Quotes of the Day:
"I am convinced an information program can contribute to our security just as can an army, a navy, and an air force; and that it can make its contribution in a manner that is vastly preferable to the threat or the use of force, and at infinitely less expense."
- SecState Feb 1946
“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.”
-Thomas Huxley
“Optimists study English; pessimists study Chinese; and realists learn to use a Kalashnikov.”
-Russian Proverb
1. RUSSIA OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JULY 13 (Putin's War)
2. In Ukraine war, a race to acquire smarter, deadlier drones
3. How Russia's current war in Ukraine echoes its Crimean War of the 1850s
4. Video purportedly shows U.S. naval attaché flicking off a Russian military “Z”
5. John Bolton said he planned foreign coups. The global outcry was swift.
6. FDD | Washington Should Keep the IRGC’s Khatam al-Anbiya on Its Sanctions List
7. Europe’s Tiny Steps Won’t Solve Its Energy Emergency
8. Analysis | So what coups might John Bolton have been involved in, exactly?
9. What China’s ‘Cold War’ rulers want from U.S.
10. Johnstone: Three Illuminating Quotes About The War In Ukraine
11. House Approves Marijuana And Psychedelics Amendments As Part Of Must-Pass Defense Bill
12. Ukraine Situation Report: More Russian Ammo Dumps Blown Up
13. House tries to avoid messy political battles over Pentagon policy bill
14. Special Operators Await Speedier Helicopters
15. Soldier of the Year 2022 is only Army officer with two post-9/11 Silver Stars
16. Why the US is selling stockpiled oil to China
17. How China Wants to Replace the U.S. Order
18. Ex-CIA engineer convicted in massive theft of secret info
19. Ukraine Is Bringing a Big Gun to a Knife Fight
20. Special Forces Around the World: Conduct, Oversight, and Opacity
21. When Irregular Becomes Everywhere: The Cybered Fight in Unwanted Places
22. The weaponizing of smartphone location data on the battlefield
23. Iran’s Increasingly Decentralized Axis of Resistance
24. For Richer or for Poorer: Security Cooperation with Developing Countries
25. Iraq, Afghanistan veteran from Hawaii takes command of Army group on Okinawa
25. Rubio, Scott Urge Army, Air Force to Address Lack of Childcare for 7th Special Forces Group
1. RUSSIA OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JULY 13 (Putin's War)
Just wanted to highlight this key point that, again, illustrates the evil nature of the Putin regime.
- Russian occupation authorities may be setting conditions to forcibly relocate Ukrainian children in occupied territories to Crimea.
RUSSIA OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JULY 13
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, July 13
Kateryna Stepanenko, Grace Mappes, George Barros, and Frederick W. Kagan
July 13, 7:30 pm ET
Click here to see ISW's interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
The Kremlin likely ordered Russian “federal subjects” (regions) to form volunteer battalions to participate in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, instead of declaring partial or full mobilization in Russia. Russian war correspondent and milblogger Maksim Fomin stated that Russia has begun a “volunteer mobilization,” where every region must generate at least one volunteer battalion.[1] The term “volunteer mobilization” likely implies that the Kremlin ordered the 85 “federal subjects” (regions, including occupied Sevastopol and Crimea) to recruit and financially incentivize volunteers to form new battalions, rather than referring to literal mobilization relying on conscription or the compulsory activation of all reservists in Russia. Russian outlets reported that regional officials recruit men up to 50 years old (or 60 for separate military specialties) for six-month contracts and offer salaries averaging 220,000 to 350,000 rubles per month (approximately $3,750 to $6,000).[2] Separate regions offer an immediate enlistment bonus that averages 200,000 rubles (approximately $3,400) issued from the region‘s budget and social benefits for the servicemen and their families.[3] Russian media has already confirmed the creation or deployment of volunteer battalions in Kursk, Primorskyi Krai, Republic of Bashkortostan, Chuvashia Republic, Chechnya, Republic of Tatarstan, Moscow City, Perm, Nizhny Novgorod, and Orenburg Oblasts in late June and early July.[4] Tyumen Oblast officials announced the formation of volunteer units (not specifically a battalion) on July 7.[5]
Volunteer battalions could generate around 34,000 new servicemen by the end of August if each federal subject produces at least one military unit of 400 men. Some Russian reports and documentation suggest that the Kremlin seeks to recruit an estimated 400 soldiers per battalion, who will receive a month of training before deploying to Ukraine.[6] The number of men may vary as some federal subjects such as Republic of Tatarstan and Chechnya are establishing two and four volunteer battalions, respectively.[7] It is possible that some federal subjects may delay or not participate in the establishment of the battalions, with officials in Volgograd reportedly remaining silent on the formation of the new units.[8] Newly formed battalions are currently departing to training grounds and will likely complete their month-long training by end of August but they will not be combat ready in such a short time period.[9]
Russian milbloggers criticized the Russian military on July 12 for sourcing Iranian UAVs to improve artillery targeting in Ukraine while failing to address the command issues that more severely limit the effectiveness of Russian artillery. Russian Telegram channel Rybar claimed on July 12 that Russian requests and approval for artillery fire pass through a convoluted chain of command, resulting in a delay of several hours to several days between Russian ground forces requesting artillery fire, Russian targeting, and conducting the actual strikes.[10] Rybar claimed that Russian forces in Syria reduced the time between targeting and striking to under an hour.[11] Rybar claimed that while the Russian need for more UAVs is clear and that Iranian UAVs helped achieve a target-to-fire time of 40 minutes in Syrian training grounds additional UAVs do not solve the problems of overcentralized Russian command and overreliance on artillery in Ukraine.[12] Russian milblogger Voyennyi Osvedomitel’ claimed that Russian forces had faced the same overcentralized command during the First Chechen War, wherein the inability of Russian ground forces to request artillery support without going through a chain of command inhibited responses to enemy offensive actions.[13] Milblogger Yuzhnyi Veter claimed that Ukrainian artillery forces’ target-to-response time is under 40 seconds.[14]
Key Takeaways
- The Kremlin likely ordered Russian “federal subjects” (regions) to form volunteer battalions to deploy to Ukraine.
- Russian forces conducted failed ground assaults north of Slovyansk and around Bakhmut.
- Russian forces continued air and artillery strikes around Siversk and west of Donetsk City.
- Russian forces continued targeting Ukrainian rail lines on the Eastern Axis.
- Russian forces attempted limited and unsuccessful ground assaults north of Kharkiv City.
- Russian forces prioritized defensive operations on the Southern Axis as Ukrainian forces continued targeting ammunition depots.
- Russian occupation authorities are increasing financial incentives for civilians working in occupied Ukraine.
- Russian occupation authorities may be setting conditions to forcibly relocate Ukrainian children in occupied territories to Crimea.
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 artillery and air strikes as well as limited ground assaults but failed to gain territory north and east of Slovyansk on July 13. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian advances towards Ivanivka, Dolyna, and Dovhenke northwest of Slovyansk near the E40 highway.[15] Russian forces struck the Slovyansk-Lyman rail and road bridges near Raihorodok, northeast of Slovyansk on the T0514 highway.[16] Russian combat footage appears to show at least one of the two bridges destroyed.[17] It is unclear whether Russian forces fully destroyed both bridges as of this publication. These bridges—if intact—could have allowed Russian forces to advance on Slovyansk from the northeast as well as from the north and northwest. Their destruction would indicate the Russians have abandoned the idea of such an advance for reasons that are not clear. Russian forces may strike these bridges to prevent Ukrainian forces from using the bridges to conduct a counterattack on Lyman, but such a decision would reflect a surprisingly defensive mindset on the axis that is the current main offensive operation of the Russian military in Ukraine. Russian forces conducted an airstrike near Mazanivka northwest of Slovyansk.[18] Russian forces continued shelling areas to the northwest and northeast of Slovyansk, including Dolyna, Krasnopillia, and Donetske.[19]
Russian forces continued artillery strikes near Siversk but did not attempt any ground assaults in this area on July 13. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces shelled areas including Siversk, Serebryanka, and Ivano-Darivka and conducted airstrikes on Verkhnokamyanske and Spirne.[20] Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Assistant to Interior Minister Vitaly Kiselyov amplified the UK Defense Ministry’s assessment that Russian forces intend to seize Siversk within the coming week, which may indicate that such is indeed the Russian intent, although Kiselyov is not an official or reliable spokesman for Russian military operations.[21] Contrarily, Russian military correspondent Boris Rozhin claimed that fighting is ongoing near Serebryanka northeast of Siversk and that Russian forces intend to bypass Siversk from the north.[22] While ISW cannot verify these claims, they indicate if true that Russian forces intend to advance from Hryhorivka west to Serebryanka before advancing on Siversk.
Russian forces conducted failed ground assaults east of Bakhmut on July 13. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian ground assaults towards Yakolivka northeast of Bakhmut and Vesela Dolyna and Vershyna to the southeast.[23] Ukrainian forces also forced a Russian reconnaissance-in-force group to withdraw near Pokrovske.[24] Kiselyov claimed that Russian forces reached the outskirts of Soledar northeast of Bakhmut and west of the Bakhmut-Lysychansk highway, but ISW has not been able to independently verify these claims.[25]
Russian forces continued firing on Ukrainian rail networks on the Eastern Axis on July 13. Russian forces shelled Raiske, situated along the Ukrainian railway connecting Kramatorsk, Chasiv Yar, and Bakhmut to central Ukraine.[26] Russian forces reportedly shelled the Stupky Rail Station on the northern outskirts of Bakhmut.[27] Russian forces likely intend to interdict Ukrainian rail networks to set conditions for an eventual assault on Slovyansk and Kramatorsk.
Russian forces continued firing on Ukrainian positions west of Donetsk City on July 13. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continued to shell with less intensity than usual along the line of contact west of Donetsk City, including Avdiivka, Mariinka, and Novomykhailivka.[28] Russian forces also conducted airstrikes on Avdiivka, Kamyanka, and Novomykhailivka.[29]
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 continued to conduct limited and unsuccessful ground assaults northwest of Kharkiv City on July 13. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled another Russian attack on Dementiivka and noted that units of the Western and Eastern Military Districts continue to maintain defensive positions on the Kharkiv City axis.[30] The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that Russian forces neutralized a Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance group in the area of Dementiivka, but ISW cannot independently verify if Russian forces recaptured territory in Dementiivka’s vicinity.[31] The Ukrainian General Staff also stated that Russian helicopters launched airstrikes on Petrivka and Verkhniy Saltiv, both northeast of Kharkiv City.[32] Russian forces continued to shell Kharkiv City and settlements northeast, northwest, and southeast of the city.[33]
Supporting Effort #2—Southern Axis (Russian objective: Defend Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts against Ukrainian counterattacks)
Russian forces continued to undertake defensive operations across the Southern Axis amidst Ukrainian strikes on Russian ammunition depots. The Kherson Oblast Administration reported that local residents observed Russian forces fortifying the Antoniv Bridge over the Dnipro River, just east of Kherson City, which may indicate Russian preparations for Ukrainian counteroffensives all the way to Kherson City.[34] Russian forces will likely attempt to defend the bridge to preserve their access to the western bank of the Dnipro River. Geolocated footage showed that Russian forces deployed Tochka-U tactical ballistic missile systems to Melitopol, reportedly in response to the increase of Ukrainian strikes on occupied territories.[35]
Ukrainian forces continued to target Russian ammunition depots along Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) on the T2207 highway on July 12 and July 13. The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command reported that Ukrainian aircraft struck a Russian ammunition depot in Novopetrivka (near the Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border) and launched missile strikes on a Russian manpower concentration point in Chkalove (approximately 65km northeast of Kherson City), both settlements situated along the T2207.[36] The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command also reported that Ukrainian forces again struck a Russian ammunition depot in Chornobaivka.[37]
Russian forces continued to shell Ukrainian positions along the Kherson-Mykolaiv and Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast borders and settlements on the Zaporizhia Oblast frontline.[38] Russian forces reportedly launched missile strikes onto an industrial facility in Zaporizhia City, a farm in Odesa Oblast, and social infrastructure in the Bereznhuvatskyi district in Mykolaiv Oblast.[39] Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Administration Head Dmytro Reznichenko also reported that Russian MLRS struck Nikopol, Chervonohryhorivka, and Myrove, all situated on the northern side of the Kakhovske Reservoir.[40]
Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)
Russian forces continued to recruit and form additional regional volunteer battalions throughout Russia on July 13. Kazan regional news outlet Biznes Online reported that the Republic of Tatarstan established and dispatched the “Alga” volunteer battalion for a month-long training program before committing it to the “special military operation” in Ukraine.[41] The Republic of Tatarstan will deploy two volunteer battalions in total and pay servicemen 2,000 rubles (approximately $34) per day in addition to a one-time 260,000 ruble payment (approximately $4,450) for enlisting out of the republic’s budget.[42] The Russian Defense Ministry will reportedly pay servicemen a starting monthly salary of 170,000 rubles (approximately $2,900).[43] Biznes Online estimated that each battalion will have over 400 servicemen, and reported that 300 to 350 men already have already passed the selection process for the second volunteer battalion “Timer.”[44] Russian opposition outlet Meduza reported that Moscow officials began recruitment for the newly-established “Sobyanskiy Polk” regiment on July 1 and are offering over 200,000 rubles per month (approximately $3,400) to volunteers out of the Moscow City budget.[45] Meduza noted that men from regions other than Moscow City predominantly registered for the “Sobyanskiy Polk” as of July 13. Meduza stated that former commander of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Militia Roman Vysotsky is one of the recruiters for “Sobyanskiy Polk,” but it is unclear if the regiment will merge with DNR forces. Ukraine’s Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) obtained a document stating that Krasnoyarsk Krai allocated 120 million rubles (approximately two million dollars) to recruit 400 servicemen from the region.[46]
Russian forces continue to face desertion and morale problems. The Ukrainian Zaporizhia Oblast Military Administration reported that about 60 Russian servicemen deserted due to fear of Ukrainian artillery strikes on Zaporizhia Oblast and noted that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) is searching for deserters in occupied settlements in the region.[47] Russian outlet Baza reported that an unknown man threw two Molotov Cocktails at a military recruitment center in Mozhaysk, Moscow Oblast on July 13.[48]
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 are increasing financial incentives for Russian civilians working in occupation governments in Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on July 13 that Russian authorities now recognize civilians who deployed to occupied territories as veterans, entitling them to pensions, in order to draw more civilians into working in occupied Ukraine.[49] The report additionally stated that Russian occupation authorities are importing Russian infrastructure workers to Mariupol due to personnel shortages.[50] ISW cannot independently verify these claims. However, if true, this report indicates that Russian occupation authorities are facing issues recruiting civilians to work in occupied southern Ukraine severe enough to warrant paying out long-term pensions for short-term deployments.
Russian occupation authorities may be setting conditions to forcibly transport Ukrainian children in occupied territories to Crimea to coerce Ukrainians into collaborating with the occupation government. The Ukrainian Kherson Oblast Administration reported that the Russian-backed government in occupied Kherson Oblast will only open 20% of available schools for the school year starting on September 1, 2022, and that occupation authorities will transport Ukrainian children to the Nakimovsky Naval School in Sevastopol, Crimea for education instead of schools in occupied Kherson.[51] While ISW cannot verify these claims, separating children from their parents (likely involuntarily) would allow Russian occupation authorities to threaten to harm the children if the parents do not cooperate. The report also states that the Russia-backed government forced Kherson Oblast teachers to travel to Crimea for training, likely to further increase civilian compliance with the occupation government in Kherson.[52] The Ukrainian Resistance Center also reported that Russian occupation authorities in Kherson Oblast are considering further delaying the referendum for Russian annexation because the lack of local cooperation prevents the occupation authorities from gathering enough data to launch the referendum.[53]
[3] https://svpressa dot ru/war21/article/339729/; https://www dot business-gazeta.ru/article/556433; https://meduza dot io/news/2022/07/13/v-moskve-sformirovan-sobyaninskiy-polk-v-nego-nabirayut-naemnikov-dlya-voyny-v-ukraine
[8] https://v1 dot ru/text/gorod/2022/07/07/71472023/
[45] https://meduza dot io/news/2022/07/13/v-moskve-sformirovan-sobyaninskiy-polk-v-nego-nabirayut-naemnikov-dlya-voyny-v-ukraine
[49] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2022/07/13/okupanty-zvozyat-v-mariupol-praczivnykiv-z-rf-ta-ne-mozhut-znajty-kolaborantiv-na-pivdni/
[50] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2022/07/13/okupanty-zvozyat-v-mariupol-praczivnykiv-z-rf-ta-ne-mozhut-znajty-kolaborantiv-na-pivdni/
2. In Ukraine war, a race to acquire smarter, deadlier drones
In Ukraine war, a race to acquire smarter, deadlier drones
AP · by OLEKSANDR STASHEVSKYI and FRANK BAJAK · July 14, 2022
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Drone camera footage defines much of the public’s view of the war in Ukraine: grenades quietly dropped on unwitting soldiers, eerie flights over silent, bombed-out cities, armor and outposts exploding into fireballs.
Never in the history of warfare have drones been used as intensively as in Ukraine, where they often play an outsized role in who lives and dies. Russians and Ukrainians alike depend heavily on unmanned aerial vehicles to pinpoint enemy positions and guide their hellish artillery strikes.
But after months of fighting, the drone fleets of both sides are depleted, and they are racing to build or buy the kind of jamming-resistant, advanced drones that could offer a decisive edge.
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“The Russian drone force may still be capable, but exhausted. And Russians are looking to capitalize on a proven Iranian track record,” said Samuel Bendett, an analyst at the CNA military think tank.
Meanwhile, Ukraine wants the means “to strike at Russian command and control facilities at a significant distance,” Bendett said.
“The number we need is immense,” a senior Ukrainian official, Yuri Shchygol, told reporters Wednesday, detailing the first results of a new fundraising campaign called “Army of Drones.” He said Ukraine is initially seeking to purchase 200 NATO-grade military drones but requires 10 times more.
Outgunned Ukrainian fighters complain that they simply don’t have the military-grade drones needed to defeat Russian jamming and radio-controlled hijacking. The civilian models most Ukrainians rely on are detected and defeated with relative ease. And it’s not uncommon for Russian artillery to rain down on their operators within minutes of a drone being detected.
Compared with the war’s early months, Bendett now sees less evidence of Russian drones getting shot down. “The Ukrainians are on the ropes,” he said.
“Russians are in a much better position because they fly long-range drones” designed to evade electronic countermeasures, a Ukrainian air reconnaissance unit leader recently told Associated Press journalists outside Bakhmut near the front lines.
On the ground, Russia’s more plentiful electronic warfare units can cut off drone pilots’ communications, interrupt live video and drop the vehicle from the sky or, if it has homing technology, force it to retreat.
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Hence the need for advanced drones that can survive radio interference and GPS jamming and rely on satellite communications and other technologies for control and navigation.
Ukraine’s most urgent need is for drones able to help newly arriving longer-range Western artillery hit distant targets, said Marine Capt.-Lt. Maksym Muzyka, a founder of UA Dynamics, a Ukrainian drone maker.
A Russian deputy prime minister who oversees Kremlin arms industries lamented in a TV interview last month that prewar drone development was not more robust. Yuri Borisov also said Russia was stepping up manufacture of a wide range of drones “although it can’t be done instantaneously.”
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Russia has lost about 50 of its most plentiful model of drone, the Orlan-10, but apparently has dozens or scores more, Bendett said.
A new report from Britain’s RUSI think tank puts the current lifespan of a Ukrainian drone at roughly a week. Russian electronic warfare units are “imposing significant limitations on Ukrainian reconnaissance in depth” — and Ukraine desperately needs radar-seeking killer drones that can destroy them.
As it stands, Russian forces are “generally able to bring accurate artillery fire down on (Ukrainian) targets three to five minutes” after a reconnaissance drone has identified them.
A Ukrainian drone operator who goes by the call sign Maverick said his fellow pilots often go deep behind enemy lines. Otherwise their drones lack the range to correct Ukrainian artillery fire. That puts them constantly in the sights of enemy artillery.
The U.S. and other Western allies have shipped hundreds of drones, including an unspecified number of “kamikaze” Switchblade 600s that carry tank-piercing warheads. They can fly at 70 mph and use artificial intelligence to track targets. But their range is limited, and they can only stay aloft about 40 minutes.
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Potentially of greater utility for reaching Russian ammunition dumps and command posts are the 121 advanced military drones called Phoenix Ghosts that the U.S. acquired for Ukraine in May.
Their specifications are mostly secret, but they can fly for six hours, destroy armored vehicles and have infrared cameras for night missions, said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, a board member of Aevex Aerospace, the manufacturer.
Other drones similarly suited to reconnaissance and artillery spotting include Ukraine’s homegrown Furia, each of which costs $25,000.
About 70 percent of the roughly 200 Furias that Ukraine purchased after Russia initiated hostilities in 2014 have been downed, said Artem Vyunnyk, CEO of the manufacturer, Athlon Avia. Production is resuming at a new factory, he said, but domestic suppliers alone can’t begin to fill Ukraine’s drone gap.
The Ukrainian military’s General Staff did not respond to questions about the unmanned aerial vehicles it seeks from allies. Pentagon spokeswoman Jessica Maxwell also declined to comment on Ukraine’s drone requests.
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But Shchygol, the head of Ukraine’s state service for special communication, made it clear Wednesday that priorities include “kamikaze” drones and models capable of surviving Russia’s thick electronic warfare curtain.
Their proliferation has spawned an entire industry devoted to countermeasures.
Anti-drone equipment supplied to Ukraine by Western companies include gear that can identify not just a drone’s location but its make and model based on the radio frequencies it uses. It then knows how best to disable the drone.
The ever more complex electromagnetic cat-and-mouse game makes Ukraine the world’s latest crucible of military technology innovation.
“Everybody now wants drones, special drones, unjammable and whatsoever,” said Thorsten Chmielus, CEO of the Germany company Aaronia, which has contributed technology to Ukraine.
The rapid advancement leads to his nightmare: “Everybody will have millions of drones that can’t be defeated.”
___
Bajak reported from Boston. AP journalists Nomaan Merchant and Lolita Baldor in Washington, Bernat Armangue in Bakhmut, Ukraine, and Alex Turnbull in Paris contributed to this story.
___
AP · by OLEKSANDR STASHEVSKYI and FRANK BAJAK · July 14, 2022
3. How Russia's current war in Ukraine echoes its Crimean War of the 1850s
Important history for many reasons. But one reason that I would like to highlight is that we sent observers to gather insights about the war that led to some perception about the future of war.
Here is an excerpt from an article about McClellen's experience in Crimea.
Summarizing his section on Crimea, McClellan concluded that the United States should maintain its coastal defenses, improve the drilling and organization of its military, and maintain a small, disciplined defensive force. Looking to invasion rather than offense, McClellan noted the effect of artillery in support of defensive fortifications.
In McClellan’s reports we see the future battles of the American Civil War; the flanking efforts of Rebel generals making use of their knowledge of Southern terrain and the future earthworks of Vicksburg are echoed in the rapid movement of the allies and stalwart defense of Sevastopol by the Russians.
Further ahead, the use of artillery in support of defensive trench works foretells the bloody stalemate of the Western Front. Though McClellan did not lead Union forces long enough to see their full echoing in the actions in Crimea, the future of warfare is clear in his report, and, had he foreseen the lessons on which he wrote, his own campaigns in Virginia may have ended very differently.
From: Magnificent, but Not War: George B. McClellan in Crimea https://www.warhistoryonline.com/history/magnificent-but-not-war-george-b-mcclellan-in-crimea.html?chrome=1
This is why we should have observers in Ukraine (and of course advisors would be better - they could do double duty - advise, assist, and observe).
How Russia's current war in Ukraine echoes its Crimean War of the 1850s
NPR · by Greg Myre · July 13, 2022
The boundary between Ukraine and Crimea, in a photo from early February of this year. Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. On Feb. 24 of this year, Russian forces in Crimea pushed deeper into southern Ukraine and have seized additional territory in the region. Claire Harbage/NPR
KYIV, Ukraine — Here's a widely held view of Russia's war: Russia had a more powerful army and expected a quick victory. It didn't think Western powers would intervene. Yet a poorly planned military campaign led to a fight much tougher than expected.
To be clear, we're not talking about Russia's current war in Ukraine. We're talking about Russia's war in Crimea in the 1850s.
Even if you're not familiar with the Crimean War, you know some of the monumental figures who emerged from it, like Florence Nightingale and Leo Tolstoy.
But this isn't just history. That long-ago conflict is still relevant today. For starters, when Russia fought the Ottoman Empire in 1853, the focal point was Crimea — the very same territory Russian President Vladimir Putin seized in 2014 when he first invaded Ukraine.
British nurse Florence Nightingale organized a hospital unit during the Crimean War of 1853-56. She is credited for bringing more sanitary conditions to the treatment of injured soldiers, who often died from infections and other illnesses, and not their wounds. AP
During the first Crimean War, The Economist magazine — the same one that's still going strong — wrote a scathing piece in 1854 on Russia and its leader, Czar Nicholas I.
"That vast state is in great measure composed of spoils which she has torn from surrounding nations," The Economist wrote. "Her frontier provinces are filled with injured, discontented hostile populations ... many of whom wait, with patience and desire, the blessed day of emancipation and revenge."
Sounds a lot like Ukraine today.
"There are very distinct parallels. And I think Putin has probably overstretched himself in the same way that Nicholas I did," says Orlando Figes, a British historian and the author of The Crimean War: A History.
"Nicholas, who wanted to counteract the influence of liberal democracy in Europe, came up with the slogan, 'Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationalism,'" says Figes, who's upcoming book is The Story of Russia. "That might just as well stand for Putin's ideology. This is a war backed by the Orthodox Church. He is an autocrat. He sees himself as a bulwark against liberal principles coming from the West.''
Professor Vladislav Zubok, a Russian historian at the London School of Economics, has a similar take.
"It's a classic case when history does definitely rhyme," says Zubok.
He notes that Russia had a huge army in the 1850s but planned poorly for the Crimean War.
"Very quickly after the outbreak of the war, it turned out that Russia was so weak that it couldn't even properly supply the troops on its own territory," Zubok says.
The Russian Black Sea naval headquarters at Sevastopol, Crimea, in 2008. In the background on the right is a Russian destroyer. The Russian tall ship Padalla (with white sails) is in the center. In the foreground is the Monument to Scuttled Ships, marking Russia's intentional destruction of its own naval fleet in the Crimean War in 1854 as British and French warships approached. AP
Much like today, where Russia has suffered recurring logistics failures since invading Ukraine in February.
Nicholas I also thought Western powers would not interfere with his war against the Ottoman Empire, which he called "the sick man of Europe." He was stunned when Britain and France joined the fight against Russia.
"He could not imagine that the leading powers of Europe would turn against him," Zubok says. "He definitely provoked the Crimean War by his arrogance, by his wrong assumptions about Europe and other powers. And he essentially blundered his way into this war."
An early and famous war photograph shows unexploded cannonballs after the Charge of the Light Brigade, a failed British military operation in the 1854 Battle of Balaklava during the Crimean War. Roger Fenton/Universal History Archive/Getty Images
Britain and France aren't fighting in the current war. But recently, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron were among five European leaders who took trains to Kyiv and stood side-by-side in solidarity with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
"Putin did not believe that the Europeans and the United States would together push back against what Russia was doing," says Angela Stent, a Russia expert at Georgetown University. She's met many times with Putin during his more than two decades in power, and is the author of Putin's World.
"He also didn't believe that Europe and the United States would agree on these very tough sanctions. So he was wrong on a number of counts," she adds.
This print depicts the outnumbered British Light Brigade fighting Russian soldiers during a disastrous British operation at Balaklava during the Crimean War. HUM Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
"Forward the Light Brigade
Was there a man dismayed
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred."
Tennyson wasn't alone in turning tragedy into art. A young Russian artillery officer, Leo Tolstoy, drew on his experience when he later wrote War and Peace.
Leo Tolstoy, shown in this undated photo, was a young Russian artillery officer in the Crimean War. He drew on those experiences in his writing, including War and Peace. AP
And Florence Nightingale became one of the most famous women in the world as she ushered in a new era of military medicine by using more sanitary methods to treat wounded troops.
Decades later, in 1890, she made a recording about her time in Crimea and the place where she set up her field hospital, Balaklava.
"When I am no longer a memory — just a name — I hope my voice may perpetuate the great work of my life," she said. "God bless my dear old comrades of Balaklava and bring them safe to shore."
The war did, however, further damage the reputation of Nicholas I. He died in 1855, while the fighting still raged. His 30-year rule left Russia isolated, impoverished and badly in need of reforms.
Russia lost the Crimean War a year later and was forced to accept humiliating terms.
Russia pledged not to place warships in the Black Sea — where it desperately wanted to project naval power.
Today, Russia is projecting naval power in the Black Sea. In an escalating crisis, some 20 Russian warships are blockading the southern coast of Ukraine, keeping the country from exporting its abundant grain to the world.
A Ukrainian man stands in protest in front of gunmen in unmarked uniforms in Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014. The forces were part of Russia's military, which remains in Crimea to this day. Andrew Lubimov/AP
"I think this is again a historical continuity," says Georgetown's Stent. "Russia trying to dominate the Black Sea. The goals haven't changed that much."
Russia has long portrayed itself as a leading military power. Putin recently compared himself to Peter the Great, the czar who expanded Russian territory through conquests in the early 1700s.
So its current invasion of Ukraine comes as no surprise to Volodymyr Viatrovych, a prominent Ukrainian historian.
"This is, of course, an imperial war," says Viatrovych, who's also in Ukraine's parliament and is a member of the armed forces who helped defend Kyiv in the early days of this war.
"Russia today acts as an empire. It is intending to expand. They're trying to take land that they perceived to have belonged to them in the past," he says.
While Russia has had many military triumphs, he says its overall record is decidedly mixed.
"If we look throughout the course of history, not only the 20th century, but also the 19th century, Russia lost more than it won," Viatrovych says.
Russia was part of the winning side in World War II. But it was defeated by Japan in a 1904-'05 war, had an abysmal showing in World War I that helped pave the way for the 1917 Russian Revolution, and the Soviet Union lost a war to rebels in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
"Russia, has really built this myth of being a global superpower," says Viatrovych. "But what we've seen since the invasion of Ukraine is that they are not a superpower."
Russia's current leader loves talking about his country's historical conquests. He's much less forthcoming on its defeats.
Greg Myre is an NPR national security correspondent. Follow him @gregmyre1.
NPR · by Greg Myre · July 13, 2022
4. Video purportedly shows U.S. naval attaché flicking off a Russian military “Z”
Kind of like a 21st century "Nuts!" He must have been inspired by this music video "Kyiv Calling - We Live for Resistance" since they call for giving the Russians a big "eff you." See the music video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWQUkRKqp2E (it is worth watching. I have added this to my various playlists so I can listen to it periodically for motivation.)
BZ. Go Navy.
Video purportedly shows U.S. naval attaché flicking off a Russian military “Z”
Relations are a tad … strained … between the United States and Russia this year, what with Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent hemorrhaging of blood and treasure — not to mention a potential humanitarian crisis and increasing unrest if Kyiv’s grain can’t escape Russia’s Black Sea blockade.
Enter into this tense milieu a purported U.S. naval attaché, who took a selfie flicking off a Russian army “Z” in Moscow, prompting outrage and calls for revenge from Russian lawmakers.
Video of the bird and televised Russian outrage was posted to Twitter on June 23 by Julia Davis, creator of the Russian Media Monitor website and a columnist for The Daily Beast.
Military Times was unable to confirm whether the helmeted bicyclist in the video is in fact a U.S. naval attaché, but those khaki cargo shorts and nerd-adjacent bike helmet scream America.
Navy officials referred questions about the attaché to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, which pushed questions to the Defense Intelligence Agency, which declined to answer any questions about the video.
“The Defense Intelligence Agency is looking into the matter and will refer credible allegations for appropriate action,” DIA spokeswoman Amanda Schuler-Zepp wrote in an email Thursday.
Either way, Davis’ posting and translation of an excerpt from a Russian TV show indicates that the American bird flipped at the Z — which has been painted on Russian military vehicles since the invasion of Ukraine began — aroused local ire.
“Let this bitch step out once again,” a lawmaker in the Russian Duma, Aleksey Zhuravlyov, says in the video, according to the subtitled translation. “We’re going to find him. He should be in prison for insulting our army. Can he take a dump in the Red Square because of his immunity? No!”
The show’s host, Olga Skabeeva, also known as the propagandizing “iron doll of Putin TV,” interjects at one point, noting that Zhuravlyov’s fiery words are “not a threat, we are polite people.”
A screenshot from Russian TV of a purported U.S. naval attaché who flicked off a Russian military Z and took a selfie doing it, sparking anger among some local lawmakers. (Screenshot/Twitter)
But Zhuravlyov was having none of that.
“This is a direct threat from me,” he warned. “And you, bastard, will know what country you’re in.”
Zhuravlyov said he would “spit” on the purported attaché's diplomatic immunity and understands that would be illegal.
“I’ll personally explain to you, bastard, what country you’re in and how you’re supposed to treat these symbols,” he continued. “If I don’t manage to do this, then our activists will do that.”
Zhuravlyov also threatened to stick the attaché's finger “where it belongs.”
“You’ll be taking selfies with a finger up your ass,” he warned.
The other show’s panelists start chuckling at this point.
“In the interest of diplomacy, we recommend for him to go home, since many people are concerned and cannot be held back,” Skabeeva said.
“I think the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is ahead of us,” an unidentified panelist added. “He’ll go home before our recommendations reach him.”
So far there is no word on the location of the middle-finger-giving supposed U.S. naval attaché. If you’re out there, contact this reporter to tell your side of the story.
Observation Post is the Military Times one-stop shop for all things off-duty. Stories may reflect author observations.
Geoff is a senior staff reporter for Military Times, focusing on the Navy. He covered Iraq and Afghanistan extensively and was most recently a reporter at the Chicago Tribune. He welcomes any and all kinds of tips at geoffz@militarytimes.com.
5. John Bolton said he planned foreign coups. The global outcry was swift.
Beware of off the cuff remarks. They can have blowback.
Excerpts:
“As somebody who has helped plan coups d’etat — not here but, you know, other places — it takes a lot of work, and that’s not what [President Donald Trump] did,” Bolton, who served as the top national security official in the Trump administration for 17 months before a bitter exit in 2019, told Tapper.
It was a passing reference, apparently meant as a stinging criticism of the former president rather than a bombshell admission of responsibility.
But clips of the remarks went viral online, drawing millions of views from all corners. Within hours, they had sparked official condemnation and unofficial speculation from foreign observers, especially in parts of the world where decades of U.S. intervention remain fresh memories.
John Bolton said he planned foreign coups. The global outcry was swift.
July 13, 2022 at 3:14 p.m. EDT
When a former White House national security adviser and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations says he was involved in planning coups abroad, the world takes notice.
John Bolton, speaking to Jake Tapper live on CNN’s “The Lead” on Tuesday afternoon, said that the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was not a “carefully planned coup d’etat” — and that he would know.
“As somebody who has helped plan coups d’etat — not here but, you know, other places — it takes a lot of work, and that’s not what [President Donald Trump] did,” Bolton, who served as the top national security official in the Trump administration for 17 months before a bitter exit in 2019, told Tapper.
It was a passing reference, apparently meant as a stinging criticism of the former president rather than a bombshell admission of responsibility.
But clips of the remarks went viral online, drawing millions of views from all corners. Within hours, they had sparked official condemnation and unofficial speculation from foreign observers, especially in parts of the world where decades of U.S. intervention remain fresh memories.
Evo Morales, the former president of Bolivia who was ousted from office in 2019 by the military amid murky election claims, tweeted Wednesday that the remarks showed that the United States was “the worst enemy of democracy and life.”
Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry, called on Thursday for an international investigation into Bolton’s remarks.
“It is important to know in which other countries the United States planned coups d’etat,” Zakharova told Radio Sputnik.
Was Bolton serious? Though some in the United States had their doubts, far-flung rivals suggested this was just further confirmation of what they already knew.
“This is no surprise,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a daily news conference on Thursday. “The admission simply shows that interfering in other countries’ internal affairs and overthrowing their governments have become the standard practice of the U.S. government.”
“This is very much part of the U.S. rule book,” Wang said.
Bolton did not specify what coups he had been involved in planning, if any, during the interview. When Tapper pressed him, he pointed to the unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in 2019 but added that the United States did not have “all that much to do with it.”
That was a strange example. For one thing, Bolton had said the attempt to oust Maduro was “clearly not a coup” in 2019.
Maduro’s government has accused the United States of helping promote political instability in Venezuela.
Maduro did not offer a response after Bolton’s comments Tuesday. But Samuel Moncada, Venezuela’s permanent representative to the United Nations, jumped on Twitter to respond that Bolton was correct: Coups did take a lot of work. “For this reason, he also failed with his local agents in Venezuela,” Moncada wrote.
Some international affairs experts said Bolton’s comments could be a setback for well-intentioned U.S. policies.
“It’s damaging to our efforts to advance and support democracy,” Stanford University-Hoover Institution scholar Larry Diamond said. “We have enough trouble already countering Russian and Chinese propaganda.”
Bolton could not be reached for immediate comment.
For America’s foreign critics and foes, Bolton often plays the role of a boogeyman, representing the worst of U.S. foreign policy and neoconservative interventionism.
As an official, his hard-line views have made him few friends internationally. But he appeared to relish his reputation, writing in one book that being labeled “human scum” by North Korean state media in 2003 was “the highest accolade” he had received.
Bolton had two stints in high positions. Under President George W. Bush, he served in senior arms control roles before becoming ambassador to the United Nations in 2005. He was a major backer of the 2003 invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein.
After Bush, Bolton spent years in the foreign policy wilderness — though he hardly went hungry, accepting positions at right-wing think tanks in Washington, working with a global private equity firm and serving as a Fox News contributor.
He returned to government office in April 2018 as the Trump White House’s national security adviser — its third in less than 18 months.
He didn’t last long, leaving the administration in September 2019. Foreign policy appeared to be one major source of dispute, with Trump later tweeting that despite Bolton’s reputation as a hawk, Trump actually had “stronger” views on Cuba and Venezuela.
In Turkey, local media supportive of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan linked Bolton’s latest remarks to the failed attempt to overthrow the Turkish government in July 2016. Bolton, who was not then in government, was a critic of Erdogan at the time.
Takvim, a pro-government tabloid, printed an article Wednesday pointing to statements Bolton made in 2016 in support of the “treacherous” coup attempt. The newspaper noted that Bolton had spoken in support of Kurdish groups in Turkey and neighboring countries.
Takvim pointed to a 2016 appearance on Fox News, during which Bolton argued that Erdogan had been seeking to “re-create the Ottoman caliphate” with an Islamist government. Bolton criticized Erdogan for not supporting the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
“If he goes down, I don’t shed any tears,” Bolton said. “I don’t think he’s been a friend of the United States.”
Bolton has been supportive of coups in the past.
In a 2008 interview with Al Jazeera, he said coups can sometimes be “a necessary way to advance American interest” and defended the 1953 overthrow of the democratically elected leader of Iran, Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, orchestrated by the Central Intelligence Agency.
“I think the U.S. should have that capability,” Bolton said, referring to Iran and North Korea as two areas that the United States should focus on toppling hostile regimes.
But despite the speculation, a number of former U.S. intelligence operatives on Tuesday responded with derision to Bolton’s remarks.
“Bolton never touched a coup,” Milton Bearden, a former CIA station chief who oversaw U.S. covert operations in Afghanistan in the 1980s, wrote on Twitter. “And anyone who thinks fomenting coups is a good idea just doesn’t get out enough.”
Julian Mark contributed to this report.
correction
An earlier version of this article said incorrectly that Bolton’s CNN interview aired Wednesday. It aired Tuesday. The article has been corrected.
6. FDD | Washington Should Keep the IRGC’s Khatam al-Anbiya on Its Sanctions List
Conclusion:
The United States should not lift sanctions on Khatam as part of any new agreement with Tehran. Since the Biden administration recently reaffirmed the president’s view that the IRGC is a terrorist organization and should remain on the U.S. FTO list, sanctions relief guaranteed to pump billions of dollars into the IRGC’s coffers would be a hard sell to Congress and U.S. allies in the Middle East.
FDD | Washington Should Keep the IRGC’s Khatam al-Anbiya on Its Sanctions List
July 13, 2022 | Policy Brief
Washington Should Keep the IRGC’s Khatam al-Anbiya on Its Sanctions List
As part of negotiations to revive a version of the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran is reportedly demanding the suspension of U.S. sanctions imposed on Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC’s) hub for infrastructure and construction projects. If the reports are accurate, Iran is effectively asking President Joe Biden to unshackle the IRGC’s key economic arm from sanctions, thereby undermining the administration’s decision to keep the Guard on the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list.
The Revolutionary Guard operates in Iran’s economy through three key entities sanctioned by the United States: Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters, the IRGC Cooperative Foundation, and the Basij Cooperative Foundation. The two cooperative foundations are financial holdings investing in various firms across Iran’s economy, including publicly traded firms. Khatam is the largest construction firm in Iran, dominating infrastructure projects throughout the country.
According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Khatam is “the engineering arm of the IRGC that serves to help the IRGC generate income and fund its operations. Khatam al-Anbiya is controlled by the IRGC and is involved in the construction of streets, highways, tunnels, water conveyance projects, agricultural restoration projects, and pipelines.” As part of the IRGC, Khatam has a specific disbursement line in the country’s annual budget and helps finance Iran’s nuclear program, ballistic missile development, and terrorist activities.
Furthermore, using its influence, Khatam receives the lion’s share of the country’s infrastructure projects. Khatam is not just a key generator of revenue for the IRGC; it also provides the IRGC with opportunities to reward loyalists by appointing them to lucrative positions and to expand its web of influence in Iranian society.
The Obama administration did not remove Khatam from the U.S. sanctions list as part of the nuclear deal in 2015. Even while Washington remained in the agreement, Khatam could not engage directly with Western multinational firms. But the IRGC now wants the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to ensure that sanctions relief for Khatam — meaning sanctions relief for the IRGC — is a condition of any revised nuclear deal going forward.
The United States should not lift sanctions on Khatam as part of any new agreement with Tehran. Since the Biden administration recently reaffirmed the president’s view that the IRGC is a terrorist organization and should remain on the U.S. FTO list, sanctions relief guaranteed to pump billions of dollars into the IRGC’s coffers would be a hard sell to Congress and U.S. allies in the Middle East.
Saeed Ghasseminejad is a senior advisor on Iran and financial economics at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where Richard Goldberg is a senior advisor. They both contribute to FDD’s Iran Program and Center on Economic and Financial Power (CEFP). For more analysis from the authors, the Iran Program, and CEFP, please subscribe HERE. Follow the authors on Twitter @SGhasseminejad and @rich_goldberg. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_Iran and @FDD_CEFP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, non-partisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Saeed Ghasseminejad Senior Iran and Financial Economics Advisor · July 13, 2022
7. Europe’s Tiny Steps Won’t Solve Its Energy Emergency
Excerpts:
In the coming weeks, several more European utilities will face insolvency, and European governments should prepare a policy response. Germany seems to be supporting bailouts while France has already decided to nationalize a utility. European countries need the utilities to keep supplying energy to their publics and will need to design a model that allows these companies to continue to operate in volatile price environments.
Ironically, the beginning recession and reduction in economic activity will likely lower energy prices and ease supply shortages in Europe. With the EU’s systemic energy security challenges still unresolved and barely addressed, any temporary easing of the crisis should not be an excuse to sit back and return to its previous policy approach.
Europe’s Tiny Steps Won’t Solve Its Energy Emergency
An expert's point of view on a current event.
The bad policies that created the crisis are still in place.
By Brenda Shaffer, a faculty member at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School.
Protesting high energy prices in London
Protesters attend a demonstration against rising energy prices on Parliament Square in London on Feb. 12. Chris J. Ratcliffe/Getty Images
The European Union and its 27 member states have invested more money, effort, and political capital in energy policy than any other region in the world. Until this year, Europe was admired globally as the gold standard for energy and climate policy. Germany’s Energiewende—or energy transition—was especially touted as a shining example of how to green the energy supply.
No one aspires to emulate the Europeans today. Germany and the EU have spiraled headfirst into the globe’s worst energy crisis since the Arab oil embargoes of the 1970s and 1980s. All across the continent, Europe’s energy policies have led to astronomical price increases, industry shutdowns, potential energy shortages, and geopolitical vulnerability. Germany, in particular, is in crisis mode and will likely see much worse, as its entire economic model—based on energy-hungry manufacturing, cheap Russian gas, and a self-mutilating shutdown of nuclear energy that Berlin still won’t reverse—is on the verge of collapsing without a plan B. In short, Europe is in a mess of its own creation.
Recently, the EU has taken several steps in hopes of improving its energy security and extricating itself from its current crisis. The steps include asking natural gas producers other than Russia to supply additional volumes, a recent decision by the European Parliament to classify natural gas and nuclear energy as eligible for investments dedicated to green energy, and new gas storage mandates for member states. These steps, however, will not be enough to avert a major energy crisis in Europe in the coming months. Europe needs to do better—and fast.
If the EU is going to significantly improve its energy security, it will need to move beyond policy tweaks. Instead, what’s called for is a much broader paradigm shift that abandons the failed policies of the past decade or more. Europe built is energy policy along several main policy lines: incentives and mandates for renewable energy; restrictions on domestic and other natural gas supplies to boost demand for renewables; reliance on market mechanisms, such as trading hubs for energy sales; and the complete separation of energy from national security considerations.
Brussels has taken steps to break with its policy of crowding out natural gas to ensure more room for renewables. EU representatives have reached out to natural gas producers—including the United States, Israel, Egypt, Azerbaijan, and Qatar—asking them to send additional volumes to Europe. These efforts have resulted in increased imports, including shipments of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and a modest increase of pipeline gas from Azerbaijan. Imports from Norway are set to increase as well, and the Netherlands is considering reopening a major gas field shut down due to environmental concerns.
These steps will not be enough to avert a major energy crisis in Europe in the coming months; Europe needs to do better—and fast.
The problem, however, is that Europe is still refusing to give suppliers a clear horizon for these deliveries, which will artificially restrict supplies. Europe’s continued fixation on an unrealistic schedule for eliminating all fossil fuels—including relatively clean natural gas—from its energy supply means that Brussels is actively discouraging gas buyers from concluding long-term contracts with producers. However, LNG and pipeline gas is usually sold on lengthy contracts, since gas production and export infrastructure require substantial investments that are normally recouped over many years. Producers cannot take the risk of a major project without a guaranteed market. That is why Chinese companies have been snapping up long-term LNG supplies from the United States while Europe has tied its hands. Instead, European countries are restarting their mothballed coal- and fuel oil-fired power plants and seeing sharply higher uses of the dirtiest fuels—and rising emissions to go with it. It seems Europe is more comfortable with increased coal consumption over cleaner natural gas, since access to coal supplies does not entail long-term commitments. Although every bit of energy helps, Europe’s self-imposed restrictions on gas contracts condemn the continent to a continued crisis.
This policy makes a mockery of Europe’s vaunted green goals. The energy crisis in Europe—which, contrary to the popular narrative, began long before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—has shown that when European countries don’t have enough gas, they turn to coal and fuel oil. By restricting new gas contracts, Europe ended up with higher coal and oil consumption and thus higher air pollution and carbon emissions.
Securing additional gas volumes to replace Russian supplies is not enough. Brussels needs to ensure not only sufficient supply but reasonable prices. Russian gas has been a cheap source of energy that Europe says it now wants to phase out—by two-thirds by year’s end and entirely out within a decade. Moscow’s weaponization of the gas supply—it has shut down deliveries to several countries already—has encouraged Europe to stick to this goal. However, Brussels needs to ensure that any new imports are priced so they don’t paralyze Europe’s economy. Countries such as Germany and Italy rely on manufacturing, where energy is one of the biggest costs. Their industrial goods cannot be competitive if energy is expensive.
Brussels, therefore, needs a plan for more pipeline-supplied natural gas, which is generally cheaper than LNG and has less volatile pricing. Even if the Ukraine crisis in resolved and European countries like Germany return to high volumes of Russian imports, they will need to reprioritize energy security by diversifying sources and types of fuels, creating redundancies in infrastructure and ensuring ample energy storage.
Brussels’s recent decision to allow natural gas and nuclear energy to receive investments from green funds is an important step toward better energy security. However, several commercial hurdles still stand in the way. In new EU legislation, natural gas was granted a window of operation only until 2035—not enough, in most cases, to realize a sufficient return on investments in major new production or export infrastructure. In addition, global nuclear capacity around the world is shrinking, mainly because the current generation of reactors, which is safer than past ones, is also very costly. This new legislation will not change the bottom line; and thus, new nuclear capacity will remain challenged in Europe, even if extending the life of existing nuclear reactors has now become more likely. Potentially, the new EU policy approach could lead to the introduction of small module reactors, which require less upfront investments and may resolve many of the remaining safety concerns, but the timeline for their introduction to Europe is still unclear. These new reactors would require a risky bet on infrastructure that has not yet been built or even received commercial support.
The crisis makes it all the more urgent that Europe finally treats energy as a part of national security, not just a subcategory of climate policy. Europe’s energy security problems long predate Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Europe set itself up to be vulnerable and already experienced energy crises over the past two winters. Still, most EU countries did not change course—for example, by diversifying gas suppliers or expanding storage.
To be sure, the EU’s new mandates to increase gas storage will help reduce its vulnerability. However, Europe will also need to examine the geopolitical implications of many of the energy market rules it designed. Exhibit A is the mechanism for setting gas prices at trading hubs instead of promoting bilateral, long-term contracts between suppliers and consumers. Hub trading has actually increased the Kremlin’s power over European gas prices: As the swing producer, Russia can rev up or reduce supplies to create its ideal price—which, right now, is one that produces maximum pain for Europe as punishment for supporting Ukraine. In addition, Brussels should review its unbundling policy in the energy sector, which requires the supply, storage, and distribution of gas to be owned by different entities.
In the coming weeks, several more European utilities will face insolvency, and European governments should prepare a policy response. Germany seems to be supporting bailouts while France has already decided to nationalize a utility. European countries need the utilities to keep supplying energy to their publics and will need to design a model that allows these companies to continue to operate in volatile price environments.
Ironically, the beginning recession and reduction in economic activity will likely lower energy prices and ease supply shortages in Europe. With the EU’s systemic energy security challenges still unresolved and barely addressed, any temporary easing of the crisis should not be an excuse to sit back and return to its previous policy approach.
Brenda Shaffer is a faculty member at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, a senior advisor for energy at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center.
8. Analysis | So what coups might John Bolton have been involved in, exactly?
Excerpts:
Of those 350-plus coup attempts, 191 occurred when Bolton held a position with the U.S. government. (We will assume that Bolton was not involved in attempted coups while outside government service, although, of course, who knows.) That figure, however, includes coup attempts that occurred when Bolton was in positions that one might assume were less coup-adjacent, like serving as an assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) or as an assistant attorney general in the Justice Department. There were 131 coup attempts internationally that occurred when Bolton served in the State Department, as U.N. ambassador or as Trump’s national security adviser — the tenure during which the Venezuela coup attempt unfolded.
The overlap between coup attempts and Bolton’s service is shown below.
Analysis | So what coups might John Bolton have been involved in, exactly?
Tuesday’s hearing of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol led to a remarkable admission: A member of President Donald Trump’s senior team confessed to having plotted a coup.
But not the attempted coup that occurred on Jan. 6, and not a member of Trump’s team at that point.
The admission came from former national security adviser John Bolton, and it came with the caveat that the coups he had planned were targeted at foreign countries.
Bolton made the surprising claim during an interview Tuesday with CNN’s Jake Tapper. Bolton was fired by Trump in late 2019, just before the country learned of the president’s efforts to pressure Ukraine into announcing a probe of Joe Biden. Since leaving Trump’s team, Bolton has been a fervent critic of his former boss and vice versa.
In the interview, Bolton objected to the idea that the events of Jan. 6 were part of “a carefully planned coup d’etat aimed at the Constitution.” His reasoning was personal: Trump was simply too much of a mess to construct anything that organized.
Tapper disagreed, saying that “one doesn’t have to be brilliant to attempt a coup.”
Then, Bolton’s admission.
“I disagree with that. As somebody who has helped plan coups d’etat, not here, but other places, it takes a lot of work,” Bolton said. “And that’s not what he did.”
We can set aside the idea that Trump “didn’t do a lot of work” as he tried to retain power after losing the 2020 election. This is subjective, certainly, although one could make a robust case that Trump invested a tremendous amount of time and energy into doing precisely that. Let’s instead just consider what Bolton is blithely copping to here: helping to try to overthrow foreign leaders. He made the admission, it seems, largely so that he could contrast his own brilliance with Trump’s dopiness, but he made the admission, nonetheless.
Tapper, of course, had a follow-up question. It ran along the lines of: Uh, where?
“I wrote about Venezuela in the book, and it turned out not to be successful,” Bolton said. “Not that we had all that much to do with it, but I saw what it took for an opposition to try to overturn an illegally elected president.”
“I feel like there’s other stuff you’re not telling me,” Tapper replied.
“I’m sure there is,” Bolton said.
So let’s assume that there is “other stuff,” no matter how useful it is to Bolton’s public presentation that he be seen as a powerful behind-the-scenes actor. When and where might Bolton have had his fingers in foreign coup events?
The Cline Center at the University of Illinois tracks coup attempts (including the one in the United States on Jan. 6). Since Bolton joined government during the Reagan administration in 1982, there have been more than 350 coup attempts around the world, nearly 150 of them successful. That includes events (such as Jan. 6) that one might not think of as a coup attempt — like the U.S.-led toppling of the government in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Of those 350-plus coup attempts, 191 occurred when Bolton held a position with the U.S. government. (We will assume that Bolton was not involved in attempted coups while outside government service, although, of course, who knows.) That figure, however, includes coup attempts that occurred when Bolton was in positions that one might assume were less coup-adjacent, like serving as an assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) or as an assistant attorney general in the Justice Department. There were 131 coup attempts internationally that occurred when Bolton served in the State Department, as U.N. ambassador or as Trump’s national security adviser — the tenure during which the Venezuela coup attempt unfolded.
The overlap between coup attempts and Bolton’s service is shown below.
You’ll notice I highlighted several, including both the Afghanistan invasion and the attempts in Venezuela. I did not pick out any coup attempts that occurred while Bolton was with Justice or USAID, assuming that his involvement in any government-led nefariousness would have been limited.
Then Bolton joined State. In October 1989, there was an attempt to oust Panamanian dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega. He was removed from power following an American invasion that December. In 1992, a coup in Afghanistan similarly led to the ouster of the country’s leader, a longtime ally of the Soviet Union. There were also coup attempts in a number of other countries while Bolton served under President George H.W. Bush, including the Philippines, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh and Romania, where General Secretary Nicolae Ceausescu was ousted.
Bolton returned to government under George W. Bush. Besides the invasion of Afghanistan, perhaps the most significant coup tracked by the Cline Center’s Coup D'état Project was the March 2004 removal of Jean-Bertrand Aristide as president of Haiti. Aristide blamed American actors for the coup. But other countries saw similar attempts, including the November 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia that ousted the country’s Soviet-allied leader, Eduard Shevardnadze.
In 2018, Bolton became Trump’s third national security adviser. It was during this period that rebels tried more than once to remove Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro from power, unsuccessfully. Bolton’s attempt to distance himself from the planning of those efforts — “I saw what it took” to effect an overthrow — does little to diminish American involvement.
This, again, was the only coup attempt to which Bolton admitted involvement, despite his telling Tapper that he had helped plan similar insurrections. (In an interview with Newsmax, Bolton dismissed questions about his comments as being a function of “snowflakes out there who don’t understand what you need to do to protect the United States.”) Perhaps he was puffing himself up at Trump’s expense, casting himself as a brilliant strategist who had deigned to work for the fumbling Trump. Or perhaps one of those other 131 coup attempts that occurred while Bolton was in government bear, however faintly, his fingerprints.
9. What China’s ‘Cold War’ rulers want from U.S.
Why are there so many antibodies to the use of the COLD War to describe the strategic environment? In what other way should it be described?
Excerpts:
The men who hold all the power in China are anti-American neo-Maoists. Their policies, in addition to those outlined by Mr. Wray, include “military-civil fusion,” the acquisition, including by theft, of technology from America and other Western countries that can be used against American troops in any future conflict.
Does that sound “like-minded” to you?
Final note: Zhao Lijian, spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry of the People’s Republic of China, said Mr. Wray’s remarks revealed a “Cold War mentality.”
Perhaps that’s the appropriate mentality for Americans — government officials and business leaders, Republicans and Democrats — to have so long as China’s rulers are so clearly waging a Cold War against us.
What China’s ‘Cold War’ rulers want from U.S.
The FBI Director understands; many business leaders do not
OPINION:
Bipartisanship is rare in Washington these days. Christopher Wray is an exception — sort of. Former President Donald Trump nominated him as FBI director but soon soured on him and would have fired him had Attorney General William Barr not threatened to resign should that occur.
President Biden, upon becoming president, accepted a recommendation from the FBI Agents Association that Mr. Wray continue his 10-year term for “the stability, credibility, and integrity of the Bureau.”
Director Wray is now energetically addressing what may be the most significant threat to America’s national security. Others — on a bipartisan basis — are failing even to comprehend the threat. More on that in a moment.
Last week, Mr. Wray was in London to meet with Ken McCallum, director general of MI5, Britain’s domestic security service. The two men spoke to a gathering of business leaders at Thames House, MI5’s headquarters.
Mr. McCallum observed: “The widespread Western assumption that growing prosperity within China and increasing connectivity with the West would automatically lead to greater political freedom has been shown to be plain wrong.” The Chinese Communist Party, he added, “is interested in our democratic, media and legal systems. Not to emulate them, sadly, but to use them for its gain.”
The CCP and the Chinese government, Mr. Wray added, pose “the biggest long-term threat to our economic and national security, and by ‘our,’ I mean both of our nations, along with our allies in Europe and elsewhere.”
He stressed that the problem is not “the Chinese people, and certainly not Chinese immigrants in our countries — who are themselves frequently victims of the Chinese government’s lawless aggression.”
China’s rulers, however, are “set on stealing your technology — whatever it is that makes your industry tick — and using it to undercut your business and dominate your market.”
China’s Ministry of State Security, active in industrial and cyber espionage, targets companies “everywhere from big cities to small towns — from Fortune 100s to start-ups.”
The FBI has “caught people affiliated with Chinese companies in the U.S. heartland sneaking into fields to dig up proprietary, genetically modified seeds which would have cost them nearly a decade and billions in research to develop themselves.”
Mr. Wray added, “And those efforts pale in comparison to their lavishly resourced hacking program that’s bigger than that of every other major country combined.”
He noted that even Chinese companies that appear to be independent are, effectively, owned by the CCP, while others “are required to host a Communist Party cell to keep them in line.” Both the MSS and the People’s Liberation Army are “like silent partners.”
China’s rulers “identify key technologies needed to dominate markets, like the ones they highlight in their ‘Made in China 2025’ plan,” he said. “Then, they throw every tool in their arsenal at stealing those technologies — causing deep, job-destroying damage across a wide range of industries, like when they tried to steal cutting edge jet engine technology, recruiting an insider at GE’s joint venture partner to enable access by hackers back in China.”
China’s rulers, Mr. Wray said, have even interfered in a congressional election in New York, including suggesting that a disfavored candidate “be struck by a vehicle and making it look like an accident.”
Repression, not just at home but also in free countries such as the U.S. and Britain, “is part of how the Chinese government tries to shape the world in its favor,” he added.
And, last November, “the Chinese Embassy warned U.S. companies that, if they want to keep doing business in China, they need to fight bills in our Congress that China doesn’t like.” In other words, they are instructing American businessmen to act as their lobbyists and agents.
This brings me to Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, a titan of the American business community who last week published in The Wall Street Journal an op-ed titled: “We Want to Rebuild U.S. Relations with China.”
He announced that he is now heading “a small group of senior U.S. business and policy leaders who have experience in China and share the view that we would be better served by having a more constructive relationship with China,” one “based on mutual respect and understanding.”
Among the distinguished members of this bipartisan coalition are Max Baucus, former U.S. ambassador to China, William Cohen, former secretary of defense, and Carla Hills, former U.S. Trade Representative.
They are “confident that like-minded people in China would embrace the opportunity to work together to find solutions.”
Let me be clear: I don’t think that Mr. Greenberg and his colleagues are taking orders from Beijing.
I do find it puzzling that they appear so little troubled by the brutal persecution of China’s ethnic and religious minorities, the stripping of the rights of the people of Hong Kong in violation of specific treaty obligations, the continuing threats against Taiwan, and the use of debt-trap diplomacy to achieve imperialist goals in vulnerable third world countries.
The men who hold all the power in China are anti-American neo-Maoists. Their policies, in addition to those outlined by Mr. Wray, include “military-civil fusion,” the acquisition, including by theft, of technology from America and other Western countries that can be used against American troops in any future conflict.
Does that sound “like-minded” to you?
Final note: Zhao Lijian, spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry of the People’s Republic of China, said Mr. Wray’s remarks revealed a “Cold War mentality.”
Perhaps that’s the appropriate mentality for Americans — government officials and business leaders, Republicans and Democrats — to have so long as China’s rulers are so clearly waging a Cold War against us.
• Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a columnist for The Washington Times.
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10. Johnstone: Three Illuminating Quotes About The War In Ukraine
And now for some opposing views. If you are debating arguments in support of Ukraine against Putin's War, it is could to know some of the counterarguments
Johnstone: Three Illuminating Quotes About The War In Ukraine | ZeroHedge
Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, and Chris Hedges have lent their expertise to the subject of the war in Ukraine with some recent comments that help bring some much-needed clarity to an often confusing and always contentious issue.
Here they are:
“I’ve spent my career working in the mainstream, and I’ve covered probably seven, eight, nine shooting wars; I’ve never seen coverage so utterly consumed by a tsunami of jingoism, and of manipulative jingoism as this one.”
~ John Pilger
This comment comes from a recent interview with the legendary Australian journalist by the South China Morning Post, and it says so much about the information ecosystem we now find ourselves floundering around trying to understand things in.
From the earliest days of the invasion it was clear that the western world was being smashed with a deluge of propaganda unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. In the first full month of the conflict, American network TV stations gave more coverage to the war in Ukraine than any other war that the US has been directly involved in, including Iraq and Vietnam. Literal Iraq war architects were some of the first pundits sought out for analysis of the conflict by the mainstream press, and calls for insane escalations against Russia succeeded in pushing the Overton window of acceptable debate in the direction of warmongering extremism and away from support for diplomatic solutions.
And this was all easily piped into mainstream consciousness because the way had been lubricated by years of Russia hysterica resulting from the mass scale psychological operation known as Russiagate. America’s most dangerous confrontation in generations just so happens to have been preceded by years of media-generated panic about that very same country, despite the Ukraine invasion having ostensibly nothing whatsoever to do with the conspiracy theory that the Kremlin had infiltrated the highest levels of the US government. Heckin’ heck of a coincidence right there, buddy boy.
“It’s quite interesting that in American discourse, it is almost obligatory to refer to the invasion as the ‘unprovoked invasion of Ukraine’. Look it up on Google, you will find hundreds of thousands of hits. Of course, it was provoked. Otherwise they wouldn’t refer to it all the time as an unprovoked invasion.”
~ Noam Chomsky
This quote, from an interview last month with Ramzy Baroud, is self-evidently true and should be pointed out more often.
People don’t go adding the same gratuitous adjectives and modifiers to something over and over again unless they’re trying to manipulate how it’s perceived. If your neighbor always referred to his wife as “my wife who I definitely never beat,” you’d immediately become suspicious because that’s not how normal people talk about normal things. We don’t say “round Earth” or “the Holocaust that totally happened,” we just say the words, because their basic nature is not seriously in dispute and we’ve got nothing invested in manipulating or obfuscating people’s understanding about them.
The need of the political/media class to continually bleat this phrase “unprovoked invasion” over and over again is itself a confession that they know they’re not telling the whole truth. It’s the imperial propaganda version of this classic tweet:
My "Not involved in human trafficking" T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt.
— Mike Ginn (@shutupmikeginn) November 21, 2013
Chomsky outlines many of the provocations the US/NATO power structure engaged in prior to the conflict, which many western analysts spent years warning was coming as a result of the provocative actions that were already being taken by the empire. The invasion could easily have been prevented with a little diplomacy and some low-cost, high-reward concessions ike honoring the Minsk agreements and providing assurances of neutrality for Ukraine, but they chose provocation and escalation instead. Add to that the exponentially increased shelling of the Donbas by Kyiv immediately prior to the invasion and you can understand why empire spinmeisters are working so hard to push the “unprovoked” line.
None of this is to say that Russia is blameless in this war; if I provoke someone into punching somebody they are still morally responsible for having thrown the punch, but I am also responsible for having provoked it. Russia is responsible for its actions, and the US/NATO/Ukraine power structure is responsible for its actions. Putin is responsible for invading, the western empire is responsible for provoking that invasion. Not complicated.
In the same interview Chomsky also says that “censorship in the United States has reached such a level beyond anything in my lifetime” regarding this war. That assessment plus Pilger’s testimony about war propaganda unlike anything he’s ever seen shows that imperial narrative management is at an all-time high, which wouldn’t be happening unless the empire had some major agendas it wanted to roll out in the coming years.
“At no time, including the Cuban missile crisis, have we stood closer to the precipice of nuclear war.”
~ Chris Hedges
— Chris Hedges (@ChrisLynnHedges) July 10, 2022
Echoing the urgent warnings that Stephen Cohen was making at the end of his life, a new article by Hedges outlines the profoundly dangerous games the empire is playing with a nuclear superpower in its continually escalating proxy war against Moscow.
It doesn’t have to be this way. There’s no good reason the world’s most powerful government needs to risk the life of everyone on earth in a bid to secure planetary domination. It is possible for all nations and peoples to simply get along and collaborate toward the common good together. All that would need to happen is for these agendas of total hegemony to be abandoned.
Unfortunately the managers of empire don’t seem to have any plans to abandon their goal of global conquest anytime soon, so we the ordinary people of this world may end up having to force the issue with them at some point in the interests of our very survival.
This is a hell of a time to be alive, but man they’ve been keeping it interesting.
* * *
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11. House Approves Marijuana And Psychedelics Amendments As Part Of Must-Pass Defense Bill
Better living through chemicals.
House Approves Marijuana And Psychedelics Amendments As Part Of Must-Pass Defense Bill
The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a bipartisan pair of psychedelics research amendments, as well as another measure requiring a military study into marijuana-related enforcement discrimination in the armed services.
The day after nine drug policy amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) were made in order for floor consideration by the House Rules Committee, the chamber voted favorably on an initial package of measures grouped together, including those that contains language requiring research into the therapeutic potential of substances like psilocybin, MDMA and ibogaine in addition to the cannabis proposal. Approval came on a voice vote.
House debate and votes on the remaining marijuana amendments cleared for floor action will be a multi-day process, but the three that have cleared the chamber so far as part of an en bloc group are especially unique.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw’s (R-TX) amendment would allow the secretary of defense to approve grants for research into the therapeutic potential of certain psychedelics such as MDMA, psilocybin, ibogaine and 5–MeO–DMT for active duty military members with PTSD.
Notably, an earlier, identical version of the was not made in order for the floor as part of last year’s NDAA, signaling that attitudes toward psychedelics have shifted in Congress over recent months.
The congressman said on the floor on Wednesday that “we need new ideas because it seems we are losing the battle with veteran suicide.”
“For our active duty service members, the situation is even worse, as they are precluded from even trying treatments such as psychedelics that could save their lives and bring hope to their families. I aim the change that,” he said. “All I’m asking is that we give our service members the ability to access this treatment instead of forcing them to travel abroad to psychedelic clinics to save their own life.”
—
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Ocasio-Cortez’s amendment would expand that proposal to include psilocybin and MDMA in the DOD-led study.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) also filed an identical amendment to the congresswoman’s, but it was not made in order in Rules. He said at the panel’s meeting on Tuesday that he didn’t care which version made it through to the floor, while still noting that he’d invited Ocasio-Cortez to cosponsor his amendment without hearing back from her.
The House on Wednesday also passed a measure from Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) that would require DOD to study the “historically discriminatory manner in which laws related to marijuana offenses have been enforced, the potential for the continued discriminatory application of the law (whether intentional or unintentional), and recommendations for actions that can be taken to minimize the risk of such discrimination.”
The vote on the first en bloc package kicks off what’s expected to be a lengthy floor process to finalize the House version of NDAA.
Other NDAA amendments that will be debated and receive votes address policies such as VA home loan benefits for veterans who use medical cannabis, allowing VA doctors to fill out recommendations for medical marijuana, protecting banks that works with state-legal cannabis businesses and more.
Also on Wednesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers separately filed an amendment to an appropriations minibus that would block VA from preventing military veterans from using medical cannabis while allowing its doctors to fill out recommendations for patients who want to participate in state programs.
The reform, which is identical to committee-approved versions from past years and also cosponsored by Cannabis Caucus co-chair Rep. Dave Joyce (R-OH), was previously pursued through the appropriations process as an amendment.
Marijuana Moment is made possible with support from readers. If you rely on our cannabis advocacy journalism to stay informed, please consider a monthly Patreon pledge.
Kyle Jaeger is Marijuana Moment's Sacramento-based senior editor. His work has also appeared in High Times, VICE and attn.
12. Ukraine Situation Report: More Russian Ammo Dumps Blown Up
Good work by Ukraine. Keep up the fire.
Ukraine Situation Report: More Russian Ammo Dumps Blown Up
Ukraine’s effort to deplete Russia’s stock of artillery shells and other explosives where it is stored shows no signs of slowing.
BY
JUL 12, 2022 11:34 PM
It appears that Ukraine is continuing to pummel Russian ammunition depots.
Video is emerging of new strikes, this time in Luhansk, as Ukraine remains intent on depleting Russia's stock of shells for its long-range fires which have been creating devastation on Ukrainian troops and civilians.
Before heading into the latest news from Ukraine, The War Zone readers can get caught up with our previous rolling coverage here.
The latest:
The vivid images of explosions at a Russian ammunition depot in Nova Kakhovka Monday generated a lot of speculation that the attack was the result of fire from U.S.-supplied M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS).
While the Pentagon declined to tell The War Zone whether those systems were involved, it says that Ukraine is using them to great effect. Regardless of whether Ukraine used any of the eight HIMARS now in-country (another four are promised) in last night's attack, retired Australian Army Maj. Gen. Mick Ryan says they are not a "silver bullet" that will change the course of the war by themselves.
Ryan, who worked in the Pakistan Afghanistan Coordination Cell on the U.S. Joint Staff, is now a widely-quoted commentator on Russia's war in Ukraine.
“HIMARS is having an important impact and will continue to do so, but it alone will not win this war,” he said in a Twitter thread Tuesday afternoon. “While it has provided the Ukrainian Armed Forces with a new ‘Long Hand’ to attack the Russian invaders, there is no such thing as a silver bullet solution in war."
“Importantly, its impact does not abrogate the responsibility of western nations to continue providing the full range of weapons, munitions, intelligence, training and other forms of support required by #Ukraine.”
The Ukrainian Defense Intelligence Directorate says it staged a daring raid to rescue captured Ukrainian troops in Kherson Oblast. With Ukraine's military losing hundreds of troops a day to death, injury and capture, this raid is a big morale boost.
As Russia’s all-out war on Ukraine grinds along in its fifth month, Belarus has kicked off military drills in the Homel region, just north of the border with Ukraine. It was there, you will remember, that Russian troops escaped to after their advance on Kyiv was repulsed.
As Belarus drills, Serhiy Kryvonos, a Ukrainian Army General, suggested that nation could be planning to invade from the north with assistance from Russia, according to the Ukraine NOW Telegram channel.
"They have the forces and means necessary to start an assault on the Ukrainian-Belarusian border without waiting for huge reinforcements. There are those who are able to attack us," Kryvonos said.
According to Kryvonos, Belarus is able to mobilize 340,000 soldiers in addition to 56,000 currently serving in the Belarusian Armed Forces.
Speaking of Belarus, its president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, suggested that it is NATO that is planning an attack on Russia, through Ukraine and Belarus.
Don't forget, Lukashenko is the guy Russian President Vladimir Putin promised to give nuclear-capable Iskander-M short-range ballistic missile systems to. You can read our coverage of that here.
The war is now primarily about sustainability and relative losses, which is how we should view Russia's successes in Luhansk.
The United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense (MOD) posted its latest map of Russia's war in Ukraine, continuing to show the battles concentrated in the east and south with little new progress made by either side.
The U.K. MOD also introduced some of the Ukrainian troops it helped train to the public.
A Defense Department watchdog warned on Tuesday that some of the DOD’s and individual services’ practices for tracking and recording the movement of money and aid to Ukraine are hurting the office’s ability to track aid overall, Defense One noted.
In response to a question from The War Zone Tuesday morning, Senate Armed Service Committee ranking member James Inhofe (R-Okla), said while he wished "President Biden was moving faster – way faster – to provide Ukraine with military aid, I am encouraged by the Pentagon’s initial oversight of the aid Congress has authorized."
"This report from the department’s independent watchdog is a sign that the Department of Defense is tracking financial flows properly, thanks to audit efforts started by the previous administration and maintained by this administration. Congress and the inspectors general must continue aggressive oversight of military aid to Ukraine to ensure we can keep providing the Ukrainian Armed Forces the weapons they need.”
Regardless, concerns are growing about a black market developing from the $10 billion in military aid from around the globe provided to Ukraine.
But military aid isn’t the only money Ukraine is receiving.
Ukraine is getting an additional $1.7 billion in assistance from the U.S. government and the World Bank to pay the salaries of its beleaguered health care workers and provide other essential services.
While the Russians have made some wild claims about long-range fire systems provided by foreign governments to Ukraine (like the false claim about destroyed HIMARS), sometimes they apparently do destroy things, as this video would appear to show.
And they've also taken out a number of Ukrainian drones as well.
Meanwhile, Ukraine continues to find creative ways to restore its stock of weaponry, including making the best out of downed or otherwise derelict airframes.
The Russians have said a lot of things over the course of their war on Ukraine, a great deal of which are untrue. Like claims that they aren't using Tochka (S-21 Scarab) mobile short-range ballistic missiles, which Ukraine uses as well, offering a shallow level of deniability for indiscriminate strikes. It can carry various types of warheads up to a weight of around 1,000 pounds over a range of up to 75 miles in its most recent Tochka-U version.
Well, it looks like the Russians are using the Zaporizhzhya plant to launch Grad rockets toward Mykolaiv.
And just as they did with Chernobyl, it appears Russia is turning the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant into an armed camp.
We will continue to update this post with new information until we state otherwise.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com
13. House tries to avoid messy political battles over Pentagon policy bill
I wonder if anyone ever asks the question of whether DOD could act on 650 amendments?
But this could be a shortsighted comment - the warfighter today or the warfighter tomorrow and far into the future?
“If it doesn’t help the warfighter,” Rep. Mike D. Rogers (R-Ala.) admonished his colleagues this week, “it doesn’t need to be in this bill.”
I think we should fund current operations, anticipate future operations, and invest in innovative and sustainable capabilities for the future.
House tries to avoid messy political battles over Pentagon policy bill
Other proposed changes to the House defense authorization act would delay new ICBMs and hasten warship retirements.
The House of Representatives is expected to give bipartisan approval this week to a record-setting $840 billion defense authorization bill that would guide the U.S. military’s reorientation within NATO and elsewhere, but first lawmakers must agree whether to include dozens of proposed amendments with implications for several domestic and foreign policy priorities.
The legislation, considered one of the few “must-pass” measures each year, is a regular forum for policy disputes that, in some cases, are peripheral to national security. This year’s bill attracted more than 1,200 proposed amendments from House members, shattering levels of interest seen in previous cycles and earning rare public rebukes from the House Armed Services Committee’s top Democrat and Republican.
“If it doesn’t help the warfighter,” Rep. Mike D. Rogers (R-Ala.) admonished his colleagues this week, “it doesn’t need to be in this bill.”
In recent years, apart from directing the Pentagon’s annual funding, the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, has ordered the renaming of select military bases to dissociate those facilities from their Confederate heritage and instituted paid family leave for all federal workers.
The proposals under consideration this year focus on matters as diverse as expediting military health initiatives to surging capacity to process visas for Afghans left behind during last year’s harried evacuation; as timely as tracking security assistance to Ukraine and cracking down on Russia’s ability to participate in international forums; and as mundane as requiring that all flags and flowers displayed in Defense Department facilities are American-made.
The list also is notable for the many measures that were floated but ultimately excluded, such as Republican-backed efforts to dismantle the military’s coronavirus vaccine requirements and de-prioritize initiatives targeting extremism in the ranks, and competing proposals from both sides of the aisle to regulate how the military navigates abortion after the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down Roe v. Wade.
In many cases, the House Rules Committee — which dictates procedures for floor debates — opted for less-controversial substitutes. Instead of amendments regarding abortion, for example, its members allowed for debate on launching a pilot program to address unwanted pregnancy and other reproductive health measures.
But the floor debate, which began Wednesday, is expected to feature some friction. The amendment list includes, for instance, measures to strip up to $100 billion from the overall cost of the defense bill.
Another proposal would allow Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to boost “inflation bonus pay” for service members earning $45,000 per year or less on top of a 2.4 percent pay hike to account for hardships facing military families as economists fear the United States is on the cusp of a recession. Both would come in addition to a 4.6 percent general pay raise already in the bill and such competing ventures could split the House — and not necessarily along party lines.
There is also the potential for political fallout around proposals that seek to condition U.S. security assistance for certain countries on meeting benchmarks, including human rights. The House is poised to consider limiting assistance to the Philippines for that reason, precluding the sale of F-16s to Turkey over its conduct toward Greece, and pausing arms sales to Saudi Arabia over the killing of journalist and Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi.
And passionate disagreement is possible over a subset of amendments related to recreational drugs and other controlled substances, as the House is poised to vote as part of the NDAA on whether to expand banking access for cannabis businesses, and allow ecstasy and certain psychedelics to be used as alternatives to prescription opioids in military medicine.
There is likely to be robust bipartisan support, however, for measures pertaining to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including amendments demanding reports and other measures to better account for U.S. weapons flowing into the country. Other proposals call for policy statements or expressions from Congress that Russia should never be allowed to rejoin organizations like the G-7 and should be compelled to release Russian political prisoners like Alexei Navalny and Vladimir Kara-Murza.
Two high-profile Americans being held in Russia, Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan, are not mentioned by name in the defense bill or any proposed amendments.
There is likely to be bipartisan support for measures seeking to urgently enhance the Pentagon’s ability to defend against enemy drones, and shore up cybersecurity and satellite systems, alongside investments in other technological advancements.
“The Pentagon,” said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.), “is not typically good at moving fast.”
The amendment list includes some familiar ideas that have earned House backing in previous years but failed to garner the Senate’s approval. Those include efforts to repeal long-standing authorizations for use of military force passed in 2002 and 1991 to authorize hostilities against Iraq. They also include a measure to grant the mayor of Washington the authority to call up National Guard personnel in times of emergency, power that all state governors possess.
It also includes measures to build upon recent changes. One amendment would commission a report on how the Defense Department has reflected the contributions of Black Americans in its naming practices for military facilities. Another would guarantee that service members complaining of harassment or discrimination will have their cases heard within 180 days or be free pursue their claims in civilian court. Others target post-traumatic stress and mental health conditions affecting service members and veterans.
The House’s expected endorsement of its defense bill will be a significant step in the process, but not the final word on how the Pentagon’s funds will be directed.
The Senate has yet to schedule a vote on its version of the bill, which, once passed, will have to be reconciled with the House’s version and approved by both chambers.
The final legislation also could be limited by congressional appropriators. The House’s proposed defense appropriation bill for fiscal 2023, which begins Oct. 1 and has yet to receive a floor vote, envisions a $762 billion budget for the Pentagon and military — about $78 billion less than what the defense bill currently under consideration would authorize.
The appropriations bill also wades into matters the authorization bill avoids, such as abortion. The defense spending bill would guarantee that service members could not be denied the right to take leave for the purposes of having an abortion or assisting a partner’s efforts to obtain an abortion. The authorization bill is silent on that subject.
14. Special Operators Await Speedier Helicopters
Special Operators Await Speedier Helicopters
7/13/2022
By
A Special Operations MH-47 Chinook
Air Force photo
TAMPA, Florida — The Army is working on developing two new speedy helicopters, and Special Operations Command expects them both to one day be in its inventory — with modifications, of course.
Special Operations Command flies three helicopter models, the A/MH-6 light attack/assault “Little Bird,” the MH-60 medium attack/assault aircraft — based on the Black Hawk — and the MH-47 heavy assault aircraft, based on the Chinook.
“They’re asked to deploy anywhere in the world with short notice. And they’re asked to do most of their missions at nighttime, at low altitude and at high speed,” said Geoffrey Downer, SOCOM’s program executive officer for rotary wing aircraft.
“Those missions sets require very unique capabilities on the aircraft,” he said at the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference, organized by the National Defense Industrial Association.
The command has taken these three aircraft — the Little Bird beginning its life as a commercial aircraft and the other two based on Army designs — and altered them with upgrades and features that allow them to do their special missions, he said.
Meanwhile, the Army — under its Future Vertical Lift program — is developing the Future Attack and Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) for assault and scouting missions and the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) to replace the Black Hawk.
“We’re very excited about the ability to get these new aircraft in our fleet,” Downer said in a briefing at the conference.
Speed is the primary reason he cited. The Little Bird tops out at 90 knots. The FARA will allow pilots to fly about twice that speed at 180 knots. The MH-60 flies at 120 knots, its replacement will be required to go 230 knots, he noted.
“This gives us a chance to have a revolutionary new approach to fly the aircraft,” he said.
The three hallmarks of the Future Vertical Lift program include increasing the speed and range of the aircraft and creating a modular, open-system architecture.
The latter suits Special Operations Command as it has a history of taking helicopters and adding features to help them perform their special missions.
The rotary wing office tries to use as many common items with the Army as possible because they don’t come out of SOCOM’s funding. If the Army doesn’t have a needed capability, the program executive office goes to other services or commercial-off-the-shelf items. “And if those do not exist to meet our requirements, then we develop those uniquely by ourselves,” Downer said.
One example is countermeasures. Special ops helicopters have unique flares to match their missions, he noted. Another is larger fuel tanks to extend the aircrafts’ range.
Unlike the legacy aircraft, SOCOM is deeply embedded in the Future Vertical Lift development, Downer said.
“We’ve always received aircraft from the vendors or from the government, and we had no impact on the design. We’re in a unique situation where we can actually influence the design,” he said.
There are two competitors for each program — Bell Helicopter and Sikorsky for FARA and Bell going against a Sikorsky-Boeing team for the Black Hawk replacement.
The rotary wing office is conducting studies with the four teams to look how to incorporate unique special ops requirements into the designs, he said.
“We want to start identifying those upfront, so when we do our mods, we already have that space identified,” he said.
SOCOM expects to receive prototypes around the same time as the Army so it can start on the modifications as soon as possible. The current projected date for fielding the two aircraft isn’t until 2035, he noted.
There might not be a complete replacement for several years beyond 2035, especially when it comes to the Little Bird. The new scout aircraft will have longer rotor-blades. The Little Bird’s are only 40 feet long, which is more suitable to flying in the urban canyons found in large cities, he said, meaning the command will want to keep some in the inventory.
“My big concern is we’re modernizing our fleet flying 200-plus knots and I’ve got an aircraft that flies 80 to 90 [knots] so it’s not going to be able to keep up,” Downer said.
The increased speed will allow commandos to arrive at a destination quicker. After landing, they often have to proceed to an objective on foot in the cover of darkness and make it back before light, so the time saved in the air could give them more time on the ground, Downer explained.
When the Little Bird first arrived in the SOCOM fleet, operators began experimenting and creating new missions with it.
Downer expects the same with the new aircraft.
“We don’t know yet how we’re going to use them differently,” he said.
15. Soldier of the Year 2022 is only Army officer with two post-9/11 Silver Stars
In principle I think a soldier of the year should be an enlisted man. However, this Major is an amazing soldier. He is certainly deserving of officer of the year if there was such a category.
Soldier of the Year 2022 is only Army officer with two post-9/11 Silver Stars
Maj. Nicholas Dockery’s resume stands out even among his fellow Special Forces officers.
The West Point graduate is enrolled in Yale University’s global affairs graduate program as part of the competitive Downing Scholars program.
He’s led an Operational Detachment-Alpha and commanded the headquarters company for 7th Special Forces Group before completing a tour as the aide-de-camp to the officer in charge of 1st Special Forces Command.
The former infantry officer received the General Douglas MacArthur Leadership Award in 2020, an honor reserved for the service’s top company grade officers.
Dockery also received the Military Outstanding Volunteer Service Medal for his work to help foster children.
The rest of his recognitions tell another story — that of an officer who performs under fire.
He’s received two Purple Heart medals, and two of his other awards bear “C” devices that denote they were received for performance under combat conditions.
And according to Defense Department records, Dockery is the sole Army officer and one of only two U.S. officers to receive two Silver Stars for gallantry in the post-9/11 era, the other being Navy SEAL Cmdr. Seth Stone, who died in a 2017 skydiving accident. Dockery received the West Point Association of Graduates’ Alexander Nininger Award for Valor at Arms in 2017, as well.
Now, the Military Times Foundation has named him the 2022 Soldier of the Year. Army Times interviewed Dockery in late June, ahead of the award ceremony in July.
‘For several years, I thought about it every single day’
Dockery’s first Silver Star came during his first deployment to Afghanistan as a fresh infantry platoon leader assigned to 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, part of the 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson, Colorado.
He was deployed immediately after arriving at Carson, joining an experienced platoon a few months into their deployment. His unit moved into Kapisa Province in late September 2012, Dockery said in a 2017 podcast interview.
Days later, on Oct. 2, 2012, his life changed.
Dockery’s platoon and a platoon of Afghan National Army troops were maintaining a security perimeter around the provincial governor’s compound during a high-level meeting when Taliban fighters attacked with machine guns, grenades and RPGs.
The Military Times Foundation's 2022 Soldier of the Year is Maj. Nick Dockery, the service's only two-time Silver Star recipient in the post-9/11 era. (Courtesy/Army Special Operations Command)
The lieutenant gathered half his troops and counterattacked, but as they continued to press their advantage, his weapons squad leader, now-retired Staff Sgt. Eric Mitchell, was wounded. That set off a close-quarters firefight in a compound where Dockery and a team of four killed several fighters. But a Taliban counterattack with a series of grenades and RPGs wounded all of the Americans.
As the dust settled, according to his Silver Star narrative, Dockery realized that one of his NCOs, Sgt. Jack Hansbro, was missing. The officer charged into a nearby alleyway and killed two Taliban fighters who were dragging away an unconscious Hansbro.
“[That day] was a very harrowing event,” Dockery told Army Times. “For several years, I thought about it every single day.”
He acknowledged that his desire to “instill...faith and confidence that I was a competent and deliberate leader” may have led him into “a little bit riskier situations than I needed to be [in],” but emphasized that the work of his soldiers in the compound was what carried them through the fight.
Both in the podcast and to Army Times, Dockery recounted how Mitchell (who nominated him for Soldier of the Year), Hansbro and the other two troops in the compound — Sgt. 1st Class Bill Nabinger and Sgt. 1st Class Roshan Baum — repeatedly saved each other’s lives.
“I was the fortunate recipient of some higher-level recognition, but those things are done with teams,” he explained.
Dockery recovered from his wounds and finished the deployment with his platoon.
Becoming a Green Beret, and a second Silver Star
After completing his platoon leader time and a tour as a company executive officer, Dockery deployed as a combat advisor, where his work along side Special Forces troops solidified his desire to become a Green Beret.
“That’s what drew me,” he said.
Then-Capt. Nick Dockery seen in an undated photo in Faryab province, Afghanistan while serving as a Special Forces officer. (Courtesy of Army Special Operations Command)
Following selection and his training pipeline, Dockery deployed again to Afghanistan with 7th Special Forces Group, with whom he would earn a second Silver Star.
The second valor award came from a fight in which about 250 Taliban fighters attacked a combined U.S.-Afghan force, and the then-captain’s decisions and rapid response were credited with blunting the attack. More than 110 enemy fighters were killed.
Since then, he’s continued to advance his career, collecting fellowships and accolades. After finishing his graduate degree in spring 2023, he’s likely to take command of a Special Forces company.
Dockery said he hopes to take some of the knowledge he’s gaining at Yale — including work on international diplomacy, cybersecurity and more — back to the special operations community.
Addressing mental health issues
Asked what he wants to see improved in the Army, Dockery expressed hope that a forthcoming overhaul of the service’s suicide prevention program can help to reduce the stigma sometimes associated with seeking behavioral health treatment.
He explained how the loss of some comrades who died by suicide affected him, describing it as “a phenomenon that’s [been] impacting [me] for years, and years and years.”
Dockery contends that although tragic, “it’s more palatable to understand” deaths in combat.
“It’s never who you would suspect [who dies by suicide],” he said. “When I think about what they must have gone through to get to that point, it’s so difficult.”
He’s optimistic that empowering commanders and getting them to understand the options and tools at their disposal will help. He pointed to the Army’s advances in understanding the science on brain injuries and “invisible wounds” as evidence of the potential “social impacts” of policy changes.
“I hope when they put [this] policy out, it kind of helps shape” and reduce some of the stigma and engrained worries about seeking behavioral health treatment, Dockery said.
Military Times’ Service Members of the Year
Davis Winkie is a senior reporter covering the Army, specializing in accountability reporting, personnel issues and military justice. He joined Military Times in 2020. Davis studied history at Vanderbilt University and UNC-Chapel Hill, writing a master's thesis about how the Cold War-era Defense Department influenced Hollywood's WWII movies.
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16. Why the US is selling stockpiled oil to China
Why the US is selling stockpiled oil to China - Poynter
The government is obligated to find the highest possible price for assets that it sells, and sometimes US companies aren’t able to handle more oil.
Critics, including conservative media outlets, attacked President Joe Biden for selling oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a Chinese-owned company. Some of the coverage implies a connection between the sales and Chinese investments linked to Biden’s son Hunter.
Experts in the international oil markets, however, told PolitiFact that the sales were governed by U.S. law, and they see no way that the Biden family could have influenced or benefited from the sales.
“It’s a political talking point, and a ridiculous one,” said Patrick De Haan, a vice president with GasBuddy, which tracks gasoline prices.
What oil was sold?
The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve dates from OPEC’s oil embargo in 1973 and 1974, when an oil price shock battered the U.S. economy. It was designed to diminish the vulnerability of the United States to energy supply interruptions, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The reserve has a capacity of more than 700 million barrels, stored in underground geological formations known as salt domes. The reserve encompasses four sites, two each in Louisiana and Texas.
Biden has authorized the sale of some of the reserve’s crude oil to counteract supply shortages, notably the West’s decision to cut back on Russian oil in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine. The process is done through a longstanding competitive bidding process, and whoever pays the most gets the oil. (More on this in a bit.)
One batch of oil, totaling 950,000 barrels, was sold on April 21 to Unipec America, a Houston-based, Chinese-owned company. Other batches of crude oil, amounting to about 4 million barrels, were sold to companies based in other countries.
What are the critics saying?
More than two months later, critics of Biden pounced. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson said Biden should be impeached for making the sale.
“So, as gas prices set records in this country, as American citizens who were born here and vote and pay taxes cannot afford to fuel their own cars, the Biden administration is selling off our emergency oil reserves to China,” Carlson said July 6. “That’s not an indictable offense? It’s certainly an impeachable one and they should impeach him for that.”
Rep. Drew Ferguson, R-Ga., tweeted on July 7 that “Biden sending oil from the United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve overseas smells to high heaven. While Americans are paying record high prices at the pump, this administration decides to give our oil to the EU and China.”
The conservative Washington Free Beacon quoted Daniel Turner — executive director of Power the Future, a pro-U.S. energy production group that targets “the radical environmental movement” — saying that the sale highlights the Biden family’s “relationship to China.” The article said that Hunter Biden is tied to Unipec’s parent company, Sinopec. “In 2015, a private equity firm (Hunter Biden) co-founded bought a $1.7 billion stake in Sinopec Marketing,” the article said.
As far as any role for Hunter Biden, his lawyer, George Mesires, released a statement on Oct. 13, 2019, saying that Hunter Biden would be resigning from the board of BHR, the investment company with business in China, without receiving any return on his investment or shareholder distributions. This would suggest no stake for Hunter Biden in the 2022 sale to Unipec.
Why is the U.S. selling oil from the reserve to overseas companies?
Experts said it’s reasonable to ask why, if the U.S. is trying to lower prices at the pump back home, it would sell oil to overseas companies. But these experts offered a straightforward answer: That’s the law, and that’s how the international oil market works.
When an administration orders the release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, “the Department of Energy puts out a notice of sale that alerts companies that oil will be made available for purchase,” said Hugh Daigle, a professor in the University of Texas-Austin Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering. “Companies then bid competitively on the oil, and the winning bidders receive the oil and the bid price.” The winning company works out with the Energy Department when and how it will take possession of the oil.
Sometimes the winning bidders may be U.S. refiners, Daigle said, in which case the oil quickly boosts U.S. gasoline supplies. But in other cases, he said, foreign companies win the bid. This increases the supply of global crude oil and, eventually, helps lower prices in the United States.
The law does not bar foreign companies in good standing from competing in such auctions.
“Companies that wish to bid on the oil sale have to be registered with the Crude Oil Sales Offer Program through the Energy Department, and any company authorized to do business with the U.S. government can register for this,” Daigle said. “In the case that a Chinese company submitted a winning bid, there is no restriction on the sale and delivery of oil to that company provided they are properly registered.”
Sales to overseas companies typically account for a minority of the oil sold at Strategic Petroleum Reserve auctions. Calculations made for Agence France-Presse found that of 30 million barrels released from the reserve in June 2022, only about 5.35 million barrels were exported.
Why does the U.S. allow this to happen?
The oil market operates on a global level, especially since 2015, when the United States ended a ban on the export of U.S.-produced crude oil. This means that the main factors in lowering prices are changing global supply and global demand. Lower demand or greater supply reduces prices.
“The logic of allowing exports is that oil is largely fungible and globally priced,” said Robert McNally, president of the Rapidan Energy Group. “So whether a barrel is refined in Louisiana or China or Italy doesn’t really matter from the perspective of the impact on domestic pump prices.”
Requiring the oil to stay in the U.S. would be pointless and could be easily evaded, said Clark Williams-Derry, an energy finance analyst with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. An American company could buy oil at auction while selling the equivalent amount from its own reserves to a foreign country, he said.
“It’s not the same physical molecules, but the effects on U.S. and global markets would be essentially identical,” Williams-Derry said.
It’s also worth noting that the company that buys oil from the reserve will need to have the ability to refine it. U.S. refiners are currently operating near capacity, and they may have special shortages in capacity for certain types of crude oil being offered from the reserve.
The international oil system, as constructed, is not necessarily “natural, inevitable, or morally commendable,” since it is “mostly designed to work to the benefit of oil companies and traders,” Williams-Derry said. But, he added, it’s the system we have. In that context, the auction of oil from the strategic reserve to the highest bidder accomplishes the policy goal of lowering oil prices.
This article was originally published by PolitiFact, which is part of the Poynter Institute. It is republished here with permission. See the sources here and more of their fact checks here.
17. How China Wants to Replace the U.S. Order
Excerpts:
How far Xi can get with the GSI is therefore unclear. Beijing’s challenge will be to convince other countries that they would not simply be replacing American hegemony with China’s. The Chinese, though, believe that time is on their side. As their power grows, their voice in global affairs will become more important, along with the import of their ideas.
More likely, the GSI could be part of the ideological foundation of a new Sino-centric sphere, composed mainly of illiberal states and Chinese clients. The U.S. and many other democratic societies seem highly unlikely to endorse Beijing’s principles, thereby splitting the current world order rather than replacing it.
The world that Beijing and the GSI envision is one where there is, in effect, no international community—where repressive regimes such as China’s can abuse their citizens as harshly as they choose and coldly pursue national goals, as Putin does in Ukraine, while other countries look the other way. The U.S.-led order certainly has its problems. The Chinese substitute would be the problem.
How China Wants to Replace the U.S. Order
What began as a trade war and a tech war between Beijing and Washington is now an ideas war.
Beijing has for years been chipping away at the pillars of the U.S.-led global order—subverting its foundational institutions, international norms, and liberal ideals—but Chinese President Xi Jinping had not offered a comprehensive vision of how a China-led replacement might work. That is changing.
Xi has collected his ideas for a new world order into the Global Security Initiative (GSI), a platform of principles on international affairs and diplomacy that, he argues, can make the world a safer place. Included are some proposals that sound appealing—countries should resolve their disputes through dialogue, respect one another’s differences, and be considerate of varying national interests to achieve “security for all,” as Xi put it in an April speech. “We need to work together to maintain peace and stability in the world,” he said. “Countries around the world are like passengers aboard the same ship who share the same destiny.”
Behind the pleasant sentiments is a deeper threat. The initiative might as well be called the Autocrat’s Manifesto. Its principles and practices would usher in a global system friendlier to repressive regimes than the current order, grounded as it is in democratic ideals. The GSI is the latest, and possibly most troubling, evidence that the confrontation between the U.S. and China is escalating into a full-fledged contest for global primacy. What began as a trade war over Beijing’s discriminatory business practices and a tech war to dominate the industries of the future is now an ideas war—a battle to establish the norms that govern global affairs. The U.S. and China are locked in a struggle to define how countries interact, the legitimacy of different forms of governments, the rules of commerce, and the meaning of human rights.
The Biden administration has placed defending and strengthening what Washington calls the “rules-based” global order at the center of its Asia policy, to counter Beijing’s threat. “China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in May. “Beijing’s vision would move us away from the universal values that have sustained so much of the world’s progress over the past 75 years.”
Chinese leaders don’t see things that way. To Beijing, the existing order has become inherently hostile to it and a constraint on its global ambitions. By upholding democracy as the sole legitimate form of government, the system undermines the stature of China’s authoritarian state on the world stage. Worse still, from Beijing’s perspective, it hands undue diplomatic, economic, and ideological leverage to the U.S. and its partners, leaving China vulnerable to sanction and pressure.
“Chinese policy makers believe that the current global order is geared toward U.S. hegemony, that … the world’s greatest power is doing all it can in order to contain and suppress and encircle China,” Tuvia Gering, a research fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, told me. “They need to lay the infrastructure for a more China-centric, or at least a less U.S.-, Western-centric, world.”
Beijing’s agenda is also shaped by its narrative of inevitable U.S. decline and Chinese ascent. Washington and Western democracies more broadly have become incapable of leading the world, China says—typified, in Beijing’s eyes, by their failed response to the coronavirus pandemic. China, and specifically Xi, whom Beijing markets as a master theorist, can provide new solutions. Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in an April essay, wrote that the GSI “contributes China’s wisdom to the efforts of mankind” and “China’s solution to addressing international security challenges.”
“The world is starting to fall apart,” Wang Huiyao, the president of the Center for China and Globalization (CCG), a Beijing-based think tank, told me. “China, being one of the largest stakeholders of this global system, felt there’s a need, there is an urgency, to propose some kind of security recommendations and initiatives” in order to “start a constructive dialogue on this issue” and “minimize the risk of the [world] falling into another catastrophe.”
Xi was probably prompted to unveil the GSI by the war in Ukraine, which encapsulates Beijing’s concerns about the U.S.-led order. From one angle, the war bolsters the Chinese narrative that the current system is in chaos, and Washington is responsible. (Beijing blames NATO expansion for the conflict.) Yet the American response—ferrying arms and intelligence to Kyiv while imposing an array of sanctions on Russia—also deepened Chinese fears that Washington could turn the global order against them.
It makes sense, then, that one of the GSI’s key tenets is opposition to “unilateral” sanctions. That idea is not necessarily new: Xi and his diplomats have been pitching it, like others in the GSI, for years. By bringing them together under the banner of the GSI, Beijing now has a framework it can sell.
But while Beijing presents the GSI as a selfless endeavor for the global good, many of its planks, such as the one about sanctions, are also self-serving. Among those Xi outlined in a speech at this year’s Boao Forum in China’s Hainan province is “respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries,” which backs Beijing’s claim to Taiwan. Another, “uphold noninterference in internal affairs,” is a way of silencing Washington’s criticism of Beijing’s ill-treatment of minority Uyghurs or Hong Kong democracy advocates. “Respect the independent choices of development paths and social systems made by people in different countries” grants autocracy the same legitimacy as democracy. “Say no to group politics and bloc confrontation” protests against the U.S. alliance system.
Many of the GSI’s points—though they don’t specifically mention the U.S.—target the tools of American influence, including economic sanctions and Washington’s preference for collective action. “China, of course, doesn’t really like what the U.S. is unilaterally doing,” said the CCG’s Wang, who then ticked off a list that included promoting the Quad, an Asia-centered security partnership, and providing nuclear-submarine technology to Australia. China’s position, according to Wang, is that “security is a comprehensive thing. You cannot just think about your security [and] not think about my security. We should think about security together.”
For some world leaders—especially the autocratic sort—the GSI may be appealing. Many would prefer to be free of American standards of human rights and democracy, and Washington’s preaching and pressure to adhere to them. In China’s version of a world order, national leaders are allowed to do more or less as they please within their own borders. The GSI thus has the potential to become the ideological backbone of an alternative, China-led system that brings together illiberal states in opposition to the U.S.
Yet Beijing also intends to co-opt elements of the current order and repurpose them to promote its own ideals and interests—most notably the United Nations, where the Chinese have already worked hard to promote their political principles. The GSI wraps itself in the UN mantle by advocating that countries uphold the institution’s charter. In this way, China tries to present itself as the defender of the international order. Foreign Minister Wang, in his essay, very obviously refers to the U.S. when he criticizes “fake multilateralism” based on “gang rules” in contrast with China, whose GSI is “rooted in true multilateralism.”
It’s hard to understand how the GSI is a practical proposal, at least in its current form. Although the Chinese present it as a “complete system,” the GSI is more a vague statement of principles and appears to be a work in progress. Some of its tenets seem simply unworkable. Take, for instance, “oppose the pursuit of one’s own security at the cost of others’ security.” Though it sounds like a great idea, this runs contrary to the fundamental responsibility of modern nation-states (including China) to defend their citizens against outside threats and promote their prosperity. Xi’s GSI offers no criteria or mechanism to sort out such competing national interests when they inevitably conflict, either.
Like all great powers (including the U.S.), China is more interested in setting rules than following them. The GSI derides “unilateral sanctions” even as Beijing imposes them on Australia and Lithuania to pressure those countries into policies more favorable to China. The GSI criticizes the formation of “blocs,” but Beijing is striving to forge its own—most notably, a partnership with Russia. Wang, the foreign minister, has racked up frequent-flier miles parading around the South Pacific, trying to woo island nations into a China-led security and economic pact.
No issue better exposes the contradictions of Xi’s initiative than China’s stance on Ukraine. Though the GSI stresses the importance of territorial integrity, Beijing has paid no more than lip service in defense of Ukraine’s, standing by its friends in Moscow as their army dismantles it, and then justifying its support for Russia’s position with another GSI plank: “taking the legitimate security concerns of all countries seriously.” It will come as little surprise that Vladimir Putin gave a thumbs-up to the GSI during a recent conversation with Xi, according to China’s foreign ministry.
How far Xi can get with the GSI is therefore unclear. Beijing’s challenge will be to convince other countries that they would not simply be replacing American hegemony with China’s. The Chinese, though, believe that time is on their side. As their power grows, their voice in global affairs will become more important, along with the import of their ideas.
More likely, the GSI could be part of the ideological foundation of a new Sino-centric sphere, composed mainly of illiberal states and Chinese clients. The U.S. and many other democratic societies seem highly unlikely to endorse Beijing’s principles, thereby splitting the current world order rather than replacing it.
The world that Beijing and the GSI envision is one where there is, in effect, no international community—where repressive regimes such as China’s can abuse their citizens as harshly as they choose and coldly pursue national goals, as Putin does in Ukraine, while other countries look the other way. The U.S.-led order certainly has its problems. The Chinese substitute would be the problem.
18. Ex-CIA engineer convicted in massive theft of secret info
So this is how you respond to a perceived hostile work environment??? I guess HR managers can use this to counsel supervisors. This is what happens with disgruntled employees. They become traitors to their country.
Prosecutors alleged the 33-year-old Schulte was motivated to orchestrate the leak because he believed the CIA had disrespected him by ignoring his complaints about the work environment. So he tried “to burn to the ground” the very work he had helped the agency to create, they said.
Ex-CIA engineer convicted in massive theft of secret info
AP · by LARRY NEUMEISTER and TOM HAYS · July 13, 2022
NEW YORK (AP) — A former CIA software engineer was convicted on Wednesday of federal charges accusing him of causing the biggest theft of classified information in CIA history.
Joshua Schulte, who chose to defend himself at a New York City retrial, had told jurors in closing arguments that the CIA and FBI made him a scapegoat for an embarrassing public release of a trove of CIA secrets by WikiLeaks in 2017.
Schulte watched without visibly reacting as U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman announced the guilty verdict on nine counts, which was reached in mid-afternoon by a jury that has deliberated since Friday.
A sentencing date was not immediately set because Schulte still awaits trial on child pornography possession and transport charges. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges.
The so-called Vault 7 leak revealed how the CIA hacked Apple and Android smartphones in overseas spying operations and efforts to turn internet-connected televisions into listening devices. Prior to his arrest, Schulte had helped create the hacking tools as a coder at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
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Prosecutors alleged the 33-year-old Schulte was motivated to orchestrate the leak because he believed the CIA had disrespected him by ignoring his complaints about the work environment. So he tried “to burn to the ground” the very work he had helped the agency to create, they said.
While behind bars awaiting trial, he continued his crimes by trying to leak additional classified materials from prison as he carried on an “information war” against the government, prosecutors said.
In his closing, Schulte claimed he was singled out even though “hundreds of people had access to (the information). … Hundreds of people could have stolen it.”
“The government’s case is riddled with reasonable doubt,” he added. “There’s simply no motive here.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney David Denton countered that there was plenty of proof that Schulte pilfered a sensitive backup computer file.
“He’s the one who broke into that system,” Denton said. “He’s the one who took that backup, the backup he sent to WikiLeaks.”
The prosecutor also encouraged jurors to consider evidence of an attempted cover-up, including a list of chores Schulte drew up that had an entry reading, “Delete suspicious emails.”
“This is someone who’s hiding the things that he’s done wrong,” Denton said.
Once the jury got the case, Furman complimented Schulte on his closing argument.
“Mr. Schulte, that was impressively done,” the judge said with jurors out of the courtroom. “Depending on what happens here, you may have a future as a defense lawyer.”
A mistrial was declared at Schulte’s original 2020 trial after jurors deadlocked on the most serious counts, including illegal gathering and transmission of national defense information. Schulte told the judge last year that he wanted to serve as his own attorney for the retrial.
Schulte has been held behind bars without bail since 2018. Last year, he complained in court papers that he was a victim of cruel and unusual punishment, awaiting the two trials in solitary confinement inside a vermin-infested cell of a jail unit where inmates are treated like “caged animals.”
AP · by LARRY NEUMEISTER and TOM HAYS · July 13, 2022
19. Ukraine Is Bringing a Big Gun to a Knife Fight
Ukraine Is Bringing a Big Gun to a Knife Fight
But U.S. and European multiple launch rockets alone aren’t enough to put Ukraine on the front foot for a counteroffensive.
By Jack Detsch, Foreign Policy’s Pentagon and national security reporter.
NEW FOR SUBSCRIBERS: Click + to receive email alerts for new stories written by Jack Detsch Jack Detsch
A U.S. High Mobility Artillery Rocket System fires salvoes in Morocco.
A U.S. High Mobility Artillery Rocket System fires salvoes during the second annual “African Lion” military exercise in the Tan-Tan region in southwestern Morocco on June 30. Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images
From dozens of miles away, Ukrainian troops watched the aftermath of a rocket blast, fired from tubes rigged up to the back of an U.S.-provided truck. They first spoke in shouts, then in hushed murmurs, as the blast cloud behind Russian lines from the American High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, known as HIMARs, grew and grew.
“Holy fuck, look how the Russians are dying,” one soldier said in footage that made the rounds on social media.
With eight American HIMARs now in Ukrainian hands and four more expected to get into the country by the end of July, the defenders are racking up a major cost in Russian ammunition, supplies, and likely lives. Ukrainian troops knocked out 14 ammunition dumps in June, according to a tally by the BBC’s Russian service, many of them behind Russian lines in the Donbas, using the new weapons and another four tank-mounted rocket launchers from Britain. (More are on the way from Germany and Norway too.) The explosions have spawned a cottage industry of pro-Ukrainian memes featuring Japanese Shiba dogs in military fatigues watching the blasts, and the Ukrainian military believes that at least one Russian general has been killed in the blasts.
Ukraine is, despite the internet narrative, losing ground in the war, with Russia swallowing up most of the strategic Luhansk province as it refits to strike deeper into Donetsk. Yet the arrival of U.S.-provided HIMARs and accompanying guided multiple launch rocket systems (GMLRs) that can strike targets 40 miles away is giving Kyiv hope that a potential counteroffensive is not far off. The soldier’s words (“look how the Russians are dying”) are becoming a new rallying cry for Ukrainians—tantamount to the charge of “Russian warship, go fuck yourself,” yelled by border guards defending Snake Island in the war’s first week—but at a new stage of the five-month conflict that is increasingly becoming an attritional slugfest.
And in the early telling, it’s a stage of the war that the Russians did not anticipate, experts said. Russia has used cannons to batter its enemies from afar for three centuries, and officials knew that the U.S.-made precision missiles were coming for months, even sending a formal diplomatic letter to the U.S. State Department in April to try and warn off the Biden administration. There’s a reason that the Kremlin was nervous. The truck-mounted system weighs nearly 18 tons and can fire six precision-guided missiles at a time and then can quickly skedaddle, cutting into Moscow’s firepower advantage in massed artillery that is about 3-1 in the Donbas region.
Yet Russia still left itself open to a counterpunch. Early in the war, it left long, vulnerable supply convoys that were ravaged by Ukrainian sneak attacks during the Kyiv offensive. Now, they’re facing the same sort of ambush—from afar, while the vaunted S-400 air defense systems Russia brought into Ukraine have been helpless against the low-altitude threat.
“It’s clear that they were not preparing to deal with this,” said Rob Lee, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute who previously served in the U.S. Marine Corps. “It’s been no secret that the Ukrainians have been asking for HIMARs for a while; it was no secret that when they got HIMARs, they were coming; and it’s no secret what the capabilities of HIMARs are. What steps did Russia take to adapt? It doesn’t look like they took many steps at all.”
The U.S. Defense Department and other U.S. agencies fed HIMARs into Ukraine slowly, officials said, waiting to test Kyiv’s aptitude on the system, reflected by Germany and Britain, which handed off multiple launch rockets mounted on Bradley tank frames four at a time. But U.S. and European officials have been impressed, they said, by Ukraine’s systematic selection of targets, interdicting Russian supplies and attacking command posts in a bid to grind the Kremlin’s war effort to a near-complete halt. The goal, one Ukrainian military official said, is to destroy all Russian storage facilities on Ukrainian soil, picking off targets about five miles behind enemy lines.
“What you see is the Ukrainians … actually systematically selecting targets and then accurately hitting them, thus providing this precise method of degrading Russian capability,” a senior U.S. defense official told reporters this month. The Ukrainian military official told Foreign Policy on Tuesday that Russia has responded by pulling back command posts, but because of the Kremlin’s top-down military planning and refusal to delegate command further down the ranks, it lacks the nimbleness in its logistics to disperse military supplies as Ukrainian defenders have done.
But Ukrainian officials said the weapons are not yet enough to put them on the front foot for a counteroffensive, which Kyiv had hoped to begin mounting by August. (Western officials more conservatively hope for Ukraine to start large-scale counterattacks by next spring but bearing in mind increasing public fatigue.) For instance, Ukraine’s demand for longer-range Army Tactical Missile Systems, known as ATACMS, that can be fired one at a time from the HIMARs truck beds and hit Russian targets nearly 200 miles away have fallen on deaf ears with the Biden administration, which is worried about Ukraine hitting targets inside of Russia and escalating the conflict. Kyiv has pledged that it would not do that.
“It’s not enough for an effective counterattack,” said Daria Kaleniuk, co-founder and executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, who has become an informal advocate for more Western arms provisions to Ukraine during the war. “What we have achieved so far is the decrease of Ukrainian losses.” Ukrainian troops are also facing a time crunch, Kaleniuk said. They need to begin liberating Russian-occupied ground before the harsh winter sets in around November or risk falling into a longer-term conflict that would favor Moscow.
The Ukrainian official said Kyiv is hoping for dozens of HIMARs to eventually arrive in Ukraine—a far cry from the 300 multiple launch rocket systems that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s confidante Mykhailo Podolyak asked for in June; Kaleniuk pegged the number at 40 batteries loaded with ATACMS missiles to begin the counterattack and self-propelled Paladin artillery pieces that can more easily dodge Russian counter-fire.
Ukrainian officials insist that Russia has not succeeded in destroying any of their batteries so far, but there remain growing fears that Russia will begin to find countermeasures from the HIMARs rockets. And the potential arrival of up to 100 Iranian combat drones, which U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Tehran had agreed to sell to Russia, is creating fears in the Ukrainian ranks that the HIMARs batteries will be left helpless to an aerial onslaught, the Ukrainian military official told Foreign Policy. Ukraine has been asking U.S. officials for more drones of their own to conduct reconnaissance sweeps and fight back. “It will be really hard for [Russia] to hide command posts from our reconnaissance,” the official said.
“Russia is not above learning from market leaders—first Israeli drones over a decade ago and now Iranians,” said Samuel Bendett, an advisor with the CNA think tank and a member of the organization’s Russia Studies Program.“If Iranians provide Russia with loitering munitions, then Moscow can start applying tactics it learnt from the Nagorno-Karabakh war, where loitering munitions proved decisive.”
Even with the HIMARs screaming and more Russian ammunition depots going boom in the night, experts believe that the new American weapons are likely to simply reinforce the status quo on the ground: a protracted stalemate.
“By hitting command and control, by hitting ammo depots, you make it much more likely that a Russian offensive will stall,” Lee said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that HIMARs is going to give the Ukrainians the ability to retake terrain.”
Jack Detsch is Foreign Policy’s Pentagon and national security reporter. Twitter: @JackDetsch
20. Special Forces Around the World: Conduct, Oversight, and Opacity
A UK perspective on countries with major SOF elements.
Excerpt:
As well as transparency, US Special Operations are treated with more legislative scrutiny than UK Operations. President Obama insisted select congressional leaders were briefed on secretive SOF missions. This was formalised in 2013 with a requirement for a written confirmation of “of any military activities JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command] conducts outside theatres of major hostilities.” And in 2017, Congress introduced monthly Pentagon briefings on SOF operations. Similar constitutional set-ups exist in Denmark and France. But in the UK, when asked about UKSF missions, Ministers defer to a long-standing ‘no comment’ policy on Special Forces.
Special Forces Around the World: Conduct, Oversight, and Opacity - AOAV
“We are far from the flagpole and are expected to be incorruptible.”
Former Navy SEAL convicted of smuggling cocaine into Florida on a military aircraft
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This report has so far focused on British Special Forces and the military infrastructure around them. But the missions, skills, equipment, and elite status of Special Forces are by no means unique to the UK.
Due to their size, Special Forces of different nations will often collaborate with other states. They may do so by training together, sharing intelligence or, even, fighting side by side. Troopers may well embed with another nation’s forces, as was tragically the case for Sergeant Matt Tonroe. The British SAS soldier was killed in Syria in 2018, while he was fighting alongside US commandos, when an explosive carried by an American colleague was accidentally detonated.
Collaboration between Special Forces was common in Afghanistan. This was a multinational effort, with 49 nations contributing troops at some stage, including all 30 NATO nations. At its peak, there were more than 13,000 special operators from at least 18 countries that committed their Special Operations Forces (SOF). The respective heads of the US, UK and Australian Special Forces were reported to meet on a weekly basis to discuss what each was doing, as part of the so-called ‘SOF tribe’.
Sources we have spoken to who served with UKSF in Afghanistan have spoken of a natural camaraderie but also a degree of competitiveness amongst the SF fighters of each nation.
One suggestion that came out of the Brereton Report was that the worst practices seen by Australian troopers was actually an attempted emulation of American and British Special Forces. Australian forces operated primarily out of Uruzgan province, but would occasionally go on missions to Helmand. AOAV understands it was common for UK and Australian special forces to have ‘exchange’ troopers in Afghanistan to observe and learn from one another.
One Australian whistleblower told the inquiry: “Whatever we do, though, I can tell you the Brits and the US are far, far worse. I’ve watched our young guys stand by and hero worship what they were doing, salivating at how the US were torturing people. You just stand there and roll your eyes and wait for it to end.”
This section will look at allegations of misconduct by other nations’ Special Forces to compare how they dealt with them and how the countries differ in their approach to transparency and oversight.
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Misconduct
Australia
Credible evidence of 39 extrajudicial killings of Afghan civilians by members of the Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) were detailed in the explosive Brereton Report. Released in November 2020, it painted a picture of a violent, toxic culture within the Australian Special Forces.
The killings did not take place in the heat of battle and none of the victims were combatants. As Chief of the Defence Force, Angus Campbell, said: “None were alleged to have occurred in circumstances in which the intent of the perpetrator was unclear, confused or mistaken. And every person spoken to by the inquiry thoroughly understood the law of armed conflict and the rules of engagement under which they operated.”
Junior soldiers were ordered by their patrol commanders to shoot a detained person to register their first kill. This initiation of ‘blooding’ would form part of a competitive framing between other patrols, to attempt to outscore their kill-counts. Such shootings would later be explained in official records with the use of ‘throwdown’ weapons and a cover story – not dissimilar to what we have outlined about occurring in UKSF units.
This culture of secrecy and cover-up was pervasive, the report found. Operational summaries “were routinely embellished, often using ‘boilerplate’ language, in order proactively to demonstrate apparent compliance with rules of engagement, and to minimise the risk of attracting the interest of higher headquarters”.
As outlined in Section 2, the circumstances, in which detainees were legitimately killed because they reached for a weapon, that were described in the UKSF’s operational summaries appeared to be duplicated on multiple occasions by Australian SF units. It was this that provoked the incredulity of certain officers.
The report theorised that subordinates complied with such orders for a number of reasons. Chiefly, to a junior soldier, who has invested years of their life to make it into the Australian SAS, “the patrol commander is a ‘demigod’, and one who can make or break the career of a trooper”.
If they did not do exactly what was expected of them, they were deemed a “lemon”, which could be career-ending. Interestingly, the report’s interviewees revealed a process of compartmentalisation, so that their actions were considered “as something that happened outside the wire to stay outside the wire.
“In that context, some individuals who would have believed themselves incapable of such behaviour were influenced to commit egregious crimes. It is clear to the Inquiry that at least some of them have regretted it, and have been struggling with the concomitant moral injury, ever since.”
A senior Australian soldier drinks beer from a prosthetic leg that belonged to a Taliban fighter killed by special forces in Afghanistan.
Exemplifying the attitude of irreproachability, SASR troopers would regularly set up an unofficial bar, called The Fat Lady’s Arms – despite alcohol being banned for Australian soldiers. A month after the Brereton Report, photos emerged from 2009 of troopers drinking out a prosthetic leg that belonged to an Afghan amputee who was killed in a raid. One photo showed it mounted on a wooden board alongside a Nazi military decoration.
Investigators found no evidence of “knowledge of, or reckless indifference to, the commission of war crimes, on the part of commanders at troop/platoon, squadron/company or Task Group Headquarters level, let alone at higher levels.”
While, in hindsight, more could have been done, the investigators conceded that “in judging the reasonableness of conduct at the time, it needs to be borne in mind that few would have imagined some of our elite soldiers would engage in the conduct that has been described; for that reason there would not have been a significant index of suspicion, rather the first natural response would have been disbelief.”
In short, the actions of Australia’s most elite troops were beyond belief and thus no one further up the chain would’ve suspected a thing.
Caption: The same leg mounted on the wall alongside a Nazi military decoration
The same cannot be said for UK Special Forces. As detailed in Sections 2 & 3, senior officers based in Afghanistan and back in London were made aware of serious concerns about potential war crimes and their subsequent cover-up of this type.
One heavily redacted incident in the Brereton Report is described in the report as “possibly the most disgraceful episode in Australia’s military history”. But Australia’s defence institutions also deserve some credit. They have gone some way to face, with complete frankness, the shameful actions of those they held up as heroes.
The UK government continues to deny there ever has been any such problem. In response to the Brereton Report, a spokesperson for the British Ministry of Defence said: “The Australian Defence Force’s report into alleged wrongdoing in Afghanistan does not affect or implicate British service personnel.”
“Our armed forces are held to the highest standards, and the Service Police have carried out extensive and independent investigations into alleged misconduct of UK forces in Afghanistan. As of today, none of the historical allegations under Operation Northmoor have led to prosecutions.”
As this report has highlighted, the claim that UK investigations were “extensive” lacks credibility. And compared to the rigour of Australia’s eventual self-examination, it is derisible.
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United States
The American Special Forces, and military at large, have a reputation for a ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ attitude.
Multiple retired British personnel expressed such a view to us. Whatever the British were accused of, ‘the Yanks were far worse’ was the mantra. And arguably, the fact that, in British minds, the US were setting a low moral bar in terms of civilian casualties, may inform us as to why British wrongdoing has been shrugged off for so long.
SAF Troop numbers, October 2009
Evaluating whether US conduct was worse than the British in Afghanistan is beyond the scope of this report. The NATO mission in Afghanistan was fundamentally US-led. Up to 2009, US soldiers constituted around half of the 71,000-strong ISAF force.
Britain, the second-largest contributor, made up 12%, with 9,000 troops stationed in Helmand. After the additional surge of soldiers by President Obama in 2009, this tipped the balance even further. By 2013, Americans made up two-thirds of international forces in Afghanistan. This included some 13,000 special operators and support personnel. Proportionally, a study by AOAV found that British soldiers were 12% more likely to die during the War on Terror (including in Iraq) than their US counterparts.
When US Marines provided major reinforcements to the British in Helmand, 2010, the allies were disagreeing heavily about strategy. According to journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book Little America, the top Marine commander Larry Nicholson thought ineffective British forces “established front lines that they did not cross” and “he recoiled when he saw how Afghan soldiers were segregated in camps on British bases. He advocated genuine partnership, not a vestigial colonial attitude toward the natives, and that meant eating and living together.”
Being so numerically dominant means that US Special Operations Forces (SOF) are likely to have caused far more civilian harm than the British. And we know from the Australian whistle-blower quoted above, Wikileaks and the recently released Civilian Casualty Files, a persistent stereotype of trigger-happy Americans in Afghanistan wasn’t produced from thin air.
Experts we have spoken to have suggested UKSF were influenced by the Americans in Afghanistan, with their superior numbers, budget and equipment. However, those who served in UKSF are keen to suggest it was the other way round. Either way, it seems worthwhile to highlight a few recent developments in the world of US SOF, to chart the changes in size, budget, oversight and conduct.
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US SOF: scope and transparency
The role of US special forces changed after 9/11. With the onset of the War on Terror, waged against a nebulous enemy spread across the globe, the demand was high for covert operations tracing and capturing or killing high-value targets. Between 2001 and 2017, the US budget for Special Forces more than quadrupled, from $3bn to $12.3bn. Personnel nearly doubled.
An investigation by Nick Turse found that in just one year, 2016, US Special Operation Forces were deployed to 138 nations, or 70% of the world. Interestingly, confirmation of deployment to 129 of these countries were supplied by US Special Operations Command.
In contrast, AOAV’s attempt to find out the nations the UKSF were deployed to have been met with a blanket refusal from the MOD. The MOD even refuses, on occasion, to release the country of regular force deployment. Releasing information on operations that have no discernible link to Special Forces was deemed a “threat to national security”, despite some of the information already being published in military magazines.
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Oversight
As well as transparency, US Special Operations are treated with more legislative scrutiny than UK Operations. President Obama insisted select congressional leaders were briefed on secretive SOF missions. This was formalised in 2013 with a requirement for a written confirmation of “of any military activities JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command] conducts outside theatres of major hostilities.” And in 2017, Congress introduced monthly Pentagon briefings on SOF operations. Similar constitutional set-ups exist in Denmark and France. But in the UK, when asked about UKSF missions, Ministers defer to a long-standing ‘no comment’ policy on Special Forces.
Credit: Nick Turse, Tom Dispatch
Members of the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) are not briefed, even confidentially, on UKSF missions, despite that fact that the operations of the security services, such as the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) are informed to the ISC.
In 2021, the US Congress created the Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations. They have the jurisdiction to demand briefs from the Department of Defense on its special forces. Whether this will be used to rigorously scrutinise the hundreds of deployments around the world remains to be seen, but at the least it established the legislative precedent for such inspections.
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Conduct in Afghanistan
Aside from a list of countries deployed to, the actions of US SOF are almost entirely classified. In Afghanistan, they were conducting, on average, the bulk of the 19 raids per night between December 2010 and February 2011, according to ISAF records. In their analysis of conduct during night raids, an Open Society Foundation report concluded that: “the right to use lethal force is too easily triggered, resulting in unnecessary and avoidable civilian harm”.
Navy SEALs during night operation in Afghanistan
Allegations of torture and unlawful killing by US SOF commandos in Wardak Province were also revealed in 2013 by Afghan military whistle-blowers. Originally denied by US authorities, the claims stuck. Then Afghanistan’s President, Hamid Karzai, banned US forces from the area. It has been suggested that killing targets became preferential to the US administration, due to the political and legal difficulties over detention in Guantanamo Bay.
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Ethics
US special forces have experienced a notable number of scandals in recent years.
A platoon of Navy SEALs was kicked out of Iraq in July 2019 for an alleged sexual assault that happened at an alcohol-fuelled party (a party that, in itself, was banned). Weeks earlier, Navy Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher was tried and acquitted of murdering a detained ISIS member who was receiving medical treatment. Witnesses claimed the soldier stabbed the young fighter; others said he did not cause the death. In the end, Gallagher was found guilty of taking a photo with the body. The court was shown texts saying: “Good story behind this. Got him with my hunting knife.” They were accompanied by a photo of the SEAL holding the dead prisoner’s head by the hair. Gallagher later appeared on a podcast where he admitted that Navy SEALs practised medical procedures on a dying detainee.
In 2021, another Navy SEAL admitted to the killing of an Army staff sergeant in a supposed hazing gone wrong in Mali in 2017.
The cumulative build-up of these scandals led to Gen. Richard Clarke commissioning a review into the ethics and culture of US SOF. The report, released in January 2020, found no “systemic ethics problem” but said the high tempo of deployments had put too much emphasis on “mission accomplishment at the expense of the training and development of our forces”.
An investigation the following year by Rolling Stone magazine found that this report was “mostly a whitewash, full of vague language about improving leadership and accountability”.
It is worth focusing on Fort Bragg, which houses the two most important command headquarters of US Special Operations – US Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) this includes the Green Berets and Rangers and Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). JSOC controls the most elite and secretive units, such as SEAL Team 6 and Delta Force. In 2020 alone, 44 soldiers died at Fort Bragg from homicides and suicides, many stemming from drug deals and use. In one shocking incident, a 21-year-old was beheaded while on a camping trip with six fellow paratroopers. An extensive substance-abuse culture was revealed, with soldiers regularly using anabolic steroids, cocaine, MDMA, methamphetamine and heroin. In 2014, a Navy SEAL pleaded guilty after being found at Miami’s airport with 10kg of cocaine in his carry-on luggage.
US SOF team fighting in Wardak province, 2011
Another former commando, also convicted of drug smuggling, told Rolling Stone that US SOF operate in a “‘grey zone’ where morality and ethics are in the eye of the beholder, and everything goes so long as the mission is accomplished and your tactics aren’t known to the public or explicitly to the higher-ups.
“Elite soldiers have access to whatever they want to get into: whores, guns, drugs, you name it. We are far from the flagpole and are expected to be incorruptible.”
Former British SAS soldier, Ben Timberlake, claimed in his book last year to have smuggled in ecstasy pills and shared them out one night with the US forces he was embedded with, in Ramadi, Iraq whilst they were on duty. He purports the sound of their machine-gun fire led them to hugging with joy.
Despite ultimately doing more damage, the US has ostensibly gone towards being more transparent about special forces deployments and have sought to improve ethical standards. The MOD and UK government has been singularly resistant to reform and in denial of any systemic problems.
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Rest of the World
Germany: A special forces company was dissolved by the Defense Minister for its links to far-right extremism. The KSK consisted of 300 soldiers and operated in Afghanistan and the Balkans. During one party, soldiers played with pig heads, listened to extreme-right rock music and performed the banned Nazi salute. The 2nd Company was disbanded but the rest of the KSK was threatened with the same fate if problems continued. Throughout the KSK, there was an apparent amnesty for troopers to return stolen ammunition, although some argued this had no legal basis and should have been punished more severely, especially considering the unit’s problems with far-right extremism.
France: In 2015, the French government confirmed that at least ten paratroopers and foreign legionnaires had absconded to fight for ISIS in Syria. This included a member of their elite First Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment, considered “one of Europe’s most experienced special forces units”. Internally the foreign legion, who enlist soldiers from all over the world, has been criticised for allowing frequent violence and ritual humiliation of its recruits. One 25-year-old Slovakian, Jozef Svarusko, who was on a march in 38C degree heat in the Djibouti desert, complained of a sore knee but rather than get treatment, he was beaten and had his water bottle emptied. He later collapsed and died following a heart attack caused by sunstroke. Four officers were indicted for acts of “torture and barbarity” but none appear to have stood trial.
New Zealand: A review of Operation Burnham, a 2010 raid in the Tirgiran Valley, found that action by New Zealand SAS resulted in seven men and one child being killed. No links to insurgents were confirmed. The soldiers were deemed to have acted lawfully, but the country’s Defence Force was found to have misled ministers about the incident by not correcting their assertion that claims of civilian casualties were unfounded. As a result of the inquiry, an Inspector-General of Defence will be established, to “provide independent oversight of the New Zealand Defence Force”.
Netherlands: In 2020, the Dutch Defence Ministry asked prosecutors to look into a report that Dutch soldiers fired and killed civilians in Uruzgan, Afghanistan, in 2007. AOAV approached the Dutch Defence Ministry to comment on the status of this investigation. At the time of publication, we have received no response.
Canada: The Canadian military has been officially warned about a ‘culture of stealing’ amongst its special forces. Several members are being investigated. Stolen equipment included gun parts and ammunition. In 1995, the Defence Minister David Collenette, decided to disband Canada’s elite Airborne Regiment after it was revealed that troopers tortured and killed a 16-year-old Somali boy, Shidane Arone, in 1993, during a United Nations peacekeeping mission in what became known as the ‘Somalia Affair’.
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Chapter Conclusion
While many patterns of ill-discipline, such as no rank hierarchy, no uniform, drinking and drug-taking, have been observed across many nations’ Special Forces, the UK appears to stand alone amongst its allies in its lack of public review or redress of such behaviour.
Defenders would say it’s wise for UKSF to not air its dirty laundry and to quietly reform behind closed doors. But without any sense of public accountability, it will mean those who have allowed rule-breaking of all shades, from excessive drinking to unlawful killings, will be the ones trusted to stamp it out. As has been evidenced throughout this report, that is not a formula for just outcomes.
21. When Irregular Becomes Everywhere: The Cybered Fight in Unwanted Places
Excerpts:
Democracies are on their back feet in the pervasive great systems conflict already underway in this century. Yet two items—one a traumatic event and the other a self-evident but not yet obvious or implemented solution—offer some optimism. The first is the Russo-Ukrainian War, which has unified democratic societies in ways only a common, clear-cut, and imminent enemy with destructive strategies can. While it is not clear how long this relative unity will last, that it emerged despite the very clear Russian energy leverage over Europe is encouraging indeed.
The second is the rising tide of calls for collective cyber defense to compensate for the overwhelming scale of the authoritarian assaults on consolidated democracies. One idea—a cyber operational resilience alliance—offers a vision of a future where the governments of the consolidated democracies and their telecommunications and IT capital goods actors coalesce to defend democratic information technologies. The objectives are to unite in order to scale up to meet the demographic scale and strategic coherence of China, to buy time to build out current defenses in a federated, multinational, private-public defense system, and then to transform the underlying substrate in ways that preclude this level of system threat from emerging again while reintroducing the safe, democratic, resilience internet envision from the outset.
Consolidated democracies constitute less than ten percent of the globe’s population, and democracy itself is a much more fragile minority regime than is understood. A new collective narrative and action—even in unwanted places—is essential to ensure democracy’s survival and prosperity in a future, deeply cybered, hostile, and increasingly authoritarian world.
When Irregular Becomes Everywhere: The Cybered Fight in Unwanted Places - Modern War Institute
Editor’s note: This article is part of the series “Compete and Win: Envisioning a Competitive Strategy for the Twenty-First Century.” The series endeavors to present expert commentary on diverse issues surrounding US competitive strategy and irregular warfare with peer and near-peer competitors in the physical, cyber, and information spaces. The series is part of the Competition in Cyberspace Project (C2P), a joint initiative by the Army Cyber Institute and the Modern War Institute. Read all articles in the series here.
Special thanks to series editors Capt. Maggie Smith, PhD, C2P director, and Dr. Barnett S. Koven.
In early 2021, major democracies around the world woke up to find that a Chinese government–associated cyberattack group Hafnium had left open a backdoor access point in Microsoft exchange servers’ software across their countries with no regard to who else might also take advantage of the widely distributed technology. What followed was a massive escalation of widespread cyberattacks by state-sponsored and criminal groups globally. With “attack attempts doubling every few hours,” cybersecurity analysts across the United States and its allies rang alarm bells. “Tens of thousands of servers have been hacked around the world. They’re being hacked faster than we can count.” In the United States, the FBI took the unprecedented step of obtaining a warrant to electronically enter hundreds of infected American computers to delete the malicious software left by the Chinese. The nation-state adversary had not only used cyber to achieve its own aims, but also handed its cyber weapons over to the global criminal community as part of their campaign.
Since its inception, the internet has presented security challenges but, for far too long, advanced democracies have clung to a utopian vision of a globally munificent cyberspace, ignoring what has emerged in the form a globally integrated and cybered conflict. The United States and its allies have also critically misunderstood the networked information fragilities of their democratic societies and institutions.
Because cyberspace underlies and enables the information environment, information operations and cyber operations are blended and often indistinguishable—psychological operations and propaganda today rely on cyberspace to deliver their intended message. Our adversaries have expanded the cybered fight beyond our connected networks into the content absorbed by our democratic publics, thus influencing the collective cognition of the population enough to endanger democracy itself. Cybered conflict is now simultaneously more irregular and more integral to the spectrum of human and state interactions along the conflict continuum. It has moved us beyond the reemergent great power competition to an ubiquitous great systems conflict.
For three reasons, public and private senior leaders have been generally slow to recognize, let alone to act against the emerging foreign malign influencers. The first is a lingering and deeply felt utopian perception of the internet itself. The second is a widespread lack of understanding of the systemic nature of cybered conflict and its challenges to the transparency, tolerance, trust, and prosperity of open societies. The third is a continuing underassessment of the threat’s competence in executing successful disruptive and false cybered disinformation campaigns, and forcing democratic nations to defend where they have never wanted to intervene.
Cyberspace as a False Utopia
Leaders in the United States and allied democracies did not collectively recognize how cyberspace, and the information and data it carries, could be weaponized in a system-versus-system struggle for global position in large part because of how it was first developed and promoted in the mid-1990s, and then commercially expanded. Marked by Western euphoria over the fall of the Soviet Union, the American and allied zeitgeist of the 1990s celebrated the westernized world’s rule of law, its international liberal economic system, and its democratizing innovation—the internet. Among advanced democracies, cyberspace was idealized to be the harbinger of peace, democracy, and prosperity, with an enduring corollary that any government regulation would kill innovation. As a result, the United States and its allies in particular took a hands-off approach to the industries building and expanding the societal substrate irrespective of how insecurely it was built.
As a result, malicious cyber actors have had free rein to exploit the shoddily created underlying cyber infrastructure. The American aversion to regulating cyberspace in particular defined any nonmilitary cyberattack as a one-off, personal or corporate, due diligence problem, even though they were costing the United States and other democracies dearly. Only by the late 2000s did major westernized powers began publicly admitting that cyberattacks by hostile states were a top national security risk, threatening future prosperity and strategic options. Even so, most states created defensive cyber strategies with limited regulatory or institutional mandates.
Comprehensive Struggle of Cybered Conflict
A general lack of understanding of cybered conflict continues to delay effective whole-of-society systemic responses to cyber insecurity, leaving the factors underpinning cybered conflict unmitigated. Analytically, cyberspace is a substrate linking and underpinning all the critical functions of the modern society. This substrate is conceptually best viewed as three layers with network and software connectivity as the foundation, content or data as the next layer, and cognition or how recipients interpret the world given the cybered lenses as the top layer. The substrate connects all the social, economic, and technical subsystems of a state into a huge, complex socio-technical-economic system (STES) that then becomes linked to and interdependent with other nations’ STESs. In principle, anything connected to the internet can be reached electronically by anything else connected to it. To be online is to be targetable by malicious cyber actors, increasingly so as more of a nation’s STES is digitized and globally connected.
To understand how cyberspace everywhere can be weaponized, envision cybered conflict as a vicious cycle in which the basic insecurities of the underlying cyber substrate work through society to make the nation weak to robust cyber power. The cycle exists because the largely American IT industries rushed to capitalize on the new information world, pushing software out the door with little to no thought to how others might abuse shortcomings in their programming. In so doing, they embedded—and continue to embed—throughout the substrate five offense advantages. Now any malign actor anywhere with little to no money can (1) create a large scale of organization to attack others, (2) easily reach out to collect formerly high-quality information from targets at any proximity to themselves, (3) choose multiple tools of attack using any level of precision in operations or effects, (4) ensure deception in the choice of tools to buy time and make advances before discovery, and (5) keep themselves and their origins opaque to defenders to avoid identification and punishment.
These five offense advantages then double from two to four of the major sources of complex systemic surprises that nations normally have to address. The first two are the normal nationally relevant complex system surprises emanating (1) from large-scale enterprises individually and (2) from consortiums of interdependent groups of enterprises. Cyberspace today, however, now imposes on the nation a tsunami of potentially disruptive and certainly costly surprises (3) from a global community of malign actors and (4) from a smaller but even more dangerous groups of state-sponsored wicked actors or advanced persistent threats. Both use the five advantages to successfully attack masses of systems through the cyberspace substrate. With these actors’ successes, defending nations manifest a low level of systemic resilience against the first three layers of complex system surprise and limited, if any, effective responses to state-sponsored actors. In short, a state unable to defend against or disrupt these attacks is a weak cyber power.
As a national government realizes the damage—which may take years—its leaders have options to mitigate, if not disrupt, the cycle. They could alter cyberspace’s connectivity, content, or cognition layers in their nations. They can orchestrate the reduction of the five offense advantages embedded in cyber products made by the IT capital goods industries. They can enhance resilience and forward disruption competencies affecting societal surprises. But, in democracies, none of this is possible unless they have the domestic mandate to do so. If they do not, especially if they do not understand the need for such mandates, then this negative cycle repeats and the systemic consequences mount, ensuring the continued weak cyber power of democratic states in particular.
Without the understanding of, or the mandate to intervene in, this vicious cycle, a nation can be losing a cybered conflict and not realize it until the losses are massive and recovery potentially out of reach. Currently, for advanced democratic countries, the losses are an estimated 1-2 percent of GDP per annum. The compounding loss of economic resilience through cyber means can hollow the future means of defense in even large economies. The founding commander of US Cyber Command noted in 2012 that the two-decade accumulation of losses to the US economy from cyberspace insecurity constituted the “greatest transfer of wealth in history.” In the same year, the Bockel Report by the French Senate declared such losses to be “the systematic pillaging of its diplomatic, cultural, scientific, and economic inheritance.”
A major and enduring difficulty is that not only did the early utopian zeitgeist blind democracies to the need to mitigate the five offense advantages and the rise of the bad actors, defending in the top two layers of the cyberspace substrate—content and cognition—are not arenas in which democracies want or are prepared to fight. In principle, democracies endorsing the free speech (content) and free thinking (cognition) of their citizenry have difficulty even proactively strategizing about measures that are perceived as violating their own values. Despite public recognition of the Russian interference in the US 2016 presidential election, in the Brexit decision in the UK, and in financially supporting far-right groups in Europe, democratic societies have proven slow to develop effective strategic responses to the expansion of the cybered battlespace through content and cognition. With this defense disarray, irregular information conflict furthers the wider cybered conflict between great systems such as the US and China.
Adversaries Learn Fast
Authoritarian adversaries practice cyber-enabled information influence on their own populations, transferring the tools, tactics, and operations abroad to vulnerable democracies. Just as successful major criminal networks spend time and effort in mapping targeted networks, major adversaries map the undefended areas of democratic STES. They experiment across all three layers of cyberspace at home and abroad. No aspect of the cybered conflict cycle is immune. Just as adversaries succeeded in exploiting the five offense advantages and employed members of the globe’s malign and wicked actor community, they also migrated to other undefended layers of democratic cyberspace including content and cognition.
For the full range of governmental manipulation of the cyberspace substrate, the best example of the authoritarian cyber anchor state is China because of its increasingly central role in the technological life of the world and of the comprehensive nature of its internal control of its own cyberspace, sharply contrasting with the westernized model of the open national cyberspace. Furthermore, China promotes itself as such, with policy statements consistently highlighting its exceptional size, stability, and growth in wealth as evidence that the “China Dream” model of governance is better than democracy. China is globally known for its regulation of the content that its citizens are allowed to see. Its internetted cognitive manipulation techniques are widely recognized for their success in manipulating societal pressure in order to install and reinforce spontaneous social censorship as well. Early on in cyberspace’s history, China moved overseas virtually through its “patriotic hacking” to extract billions in technological intellectual property, cash, economic control, and massive amounts of data usable for a wide variety of other campaigns. Chinese leader Xi Jinping himself has acknowledged the power possible in being the nation with more data than any other single state, much of it stolen, coerced, or copied.
Over the past decade, however, Chinese state cyber-attack campaigns have moved beyond economic or espionage objectives to more dedicated, Chinese information campaigns targeting democratic populations, using increasingly sophisticated and effective tools and techniques. The objectives include furthering positive views of China but now also enhancing negative images of democratic leaders seen as obstacles to China’s strategic dominance. More recently China’s information campaigns have adopted methods of infiltration and coercion closely associated with Russian population influence manipulations, especially in Asian nations, but also in European and North American states.
As the authoritarian cyber bad actor state, Russia weaponizes information to an extent and with ubiquitous global reach that the old Soviet leaders could have only dreamt. Putin’s kleptocracy has transferred information tools from its Soviet history and more recent criminal past consistently to its phishing and other deceptive campaigns inducing westernized populations to allow malicious software to be installed on their machines. Russia’s pathologically aggrieved revisionist history narrative is used to deepen cybered societal control at home. Even before the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian operatives had already laid the groundwork of misleading reports and falsifications around the world in order to build a global acceptance of, or at least confusion about, the conflict. In Putin’s resurgent Soviet-style Russia, cyberspace has become a major vector of government intervention in a weak emulation of China. Moreover, cyber-skilled criminals face jail or becoming state-directed proxies while social media troll farms implement information campaigns locally and globally through open cyber connections, inserting disruptive, false narratives into democratic political systems across the globe.
New Narrative Required Across Collective Cyber Defense
Democracies are on their back feet in the pervasive great systems conflict already underway in this century. Yet two items—one a traumatic event and the other a self-evident but not yet obvious or implemented solution—offer some optimism. The first is the Russo-Ukrainian War, which has unified democratic societies in ways only a common, clear-cut, and imminent enemy with destructive strategies can. While it is not clear how long this relative unity will last, that it emerged despite the very clear Russian energy leverage over Europe is encouraging indeed.
The second is the rising tide of calls for collective cyber defense to compensate for the overwhelming scale of the authoritarian assaults on consolidated democracies. One idea—a cyber operational resilience alliance—offers a vision of a future where the governments of the consolidated democracies and their telecommunications and IT capital goods actors coalesce to defend democratic information technologies. The objectives are to unite in order to scale up to meet the demographic scale and strategic coherence of China, to buy time to build out current defenses in a federated, multinational, private-public defense system, and then to transform the underlying substrate in ways that preclude this level of system threat from emerging again while reintroducing the safe, democratic, resilience internet envision from the outset.
Consolidated democracies constitute less than ten percent of the globe’s population, and democracy itself is a much more fragile minority regime than is understood. A new collective narrative and action—even in unwanted places—is essential to ensure democracy’s survival and prosperity in a future, deeply cybered, hostile, and increasingly authoritarian world.
With degrees in engineering, economics, and comparative complex organizations / political science, Dr. Chris C. Demchak is Grace Hopper Chair of Cyber Security and Senior Cyber Scholar, Cyber Innovation Policy Institute, US Naval War College. She studies cyberspace as an insecure, conflictual system, emerging technologies as its offspring, and collective resilience to complex systems’ surprise as critical to the future of democracy.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: J.M. Eddins Jr., US Air Force
22. The weaponizing of smartphone location data on the battlefield
The weaponizing of smartphone location data on the battlefield - Help Net Security
For soldiers on the battlefield, the act of turning on one’s smartphone has been described as the digital equivalent of lighting a cigarette, as doing so creates a signal about one’s location that can be picked up by the enemy. Despite this, smartphones have played a meaningful role in recent conflicts, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, where the devices have been used for communicating in the event of radio failure, disseminating on-the-ground footage to counter propaganda and maintaining morale by staying in touch with family and friends. How each side collects the adversary’s smartphone location data and shields their own can mean the difference between victory and defeat.
How smartphone location data is obtained
For a country at war, monitoring the cellular networks in the conflict zone provides the most comprehensive view of mobile device activity. But before the conflict even begins, the nation can identify phones of interest, including the devices belonging to soldiers.
Because mobile app location data is often sold to commercial data brokers and then repackaged and sold to individual customers, a country can access such a database and then pick out the phones likely belonging to soldiers. Such devices will ping regularly in the locations of known bases or other military facilities. It’s even possible to identify the owner of a device by tracking the phone to its home address and then referencing publicly available information.
A country can also use information obtained from one or more data breaches to inform their devices of interest. The T-Mobile breach in 2021 demonstrated how much customer data is in the hands of a mobile operator, including a phone’s unique identifier (IMEI) and its SIM card’s identifier (IMSI).
Spies can also physically monitor known military sites and use devices known as IMSI catchers – essentially fake cell towers – to collect phone data from the phones in the vicinity. The Kremlin reportedly did this in the UK, with GRU officers gathering near some of the UK’s most sensitive military sites.
When a phone of interest appears on the monitored mobile network, the country can keep a close eye on the device’s location and other cellular data. The presence of two or more such devices in close proximity indicates that a mission may be taking place.
In addition to monitoring cell networks, a nation at war can utilize IMSI catchers on the battlefield to gather phone data for the purposes of locating and identifying devices. Location can be determined by triangulating signal strengths from nearby cell towers or by pinging a targeted device’s GPS system. Russia’s Leer-3 electronic warfare system, which consists of two drones containing IMSI catchers along with a command truck, can locate up to 2,000 phones within a 3.7-mile range.
To counter these location-finding drones, an opposing nation may jam a drone’s GPS signal, using a radio emitter to block the drone from receiving GPS signals. The country can also try GPS spoofing, employing a radio transmitter to corrupt the accuracy of the drone’s reported location. To counter such spoofing, systems for validating GPS signals have been deployed on the battlefield. In the larger picture, the corruptibility of GPS data has forced some nations to build their own geopositioning systems. For the US, M-Code serves as a military-only GPS signal that is both more accurate and provides anti-jamming and anti-spoofing capabilities.
Spyware is a more targeted approach to obtaining location data. It can be delivered over the cell network (via a malicious carrier update) or through an IMSI catcher. It’s also not uncommon for operators to pose as single women on social media sites to lure soldiers into downloading a malicious app. Hamas has reportedly used this tactic many times against Israeli soldiers. Such spyware can capture a device’s real-time location, among other capabilities.
The risks of captured smartphone location data
Of all the signals given off by smartphones in the normal course of operation, location data is perhaps the most valuable during battle. Unlike captured conversations or call metadata, location data is actionable immediately. Location data can reveal troop movements, supply routes and even daily routines. A cluster of troops in a given location may signal an important location. Aggregated location data can also reveal associations between different groups.
The obvious risk to soldiers is that their location data can be used by the enemy to direct targeted attacks against them. Notably, it has been reported that a Russian general and his staff were killed in an airstrike in the early weeks of the invasion after his phone call was intercepted and geolocated by the Ukrainians.
Short of lethal strikes, location data can be used to inform a country’s strategy. For example, Russia’s phone data-collecting drone flights over Poland and the Baltic states in 2017 suggested to military experts that the country was trying to monitor troop levels at NATO’s new bases to see if there were more forces present there than the alliance had disclosed publicly.
Smartphone location data countermeasures
To counter the capture of location data from soldiers’ smartphones, many countries have understandably banned the presence of these devices on the battlefield. In 2019, for instance, Russia’s parliament unanimously voted to ban smartphones and tablets from being used by on-duty armed forces.
However, banning mobile device usage by soldiers who have never known a world without smartphones has its limitations. Since the invasion began, there have been multiple instances of Russian commanders confiscating their subordinates’ personal phones for fear that they would unwittingly give away the locations of their units.
Short of an outright ban, soldiers may be encouraged to mind their SIM cards. Ukrainian soldiers have been advised to obtain a SIM card in the conflict zone, which helps shield a device’s identity. During the war in Afghanistan, some top Taliban leaders played SIM card roulette, randomly distributing SIM cards at frequent intervals to elude American trackers.
Soldiers are also advised to shield their true locations when smartphones are used. Ukrainian soldiers, for example, are instructed to walk at least 1,600 feet away from their squad position in order to make a phone call, ideally to an area with many civilians. Soldiers can also use a Faraday case to cloak their direction of travel, first heading in the wrong direction before placing their phone in the case. Using a Faraday case is a safer option than turning off the phone, as powering off is a signal in its own right that can invite additional scrutiny, and as the phone may have been hacked to appear to be off when it’s in fact still on and transmitting signals to the enemy.
What’s at stake
Smartphones are so ubiquitous that their presence on the battlefield is inevitable, even when they’ve been prohibited or otherwise discouraged from use due to lethal consequences. But each location ping gives the enemy another signal that may ultimately culminate in a targeted missile strike or an improved defensive posture. The side that can best fight this information battle very likely has the upper hand in winning the war.
23. Iran’s Increasingly Decentralized Axis of Resistance
Excerpts:
Paradoxically, decentralization reduces the direct utility of the axis as a tool of Iranian foreign policy but improves its resilience and capabilities. Partners may take actions that run counter to Iranian interests, such as attacks that threaten the future of the nuclear deal or rapprochement with the United Arab Emirates. But Iran also gains a denser defensive network with more plausible deniability to respond to threats from opponents.
Nonetheless, securing the benefits of this new organizational model requires maintaining a degree of ideological and political coherence. Here, domestic upheavals and divergent interests will generate the next set of challenges for the axis of resistance. As members are increasingly resilient and can tap into horizontal networks for support, their incentive to respect Iranian orders will likely decrease. If Iran did rejoin the nuclear deal, for example, some of its partners might refuse to comply with the necessary conditions. So far, the axis remains sufficiently aligned for everyone within it to benefit. But local political resistance and stronger international opponents could eventually make the axis so decentralized that it comes apart.
Iran’s Increasingly Decentralized Axis of Resistance - War on the Rocks
After Iran’s allies lost ground in recent elections in Lebanon and Iraq, international observers began asking whether Tehran’s regional influence was slipping. On May 15, Lebanon’s voters denied Hizballah and its allies the majority they had enjoyed over the past 15 years. A few months earlier, Iran’s close allies in Iraq — the Fateh alliance — suffered a much larger blow as its opponents established a clear parliamentary majority against it. Nonetheless, both Hizballah and Fateh’s coalition secured a significantly larger number of votes than their opponents in absolute terms and still managed to steer post-election politics as they desired. These developments certainly reflect new challenges that Iran is facing. But they also portend a new, more decentralized approach to axis management that could help protect Iranian interests in the long run.
Over the years, Iran has been agile in devising tactical responses to regional developments. It supported Iraqis when they were threatened by the Islamic State’s onslaught in 2014 and managed to continue sponsoring Hamas despite the Israeli blockade of Gaza. However, Iran’s fast-growing array of partners, combined with shifting regional and domestic realities, have made it increasingly difficult for Tehran to respond to emerging threats. For example, the Iraqi and Lebanese elections both followed widespread protests in Baghdad and Beirut that called for radical political reform and the expulsion of foreign actors — Iran among them. This has forced some of Iran’s partners to distance themselves either politically or rhetorically from Tehran to retain their domestic legitimacy. And this comes as Iran was already dealing with challenges created by the overextension of its regional network, a weak economy, and divisions within the Shiite community over the doctrinal status of Iranian clerics.
The result is that the “axis of resistance” is now shifting from a hierarchical, Iran-centric network to a decentralized horizontal structure that facilitates greater autonomy for its members. The breakdown of Tehran’s control may well lead to partners taking uncoordinated actions that threaten Iranian interests. But the benefits for Iran and the network remain greater. More autonomy gives Iran the plausible deniability to distance itself from its partners’ provocations while still seeking their support when needed.
Causes of Decentralization
Iran’s axis of resistance consists of a network of political parties and armed groups that span Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen. It is ideologically connected by the joint struggle of these actors against Israel, the United States, and their allies, and it is operationally supported by the Quds Force — the external arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The different nodes of the network were always linked to Tehran with various degrees of intensity, but recently they have become more autonomous.
Three main factors have contributed to this shift. To begin with, the size of the axis and the strength of its members have grown substantially. This makes it more difficult for Tehran to maintain a set of ideological principles and political priorities across this network. Second, the network’s central organization made it vulnerable to disruption by the assassination of senior commanders like Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Finally, for Iran’s partners, political power also brought new challenges. Where they joined ruling coalitions, as in Lebanon and Iraq, they became part of corrupt political systems and were seen as complicit in the injustice they claimed to resist.
Paradox of Power
Historically, the different components of the axis of resistance emerged independently in response to the struggles faced by different Shiite populations: the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon in 1982; Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran in 1980; his oppression and exclusion of Iraq’s Shiite community after 1991; the rise of the Islamic State in 2014; and the Persian Gulf monarchies’ hostile stance towards Shiism, most recently demonstrated by Saudi Arabia’s execution of more than 40 Shiite citizens. Iran played a leading role in nurturing local resistance, an effort that was underpinned by a shared Shiite ideology of suffering and social justice.
But recent decades have seen a significant improvement in the political positions of Shiite populations, particularly with fall of Iraq’s Baath regime in 2003 and the liberation of South Lebanon by Hizballah in 2005. With Shiite empowerment across the region, the core notion of “resisting oppression” has lost some of its resonance. Thus, some of Iran’s powerful allies, such as the Badr organization and Asaib ahl al-Haq in Iraq, have emancipated themselves from Tehran’s guidance and increasingly charted their own course. Lebanon’s Hizballah has also become more independent in a number of ways including its approach to domestic politics and its conduct of military operations.
The erosion of Iran’s central control has also been visible in Syria. In November 2021, the Quds Force’s chief commander there, Gen. Javad Ghaffari, was removed from his post. Although Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-affiliated media claimed that Ghaffari left Syria after his mission ended, his removal reportedly occurred at the request of Syrian President Bashar al Assad. In Yemen, the relationship between Tehran and the Houthis, which was already weaker than that with other allies, eroded further when Iran refused to back the movement’s January 2022 attack against the United Arab Emirates. As the attacks occurred just when Iran sought to improve bilateral relations with Abu Dhabi, Tehran signaled its displeasure with the Houthis by announcing that “military strikes are not the solution to the Yemeni crisis.”
The Perils of Hierarchy
The January 2020 killing of Soleimani created a major challenge for Iran’s top-down network. Soleimani had unparalleled influence over Iran’s partners. This gave him the ability to direct their domestic decision-making in accordance with Iranian interests. But this influence was personal and not institutionalized in the Quds Force or beyond it. As the network’s architect, Soleimani personally acted as the chief commander and political coordinator of Iranian-backed armed groups. Next in the chain of command were top field commanders operating under Soleimani’s direct supervision, such as Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Gen. Hosein Hadamadi in Syria (assassinated in 2015), Abu Mahdi al Muhandis in Iraq (assassinated in 2020), and Imad Mughniyeh in Lebanon (assassinated in 2008). All of these killings undermined the strategic coherence and operational performance of a network built on personal ties. Now, Soleimani’s successor, Brig. Gen. Esmail Qaani is struggling to direct a network he himself did not create. The very strength of the axis became its core weakness.
The effect of Soleimani’s absence was compounded in Iraq by the simultaneous assassination of al Muhandis, who had maintained harmony among the country’s various Shiite groups. This is now proving to be an impossible task for Qaani. Several senior Iranian representatives have had to step in to restore Iran’s influence, including the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani, the former head of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence Hossein Taeb, former intelligence minister Mahmoud Alavi, and delegates from Lebanon’s Hizballah. Despite this, Iran faced defiance from its Iraqi partners during several recent incidents. They rejected Tehran’s request for calm during nuclear talks with the United States, as well as Tehran’s earlier plea to sit out the remainder of President Donald Trump’s term without creating an excuse for U.S. intervention. The loudest of the defiant voices has been Qais al Khazali, leader of Iraq’s Asaib Ahl al-Haq. In public statements, he directly defied Iran’s directives, claiming that he would continue to target the U.S. “occupier” and that this decision was an Iraqi one.
Failure to Deliver
Axis of resistance members are also increasingly struggling to deliver to their local constituents. Even though Lebanon and Iraq’s Shiite communities have experienced a substantial political revival under the leadership of Iranian allied groups, these military and political victories have not translated into substantial socioeconomic gains. In late 2019, demonstrations against corruption and a lack of economic reforms erupted in both countries. These protests rocked Shiite towns and cities (especially in Iraq), revealing that Iran’s allies were not delivering for their supporters — let alone for citizens at large. Having prided themselves for decades on protecting the impoverished and fighting injustice, Iran and its partners are now part of corrupt political regimes in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq that work against the people. In Iraq, Iranian-backed Shiite groups such as Badr, Asaib, and Kataib Hizballah are afraid of losing their influence and political relevance after significant losses in recent elections. Meanwhile, Iran’s most important regional ally, Hizballah, has also come under unprecedented internal and external pressure. The Lebanese organization is increasingly blamed by opponents for the country’s severe political and economic crises. This was seen as the main reason anti-Hizballah opposition groups gained ground in the country’s May 2022 elections.
The Decentralized Axis in Action
However, these developments do not mean that Iran’s axis is disintegrating. Instead, it is transforming from a highly centralized network to a more participatory and decentralized one. In recent years, “mutual assistance” among Iran’s partners has grown. Hizballah, for example, plays a decisive role in consolidating the axis: It joined Hamas in rejecting Arab normalization agreements with Israel and has worked to restore the group’s ties with the Syrian regime. Hizballah also mediated between Iraqi Shiite factions over the past year and is said to influence negotiations between Houthis and the United Arab Emirates.
Cooperation between Iranian partners is not a recent trend: As early as December 1983, Lebanese Hizballah and Iraqi Dawa operatives worked together to attack a series of targets in Kuwait. But in recent years, Iran has consciously encouraged such efforts, particularly the exchange of military expertise and asymmetric warfare tactics. Today, Iraqi and Lebanese groups have deployed expeditionary forces in Syria and elsewhere, while providing advanced training for other Shiite forces. Hizballah has trained the Houthis in explosive drones and guerilla warfare in designated camps. Houthi operatives claimed in an interview with the authors that the group provided on-site training and advice to Palestinian Hamas members during Israel’s May 2021 offensive against Gaza. Even more recently, Iraqi factions have shown their support for the Houthis, in defiance of Iran, by launching one of their own attacks against the United Arab Emirates.
New financial constraints have also driven cooperation. Since 2018, the U.S. government has pursued a “maximum pressure” policy designed to alter the course of Iran’s foreign and security policies. The strategy relies heavily on sanctions, which have pushed Iranian-linked groups to diversify their funding sources. As a result, they have collaboratively expanded their portfolios with activities such as smuggling drugs and selling counterfeit products. This has had the side effect of embedding these groups more deeply in the local political economy and developing intra-axis contacts independent of Iran. As a New York Times investigation reported last year, the Fourth Armored Division of the Syrian Army, commanded by Bashir al Assad’s younger brother, has worked with Syrian intelligence services and other regime-linked warlords to establish a network for smuggling captagon across the Middle East. Lebanese and Iraqi law enforcement officials have said that Hizballah increasingly relies on drug trafficking, with the help of the Syrian regime, to pay its fighters, buy weapons, and provide social services. Various pro-Iranian paramilitary groups in Iraq, such as Kataib Hizballah, are known to exploit drug trafficking for similar ends.
Similarly, as sanctions and Israeli airstrikes have made weapon and technology transfers harder, Iran’s allies have worked with one another to develop their own missile production capabilities. For example, Hizballah efforts to indigenously produce precision-guided missiles have resulted in development of a number of military industries in Lebanon and Syria. In 2019, Iran boasted of its ability to equip its partners in the Gaza Strip with rocket technology. In Yemen, a land mine production facility has been established in Sa’ada, producing about 20 tons of mines per day. In Iraq, Shiite resistance groups have built their own unmanned aerial vehicles. Although these groups will continue to benefit from Iranian military assistance, their dependence on Iranian weapons and parts is declining as self-production expands.
Such inter-group assistance deepens mutual commitment among axis members while significantly reducing dependence on Iran for operational and financial support. It also means that an attack on one of the nodes of the network increasingly risks a response by other nodes. Finally, it diversifies the resources available to both Iran and other axis members to survive sanctions, pressure, or direct attacks.
Conclusion
In constructing an “axis of resistance” throughout the Middle East, Qassem Soleimani built strategic consensus between heterogeneous organizations that did not necessarily have direct ideological links to Iran. Though he ran the network in a highly personalized manner, he also helped lay the basis for the more decentralized model emerging today. Soleimani was never interested in cultivating a group of completely dependent proxies. Instead, he sought to help regional partners develop their own defense industries and integrate into the political and economic life of their own countries.
Paradoxically, decentralization reduces the direct utility of the axis as a tool of Iranian foreign policy but improves its resilience and capabilities. Partners may take actions that run counter to Iranian interests, such as attacks that threaten the future of the nuclear deal or rapprochement with the United Arab Emirates. But Iran also gains a denser defensive network with more plausible deniability to respond to threats from opponents.
Nonetheless, securing the benefits of this new organizational model requires maintaining a degree of ideological and political coherence. Here, domestic upheavals and divergent interests will generate the next set of challenges for the axis of resistance. As members are increasingly resilient and can tap into horizontal networks for support, their incentive to respect Iranian orders will likely decrease. If Iran did rejoin the nuclear deal, for example, some of its partners might refuse to comply with the necessary conditions. So far, the axis remains sufficiently aligned for everyone within it to benefit. But local political resistance and stronger international opponents could eventually make the axis so decentralized that it comes apart.
Nancy Ezzeddine is a research fellow at Clingendael’s Conflict Research Unit. In this capacity, she explores identity politics and the use of religion as a means of political mobilization in the Levant. Her recent work focuses on the interplay between sectarian constituencies, patronage politics, and transnational militancy in Iraq and Lebanon.
Dr. HamidReza Azizi is a research associate at Clingendael’s Conflict Research Unit and a CATS fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin. His research interests include security and geopolitical issues in the Middle East and Central Eurasia, Iran’s foreign policy, and Iran-Russia relations. Azizi holds a Ph.D. in regional studies from the University of Tehran. He was an assistant professor of regional studies at Shahid Beheshti University (2016–2020) and a guest lecturer in the Department of Regional Studies at the University of Tehran (2016–2018).
24. For Richer or for Poorer: Security Cooperation with Developing Countries
Words and definitions matter.
Excerpt:
Rethinking the definition of “developing country” under Section 312 is key to maintaining sustained relationships between the Department of Defense and countries in the near-abroad: Latin America. Insisting on a definition that doesn’t capture the full reality of the region paints the United States as a partner that can be demanding and inconsistent, a less attractive proposition than that of some of the U.S. competitors in the region. Crafting a definition that takes into account the economic characteristics of the region increases transparency and understanding and better positions the United States to be the partner of choice. Good partnerships prevail through richer and poorer, and so too should the partnership between the United States and Latin America.
For Richer or for Poorer: Security Cooperation with Developing Countries - War on the Rocks
This month, the U.S. Department of Defense found out that it cannot fund mil-to-mil engagements, training, and exercises, or do most of the activities that fall under the general heading of “security cooperation,” in Panama and Chile. The decision in this case is driven not by the domestic political dynamics of these countries but on their income levels. Both Chile’s Gabriel Boric and Panama’s Laurentino Cortizo attended the Summit of the Americas this month in Los Angeles, likely a strong signal of their interest in continuing a strong relationship with the United States. But Chile last year was classified as a high-income economy by the World Bank and passed the income threshold again this year. Panama has been classified as such in years past, then dropped to a lower income level, only to rise again to high income according to the World Bank country groupings released on July 1. Since they are high-income, the Department of Defense cannot fund the security cooperation activities authorized in Chapter 16, which are nearly all security cooperation activities.
U.S. Code (Title 10, Section 312) specifies that security cooperation funds “may be used only for the payment of expenses of, and special compensation for, personnel from developing countries.” The same section explains that the term “‘developing country’ has the meaning prescribed by the Secretary of Defense.” The current iteration of that meaning is outlined in a memo from the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy dated May 15, 2017. The memo specifies that countries are considered “developing” if they are not “high income” on the World Bank classification of countries. The World Bank releases its country groupings by year in July, and that classification governs spending for the following year: The classification released next month decides whether or not the United States can spend security cooperation money on Panama for all of Fiscal Year 23. The decision impacts cooperation from July to the following June. It’s not synched to the fiscal year calendar, which means that theoretically if a country is announced as high-income next week, security cooperation activities that rely on Section 312 would stop immediately for the rest of the fiscal year and halfway into the following calendar year.
In this sense, the World Bank classification decides who the Department of Defense can engage in security cooperation with. The secretary of defense can “authorize the payment of such expenses and special compensation for personnel from a country other than a developing country” on a case-by-case basis. Exceptions have to be requested by individual Department of Defense components and have to be justified as “necessary to respond to extraordinary circumstances and is in the national security interest of the United States.” Such a threshold can be difficult to meet in almost any case, and all the more so in the case of countries in the developing world. In practice, if a country rises to “high income,” U.S. spending on security cooperation with that country will all but disappear.
The World Bank employs a rigorous system to sort countries by income. The Bank classifies countries with reference to their per capita gross national income (GNI) calculated using the Atlas method. GNI is the sum total of the money earned by the country’s people and businesses regardless of where they are located. It’s a larger number than gross domestic product (GDP), which looks only at what is produced within the country’s borders. The Atlas method smooths fluctuations in prices and exchange rates. To keep the income classification thresholds fixed in real terms, the thresholds are adjusted annually for inflation using the Special Drawing Rights deflator. For the country groupings released in July 2021, a country is classified as high income if its GNI per capita (using the Atlas method) rises above $12,695.
Most countries in the Latin American and Caribbean region have never broken into the high-income category: Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras. These are countries with which security cooperation has been enduring over time (or at least hasn’t been hampered by restrictions related to income). However, since 2000, six countries in the region have made it to high income: Antigua and Barbuda (2002), Barbados (2000), Chile (2012), Panama (2017), St Kitts and Nevis (2011), and Uruguay (2012). Of these, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, and Panama have since slid down.
Barbados has had a roller-coaster ride. The Caribbean nation of 287,000 people was high income in 2000 and 2001, high income (and thus ineligible for U.S. security cooperation money) the following year, then back to upper-middle income in 2003-2005. In 2006, it broke through to high income again and has stayed there. Last year, its GNI per capita was $14,350, less than $2,000 above the cutoff line. Its entire GDP of $4.42 billion is closer to its most famous citizen’s net worth (Rihanna’s net worth is $1.7 billion) than it is to its closest high-income neighbor’s GDP (Trinidad and Tobago’s GDP is $21.59 billion). Though Barbados has achieved high levels of human development (measured adding years of schooling and life expectancy to GNI per capita), its national income has been the component of development that has increased the slowest. National income is key to spending on security and security cooperation. Barbados’ GNI per capita of $14,350 is a third of that of Canada, a country that shares the same classification as the Caribbean island.
Panama, home of the Panama Canal and at one time the headquarters for U.S. Southern Command, has had a similar journey. The Central American country’s GNI rose enough to make it to high income in 2017 and remained that way until 2020, when it dipped into upper-middle status. The years that Panama was a high-income country coincided with the establishment of Section 312. During this time, funding for security cooperation activities was restricted. This meant that, for example, military personnel could attend training in the United States if Panama covered the cost (or the Defense Department component organizing the training obtained a waiver). In 2020, Panama’s GNI per capita fell to $12,420, which means that in FY21 and FY22 the country’s armed forces were eligible for security cooperation funding. The World Bank’s own reporting suggests that Panama’s income has since recovered, potentially making it again too rich for cooperation from the United States.
Though the issue of restricting security cooperation to developing countries as defined by the World Bank is important in Latin America, this is not the only region where this has happened. In Africa, Equatorial Guinea and Mauritius both slid out of the high-income group (in 2015 and 2020, respectively) but might rise again. Equatorial Guinea almost certainly will. Oil rents account for over a fifth of the country’s income. The current increase in oil prices could cause Equatorial Guinea’s GNI to rise so significantly that it crosses the high-income threshold. In Europe, Croatia, Hungary, Latvia, and Malta have all risen into high income only to drop again and rise again. In Asia, Nauru has had the same fate. The impact of the changes in these countries might not be as strong as it is in Latin America. The Defense Department’s emphasis on strategic competition means that funding for activities in all these countries could be easily justified as necessary to compete with Russia and China. To be clear, though, Russia is competing for Latin America. Just this week, Nicaragua authorized Russian troops, planes, and ships to enter the Central American country for training and other purposes. China is also investing and competing for Latin America and doing so without income-related restrictions.
Limiting security cooperation funding to countries with incomes below a certain threshold decreases the Department of Defense’s ability to compete effectively in the developing world. While the United States strives to be the “partner of choice” to countries in the Americas, its limits on cooperation risk making it unreliable one. Rather than being a steadfast, trustworthy partner, restricting cooperation and tying the restrictions to a level of income suggests that unlike committed partners that promise to stay together for richer or for poorer, the United States is ready to step aside should its partner’s situation improve.
The case of cooperation with Panama is perhaps the most concerning in the region. The World Bank listed the country as high income for the first time in July 2018 (using data from 2017). This meant that for FY2019 (which started in October of 2018) the Department of Defense could not fund security cooperation activities with Panama because the country was no longer a “developing country” under the definition adopted by the secretary of defense. Just a year before Panama crossed into high income, the country had made another major switch: It went from recognizing Taiwan to recognizing the People’s Republic of China. The announcement came in June 2017. In July 2018, the World Bank announced the change to Panama’s classification. In October 2018, Department of Defense funding for security cooperation with Panama was restricted under Section 312 right as Beijing was rolling in to wow its new partner. Proposed Chinese investments in Panama included bridges, ports, and even a cruise-ship terminal. The nascent relationship between Panama and China hasn’t included significant security cooperation yet, though likely scrutiny from President Cortizo and domestic dynamics in Panama are the main reason for this.
The restrictions on security cooperation funding to developing countries do not affect all forms of cooperation to the region. Security assistance efforts authorized under Title 22 of the U.S. Code are administered by the State Department, not by the Department of Defense, and thus are not subject to the same restrictions. This restriction affects specifically the aspects of the relationship that are managed by the Department of Defense, which include efforts as varied as combined exercises and defense institution legal capacity-building. This distinction might be well understood by American bureaucrats but does not translate well to the region, especially to partners that are sifting through more than one proposal when they make decisions about security and defense.
To remain competitive in the region, the United States should fully embody the trustworthy partner of choice it aspires to be. Doing so might require rethinking what constitutes a developing country for the purposes of security cooperation. The restrictions described here came into effect only in NDAA2017. Five years in, it’s a good time to reconsider this definition. The World Bank country groupings have a sound methodological foundation but are inconsistent with a goal of sustained engagement. A better strategy might be to continue to follow the World Bank income groups but allow for countries to be considered “not-developing” only after they have crossed the income threshold and remained high income for five consecutive years. This approach would maintain consistency with other government agencies that also use the World Bank’s definition and would allow an off-ramp that could afford these countries the opportunity to plan ahead for reduced security cooperation from the United States.
Rethinking the definition of “developing country” under Section 312 is key to maintaining sustained relationships between the Department of Defense and countries in the near-abroad: Latin America. Insisting on a definition that doesn’t capture the full reality of the region paints the United States as a partner that can be demanding and inconsistent, a less attractive proposition than that of some of the U.S. competitors in the region. Crafting a definition that takes into account the economic characteristics of the region increases transparency and understanding and better positions the United States to be the partner of choice. Good partnerships prevail through richer and poorer, and so too should the partnership between the United States and Latin America.
Fabiana Sofia Perera is an associate professor at the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies and a non-resident fellow at the Modern War Institute.
25. Iraq, Afghanistan veteran from Hawaii takes command of Army group on Okinawa
Two logisticians with strong ties to SOF. Good for 1-1 SFG At Torii Station.
Iraq, Afghanistan veteran from Hawaii takes command of Army group on Okinawa
Army Col. Ned Holt accepts the unit colors and takes command of the 10th Support Group at Torii Station, Okinawa, Thursday, July 14, 2022. (U.S. Army)
TORII STATION, Okinawa — A veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan with experience in the Pacific took command Thursday of the Army’s 10th Support Group on Okinawa.
Col. Ned Holt, a native of Fulton, Mo., took over from Col. Chris Paone, whose tenure was dominated by the coronavirus pandemic.
The changeover took place at the Yomitan beach where the U.S. 10th Army landed in 1945 during the Battle of Okinawa. The island prefecture still has a role on the global stage, the commander of U.S. Army Japan said at the ceremony.
“Today, Japan and the island of Okinawa are a part of the most consequential place during one of the most consequential times in history,” said Maj. Gen. Joel Vowell.
Without naming China, Russia and North Korea, he referred to “three potential adversaries” who “don’t have our best interests in mind.”
Vowell said Holt possesses "invaluable experience almost personally tailored for his new position.”
Holt last served as deputy logistics director, and before that chief of plans and exercises, for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command at Camp H.M. Smith, Hawaii, group spokesman Staff Sgt. Christopher Schmiett said prior to Thursday’s ceremony.
The Missouri native previously commanded the 7th Group Support Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne), at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., and served as assistant chief of staff for logistics at the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii.
He has bachelor’s degrees in history and political science from Louisiana State University and a master’s degree in diplomacy from Hawaii Pacific University. Holt also did two tours in South Korea.
Army Col. Ned Holt, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan with experience in the Pacific, took command of the 10th Support Group at Torii Station, Okinawa, Thursday, July 14, 2022. (Matthew M. Burke/Stars and Stripes)
The 10th Support Group is composed of approximately 5,000 soldiers, family members and Japanese employees spread between Okinawa and Camp Zama, the headquarters 26 miles southwest of Tokyo of U.S. Army Japan, Schmiett said. The group is the senior command for all Army organizations on Okinawa and provides logistical support and sustainment to the joint force and American units in the Indo-Pacific area of operations.
The group commander is the Army’s senior logistician in Japan, Vowell said.
Holt kept his remarks brief Thursday as soldiers swayed under Okinawa’s searing summer sun and 80% humidity.
“I’m inspired by your tenacity over the last 2 ½ years, while operating in a challenging COVID environment,” he said. “I look forward to working with each and every one of you.”
Paone, a native of Ramsey, N.J., heads to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., to serve as logistics officer for Special Operations Command, according to 10th Support Group spokesman Maj. Richard Barker. A veteran of Afghanistan, Paone is also a Bronze Star recipient.
Paone joined the support group in July 2020, with the pandemic well underway on Okinawa. Despite that, he shepherded the force through 10 Pacific Pathways exercises, which sustained over 60,000 U.S. and allied troops across seven countries, and countless other exercises, Vowell said.
He also expanded the Army’s footprint on the high seas, with 10th Support Group vessels participating in 37 transportation missions in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Australia, Paone said.
25. Rubio, Scott Urge Army, Air Force to Address Lack of Childcare for 7th Special Forces Group
Thank you Senator.
Rubio, Scott Urge Army, Air Force to Address Lack of Childcare for 7th Special Forces Group
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Rick Scott (R-FL) sent a letter to U.S. Army Secretary Christine Wormuth and U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall regarding the lack of childcare facilities for members of the 7th Special Forces Group (7th SFG) at Camp Bull Simons on Eglin Air Force Base. The senators initially raised this concern in February 2020.
“Those who raise their hand and volunteer to serve in our armed forces, and their families, make great sacrifices to protect and defend our nation,” the senators wrote. “They require their leaders to deliver what was promised when they signed up. When we fail to deliver for our service members, lethality declines, quality of life drops, morale plummets, and retention rates fall.”
We write to express our continued concern with the ongoing lack of child care for our U.S. Army 7th Special Forces Group operators and families at Camp Bull Simons on Eglin Air Force Base (AFB). We continue to hear from many in the community about the lack of access to a Child Development Center (CDC) due to long distances and lengthy waiting lists. The stories are heart-wrenching, and the impact this is having on both families and readiness is unacceptable.
Since our February 2020 letter to then U.S. Army Secretary McCarthy, we have engaged the leadership of Eglin AFB and held discussions with others across the U.S. Department of Defense to better understand the problem, make sure the appropriate teams were communicating with one another, and find a path forward. After these discussions, we are concerned with the shortcomings by the Air Force in facilitating an appropriate and timely solution for the impacted soldiers of 7th SFG on Camp Bull Simons.
While we are grateful for the temporary solution of partnering with two private childcare facilities in Okaloosa and Santa Rosa Counties, one of these facilities will not be operational for some time. The other is nearly an hour drive, each way, from the 7th SFG compound. Further, neither facility has the capacity to meet the demand of the community, many of whom do not put themselves on the waitlist for main base Eglin’s CDC because the cost of gas and time spent traveling is prohibitive. The lack of urgency and failure to understand the depth of the impact this is having on our operators is growing increasingly frustrating for us and for our constituents.
We are pursuing language in the Fiscal Year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act to work toward rectifying this wrong as quickly as possible, but the decision to take care of our operators and their families comes down to the two of you. It is critical to provide a solution to the acute short-term need, and be forward looking to find a solution capable of accommodating the right number of children at a location that is easily accessible for the operators serving at Camp Bull Simons.
Those who raise their hand and volunteer to serve in our armed forces, and their families, make great sacrifices to protect and defend our nation. They require their leaders to deliver what was promised when they signed up. When we fail to deliver for our service members, lethality declines, quality of life drops, morale plummets, and retention rates fall. Further, we have recently learned of the alarming decline in recruitment, which is to be expected when the Department of Defense continues to fail our service members and their families.
As the Army dictum goes: “mission first, people always.” We must take concrete steps to ensure that this is more than just a slogan. Taking care of our operators’ children is an obvious place to start, and addressing this issue must be a top priority.
Thank you for your attention to this important matter.
Sincerely,
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
