Quotes of the Day:
“I love America more than any country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”
- James Baldwin
“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.”
- Aldous Huxley
"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it."
- Voltaire
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JULY 8 (Putin's War)
2. Ukrainian Office Workers and Tradesmen Receive Training From U.K. for War
3. Ukraine’s Implausible Theories of Victory
4. The Case for a Stalemate in Ukraine Is Fatally Flawed
5. Fact Sheet on U.S. Security Assistance to Ukraine
6. America's top anti-war think tank is fracturing over Ukraine.
7. U.S. to send 15th military package to Ukraine, bringing total aid in Russia war to $7 billion
8. Four More HIMARS Launchers Heading To Ukraine Bringing Total To 12
9. US to send more HIMARS precision rockets to Ukraine
10. ‘Liberal World Order’ Is Decades-Old Term Misinterpreted by Social Media Posts
11. Latest Japan Updates: As Nation Mourns, Questions Swirl Over Abe’s Security
12. CA affirms Maria Ressa's cyber libel conviction, adds 8 months to possible jail sentence
13. FDD | Strict Oversight Needed for New U.S-Backed Counter-China Infrastructure Initiative
14. China demands end to US-Taiwan military 'collusion'
15. Choose your reality: Trust wanes, conspiracy theories rise
16. Five Men Indicted in Connection with PRC Repression Scheme Targeting Chinese Dissidents in the U.S.
17. There Is No Cyber Bullet
18. Domestic terror cases increasingly cross borders, FBI director says
19. The Far-Right Christian Quest for Power: ‘We Are Seeing Them Emboldened’
20. US and NATO Escalate Tensions with Asia-Pacific War Games
21. The US army base training Ukrainian fighters
22. Earth to Executives: Boycotts of Israel Backfire
23. False myths about USIA blind us to our problems… and to possible solutions
24. The Growing Tech Focus of the Quad
25. What Happened to Michael Flynn?
26. Hollywood won't budge for Chinese censors anymore. Here's what changed
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JULY 8 (Putin's War)
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JULY 8
Kateryna Stepanenko, Frederick W. Kagan, and George Barros
July 8, 7:00 pm ET
Click here to see ISW's interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
Luhansk Oblast Administration Head Serhiy Haidai stated that Russian forces are not conducting an operational pause as of July 8 and are continuing to shell settlements and deploy additional tank units to Donbas.[1] Haidai’s statement likely reflects confusion about the meaning of the expression “operational pause” and how such a “pause” actually manifests on the ground in a war. US military doctrine considers the role of operational pauses in warfighting and campaigning in some detail.[2] It notes that “Normally, operational pauses are planned to regenerate combat power or augment sustainment and forces for the next phase.” It observes that “The primary drawback to operational pauses is the risk of forfeiting strategic or operational initiative.” It therefore recommends that “If pauses are necessary, the [commander] can alternate pauses among components to ensure continuous pressure on the enemy or adversary through offensive actions by some components while other components pause.” Soviet military theory regarded operational pauses in a similar fashion—sometimes necessary, but always dangerous.
The Russian military command, which announced an operational pause on July 7, has apparently recognized the need for a pause given the state of Russian forces at this point in the campaign. The Russian troops that have completed the seizure of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk are clearly in need of regenerating combat power and building up supporting capabilities, including supply, before launching another large-scale offensive operation. Numerous reports from various sources show that they are engaged in both activities. They have naturally and necessarily ceased efforts to conduct large-scale offensive operations in this sector while they reorganized, reinforce, and resupply their tired troops—in other words, they are in an operational pause in this sector.
Recognizing the danger of allowing the Ukrainians to seize the initiative and go over to an offensive of their own, however, Russian forces continue to conduct more-limited offensive operations in this sector and elsewhere along the front line. Those operations involve smaller Russian forces than had been involved in the attacks on Severodonetsk and Lysychansk pursuing more limited and localized objectives with less determination and willingness to take casualties compared with their behavior during the fights for the two cities. When the Russian military command has determined that it has adequately prepared for a renewed major offensive operation, it will likely resume larger-scale ground offensives with more troops and a greater determination than it is currently showing. The transition out of the operational pause may be gradual and difficult to discern at once, just as the transition into it appeared gradual. Skillful campaign design aims to achieve precisely such an effect in order to persuade the enemy that no pause is contemplated or underway, or that it will be too short to be of benefit to the enemy, and thereby convince the enemy that it does not have the opportunity to seize the initiative and go over to a counter-offensive of its own. Russian campaign design, inadequate as it has generally been, is nevertheless good enough to manifest this basic principle of operational art.
Russian milbloggers are continuing to show rhetorical opposition to the Kremlin by faulting the Russian Defense Ministry for making Russian logistics vulnerable to the Ukrainian strikes via US-provided HIMARS rocket systems. Russian milbloggers are notably criticizing the Russian military command instead of expressing patriotic hatred toward Western suppliers of HIMARS as one would have expected of the ultra-nationalist, pro-war Telegram channels. Former Russian military commander Igor Girkin, an outspoken Russian nationalist who commanded militants during the Donbas war in 2014, stated that personnel of the Russian Defense Ministry’s logistics department should be tried for failing to disperse and camouflage ammunition depots.[3] Russian milbloggers Starshe Eddy and Russian officer Aleksey Suronkin echoed similar concerns over the effectiveness of HIMARS, calling on Russian forces to adapt to new threats and strike back against Ukrainian forces.[4] The continued trend of patriotic and pro-war Russian milbloggers blaming the Kremlin by default for setbacks and problems in the war may begin to create in effect a loyal opposition that could ultimately erode confidence in the milbloggers’ significant audience in Russia’s ability to win.
Key Takeaways
- Russian forces continued to conduct limited offensive operations north of Slovyansk.
- Russian forces continued attempting to advance toward Siversk from Lysychansk but did not make any confirmed territorial gains.
- Russian forces launched assaults on Dementiivka to disrupt Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) along the T2117 highway.
- Russian forces continued to launch assaults on settlements along the Kherson-Mykolaiv and Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border to regain lost positions.
- Russian Federation Council approved a bill committing the Kremlin to paying veteran benefits to civilians involved in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
- Russian occupation authorities continued to set conditions for the annexation of Donbas and southern Ukraine.
We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because those activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.
- Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and three supporting efforts);
- Subordinate Main Effort—Encirclement of Ukrainian Troops in the Cauldron between Izyum and Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts
- Supporting Effort 1—Kharkiv City
- Supporting Effort 2—Southern Axis
- Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
- Activities in Russian-occupied Areas
Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine
Subordinate Main Effort—Southern Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk Oblasts (Russian objective: Encircle Ukrainian forces in Eastern Ukraine and capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
Russian forces continued to conduct offensive operations north of Slovyansk on July 8. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces launched an unsuccessful assault in Bohorodychne, approximately 20 km north of Slovyansk, and geolocated footage showed Ukrainian artillery destroying five Russian tanks advancing onto the settlement from the southwest.[5] Slovyansk Mayor Vadym Lyakh stated that Russian forces shelled Slovyansk during the night of July 7 and July 8 and NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) remotely sensed data showed fires around Raihorodok, just 10 km east of Slovyansk.[6] Russian forces also shelled Volubivka, Husarivka, and Chepil northwest of Izyum, likely in an effort to restrain Ukrainian counterattacks in the area.[7]
[Source: NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System over Slovyansk, July 8]
Russian forces continued to launch assaults in effort to reach Siversk from the Lysychansk area but did not make any confirmed territorial gains. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian artillery fire repelled Russian force from newly-established positions in Verknokamyanske (approximately 8 km east of Siversk).[8] Russian forces also unsuccessfully attempted to break through Ukrainian defenses around Spirne and Ivano-Daryvivka to reach Siversk from the southeast.[9] Russian forces also continued to shell Siversk and settlements northeast and east of Siversk.[10] The UK Defense Ministry noted that Russian forces are concentrating equipment in the Siversk direction, possibly to resume frontal assaults on Ukrainian positions in the settlement in the near future.[11]
Russian forces are continuing to set conditions to advance toward Bakhmut by firing artillery and conducting offensive operations south and east of the city. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces launched an assault on Vessela Dolyna, approximately 7 km south of Bakhmut, and fighting is ongoing in the settlement.[12] Russian forces shelled Ukrainian positions in Bilohorivka, Klynove, Berestove, Novoluahanske, Pokrovske, Kodema, Opytne, and Zaitseve.[13] Russian forces also launched airstrikes on Vuhlehirska Power Station and Vershyna, just south of Bakhmut.[14]
Russian forces did not conduct offensive operations around Avdiivka and continued to shell and launch airstrikes in the area.[15]
Supporting Effort #1—Kharkiv City (Russian objective: Defend ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Izyum and prevent Ukrainian forces from reaching the Russian border)
Russian forces did not make any confirmed gains near Kharkiv City on July 8 but are likely attempting spoiling attacks to stymie Ukrainian counterattacks. Russian forces are likely attempting to conduct spoiling attacks near Dementiivka to disrupt ongoing Ukrainian counterattacks from Prudyanka north toward Russian positions in Tsupivka.[16] The Ukrainian Genral Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled two Russian attacks against Dementiivka.[17] Russian forces in Mali Prokhody and Velyki Prokhody are likely attempting to attack west toward Dementiivka to reach the Ukrainian ground line of communication (GLOC) on the T2117 road that supports the frontline Ukrainian position in Prudianka. Two reservoirs north and south of Dementiivka complicate feasible Russian approaches toward the T2117 and are likely funneling Russian forces toward Ukrainian defensive positions in Dementiivka. Russian forces continued heavy shelling near and in Kharkiv City.[18]
[Source: NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System over Slovyansk, July 8]
Supporting Effort #2—Southern Axis (Russian objective: Defend Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts against Ukrainian counterattacks)
Russian forces continued to attack settlements along the Kherson-Mykolaiv and Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts borders in an effort to retake lost positions. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attack on Velyke Artakove, on the western bank of the Inhulets River.[19] Russian forces are likely attempting to push Ukrainian forces from their positions on the eastern bank in Lozove. The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command noted that Ukrainian missile and artillery units repelled Russian reconnaissance attempts and struck a Russian ammunition depot in the Vysokopillya area on the Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border.[20] Ukrainian forces reportedly struck other Russian ammunition depots and concentration areas near Davydiv Brid, Pravdyne, and Nova Kakhovka.[21] Ukrainian aviation continues to successfully strike Russian positions in Kherson Oblast, which could indicate that Russian force lack sufficient air defense systems in the area.[22]
Russian forces continued to shell Mykolaiv City and settlements in its vicinity, and launched a cruise missile strike on Odesa Oblast on July 8.[23] The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command reported that Russian Su-30 aircraft launched a Kh-31 cruise missile strike on Odesa Oblast coast, noting that Russian forces may continue targeting coastal settlements rather than inland areas.[24]
Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)
The Russian Federation Council approved a bill on July 8, granting veteran statuses to civilian personnel participating in the “special military operation in Ukraine.”[25] The bill would entitle civilian personnel of the Russian Armed Forces, repair brigades, and medical staff to veteran benefits and pension. The Kremlin is likely attempting to incentivize more Russians to participate in the war effort, but these measures also commit the Russian budget to a long-term obligation to financially support more veterans.
Russian forces had reportedly mobilized approximately 140,000 servicemen in Donbas by mid-June, having begun mobilizing reservists in the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR) in 2021.[26] Russian independent outlet Meduza cited Russian Eastern Human Rights Group’s findings that Russian forces deployed 48,000 mobilized personnel to the line of contact in Ukraine. Eastern Human Rights Group also found that Russian military recruiters carried out aggressive enlistment campaigns among DNR and LNR military-aged men and incentivized the homeless and drunks to join the Russian military. Meduza reported that DNR and LNR conscripts arrived in Valuyki, Belgorod Oblast, before deploying to Kharkiv Oblast with poor equipment. ISW has previously reported that Russian forces deployed DNR servicemen to defend settlements around Kharkiv City.[27] Russian officials also reportedly established eight mobilization centers in occupied settlements in Donbas to recruit reserves. The DNR 4th Battalion of the 109th Regiment published a video addressing Russian President Vladimir Putin and DNR Head Denis Pushilin, complaining that military recruiters did not provide the mobilized unit with the necessary equipment and documentation that certify participation in the war.[28] The 109th Regiment’s appeal noted that the unit lacks highly-skilled officers.
The BBC published a report examining the geographic origins and breakdown by rank, service, and other factors of the 4,515 Russians whose deaths in Ukraine it was able to confirm. The report is not exhaustive. The BBC confirmed that Russian forces have lost at least 773 officers since the start of the invasion. The BBC reported that at least four generals, 21 colonels, 126 majors, and 568 junior officers had died as of July 7.[29] The BBC also found that 890 motorized riflemen and 888 servicemen of the Russian Airborne died in combat, out of 4,515 total deaths across the Russian Armed Forces that the BBC was able to confirm. Russian National Guard (Rosgvardia) and Special Forces lost 162 and 111 servicemen, respectively. The BBC confirmed that 49 pilots and crew of the Russian Air Forces died in combat.
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 occupation authorities continued to undertake measures to set conditions for the annexation of southern Ukraine. Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom Andrey Kelin said that Russia does not intend to leave southern Ukraine after capturing Donbas, asserting that the withdrawal would cause provocations and loss of civilian lives.[30] The Ukrainian Resistance Center noted that Russian occupation authorities are replacing Ukrainian collaborators in Kherson Oblast and Melitopol with Russian officials.[31] The Kremlin is also appointing Russian officials in the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR), likely to recruit personnel to facilitate the unilateral annexation of Donbas and southern Ukraine.[32] The Ukrainian Resistance Center also reported that Russian occupation authorities are bribing residents of occupied territories with 10,000 rubles to receive Russian passports.[33] The Kremlin continues “passportization” efforts to ensure permanent control over occupied territories.
Russian occupation authorities are attempting to increase security in occupied territories, likely fearing Ukrainian partisan activity or sabotage operations. Russian-appointed Kharkiv Oblast Head Vitaliy Ganchev introduced martial law in occupied Kharkiv Oblast settlements.[34] The introduction of martial law likely indicates that Russian occupation authorities are very concerned about partisan activity and fear Ukrainian sabotage of Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) in eastern Kharkiv Oblast. Ukrainian Operational Forces reported that Russian-appointed Head of Kakhovka Administrative District Volodymyr Leontiev ordered an access control regime in the city, requiring residents to obtain permits to enter certain buildings or areas.[35] The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported that Ukrainian partisans killed the Russian-appointed Nova Khakovka Police Deputy Chief Serhiy Tomka in his car on July 7.[36]
[2] JP 5-0, Joint Planning, 01 December 2020 (jcs.mil), p. IV-39.
[26] https://meduza dot io/feature/2022/07/06/zhizn-zdes-katitsya-v-hrenovuyu-storonu
[33] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2022/07/08/okupanty-zbilshyly-masshtaby-pidkupu-naselennya-dlya-otrymannya-pasportnyh-danyh/
2. Ukrainian Office Workers and Tradesmen Receive Training From U.K. for War
Whole of society. With "allied" help. Defending their homeland.
Ukrainian Office Workers and Tradesmen Receive Training From U.K. for War
Program aims to give Ukraine more manpower along the eastern front with Russia
July 9, 2022 1:00 am ET
The men are among the first recruits to undergo training in the U.K. as part of a new program that aims to prepare up to 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers every three months for the war against Russia. Some had never picked up a rifle before arriving in the U.K. recently.
British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, wearing sweater, on Thursday visited the U.K. facility where Ukrainian recruits were preparing for war.
Photo: © Louis Wood/PA Wire via ZUMA Press
Ukrainian officials say long-range artillery systems sent by the West are starting to make a difference against Russian forces that have gained ground in recent weeks by blasting towns and cities in their path. But Ukraine also needs more infantry men such as these to hold positions along the vast eastern front and retake territory where possible, they say.
“Hopefully, we set the foundation that enables them to survive,” said Brigadier Justin Stenhouse, who designed the training program. It covers basic infantry skills such as using a rifle, how to behave on a battlefield and treating casualties.
No amount of training, Mr. Stenhouse acknowledged, can fully prepare them for the trench warfare they are likely to encounter in Ukraine’s east, the likes of which many of the British instructors themselves haven’t experienced. “It feels like a huge responsibility,” he said.
As the war settles into a battle of attrition, both sides are in a race to replenish weapons, ammunition and men. At the height of the battle for the eastern city of Severodonetsk last month, Ukrainian officials said they were losing between 100 and 200 men a day.
Some are being killed even before reaching the battlefield. A missile strike on the Desna training facility in northern Ukraine killed 87 recruits in May, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said. Earlier in the war, an airstrike on the Yavoriv base in western Ukraine killed at least 35 people. That is why the training is taking place in the rolling countryside of northwestern England as well as several other locations across the U.K. in a sign of Britain’s deepening involvement in the war.
Among the recruits is a 34-year-old who ran an e-commerce project until signing up for the war four weeks ago. He said his decision to do so was fueled by anger at the destruction of his hometown of Chernihiv, besieged by Russian forces in the early stages of the war. “This was the first time I took a gun in my hand,” he said
Although fluent in Russian, he refused to speak the language of his enemy, communicating in English instead. “I am fully committed to [absorb] the most information and experience,” he said. “To stay alive and to be of the most value to my country.”
The U.K. training is part of a program that aims to ready up to 10,000 Ukrainian troops for deployment every three months.
Photo: © Louis Wood/PA Wire via ZUMA Press
Among the battlefield skills being taught to the recruits is how to use a rifle.
Photo: © Louis Wood/PA Wire via ZUMA Press
Far from the front line in Ukraine, the training camp also feels removed from the political tumult in the U.K. that forced Prime Minister Boris Johnson to say he would resign following a series of scandals. Many Ukrainians are dismayed by the demise of a politician who put the U.K. at the forefront of Western efforts to roll back Russia’s invasion. Mr. Johnson announced the new training program during a visit to Kyiv last month, saying it would “fundamentally change the equation of the war.”
During a visit to the training of Ukrainian recruits on Thursday, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said a change of leadership wouldn’t affect the U.K.’s commitment to Ukraine—a stance enjoying wide support from the political establishment.
Mr. Wallace, currently one of the favorites to succeed Mr. Johnson, played down Russia’s recent gains in the east and said Moscow had failed to achieve its objectives. “I would not say the Russians are winning,” he said.
By generating more forces, the training program will give Ukraine’s military leadership greater room for maneuver along the front with Russian troops, he said. Russian forces have made steady advances there behind an intense barrage of artillery after pulling back from northern Ukraine in March and concentrating their firepower on the eastern Donbas region.
In response to Russia’s recent gains, Ukraine’s Western allies have stepped up military support for Kyiv, with the recent arrival of the U.S.-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or Himars, already strengthening its hand. Britain’s contribution amounts to more than £2.3 billion (roughly $2.75 billion) in military aid, including more than 5,000 NLAW antitank weapons and long-range Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, which experienced Ukrainian artillery soldiers are being trained to use separately from the infantry recruits elsewhere in the U.K.
Some of the British instructors have experience in working with the Ukrainian military as part of Operation Orbital, in which the U.K. trained more than 22,000 soldiers from 2015 until Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion in February. The key difference: Those were trained soldiers.
“These are guys who were working in an office, as plumbers or electricians a couple of weeks ago,” said Lourens, a British soldier who was involved in Operation Orbital. The Wall Street Journal agreed to use only his first name.
The equivalent training for British soldiers would take six months, but the urgency of the war means it is being done in a fraction of the time. When announcing the training, Mr. Johnson said the course would last three weeks.
A higher ratio of instructors to recruits is helping to fast-track the training. So is the high level of motivation among the recruits, according to the instructors.
“It’s nonstop,” said Capt. Sam Russon, 28 years old. “They’re learning really quickly.”
The course includes learning how to dig fortifications, fill sandbags and maneuver under fire. (Included in the advice: don’t panic; run in a zigzag instead of a straight line.) Mine awareness is a field in which the Ukrainians have expressed particular interest, Capt. Russon said.
One challenge is language: it has proved difficult for the civilian interpreters accompanying Ukrainian recruits to translate technical British military terminology that is heavy on acronyms.
Members of the British Army’s Rifles regiment at the training camp.
Photo: © Louis Wood/PA Wire via ZUMA Press
The AK-74 rifles with which the recruits will be armed back in Ukraine aren’t used by the British military, so the instructors have had to receive training themselves. And the blank-firing attachment for an AK-74 doesn’t meet U.K. safety standards, so the Ukrainians will have to practice with the SA80 rifle instead.
In the shade of a tent, an instructor showed more than a dozen Ukrainian recruits how to strip down an SA80. “Remember, the firing pin will only go in one way,” the instructor said. A translator conveyed his words in Ukrainian.
Another group of recruits was learning to apply a tourniquet using one hand. In the time it took them to fasten the tourniquet, they would already have lost three liters of blood, the instructor informed them.
The recruits are accompanied by a small number of experienced Ukrainian soldiers from whom the British instructors say they are learning lessons of their own. British soldiers typically check corpses for booby traps by rolling them over manually, one instructor said, whereas the Ukrainians do so by attaching a rope to the body so they can flip it from a safe distance.
A helicopter transports Ukrainian recruits to the training camp.
Photo: © Louis Wood/PA Wire via ZUMA Press
3. Ukraine’s Implausible Theories of Victory
More negative waves.
A negotiated solution to the war would no doubt be hard to achieve, but the outlines of a settlement are already visible. Each side would have to make painful concessions. Ukraine would have to relinquish considerable territory and do so in writing. Russia would need to relinquish some of its battlefield gains and renounce future territorial claims. To prevent a future Russian attack, Ukraine would surely need strong assurances of U.S. and European military support, as well as continuing military aid (but consisting mainly of defensive, not offensive, weapons). Russia would need to acknowledge the legitimacy of such arrangements. The West would need to agree to relax many of the economic sanctions it has placed on Russia. NATO and Russia would need to launch a new set of negotiations to limit the intensity of military deployments and interactions along their respective frontiers. U.S. leadership would be essential to a diplomatic solution. Because the United States is Ukraine’s principal backer and the organizer of the West’s economic pressure campaign against Russia, it possesses the greatest leverage over the two parties.
It is easier to state these principles than it is to hammer them into the implementable provisions of an agreement. But that is precisely why negotiations should start sooner rather than later. The Ukrainian and Western theories of victory have been built on weak reasoning. At best, they are a costly avenue to a painful stalemate that leaves much Ukrainian territory in Russian hands. If this is the best that can be hoped for after additional months or years of fighting, then there is only one responsible thing to do: seek a diplomatic end to the war now.
Ukraine’s Implausible Theories of Victory
The Fantasy of Russian Defeat and the Case for Diplomacy
July 8, 2022
As Russian forces gain ground in Ukraine, that country’s president and allies all seem to agree: Ukraine must fight on to victory and restore the prewar status quo. Russia would disgorge the territorial gains it has made since February. Ukraine would recognize neither the annexation of Crimea nor the secessionist statelets in the Donbas and would continue down the path toward membership in the EU and NATO.
For Russia, such an outcome would represent a clear defeat. Given the vast costs it has already paid, along with the likelihood that Western economic sanctions against it would not be lifted anytime soon, Moscow would gain less than nothing from this war. Indeed, it would be headed toward permanent enfeeblement—or in the words of U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, “weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”
Ukraine’s backers have proposed two pathways to victory. The first leads through Ukraine. With help from the West, the argument runs, Ukraine can defeat Russia on the battlefield, either depleting its forces through attrition or shrewdly outmaneuvering it. The second path runs through Moscow. With some combination of battlefield gains and economic pressure, the West can convince Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war—or convince someone in his circle to forcibly replace him.
But both theories of victory rest on shaky foundations. In Ukraine, the Russian army is likely strong enough to defend most of its gains. In Russia, the economy is autonomous enough and Putin’s grip tight enough that the president cannot be coerced into giving up those gains, either. The most likely outcome of the current strategy, then, is not a Ukrainian triumph but a long, bloody, and ultimately indecisive war. A drawn-out conflict would be costly not only in terms of the loss of human life and economic damage but also in terms of escalation—including the potential use of nuclear weapons.
Ukraine’s leaders and its backers speak as if victory is just around the corner. But that view increasingly appears to be a fantasy. Ukraine and the West should therefore reconsider their ambitions and shift from a strategy of winning the war toward a more realistic approach: finding a diplomatic compromise that ends the fighting.
VICTORY ON THE BATTLEFIELD?
Many in the West contend that the war can be won on the ground. In this scenario, Ukraine would destroy the Russian army’s combat power, causing Russian forces to retreat or collapse. Early on during the war, boosters of Ukraine argued that Russia could be defeated through attrition. Simple math seemed to tell the story of a Russian army on the verge of collapse. In April, the British defense ministry estimated that 15,000 Russian soldiers had died in Ukraine. Assuming that the number of wounded was three times as high, which was the average experience during World War II, that would imply that roughly 60,000 Russians had been knocked out of commission. Initial Western estimates put the size of the frontline Russian force in Ukraine at 120 battalion tactical groups, which would total at most 120,000 people. If these casualty estimates were correct, the strength of most Russian combat units would have fallen below 50 percent, a figure that experts suggest renders a combat unit at least temporarily ineffective.
These early estimates now look overly optimistic. If they were accurate, the Russian army ought to have collapsed by now. Instead, it has managed slow but steady gains in the Donbas. Although it is possible that the attrition theory could one day prove correct, that seems unlikely. The Russians appear to have suffered fewer losses than many thought or have nonetheless found a way to keep many of their units up to fighting strength. One way or another, they are finding reserves, despite their stated unwillingness to send recent conscripts or mobilized reservists to the front. And if push came to shove, they could abandon that reluctance.
If the collapse-through-attrition theory seems to have failed the test of battle already, there is another option: the Ukrainians could outmaneuver the Russians. Ukraine’s forces could beat the enemy in mechanized warfare, with tanks and accompanying infantry and artillery, just as Israel beat its Arab enemies in the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Neither Russia nor Ukraine has sufficient mechanized combat units to densely defend their vast fronts, which means in principle that either side should be vulnerable to rapid, hard-hitting mechanized attacks. So far, however, neither side appears to have resorted to such tactics. Russia may be finding that it cannot concentrate forces for such attacks without being observed by Western intelligence, and Ukraine may suffer from similar scrutiny by Russian intelligence. That said, a cagey defender such as Ukraine could lure its enemy into overextending itself. Russian forces could find their flanks and supply lines vulnerable to counterattacks—as appears to have occurred on a small scale around Kyiv in the early battles of the war.
The Ukrainian and Western theories of victory have been built on weak reasoning.
But just as the Russian army is unlikely to collapse through attrition, it is also unlikely to lose by being outmaneuvered. The Russians now seem wise to the gambits Ukraine tried early on. And although details are scarce, Ukraine’s recent counterattacks in the Kherson region do not appear to involve much surprise or maneuver. Rather, they seem to look like the kind of slow, grinding offensives that the Russians have themselves mounted in the Donbas. It is unlikely that this pattern will change much. Although the Ukrainians, because they are defending their homeland, are more motivated than the Russians, there is no reason to believe that they are inherently superior at mechanized warfare. Excellence at that requires a great deal of planning and training. Yes, the Ukrainians have profited from Western advising, but the West itself may be out of practice with such operations, having not waged mechanized warfare since 2003, when the United States invaded Iraq. And since 2014, the Ukrainians have focused their efforts on preparing forces for the defense of fortified lines in the Donbas, not for mobile warfare.
More important, a country’s ability to conduct mechanized warfare correlates with its socioeconomic development. Both technical and managerial skills are needed to keep thousands of machines and electronic devices in working order and to coordinate far-flung, fast-moving combat units in real time. Ukraine and Russia have similarly skilled populations from which to draw their soldiers, so it is unlikely that the former enjoys an advantage in mechanized warfare.
A possible counterargument is that the West could supply Ukraine with such superior technology that it could best the Russians, helping Kyiv defeat its enemy through either attrition or mobile warfare. But this theory is also fanciful. Russia enjoys a three-to-one advantage in population and economic output, a gap that even the highest-tech tools would be hard-pressed to close. Advanced Western weapons, such as the Javelin and NLAW antitank guided missiles, have probably helped Ukraine exact a high price from the Russians. But so far, this technology has largely been used to leverage the tactical advantages that defenders already enjoy—cover, concealment, and the ability to channel enemy forces through natural and manmade obstacles. It is much harder to exploit advanced technology to go on the offense against an adversary that possesses a significant quantitative advantage, because doing so requires overcoming both superior numbers and the tactical advantages of defense. In the case of Ukraine, it is not obvious what special technology the West possesses that would so advantage the Ukrainian military that it could crack Russian defenses.
To comprehend the difficulty Ukraine faces, consider Nazi Germany’s failure in its last major offensive of World War II, the Battle of the Bulge. In December 1944, the Germans surprised the Allies in the Ardennes Forest with a concentration of mechanized and infantry divisions against a thinly defended 50-mile stretch of front. They hoped to shatter the Allied defenses in Belgium, split the U.S. and British Armies, take the critical port of Antwerp, and stall the Allied war effort. The Wehrmacht bet that its skill at armored warfare, its laboriously assembled local numerical superiority, and its advanced armored vehicle technology would overcome the combined advantages that the U.S. and British militaries enjoyed in terms of manpower, artillery, and airpower. Although the Germans were able to achieve surprise and enjoyed a few days of success, the operation soon foundered. Western commanders quickly figured out what was going on and efficiently used their materiel superiority to beat back the advance. Today, some seem to be suggesting that the Ukrainians try a strategy similar to the Germans to overcome similar constraints. But there is no compelling reason to believe that the Ukrainians would fare any better.
WINNING IN MOSCOW?
If Kyiv can’t win on the battlefield in Ukraine, perhaps it can achieve a victory in Moscow. This, the other main theory of victory, imagines that a combination of battlefield attrition and economic pressure could elicit a decision on Russia’s part to end the war and relinquish its gains.
In this theory, battlefield attrition mobilizes the family members of slain, injured, and suffering Russian soldiers against Putin, while economic pressure makes the lives of average Russians ever more dismal. Putin watches his popularity wane and begins to fear that his political career could soon end if he doesn’t stop the war. Alternatively, Putin doesn’t see how fast battlefield attrition and economic privation are undercutting his support, but others in his circle do, and in their own naked self-interest, they depose and perhaps even execute him. Once in power, they sue for peace. Either way, Russia concedes defeat.
Even the most patriotic soldiers can run out of patience if the fighting seems futile.
But this path to Ukrainian victory is also strewn with obstacles. For one thing, Putin is a veteran intelligence professional who presumably knows a lot about conspiracies, including how to defend against them. This alone makes a strategy of regime change suspect, even if there were some in Moscow who were willing to risk their lives to try it. For another thing, squeezing the Russian economy is unlikely to produce sufficient privation to create meaningful political pressure against Putin. The West can make the lives of Russians a bit drabber, and it can deprive Russian weapons manufacturers of sophisticated imported electronic subcomponents. But these achievements seem unlikely to shake Putin or his rule. Russia is a vast and populous country, with ample arable land, plentiful energy supplies, lots of other natural resources, and a big, if dated, industrial base. U.S. President Donald Trump tried and failed to strangle Iran, a much smaller and less developed but equally energy independent country. It is hard to see how the same strategy will work against Russia.
The effect of casualties on Putin’s calculations of his own interests is harder to assess. Again, however, there is reason to be skeptical that this factor will convince him to retreat. Great powers often incur major war losses for years, even for flimsy reasons. The United States did so in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq; the Soviet Union did so in Afghanistan. Before Russia’s invasion in February, many in the West insisted that the Ukrainians organize for a guerrilla insurgency against Russia. The hope was that this prospect would deter a Russian attack in the first place or, failing that, exact such a high price from Russian forces that they would soon depart. One problem with this strategy is that insurgents themselves must suffer a lot for the privilege of imposing a high price on their occupiers. Ukrainians may be willing to incur painful losses in a conventional war of attrition against Russia, but it is not clear that they can inflict enough pain to achieve the victory they want.
Nor is it clear that they can sustain such losses for a long time. Even the most patriotic soldiers can run out of patience if the fighting seems futile. If mounting casualties require Ukraine to throw ever less prepared troops into a hopeless battle, support for an open-ended war of attrition would erode even further. At the same time, the Russians are likely to have a high tolerance for pain. Putin has so controlled the domestic narrative about his war that many Russian citizens see the fight the same way he does—as a crucial battle for national security. And Russia has more people than Ukraine.
TO THE NEGOTIATING TABLE
Nobody can say with certainty that the Russian army cannot be hit hard enough or cleverly enough to induce its collapse or that Russia cannot be hurt enough to induce Putin to surrender. But these outcomes are highly improbable. At present, the most plausible result after months or years of fighting is a stalemate close to the current battle lines. Ukraine should be able to stop Russian advances, thanks to its highly motivated force, infusions of Western support, and the tactical advantages of the defense. Yet Russia enjoys superior troop numbers, and that, plus the tactical advantages of defense, should allow it to thwart Ukrainian counterattacks designed to reverse its gains. In Russia, Western sanctions will annoy the population and set back economic development, but the country’s self-sufficient supply of energy and raw materials should prevent the measures from achieving anything more than that. In the West, meanwhile, populations inconvenienced by the collateral damage of sanctions could themselves lose patience with the war. Western support of Ukraine may become less generous. Taken together, these factors point to one outcome: a draw on the battlefield.
As the months and years go on, Russia and Ukraine will both have suffered a lot to achieve not very much more than what each has already achieved—limited and pyrrhic territorial gains for Russia, and a strong, independent, and sovereign government with control over most of its prewar territory for Ukraine. At some point, then, the two countries will likely find it expedient to negotiate. Both sides will have to recognize that these must be true negotiations, in which each must give up something of value.
If that is the most likely eventual outcome, then it makes little sense for Western countries to funnel even more weapons and money into a war that results in more death and destruction with every passing week. Ukraine’s allies should continue to provide the resources that the country needs to defend itself from further Russian attacks, but they should not encourage it to expend resources on counteroffensives that will likely prove futile. Rather, the West should move toward the negotiating table now.
There is only one responsible thing to do: seek a diplomatic end to the war now.
To be sure, diplomacy would be an experiment with uncertain results. But so is the continued combat necessary to test Ukrainian and Western theories of victory. The difference between the two experiments is that diplomacy is cheap. Besides time, airfare, and coffee, its only costs are political. For example, participants may leak details of negotiations for the purpose of discrediting one camp or another, destroying a particular proposal and generating political opprobrium. Such political costs pale in comparison to costs of continued war, however.
And those costs could easily grow. The war in Ukraine could escalate to include even more destructive attacks by either side. Russian and NATO units operate in proximity at sea and in the air, and accidents are possible. Other states, such as Belarus and Moldova, could get drawn into the war, with knock-on risks for neighboring NATO countries. Even more frightening, Russia possesses powerful and diverse nuclear forces, and the imminent collapse of its effort in Ukraine might tempt Putin to use them.
A negotiated solution to the war would no doubt be hard to achieve, but the outlines of a settlement are already visible. Each side would have to make painful concessions. Ukraine would have to relinquish considerable territory and do so in writing. Russia would need to relinquish some of its battlefield gains and renounce future territorial claims. To prevent a future Russian attack, Ukraine would surely need strong assurances of U.S. and European military support, as well as continuing military aid (but consisting mainly of defensive, not offensive, weapons). Russia would need to acknowledge the legitimacy of such arrangements. The West would need to agree to relax many of the economic sanctions it has placed on Russia. NATO and Russia would need to launch a new set of negotiations to limit the intensity of military deployments and interactions along their respective frontiers. U.S. leadership would be essential to a diplomatic solution. Because the United States is Ukraine’s principal backer and the organizer of the West’s economic pressure campaign against Russia, it possesses the greatest leverage over the two parties.
It is easier to state these principles than it is to hammer them into the implementable provisions of an agreement. But that is precisely why negotiations should start sooner rather than later. The Ukrainian and Western theories of victory have been built on weak reasoning. At best, they are a costly avenue to a painful stalemate that leaves much Ukrainian territory in Russian hands. If this is the best that can be hoped for after additional months or years of fighting, then there is only one responsible thing to do: seek a diplomatic end to the war now.
4. The Case for a Stalemate in Ukraine Is Fatally Flawed
Useful counterpoint to Barry Posen's Foreign Affairs article.
Conclusion:
Can one seriously believe that Putin would voluntarily agree “to relinquish some of its battlefield gains and renounce future territorial claims” and “acknowledge the legitimacy” of a militarily strong Ukraine? The likelihood of that would appear to be close to zero, while the unlikelihood is close to 100. The probabilities will change only after the Ukrainians push back and Putin realizes that his goals are unattainable.
The Case for a Stalemate in Ukraine Is Fatally Flawed
Barry R. Posen’s just-published article (“Ukraine’s Implausible Theories of Victory: The Fantasy of Russian Defeat and the Case for Diplomacy now in Foreign Affairs”) is an exercise in wishful thinking on the one hand and willful inattention to inconvenient facts on the other. The result is an argument that is as implausible as those he claims to reject, both because it rests on unconvincing logic and because it ignores certain elementary empirical realities.
The Problems with Posen’s Ideas on Ukraine
It is striking just how often Posen resorts to the word “unlikely.” It appears a total of seven times, usually at critical junctures of his argument. The word “likely” appears six times. As I illustrate below, these words are intended to convey that “theories” of Ukraine’s victory are implausible, while his own theory of stalemate is plausible. In fact, his case against a Ukrainian victory is weak and his case for negotiation is even weaker. And that means that the case for a Ukrainian victory is, by the same token, far stronger than Posen cares to admit.
How do we know that something is or is not unlikely if Posen provides only one side of the story, that which corresponds to his own preconceived conclusions? According to Posen, “In Ukraine, the Russian army is likely strong enough to defend most of its gains. In Russia, the economy is autonomous enough and Putin’s grip tight enough that the president cannot be coerced into giving up those gains, either.”
Perhaps, but “likely strong enough” is not much of an endorsement of the Russian army’s strength. Moreover, Posen’s sweeping conclusion ignores the possibility—and reality—that the Russian army’s likely strength may vary. At this time, for instance, the Russians are obviously strong enough to advance incrementally in the Donbas. But they are also weak enough to be retreating in Kherson oblast. Is that a stalemate? Hardly, inasmuch as control of Kherson is strategically important for Ukraine, while control of Luhansk is not.
Posen’s casual use of unlikely and likely also masks the possibility that something may be so minimally unlikely as to be close to being likely—and vice versa. An outcome that is 51% likely is also 49% unlikely, after all, and a two-percentage-point difference isn’t much of a difference. Why should the Ukrainians be alarmed by a 49% likelihood of success? Given the disparity of resources between Russia and Ukraine, a 49% chance of a Ukrainian victory would be cause for rejoicing in Kyiv. How unlikely must the unlikelihood of a positive outcome be for Ukraine to be disheartened? 40%? 35%? 25%? Posen doesn’t tell us.
Posen’s conclusions often rest on flimsy evidence. Consider this, not atypical, statement:
“These early estimates [of the Russian army’s attrition and collapse] now look overly optimistic. If they were accurate, the Russian army ought to have collapsed by now. Instead, it has managed slow but steady gains in the Donbas. Although it is possible that the attrition theory could one day prove correct, that seems unlikely. The Russians appear to have suffered fewer losses than many thought or have nonetheless found a way to keep many of their units up to fighting strength. One way or another, they are finding reserves, despite their stated unwillingness to send recent conscripts or mobilized reservists to the front. And if push came to shove, they could abandon that reluctance.”
First, no one expected attrition to lead to the Russian army’s “collapse by now.” Second, Russia has made “slow but steady gains in the Donbas” because it has concentrated most of its troops in that sector, and not because of its prowess. Third, Ukrainian estimates of Russian war losses—at about 36,00 dead—are roughly twice those used by Posen. There is no likely or plausible reason for thinking these estimates are inaccurate. Indeed, they may be conservative: according to a reliable Russian source, “the Kremlin received nearly 42,000 complaints in April from the relatives of soldiers missing in Ukraine.” That number may be considered a proxy for the number of Russians killed in the war. Finally, the Russians are struggling to find adequate reserves, having been forced to conscript overage men and untrained residents of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics, enticing foreign mercenaries, and hoping to drag the Belarusians into the war. These facts hardly bespeak an army that is easily able to resist pushes and shoves.
Putin’s War Goals
Equally debilitating for his argument is that Posen ignores some inconvenient facts regarding Vladimir Putin’s intentions and goals in the war. Instead, Putin appears only as a run-of-the-mill leader with limited aspirations and rational approaches, while Russian ideology and culture—and especially Russian attitudes toward Ukraine—appear not to matter at all. Ukraine, and its hopes, fears, expectations, and strategies, is equally absent from the analysis. All that seems to matter is Posen’s evaluation of likely and unlikely outcomes.
But Putin is absolutely central to any understanding of the war. He started it, and he appears to be conducting it. He is also the major obstacle to any more or less simple resolution of the war. Putin’s goals are genocidal, intended to erase Ukrainian identity. They are also imperialist, intended to destroy Ukrainian sovereignty and transform Ukraine into a vassal or province of Russia. And, to add insult to injury, Putin appears to have a Ukraine obsession that pushes him toward a position of uncompromising rejection of any solution short of Ukraine’s destruction. Many of his minions and many Russians, including the Russian Orthodox Church, share these barbaric views.
Such a hardline attitude means that Putin will be unwilling to engage in any kind of compromise regarding Ukraine. For him, the war is a zero-sum game, as it is for the Ukrainians. Either he destroys them, or they survive by stopping and perhaps pushing back the Russian advance. Putin will negotiate only if he is forced to negotiate—that is, only if Ukraine does well enough on the battlefield to persuade even him that a Russian victory is impossible and that a Russian defeat is inevitable. In light of this, Posen’s recommendation that “Ukraine’s allies should continue to provide the resources that the country needs to defend itself from further Russian attacks, but they should not encourage it to expend resources on counteroffensives that will likely prove futile” is exactly wrong. Putin will never negotiate as long as he thinks he can win. Only a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive, even one that stops short of recapturing all the territories Russia seized since February, is indispensable to bringing Putin to the negotiating table.
Putin’s intransigence, barbarity, and imperial goals are also the major obstacles to Posen’s recommendations for a negotiated peace. Herewith his suggestions: “Each side would have to make painful concessions. Ukraine would have to relinquish considerable territory and do so in writing. Russia would need to relinquish some of its battlefield gains and renounce future territorial claims. To prevent a future Russian attack, Ukraine would surely need strong assurances of U.S. and European military support, as well as continuing military aid (but consisting mainly of defensive, not offensive, weapons). Russia would need to acknowledge the legitimacy of such arrangements. The West would need to agree to relax many of the economic sanctions it has placed on Russia.”
Can one seriously believe that Putin would voluntarily agree “to relinquish some of its battlefield gains and renounce future territorial claims” and “acknowledge the legitimacy” of a militarily strong Ukraine? The likelihood of that would appear to be close to zero, while the unlikelihood is close to 100. The probabilities will change only after the Ukrainians push back and Putin realizes that his goals are unattainable.
Dr. Alexander Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia, and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires, and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, including Pidsumky imperii (2009); Puti imperii (2004); Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires (2001); Revolutions, Nations, Empires: Conceptual Limits and Theoretical Possibilities (1999); Dilemmas of Independence: Ukraine after Totalitarianism (1993); and The Turn to the Right: The Ideological Origins and Development of Ukrainian Nationalism, 1919–1929 (1980); the editor of 15 volumes, including The Encyclopedia of Nationalism (2000) and The Holodomor Reader (2012); and a contributor of dozens of articles to academic and policy journals, newspaper op-ed pages, and magazines. He also has a weekly blog, “Ukraine’s Orange Blues.”
5. Fact Sheet on U.S. Security Assistance to Ukraine
For those keeping track.
Fact Sheet on U.S. Security Assistance to Ukraine
Release
Immediate Release
July 8, 2022
The United States has now committed $2.2 billion of security assistance to Ukraine in the last three weeks as we support their fight to defend their democracy. In total, the United States has committed approximately $8 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden Administration.
On July 8, the Department of Defense (DoD) announced the authorization of a Presidential Drawdown of security assistance valued at up to $400 million. This is the fifteenth drawdown of equipment from DoD inventories for Ukraine since August 2021.
United States security assistance committed to Ukraine includes:
- Over 1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft systems;
- Over 6,500 Javelin anti-armor systems;
- Over 20,000 other anti-armor systems;
- Over 700 Switchblade Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems;
- 126 155mm Howitzers and up to 411,000 155mm artillery rounds;
- 36,000 105mm artillery rounds;
- 126 Tactical Vehicles to tow 155mm Howitzers;
- 22 Tactical Vehicles to recover equipment;
- 12 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems and ammunition;
- Two National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS);
- 20 Mi-17 helicopters;
- Counter-battery systems;
- Hundreds of Armored High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles;
- 200 M113 Armored Personnel Carriers;
- Over 10,000 grenade launchers and small arms;
- Over 59,000,000 rounds of small arms ammunition;
- 75,000 sets of body armor and helmets;
- 121 Phoenix Ghost Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems;
- Laser-guided rocket systems;
- Puma Unmanned Aerial Systems;
- Unmanned Coastal Defense Vessels;
- 26 counter-artillery radars;
- Four counter-mortar radars;
- Four air surveillance radars;
- Two harpoon coastal defense systems;
- 18 coastal and riverine patrol boats;
- M18A1 Claymore anti-personnel munitions;
- C-4 explosives, demolition munitions, and demolition equipment for obstacle clearing;
- Tactical secure communications systems;
- Thousands of night vision devices, thermal imagery systems, optics, and laser rangefinders;
- Commercial satellite imagery services;
- Explosive ordnance disposal protective gear;
- Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear protective equipment;
- Medical supplies to include first aid kits;
- Electronic jamming equipment;
- Field equipment and spare parts;
- Funding for training, maintenance, and sustainment.
The United States also continues to work with its Allies and partners to provide Ukraine with additional capabilities to defend itself.
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6. America's top anti-war think tank is fracturing over Ukraine.
While some will surely assess this as a hit piece against the Quincy Institute, I think it is important for the broader critique it is indirectly making about the think tank community as well as the alleged causes of Putin's War, e.g., NATO expansion is at fault.
It is interesting that it is Mother Jones that is doing this reporting.
Conclusion:
Outside of Quincy, there is not much money on the anti-militarism side, making the institute even more important as a rare voice of dissent from foreign policy orthodoxy. Even as figures like Cirincione and Eaton find substantial support from Democrats in Congress, their views have encountered backlash among the wider progressive community. Whether there continues to be room for a progressive foreign policy that includes skepticism of NATO expansion or the wisdom of a prolonged war against Russia is still an open question. For Cirincione, there remains a glaring need for a truly progressive think tank. “A lot of us thought Quincy was going to be it,” he says. “But it’s just not.”
America's top anti-war think tank is fracturing over Ukraine.
An internal battle over the US response to Russia prompts resignations from the Quincy Institute.
Ukrainian soldiers move a US-supplied M777 howitzer in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region on June 18, 2022.Efrem Lukatsky/AP
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Two prominent figures have resigned in protest from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft—the only major think tank to promote a skeptical view of US power and military interventionism. In announcing their departures, Joe Cirincione and Paul Eaton criticized the organization’s dovish response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“They take this indefensible, morally bankrupt position on Ukraine,” Cirincione said in an interview Thursday with Mother Jones. “This is clearly an unprovoked invasion, and somehow Quincy keeps justifying it.”
“They take this indefensible, morally bankrupt position on Ukraine.”
Cirincione, who was until recently a “distinguished non-resident fellow” at Quincy, tweeted news of his resignation on Thursday, citing the institute’s “position on the Ukraine War” as his reason. Formerly the head of the Ploughshares Fund, an influential grant-giving foundation in the small progressive foreign policy world, Cirincione helped raise money for Quincy in its early days and connected it with key donors. But Ukraine proved to be his breaking point.
In articles posted online and in media appearances, other Quincy experts have called for the Biden administration to press Ukraine to reach a peace deal that allows Russia to keep some of the territory it has seized, arguing the alternative is a prolonged war and increased risk of direct conflict between the United States and Russia. That position has little public backing from prominent Democrats in Washington, who support the administration’s efforts to aid Ukraine’s military.
In an interview Thursday night, Cirincione said he “fundamentally” disagrees with Quincy experts who “completely ignore the dangers and the horrors of Russia’s invasion and occupation and focus almost exclusively on criticism of the United States, NATO, and Ukraine.”
Cirincione’s exit comes just days after Eaton—a retired Army major general who has long been an adviser to Democratic politicians and liberal advocacy groups—resigned from Quincy’s board for similar reasons. When asked why he left the organization, Eaton said on Twitter, “I support NATO,” an apparent reference to the strain of thought among anti-interventionists that Russia’s invasion was motivated by the expansion of the NATO alliance.
The fissures within Quincy reflect a deeper conflict among skeptics of US military power. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has exacerbated that conflict, with some backers of the Biden administration’s Ukraine policy accusing critics of being Putin apologists.
For Cirincione, the Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s unprovoked invasion “is a just war” deserving of US financial and military support. He disputes the view that the United States is engaged in a proxy war with Russia or attempting to “bleed Russia dry.” (Many international relations experts, not just at Quincy, have said the conflict is edging closer to a proxy war.)
On Responsible Statecraft, Quincy’s online magazine, “you cannot find a criticism in depth of Russia’s foreign policy pronouncements justifying the war,” Cirincione said.
Trita Parsi, the co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, called Cirincione a friend, but said that Cirincione’s criticisms were “not only false but bewildering.”
“A quick glance at our website would show that that statement is just simply not true,” Parsi said. “It is true that we are pushing for diplomatic solutions. We are not going along with the idea that it’s a good thing to change the objectives in Ukraine towards weakening Russia, because we believe that could lead to endless war.”
Parsi said that Cirincione had been encouraged to disagree—in private and and in public—with other Quincy experts. But Cirincione “wanted Quincy as a whole to adopt his position,” Parsi said, adding that such a move would be incompatible with the think tank’s mission and not “necessarily compatible with progressive foreign policy either.”
“It is true that we are pushing for diplomatic solutions.”
A particularly knotty issue for some progressive thinkers is the question of military aid, which is the main forum through which the United States has supported Ukraine. Matt Duss, a foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), used a recent piece in the New Republic to appeal to progressives on this point, arguing that the Left should not let prior US misadventures abroad “blind us to the instances when provision of military aid can advance a more just and humanitarian global order.”
There is not much division among congressional Democrats on that question. Not a single Democrat in the House or Senate voted against President Joe Biden’s request for $40 billion in weapons and humanitarian aid for Ukraine. But outside of the Democratic Party, a collection of prominent figures spanning the progressive left and libertarian right have been vehemently opposed to such a huge aid package, which is one of the largest sums of foreign aid in US history.
Many of these critics view the source of the conflict as broader than Putin himself. Taking their lead from John Mearsheimer, an influential international relations professor and non-resident fellow at Quincy, they argue that the United States gravely miscalculated at the end of the Cold War by expanding NATO to include several Eastern European countries that were once part of the Soviet Union. Mearsheimer has argued that the US government should have expected Russia to perceive the expansion of NATO as a security threat.
Many of these critics do not think the US government’s aims in Ukraine are necessarily noble. As examples, they have seized on comments from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who said that he wants to see Russia “weakened,” and media leaks that claiming that US intelligence is helping Ukraine kill Russian generals. (“I think the Biden administration has done an exemplary job of aiding Ukraine, but it’s not flawless,” Cirincione told Mother Jones.)
While functionally a debate about means and ends—no different from many arguments in the national security space—the fractious conversation about Ukraine on the Left also speaks to the kinds of questions that remain out of bounds in the elite world of US foreign policy. Quincy was a unique entry in to the debate from the start. The institute is proudly not progressive; it prefers to call itself “transpartisan.” Its experts often align with the anti-militarist worldview shared by many progressive Democrats and libertarians, a coalition that is reflected in the organization’s primary funders: George Soros and Charles Koch.
Outside of Quincy, there is not much money on the anti-militarism side, making the institute even more important as a rare voice of dissent from foreign policy orthodoxy. Even as figures like Cirincione and Eaton find substantial support from Democrats in Congress, their views have encountered backlash among the wider progressive community. Whether there continues to be room for a progressive foreign policy that includes skepticism of NATO expansion or the wisdom of a prolonged war against Russia is still an open question. For Cirincione, there remains a glaring need for a truly progressive think tank. “A lot of us thought Quincy was going to be it,” he says. “But it’s just not.”
7. U.S. to send 15th military package to Ukraine, bringing total aid in Russia war to $7 billion
U.S. to send 15th military package to Ukraine, bringing total aid in Russia war to $7 billion
CNBC · by Amanda Macias · July 8, 2022
US military personnel stand by a M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) during Saudi Arabias first World Defense Show, north of the capital Riyadh, on March 6, 2022.
Fayez Nureldine | Afp | Getty Images
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is set to send its 15th security assistance package to Ukraine, bringing the tally of U.S. military and humanitarian aid to more than $7 billion since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February.
A senior U.S. Defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to share details of the additional security assistance, said the $400 million weapons package was coordinated with Ukrainian officials and is tailored to the wider Russian assault in eastern Ukraine.
Heavy artillery platforms, like howitzers and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, sit high on Ukrainian military wish lists.
The official said the latest security package will include four additional HIMARS, which brings the total number of HIMARS transfers to Ukraine from U.S. arsenals to 12.
The HIMARS, manufactured by defense giant Lockheed Martin, are designed to shoot a variety of missiles from a mobile 5-ton truck. The official said that U.S. troops will keep training Ukrainian forces on how to use the platform at a location outside the country.
US M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers fire salvoes during the "African Lion" military exercise in the Grier Labouihi region in southeastern Morocco on June 9, 2021.
Fadel Senna | AFP | Getty Images
"We will continue to train them because we see this as a sustained battle," the official said, adding that HIMARS training takes approximately a week to complete.
The official declined to elaborate when pressed by reporters on how many Ukrainian troops have so far completed training on the HIMARS platform.
The person added that the latest security assistance will be a mixture of systems already deployed to the fight as well as new capabilities.
The official said that the latest tranche of weapons will include additional ammunition for HIMARS, 155 mm howitzers and rounds of ammunition for the howitzers.
VIDEO3:3003:30
Here's a breakdown of the high-tech weapons the U.S. is shipping to Ukraine
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
CNBC · by Amanda Macias · July 8, 2022
8. Four More HIMARS Launchers Heading To Ukraine Bringing Total To 12
Good news. This may turn out to be one of the most important weapons systems of Putin's War.
Four More HIMARS Launchers Heading To Ukraine Bringing Total To 12
This latest round of weapons deliveries from the U.S. to Ukraine will also include 1,000 precision-guided 155mm artillery shells.
BY
JUL 8, 2022 4:23 PM
Another four M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS and additional ammunition for those systems, plus 1,000 rounds of high-precision 155 mm howitzer ammunition are heading to Ukraine as part of a $400 million Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) allocation signed by President Joe Biden Friday.
This latest PDA will bring to 12 the number of HIMARS the U.S. will have sent to Ukraine, a senior U.S. official told reporters Friday morning. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said that there were already eight of those systems operating in Ukraine now.
The official said that contrary to Russian claims, none have been damaged or destroyed.
“High-precision air-based missiles have destroyed 2 US-made HIMARS multiple-launch rocket launchers and 2 ammunition depots near Malotaranovka in Donetsk People's Republic,” the Russian Ministry of Defense said last week on its Telegram channel.
In addition to HIMARS, the U.S. will be sending 1,000 rounds of what the official said are 155 mm howitzer rounds that provide “greater precision” than standard shells for those systems.
“It offers Ukraine precise capability for specific targets,” the official said. “It will save ammunition. It will be more effective due to the precision.”
Ukraine still has "substantial stores" of standard 155 mm shells, the official said.
The official declined to answer repeated questions about whether the new high-precision rounds were the M982 Excalibur precision-guided 155mm artillery shell. The Excalibur, which the Army, as well as the U.S. Marines, have been using for more than a decade, is only capable of hitting stationary targets using its GPS-assisted inertial navigation system (INS) guidance package. The M982 has a maximum range of 20 miles.
“I can't get into details for operational reasons,” the official said.
Images posted online claim to show destruction of Russian ammo depots and other logistic support areas caused by the HIMARS Ukraine already has. Other than to say they’ve been used in the Donbas, the official declined to give specific details.
“We don't want to help the Russians do their battle damage assessment or anything like that,” the official said. “These are locations behind the frontlines of where the Russian forces are concentrated, where you see every day the battles going on - [command and control] logistics nodes.”
When asked why it’s taken so long for the U.S. to supply HIMARS, and why they are only being shipped out four at a time, the official explained that it takes time to train Ukrainian troops who have only previously used former Soviet Union long-range fires.
Learning how to use the HIMARS “is a weeks-long training process where Ukrainian crews needed to be trained on these systems that were new to them, because it's not a Soviet legacy system,” the official said. “The sort of limiting factor was having trained crews and we have been training successive sets of crews to be ready to staff the use of the sets of four HIMARS systems at a time as the crews were ready to be able to use them effectively.”
After a visit to Kyiv along with U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to see Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn) said he supports providing Ukraine with, among other things, longer-range HIMARS rounds on the condition that Ukraine did not use these to attack Russian territory, according to Reuters.
Biden has so far declined to give Ukraine those longer-range HIMARS munitions, with a range of up to 190 miles, over worries that Ukraine would use them to strike deep into Russia. The U.S. Army currently fields such a round, called the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) You can read more about that system here.
The U.S. Army's Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) has a far longer range and more devastating firepower than the HIMARS rounds being provided to Ukraine. (U.S. Army photo)
When asked about preclusions against Ukraine using the existing HIMARS systems, the senior U.S. official told reporters Friday morning that any targets inside Ukraine, including territories now occupied by Russia, are fair game.
With so much weaponry heading from the U.S. to Ukraine, concerns have been raised about whether the Pentagon is tracking the billions of dollars worth of arms it has sent.
“We absolutely track them from the time we send the capabilities to Ukraine, deliver them to Ukraine [and] they move into the battlefield,” the official said. “Our military leaders and experts and professionals are in communication with the Ukrainians to understand how they're employing those capabilities, what their usage rate is, what their strategy is.”
The goal, according to the official, is not just to make sure the weapons are not falling into the wrong hand, but also to gauge what Ukraine needs.
“It's a really important element of deciding what goes into our next assistance package is to understand how they're employing them. We are tracking that very carefully and we are very mindful of our duties and obligations to maintain awareness of the capabilities we're providing.”
9. US to send more HIMARS precision rockets to Ukraine
Ammunition, ammunition, ammunition. Are our ammunition production lines open and operating at capacity?
US to send more HIMARS precision rockets to Ukraine
WASHINGTON — The United States is sending to Ukraine up to $400 million in additional military equipment and supplies, including four more medium-range rocket systems and ammunition, as the embattled nation tries to repel Russia’s advances in the Donbas region.
The four additional M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, will bring the total number sent to Ukraine to a dozen, a senior defense official told reporters in a briefing Friday. The official said the first eight HIMARS were particularly useful for Ukraine, as the fight in the Donbas has largely evolved into an artillery duel. The official refuted Russian reports that two of the delivered HIMARS were destroyed, and said all eight are accounted for and still in use by Ukraine.
The military equipment being drawn down from U.S. stockpiles and sent to Ukraine also includes three tactical vehicles, demolition munitions, counter-battery systems and spare parts, among other equipment, so Ukraine can repair and maintain other systems that allies have sent in recent months.
The shipment will also include 1,000 rounds of 155mm artillery ammunition, which the defense official described as a precision-guided type that would allow the Ukrainian military to better hit specific targets, which would save ammunition. The official would not confirm whether these shells will be the guided Excalibur artillery rounds, but said they have not been part of previous security assistance packages to Ukraine.
HIMARS is a light, wheeled multiple rocket launcher, which Pentagon officials previously said was a “top priority” request by Ukraine. The U.S. undersecretary for defense for policy, Colin Kahl, told reporters last month that HIMARS allows Ukrainian forces to strike targets with greater range and precision than other artillery weapons that were sent.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy formally promised only to use HIMARS for defensive purposes and to avoid firing into Russian territory; this took place before the U.S. agreed to provide the systems in order to avoid escalating the conflict.
The defense official said Russian claims HIMARS were used in strikes outside of Ukrainian territory are false, and that Russian forces, capabilities and logistics nodes within Ukraine are “absolutely fair targets.”
The official said the weekslong process to train Ukrainian troops on how to use the high-end HIMARS platform has been a limiting factor, and is why they were delivered in batches of four at a time. The official said efforts to train more Ukrainians on HIMARS will continue, but would not say how many have so far been trained.
The official said the HIMARS would arrive on the battlefield “rapidly,” but would not say how long their deployment might take.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attends a meeting with military officials during his visit the war-hit Dnipropetrovsk region. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)
The official said Russian forces are making “very incremental, limited, hard-fought, highly costly progress” in some parts of Donbas, and that they are far behind their timelines and objectives. The official would not specify where Russian forces are believed to have been disrupted, but said they are behind the front lines in Donbas.
Ukrainian forces are launching effective counteroffenses, the official said, and in the last week have started to use HIMARS strikes to seriously disrupt Russia’s ability to gain ground.
“We don’t see this at all as Russia winning this battle,” the official said. “Certainly they’re not winning it relative to their initial objectives. They’ve been very much thwarted, but the fighting is hard.”
The U.S. has been talking with allies and partners about other systems that could be sent to Ukraine, such as coastal defense capabilities, to move the nation away from Soviet legacy systems.
While Ukraine has received a great deal of equipment from the U.S. and other partner nations, the official said, its military has been using it at such an intense pace that forces need resources to repair and sustain those systems.
Providing this ability also sends Russia an important signal that Ukraine will be able to continue the fight, the official said.
“If the Russians think they can outlast the Ukrainians, they need to rethink that,” the official said. “We are already pivoting towards thinking about what the Ukrainians will need in the months and years ahead.”
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter at Defense News. He previously reported for Military.com, covering the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare. Before that, he covered U.S. Air Force leadership, personnel and operations for Air Force Times.
10. ‘Liberal World Order’ Is Decades-Old Term Misinterpreted by Social Media Posts
"Liberal." One of the most misunderstood and misused and hot button words today.
On the one hand this illustrates how social media dumbs us down. On the other hand Rep. Gallego has an important point, most Americans (and Congress people) are not reading Foreign Policy Magazine and leaders should not be talking to them as if they are.
Excerpts:
“The White House openly stated that you’re just going to have to pay more in gas so that they can hold the ‘liberal world order’ together and it barely registers as breaking news,” Boebert tweeted. “They’re telling you EVERYTHING they plan to do and most don’t even care.”
...
A frustrated Democrat, Rep. Ruben Gallego, retweeted a link critical of Deese’s interview and wrote, “Democracy just say Democracy, we are helping defend a Democratic country. Stop talking to Americans as if they read Foreign Policy magazine.” Gallego added a facepalm emoji.
‘Liberal World Order’ Is Decades-Old Term Misinterpreted by Social Media Posts
Posted on July 8, 2022
“Liberal world order” is a decades-old term referring to a system of global cooperation. A Biden administration adviser used the term to explain why gasoline prices are tied to the war in Ukraine. But social media posts use the adviser’s comments to misleadingly claim Biden is pushing a “new liberal world order” to make Americans pay “high gas prices forever.”
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The term “liberal world order,” also referred to as the “liberal international order,” has been in use since at least the end of World War II when “countries sought to ensure the world never again devolved into such horrific violence,” according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
“World leaders created a series of international organizations and agreements to promote global cooperation on issues including security, trade, health, and monetary policy,” CFR writes. “The United States has championed this system — known as the liberal world order — for the past seventy-five years. During this time, the world has enjoyed unprecedented peace and prosperity.”
During a news conference at the close of the NATO summit on June 30 in Madrid, a reporter asked President Joe Biden “how long is it fair to expect American drivers and drivers around the world” to pay high gasoline prices due to the war in Ukraine. Biden responded, “[a]s long it takes so Russia cannot, in fact, defeat Ukraine and move beyond Ukraine.”
Blackwell played a video of Biden’s comments from the NATO news conference. He asked Deese what he would say to American families who can’t afford high gasoline prices for months or even years to come if the war in Ukraine were to last as long as some experts predict. In response, Deese used the term “liberal world order.”
Deese, June 30: Well, what’s heard from the president today was a clear articulation of the stakes. This is about the future of the liberal world order and we have to stand firm. But at the same time what I’d say to that family and to Americans across the country is you have a present administration that is going to do everything in its power to blunt those price increases and bring those prices down.
Deese appeared to use the decades-old terminology to describe the international world order that was created after World War II, and the current unified effort to prevent Russia from moving beyond Ukraine.
But posts on social media shared a brief clip of Deese’s exchange with Blackwell and misleadingly claimed the Biden administration is making Americans pay high gasoline prices to push the “liberal world order,” insinuating that the term relates to American politics.
Jimmy Dore, who is a frequent spreader of misinformation and host of the Jimmy Dore Show, produced a show segment with the headline “High Gas Prices FOREVER Says Biden” that covered Deese’s comment.
“Right now we’re going to tell you about the new liberal world order,” Dore says before showing an edited clip of the Deese interview. “You think I’m kidding? Here’s a guy from the Biden administration, and he’s going to tell you that you’re gonna have to keep paying high gas prices forever. Why? Cause a new world liberal – what, you think I’m kidding?”
“The White House openly stated that you’re just going to have to pay more in gas so that they can hold the ‘liberal world order’ together and it barely registers as breaking news,” Boebert tweeted. “They’re telling you EVERYTHING they plan to do and most don’t even care.”
In a blog post, which carried the headline, “The Biden Administration Pushes ‘Liberal World Order,'” the American Center for Law and Justice said: “Liberal world order? Are they serious? Of course, the first question is, what does that even mean?”
A frustrated Democrat, Rep. Ruben Gallego, retweeted a link critical of Deese’s interview and wrote, “Democracy just say Democracy, we are helping defend a Democratic country. Stop talking to Americans as if they read Foreign Policy magazine.” Gallego added a facepalm emoji.
The term has been used by Biden on at least two occasions as president, but it also has been referenced by Republican presidents.
Some drop the word “liberal” and just say “world order,” as former President Richard Nixon did in 1969 in a message to Congress about foreign aid. “U.S. assistance is essential to express and achieve our national goals in the international community — a world order of peace and justice,” Nixon said.
At the end of the Cold War, President George H. W. Bush spoke of what he called a “new world order,” which “involved collective security with multinational cooperation” by breaking down “Cold War conceptions” and creating “new allies,” as Stephen Knott, a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, explained in an article for the Miller Center at the University of Virginia.
In a speech to Congress after the U.S. victory in the first Gulf War, Bush spoke of a “new world order,” quoting the late Winston Churchill, prime minister of the United Kingdom during World War II.
“Now, we can see a new world coming into view. A world in which there is the very real prospect of a new world order,” Bush said. “In the words of Winston Churchill, a world order in which ‘the principles of justice and fair play protect the weak against the strong. . . .’ A world where the United Nations, freed from Cold War stalemate, is poised to fulfill the historic vision of its founders.”
An April 2020 paper titled “The Rise of the Liberal World Order,” written by Samantha A. Taylor for the U.S. Army War College website, explained how the rise of the United States is tied to the creation of the liberal world order.
“[T]he rise of the liberal world order is connected to the rise of the United States in the international system. This development occurred in three phases. The first phase occurred between 1917 and 1945, during which the United States emerged as a world power,” wrote Taylor, a visiting professor at the college. “The second phase from 1945 to 1991 occurred as the United States stood as one of two superpowers. The third phase began in 1991 and continues to today, where the United States stands as the world’s sole superpower and supporter of the liberal world order.”
But that context is ignored in social media posts that misleadingly suggest Biden is pushing a “new liberal world order” to make Americans pay “high gas prices forever.”
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
Sources
“Brian Deese” biography. Council on Foreign Relations. Accessed 7 Jun 2022.
11. Latest Japan Updates: As Nation Mourns, Questions Swirl Over Abe’s Security
A lot of detail of what is known and happening so far.
Latest Japan Updates: As Nation Mourns, Questions Swirl Over Abe’s Security
Many people asked how a gunman was able to get close enough to Shinzo Abe to kill him. The former prime minister’s body was taken Saturday to his home in Tokyo.
People lining on Saturday to lay flowers at the site of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s assassination in Nara, Japan.Credit...Issei Kato/Reuters
NARA, Japan — The assassination of Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest serving prime minister, drew international attention to Nara, the country’s old capital and a city known more for its temples, shrines and proliferating deer than politics.
The city of about 360,000 people is often a second stop for tourists visiting nearby Kyoto, and the prefecture in which it is located is home to the third-largest number of nationally recognized cultural assets, after Tokyo and Kyoto.
Close to a third of the population is 65 or older, and Nara is a stronghold for the Liberal Democratic Party that Mr. Abe led for nearly eight years. One of his protégés, Sanae Takaichi, represents Nara in the Lower House of Parliament.
In a sign of Mr. Abe’s strong local support, hundreds of people lined up on Saturday to pay their respects to the fallen leader at a makeshift memorial set up at the site near the Yamato Saidaiji railway station where he had been assassinated a day earlier. They laid flowers, photos and cards along with packets of snacks and cans of beer and soda on tables set up under a white tent.
Police officers controlled traffic as people spilled over from the sidewalk onto the street, and set up cardboard boxes to collect the overflow of bouquets. Even as rain poured down in the midafternoon, visitors of all ages stood in line.
Miharu Araki, 24, a former resident of Nara who now works in Osaka, about 20 miles away, said she felt compelled to visit the site after being glued to the television for news about Mr. Abe all day on Friday. “He is a very memorable prime minister to me,” Ms. Araki said. “If asked who is the face of Japan, it’s Mr. Abe.”
Miyoko Ogawa, 61, who took the train from Osaka to lay two sunflowers and a small bottle of sake on the memorial, said she had been a longtime fan of Mr. Abe. “I just want to say, ‘Thank you for your hard work,’” she said. Even though he had stepped down as prime minister in 2020 for health reasons, she said, Mr. Abe had been working to support other politicians in Nara.
“He still wanted to devote himself and contribute to politics, even though he didn’t look so healthy,” Ms. Ogawa said. “I am so sad and upset that Mr. Abe was killed.”
Shinzo Abe, a Japanese former prime minister, in Nara, Japan, on Friday, minutes before he was shot.Credit...The Asahi Shimbun, via Reuters
A day after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was gunned down in broad daylight, a stunned nation is questioning how the gunman was able to approach one of Japan’s most prominent politicians and fire two shots from close range without security stepping in.
On television and social media, there are numerous videos of the gunman walking unobstructed past security before pointing a large, handmade gun in the direction of Mr. Abe. The first shot seemed to startle the former leader and, a few seconds later, a second shot was fired and Mr. Abe collapsed to the ground. At that point, a group of men who appeared to be part of his security detail tackled the gunman to the ground.
The graphic footage has raised questions about why the gunman was able to approach from behind the riser where Mr. Abe was speaking and how, after the first shot, he was able to fire a second before security officers stopped him.
Toshio Tamogami, the chief of staff for Japan’s Air Force, seemed to ask the question that was on the country’s mind.
“How did the police, protective detail and other security not notice the criminal who approached with a gun from behind?” he wrote on Twitter.
At a press briefing on Saturday in Nara, Tomoaki Onizuka, head of the Nara prefectural police, acknowledged flaws in the protection given to Mr. Abe at Friday’s campaign event. “It is undeniable that there were problems in the security,” Mr. Onizuka said.
However, the National Police Agency said that there had been no problem with Mr. Abe’s security, according to Jiji News Agency, and that there had been an armed officer on the scene from Japan’s Security Police. That protective detail is a division of Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department and serves a role similar to the Secret Service in the United States. An agency spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
The agency said the lone Security Police officer at the event saw the attacker but could not stop the shooting, according to Jiji. The local police department in Nara said it also had officers there guarding Mr. Abe, although they declined to provide specifics on how many officers were deployed.
Danny Russel, a vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute and former assistant secretary of state who traveled extensively with President Barack Obama, said he was stunned by the lack of protection for Mr. Abe during Friday’s campaign stop.
“The notion that the security police could have been there and not only allowed someone to walk up that closely to Abe carrying a homemade weapon, but there were two shots several seconds apart,” Mr. Russel said. “Why did nobody interpose their body or wrestle Abe to the ground?”
The seemingly relaxed security around Mr. Abe is a byproduct of the relative safety of Japan, where violent crimes and major disturbances at political rallies are rare.
Paul Nadeau, a former private secretary and adviser for a Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker from 2015 to 2018, said that he had attended campaign stops where Mr. Abe was speaking and that security was not overwhelming, even though he was prime minister at the time. He noted that there were around six to 12 security police officers guarding him but that the level of security did not come close to that of an American president.
Mr. Nadeau, who is now an adjunct professor at Temple University in Japan, said that he would attend party functions where Mr. Abe was in attendance with several hundred politicians, aides and other affiliated people without going through a background check, screening or a metal detector.
The proximity of candidates and constituents was intentional, he said, as part of a way to create a sense of intimacy and a feeling that the politician was approachable. Security was rarely considered.
“It never crossed my mind that you would ever need more security,” he said.
Motoko Rich and Hikari Hida contributed reporting.
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Police officers at the scene of Shinzo Abe’s killing in Nara, Japan.
Tetsuya Yamagami, the suspect in the assassination of Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, will be detained and questioned by the police in the city of Nara for another night, then transferred to the custody of the local prosecutors’ office, the police said on Saturday.
The police said little else about the case during a brief news conference in Nara, where Mr. Abe was killed on Friday. Under Japan’s criminal justice system, the police are allowed to interrogate suspects for two days before turning them over to prosecutors.
At the news conference, the police told reporters that Mr. Yamagami had taken a train one stop from his neighborhood to the location of the campaign rally where Mr. Abe was shot. They also said they had found multiple bullet holes in a vehicle used by the candidate for whom Mr. Abe was campaigning, but they did not elaborate.
For years, Japan’s criminal justice system has been criticized as unfairly slanted toward the prosecution, with critics pointing to a national conviction rate that exceeds 99 percent.
Once Mr. Yamagami is in their custody, prosecutors will have a day to determine whether to seek a detention order from a court, which they almost certainly will, said Charles D. Weisselberg, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law who directs a program studying U.S. and Japanese law.
At that point, prosecutors will have 10 days to question Mr. Yamagami. They can then apply for another order that would allow them to interrogate him for an additional 10 days.
In total, that means Mr. Yamagami can be detained and questioned for 23 days before being indicted. During interrogation, he is not entitled to have a lawyer present. Many critics of the system have said that it is geared toward forcing a suspect into confessing.
Japan’s Constitution states that people cannot be compelled to testify against themselves and that forced confessions are inadmissible in court. The country’s Ministry of Justice has said that it decided against letting lawyers be present during questioning because that “would make it difficult to discover the truth of the case due to the difficulty of obtaining sufficient statements from the suspects.”
The ministry also has said experts had warned that having lawyers present during interrogation would “not be supported by crime victims or the Japanese people, who strongly demand that the truth of a case be discovered.”
Satoru Shinomiya, a defense attorney and professor of law at Kokugakuin University in Tokyo, said he expected prosecutors to take the maximum amount of time allowed under the law in this case, because Mr. Abe was a high-profile victim and they want to avoid making mistakes that could expose them to criticism.
Even in cases where the accused confesses to a crime, he said, prosecutors keep investigating to capture not only a full picture of the crime but of the life of the suspect.
Mr. Shinomiya added that he did not expect prosecutors to seek the death penalty against Mr. Yamagami, because Mr. Abe was the only victim and Japanese courts have been reluctant to impose the death penalty in such cases.
The man accused of killing Shinzo Abe, Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, was tackled after the shooting in Nara, Japan, on Friday.Credit...The Asahi Shimbun, via Reuters
As Japan’s former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, spoke to the crowd in the city of Nara, a man in cargo pants and a grey shirt approached from behind, carrying a crude handmade gun. He shot Mr. Abe twice.
Men in suits, apparently the prime minister’s security detail, moved swiftly, chasing down the suspect and tackling him to the ground. The man, Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, was arrested at the scene.
While his full motives are unclear, he confessed that he had intended to kill Mr. Abe, according to the police. The prime minister, he believed, had some association with a group against which Mr. Yamagami held “a grudge.”
The police have charged him with murder.
“I am in complete shock,” said Ayane Kubota, 37, who was headed home from work in Tokyo and scrolling through Twitter to catch up on the news on Friday evening. “This is so un-Japanese. You never hear about gun violence here. On TV in the United States you hear about it all the time, but not here.”
In a news briefing on Friday night, police officials from the Nara prefectural office said Mr. Yamagami had made the double-barreled gun, about 16 inches long and 7 inches wide. The police also found several similar weapons in his apartment near the site.
The authorities have not said what penalty they will seek for Mr. Yamagami. Japan is one of the few highly developed countries that have capital punishment; six people have been executed by hanging in the past three years. The law allows the death penalty for murder, but it is rarely applied for a single killing.
On Saturday, a hearse brought Mr. Abe’s body to his home in Tokyo. His wife, Akie Abe, accompanied the body during the ride from Nara, according to local news coverage.
Mr. Abe’s constituency office in Yamaguchi said a wake would be held on Monday and a funeral on Tuesday, but it did not indicate where the ceremonies would take place.
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Campaign posters in Tokyo on Saturday.
TOKYO — On Saturday, a day after the shocking news of , the news coverage was muted.
Except for brief updates and smatterings of analysis, weekend programming proceeded as usual. The extensive coverage that, in many countries, would follow the assassination of a major public figure was nowhere to be seen.
Late Saturday morning, NHK, Japan’s public broadcaster, was showing travel and nature programs, featuring schools of fish gliding through soporific underwater scenes. Another channel took viewers through a luxury mansion, while others aired cooking programs or variety shows featuring antic performers and pop stars.
Mr. Abe was shot while campaigning for a candidate for the Upper House of Parliament in
Under Japanese law, news outlets are strictly required to provide balanced coverage of political parties during campaign seasons. Broadcasters might have been wary of violating such laws by offering wall-to-wall commentary on Mr. Abe the day before an election, said Kaori Hayashi, a professor of media studies at the University of Tokyo.
“TV stations are very cautious because it’s election time,” Ms. Hayashi said. “Theoretically, too much coverage of Abe could infringe on the election law.”
But Ms. Hayashi said that broadcasters in Japan, where political apathy runs high, were also likely wary of jeopardizing their ratings, assuming that the public is less focused on “what will become of politics or the election.”
As the nation mourned, life continued at pace. Campaigning resumed in Tokyo. In Shibuya, the city’s popular shopping and entertainment district, crowds thronged fashion stores, and cafes and restaurants were full. A flag at Tokyo Dome flew at half-staff as the Yomiuri Giants played the Yokohama DeNa Baystars, but there was no moment of silence before the game.
Outside the baseball stadium, couples tried to win stuffed animals in an arcade. A line snaked out the door of a nearby convenience store. Makiko Kawasaki, 29, who planned to take her 3-year-old for a ride on a Ferris wheel, said the assassination of Mr. Abe had not changed her plan to skip the voting.
“I’m not really interested in politics,” Ms. Kawasaki said. “And it’s my husband’s birthday tomorrow.”
Members of the Maritime Self-Defense Forces marching in 2004. Fixed-term officers with the navy would typically receive training in shooting, handling and disassembling rifles, the Defense Ministry said.
The 41-year old man arrested and charged with murder in Friday’s assassination of Shinzo Abe, Japan’s former prime minister, has said he had served in the country’s military, the police said Saturday, and his name and birth date matches that of someone defense officials said had served in the navy.
A man with the same name and birth date as Tetsuya Yamagami, about whom little is publicly known, served in the Maritime Self-Defense Forces for three years beginning in August 2002, according to Japan’s Ministry of Defense. He spent two years as a crew member of the destroyer Matsuyuki at a naval base in Hiroshima Prefecture, the ministry said. Police in Nara Prefecture, where Mr. Abe was shot, said the suspect had said he had served in the Self-Defense Forces for three years starting in 2002 but did not specify which branch.
The Defense Ministry said it could not definitively confirm that the suspect in custody for Mr. Abe’s shooting was the person who had served a single fixed term as an officer in the service.
Fixed-term officers with the Self-Defense Forces would typically receive training in shooting, handling and disassembling rifles, the ministry said.
Japan’s Self-Defense Forces, so-called because of a clause in the country’s postwar Constitution renouncing war, has more than 240,000 active personnel, 45,000 of whom are maritime. It is a voluntarily enlisted force — conscription would be unconstitutional — that has struggled to fill recruitment targets as the country’s population ages and birthrates remain low.
Under Mr. Abe’s leadership, the country steadily increased its military spending under heightened provocations from North Korea and a rising threat from China.
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At Shinzo Abe’s home in Tokyo on Saturday.
The assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during a campaign rally in western Japan was especially hard to fathom because it involved a gun — a type of crime that is extremely rare in a country with some of the most stringent laws on buying and owning firearms.
Gun violence is almost unheard-of in Japan. There was only one firearm-related death in all of 2021. Since 2017, there have been 14 gun-related deaths, a remarkably low figure for a country of 125 million people.
Expressing a common reaction, Erika Inoue, 25, a designer in Tokyo, said the gun violence was hard to process.
“The shooting part is confusing,” she said. “There are guns? In Japan?”
Japan’s firearms law states that, in principle, guns are not permitted in the country. There are exceptions for guns used in hunting, but the process of getting a license is time-consuming and expensive, so very few people go through the hassle.
A person must pass 12 steps before purchasing a firearm, starting with a gun-safety class and then passing a written exam administered three times a year. A doctor must sign off on the gun buyer’s physical and mental health. Other steps include an extensive background check and a police inspection of the gun safe and ammunition locker required for storing firearms and bullets.
The shooting was all the more shocking because before Friday, even the idea of a political murder seemed like a relic of a long-gone era.
Tempers rarely run high in Japan’s famously sedate politics. Parliamentary debates usually do not move beyond cat calls and faux outrage, and even the ultra-right-wing groups that regularly prowl city streets in black vans, blaring political propaganda, are viewed as more of a nuisance than a threat to public safety.
Police protection at political events is light, and during campaign season, voters have plenty of opportunities to interact with the country’s top leaders. Videos showed the man suspected of shooting the former prime minister walking unobstructed in proximity of him and firing a handmade gun.
Mr. Abe winning the leadership vote of his Liberal Democratic Party in 2018. He was Japan’s longest-serving prime minister.Credit...Toru Hanai/Reuters
Shinzo Abe, the longest-serving Japanese prime minister, who made it his political mission to vanquish his country’s wartime ghosts but fell short of his goal of restoring Japan as a normalized military power, was assassinated on Friday in the city of Nara, Japan. He was 67.
Mr. Abe, the scion of a staunchly nationalist family of leading politicians, had the longest uninterrupted tenure as prime minister in Japanese history, nearly eight years beginning in 2012. He had previously served a year in an earlier stint as the country’s leader.
His long run delivered only partial victories on his two primary ambitions: to unfetter Japan’s military after decades of postwar pacifism and to jump-start and overhaul its economy. He resigned as prime minister in August 2020, a year before his term was set to end, citing ill health.
One of his most significant moves came in 2015, when, in the face of intense opposition, he pushed through legislation that authorized overseas combat missions alongside allied troops in the name of “collective self-defense.” But he failed in his long-held dream of revising the war-renouncing clause of Japan’s Constitution, put in place by American occupiers after World War II.
Mr. Abe’s economic program, known as Abenomics, involved cheap cash, government spending on stimulus projects that expanded the country’s debt and attempts at corporate deregulation. The combination delivered results in the early years of his term, lifting the economy out of an unrelenting malaise.
A key factor in Mr. Abe’s economic platform was to draw more women into the paid work force, to counterbalance a declining and aging population. But the promise of drastically raising the proportion of women in management and in government did not come to fruition.
On the international stage, Mr. Abe was one of the few world leaders to maintain a consistently close relationship with President Donald J. Trump. And after years of a chilly relationship with China, Mr. Abe tried to usher in a warmer era, making the first visit to Beijing by a Japanese prime minister in seven years when he met with President Xi Jinping in 2018.
While Mr. Abe worked to cultivate diplomatic and trade relations around the world, he never lost sight of his nationalist agenda at home. A year after taking office in 2012, he visited Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japan’s war dead — including war criminals from the World War II era. Although he largely avoided further visits, he resisted calls for Japan to more fully apologize for its wartime atrocities, a sore point in Korea and China.
He reiterated support for past official statements of remorse, but also seemed to suggest that Japan had done enough. “We must not let our children, grandchildren and even further generations to come, who have nothing to do with that war, be predestined to apologize,” he said in 2015.
Shinzo Abe was born on Sept. 21, 1954, in Tokyo to Shintaro and Yoko Abe. His mother was the daughter of Nobusuke Kishi, prime minister from 1957 to 1960, who had been accused of war crimes by the occupying Americans, but who was ultimately released from prison without appearing before the Allied war crimes tribunal.
Mr. Abe’s father was also a politician, and served as foreign minister.
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The weapon used to assassinate former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan was an improvised firearm.
Video of the assassination shows a device on the ground after the attack, consisting of two tubes perhaps just over a foot in length and bound together side by side with black electrical tape — similar to a double-barrel shotgun.
It is unknown what kind of ammunition was used in the attack that killed Mr. Abe. But in the video, two shots can be heard, approximately two and a half seconds apart, with a deep report that suggests they came from a cartridge such as those fired by a shotgun commonly used by civilian hunters.
The firearm on the ground after the attack.
Such ammunition, commonly used for hunting small game, consists of a propellant and a number of solid spherical projectiles called shot, or a single projectile called a slug. When fired, shot spreads out into a conical pattern that widens with distance; a slug follows a simple ballistic path like a bullet fired from a rifle or a handgun.
The amount of smoke seen in videos of the attack is not typical of modern, commercially purchased ammunition, suggesting the firing system and ammunition may have been homemade or improvised as well.
Japan has exceptionally strict regulations that prohibit the average citizen from obtaining a factory-manufactured firearm. Civilian ownership of firearms, except for those used for hunting purposes, is generally prohibited by the country’s Firearms and Swords Control Law.
Japanese citizens may possess guns “as an exception only if approval is obtained” from a public safety commission at the prefectural level, which is just below the national government, according to an official summary of the law.
“Licenses for possession of firearms are issued for specific guns for certain applications such as hunting or eradication of noxious birds or animals,” the summary says.
Japanese citizens who have criminal records or who are addicted to narcotics are prohibited from owning firearms. Concealed firearms are prohibited entirely.
Shinzo Abe campaigning with Keiichiro Asao, left, a Liberal Democratic Party candidate for the Upper House, in Yokohama on Wednesday.
TOKYO — It was supposed to be a quiet election for the Upper House of Parliament. But the assassination on Friday of Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has added an element of chaos to Japanese politics just two days before voters head to the ballot box.
For the time being, political parties across the spectrum are pulling back on their messaging, but the election is still going ahead.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said after Mr. Abe’s death that campaigning for the Upper House election would continue as planned.
“Free and fair elections are the foundation of democracy, and we absolutely must protect them,” he said, adding that doing so would demonstrate Japan’s “firm resolve not to surrender to violence.”
Japanese electoral law gives candidates just over two weeks to take their message to voters, and the last days normally involve politicians sprinting through endless rallies, hoping to drum up last-minute votes.
Candidates running for an electoral seat make many stops every day across their prefecture, usually on a truck with their face and slogan plastered along the side. They typically park along the road and talk from beside or even atop their truck.
Often, lesser-known candidates will have a more prominent politician join them for a few stops. That is what Mr. Abe was doing on Friday: supporting a younger politician running for re-election, even though he himself was not up for election.
So far, the authorities have not announced additional security measures for the last day of campaigning.
Mr. Abe’s party, the Liberal Democrats, have been the dominant political force in Japan since the end of World War II, and the country’s scattered opposition parties have little hope of changing that on Sunday.
Upper House members in Japan serve staggered six-year terms, with half of them up for election every three years. This year, 75 members will be chosen to represent electoral districts, and 50 through proportional representation.
Even after stepping down as prime minister in 2020, Mr. Abe continued to be a powerful force in his party, pushing forward his long-held goals of increasing Japan’s military spending and changing its pacifist Constitution to allow it to maintain a standing army.
That role as a power broker kept him at the center of public attention in the lead-up to the election, said Tobias Harris, a senior fellow for Asia at the Center for American Progress who has written a biography of Mr. Abe.
His death will have a powerful impact on the election, Mr. Harris said, even though the specifics are yet to be known.
“It just scrambles so much,” Mr. Harris said.
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As prime minister, Shinzo Abe edged Japan closer to the United States and most of its Pacific allies.
In his record-breaking run as prime minister, Shinzo Abe never achieved his goal of revising Japan’s Constitution to transform his country into what the Japanese call a “normal nation,” able to employ its military to back up its national interests like any other.
Nor did he restore Japan’s technological edge and economic prowess to the fearsome levels of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Japan was regarded as China is today — as the world’s No. 2 economy that, with organization and cunning and central planning, could soon be No. 1.
But his assassination in the city of Nara on Friday was a reminder that he managed, nonetheless, to become perhaps the most transformational politician in Japan’s post-World War II history, even as he spoke in the maddeningly bland terms that Japanese politicians regard as a survival skill.
After failing to resolve longstanding disputes with Russia and China, he edged the country closer to the United States and most of its Pacific allies (except South Korea, where old animosities ruled).
He created Japan’s first national security council and reinterpreted — almost by fiat — the constitutional restrictions he could not rewrite, so that for the first time Japan was committed to the “collective defense” of its allies. He spent more on defense than most Japanese politicians thought wise.
“We didn’t know what we were going to get when Abe came to office with this hard nationalist reputation,” said Richard Samuels, the director of the Center for International Studies at M.I.T. and the author of books on Japan’s military and intelligence capabilities. “What we got was a pragmatic realist who understood the limits of Japan’s power, and who knew it wasn’t going to be able to balance China’s rise on its own. So he designed a new system.”
12. CA affirms Maria Ressa's cyber libel conviction, adds 8 months to possible jail sentence
This is terrible news. Keep Maria out of jail.
Anyone or any government that fears a free press has no business being in any kind of leadership role. If you cannot stand the scrutiny of a free press then you do not support freedom and individual liberty, a liberal democracy, or human rights. You can only lead or rule by an iron hand that denies rights in order to stay in power. Think about that. Deny a free press and you are saying you fear you cannot remain in power without denying basic, universal, and unalienable rights and freedoms.
The Philippines is no longer creeping toward authoritarianism. It is now quashing basic freedoms without apology.
CA affirms Maria Ressa's cyber libel conviction, adds 8 months to possible jail sentence
MANILA, Philippines – The Philippine Court of Appeals (CA) affirmed the cyber libel conviction of Rappler CEO and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa, and former Rappler researcher-writer Reynaldo Santos Jr., adding eight months to the prison sentence initially imposed by a lower court in Manila.
“The appeal is denied. The decision of the Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 46 finding accused Reynaldo Santos Jr. and Maria Ressa guilty beyond reasonable doubt of violation of Section 4(c)4 of Republic Act 10175 otherwise known as the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 is affirmed with modification insofar as accused are sentenced to suffer the indeterminate penalty of imprisonment ranging from six months and one day as minimum to six years and eight months and twenty days as maximum,” said the decision by the Court of Appeals Fourth Division.
The CA ruling was signed by Associate Justices Roberto Quiroz, Ramon Bato, and Germano Francisco Legaspi. It is a different set of justices than the ones who handled the appeal earlier on and who had previously granted Ressa’s travel authorities.
The CA justices also imposed a longer prison sentence than what the Manila court imposed in June 2020 which was six months and one day as minimum to six years as maximum. This set of CA justices added eight months and 20 days to the maximum imprisonment penalty. The fines totaling P400,000 for moral and exemplary damages were retained.
“Both [Ressa and Santos] will avail of all legal remedies available to them, including elevating the decision to the Supreme Court for review,” said Rappler in a statement Friday, July 8.
Constitutionality of cyber libel
The Manila court’s ruling, which the CA affirmed, interpreted the young cyber libel law as having a 12-year prescription period as opposed to having only a one-year prescription period as stated in the revised penal code. The 12-year period, which means you can be sued even after 12 years of publication, was a gray area in the highly-contested law, but was interpreted by the justice department using a pre-war statute to be able to prosecute Ressa and Santos.
The Manila court also ruled that republication is a separate offense. Rappler’s story in question, an investigative story about the use of one of complainant Wilfredo Keng’s vehicles by the late chief justice Renato Corona, was published in 2012 but months before the cybercrime law was even enacted. But a correction of a typographical error made two years later was considered a separate offense by the court. It was regarded as a republication of the story and legal experts have questioned the constitutionality of the ruling on these grounds.
Rappler said: “While the decision is unfortunate, it is also a good opportunity for the Supreme Court to take a second look at the constitutionality of cyber libel and the continuing criminalization of libel, especially in light of the freedom of expression and freedom of the press.”
Because cyber libel is bailable, neither has to go to jail while they exhaust their remedies up to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court, in at least two separate decisions against broadcaster and now Senator Raffy Tulfo, has shown an inclination to decriminalize libel. In 2019, it affirmed the conviction against Tulfo but removed the prison sentence. In 2021, it acquitted Tulfo and said “the constitutionality of criminalizing libel is doubtful.”
Cases against Rappler
Rappler received last week the decision by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revoking its license and ordering its closure. Rappler’s legal counsel Francis Lim, former president of the Philippine Stock Exchange, said the order is appealable to the courts and the news organization can go on business as usual.
The SEC order stems from the Philippine Depositary Receipts (PDR) issue which has spurred five tax charges against Ressa and several board members. Two separate but related cases for violation of the anti-dummy and securities law have been remanded to prosecutors. Three other libel cases have now been junked.
“We call on our media colleagues, our community, and other advocates of a free and independent press to be vocal and vigilant now more than ever. This is not just about Maria Ressa, Rey Santos Jr., or Rappler. What is ultimately at stake is our democracy whose strength rests on a media that is not threatened by the state nor intimidated by forces out to silence critical voices,” said Rappler.
– Rappler.com
13. FDD | Strict Oversight Needed for New U.S-Backed Counter-China Infrastructure Initiative
Excerpts:
The PGII’s sheer size necessitates close congressional scrutiny as well as the appointment of an independent inspector general to conduct audits and inspections of PGII activities. This new entity could be modeled on the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, which documented rampant waste, fraud, and abuse of the $146 billion appropriated by Congress to support reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan.
Congress should push for the establishment of an appropriate monitoring mechanism at the PGII’s inception. Lawmakers should also wield their appropriations authorities to ensure PGII financing aligns squarely with America’s long-term national security interests vis-à-vis China rather than the domestic policy priorities of any one administration.
FDD | Strict Oversight Needed for New U.S-Backed Counter-China Infrastructure Initiative
fdd.org · by Craig Singleton Senior Fellow · July 8, 2022
The United States, in partnership with other Group of 7 (G7) nations, launched an initiative last week aimed at raising $600 billion to fund infrastructure projects in low- and middle-income countries over the next five years. While President Joe Biden hailed the program as an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the White House has released scant details about how Washington will fund or monitor the projects, raising important questions for Congress as it seeks to counter China’s overseas influence responsibly.
Since 2013, China has signed more than 170 BRI cooperation agreements with 125 countries, committing nearly $800 billion in loans for emerging countries to build infrastructure such as ports, roads, and bridges. Western governments have called BRI a “debt trap” because some projects force debt-saddled countries to cede key assets if they fail to meet debt repayment obligations. A 2018 study by the College of William and Mary found that unreported Chinese loans to overseas borrowers, mostly developing countries, amounted to nearly 15 percent of these countries’ gross domestic product on average.
While outbound Chinese development loans have dropped considerably, from $75 billion in 2016 to $4 billion in 2020, many BRI recipients are facing challenges repaying their loans. In response, China has offered $12 billion of debt-service postponements and restructuring to BRI recipients since the start of the pandemic. Nevertheless, Beijing has resisted calls to forgive BRI-related debts, because doing so would devastate the balance sheets of China’s state-owned banks at a time when the country’s economy is facing considerable headwinds.
In announcing Washington’s participation in the G7 initiative, formally known as the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII), Biden pledged to mobilize $200 billion in American financing. This financing will reportedly consist of a combination of government funding and private capital from pension funds, private equity funds, and insurance funds, among others.
Unlike the BRI, which focuses on physical infrastructure financing, PGII will exclusively support projects that “advance climate and energy security, digital connectivity, health and health security, and gender equality and equity priorities,” according to a memorandum issued by Biden. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan will lead a six-month interagency process to craft PGII’s implementation, after which he will deliver recommendations to the president.
A coordinated, U.S.-led effort to undermine BRI’s predatory model has been a long time coming. However, many questions remain about PGII’s scope as well as the fiduciary risks stemming from providing already debt-laden countries with access to even more infrastructure financing.
For instance, Biden noted that the PGII “isn’t aid or charity” but rather an “investment that will deliver returns for everyone, including the American people.” If PGII funds are not grants but rather loans, it remains unclear whether and how U.S. taxpayers could recoup losses if some recipient countries prove unable to pay the loans back. The White House has also not explained how it will prioritize PGII projects or if it will distribute funds to countries deemed neither free nor fair.
Likewise, still uncertain is whether the White House intends to redirect funding from existing development programming, including security assistance or training programs, to projects that fall under the PGII’s umbrella. Also unclear is how the United States intends to evaluate and manage the risks associated with PGII investments in countries with high levels of corruption or political instability.
The PGII’s sheer size necessitates close congressional scrutiny as well as the appointment of an independent inspector general to conduct audits and inspections of PGII activities. This new entity could be modeled on the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, which documented rampant waste, fraud, and abuse of the $146 billion appropriated by Congress to support reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan.
Congress should push for the establishment of an appropriate monitoring mechanism at the PGII’s inception. Lawmakers should also wield their appropriations authorities to ensure PGII financing aligns squarely with America’s long-term national security interests vis-à-vis China rather than the domestic policy priorities of any one administration.
Craig Singleton, a national security expert and former U.S. diplomat, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he contributes to FDD’s China Program and International Organizations Program. For more analysis from Craig, the China Program, and the International Organizations Program, please subscribe HERE. Follow Craig on Twitter @CraigMSingleton. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Craig Singleton Senior Fellow · July 8, 2022
14. China demands end to US-Taiwan military 'collusion'
Some fundamental question for the international community: Does Taiwan have the right to self defense? Does it have the right to request assistance in defending its people and territory? Should the PRC be allowed to threaten, coerce, or use force against Taiwan?
Is support to a country and people to help them defend themselves "military collusion?"
China demands end to US-Taiwan military 'collusion'
China’s People’s Liberation Army Gen. Li Zuocheng, left, and then-U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley review an honor guard during a welcome ceremony at the Bayi Building in Beijing on Aug. 16, 2016. According to reports on Thursday, July 7, 2022, Li told Milley, now the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, that China has demanded the U.S. cease military “collusion” with Taiwan. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP)
BEIJING — China has demanded the U.S. cease military "collusion" with Taiwan during a virtual meeting between the joint chiefs of staff from the two countries whose relationship has grown increasingly fractious.
Gen. Li Zuocheng told Gen. Mark Milley on Thursday that China had "no room for compromise" on issues affecting its "core interests," which include self-governing Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own territory to be annexed by force if necessary.
"China demands the U.S. ... cease reversing history, cease U.S.-Taiwan military collusion and avoid impacting China-U.S. ties and stability in the Taiwan Strait," Li said.
The Chinese military would "resolutely safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity," he said. "If anyone creates a wanton provocation, they will be met with the firm counterattack from the Chinese people."
Such language is fairly routine and Li was also quoted in a Defense Ministry news release saying China hoped to "further strengthen dialogue, handle risks, and promote cooperation, rather than deliberately creating confrontation, provoking incidents and becoming mutually exclusive."
China routinely flies warplanes near Taiwan to advertise its threat to attack, and the island's Defense Ministry said Chinese air force aircraft crossed the middle line of the Taiwan Strait dividing the two sides on Friday morning. It said measures were taken in response, including the scrambling of Taiwanese jets.
Such "provocative behavior ... has seriously damaged regional peace and stability," the ministry said.
Asked about the incident, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said, "This exercise by China is directed at external interference and separatist Taiwan independence forces."
The meeting between Li and Milley followed fiery comments by Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe at a regional security conference last month that was also attended by U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
Wei accused the United States of trying to "hijack" the support of countries in the Asia-Pacific region to turn them against Beijing, saying Washington is seeking to advance its own interests "under the guise of multilateralism."
At the same meeting in Singapore, Austin said China was causing instability with its claim to Taiwan and its increased military activity in the area.
And in May, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called China the "most serious long-term challenge to the international order" for the United States, with its claims to Taiwan and efforts to dominate the strategic South China Sea, prompting an angry response from Beijing.
The U.S. and its allies have responded with what they term "freedom of navigation" patrols in the South China Sea, prompting angry responses from Beijing.
Despite not having formal diplomatic relations in deference to Beijing, Washington remains Taiwan's chief ally and supplier of defense weapons. U.S. law requires the government to treat all threats to the island as matters of "grave concern," although it remains ambiguous on whether the U.S. military would defend Taiwan if it were attacked by China.
The latest round of heated rhetoric comes ahead of a meeting between Blinken and his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, on Saturday at a gathering of foreign ministers from the G-20 bloc of industrialized nations in Indonesia that is expected to be overshadowed by disagreements over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
China has refused to criticize Moscow's aggression or even term it an invasion, while condemning Western sanctions against Russia and accusing the U.S. and NATO of provoking the conflict.
Along with Taiwan and the South China Sea, Washington and Beijing are also at odds over trade, human rights and China's policies in Tibet and toward mainly Muslim Turkic minorities in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.
15. Choose your reality: Trust wanes, conspiracy theories rise
This is a national security threat. It is what could do the most damage to our nation.
Choose your reality: Trust wanes, conspiracy theories rise
AP · by DAVID KLEPPER · July 9, 2022
Daniel Charles Wilson believes the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were an inside job. The war in Ukraine is “totally scripted” and COVID-19 is “completely fake.” The Boston Marathon bombing? Mass shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, and Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas? “Crisis actors,” he says.
Wilson, a 41-year-old from London, Ontario, has doubts about free elections, vaccines and the Jan. 6 insurrection, too. He accepts little of what has happened in the past 20 years and cheerfully predicts that someday, the internet will make everyone as distrustful as he is.
“It’s the age of information, and the hidden government, the people who control everything, they know they can’t win,” Wilson told The Associated Press. “They’re all lying to us. But we’re going to break through this. It will be a good change for everyone.”
Wilson, who is now working on a book about his views, is not an isolated case of perpetual disbelief. He speaks for a growing number of people in Western nations who have lost faith in democratic governance and a free press, and who have turned to conspiracy theories to fill the void.
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Rejecting what they hear from scientists, journalists or public officials, these people instead embrace tales of dark plots and secret explanations. And their beliefs, say experts who study misinformation and extremism, reflect a widespread loss of faith in institutions like government and media.
A poll conducted last year by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that just 16% of Americans say democracy is working well or extremely well. Another 38% said it’s working only somewhat well.
The distrust has gone so deep that even groups that seem ideologically aligned are questioning each others’ motives and intentions.
On the day before Independence Day in Boston this year, a group of about 100 masked men carrying fascist flags marched through the city. Members proudly uploaded videos and photos of the march to online forums popular with supporters of former President Donald Trump and QAnon adherents, who believe a group of satanic, cannibalistic child molesters secretly runs the globe.
Instead of praise, the white supremacists were met with incredulity. Some posters said the marchers were clearly FBI agents or members of antifa — shorthand for anti-fascists — looking to defame Trump supporters. It didn’t matter that the men boasted of their involvement and pleaded to be believed. “Another false flag,” wrote one self-described conservative on Telegram.
Similarly, when an extremist website that sells unregulated ghost guns — firearms without serial numbers — asked its followers about their July 4th plans, several people responded by accusing the group of working for the FBI. When someone claiming to be Q, the figure behind QAnon, reappeared online recently, many conservatives who support the movement speculated that the new Q was actually a government plant.
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This past week, when a Georgia monument that some conservative Christians criticized as satanic was bombed, many posters on far-right message boards cheered. But many others said they didn’t believe the news.
“I don’t trust it. I’m still thinking ff,” wrote one woman on Twitter, referencing “false flag,” a term commonly used by conspiracy theorists to describe an event they think was staged.
The global public relations firm Edelman has conducted surveys about public trust for more than two decades, beginning after the 1999 World Trade Organization’s meeting in Seattle was marred by anti-globalization riots. Tonia Reis, director of Edelman’s Trust Barometer surveys, said trust is a precious commodity that’s vital for the economy and government to function.
“Trust is absolutely essential to everything in society working well,” Reis said. “It’s one of those things that, like air, people don’t think about it until they realize they don’t have it, or they’ve lost it or damaged it. And then it can be too late.”
For experts who study misinformation and human cognition, the fraying of trust is tied to the rise of the internet and the way it can be exploited on contentious issues of social and economic change.
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Distrust and suspicion offered obvious advantages to small bands of early humans trying to survive in a dangerous world, and those emotions continue to help people gauge personal risk today. But distrust is not always well suited to the modern world, which requires people to trust the strangers who inspect their food, police their streets and write their news. Democratic institutions, with their regulations and checks and balances, are one way of adding accountability to that trust.
When that trust breaks down, polarization and anxiety increases, creating opportunities for people pushing their own “ alternative facts.”
“People can’t fact check the world,” said Dr. Richard Friedman, a New York City psychiatrist and professor at Weill Cornell Medical College who has written about the psychology of trust and belief. “They’re awash in competing streams of information, both good and bad. They’re anxious about the future, and there are a lot of bad actors with the ability to weaponize that fear and anxiety.”
Those bad actors include grifters selling bad investments or sham remedies for COVID-19, Russian disinformation operatives trying to undermine Western democracies, or even homegrown politicians like Trump, whose lies about the 2020 election spurred the Jan. 6 attack.
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Research and surveys show belief in conspiracy theories is common and widespread. Believers are more likely to to get their information from social media than professional news organizations. The rise and fall of particular conspiracy theories are often linked to real-world events and social, economic or technological change.
Like Wilson, people who believe in one conspiracy theory are likely to believe in others too, even if they are mutually contradictory. A 2012 paper, for instance, looked at beliefs surrounding the death of Princess Diana of Wales in a 1997 car crash. Researchers found that subjects who believed strongly that Diana was murdered said they also felt strongly that she could have faked her own death.
Wilson said his belief in conspiracies began on Sept. 11, 2001, when he couldn’t accept that the towers could be knocked down by airliners. He said he found information on the internet that confirmed his beliefs, and then began to suspect there were conspiracies behind other world events.
“You have to put it all together yourself,” Wilson said. “The hidden reality, what’s really going on, they don’t want you to know.”
AP · by DAVID KLEPPER · July 9, 2022
16. Five Men Indicted in Connection with PRC Repression Scheme Targeting Chinese Dissidents in the U.S.
The PRC/CCP seems to be getting pretty bold.
Five Men Indicted in Connection with PRC Repression Scheme Targeting Chinese Dissidents in the U.S.
On July 6, a federal grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York indicted five individuals with various crimes in connection with “a transnational repression scheme” targeting critics of the Chinese government. The superseding indictment adds two new defendants—Craig Miller, a 15-year employee of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Derrick Taylor, a retired DHS law enforcement officer who later worked as a private investigator—to a March 2022 indictment of Fan “Frank” Liu, Matthew Ziburis, and Qiang “Jason” Sun. The Justice Department alleges that the group stalked, harassed, and spied on critics of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), targeting the dissidents on behalf of China’s Ministry of State Security.
The grand jury charged Liu and Ziburis with conspiring to act as agents of the Chinese government; Liu, Ziburis, and Sun with conspiring to engage in interstate harassment and criminal use of a means of identification; and Liu and Sun with conspiring to bribe an Internal Revenue Service employee to obtain the tax records of a Chinese dissident in the United States. Both Miller and Taylor face charges of obstruction of justice, and Taylor is charged with making a false statement to the FBI.
The complaint alleges that former DHS employees Miller and Taylor lied to FBI agents about their improper use of federal law enforcement databases to obtain personal identifying information about dissidents. In one instance described in the complaint, Taylor and Miller allegedly helped to procure passport information about a dissident and his daughter.
You can read the indictment here and below:
Tia Sewell is an associate editor of Lawfare. She is an undergraduate at Stanford University studying international relations and economics.
17. There Is No Cyber Bullet
Excerpts:
Ultimately, commanders must have the ability to deploy a variety of cyber capabilities if the Navy is to fight effectively in the 21st century. However, the notion that the Navy and Marine Corps can engineer, test, and field a cyber weapon the same way it does conventional weapons is a fallacy that the services should seek to end. Doing so will require a paradigm shift in the thinking of leaders, removing the concept of weapon deployment from cyberwarfare and replacing it with that of effects generation.
Commanders who follow this strategy will be able to successfully drive the realistic delivery of cyber capabilities and effects and bring to bear the full potential of cyberwarfare.
There Is No Cyber Bullet
To understand how to use cyber effects, commanders must first understand their limitations.
By Lieutenant Commander Eric P. Seligman, U.S. Navy
July 2022 Proceedings Vol. 148/7/1,433
Since the dawn of warfare, the prowess of combatants has been defined by how effectively they bring to bear the weapons of their time. Warriors hone their craft over years, their weapons becoming extensions of their own bodies. Whether these weapons be the sword, bow, musket, M-16, or F-35, they change little over the course of a warrior’s career. This, however, is not the case for the cyber warrior. This warrior wields instruments of amorphous design and exotic purpose, known to most as “cyber weapons.”
While the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms has no definition of “weapon,” the word is used more than 150 times to define various other terms. One of these is the well-known expression “fires,” which is defined as: “The use of weapon systems or other actions to create specific lethal or nonlethal effects on a target.”1 This is of particular interest, as the term “cyber fires” has come into heavy use when referring to offensive cyber operations and related activities.2
If a weapon is said to deliver fires, then the effect of those fires should be specific and known. For example, when detonated 50 feet from a target, the 500-pound Mk 82 aircraft bomb delivers 17 psi of overpressure. Fragmentation of the bomb causes 32 mm of penetration in steel armor plate, and it will generate nearly a 100 percent fatality rate to unprotected human targets at the same range.3 Furthermore, the Mk 82 would be just as effective in destroying a CSK131 as it would a GAZ Tiger (both armored HMMWV equivalents). If a single Mk 82 failed to destroy a given target, the application of additional Mk 82s almost certainly would.
The laws of physics are immutable: When the amount of energy transferred to an object exceeds the strength of its molecular bonds, the result is inevitable. This is the world of kinetic strikes, the world of bombs and bullets. It is not, however, the world of cyberwarfare.
Nevertheless, commanders at sea, in the air, and on the ground require real-world effects from cyber weapons. These commanders also should know the effects will be delivered by a warfare domain of which they have no direct insight or control. The fifth domain of warfare—cyberspace—unlike the other domains, is an entirely human construct. The “laws” of this domain are remade on a near continual basis. Any tactic or tool a warfighter may find effective in one moment could be rendered wholly ineffective in the next with the flip of a single bit.
So where does this leave the notional cyber weapon? Can we make it as effective and reliable as the Mk 82?
Building an Effective Cyber Weapon
The process for developing, testing, manufacturing, and deploying the Mk 82 and similar munitions is well understood. But what of cyber weapons? Suppose a commander was told the effectiveness of a weapon depended entirely on a large constellation of variables, some predictable, many that are not, and some that are unknowable. This is where the Navy finds itself today when attempting to develop and deploy cyber weapons.
Consider just one potential variable when designing a cyber weapon: the target’s operating system. While this may seem simple to account for, note that Microsoft has released 14 major versions of its operating system in the past 15 years.4 Add in both 32-bit and 64-bit processor variants and there are now twice as many variables to contend with. Unlike the Mk 82, which will destroy a vehicle regardless of its make and manufacturer, a variant of a cyber weapon may have to be developed for each of the operating system versions described above to be effective. In addition, this does not account for custom configurations, patch levels, security products, or other applications that may interfere with the weapon’s effectiveness.
Given the complexity of cyber weapons, commanders must understand that deploying a cyber weapon may take weeks of prep work, and, even then, may still have unintended consequences. Credit: U.S. Navy (Arthur Rosen)
The variables to consider when fielding a cyber weapon could reach well into the thousands, if not higher. This assessment, of course, only contends with known variables. Accounting for the probability of unknown factors (such as network link volatility or system memory state) can take what was once considered a simple deterministic process to achieve an effect and turn it to a non-deterministic probability.
In other words, the effect that a cyber weapon brings to bear is often probabilistic in the best-case scenario, and profoundly nonspecific in the worst. Triggering third- and fourth-order effects far beyond the intent of the weapon’s creator is a frighteningly common occurrence.
The Necessity of Covert Action in Cyberspace
Assuming the myriad variables required to develop and test a cyber weapon have been accounted for, the weapon must eventually be fielded. U.S.C. Title 10 and Title 50 authorities define how most cyberwarfare operations should be conducted.5 To the uninitiated, the separation of these authorities appears clear: Title 10 specifies the bounds of offensive military actions in cyberspace; Title 50 authorizes covert activities—most specifically, intelligence collection. However, as most in the cyberwarfare profession are aware, this distinction can quickly break down in practice.6
The central point of conflict in this debate is that most, if not all, Title 10 offensive actions in cyberspace require covert “Title 50–like” actions to enable them. This becomes an issue as the United States tries to replicate traditional show-of-force activities—such as freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea—in cyberspace. The intent of these activities is demonstrating to adversaries that the United States has both the capability and will to deter any assault against its interests.
The problem in cyberspace is that when a weapon is revealed overtly, in a way that explicitly demonstrates a capability, it likely will be the last time the capability can be used. Unlike the Mk 82, which will impart a specific amount of kinetic force every time it is deployed, a cyber weapon’s use carries with it a specific signature. With each use, the signature of the attack is more likely to be detected and mitigated.7
Worse still is when the vulnerability used to gain access to a target is discovered by the adversary. While signatures can possibly be modified, new vulnerabilities are finite and cannot be created. A show-of-force operation, or any operation that is, by design, meant to be discovered, will result in a capability that is no longer effective and loss of access to target systems. The best hope for retaining reproducible effects is to ensure that cyber-attacks are covert and nonattributable whenever possible and only executed overtly out of necessity.
F-35C pilots become experts at handling their aircraft—they know not only how it maneuvers, but also what to expect from its fires. Cyber weapons are ever-changing, making it more difficult to know what their specific effects will be. Credit: U.S. Navy (Haydn N. Smith)
Access and Tactical Warfare
Assuming the cyber weapon has remained undetected and unmitigated through its initial deployment, how can the Navy and Marine Corps enable its use by commanders at sea and on the ground? In most cases, offensive cyber operations cannot occur without access to target systems, and a weapon predeployed to targets in one geographic region will not help forces located in another.
In the realm of cyberwarfare access equals victory, and as with most victories, access typically is not achieved in a single hour or day; weeks, months, or even years of preparation are required. Furthermore, access to a given network that has taken months of preparation can be lost in an instant.8 New targets that require immediate action cannot not be engaged until appropriate preparation of the battlespace has occurred. This leaves most tactical and operational commanders with little recourse for delivering cyber effects to emergent targets without reaching back to strategic cyberwarfare assets.
As tantalizing as the concept of tactical cyberattacks is, there is a small and quickly vanishing number of use cases in which a previously unknown target could be engaged in this manner. Targets of opportunity in the cyberwarfare domain are few and far between.
The Ground Truth of Cyber Weapons
Given all this, if a cyber weapon’s specific effect cannot be known with certainty, and its effectiveness is reduced exponentially through each use, and it is only effective once access to a system is gained, does it meet the criteria to be called a weapon at all? This question reveals the uncomfortable truth in cyberwarfare: There is no cyber bullet, no cyber bomb, and, in fact, no cyber weapons at all.
What exists is a vast and ever-changing patchwork of semi-interconnected tools and techniques, with capabilities that look less like those of the warrior and more like those of a locksmith, thief, or saboteur. The tools used in this domain are developed in an iterative fashion and tested quickly, often only to ensure basic functionality. They are deployed in this manner because they must be able to maintain relevancy in a domain in which fundamental realities shift like sand under one’s feet.
Unlike the scientists and engineers who developed the Mk 82, cyber capability developers do not have years or decades of research to fall back on. They cannot rely on the immutable laws of nature and physics to ground their assumptions; the laws of cyberspace are being rewritten every hour of every day.
The Way Forward
Given the complexities of cyberwarfare, what is a commander to do if he or she can see the potential for cyber enabled effects but is unsure how to deploy or integrate them? Addressing the following points will provide a realistic assessment of how and when cyber effects could be deployed:
Acknowledge complexity. Commanders must understand that the more complex an order, the more time and resources will be required for its execution. They must realize that, given the myriad variables involved, ordering a new cyber effect on a new target is one of the most complex orders that can be issued.
Prepare your battlespace. Seemingly simple requests may require weeks or longer of prep work. A single antiair battery can be disabled in seconds by a kinetic strike. A similar action could take months for a cyber effect, requiring cyberwarfare elements to penetrate multiple layers of networks and defenses to stage the effect when it is needed. For example, cyber commands that support tactical units must ensure their theaters of operations are prepared well in advance to support tactical-level cyberwarfare activity.
Request effects, not specific capabilities. Shipboard and other tactical commanders are unlikely to have the technical insight to direct the use of a given cyberwarfare capability. Instead, when engaging with strategic and combatant command–level cyberwarfare elements, consider the objectives against a given target and request the effect required to achieve that objective.
Know the stakes. Employing cyber effects almost always will have unintended consequences. Show-of-force activities are a surefire way to lose a capability. Furthermore, effects that quickly disable or destroy a target should be used sparingly as they will quickly be discovered and rendered inert. The more spectacular or frequently used the effect, the likelier the loss of that capability. Capabilities that generate deception or low-grade degradation effects are more likely to be enduring.
Ultimately, commanders must have the ability to deploy a variety of cyber capabilities if the Navy is to fight effectively in the 21st century. However, the notion that the Navy and Marine Corps can engineer, test, and field a cyber weapon the same way it does conventional weapons is a fallacy that the services should seek to end. Doing so will require a paradigm shift in the thinking of leaders, removing the concept of weapon deployment from cyberwarfare and replacing it with that of effects generation.
Commanders who follow this strategy will be able to successfully drive the realistic delivery of cyber capabilities and effects and bring to bear the full potential of cyberwarfare.
1. U.S. Department of Defense, Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, March 2017).
2. MIDN 3/C Edwin Lopez, USN, “Call of Duty: A Prediction of Future Wars?” USNI Blog, 22 April 2021; Amber Corrin, “Air Force Calls for Hybrid Approach to Cyber Warfare,” Defense Systems, 22 October 2010; and Alexander Kott, “Overview of Cyber Science and Technology Programs at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory,” Journal of Cyber Security and Information Systems 5, no. 1 (December 2016).
5. VADM Kevin D. Scott, USN, Joint Publication 3-12: Cyberspace Operations (Washington, DC: Joint Chiefs of Staff, 5 February 2013).
6. Andru E. Wall, “Demystifying the Title 10–Title 50 Debate: Distinguishing Military Operations, Intelligence Activities & Cover Action,” Harvard National Security Journal 3, no. 1 (2011): 85–141.
7. Kimberly K. Watson, “Deploying Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) for Network Defense,” Cybersecurity Automation and Threat Intelligence Sharing Best Practices (Laurel, MD: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, February 2021).
8. David E. Sanger, “A Botnet Is Taken Down in an Operation by Microsoft, Not the Government,” The New York Times, 10 March 2020.
18. Domestic terror cases increasingly cross borders, FBI director says
I think Bruce Hoffman's tweet adds some very important perspective to this article.
Bruce Hoffman
@hoffman_bruce
What Director Wray left out is that the US has itself become an exporter of ideologies fueling domestic terrorism elsewhere as evidenced by Canada's, Australia's & the UK's designation of various US-based/origin groups as terrorist organizations
Domestic terror cases increasingly cross borders, FBI director says
LONDON — Many domestic terrorism cases now have an international component, as would-be killers are “egging each other on” and drawing inspiration from racist or neo-Nazi attacks overseas, the head of the FBI and his British counterpart said Friday.
FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, speaking to reporters alongside Ken McCallum, director general of the British domestic security agency MI5, said their agencies have spent decades developing tip-sharing systems to handle international terrorism cases, but that “muscle memory” is now being applied to domestic terrorism investigations.
“Travel and technology,” Wray said, “have really blurred the lines between foreign and domestic threats.”
The FBI director said the frequently cited expression of “connecting the dots” to stop a terrorist attack has taken on a new kind of urgency for many investigators because attackers can mobilize so quickly and often are not part of a large, well-established network.
In many terrorism cases, Wray said, “you’re talking about largely lone actors, maybe one or two other people who don’t have to do a lot of plotting, who don’t need to have a lot of money … don’t need to do a lot of training, and whose targets are pretty much everywhere.”
As a result, Wray continued, “there are very few dots out there, as compared to, say, the 9/11 model of an al-Qaeda sleeper cell. … With fewer dots and much less time in which to connect those dots, it may well be that Ken’s folks have one dot and we have the other dot, and if we’re not super latched up, we’re going to miss the only picture that’s out there and it’s got to happen fast.”
McCallum said in Britain, investigations involving individuals motivated by racism, neo-Nazism, or related hateful ideologies represent about 20 percent of the terrorism caseload. Many of the individuals of concern are young.
“The neo-Nazi racist groups, there is, if anything, a greater emphasis on juveniles within the caseload, a more obsessive interest in weaponry — in many cases even before there is some kind of attack planned,” said McCallum. “There’s kind of an interest in weaponry for its own sake, so it creates a very difficult cocktail of risk we have to manage with great care.”
Wray noted that while racist violence has generally been categorized as a domestic terror threat, increasingly the perpetrators appear to draw inspiration, often through social media, from people in foreign countries who conducted their own terrorist attacks.
“You have people who may not be conspiring or colluding with each other, but who are in effect inspiring or egging each other on,” said Wray. “You can see that for example with the attack in New Zealand, the attack in Norway, in some sense you see an attack in the U.S. that inspires somebody else to attack somewhere else.”
Those inspirational, international connections mean that the FBI and MI5 have to be constantly “comparing notes on what they are seeing,” the FBI director said.
The two security chiefs spoke to reporters as Wray wrapped up several days of meetings in London with various United Kingdom law enforcement and intelligence officials.
On Wednesday, Wray and McCallum made rare joint speeches to sound an alarm to the British business community about the danger that Chinese hacking and covert influence operations pose to Western companies’ long term interests.
McCallum said the problem of Chinese espionage is at the top of the agenda for the intelligence-sharing alliance known as the Five Eyes, which includes the United States, the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand.”
19. The Far-Right Christian Quest for Power: ‘We Are Seeing Them Emboldened’
I am sure this will generate some scathing comments in response.
The Far-Right Christian Quest for Power: ‘We Are Seeing Them Emboldened’
Political candidates on the fringe mix religious fervor with conspiracy theories, even calling for the end of the separation of church and state.
Credit...Tim Gruber for The New York Times
Political candidates on the fringe mix religious fervor with conspiracy theories, even calling for the end of the separation of church and state.
Credit...Tim Gruber for The New York Times
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Three weeks before he won the Republican nomination for Pennsylvania governor, Doug Mastriano stood beside a three-foot-tall painted eagle statue and declared the power of God.
“Any free people in the house here? Did Jesus set you free?” he asked, revving up the dozens before him on a Saturday afternoon at a Gettysburg roadside hotel.
Mr. Mastriano, a state senator, retired Army colonel and prominent figure in former President Donald J. Trump’s futile efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results, was addressing a far-right conference that mixed Christian beliefs with conspiracy theories, called Patriots Arise. Instead of focusing on issues like taxes, gas prices or abortion policy, he wove a story about what he saw as the true Christian identity of the nation, and how it was time, together, for Christians to reclaim political power.
The separation of church and state was a “myth,” he said. “In November we are going to take our state back, my God will make it so.”
Mr. Mastriano’s ascension in Pennsylvania is perhaps the most prominent example of right-wing candidates for public office who explicitly aim to promote Christian power in America. The religious right has long supported conservative causes, but this current wave seeks more: a nation that actively prioritizes their particular set of Christian beliefs and far-right views and that more openly embraces Christianity as a bedrock identity.
Many dismiss the historic American principle of the separation of church and state. They say they do not advocate a theocracy, but argue for a foundational role for their faith in government. Their rise coincides with significant backing among like-minded grass-roots supporters, especially as some voters and politicians blend their Christian faith with election fraud conspiracy theories, QAnon ideology, gun rights and lingering anger over Covid-related restrictions.
Their presence reveals a fringe pushing into the mainstream.
“The church is supposed to direct the government, the government is not supposed to direct the church,” Representative Lauren Boebert, a Republican representing the western part of Colorado, said recently at Cornerstone Christian Center, a church near Aspen. “I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk.” Congregants rose to their feet in applause.
A small handful of people who espouse this vision, like Ms. Boebert, have recently come to power with the blend of Christian messaging and conspiracy theories that Mr. Trump elevated. Others, like Mr. Mastriano, are running competitive races, while most have long-shot campaigns and are unlikely to survive primary races.
A campaign video for Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, during a rally last month in Warminster.
The ascension of these candidates comes amid a wave of action across the country that advances cultural priorities for many conservative Christians. The most significant is the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and end the constitutional right to an abortion — on top of its recent series of decisions allowing for a larger role of religion in public life, such as school prayer and funding for religious education. States have also been taking action; many have instituted abortion bans. A Florida law prohibits classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in early elementary school, and Texas has issued an order to investigate parents with transgender children for possible child abuse.
Some of the candidates see the Supreme Court’s recent string of decisions as a sign their mission is succeeding. In Georgia, Kandiss Taylor got only 3.4 percent of the vote in the Republican primary for governor. “I’m glad the SCOTUS decided to join me on the FRINGE! Jesus, Guns, & Babies,” she said in a tweet, referring to her own campaign platform.
Declaring the United States a Christian nation and ending federal enforcement of the separation of church and state are minority views among American adults, according to the Pew Research Center. Although support for church-state integration is above average among Republicans and white evangelicals, many Christians see that integration as a perversion of faith that elevates nation over God. The fringe vying for power is still a minority among Christians and Republicans.
Like Mr. Mastriano, some of the candidates pushing that marginal view already hold lower-level elected positions but are now running for higher office where they would have more power, said Andrew Seidel, a vice president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
“We are seeing them emboldened,” Mr. Seidel said. “They are claiming to be the true heirs of the American experiment.”
At the Patriots Arise event, Jenna Ellis, a senior legal adviser to Mr. Mastriano and the former co-counsel for the Trump campaign’s effort to overturn the 2020 election, told the audience that “what it really means to truly be America first, what it truly means to pursue happiness, what it truly means to be a Christian nation are all actually the same thing.”
At Mr. Mastriano’s victory party on primary night, which included Sean Feucht, an evangelical worship leader who led outdoor events in defiance of pandemic restrictions, he announced that his faith was going on offense. “If I read articles where you’re attacking Christians and painting us in a particular picture that is hateful and intolerant, we won’t have the time of day for you,” Mr. Mastriano said, to cheers.
Mr. Mastriano also said, “My campaign has no place for hate, bigotry and intolerance.” Asked in an email to explain his views and thoughts on representing non-Christians in Pennsylvania, Mr. Mastriano did not respond.
Prayer during an America First political rally at Grace Woodlands church in Texas.Credit...Annie Mulligan for The New York Times
The fight over Christian power in America has a centuries-long history, dating to the country’s origins, and it is again in sharp relief as the makeup of the nation shifts. For generations, the United States has been made up mostly of Christians, largely white and Protestant. In recent years, Christianity has declined at a rapid pace, as pluralist and secular values have risen.
Since the Jan. 6 attack, which blended extremism and religious fervor, the term “Christian nationalism” is often used broadly to refer to the general mixing of American and white Christian identities. Historically, however, Christian nationalism in America has also encompassed extremist ideologies.
In the 1948 presidential election, for example, a fringe political party called the Christian Nationalist Party nominated Gerald L. K. Smith, a pastor with pro-Nazi sympathies, and adopted an antisemitic, anti-Black platform that called for the deportation of people with whom it disagreed.
The fact that Mr. Trump, whom they saw as their protector, is no longer president intensifies feelings for many conservative Christians that everything is on the line. About 60 percent of white evangelical Protestants believe that the election was stolen from Mr. Trump, according to a Public Religion Research Institute survey conducted late last year. White evangelicals are also the most likely religious group to be believers in QAnon, according to the survey. QAnon refers to a complex conspiracy theory involving a Satan-worshiping, child-sex-trafficking ring, and the F.B.I. has previously warned that some of its adherents could turn violent.
Across the country, candidates have attempted to appeal to voters by championing Christian identity in policymaking.
In Arkansas in May, State Senator Jason Rapert, who founded a group called the National Association of Christian Lawmakers in 2020, lost the Republican primary for lieutenant governor with 15 percent of the vote. The group offers model legislation, like prohibiting abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy and requiring the display of “In God We Trust” at public schools.
In Oklahoma, Jackson Lahmeyer, lead pastor of Sheridan Church, made a long-shot attempt to unseat Senator James Lankford, who has embodied traditional social conservatism. Mr. Lahmeyer lost, but got 26 percent of the vote. “Our Constitution is built upon the Bible,” he said in an interview. He said that he did not advocate a theocracy and that he supported the separation of church and state, which he said “had nothing to do with the church staying out of the affairs of the state.” He also said that “trying to remove Christianity, which this nation was birthed upon,” from public schools had “absolutely” led to the rise in school shootings.
State Representative Timothy Ramthun of Wisconsin, who is running for governor, spoke at a “Let There Be Light” rally at the State Capitol in Madison. Credit...Taylor Glascock for the New York Times
In Wisconsin, State Representative Timothy Ramthun is significantly trailing in a bid for governor that emphasizes his Christian faith and a promise to decertify the 2020 election. He created a 72-page report of what he sees as evidence of election fraud, and called his push to fight it “Let There Be Light” after words attributed to God in the Bible. In an interview, he described his efforts as a Christian act of truth-seeking. “I don’t lie,” he said. “I work for the Lord first and foremost.”
In a livestream on Rumble, a video site popular with the far right, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, urged followers to be proud of “Christian nationalism” as a way to fight “globalists,” the “border crisis” and “lies about gender.” “While the media is going to lie about you and label Christian nationalism, and they are probably going to call it domestic terrorism, I’m going to tell you right now, they are the liars,” she said.
Around the country there are active efforts to leverage the growing religious fervor in the American right into voter turnout. That includes more typical Republican voter outreach efforts, but also new groups mobilized since President Biden took office.
In California, Freedom Revival, which started late last year and has used worship to mobilize evangelicals to see Christian morality as the foundation for governance, targeted conservative Christians with voter guides of its California primary endorsements of “freedom-loving candidates” who stand for “traditional values.” Endorsements included those for Anthony Trimino, a businessman who felt divinely called in church to run for governor to bring “Christian, moral, biblical values to Sacramento,” and who did not qualify for the general election; and Sheriff Chad Bianco of Riverside County, who has previously defended his past membership in the Oath Keepers, an extremist group, and who did win.
“We continue to support law enforcement officials who recognize and behave as a shield of the people against drunken tyrannical rule,” Brittany Mayer, one of Freedom Revival’s founders, said in an email.
A sense of religious grievance is deepening in the ultraconservative wing of the Southern Baptist Convention, the country’s largest Protestant denomination, a contingent that is increasingly allied with right-wing political causes like the extreme push to punish women for abortion. At a conference in Memphis this spring, Rod Martin, one of the founders of the Conservative Baptist Network, described objections to Christian nationalism as simply a plot by Democrats.
“Let’s demonize patriotism by calling it nationalism and associating that with Hitler. Ah, now let’s call it white nationalism,” he told the gathering, imitating how he saw people on the left. “Then we’ll call it Christian nationalist so we’ll make it sound like you are the ayatollah. It is all designed to demonize you.”
Young male pastors, he predicted, would increasingly adopt the Christian nationalist label in defiance: “They are not saying they are theocrats; they are saying they are deplorables.”
In a sign that political operatives see opportunity to capitalize on that feeling of persecution, the next day a second conference was held in the same auditorium with an explicit purpose to mobilize the constituencies these pastors represent.
A mural of the Virgin Mary, painted on the side of a building, is reflected in a poster outside a church in Roseville, Mich.Credit...David Goldman/Associated Press
Chad Connelly urged attendees to scan a QR code on the screen so he could connect their churches to precinct poll-watching efforts, and said his group, Faith Wins, worked with 312 churches in Virginia to register 77,000 new voters ahead of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s win. Mark Meadows, former chief of staff for Mr. Trump, described the importance of America as a Christian nation in personal terms, with a story of how his 11th great-grandfather escaped religious persecution on the Mayflower. “You may never see the fruit of your labor, but I can tell you this: God will use your obedience to change this great nation,” he said.
Rick Green, who leads a group called the Patriot Academy that runs “biblical citizenship” training programs in hundreds of churches to instill the belief that America was founded on Christian values, told the audience he saw “a window of opportunity right now to convert millions of Americans to the principles of liberty and to biblical values” because of “the chaos and insanity of the last two years.”
In some places there are signs that conspiracy theorists and far-right activists are embracing an explicitly Christian nationalist identity.
Andrew Torba, who founded Gab, a social media platform popular with extremists, and is from Pennsylvania, wrote on the site that he endorsed Mr. Mastriano as part of his own efforts to build “a coalition of Christian nationalists at the local and state levels to help pioneer a grass-roots movement of Christians in PA to help take it back for the glory of God.” Mr. Torba has written about building Gab as “a parallel Christian society on the internet.”
The day after a mass shooting in Buffalo, where a white man was charged with killing 10 Black people after posting a racist screed online, Mr. Torba posted on Gab, “The best way to stop White genocide and White replacement, both of which are demonstrably and undeniably happening, is to get married to a White woman and have a lot of White babies.”
So-called replacement theory is the notion that Western elites want to “replace” and disempower white Americans.
“Jesus Christ is King of Kings and we are going to lawfully, peacefully and democratically take back this country and our culture in his name,” Mr. Torba wrote in an email response to a request for comment. “There is absolutely nothing you or any of the other powers and principalities can do to stop us.”
Events at times use violent rhetoric and imagery.
The Patriots Arise event, where Mr. Mastriano spoke, opened with a video of conspiracy theories related to QAnon that prophesied that “control systems” including “media propaganda, the child trafficking and the slave economy” would “crumble down.” A robotic voice-over forecast a “great awakening,” and an image of a guillotine blade accompanied the promise of “executions, justice, victory.”
When Mr. Mastriano finished, a man in an American flag cowboy hat and shirt presented him with a long sword, inscribed with “For God and country.”
“Because you’ve been cutting a lot of heads off,” explained Francine Fosdick, a social media influencer who organized the event and whose website has promoted a QAnon slogan. “You are fighting for our religious rights in Christ Jesus, and so we wanted to bless you with that sword of David.”
He raised the gold hilt in his right hand. “Where’s Goliath?” he asked.
20. US and NATO Escalate Tensions with Asia-Pacific War Games
The anti-US, anti-South Korean and pro-north KOrea group "Women Cross DMZ" very approves of this article by a former US Army Colonel.
It is important to read their propaganda. It is important to recognize their strategy, understand it, expose it, and attack it with information.
says #RIMPAC military exercises have “dangerous, intended, or unintended, consequences that put the Pacific region at ever increasing risk of military confrontation and destruction.”
2/6 Many people living in the 26 #RIMPAC countries do not agree with their country’s participation in the war games, calling them provocative and dangerous for the region.
3/6 The Pacific Peace Network, with members from across the Pacific including Guåhan, Jeju Island, South Korea, Okinawa, Japan, Philippines, Northern Mariana Islands, Aotearoa, Australia, Hawai’i, and the US demand #cancelRIMPAC.
4/6 The Hawai’i-based Women’s Voices, Women Speak declared “RIMPAC causes ecological devastation, colonial violence, and gun worship. RIMPAC’s ship sinking, missile testing, and torpedo blasting have destroyed island ecosystems and disturbed sea creatures’ wellbeing.
5/6 The “No to NATO” organization, with membership in all the NATO countries, challenges NATO war policies through public outreach & community events in the cities where NATO meetings occur, the latest being in June 2022 in Madrid.
6/6 Together, these efforts decry the preparations for war and call instead for a more peaceful world.
US and NATO Escalate Tensions with Asia-Pacific War Games - FPIF
Civil society opposition to U.S. militarization of the Pacific is growing.
While the world’s attention is focused on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, halfway around the world in the Pacific Ocean, U.S. and NATO confrontation with China and North Korea is increasing dramatically.
Ever since the Obama administration’s “Pivot to Asia,” which was created in part to take the spotlight off the decision to surge troops in Afghanistan and Iraq in the failed U.S. war policies in the Middle East, U.S. military naval and air presence in the Western Pacific has been steadily increasing. During the Obama administration, Washington used “freedom of navigation”—an integral part of the Law of the Seas treaty that the United States has failed to ratify—to send large numbers of U.S. naval ships into contested areas in and around the South China Sea. Under the Trump administration, freedom-of-navigation armadas sailed in an even more confrontational manner.
Now, during the Biden administration, NATO countries have joined in the armadas as British, French, and German navies have sent ships to join with U.S. aircraft carrier groups of more than 20 ships. For the first time, the UK’s only aircraft carrier, the Queen Elizabeth, sailed into the Pacific to participate in war maneuvers off the coast of China.
The Trump administration ramped up confrontation with China by sending the highest-ranking U.S. diplomat to visit Taiwan in the history of the 40-year-old U.S. policy of “One China,” according to which Washington does not recognize Taiwan diplomatically. Trump’s actions deeply angered Beijing.
The Biden administration has dramatically increased the number of high-level diplomats visiting Taiwan. Its encouragement of congressional delegations to visit has infuriated the Chinese even more. The Chinese response to U.S. actions has been to send over 50 military aircraft across the narrow Taiwan Strait to the edge of Taiwan’s air defense zone in a show of potential military action.
Although the United States does not have a defense agreement with it, Taiwan has always purchased U.S. weapons and U.S. military trainers regularly visit Taiwan. President Biden has responded to media questions about the prospect of an invasion by China with statements such as “We will defend Taiwan,” statements that his advisors have had to walk back. Since 2010, the United States has announced more than $23 billion in arms sales to Taiwan. In 2022, U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan so far total $1 billion and are for Patriot missiles and howitzers.
RIMPAC War Games
Adding to the tensions in the region, NATO countries and “partners” are joining the massive Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) naval war exercises. Held every two years since 1971, 2022 RIMPAC will feature 38 ships from 26 countries, four submarines, 170 aircraft, and 25,000 military personnel practicing naval war maneuvers in the Hawaiian waters from June 29 to August 4. Additionally, ground units from nine countries will come ashore on the islands of Hawai’i in amphibious landings.
Forty-five percent of RIMPAC participants are either in NATO or have NATO ties. Eight of the 26 RIMPAC countries are NATO members—Canada, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The four other participating countries are Asia-Pacific “partners” of NATO: Australia, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand. The other countries participating in 2022 RIMPAC are Brunei, Chile, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Israel, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, the Republic of the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Tonga. With participation of India for the first time in RIMPAC, all four members of the Quad—U.S., Japan, Australia and India—will be war gaming in the Pacific.
RIMPAC military war exercises have dangerous, intended or unintended, consequences that put the Pacific region at ever increasing risk of military confrontation and destruction. Major cities in Asia—Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo, and Pyongyang— could be destroyed in an exchange of ballistic missiles. The same holds true for major U.S. cities.
Civic Opposition to RIMPAC
Many citizens of the 26 RIMPAC countries do not agree with their country’s participation in the war games, calling them provocative and dangerous for the region.
The Pacific Peace Network, with members from countries/islands across the Pacific including Guåhan, Jeju Island, South Korea, Okinawa, Japan, Philippines, Northern Mariana Islands, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Australia, Hawai’i and the United States, demand that RIMPAC be cancelled, calling the naval armada “dangerous, provocative and destructive.”
RIMPAC dramatically contributes to the destruction of the ecology system and aggravation of the climate crisis in the Pacific region. RIMPAC war forces will blow up decommissioned ships with missiles endangering marine mammals such as humpback whales, dolphins and Hawaiian monk seals and polluting the ocean with contaminates from the vessels. Land forces will conduct ground assaults that will tear up beaches where green sea turtles come to breed.
The petition rejects “the massive expenditure of funds on war-making when humanity is suffering from lack of food, water and other life-sustaining elements. Human security is not based on military war drills, but on care for the planet and its inhabitants.”
Other citizen groups in the Pacific region are adding their voices to the call to cancel RIMPAC.
In its statement about RIMPAC, the Hawai’i-based Women’s Voices, Women Speak declared that “RIMPAC causes ecological devastation, colonial violence and gun worship. RIMPAC’s ship sinking, missile testing, and torpedo blasting have destroyed island ecosystems and disturbed sea creatures’ wellbeing. This convening of military personnel promotes toxic masculinity; sex trafficking and violence against local populations.”
In a June 14, 2022 opinion piece in the Honolulu Star Advertiser, the only state-wide newspaper in Hawai’i where the headquarters of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command is located, three local activists with the Hawai’i Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines wrote:
We are one with the people of Hawaii in opposing the U.S.-led wars, for which Balikatan (US-Philippine ground war maneuvers) and RIMPAC are warmups. As it is, our governments bring together the people of Hawaii and the people of the Philippines to prepare for war, death and destruction. Military posturing in the Asia-Pacific also risks nuclear war and the potential extinction of the human species. We must instead work toward global cooperation to address the threats of climate change and biodiversity loss; to build toward peace, life and coexistence.
The “No to NATO” organization, with membership in all the NATO countries, challenges NATO war policies through public outreach by webinars and community events in the cities where NATO meetings occur, the latest being in June 2022 in Madrid, Spain.
Together, these efforts decry the preparations for war and work instead for a more peaceful world.
fpif.org · by John Feffer · June 29, 2022
21. The US army base training Ukrainian fighters
The importance of Leavenworth. All those terrain walks on the Kansas plains did have value!
Excerpts:
This quintessentially Kansas landscape has become the backdrop for generations of international soldiers, who head to the US base to receive strategic training.
Ukraine's deputy interior minister, Anton Herashchenko, has remarked on its similarities to the landscape of Donbas, in the country's heavily-contested east.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby says the same: "That part of Ukraine is a bit like Kansas, so it's a little bit flatter, it's a little bit more open," he told media during a press briefing.
Fort Leavenworth has proved to be a valuable training ground for dozens of Ukrainian soldiers over the past several decades, who spend a year studying at the base's US Army Command and General Staff College.
Today, experts say, the knowledge they gain there is helping Ukrainians mount a fierce defence of their country - in part because of the contrast between the flexibility of American military coursework and the rigid Soviet-style education given to Russian soldiers.
The US army base training Ukrainian fighters
By Tara McKelvey
BBC News
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Image source, NICHOLAS KAMM
Image caption,
The sign outside Fort Leavenworth.
Senior-level Ukrainian officers have been studying in the US state of Kansas, thousands of miles from Russia's invasion and the battlefields of Donbas.
Outside the Fort Leavenworth army base, wheat fields are starting to turn. Wide, open prairie land, with softly rolling hills, stretches for miles, and the sky is huge.
This quintessentially Kansas landscape has become the backdrop for generations of international soldiers, who head to the US base to receive strategic training.
Ukraine's deputy interior minister, Anton Herashchenko, has remarked on its similarities to the landscape of Donbas, in the country's heavily-contested east.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby says the same: "That part of Ukraine is a bit like Kansas, so it's a little bit flatter, it's a little bit more open," he told media during a press briefing.
Fort Leavenworth has proved to be a valuable training ground for dozens of Ukrainian soldiers over the past several decades, who spend a year studying at the base's US Army Command and General Staff College.
Today, experts say, the knowledge they gain there is helping Ukrainians mount a fierce defence of their country - in part because of the contrast between the flexibility of American military coursework and the rigid Soviet-style education given to Russian soldiers.
Image source, Getty Images
Image caption,
Kansas fields (right) share similarities with the Donbas region terrain in Ukraine
Inside classrooms, chairs are arranged neatly, and look like the kind one would find on campuses across the country, but unlike elsewhere, an electronic sign, a "secure light", can sometimes be seen blinking. It is marked in bold letters ,"secure" and "non-secure". When information is classified, a light blinks on, with a red background, reminding people that the information can be shared only with those who have clearance.
As of today, more than 8,000 international officers have trained at the base in Kansas, including some of Ukraine's top generals. They include Oleksiy Nozdrachov, the Ukrainian Armed Forces' chief of coordination centre in Kyiv, and Mykhailo Vitaliyovych Zabrodskyi, a military commander who has fought in Donbas.
For Ukrainian students at Leavenworth, lessons are being put into practice back home. A Ukrainian student, a lieutenant colonel, left during the spring semester to join the war.
"He's in the fight," said Jim Fain, the director of the International Military Student Division at the college. "He's actually been promoted."
Ukrainian officers started coming to Fort Leavenworth in the early 1990s, after their nation became independent. Back then, they studied alongside Russian officers. Then, in 1999, the Russians stopped showing up, about the same time that Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic joined Nato.
Mr Fain attributes Russia's decision not to send soldiers to Leavenworth to increasing tensions over Nato.
This year, the programme for international students has a $7m budget (£5.8m). The officers are chosen by their home countries. About half are funded by their home government, and the others are supported by grants provided by the US State Department to foreign governments.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, international training for the Ukrainian troops has been stepped up. Some of them have gone to the UK for driving lessons for armoured vehicles. Others are in Poland, learning how to operate weapons systems provided by the US. But their numbers at Leavenworth have remained consistent with years in the past, Mr Fain said.
The training they receive at Fort Leavenworth focuses on war theory, ethics and other aspects of the modern military, in sharp contrast to the Soviet-style training that has been used in Russia, according to experts.
"Soviet education was all about subordination, and it discouraged independent thinking," said Vitaly Chernetsky, a professor at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. "At Leavenworth, the emphasis is on an analytical approach. It creates military specialists who are true intellectuals".
Professors at Leavenworth describe the Soviet model of military training as rigid and authoritarian. One of them, Mahir Ibrahimov, 66, knows first-hand: He studied at a Soviet military school in the 1970s.
Soviet instructors "would stand next to you until you learned," he said - and if you didn't, "they would just hit the desk," he added, making a hard, swiping motion with his arm. "Sometimes you would be hit".
Image caption,
Lauri Teppo is at Fort Leavenworth all the way from Estonia.
Ukraine faces a war today in which its defence is outnumbered and outgunned - Russian forces are said to be ten times larger in cities in the Donbas, where heavy fighting continues for control of the region.
But the Ukrainans' advantage is that they can think independently on the battlefield, according to Matt Hofmann, a graduate of the Leavenworth programme who worked with Ukrainian officers in Afghanistan.
"The Russians are still trying to fight a linear battle with tanks on line, and sticking very much to their doctrine," he said. "They can't handle the chaos that the Ukrainians are sending out".
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22. Earth to Executives: Boycotts of Israel Backfire
Earth to Executives: Boycotts of Israel Backfire
WSJ · by July 8, 2022 11:39 am ET
Unilever and Ben & Jerry’s learned the hard way.
A Morton Williams supermarket in New York places Ben & Jerry’s in a less desirable shelf after the ice-cream company’s Israel boycott, July 24, 2021.
Photo: Ron Adar/Zuma Press
In “Boycotting Israel Isn’t Free Speech” (op-ed, July 6), Eugene Kontorovich argues that the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel is losing. He’s right, but some C-suites can’t seem to learn.
Ben & Jerry’s boycott of Israel cost its parent company dearly. Several U.S. states invoked anti-BDS laws, divesting hundreds of millions of dollars in state pension funds from Unilever.
Newspaper ads and rallies urged Unilever to reverse course. State attorneys general fired off letters. Lawmakers urged the SEC to investigate. A shareholder filed a class-action suit. Ben & Jerry’s Israel sued to prevent the termination of its three-decades-old license.
Chaos ensued in Unilever’s boardroom. Top investor Terry Smith blasted the company for losing its focus. Activist investor Nelson Peltz joined the board. An ice-cream boycott of Israel had become a brain freeze that Unilever could no longer endure.
The company settled the lawsuit with its Israeli licensee, overriding its subsidiary and selling off the rights to distribute Ben & Jerry’s throughout Israel in perpetuity. In its reversal, Unilever denounced anti-Semitism and BDS.
Unilever’s about-face parallels Airbnb’s ill-conceived 2018 boycott of Israel, which ended with a similar reversal after the company faced state blacklisting threats and litigation.
The next C-suite set to learn the lesson the hard way? Chicago-based financial-research giant Morningstar, whose ESG research subsidiary Sustainalytics appears to use the BDS playbook to produce negative ratings of companies connected to Israel. A new analysis finds that Sustainalytics relies heavily on deeply flawed, anti-Israel sources to produce ESG ratings and research, and automatically finds companies involved in parts of Israel’s economy to be complicit in human-rights abuses.
We know how Morningstar’s movie will end. The story of Unilever should serve as a case study for C-suites before they damage their businesses by indulging the BDS mob.
David May and Richard Goldberg
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Washington and Chicago
23. False myths about USIA blind us to our problems… and to possible solutions
This is another must read from Matt Armstrong. It is a follow-up (but actually a prequel) to the USIA article by Matt Armstrong and Christopher Paul. Their article follows Mattt's additional commentary.
Excerpt:
One last note. This is not USIA-bashing, it is about putting the agency into proper perspective. The false mythology, as the title states and reason reveals, inhibits informed discussion and coherent debate on how to move forward operationally and organizationally in the information realm. There were a lot of impactful acts by USIA personnel and the agency overall, but it was neither positioned nor charged with doing with much, if not all, the “bring back USIA” genre alleges. (Exceptions prove this rule, including when in 1965 a USIA associate director exercised temporary operational command over the US Army’s 1st Psychological Operations Battalion during Operation POWER PACK in the Dominican Republic. In June 1965, USIA issued an “Award for Distinguished Service” to the 1st POB “In recognition of outstanding support and assistance to the United States Information Service in the Dominican Republic during the month of May 1965.”)
False myths about USIA blind us to our problems… and to possible solutions
An alternative title to a recent article by Chris Paul and Matt Armstrong
Jul 7
A couple of weeks ago, a friend reached out to see if I was interested in co-authoring an article. Dr. Chris Paul, a defense policy researcher at RAND Corporation, had attended a Defense Department-focused conference “intended to inform and coalesce departmental efforts supporting Information Advantage and Cognitive Security” where he heard declarations that our problems with international information operations would be fixed if only the US Information Agency was resurrected. From someone else who was there, I heard at least one such pronouncement received a big applause.
I’ve known Chris for more than a decade. We have been in the same “information operations” circles for a very long time, and we have worked together before – including when I was supposed to be a co-author on his 2009 report “Whither Strategic Communication,” but after the initial research was done, I had to switch gears. He reached out to see if we could collab again, and I was quick to say yes.
The proliferation of articles in what I call the “bring back USIA” genre reflects, in my opinion, desperation and ignorance. The desperation comes from the belief the absence of leadership and strategic action that ails our strategic communication, public diplomacy, international information operations, or whatever you want to call this stuff is the result of a defective organizational chart. The ignorance comes from not knowing – or researching – what USIA actually did and did not do and why. The misinformation around USIA is abundant and ironic. This is something I’ve written on often, including in 2015 and 2021. This piece would be different.
Our article published on the website 1945 entitled, The Irony Of Misinformation: USIA Myths Block Enduring Solutions, is a commentary suggesting that some of the US Government’s information woes would be improved upon using a model like the short-lived and forgotten International Information Agency rather than the more well-known, smaller and never nearly as well integrated and positioned USIA.
Despite taking up few words and being the vast last words of the piece, our prescriptive is quite substantial, realistic, and remarkably unique, in our opinion:
To be successful, a new organization or agency would have the backing of a supportive White House and engaged Secretary of State, which would grant it the necessary authority to conduct activities, coordinate across government agencies, and foster private initiatives big and small, just as IIA did during its short life.”
The focus on leadership is an overlooked or conveniently ignored fact in the “bring back USIA” genre that imagines a new organization will magically manifest leadership, magically subordinate intra- and inter-department activities, and magically establish collaborative relationships.
We hit on this point of leadership several times in the article, though the earlier points are subtle. It can be seen with Secretary of State George C. Marshall’s statement the article opens with and by the action of his successor, Dean Acheson, who created IIA. Critically, a negative form is found in the action of John Foster Dulles, who followed Acheson as President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State. The point of leadership, or the absence of, is also found in the discussion around the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Here, many will focus on the office itself while ignoring the role of the Oval Office and the Secretary of State in hiring, empowering, supporting, and holding accountable this office. Also, the same people are likely to ignore how the creation, and positioning, of the Global Engagement Center and its predecessor was a workaround (leaving aside other bureaucratic challenges at the department).
The article may feel heavy on history. This is because we directly and intentionally responded to public and private calls to organize our way to a better solution. We raised the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs as this office was the direct descendent of the USIA Director and, despite being nearly completely ignored by the “bring back USIA” crowd, is relevant. We also had to point out US Agency for Global Media is not what many think it is to address those who think it should be a political cannon. Ultimately, we sought to, in as few words as possible, correct the ironic misinformation around USIA to propose a better model to consider while also emphasizing that leadership is the cornerstone and not a by-product of a relevant organizational structure.
Let me highlight the above again, which is ultimately our central thesis: “Leadership is the cornerstone and not a by-product of a relevant organizational structure.” I have often been asked what structure I would recommend. To wit, I respond that it depends on what our leadership (i.e., the President) wants to do and how they want to do it. Here is my response in pictorial form, an image I have used in presentations for over a decade, and, unfortunately, it remains apt.
A review process (before submitting it to 1945) caused the piece to grow beyond our original goal of around 1100 words to the final form of 2060 words. This was primarily because of the need to delve deeper into the history to support our arguments and to respond to pre-submission reviewer comments, including why we did not mention USAGM (which one reviewer thought odd considering I was a Governor on the Broadcasting Board of Governors, now called USAGM).
The website 1945 was gracious enough to ask us for suggested titles (though they, not us, selected the picture accompanying the article). Here is the list we proposed, each of which accurately conveys our intent in writing the piece:
“Organizing for information: The country needs what the USIA never was”
"False myths about USIA blind us to our problems… and to possible solutions”
“The irony of misinformation: USIA myths block enduring solutions"
“Organizing for information: leadership is the cornerstone and not a by-product of structure”
“The USIA institutionalized the segregation of information from policy and leadership: The US can (and once did!) do better”
“Don’t ignore the past and repeat the mistake of segregating information from policy”
“There is a gap in US efforts to inform, influence, and persuade overseas, but reviving USIA isn’t the right way to close it”
One last note. This is not USIA-bashing, it is about putting the agency into proper perspective. The false mythology, as the title states and reason reveals, inhibits informed discussion and coherent debate on how to move forward operationally and organizationally in the information realm. There were a lot of impactful acts by USIA personnel and the agency overall, but it was neither positioned nor charged with doing with much, if not all, the “bring back USIA” genre alleges. (Exceptions prove this rule, including when in 1965 a USIA associate director exercised temporary operational command over the US Army’s 1st Psychological Operations Battalion during Operation POWER PACK in the Dominican Republic. In June 1965, USIA issued an “Award for Distinguished Service” to the 1st POB “In recognition of outstanding support and assistance to the United States Information Service in the Dominican Republic during the month of May 1965.”)
The Irony Of Misinformation: USIA Myths Block Enduring Solutions
By
20 hours ago
“There is no question today that the policies and actions of the US are often misunderstood and misrepresented abroad.” Secretary of State George C. Marshall spoke those words before Congress in 1947, and yet they are just as true—possibly even truer—today, as major U.S.-competitors have built up well-funded and organized entities that constantly mislead audiences about U.S. policies and motives. Russia, for example, uses its global state-run media, such as RT and Sputnik, as well as hordes of paid internet trolls; it leverages ideological and profit-minded fellow travelers to unleash a “firehose of falsehood” that undermines the credibility of all news sources; all while promoting narratives that favor the Russian state. China has the equivalent of an entire military service—the strategic support force—devoted to information warfare, and a huge government entity, the United Front Works Department, that coordinates China’s international exchanges and outreach, it also works to shape international public opinion of China.
Unlike these competitors, the United States government has failed to institutionalize the importance of information in foreign policy. The United States lacks formalized leadership structures to tackle these information issues head-on, just as it lacks a central organization to coordinate activities to understand, inform, and influence foreign audiences. These are longstanding gaps, readily acknowledged in the policy analytic community since at least 2001, and discussed at length throughout the first decade of the 21st century. And yet, these gaps persist today.
Among the persistent calls for improvement in U.S. information efforts is one to bring back the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), which was dismantled in 1999 But these calls miss an important point—USIA was disestablished for a reason: it was a marginalized agency, limited by design, separated from foreign policy, denied access to the National Security Council in 1969 by then-National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, relentlessly attacked by Sen. J. William Fulbright for years (he opposed its creation and tried to kill the agency in 1972), and, thus hobbled, proved itself of questionable effectiveness as it limped into its final decades.
USIA never had the leadership role or the level of integration with American foreign policy that modern proponents imagine it did, and that contemporary levels of information competition and conflict demand. Further, the agency was not charged with countering foreign propaganda, the mission which motivates many of the demands for a new USIA; the best, and mostly forgotten example of such an effort was the short-lived Active Measures Working Group, which was formed in 1981 to counter Soviet propaganda.
What about the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), formerly the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which operated under USIA until 1999, when it became an independent agency? Is that the right model for integrating information in foreign policy? The USAGM’s operations target countries relevant to U.S. national security and that lack a free press due to censorship (such as North Korea, Russia, and China), that are historically vulnerable (like Ukraine), or lack a foundation of professional news media (like Indonesia) or resources (like much of Latin America). USAGM’s networks—Voice of America, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, and others—do not, by law and on purpose, operate in or target democratic countries with a vibrant commercial press, which is the case for most of Europe. The USAGM is a surrogate news and information service to information-poor audiences providing content not just in the local vernacular, but based on their perspective, often with reporters from the area, often risking their lives in the pursuit of local journalism to inform and empower audiences. But the USAGM’s power, its credibility—the backbone of which is its relationship with its audiences—would be at real risk if it were no longer operating separate from policy, if it were suddenly subject to micromanagement from policymakers and operatives across the other international information and engagement portfolios.
A better historical model for an agency that could fulfil the needs of our information-starved foreign policy space is USIA’s short-lived predecessor, the International Information Administration (IIA). Formed in 1952 by Secretary of State Dean Acheson as a semi-autonomous operation within the State Department, the purpose of IIA was to streamline the management, budgeting, integration, and accountability of the government’s overseas information and engagement programs. To give an idea of the scale, it was considerable: IIA included half of the State Department’s personnel and more than 40% of the department’s budget. During its short existence, IIA benefited from being integrated with the foreign policy apparatus. IIA chaired an interagency coordinating committee that included the State Department, CIA, the Defense Department, and the Mutual Security Agency, positioning it to help an increasingly complex government with consistency between words and deeds. The IIA Administrator reported directly to a Secretary of State who appreciated the importance of information to policy. The Administrator managed a portfolio broader than USIA’s and with direct lines of authority into the State Department and across the field, owned the department’s relevant relationships with interagency partners, and operated with a broader interpretation of “information” that included personal interactions abroad.
In addition to the educational and cultural exchanges that were under IIA—but were prevented from moving to USIA—the agency was charged with direct and indirect support for building local civil capacity abroad, facilitating foreign engagements with U.S. experts in diverse fields such as agriculture and census taking, public health and transportation, virtually none of which were later included in USIA’s portfolio. One such IIA engagement saw a rural education expert sent to Turkey, resulting in the Turkish government sending 50 of its teachers to the U.S. for training. IIA also actively supported private foundations, community groups, and book and music publishers to tell America’s story abroad. Overseas, the IIA empowered and protected staff in the field, so they could be agile while maintaining unity of policy, objectives, and voice with Washington across programs.
Though the agency met little resistance within the State Department, and its efforts appeared to be working, the IIA project ended after little more than a year, with the arrival of new administration that did not believe in its mission. The department’s “lack of enthusiasm and imagination” and the “bureaucratic elephantiasis” that led Acheson to create IIA now motivated the Eisenhower administration to move some— but not all— of the IIA out of the State Department and form USIA, resulting in a 40% reduction of the State Department’s personnel. Instead of fixing the State Department, the White House created a new agency. Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, was all too happy to be rid of the broader information and engagement mission he considered a distraction from the department’s focus on traditional diplomacy. As if to underline its quiet demise, information about the IIA and its brief but largely successful history has never been organized and made available by the U.S. government.
Ultimately, what formed in its wake—the USIA—was the result of bureaucratic reshuffling and unfulfilled promises that resulted in an organization with fewer authorities and less integration than what it replaced. The Rockefeller Committee on Government Organization urged consolidation based on what IIA already was; the Jackson committee largely restated IIA’s current structure and focus to push out ownership of local programs to the field and recommending elevating IIA within the State Department; the Advisory Commission on Information reversed its support for keeping the broad programs within the State Department and instead recommended a Cabinet-level agency largely based on inaction by both the White House and Congress in addressing leadership issues.
The unkept promise underpinning the USIA model was the intent to forge “a closer link between operations and strategy planning” with a cabinet-level position. In actual execution, USIA fell out of step with the original proposals with a portfolio smaller than IIA’s, a smaller toolbox, and no longer having a seat at the tables of policy planning, execution, or coordination. Whereas IIA’s role was integrated with the State Department, the proposed leadership role for USIA teed up a conflict with the department that was never resolved and later produced the fuzzy term “public diplomacy” in an attempt to elevate and distinguish the mission of a struggling USIA from the State Department’s responsibility for diplomacy. The reality was that USIA never gained a cabinet seat, and it did not have institutionalized reach across foreign policy making and execution at the State Department nor among its interagency partners. The USIA never owned, managed, or directed the breadth and depth of programs or had control in the field abroad that IIA had. The result was the formalized segregation of information from policy.
Another step away from the vision realized in IIA is the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, created in 1999 with the closure of USIA. Though the Under Secretary is notionally the successor of the USIA Director, the office has never wielded the same level of authorities in the department or with interagency partners as USIA, let alone IIA. What operational leadership the Under Secretary did wield, like the Bureau of International Information Programs, a formerly massive remnant of
USIA damaged from years of mismanagement, was integrated into the renamed Bureau of Global Public Affairs, an office that never truly reported to the Under Secretary; went its own way, like the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs which has rejected the leadership of the Under Secretary since the Obama administration; or, was brittle and inconsistent. The Global Engagement Center is not part of the Under Secretary’s portfolio, and arguably was created because of the absence of effective leadership from that quarter. Reflecting successive administrations’ lack of interest in this position, it has been vacant more than four of every ten days since its creation: 37% of the Bush administration, 22% of the Obama administration, 93% of the Trump administration, and 100% of the Biden administration. While an empowered Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs could be part of a solution, twenty years of neglect is hard to overcome.
Based on this history, we might offer two possible solutions. First, the United States could choose to fix some of the cultural and bureaucratic problems in the State Department and resurrect an organization similar to the former IIA headed by a renamed Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. As a second alternative, the U.S. could choose to establish an independent cabinet-level agency with the same vision and mission.
The same core ideas that brought the IIA into being might serve as inspiration for this new organization or agency, structured to coordinate the U.S. government’s information efforts. This organization or agency could have a clearly defined mission of conducting and integrating informational activities supporting foreign policy—including perhaps identifying, anticipating, and responding to foreign malign influence, disinformation, and gaps in the availability of information. The new organization or agency might also be the operational and organizational home for information capabilities not well integrated elsewhere, for instance, such as the functions of the office of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, the Global Engagement Center, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, and have direct access to the State Department’s public affairs staff on the ground as both USIA and IIA did.
The United States stands to learn from the failures of the USIA—which was ultimately an agency born out of trying to work around, rather than through, how it conducts foreign affairs. To be successful, a new organization or agency would have the backing of a supportive White House and engaged Secretary of State, which would grant it the necessary authority to conduct activities, coordinate across government agencies, and foster private initiatives big and small, just as IIA did during its short life.
Dr. Christopher Paul is a senior social scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. Matt Armstrong is a former Governor on the Broadcasting Board of Governors, now the US Agency for Global Media, and is pursuing a PhD on political warfare at King’s College London (and was recently sanctioned by Russia). Both have studied public diplomacy, strategic communication, information operations, and other terms for topics related to leveraging information power as part of foreign policy for almost 20 years. The views expressed here are their own.
24. The Growing Tech Focus of the Quad
Excerpts:
The May 2022 Quad Summit again emphasized the tech focus, stating the priority, as articulated before, as to ensure that “the region remains inclusive, open, and governed by universal rules and norms.” The leaders’ joint statement from the summit meeting noted that the Quad countries “will advance interoperability and security through the signature of a new Memorandum of Cooperation on 5G Supplier Diversification and Open RAN.” The statement also noted that additionally the four countries have been mapping the Quad’s capacity in the area of global semiconductor supply chains with the goal of leveraging the complementary strengths of the four countries that can help ensure “a diverse and competitive market for semiconductors.”
During the summit, the four countries issued a Common Statement of Principles on Critical Technology Supply Chains aimed at accelerating the pace of cooperation on semiconductors and other critical technologies. The four have also been working with international standardization institutions like the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau of the International Telecommunication Union and expect to advance cooperation technology standards through a newly established, as-yet-mysterious body, the International Standards Cooperation Network (ISCN).
Given the growing technology competition between China and the others in the region, this new focus is much needed. It can ensure that technology is developed and used in line with the principles of a free, open, and resilient Indo-Pacific. Writing new rules for critical and emerging technologies is a key imperative; expect the Quad countries to continue to stress this in the future.
The Growing Tech Focus of the Quad
Writing new rules of the road for critical and emerging technologies is a key imperative for the Quad.
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The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or the Quad, which includes Australia, India, Japan, and the United States, appears to be taking a particular interest on critical and emerging technologies. From their first summit meeting in March 2021, the focus on technology has been growing.
The March 2021 joint statement stated that the four countries “will begin cooperation on the critical technologies of the future to ensure that innovation is consistent with a free, open, inclusive, and resilient Indo-Pacific.” Further, they noted that the Quad will “launch a critical- and emerging-technology working group to facilitate cooperation on international standards and innovative technologies of the future,” with the Quad efforts focusing on four aspects: “technical standards, 5G diversification and deployment, horizon-scanning, and technology supply chains.”
The subsequent September 2021 meeting of the Quad leaders elaborated on the tech agenda, stating that the Quad countries will work together on emerging technologies, space, and cybersecurity. The buzzwords the Quad used were openness, access and security of the entire tech ecosystem, shared democratic values and respect for universal human rights. Pushing this agenda forward, the Quad countries in September 2021 issued a statement of principles on technology design, development, governance, and use that will lead the region and beyond to responsible, open, and high standards of innovation. Three key principle were highlighted: support for universal values; building trust, integrity, and resilience; and fostering healthy competition and international collaboration to advance the frontier of science and technology.
Elaborating on these, the principles noted the importance of technology development while keeping the sanctity of universal values, including “respect for freedom of expression and privacy,” promoting technology development and usage in line with shared values, including “the autonomy, agency, and dignity of individuals,” and that technology development should be driven by “an equitable and inclusive process that neither involves nor results in unfair discriminatory action.” The principles also noted that “technology should not be misused or abused for malicious activities such as authoritarian surveillance and oppression, for terrorist purposes, or to disseminate disinformation.”
Building technology ecosystems that are founded on trust, integrity, and resilience to further innovation was a key point of emphasis in the statement. Openness, trustworthiness, transparency, accountability, and interoperability in order to foster innovation were also highlighted by the leaders. These aspects made particular sense given the history of technology thefts and intellectual property rights issues involving China. Resilience of supply chains for hardware, software, and services in order to avoid vulnerabilities, which became particularly evident over the last couple of years with overdependence on China, was a key point of agreement among the Quad countries.
Further, the Quad leaders in September 2021 decided to establish technical standards contact groups with a focus on advanced communications and artificial intelligence both in terms of developing standards and foundational pre-standardization research. Given the focus found in the principles on supply chain resilience, the group agreed to launch a cooperative initiative “to map capacity, identify vulnerabilities, and bolster supply-chain security for semiconductors and their vital components.”
The Quad also decided to support 5G deployment and diversification as a means to ensure “a diverse, resilient, and secure telecommunications ecosystem.” To this end, the group launched a track 1.5 industry dialogue on Open RAN deployment and adoption, that will be aligned with the Open RAN Policy Coalition. The coalition is a group of companies working together “to promote open interfaces and interoperability.” The Open RAN Policy Coalition states that its key goal is “to promote policies that will advance the adoption of open and interoperable solutions in the Radio Access Network (RAN) as a means to create innovation, spur competition and expand the supply chain for advanced wireless technologies including 5G.” This can be done, the members argue that by “standardizing” or “opening” the protocols and interfaces between the various subcomponents (radios, hardware and software) in the RAN, thus moving to a scenario where “networks can be deployed with a more modular design without being dependent upon a single vendor.”
The Quad has also begun to focus on other emerging technologies such as advanced biotechnologies, including synthetic biology, genome sequencing, and biomanufacturing, while exploring areas of cooperation among the Quad countries.
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Lastly, the Quad also put its focus on outer space and cyberspace with an emphasis on critical infrastructure resilience against growing cyber threats. In this regard, the four countries decided to set up a Quad Senior Cyber Group which will work on government-industry collaboration across areas such as adoption and execution of “shared cyber standards; development of secure software; building workforce and talent; and promoting the scalability and cybersecurity of secure and trustworthy digital infrastructure.”
The Quad also went on to establish a working group on outer space affairs, which will focus on sharing satellite data for a range of applications including monitoring and addressing climate change and environmental challenges involving natural disasters and disaster preparedness. This group will also work closely with another Quad working group on climate change. Most significantly, the Quad countries will engage in consultations on norms, principles, and rules that will ensure the long-term sustainability of outer space. This is, in a sense, a departure for India that traditionally believed in partnering with the G-20 countries (mostly the non-aligned countries in the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva) for legally binding and verifiable mechanisms. India’s interest and willingness in working with the Quad countries is possibly a reflection of Indian concerns regarding the deteriorating space security environment and the need for strengthening norms and regulations.
The May 2022 Quad Summit again emphasized the tech focus, stating the priority, as articulated before, as to ensure that “the region remains inclusive, open, and governed by universal rules and norms.” The leaders’ joint statement from the summit meeting noted that the Quad countries “will advance interoperability and security through the signature of a new Memorandum of Cooperation on 5G Supplier Diversification and Open RAN.” The statement also noted that additionally the four countries have been mapping the Quad’s capacity in the area of global semiconductor supply chains with the goal of leveraging the complementary strengths of the four countries that can help ensure “a diverse and competitive market for semiconductors.”
During the summit, the four countries issued a Common Statement of Principles on Critical Technology Supply Chains aimed at accelerating the pace of cooperation on semiconductors and other critical technologies. The four have also been working with international standardization institutions like the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau of the International Telecommunication Union and expect to advance cooperation technology standards through a newly established, as-yet-mysterious body, the International Standards Cooperation Network (ISCN).
Given the growing technology competition between China and the others in the region, this new focus is much needed. It can ensure that technology is developed and used in line with the principles of a free, open, and resilient Indo-Pacific. Writing new rules for critical and emerging technologies is a key imperative; expect the Quad countries to continue to stress this in the future.
Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan
Dr. Rajeswari (Raji) Pillai Rajagopalan is the Director of the Centre for Security, Strategy & Technology (CSST) at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.
25. What Happened to Michael Flynn?
I never served with him so I cannot judge from any personal experience.
What Happened to Michael Flynn?
In military intelligence, he was renowned for his skill connecting the dots and finding terrorists. But somewhere along the way, his dot detector began spinning out of control.
JULY 8, 2022, 10:53 AM ET
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Michael Flynn faced the camera with brow creased and lips compressed. He hadn’t been born yesterday, his expression said. He was not going to fall for trick questions.
“General Flynn, do you believe the violence on January 6 was justified?” Representative Liz Cheney asked him in a video teleconference deposition for the January 6 committee.
Flynn’s lawyer pressed the mute button and switched off the camera. Ninety-six seconds passed. Flynn and the lawyer reappeared with a request for clarification. Did Cheney mean morally justified, or legally? Cheney obligingly asked each question in turn.
“Do you believe the violence on January 6 was justified morally?” she asked.
Flynn squinted, truculent.
“Take the Fifth,” he said.
“Do you believe the violence on January 6 was justified legally?” Cheney asked.
“Fifth,” he replied.
Cheney moved on to the ultimate question.
“General Flynn, do you believe in the peaceful transition of power in the United States of America?” she asked.
“The Fifth,” he repeated.
It was a surreal moment: Here was a retired three-star general and former national security adviser refusing to opine on the foundational requirement of a constitutional democracy. Flynn had sworn an oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Rule of law had been drilled into him for decades in the Army.
Now, by invoking the right against self-incrimination, he was asserting that his beliefs about lawful succession could expose him to criminal charges. That could not be literally true—beliefs have absolute protection under the First Amendment—but his lawyer might well have worried about where Cheney’s line of questioning would lead.
Flynn had said publicly that President Donald Trump could declare martial law and “re-run” the presidential election he had lost. He and Sidney Powell, one of Trump’s lawyers, had turned up in the Oval Office on December 18, 2020, with a draft executive order instructing the Defense Department to seize the voting machines that recorded Trump’s defeat. Flynn and Roger Stone, the self-described political dirty trickster, were the two men Trump made a point of asking his chief of staff to call on January 5, on the eve of insurrection, according to Cassidy Hutchinson’s recent testimony before the January 6 committee.
All of which raises a question: What happened to Michael Flynn?
He has baffled old comrades with his transformation since being fired as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014. He led chants to lock up Hillary Clinton in 2016. In 2020, he posted a video of himself taking an oath associated with QAnon. He has endorsed crackpot fabrications of the extreme right: that Italy used military satellites to switch votes from Trump to Biden in 2020, that COVID-19 was a hoax perpetrated by a malevolent global elite, that the vaccine infused recipients with microchips designed for mind control.
Has Flynn always been susceptible to paranoid conspiracies? Or did something happen along the way that fundamentally shifted his relationship to reality? In recent conversations with the former general’s close associates, some for attribution and some not, they offered a variety of theories.
I had started trying to answer these questions about Flynn well before the country saw him plead the Fifth. The best way to investigate, I initially thought, would be to spend time with the man himself.
I’d had lunch with Flynn some years ago at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He was a one-star general working for then–Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal, his most important mentor in the Army. He fit in comfortably at the Council, a pinstriped bastion of the foreign-policy establishment, which these days is a bugaboo of his dark suspicions about global elites. We spoke of then–Vice President Dick Cheney, the subject of a biography I had recently written, and he later sent word that he had enjoyed listening to the audiobook while running. His affect was thoughtful, buttoned-down, and appropriate to the setting.
I recalled that lunch to Flynn’s brother Joe, who serves as his gatekeeper with the press, when I asked for an interview for this story. (Another brother, Charles, is the commanding general of the U.S. Army in the Pacific.) Joe Flynn said those were very different times. “His attitude about speaking to the mainstream media—or I’d say I would put The Atlantic into the left-wing media—is very negative because it always blows up in your face,” he said. “They always report things that [he] didn’t say or they’re calling names that he doesn’t, you know, that don’t have anything to do with him.”
“That’s kind of the whole point of talking to a guy, to understand him in his own words,” I said.
Joe Flynn didn’t bite.
“Write what you want to write. But we don’t necessarily want to add fuel to the fire by talking to people and then they twist your words. There has not been a time yet that it hasn’t backfired,” he said. Every story turns out to say, “‘Ah, Flynn’s a nut, Flynn’s a conspiracy theorist, Flynn’s an insurrectionist,’ all the other bullshit they say.”
This week, I tried again to seek comment from Flynn, via his brother. “There is no chance General Flynn will speak to the Atlantic,” Joe Flynn wrote. “Have a great day.”
When Flynn moves through public spaces these days, three muscular men with earpieces enclose him in a wedge. One of them moved to intercept me when I approached with a question at an event, taking my elbow and turning me away. “Don’t,” he said, succinctly.
The next-best strategy, I figured, was to watch Flynn in his element, surrounded by supporters. I went to hear him speak at the Trinity Gospel Temple in Canton, Ohio, where he served as mascot and majordomo of a traveling road show called “ReAwaken America.” It was a proudly mask-free event; anyone with a covered face was asked to leave. There would be six dozen speakers over two days, including MAGA stars such as Eric Trump, Mike Lindell, and Roger Stone. But Flynn was the big draw.
Nearly every other speaker paid Flynn homage. One of them won a standing ovation by invoking a MAGA trinity: “Jesus is my God. Trump is my president. And Mike Flynn is my general!”
Flynn stood in the wings, stage left, just visible to an adoring audience of 3,000. He wore cowboy boots, a gray worsted suit, and an open-collared shirt, arms crossed at his chest in a posture of benign command.
“Ladieeeees and gentlemen, stand on your feet and greet Generalllll … Miiiiiichael Flyyyyynnn!” Clay Clark, Flynn’s touring partner and emcee, yelled into the microphone in the style of a professional-wrestling announcer. The room erupted. “Fight like a Flynn!” screamed a man in the audience, quoting a slogan that Flynn’s niece was selling on T-shirts outside. “We love you!” screamed the woman next to me.
Nothing superficial explained the appeal. Flynn is not an orator. He does not premeditate applause lines, and he sometimes seems startled when the audience reacts. He rambles, scriptless, through fields of apparently disconnected thoughts. “He’s free-range,” Clark told me.
Some of the things he said fell into a category of assertion that his military-intelligence critics used to call “Flynn facts.” “Read some of The Federalist Papers,” Flynn told the crowd. “They’re simple; they’re amazing, amazing documents as to who we are.” He added, “Ben Franklin’s one of the ones that wrote some of this and argued some of it.” (No, he’s not.) Flynn attributed the nation’s founding to divine intervention, adding, “That’s why the word creator is even in our Constitution.” (It isn’t.)
What Flynn has is an everyman quality, according to Steve Bannon, who said he declined an invitation to join the tour. “Mike is authentic,” Bannon told me. “To them, he’s authentic. He’s a fighter. That’s big.” Flynn reminds Bannon, he said, of his Irish uncles and cousins: “He’s not pretentious. He’s one of them.”
If this was authenticity, though, it was authentically detached from reality. The animating ideas behind the “Great ReAwakening,” expounded by the various speakers, were (1) that forces loyal to Satan are stealing political power in rigged elections (2) on behalf of a global conspiracy masterminded by Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum, and Yuval Noah Harari, an Israeli public intellectual, and (3) that the cabal has fabricated the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to mandate dangerous vaccines, which (4) make people sick and may secretly turn them into “transhumans” under the conspiracy’s remote control.
QAnon talking points pervade the “ReAwaken America” tour. In Canton, Clark got a rise from the crowd with a reference to “adrenochrome,” which QAnon myths describe as a drug that cannibalistic global elites harvest by torturing children.
Some of the “ReAwaken America” speakers fairly glowed with insincerity—Roger Stone grinned a Cheshire Cat grin after telling the crowd that he saw a “demonic portal” open over the White House when Joe Biden moved in.
But Flynn, by contrast, did not display any guile at all. By every outward indication, he was speaking in earnest.
The man had once had an outstanding career in military intelligence, a field that values discernment and reason, evidence and verification. Now he looked high on his own supply.
In 1972, Michael Flynn received a commendation and town title in Middletown, Rhode Island, for his help rescuing toddlers from the path of a car rolling driverless down a hill. (The Newport Daily News / AP)
Did something in his history offer a clue?
Flynn grew up in Rhode Island, the sixth of nine children of an Army sergeant first class and a mother from a military family. He stood out early. He graduated from Middletown High School in 1977 as homecoming king, a co-captain of the state-champion football team, and the “best looking” senior by vote of his classmates. Thomas Heaney, the quarterback, told me that Flynn, at maybe 160 pounds, was scrawny for an offensive lineman but he had grit. He was “not the fastest guy on the field, but played hard.”
Already, Flynn had a flair for the heroic. As a teenager, he and a friend rescued a pair of toddlers from the path of a car rolling driverless down a hill. Flynn became known in the neighborhood as a “guardian of the little ones,” according to Kathleen Connell, a neighbor and a former Rhode Island secretary of state. But he also had a brush with the criminal-justice system, he writes in a 2016 book, which landed him in juvenile detention for a night and earned him a year of supervised probation. He does not elaborate.
Flynn was a B student at the University of Rhode Island but top of his class in the ROTC cohort. In 1983, not long after graduation, First Lieutenant Flynn deployed with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division in the invasion of Grenada. There was not much combat to speak of, but Flynn demonstrated valor when two fellow soldiers were swept out on a riptide and struggled to stay afloat. Again, he was the hero, diving off a 40-foot cliff to rescue them both.
Flynn began to make his name as a colonel in 2004, when the Army deployed him to Iraq as J-2, or director of intelligence, of a Special Operations unit called Task Force 714. The task force, drawn from the most elite units in the Joint Special Operations Command and led by then–Major General Stanley McChrystal, had one mission in Iraq: to track and kill insurgents.
They had a slow start. In his memoir, My Share of the Task, McChrystal writes that he arrived in the command to discover “painstakingly selected, exquisitely trained warriors” who could not keep track of their targets. In those early days, the task force would stage a raid, kill or capture insurgents, and fill burlap sacks with “scooped-up piles of documents, CDs, computers, and cell phones.” Unable to make sense of that raw intelligence in the field, the commandos would ship it all back to headquarters in Baghdad, or even back to the United States, for analysis.
At McChrystal’s direction, Flynn rebuilt the system. The two men shaped the task force into an “extraordinary machine,” a senior flag officer who worked with them told me.
McChrystal described Flynn as “pure energy.” He speed-walked, speed-talked, and filled bulging green notebooks with diagrams and briefing notes. Flynn, McChrystal writes, “had an uncanny ability to take a two-hour discussion or a thicket of diagrams on a whiteboard and then marshal his people, resources, and energy to make it happen.”
Under Flynn’s leadership, and with forward-deployed intelligence analysts, the commandos found that they could capture an enemy safe house, exploit devices and papers on the spot, and use the fresh intelligence to launch another operation within an hour or two, before insurgents had even realized that they had been compromised.
Flynn and McChrystal became an exceedingly deadly team. At its peak, the task force was “doing 12 to 15 operations a night,” the flag officer said, month after month. “He was incredibly hardworking, and he could see how to connect the dots.” Another admirer of Flynn’s at the time, a retired four-star general, told me that there were no illusions about the nature of those missions. “You go in the house to kill everybody in there,” he said.
In his three years in Iraq, Flynn lived in a world of good and evil. He oversaw a relentless machine that killed thousands, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the prolifically murderous leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Flynn won his promotion to brigadier general, then added a second star when he served briefly as J-2 for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon in 2008, a prestigious assignment. Then, in 2009, McChrystal was selected to command all U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan. He brought Flynn with him.
General Barry McCaffrey, one of the most decorated generals in recent decades, made a fact-finding tour of McChrystal’s command in November 2009 and met with Flynn. He was dazzled. “He had a map, and he had this immense command of the terrorist forces in Afghanistan and the nature of the culture and what was going on in Pakistan,” McCaffrey told me. “I thought, God, this guy is flipping magic.”
People who worked with Flynn in Iraq and Afghanistan, most of whom declined to speak on the record out of respect for old friendships, said Flynn showed no sign in those years of extreme or fantastical views. One of his colleagues in Afghanistan was a young Marine captain named Matt Pottinger, who would go on to become deputy national security adviser under Trump. “When we were in Afghanistan,” Pottinger told me, “I didn’t hear wacky conspiracies.”
Still, with Pottinger’s help, Flynn cultivated a reputation as an iconoclast. He was best known in Afghanistan for a controversial white paper that he published in January 2010, a sharp critique of the U.S. government’s intelligence operations in Afghanistan by the man ostensibly in charge of them. Flynn was listed as the first and senior author, and it burnished his reputation as a defense intellectual, though in fact, Pottinger told me, he himself “wrote most of the paper,” and “Flynn provided guidance and edits.”
Flynn had taken a risk by publishing the paper outside the Pentagon chain of command, and then–Defense Secretary Robert Gates complained about the breach of protocol to James Clapper, then the undersecretary of defense for intelligence. “He didn’t object to the article as much as he did object to … the manner in which it came out,” Clapper told me. Clapper called to admonish Flynn, passing along the secretary’s displeasure. But on the whole, the episode raised Flynn’s profile and laid the ground for his next promotion.
Flynn spent his career in a fixed universe of black and white, right and wrong. His expertise was in connecting the dots and drawing inferences. But somewhere along the way, his dot detector began spinning out of control.
Flynn’s last job in uniform, as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, became his first major failure. He had been “a superb officer” in staff positions, a senior colleague told me, but when it came time to run a large organization—with more than 15,000 employees, most of them civilians—Flynn struggled. Another colleague, a high-ranking officer, told me that Flynn “thought he was the only one speaking truth to power.” Flynn clashed with his civilian deputy, David Shedd, and his supervisor, Michael Vickers, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, according to Clapper.
“I think he was a one-trick pony,” McCaffrey said. “He and McChrystal knew how to hunt down and kill or neutralize terrorist threats to the United States, and they were unbelievable at it, and Flynn was a part of it. Then they moved him into DIA.” There, McCaffrey said, “he was way over his head.”
In retrospect, the first signs of Flynn’s loss of touch with evidence came in this final military posting. Flynn, colleagues told me, would become fixated on an idea and demand that analysts find evidence to support it. This is when DIA executives began to speak derisively of “Flynn facts.” Flynn would say, for example, that Iran had killed more Americans than al-Qaeda had, a claim that could easily be refuted, but Flynn kept repeating it.
In February 2014, when he was not yet two years into the job, Flynn was summoned to Room 3E834 at the Pentagon. Vickers and Clapper, his two bosses, were waiting. The position was not working out, they said. He was fired, but allowed to hang on until he reached the minimum service required to retire as a lieutenant general.
“My problem was his impact on the morale of the workforce,” Clapper told me. “It was the stories about ‘Flynn facts.’ Very erratic, you know, he’d always contradict himself and give direction and then 10 minutes later contradict it. You just can’t do that, running a big organization.” For Vickers, Clapper suggested, “it was a case of insubordination” on issues relating to the Defense Clandestine Service. Both reasons for his firing hinted at an overweening confidence in his own apprehension of the world.
Flynn wrote in a memoir that President Barack Obama fired him because he did not want to hear Flynn’s warnings about the danger of Islamic extremism. Clapper calls that explanation “complete baloney.” Obama had nothing to do with Flynn’s firing, Clapper says, and neither did Flynn’s views on the Islamic State.
Michael Flynn spoke in Phoenix in January as part of the “ReAwaken America” tour. (Mark Peterson / Redux)
Flynn’s dissolution in recent years is a subject of considerable chagrin and embarrassment to his old brothers in arms. It is a forbidden subject for many of them, and an awkward one for others.
McChrystal, his longtime mentor and commander, is said by friends to have watched in horror as Flynn chanted “Lock her up!” at the Republican convention in 2016. He declined to be interviewed for this story. “Out of the respect for our service together, and years of closer friendship, I’m now just going to stay silent,” he told me by email. Retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, once Flynn’s commander and later his White House colleague, wrote, “I have known Mike Flynn for many years going back to our days as Paratroopers in the 82d Airborne Division. As such, he remains a friend and [I] prefer to not talk about him.” My inquiries prompted many replies like those.
Former close associates of Flynn who did respond to my queries proposed varying explanations for Flynn’s behavior in recent years. The high-ranking officer said his extremism and conspiratorial bent may have been in him all along, but tamped down.
“The uniform constrains people’s political and emotional qualities,” he said. “You can misjudge a person because they are constrained by the job and the uniform.” When he takes off the uniform, “the personality that may have been constrained comes out.”
“Keep in mind, his reputation was built essentially as staff officer who’s got, you know, a really smart commander,” another top-ranking officer said. “You had Stan McChrystal, you know, holding both arms and keeping him focused.”
Clapper thinks it was Flynn’s humiliation at the DIA that started him down the wrong road. “Getting terminated a year early ate at him,” Clapper told me. “He had a grievance. And it just, it was corrosive with him, and he became a bitter, angry man and just latched on to anybody who was opposed to Obama and the Obama administration. That’s my armchair analysis of what happened.”
The humiliation of his subsequent firing as national security adviser and prosecution for lying to the FBI about conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States (he pleaded guilty, then tried to withdraw his plea, and then was pardoned by Trump) only amplified his feelings of persecution, by this hypothesis.
But Clapper has another theory too.
“He spent a lot of time deployed, maybe too much, as it turns out,” Clapper said. “He spent a lot of time in Iraq and Afghanistan chasing terrorists, and I think that, to some extent, that consumed him.” An officer who worked closely with Flynn in the field told me, “If you spend years hunting terrorists and honing this killing machine,” some people “get unhinged by all that.”
One after another in my interviews, people who know Flynn speculated about the possibility of cognitive decline or a psychological disorder, then shied away. McCaffrey was the only person prepared to say on the record, “I think he was having mental-health problems.”
At every stage of his career in the Army, Flynn’s performance had been dissected and judged by a senior rater. Given his rapid ascent, he must have been promoted at least twice “below the zone,” or before he would normally have been eligible. Shouldn’t the Army have seen the seeds of Flynn’s unraveling?
McCaffrey said that that is asking too much. There are hundreds of generals in the Army, he said, and nearly 1,000 flag officers across the armed services. They are among the most rigorously selected people in any profession.
“As people get older, in particular, and as circumstances push in on them,” he said, “every year there’s some fairly small number who have mental-health problems … So yeah, some of them go bad. But Flynn went bad in one of the most spectacular manners we’ve ever witnessed. You know, it wasn’t just bad judgment. It was demented behavior.”
Demented, and well rewarded. Which is still another potential explanation for the Flynn we see today.
Somebody is making good money on the “ReAwaken America” tour. At $250 a ticket, the gate for the Canton event was in the neighborhood of three-quarters of a million dollars, not including sales of MAGA swag, Flynn memorabilia, Jesus hats, survival gear, vitamins and plant pigments marketed as COVID therapy, and, inevitably, MyPillow bedroom furnishings. Clay Clark, the emcee, is a Tulsa-based business coach who conceived of and organizes the tour; he holds the two-day events every month. Clark declined, in an interview, to say what Flynn’s cut is.
It could be that I am wrong about Flynn’s purity of belief. It could be that he is responding, rationally enough, to incentives. Flynn faced monumental legal bills in his criminal case, and there is a lucrative role in the MAGA ecosystem for someone who says the things that he says. John Kelly, the former White House chief of staff and a retired general, told me that Flynn “spent quite a bit of money” to defend himself. Perhaps, Kelly said, “he’s trying to make some of that money back.”
Then there is the lure of adulation. The latter-day Flynn is celebrated by adoring crowds. Standing onstage, he gets to be the hero once again.
Does Flynn imagine a political future? Sometimes it sounds that way.
He closed his Ohio appearance with a rallying cry.
“I’m trying to get this message out to the American people that now is the time to decide whether you’re going to be courageous or not,” he said. “I mean, this is it.”
I asked Joe Flynn whether his brother planned to run for office.
“I don’t think he’s interested in that at all,” Joe replied.
He wouldn’t be the last guy who got conscripted, however, and there is one political office for which Flynn has been on the shortlist before.
“I personally think he should become Trump’s running mate,” Clark said. “I’d love to see a Trump-Flynn ticket.”
In the closing days of the 2016 presidential campaign, when Trump flew to as many as five campaign events a day, Flynn became his regular warm-up act. “He was an amazingly popular opener,” Bannon told me. “He was as popular as Rudy [Giuliani], and Rudy’s pretty fucking popular with the crowd. Flynn was the most popular opening act we had.”
Trump, according to contemporary news accounts, looked hard at Flynn as a running mate in 2016 before selecting Mike Pence. Some Trump allies think that Flynn, who recently visited the former president at Mar-a-Lago, is back on the menu for 2024. “I think Mike [Flynn] could very well be on the VP shortlist in ‘24,” Bannon said. “And if the president doesn’t run, I strongly believe Mike is running.”
Roger Stone, the veteran operative of countless campaigns—and, like Flynn, the recipient of a pardon from Trump—told the Canton crowd to expect great things.
“There is one person who is absolutely central to the future of this country,” he said. “Absolutely central to the struggle for freedom that we face. This is a man who’s not a politician. I don’t think he much likes politics. This is a man who served his country. He’s actually a war hero … I speak of that great American patriot, General Michael Flynn.”
“And let me say this,” he added. “General Flynn’s greatest acts of public service lie ahead.”
26. Hollywood won't budge for Chinese censors anymore. Here's what changed
Good news. Hollywood grows up and gets tough.
But is seems these are business decisions:
Excerpts:
However, China, which remains a massive film market despite missing out on some of the most popular global new releases, may not need American films.
“Xi Jinping’s ‘Made in China 2025’ policy makes clear that Beijing intends to eliminate most dependence on the West,” said Fenton. “Independence from Hollywood is only one small segment of that goal, and China has pretty much achieved it.”
To be sure, “studios are still trying” to get into the country, Kokas noted.
The studios … see China as less of a golden goose.
Robert Cain, founder of Pacific Bridge Pictures
But the lack of certainty means that some producers aren’t banking on its prospects there anymore.
Fenton said he knew of “at least one major Hollywood studio projecting zero [in revenue] for China now when they green-light movies,” given that “it’s now almost impossible to factor in the whims of the Chinese government at any given moment.”
“There’s still some opportunity there,” said Cain. “But it’s just not the same thing as it was.”
Hollywood won't budge for Chinese censors anymore. Here's what changed | CNN Business
CNN · by Michelle Toh · July 8, 2022
Hollywood has long bent over backwards to give Chinese censors what they want. Not anymore.
Over the past year, producers behind some of the hottest US blockbusters have kept in scenes that could irk China’s censors, apparently less concerned about the potential loss of access to theaters across the country of 1.4 billion people.
As a result, some of the most anticipated movies released in recent months — including “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and “Lightyear” — have not, and may never, hit the world’s second largest box office.
All films publicly screened in China need a permit from regulators. Censorship is rife, with authorities increasingly clamping down on what they perceive to be inappropriate, including in some cases the appearance of cleavage, tattoos or people smoking, as well as more obviously politically sensitive elements.
Take the new “Top Gun” sequel, now the biggest picture of the year. In a trailer released in 2019, the movie appeared to omit Taiwan’s flag, after a Chinese backer urged producers to do so, according to the Wall Street Journal. Later, once the investor, Tencent (TCEHY), reportedly dropped out, the symbol was reinstated on Tom Cruise’s iconic bomber jacket.
China and Taiwan have a complex relationship. Beijing’s Communist leadership has long claimed Taiwan, a self-governed democratic island, as part of its territory, despite having never ruled over it.
Now, executives at the film’s studio, Paramount (PGRE), no longer expect a mainland Chinese release, the Journal reported in May, citing anonymous sources.
The move was followed by another rebuff by Disney (DIS) and Pixar, which were reportedly asked by authorities in countries including China to remove a brief, same-sex kissing scene from their latest animated release, “Lightyear.” China has long cracked down on depictions of homosexuality.
Disney declined to make the cut, its producer, Galyn Susman, told Reuters, adding that she believed the film would also not open in the country. The movie, which has Chris Evans voice the role of titular space ranger Buzz Lightyear, premiered elsewhere last month.
A person familiar with the matter said that Disney had submitted the film for release in mainland China, and was awaiting an official response.
Sony (SNE) Pictures also found itself in a tight spot late last year, when it was asked by Chinese regulators to cut out or minimize the appearance of the Statue of Liberty in a scene in “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” according to the publication Puck. The company reportedly refused, and the movie was never shown in mainland theaters.
Sony and Disney did not respond to a request for comment, while Paramount declined to comment. China’s film regulators did not respond to a request for comment.
A scene from "Spider-Man: No Way Home." Sony reportedly refused to alter a scene in the film, which was released late last year, involving the Statue of Liberty.
Soncy Pictures
So why would these companies push back, putting tens or hundreds of millions of dollars at risk? For one, industry veterans say that China’s movie market isn’t what it used to be.
In recent months, film studios have begun to rethink the trade-off associated with appeasing censors in China, particularly as the country’s box office becomes more insular, more heavily regulated, and continues to be battered by Covid-19 restrictions, according to experts.
“There is 100% a shift” in how Hollywood regards Chinese censors, said Chris Fenton, former president of DMG Entertainment and author of the book “Feeding the Dragon: Inside the Trillion-Dollar Dilemma Facing Hollywood, the NBA, and American Business.”
“Pleasing Beijing no longer guarantees big revenues in China,” he told CNN Business. “Such risk and effort no longer guarantee results, and I expect this lack of certainty to prolong this era of pushback for quite some time.”
A tricky history
“It’s about damn time,” said Robert Cain, founder of Pacific Bridge Pictures, which helps Chinese and international partners develop entertainment projects.
In previous years, Hollywood studios were “kowtowing to the Chinese government, doing anything and everything they could to make sure their films got in, including debasing their films and themselves,” added Cain, who has done business in China and Hollywood for more than two decades.
“You would never be able to find a single studio executive who would utter a peep that could be perceived as critical of anything about China … Now we’re in a different situation, where I think the studios, because they see China as less of a golden goose, they’re feeling more emboldened to go their own way and push back.”
The hoops that filmmakers have jumped through are well documented.
In a 2015 report, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a government agency created to brief US Congress, described how “with an eye toward distribution in China, American filmmakers increasingly edit films in anticipation of Chinese censors’ many potential sensitivities.”
One such example was the remake of the action movie “Red Dawn,” which “underwent expensive digital alterations” so that China was no longer portrayed as the villain, the commission wrote.
The character Alisha Hawthorne in Pixar's animated movie "Lightyear." Disney released the film, about titular space ranger Buzz Lightyear, in June.
Pixar/PIXAR
And in 2016, a Tibetan character was reportedly rewritten as Celtic in the film “Doctor Strange” to avoid the ire of Chinese officials, noted Aynne Kokas, an associate professor of media studies at the University of Virginia and author of the book “Hollywood Made in China.”
Tibet, which has been controlled by the Communist government in Beijing since 1951, is one of the most sensitive subjects in Chinese politics.
Kokas also pointed to the decision this year by Warner Bros. to remove footage alluding to a gay relationship in the Chinese version of its latest “Harry Potter” movie. (Warner Bros. is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, the same parent company of CNN.)
In a statement at the time, a Warner Bros. spokesperson told CNN Business it was “committed to safeguarding the integrity of every film we release.”
“A six-second cut was requested and Warner Bros. accepted those changes to comply with local requirements, but the spirit of the film remains intact,” the representative added.
That kind of behavior increasingly risks a backlash in Western markets.
There has been more “scrutiny placed on Hollywood by politicians, journalists, critics, and even movie fans in terms of anything viewed as pandering to Beijing,” said Fenton, suggesting that such scrutiny could ultimately lead “to lost revenue globally.”
Several bills have been introduced in US Congress, such as the “SCREEN Act,” which requires Hollywood studios to “provide written agreements pledging they will not edit their own films at the request of censorship from the Chinese Communist Party.”
Requests such as the one to remove the Statue of Liberty from “Spider-Man” have left studios on an unenviable tightrope, Kokas said.
“[For producers,] there’s not a guarantee that I’ll be able to double my profits, and I might actually damage my US market,” she noted. “I mean, removing the Statue of Liberty is something that could potentially draw negative attention to your film in a highly polarized US political environment.”
A tougher market
China’s box office rakes in billions of dollars a year, rivaling the United States and Canada combined.
In 2020, it became the biggest movie market on Earth, as its theaters were able to recover from the impact of the Covid pandemic more quickly than those in North America. The trend continued last year.
This year, however, the balance has tilted again. US theaters have bounced back, while China continues to maintain a strict “zero Covid” policy that keeps many of its cinemas in limbo. That puts North America’s box office slightly ahead so far in 2022, generating more than $3.6 billion compared with China’s roughly $2.7 billion, according to data from Comscore.
Another headache for Hollywood executives is whether China will even allow their movies into theaters, with or without censoring them.
While China typically permits the release of 30 to 40 foreign films a year, that number has fallen since the pandemic. The country allowed 20 theatrical releases of Hollywood films last year, compared to 36 in 2018, according to Artisan Gateway, a film industry consultancy and investment research firm.
People wearing protective masks as they watch a movie in 3D at a theater on the first day they were permitted to open in Beijing on July 24, 2020. China's box office became the world's largest that year, according to Comscore data.
Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
Producers are also keenly aware of how fast the political environment can shift.
Kokas pointed to titles such as Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” and “Eternals,” which were not released in mainland China. The movies were expected to be big hits in the Chinese market, given their ethnic Chinese-led casts and crew.
But they never came out in the country. The prevailing theories were that Simu Liu, the superhero star of “Shang-Chi,” and Chloe Zhao, director of “Eternals,” both received the cold shoulder after reportedly criticizing the Chinese government years ago, said Kokas.
China’s film regulatory agency and Marvel’s owner, Disney, did not respond to a request for comment.
Part of the difficulty is that “there used to be much more transparency on the part of Chinese regulators” about what they would accept, Kokas said.
Then there is the question of whether the films will still do well.
Chinese moviegoers have recently eschewed foreign films in favor of other titles, such as patriotic propaganda war movies, which have topped the box office domestically.
The share of the annual box office intake in China going to Hollywood movies has dwindled over the past four years, from 30.7% in 2018 to 13.6% so far this year, according to data from Artisan Gateway.
Rance Pow, the firm’s founder, also said that talent in the Chinese industry had become stronger. Local stories told “in Mandarin and portrayed with Chinese sensibilities … naturally appeal to local audiences, particularly as you move from urban to rural markets,” he noted.
“As Chinese producers venture further into the action and sci-fi genres in particular, where Hollywood dominated for many years, there will likely be increased competition from local fare.”
A gradual decoupling
China once made no secret of its ambitions to join forces with Hollywood.
In 2012, one of the country’s biggest conglomerates, Wanda, made a splash by buying AMC (AMC) for $2.6 billion, forming the largest cinema chain in the world.
The move was followed by a slew of deals that saw production studios like Legendary Entertainment and Dick Clark Productions get snapped up by Wanda, and Chinese firms such as Alibaba (BABA) show up as sponsors on big screens all over the world.
Recently, however, such funding has largely dried up. Wanda sold off most of its AMC stake last year, according to a regulatory filing.
Global mergers and acquisitions by mainland Chinese film companies have dropped, from 61 deals in 2018 to 15 last year and only one so far this year, according to data provider Dealogic.
The situation has led some critics to wonder whether Hollywood still needs China, or vice versa.
Several titles that have recently skipped Chinese releases still enjoyed huge commercial success. This summer, “Top Gun: Maverick” became the highest-grossing movie of the year, crossing the billion-dollar mark in global box office revenue, according to Comscore.
“Spider-Man” also enjoyed a record-breaking debut, and in December became the first movie to hit the billion-dollar milestone since 2019.
Kokas said that while the performances were promising, it was too early to write off Hollywood’s dependence on the world’s second largest economy.
Tom Cruise playing Captain Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in "Top Gun: Maverick" from Paramount Pictures, Skydance and Jerry Bruckheimer Films. The film has become the highest-grossing movie of the year.
Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures Corp
However, China, which remains a massive film market despite missing out on some of the most popular global new releases, may not need American films.
“Xi Jinping’s ‘Made in China 2025’ policy makes clear that Beijing intends to eliminate most dependence on the West,” said Fenton. “Independence from Hollywood is only one small segment of that goal, and China has pretty much achieved it.”
To be sure, “studios are still trying” to get into the country, Kokas noted.
The studios … see China as less of a golden goose.
Robert Cain, founder of Pacific Bridge Pictures
But the lack of certainty means that some producers aren’t banking on its prospects there anymore.
Fenton said he knew of “at least one major Hollywood studio projecting zero [in revenue] for China now when they green-light movies,” given that “it’s now almost impossible to factor in the whims of the Chinese government at any given moment.”
“There’s still some opportunity there,” said Cain. “But it’s just not the same thing as it was.”
— CNN’s Beijing bureau and Frank Pallotta contributed to this report.
CNN · by Michelle Toh · July 8, 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
