear it.”
Yet former high-ranking US intelligence officials I spoke to this week cautioned against reading too much into these reports.
Christopher Chivvis, who served as national intelligence officer for Europe from 2018 to 2021, tells me that the Biden administration is unlikely to change its approach to Ukraine in the near term, “especially on deferring to Ukraine on war aims and how far they want to push – as long as they don’t hit targets inside Russia.”

Other than that “there are almost no caveats on Ukraine,” says Chivvis, “especially in light of the pressure the administration is under from the expert community here in Washington, which remains extremely hawkish and is lobbying hard for the administration not to put pressure on Zelensky.”
Paul Pillar, who served as national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia during the George W Bush administration, tells me, “None of us who are not privy to information that is currently flowing through classified government channels (and that includes those of us who are former intelligence officers) should be very confident about what is or is not known in those channels about the Ukraine side of the war.”
Pillar says he “suspects that US intelligence agencies and especially DIA [the Defense Intelligence Agency] have a better handle on this than one might suspect from the comments in the June 8 New York Times story.”
Pillar, like Chivvis, sees few indications that the Biden administration is planning on changing course any time soon. That gap between what the Ukrainian leadership is claiming to be happening on the ground and the reality is not so large, according to Pillar, that it “will have much effect on the US administration’s policy decisions.”
“Most of the status of the war and the Ukrainian war effort is an open book. The range of uncertainty involved is between Ukraine suffering heavy losses or very heavy losses, and between Ukraine holding on in the east or barely holding on in the east. US policy decisions are unlikely to hinge on exactly where along those dimensions the detailed truth lies,” Pillar said.

Chivvis also noted that “it can be difficult to get information at any level of precision but it is crucial for the Ukrainians to maintain Western support and send a message they are winning. So it was significant for them to admit that their losses are as big as they are.”
So where are we now? Goldstein, who is also a scholar at the realist think-tank Defense Priorities, tells me that in his view “the propaganda is now running aground on the shoals of stark reality.”
“My interpretation is that Ukraine won Phase 1. Russia is now winning Phase 2. But we don’t know how Phases 3 and 4 will turn out,” Goldstein says. Part of the rude awakening of which the New York Times and Newsweek stories were manifestations has to do perhaps with a misunderstanding of what really happened during Phase 1, in which the Russian advance on Kiev was repelled.
Chivvis, now director of the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment, tells me that Phase 1, in addition to being a story of Ukrainian courage and determination, was “also a story of poor Russian performance. It was less evidence of Ukrainian fighting prowess than it was of Russian mistakes.”
Right now, says Goldstein, “Ukraine faces the possibility of defeat across the board. Their best forces were in Donbas and Mariupol. It will be interesting to see if Russia tries again for Kharkiv. I would be surprised to see the Russian army stop at the Donbas and say ‘we’re done.’”

asiatimes.com · by More by James Carden · June 15, 2022


16. Trilateral – Not Quad – Is the Best Chance for Indo-Pacific Defense

Maybe more is not always better.

Excerpts:

In all of these flashpoint areas, the strategic rationale for the Trilateral to play a role is strong, but the rationale crumbles when broadened to Quad cooperation. This is also true at the global level.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Australia, Japan, and the U.S. would have liked a robust Quad response but India’s military ties with Russia prevented any such action. The Quad statement from May 24 was so lukewarm on the issue it referred only to the “conflict in Ukraine” – not Russia’s invasion or war – and responded only that “the centerpiece of the international order is international law” and “all countries must seek peaceful resolution of disputes.” While the Trilateral countries were on the same page, India’s differences with its Quad partners were exposed.

There should be no quarrel that the Quad is an ambitious and promising security mechanism. Yet, as a grouping that will bring about solid defense and strategic outcomes in the region, the Quad cannot compare with the slimmed down Trilateral. Last weekend’s TDMM went almost completely unreported, but the Australia-Japan-U.S. trilateral deserves the envy of the Indo-Pacific. For, while the Quad gains all the attention, the Trilateral is quietly achieving in the background.



Trilateral – Not Quad – Is the Best Chance for Indo-Pacific Defense
The Australia-Japan-U.S. trilateral is older and more formalized than the Quad – and unlike the latter, it explicitly embraces a defense mandate.
thediplomat.com · by Hayley Channer · June 16, 2022
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Over the weekend, the Australian, Japanese, and U.S. defense ministers met on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. The Trilateral Defense Ministers’ Meeting (TDMM) convened to much less fanfare than a meeting of Quad ministers attracts. The Trilateral and the Quad are not in competition; in fact, they are mutually reinforcing. But the Quad has received much more attention for its potential to deliver defense outcomes in the Indo-Pacific than the Trilateral, when the reverse is true.
The Trilateral will be far more significant for Indo-Pacific defense than the Quad could hope to be. Here’s why.
Consistency in cooperation and time under pressure has strengthened the triangle more than the diamond. The origins of the Australia-Japan-U.S. trilateral are older than the Quad, with 2022 marking two decades of cooperation. Starting at the senior official level in 2002, trilateral meetings were later elevated to foreign secretary (2006), leader-level (2007), and defense secretary (2010).
Around the same time Trilateral meetings were expanding to senior levels and new portfolios, the Quad was breaking up amid pressure from China. What led the Quad to disband in 2008 is disputed but, under the same geopolitical circumstances, the Trilateral consolidated. The Trilateral’s unbroken pattern of cooperation has built trust and familiarity while Chinese pressure has seen Australian, Japanese, and U.S. strategic interests converge even more closely.
Another primary reason the Trilateral stands to outperform the Quad in Indo-Pacific defense is simple: The Quad has dealt itself out of defense issues while the Trilateral embraces them.
There has never been a meeting of Quad defense ministers, whereas the last TDMM was the tenth iteration. At the TDMM, Australia, Japan, and the United States committed to expand cooperation on R&D, advanced technologies, and strategic capabilities and increase military inoperability. On the latter, they are advancing interoperability across all three services. The end of May marked the conclusion of their trilateral ground exercise, Southern Jackaroo; in March their navies trained together in the South China Sea; and in February they conducted aerial combat training via Exercise Cope North.
Contrast this with the Quad’s would-be equivalent maritime exercise, Malabar. Australia only recently re-joined Malabar in 2020 after more than a decade hiatus. Moreover, India rejects any connection between Malabar and the Quad to deliberately downplay a defense connection.
Beyond practical military cooperation, on key Indo-Pacific flashpoints and areas of concern – Taiwan, North Korea, and the Pacific – the Trilateral has a much greater strategic stake than the Quad.
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Regarding Taiwan, the U.S., Japan and Australia have all made stronger statements in support of its defense in recent years and mentioned the security of the Taiwan Strait in the TDMM joint statement. The Quad Statement did not.
On the stability of the Korean Peninsula, the U.S., Australia and Japan have a shared history of active military commitments to South Korea – as recently as last year Australia had peacekeepers deployed to the United Nations Command on the Demilitarized Zone. Any military confrontation on the peninsula would activate U.S., Japanese, and Australian forces immediately and cause those countries direct consequences. By contrast, drawing Indian troops into a Korean Peninsula conflict as part of a Quad contingent would not be a natural solution, particularly given India’s non-aligned history.
On the Pacific too, Australia, Japan, and the U.S. are deeply concerned with China’s defense encroachment in this subregion and are mobilizing in response. To be sure, India is concerned about Chinese coercion and the risks to state sovereignty, but it has specifically avoided talking about the China-Solomon Islands pact. Pacific security does not represent an area of strong overlapping interest for the Quad because India is far removed Pacific Island nations and Delhi has its own, higher priority challenges with Chinese influence in South Asia and the Indian Ocean.
In all of these flashpoint areas, the strategic rationale for the Trilateral to play a role is strong, but the rationale crumbles when broadened to Quad cooperation. This is also true at the global level.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, Australia, Japan, and the U.S. would have liked a robust Quad response but India’s military ties with Russia prevented any such action. The Quad statement from May 24 was so lukewarm on the issue it referred only to the “conflict in Ukraine” – not Russia’s invasion or war – and responded only that “the centerpiece of the international order is international law” and “all countries must seek peaceful resolution of disputes.” While the Trilateral countries were on the same page, India’s differences with its Quad partners were exposed.
There should be no quarrel that the Quad is an ambitious and promising security mechanism. Yet, as a grouping that will bring about solid defense and strategic outcomes in the region, the Quad cannot compare with the slimmed down Trilateral. Last weekend’s TDMM went almost completely unreported, but the Australia-Japan-U.S. trilateral deserves the envy of the Indo-Pacific. For, while the Quad gains all the attention, the Trilateral is quietly achieving in the background.
thediplomat.com · by Hayley Channer · June 16, 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
VIDEO "WHEREBY" Link: https://whereby.com/david-maxwell
Phone: 202-573-8647

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

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

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