Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners


Quotes of the Day:


"Recognize that your struggle and your suffering is the same as everyone else’s, I think that’s the beginning of a responsible life. Otherwise, we are in a continual savage battle with each other with no possible solution, political, social, or spiritual."
- Leonard Cohen

“The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence.” 
- Aldous Huxley

"Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability."
- Marcus Tulles Cicero



1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 30 (Putin's War)

2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (30.09.22) CDS comments on key events

3. SPECIAL REPORT: ASSESSING PUTIN’S IMPLICIT NUCLEAR THREATS AFTER ANNEXATION (ISW)

4. Flag raisings and burnings in Taiwan as some mark China's national day

5. Opinion | Facts on the ground matter more than rants at the Kremlin

6. Taiwan inducts new amphibious ship in push to bolster indigenous defence industry

7. Senators propose ‘China Grand Strategy’ commission to guide US policy

8. In Praise of Classical Realists

9. How Democracies Live – The Long Struggle for Equality Amid Diversity

10. Putin’s Newest Annexation Is Dire for Russia Too

11. Russia’s withdrawal from Lyman comes a day after Putin said he was annexing the region.

12. Forging the ‘New Era’: The Temporal Politics of Xi Jinping

13. China drops the gauntlet on NSA’s serial cyberattacks

14. The Best Way to Combat Putin’s Nuclear Threats

15. Enduring Lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis

16. Legislators from Japan to Europe Visit Taiwan to Talk Defense, Chips

17. We Must Reject Russia’s Nuclear Blackmail

18. Dangerous, expanding satellite population poses policy challenges to US government

19. Opinion | Alexei Navalny: This is what a post-Putin Russia should look like

20. THE KYIV SECURITY COMPACT – INTERNATIONAL SECURITY GUARANTEES FOR UKRAINE: RECOMMENDATIONS

21. The West Is Wrong to Fixate on Xi’s Fate

22. National Cyber Power Index 2022

23. A Dangerous Time for the United States Of America




1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 30 (Putin's War)



Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-30


Key Takeaways

  • Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the illegal Russian annexation of four Ukrainian territories on September 30 without clearly defining the borders of those claimed territories.
  • Putin announced that Russia’s usual autumn conscription cycle will start a month late on November 1, likely because Russia’s partial mobilization of Russian men is taxing the bureaucracy of the Russian military commissariats that would usually oversee the semi-annual conscription cycle.
  • Russian officials could re-mobilize last year’s conscripts when their terms expire on October 1.
  • Ukrainian forces will likely capture or encircle Lyman within the next 72 hours.
  • Ukrainian military officials maintained operational silence regarding Ukrainian ground maneuvers in Kherson Oblast but stated that Ukrainian forces continued to force Russian troops into defending their positions.
  • Russian troops continued ground assaults in Donetsk Oblast.
  • Russian authorities continued efforts to coerce Russian participation in mobilization efforts, but will likely struggle to coerce participation as Russians continue to flee Russia for border states who welcome them.
  • Russian officials are accepting bribes and engaging in other preferential treatment to prevent or ease the economic burden of mobilization on the wealthy.
  • Russian authorities are continuing to deploy mobilized personnel to Ukraine without adequate training or equipment, and personnel are unlikely to be able to afford to provide their own supplies.
  • Russian forces conducted a missile strike on a Ukrainian humanitarian convoy and attempted to blame the Ukrainian government.




RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 30

Sep 30, 2022 - Press ISW


understandingwar.org

Kateryna Stepanenko, Katherine Lawlor, Grace Mappes, Riley Bailey, George Barros, and Frederick W. Kagan

September 30, 8:30 pm ET

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

Russian President Vladimir Putin did not threaten an immediate nuclear attack to halt the Ukrainian counteroffensives into Russian-occupied Ukraine during his speech announcing Russia’s illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory. ISW analysts broke down Putin’s speech in a separate September 30 Special Report: “Assessing Putin’s Implicit Nuclear Threats after Annexation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the illegal Russian annexation of four Ukrainian territories on September 30 without clearly defining the borders of those claimed territories. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declined to specify the borders of the newly annexed territories in a September 30 conversation with reporters: "[the] Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics [DNR and LNR] were recognized by Russia within the borders of 2014. As for the territories of Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts, I need to clarify this. We will clarify everything today.”[1] DNR head Denis Pushilin added that even the federal district into which the annexed territories will be incorporated remains unclear: “What will it be called, what are the borders—let's wait for the final decisions, consultations are now being held on how to do it right.”[2] Russian officials may clarify those boundaries and administrative allocations in the coming days but face an inherent problem: Ukrainian forces still control large swathes of Donetsk and Zaporizhia and some areas of Luhansk and Kherson oblasts, a military reality that is unlikely to change in the coming months.

Putin likely rushed the annexation of these territories before making even basic administrative decisions on boundaries and governance. Russian officials have therefore not set clear policies or conditions for proper administration. Organizing governance for these four forcibly annexed oblasts would be bureaucratically challenging for any state after Russian forces systematically killed, arrested, or drove out the Ukrainian officials who previously ran the regional administrations. But the bureaucratic incompetence demonstrated by the Kremlin’s attempted partial mobilization of Russian men suggests that Russian bureaucrats will similarly struggle to establish governance structures over a resistant and unwilling population in the warzone that is Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory.

Putin announced that Russia’s usual autumn conscription cycle will start a month late on November 1, likely because Russia’s partial mobilization of Russian men is taxing the bureaucracy of the Russian military commissariats that would usually oversee the semi-annual conscription cycle.[3] Putin’s September 30 decree calls for 120,000 Russian conscripts—7,000 fewer than in autumn 2021. Neither Putin’s decree nor subsequent official statements clarified whether Ukrainian civilians of conscription age (18-27) in Russia’s newly-annexed occupied Ukrainian territories will be liable for conscription. A representative of Russia’s Main Organizational and Mobilization Directorate, Rear Admiral Vladimir Tsimlyansky, claimed that no autumn 2022 conscripts would fight in the “special operation” in Ukraine, a promise Putin also made (and broke) about the autumn 2021 and spring 2022 conscripts.[4] Russian conscripts are not legally deployable overseas until they have received at least four months of training unless Putin were to declare martial law.[5] Russia’s illegal annexation of occupied areas in Ukraine likely removes this problem within the framework of Russian Federation law, which may be part of the reason for Putin’s rush in announcing the annexation.

Russian officials could re-mobilize last year’s conscripts when their terms expire on October 1. Tsimlyansky emphasized on September 30 that all Russian conscripts whose terms have expired—meaning those conscripted in autumn 2021—will be released from service and returned to their residences “in a timely manner.”[6] Once released, autumn 2021 conscripts will technically become part of the Russian reserves, making them legally mobilizable under Putin’s September 21 partial mobilization order.

Putin invited some Russian milbloggers and war correspondents who have previously criticized the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) for a lack of transparency about Russian progress in Ukraine to attend his annexation speech in Moscow.[7] Russian state media has been increasingly featuring some milbloggers on federal television channels as well, which likely indicates that Putin is attempting to secure the support of these nationalist and pro-war figures rather than censor them. The milblogger presence in Moscow may also explain why several prominent Telegram channels had limited or no coverage of daily frontline news on September 29.

Key Takeaways

  • Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the illegal Russian annexation of four Ukrainian territories on September 30 without clearly defining the borders of those claimed territories.
  • Putin announced that Russia’s usual autumn conscription cycle will start a month late on November 1, likely because Russia’s partial mobilization of Russian men is taxing the bureaucracy of the Russian military commissariats that would usually oversee the semi-annual conscription cycle.
  • Russian officials could re-mobilize last year’s conscripts when their terms expire on October 1.
  • Ukrainian forces will likely capture or encircle Lyman within the next 72 hours.
  • Ukrainian military officials maintained operational silence regarding Ukrainian ground maneuvers in Kherson Oblast but stated that Ukrainian forces continued to force Russian troops into defending their positions.
  • Russian troops continued ground assaults in Donetsk Oblast.
  • Russian authorities continued efforts to coerce Russian participation in mobilization efforts, but will likely struggle to coerce participation as Russians continue to flee Russia for border states who welcome them.
  • Russian officials are accepting bribes and engaging in other preferential treatment to prevent or ease the economic burden of mobilization on the wealthy.
  • Russian authorities are continuing to deploy mobilized personnel to Ukraine without adequate training or equipment, and personnel are unlikely to be able to afford to provide their own supplies.
  • Russian forces conducted a missile strike on a Ukrainian humanitarian convoy and attempted to blame the Ukrainian government.


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.

  • Ukrainian Counteroffensives—Southern and Eastern Ukraine
  • Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and two supporting efforts);
  • Russian Subordinate Main Effort—Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
  • Russian Supporting Effort—Southern Axis
  • Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
  • Activities in Russian-occupied Areas

Ukrainian Counteroffensives (Ukrainian efforts to liberate Russian-occupied territories)

Eastern Ukraine: (Vovchansk-Kupyansk-Izyum-Lyman Line)

Ukrainian forces will likely capture or encircle Lyman within the next 72 hours. Russian forces continued to withdraw from positions around Lyman on September 30 as Ukrainian forces continued to envelop Russian troops in the area.[8] The Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) officials and Russian war correspondents stated that Russian forces still control Lyman but have withdrawn from their positions in Drobysheve (around 6km northwest of Lyman) and Yampil (about 13km southeast of Lyman).[9] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces still control one road from Lyman to Torske, while Ukrainian forces have cut off the Drobysheve-Torske road in the Stavky area.[10] Russian sources also noted the increasing activity of Ukrainian reconnaissance and sabotage groups on the Svatove-Torske highway northeast of Lyman after reportedly crossing the Zherebets River.[11] Geolocated footage also showed Ukrainian artillery striking withdrawing Russian forces near Torske.[12] Some Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces have crossed the Siverskyi Donets River in Dronivka and are now operating in the forests south of Kreminna.[13] Russian sources uniformly noted that Ukrainian artillery continues to interdict Russian forces’ single remaining egress route on the Kreminna-Torske road.[14]

Russian sources claimed that Russian forces are bringing additional reserves to reinforce Russian positions near Lyman, but some milbloggers criticized the Russian military command for failing to learn from its mistakes in Kharkiv Oblast. DNR Head Denis Pushilin claimed that Russian forces continued to deploy additional reserves to hold Lyman on September 30.[15] Russian milbloggers also reported that Russian forces deployed elements of the 503rd Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment of the 58th Combined Arms Army near Torske in an effort to break the encirclement in the area, noting that the unit is at least in part composed of newly-mobilized men.[16] Other milbloggers noted that elements of the Western and Central Military districts (WMD and CMD) are operating in the Lyman area alongside the Russian proxy republic units.[17] Many milbloggers claimed that the Russian withdrawal from Lyman resembles the chaotic retreat from Balakliya, Kharkiv Oblast, in its poor coordination and lack of artillery support.[18] Others stated that the Russian military command did not send necessary reinforcements and are instead firing rockets at Mykolaiv Oblast rather than helping the defense of Lyman.[19] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) only reported striking Ukrainian forces north of Lyman in Ridkodub and did not mention striking Ukrainian forces to the west, east, or south of Lyman.[20]

Ukrainian forces likely continued to make incremental advances around Kupyansk on the eastern bank of the Oskil River on September 30. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces shelled Petropavlivka (seven kilometers east of Kupyansk), which may indicate that Ukrainian forces are operating in the area.[21]

Ukrainian forces continued to strike Russian military targets in Luhansk Oblast on September 30. Geolocated footage showed the aftermath of Ukrainian reported HIMARS strikes on a television tower and a radio repeater in Starobilsk and at the asphalt plant near Alchevsk that reportedly housed Russian forces.[22]


Southern Ukraine: (Kherson Oblast)

Ukrainian military officials maintained their operational silence regarding the progress of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in southern Ukraine on September 30. Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported that Ukrainian forces are continuing to force Russian troops to defend their positions. The Ukrainian General Staff added that Russian forces are continuing to evict civilians in Kherson City to quarter additional Russian reinforcements.[23] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command noted that Russian forces are attempting to restore the operations of the Antonivsky Bridge and are bringing additional construction materials and repair equipment to the bridge.[24]

Ukrainian forces continued their interdiction campaign on September 29 and September 30, primarily striking Russian ground lines of communications (GLOCs), positions, and ammunition depots in northern and central Kherson Oblast. Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command stated that Ukrainian forces struck Russian military convoys in Nova Kakhovka, a command post in Beryslav Raion, and six Russian concentration areas in Kherson City, Nova Kakhovka, Dariivka, and Nova Kardashinka.[25] Ukrainian military officials added that Ukrainian forces targeted an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) control center in Davydiv Brid on the eastern bank of the Inhulets River.[26] Ukrainian and Russian sources reported that a Ukrainian strike on Kherson City killed Russian-appointed Kherson Oblast Deputy Occupation Administration Head Aleksei Katerinchev.[27] Local Telegram channels reported witnessing explosions in Nova Kakhovka, and Ukrainian strikes on the Elektromash factory in Nova Kakhovka and the area of the Kherson City shipyard.[28]

Ukrainian and Russian sources identified two areas of kinetic activity on September 30: south of the Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border and around the Ukrainian bridgehead over Inhulets River. Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported that Ukrainian forces discovered and repelled a small Russian sabotage and reconnaissance group in Osokorkivka (on the T0403 highway in northern Kherson Oblast), and the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces continued to strike Ukrainian positions in Osokorkivka.[29] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command also noted conducting unspecified ”successful actions in the area of Davydiv Brid and noted that Ukrainian forces “suppressed a Russian stronghold,” but this language is vague and can mean that Ukrainian troops conducted a ground attack in the area or inflicted bombardment damage on Russian positions.[30] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces conducted a spoiling attack in anticipation of a Ukrainian attack on Davydiv Brid.[31] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Ukrainian forces repelled a Russian assault on Bezimenne (southeast of the bridgehead).[32]


Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian forces continued ground attacks in Donetsk Oblast on September 30 but did not make any confirmed territorial gains. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian ground assaults northeast of Bakhmut near Bakhmutske and south of Bakhmut near Vesela Dolyna (6km southeast of Bakhmut), Zaitseve (8km southeast of Bakhmut), Odradivka (9km south of Bakhmut), and Mayorsk (20km south of Bakhmut).[33] Russian sources also claimed that Russian forces conducted ground attacks in Bakhmut itself and near Soledar.[34] Ukrainian sources reported that Russian forces continued routine artillery, air, and missile strikes throughout the line of contact in Donetsk Oblast.[35]


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

Russian forces continued artillery, air, and missile strikes west of Hulyaipole, and in Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts on September 30.[36] Ukrainian and Russian sources reported that Russian forces struck Mykolaiv City, Zaporizhzhia City, Dnipro City, Nikopol, and Kryvyi Rih on September 30.[37] Ukrainian sources also reported that Russian forces fired Smerch multiple launch rocket system (MLRS) rockets near Ochakiv, Mykolaiv Oblast.[38] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces struck and destroyed a Russian command post and a Russian S-300 system in Melitopol and struck Russian positions in Tokmak on September 30.[39]

Russian forces continued to use Iranian-made drones to target Ukrainian positions and cities in Southern Ukraine on September 30. Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported that Russian forces conducted two Shahed-136 drone attacks on an administrative building and a critical infrastructure facility in Mykolaiv City.[40] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command also reported that Ukrainian air defenses shot down three Russian Shahed-136 drones in Mykolaiv Oblast and two unspecified loitering munitions—likely also Shahed136 drones—in Odesa Oblast.[41]

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

Russian authorities continued efforts to coerce Russian participation in mobilization efforts. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on September 30 that simplifies the citizenship process for foreigners who serve in the Russian military, further incentivizing foreigners to volunteer for military service.[42] A Russian source stated on September 30 that Russian authorities instituted a travel ban for Russian law enforcement and government personnel who have access to state secrets and are forcing these personnel to surrender their passports.[43] The source also stated that the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs is increasing target practice for its personnel to weekly, indicating Russian efforts to deploy more security service personnel to Ukraine, likely to act as security in occupied territories.[44] Duma deputies from the Republic of Bashkortostan submitted a draft bill to the Russian State Duma on September 30 that would legalize Russian military recruitment efforts in prison for the “special military operation,” taking 10 days off each prisoner’s sentence for each day served in Ukraine.[45] A Russian source reported that Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs personnel began detaining operators of Telegram channels that call for protests and trigger unrest and have likely coerced protest organizers in the Republic of Dagestan to issue public apologies for inciting protests.[46]

Russia will likely struggle to coerce participation in mobilization as Russians continue to flee Russia for border states that welcome them. The Financial Times reported that Kazakh and Georgian officials have expressed willingness to welcome Russians fleeing to Kazakhstan and Georgia from forced mobilization, indicating that Russian influence in Central Asia and the Caucasus has degraded. The Kremlin likely cannot leverage its influence to coerce Kazakhstan and Georgia to return fleeing mobilized personnel to Russia.[47] Russians continue to flee Russia for Georgia and Kazakhstan, leaving behind their vehicles and even their families to escape mobilization.[48] Israeli officials reportedly called all Israeli military personnel who are dual citizens of Russia to return to Israel immediately, indicating international fear that Russia may mobilize people with dual Russian citizenship.[49]

Russian officials are accepting bribes and engaging in other preferential treatment to prevent or ease the burden of mobilization on the wealthy. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that officials in charge of the selection and preparation of mobilization in Khabarovsk Krai established a 100,000 ruble “tariff” for mobilized individuals to avoid mobilization, but this amount is unattainable for most Khabarovsk Krai residents.[50] The Russian Duma passed a law on September 30 that allows mobilized businessmen to apply for deferred loan payments, extensions on business transaction terms, and free account maintenance from their banks.[51]

Russian authorities are continuing to deploy mobilized personnel to Ukraine without adequate training or equipment. A Russian source reported on September 29 that mobilized personnel from Sverdlovsk Oblast stayed at a training center for one day before deploying to Russia’s border areas and did not indicate if these personnel would receive further training.[52] Russian authorities will likely redeploy personnel from border regions to areas in Ukraine as Russian efforts to advance and Ukrainian counteroffensives shift over time. A Russian source reported that Russian military authorities detained a Russian soldier who posted footage showing mobilized personnel from Perm Krai camped in a field in Volgograd Oblast without equipment necessary to weather the outdoors, but that Russian officials denied the detention.[53] Russian sources posted footage of mobilized personnel at training centers in occupied Donetsk Oblast with Soviet-era weapons and equipment.[54] The UK Ministry of Defense reported that Russia’s provision of medical supplies to mobilized personnel and personnel already in Ukraine is worsening and assessed that Russian forces likely have poor awareness of medical and first-aid training, exacerbating low Russian morale.[55]

Russian military personnel, especially newly mobilized personnel, are unlikely to be able to afford to provide their own supplies. A Russian source reported that prices for body armor in Russia have increased ten times since the partial mobilization announcement on September 21.[56] The source reported that mobilized personnel have purchased commercial body armor because they believe it to be more reliable than Russian military-issued equipment.[57] The Russian Anti-Monopoly Service ordered the tightening of price controls on military equipment and uniforms on September 30 to combat high equipment prices.[58] Russian authorities' decision to combat high costs of commercially-available equipment rather than provide quality equipment to Russian military personnel further emphasizes the ad hoc nature of Russian mobilization and the Russian government's failure to plan or provide for the sudden influx of personnel.

Regional Russian authorities continue to try to fix problems that result in the calling up of individuals ineligible for mobilization. A Russian source reported that Moscow Oblast authorities canceled some mobilization summons for wrongly mobilized men and have dedicated special groups in military recruitment offices to canceling the improper summonses.[59] Altai Krai authorities indefinitely postponed the dispatch of newly mobilized personnel originally scheduled to depart on September 30.[60] A local news outlet reported that Altai Krai authorities also created a commission for wrongly mobilized personnel and will resume mobilization efforts in mid-October.[61]

Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of occupied areas; set conditions for potential annexation into the Russian Federation or some other future political arrangement of Moscow’s choosing)

Russian forces conducted a missile strike on a Ukrainian humanitarian convoy and attempted to blame the Ukrainian government on September 30. Russian forces struck the humanitarian convoy outside Ukrainian-controlled Zaporizhzhia City, killing 28 civilians and wounding 88.[62] The convoy was reportedly waiting at a Russian checkpoint to enter Russian-occupied territory in Zaporizhia Oblast, possibly to transport Ukrainian civilians out of occupied territories.[63] The Russian-appointed head of the Zaporizhzhia Occupation Administration, Evgeny Balitsky, and other occupation officials claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted the attack in “revenge” for the Russian annexation of Zaporizhia Oblast and claimed the convoy was fleeing to Russian-occupied territory.[64] Russian forces may hope to restrict the movement of Ukrainian civilians in occupied areas; the Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on September 30 that occupation administration officials intend to prevent all movement into Ukrainian-held territory on October 1 and will introduce an unspecified system of temporary travel permits.[65]

Russian occupation officials continued efforts to mobilize Ukrainian civilians in occupied Ukrainian territories by force. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on September 30 that occupation authorities in Kherson City have increased their arbitrary detentions of fighting-age men, whom Russian forces then force into units that will soon be deployed to the frontlines.[66] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that additional Rosgvardia units deployed to Berdyansk to suppress expected unrest as occupation officials forcibly mobilize Berdyansk industrial workers. The Ukrainian mayor of Mariupol, Petro Andryuschenko, said on September 30 that Russian military officials stop men on the street to check their documents, and men registered in Donetsk Oblast are immediately mobilized and sent to the frontlines.[67] The Ukrainian mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, said on September 30 that Russian occupation officials opened a military commissariat in Melitopol and intend to forcibly mobilize 3,000 “volunteers” from the city by October 10.[68] Fedorov reported that if a “volunteer” refuses conscription, he must bring another man to take his place.

Russian occupation officials intensified their efforts to eliminate Ukrainian influence and coerce citizens to cooperate with Russian administrators following Putin’s illegal annexation of occupied Ukrainian territories. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on September 30 that Russian occupation officials are forcing Ukrainian residents to obtain Russian citizenship and passports and are threatening to fire teachers who refuse to exchange their Ukrainian passports. Russian officials are reportedly confiscating Ukrainian passports and have threatened to deport those Ukrainian citizens who do not accept Russian citizenship by October 1.[69]

Occupation officials in Donetsk Oblast announced the confiscation of property from 144 Ukrainian officials from the Donetsk Oblast Administration and from various companies in Donetsk on September 30.[70] Occupation officials will likely either nationalize the property or distribute it to Kremlin-selected favorites as a reward for their support of Russia’s illegal annexation of the oblast.

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

[1] https://tass dot ru/politika/15918397?utm_source=suspilne.media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=suspilne.media&utm_referrer=suspilne.media

[2] https://tass dot ru/politika/15926245

[3] http://publication.pravo.gov dot ru/Document/View/0001202209300077?index=0&rangeSize=1

[6] https://tass dot ru/armiya-i-opk/15925951

[11]

[27] https://t.me/opersvodki/9273; https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/statu... io/news/2022/09/30/v-hersone-pogib-pervyy-zamestitel-glavy-okkupatsionnoy-oblastnoy-administratsii-aleksey-katerinichev; https://sprotyv.mod.govdotua/en/2022/09/30/the-deputy-head-of-the-occupa...

[45] https://meduza dot io/news/2022/09/30/bashkirskie-deputaty-podgotovili-zakonoproekt-ob-otpravke-osuzhdennyh-na-voynu-v-ukraine

[48] https://t.me/readovkanews/42871; https://t.me/readovkanews/42679

[52] https://eburg.mk dot ru/social/2022/09/29/sverdlovskikh-mobilizovannykh-nachali-otpravlyat-v-goroda-ryadom-s-ukrainoy.html

[58] https://ria dot ru/20220930/fas-1820519995.html

[60] http://club-rf dot ru/22/news/61441

[61] http://club-rf dot ru/22/news/61441

[63] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/en/2022/09/30/russians-shelled-humanitarian-convoy-on-the-outskirts-of-zaporizhzhia/

[65] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/en/2022/09/30/decrees-of-the-russian-dictator-are-legally-void/

[70] https://t.me/kommunist/10117; https://t.me/donporchay/872; https://twi... https://glavadnr dot ru/doc/GKO/post/Post_GKO_254.pdf; https://t.me/readovkanews/42867

understandingwar.org


2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (30.09.22) CDS comments on key events

 




CDS Daily brief (30.09.22) CDS comments on key events

 

Humanitarian aspect:

In 100 days, 13,835 investigations to search for missing persons have been launched, said Oleg Kotenko, the Commissioner for Issues of Persons Disappeared Under Special Circumstances. 539 bodies from non-controlled [by Ukraine] territories and 2,026 from combat zones were found and returned. Some of those, who their relatives report missing, eventually get in touch; this concerns 1,308 civilians and 965 military personnel. Also, 163 people were found in captivity and released. There are currently 4,390 people who are missing. Kotenko emphasized that the exact number of missing persons cannot be established until Ukraine returns control over all territories.

 

On the morning of September 30, Russian troops hit the outskirts of the city of Zaporizhzhia with 16 S-300 rockets. A civilian caravan planning to go to the occupied territory to pick up evacuees and bring humanitarian aid was hit. At 11:30 a.m., the Prosecutor general's office reported that 25 people had died and about 50 people were injured. By the end of the day, the number grew to 30 dead, including 2 children, and 90 injured. October 1 has been declared a day of mourning in Zaporizhzhia and Zaporizhzhia Oblast.

 

On the night of September 30, the Russian forces attacked the residential area of Mykolaiv with two rockets; one of them hit a 9-story residential complex. At least eight people were injured as a result, Vitaliy Kim, the head of the Mykolaiv Oblast Administration, said. A woman was freed from under the rubble.

 

As a result of the attack by Russian "Iskanders" on the Dnipro on the night of September 30, at least one person died, and five more were injured, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Military Administration Valentyn Reznichenko said. The city-owned transport enterprise was also destroyed, 52 buses burned during the fire caused by the Russian strike, and another 98 were damaged.

 

According to the head of Kharkiv Oblast Military Administration, Oleh Synehubov, it will be impossible to repair the central heating system in the recently liberated Izyum as there is a vast pit from an explosion at the site where the local heating plant used to be. According to his data, 15,000 residents still remain in the city.

 

Ukraine does not exchange those Russian prisoners of war who refuse to return to the territory of the Russian Federation, Andriy Yusov, a representative of the Coordination HQ for the Issues of Prisoners of War, said. If a [Russian] serviceman wants to return to his country, the mark is made in his records that he was captured during hostilities. Yusov said this is done to ensure the Russian POWs avoid punishment for voluntary surrender after returning home.

 

Occupied territories

"By attempting to annex Ukraine's Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, Putin tries to grab territories he doesn't even physically control on the ground. Nothing changes for


Ukraine: we continue liberating our land and our people, restoring our territorial integrity," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter.

 

Aleksey Katerinichev, the Russia-appointed first deputy head of the pro-Russian Kherson Oblast administration for security issues, died during a missile attack by the Ukrainian armed forces on Kherson, Russian media reported. Aleksey Katerinichev had worked in the "administration" for 1.5 months. Before that, he served in the border troops, the FSB and the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations.

 

In Tokarivka, Kherson Oblast, the [Russian] occupiers are threatening local residents with eviction and deportation outside the occupied territories if they do not receive Russian passports by October 1, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reported. In Kherson, the occupiers evicted the residents of several hostels to free up space for the servicemen of the Russian occupying forces, who arrived in the city as reinforcement in this direction.

 

In Mariupol, teachers are threatened with dismissal if they refuse to exchange their Ukrainian passport for a Russian one, and other residents are allowed to keep their Ukrainian passport upon receiving a Russian one, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said.

 

More than 1,000 residents of the occupied Crimea fleeing mobilization have already arrived on the territory of Kazakhstan, and their number is growing, Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people Refat Chubarov said. He noted that most Crimeans in Kazakhstan are already experiencing difficulties because they have no money or shelter. They also do not know how to get to Ukraine. Therefore, Chubarov believes an interagency working group to help Crimeans who left the occupied peninsula due to illegal mobilization should be formed.


Operational situation

It is the 219th day of the strategic air-ground offensive operation of the Russian Armed Forces against Ukraine (in the official terminology of the Russian Federation – "operation to protect Donbas"). The enemy continues to concentrate its efforts on establishing full control over the territory of Donetsk Oblast, maintaining control over the captured territories, and disrupting the intensive actions of the Ukrainian troops in certain directions. It fires at the positions of the Ukrainian troops along the contact line, tries to recapture lost positions, and continuously conducts aerial reconnaissance. It inflicts strikes on civilian infrastructure and residential buildings, violating the norms of international humanitarian law and the laws and customs of war.

 

Over the past day, the Russian military launched 5 missile strikes and 11 air strikes and carried out more than 100 MLRS attacks on military and civilian targets on the territory of Ukraine. Almost 50 Ukrainian towns and villages were affected by the Russian strikes. Among them are Slovyansk, Kramatorsk, Bakhmut, Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih, Mykolaiv, Nikopol, Voznesensk, Pavlivka, Vysokopillya, Bilohirka and Myrne. The border settlements of Senkivka and Sosnivka of Chernihiv Oblast and Novovasylivka and Pavlivka of Sumy Oblast were shelled.


On September 21, the Republic of Belarus began checking its airfield network's means of radio technical support. This may indirectly indicate that the Russian Armed Forces could use Belarusian airfields. The rotation of the aviation units at the joint training center of the Russian and Belarus Air Force and Air Defense Forces took place. Three of the four available Su-30m multi- purpose fighters were replaced. The threat of missile and air strikes from the territory and airspace of the Republic of Belarus persists.

 

The Ukrainian Air Force carried out 29 strikes during the day to support the ground groupings, destroying six enemy strongholds, twenty weapon and military equipment concentration areas, and three Russian anti-aircraft missile systems. In addition, air defense units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine shot down seven UAVs, particularly five Iranian-made ones, one Mi-8 helicopter, and a Su-25 attack aircraft.

 

Over the past day, Ukrainian missile forces and artillery hit five enemy command and control posts, fifteen areas of manpower, weapons and military equipment concentration, six ammunition depots and fuel warehouses, one anti-aircraft missile complex and eight other important enemy targets.

The morale and psychological state of the personnel of the invasion forces remains low. Kharkiv direction

 Zolochiv-Balakleya section: approximate length of combat line - 147 km, number of BTGs of the

RF Armed Forces - 10-12, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 13.3 km;

 Deployed enemy BTGs: 26th, 153rd, and 197th tank regiments, 245th motorized rifle regiment of the 47th tank division, 6th and 239th tank regiments, 228th motorized rifle regiment of the 90th tank division, 1st motorized rifle regiment, 1st tank regiment of the 2nd motorized rifle division, 25th and 138th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 6th Combined Arms Army, 27th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 1st Tank Army, 275th and 280th motorized rifle regiments, 11th tank regiment of the 18th motorized rifle division of the 11 Army Corps, 7th motorized rifle regiment of the 11th Army Corps, 80th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 14th Army Corps, 2nd and 45th separate SOF brigades of the Airborne Forces, 1st Army Corps of so-called DPR, PMCs.

 

The Russian military continued to fire tanks, mortars and barrel artillery in the areas of Petropavlivka and Kurylivka.

 

The Armed Forces of Ukraine have entered Pidlyman on Oskol; intense fighting is going on between the center of this village and Shaykivka.

 

The Ukrainian defense forces liberated Shandryholove, Ridkodub, Katerynivka, Nove, Zelena Dolyna, and Kolodyazi. However, on the morning of September 30, the Russian troops counterattacked Kolodyazi from the area of Nevske and Terny.


The Russian command threw all available reserves into the Svatove area and from there on to Kopanky, Proletarske, and Olhivka. All these forces are reservists without any training. They are also poorly equipped but numerous.

 

Kramatorsk direction

 Balakleya - Siversk section: approximate length of the combat line - 184 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 17-20, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 9.6 km;

  252nd and 752nd motorized rifle regiments of the 3rd motorized rifle division, 1st, 13th, and 12th tank regiments, 423rd motorized rifle regiment of the 4th tank division, 201st military base, 15th, 21st, 30th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 2nd Combined Arms Army, 35th, 55th and 74th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 41st Combined Arms Army, 3rd and 14th separate SOF brigades, 2nd and 4th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 2nd Army Corps, 7th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 1st Army Corps, PMCs.

 

The Russian forces shelled the Ukrainian Defense Forces with tanks, mortars, barrel and jet artillery in the areas of Bogorodychne, Blakytni Ozera, Shchurove, Dibrova and Ozerne.

 

Donetsk direction

 Siversk - Maryinka section: approximate length of the combat line - 235 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 13-15, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 17 km;

  Deployed BTGs: 68th and 163rd tank regiments, 102nd and 103rd motorized rifle regiments of the 150 motorized rifle division, 80th tank regiment of the 90th tank division, 35th, 55th, and 74th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 41st Combined Arms Army, 31st separate airborne assault brigade, 61st separate marines brigade of the Joint Strategic Command "Northern Fleet," 336th separate marines brigade, 24th separate SOF brigade, 1st, 3rd, 5th, 15th, and 100th separate motorized rifle brigades, 9th and 11th separate motorized rifle regiment of the 1st Army Corps of the so-called DPR, 6th motorized rifle regiment of the 2nd Army Corps of the so-called LPR, PMCs.

 

The Russian military fired at the positions of the Ukrainian Defense Forces near Verkhnokamyanske, Vyimka, Spirne, Vesele, Bilohorivka, Yakovlika, Soledar, Bakhmutske, Bakhmut, Odradivka, Zaitseve, Pivnichne, Mayorsk, Tonenke, Avdiivka, Netaylove, Pervomaiske, Opytne, Krasnohorivka, Maryinka and Novomykhailivka.

 

Over the past day, units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces repelled Russian attacks in the areas around Zaitseve, Mayorsk, Vesela Dolyna, Bakhmutske, Odradivka, Kurdyumivka, New York, Pervomaiske and Bezimenne.

 

In the village of Bakhmutivka, Luhansk Oblast, an attack on the Russian concentration area killed more than fifty servicemen and destroyed seventeen units of Russian equipment.

 

Zaporizhzhia direction

  Maryinka – Vasylivka section: approximate length of the line of combat - 200 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 17, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 11.7 km;


  Deployed BTGs: 36th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 29th Combined Arms Army, 38th and 64th separate motorized rifle brigades, 69th separate cover brigade of the 35th Combined Arms Army, 5th separate tank brigade, 37 separate motorized rifle brigade of the 36th Combined Arms Army, 135th, 429th, 503rd and 693rd motorized rifle regiments of the 19th motorized rifle division of the 58th Combined Arms Army, 70th, 71st and 291st motorized rifle regiments of the 42nd motorized rifle division of the 58th Combined Arms Army, 136th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 58 Combined Arms Army, 46th and 49th machine gun artillery regiments of the 18th machine gun artillery division of the 68th Army Corps, 39th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 68th Army Corps, 83th separate airborne assault brigade, 40th and 155th separate marines brigades, 22nd separate SOF brigade, 1st Army Corps of the so-called DPR, and 2nd Army Corps of the so-called LPR, PMCs.

 

The Russian military did not conduct active offensive actions. However, shelling from tanks, mortars, barrel and jet artillery was recorded in the areas of Novopil, Prechystivka, Vuhledar, Pavlivka, Mykilske, Zaliznychne, Zeleny Hai, Dorozhnyanka and Novoukrayinka.

 

In Tokmak, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, up to fifty Russian servicemen were injured, and ten pieces of weapons and military equipment were destroyed. In the Hulyaipilske district, up to forty Russian servicemen were injured. In Melitopol, a command and control post and an S-300 anti-aircraft missile system were destroyed, and more than fifty Russian occupiers were wounded.

 

Kherson direction

 Vasylivka–Nova Zburyivka and Stanislav section: approximate length of the battle line - 252 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 27, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 9.3 km;

 Deployed BTGs: 114th, 143rd, and 394th motorized rifle regiments, 218th tank regiment of the 127th motorized rifle division of the 5th Combined Arms Army, 57th and 60th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 5th Combined Arms Army, 135th, 503rd and 693rd motorized rifle regiments of the 19th motorized rifle division, 70th, 71st and 291st motorized rifle regiments of the 42nd motorized rifle division, 51st and 137th parachute airborne regiments of the 106th parachute airborne division, 7th military base of the 49th Combined Arms Army, 16th and 346th separate SOF brigades.

 

There is no change in the operational situation. In Kherson, the occupiers evicted the residents of several hostels to free up space for the servicemen of the Russian occupying forces, who arrived to reinforce units in this direction.

 

Kherson-Berislav bridgehead

  Velyka Lepetikha – Oleksandrivka section: approximate length of the battle line – 250 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces – 22, the average width of the combat area of one BTG –

11.8 km;

 Deployed BTGs: 108th Air assault regiment, 171st separate airborne assault brigade of the 7th Air assault division, 4th military base of the 58th Combined Arms Army, 429th motorized rifle regiment of the 19th motorized rifle division, 33rd and 255th motorized rifle regiments of the 20th


motorized rifle division, 34th, and 205th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 49th Combined Arms Army, 224th, 237th and 239th Air assault regiments of the 76th Air assault division, 217th and 331 Air assault regiments of the 98th Air assault division, 126th separate coastal defense brigade, 127th separate ranger brigade, 11th separate airborne assault brigade, 10th separate SOF brigade, PMC.

 

More than 50 villages along the contact line were shelled, in particular, Arkhanhelske, Bilousove, Sukhy Stavok, Shyroke, Bezimenne, Kvitneve, Ivanivka, Zorya, Olhyne, Lymany, Blahodatne, Pravdyne, Myrne, and Oleksandrivka.

 

Azov-Black Sea Maritime Operational Area:

The forces of the Russian Black Sea Fleet continue to project force on the coast and the continental part of Ukraine and control the northwestern part of the Black Sea. The ultimate goal is to deprive Ukraine of access to the sea and connect unrecognized Transnistria with the Russian Federation by land through the coast of the Black and Azov seas.

 

Due to the weather conditions, there are currently 6 enemy warships on a mission in the Black Sea, conducting reconnaissance and controlling navigation in the Azov-Black Sea waters. Up to 24 Kalibr missiles are ready for a salvo on three carriers: one 1135.6 frigate and two Buyan-M missile corvettes. In general, the current activity of the maritime groups of the Russian Federation is characterized by low intensity. This is probably because some ships, aircraft and C2 bodies (including part of the Black Sea Fleet HQ) were transferred to Novorossiysk; and the "partial mobilization" activities.

 

In the Sea of Azov, the Russian military continues to control sea communications, keeping up to 6 ships and boats on combat duty.

 

During the day, the following vessels passed through the Kerch-Yenikal Strait the in the interests of the Russian Federation:

       to the Sea of Azov - 37 vessels, of which 11 vessels moved from the Bosphorus Strait;

       to the Black Sea - 31 vessels, of which 9 vessels continued their movement in the direction of the Bosphorus Strait.

 

All 4 submarines of project 636.3 that are currently in the Black Sea are at the port of Novorossiysk.

 

Russian aviation continues to fly from the Crimean airfields of Belbek and Hvardiyske over the northwestern part of the Black Sea. Over the past day, 14 Su-27, Su-30, and Su-24 aircraft from Belbek and Saki airfields were involved.

 

No signs of the formation of amphibious groups for marine landings were detected. Amphibious ships are at their bases in Novorossiysk and Sevastopol.


The Russian forces continue to carry out intensive missile and artillery and air strikes on the objects of the civil and military infrastructure of the seaports of Ukraine. On the night of September 30, the Russian military used the S-300 air defense system on Mykolaiv. Also, the Russian forces renewed attacks by Iranian "Shahid-136" kamikaze drones: two on Odesa (both drones were shot down by air defense) and five on Mykolaiv (3 drones were shot down by air defense).

 

"Grain initiative": in two months, 238 ships with 5.5 million tons of agricultural products left the unblocked Black Sea ports, of which 3.7 million tons in September. Such results turned out to be better than expected. Currently, the sea routes ensure the export of more than half of Ukrainian agricultural products abroad. According to the September results, farmers will reach the pre-war figure of 6 million tons of Ukrainian agricultural products exported per month. Almost half of the

5.7 million tons of agricultural products shipped in two months by sea is corn, and another third is wheat. Sunflower oil takes the third position.

 

Meanwhile, monthly steel exports from Ukraine have fallen by 77% since the start of the full- scale war due to the blockade of seaports. Ukraine used to export 1.27 million tons of ferrous metals per month. During the war, this indicator decreased to 0.29 million tons (only by rail transport). The extension of the grain corridor to ferrous metallurgy products is not being discussed yet. At the same time, insufficient export of ore and metal products will significantly weaken the Ukrainian economy. Before the Russian invasion, 97% of pig iron exports and 76% of niche steel exports from Ukraine were transported by sea, and the rest by rail.

 

Russian operational losses from 24.02 to 30.09

Personnel - almost 59,080 people (+500);

Tanks 2,338 (+13);

Armored combat vehicles – 4,932 (+23);

Artillery systems – 1,391 (+6);

Multiple rocket launchers (MLRS) - 333 (+2); Anti-aircraft warfare systems - 176 (+1); Vehicles and fuel tanks – 3,768 (+17); Aircraft - 264 (+2);

Helicopters – 225 (+1);

UAV operational and tactical level – 1,003 (+8); Intercepted cruise missiles - 241 (0);

Boats / ships - 15 (0).


International diplomatic aspect

 

Announcements of Vladimir Putin's annexation speech were overrated. There are few new thoughts a political scientist can make from his speech. Putin reached his limits in creating his parallel universe where he holds the moral height, owns the monopoly on historical truth and leads non-western nations. He has repeated all his bizarre accusations that Ukraine and the West are harming Russia.


The primary target audience is a domestic one. Putin has played all his cards based on conspiracy theories, historical myths, and various phobias. He painted Russia as both a victim of the devious West throughout millennia and a resolved and self-assured nation that has never been subjugated and now, under his leadership, is restoring its great power status by its right. He justified the annexation of Ukrainian territories because of "the neo-Nazi coup d'etat" and aggressive Western policies. He did it because the US "wanted to remain a hegemon" and "exploit other nations," and the westerners were "attempting to kill Russian philosophers." He claimed that the United States "until now, actually occupy Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea and other countries, and at the same time cynically call them equal allies."

 

Despite of how eclectic and out of touch is Putin's worldview, there are three points from his lengthy monolog that should be underlined.

 

       "The West defends the rules-based order. Where did they come from? Who even saw these rules? Who agreed? Listen, this is just some kind of nonsense, complete deception, double or even triple standards! It is designed simply for fools," he said. The all-out Russian invasion and the illegal annexation are blatant violations of norms and principles of international law per se. Up to the moment, he has been misusing and manipulating international law and multilateral institutions. From now on, Russia overtly rejects the idea that the rules-based order binds it.

       Secondly, he called on Zelenskiy to stop fighting and "return" to negotiations by accepting the loss of the annexed territories.

       Thirdly, he reiterated his nuclear blackmail by warning that Russia "will protect our land with all the forces and means available to us and will do everything to ensure the safe life of our people." He doubled down the threat, blaming the US, which has set a precedent by being the "only country in the world that used nuclear weapons twice, destroying the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." It sounds like both demonizing the United States, Russia's archenemy, and opening a possibility for the "second," not the first, use of the ultimate weapon.

 

The pompous farce received an adequate response from Ukraine and the Free world. "Obviously, it's impossible to deal with this Russian President. He does not know what dignity and honesty are. Therefore, we are ready for a dialogue with Russia, but with another President of Russia," replied to the unacceptable ultimatum Volodymyr Zelensky. Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov said that the decision on Ukraine's refusal to negotiate with the Russian Federation while Russian dictator Vladimir Putin remains in power was unanimously adopted at today's National Security Council meeting.

 

The Polish President rightfully summarized that "today's desperate and pathetic action by the Kremlin is a defeat for those who naively believed in a compromise with Russia."

 

"Only the path of strengthening Ukraine and expelling the occupiers from our entire territory will bring peace back," said Zelensky. The President announced that Ukraine is submitting a formal


application for accelerated accession to NATO. The Baltic nations and Poland support the move, while the US believes that at this moment, it's better to focus on the situation on the ground.

 

The illegal annexation was condemned and rejected by the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, the EU as an institution, and by European nations on their own. The US, EU, United Kingdom, and Canada announced a new wave of sanctions. The US imposed visa restrictions on 910 individuals, including members of the Russian Federation military, Belarusian military officials, and Russia's proxies. One hundred nine additional State Duma members, 169 members of the Federation Council, and more members of Russia's government, including the Governor of the Central Bank, were blacklisted. In addition to that, 57 entities located in Russia and the Crimea region of Ukraine were sanctioned.

 

The US Congress approved a short-term spending package that would keep the government open through mid-December and secure about $12.3 billion in military and economic aid to Ukraine.

 

The Pentagon will set up a new command in Germany aimed at pulling together the threads of its training and assistance program for the Ukrainian army. The new command would oversee the Ukrainian troops training programs and coordinate technical support centers, like those involved in repairing weapons provided by the US and other countries.

 

The UN Security Council voted on a draft resolution condemning Russia's illegal annexation of yet another set of Ukrainian territories. Russia vetoed it. "We are tired of repeating it again and again. Allowing Russia to avail itself of the right of the Soviet Union to veto decisions of the Security Council effectively prevents this body from exercising its primary responsibility under the UN Charter – maintenance of international peace and security," Ukraine's Permanent Representative to the UN highlighted the destructive role of Russia.

 

China, Brazil, Gabon, and India abstained. The US tried hard to convince China and India to vote "aye," highlighting that whatever relations with Russia they have, the principle of territorial integrity is sacred. Now, the draft will go to the UN General Assembly. Without a doubt, it will be adopted by the majority of nations.

 

In the meantime, the intrigue remains in a number of "ayes" and "noes." For example, only ten "friends" of Russia (Armenia, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, DPRK, Nicaragua, Sudan, Syria, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela) voted against the UN General Assembly's resolution on the territorial integrity of Ukraine after the illegal annexation of Crimea in March 2014. One hundred nations supported the resolutions, while fifty-eight abstained.

 

Russia, relevant news

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree according to which foreigners who have signed contracts for military service in the Russian Armed Forces will be granted Russian citizenship under a simplified procedure.


The Japanese government has banned the export of 73 types of chemicals to Russia in connection with the decision approved on September 26 to impose a ban on the supply of goods related to the production of chemical weapons to the Russian Federation.

 

Commenting on the possibility of negotiations with Ukrainian President Zelensky, press secretary of the Russian President Dmitriy Peskov said that Kyiv has left the negotiation track. Moscow's demands, however, do not change, so the "special military operation" will be continued, Russian media reported. Peskov also said that Moscow would regard possible Ukrainian strikes on the territories that will "become part of the Russian Federation" as an act of aggression against Russia.

 

As of September 23–25, the level of anxiety among the respondents in Russia was almost 70% which is two times higher than a week before, researchers of the Public Opinion Foundation said. Only 26% of those surveyed in the latest survey said they feel calm. However, 57% of respondents chose this option just a week before.

 

In Krasnodar, the rapper known as Walkie committed suicide due to mobilization on September

30. 27-year-old Ivan Petunin from Krasnodar recorded a suicide note in which he stated that after the announcement of mobilization, Russians had only three options left: prison, the army, and suicide.


 

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3. SPECIAL REPORT: ASSESSING PUTIN’S IMPLICIT NUCLEAR THREATS AFTER ANNEXATION (ISW)



SPECIAL REPORT: ASSESSING PUTIN’S IMPLICIT NUCLEAR THREATS AFTER ANNEXATION

Sep 30, 2022 - Press ISW


understandingwar.org

Mason Clark, Katherine Lawlor, and Kateryna Stepanenko

September 30, 12:45pm ET

Russian President Vladimir Putin did not threaten an immediate nuclear attack to halt the Ukrainian counteroffensives into Russian-occupied Ukraine during his speech announcing Russia’s illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory. Putin announced Russia’s illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia oblasts on September 30 even as Ukrainian forces encircled Russian troops in the key city of Lyman, Luhansk Oblast, immediately demonstrating that Russia will struggle to hold the territory it claims to have annexed. Putin likely intends annexation to freeze the war along the current frontlines and allow time for Russian mobilization to reconstitute Russian forces. The annexation of parts of four Ukrainian oblasts does not signify that Putin has abandoned his stated objective of destroying the Ukrainian state for a lesser goal. As ISW assessed in May, if Putin’s annexation of occupied Ukraine stabilizes the conflict along new front lines, “the Kremlin could reconstitute its forces and renew its invasion of Ukraine in the coming years, this time from a position of greater strength and territorial advantage.”[1]

Putin’s annexation speech made several general references to nuclear use that are consistent with his past language on the subject, avoiding making the direct threats that would be highly likely to precede nuclear use. Putin alluded to Russia’s willingness to use “all available means” to defend claimed Russian territory, a common Kremlin talking point. Putin stated that “the US is the only country in the world that twice used nuclear weapons, destroying the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Incidentally, they created a precedent.” Putin stretched his historical allusions, stating that the United States and the United Kingdom demonstratively and without a military need destroyed many German cities during World War II with the “sole goal, just like in the case of nuclear bombardments in Japan, to scare our country and the entire world,” attempting to portray Western states as the true aggressor. Putin did not directly articulate any new red lines or overtly threaten to use a nuclear weapon against Ukraine if Ukrainian counteroffensives continue.

Putin is attempting to force Kyiv to the negotiating table by annexing Russian-occupied territory and threatening nuclear use.[2] He is following the trajectory that ISW forecasted he might on May 13. As ISW wrote at the time: “A Russian annexation would seek to present Kyiv with a fait accompli that precludes negotiations on territorial boundaries even for a ceasefire by asserting that Russia will not discuss the status of (illegally annexed through military conquest) Russian territory—the argument the Kremlin has used regarding Crimea since 2014.” Predictably, Putin demanded that Ukraine return to negotiations in his September 30 speech announcing annexation and precluded any discussion of returning illegally annexed Ukrainian territory to Kyiv’s control: “We call on the Kyiv regime to immediately cease all fire and hostilities and end the war it initiated in 2014 and return to the negotiations table. We are ready for it and have said that several times. But the decision of the people in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson we will not negotiate. This choice has been made and Russia will not betray it.”

Putin’s call for negotiations and implicit nuclear threats are aimed at both Ukraine and the West; he likely incorrectly assesses that his nuclear brinksmanship will lead the United States and its allies to pressure Ukraine to negotiate. As ISW wrote in May: “The Kremlin could threaten to use nuclear weapons against a Ukrainian counteroffensive into annexed territory to deter the ongoing Western military aid that would enable such a counteroffensive.” However, Ukraine and its international backers have made clear that they will not accept negotiations at gunpoint and will not renounce Ukraine’s sovereign right to its territories. As Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on September 20, “Ukraine has every right to liberate its territories and will keep liberating them whatever Russia has to say.”[3] Where does this leave Putin, then, and what are the actual prospects for the Russian use of nuclear weapons?

ISW cannot forecast the point at which Putin would decide to use nuclear weapons. Such a decision would be inherently personal, but Putin’s stated red lines for nuclear weapon use have already been crossed in this war several times over without any Russian nuclear escalation. Reported Ukrainian cross-border raids into Belgorod Oblast and strikes against Russian-occupied Crimea could arguably meet the stated Russian nuclear use threshold of “aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is in jeopardy.”[4] Putin framed Ukraine as posing an existential threat to Russian sovereignty repeatedly at the start of his full-scale invasion—a phrase that meets that stated threshold: “For our country, it is a matter of life and death, a matter of our historical future as a nation. … It is not only a very real threat to our interests but to the very existence of our state and to its sovereignty. It is the red line which we have spoken about on numerous occasions,” he said on February 24.[5] Formal Russian nuclear doctrine is evidently not a deciding factor for Putin, who has reportedly been micromanaging this war down to the operational level.[6]

Putin has set in motion two major means short of nuclear use through which he will try to achieve his objectives: partial mobilization to replace Russian losses, and wintertime energy pressures on Europe to deter European support. He likely intends Russia’s ongoing mobilization to stabilize Russian positions and enable the temporary freezing of the conflict. He is unlikely to succeed; rushing thousands of untrained and unmotivated Russian men to the front will not meaningfully increase Russian combat power, particularly in places like western Luhansk oblast where the Ukrainian counteroffensives are making significant progress. Putin intends his second approach, curtailing natural gas exports to Europe, to fracture the Western consensus around supporting Ukraine and limit Western military aid to Ukrainian forces. This too is unlikely to succeed; Europe is in for a cold and difficult winter, yet the leaders of NATO and non-NATO European states have not faltered in their support for Ukrainian sovereignty and may increase that support in light of Russia’s illegal annexation even in the face of economic costs.[7] European states are actively finding alternatives to Russian energy and will likely be far more prepared by winter 2023.[8] It is difficult to assess what indicators Putin will use to evaluate the success of either effort. But both will take considerable time to bear fruit or to demonstrably fail, time Putin will likely take before considering a nuclear escalation.

Putin would likely need to use multiple tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine to achieve his desired operational effect—freezing the front lines and halting Ukrainian counteroffensives. But the operational effect would need to outweigh the potentially very high costs of possible NATO retaliation. Putin might try a nuclear terror attack against one or more major Ukrainian population centers or critical infrastructure in hopes of shocking Ukraine into surrender or the West into cutting off aid to Ukraine. Such attacks would be highly unlikely to force Ukraine or the West to surrender, however, and would be tremendous gambles of the sort that Putin has historically refused to take. Ukraine’s government and people have repeatedly demonstrated their will to continue fighting, and the West would find it very challenging simply to surrender in the face of such horrific acts because of the precedent such surrender would set. Putin is therefore far more likely to use nuclear weapons to change the operational environment, if he uses them at all. We assess Putin has two main tactical nuclear weapon use options: striking key Ukrainian ground lines of communication nodes and command centers to paralyze Ukrainian offensive operations, and/or striking major Ukrainian force concentrations near the line of contact. A single nuclear weapon would not be decisive against either of these target sets. Putin would likely need to use several tactical nuclear weapons across Ukraine to achieve significant effects and disrupt Ukraine’s ability to conduct counteroffensives. The scale of nuclear use likely required would raise the risks of Western retaliation, likely increasing the potential costs Putin would have to weigh against the likely temporary benefits the strikes themselves might provide.

Russian nuclear use would therefore be a massive gamble for limited gains that would not achieve Putin’s stated war aims. At best, Russian nuclear use would freeze the front lines in their current positions and enable the Kremlin to preserve its currently occupied territory in Ukraine. Russian nuclear use would not enable Russian offensives to capture the entirety of Ukraine (the Kremlin’s original objective for their February 2022 invasion). Russian military doctrine calls for the Russian Armed Forces to be able to effectively fight on a nuclear battlefield, and the “correct” doctrinal use of tactical nuclear weapons would involve tactical nuclear strikes to punch holes in Ukrainian lines, enabling Russian mechanized units to conduct an immediate attack through the targeted area and drive deep into Ukrainian rear areas.[9] The degraded, hodgepodge Russian forces currently operating in Ukraine cannot currently conduct effective offensive operations even in a non-nuclear environment. They will be flatly unable to operate on a nuclear battlefield. DNR/LNR proxy units, Wagner Group fighters, BARS reservist units, and the depleted remnants of the Russian conventional units that actually exercised fighting on a nuclear battlefield in annual exercises—not to mention newly mobilized replacements shipped to the front lines with less than a week of training—will not have the equipment, training, and morale necessary to conduct offensive operations following nuclear use. NATO is additionally likely to respond to Russian nuclear weapon use in Ukraine with conventional strikes on Russian positions there. Russian use of multiple weapons (which would be required to achieve decisive operational effects) would only increase the likelihood and scale of a Western conventional response.

The more confident Putin is that nuclear use will not achieve decisive effects but will draw direct Western conventional military intervention in the conflict, the less likely he is to conduct a nuclear attack.

[1] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-annexation-occupie...

[2] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-annexation-occupie...

[3] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[4] https://rusemb dot org dot uk/press/2029#:~:text=25.,with%20the%20Collective%20Security%20Treaty; https://globalsecurityreview.com/nuclear-de-escalation-russias-deterrenc...

[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/world/europe/putin-ukraine-speech.htm...;

[6] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/16/putin-involved-russia-ukra...

[7] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[8] https://www.npr.org/2022/09/20/1124008571/russias-attempt-to-use-energy-...

[9] https://www.armyupress.army.mil/portals/7/hot%20spots/documents/russia/2....

 

understandingwar.org



4.  Flag raisings and burnings in Taiwan as some mark China's national day




Resistance.


Flag raisings and burnings in Taiwan as some mark China's national day

Reuters · by Ann Wang

TAINAN/TAIWAN STRAIT, Taiwan, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Two small Taiwanese groups at far ends of the debate over relations with Beijing marked China's national day on Saturday with flag raisings and flag burnings, very opposite responses at a time of rising tension over the Taiwan Strait.

Oct. 1 marks when Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China in 1949, with the defeated Republic of China government fleeing to Taiwan at the end of that year and where it remains to this day, neither recognising the other.

China's national day is not officially marked in any way in democratically-governed Taiwan, which celebrates its national day, the founding of the Republic of China, on Oct. 10.


But some small groups in Taiwan do mark China's national day, with either pride at being Chinese or fury at Beijing's threats against the island, especially after China staged war games near Taiwan in August.

In a rural part of Tainan in the south, the Taiwan People's Communist Party gathered about 200 people, mostly elderly, to sing China's national anthem and raise the country's flag on what the party referred to in a news release as "a sacred part of China's territory".

Lin Te-wang, the chairman of the party which has no elected officials and is very fringe, told Reuters that China was no threat, despite the recent war games which were condemned by all of Taiwan's mainstream parties.

"Military exercises are good for Taiwan because they show the majesty of China's military force internationally," Lin, 67, said.

At the other end of the spectrum, the pro-independence Taiwan Statebuilding Party burned a Chinese flag on Saturday on a boat off Taiwan's south coast in an area of the sea where China staged its August drills, shouting slogans including "protect Taiwan to the death".

Party Chairman Chen Yi-chi told Reuters on the boat in the Taiwan Strait that burning the flag was not provocative.

"How can burning the flag be extreme? If you want to show your resistance to defending Taiwan now, if burning the flag is extreme, what will you do when the artillery fire comes?"

The party lost its only member of parliament last year after he was voted out in a recall election.

China considers Taiwan to be part of the People's Republic, over the strenuous objections of the government in Taipei, which says Beijing has no right to claim it or speak for the Taiwanese people.


Reporting by Ann Wang; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Kim Coghill

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Reuters · by Ann Wang


5. Opinion | Facts on the ground matter more than rants at the Kremlin


Excerpts:

The best thing President Biden and his fellow NATO leaders can do is keep up sanctions and arms shipments that weaken Russia’s military and empower Ukraine to fight back. Mr. Biden indicated on Friday he would do so, with another $1.1 billion weapons package in the works. Symbolically and psychologically important as it was for President Volodymyr Zelensky to announce, in response to Mr. Putin’s threats, that Ukraine will seek immediate NATO membership, there is no need for Western leaders to act on that complicated question. Instead, they should finalize and implement their plan for a price cap on Russian crude exports and accelerate preparations to keep European homes and businesses supplied with energy through the winter.
Also on the agenda should be diplomatic outreach to — or pressure on — India, China and Turkey, all of which seem increasingly weary of Mr. Putin’s war and might help persuade him to abandon it. Mr. Putin’s latest escalations, dangerous as they are, show that he senses the endgame approaching — and fears losing it.


Opinion | Facts on the ground matter more than rants at the Kremlin

The Washington Post · by Editorial Board · September 30, 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ratcheted up his aggressiveness to a disturbing and dangerous degree over the past few days, both rhetorically and in terms of policy. Perhaps the only thing more brazen than his illegal annexation of four Ukrainian regions, based on a sham referendum in the territories, was the speech he gave on Friday to justify it.

Mr. Putin rambled widely and tendentiously through world history to depict the West as a sinister force bent — for centuries — on the subjugation of Russia and motivated, today, by “outright Satanism.” He warned the internationally recognized government in Kyiv, and its supporters in the United States and elsewhere, that the people of the purportedly annexed regions are Russian citizens “forever.” Then he alluded to the “precedent” set by U.S. use of atomic weaponry in World War II. Plainly, Mr. Putin, having failed to defeat Ukraine militarily, is attempting to bully both that country and its friends into accepting Russian sovereignty over the 15 percent or so of Ukrainian territory that it has managed to occupy, with Russian nuclear weapons use as the implied “or else.”

Scary stuff — but an appropriate response begins with remembering that facts on the ground matter more than rants at the Kremlin. Indeed, Mr. Putin’s language is escalating precisely because his strategic position is deteriorating. Russia does not even control all of the territory it supposedly annexed and, in fact, Ukrainian forces have recently retaken Russian-held areas equal to more than 3,500 square miles. The “partial” mobilization of some 300,000 reservists Mr. Putin ordered in response to those setbacks is off to a troubled start, with thousands of men crossing Russia’s borders to escape military service; some 100 protests, including 20 or so attacks against recruiting offices, have occurred, according to the Economist. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s military was poised on Friday to seize a key transportation hub, Lyman, in Donetsk, which is one of the four regions Mr. Putin claimed to annex. If the town’s Russian garrison falls, it could lead to additional Russian retreats from this supposedly Russian territory, as well as from the neighboring Luhansk region.

The best thing President Biden and his fellow NATO leaders can do is keep up sanctions and arms shipments that weaken Russia’s military and empower Ukraine to fight back. Mr. Biden indicated on Friday he would do so, with another $1.1 billion weapons package in the works. Symbolically and psychologically important as it was for President Volodymyr Zelensky to announce, in response to Mr. Putin’s threats, that Ukraine will seek immediate NATO membership, there is no need for Western leaders to act on that complicated question. Instead, they should finalize and implement their plan for a price cap on Russian crude exports and accelerate preparations to keep European homes and businesses supplied with energy through the winter.

Also on the agenda should be diplomatic outreach to — or pressure on — India, China and Turkey, all of which seem increasingly weary of Mr. Putin’s war and might help persuade him to abandon it. Mr. Putin’s latest escalations, dangerous as they are, show that he senses the endgame approaching — and fears losing it.

The Washington Post · by Editorial Board · September 30, 2022


6. Taiwan inducts new amphibious ship in push to bolster indigenous defence industry


Taiwan inducts new amphibious ship in push to bolster indigenous defence industry

Reuters · by Ann Wang

KAOHSIUNG, Taiwan, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Taiwan's navy took delivery on Friday of a new, domestically made amphibious warfare ship that can be used to land troops and bolster supply lines to vulnerable islands, part of President Tsai Ing-wen's defence self-sufficiency push.

The 10,600-tonne Yu Shan, named after Taiwan's tallest mountain, is the latest development in Tsai's ambitious programme to modernise the armed forces amid increased pressure from China, which claims the island as its own.

Speaking at the delivery ceremony in the southern port city of Kaohsiung, Tsai said the ship was a testament to Taiwan's efforts to boost production of its own warships and achieve the goal of "national defence autonomy".


"When it comes to China's military threats, only by strengthening our self-defence capabilities can there be true peace," she said. "It is our constant policy and determination to implement national defence autonomy so that the military has the best equipment to defend the country."

China carried out war games near Taiwan last month to show its anger at a visit to Taipei by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Chinese military activity has continued though at a much reduced tempo.

Built by state-backed CSBC Corporation Taiwan (2208.TW), the ship is armed with a cannon for use against air and surface targets, anti-aircraft missiles and rapid-fire Phalanx close-in anti-aircraft and anti-missile guns.

CSBC Chairman Cheng Wen-lung said as well as being an amphibious warfare vessel, with space for landing craft and helicopters, it will assume the "main transport role" for the South China Sea and offshore Taiwanese islands that lie close to the Chinese coast, long considered easy targets for China in the event of war.

Though the United States is Taiwan's most important international arms supplier, Tsai has bolstered the domestic arms industry to try to make Taiwan as self-sufficient as possible.

Although Taiwan's air force has benefited from big-ticket items such as new and upgraded F-16s, the navy is another of Tsai's focuses, with submarines in production and a launch in 2020 of the first of a fleet of highly manoeuvrable stealth corvettes.


Reporting by Ann Wang; Writing by Ben Blanchard. Editing by Gerry Doyle

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Reuters · by Ann Wang


7. Senators propose ‘China Grand Strategy’ commission to guide US policy


If I were king for a day I would establish a Solarium commission (consisting of scholars, practitioners, and citizens from "flyover country") to meet at the National War College in the summer following the presidential election to draft the new President's equivalent of an updated "NSC 68"" every four years. It would do one of three things: (1) validate the current NSC-XX in effect; (2) modify it; (3) or draft a new one from ground zero.


See the State memorandum below describing the Solarium Commission (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54v02p1/d63)


Senators propose ‘China Grand Strategy’ commission to guide US policy

Defense News · by Bryant Harris · September 30, 2022

WASHINGTON – A bipartisan group of 15 senators is seeking to create a commission tasked with formulating a “grand strategy” on China that avoids conflict with the world’s most populous nation while allowing the U.S. to pursue its interests.

Sens. Angus King, I-Maine, John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Tim Kaine, D-Va., said Friday they would introduce legislation to create a China Grand Strategy Commission, which would be given two years to develop a whole-of-government approach guiding Washington’s relationship with Beijing.

The senators and their 12 co-sponsors – most of whom sit on the Armed Services Committee – hope to file the bill as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, which the Senate is expected to begin debating in October.

“It would harness the smartest public and private sector minds to study and evaluate on how our nations interact – striking the balance between avoiding conflict and fully pursuing our national interest,” King said in a statement. “Most vitally, this commission isn’t putting a report on a shelf to collect dust; it will make actionable recommendations to develop a grand strategy across the entire government.”

The proposed commission would mirror the two-year Cyberspace Solarium Commission, established in the 2019 NDAA. King served as co-chair of that panel, which put forward 80 recommendations on improving U.S. cybersecurity. The Maine senator has said that 85% of those recommendations have been fully or partially implemented.

Both commissions are molded after former president Dwight Eisenhower’s Project Solarium, which developed a U.S. grand strategy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union.

Like the cyberspace commission, the China commissioners would include lawmakers, executive branch officials and private sector experts. The proposed China commission would consist of 18 members” two co-chairs agreed upon by Congress and the president and drawn from commissioners comprised of two senators, two House members, six executive branch officials and eight individuals from the private sector.

A summary of the legislation from King’s office says that the commission would develop “a holistic approach” across the federal government while “defining specific steps necessary to build a stable international order that accounts for the People’s Republic of China participation in that order.” It would be tasked with developing “actionable recommendations” aimed at protecting and strengthening U.S. national security interests.

House China Task Force

Republicans this month vowed to establish a select committee on China if they win the House in November’s midterm elections. House Republicans already established their own China Task Force in 2020, which Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Democrats declined to join after accusing former president Donald Trump of scapegoating Beijing for his mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the House’s China Task Force remains partisan, it has advanced proposals with bipartisan support among its hundreds of recommendations. These include the $52 billion in semiconductor subsidies and tax incentives that Congress passed in July to encourage manufacturers to develop chips in the U.S. instead of China and other Asian countries as part of a broader effort to shore up the U.S. defense industrial base.

Congress also mandated in 2000 the creation of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which is tasked with submitting an extensive annual report on the national security implications of the economic and trade ties between Washington and Beijing.

About Bryant Harris

Bryant Harris is the Congress reporter for Defense News. He has covered U.S. foreign policy, national security, international affairs and politics in Washington since 2014. He has also written for Foreign Policy, Al-Monitor, Al Jazeera English and IPS News.

Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, National Security Affairs, Volume II, Part 1 - Office of the Historian

history.state.gov

S/S–NSC files, lot 66 D 148, “Solarium”

Memorandum for the Record by the Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (Cutler)

top secret

[Washington,] 9 May 1953.

  • Subject:
  • Solarium Project

1. Upon the President’s direction and as a matter of urgency, the alternatives outlined in the attachment will be explored and presented to the National Security Council. The undertaking may be referred to as “Solarium”.

2. A working committee of The National Security Council, consisting of W. B. Smith, A. W. Dulles, and R. Cutler, will arrange the detailed plans for:

a. A Panel of about 5 qualified persons to draft precise and detailed terms of reference for each Alternative. Attached is a list of proposed names for such Panel. The Panel should meet for a week or so before May 31st, utilizing the Council offices and Staff. T. M. Koons, of the NSC Special Staff, is available to serve as Executive Secretary for this Panel and for the Teams set up under b.

The terms of reference should include directions to seek out all the factors that would go into planning a major campaign: forces needed; costs in manpower, dollars, casualties, world relations; intelligence estimates; time-tables; tactics in every other part of the world while actions were being taken in a specific area; relations with the UN and our Allies; disposition of an area after gaining a victory therein; influencing world opinion; Congressional action required; etc.

b. A separate Task Force of 3–5 qualified persons for each Alternative to be explored and presented. The preparation should be as for a War College project, and might be done at the War College, [Page 324] utilizing also its top personnel and facilities. The National Security Council would furnish whatever authority was necessary for urgent access to any and all material.

Each Task Force would work up its Alternative in the same spirit that an advocate works up a case for court presentation. In presenting an Alternative to the National Security Council, visual presentation (maps, charts, oral discourse) would be maximized. If possible, the Alternatives would be presented on the same or successive days in the White House. Target date for presentation should be as near July 1 as possible.

3. At the NSC Meeting on May 13, 1953, the President should describe “Solarium” in general terms, and enjoin strict confidence. The Council should realize what is under way for their future guidance.

Robert Cutler

[Attachment]

Paper Prepared by the Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (Cutler)

Suggestions for Panel Membership

  • Mr. Robert A. Lovett, Chairman
  • Admiral Leslie C. Stevens
  • Mr. Robert Amory, Jr.
  • Mr. Karl R. Bendetsen
  • Mr. Robert R. Bowie
  • Lieutenant General Thomas D. White
  • Professor Max Millikan

Alternates (also possibilities for Teams)

  • Mr. Paul H. Nitze
  • Mr. William Draper
  • Mr. S. Douglas Cornell
  • Mr. J. R. Dean
  • General John E. Hull
  • Lt. General Charles P. Cabell
  • Colonel George Lincoln
  • Colonel Charles H. Bonesteel III
  • Mr. T. J. Lanphier, Jr.
  • Admiral Richard L. Conolly
  • Professor Raymond Sontag
  • Major General James McCormack
  • Colonel Paul Carroll
  • Mr. Douglas MacArthur II

Alternative A

To continue the general policy, towards the USSR and its bloc, which has been in effect since 1948; as modified by the determination expressed in NSC 149/2 (April 29/53) to bring the Federal budget into balance as rapidly as is consistent with continuing our leadership in the free world and barring basic change in the world situation.

This policy contemplates that, consonant with this fiscal determination, the United States will:

(a)

maintain over a sustained period armed forces to provide for the security of the United States and to assist in the defense of vital areas of the free world;

(b)

continue to assist in building up the strength of the free world;

(c)

oppose expansion by the Soviets and Communist China and deter the power of the Soviets and Communist China from aggressive war;

(d)

continue to exploit the vulnerabilities of the Soviets and their satellites;

(e)

generally avoid risking a general war;—

all with a view to the ultimate retraction and reduction of the Soviet system to a point which no longer constitutes a threat to the security of the United States.

Subject to modification by Part I of NSC 149/2, this policy is the same policy stated in NSC 20/4, and affirmed in NSC 68/2 and NSC 135/3. It is defensive; it seeks to contain Soviet power by building positions of indigenous strength throughout the free world; it trusts by such show of strength to deter Soviet power from aggression until the Soviets shall decay from internal weaknesses inherent in despotic government; it relies that time is on the side of the free world—that if we can “last out” the Soviets will deteriorate and fail.

(The Council has directed the Planning Board to restate and reconcile in one paper NSC 20/4, 68/2, 135/3, and 149/2. This work is under way.)

[Page 326]

Alternative B

To determine the areas of the world which the United States will not permit to become Communist, whether by overt or covert aggression, by subversion of indigenous peoples, or otherwise.

To make clear in an appropriate way that the United States has “drawn a line” about such areas and that we would consider the fall to Communism of any country on our side of such line as grounds for the United States to take measures of our own choosing, including offensive war.

This alternative might be worked out on a grand scale or on a lesser scale. In the first case, the fall of a country on our side of the line to Communism would be a casus belli against the USSR. In the second case, the line might be drawn in a region, such as Asia; and the fall of a country on our side of the line to Communism would involve war against Communist China (but not necessarily global war).

Alternative C

To take actions, against the background of Alternative A or Alternative B, which would seek to restore the prestige of the West by winning in one or more areas a success or successes.

The objective of such positive alternative is to produce a climate of victory, disturbing to the Soviets and their satellites and encouraging to the free world.…

. . . . . . .

history.state.gov

8. In Praise of Classical Realists


Debate THIS:


Liberals and idealists will scorn Spykman by invoking so-called “universal values” and “rules-based orders” that in reality constrain no nation from acting in support of its perceived interests. Morality and foreign policy often don’t go well together – recall Jimmy Carter’s “human rights” crusade that helped bring the mullahs to power in Iran and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. More recently, we have seen what the promotion of universal democracy by George W. Bush “accomplished” in Afghanistan and Iraq.

More practically, even the most ardent rhetorical promoters of universal values, like Franklin Roosevelt, aided and supported Joseph Stalin’s regime – one of the most murderous governments in human history – when he perceived such aid and support to be in America’s national interests. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Or to paraphrase Lord Palmerston, nations have no permanent friends and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests.

Ashford’s review is a welcome reminder that U.S. statesmen would be wise to study the classical realists – both theorists and practitioners. Realists approach the world as it is, not as they want it to be. Realists understand the imperfectability of human nature. Realists distinguish between peripheral and vital interests. Realists see, they do not dream.


In Praise of Classical Realists

By Francis P. Sempa

October 01, 2022


https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2022/10/01/in_praise_of_classical_realists_856661.html


Emma Ashford of the Stimson Center, who also teaches at Georgetown University, reviews two new books in Foreign Affairs that present different takes on the classical realist approach to foreign policy. Jonathan Kirshner’s An Unwritten Future, Ashford writes, “seeks to rehabilitate classical realism,” while Matthew Specter’s The Atlantic Realists seeks to use moral principles and values “to bury it.” Ashford gives a respectable hearing to Specter’s attack on classical realist thought, but she ultimately comes down on the side of Kirshner’s effort to rehabilitate it. As she writes, “pretending that moral principles and values can override all constraints of power and interest – is not political realism. It is political fantasy.”

Ashford’s review identifies some, but not all, of the most important classical realist thinkers – Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Bismarck, Hans Morgethau, George Kennan. She does not mention Halford Mackinder, Alfred Thayer Mahan, Nicholas Spykman, James Burnham, Walter Lippmann, or more recently Angelo Codevilla, important realist thinkers who focused not on values and principles, but rather on geography, history, and relative power balances. Ashford explores the “tension” between idealists and realists, between principles/values vs. national interests/prudence, and she comes down on the side of a prudent foreign policy based on concrete national interests. But she does so almost apologetically. She seems to accept Specter’s characterization of “geopolitics” and “national interest” as impure or unethical. She quotes Morgethau: “Political realism does not require, nor does it condone, indifference to political ideals and moral principles, but it requires indeed a sharp distinction between the desirable and the possible.”

But there is no reason for realists to be apologetic about approaching world politics based on an understanding of history and human nature. The great geopolitical thinkers, like Mackinder, Mahan and Spykman, were consummate realists. Their writings were infused with an appreciation of global politics assessed through the lens of history. And read George Washington’s Farewell Address – it is perhaps the ultimate realist exposition. Washington understood that sentiment has no place in a nation’s foreign policy. “The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave,” Washington wrote. “It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.” America should not “implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of [other nations’] politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of [other nations’] friendships or enmities.” Every nation is guided by its interests. Period. Washington and the other Founders of this country eschewed idealism because they learned about human nature form history and their own experience.

Instead of apologetically quoting Morgenthau, Ashford could have quoted Spykman:      

  • “[S]tates can survive only by constant devotion to power politics;”
  • “the struggle for power is identical with the struggle for survival, and the improvement of the relative power position becomes the primary objective of the internal and external policy of states. All else is secondary, because in the last instance only power can achieve the objectives of foreign policy;”
  • ”The statesman who conducts foreign policy can concern himself with values of justice, fairness, and tolerance only to the extent that they contribute to or do not interfere with the power objective. They can be used instrumentally as moral justification for the power quest, but they must be discarded the moment their application brings weakness. The search for power is not made for the achievement of moral values; moral values are used to facilitate the attainment of power.”
  • Today – tomorrow

Liberals and idealists will scorn Spykman by invoking so-called “universal values” and “rules-based orders” that in reality constrain no nation from acting in support of its perceived interests. Morality and foreign policy often don’t go well together – recall Jimmy Carter’s “human rights” crusade that helped bring the mullahs to power in Iran and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. More recently, we have seen what the promotion of universal democracy by George W. Bush “accomplished” in Afghanistan and Iraq.

More practically, even the most ardent rhetorical promoters of universal values, like Franklin Roosevelt, aided and supported Joseph Stalin’s regime – one of the most murderous governments in human history – when he perceived such aid and support to be in America’s national interests. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Or to paraphrase Lord Palmerston, nations have no permanent friends and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests.

Ashford’s review is a welcome reminder that U.S. statesmen would be wise to study the classical realists – both theorists and practitioners. Realists approach the world as it is, not as they want it to be. Realists understand the imperfectability of human nature. Realists distinguish between peripheral and vital interests. Realists see, they do not drea​m.​

Francis P. Sempa is the author of Geopolitics: From the Cold War to the 21stCentury, America’s Global Role: Essays and Reviews on National Security, Geopolitics and War, and Somewhere in France, Somewhere in Germany: A Combat Soldier’s Journey through the Second World War. He has written lengthy introductions to two of Mahan’s books, and has written on historical and foreign policy topics for The Diplomat, the University Bookman, Joint Force Quarterly, the Asian Review of Books, the New York Journal of Books, the Claremont Review of Books, American Diplomacy, the Washington Times, The American Spectator, and other publications. He is an attorney, an adjunct professor of political science at Wilkes University, and a contributing editor to American Diplomacy.


9. How Democracies Live – The Long Struggle for Equality Amid Diversity


Conclusion:


In this time of urgency, Americans should closely look at these proposals. As Mounk and Gest make clear, it will take a lot of work and creativity for the United States to achieve the democracy renovation its people deserve.


How Democracies Live

The Long Struggle for Equality Amid Diversity

By Danielle Allen

September/October 2022

Foreign Affairs · by Democracy in the Time of Coronavirus · September 16, 2022

This is not a fire drill. The U.S. political system really is burning. The country is sizzling with contention between hard-left progressives, left-leaning liberals, right-leaning liberals, and right-wing nationalists. Each faction sees itself as entrenched in fierce combat both internally—within its party of affiliation—and across the partisan divide. Americans who support former President Donald Trump cannot agree with those who are anti-Trump about virtually any issue: immigration, the proper role of religion and corporations in public life, the outcome of the 2020 election. Yet as polling shows, Americans do agree on one thing: U.S. democracy is extremely fragile.

Red alerts for U.S. democracy abound. Some have been public and collective, such as the January 6, 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol, during which a group of insurrectionists attempted to keep Trump in power. Others have been political but also deeply personal. Far from the headlines, many Americans constantly live with the effects of democratic decay. In 2009, I lost a beloved younger cousin, whose bad choices were compounded by unjust policies that encourage mass incarceration and gun violence in a way that brought about his demise. This tragedy led me to join the fights against the country’s so-called war on drugs and for criminal justice reform. Both movements have been broadly popular, and yet the government has been slow to act. For me, this experience showcased the state’s diminishing effectiveness. Many other Americans have clearly picked up on the trend. In 2013, Congress’s approval rating fell to a remarkably low nine percent: a clear sign of just how unresponsive the institution has become. Sadly, young people are the most disaffected from U.S. politics. According to 2017 research by the political scientists Yascha Mounk and Roberto Foa, roughly 70 percent of Americans born before World War II believe it is essential to live in a democracy. Among millennials, the figure is below 30 percent.

The United States has historically been the proof point that activists and leaders around the world look to when arguing that constitutional democracy can lead to durable, successful governance. Saving U.S. democracy is, therefore, critical to saving democracy worldwide. Now, one of the United States’ biggest challenges is how to transition successfully from past and current demographic patterns, in which most Americans have identified and continue to identify as white, to a stable multicultural democracy in which no single ethnic or ethnoreligious subgroup is in the majority—and in which no group dominates any others.


Red alerts for U.S. democracy abound.

Two excellent new books can help the country navigate this challenge: Mounk’s The Great Experiment and Justin Gest’s Majority Minority. Mounk, who holds an appointment at Johns Hopkins University, argues that justly managing increasing demographic diversity will be difficult. Most of the world’s democracies are, after all, highly homogeneous, with one ethnic group making up the overwhelming share of the country’s population. As I wrote in The Washington Post in the wake of the 2017 white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, “the simple fact of the matter is that the world has never built a multiethnic democracy in which no particular ethnic group is in the majority and where political equality, social equality and economies that empower all have been achieved.” This is the work ahead in the United States. Mounk’s project in The Great Experiment is to provide Americans with a philosophical foundation and some practical actions for mastering this task.


Majority Minority also grapples with how the United States can grow more diverse without succumbing to authoritarian nationalism. Gest, a political scientist at George Mason University, notes that politicians across the country are using fear of newcomers to whip up support and win office, all with dangerous consequences. “Unless America’s political, business, and civil society leaders change course,” he argues, the United States risks adopting “an illiberal form of governance” that fully entrenches the minority rule of a political faction or ethnoreligious subgroup.


The United States has grappled with significant racial disparities since its founding.

Both Mounk and Gest use the term “majority minority” throughout their books. It is a common phrase. I used it, too, in my 2016 essay, “Toward a Connected Society,” in which I argued that maximizing bridge-building social ties is the appropriate goal for a highly pluralistic constitutional democracy in which no single ethnic group is in the majority. (Gest draws on this essay.) Yet I have come to think that the phrase is a profound mistake, a term that obscures more than it illuminates. It encourages people to think that demography is destiny when it very much is not; one cannot straightforwardly infer clear political implications from demographic patterns. To the contrary, ethnic and political affiliations are inevitably the result of the work of political entrepreneurs, as many scholars have shown and as both Gest and Mounk point out. The phrase also conveys an undue sense of political threat to white Americans, feeding a misguided anxiety among them that now they alone will be in the minority. Instead, the United States’ coming political challenge is that everyone will begin “from the psychological position of fearing to be a member of a vulnerable minority,” as I wrote in 2017. “Experiences of uncertainty, anxiety and endangerment are widely spread. Out of such soil grows the poison plant of extremism.” As the United States works to build a stable constitutional democracy in conditions of significant pluralism, it needs to tamp down anxiety rather than trigger it. Scholars and commentators must abandon the term “majority-minority country” and acknowledge instead that Americans can know only that their country is likely to be a place where no single ethnic group or ethnoreligious group is in the majority.

Despite using this phrase, Mounk’s and Gest’s books offer substantial wisdom and good advice on how the United States can achieve a stable, inclusive, and egalitarian constitutional democracy in conditions of maximal diversity. Gest argues that although the United States is currently on a perilous political path, it is not too late for the country to change course. The United States, he writes, has “structural advantages” that make it possible to reimagine U.S. nationhood and reconcile the U.S. population as one people. These include the facts that the country’s many minority groups are themselves incredibly diverse and do not form a single group (contrary to what the majority-minority label would imply); that recent immigration has been continuous and voluntary; and that the country has an increasing number of multiethnic and mixed-religion residents. Mounk is, ultimately, upbeat. “The great experiment can succeed,” he writes.

Gest’s sober analysis of the dynamics currently at play and Mounk’s optimism are both well supported, and the authors are good partners in the fight to protect democracy. Yet their diagnoses fail to capture the true depth and scope of the problem. They both primarily approach the political challenges flowing from the United States’ diversity as if they are largely contemporary and mostly driven by the growing share of the U.S. population that is foreign born. But the United States has grappled with significant, persistent racial disparities in opportunity and outcome since its founding. Establishing a truly diverse democracy will require not just integrating new (and relatively new) arrivals but also giving members of all the country’s communities—including long-standing minority communities—equal political and economic power. This is a task at which the United States has fallen short for centuries. There is much to learn, then, from both the analyses of Mounk and Gest and from their limitations.

RECKONING WITH RACE

Mounk and Gest start their books by recognizing that the United States is in the midst of a dramatic transition. If current demographic projections hold, by 2045, white people will make up less than 50 percent of the U.S. population. It is a trend that many political observers, including Mounk, worry could strengthen ethnonationalist politicians. As he observes, humans have a tendency to form groups and turn against outsiders, a dynamic that can spur anarchy, domination, and fragmentation— especially in states in which the most powerful group fears it is losing power. It is easy, Mounk writes, to think that society “will forever be characterized by a clash between the historically dominant and historically oppressed.”

Gest is also concerned that the United States will struggle to remain democratic while growing more diverse. He spends time on comparative empirical case studies of immigrant incorporation and demographic transitions, and he looks at multiple places where increased diversity has led to dangerous, oppressive policies. In Bahrain and Singapore, he writes, demographic change was met with political suppression. In Mauritius and Trinidad and Tobago, increased diversity made racial identity central to politics, leading to irresolvable social tensions. But Gest also explores optimistic scenarios. He argues, for example, that in Hawaii and New York City, immigrants and other minorities achieved full acceptance and access to opportunities. Gest sees both of the optimistic cases as templates for the United States at large. The successful resolution of social conflict, he writes, is “contingent on whether the state equally enfranchises the newcomer population and whether its subsequent redefinition of the national identity is inclusive or exclusive—according to the combination of state institutions and rhetoric.” As the country grows more diverse, U.S. policymakers, he says, should actively redefine their country’s identity to include people of color clearly. Mounk also sees hope in the United States’ past, sketching out how the “great majority of African Americans” have by now entered the middle class, defined as the second through fourth quintiles of income distribution.


These parallels and examples do provide some insight into the challenges that can hinder—as well as the opportunities that can support—the full incorporation of minority communities. Yet the accounts by both authors also gloss over the depths of the country’s difficult history when it comes to race. According to Gest, reconciliation in New York City was achieved in the period from 1890 to 1940 because the white majority repeatedly broadened its membership to include new ethnic groups: the Germans, the Greeks, the Irish, the Jews, and the Italians. He does not mention that this broadening took place while Asian, Black, and Mexican Americans were forcibly excluded. Expanding the definition of “white” sharpened their status as outsiders and others. This process, then, is better understood as an example of how the United States previously failed to achieve a democratic demographic transition because immigrant incorporation produced more racial domination.


Demonstrators at a voting rights rally in Austin, United States, July 2021

Tamir Kalifa / Reuters

Mounk’s report on Black upward mobility is also incomplete. He fails to acknowledge that 20 percent of Black Americans still live below the poverty line (in contrast to about eight percent of non-Hispanic whites) and that if current incarceration rates remain unchanged, one out of every three Black boys can expect to be incarcerated in the future. Mounk may be right that most Black people don’t live below the poverty line, but it is also true that far too many still do.

If it wants to stay democratic, the United States must transition to full power sharing across all segments of society, not just incorporate foreign-born residents and their children. The country needs to muster the institutional and cultural resources needed to achieve this broad shift. The question, then, is not only if Gest’s and Mounk’s advice assists in incorporating immigrants but also whether it can help the United States overcome the long-standing patterns of domination to which other minority communities have been subjected.

Contemporary politics makes solving this problem even more difficult. On the right, an emboldened populist vanguard is trying to resist power sharing and has captured a substantial swath of the Republican Party apparatus. On the left, radical activists seek total victory over old ways of doing things and have embraced practices of naming, blaming, and shaming that don’t exactly call people into the project of participation and collaboration. It is too easy for people to make a career-destroying mistake without room for a second chance, and the result is that many potential allies just disengage. These are not equivalent threats: only the far right has actively tried to sabotage the peaceful transfer of power, the bedrock of any democratic system. But regardless of the differences in the two factions’ strength and access to power, their persistence and growing influence will make it difficult for political leaders to construct a coalition that can both win and implement change.

LINK UP

Despite their shortcomings in diagnosing the United States’ challenges, Gest and Mounk do offer valuable prescriptions that can help everyone. Gest calls on leaders to use “connectedness as a criterion of governance.” Policymakers, he writes, should ask three related questions when making decisions: first, whether their actions “reinforce or break down social boundaries between people”; second, whether their decisions can “be adjusted to strengthen the sense of connection between people”; and third, whether their actions will lead people to “trust this institution more and participate in its efforts.” If broadly applied, this framework will foster decisions that help groups better coexist and more fully engage in the U.S. political process.

Mounk shares Gest’s interest in connectedness—although he does not use that vocabulary or go so far as to make it a formal principle. He calls on U.S. activists and policymakers to turn their political system into the governmental equivalent of a public park. The public park, he writes, is “open to everyone,” “gives its visitors options,” and “creates a vibrant space for encounter.” He writes: “The best thing you can do to advance the lived reality of a thriving diverse democracy is, quite simply, to get out of your own bubble. Seek out opportunities to build bridges to members of other groups.” Mounk recognizes that achieving this will require not just cultural commitments but real institutional change—including altering political institutions via implementing ranked-choice voting and ending gerrymandering, both of which could help reduce polarization.


It is time for the United States to revisit its approach to immigration.

Both authors also encourage a deep rethinking of U.S. strategies for political rhetoric in order to lower the temperature. As Gest puts it, political leaders should work to avoid “rhetoric-induced panic” and instead develop strategies of messaging to “construct unifying narratives about the nation and its identity.” Mounk writes that as “polarization in many democracies intensifies, and extremists attempt to poison the tone of the public debate, there is a growing temptation to turn politics into a Manichean struggle between ‘us’ and ‘them.’” To counter this, he offers principles for political speech, including “be willing to criticize your own” and “don’t ridicule or vilify; engage and persuade.”


Mounk’s most striking suggestion has to do with immigration policy: he argues that advocates of diverse democracies should embrace tight controls over borders. “There appears to be a tight empirical link between border enforcement and public views of immigration,” he writes. “Roughly speaking, countries that have weakened their determination to control their own borders have seen attitudes toward immigration turn more hostile. By contrast, countries that have strengthened control over their own borders have seen citizens grow more welcoming of immigration.”

Mounk’s view is heterodox from the perspective of his intellectual community, and he deserves credit for offering it. He is also right that the time is here to revisit our approaches to immigration, which is at the root of many of the challenges in U.S. politics. Tech libertarians see recent levels of immigration as a great boon and evidence of the health of the country’s institutions, but both the nationalist right and the left are dissatisfied with the present system. The former sees immigration as proof that U.S. institutions are out of sync with the country’s needs, and the latter argues that the United States has failed to give 11 million undocumented people a right to participate, wronging these immigrants and dramatically reducing the voice of labor in politics. Mounk spends barely a page on his important and controversial proposal, so it is hard to evaluate in this spare form. But some of the immigration policies that most benefit Silicon Valley—for instance, having hosts (such as companies) sponsor immigrants— could be extended far more broadly through the immigration system to address problems that both the right and the left see.

CALLING IN

Building a truly multicultural U.S. democracy must begin with a renewed investment in political liberalism: the philosophical commitment to a government grounded in rights that protect people in their private lives and empower them to help govern public life. This style of government is not new to Americans. Over the course of U.S. history, both Democrats and Republicans have been liberals of various flavors, including classical liberals (the more conservative, pro-market variant), New Deal liberals (the big-state Democratic Party variant), and neoliberals (the economically globalizing, democracy-spreading, technocratic variant). Each one has held power at different points in history, shaping U.S. policy in different ways.

Each of these variants was also built on intellectual paradigms that led advocates to believe they could advance the rights of all while reserving power to the few. In the twentieth century, big-state left-leaning liberals repeated the error of exclusion, including by keeping Black Americans out of welfare programs—such as Social Security—for decades. Neoliberals have also developed exclusionary systems. In recent years, this has occurred when the country defers to technocracy, expecting that the best outcomes emerge when experts govern for rather than govern with the rest of the citizenry. The result has been policies that attempt to plan the lives of others.

But the error traces back to the founders, who set up a system they believed would protect the life and liberty of the unenfranchised even as it preserved slavery and kept power concentrated in the hands of white men with property. In a letter that Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, the early U.S. leader John Adams, during the country’s revolution, she expressed skepticism that such a system could do both. Everyone needs “voice” and “representation,” she said, if the government really would protect the rights of all. She made her case on behalf of women, but the same argument has been made consistently for generations by members of a variety of groups suffering from political exclusion and domination.


A pro-Trump demonstrator arguing with an anti-Trump demonstrator in El Paso, United States, August 2019

Jose Luis Gonzalez / Reuters

What the United States requires, instead, is a power-sharing liberalism and a constitutional democracy that rests on it. Creating one will necessitate renovating the country’s political culture, institutions, and economy so that each is fully inclusive, participatory, and effective. This won’t be easy, but a democracy commission created by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, for which I served as a co-chair, recently laid out one practical path forward. The commission’s membership spanned partisan viewpoints, geographies, and demographics. The members nonetheless unanimously endorsed 31 recommendations, each of which would improve the U.S. system.

The proposed reforms include items that are large and structural. The commission, for instance, recommended transitioning elections to ranked-choice voting, introducing multiple-member congressional districts, increasing the size of the U.S. House of Representatives (which would also rebalance the country’s lopsided Electoral College), and establishing term limits for Supreme Court justices. It also recommended creating a system of universal national service for young Americans and redistributing advertising revenue from large technology companies to support local journalism. These changes would increase the proximity between representatives and the represented, create stronger incentives for elected officials to be responsive to the entire U.S. population, and fully include that diverse population in shared self-government. They would also help enable members of different demographic groups and political factions to share power effectively. And they would create more productive ways of structuring how Americans hear disagreements and work through them so that the country can achieve workable, functional, and stable resolutions.

In this time of urgency, Americans should closely look at these proposals. As Mounk and Gest make clear, it will take a lot of work and creativity for the United States to achieve the democracy renovation its people deserve.

  • DANIELLE ALLEN is James Bryant Conant University Professor and Director of the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. She is the author of Democracy in the Time of Coronavirus.

Foreign Affairs · by Democracy in the Time of Coronavirus · September 16, 2022


10. Putin’s Newest Annexation Is Dire for Russia Too


Excerpts:


Today’s annexation, along with the mobilization that has been launched to defend these occupied territories, has also been designed to increase that fear. The battle against independent thinkers is now expanding beyond Putin’s opponents and is reaching even Russians who felt too distant, too apathetic, or too afraid to protest in the past. If, once upon a time, the threat of the gulag was used to keep all Soviet citizens in a state of permanent fear, the threat of the war in Ukraine is now being used in exactly the same way against Putin’s subjects. The regime is now treating ordinary citizens exactly as if they were expendable prisoners, throwing untrained, poorly equipped men into the battlefield, where some are rumored to have already died. New draftees are being driven to empty fields with no shelter and no food, just as new prisoners were once abandoned in the 1930s to build their own labor camps. Putin, like Stalin, believes that his sinister, unbalanced idea of collective glory matters more than the prosperity, well-being, happiness, and even physical existence of ordinary Russians.


But nothing lasts forever: “Your time will pass,” Navalny told his jailers last week. Kara-Murza, in a prison interview published this week, said the same thing: “None of us knows exactly how and when the Putin regime will end—but we know that it will.”


And they are right. We don’t know how and when it will end. Nor do we know what kind of regime will follow. But there is nothing predestined about Putinism or his form of kleptocratic autocracy. There is nothing “forever” about the annexation of territories that aren’t even under full Russian control, and none of the people who were at the annexation ceremony today will live forever either. Russia’s sham annexation of Ukrainian land will end, whatever false words are spoken this week.



Putin’s Newest Annexation Is Dire for Russia Too


His baldly illegitimate claim to four Ukrainian provinces shows contempt for the global order—and his own subjects.

By Anne Applebaum

The Atlantic · by Anne Applebaum · September 30, 2022

Vladimir Putin today announced his annexation of four provinces of Ukraine—four provinces that he does not fully control, that did not vote to join Russia, that have been the site of mass murder and mass deportation since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. With this statement, the Russian president is also declaring war. But this is not merely a war on Ukraine.

Putin’s war—Russia’s war—is also a war on a particular idea of world order and international law, an idea upheld not just by Europeans and North Americans, but by most of the rest of the world, indeed by the United Nations itself. One core principle of this world order is that larger countries should not be able to grab parts of smaller countries, that mass slaughter of whole populations is unacceptable, that borders have international significance and cannot be changed through violence or on one dictator’s whim. Putin already challenged this idea in 2014, when he annexed Crimea. At the time he also held a sham referendum, but he convinced many outsiders that it had some validity. Although some sanctions followed, the world largely gave him a pass. Commerce and diplomacy with Russia continued.

This time, Putin is no longer able even to pretend that the farcical votes he has staged in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson have any validity, and no one, anywhere, believes that they do. The simulation was played out: Armed men went house to house collecting so-called ballots, and some people, left destitute by the war, were bribed in exchange for showing up to vote. But in regions where hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens have been evacuated, deported, or murdered, where violent conflict continues and where an active resistance is raging, nothing remotely like an actual vote could ever have taken place. Even as Putin was speaking in Moscow, the Ukrainians announced that they were surrounding and cutting off a large group of Russian soldiers in Lyman, a strategically significant city in Donetsk province.

Russia’s actions under these circumstances show contempt not only for international lawyers in European capitals, but also for Chinese politicians who like to talk about sovereignty and African diplomats who have agreed that borders matter, even when they are arbitrary. In the upside-down reality that Putin has created, he will now claim that Ukrainians, by defending their own land and their own people, are somehow attacking Russia. He will even raise the stakes, will try to frighten Ukraine and the West by calling Ukraine’s self-defense an existential threat to Russia that requires an extraordinary response—perhaps even a nuclear response, echoing a threat he has made repeatedly since he began his invasion.

Tom Nichols: The Russian clocks are all ticking

This annexation is also more specifically a declaration of war against the democratic world, a statement of contempt for democracy itself. Putin has been treating democracy as a tool for decades, using fake parties, creating fake opponents, and rigging elections. For a long time, he and his spin doctors promoted a form of “managed democracy,” a system that allowed some space for public opinion, while at the same time ensuring that he always remained in power. With today’s announcement, he no longer pretends or plays games. This deliberate farce mocks the very idea of referenda, of voting, of popular opinion. Nothing about this act has any legitimacy, and that is also part of the point. In his world, there is no such thing as legitimacy. Only brutality matters.

Finally, this annexation marks the culmination of a two-decade war against any Russians whose vision of their country differs from his. Some of those Russians belong to ethnic minority groups—Dagestanis, Buryat, Tuvans, Crimean Tatars, all of whom have been subject to vigorous mobilization drives, as if Putin wants to use his genocidal war against Ukraine to eliminate them as well. Some simply want to live in a country governed by different rules, a country that does not have murderous designs on its neighbors, a country that is not a menace to the world. Although thousands of such people have fled the country over the past decade, the invasion deliberately sparked a new exodus. Putin’s propagandists have celebrated the departure of anti-war Russians as a form of cleansing; Putin himself has said that the nation should “spit them out like a midge that accidentally flew into their mouths.”

Since the war began, the crackdown at home has also accelerated, because the war provides the context in which dissent can be portrayed as treason, and because any criticism of the war is a crime. Newspapers, websites, social-media channels, and civic groups of all kinds have been shut down. More than 16,400 Russians have been detained in prison for protesting. In the past few days, some protesters have received draft notices after being taken to jail. Others are now the focus of special efforts to undermine and destroy them. Alexei Navalny, the Russian politician who came the closest to creating a grassroots, anti-Putin, prodemocracy movement, received a nine-year jail sentence in May and is now locked in a maximum-security prison. He has spent most of the past several weeks in an isolation cell, as punishment for tiny (or invented) infractions of jailhouse rules. Other inmates are forbidden to speak with him and even to look at him. But his anti-corruption foundation continues to function in exile (I am an unpaid member of its advisory board). And when he was allowed to speak in an internal prison court last week, Navalny responded to Putin’s call for the mobilization of military reservists without mincing words: “It is already clear that the criminal war that is going on is getting worse and deeper, and Putin is trying to involve as many people as possible in this. He wants to smear hundreds of thousands of people in this blood.”

Vladimir Kara-Murza, another opposition politician who has played an important role in campaigning for individual sanctions, is also in prison, where he remains equally defiant. “It continues to amaze me,” he told an interviewer via smuggled messages, “how many serious Western analysts buy the Kremlin’s propaganda on the ‘overwhelming popularity’ of Putin and of the war. If this were true, the authorities wouldn’t need to rig elections, muzzle the media, or imprison and murder their opponents. The Kremlin knows the real situation—and the only thing it has left in the toolbox to prevent protests in Russia is fear.”

Today’s annexation, along with the mobilization that has been launched to defend these occupied territories, has also been designed to increase that fear. The battle against independent thinkers is now expanding beyond Putin’s opponents and is reaching even Russians who felt too distant, too apathetic, or too afraid to protest in the past. If, once upon a time, the threat of the gulag was used to keep all Soviet citizens in a state of permanent fear, the threat of the war in Ukraine is now being used in exactly the same way against Putin’s subjects. The regime is now treating ordinary citizens exactly as if they were expendable prisoners, throwing untrained, poorly equipped men into the battlefield, where some are rumored to have already died. New draftees are being driven to empty fields with no shelter and no food, just as new prisoners were once abandoned in the 1930s to build their own labor camps. Putin, like Stalin, believes that his sinister, unbalanced idea of collective glory matters more than the prosperity, well-being, happiness, and even physical existence of ordinary Russians.

Brian Klaas: Putin didn’t think he would fool anyone

But nothing lasts forever: “Your time will pass,” Navalny told his jailers last week. Kara-Murza, in a prison interview published this week, said the same thing: “None of us knows exactly how and when the Putin regime will end—but we know that it will.”

And they are right. We don’t know how and when it will end. Nor do we know what kind of regime will follow. But there is nothing predestined about Putinism or his form of kleptocratic autocracy. There is nothing “forever” about the annexation of territories that aren’t even under full Russian control, and none of the people who were at the annexation ceremony today will live forever either. Russia’s sham annexation of Ukrainian land will end, whatever false words are spoken this week.

The Atlantic · by Anne Applebaum · September 30, 2022




11. Russia’s withdrawal from Lyman comes a day after Putin said he was annexing the region.


Putin must be setting up the argument for when Ukraine attacks to retake these annexed territories that they are attacking Russian sovereign territory. Ukraine must conduct some counter preparation of the information environment to debunk what what should be an obviously incredible (or uncredible) claim by Russia. But given Zelensky's and Ukraine's apparent information savvy he does not need our advice and will do this.


But my worry is that Putin could also be preparing the justification for the use of nuclear weapons when Ukraine does attack the "annexed" region. 


Russia’s withdrawal from Lyman comes a day after Putin said he was annexing the region.

By Erin Mendell ANDREW E. KRAMER HIROKO TABUCHI EDWARD WONG Thomas Gibbons-Neff Michael Crowley Evan Hill Yousur Al-Hlou,  Matthew Mpoke Bigg Masha Froliak The New York Times14 min

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Ukrainian soldiers near the city of Lyman in the eastern Donetsk region. The Ukrainian administrative leader of Donetsk said on Friday that the city was “half encircled.”Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

RIVNE, Ukraine — Russian forces withdrew from the strategic eastern city of Lyman on Saturday, just a day after President Vladimir V. Putin’s internationally derided declaration that the region where it lies and three others in Ukraine were now part of Russia.

The battle for Lyman, a city in Donetsk Province with a pre-war population of 20,000, is particularly poorly timed for the Kremlin after it illegally declared its annexation of swaths of Ukraine and Kyiv’s stunning victories in the country’s northeast last month.

Hours after Ukraine’s defense ministry said its forces were entering the city, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said in it had taken the decision to pull out of Lyman.

“In connection with the creation of a threat of encirclement, the allied troops were withdrawn” from the city to a “more advantageous” location, the ministry said in a statement posted on Telegram.

The acknowledgment came after Ukraine’s Defense Ministry posted a video on Twitter showing two soldiers unfurling the country’s yellow-and-blue flag at a sign marking the city limits. The army “will always have the decisive vote in today’s and any future ‘referendums,’” it added in a pointed reference to the annexation process.

A senior Ukrainian military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Lyman was “already liberated.”

“A mop-up is ongoing,” the official said. “The Russians have nowhere to run.”

The city’s position on the banks of the Siversky Donets river means its recapture by Ukrainian forces would lend them a strategic foothold for further advances east. It also would put additional pressure on the Kremlin, which has been facing blowback at home over its setbacks on the battlefield and the conscription of hundreds of thousands of men to fight in Ukraine.

Maps: Tracking the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Ukrainian forces are close to encircling the eastern city of Lyman, a major rail hub, in a continuation of their eastern counteroffensive.

For Russia, the new setback comes at a particularly sensitive moment: less than 24 hours after Mr. Putin on Friday delivered his most fiery speech of the war, one that cast Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as part of an existential conflict with the West, which he called “the enemy.”

Confirmation of the withdrawal staved off a potential worst-case scenario for the Kremlin in which Russian troops are trapped in the city.

Lyman, which fell to the Russians in May, serves as a rail hub that flows into Donbas, the mineral rich region comprised of Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk Province that has long been the focus of Mr. Putin’s war aims.

Michael Schwirtz, Anton Troianovski and Matthew Mpoke Bigg contributed reporting.


Ukrainian servicemen walk by a crater left by a missile strike near Zaporizhzhia on Friday.Credit...Genya Savilov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

From a distance, the double column of cars and minivans stopped on a broad strip of pavement in a province in southern Ukraine appears frozen in time. The vehicles contain the belongings of people on a long journey: suitcases, full plastic bags and water bottles.

But all around are signs of the violence of the strike that hit a convoy of people fleeing fighting in Zaporizhzhia Province early on Friday. A crater lies a few yards to the right of the convoy, its edges blackened. The vehicles are pockmarked by shrapnel, most of their tires deflated and their windows blown out.

In all, 30 people died and 88 people were wounded in a Russian missile attack, according to the region’s police chief, Ihor Klymenko. Pictures from the scene showed security personnel removing bodies that had been placed in black plastic sacks, while others still lay on the ground.

An 11-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy died and a 3-year-old girl was wounded, he said in a post on Facebook.

Natalia, who asked that her last name not be published out of concern for her safety, said she had driven her car with four passengers into the line and stepped out to stretch as the first explosion rang out. “I don’t know how many explosions there were,” she said in an interview. “I lay on the ground to wait it out.”

The second blast shattered the windows of her car and about a dozen more followed. “When it was over, I ran,” she said, passing a macabre scene of dead and injured.

“People were lying on the ground, near their cars or a little away, depending on how far they got, and they were dead.”

She was grazed by shrapnel, but she said that two of her passengers, a man and a woman, died, and two others were wounded. Speaking of Russian forces, she said: “I don’t understand their logic, if it exists at all.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky noted the timing of the attack, which came hours before President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia announced in Moscow, to great domestic fanfare, that Russia would take control of four Ukrainian regions including Zaporizhzhia. The annexation was denounced by Ukraine and the West as illegal.

“Another farce took place in Moscow today,” Mr. Zelensky said in an overnight address on Friday. “Something was celebrated there. They were chanting something there. They sang in the square. They were talking about Zaporizhzhia, when they themselves arranged such a thing in Zaporizhzhia.”

The strike is the latest in a litany of large-scale attacks on civilian targets since Russia invaded in February. Those include an attack at a railway station in Kramatorsk that killed 50 in eastern Ukraine in April; a missile strike on a shopping mall in the city of Kremenchuk in June that killed at least 16; and an attack at a shopping mall in the city of Vinnytsia in July that killed 20. Russia has often denied responsibility or blamed Ukraine for civilian deaths.

Russia has appeared to step up its strikes on eastern and southern targets in recent days. Four civilians died in Donetsk province on Friday, the head of the regional military association, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said on the Telegram social messaging app. And a mother and a three-month-old baby were wounded in the port city of Mykolaiv overnight when a missile hit a house, according to the city’s mayor, Oleksandr Sienkevych.

Experts questioned the military value of the attacks as Ukraine made territorial gains in the northeast of the country in September and inroads in the east.

A British military intelligence report said on Saturday that Russia may be using up scarce supplies of the type of long-range air defense missile used in the Zaporizhzhia attack.

“Russia’s stock of such missiles is highly likely limited and is a high-value resource designed to shoot down modern aircraft and incoming missiles, rather than for use against ground targets,” the report said.

— and


The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in August. The plant was taken by Russian forces in March but is run by Ukrainian engineers.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

Russia detained the director general of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant on Friday, and his location was not known, the company that operates the plant said in a statement.

The site’s director general, Igor Murashov, is responsible for nuclear and radiation safety, according to the statement from Energoatom, the Ukrainian national energy company. His detention poses a threat to the facility’s operation, the company added.

The plant was taken by Russian forces in March but is run by Ukrainian engineers. Fighting near the nuclear plant, Europe’s largest, has raised international concern about an accident. Shelling has at times caused the plant to be disconnected from Ukraine’s power grid, which Ukraine’s energy minister has said put critical cooling systems at risk of relying solely on emergency backup power.

The car that Mr. Murashov was in was stopped on the road leading to the plant around 4 p.m., and he was blindfolded and taken to an unknown location, the statement said.

Energoatom called on Russia to return Mr. Murashov and urged nuclear security officials including Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to work on his release. Ukraine’s foreign ministry echoed those calls in a statement, saying that Russia must immediately release Mr. Murashov and urging the agency to take “decisive measures.”

The agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, has had two inspectors at the plant since September. It said in a statement Friday that there had been a series of land mine explosions near the plant in recent days that was jeopardizing safety and security at the facility.

The latest blast, the sixth reported in a week, damaged a low-voltage cable outside the fence perimeter, according to the agency. The explosion was close to a nitrogen-oxygen facility and indirectly damaged a voltage transformer at one of the reactors, the statement said. Earlier in the week, the agency said the land mines appeared to have been set off by animals.

Both Ukrainian and Russian military forces have accused each other of using the specter of nuclear disaster in brinkmanship in the war by waging attacks around the plant. Mr. Grossi said in a statement that he was continuing efforts to establish a security zone around the nuclear plant.

The nuclear agency did not immediately comment on Mr. Murashov.

The plant is in the region of Zaporizhzhia, which is part of the area of eastern and southern Ukraine that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia moved to illegally annex on Friday.

Ukrainian officials have noted the fatigue and stress of Ukrainian control room employees, saying that Russian soldiers have subjected them to harsh interrogations, including torture with electrical shocks, suspecting them of sabotage or of informing the Ukrainian military about activities at the plant.

Russian forces killed at least 20 people, including 10 children, in a shooting attack on a convoy carrying people fleeing northeastern Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said on Saturday.

It was not immediately possible to independently confirm the details of the attack, which would mark the latest in a series to claim the lives of civilians in recent days and follows a missile strike on a convoy in Zaporizhzhia Province on Friday in which 30 people were killed and scores were wounded.

Vasyl Maliuk, the acting head of the security service of Ukraine, said that the civilians were leaving a “gray zone” between Svatove, a Russian-occupied town in the eastern province of Luhansk, and heading northwest toward the city of Kupiansk in Kharkiv Province, which was recaptured by Ukraine in September.

“A brutal attack on civilians was carried out by a sabotage and intelligence group of the occupiers,” he said in a post on the Telegram social messaging app. The attackers shot six cars and a truck at close range with small arms, he said. While he did not specify when the attack took place, Ukraine’s prosecutor general said that the authorities had discovered the convoy on Friday and that a preliminary investigation showed the attack took place on Sept. 25.

Russian authorities did not immediately comment.

Ukrainian forces staged a rapid counter offensive in Kharkiv Province in early September, reclaiming the cities of Izium and Kupiansk, and the town of Balakliya, in a significant setback for the Kremlin. They are now pushing south toward the eastern Donbas region and in recent days have advanced to the city of Lyman in the north of Donetsk Province.

The military advance has brought many civilians back under the control of Ukrainian authorities, ending a brutal Russian occupation that lasted for months.

The United Nations Children’s Fund, Unicef, said in August that nearly 1,000 children have been killed or wounded since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.


The New York Times exclusively obtained recordings of thousands of calls that were intercepted by Ukrainian law enforcement agencies.Credit...The New York Times

KYIV — The Ukrainian capital was supposed to fall in a matter of days. But plagued by tactical errors and fierce Ukrainian resistance, President Vladimir V. Putin’s destructive advance quickly stalled, and his forces became bogged down for most of March on the city’s outskirts.

From trenches, dugouts and in occupied homes in the area around Bucha, a western suburb of Kyiv, Russian soldiers disobeyed orders by making unauthorized calls from their cellphones to their wives, girlfriends, friends and parents hundreds of miles from the front line.

Someone else was listening in: the Ukrainian government.

The New York Times has exclusively obtained recordings of thousands of calls that were made throughout March and intercepted by Ukrainian law enforcement agencies from this pivotal location.

The calls, made by dozens of fighters from airborne units and Russia’s National Guard, have not previously been made public and give an inside view of a military in disarray just weeks into the campaign. The soldiers describe a crisis in morale and a lack of equipment, and say they were lied to about the mission they were on — all conditions that have contributed to the recent setbacks for Russia’s campaign in the east of Ukraine.

The conversations range from the mundane to the brutal, and include blunt criticisms of Mr. Putin and military commanders, remarks that may be punishable under Russian law if they were publicly expressed at home. The Times is using only the first names of the soldiers, and is withholding the names of family members in order to protect their identities.

Produced by Rumsey Taylor and Matt Ruby. Translations by Aleksandra Koroleva and Oksana Nesterenko.

— and


Residents casting their votes in a referendum on Sunday in Donetsk, a province of eastern Ukraine that Russia has claimed as part of its territory.Credit...Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters

WASHINGTON — President Biden condemned Russia’s claimed annexation of captured Ukrainian territory on Friday, responding to Moscow’s latest escalation with a range of sanctions and a warning to President Vladimir V. Putin that the United States would defend “every single inch” of NATO territory from a potential attack.

Hours after Mr. Putin gave a speech asserting Russian control over four eastern Ukrainian regions, Mr. Biden called the action a “fraudulent” violation of international law that showed “contempt for peaceful nations everywhere.”

“The United States is never going to recognize this, and quite frankly the world is not going to recognize it either,” Mr. Biden said from the White House. “He can’t seize his neighbor’s territory and get away with it. It is as simple as that.”

World leaders rallied around Mr. Biden in a forceful collective denunciation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

President Emmanuel Macron of France said Russia had committed a “serious violation of international law and Ukrainian sovereignty” and vowed on Twitter to help Ukraine “recover its full sovereignty over its entire territory.”

Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general, called Mr. Putin’s move “an illegal and illegitimate land grab” and pledged to continue assisting Ukraine until it defeated the aggressor.

Even among Russia’s traditional allies, no country stepped forward to recognize the annexation. Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia, issued a statement before Mr. Putin’s speech calling for “respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity and the noninterference in the internal affairs of other states.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine responded to Russia’s claims by announcing that he was fast-tracking his country’s application to NATO. In a video, he accused the Kremlin of trying to “steal something that does not belong to it.”

“Ukraine will not allow that,” he said.

But Mr. Zelensky’s request to join the alliance drew a less resounding response.

“Right now, our view is that the best way for us to support Ukraine is through practical, on-the-ground support in Ukraine,” said Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser.

— and

Video



The leaks from the Nord Stream undersea pipelines, hit by explosions in recent days, could be among the largest-ever human-caused releases of planet-warming methane gas into the atmosphere, scientists say — equal to the size of a whole year’s emissions from a city the size of Paris, or a country like Denmark.

Now, researchers at the Integrated Carbon Observation System, a Europe-wide research network that runs air monitoring stations across the continent have taken readings of methane gas from the leaks and combined them with weather and other atmospheric patterns to model the path of the plume. The gas curled its way north over the Baltic Sea to the Finnish archipelago before swinging west toward Sweden and Norway and reaching the British Isles.

The researchers say that the modeling is preliminary; it shows the emissions ending, for example, though methane continues to surge from the damaged pipelines, causing a mass of bubbles on the water’s surface. And estimating an exact reading of the amount of methane released is still tricky, said Alex Vermeulen, an atmospheric scientist who heads the European network’s carbon monitoring effort.

There was no direct safety or health risk to regions directly below the methane plume, Dr. Vermeulen said. Concentrations of methane at that point in time after the explosions would be far below levels where the gas would be explosive, or pose direct health hazards.

Still, the ground-based observations from measuring stations in Scandinavia and in the United Kingdom were proving valuable in tracking the release, especially because satellites, blocked by cloudy weather in the region, have struggled to get a clear picture of the leaks. GHGSat, a company that uses satellites to measure greenhouse gas emissions from space, said Friday that one of the leaks was releasing 23 tons of methane an hour — the equivalent of burning 630,000 tons of coal every hour.

Even a leak of this magnitude is just a fraction of overall global emissions. But methane is a particularly potent if short-lived greenhouse gas, warming the atmosphere about 30 times more than carbon dioxide over a period of 100 years, helping to worsen climate change. Just Thursday, scientists said that the oil and gas industry was likely releasing more methane into the atmosphere than previously estimated.

“All these leaks together, we have gas going into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate,” Dr. Vermeulen said. “That’s a big concern.”

© 2022 The New York Times Company.


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12. Forging the ‘New Era’: The Temporal Politics of Xi Jinping


Excerpts:


As we approach the 20th Party Congress, many expect to see the formal contraction of the lengthy “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era” to simply “Xi Jinping Thought” (习近平思想). As David Bandursky of the China Media Project noted, this would be an important consolidation of Xi’s long-term power. Bandursky wrote: “These abbreviations, far from being incidental, must be regarded as chess moves in the longer rhetorical game, in which the ultimate victory will be the final transformation of Xi Jinping’s 16-character banner term into a 5-character banner term.”
However, I think we are more likely to see increased usage of “new era” in official discourse. The real “victory” for Xi Jinping is perhaps the 8-character “Xi Jinping Thought in the New Era” (习近平新时代思想). This temporal element ties Xi to both his Marxist roots and the future of China’s rejuvenation, and distinguishes his doctrine from both Mao and Deng’s. The discourse of a “new era” works to place Xi as the center of gravity in China’s space-time.
In sum, we should recognize the “new era” as an emergent strategic narrative that is seeking to further political objectives. Academics, policymakers, business circles, and analysts should go further to understand the implications of China’s exercise of “discourse power.” We should not take the so-called “new era” for granted.


Forging the ‘New Era’: The Temporal Politics of Xi Jinping

The “new era” – connoting a fundamental historical shift – has been systematically fused with the persona of Xi in Chinese official discourse.

thediplomat.com · by Hugo Jones · October 1, 2022

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On Monday, Xi Jinping and other senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders attended a 30,000 square meter exhibition titled “Forging Ahead in the New Era.” For the past five years, the term “new era” (新时代) has appeared with increasing frequency in China’s white papers, propaganda, official speeches, and public diplomacy. Further declarations pertaining to the “new era” are certain to feature in the CCP’s public messaging during the 20th Party Congress, to be held in mid-October, heralding both achievements of the “new era” so far and promises of what is to come.

Why is this important? The discourse of a “new era” is hardly unique to Xi Jinping’s China. Various parties and regimes around the globe use the hyperbole of historical eras to associate themselves with progress and their critics with antiquity. See, for example, U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss’ comments at the United Nations last week, where she proclaimed a “new Britain for a new era.” A year earlier U.S. President Joe Biden declared a “new era” of U.S. diplomacy. Hu Jintao also made a single reference to a “new era” during his speech at the 17th Party Congress in 2007.

The difference between these examples and today’s China is the growing centralization of power around Xi Jinping. The “new era” – connoting a fundamental historical shift – has been systematically fused with the persona of Xi in Chinese official discourse. This process began in earnest with the 19th Party Congress in 2017 and Xi’s keynote speech, in which a “new era” was mentioned 46 times. Since then, the “new era” has been retroactively applied in official statements to refer to the period following the 18th Party Congress in 2012, equating the “new era” to all of Xi Jinping’s tenure as general secretary of the CCP.


From early on in his premiership, it was clear that Xi Jinping sought historical significance greater than that of his two immediate predecessors, Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin. This was also encouraged by a growing Chinese nationalism, which predates Xi. In a 2014 journal article, retired PLA officers Liu Mingfu and Wang Zhongyuan wrote: “The era of Xi Jinping has two meanings: the era of Xi Jinping in a narrow sense is the next 10 years, which is limited by Xi Jinping’s term of office. In a broad sense, the era of Xi Jinping refers to the next 30 years… and the successful realization of the Chinese Dream.”

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Liu and Wang were prescient in understanding how the language of an “era” could be used to extend Xi Jinping’s political power, even beyond the deadline demanded by succession norms. In 2018, presidential term limits were formally removed from China’s constitution. In the same year “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” was added to the CCP constitution. These constitutional changes instruct the party and the state to think in terms of pre- and post-Xi.

The CCP is well known for mobilizing history in support of the regime. Party historical resolutions to this end have been issued under Mao Zedong (1945), Deng Xiaoping (1981), and Xi Jinping (2021). However, the 2021 historical resolution refers to “periods” (时期) for the achievements made under Mao and Deng’s rule, and “era” (时代) for those under Xi. Similarly, during a speech to the Communist Youth League in May 2022, Xi made the period/era distinction between the two previous leaders and himself. An “era” is more momentous than a “period” in Chinese – creating an intentionally grander historical context for Xi.

So what is the “new era”? Despite a growing body of Chinese literature on the “new era,” these analyses tend to simply stress the importance of following “Xi Jinping Thought.” The most comprehensive outline of the “new era” can be found at the source, Xi’s (three hour) speech at the 19th Party Congress:

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Chinese socialism’s entrance into a new era is, in the history of the development of the People’s Republic of China and the history of the development of the Chinese nation, of tremendous importance. In the history of the development of international socialism and the history of the development of human society, it is of tremendous importance.

For Xi, while the “new era” is scalable from the local to the international context, it is ultimately all about China: “It will be an era that sees China moving closer to center stage and making greater contributions to mankind.”

As such, the “new era” has been interpreted by many international observers as China entering a new phase in its history due to changes in its material power. From this perspective, the new era can be seen in charts depicting changes in China’s GDP per capitamilitary spending and technological advancement. However, I argue that the “new era” is better understood as a form of “discourse power” (话语权) that seeks to legitimize the centralization of power around the CCP and, specifically, Xi Jinping.

The Discourse Power of a “New Era”

The notion of a “new era” is embedded in a Marxist-Leninist understanding of historical development through the lens of dialectic materialism, or historical materialism. The discourse of a “new era” places China under Xi Jinping within a specific stage of socialist development. The “new era” is also derived from a narrative of national rejuvenation that long precedes Xi, based on ideas of China’s historical place in the world, a lingering victim mentality, and the project of developing China’s comprehensive national power.

As a result, the prevalence of rejuvenation discourse under Xi is not surprising – this has permeated Chinese political discourse since the foundation of the PRC. But equally Xi did not need to declare a “new era” to align his leadership with a pre-existing narrative of national rejuvenation. From 2012 it was already clear that his time as China’s leader would likely coincide with the first centenary goal of achieving a moderately prosperous society. But Xi actively went one step further, and transposed another temporal framework over Chinese history with the concept of a “new era.”

Rather than a specific political agenda, the language of a “new era” is a powerful example of how Xi understands discourse power as a tool to advance broad normative change and to strengthen his personal power. Adding “in the new era” or “for the new era” to statements on various policy areas, such as securitydevelopmentdiplomacypoverty alleviationhuman rights, evokes the context of an inevitable and objective tide of change. Moreover, it ties Xi Jinping to that change. This seeks to create the space for more radical departures from previous domestic and international norms.

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The “New Era” as a Source of Legitimacy

The discourse of a “new era” serves three functions. First, it bolsters the CCP’s legitimacy in a domestic context. “New era” is plastered across China’s state media landscape, where each day multiple articles, editorials, and news segments are devoted to a particular item “in the new era.” This acts as propaganda for the idea that the CCP is now operating under different conditions. This framing allows Xi to diverge from long-standing political and economic decision-making norms such as a Dengist approach to market regulation, or the two-term limit for China’s president, by making Xi’s measures seem timely in a changing world. As Xi said in 2017, “as history progresses and the world undergoes profound changes, the Party remains always ahead of the times.”

The “new era” is also used to provide the context for sensitive issues such as Tibet, Xinjiang, and Taiwan – Xinhua reported in 2020 that Xi said “facts prove that the party’s policies on Xinjiang in the new era are completely correct and must be adhered to in the long term.” And in August the State Council released a white paper titled “The Taiwan Question and China’s Reunification in the New Era.”

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Second, the discourse of a “new era” is used to empower the CCP and challenge norms internationally. The strongest example was on February 4, when Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin released a joint statement on “International Relations Entering a New Era,” a major foreign policy declaration that aligned China with Russia weeks before the invasion of Ukraine. In the past couple of years, China has also begun referring to “comprehensive strategic partnership for a new era” (emphasis added) with certain parties, including Russia and Uzbekistan, in what seems like a soft extension of its tiered partnership diplomacy.

The discourse of a “new era” is also used to challenge the U.S., NATO, and Western countries that belong to the “old,” unipolar era of global politics. The “new era” is presented by China as the just temporality of a multipolar, post-imperial world. This can be seen in the way the “new era” is increasingly used in Chinese public messaging to provide context for South-South relations, such as the eighth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in November 2021. This messaging paints Xi Jinping as the figurehead of a “new era of international relations” in an attempt to bolster his legitimacy as a global leader in a changing world (not necessarily successfully).

Third, the discourse of a “new era” serves to reinforce the idea that the government of China, and the governance of Xi, is always thinking in the long term, operating on fundamentally different time scales to the Western world. This reinforces certain orientalist tropes that China is inherently “better” at grand strategy. Despite its popularity, this narrative disguises the reality that Xi and the CCP are often as short-sighted as other regimes – the chaotic “zero-COVID” policy is just one example. This reminds us that we should take the narrative of a “new era” with a fair degree of skepticism.

The New Era after the 20th Party Congress

As we approach the 20th Party Congress, many expect to see the formal contraction of the lengthy “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era” to simply “Xi Jinping Thought” (习近平思想). As David Bandursky of the China Media Project noted, this would be an important consolidation of Xi’s long-term power. Bandursky wrote: “These abbreviations, far from being incidental, must be regarded as chess moves in the longer rhetorical game, in which the ultimate victory will be the final transformation of Xi Jinping’s 16-character banner term into a 5-character banner term.”

However, I think we are more likely to see increased usage of “new era” in official discourse. The real “victory” for Xi Jinping is perhaps the 8-character “Xi Jinping Thought in the New Era” (习近平新时代思想). This temporal element ties Xi to both his Marxist roots and the future of China’s rejuvenation, and distinguishes his doctrine from both Mao and Deng’s. The discourse of a “new era” works to place Xi as the center of gravity in China’s space-time.

In sum, we should recognize the “new era” as an emergent strategic narrative that is seeking to further political objectives. Academics, policymakers, business circles, and analysts should go further to understand the implications of China’s exercise of “discourse power.” We should not take the so-called “new era” for granted.


Hugo Jones

Hugo Jones is a program and research associate at LSE IDEAS, the London School of Economics’ foreign policy think tank. He holds an MSc in International Relations from LSE.

thediplomat.com · by Hugo Jones · October 1, 2022



13. China drops the gauntlet on NSA’s serial cyberattacks


Snowden's legacy lives on.


On a separate note I never noticed the acronym for Tailored Access Operations = "TAO." Perhaps there is some irony that it is the Chinese philosophy. 


Tao or Dao is the natural order of the universe, whose character, one's intuition must discern to realize the potential for individual wisdom, as conceived in the context of East Asian philosophyEast Asian religions, or any other philosophy or religion that aligns to this principle. This intuitive knowing of life cannot be grasped as a concept. Rather, it is known through actual living experience of one's everyday being. Its name, Tao or Dao (Chinese (help·info)), came from Chinese, where it signifies the way, path, route, road, or sometimes more loosely doctrine, principle, or holistic belief.

Tailored Access Operations (TAO) is a "way, path, route, road" to victory in cyberspace. (just a slight attempt at some humor)


Then again how did they come up with the name "Suctionchar?" 


Here is a 2017 article that mentions "Suctionchar" as well as another interesting one: "Stoicsurgeon." https://www.cyberscoop.com/nsa-shadow-brokers-leaks-iran-russia-optimusprime-stoicsurgeon/


China drops the gauntlet on NSA’s serial cyberattacks

Beijing accuses US spy agency of using trojans, malware and other cyber weapons to bombard defense industry-linked university


asiatimes.com · by Jeff Pao · September 30, 2022

China’s top cybersecurity authority has accused the US National Security Agency (NSA) of stealing information from a top Chinese university through a trojan virus, an allegation that threatens to escalate already high and rising bilateral tensions.

China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC) claimed in a recent report that NSA’s Office of Tailored Access Operation (TAO) had used a cyber weapon known as “Suctionchar” to take control of computer servers at Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU) in the city of Xi’an.

The CVERC claims to have analyzed over 1,000 NSA cyberattacks on the university and said in a statement that it hoped nations worldwide could use the analysis to prevent themselves from being attacked by the US.


China’s foreign ministry, meanwhile, urged the US to immediately stop infringing on the technology secrets of Chinese institutions and offer a responsible explanation for the alleged cyberattacks. The NSA, an intelligence arm of the US Department of Defense, has not responded to the accusations.

According to the CVERC, the attacks have been ongoing for a long period but were only discovered in June this year by Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU), which specializes in aeronautical, astronautical and marine engineering research and works closely with China’s defense industry.

On June 22, NPU said it had called the police after it found malware and trojan viruses in its computer servers with the help of Qihoo 360, a Chinese internet security company that develops and sells antivirus software programs.

The CVERC released three separate reports on the alleged NSA attacks in September and accused the NSA-affiliated TAO of attacking the university with 41 types of “cyber weapons.”

In a report released on September 5, the CVERC said TAO had launched more than 10,000 attacks on China’s computer networks in recent years and supposedly controlled tens of thousands of servers, terminals, telephones, routers and firewalls across the country.


The US NSA has allegedly launched cyberattacks on a top Chinese university. Image: Screengrab / CNN

It claimed TAO had stolen 140 gigabytes of high-value data from China over the years and identified 13 people by name in the US who allegedly launched or were somehow responsible for the attacks.

The CVERC claimed TAO had used 54 so-called “jump servers” in 17 countries, 70% of which were based near China, including in Japan and South Korea, to attack NPU.


First, the CVERC claimed TAO used platforms such as “Foxacid,” “Ebbisland” and “ebbshave” to penetrate NPU’s computer system. Then the NSA allegedly used trojan viruses such as “NOPEN,” “Seconddate” and “DanderSpritz” to seize control of the university’s servers and core network facilities.


After that, spyware such as “Suctionchar” and “Enemyrun” was released on NPU’s computers to steal user passwords. Finally, malware including “Toast” was used to clean and erase any cyber tracks of the attacks.

The CVERC said Robert Edward Joyce, a former deputy director at TAO and the current director of the NSA’s Cybersecurity Directorate, was in charge of all the attacks. Joyce has not publicly commented on the allegations and Asia Times could not immediately contact him for comment.

On September 13, the CVERC published a more detailed report about how “Suctionchar” was used to steal login information from NPU’s computer users. On Tuesday, it released an updated report on its investigations into the cyber-attacks and said that many pieces of evidence showed the NSA had initiated them.


CVERC said all the attacks were launched during working hours in the US while the attackers used American English, keyboards and codes. It pointed to one case where the alleged NSA attacker made a mistake by leaving traces after using the trojan virus NOPEN. It added that most “cyber weapons” used in the attacks were similar to known NSA tools.


Mao Ning, a Chinse foreign ministry spokesperson, said in a media briefing on September 5: “The US’s behavior poses a serious danger to China’s national security and citizens’ personal information security. China strongly condemns this and asks the US side to offer an explanation and immediately stop its unlawful moves.”

Mao said on September 13 that China had asked the US via various channels to explain its “malicious cyberattacks” and immediately stop its “unlawful behavior” but had yet to receive any substantive response from the contacted US units and agencies.


It is not the first time that the CVERC or Chinese officials have accused the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and NSA of targeting China with cyberattacks.


China claims the US NSA is penetrating sensitive cybernetworks using malware and other cyber weapons. Image: Facebook

In a June 29 report, the CVERC said “Foxacid” remained one of the NSA’s main platforms for launching cyber-attacks globally, particularly against China and Russia. It likened Foxacid and related malware to a “black hole in the universe” that could suck information from all kinds of connected devices.

The report said it was able to analyze the Foxacid platform as it used the highly-classified information leaked by Edward Snowden, the renowned whistleblower former NSA employee and subcontractor.

In May 2013, Snowden fled to Hong Kong and leaked thousands of NSA documents that showed how the NSA and its associated “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance operated online surveillance programs worldwide. He later moved to Russia to escape prosecution in the US.

Snowden was granted permanent residency in Russia in 2020 and this month was granted Russian citizenship by President Vladimir Putin.

The Global Times, a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, in a commentary on September 29 criticized the US DoD for treating cyberspace as a “fifth battlefield”, along with land, sea, air and space.


It said the US used malware to attack other countries’ computer networks in order to maintain its cyber hegemony and called on countries to join together to fight against US cybersecurity threats.

Read: China’s state media turning on Putin’s war

Follow Jeff Pao on Twitter at @jeffpao3

asiatimes.com · by Jeff Pao · September 30, 2022



14. The Best Way to Combat Putin’s Nuclear Threats




The Best Way to Combat Putin’s Nuclear Threats

The U.S. shouldn’t intervene directly, but it should help Ukraine develop a credible deterrent.

By Jakub Grygiel

Sept. 30, 2022 6:24 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-best-way-to-combat-putins-nuclear-threats-vladimir-russia-war-weapons-national-security-ukraine-military-europe-11664571529?utm_source=pocket_mylist


Vladimir Putin has again threatened to use nuclear weapons to protect Russia and its people. In his remarks Friday, he extended that nuclear deterrence over the 15% of Ukraine’s territory that Russia annexed after sham referendums that ended on Wednesday. That even includes some lands already liberated by the Ukrainian army. Mr. Putin’s threats constitute an offensive use of nuclear weapons, imperial expansion through nuclear threats. He must be stopped, but how?

It is tempting for the U.S. to take a leading role. These are not the ramblings of a weakened dictator; Mr. Putin has an idea of how to use nuclear weapons to achieve his purpose. The response from the Biden administration to these serious threats has been swift. National security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday the U.S. would “respond decisively” to a Russian nuclear attack on Ukraine, with “catastrophic consequences for Russia.”

The details of such a response aren’t known, but it is fair to assume that it would involve a U.S. strike with conventional weapons on Russian targets. U.S. long-range missiles and air power could destroy Russia’s Black Sea Fleet by targeting the port of Sevastopol in Crimea. Or America could establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine, with U.S. planes targeting Russian fighter jets, radar installations and bases. This would result in a direct war between the U.S. and Russia.

Given the poor performance of the Russian military so far, direct American involvement would be catastrophic for Mr. Putin’s forces. But the threat may not be sufficiently credible to deter Mr. Putin from using nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

Washington’s stated goal is to avoid a world war, and rightly so. President Biden publicly announced in March that while he will defend NATO, he won’t go to war with Russia over Ukraine. This is at odds with the current American threat to respond “decisively” to a Russian use of nukes in Ukraine, which makes it less likely that Mr. Putin and his advisers will take them seriously. They may assume that Mr. Biden is bluffing, that his administration’s fear of a catastrophic conflict may be greater than its promise of “catastrophic consequences.”

Moreover, an American military attack against Russian forces is likely to lead to a collapse in European support for Ukraine. The unity of the Western alliance isn’t a given and has already been imperiled by economic strife resulting from high energy prices. It’s still standing strong because Kyiv’s allies have struck a careful balance between supporting Ukraine and avoiding war with Russia. Wobbly Western European states, facing a cold, bleak winter, may balk at the risk of a direct war with Russia.


Finally, Mr. Putin may not fear a military setback inflicted by the U.S. as much as the West thinks he should. In fact, he may welcome an American retaliatory strike against Russian targets because it would strengthen his domestic support. Russians could see the West not only as an enemy peddling cultural decadence, but also as the first military aggressor against Mother Russia since Nazi Germany.

Instead of vowing a U.S. response to a tactical nuclear strike, it would be more credible instead to threaten Moscow with a massive Ukrainian response with Western-supplied conventional weapons on Russia soil. This could mean arming Ukraine with long-range missiles, such as Army Tactical Missile Systems, capable of striking targets in Russia; airplanes, such as F-16s, that could help establish air dominance; and superior land capabilities, such as M1 tanks. The U.S. could put conditions on the use of some of these weapons, such as only using them in the case of a Russia tactical nuclear attack.

There are risks to giving Ukraine such capabilities. Many Western leaders worry that Ukraine may launch strikes on Russia ahead of a nuclear strike, unnecessarily escalating the war and potentially driving Mr. Putin to such a desperate place that he might lash out against other countries. But fear of such entrapment is overblown. Ukraine isn’t suicidal and is likely to escalate by striking targets inside Russia only if it is attacked first. Authorities in Kyiv can calculate on their own the costs of escalation, perhaps even better than distant friends or allies for whom nuclear deterrence is a theoretical game.

The alternatives to arming Ukraine are grim: Either the U.S. risks a nuclear war with Russia or Moscow’s nuclear intimidation succeeds, motivating brinkmanship and even nuclear proliferation in front-line states threatened by their nuclear neighbors.

Mr. Grygiel is a professor at the Catholic University of America, a senior adviser at the Marathon Initiative, and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.


15. Enduring Lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis



Excerpts:


What lessons might diplomats infer from all this? Don’t be afraid of groping your way in the darkness. Stay fearful of—and focused on—nuclear weapons. Take chances. And don’t be so sure of continued good luck. We’ve been lucky for 77 years. We’re used to the worst thing not happening. But it could, and may.
You have to keep trying. You can’t rest on luck built by others.

Enduring Lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis

JFK came to understand the need to be ‘disciplined in self-restraint,’ as he put it in a 1963 speech.


By Peggy NoonanFollow

Sept. 29, 2022 6:42 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/enduring-lessons-of-the-cuban-missile-crisis-russia-ukraine-nuclear-weapons-world-war-iii-reagan-jfk-speech-history-war-11664486986?utm_source=pocket_mylist



In October it will be 60 years since the Cuban missile crisis, which has been called the most dangerous crisis in recorded history. The Soviet Union had secretly placed missiles in a base in Cuba; the U.S. discovered them through secret aerial photographs. What would President John F. Kennedy do, less than two years into his presidency and 1½ since the botched Bay of Pigs invasion? It is a famous story told in books, movies and monographs, but it bears another look and deeper reflection as Vladimir Putin threatens nuclear use in Ukraine.

Weeks ago Ukraine’s top military chief warned that there is “a direct threat of the use . . . of tactical nuclear weapons by the Russian armed forces.” Gen. Valery Zaluzhny wrote: “It’s also impossible to completely rule out possibility of the direct involvement of the world’s leading countries in a ‘limited’ nuclear conflict, in which the prospect of World War III is already directly visible.”

What can we learn from what happened 60 years ago? The JFK Library website has transcripts, tapes and documents of White House deliberations as the crisis played out. What strikes you as you read and listen is the desperate and essential fact that they were groping in the darkness to keep the world from blowing up.

From the transcript of a White House meeting the morning of Oct. 16, the first day of the 13-day crisis:

Secretary of State Dean Rusk: “Mr. President, this is a, of course, a [widely?] serious development. It’s one that we, all of us, had not really believed the Soviets could, uh, carry this far.”

JFK asked why the Russians would do this. Gen. Maxwell Taylor suggested they weren’t confident of their long-range nuclear weapons and sought placement of shorter-range ones. Rusk thought it might be that Nikita Khrushchev lives “under fear” of U.S. nuclear weapons in Turkey and wants us to taste the same anxiety.

U.S. officials knew where most of the missiles and launchers were in Cuba, but not where the nuclear warheads were, or even if they’d arrived.

Should the U.S. attack the bases? If so, should it warn the Soviets first?

JFK: “Warning them, uh, it seems to me, is warning everybody. And I, I obviously—you can’t sort of announce that in four days from now you’re going to take them out. They may announce within three days they’re going to have warheads on ’em. If we come and attack they’re going to fire them. Then what’ll we do?”

You can hear the tension in the voices, and you can hear them because JFK secretly taped the deliberations, as he taped many conversations. No one knows why; historians have evinced a pronounced lack of interest in the question.

READ MORE DECLARATIONS

See more...

But it’s good he did, because it allows us to see decision-making played out at the highest level and with the highest possible stakes. Seemingly small things tell you worlds about general mood and approach. When JFK called to brief Harold Macmillan, the British prime minister said it might encourage the Soviets to withdraw the weapons if actions were taken to “help the Russians save face.” He offered to “immobilize our Thor missiles here in England” temporarily. JFK said he’d bring the idea forward. This was the West working to defuse things and encourage constructive action. Conceivably, were it discovered, Macmillan could have paid a political price for this at home; he never mentions that.

As the political scientist Graham Allison has noted, JFK was focused on big, strategic nuclear weapons. He didn’t know and couldn’t have known that Khrushchev had already sent smaller, tactical nukes to Cuba, under a Soviet commander who was on the ground there. If JFK had bombed the missile sites instead of using naval blockades and creative diplomacy, he might have unleashed what he was trying to prevent.

In the end, of course, Khrushchev withdrew the missiles. JFK, who had previously admitted to him that the Bay of Pigs was a mistake, repeated a promise not to invade Cuba. He secretly promised, too, that the U.S. would get its missiles out of Turkey.


But the story doesn’t end there. Eight months later, in June 1963, Kennedy gave a speech in which he described how the crisis had convinced him that the entire Cold War must be rethought. His speechwriter, Ted Sorensen, told me years later it was the “most important” speech he’d ever worked on. I saw in his eyes he meant the greatest, and he was right.

The nature of war has changed, Kennedy said. We can’t continue with great powers having huge nuclear arsenals and possibly resorting to their use: “A single nuclear weapon contains almost 10 times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War.” A major nuclear exchange could extinguish the world.

To believe peace is impossible is to believe war inevitable, and if that is so then mankind is doomed. “We need not accept that view.” No government is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in every virtue. America and the Soviet Union are “almost unique among the major world powers” in that “we have never been at war with each other.”

If we can’t resolve all our differences, we can at least turn to common interests. “For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”

Importantly, there was this: “Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war.” Choosing that path would be evidence of a “collective death-wish for the world.” That is why U.S. military forces are “disciplined in self-restraint” and our diplomats “instructed to avoid unnecessary irritants and purely rhetorical hostility.”

He said talks would soon begin in Moscow toward a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty. He vowed to act as if it were already in place.

Kennedy’s insight that nuclear weapons changed the facts of human history was shared by Ronald Reagan. Like Kennedy, he respected Russia’s nuclear arsenal. Reagan said, privately and publicly, that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” He had been shocked, years before his presidency, to spend a day at Norad and absorb all the implications of the doctrine of mutual assured destruction. As president his way would be stark candor coupled with increased strength and no sudden moves. Between 1982 and 1985 three Soviet leaders died, but when Reagan got a partner he could work with, Mikhail Gorbachev, he attempted, at Reykjavik in 1986, to abolish nuclear weapons outright. Later they achieved a historic arms-control agreement.

What lessons might diplomats infer from all this? Don’t be afraid of groping your way in the darkness. Stay fearful of—and focused on—nuclear weapons. Take chances. And don’t be so sure of continued good luck. We’ve been lucky for 77 years. We’re used to the worst thing not happening. But it could, and may.

You have to keep trying. You can’t rest on luck built by others.

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WSJ Opinion: How Real Is Putin's Threat to Use Nukes in Ukraine?

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Appeared in the October 1, 2022, print edition as 'Enduring Lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis'.



16. Legislators from Japan to Europe Visit Taiwan to Talk Defense, Chips


Excerpts:

Taiwan’s security is also becoming a domestic concern in Japan, as a Chinese attack on Taiwan could quickly affect Japan’s outlying islands such as Okinawa because of their proximity to Taiwan, said Eleanor Shiori Hughes, a Washington-based analyst who follows Taiwan and Japan. This was underlined in August when Chinese missiles landed in Japan’s exclusive economic zone nearby, she said.
As the security of Japan’s outlying islands becomes a domestic issue in Japan, media there reported in mid-August that Tokyo was considered building a civilian evacuation shelter off the southern island of Okinawa citing anonymous government officials.


Legislators from Japan to Europe Visit Taiwan to Talk Defense, Chips

September 30, 2022 6:47 AM

voanews.com

TAIPEI, TAIWAN —

Visits to Taiwan by its official and unofficial allies are returning to pre-pandemic levels with increasingly high-level officials and parliamentarians visiting to strengthen ties and show diplomatic support.

While a wave of visits by U.S. legislators followed in the footsteps of a historic trip by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in early August, visitors from other countries such as Japan, Guatemala, Palau, and Tuvalu, and from Europe signal growing interest in Taiwan.

The visits also coincided with several days of Chinese military exercises around Taiwan’s main island to protest Pelosi’s visit, raising tensions to some of the highest levels seen since late 1995 and early 1996, when China test-fired missiles across the Taiwan Strait.

While some of these trips may have been planned months in advance, some commentators called the wave of trips the “Pelosi effect” -- as the Taiwan Strait heats up, officials are eager to show their support for Taiwan or, conversely, that they are tough on China.

Japan’s conservative party ups its visits

Visits by Japanese politicians to Taiwan have increased since last year, said Sheila Smith, a senior fellow for Asia-Pacific Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, with most hailing from the ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party.

Last summer, the LDP held its first interparty dialogue with Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party on defense and other issues. Since then, there has been a “significant uptick” in visitors, Smith told VOA, including former LDP defense ministers.

Delegations of Japanese legislators also visited shortly before and after Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan and several subsequent days of military exercises staged by China in protest. Smith said these politicians may have hoped to grab some of the spotlight as had their American counterparts.

“My sense is as the American congressional delegations are going one after the other after Pelosi, the Japanese decided they need to be in the communications as well and demonstrate their empathy or sympathy with Taiwanese democracy,” Smith said.

Taiwan’s security is also becoming a domestic concern in Japan, as a Chinese attack on Taiwan could quickly affect Japan’s outlying islands such as Okinawa because of their proximity to Taiwan, said Eleanor Shiori Hughes, a Washington-based analyst who follows Taiwan and Japan. This was underlined in August when Chinese missiles landed in Japan’s exclusive economic zone nearby, she said.

As the security of Japan’s outlying islands becomes a domestic issue in Japan, media there reported in mid-August that Tokyo was considered building a civilian evacuation shelter off the southern island of Okinawa citing anonymous government officials.


In this photo released by the Taiwan Presidential Office, Taiwanese President President Tsai Ing-wen speaks during a visit by French lawmakers led by French Senator Joel Guerriau at the Presidential Office in Taipei, Taiwan, June 9, 2022.

Europeans returning to pre-pandemic levels

Taiwan is a frequent destination for European visitors and trips are finally returning to their pre-pandemic levels, according to data compiled by China Observers in Central and Eastern Europe, a Prague-based analysis group. Twelve European delegations have visited so far this year, including groups from France, Lithuania, and the Czech Republic between July and September -- around and just after Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan.

Filip Šebok, China research fellow at the Czech Republic-based Association for International Affairs, said by email that while numbers are still returning to pre-pandemic levels, the tone of the trips has changed as “almost any delegation to Taiwan is now a political statement.”

Higher-level officials have also started visiting, as well, which since 2020 have included members of the European Parliament with a political interest in Taiwan. Many European legislators have also expressed interest in Taiwan’s world-famous semiconductor industry as the region tries to solidify their chip reserves amid a global shortage.

Recent trips include one made by Lithuanian Deputy Transport and Communications Minister Agne Vaiciukeviciute in the midst of Chinese military exercises in early August. While the trip was intended to discuss issues like electric buses, China sanctioned Vaiciukeviciute for the trip by suspending all types of exchange with her ministry and suspending all cooperation with LIthuania in the field of international road transport in its latest punitive measure against the tiny Baltic state for befriending Taiwan. China suspended imports from Lithuania last year to punish it for closer ties to Taiwan.

Marcin Jerzewski, head of the Taiwan office of the Center for European Values, said while these visits may be largely symbolic, they help Taiwan’s soft power diplomacy in Europe.

"This is why MPs are important,” Jerzewski told VOA. "They can bring the story of Taiwan back to constituencies and strengthen the importance of Taiwan not only at the elite level but also among individuals and the electorate.”

Treaty allies and Pacific security concerns

High-level visits by Taiwan’s treaty allies, mostly small countries in the Pacific, Caribbean, and Latin America, have also trickled in despite recent tensions with China.

Over the past month, Taipei received visits from the Guatemalan Foreign Minister Mario Bucaro, Palauan Vice President J. Uduch Sengebau Senior, and Tuvaluan Prime Minister Kausea Natano.

Maintaining ties with even its last few allies is difficult because of pressure from Beijing, said Mihai Sora, a research fellow in the Pacific Islands Program at the Lowy Institute in Australia.

In 2019 Beijing snapped up two Pacific allies from Taiwan -- Kiribati and the Solomon Islands – thanks in parts to its deeper pockets.

“It’s become increasingly difficult for Taiwan to be able to keep up with the bidding war against China for influence in the Pacific,” Sora told VOA, with Beijing reportedly offering the Solomon Islands $500 million to cut ties with Taipei.

The issue has taken on a new dimension in the Pacific as China attempts to expand its naval presence and acquire logging, mining, and fishing rights, he said.

China’s recent security pact with the Solomon Islands also caught countries such as Australia, New Zealand and the United States off guard, said Mark Harrison, a senior lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Tasmania.

Taiwan’s relationship with its last four Pacific allies, Palau, Tuvalu, Naru and the Marshall Islands will be watched more closely by Washington and Canberra so that Beijing does not just marginalize Taiwan but also further expand its position in the Pacific, Harrison said.

Harrison told VOA it was important to watch which legislators have been visiting Taiwan as much as who has failed to visit so far. Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott visited earlier this year, but no sitting Australian officials or legislators have followed in his wake.

voanews.com



17. We Must Reject Russia’s Nuclear Blackmail



Excerpts:


We called for the creation of a Kyiv Security Compact—a strategic partnership that unites Ukraine and a set of guarantor states. The principle is simple: Ukraine’s security relies primarily on its ability to defend itself. To do this effectively, Ukraine needs long-term contributions from its allies. Previous guarantees given to Ukraine were not worth the paper they were written on. The Kyiv Security Compact would be different. It focuses on providing practical, material support to enhance Ukraine’s defensive capabilities.
A core group of Ukraine’s allies, with significant military capabilities, would make a set of commitments that are both politically and legally binding. Alongside these commitments of military support, a broader group of international partners would offer a set of nonmilitary guarantees based on sanctions. These recommendations are not a substitute for Ukraine’s ambition to join NATO. But joining NATO will take time, and we need guarantees to protect Ukraine now.
The Kyiv Security Compact would make clear to Russia that the cost of its aggression will continue to mount, until it becomes too high for it to bear. Helping Ukraine defend itself, survive, and ultimately prevail is the best investment our allies can make to secure a safer future for the whole world.




We Must Reject Russia’s Nuclear Blackmail​

And stop Putin before other dictators follow his lead.

By Andriy Yermak

​(Andriy Yermak is the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine.)​

The Atlantic · by Andriy Yermak · September 30, 2022

It is not often that criminals declare the date and place of the future crime. Only the boldest crooks behave that way. Earlier today, though, Russia followed through on its publicly announced intention to close on its neighbor’s property. At an event in the Kremlin, it declared that it had annexed the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine.

If the world fails to react, evil will prevail. Brute force will override the rule of law. The rules-based world order is crumbling, and we have to act to prevent it from collapsing.

Yesterday, the Russians held fake referenda in sovereign territories of Ukraine. Tomorrow, they can do it elsewhere. Russia has weaponized its diasporas, its language, and its culture itself, using them to attack the integrity and sovereignty of its neighbors.

What’s more, Russia has started threatening Ukraine with nuclear strikes, to intimidate us into giving up the fight for our people and our land. The Russians now realize that they are losing the war they started. That’s why they are resorting to annexation and nuclear blackmail.

From the July/August 2022 issue: We have no nuclear strategy

We know they are not bluffing. But we are not afraid. Nothing can scare us anymore. Ukrainians have seen large cities reduced to ruins. We’ve absorbed many forms of conventional and some forms of unconventional enemy fire. We’ve survived all kinds of torture. We’ve discovered mass graves everywhere the Russians put their boots. For us, this war is an existential fight, and we have no choice but to go on.

Our intelligence agencies assess the threat of Russia’s tactical nuclear-weapons use as “very high.” And Russia’s willingness to make nuclear threats presents a crisis not just for Ukraine, but for every country on Earth. The response to Russia’s nuclear blackmail must be fierce and unequivocal, rejecting the very idea of ​making concessions to a nuclear aggressor. Otherwise, every ambitious dictator will scramble to obtain nuclear weapons, and every responsible nonnuclear nation will seek to acquire nuclear weapons for self-defense. Nonproliferation agreements will be worthless. Nuclear wars, with their millions of casualties, will follow.

To leash an aggressor, you must be determined. Sixty years ago, during the Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy convinced the Soviets that America would respond with the full force at its disposal. Today, we must display a similar degree of resolve. We need to convince Russia that it won’t get away with its annexations, and that it must cease its nuclear blackmail. Otherwise, the world will have to punish Russia sometime later, after the worst has already happened. Preventing a disease is always easier than dealing with its aftermath.

There are concrete steps that Ukraine’s allies could take today to signal their resolve. Earlier this month, I co-wrote a report with Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former secretary-general of NATO, offering a set of recommendations based on our consultations with an international group of experts.

James Kirchick: How the anti-war camp went intellectually bankrupt

We called for the creation of a Kyiv Security Compact—a strategic partnership that unites Ukraine and a set of guarantor states. The principle is simple: Ukraine’s security relies primarily on its ability to defend itself. To do this effectively, Ukraine needs long-term contributions from its allies. Previous guarantees given to Ukraine were not worth the paper they were written on. The Kyiv Security Compact would be different. It focuses on providing practical, material support to enhance Ukraine’s defensive capabilities.

A core group of Ukraine’s allies, with significant military capabilities, would make a set of commitments that are both politically and legally binding. Alongside these commitments of military support, a broader group of international partners would offer a set of nonmilitary guarantees based on sanctions. These recommendations are not a substitute for Ukraine’s ambition to join NATO. But joining NATO will take time, and we need guarantees to protect Ukraine now.

The Kyiv Security Compact would make clear to Russia that the cost of its aggression will continue to mount, until it becomes too high for it to bear. Helping Ukraine defend itself, survive, and ultimately prevail is the best investment our allies can make to secure a safer future for the whole world.

The Atlantic · by Andriy Yermak · September 30, 2022


18. Dangerous, expanding satellite population poses policy challenges to US government


The space application of "big sky little bullet."


Space warfare tactics are also affected by the Big Sky Theory, if unguided projectiles are used. At the vast engagement distances, the subtended angle of the target would be minuscule, and the projectile flight time to target would be great, possibly on the order of an hour or more. If the target vehicle randomly maneuvered every few minutes, the chance of a hit would be extremely small, even if many projectiles were fired. A space weapon using unguided kinetic projectiles flew on the Soviet Almaz military space station.


Dangerous, expanding satellite population poses policy challenges to US government - Breaking Defense

"We need to address space debris so that space is sustainable and remains a working environment," Ezinne Uzo-Okoro, assistant director for space policy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), said today.

breakingdefense.com · by Theresa Hitchens · September 29, 2022

The Satellite Dashboard is an example of an open source tool to monitor close approaches of satellites and debris in space, produced by the Center for Strategic and International Security, the Secure World Foundation, and the University of Texas at Austin. (The Satellite Dashboard)

AMOS 2022 — The rapid increase in constellations comprising large numbers of satellites pose serious environmental hazards in space and to the atmosphere, but mitigation is challenging — in large part because there hasn’t been enough research on what can be done, finds a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

The report, released today, explained that there are “almost 5,500 active satellites in orbit as of spring 2022, and one estimate predicts the launch of an additional 58,000 by 2030.” Large constellations in low Earth orbit (LEO) “are the primary drivers of the increase,” the report said.

“Satellites provide important data and services, such as communications, internet access, Earth observation, and technologies like GPS that provide positioning, navigation, and timing. However, the launch, operation, and disposal of an increasing number of satellites could cause or increase several potential effects,” the report says.

GAO studied three primary threats from that explosion of on-orbit activity: an increase in orbital debris; harmful emissions into the atmosphere from more launches; and the disruption of astronomy as satellites reflect sunlight or cause a cacophony of radio signals. And the congressional watchdog office suggested a number of policy options that US government policymakers could take to mitigate those risks, ranging from funding expanded research to increasing data sharing to setting new standards and regulations.

Of those three threats, the dangers of orbital debris are the most well understood — and the problem that the US and other governments have been most active in attempting to resolve.

The Government Accountability Office reviewed the potential hazards caused by the increase in large constellations of satellites.

“We need to address space debris so that space is sustainable and remains a working environment,” Ezinne Uzo-Okoro, assistant director for space policy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), said today.

“We are looking to develop a risk framework to understand the amount of debris that would impact different stakeholders,” she told the Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance (AMOS) conference in Maui.

That framework will be the result of the OSTP’s “National Orbital Debris Implementation Plan” [PDF] released in July, that set out 44 research tasks for US government agencies to help figure out how the government can better tackle the growth of dangerous space debris.

For example, Uzo-Okoro explained that the Defense Department be helping to build out the framework, using the findings and recommendations from efforts like the interagency Space Systems Anomalies and Failures (SCAF) workshops.

The SCAF workshops are held annually “to bring together civil, industry, academia, and military personnel who do not regularly interact with common interests in space system anomalies and failures including flight and ground system operators, space environment experts, spacecraft designers and mission assurance professionals,” according to NASA website. The next SCAF is slated for March 29 and 30 in Chantilly, Va., also where the National Reconnaissance Office is headquartered.

Further, Uzo-Okoro said, there is thought being given to potential changes to US policy for sharing data with commercial satellite operators about malfunctioning spacecraft that are drifting out of their normal orbits and could potentially crash into others in order to improve on-orbit safety.

The OSTP implementation plan also kicked off a government-wide review of whether government, civil and commercial operators should be exhorted, or required under federal agency licensing regulations, to de-orbit dead satellites earlier than the deadline of 25 years after end of life. That review of the US government’s Orbital Debris Mitigation Standards and Procedures is being led by NASA, with participation from the Pentagon and other agencies.

“We do need an updated review, because 25 years is too long,” Uzo-Okoro said.

Meanwhile, the independent Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today made a first move in that direction — deciding to require that satellite operators subject to its own regulations must de-orbit spacecraft stationed in LEO within five years after they cease to operate.

The FCC regulates the use of radio frequency spectrum, and thus most commercial satellite operators (and all commercial satellite communications operators) must get its approval before launch. The commission first proposed re-consideration of the 25-year rule back in April 2020, and on Sept. 8, it issued a draft ruling to set the disposal deadline at five years. Today’s action, made at the monthly FCC public meeting, made that deadline formal — although operators are being given a two-year window to make the shift.

“The new 5-year rule for deorbiting satellites will mean more accountability and less risk of costly collisions that increase debris,” the FCC said in a press release announcing the new order.

FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel stressed that the change was necessary to ensure the growing space economy.

“Our space economy is moving fast. The second space age is here. For it to continue to grow, we need to do more to clean up after ourselves so space innovation can continue to respond,” she said in a statement following the decision.

breakingdefense.com · by Theresa Hitchens · September 29, 2022



19. Opinion | Alexei Navalny: This is what a post-Putin Russia should look like



Opinion | Alexei Navalny: This is what a post-Putin Russia should look like

The Washington Post · by Alexei Navalny · September 30, 2022

Global Opinions



September 30, 2022 at 8:00 a.m. EDT

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is serving a nine-year sentence in a maximum-security penal colony. This essay was conveyed to The Post by his legal team.

What does a desirable and realistic end to the criminal war unleashed by Vladimir Putin against Ukraine look like?

If we examine the primary things said by Western leaders on this score, the bottom line remains: Russia (Putin) must not win this war. Ukraine must remain an independent democratic state capable of defending itself.

This is correct, but it is a tactic. The strategy should be to ensure that Russia and its government naturally, without coercion, do not want to start wars and do not find them attractive. This is undoubtedly possible. Right now the urge for aggression is coming from a minority in Russian society.

In my opinion, the problem with the West’s current tactics lies not just in the vagueness of their aim, but in the fact that they ignore the question: What does Russia look like after the tactical goals have been achieved? Even if success is achieved, where is the guarantee that the world will not find itself confronting an even more aggressive regime, tormented by resentment and imperial ideas that have little to do with reality? With a sanctions-stricken but still big economy in a state of permanent military mobilization? And with nuclear weapons that guarantee impunity for all manner of international provocations and adventures?

It is easy to predict that even in the case of a painful military defeat, Putin will still declare that he lost not to Ukraine but to the “collective West and NATO,” whose aggression was unleashed to destroy Russia.

And then, resorting to his usual postmodern repertoire of national symbols — from icons to red flags, from Dostoevsky to ballet — he will vow to create an army so strong and weapons of such unprecedented power that the West will rue the day it defied us, and the honor of our great ancestors will be avenged.

And then we will see a fresh cycle of hybrid warfare and provocations, eventually escalating into new wars.

To avoid this, the issue of postwar Russia should become the central issue — and not just one element among others — of those who are striving for peace. No long-term goals can be achieved without a plan to ensure that the source of the problems stops creating them. Russia must cease to be an instigator of aggression and instability. That is possible, and that is what should be seen as a strategic victory in this war.

There are several important things happening to Russia that need to be understood:

First, jealousy of Ukraine and its possible successes is an innate feature of post-Soviet power in Russia; it was also characteristic of the first Russian president, Boris Yeltsin. But since the beginning of Putin’s rule, and especially after the Orange Revolution that began in 2004, hatred of Ukraine’s European choice, and the desire to turn it into a failed state, have become a lasting obsession not only for Putin but also for all politicians of his generation.

Control over Ukraine is the most important article of faith for all Russians with imperial views, from officials to ordinary people. In their opinion, Russia combined with a subordinate Ukraine amounts to a “reborn U.S.S.R. and empire.” Without Ukraine, in this view, Russia is just a country with no chance of world domination. Everything that Ukraine acquires is something taken away from Russia.

Second, the view of war not as a catastrophe but as an amazing means of solving all problems is not just a philosophy of Putin’s top brass, but a practice confirmed by life and evolution. Since the Second Chechen War, which made the little-known Putin the country’s most popular politician, through the war in Georgia, the annexation of Crimea, the war in Donbas and the war in Syria, the Russian elite over the past 23 years has learned rules that have never failed: War is not that expensive, it solves all domestic political problems, it raises public approval sky-high, it does not particularly harm the economy, and — most importantly — winners face no accountability. Sooner or later, one of the constantly changing Western leaders will come to us to negotiate. It does not matter what motives will lead him — the will of the voters or the desire to receive the Nobel Peace Prize — but if you show proper persistence and determination, the West will come to make peace.

Don’t forget that there are many in the United States, Britain and other Western countries in politics who have been defeated and lost ground due to their support for one war or another. In Russia, there is simply no such thing. Here, war is always about profit and success.

Third, therefore, the hopes that Putin’s replacement by another member of his elite will fundamentally change this view on war, and especially war over the “legacy of the U.S.S.R.,” is naive at the very least. The elites simply know from experience that war works — better than anything else.

Perhaps the best example here would be Dmitry Medvedev, the former president on whom the West pinned so many hopes. Today, this amusing Medvedev, who was once taken on a tour of Twitter’s headquarters, makes statements so aggressive that they look like a caricature of Putin’s.

Fourth, the good news is that the bloodthirsty obsession with Ukraine is not at all widespread outside the power elites, no matter what lies pro-government sociologists might tell.

The war raises Putin’s approval rating by super-mobilizing the imperially minded part of society. The news agenda is fully consumed by the war; internal problems recede into the background: “Hurray, we’re back in the game, we are great, they’re reckoning with us!” Yet the aggressive imperialists do not have absolute dominance. They do not make up a solid majority of voters, and even they still require a steady supply of propaganda to sustain their beliefs.

Otherwise Putin would not have needed to call the war a “special operation” and send those who use the word “war” to jail. (Not long ago, a member of a Moscow district council received seven years in prison for this.) He would not have been afraid to send conscripts to the war and would not have been compelled to look for soldiers in maximum-security prisons, as he is doing now. (Several people were “drafted to the front” directly from the penal colony where I am.)

Yes, propaganda and brainwashing have an effect. Yet we can say with certainty that the majority of residents of major cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as young voters, are critical of the war and imperial hysteria. The horror of the suffering of Ukrainians and the brutal killing of innocents resonate in the souls of these voters.

Thus, we can state the following:

The war with Ukraine was started and waged, of course, by Putin, trying to solve his domestic political problems. But the real war party is the entire elite and the system of power itself, which is an endlessly self-reproducing Russian authoritarianism of the imperial kind. External aggression in any form, from diplomatic rhetoric to outright warfare, is its preferred mode of operation, and Ukraine is its preferred target. This self-generated imperial authoritarianism is the real curse of Russia and the cause of all its troubles. We cannot get rid of it, despite the opportunities regularly provided by history.

Russia had its last chance of this kind after the end of the U.S.S.R., but both the democratic public inside the country and Western leaders at the time made the monstrous mistake of agreeing to the model — proposed by Boris Yeltsin’s team — of a presidential republic with enormous powers for the leader. Giving plenty of power to a good guy seemed logical at the time.

Yet the inevitable soon happened: The good guy went bad. To begin with, he started a war (the Chechen war) himself, and then, without normal elections and fair procedures, he handed over power to the cynical and corrupt Soviet imperialists led by Putin. They have caused several wars and countless international provocations, and are now tormenting a neighboring nation, committing horrible crimes for which neither many generations of Ukrainians nor our own children will forgive us.

In the 31 years since the collapse of the U.S.S.R., we have witnessed a clear pattern: The countries that chose the parliamentary republic model (the Baltic states) are thriving and have successfully joined Europe. Those that chose the presidential-parliamentary model (Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia) have faced persistent instability and made little progress. Those that chose strong presidential power (Russia, Belarus and the Central Asian republics) have succumbed to rigid authoritarianism, most of them permanently engaged in military conflicts with their neighbors, daydreaming about their own little empires.

In short, strategic victory means bringing Russia back to this key historical juncture and letting the Russian people make the right choice.

The future model for Russia is not “strong power” and a “firm hand,” but harmony, agreement and consideration of the interests of the whole society. Russia needs a parliamentary republic. That is the only way to stop the endless cycle of imperial authoritarianism.

One may argue that a parliamentary republic is not a panacea. Who, after all, is to prevent Putin or his successor from winning elections and gaining full control over the parliament?

Of course, even a parliamentary republic does not offer 100 percent guarantees. It could well be that we are witnessing the transition to the authoritarianism of parliamentary India. After the usurpation of power, parliamentary Turkey has been transformed into a presidential one. The core of Putin’s European fan club is paradoxically in parliamentary Hungary.

And the very notion of a “parliamentary republic” is too broad.

Yet I believe this cure offers us crucial advantages: a radical reduction of power in the hands of one person, the formation of a government by a parliamentary majority, an independent judiciary system, a significant increase in the powers of local authorities. Such institutions have never existed in Russia, and we are in desperate need of them.

As for the possible total control of parliament by Putin’s party, the answer is simple: Once the real opposition is allowed to vote, it will be impossible. A large faction? Yes. A coalition majority? Maybe. Total control? Definitely not. Too many people in Russia are interested in normal life now, not in the phantom of territorial gains. And there are more such people every year. They just don’t have anyone to vote for now.

Certainly, changing Putin’s regime in the country and choosing the path of development are not matters for the West, but jobs for the citizens of Russia. Nevertheless, the West, which has imposed sanctions both on Russia as a state as well as on some of its elites, should make its strategic vision of Russia as a parliamentary democracy as clear as possible. By no means should we repeat the mistake of the West’s cynical approach in the 1990s, when the post-Soviet elite was effectively told: “You do what you want there; just watch your nuclear weapons and supply us with oil and gas.” Indeed, even now we hear cynical voices saying similar things: “Let them just pull back the troops and do what they want from there. The war is over, the mission of the West is accomplished.” That mission was already “accomplished” with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, and the result is a full-fledged war in Europe in 2022.

This is a simple, honest and fair approach: The Russian people are of course free to choose their own path of development. But Western countries are free to choose the format of their relations with Russia, to lift or not to lift sanctions, and to define the criteria for such decisions. The Russian people and the Russian elite do not need to be forced. They need a clear signal and an explanation of why such a choice is better. Crucially, parliamentary democracy is also a rational and desirable choice for many of the political factions around Putin. It gives them an opportunity to maintain influence and fight for power while ensuring that they are not destroyed by a more aggressive group.

War is a relentless stream of crucial, urgent decisions influenced by constantly shifting factors. Therefore, while I commend European leaders for their ongoing success in supporting Ukraine, I urge them not to lose sight of the fundamental causes of war. The threat to peace and stability in Europe is aggressive imperial authoritarianism, endlessly inflicted by Russia upon itself. Postwar Russia, like post-Putin Russia, will be doomed to become belligerent and Putinist again. This is inevitable as long as the current form of the country’s development is maintained. Only a parliamentary republic can prevent this. It is the first step toward transforming Russia into a good neighbor that helps to solve problems rather than create them.

The Washington Post · by Alexei Navalny · September 30, 2022



20.  THE KYIV SECURITY COMPACT – INTERNATIONAL SECURITY GUARANTEES FOR UKRAINE: RECOMMENDATIONS



I was unaware of the Kyiv Security Compact until I read the Atlantic article by Andriy Yermak (the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine) on rejecting Putin's nuclear blackmail. A friend sent me the compact that I have pasted below. The PDF is available at the link.


https://www.president.gov.ua/storage/j-files-storage/01/15/89/41fd0ec2d72259a561313370cee1be6e_1663050954.pdf


 ​Here is a link to an article in the Kyiv Pst that assess he compact.​ https://www.kyivpost.com/article/opinion/op-ed/the-kyiv-security-compact-long-on-aspiration-short-on-brass-tacks-silent-on-ukrainian-nukes.html

THE KYIV SECURITY COMPACT

 

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY GUARANTEES FOR UKRAINE: RECOMMENDATIONS


 

Co-Chairs of the Working Group On International Security Guarantees for Ukraine

 

Mr. Anders Fogh Rasmussen Mr. Andrii Yermak

 

 

Kyiv

13 September 2022


 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

 

This report was prepared based on input and discussions with leading experts from across the democratic world. This includes former Prime Ministers, Ministers, as well as senior officials and academics. The co-authors thank all of them for their contributions.

 

 

PREAMBLE

 

Eight years after illegally annexing Crimea, invading the Donbas and fomenting conflict in Ukraine’s East, Russia has attacked Ukraine for the second time. Russian forces have levelled cities, committed war crimes, and sought to grab Ukraine’s sovereign territory. They have attempted to subdue Ukraine’s population and replace the democratically elected leadership in Kyiv. The war in Ukraine has far reaching consequences both for the region and the world. Stability in the Euro-Atlantic area depends on Ukraine's security.

 

The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances proved worthless. No sufficiently robust, legally and politically binding measures were in place to deter Russian aggression. Unless Ukraine is provided with unique and effective security guarantees – embedded in an eventual peace process – there is no reason to believe that this will not happen again.

 

Ukraine is on the path to EU membership and as a future EU member will benefit from the EU’s own mutual defence clause. Ukraine’s aspiration to join NATO and benefit from its mutual defence arrangements is safeguarded in its Constitution. This aspiration is the sovereign decision of Ukraine. Both NATO and EU membership will significantly bolster Ukraine’s security in the long-term. However, Ukraine needs security guarantees now.

 

These guarantees should enable Ukraine’s self-defence both to deter an armed attack or act of aggression (deterrence by denial), and – in case an attack occurs – to protect the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security of Ukraine (deterrence by punishment).

 

The Kyiv Security Compact will fulfil this purpose by mobilising the necessary political, financial, military, and diplomatic resources for Ukraine’s self-defence. The Compact will consist of a joint strategic partnership document co-signed by guarantor states and Ukraine (as well as bilateral agreements between Ukraine and guarantor states).

 

Alongside reconstruction efforts, these guarantees are key for the millions of Ukrainians displaced by the war to return and build a future in their home country. By designing and adopting them now, they will send a strong message of resolve and unity against the aggressor and for Ukraine’s future. These will be the first such guarantees of the 21st century and can lay the foundations for a new security order in Europe.


KEY RECOMMENDATIONS


 

 

A broader group of international partners including Japan, South Korea, among others, should also support a set of non-military guarantees based on sanctions. It would include snapback sanctions, which are automatically re-applied in case of further Russian aggression. A legal framework should be developed which will allow authorities to seize the property of the aggressor, its sovereign funds and reserves, and the assets of its citizens and entities on the sanctions list. The funds raised should be directed to repair the war damage inflicted on Ukraine.

 

The guarantees framework may be supplemented by additional agreements, dealing with specific issues not covered in the layers of guarantees discussed in this document. It may include an agreement, or set of agreements, between Ukraine and countries producing anti-aircraft and anti-missile defense equipment to provide Ukraine with modern and effective air defense and anti-missile defense systems in sufficient quantity to ensure a "closed sky" from air attacks.

 

The package of guarantees may additionally include regional agreements on the Black Sea with Turkey and other littoral states like Romania and Bulgaria.


 

A.   SECURITY GUARANTEES – COMMITMENTS BY A CORE GROUP OF GUARANTORS REGARDING UKRAINE’S SELF-DEFENCE CAPABILITIES AND CAPACITIES TO DETER AN ATTACK

 

 

CONCEPT AND PRINCIPLES

 

Given its unique geopolitical position, the most effective security guarantees lie in Ukraine’s capacity to defend itself. To be sufficiently robust and credible, Ukraine’s self- defence must be underpinned by binding commitments from a group of international partners to mobilise the necessary military and non-military resources.

 

Ukraine is a European country that is now on the path to EU membership. This process will further integrate Ukraine into the European political community, improve its prospects for reconstruction and development, and strengthen the country’s institutions and security. As an EU member, it will also benefit from the EU’s mutual defence clause under Article 42.7 of the Treaty of the European Union. In the meantime, EU Member States and institutions should do their part in providing security guarantees to Ukraine through sustained arms supplies, financial aid, and with training missions, among others.

 

Ukraine’s aspiration to join NATO and benefit from its mutual defence arrangements is safeguarded in its Constitution. This aspiration is the sovereign decision of Ukraine. In the interim period Ukraine needs iron-clad security guarantees. These will come predominantly – though not exclusively – from NATO countries.

 

The guarantees must not constrain Ukraine to limit the size or strength of its armed forces. Nor should they be drawn in exchange for a specific status, such as neutrality, or put other obligations or restraints on Ukraine. With those guarantees, Ukraine will sustain its capacity to ensure its self-defence. Their aim is to strengthen Ukraine’s territorial integrity, sovereignty, and political independence within its internationally recognized borders. The guarantees should also support Ukraine’s commitment to continuing democratic reforms, as specified in the European Council Conclusions of June 23-24, 2022 on granting Ukraine EU candidate status. Effective security for Ukraine is closely related to a modern society that guarantees its citizens their fundamental rights.

 

 

SCOPE

 

The security guarantees should be codified in a joint strategic partnership document named the Kyiv Security Compact co-signed by a core group of partners that would act as enablers of Ukraine’s self-defence. This could include, but is not limited to, the US, UK, Canada, Poland, Italy, Germany, France, Australia, Turkey, and Nordic, Baltic, and Central European countries. In addition to the strategic partnership document, Ukraine and certain guarantor states may sign bilateral agreements covering specific issues related to security guarantees between Ukraine and the guarantor states.

 

On top of the core guarantors, various layers of countries could join in on additional or specific issues related to security guarantees. The Rammstein Format (also known as


the Ukraine Defence Contact Group), made up of circa 50 countries, could form the basis of this broader group, which can become formalized into a coalition of the willing.

 

Provisions should be applied for Ukraine to both deter and – if needed – defend against another armed attack or acts of aggression. For this, Kyiv will need large defence forces, robust capabilities, and a strong, reformed defence industry. This must be underpinned by sustained investments in its defence industrial base, extensive weapons transfers and intelligence support from allies, and well-trained and exercised forces.

 

To defend itself for the long-term Ukraine will need:

      A high-readiness force that can effectively and forcefully respond to a territorial breach. As stated in NATO’s Madrid Summit Communiqué, Ukraine is ‘vital’ for the stability of the Euro-Atlantic area. As such and with the support of key guarantors, Ukraine must be able to develop a robust territorial defence posture whose ultimate objective is to deter and successfully defend against acts of aggression. Ukraine needs the resources to maintain a significant force capable of withstanding the Russian Federation’s armed forces and paramilitaries.

 

      A massive training and joint manoeuvre programme of Ukrainian forces and partners on Ukrainian territory with international trainers and advisors. Taking advantage of national and multinational training efforts by EU and NATO countries, Ukrainian forces will be trained at NATO standard and at the scale needed to build a robust territorial defence force and reserve force. The training activities will be supported by an extensive exercise programme both on Ukrainian soil and with Ukrainian forces on EU/NATO territory. In addition to training programmes, joint manoeuvres under the Vienna Document (144) will further strengthen the Ukrainian forces, increase military transparency, and serve regional needs.

 

      Advanced defensive systems including providing Ukraine with comprehensive defensive systems to protect key population centres and access points by deploying air and maritime missile defence, cyber capabilities, advanced radar capabilities. Those systems – so called anti- access/area denial (A2/AD) - could incorporate a mix of home-based capabilities and foreign systems. In case of a threat of the use of force or aggression, they could be rapidly augmented by ear-marked systems provided by the key guarantors.

 

      Access to EU’s capability funding to re-build Ukraine’s defence industrial base on EU/NATO standards – and develop with EU member states new defensive capabilities. As a candidate to EU membership, Ukraine could be granted privileged access to EU funding, mainly the European Defence Fund and the European Peace Facility.

 

      Self-defence territorial force for all civilians aged above 18 years old. Modelled on countries with active conscription, Ukraine will need to maintain a large enough territorial defence force, including a reserve service that can be sporadically called for active duty.


 

To achieve this, Ukraine will need the group of international guarantors to:

 

      Provide financial aid and direct investments, including through future reconstruction instruments, to support the national defence budget, as well as ensuring financial assistance (including non-repayable grants) to restore the infrastructure of Ukraine, which was destroyed or damaged by military actions.

 

      Allocate reconstruction funds, including non-repayable financial assistance, towards supporting and building Ukraine’s new national defence industrial base.

 

      Offer technology transfers and arms export.

 

      Coordinate closely among each other to supply capabilities, military equipment, ammunition, and services.

 

      Establish regular training exercises to Ukrainian forces.

 

      Establish a cooperation program on cyber defence and security; and countering cyber threats.

 

      An enhanced intelligence cooperation, including frequent sharing of intelligence and establishing a regular cooperation between the intelligence services of Ukraine and guarantor states.

 

B.   SECURITY GUARANTEES – HOW WOULD THEY WORK IN CASE OF ATTACK: LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS AND MECHANISMS

 

Security guarantees should be both permanent to help build Ukraine’s self-defence capacity on the long term, and scalable to adapt and reflect the level of the threat. While they could be embedded in an eventual peace process, they should be agreed and implemented in the shortest time period.

 

This will demonstrate the unity of the international community with Ukraine, and the continuity and amplification of the current efforts, including under the Ramstein Format. It will also signal to Russia that the cost of aggression will continue to rise.

 

 

1.    LEGAL SCOPE AND ASPECTS

 


To avoid the pitfalls of weak guarantees, Ukraine will need:


      Security guarantees should explicitly commit guarantors to Ukraine’s self- defence. This means creating the parameters for a broad range of responses and not excluding any form of support to assure Ukraine’s self-defence.

 

      Some of those guarantees will be open-ended and on-going: they will include training and exercises, defence investment and cooperation, and weapons supply.

 

      In case of aggression, the joint document should spell out extended guarantee commitments by guarantors to use all elements of their national and collective power and take appropriate measures – which may include diplomatic, economic, and military means – to enable Ukraine to stop the aggression, restore its sovereignty, ensure its security, military edge, and capability to deter its enemies and defend itself by itself against any threat.

 

      The territorial scope of the guarantees applies throughout Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders. At the same time, the extended guarantees are to apply if Ukraine comes under attack on its territory within internationally recognized borders.

 

      According to Uniting for Peace Resolution 377A(V) of the UN General Assembly, the guarantors should seek the support of the UN, most likely via UNGA, within the timeframe discussed below. Nonetheless, all security guarantee provisions will fall under the law on individual and collective self- defence (Article 51 of the UN Charter: (‘Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations…’).

 

      Finally, to achieve the overall political objective of the security guarantees, the joint strategic partnership document should strike the right balance between specific provisions and generic commitments. This could be done by combining the main joint document with an annex, which will lay out more specific provisions reflecting the threat assessment.

 

 

 

 

2.    MECHANISMS – HOW SHOULD THE SECURITY GUARANTEES WORK

 

       Triggers should be based on a joint threat-assessment structure: extended security guarantees should be activated through a mechanism that would require a request from Ukraine to the guarantor states, following “an armed attack or an act of aggression.” Rather than a confirmation from a third-party, such as the UNSC or General Assembly, there should be a degree of automaticity where guarantors would collectively consult with Ukraine.

 

       The decision-making process should be based on the principle of collective consultations followed by individual contributions. Upon a request from Ukraine, guarantors shall gather for collective consultations within a very short


amount of time (e.g. 24 hours) and decide on amplifying the guarantees on the basis of a coalition of the willing (e.g. 72 hours).

 

       The guarantees should be agreed on an open-ended basis. Nevertheless, the guarantees should create a mechanism for guarantors to collectively meet, evaluate and review the guarantees, to keep them meaningful and relevant – and if need be, adjust them to meet the nature and level of threat.

 

       Ukraine and the guarantor states should establish a permanent and ongoing mechanism to monitor threats and security challenges, as well as inform each other about military activities, exercises, and manoeuvres. Towards that end, Ukraine and guarantors will need to have a mechanism of collecting, exchanging, processing, and analysing intelligence, including for the purpose of early detection regarding preparations for an armed aggression.

 

 

C.   INTERNATIONAL SANCTIONS

 

International sanctions should be an additional layer of the overall set of security guarantees, in case of aggression. This could both help deter an act of aggression and also put a punitive cost on the aggressor. Sanctions would need to balance specific elements while leaving enough room to manoeuvre, to not reveal to the aggressor the full cost of any future possible attack on Ukraine.

 

Notwithstanding the sanctions mechanism described below, the guarantors should refrain from lifting the sanctions on Russia agreed since 2014, until Moscow: a) stops its aggression against Ukraine; b) guarantees it will not attack Ukraine in the future; c) compensates Ukraine for the damages caused during the invasion.

 

Any decision on lifting or temporarily suspending sanctions, as part of a negotiated peace settlement, should be taken in close coordination with Ukraine. The security guarantee agreement should contain a provision that the sanctions will be reimposed (snapback provisions) in the event of new attacks or aggression. Sanctions need to be maintained until Russia is no longer a threat to Ukrainian sovereignty.

 

The package of sanctions shall by initiated and implemented by Ukraine’s security guarantors, in close coordination with other international bodies such as the G7 and the EU. Other like-minded countries supporting sanctions (e.g., Switzerland, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Australia, and others) should also be invited to join.

 

The sanctions guarantors should:



 




21. The West Is Wrong to Fixate on Xi’s Fate


Excerpts:

An increasing number of countries have begun to express their concerns about or even criticize China, Inc. Facing the growing criticism and the possibility of delinking, the CCP may adjust its strategy. So, we must pay close attention to the upcoming party congress. The CCP may retreat from China, Inc., or further strengthen China, Inc. This, I think, is more important than the fate of Xi.
Instead of “curbing Xi to save the CCP,” we need to set our goal as curbing the CCP and its China, Inc. to save our economy and democracy.


The West Is Wrong to Fixate on Xi’s Fate 

The entire CCP is the danger.


spectator.org · by Shaomin Li · October 1, 2022

Right now, most China observers focus their attention on the upcoming 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, which will be held in mid-October. Their focus is on whether Xi Jinping, who is finishing up full two terms (10 years) like his predecessors, will break the norm and continue to be the party boss.

Compared to his predecessors, Xi is certainly much more powerful, aggressive, and controversial. Previous party bosses all subscribed to the advice of the late Deng Xiaoping, the most prominent CCP leader after Mao’s death in 1976: Do not try to be the world’s leader and do not challenge the U.S. Deng summarized his strategy using a Chinese idiom, “Hide one’s claws and bide one’s time.”


Indeed, the past CCP leaders, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, all expressed affinity for private businesses, welcomed foreign investment, and avoided direct confrontations with the U.S.


Xi has changed all that since he assumed power in 2012.

Under his reign, the CCP has substantially increased its restrictions on personal freedoms, which were already extremely limited. Xi has also interfered with economic activities at an unprecedented scope. For example, he stopped the IPO of the financial giant Ant Group and killed the after-school education sector. Internationally, the CCP has waged more and bigger confrontations with democratic nations, constructed artificial islands for military use on international waters, and exerted greater influence on global rule-setting. It has spent billions of dollars to bribe elites in democracies.

In sum, the CCP’s strategy and actions under Xi are more repressive domestically and aggressive internationally. All of these have caused great anxiety among more liberal-leaning Chinese and observers and policymakers in democratic countries.

The threat to our democracy is not an idiosyncratic CCP leader such as Xi; the threat is the largest political organization in the world.

Liberal-leaning Chinese believe Xi has abandoned Deng’s strategy of “Hide one’s claws and bide one’s time” by directly challenging democratic countries, especially the U.S. Their wish for CCP’s 20th National Congress is to replace Xi with a moderate leader. Their goal is to contain Xi to save the CCP.

Policymakers in democratic countries, meanwhile, hope for a leader who will seek friendlier relations with the U.S. and be less aggressive.


This fixation on Xi and the hope for a more tolerant CCP leader is misguided and misleading.

The reason that we, people in democracies, are concerned about China is that it projects undue influence on the world order and our very home. According to the CCP’s ideology, it must achieve world dominance. There is no difference between Xi and other moderate party leaders as far as the ultimate goal is concerned. The difference exists in the speed and method for achieving such dominance.



Helped by the democracies through trade and investment, China’s economy has grown rapidly to become the world’s largest based on purchasing power parity. So, it is more assertive and aggressive. If someone else is the head of CCP, he would have to challenge the U.S. and world order, except maybe at a different pace and degree than Xi would.

Naturally, most democracy-loving people tend to want a more moderate CCP leader better because he will be more amiable to the U.S. However, such a leader could actually be more dangerous than Xi. He could conceal the CCP’s intentions better and win more support from academics and policymakers in democracies who are either bought off by the CCP or have vested interests in China.

The threat to our democracy is not an idiosyncratic CCP leader such as Xi; the threat is the largest political organization in the world: the Chinese Communist Party. It is well-organized, highly disciplined, and controls the largest financial and human resources in the world. Like all dictatorial political systems, the CCP does not have a set of transparent and fair rules for leadership transition. But that is a headache for the CCP, not the most important concern for democratic countries.

For democratic countries, an urgent and important task is to understand the expansive goal of the CCP and how it plans to achieve that goal. This understanding will help us to formulate effective strategies to counter the CCP’s expansion.

“The CCP’s Century of Terror,” editorial cartoon by Shaomin Li for The American Spectator.

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the top think tank for the CCP, recently identified five key features of the Chinese economy: efficient markets, active management by the government, a well-organized population, the ability to mobilize all resources of the country, and development according to state planning. These five features form what I call “China, Inc.,” meaning that the CCP runs China like a giant corporation.

All people in China must follow the order of and work for the CCP; all firms — whether they are privately owned or foreign-invested — are units or joint ventures of China, Inc., with the CCP’s leader being the CEO. Government agencies are functional departments of this giant corporation. China, Inc. has the huge resource of a country and the agility of a firm, making it extremely competitive in the world markets. To protect international law and order, their domestic markets, and their way of life, the democracies must be able to counter China, Inc. effectively. (READ MORE: A Deal With the Dragon)

An increasing number of countries have begun to express their concerns about or even criticize China, Inc. Facing the growing criticism and the possibility of delinking, the CCP may adjust its strategy. So, we must pay close attention to the upcoming party congress. The CCP may retreat from China, Inc., or further strengthen China, Inc. This, I think, is more important than the fate of Xi.

Instead of “curbing Xi to save the CCP,” we need to set our goal as curbing the CCP and its China, Inc. to save our economy and democracy.

Shaomin Li is Professor of International Business at Old Dominion University and author of The Rise of China, Inc.: How the Chinese Communist Party Transformed China into a Giant Corporation.

spectator.org · by Shaomin Li · October 1, 2022



22. National Cyber Power Index 2022



​The 66 page report can be downloaded here: https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/files/publication/CyberProject_National%20Cyber%20Power%20Index%202022_v3_220922.pdf


National Cyber Power Index 2022

https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/national-cyber-power-index-2022

Authors: Julia Voo Irfan Hemani Daniel Cassidy | September 2022

A NOTE TO READERS

From Eric Rosenbach, Belfer Center Co-Director and former Chief of Staff and Assistant Secretary for the U.S. Department of Defense

The Belfer Center’s mission is to provide leadership to advance critical policy-relevant knowledge of important international security issues. The release of the National Cyber Power Index in 2022 does just that. Over the past two years, the NCPI has catalysed conversations and debate between policymakers, academia, and industry on the concept of cyber power and how states are and can further harness their capabilities to enhance their overall ability to achieve national objectives.

Harnessing a state’s cyber power requires a whole-of-nation approach. National governments should not just be concerned about destructive operations, espionage, or enhancing its cyber resilience, but also other state’s efforts at surveillance, information control, technology competition, financial motivations, and shaping what is acceptable and possible through norms and standards.

During my time in the U.S. government, I sought and applied analytical methods to assess cyber threats to U.S. national security. With the challenges in the cyber domain only increasing, it is critical for analytical tools to also be available, presenting the full range of cyber power, and informing critical public debates today. The framework that the NCPI provides is one that allows policymakers to consider a fuller range of challenges and threats from other state actors. The incorporation of both qualitative and quantitative models, with more than 1000 existing sources of data and with 29 indicators to measure a state’s capability, is more comprehensive than any other current measure of cyber power.

NCPI 2022 builds on the foundations outlined in the 2020 paper and should be understood as a snapshot of the current status of the thirty countries and not be considered a linear step from the 2020 index. Due to the team’s methodology, downwards movements do not mean that a country’s cyber power has diminished in absolute terms. Instead, this movement should be interpreted as relative to the assessment of demonstrated cyber power of other countries drawn from publicly available sources only. Importantly, the index does not make value judgements about how states use their cyber power, only that they have demonstrated their capability and intent to use it. Policy decisions around what is responsible and in the best interests of nations, international conventions, and the world, should draw on this tool, and others, to make those judgements. 

The Belfer Center team’s model for cyber power remains the most holistic and best model to date for measuring cyber power. I am proud of the team for the work they continue to do to push forward this important conversation shining a light on a previously abstract, constantly evolving and central topic to state power and geopolitics today.

 

Downloads

For more information on this publication: Belfer Communications Office

For Academic Citation: Voo, Julia, Irfan Hemani and Daniel Cassidy. “National Cyber Power Index 2022.” Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, September 2022.



23. A Dangerous Time for the United States Of America


My bias shows through. In all these doom and gloom articles I look for north Korea to be mentioned. This is another one that does not. Not that north Korea is the bigger threat but it is one that is linked to all the others. to be fair, Iran is not mentioned in this one either.


A sober warning:

However, the United States was able to achieve the victories against those difficult odds because the American society was united and there was a relative peace inside the United States. But, this time, the United States has to fight at the multiple fronts which would be dangerous with the declining economic and political power along with the internal instability.
Some American scholars argue that the United States would need another disaster like the civil war to unite the American society again. The circumstances would turn in either way in the world of complex interdependence: the United States would become again ‘the United States of America’ or ‘the disunited states of America’. This is indeed a dangerous time for the United States.


A Dangerous Time for the United States Of America - The Friday Times - Naya Daur

thefridaytimes.com · by Asim Ali · October 1, 2022

The United States has had enjoyed an unprecedented global hegemony since the end of the cold war in 1989. The collapse of the USSR had provided the United States an opportunity to expand its liberal global order in the global world. The United States was free to Rome in every realm of international relations.

The reason of the US’s unchallenged supremacy was the absence of a parallel competitor; however, it was coupled with the internal stability at home. The stability at home ensures the strength of the foreign policy of the states in the international arena.

In addition to it, there were relatively lesser global challenges that could create trouble for the United States. But, now, in the contemporary times, the United States has been facing a dangerous time due to some reasons: the emergence of new global competitors like China; the appearance of threats to its democracy at home- the Trump mind-set; the rise of global challenges like the climate change issue and the Russian war against the Ukraine, and the Russian ambitions towards the US’s allies in the eastern and the western Europe.

Moreover, the US’s military misadventures in Afghanistan and in the Middle East has explicitly weakened its relative economic power which has directly influenced the economic disparities in the United states that also has catalysed the rise of far right groups.

These underlying factors have contributed to create a dangerous situation for the United States to safeguard its democratic norms back at home and to maintain peace and order in the global world.

The United States has remained the global world order since the disintegration of the USSR. The US led liberal world order has had prevailed across the globe through the values of democracy and the international free market economy. The dollar has maintained its central position in the international financial matters. However, with the emergence of new global economic players, there is apparently a paradigm shift in the international economic and financial markets. That is affecting the US’s global economic power.

The 2008 economic crisis exposed the loopholes in the liberal world order as well as the American incapacity to maintain the economic status quo. The one single state that has threatened the US’s economic might is China. After the inclusion of China in the world trade organization in 2001, china has made a tremendous growth in increasing its export by replacing the US’s relatively costly exports with its cheap products in the African and Asian markets.

China has used its economic leverage as a soft power to gain political gains in Africa, East Asia, and South Asia and among the US’s European allies. There has been a growing realization among the US’ allies to minimise their dependency on the American goods.

An eminent American scholar of international relations professor John Mearsheimer has argued in his book ‘Why china Cannot Rise Peacefully’ that the rise of China as global power will threaten the American political and economic power, while, the US will try to maintain the balance of power by containing China which would eventually involve the US with an inevitable conflict with China. It would be a Thucydides Trap for the US to contain the emerging power in order to maintain its established power.

Moreover, the Chinese irredentist ambitions towards its neighbouring states may threaten the US security interests in the Far East: the South China Sea issue, the Taiwan issue and the East China Sea issue. To contain China both militarily and economically would be a dangerous quagmire for the United States.

The global world has been facing an unprecedented climate change issues. The scientists have reiterated their warnings, time and again, that the world might reduce its carbon emissions in order to save the planet, otherwise, the world must be ready to face the dire consequences. The on-going floods in Pakistan and in order countries may prove to be an indicator to a disastrous and catastrophic future for the humanity. The United States has remained an advocate of carbon free planet in order to reduce the climate risks.

However, the Trump administration, unilaterally, withdrew from the Paris climate accord which undermined its credibility and its capacity to implement the climate regulations among the member states. There is no doubt that the US has backed the global campaigns against the pandemics, diseases, and the climate changes both politically and economically. But, given the US’s weaken economic power and its political unwillingness to act on the global climate change issues may prove a dangerous policy choice for the United States as well as for the whole planet.

The climate change issue may also trigger the US-Chinese conflict because China is one of the biggest carbon emission countries which have been continuously violating the international climate rules. This issue may multiply with the existing US-China antagonism and may aggravate the situation for the United States.

The ‘Russian factor’ had overwhelmed the American foreign policy makers throughout the cold war. The United States, since the 1945, has had taken the responsibility of the security of the western hemisphere. The US’s policy has been proven effective in deterring the Russian aggression by strengthening the NATO and also by expanding its security petrol in the Far East.

However, after the US engagement in the other global political and security problems, the Russian aggression is again on the rise which is directly threatening the US allies in the eastern and western Europe. The Russian annexation of the Crimea in 2014 was an eye opening event for the US security establishment. The Obama administration could not act against the Russian expansionism because the United States was already occupied in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Apparently, the US was not in a position to open another dangerous front with Russia that might escalate the situation to become a protracted conflict. However, the Russian attack on Ukraine has compelled the United States to revisit its foreign policy towards the Russian ambitions. Meanwhile, there is a growing distress among the US’ NATO allies that the United States is reluctant and sceptical to take concrete action against the Russia. The military aid to Ukraine is still in rhetoric which may not become practical without the help of the United States. Thus, the Ukraine-Russian conflict has become a difficult and a dangerous situation for the United States: it may not act aggressively nor it may remain neutral.

The United States may not be able to face and tackle the above mentioned global challenges without maintaining the peace and stability back at home. The internal security of the United States is just not the part of problems; rather it is itself a bigger problem that may require the shift of focus from global challenges to the internal matters.

Since the 1945, the US has enjoyed its global hegemony due to two major advantages: its geopolitical location and effective and stable democratic institutions with in the United States. These advantages have had provided the US an opportunity to focus more on the global issues. However, the recent political developments in the United States may no longer allow the US establishment particularly the democrats to continue their ‘international social work’- as the Republicans like to interpret the US’ global campaigns it in that way.

The 2016 presidential election was the phenomenon that the democrats and the US think tanks would not have anticipated. The emergence of Donald Trump as the president of the US has exposed the fault lines in the American democracy and has proven to be detrimental for the internal security. The issue of racism which has been remained Achilles’ heel for the America is again on the rise. The extreme far right radical groups: Ku Klux Klan, white supremacists and Neo Nazis are gaining support and are strengthening their grounds which was culminated on 6 January attack on the capital. The violent attack on the Capitol Hill has vehemently threatened the capacity and the credibility of the American federal institutions.

Although the federal institutions are working to circumvent the situation, yet it may take a long route to heel the American democratic institutions which would undermine the American power to implement its foreign policy goals with full strength. The polarisation in the American society would encourage its international competitors to take the advantage of the situation as Russians and Chinese are already exploiting the American weakness. This is really a dangerous and critical situation for the United States- both at home and abroad.

The global geopolitical ,economic, and security issues have multiplied with the internal American instability to the extent that the United states is no longer a free to Rome in the international and global politics. The war on terrorism already has weekend its relative economic power. The emergence of multipolarity and the regional balance of power are just adding to reduce the American capacity to maintain its position in the international relations which would ultimately affect the American will and capacity to secure its allies in the East Asia, and also in the Eastern and Western Europe. The United States has a history of facing vicious and crucial circumstances in the past, both at domestic and at the international level: the American civil war, WW2, the cold war with the USSR, and the war against terrorism.

However, the United States was able to achieve the victories against those difficult odds because the American society was united and there was a relative peace inside the United States. But, this time, the United States has to fight at the multiple fronts which would be dangerous with the declining economic and political power along with the internal instability.

Some American scholars argue that the United States would need another disaster like the civil war to unite the American society again. The circumstances would turn in either way in the world of complex interdependence: the United States would become again ‘the United States of America’ or ‘the disunited states of America’. This is indeed a dangerous time for the United States.

thefridaytimes.com · by Asim Ali · October 1, 2022





De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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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