Quotes of the Day:

"Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“No matter what anyone says, just show up and do the work. If they praise you, show up and do the work. If they criticize you, show up and do the work. If no one even notices you, just show up and do the work. Just keep showing up, doing the work, and leading the way.” 

- Jon Gordon

"I would rather have questions that cannot be answered than answers that cannot be questioned."

- Richard Feynman, Physicist

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 11, 2023

2. The 'morale challenge' facing some special operators in the era of Great Power competition

3. Perspective: Time for a Commission on Information Warfare

4. Special operations role in great power competition needs work

5. U.S. Military Observers And Why They Are Needed In Ukraine

6. Russia denies reports of Ukrainian breakthroughs along front lines

7. Debt-Ceiling Fight Weighs on Defense Industry

8. The U.S. and China Are Finally Talking Again, but Mistrust Clouds Next Steps

9. Ukraine’s Hidden Advantage

10. Why Putin Needs Wagner

11. How Secrecy Limits Diversity

12. China, US Break Diplomatic Deadlock

13. In Defense of Bean Counting: Why Material Measures of National Power Matter

14.  Ukraine’s Dogged Effort to Get Weapons to the Battlefield, Not the Black Market

15. Why China cannot be trusted on Ukraine

16. Ukraine’s cultural counteroffensive: The rush to erase Russia’s imprint

17. Child care debate at Camp Bull Simon continues as families struggle (7th Special Forces)

18. Time for a more unified and decisive ASEAN

19. Is Chinese power about to peak?

20. Kissinger at 100: A Legacy with Lessons for Us All

21. What Ukraine Still Needs to Win

22. War Books: Science Fiction and Modern War

***23. A Quintessential Factor in Strategy Formulation: The Unequal Dialogue

24. Only Humility Can Save Us From AI

25. Signals intelligence teams reposition to face China, Russia

26. China slams Japan after deployment of Patriot PAC-3 missile near Taiwan

27. 'Don't Kill Me': Russian Solider Surrendered to a Drone From Ukraine

28. ‘War Is Fun’: The Navy SEAL Who Went to Ukraine Because He Couldn’t Stop Fighting

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 11, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-11-2023

Key Takeaways

• Ukrainian forces likely broke through some Russian lines in localized counterattacks near Bakhmut, prompting responses from Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD).
• The deployment of low-quality Russian forces on the flanks around Bakhmut suggests that the Russian MoD has largely abandoned the aim of encircling a significant number of Ukrainian forces there.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that Ukraine needs more time to launch a counteroffensive because it is waiting for the delivery of promised military aid.
• Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov contradicted the pre-war Kremlin justifications for the war by asserting that the Russian “special military operation” began as “a conflict between Russia and Ukraine.”
• Unnamed Kremlin sources claimed that Wagner Group Yevgeny Prigozhin’s recent rhetoric is “seriously disturbing the top leadership” of Russia.
• The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) denied Ukrainian and US reports that a Patriot missile defense system shot down a Kinzhal missile on the night of May 4.
• Russian occupation authorities seized the cathedral of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in Simferopol as oppression of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church continues in Russian-occupied Crimea.
• Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks northeast of Kupyansk and along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
• Ukrainian forces reportedly continued to conduct localized counterattacks around Bakhmut.
• Russian forces targeted Ukrainian positions west of Hulyaipole and in Kherson Oblast.
• Russia needs to produce over 29 million shells per year to satisfy Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin’s demands for Wagner to use 80,000 shells per day – 13 times more than Russia’s pre-invasion annual production rate.
• Russian officials continue to threaten and seek to manipulate international humanitarian efforts by threatening to dissolve the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which is set to expire on May 18.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MAY 11, 2023

May 11, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

Kateryna Stepanenko, Grace Mappes, Nicole Wolkov, Layne Philipson, and Frederick W. Kagan

May 11, 2023, 8pm 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.

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Note: The data cutoff for this product was 2:00 pm ET on May 11. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the May 12 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Ukrainian forces likely broke through some Russian lines in localized counterattacks near Bakhmut, prompting responses from Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD). Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Commander Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi stated that Russian forces retreated up to two kilometers behind Russian lines in unspecified sectors of the Bakhmut front.[1] Syrskyi’s confirmation of Ukrainian gains prompted a response from Prigozhin, who claimed that Ukrainian forces have started the counteroffensive and recaptured three kilometers of ground in and around Bakhmut.[2] The Russian MoD acknowledged the Ukrainian counterattacks uncharacteristically quickly, claiming that Russian forces repelled eight ground attacks and three reconnaissance-in-force efforts in the Donetsk direction but denied reports that Ukrainian forces broke through the Russian defensive lines.[3] Prigozhin’s and the MoD’s responses are reflective of increased panic in the Russian information space over speculations about planned Ukrainian counteroffensives and indicate increased concern among Wagner and Russian MoD leadership as well as reflecting Kremlin guidance to avoid downplaying Ukrainian successes.[4]

The deployment of low-quality Russian forces on the flanks around Bakhmut suggests that the Russian MoD has largely abandoned the aim of encircling a significant number of Ukrainian forces there. The Russian MoD likely began a broader deprioritization of the Bakhmut effort by January 2023 when the MoD cut off Wagner Group penal recruitment efforts, which likely prompted Prigozhin to ramp up the Soledar-Bakhmut effort in January and publicly complain about the lack of MoD support for his efforts starting in February 2023.[5] The Russian MoD briefly allocated more resources to the Bakhmut front line in March and April by sending T-90 tanks and Russian Airborne (VDV) forces to the Bakhmut area and assigning mobilized reservists to Wagner, however.[6] Prigozhin claimed on April 24 that the Russian MoD only deployed irregular and degraded units to hold Bakhmut’s flanks, and the inability of these units to fulfill even this limited mission indicates that Russian flanks in Bakhmut and other similarly-manned areas of the front are likely vulnerable to Ukrainian counterattacks.[7] The MoD’s allocation of forces combined with changes in the geometry of the battlespace also suggests that the danger of a Russian encirclement of significant Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut may have passed. Wagner forces will likely continue conducting frontal assaults in Bakhmut, which would allow Ukrainian forces to conduct organized withdrawals from threatened areas in a shallower partial envelopment rather than facing encirclement on a large scale.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that Ukraine needs more time to launch a counteroffensive because it is waiting for the delivery of promised military aid. Zelensky told the BBC that some of the expected military equipment has not arrived in Ukraine and that, although Ukrainian forces are ready for the counteroffensive, Ukraine would suffer too many casualties.[8] Zelensky also stated that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is important to prevent Russia from freezing the war.

Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov contradicted the pre-war Kremlin justifications for the war by asserting that the Russian “special military operation” began as “a conflict between Russia and Ukraine.” He said that Russia has “partially” achieved the goals of “protecting” people in Donbas,[9] but added that Russia is still far from fully achieving these goals. He said that it was ”hard to believe” at the beginning of the war that NATO, the United States, and European countries would ”intervene in this conflict.” ISW previously reported that the Kremlin has begun to shift its domestic narratives to claim that Russia is fighting only against NATO in an effort to set informational conditions for potential Russian military failures during the planned Ukrainian counteroffensive.[10] Peskov’s statement is consistent with the new Russian narrative but contradicts Russian President Vladimir Putin’s statements prior to the February 24, 2022 invasion. Putin stated on February 21, 2022, that Russia is ”not fighting the Ukrainian people” and claimed that Ukraine had become a hostage of its ”Western masters.”[11] The Russian pre-war justification for the invasion relied heavily on portraying a NATO threat to Russia supposedly emanating from Ukraine.[12]

Unnamed Kremlin sources claimed that Wagner Group Yevgeny Prigozhin’s recent rhetoric is “seriously disturbing the top leadership” of Russia. Two Kremlin sources told Russian opposition outlet Meduza that the Kremlin saw Prigozhin’s attempts to blackmail the Russian MoD on May 5 as a “serious threat” and that Prigozhin is not acting in the Kremlin’s interests.[13] One interlocutor stated that Prigozhin is committed to claiming Bakhmut as a personal victory in order to have influence over the Russian MoD. The Kremlin reportedly expressed further concerns over Prigozhin’s May 9 mockery of the “happy grandfather” figure who is responsible for future Russian generations.[14] ISW assessed on May 9 that Prigozhin was likely referring to Putin, and a Kremlin source claims that Prigozhin’s statement was a direct allusion to Putin. The second interlocutor claimed that Prigozhin’s rhetoric cannot be interpreted as a “direct attack” on Putin, however. Prigozhin attempted on May 10 to downplay his original statements, claiming that the “happy grandfather” did not refer to Putin.[15] The sources noted that Prigozhin’s escalating behavior is likely a result of his inability to meet an unspecified deadline for the capture of Bakhmut. One source claimed that Prigozhin is blaming conventional units in order to avoid accepting responsibility for failing to follow through on his “personal promise” to capture Bakhmut.

The interlocutors noted that Prigozhin may have crossed the Kremlin’s “red lines” and may alienate his supporters within the Russian inner circle. Prigozhin reportedly is losing contact with one of his patrons, Russian billionaire and Putin’s “personal banker” Yuriy Kovalchuk. Kovalchuk was reportedly one of the leading voices supporting the full-scale invasion of Ukraine after developing a strong relationship with Putin during the Covid-19 pandemic.[16] The sources noted that Russian propagandists received a directive to discredit Prigozhin as a traitor if he continues to critique the Kremlin – an effort that has previously failed.[17] The sources assessed that Prigozhin is not at risk while Wagner is still on the frontline, which allows Prigozhin to have contact with Putin.

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) denied official Ukrainian and US reports that a Patriot missile defense system shot down a Kinzhal missile on the night of May 4.[18] Kremlin newswire TASS reported on May 11 that a “high-ranking source in the Russian MoD” denied reports that Ukraine intercepted a Kinzhal missile. Ukrainian Air Force Commander Mykola Oleshchuk had reported that Ukrainian forces used the Patriot system to shoot down a Kinzhal missile in the air over Kyiv Oblast at night on May 4.[19] The Russian MoD denied this report only after the US Department of Defense confirmed on May 9 that a Patriot air defense system had shot down a Russian Kinzhal missile.[20]

Russian occupation authorities seized the cathedral of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in Simferopol as oppression of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church continues in Russian-occupied Crimea. The Commissioner of the Crimean Eparchy of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Metropolitan Kliment of Simferopol, and Crimean journalist Andriy Shchekun reported on May 11 that representatives of the Russian State Property Fund of the Republic of Crimea and other occupation authorities broke down the doors of the church and began stealing the property of the cathedral.[21] ISW has previously reported on Russia’s religious repression throughout occupied Ukraine.[22]

Key Takeaways

• Ukrainian forces likely broke through some Russian lines in localized counterattacks near Bakhmut, prompting responses from Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD).
• The deployment of low-quality Russian forces on the flanks around Bakhmut suggests that the Russian MoD has largely abandoned the aim of encircling a significant number of Ukrainian forces there.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that Ukraine needs more time to launch a counteroffensive because it is waiting for the delivery of promised military aid.
• Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov contradicted the pre-war Kremlin justifications for the war by asserting that the Russian “special military operation” began as “a conflict between Russia and Ukraine.”
• Unnamed Kremlin sources claimed that Wagner Group Yevgeny Prigozhin’s recent rhetoric is “seriously disturbing the top leadership” of Russia.
• The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) denied Ukrainian and US reports that a Patriot missile defense system shot down a Kinzhal missile on the night of May 4.
• Russian occupation authorities seized the cathedral of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in Simferopol as oppression of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church continues in Russian-occupied Crimea.
• Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks northeast of Kupyansk and along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
• Ukrainian forces reportedly continued to conduct localized counterattacks around Bakhmut.
• Russian forces targeted Ukrainian positions west of Hulyaipole and in Kherson Oblast.
• Russia needs to produce over 29 million shells per year to satisfy Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin’s demands for Wagner to use 80,000 shells per day – 13 times more than Russia’s pre-invasion annual production rate.
• Russian officials continue to threaten and seek to manipulate international humanitarian efforts by threatening to dissolve the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which is set to expire on May 18.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because these 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 the Ukrainian 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.

• Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
• Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Activities in Russian-occupied areas

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks northeast of Kupyansk and along the Svatove-Kreminna line on May 11. Geolocated footage published on May 11 shows artillery elements of the 6th Combined Arms Army (Western Military District) operating near Vilshana (15km northeast of Kupyansk).[23] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive actions near the Serebrianska forest area (10km south of Kreminna).[24] A Russian milblogger claimed on May 10 that Russian forces conducted ground attacks near Masyutivka (12km northeast of Kupyansk), Stelmakhivka (15km northwest of Svatove), Makiivka (22km northwest of Kreminna), and Bilohorivka (10km south of Kreminna).[25]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Donetsk Oblast (Russian Objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Ukrainian forces continued to conduct localized counterattacks around Bakhmut on May 11. Geolocated footage shows that Ukrainian forces pushed Russian forces from a section of the T0504 Bakhmut-Chasiv Yar highway in southwestern Bakhmut.[26] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces advanced northwest of Bakhmut near Bohdanivka (6km northwest of Bakhmut) and Khromove (immediately west of Bakhmut) after Russian forces retreated from positions north of Khromove. Russian milbloggers also claimed that Ukrainian forces attacked in Bakhmut to alleviate pressure against the Bakhmut-Chasiv Yar highway.[27] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces regained ground south and southwest of Ivanivske (6km west of Bakhmut) and west of Klishchiivka (6km southwest of Bakhmut).[28]

Successful localized Ukrainian counterattacks have likely constrained Russian offensive efforts in Bakhmut as of May 11. Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces conducted 15 ground attacks in Bakhmut and near Stupochky (13km southwest of Bakhmut), a notable decrease in the number of reported Russian ground attacks in the Bakhmut area.[29] A Russian milblogger described the Stupochky assault as risky.[30] Russian milbloggers criticized the Russian 4th and 374th Motorized Rifle brigades (2nd Army Corps) for abandoning their positions northwest of Klishchiivka during Ukrainian counterattacks and said that Wagner Group forces took up the brigades’ former positions to prevent deep penetration of Russian lines, likely depriving Wagner forces of personnel that could otherwise have been allocated to offensive operations in Bakhmut.[31] Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed that Wagner forces only need to advance 625 meters to reach the western entrance to Bakhmut, a rhetorical shift suggesting that Prigozhin is unwilling to completely abandon his goal of completing the capture of Bakhmut in favor of defending against localized Ukrainian counterattacks.[32] The Republic of Tatarstan’s “Alga” volunteer battalion (part of the 72nd Motorized Rifle Brigade, 3rd Army Corps) reportedly lost contact with personnel‘s affiliated social media channels following the retreat on May 9.[33] The ”Alga” battalion is one of two elements of the 72nd Brigade; there is currently no information on whether the brigade’s second element, the ”Molot” volunteer battalion, was defeated or retreated.[34]

Russian forces continued limited ground attacks on the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line on May 11. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful ground attacks near Avdiivka, Marinka (27km southwest of Avdiivka), and Novomykhailivka (36km southwest of Avdiivka).[35] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces made marginal gains west of Kamianka (5km northeast of Avdiivka) and northeast of Opytne (3km southwest of Avdiivka), and continued ground attacks near the N20 highway west of Novobakhmutivka (9km northwest of Avdiivka).[36]

Ukrainian forces reportedly conducted a limited and localized counterattack in western Donetsk Oblast on May 11. A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces counterattacked and crossed the Shaitanka River near Novodonetske (12km southeast of Velyka Novosilka).[37]

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

Russian forces targeted Ukrainian positions west of Hulyaipole and in Kherson Oblast on May 11. The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command reported that Russian forces increased the intensity of shelling and shelled the west (right) bank Kherson Oblast 98 times.[38] Russian forces are reportedly becoming more active in shelling the Dnipro-Buzka estuary against the backdrop of the Black Sea Grain Initiative talks.[39] Ukrainian military officials reported that Russian forces struck Stanislav (33km southwest of Kherson City) and Kizomys (20km southwest of Kherson City) with seven KAB-500 guided aerial bombs and targeted civilian infrastructure in Zaporizhzhia City with two S-300 missiles.[40] A Russian milblogger claimed that fighting is ongoing on Velykyi Potemkin Island in the Dnipro River delta south of Kherson City.[41]

Russian forces reportedly plan to “evacuate” Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) staff to Russia. Ukrainian nuclear energy operator Energoatom reported on May 11 that Russian occupation authorities plan to “evacuate” about 3,100 people from Enerhodar.[42] Energoatom reported that the Russian occupation authorities are discussing the removal of 2,700 employees (and their families) of the ZNPP who signed contracts with the fake “Operating Organization of Zaporizhzhia NPP” or another Rosatom company. Enerhodar stated that Russian forces have prohibited ZNPP employees from leaving the city since the start of the occupation, and the Ukrainian General Staff noted that Russian forces have already deported some families of ZNPP employes from Enerhodar to Rostov Oblast.[43] ISW has previously reported on Russian forces kidnapping ZNPP employees to strengthen Russian control over ZNPP operations.[44]

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

Russia needs to produce over 29 million shells per year to satisfy Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin’s demands for Wagner to use 80,000 shells per day – 13 times more than Russia’s pre-invasion annual production rate. Prigozhin stated on April 29 that Wagner needs 80,000 shells to “grind” Ukrainian forces, and ISW previously reported that Russian forces used up to 60,000 shells per day (almost 22 million per year) before facing ammunition shortages.[45] A Russian military expert told Russian opposition outlet MediaZona that Russia produced about 2.4 million shells per year prior to the full-scale invasion and is attempting to increase the production of shells to three million shells per year.[46]

Russian officials are continuing to express concerns about Russian shortages of military personnel on the frontlines likely out of panic ahead of the planned Ukrainian counteroffensive. The former head of the Russian state space corporation, Roscosmos, (and current head of the “Tsar’s Wolves” group of military advisors), Dmitry Rogozin, stated that Russia needs to call up new mobilization waves with one wave taking place prior to fall and one in early fall.[47] Rogozin acknowledged that Russia “has problems” with the number of available personnel due to casualties on the battlefield. Rogozin noted that Russia must bear in mind that “the enemy is stronger” than Russian forces. Russian State Duma Defense Committee member Viktor Sobolev proposed that Russian military officials call up Russian civilian men for reservist training, even if these men are over the legal conscription age but are still part of the mobilization reserve.[48]

The Russian MoD continues to recruit prisoners, while the Russian justice system is setting conditions that aid such force generation efforts. The UK MoD reported that the Russian MoD has intensified prisoner recruitment efforts since the start of 2023 and likely recruited up to 10,000 convicts in April 2023 alone.[49] A Russian opposition outlet reported that Russian courts drastically reduced the number of paroles granted to Russian prisoners since the Wagner Group and the Russian MoD began prisoner recruitment in 2022. The Russian judicial system only granted paroles to 39 percent of eligible prisoners, which marked one of the lowest parole rates in the past two decades.[50]

Russian regional officials are launching new recruitment drives and are forming new volunteer battalions. The Republic of Bashkortostan is forming a “Tagir Kusimov” volunteer battalion, which is Bashkortostan’s fifth military volunteer unit.[51] The Republic of Sakha published a document that offers compensation to private entities that facilitate the transfer of recruits who live outside of the republic to Yakutsk for contract service.[52] The document reveals that Russian regional officials may be paying privately-owned entities to assist in fulfilling its force generation quotas. The transfer of volunteers from different regions may also indicate that republics such as Sakha are trying to meet their force generation quotas by recruiting and competing for volunteers in other regions.

Russian recruitment efforts are continuing to disproportionally target ethnic minorities and labor immigrants. Russian MoD are reportedly conducting crypto-mobilization in the Republic of Buryatia despite the ongoing high casualty rates among personnel from Buryatia on the frontlines in Ukraine.[53] A Russian opposition outlet reported that official documents suggest that 645 servicemen from Buryatia died in April 2023 alone, and the toll of unconfirmed deaths is likely higher. Representatives of a Moscow-based migration center are reportedly attempting to coerce Tajik labor migrants to sign military contracts under the guise of immigration consultation sessions.[54]

Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian civilians into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Russian officials continue to threaten and seek to manipulate international humanitarian efforts by threatening to dissolve the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which is set to expire on May 18. Russian and Ukrainian officials failed to reach an agreement to extend the grain deal after two days of negotiations in Istanbul, Turkey.[55] Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin claimed on May 11 that Russia will not continue the grain deal if the West rejects its demands, which include removing restrictions on Russian grain and fertilizer exports and reconnecting Russian state-owned agriculture bank Rosselkhozbank to the SWIFT banking system.[56] The Turkish Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported that Russian and Ukrainian officials agreed to continue negotiations in Istanbul soon but provided no details.[57]

Russia is also likely attempting to intensify divisions between Ukraine and Central European countries by threatening not to extend the grain deal. The European Union (EU) lifted tariffs and quotas on food exports from Ukraine in June 2022 after Russian forces blocked farmers from transporting grain and other goods by sea.[58] The measure successfully enabled Ukrainian farmers transport grain to Europe by rail and trucks at the lowest cost possible, sparking complaints from Central European farmers.[59] The Polish government announced a ban on Ukrainian food imports in an effort to protect the domestic agricultural market, with Hungary and Slovakia instituting the same measures in mid-April.[60] Ukrainian Minister of Agriculture Mykola Solsk stated on May 9 that Ukraine has alternative means of transporting grain should the grain deal expire but did not provide details.[61] Russia likely anticipates that the West will continue to deny its demands at the next round of negotiations and may hope to further divide Ukraine from its neighbors by forcing Ukraine to export more grain to its western neighbors in an effort to weaken the broader NATO Alliance.

The Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s Office reported on May 11 that Russian forces have committed 187 sexually charged crimes against Ukrainians, thirteen of which were against children.[62] The office reported that Ukrainian officials have notified 16 people under suspicion that they participated in the acts.[63]

Ukrainian nongovernmental organization “Save Ukraine” Director Mykola Kuleba reported the return of 96 Ukrainian children from Russia on May 11.[64]

Significant activity in Belarus (ISW assesses that a Russian or Belarusian attack into northern Ukraine in early 2023 is extraordinarily unlikely and has thus restructured this section of the update. It will no longer include counter-indicators for such an offensive.)

ISW will continue to report daily observed Russian and Belarusian military activity in Belarus, but these are not indicators that Russian and Belarusian forces are preparing for an imminent attack on Ukraine from Belarus. ISW will revise this text and its assessment if it observes any unambiguous indicators that Russia or Belarus is preparing to attack northern Ukraine.

The Belarusian Ministry of Defense (MoD) announced that Belarusian conscripts will take part in territorial defense training the Mazyr region, as well as in Gomel and Minsk from May 11 to June 2.[65]

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

2. The 'morale challenge' facing some special operators in the era of Great Power competition

Comment from LTG(R) Cleveland when he flagged this article for me.

(Abizaid, speaking alongside Sands, suggested that it was a false choice between the counter-terrorism or crisis response missions and competitive campaigning. The CT work, she said, would provide opportunities for the partnerships and the trust-building that’s so critical to keeping Russia or China at bay around the world.)

LTG Cleveland: Abizaid has it right. It is a false choice between CT or competition. CT is a collection of defensive measures against a tactic used by insurgents and revolutionaries. Competition is a loose, over broad term that in the military lane means conducting deterrence in nuc and conventional war, while conducting offensive and defensive special warfare. That global campaign must be active and reactive, providing policy makers options, mitigating instability where it matters and taking advantage of opportunities that the enemy will inevitably present.

Excerpts:

Vincent Brooks, former commander of US forces in Korea and before that a senior official on the Joint Staff directing the War on Terror, said special operations leaders should tell their people to focus on their mission and not be “consumed” with the greater question of what competition means for them.

More bluntly, he said leaders have to keep those under them from “getting lost in” thinking, “Am I doing the right thing? Am I winning or losing? How come I’m not shooting somebody? Why am I not in a stack?

“That’s not all there is to it,” he said. “But they have to be able to do that, and also able to deal with someone with a generational relationship, recognizing how important that is… It’s critically important.”

The 'morale challenge' facing some special operators in the era of Great Power competition - Breaking Defense

The head of US special ops in the Pacific suggested some operators are struggling with a less direct mission, though USSOCOM chief Gen. Bryan Fenton told Breaking Defense that's not something he's seen.

By  LEE FERRAN

on May 11, 2023 at 9:00 AM

breakingdefense.com · by Lee Ferran · May 11, 2023

A Green Beret with the 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) trains U.S. Soldiers and Philippine Marines on proper aircraft load and unload procedures April 3, 2022. (U.S. Army Photo by Sgt. 1st Class Ryan Hohman)

SOF WEEK 2023 — After 20 years of high-tempo combat operations in the Middle East, parts of the US special operations community are facing a “morale challenge” now that much of the mission has shifted to less direct “campaigning” in the era of great power competition, according to the commander of US special ops in the Pacific.

“There is absolutely, when we get right down to deck plates, there’s a morale challenge, because there’s a lot of folks that quite frankly have joined the organization with a vision of what their day’s work, what their career would look like, and that’s rapidly morphing and changing,” Rear Adm. Jeromy Williams, commander of US Special Operations Command Pacific, said Wednesday during a panel at the SOF Week 2023 conference in Tampa, Fla. “But I think the paths [are] laid out very well for us, the cognizance of the challenge that’s on our shoulders.”

Williams’ comments came after he was asked if he had seen any issues with the transition away from counter-terrorism operations to “campaigning” as the US settles in for a long-term competition, especially in the Pacific, with China. Campaigning generally refers to non-kinetic special operations responsibilities — key among those is training, advising and establishing long-lasting relationships with the special operations forces of foreign partners and allies in hopes of preparing for, or better yet deterring, conflict.

“Some of our folks don’t have as much experience in competition,” said Williams, himself a former Navy SEAL. “The thing that we have to be very careful [of] is our cultural affinity in terms of the bias for action, our desire to gravitate back to what we know versus embrace what [we are] maybe a little apprehensive or insecure about. But I think we do have formative experiences” in the campaign-related operations, and some “fundamentals” cross over.

Williams’ contention that some operators may question their role, however, wasn’t shared by his boss, US Special Operations Command head Gen. Bryan Fenton. Speaking on the sidelines of the conference, Fenton told Breaking Defense the morale issue is “absolutely not” something he’s seen himself nor heard in his discussions with commanders around the globe.

“I think they [special operators] signed up to solve wicked problems,” he said, in whatever form those problems present themselves.

Partner Building As Focus, But Action Still Required

Special operations forces are certainly still engaged in direct counter-terrorism and crisis response operations; American commandos reportedly killed an ISIS leader earlier this year in Somalia, and special operations forces (SOF) were the backbone of the evacuation of diplomats from Sudan last month. In another panel Wednesday, National Counter Terrorism Center Director Christine Abizaid emphasized that the terror threat, like from ISIS, is still very relevant.

“We should not kid ourselves that ourselves that that network’s highly sophisticated threat has been defeated, because it has not,” she said. She also reminded the audience that the US special operations are still very active in Iraq and Syria.

By and large, though, the White House and the Pentagon have shifted their focus to nation-states: the “acute” threat of Russia and the “pacing challenge” of China. That move, years in the making, meant that American special operators have had to conform to the new reality.

Partner relationship-building is hardly a new mission for US special operations — it’s been the bread and butter for US Army Special Forces, specifically, for decades — but the renewed emphasis was hard to miss in the first days of the SOF Week conference. It was a key theme in Fenton’s own keynote address with regard to the key role US special ops have played in training and advising the Ukrainian military, and the panel following Williams’ was titled “Partnerships as a Pacing Item.” At the beginning of that panel, the moderator asked foreign partners in the audience to raise their hands, and flurry of arms draped in different camouflage patterns shot up while the crowd clapped.

The panel after that one, the last of the day, was dedicated to special operations’ continuing role in counter-terrorism, but in it the head of American special ops in Africa, perhaps the command with the most kinetic potential short of Central Command, acknowledged the world has changed.

“The future of SOF and CT [counter-terrorism] in Africa is really about allies and our African partners, coming together, unity of effort. Our focus is really going to be to serve as connective tissue between nations to enable African solutions,” Rear Adm. Jamie Sands III said. “When we look at what we’ve done before when it comes to CT, to crisis response, you have to think hard about what tools do we need to drop, which new ones do we need to pick up” for what he called the “new paradigm.”

“We do kinetic things, but we also do a lot of other things,” he said. Sands, for his part, didn’t mention any morale issues.

Abizaid, speaking alongside Sands, suggested that it was a false choice between the counter-terrorism or crisis response missions and competitive campaigning. The CT work, she said, would provide opportunities for the partnerships and the trust-building that’s so critical to keeping Russia or China at bay around the world.

Still, others on Williams’ panel seemed to agree that some special operations personnel needed some reassurance about their importance in the Pentagon’s modern strategy, and the direction they’re meant to follow. (Kimberly Field, director of J5 for strategy, plans and policy, said policy-makers similarly had to be reminded of the importance of special operations, saying there was “fight” to get a special operations “hook” in the National Defense Strategy.)

Vincent Brooks, former commander of US forces in Korea and before that a senior official on the Joint Staff directing the War on Terror, said special operations leaders should tell their people to focus on their mission and not be “consumed” with the greater question of what competition means for them.

More bluntly, he said leaders have to keep those under them from “getting lost in” thinking, “Am I doing the right thing? Am I winning or losing? How come I’m not shooting somebody? Why am I not in a stack?

“That’s not all there is to it,” he said. “But they have to be able to do that, and also able to deal with someone with a generational relationship, recognizing how important that is… It’s critically important.”

breakingdefense.com · by Lee Ferran · May 11, 2023

3. Perspective: Time for a Commission on Information Warfare

Perspective: Time for a Commission on Information Warfare | Small Wars Journal

Small Wars Journal

Perspective: Time for a Commission on Information Warfare

Zachary Kallenborn

Information warfare continues to play a big role in the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia continue to target and jam one another’s drones. They jam and intercept communications. Although cyber weapons have generated limited physical effects, it’s not for lack of trying. James Lewis—Director of CSIS’s Strategic Technology Program—notes that Ukraine mounted a strong cyber defense with support from allied nations that stymied Russian offenses. Russian hackers targeted satellite internet provider, Viasat, which knocked thousands of Ukrainians offline. But perhaps the largest game-changer is the strategic information environment—or narrative warfare. Ukraine’s unexpected strength has clearly won the sympathy of western Europe, and that—coupled with normal national interest—encouraged a broad range of military aid. Most notably: Lithuania crowd-sourced 5 million euros to buy Ukraine a Bayraktar TB-2 drone, which Turkey then donated for free.

Real-time cyber attacks monitored by 275th Cyberspace Squadron, Air National Guard, June 2017. Defense Visual Information Distribution Service: Public Domain.

The role of information warfare in the Ukraine conflict reflects a larger truth that warfare is increasingly dependent on information. And the United States must ensure the country is prepared. The United States through an act of Congress should commission a blue-ribbon panel to assess the state of American information warfare capabilities, organization, doctrine, training, and simply awareness across the armed services and supporting national security agencies. The commission should aim to critically assess the state of current information warfare capabilities, identify gaps in those capabilities, and chart a way-forward to closing the gaps and overall improving the ability of the United States to wage information conflict. A particular focus should be on how the United States national security apparatus should respond to the major shifts in the information environment from artificial intelligence-enabled disinformation to the disruption of local media and micro-targeting information. Given the tricky domestic politics of even defensive activities aimed at the US public, the commission may need to divide the work into two parts: a first volume of findings looking at strategic information operations, and the second looking at information management on the battlefield.

The Criticality of Information Warfare

Information warfare often is great power competition. American power depends on a network of alliances from Japan, Australia, South Korea, and other partners to the West to NATO on the East. Information operations may strengthen or weaken those relationships. Russian disinformation operations have aimed to exacerbate fractures in the NATO alliance and hopefully break the alliance apart; encourage Britain’s separation from the European Union; and inflame already fiery American political tensions. Information operations may also confound alliance decision-making, particularly in NATO with its requirements for consensus in the North Atlantic Council and Military Committee. Plus, imagine a hacked or deep-faked report of a horrific attack by a US military official on a host nation civilian. That could certainly foster opposition to military basing, the hosting of specific units, or broader relations with the country. The global Internet means the ill-will may spread to other countries too.

If and when major conventional war does break out, information management is increasingly critical to the battlefield. Weapon systems are increasingly dependent on cyber, space, and electronic warfare systems. GPS supports precision targeting; F-35s run on 8 million lines of, unfortunately sometimes buggy, code; and intelligence, signals, and reconnaissance capabilities often rely on the electromagnetic spectrum.

New technologies raise the importance of information warfare even more, particularly unmanned systems, artificial intelligence, and developments in cybersecurity. The recent conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan and Ukraine and Russia have demonstrated the relevance—if not criticality—of unmanned systems, even in peer on peer conflict. With the United States and adversaries developing a wide range of ever more advanced unmanned aerial, surface, ground, and subsurface vehicles, the role of unmanned systems will likely grow even further. That matters because unmanned system—and particularly autonomous systems and drone swarms—have significant information warfare dependencies. Unmanned systems typically rely on electromagnetic spectrum-based communication for command and control, and use GPS satellites for navigation. As essentially flying computers, unmanned systems are also vulnerable to cyber attacks either in the field, or prior to engagement to degrade military effectiveness. If the growth of unmanned, and autonomous systems creates a future defined by small, distributed units (e.g., missile barges), then the links between those units are how those units integrate into a coherent whole becomes critical. That means communications are a requirement.

The State of Information Warfare

To many, American information warfare capabilities are in a bad way. The more optimistic might call information warfare increasingly contested. According to Major General John Morrison, Commanding General of the US Army Center for Excellence: “When it comes to electronic warfare, we are outgunned . . . We are plain outgunned by peer and near-peer competitors.” Likewise, a 2018 Government Accountability Office report found that from 2012 to 2017, “[Department of Defense] testers routinely found mission-critical cyber vulnerabilities in nearly all weapon systems that were under development.” And in space, the Defense Intelligence Agency recently assessed: “As the number of spacefaring nations grows and space and counterspace capabilities become more integrated into military operations, the U.S space posture will be increasingly challenged and on orbit assets will face new risks.”

Often, it’s not even clear what information warfare even means. The Congressional Research Service has also noted there is no official definition of information warfare. Analysts use the term sometimes to refer exclusively to strategic-level information warfare aimed at, for example, shaping public opinion akin to Russian disinformation in the 2016 election. Other times the term focuses exclusively on tactical or operational information, such as command and control. Unlike the British government, the United States typically does not include space warfare in the scope of information warfare, yet communication satellites and satellites for position, navigation, and timing are clearly critical battlefield information.

Of course, the armed services are making new efforts and those should not be poo-pooed. US Army Cyber Command expanded its mission to include full-spectrum cyber operations, electronic warfare, and information operations writ large. Technologies are being developed that make guided weapons more resistant to jamming. Plus, research is ongoing to make unmanned systems less dependent on electromagnetic spectrum and GPS. But those activities do not appear guided by integrated strategy or organization. Plus adversaries are innovating too, like China's Strategic Support Force to combine different elements of information warfare into a single organization, along with supporting artificial intelligence capabilities.

The Need for a New Commission

Information warfare is critical to great power competition, before, during, and after bullets fly. Information influences the strategic environment, building, maintaining, and breaking alliances. On the battlefield, diffusing units and remotely operated weapons and platforms mean communication links are critical. New technologies, particularly autonomous systems, increase information dependencies even more. Unfortunately, the United States faces serious challenges on multiple dimensions of information warfare. A congressionally-appointed Commission on Information Warfare would aim to strengthen that capability. Specifically, the Commission should aim to:

1. Define information warfare: Before the Commission can be started, a brief effort is required to better define information warfare, identify agencies involved in information warfare, and how those efforts interact across strategic, operational, and tactical levels. Clear definitions will also be necessary to establish a reasonable scope and timeline for completion of the commission.
2. Assess information warfare challenges: The Commission should examine the information warfare challenges the United States faces from structural and technological trends in the information environment to adversary approaches to manipulate and exploit that environment.
3. Conduct a fact-finding mission on the state of American information warfare: the Commission should inventory American platforms, systems, organizations, workforce, doctrine, concepts, and related information warfare capabilities across each armed service and supporting agencies.
4. Identify gaps: the Commission should figure out where the United States is not doing as good a job as it could be, and, particularly, which gaps hold the United States back the most;
5. Develop actionable policies: The United States must identify specific, concrete next steps on how to go about closing identified gaps; and
6. Develop an integrated strategy: Specific policy, capability, and organizational capabilities need to be considered as part of an aggregate whole that sets out core values, principles, and ideas that animate information warfare across the joint service.

The need to manage, maintain, and manipulate information increasingly dominates the modern battlefield. The United States needs a concerted effort to make sure it maintains leadership.

About the Author(s)

Zachary Kallenborn

Zachary Kallenborn is a Policy Fellow at the Schar School of Policy and Government, a Research Affiliate with the Unconventional Weapons and Technology Division of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), an officially proclaimed US Army “Mad Scientist,” and national security consultant. His research on autonomous weapons, drone swarms, and weapons of mass destruction has been published in a wide range of peer-reviewed, wonky, and popular outlets, including the Brookings Institution, Foreign Policy, Slate, War on the Rocks, Parameters, and Terrorism and Political Violence. Journalists have written about and shared that research in the New York Times, NPR, Forbes, the New Scientist, WIRED, and the BBC, among dozens of others in dozens of languages.

Small Wars Journal

4. Special operations role in great power competition needs work

Who leads in irregular warfare, support to political warfare, and competitive statecraft?

Excerpts:

“We’re in almost as awkward a structure for competition as we were for combatting terrorism in 2002. Who’s the lead globally?” said retired Army Gen. Vincent Brooks, who last commanded U.S. Forces in Korea and is now a principal at the consulting firm WestExec Advisors.

Kimberly Field, director of strategy, plans and policy at SOCOM, said the command is working to shape its role. In particular, it’s focused on an exercise called “what winning looks like.” This training event starts with the pacing threat of China against Taiwan and then zooms out to see how that fits in a global approach to peer adversaries.

Special operations role in great power competition needs work

militarytimes.com · by Todd South · May 11, 2023

TAMPA, Fla. — Special operations will play an important role in competition with China and Russia, but that role needs refining, according to military officials.

U.S. Special Operations Command made major contributions during the Cold War and could be critical again, a retired general said during a Wednesday panel at the Global SOF Foundation’s SOF Week here. But one challenge is determining who’s in charge. Special operations can’t run the show but they can be at the front of where policy decisions meet the messiness of real-world operations.

“We’re in almost as awkward a structure for competition as we were for combatting terrorism in 2002. Who’s the lead globally?” said retired Army Gen. Vincent Brooks, who last commanded U.S. Forces in Korea and is now a principal at the consulting firm WestExec Advisors.

Kimberly Field, director of strategy, plans and policy at SOCOM, said the command is working to shape its role. In particular, it’s focused on an exercise called “what winning looks like.” This training event starts with the pacing threat of China against Taiwan and then zooms out to see how that fits in a global approach to peer adversaries.

She said leaders in the command must “be able to express what SOF delivers.”

One panelist pointed out this is not the command’s first pivot. Michael Vickers, a former undersecretary of defense for intelligence, noted that in the decade after Sept. 11, 2001, SOCOM doubled its force and tripled its budget.

Early in the shift to great-power competition, top defense and intelligence officials questioned the relevance of SOF. But he said that question is now mostly settled.

To make this pivot, he said the command must address anti-access, area-denial systems China has rolled out in its region. Those will require clandestine infiltration; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; and “stay behind” capabilities in places such as Taiwan.

That is similar to some of what Vickers saw in the last Cold War. “One of the big things that kept the Cold War cold and hopefully will keep the new Cold War cold is nuclear weapons and the threat of escalation,” he said.

To leverage special operations capabilities, Army Maj. Gen. Steven Edwards, commander of U.S. SOCOM-Europe, pointed to the importance of building partner- and allied-forces.

“When the war kicked off in Ukraine, we all needed to come together, we could not do it alone, we needed to burden share,” Edwards said during the same panel.

The two-star pointed to “reverse burden sharing” as well. He said U.S. forces can’t operate within Ukraine, but some partners can, though he did not give specific names.

Reverse burden-sharing means U.S. forces can step in to relieve other pressures from partners in their countries or other locations so that those with access to Ukraine can conduct training and support.

About Todd South

Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.

5. U.S. Military Observers And Why They Are Needed In Ukraine

Yes, we need military observers observing conflicts around the world. We should recall our history and the impact observers have on influencing our future military.

Excerpts:

As Delafield drew early military lessons from the battlefields of Ukraine for the United States, a modern military commission could do the same today. Comparing the approaches to learning from the Crimean War, Russo-Japanese War, and Yom Kippur War yields four critical considerations for an observer mission. First, observers must publish a public and unclassified report to spark debate and unify the military around a modernization agenda. Second, Department of Defense leaders should personally oversee and provide specific guidance. Changes in the Department of Defense’s senior leadership this summer offer an opportunity to bolster whatever efforts may be under way. Third, senior leaders should hand-pick talented officers and noncommissioned officers who communicate well and can draw from their experiences for years to come. Finally, observers must walk battlefields and meet with Ukrainian commanders and observers from other countries. 

After sending observers, an unclassified and public report may be the most important factor for learning. A report from a well-resourced observer mission with high-level support will anchor public debate around modernization, limit bias in debates about future force structure, and force others to address the report in their commentary. The Department of Defense could also open data for investigation by military and civilian academics and students at war and staff colleges to encourage deep thinking about war’s many lessons. Furthermore, adversaries assume the United States learns lessons from foreign wars, so an open report will help align the Department of Defense, U.S. government, and allies, while signaling to adversaries. 

Rather than relying on bureaucratic processes that protect parochial interests, send observers to capture lessons and then open that data for deep debate about the future of defense. 

U.S. Military Observers And Why They Are Needed In Ukraine - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Zachary Griffiths · May 12, 2023

After his first ride through the city, Capt. George McClellan remarked that “Sebastopol is knocked into a cocked hat.” The siege works outside the Crimean city had been “ploughed & reploughed up by shot & shell–exploded magazines–ruined traverses–broken guns, disabled carriages–charred timber.” Cockaded caps, bent bayonets, and bloodied blouses lay around the French, British, and Russian bodies. British supplies flowed off steam ships and onto railroads that carried arms and reinforcements smartly from Balaklava to the siege lines. Flowing the other direction, telegraphs carried reports from the British command in Crimea back to Whitehall, as Florence Nightingale treated soldiers evacuated from Crimea back to Constantinople.

In 1855, war was changing.

Fortunately, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis had dispatched the Delafield Commission a year earlier. Seeing the Crimean War as an opportunity to learn, Davis handpicked and dispatched Maj. Richard Delafield, Maj. Alfred Mordecai, and Capt. George B. McClellan. He also gave detailed instructions. In a two-page letter, Davis instructed them to focus on organizations, supply, troop transportation, field and siege operations, coastal defenses, and even camels. After an incredible journey that took them through Venice, Verona, London, Marseilles, and St. Petersburg as they navigated diplomatic and bureaucratic hurdles, the commission members arrived in Crimea just as the siege ended.

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And bring back lessons they did. Then, as is the case now, artillery had an obvious impact. Rifled artillery provided greater range and accuracy, but the sheer concentration of cannon foreshadowed the future of conflict. The British brought 911 guns and the French more than 1,700 to the Russian 500. Delafield calculated a total allied “shot and shell” consumption of an incredible 2.4 million. Where artillery provided mass, the rifled musket provided precision. Minié balls fired by riflemen outranged muskets by hundreds of yards, forcing troops to entrench. But these were not the only lessons – and the commission certainly missed lessons as well. Ultimately, this first foray into combat observations had limited impact but marked an important initial effort to learn lessons from foreign wars.

As it has in the past, the United States should seek to learn the right lessons from a foreign war. The stakes are high. Understanding the war in Ukraine might shape future U.S. decision-making as it considers potential flashpoints like Taiwan, Iran, or North Korea. The Pentagon should also decide each year how to make the most of its annual $800 billion budget. Lessons from Ukraine might shift the balance from the tanks, airplanes, and ships of yore toward drones, cyber, or something new. But the United States will not know for sure unless it makes a deliberate effort to learn.

This is why, since the early months of the war, I’ve been advocating for U.S. military observers to be sent to Ukraine. Ryan Evans made a similar argument in these virtual pages. These observers should have a clear mandate and requirement to publish a version of their reports in a public and unclassified form.

Learning from foreign wars

Learning from foreign wars is hard. Propagandists on all sides play up success and obscure failure. Early video clips from Ukraine of Javelin missiles destroying Russian tanks led observers to conclude that tanks were “being pushed into obsolescence,” a conclusion that is hard to square with Rob Lee’s analysis or the current fielding of Leopard tanks. Additionally, intelligence about how wars are fought is not a high collection priority. U.S. intelligence agencies focus on the biggest and most strategic questions, not on the lessons from Ukraine for countering uncrewed vehicles or changes to soldiering. Additionally, the intelligence produced about the war will likely be overclassified and out of reach of military concept writers. The recent intelligence leak that played out on obscure online servers will only exacerbate the challenge of turning intelligence into lessons for the U.S. military. Finally, the military must open itself to changes. Despite intense combat, U.S. Army leaders have not changed the service’s modernization priorities. Lessons from Ukraine may challenge assumptions and tightly held beliefs. The United States should be grateful not to learn those lessons the hard way.

Once political conditions are feasible, a modern Delafield Commission would interview participants, study battlefields, examine wreckage, and write reports. The observers should capture both raw information and chart a way forward for the U.S. military. Observers could tease the truth from the conflict’s propaganda, drawing conclusions on the future of the Javelin or Stinger, integrating drones and loitering munitions, or understanding what undergirds Ukrainian resistance. Then, the Department of Defense should unite support around reforms rooted in the applicable lessons of the war in Ukraine at low cost and risk. Satisfactory conclusion of this conflict should remain the United States’ top priority. The Department of Defense should move on this now, before the lessons are lost and Ukrainian wheat obscures the battlefields.

Historical examples

The United States has a history of dispatching observers overseas. Since Col. William Stephen Smith’s military tour of Prussia in 1785, more than 2,000 American observers have learned from foreign conflicts. Successful observer teams stimulate debate about the lessons from a conflict and then the validity of those lessons for their military. Those sending observers must balance a variety of factors to ensure lessons are learned and not just encountered.

The Delafield Commission of 1855, the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, and the Yom Kippur War of 1973 show the range of outcomes and provide lessons for structuring an observer mission today. Despite its efforts, the Delafield Commission did not substantially change the U.S. Army. The observers arrived with a limited scope and narrow focus. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis dispatched these highly competent military officers with explicit instructions to learn from the Crimean War as part of a modernization effort. While in Europe, the commission aimed to gain insights from the French, British, Russian, and Ottoman parties involved in the conflict. Unfortunately, political tensions between the United States and several European nations hindered access to battlefields during the war. The observers only examined French and British trench lines and abandoned Russian fortifications after the conflict had ended. Upon returning to the United States, the commission produced three separate and narrowly focused volumes between 1857 and 1861. The last volume was published four years after Davis’s departure from the War Department and seven months after the onset of the American Civil War. The recommendations were too late and too narrow to substantially alter the course of the war.

Half a century later, the Russo-Japanese War provided valuable insights that fueled almost a decade of intense, albeit inconclusive, discussions about the precise military implications. During the conflict, the United States rotated 12 officers through Japanese field armies, with five experiencing active combat. Medical observers with the Russian side captured innovations in military medicine. With ongoing support from the War Department, several observers penned detailed accounts and spoke of their experiences throughout the war. General John Pershing, in particular, described his time in Manchuria as “invaluable” to his later leadership during World War I. Unfortunately, the inability to draw clear conclusions from the conflict, doubts regarding the war’s relevance to the American military context, and budgetary constraints impeded the implementation of significant changes within the U.S. military leading up to World War I.

About 50 years ago, American observers drew lessons from the 1973 Yom Kippur War. That war, between Israel and its neighbors, rocked the Middle East. Egyptian AT-3 Sagger anti-tank missiles cut through 100 Israeli tanks on the conflict’s first day. By the end of the war, Syria and Egypt had lost as many tanks in 18 days of battle as the United States had stationed in Europe at the time. Diplomatic concerns kept American observers out of Israel until the war ended, but the Department of Defense’s senior leaders rushed observers in to learn immediately after.

Lessons from the Yom Kippur War galvanized change in the Army and Air Force. While debate over the Yom Kippur War’s impact continues, the U.S. Army’s primary observer, Maj. Gen. Donn Starry, noted three primary observations from that war: armies could fight outnumbered and win, modern weapons were incredibly lethal, and the tank still dominated the battlefield. Based on his observations, the Army invested in the “big five” weapons systems and changed how it fought, culminating in the AirLand Battle doctrine that won the Gulf War.

To learn from foreign wars, the United States’ most successful observer missions published timely and public summaries of their findings to anchor debate. Senior leaders, such as Secretaries of War/Defense or the country’s most senior military officers, selected talented individuals and dispatched them with clear guidance. Battlefield access and the exact timing of the trips made less impact on their success. The war in Ukraine offers another opportunity to galvanize investment around a reform agenda, but only if we send a team of observers to learn.

How to learn from the war in Ukraine

Based on these historical examples, the Department of Defense should consider four points when assembling an observer team.

First, timely written public reports are critical. They spark debate and ensure data can be reconsidered as new ideas arise. Current concept development models do their best with wargames and simulations but cannot truly test hypotheses outside of major conflict. Accordingly, robust debate followed the Russo-Japanese and Yom Kippur wars about the validity of the lessons, and such debate should be encouraged in our war and staff colleges and military academies today. Discourse on the lessons from Ukraine must be encouraged and channeled into a robust reform agenda.

Despite producing public reports, the United States can also compartmentalize the most sensitive lessons. By being public about the things the United States can share, adversaries may not look as hard for the hidden.

Second, clear guidance from the department’s most senior leaders will focus the team and ensure the influence of their recommendations. To ensure the military services took the Yom Kippur War observers’ recommendations seriously, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger mandated an observer mission and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral T.H. Moorer outlined the mission’s aims and composition, just as Secretary Davis had dispatched the Delafield Commission. As senior leaders transition this year, their teams should make sure the Department of Defense is learning everything possible from the war in Ukraine.

In their guidance, the Department of Defense’s senior leaders should require assessments of both legacy systems and emerging technologies and especially the way Ukraine employs them. Russian tanks have proven vulnerable, but observers should determine whether poor training, strong Javelins, or ineffective doctrine is responsible. Additionally, the United States could certainly learn from Ukraine’s expert information campaign. Observers could also sketch out doctrine for integrating newer technologies, like loitering munitions, artificial intelligence, or cyber attacks. Clear guidance will help determine which observers to send and how they should focus their attention.

Third, the mission should consist of talented officers and noncommissioned officers with the appropriate experience and specialties for their task. One goal of this trip must be to learn about Ukrainian drone employment and force structure. To draw these lessons, the Department of Defense should send experts on drones, air defense, and air-ground operations who can probe the conflict’s lessons alongside experts on tanks, anti-tank missiles, air defense, cyber, and other areas.

The experts must also communicate clearly in writing and speech so their observations can be widely shared. To learn from the Yom Kippur War, the Army chose well, selecting Donn Starry, a promising brigadier general and Armor School commandant. Starry later rose to command the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, drawing from the lessons of the Yom Kippur war to train and educate a generation of soldiers.

Fourth, effective observers require access to battlefields, key military leaders, and observers from other countries. Placing observers onto Ukraine’s battlefields presents risk, both in escalating the conflict and to the observers themselves. However, the risk of sending observers may be overstated. The Delafield Commission came under fire only once and once had a mine explode nearby. Only five of the 12 observers of the Russo-Japanese War came under enemy fire. Later, to mitigate this risk during the Yom Kippur War, observers were sent to the battlefield less than two months after the conflict concluded. American observers were hungry for information. They met with leaders like General Moshe Peled, who led a decisive counterattack in the Golan Heights. They even observed company-level live fires, writing reports and building relationships. Prestaging observers in Poland could jumpstart the lesson-learning process and ensure they were ready to enter Ukraine when conditions become suitable.

Sending military observers into the country is important. While learning from foreign locales might seem like an obvious task for our intelligence agencies, they recently struggled to assess Afghan and Ukrainian military capabilities. Furthermore, collecting information on how wars are fought is not their focus, and their findings will be classified, limiting the impact of their observations. Finally, there are risks of escalation and casualties when sending observers, but history suggests these risks are milder than imagined.

Likewise, neither journalists nor think-tankers bring a focus on how the war is fought or the resources necessary for systematic and robust study. Those studying the war need access to see through the tightly controlled media where everyone is lying to everyone. Expert American military observers are our best hope to see through the chaff and flares toward the truth.

Send military observers

As Delafield drew early military lessons from the battlefields of Ukraine for the United States, a modern military commission could do the same today. Comparing the approaches to learning from the Crimean War, Russo-Japanese War, and Yom Kippur War yields four critical considerations for an observer mission. First, observers must publish a public and unclassified report to spark debate and unify the military around a modernization agenda. Second, Department of Defense leaders should personally oversee and provide specific guidance. Changes in the Department of Defense’s senior leadership this summer offer an opportunity to bolster whatever efforts may be under way. Third, senior leaders should hand-pick talented officers and noncommissioned officers who communicate well and can draw from their experiences for years to come. Finally, observers must walk battlefields and meet with Ukrainian commanders and observers from other countries.

After sending observers, an unclassified and public report may be the most important factor for learning. A report from a well-resourced observer mission with high-level support will anchor public debate around modernization, limit bias in debates about future force structure, and force others to address the report in their commentary. The Department of Defense could also open data for investigation by military and civilian academics and students at war and staff colleges to encourage deep thinking about war’s many lessons. Furthermore, adversaries assume the United States learns lessons from foreign wars, so an open report will help align the Department of Defense, U.S. government, and allies, while signaling to adversaries.

Rather than relying on bureaucratic processes that protect parochial interests, send observers to capture lessons and then open that data for deep debate about the future of defense.

Become a Member

Zachary Griffiths is an Army officer. He tweets at @z_e_griffiths.

Image: Library of Congress

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Zachary Griffiths · May 12, 2023

6. Russia denies reports of Ukrainian breakthroughs along front lines

Russia denies reports of Ukrainian breakthroughs along front lines

Reuters · by Reuters

• Summary
• Kremlin acknowledges situation 'very difficult'
• Kyiv says Russian forces pushed back up to 2 km near Bakhmut
• Zelenskiy says more armoured vehicles would reduce casualties

May 11 (Reuters) - Russia's defence ministry on Thursday denied reports that Ukrainian forces had broken through in various places along the front lines and said the military situation was under control.

Moscow reacted after Russian military bloggers, writing on the Telegram messaging app, reported what they said were Ukrainian advances north and south of the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, with some suggesting a long-awaited counteroffensive by pro-Kyiv forces had started.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had earlier said the offensive had yet to start.

"Statements circulated by individual Telegram channels about 'defence breakthroughs' that took place in different areas along the line of military contact do not correspond to reality," the Russian defence ministry said in a Telegram post.

"The overall situation in the area of the special military operation is under control," it said in a statement, using the Kremlin's description of the war in Ukraine.

The fact the Russian ministry felt obliged to release the statement reflects what Moscow acknowledges is a "very difficult" military operation.

Ukraine says it has pushed Russian forces back over the past several days near Bakhmut, while a full-blown counteroffensive involving tens of thousands of troops and hundreds of Western tanks is still being prepared.

"We still need a bit more time," Zelenskiy said in an interview with European broadcasters.

Reuters was not able to verify the reports and it was unclear whether Ukrainian forces were attacking in force or just mounting armed reconnaissance raids.

Ukrainian military analyst Oleksandr Musiyenko said Kyiv's backers understand that a counteroffensive "may not result in the complete eviction of Russian troops and the definitive defeat of Russia in all occupied areas."

"We have to be ready for the war to continue into next year - or it could end this year," Musiyenko told Ukrainian NV Radio. "It all depends on how the battles develop. We can't guarantee how the counter-offensive will develop."

Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Russia's Wagner private army which has led the fight in Bakhmut, on Thursday said Ukrainian operations were "unfortunately, partially successful". He called Zelenskiy's assertion that the counteroffensive had not yet begun "deceptive".

BRITAIN TO SEND CRUISE MISSILES TO UKRAINE

Ukrainian forces had already received enough equipment from Western allies for their campaign but were waiting for the full complement of armoured vehicles to arrive, Zelenskiy said.

In a major step up in Western military support for Ukraine, Britain said it was sending Storm Shadow cruise missiles that would give Kyiv the ability to strike deep behind Russian lines.

The missiles "are now going into, or are in, the country itself," Defence Secretary Ben Wallace told parliament in London, adding the missiles were being supplied so they could be used within Ukraine.

Western countries including the U.S. had previously held back from providing long range weapons for fear of provoking Russian retaliation. Wallace said Britain had weighed the risk.

The Kremlin earlier said if Britain provided these missiles it would require "an adequate response from our military".

In an evening address on Thursday, Zelenskiy said he would soon be able to report very important defence-related news.

"Foreign flags will never reign on our land, and our people will never be enslaved," he said.

The war in Ukraine is at a turning point, with Kyiv poised to unleash its counteroffensive after six months of keeping its forces on the defensive, while Russia mounted a huge winter offensive that failed to capture significant territory.

Moscow's main target for months has been Bakhmut, which it has yet to fully capture despite the bloodiest ground combat in Europe since World War Two.

ZELENSKIY EXPECTED TO MEET POPE FRANCIS

There are no signs of peace talks between the two countries to end the war, which began in February 2022 with a full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces. Zelenskiy is expected to meet Pope Francis in the Vatican on Saturday, diplomatic sources said, days after the pope said the Vatican was involved in a peace mission. The pope has given no further information on such an initiative.

The war worsened a global food crisis - Ukraine and Russia are major agricultural exporters - and while an agreement last July safely reopened some Black Sea grain shipment channels, negotiations to extend the deal were difficult.

Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the United Nations discussed on Thursday U.N. proposals to keep the pact alive. Moscow has threatened to quit on May 18 over obstacles to its grain and fertilizer exports.

Meanwhile in South Africa, an important Russian ally on a continent divided by the war, the U.S. ambassador told journalists that Washington was confident a Russian vessel had loaded weapons and ammunition from South Africa in December, a possible breach of Pretoria's declared neutrality in the conflict.

The government is opening an independent inquiry led by a retired judge into the allegation, the office of President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a statement. No evidence had yet been provided by Washington to support its allegation, the president's office said.

Washington has repeatedly warned countries against providing material support to Russia, saying that those who do may be subject to economic sanctions similar to those imposed on Moscow.

Reporting by Tom Balmforth, Olena Harmash, Pavel Polityuk, David Ljunggren and Ron Popeski; Editing by Peter Graff, Alex Richardson, David Gregorio and Diane Craft

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Reuters · by Reuters

7. Debt-Ceiling Fight Weighs on Defense Industry

Are we playing a catastrophic game of chicken?

Debt-Ceiling Fight Weighs on Defense Industry

Investors fear fight could delay passage of next year’s national-security budget, hurting military contractors

By Doug CameronFollow

 and Matt GrossmanFollow

May 12, 2023 5:30 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/debt-ceiling-fight-weighs-on-defense-industry-114f4cac?mod=hp_lead_pos4

If the U.S. defaults on its debt and is unable to pay all its bills this summer, the pain will fall squarely on the defense industry.

National security is by far the largest category of discretionary federal spending, with budgets rising over the past two years to counter China’s military expansion and tackle the conflict in Ukraine. Discretionary military spending reached three-quarters of a trillion dollars last year, up from $590 billion five years ago. 

House Republicans led by Speaker Kevin McCarthy have demanded across-the-board spending cuts in exchange for raising the limit of the government’s ability to borrow money, known as the debt ceiling. With a June 1 deadline looming, President Biden and Congressional Democrats maintain that the borrowing limit should be raised without preconditions and have called the GOP stance irresponsible. 

Neither side has presented a path forward that could win enough support to pass both chambers of Congress. The brinkmanship has driven investors from defense stocks and prompted efforts inside the Pentagon to mitigate any impact from the broader budget morass.

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As Democrats and Republicans debate raising the debt ceiling, they both agree that a default would be disastrous for the economy. But how? WSJ explains why U.S. debt has become the center of the economy. Photo Illustration: Madeline Marshall

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said that the legal debt ceiling will prevent further government borrowing as soon as June 1. That could temporarily disrupt federal spending, risking revenue streams for businesses not only in the defense industry, but also in the arenas including healthcare and consulting that bill the Treasury for much of their income.

A Goldman Sachs index of stocks that depend heavily on government revenue—largely concentrated in those sectors—has lagged behind the market overall, gaining less than 4% this year, compared with 7.8% for the broader S&P 500.

Even if Congress and the president temporarily resolve the crisis by suspending the debt ceiling to leave time for further talks, it would eat into the time Congress needs to write and pass a budget for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1. That would raise the likelihood the Defense Department will have to make do with a temporary budget known as a continuing resolution.

The debt-ceiling standoff has already led the House Armed Services Committee to delay its work on next year’s defense budget.

“The Republican leadership’s decision to take the debt ceiling increase hostage, to basically play chicken with the full faith and credit of our country, also cannot do anything but jeopardize our national security,” said Rep. Adam Smith (D., Wash.), the committee’s ranking member.

A continuing resolution likely would inflate the costs of military programs, delay the launch of new ones and prevent production increases.

“My biggest strategic worry is that we end up with a year-long CR,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said at a conference this week.

The latest Pentagon budget request includes numerous new program starts, including the Collaborative Combat Aircraft system of uncrewed jets. Boeing and Kratos are among companies developing the aircraft.

Concerns that military spending could be cut—or, at best delayed—in a debt-ceiling fight have weighed heavily on investor sentiment toward the biggest military contractors. Shares in Lockheed Martin are down this year more than 7%, with General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman off 16% and 20%, respectively.

Rob Stallard, a defense analyst at Vertical Research Partners, said the stocks’ performance reflects a “wall of worry” among investors over the broader budget debate. 

The U.S. has never missed a debt payment, and similar debt-ceiling standoffs often have been resolved in 11th-hour legislative agreements. But analysts and investors say that the drama in Washington this spring reflects a deeper political impasse that risks crimping military-spending growth in future budget negotiations.

House Republicans have proposed capping discretionary federal spending at 2022 levels and limiting growth to 1% a year for the next decade. Those limits would apply to discretionary military spending, which—at $751 billion—made up about 44% of the government’s discretionary spending last year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. While Republicans are seeking a spending freeze, many members have voiced support for a larger increase in the military budget, though it would come at the cost of cuts in other areas.

While defense-company executives have been loath to quantify the impact of a disrupted budget, some have tried to position themselves as more protected than others.

KBR, a company that provides logistical support for the military overseas and for the U.S. space program, thinks services in those areas are so critical that the government can’t cut back on contracts, Chief Executive Stuart Bradie said.

“What we’re doing in space can’t be turned off,” he said.

Lockheed Martin, whose stock has been down, had a display in March at an expo in Huntsville, Ala. PHOTO: CHENEY ORR/REUTERS

Spending by the Pentagon and other agencies with national security missions tends to be uneven, with large contract awards skewing spending in any given month. That pattern often leaves them unaligned with the flow of tax revenue into the Treasury, requiring borrowing to close the gap. 

The prospect of a disruption in federal spending during the summer months is particularly concerning. Contract awards tend to surge in the run up to the end of the government’s fiscal-year end on Sept. 30, said executives and analysts.

“If Treasury has to start paying obligations without additional borrowing, June to August is not an ideal period to begin that experiment,” said Byron Callan at Capital Alpha Partners, which provides policy research.

Meanwhile, concerns that the flow of military contracts could be interrupted might have sped up deals before any potential spending freeze.

“We’ve had some programs that have been in the acquisition process for years, and they’re starting to get awarded,” Roger Krone, who recently retired as CEO of Leidos, told analysts at an investor event last week. Leidos, whose government contracts span healthcare, civil aviation and defense, earned nearly 86% of its revenue from federal agencies last year.

Write to Doug Cameron at Doug.Cameron@wsj.com and Matt Grossman at matt.grossman@wsj.com

8. The U.S. and China Are Finally Talking Again, but Mistrust Clouds Next Steps

Excerpts:

The stakes are high. Besides making up the world’s two largest economies, both countries have crucial roles to play in solving global challenges such as climate change. Concerns are rising that a prolonged diplomatic chill between them could split the world into geopolitical blocs like during the Cold War, though both countries say that isn’t what they want.

Official accounts of the recent meetings suggest both sides remain far apart on core issues. China blames the U.S. for the worsening of ties. During the foreign minister’s meeting with Mr. Burns, Mr. Qin told the U.S. envoy that Washington should “deeply reflect” and “return to rationality” when it comes to relations between the countries, according to a Chinese statement. 

Before that meeting, Mr. Burns, a veteran diplomat, had largely been frozen out of meetings with high-level Chinese officials since his arrival in Beijing last year.

At the same time, statements by both countries after the meetings in Vienna said they had agreed to keep open the line of communication between Mr. Sullivan and his Chinese counterpart Mr. Wang, signaling a desire by both sides to talk more.

So far, Beijing is holding off on rescheduling a visit by Mr. Blinken after the balloon incident, and Messrs. Sullivan and Wang didn’t discuss specific dates for when a rescheduled visit might take place, a U.S. official said.

The U.S. and China Are Finally Talking Again, but Mistrust Clouds Next Steps

High-level meetings in Beijing and Europe open door to easing tensions

By Brian SpegeleFollow

May 12, 2023 6:50 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-u-s-and-china-are-finally-talking-again-but-mistrust-clouds-next-steps-4507a783?mod=hp_lead_pos5

BEIJING—An unexpected burst of diplomacy between the U.S. and China this week points to a growing desire in both capitals to begin stabilizing relations after months of free fall. 

The question of how to achieve that and what comes next is much more difficult to answer due to high levels of mistrust running through Beijing and Washington, especially when it comes to the most sensitive areas of the relationship such as Taiwan. 

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan convened more than eight hours of talks with China’s top foreign-affairs official, Wang Yi, over two days in Vienna this week. In Beijing, meanwhile, U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Burns met with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and Commerce Minister Wang Wentao in recent days. 

The talks sought to break the ice of a bitter few months after the U.S. shot down a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon in February and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy met with Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen, defying warnings from Beijing. 

The balloon incident reinforced concerns in Washington over Chinese spying and led the Biden administration to cancel a rare visit to Beijing by Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Beijing saw the furor over the balloon as evidence of a U.S. effort to contain its rise as a global power. 

This week’s meetings are important for breaking the impasse of the past few months, said Dingding Chen, a professor of international relations at China’s Jinan University. 

“Both countries want to stabilize the relationship,” he said. “Neither side wants to continue to deteriorate the relationship. That’s for sure. The question is how to do that.” 

The stakes are high. Besides making up the world’s two largest economies, both countries have crucial roles to play in solving global challenges such as climate change. Concerns are rising that a prolonged diplomatic chill between them could split the world into geopolitical blocs like during the Cold War, though both countries say that isn’t what they want.

Official accounts of the recent meetings suggest both sides remain far apart on core issues. China blames the U.S. for the worsening of ties. During the foreign minister’s meeting with Mr. Burns, Mr. Qin told the U.S. envoy that Washington should “deeply reflect” and “return to rationality” when it comes to relations between the countries, according to a Chinese statement. 

Before that meeting, Mr. Burns, a veteran diplomat, had largely been frozen out of meetings with high-level Chinese officials since his arrival in Beijing last year.

At the same time, statements by both countries after the meetings in Vienna said they had agreed to keep open the line of communication between Mr. Sullivan and his Chinese counterpart Mr. Wang, signaling a desire by both sides to talk more.

So far, Beijing is holding off on rescheduling a visit by Mr. Blinken after the balloon incident, and Messrs. Sullivan and Wang didn’t discuss specific dates for when a rescheduled visit might take place, a U.S. official said.

Wang Yi, China’s top foreign-affairs official. PHOTO: ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Both governments have also discussed potential trips to China by Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

In a brief encounter with reporters on Wednesday, Mr. Biden said there had been progress in arranging a conversation between him and Chinese leader Xi Jinping but didn’t say when it might take place. The two leaders last spoke to each other in Bali, Indonesia, ahead of a summit of the Group of 20 major economies in November, in their first face-to-face meeting since Mr. Biden became president. 

The most significant source of tension between the two countries is Taiwan, the democratically self-ruled island that is claimed by Beijing. While the U.S. doesn’t officially recognize the government in Taipei, it has been providing military and political support for the island as it faces Western officials widely say is growing aggression by China and its military.

As Beijing sees it, the U.S. support for Taiwan is coming close to violating the arrangement about Taiwan reached when the U.S. and China established diplomatic relations in 1979. Beijing says that providing any recognition to the government in Taiwan or encouraging Taiwan independence would cross its most sensitive of red lines and send relations between the countries into dangerous territory.

“The U.S. side should not underestimate or mistake that position,” Mr. Chen said. 

The Biden administration repeatedly has said the U.S. position on Taiwan remains unchanged. 

The renewed U.S.-China diplomacy is taking place against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine. A bid by China to present itself as a peacemaker in the conflict has faced skepticism in the West due to Beijing’s close relations with Moscow, though both U.S. and European officials recently signaled a willingness for China to play a stepped-up role in helping end the conflict.

After meeting with Mr. Burns in Beijing, Mr. Qin flew to Europe. Analysts widely see the trip as part of an effort to restore ties with key trading partners such as Germany and an attempt to insert a wedge in Europe’s relationship with the U.S. 

U.S.-China tensions have hung in the background of Mr. Qin’s trip. The Chinese foreign minister said Europe risked getting dragged into a Cold War-style confrontation with China. 

“If this ‘new Cold War’ is fought, not only the interests of China will be harmed, but Europe’s interests will also be sacrificed,” Mr. Qin said this week. 

The Chinese and U.S. accounts of the meetings in Vienna each listed the war in Ukraine as one of the topics of conversation, although no further details were given. 

Despite the evident tensions between the U.S. and China, the in-person meetings this week at the very least show that the business of diplomacy between two of the world’s biggest powers is starting to normalize after the Covid-19 pandemic almost entirely cut off in-person contact for three years. 

Before Covid-19, U.S. officials met regularly with their Chinese counterparts. Executives, investment managers and students also played a role in helping the two countries find common ground. Many of those connections were severed in early 2020 when China imposed strict border controls and direct flights between the countries almost completely dried up.

While China’s borders have now reopened, flights between the U.S. and China remain scarce. A new challenge may loom on the horizon, as China intensifies a national-security campaign to shut down foreign access to information that Beijing considers sensitive. 

The campaign has already targeted foreign businesses, including a police visit to the Shanghai offices of U.S. consulting firm Bain & Co., and has sent a chill through the foreign business community in China. 

Write to Brian Spegele at Brian.Spegele@wsj.com

9. Ukraine’s Hidden Advantage

Excerpts:

When it comes to training Ukrainian forces, European countries are shouldering a much larger burden than the United States despite the high costs and impacts to their own military preparedness. The British military is sacrificing a substantial portion of its own military readiness by training and equipping Ukrainians instead of their own soldiers. The combined arms training the United States is providing at several bases in Germany comes at a far lower impact to the U.S. military, given its size and the significant U.S. resources that are present in Europe. Indeed, the United States should do more to help Ukraine train its military and maintain consistent force quality.

An area of particular need is the development of company-grade officers and midlevel sergeants. Ensuring the continued quality of Ukraine’s junior military officers will be essential to maintaining the good battlefield decision-making that has been crucial to Ukraine’s success thus far. Since European countries are already doing so much to train Ukrainians, this is one area in which the United States, with its combat experience and resources, could take the lead.

Training takes weeks and months to deliver results, and Ukraine’s Western allies cannot afford to wait until new needs emerge in Kyiv. Up to now, Europe has helped give Ukraine a crucial edge in force quality through its extensive training efforts. But the United States and its European allies should immediately begin planning to sustain Ukrainian combat effectiveness with extra reserve forces over a potentially long counteroffensive. Greater U.S. support would help increase the volume of training and maintain the resolve of European providers if their efforts failed to materialize into quick Ukrainian gains on the battlefield. The willingness of European countries to put significant resources on the line—even in areas where the United States is doing comparatively little—has become increasingly vital to Ukraine’s defense and will be crucial to its continued success.

Ukraine’s Hidden Advantage

How European Trainers Have Transformed Kyiv’s Army and Changed the War

By Alexandra Chinchilla and Jahara Matisek

May 11, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Alexandra Chinchilla and Jahara Matisek · May 11, 2023

In the 14 months since Russia invaded Ukraine, analysts have expressed recurring doubts about the strength of Europe’s commitments to Kyiv. Through much of 2022, many noted that Germany dragged its feet in supplying arms to Ukrainian forces and took months to come around on tanks. Others have worried that some European countries facing rising energy costs and other economic stresses would curtail their support and press for a negotiated peace with Moscow. Even now, despite a steady flow of weapons and aid to Ukraine, some commentators have suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin may be calculating that Europe is wavering and that he can simply outlast Kyiv’s Western partners.

But by focusing on weapons and aid, such assessments overlook the full extent of European efforts in Ukraine. The United States deservedly gets credit for providing about half of the $156 billion in economic, humanitarian, and military aid that Ukraine received in the first 12 months of the conflict. Yet aid and equipment, though important, are not sufficient to account for Ukraine’s success on the battlefield: much has depended on the quality and training of Ukrainian forces. And in this regard, Europe has been able to play an especially crucial role. In 2022, for instance, the United Kingdom trained about 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers, whereas the United States trained only about 3,100. And with the exception of Austria, every country in the EU, and even Switzerland, has provided some form of lethal or nonlethal aid and training to the Ukrainian military since the war started.

In fact, these European efforts build on training and advising programs that NATO countries provided to Ukraine before the war started: between 2014 and 2022, Canada, Lithuania, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States—along with a dozen other Western countries—trained and advised Ukrainian forces on a variety of skills, from combat leadership to operational planning. NATO advisers also helped build Ukrainian special forces to meet NATO standards. These initiatives paid off: in contrast to 2014, when they were disorganized and lacked up-to-date training to counter Russia’s seizure of Crimea and initial war in the Donbas, Ukrainian forces successfully thwarted Russia’s 2022 invasion and have since defended much of Ukrainian territory. In doing so, they have used irregular warfare tactics absorbed from Western advisers to stop Russian forces on the road to Kyiv as well as more conventional tactics based on military strength and discipline to halt Russia’s offensive in the eastern part of the country.

But training is a continuous process and will become even more important the longer the war continues. Ukraine needs more new recruits and specialized training in the advanced weapons systems it is receiving from the West. To improve the odds of success in its upcoming spring offensive, it also needs expertise in coordinating large masses of forces and firepower in what is known as combined arms maneuver. Scaling up training from the level of squads to platoons, companies, and eventually battalions will give Ukrainian forces the agility and speed they need to overcome Russia’s preferred war of attrition and to recapture Russian-occupied territory.

With its geographic proximity, Europe is ideally positioned to provide this support. Since Russia’s invasion, and without any U.S. involvement, European countries have been hosting and providing all basic combat training for new Ukrainian recruits—converting civilians into capable soldiers in a five-week training course. Additionally, many European countries are providing specialized training in weaponry such as Leopard tanks and air defense systems and are currently supplying about half of the more advanced training needed for larger Ukrainian formations to learn and master maneuver warfare. Even more than arms and ammunition, Ukraine’s offensive to push Russia out of its territory will depend on training. To better grasp the challenges Ukraine faces and the ways that Europe in particular can help meet them, it is crucial to recognize this important dimension of the war effort and how it is being addressed today.

SKILLS AND SHELLS

After more than a year of hard fighting, maintaining force quality has become a key challenge for Ukraine. Any military that is engaged in intense combat over a prolonged period will experience a drop in combat effectiveness as experienced soldiers are lost and replaced with fresh recruits. Upward of 120,000 of Ukraine’s professional, well-trained forces were killed or wounded over the last year, and their replacements include large numbers of mobilized citizen-soldiers who have little or no combat experience. Such a decline in skills and expertise is to be expected and is also affecting Russia, whose military has suffered over 200,000 casualties and is filled with mobilized soldiers and recruits from prisons who have little desire to fight and die in Ukraine.

Nevertheless, Kyiv cannot simply hope that Russia, with a population more than three times larger, will see its forces degrade faster than Ukraine’s. To defend its own positions and reclaim territory from Russia, Ukraine must continue to train large numbers of citizen-soldiers, many of whom lack basic skills, such as how to shoot, move, communicate, and provide combat medicine. The Ukrainian government has set out to train 6,000 new soldiers a month—a difficult task given the country’s severely stretched resources and struggle for survival.

To help Ukraine meet this goal, European countries are providing crucial support. Our interviews with Ukrainian and NATO personnel indicate that trainers from NATO countries have been able to get around 2,500 new Ukrainian soldiers through basic combat training each month—short of Kyiv’s target but still an important contribution. Known as Operation Interflex, this program started in June 2022 and has been led by the United Kingdom with the assistance of army trainers from Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden.

Training takes place at four sites and is an extension of the training that was provided by the United Kingdom and its NATO allies before 2022. It is tailored to what the Ukrainian armed forces consider useful in view of actual conditions on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine. The reliance on army trainers from European countries and their partners in the Indo-Pacific has been vital to demonstrating multilateral support for Ukraine and combating Russian narratives about the war’s being fueled by the United States and NATO. Along with basic training, Ukrainian recruits who complete the program are given gear such as uniforms, helmets, vests, first-aid kits, and cold- and wet-weather clothing. Alongside this effort, Germany, Latvia, Slovakia, and Spain have also provided training to smaller groups of Ukrainian soldiers, around 200 per month.

European countries are providing all of Ukraine’s basic combat training.

Even battle-hardened Ukrainian soldiers need training in using and maintaining the large variety of weapons systems now being provided by the West. Since the early months of the war, Ukraine has relied on military equipment from a variety of Western and unaligned donors to replenish its existing stockpiles and equip the new units it is building to prepare for counteroffensive operations. Some Western weapons systems, such as Javelin and NLAW antitank missiles, have been easy to integrate into Ukrainian operations because they are easy to use or already familiar to Ukrainian soldiers. But many other kinds of non-Soviet weapons and equipment—including artillery, air defense systems, and the German Leopard 2 and British Challenger 2 tanks—are new to Ukrainian soldiers and require advanced training to master.

In fact, European countries have another advantage in leading this training effort: they are familiar with a wider variety of equipment and weapons systems than their counterparts in the United States. Although the United States is the biggest donor in terms of the volume of aid, European countries provide a wider array of weapons systems, ammunition, and equipment to Ukraine. Take artillery shells: the United States provides substantial numbers of 120-millimeter mortar shells and 105-millimeter artillery shells compatible with the U.S. weapons sent to Ukraine, but European donors have been providing dozens of other kinds of shells to supply the large variety of guns in Ukraine’s arsenal. Several European countries, such as Slovakia, are scaling up production of 155-millimeter artillery shells fivefold to meet Ukrainian demands.

According to interviews with Ukrainian troops in February 2023, over half of the artillery and mortar systems they have been using were donated by European countries, Australia, and Canada. Because of its proximity to Ukraine, Poland is also taking a lead role in maintaining and fixing numerous Western and Soviet legacy weapons systems that Ukraine trucks across the border when they break down. In March, the European Union collectively agreed to refund member countries that are sending a combined one million artillery rounds from their own stockpiles to Ukraine, with plans for a $1 billion joint munition procurement to further support the country.

Given the broad range of weapons and artillery they work with, European donors are best suited to train Ukrainians on these systems. Indeed, according to interviews, European countries are now providing the majority of training for specialized weapon systems. For example, at sites across Poland, Ukrainian tank crews are learning how to use Leopard tanks with the assistance of Canadian, Polish, and Norwegian trainers. Europe has also played a lead role in enhancing Ukraine’s air defense capabilities. Germany is training Ukrainian forces on their own territory on the IRIS-T advanced air defense systems and Gepard anti-aircraft guns; France and Italy have been introducing them to the Aster 30 SAMP/T air defense system. Such an emphasis on air defense training is crucial to Ukraine’s ability to protect its infrastructure and civilians. Still, Ukraine will need more of these European air defense systems by the end of the summer, given Russia’s use of Iranian drones and ballistic and hypersonic missiles to cause collateral damage throughout the country.

EMBRACING COMPLEXITY

European contributions have not been limited to training Ukrainian forces in new weapons systems. For one thing, Europe has provided crucial help in integrating newly trained units into Ukraine’s existing forces and in preparing Ukraine for complex combined-arms operations. Once individual soldiers are trained, they need to be integrated into the company- and battalion- size units to which they are assigned. To be able to orchestrate effective defensive and offensive operations, such units must quickly learn to coordinate with one another. Ukraine’s much-anticipated spring offensive to reclaim its territories in the south and east will require even more advanced coordination, involving armor, artillery, reconnaissance, and air power, in combined arms maneuver warfare. Planning and executing such operations in line with NATO principles will be crucial for Ukraine to gain the full potential of the advanced weaponry it is receiving from Europe and puncture Russian lines and trenches.

Certainly, the United States has played a significant part in this effort. At present, U.S. trainers are providing around half of the combined arms training to Ukraine at the Grafenwöhr training area in Germany. But Poland and many other European countries have been especially crucial. For example, the European Union Military Assistance Mission to support Ukraine was established in November 2022 with the support of 24 countries. It will train 15,000 Ukrainians over the course of two years in activities ranging from basic training to advanced and more specialized military capabilities such as demining, junior leadership, logistics, and communication. Allowing many European countries to train smaller, company-size Ukrainian units in combined arms maneuver, this initiative will enhance Ukraine’s fighting capabilities and reinforce European unity against Russian aggression.

Europe is providing weapons that the United States is hesitant to send.

European countries have also taken the lead in providing weapons that the United States has been hesitant to send, such as MiG-29 fighter aircraft from Poland and Slovakia. Even the transfer of main battle tanks to Ukraine, agreed to in January by the United States and many of its European allies, was a European rather than a U.S. initiative. The agreement was reached only after the United Kingdom first pledged Challenger tanks and Poland, along with 11 European countries and Canada, made a similar pledge of Leopard tanks and pressured Germany to permit their export to Ukraine. In the end, Germany consented to the Leopard exports after the United States agreed to contribute Abrams tanks. But that U.S. contribution was largely symbolic, at least in the short term: Ukraine will receive almost 300 Western battle tanks with modern targeting and optical kits before its spring offensive, but none of them will be Abrams tanks, which will not arrive until later in the year.

Such European initiative and resolve may prove even more crucial in the months to come as countries like Finland, France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom consider providing fourth-generation fighter aircraft and fighter pilot training to Ukraine. So far, the United States has not yet agreed to train Ukrainians to fly F-16s. It seems plausible that the United States will agree to have European countries provide advanced fighter aircraft on their own to avoid the escalation concerns raised by some in Washington.

MORE EUROPE, MORE SUCCESS

In contrast to the narrative of European wavering on Ukraine, the EU and NATO have displayed a remarkable degree of unity throughout the war. Moreover, this united front has been bottom-up—driven by individual countries’ stepping forward to offer training, equipment, and other support — rather than imposed by the United States. Most important, although this multifaceted assistance has received less attention among analysts in Washington, it reflects genuine public support in Europe for Ukraine. Polling of NATO member states in November 2022 showed that around 64 percent of respondents believed that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has threatened their security and that 69 percent thought their country should continue to provide aid to Ukraine. Across Europe, civil society groups and nongovernmental organizations have responded to Russian aggression with their own informal assistance to Ukraine, countering Russian disinformation while crowd sourcing weapons and military aid and providing humanitarian training.

When it comes to training Ukrainian forces, European countries are shouldering a much larger burden than the United States despite the high costs and impacts to their own military preparedness. The British military is sacrificing a substantial portion of its own military readiness by training and equipping Ukrainians instead of their own soldiers. The combined arms training the United States is providing at several bases in Germany comes at a far lower impact to the U.S. military, given its size and the significant U.S. resources that are present in Europe. Indeed, the United States should do more to help Ukraine train its military and maintain consistent force quality.

An area of particular need is the development of company-grade officers and midlevel sergeants. Ensuring the continued quality of Ukraine’s junior military officers will be essential to maintaining the good battlefield decision-making that has been crucial to Ukraine’s success thus far. Since European countries are already doing so much to train Ukrainians, this is one area in which the United States, with its combat experience and resources, could take the lead.

Training takes weeks and months to deliver results, and Ukraine’s Western allies cannot afford to wait until new needs emerge in Kyiv. Up to now, Europe has helped give Ukraine a crucial edge in force quality through its extensive training efforts. But the United States and its European allies should immediately begin planning to sustain Ukrainian combat effectiveness with extra reserve forces over a potentially long counteroffensive. Greater U.S. support would help increase the volume of training and maintain the resolve of European providers if their efforts failed to materialize into quick Ukrainian gains on the battlefield. The willingness of European countries to put significant resources on the line—even in areas where the United States is doing comparatively little—has become increasingly vital to Ukraine’s defense and will be crucial to its continued success.

• ALEXANDRA CHINCHILLA is an Assistant Professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.
• JAHARA MATISEK is a Military Professor at the U.S. Naval War College and a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force. The views expressed here are his own.

Foreign Affairs · by Alexandra Chinchilla and Jahara Matisek · May 11, 2023

10. Why Putin Needs Wagner

Excerpts:

As a result, Putin has resorted to increasingly unorthodox methods to rein in the generals. Starting in the fall 2022, for example, he encouraged the voenkors to publicize problems in the army. But even more important has been the role of Wagner as a counterbalancing force to the military. For Prigozhin, despite the extraordinary casualties suffered by his solders, this is a win-win situation. He recognizes that he will never pose a political threat to Putin because he has no other backing within the Russian ruling elite apart from Putin’s own patronage. And Putin has been careful to keep it that way.

With his special status—loosely managed by the GRU, tolerated by the military, and protected by Putin—Prigozhin hopes to keep his unique position in the Kremlin’s increasingly medieval court. And in this situation, even Prigozhin’s outrageous attacks may be part of the design: the more he acts like a wicked court jester, the better. This is a familiar type in Russian history. In the eighteenth century, Tsar Peter the Great made Alexander Menshikov, his own version of a court jester, the most powerful prince in the country for much the same reason: Menshikov, with his modest background, had no standing within Russian aristocracy, and was brutal, ruthless, and utterly loyal to the tsar, who had a habit of beating him with a stick.

What Prigozhin apparently doesn’t understand, however, is that Putin’s Russia is not Peter the Great’s, as much as he and Putin have tried to make it so. Many sectors of Russian society, in particular the country’s bureaucracy, are watching the Wagner boss’s escapades with horror and disgust. Right now, Wagner is burning through more ammunition than any other Russian unit, which can be justified only as long as Wagner is doing what Prigozhin promised—making advances in Bakhmut. If things go south on the battlefield, this enormous monthslong campaign—in which Wagner has sacrificed thousands of human lives and destroyed huge quantities of war materiel—could start to look like a colossal waste of scarce resources. But whether Putin would see a serious Wagner setback as a capital offense is another matter. The Russian president has a long record of making effective use of failed bureaucrats, politicians, and other henchmen—former president and prime minister Dmitry Medvedev comes to mind. Prigozhin could be next.

Why Putin Needs Wagner

The Hidden Power Struggle Sustaining Russia’s Brutal Militia

By Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan

May 12, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan · May 12, 2023

In early May, tensions between the Russian Defense Ministry and Wagner, the private military company close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, burst into the open. For months, Wagner soldiers had been playing a lead part in Russia’s siege of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, at enormous human cost. Now, Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner’s combative leader, had had enough. In a lurid video he released, he stood surrounded by the dead bodies of Wagner soldiers in Bakhmut, hurling expletives at Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defense minister, as well as at the head of the general staff and the head of Russian forces in Ukraine. Prigozhin threatened to withdraw his forces from Bakhmut if they were not immediately given more ammunition.

To many observers, a major crack seemed to be emerging between Wagner and the Kremlin. Others speculated that Prigozhin’s days might be numbered, now that he had seemingly made enemies with the entire Russian military leadership. But two days later, Prigozhin walked back his threat to pull Wagner out of Bakhmut and tried to present the situation as having been successfully resolved in his favor. And then, in a new video, he berated some unnamed “happy grandfather” who “thinks he is good,” raising many eyebrows in Moscow about whom he was taking aim at. In the end, the melodrama looked like a desperate attempt by Prigozhin to save Wagner’s reputation as the only Russian unit capable of offensive operations, despite its catastrophic losses in Bakhmut.

Missing from this view, however, is why Putin has tolerated Prigozhin’s antics and where Wagner actually fits within Russia’s military and intelligence hierarchy. In fact, Wagner’s rise to prominence is only the most recent development in a long history of Russian and Soviet reliance on informal forces, which goes all the way back to the Stalin era. Moreover, the group has a substantial legacy in Ukraine, having first emerged there during Russia’s previous war in the Donbas, eight years ago. For Putin, Wagner has also become a crucial means to rein in the military, which he has long viewed as a potential threat to his rule. Contrary to Western assumptions, Wagner’s high-profile role in the war has as much to do with the dynamics of power in Moscow as with what is happening on the battlefield in Ukraine.

STALIN’S SECRET FORCE

To understand the relative strength of Prigozhin and Wagner in Russia, it is necessary to consider how the company is seen by at least four different parts of the Russian state: the military intelligence agency, known as GRU; the military at large; the state security agency, known as the FSB; and Putin himself.

The GRU played a leading role in Wagner’s origins, and the reasons lie to a large degree in the tumultuous reforms that the military intelligence went through in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Under Shoigu’s predecessor Anatoly Serdyukov, who served as defense minister from 2007 to 2012, the ministry had tried to decrease the role of the GRU within the military. Soon after taking over, however, Shoigu changed course and put new resources into the GRU. As a result, the agency was beefed up with new personnel, many of whom were recruited from the Spetsnaz—military special forces who were traditionally supervised by the GRU. To the generals running the agency, bringing in more Spetsnaz made sense: the Russian army was by then heavily involved in the conflict in Syria, as well as in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, and the GRU was shifting its focus to what it called “active intelligence”—conducting armed operations rather than simply cultivating sources as in traditional espionage. In the years that followed, this Spetsnaz mentality grew inside the agency, and General Vladimir Alexeev, who was in charge of the Spetsnaz, was promoted to first deputy chief of the GRU.

Russia has relied on informal and deniable military forces since the Stalin era.

It was amid this shift in the GRU’s priorities that the existence of Wagner was first reported in the Russian media. In 2015, the independent news site Fontanka.ru, based in St. Petersburg, reported that members of the private military company were active in eastern Ukraine. Fontanka was also the first to report that Prigozhin was a leading backer of Wagner and that Dmitry Utkin, who had served as a Spetsnatz commander, was in charge of Wagner’s military operations. In fact, although it was unknown at the time, a new department had been formed inside the GRU to supervise the activities of private military companies, including Wagner. A few months after Wagner’s existence was first reported, an official within the GRU confirmed to us the existence of this new department, which was staffed, unsurprisingly, by Spetsnaz veterans. For the GRU, Wagner provided a convenient deniability to its operations, at a time when Russia was publicly disavowing its direct involvement in eastern Ukraine.

On the surface, the use of private military companies fit a new pattern of twenty-first-century warfare. Military contractors had been used by the United States in Iraq, for example, and Wagner bore some similarities to Blackwater, the U.S. military contractor. But for the GRU, Wagner was also a continuation of a much older tradition going back to Soviet times, when the Kremlin used proxy forces to intervene in conflicts all over the world. “It’s just like when we had our military in disguise in Spain during the Spanish Civil War,” a GRU official told us in 2017, when we asked him why the agency needed a private military company like Wagner.

Although the Soviet government never officially confirmed its intervention, it is well established that Stalin sent military advisers to support Republican forces in Spain in the 1930s. All Soviet soldiers who went were given false Spanish-sounding names. (One of these advisers was the legendary Soviet officer Haji Mamsurov, who was known in Spain as Colonel Xanti and who may have been one of the possible prototypes for the character of Robert Jordan in Ernest Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls.) In 2015, a Spanish town near Madrid unveiled a monument to Colonel Xanti in a ceremony attended by Mamsurov’s descendants and Russian government officials.

Soviet and Russian military officials had long viewed the Spanish Civil War as a “good war”: Soviet soldiers had been on the right side and the fighting was undeniably antifascist, since the Republicans were fighting the Nationalist forces of General Francisco Franco, who was allied with both Mussolini and Hitler. In official Russian historiography, the Soviet intervention in Spain is seen as the direct precursor to the Great Patriotic War—Russia’s monumental fight against Nazi Germany in World War II.

For the GRU, the Russian experience in the Spanish Civil War became a convenient justification for its embrace of Wagner forces in Ukraine, where the Kremlin insisted it was once again fighting fascists. And Wagner even had its own Colonel Xanti: like the famous Soviet officer, Dimitry Utkin used a nom de guerre—Wagner—and his exploits included directing Russian mercenaries, in his case in Syria.

GAMING THE GENERALS

A far more complicated question, however, is the extent of Wagner’s support within the military and the FSB. In the years since its emergence in 2015, and especially since the start of Russia’s current war in Ukraine, the character of Wagner’s military operations has evolved considerably. It started as a secretive, deniable proxy mercenary force, and gradually evolved into a large military unit with operations in several countries, its own artillery and air force, and finally, huge recruiting billboards on the streets of Russian cities, its own film production glorifying its deeds, and a big shiny tower in St. Petersburg for its corporate headquarters. It also became known as the most brutal force in Russian military, openly boasting of killing “traitors” in the most horrific way.

As Prigozhin becomes increasingly bold in his criticism of the military leadership, many observers have begun to question how long he can get away with it. For the moment, the GRU has maintained its support for Wagner, according to officials we have spoken to within the agency’s Spetsnaz forces. The GRU seems to believe that Wagner remains useful.

But the agency’s backing doesn’t give much assurance to Prigozhin. During Putin’s tenure, there have been notable occasions when GRU support didn’t count for much. In the early years of this century, for example, the GRU and its Spetsnaz forces supervised a proxy military battalion in Chechnya called Vostok, which was run by Ruslan Yamadayev, a powerful Chechen warlord. Vostok was an efficient force, and Yamadaev was loyal to the GRU. But this was not enough to protect him when his clan went into open conflict with Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of Chechnya. In September 2008, Yamadayev was assassinated in a drive-by shooting while sitting in his Mercedes at a traffic light just a few hundred meters from the White House in Moscow (the seat of the Russian government). Many believe that the killing was ordered by Kadyrov.

For the moment, Prigozhin also retains some support within the military, despite his caustic criticism of the ministry of defense. Since September 2022, when Russia lost a great deal of territory to Ukraine’s offensive in the northeast, Prigozhin has been openly attacking Russia’s military chain of command. Nonetheless, Russia’s heavily controlled media, including the so-called voenkors—Russian war reporters who are embedded with the army—have been ordered to help promote Wagner and its activities in Ukraine. As a result, pro-Kremlin papers have continued to publish interviews with Wagner’s officers that glorify the group’s fighting spirit.

Even now, the Russian media’s pro-Wagner coverage has not subsided. Moreover, the army itself appears to be continuing to support Wagner. According to Prigozhin, following the release of his Bakhmut video, the military leadership assigned General Sergey Surovikin, the former head of Russian forces in Ukraine and still one of Russia’s most respected generals, to oversee the provision of ammunition and resources to Wagner.

For Prigozhin, one advantage is that, apart from him, Wagner has remained faceless, and Russia’s military leadership doesn’t see it as competition. Although Prigozhin has been incessantly promoting his fighters as the most capable fighting force on the Russian side, he has also made a special effort to keep his officers and field commanders anonymous. None of their names, even Utkin’s, are familiar to ordinary Russians, and when Wagner’s soldiers and officers are interviewed by voenkors, they remain anonymous. The military leadership’s tolerance of Wagner is important, but it could be withdrawn the minute that the army or the Kremlin finds it fit to do so. Russian generals are not known for their loyalty to their comrades-in-arms.

Just as important for Wagner is the stance of the FSB, Russia’s main intelligence agency. After the FSB’s initial missteps at the start of the war, the agency has recently regained its footing and influence within the Russian establishment. In Russia itself, the FSB has been getting more and more aggressive in suppressing any signs of dissent. But it is also very active in Ukraine, especially its military counterintelligence department, which provides oversight of the army and has been assigned to suppress all forms of resistance in Russian-occupied territories. Wagner, as a military unit, falls under the responsibility of this branch of the FSB, and this offers little comfort to Prigozhin.

THE UTILITY OF BADNESS

The most important factor in Prigozhin’s continued role in Ukraine, however, is Putin himself. Indeed, Prigozhin’s repeated attacks on the military’s two top leaders seem so out of line that only Putin’s personal support seems able to account for the Wagner leader’s continued role in the war. But why is Prigozhin valuable to Putin?

The explanation lies in Putin’s complicated relationship with the Russian military. During his early years in power, one of Putin’s greatest challenges was keeping the military under control. As one of the world’s largest armies in a vast country where everything is done in-house, the military has a tradition of making sure that the outside world knows as little as possible about its activities. That means that the usual forms of government and public oversight—whether through Parliament, law enforcement, or the media—simply don’t take place in Russia. During his first decade in office, Putin sought to tighten his grip on the army by appointing the former KGB general and his trusted friend Sergei Ivanov as minister of defense. But Putin was forced to replace him in 2007 when it became clear that Ivanov’s efforts to launch a larger military reform had failed. Later, with Shoigu, another outsider to the military, Putin again attempted to gain more leverage.

In Putin’s Russia, the more Prigozhin acts like a wicked court jester, the better.

But now, after more than a year of war in Ukraine, there is little evidence that Putin has succeeded with Shoigu any more than he did with Ivanov. Moreover, Putin understands that in wartime the military tends to gain more power within the state. He knows that the longer the war continues the more this power will grow, and the harder it may be for him to exercise control. And since he tends to view the world in terms of threats, the relative power of the military is something that concerns him—in some ways even more than the army’s performance on the battlefield.

As a result, Putin has resorted to increasingly unorthodox methods to rein in the generals. Starting in the fall 2022, for example, he encouraged the voenkors to publicize problems in the army. But even more important has been the role of Wagner as a counterbalancing force to the military. For Prigozhin, despite the extraordinary casualties suffered by his solders, this is a win-win situation. He recognizes that he will never pose a political threat to Putin because he has no other backing within the Russian ruling elite apart from Putin’s own patronage. And Putin has been careful to keep it that way.

With his special status—loosely managed by the GRU, tolerated by the military, and protected by Putin—Prigozhin hopes to keep his unique position in the Kremlin’s increasingly medieval court. And in this situation, even Prigozhin’s outrageous attacks may be part of the design: the more he acts like a wicked court jester, the better. This is a familiar type in Russian history. In the eighteenth century, Tsar Peter the Great made Alexander Menshikov, his own version of a court jester, the most powerful prince in the country for much the same reason: Menshikov, with his modest background, had no standing within Russian aristocracy, and was brutal, ruthless, and utterly loyal to the tsar, who had a habit of beating him with a stick.

What Prigozhin apparently doesn’t understand, however, is that Putin’s Russia is not Peter the Great’s, as much as he and Putin have tried to make it so. Many sectors of Russian society, in particular the country’s bureaucracy, are watching the Wagner boss’s escapades with horror and disgust. Right now, Wagner is burning through more ammunition than any other Russian unit, which can be justified only as long as Wagner is doing what Prigozhin promised—making advances in Bakhmut. If things go south on the battlefield, this enormous monthslong campaign—in which Wagner has sacrificed thousands of human lives and destroyed huge quantities of war materiel—could start to look like a colossal waste of scarce resources. But whether Putin would see a serious Wagner setback as a capital offense is another matter. The Russian president has a long record of making effective use of failed bureaucrats, politicians, and other henchmen—former president and prime minister Dmitry Medvedev comes to mind. Prigozhin could be next.

• ANDREI SOLDATOV is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and Co-Founder and Editor of Agentura.ru, a watchdog of the Russian secret services’ activities.
• IRINA BOROGAN is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and Co-Founder and Deputy Editor of Agentura.ru.

Foreign Affairs · by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan · May 12, 2023

11. How Secrecy Limits Diversity

Excerpts:

More must be done. Government training programs—intended to curb bias, whether explicit or implicit—need to be redesigned and proven to be effective. This is particularly important when it comes to training for security clearance investigators and adjudicators. The Teixeira case shows that officials need to be aware of how implicit bias may lead them not only to discriminate against groups that are already underrepresented in the national security workforce but prevent them from perceiving character flaws and ideological commitments that make others unfit and untrustworthy.

Mentorship programs should also be based on best practices and continually evaluated. Participants must be willing and interested volunteers who feel at ease with open discussion about the types of gender, racial, ethnic, and sexual orientation issues that their mentees may face. They must also be comfortable giving open and candid advice, even when it is not favorable. Finally, they should see themselves as not only providing technical advice but also coaching and supporting their mentees on a confidential and trusted basis.

Department and agency leaders need to be held accountable and demonstrate progress. They should expect and plan for resistance. It will sometimes come from some of the organizations’ best staff members but will nevertheless have to be addressed head-on. Unconscious bias exists in most, if not all, of us. How an agency addresses it when it comes from an unexpected, valuable, and productive source will be a challenge—one that cannot be ignored or pushed aside.

As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed in 1997, a whole culture of secrecy has grown inside government. It is a self-replicating culture that resists outside scrutiny and enforces a sense of exclusivity through the use of initiation rituals, code words, and color-coded badges. But the secrecy and power of the national security establishment make it all the more vital that citizens have confidence that its ranks represent all of the American people, in all their diversity. And it must redress or at least acknowledge the wrongs done to all too many of their fellow citizens who tried to serve their country but were unfairly deemed untrustworthy by a government that, for too long, has not earned their trust.

How Secrecy Limits Diversity

The Security-Clearance Process Keeps Many Qualified People Out of America’s National Security Workforce

By Matthew Connelly and Patricia Irvin

May 12, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Matthew Connelly and Patricia Irvin · May 12, 2023

In December 2022, the Department of Energy announced that it was righting a historic wrong. After an unprecedented reexamination of a decades-old case, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm decided to void the 1954 revocation of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s security clearance. The case of Oppenheimer, the famous nuclear physicist, sheds light on how the United States decides who can be trusted with access to classified information. The clearance process ultimately determines who has the knowledge and the power to play a role in defending the United States against all threats, foreign and domestic.

Oppenheimer’s revocation, Granholm announced, resulted from “the bias and unfairness of the process.” Despite being known as the “father of the atom bomb” for his crucial work developing the weapon, Oppenheimer rankled officials by opposing high-level decisions on thermonuclear weapons and the postwar world order. He was also the son of German Jewish immigrants, with friends and relatives who had politically progressive views—several were communists—at a time when many Americans treated Jews as intrinsically foreign and untrustworthy. The hearing board that decided Oppenheimer’s fate was made up of three men. Before the case was even presented, one of those men, Ward Evans, made his views clear when he declared that “almost without exception those who turned up before security review boards with subversive backgrounds and interests were Jewish.”

Exonerating Oppenheimer is hardly the end of the story, however. The security clearance process and other systems that determine who can access classified information—starting with who gets offered sensitive positions—have excluded countless other Americans, typically with little or no explanation or redress. In fact, Oppenheimer had far more advantages than others who have come under this kind of scrutiny. After all, Oppenheimer’s family was wealthy, and he was well connected. Since details about the stripping or denial of security clearances in individual cases are typically unavailable, there is no way to determine with real precision how many such cases have, over decades, shaped the composition of the foreign policymaking and national security community. But the limited information that is available suggests that people from marginalized groups in the United States have consistently had greater difficulty obtaining and retaining clearances than others. Along with clear disparities (and discrimination) in hiring and promotion, this is an important factor in explaining why people from these groups are less likely to hold national security positions—both relative to their representation in society at large and relative to representation in government jobs that do not require such clearances. This is especially true of the most senior positions where higher levels of security clearances are required.

A LACK OF INTELLIGENCE

The stakes in examining this question are enormous. The recent case of Jack Teixeira, a young, white airman who leaked classified documents to friends online, makes clear that granting someone access to national security information carries genuine risks, and just one mistake can have serious consequences. In Teixeira’s case, the system erred in too easily granting him a clearance, despite numerous red flags. But in the case of many female and nonwhite applicants, it may have been unfair and discriminatory in denying them clearances. If the process discriminates against people who are already marginalized and favors other groups who have long benefited from preferential access, the clearance system offers another example of how structural inequality has both reflected and reinforced disadvantage in the United States.

Beyond the effects on individuals and communities—as grave as they may be—there are also serious national security implications in how the United States recruits and retains people to work for the government. Empirical research has demonstrated that diverse groups are less conformist and more deliberative, leading to more accurate and evidence-based decision-making. More diverse firms outperform less diverse ones, are more innovative, are better able to attract younger applicants, and have higher rates of employee retention. Moreover, the U.S. national security community would benefit from attracting individuals with greater experience and knowledge of cultural differences. As a white CIA officer with over 34 years of service put it in an interview with ABC News in 2020: “Our adversaries and enemies are not going to be privileged, white suburbanites. . . . A large body of our spies are not really up to the challenge of dealing with different people and relating to them in an effective way.”

Declassified CIA documents show that, even almost 60 years ago, government officials acknowledged the lack of diversity in the national security workforce and recognized that the security clearance process disproportionately excluded Black job applicants. But even after a series of high-profile efforts to recruit more people from underrepresented groups, the Annual Demographic Report of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence shows that there are still significantly fewer people from these groups in the national security workforce than in the federal workforce as a whole (27.6 percent versus 38.6 percent). At the highest level of leadership in the intelligence community—the Senior Executive Service—seven percent are Black and 3.5 percent are Hispanic or Latino, a third of their share of the general population (12 and 18 percent respectively). One reason is that employees who are members of minority racial groups are more likely to resign: as years of service in the intelligence community increase, minority officer representation decreases. At the FBI, African Americans make up 11.3 percent of the workforce but only 4.7 percent of its special agents.

Women also remain underrepresented, especially in more senior positions. They account for 32.4 percent of the Senior Executive Service in the intelligence community, compared with 44.2 percent of the federal workforce. At the FBI, 23 percent of special agents are women. But women have been able to make more substantial progress over time. At the State Department, for instance, 35 percent of Foreign Service officers are women, compared with 24 percent in 1987. The percent of Black foreign service officers during the same period went from 5.4 percent to seven percent.

In 2021, in a bid to address this problem, the Biden administration announced via executive order a new push to increase the number of hires from traditionally underrepresented groups. It is not the first such initiative. Rather, a lack of diversity in the national security community has been recognized as a problem for several decades. It was already a high-profile issue in the 1990s after multiple employment discrimination cases and the release of damning internal research. One example is the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s 1989 report to Congress about the underrepresentation of women and racial minorities in all levels of the State Department and, more severely, in the Foreign Service and in senior levels. Previous directives and exhortations have been insufficient; they have run into policies and practices unique to the national security community that are ostensibly designed to ensure that personnel are loyal and trustworthy, but which have made the community particularly resistant to change.

DELIBERATE DISCRIMINATION

The historical record provides overwhelming evidence of how, for many decades, discriminatory hiring and screening practices created a remarkably homogeneous national security community. J. Edgar Hoover, the first director of the FBI, had a preference for hiring his fraternity brothers with whom he had celebrated the Confederacy at George Washington University. These FBI agents—virtually all white and all male until the 1970s—served as gatekeepers standing in the way of anyone seeking a job that required a security clearance. As the retired diplomat Chris Richardson has noted, when the United States’ reputation abroad suffered as a result of racial segregation in the 1950s, the State Department still “turned to the security clearance process to bar Blacks from the Foreign Service, claiming that many had been members of ‘subversive’ organizations such as the N.A.A.C.P.” The perception that Black people could not obtain security clearances (even though the grounds for denial were questionable at best) meant that senior State Department officials did not even try to appoint them. As Secretary of State John Foster Dulles explained in 1953, there was a “problem of getting colored people cleared by the FBI.”

For decades, the government made it a matter of policy to deny clearance to non-conforming sexual minorities and systematically removed gay people from the ranks. This was ostensibly because they were vulnerable to blackmail, posing a national security risk. But when the Pentagon finally studied the issue in 1991, it could not identify a single example of a queer person who had betrayed their country because of the threat of being outed. Even so, the Clinton administration faced staunch resistance when it sought to remove the ban on gay people serving in the military. In a 1993 White House meeting, Marine Corps Commandant Carl Mundy insisted that for someone to identify as gay was equivalent to them saying, “I’m [a member of the] KKK, [a] Nazi, [or a] rapist.” Nevertheless, in 1995, President Bill Clinton put an end to the automatic disqualification of queer people from security clearances by including “sexual orientation” within the antidiscrimination statement pertaining to access to classified documents.

The 1990s marked the start of a new era in which government agencies began to acknowledge that such attitudes undermined their ability to accomplish their mission. In 1991, when the CIA first surveyed its own employees, nearly half of white women at the agency said they had been sexually harassed, and well over half of Black employees experienced racial harassment. Black employees tended to be hired at a lower level than whites with the same background, and women tended to be promoted more slowly. All in all, 90 percent of those filling positions in the top four management ranks were white men—barely half of one percent were Black. When the study’s authors asked the 11 most senior CIA officials about the agency’s lack of diversity, their justification was that women and minorities were “reluctant to take the risks necessary to advance.” Other stereotypes included the idea that “women are both too assertive and not assertive enough” and that “minorities are not good at negotiating.” In fact, people from marginalized communities who somehow earned a place in the national security establishment found, over and over again, that they could only survive if they kept their mouths shut with regard to anything that might seem like a complaint about discrimination. The CIA study observed that the number who filed even an informal complaint was “remarkably small.”

One reason it has been so hard to assess and eliminate discrimination from the security clearance process is that at no point in the process is information officially recorded about race or ethnicity. Consequently, it is not possible to obtain data based on race or ethnicity about clearance denials or suspensions, measure disparities, and thus determine the nature and dimensions of possible discriminatory outcomes.

Teixeira was notorious among his classmates for racist and antisocial views and his obsession with weapons

The only government study that assessed potential bias in the offices responsible for handling security clearances was conducted in 1994. It reviewed data concerning potential racial disparities in security clearance suspensions at three Department of Energy facilities. All three showed statistically significant differences. For instance, in the fiscal year 1992, Native Americans and Hispanics made up about two percent and about 23 percent, respectively, of all employees at the department’s Albuquerque operations. But 12 percent of the suspensions involved Native Americans and 42 percent involved Hispanics, rising to 47 percent the next year. At the Savannah River facility, African Americans made up about 20 percent of employees holding clearances but accounted for 41 percent of those whose clearances were suspended. The report concluded that the department should investigate and take “appropriate corrective action” if it found discrimination. The department established a process to obtain data but made “no further plans to determine whether disparities exist or the need for corrective actions.”

Despite a lack of data, societal and structural factors relating to race may help explain denials and suspensions. A 2021 RAND study explored factors that disproportionately affect nonwhite applicants. For instance, the top reason why clearances are not granted is “financial considerations.” As a group, Blacks and Latinos tend to have significantly higher student loans and unsecured consumer debt and lower credit scores than their white counterparts. The RAND study also suggested that clearance denials resulting from having foreign relatives are more likely to affect underrepresented communities. A record of having been arrested, even without an indictment or conviction, can also thwart a clearance; this weighs against many nonwhite applicants owing to the fact that people of color are disproportionately subjected to police stops and arrests for lesser infractions.

An additional challenge that racial and ethnic minorities face is the length of time it takes to complete the clearance process. In 2021, CIA Director William Burns testified that it takes over 600 days from completion of the application to receipt of the security clearance that allows a person to work at the CIA. Long wait times disadvantage poorer applicants, who disproportionately tend to be nonwhite. Finally, anecdotal evidence suggests that potential nonwhite applicants sometimes self-select out of the process. The process can be intimidating, as interviewers, who are often FBI agents, investigate intimate aspects of the applicant’s life. There are strict legal restrictions on the types of questions that a job applicant can be asked, but security clearance interviewers have significant latitude. These problems can collectively deter applicants.

The Teixeira case shows the other side of the coin. Screeners should have uncovered clearly worrisome signs that he was not—as required of anyone applying for a security clearance—“reliable, trustworthy, of good conduct and character, and of complete and unswerving loyalty to the United States.” None of the standard questions, whether about drug use, foreign connections, or money problems, would have revealed why he was such a risky prospect. But Teixeira was notorious among his classmates for racist and antisocial views and his obsession with weapons. The fact that he came from a military family—his father served in the same intelligence unit—may have given false assurance to his screeners.

A HOSTILE WORKPLACE

Even after obtaining a position and a security clearance, people who might bring more diverse perspectives to the national security workforce face a variety of challenges in seeking to move up the ladder. These include the daily grind of bias and harassment in the workplace, as well as the multitude of microaggressions—subtle negative, condescending, or stereotyped comments and actions that may or may not be intentional. For instance, in recent years, some intelligence community veterans have published scathing attacks on the very idea of diversifying the workforce as “political correctness” or even as the long-term result of a Soviet-era disinformation campaign that aimed to exploit racial divisions in the United States. They insist that the necessary changes will make it harder to recruit “men with first-class brains” who are willing to work hard and claim that white people more easily blend into operational environments.

A common theme among the people we spoke to with careers in the national security community is that diversity committees and training sessions do not help to advance the careers of women and racial minorities. Success in the intelligence services is often dependent on having a mentor to guide an employee through the unwritten rules of the institution and recommend them for advantageous positions, many of which require additional security checks. But finding a mentor depends upon a range of factors and can be challenging. Senior white men in an organization may feel more of a natural affinity to younger white men or to women who remind them of a sister or daughter. Others may decide not to try with minorities due to concerns that they might inadvertently offend, or with women because of concerns of risking a sexual harassment claim.

Lacking guidance and sponsorship, people of color often get assignments related to their racial identity. Black diplomats get posted to African countries, Latinos get assigned to South America, and FBI agents of color are given civil rights cases. “For the most part, Blacks are not involved in hot spots like Russia, North Korea, Iran, Ukraine, nuclear issues, etc.,” one State Department veteran told us. She added that “they are placed in jobs where they have little power and aren’t in sensitive positions where they require high-level clearances.” In order for Blacks and Latinos to progress in the State Department, they need to be posted in areas where they have not traditionally served in large numbers, such as in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. But they find it difficult to get these kinds of assignments that are best for career advancement and sometimes even the right advice about which assignments those are. Although many welcome the opportunity to serve in positions that utilize their particular knowledge of a language or culture—which might be in the increasingly polyglot and cosmopolitan cities of Europe and the Persian Gulf—none want to be pigeonholed.

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders confront other challenges. They sometimes face significantly longer security clearance investigations, usually centering around whether they might have family or other ties to countries that are U.S. adversaries, even though their families may have emigrated generations ago. In addition, security concerns often cause restrictions to be placed on where they can serve that are tied to their ethnic backgrounds. This means that, at a time when Asia is more important than ever, the United States is depriving itself of a rich pool of cultural and linguistic expertise.

DATA-DRIVEN CHANGE

The decision to acknowledge the wrong done to Oppenheimer could establish a useful precedent. If the national security establishment wishes to send a clear signal of cultural change, it could reopen the files of other individuals who were unjustly denied a place in the national security community and commission studies to determine how discrimination in earlier decades may have shaped the system. To expose continuing bias and discrimination, the Biden administration should issue an executive order directing departments and agencies to collect and publish the data necessary to identify abiding disparities in clearance denials, adjudications, and appeals.

More must be done. Government training programs—intended to curb bias, whether explicit or implicit—need to be redesigned and proven to be effective. This is particularly important when it comes to training for security clearance investigators and adjudicators. The Teixeira case shows that officials need to be aware of how implicit bias may lead them not only to discriminate against groups that are already underrepresented in the national security workforce but prevent them from perceiving character flaws and ideological commitments that make others unfit and untrustworthy.

Mentorship programs should also be based on best practices and continually evaluated. Participants must be willing and interested volunteers who feel at ease with open discussion about the types of gender, racial, ethnic, and sexual orientation issues that their mentees may face. They must also be comfortable giving open and candid advice, even when it is not favorable. Finally, they should see themselves as not only providing technical advice but also coaching and supporting their mentees on a confidential and trusted basis.

Department and agency leaders need to be held accountable and demonstrate progress. They should expect and plan for resistance. It will sometimes come from some of the organizations’ best staff members but will nevertheless have to be addressed head-on. Unconscious bias exists in most, if not all, of us. How an agency addresses it when it comes from an unexpected, valuable, and productive source will be a challenge—one that cannot be ignored or pushed aside.

As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed in 1997, a whole culture of secrecy has grown inside government. It is a self-replicating culture that resists outside scrutiny and enforces a sense of exclusivity through the use of initiation rituals, code words, and color-coded badges. But the secrecy and power of the national security establishment make it all the more vital that citizens have confidence that its ranks represent all of the American people, in all their diversity. And it must redress or at least acknowledge the wrongs done to all too many of their fellow citizens who tried to serve their country but were unfairly deemed untrustworthy by a government that, for too long, has not earned their trust.

• MATTHEW CONNELLY is Professor of History at Columbia University and the author of The Declassification Engine, What History Reveals About America’s Top Secrets.
• PATRICIA IRVIN is a corporate attorney who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration from 1993 to 1996.

Foreign Affairs · by Matthew Connelly and Patricia Irvin · May 12, 2023

12. China, US Break Diplomatic Deadlock

Excerpts:

The United States has a laundry list of Cabinet secretaries hoping to visit China, including not only Blinken but Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. So far, there have been no announcements.

But there are limits to the uptick in China-U.S. engagement, especially on the military side.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has been attempting to arrange a sideline meeting with China’s Defense Minister Li Shangfu on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in June. China has refused to agree to such a meeting due to existing U.S. sanctions on Li. Austin previously expressed frustrations that emergency hotlines between the two militaries went unanswered during the balloon crisis.

China, US Break Diplomatic Deadlock

A meeting between Jake Sullivan and Wang Yi is the highest-ranking exchange since the balloon crisis in February.

thediplomat.com · by Shannon Tiezzi · May 12, 2023

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U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, met on May 10 and 11 in Vienna, Austria, both sides confirmed on Thursday. (Wang, previously China’s long-time foreign minister, is now the director of the Chinese Communist Party’s Foreign Affairs Office, a higher-ranking position.)

The United States described the talks as “candid, substantive, and constructive,” while China said they were “candid, in-depth, substantive, and constructive.”

It was the highest-level exchange between China and the United States since a testy bilateral meeting between Wang and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on February 18. That conversation was dominated by then-recent accusations of a Chinese surveillance balloon transiting the continental United States.

The White House readout of the Sullivan-Wang meeting included a list of topics discussed, from “key issues in the U.S.-China bilateral relationship” to “Russia’s war against Ukraine, and cross-strait issues, among other topics.”

Interestingly, the initial readout from China, as published by the state news agency Xinhua, did not mention any discussion on global or regional issues, only saying that the meetings had discussed “bilateral ties.”

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More than that what discussed, however, the mere fact that the talks occurred at all was noteworthy. According to the White House, “This meeting was part of ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication and responsibly manage competition,” a key goal of the first (and so far only) in-person meeting between Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping last November. But “lines of communication” have been mostly dormant for the past three months – until a flurry of diplomacy in the last week.

The in-person meeting between Sullivan and Wang continues that momentum, with reported plans for Biden and Xi to speak in the near future.

China-U.S. diplomatic exchanges had been largely frozen since Blinken canceled a planned trip to Beijing in February, in response to a Chinese balloon discovered transiting over the United States. Washington insisted that the balloon was conducting surveillance of sensitive military sites. Beijing claimed it was a scientific balloon conducting meteorological research but refused to release information on the type of research being conducted or the agency responsible for the balloon.

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The United States military eventually shot the balloon down over the Atlantic Ocean and collected the debris for analysis. China responded vehemently, accusing the United States of using force on a “civilian airship,” which it called an “unacceptable and irresponsible action.”

After that, formal diplomatic exchanges largely ceased, aside from the meeting between Blinken and Wang in the immediate aftermath of the crisis.

Recently, however, there have been signs of a thaw. John Kerry, the United States’ special presidential envoy for climate change, said on May 3 that he had been invited to China, although there has not been any official confirmation or dates announced.

Then U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns held talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang in Beijing on May 9. In that meeting, Qin blamed a “series of erroneous words and deeds by the U.S.” for having “undermined the hard-won positive momentum of Sino-U.S. relations.” Qin said there was a need to stabilize “icy” ties and “avoid a downward spiral and unanticipated events.” But he largely laid the onus on Washington to do that, saying the United States should “correct its understanding of China and return to rationality.”

When asked if the United States saw “anything for it to correct” in its approach to China, a State Department spokesperson replied, “There absolutely isn’t.” He later expanded on that, saying, “The United States has acted responsibly. We have continued to engage with PRC [People’s Republic of China] officials and have kept lines of communications open.”

Those efforts have not be without cost, however. According to Reuters, Washington has taken conscious steps to avoid raising China’s ire and pave the way for increased communications. Such measures include delaying the rollout of new U.S. sanctions on Chinese firms and avoiding the public release of information from the FBI’s analysis of the surveillance balloon.

As Reuters’ Michael Martina wrote: “One Chinese official confirmed to Reuters that a renewed Blinken visit would be more likely if the U.S. accommodated Beijing’s wish to shelve the issue, adding that China had conveyed it did not want the FBI to release details of its investigation into the downed balloon.”

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The United States has apparently decided to do just that, judging by the conspicuous silence about the balloon since the days immediately after it was shot down. And it appears the return to formal talks is its reward from Beijing.

In addition to the exchanges that have occurred already, China’s commerce minister, Wang Wentao, will reportedly come to the United States for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting later this month. He is expected to hold bilateral talks with U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai.

The United States has a laundry list of Cabinet secretaries hoping to visit China, including not only Blinken but Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. So far, there have been no announcements.

But there are limits to the uptick in China-U.S. engagement, especially on the military side.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has been attempting to arrange a sideline meeting with China’s Defense Minister Li Shangfu on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in June. China has refused to agree to such a meeting due to existing U.S. sanctions on Li. Austin previously expressed frustrations that emergency hotlines between the two militaries went unanswered during the balloon crisis.

STAFF AUTHOR

Shannon Tiezzi

Shannon Tiezzi is Editor-in-Chief at The Diplomat.

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thediplomat.com · by Shannon Tiezzi · May 12, 2023

13. In Defense of Bean Counting: Why Material Measures of National Power Matter

Excerpts:

For attempts to predict the outcome of battles—where contextual factors such as morale and operational art dominate—material measures of power have proven too abstract, too imprecise. In predicting overall war outcomes, their predictive abilities are imperfect, though considerably better. (The 80 percent accurate prediction of war outcomes is far better than a coin flip.)

However, material measures of power are most useful for providing a general understanding of the grand strategic situation in which countries and their national leaders find themselves. A country’s global share of GDP is far from a perfect predictor of any outcome, but it provides a fairly accurate sense of that country’s power status in the international system. Composite measures of economic, political, and security-based capabilities will miss much, but they also have proven capable of tracking our transition from a bipolar to a unipolar to a multipolar world order.

Context, of course, remains important. So too do materials and mass, even if these measures are inadequate for drawing policy-relevant conclusions when considered in isolation. Rather than choosing one over the other, material measures of power offer objective starting points for scientific analyses—leaving room for some alchemy thereafter.

In Defense of Bean Counting: Why Material Measures of National Power Matter - Modern War Institute

mwi.usma.edu · by Collin Meisel · May 11, 2023

The rack and stack of Russian and Ukrainian forces prior to Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine left many analysts, myself included, convinced that by this time last year Putin and pals would be celebrating under a white, blue, and red flag in Kyiv’s Independence Square. This isn’t the first time that a material-based understanding of national power has failed.

Many military professionals and analysts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries attempted to quantify the battlefield and also largely failed. From Lanchester’s laws of relative military force strength to Dupuy’s Operational Lethality Indices to the US Army’s weapon effectiveness index / weighted unit value metric and beyond, many creative attempts to quantify military power have successively been championed and abandoned.

Now, the pendulum appears to have swung in the opposite direction, with analysts heeding the “alchemy of combat effectiveness” and dismissing comparisons of equipment and personnel counts as “bean counting.” Today’s critics of material measures of power have a point—if the goal is to measure combat outcomes. As military analysts Michael Kofman and Rob Lee often remind us, combat is contingent upon a myriad factors, some of which involve pure chance, even luck.

But material measures continue to offer an important guide to measuring power at the national level. In a more limited sense, they continue to be informative on the battlefield, provided such measures are assessed within broader situational contexts. Put simply, materials—and mass—still matter.

Mass in the Donbas

The war in Ukraine has been one of innovation, inspiration, and intrepidness. It has also been one of surging and dwindling inventories of ammunition, equipment, and personnel.

Although a “bean counting” of Ukrainian and Russian military equipment on hand at the time of Russia’s full-scale invasion would have shown a stark contrast that heavily favored the Russians, military aid that has been provided to Ukraine since has gone a long way in narrowing the material capabilities gap. Where masses of material capabilities have failed in terms of predictive capacity for the future, they hold immense explanatory capacity for the present. In Ukraine, Russia’s material advantages should have produced battlefield outcomes heavily in its favor, and the fact that they did not shows that a range of other factors that degraded Russian military effectiveness needed to be accounted for. But by flipping that around, we can see that all of those other factors were also mitigated by Russia’s material advantages.

What other force could have executed its campaign as miserably as the Russians in the early days of their full-scale invasion and still be in the fight today? Indeed, the Russian military arguably still has a chance of winning the conflict, though we can debate what winning means in this context given Russia’s undeniable geopolitical losses. Setting the question of combat performance scorecards aside, what can better explain the periodic operational pauses in the war so far than shortages of personnel, ammunition, and equipment?

Materially False

To be sure, quantitative measures of complex phenomena can fail us. As sociologist William Bruce Cameron cautioned, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” By focusing only on the easily measurable, we can become like the drunk searching for his keys under the lamppost because that is where the light is.

Quantifauxcation—or the “practice of assigning a meaningless number, then concluding that because the result is quantitative, it must mean something,” as defined by statistician Philip B. Stark—is another potential pitfall. The remainder of Stark’s quote, that “if the number has six digits of precision, they all matter,” describes the distinct but related problem of false precision.

Unfortunately, assessments that are fully divorced from the quantitative realities of our world fail too. Deeply ingrained cognitive biases lead us to be drawn in by vivid, tidy stories that communicate a clarity, consistency, and certainty—tending, as intelligence analyst Richards Heuer observed, to “disregard abstract or statistical information that may have greater evidential value.” In contrast, the “strict grammar” of mathematics, as political scientist John V. Gillespie wrote, allows for broad-based and objective comparison of alternatives and, in our case, national power.

The solutions to the problems of quantification include making an earnest attempt to measure previously unmeasured factors, and when numbers are assigned, to avoid assigning meaningless numbers. For example, the US intelligence community regularly uses the terminology of probability, including phrases such as “likely” and “probably,” even though their assessments are rarely if ever based on probabilistic statistical models. The phrases are meaningful, however, because analysts use these words with reference to a common scale of their best guess of a probability, where for example “likely” and “probably” communicate a 55–80 percent chance.

Of course, one cannot know with exactitude whether 55–80 percent is the correct likelihood, but it is far better than a shoulder shrug and disclaimer that anything is possible. And the intentionally broad range communicates that it is an inherently imprecise estimate.

Heuristics, Not Predictors

In a recent effort to quantify military power, political scientist Mark Souva created the material military power measure, which combines data across militaries’ land, air, sea, and nuclear capabilities. While far from perfect—as any coarse-grained measure will fail to capture important distinctions in specific contexts—Souva’s measure accurately predicts the outcome of 80 percent of the thirty-six wars between 1865 and 2007 cataloged by the Correlates of War project.

Across a broader set of instruments of national power, the Global Power Index—a composite measure of countries’ demographic, diplomatic, economic, military, and technological capabilities—has successfully tracked and forecasted the rise of the Global South. Its account of the widening and then narrowing gap in the distribution of power in the international system offers a measurement of the United States’ unipolar moment. In the line graph presented here in Figure 6, that period was roughly 1991 through 2009—an era bookended by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Great Recession.

The Formal Bilateral Influence Capacity Index has successfully tracked geopolitical influence in nations’ bilateral relations as well as among networks of international interactions. For example, in a forthcoming report from me and my colleagues with the Stimson Center, we note that the Middle East appears to have permanently left America’s sphere of influence in favor of its own or a more China-oriented sphere. Beijing’s latest diplomatic coup, reestablishing Saudi and Iranian ties with one another, and Saudi Arabia’s deepening ties with the Chinese-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization are but two early indicators of this development. Long-term structural transitions—including shifts in global oil demand, with US demand peaking and Chinese demand forecasted to continue to grow substantially—will continue to push trends in this direction.

An index that will be more familiar to readers, gross domestic product (GDP), also offers a useful if imperfect general measurement of national power. As economist Paul Krugman illustrated earlier this year with a simple column chart, the vast disparity in GDPs for the United States and European Union relative to Russia goes a long way in explaining why Western-backed Ukraine has been so successful in resisting Russian domination (a fact that does not diminish Ukraine’s extraordinary and unexpectedly successful resistance). And, as political scientist Jacek Kugler and others note, GDP is particularly useful for “longer-term assessments because of [its] simplicity, availability, and forecasting potential.”

These measures are heuristics, not predictors. In the theoretical framework of political scientist Alexander Wendt, they speak to the “rump materialism” underlying international interactions. While the immaterial is important, the distribution of material capabilities, their sophistication and diversification, and their positions in the world (i.e., geography) conspire to constrain outcomes—independent from, though often in connection with, ideas, norms, and other immaterial factors.

Remaining Tensions

To some extent, measuring power means reifying a fundamentally relational concept. Beyond the difficult-to-measure features of a fighting force—intangibles such as the will to fight—power is an idea that emerges from “processes of social transactions.” In other words, in the language of quantitative social science, it is not a variable. To the extent that we can think of it as something concrete, it manifests in the connections between variables.

In plain language, power is not something that can be measured directly. It can only be measured by proxy. All measures of power, then, are abstractions that are necessarily divorced from some, though certainly not all, realities.

For attempts to predict the outcome of battles—where contextual factors such as morale and operational art dominate—material measures of power have proven too abstract, too imprecise. In predicting overall war outcomes, their predictive abilities are imperfect, though considerably better. (The 80 percent accurate prediction of war outcomes is far better than a coin flip.)

However, material measures of power are most useful for providing a general understanding of the grand strategic situation in which countries and their national leaders find themselves. A country’s global share of GDP is far from a perfect predictor of any outcome, but it provides a fairly accurate sense of that country’s power status in the international system. Composite measures of economic, political, and security-based capabilities will miss much, but they also have proven capable of tracking our transition from a bipolar to a unipolar to a multipolar world order.

Context, of course, remains important. So too do materials and mass, even if these measures are inadequate for drawing policy-relevant conclusions when considered in isolation. Rather than choosing one over the other, material measures of power offer objective starting points for scientific analyses—leaving room for some alchemy thereafter.

Collin Meisel is the associate director of geopolitical analysis at the University of Denver’s Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies. He is also a geopolitics and modeling expert at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, a Netherlands-based security and defense think tank.

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: Petro Poroshenko

mwi.usma.edu · by Collin Meisel · May 11, 2023

14. Ukraine’s Dogged Effort to Get Weapons to the Battlefield, Not the Black Market

Excerpts:

Yet the scrutiny is wearing on Ukrainian officials, who are balancing their dire need for weapons against onerous expectations for tracking them.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine revealed “a twinge of frustration” and an air of “How many times do I have to tell you?” when the issue was raised last month by a U.S. delegation to Kyiv, said Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, who was on the trip.

But Mr. Zelensky agreed it is necessary, she said, to ensure the continued provision of American weapons and other security assistance.

“All it will take is a situation where we find that somebody, somewhere down the chain, has gotten a piece of military equipment and has sold it for personal enrichment, or misappropriated it in some way,” Ms. Murkowski said. “Because then it just gets that much harder.”

Ukraine’s Dogged Effort to Get Weapons to the Battlefield, Not the Black Market

The New York Times · by Lara Jakes · May 12, 2023

They can’t track every shell, but at a time of heightened scrutiny in Washington they know they can ill afford slips with the big ticket items.

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The 59th Motorized Brigade of the Ukrainian Ground Forces firing a howitzer at a Russian position in early May.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

By

Reporting from Warsaw

May 12, 2023, 5:00 a.m. ET

Rocket launchers, precision-guided missiles and billions of dollars’ worth of other advanced American weapons have given Ukraine a fighting chance against Russia ahead of a counteroffensive. But if even a few of the arms wind up on the black market instead of the battlefield, a Ukrainian lawmaker gloomily predicted, “we’re done.”

The lawmaker, Oleksandra Ustinova, a former anti-corruption activist who now monitors foreign arms transfers to Ukraine, does not believe there is widespread smuggling among the priciest and most sophisticated weapons donated by the United States over the last year.

“We’ve literally had people die because stuff was left behind, and they came back to get it, and were killed,” she said of Ukrainian troops’ efforts to make sure weapons were not stolen or lost.

But in Washington, against a looming government debt crisis and growing skepticism about financial support for Ukraine, an increasingly skeptical Congress is demanding tight accountability for “every weapon, every round of ammunition that we send to Ukraine,” as Representative Rob Wittman, Republican of Virginia, said last month.

By law, U.S. officials must monitor the use, transfer and security of American weapons and defense systems that are sold or otherwise given to foreign partners to make sure they are being deployed as intended. In December, for security reasons, the Biden administration largely shifted responsibility to Kyiv for monitoring the American weapons shipments at the front, despite Ukraine’s long history of corruption and arms smuggling.

Yet the sheer volume of arms delivered — including tens of thousands of shoulder-fired Javelin and Stinger missiles, portable launchers and rockets — creates a virtually insurmountable challenge to tracking each item, officials and experts caution.

An American volunteer teaching Ukrainian soldiers how to use a Javelin at a base outside Zaporizhzhia in South Eastern Ukraine, April last year.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

All of which has heightened anxieties among Ukrainian officials responsible for ensuring weapons get to the battlefield.

“It’s impossible, honestly, to ask people to go through their stocks all the time,” said Ms. Ustinova, the chairwoman of a committee in Ukraine’s Parliament that monitors the transfer of weapons, in an interview in the streets of Warsaw last month, as she rushed to catch a train to Kyiv.

At the beginning of the war, she said, “it was just about survival, and people were just passing around Javelins” to repel a column of Russian armor that bore down on Kyiv early in the invasion. While those sorts of weapons are now routinely tracked, it’s still “very difficult” to account for small arms, like rifles, or the millions of artillery shells that the United States and its allies have sent.

The scrutiny is heightened for Javelins, Stingers and other kinds of missiles, as well as small-diameter bombs, certain types of drones, night-vision goggles and other systems being supplied to Ukraine.

But Ms. Ustinova says she has seen “zero evidence” of illicit arms transfers of the sort that would destroy Ukraine’s credibility and threaten at least a cutback in U.S. support.

“Once there is smuggling or misuse of weapons, we’re done,” she said.

So far, American officials said, there have been only a handful of cases of suspected arms trafficking or other illicit military transfers of advanced weapons sent to foreign conflicts that must be most closely tracked.

Ukrainian soldiers near Kyiv last year inspecting the remnants of a Russian tank that was destroyed by what they said was a Javelin missile.Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

Currently, federal investigators are looking into reports of Javelin shoulder-fired rockets and Switchblade drones being sold online after being taken from Ukraine, according to an American official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a highly sensitive issue.

There was one confirmed report of a Swedish-made, anti-tank grenade launcher being smuggled out of Ukraine. But the theft was discovered only after the weapon exploded in the trunk of a car about 10 miles outside Moscow, injuring a retired Russian military officer who had just returned from eastern Ukraine.

Inspectors at the Pentagon, State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development reported in March that they had “not yet substantiated significant waste, fraud or abuse” of American support that has been sent to Ukraine out of 189 complaints they received alleging misconduct.

A rare visit by American inspectors to a Ukrainian military facility in Odesa on April 26 found “no irregularities,” said Capt. William Speaks, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Europe.

The commander of NATO troops in Europe, Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, told Congress late last month that he could recall only one case of attempted smuggling — some automatic rifles — since the war began. He said he remained “highly confident” in Ukraine’s ability to secure the nearly $37 billion in U.S. weapons and other security assistance that has been committed so far.

But the threat remains. In intense conflicts like the one in Ukraine, weapons are being used almost as quickly as they are received. That makes hand-held missile systems and other portable arms “vastly more difficult” to track, said Nikolai Sokov, a senior expert at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation in Austria.

Ukrainian soldiers handling a Stinger weapon in eastern Donetsk region, in May last year.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

Accounting for ammunition is “next to impossible,” Mr. Sokov said. He cited unconfirmed reports of Stinger missiles “roaming Ukraine free,” and said officials appeared to be trying to persuade Ukrainian citizens to return light arms they received to defend themselves last year.

“This is what happens in every large-scale, lengthy conflict, and I do not see any reason to think it may be different with Ukraine,” Mr. Sokov said.

In interviews and congressional testimony, more than a half-dozen American and Ukrainian officials described an assiduous but fallible process to track U.S.-delivered weapons.

Before they cross into Ukraine, arms shipments stop at military staging centers in Europe, where the weapons’ serial numbers are recorded into multiple databases that are viewed by American and Ukrainian officials. The serial numbers are rechecked along the delivery route into Ukraine to make sure none are missing. They are also used to identify weapons that have been lost and later reclaimed; arms that turn up far from Ukraine would indicate they were smuggled.

Ukrainian officials “track it as it goes forward,” General Cavoli told Mr. Wittman in the House hearing. “We watch over their shoulder.”

This past December, American officials began giving Ukrainian troops hand-held bar code scanners to instantly transmit the serial numbers of advanced weapons into an American database. The new process was part of the decision by the Biden administration to give Ukraine more authority to self-report how it is securing arms.

American military officials said the shift was necessary, given that fighting has largely prevented U.S. inspectors from visiting battlefield units. But American officials responsible for the oversight remain concerned they cannot personally confirm the weapons’ whereabouts.

At least some Ukrainian frontline units under constant Russian fire are still waiting to receive hand-held scanners, Ms. Ustinova said. Such battlefield assessments have been infrequent in other war zones, American officials said, as smuggling generally becomes a concern when entire containers of sensitive missiles or rocket systems go missing — not individual light weapons.

Ms. Ustinova said Ukrainian officials and troops were all too aware of the stiff criminal penalties not just for smuggling American weapons but also failing to report any losses — arms destroyed or captured on the battlefield. Each lost weapon system is investigated and its serial number reported to the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, she said, “so in case it shows up, in Iran or somewhere, we’re not being accused of that.”

Shells and primers inside a self-propelled howitzer as Ukraine’s 80th Brigade waited to fire artillery at Russian positions, near Kreminna, Ukraine, in January.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times

She said the 16-person committee she chairs has doggedly investigated news reports of Western arms meant for Ukraine that have supposedly turned up with gangs, terror groups and other criminals. But Ms. Ustinova said she has found no evidence those reports are true, and echoed American assertions attributing them to Russian disinformation campaigns to sow doubt about NATO support for the war.

Yet the scrutiny is wearing on Ukrainian officials, who are balancing their dire need for weapons against onerous expectations for tracking them.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine revealed “a twinge of frustration” and an air of “How many times do I have to tell you?” when the issue was raised last month by a U.S. delegation to Kyiv, said Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, who was on the trip.

But Mr. Zelensky agreed it is necessary, she said, to ensure the continued provision of American weapons and other security assistance.

“All it will take is a situation where we find that somebody, somewhere down the chain, has gotten a piece of military equipment and has sold it for personal enrichment, or misappropriated it in some way,” Ms. Murkowski said. “Because then it just gets that much harder.”

Thomas Gibbons-Neff contributed reporting.

The New York Times · by Lara Jakes · May 12, 2023

15. Why China cannot be trusted on Ukraine

Excerpts:

Putin’s assault on Ukraine parallels the aggression China is vigorously planning for Taiwan. So, any concession Xi would press on Putin would potentially undermine China’s own hardline position on Taiwan.

Allowing, for example, a legitimate plebiscite or referendum on Taiwan’s future would ensure a popular declaration of independence, since the Taiwanese population has no desire to return to life under a dictatorship. Having rid themselves of one authoritarian system, the Chinese communist variety holds no appeal.

Nor would Xi be any more willing to settle for an outlying Taiwanese island than Putin is likely to accept Crimea or part of Eastern Ukraine except as a base of operations for further aggression at a later date.

The most helpful thing Xi could do to bring a just end to the war in Ukraine would be to set a good example for Putin by abjuring any use of force against Taiwan and recommending that he do the same for Ukraine.

While not holding its breath for that to happen or getting distracted by phony peace initiatives, the West should expedite delivery of all needed weapons to both Ukraine and Taiwan.

Why China cannot be trusted on Ukraine

BY JOSEPH BOSCO, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 05/09/23 11:00 AM ET

The Hill · · May 9, 2023

Last month, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Russian President Vladimir Putin, his proclaimed “no-limits strategic partner,” to discuss Putin’s war in Ukraine, among other things. While Xi was on his way to Moscow, he let it be known that he was also considering having a conversation, virtually, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The diplomatic gambit launched a wave of hopeful speculation that Xi would use his growing influence with Putin to facilitate Russia-Ukraine negotiations to end what Xi calls “the Ukraine crisis” and Putin hygienically terms his “special military operation.” (It more accurately could be described as his special war crimes operation.)

The Biden administration expressed hope that, as national security advisor Jake Sullivan put it, the call “would continue to dissuade them from choosing to provide lethal assistance to Russia, which is obviously something that we have warned about.” It is not clear what superior persuasive leverage over China Zelensky would have compared to Biden’s “warning” about what United Nations Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield called a U.S. “red line.”

Zelensky became taken with the prospect of talking with Xi and publicly conveyed the impression that he was eagerly awaiting his call. Ursula von Leyden, president of the European Commission, pushed the idea during a meeting with Xi in Beijing, but he would only say the call would take place “when the time and conditions are right.”

Zelensky’s hoped-for conversation did not occur while Xi was in Moscow or for several weeks afterward. Beijing was now in its preferred position of receiving supplicants seeking the favor of its attention, just as President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken were maneuvered into the posture of eagerly seeking meetings and calls with their ostensibly aloof Chinese counterparts.

The underlying first premise of all the hopeful speculation is that China has special leverage over Putin because its economic support is critical to keeping the Russian economy afloat, a statement of fact. The far more dubious assumption is that Xi would be at all inclined to extract significant territorial or sovereignty concessions from Putin that would be more than illusory.

On the surface, the combatants’ positions appear irreconcilable. Putin seeks all or a substantial part of Ukraine – specifically Crimea – under permanent Russian sovereignty.

Zelensky has repeatedly declared that his government and people want every square mile of Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory liberated and returned. A negotiated settlement would require at least a partial retreat by one or both sides.

It is difficult to see what Putin concession Zelensky could reasonably expect Xi to produce. It is conceivable that Zelensky is prepared to offer Putin a face-saving end to the fighting, meaning Russia would keep some part of sovereign Ukrainian territory — though Crimea would seem to be nonnegotiable for both sides.

Zelensky might be considering another option. Rather than negotiating over the heads of the people, he might be willing to accept an internationally-supervised referendum on the future status of the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine — specifically the Donbas and Crimea, unlike the deeply-flawed charade Putin arranged in 2022.

Given the record of war crimes in areas of Ukraine Russian occupied over the past year, it is highly unlikely many Ukrainians would choose to live under Putin’s rule.

Another possible explanation for Zelensky’s apparent willingness to accept Xi as a good-faith mediator might be Zelensky’s high expectations, realistic or inflated, for the success of the imminent Ukrainian counteroffensive. He may reason that he can convince Xi to warn Putin of his last chance to avoid a humiliating Russian defeat.

The converse of that hypothesis is also possible. Zelensky may fear the failure of the counteroffensive because of inordinate delays in the delivery of Western tanks and President Biden’s refusal to provide fighter aircraft and longer-range weapons systems. Zelensky might want to strike the best deal he can now.

In any event, Xi’s role as an honest broker is highly suspect. While professing allegiance to international norms such as national sovereignty and peaceful resolution of disputes, China has provided significant political and material support for Putin. Xi has blamed the West for the war, increased China’s purchase of Russian oil to keep Russia’s war financed and provided “non-lethal” dual-use technology that can be used to kill Ukrainians and destroy their cities and infrastructure.

It is a brazen flouting of the lecture China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang gave the other day to U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, accusing Washington of “saying one thing and doing another.”

An example of how well China adheres to the principle of nations keeping their word was Xi’s solemn face-to-face promise to President Obama during their 2013 summit that China would not militarize the artificial islands it built in the South China Sea.

The Qin-Burns meeting highlighted the overriding reason China’s good faith on Ukraine cannot be trusted. Qin said, “[The U.S.] can’t talk about communication on the one hand, but keep suppressing and containing China on the other hand.”

Beijing’s idea of America “suppressing and containing China” is the U.S. commitment to help China’s neighbors, especially Taiwan, defend themselves against Chinese expansionism in the region.

Qin’s spokesperson emphasized that if Washington expects China’s cooperation on other issues, it “must correctly handle the Taiwan question.”

Putin’s assault on Ukraine parallels the aggression China is vigorously planning for Taiwan. So, any concession Xi would press on Putin would potentially undermine China’s own hardline position on Taiwan.

Allowing, for example, a legitimate plebiscite or referendum on Taiwan’s future would ensure a popular declaration of independence, since the Taiwanese population has no desire to return to life under a dictatorship. Having rid themselves of one authoritarian system, the Chinese communist variety holds no appeal.

Nor would Xi be any more willing to settle for an outlying Taiwanese island than Putin is likely to accept Crimea or part of Eastern Ukraine except as a base of operations for further aggression at a later date.

The most helpful thing Xi could do to bring a just end to the war in Ukraine would be to set a good example for Putin by abjuring any use of force against Taiwan and recommending that he do the same for Ukraine.

While not holding its breath for that to happen or getting distracted by phony peace initiatives, the West should expedite delivery of all needed weapons to both Ukraine and Taiwan.

Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He served in the Pentagon when Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia and was involved in Department of Defense discussions about the U.S. response. Follow him on Twitter @BoscoJosephA

The Hill · by Alexander Bolton · May 9, 2023

16. Ukraine’s cultural counteroffensive: The rush to erase Russia’s imprint

A long read with lots of photos and videos. Please go to the link to read this in the proper format.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2023/ukraine-russian-influence-destruction/?itid=hp-top-table-main_p001_f004

Ukraine’s cultural counteroffensive: The rush to erase Russia’s imprint

By Ruby Mellen, Zoeann Murphy, Kostiantyn Khudov and Kasia Strek 

May 11 at 2:25 p.m.

72

KYIV, Ukraine —

In one of the most profound examples of how President Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion has backfired, some Ukrainians are now trying to erase Russia — and the Russian language — from their culture and landscape.

Ukraine is a country where many, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, grew up with Russian as their native tongue. But now the language is vanishing from public life and fading even in some daily private conversations.

Russian-language books have been pulped. Russocentric museums have been pressured to shutter. Streets named after Russian sites, poets and Soviet army generals are marked for a change.

Zelensky last month signed two laws barring the use of Russian place names and requiring Ukrainian citizens to know the Ukrainian language.

“Russia itself is doing everything to ensure that de-Russification takes place on the territory of our state,” Zelensky said a month after the start of the invasion in February 2022. Putin in part has justified his bloody assault on Ukraine by saying he is saving Russian people there from cultural erasure.

But Russia’s war on Ukraine, including the bombing of predominantly Russian-speaking cities such as Mariupol and Kharkiv, has only pushed Ukrainians further away.

“No one has done more de-Russify Ukraine than Putin,” said Rory Finnin, an associate professor of Ukrainian studies at Cambridge University. Ukrainians had been able “to manage their, at times, overlapping” and layered cultures, Finnin added, but Putin’s aggression has pushed many to seek the complete removal of Russian culture and history.

A destroyed building in the Saltivka district of Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Jan. 13. (Kasia Strek/Panos Pictures for The Washington Post)

It is in Ukraine’s public squares and parks where “de-Russification” is most visible. Statues of Russian poets and Soviet generals are being torn down or defaced, and public art and propaganda murals are being covered up or removed.

The erasure of the past has prompted a debate not unlike one in the United States: How to contend with the physical monuments to a fraught history? Americans are questioning whether to keep monuments of enslavers and Confederate generals. Ukrainians are reassessing the place of Soviet and Russian figures who once seemed intertwined with their country’s story.

Oleg Slabospitsky, a Kyiv-based activist who is part of the organization Ukrainian Kyiv, has recorded the location of more than 200 signs and monuments in Ukraine’s capital that he believes should be removed. A Telegram channel run by another organization, Decolonize Ukraine, has more than 5,000 members. Daily posts detail almost every nook and cranny of the country where the stamp of Russia still remains. In vigilante fashion, members sometimes set off in the middle of the night to deface or dismantle landmarks they deem offensive and that local governments haven’t taken down.

Videos from the Decolonize Ukraine Telegram channel verified by The Washington Post show Ukrainians dismantling landmarks in the Lviv region, in Chernihiv, in Cherkasy and in the village of Romaniv over the past year.

This effort to “decolonize” Ukraine has its roots in an earlier movement to “de-communize” the country. During the pro-democracy Maidan Revolution of 2013 to 2014, Ukrainian demonstrators repudiated Soviet symbols, including statues of Vladimir Lenin, because they were rejecting authoritarianism and communism and demanding closer ties with the European Union. Ukraine outlawed Soviet symbols in 2015 after Russia illegally annexed Crimea and backed separatists in the country’s east. For many, that is no longer enough.

“I’ll be satisfied when everything is removed,” said Slabospitsky, referring not just to Communist iconography but Russian names and imagery.

​Continue reading at the link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2023/ukraine-russian-influence-destruction/?itid=hp-top-table-main_p001_f004​

17. Child care debate at Camp Bull Simon continues as families struggle (7th Special Forces)

Child care debate at Camp Bull Simon continues as families struggle

militarytimes.com · by Karen Jowers · May 11, 2023

A child development center will be built somewhere, sometime, to meet the needs of Army, Navy, Air Force and other service personnel working at or living near Camp Bull Simons, Florida, who have long struggled to find child care.

But “the location is still officially undecided,” said J. Elise Van Pool, a spokeswoman for U.S. Army Special Operations Command. The Army and the families of troops with 7th Special Forces Group want the CDC on the camp where service members work.

In fact, the Army has budgeted about $16 million in fiscal 2025 for the center, anticipating it will be located on Camp Bull Simons. But the Air Force says it is concerned about the children’s safety because the camp is adjacent to an active bombing range. Air Force officials are planning to use military construction funds to build the center on federal land in the city of Crestview, just north of the camp, where most of the families live.

Despite the Air Force’s stance, Army Special Operations Command officials “feel confident in the current safety protocols for [Camp Bull Simons] and think the addition of a CDC doesn’t represent an increased risk,” Van Pool said. She noted that Air Force officials are still surveying possible locations for the CDC and no money has been appropriated to buy the land needed.

“A CDC in Crestview would be acceptable,” she said. “However, we have concerns that building off the installation will cause additional delays. The need for child care is an acute problem, and we are trying to avoid unnecessary delays.”

Many thought the issue was decided.

In October, Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth announced that “working closely with the Air Force, we now have plans to build a new CDC at Camp Bull Simons” in fiscal 2025. More recently, at a public meeting on April 25, Army Lt. Gen. Kevin Vereen, deputy chief of staff for the operations (G-9) directorate, said, “I can assure, I can almost guarantee, that we’ll have a CDC at Camp Bull Simons and it will be an Army CDC.”

He did acknowledge, however, that “we’re in the middle of trying to figure this one out.”

Members of the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) conduct casualty evacuation training on Camp Bull Simons, Fla., Feb. 25, 2021. (Spc. Aaron Schaeper/Army)

Unusual beginning

As part of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure action, Camp Bull Simons was carved out of an Eglin Air Force Base bombing range that the service uses in its testing mission.

Due to testing of hypersonic weapons, long-range standoff systems and other tests, the risk to children is too great to have the child care center on the Army camp, said Brig. Gen. Jeffrey T. Geraghty, commander of the 96th Test Wing at Eglin, in an interview with Military Times.

Geraghty serves as the installation commander at Eglin, as well as the range operating authority, responsible for mitigating risk and ensuring that nothing encroaches upon the test facility.

The ball is now in the Defense Department’s court, Geraghty said. “They’re doing a pretty comprehensive study to determine the risks on the range,” he said. The DoD Test Resource Management Center is doing the study “to make sure the Army concerns are addressed, Air Force concerns are addressed, national security and weapons test concerns are addressed, and encroachment concerns on our national defense ranges are addressed,” he said.

That study is expected to be finished in September; a decision will be made later in the year on the location, a process which could further delay construction.

“I believe this is going to find the right solution because the Army and Air Force are working together at the highest levels,” Geraghty said. “Perhaps the reason you don’t hear the Air Force coming out with as strong a position as the Army has, is that right now the ball is really in the court of the Office of the Secretary of Defense.”

“We do acknowledge that that’s a hardship for the Team Eglin families that live up there to have to come down here to Eglin main to get day care,” Geraghty said.

“So, that’s the problem we’re working on, big picture, the fastest we can, to get a child development center that services those families that live north of the range. That’s Army, Navy, Air Force, Space Force. We want to give them a child care facility up there.”

Families are “grateful that we’re working to bring child care up closer to where they live, up there in the city of Crestview,” Geraghty said. “Those who live up there but don’t work at Camp Bull Simons are especially excited about it.”

About 60% of 7th SFG families live in Crestview. He’s also been letting them know that the longer term plan is to take care of their medical needs closer to home, with a military treatment facility and a Veterans Affairs facility.

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The 7th Special Forces Group families' child care crisis "is endemic of the retention and recruiting problem we’re having right now."

“The good news is there’s going to be a child development center no matter what,” said Stu Bradin, president and CEO of the Global SOF Foundation, who has been an advocate for the families at Camp Bull Simons. “The bad news is there’s all these shenanigans going on to keep it from going to the optimal place. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s not optimal,” he said.

Some service members live in lower Alabama and drive an hour south to the camp, “because they can’t afford to live there. They don’t have the money even to live in Crestview,” Bradin said. There are also families who live closer to Pensacola, who would have to drive 15 miles further north to Crestview to drop off their children.

7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) Soldiers participate in the 5th Annual Ruck for your Lives food-drive event at Camp Bull Simons, Fla., on Oct. 27, 2022. (Staff Sgt. Matthew Key/Army)

“It’s easier to drop your child off where you work. But anything is better than driving to Eglin, if it’s a government facility. The good thing about the military CDC is that they have high standards,” he said, and can adjust their hours to meet operational needs.

Families like the security of having their military child development center within a military installation, too. Geraghty said officials haven’t yet worked through the details on security. “But those are risks we are aware of, and we would certainly mitigate those as we build a child care center up there in the town of Crestview, too.”

Safety concerns rising

So, why are there safety concerns now if people have been living and working on Camp Bull Simons for more than a decade?

There have been no evacuations of the camp to date, Van Pool said, but they have been notified the 96th Test Wing may order one in the near future.

“The tests and the maneuvers, the weapons and the systems that we’re starting to test now are different than they have been for the past 15, 20 years that we’ve been focused on the global war on terrorism,” Geraghty said.

For years, the Air Force bent over backward to avoid having to evacuate Camp Bull Simons, he said, modifying its tests and employment of weapons. While normally they would test weapons at a certain altitude and air speed, they took some risks and tested at a lower altitude or air speed.

“We’d do some engineering analysis and say, ‘Hey in a war, it would probably still work even though we didn’t test it at the actual conditions.’

“We had accepted some risk, and our weapons weren’t as fleshed out as we are now making sure they are. That’s why we now have to move to start testing those weapons systems much closer to their full capability, which is drawing us to have to ask soldiers on Camp Bull Simons to … evacuate,” he said, noting that one such evacuation is coming in June.

“We are pivoting towards this preparation for this high-end conflict.”

They’ve worked with the commands at Camp Bull Simons to minimize any mission impact on them, he said.

Bradin questioned the concerns about a child care center, given that there have been barracks, a chapel, a troop clinic, a shopette and other services on Camp Bull Simons for years. “What is the risk mitigation for them? Are they putting bunkers there?” he asked.

Soldiers play foosball in the new BOSS Center on Camp Bull Simons, Fla. Oct. 14, 2022. The Better Opportunities for Single Soldiers program supports overall quality of life, morale and readiness. (Spc. Taylor Zacherl/Army)

“Those facilities were put there to take care of the morale and welfare of the soldiers and the people who were supporting the mission on the range up there,” Geraghty said. “There is some level of aggregate risk that we take in service to our nation that soldiers are certainly cognizant of when they sign up to serve.

“The adults who work in support of the mission on the range are cognizant of those risks,” he said.

“Let’s take care of our children and our child care needs outside of the range,” he said.

About Karen Jowers

Karen has covered military families, quality of life and consumer issues for Military Times for more than 30 years, and is co-author of a chapter on media coverage of military families in the book "A Battle Plan for Supporting Military Families." She previously worked for newspapers in Guam, Norfolk, Jacksonville, Fla., and Athens, Ga.

​18. Time for a more unified and decisive ASEAN

Excerpts:

ASEAN founding members Malaysia and the Philippines also called on the region to step up to challenges in its own backyard in order to reclaim centrality in shaping the Indo-Pacific. Malaysia’s Foreign Minister Zambry Abdul Kadir echoed Anwar by emphasizing the need for the regional body “to come as a force together” lest it remains ineffectual in addressing the crisis in Myanmar.

Marcos Jr, who had just arrived from earlier trips to the White House and the coronation of King Charles III in London, warned of broader threats to regional security in a veiled criticism of China and Russia.

“Today, ASEAN faces a complex geopolitical environment which includes rivalries amongst great powers, climate change and technological disruptions, amongst others. ASEAN itself is not immune to its own challenges as we continue to navigate our differences in the region towards a general consensus of action,” Marcos said.

More specifically, Marcos also highlighted rising tensions in the South China Sea and emphasized the “necessity to resolve all sovereignty and jurisdictional issues pertaining to the South China Sea by peaceful means without resort to force.”

In their joint statement, ASEAN leaders welcomed “the initiative to expedite the [Code of Conduct] negotiations” to more effectively manage the South China Sea disputes, namely through “develop[ing] guidelines for accelerating the early conclusion of an effective and substantive COC.”

Jokowi, in his chairman’s statement, called on disputing parties to manage their disputes with self-restraint and in accordance with international law.

Time for a more unified and decisive ASEAN

Regional leaders gathered in Indonesia acknowledged ASEAN’s failure to solve crucial crises as superpower rivalry threatens to split bloc unity

asiatimes.com · by Richard Javad Heydarian · May 12, 2023

“ASEAN unity is needed to formulate the way forward,” declared Indonesia’s leader Joko Widodo, also known as “Jokowi”, during the closing hours of this year’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting held on the island of Labuan Bajo.

“But the issue of Myanmar must not hinder the accelerated development of the ASEAN community, because this is what we have been waiting for,” he added in his chairman statement in a bid to rally the bloc amid the failure so far to staunch the debilitating civil war in Myanmar.

Some of his ASEAN colleagues, however, were more openly frustrated with the lack of any meaningful progress in collectively resolving one of the most violent conflicts seen in years in their own backyard. Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim discussed how as many as 200,000 people, many from the persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority group, have sought refuge in Malaysia in recent years.

“ASEAN has not been able to resolve most problems, contentious ones,” Anwar, a reformist who won Malaysia’s leadership after spending decades in the opposition and years in jail, told his fellow leaders.

“We are stuck with the principle of non-intervention…Yes, there is non-interference but we will have to then have a new vision that could give us some flexibility to navigate and maneuver the way forward,” he added, underscoring how the insistence on unanimity has paralyzed the regional body.

Meanwhile, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who has placed ASEAN at the heart of his foreign policy agenda, called on his fellow leaders to be more decisive and unified in the face of common challenges, including festering disputes in the South China Sea that puts certain bloc members at odds with each other and often in conflict with China.

“The ASEAN of today must be better than the ASEAN of yesterday. For ASEAN to succeed, ASEAN must be the master of its future,” the Filipino president said as regional leaders sought to map out a new long-term vision for ASEAN.

Marcos Jr added the importance of demonstrating actual “ASEAN centrality” beyond semantics by showing the world how “we are able to respond effectively to geopolitical and geo-economic challenges as a cohesive [force].”

Philippine leader Ferdinand Marcos Jr is calling on ASEAN to up its game. Image: Twitter

For decades, Indonesia, the cradle of the global “Non-Aligned Movement” (NAM) under Sukarno, was the only major regional player which placed ASEAN at the heart of its foreign policy agenda.

On two occasions, however, the Southeast Asian giant was relegated to the sidelines, first after the collapse of the Suharto regime, which came on the back of the massive 1997-98 economic meltdown and subsequently a long period of political uncertainty, and, more recently, during the early years of Jokowi, who prioritized nation-building over foreign policy.

Last year, however, Indonesia reassumed its mantle of international leadership during its presidency of the Group of 20 (G20) nations. In many ways, the prestigious position marked a new era of global diplomacy for Jokowi, who even tried to mediate the Ukraine conflict and facilitate a détente between China and the United States.

As ASEAN’s chairman, Indonesia has considerable influence. For starters, the regional body’s chairmen have the prerogative to shape the annual policy agenda of ASEAN, curate its set of priorities and, when divisions emerge, unitarily issue a robust “chairman’s statement” to set out a roadmap for diplomatic resolution of any major crisis.

If history is a guide, Indonesia can play an effective proactive role in the region. The last time it was the rotational chairmanship of ASEAN, Indonesia successfully mediated between two member states on the throes of war; in fact, it even convinced the disputing parties, Thailand and Cambodia, to resolve their border disputes through international arbitration.

A year later, Indonesia also prevented an intra-ASEAN conflagration following Cambodian strongman Hun Sen’s controversial chairmanship of the regional body, when ASEAN members failed to issue a joint communique for the first time in the grouping’s history due to disagreements on whether to include the South China Sea disputes in the regional agenda.

In response, Indonesia rallied regional support for the so-called “six points principles’, which emphasized the need for an effective ASEAN stance on the maritime disputes.

Fearing the regional body’s marginalization amid a brewing New Cold War, Indonesia has over the last decade advocated for a new document that asserts “ASEAN centrality” in shaping the Indo-Pacific. The upshot was the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP), which seeks to enhance the regional body’s role in mediating and navigating Sino-American rivalry in the region.

Barely halfway into its current ASEAN chairmanship, Indonesia has made it clear that the regional body is at a crossroads. Over the past two years under the aegis of Jokowi’s leadership, the bloc has pressed the junta in Myanmar to follow the ASEAN-brokered “Five Point Consensus”, which seeks to restore peace and democratic politics in the Southeast Asian nation.

Ahead of its assumption of the regional leadership, Jokowi made it clear that more draconian measures, including the full expulsion of junta-ruled Myanmar, should be on the table.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo is lately cutting a more global profile. Image: Facebook

“We were deeply concerned with ongoing violence in Myanmar and urged the immediate cessation of all forms of violence and the use of force to create a conducive environment for the safe and timely delivery of humanitarian assistance and inclusive national dialogues,” ASEAN leaders said in a joint statement.

Jokowi himself was more forthcoming. “I must speak candidly. On (the) implementation of the [Five Point Consensus], there has not been significant progress,” he said, emphasizing the need for “ASEAN unity” to “decide on the next steps”, including whether to expel junta-ruled Myanmar and/or to formally engage the exiled democratic government representing Myanmar at the United Nations.

ASEAN Secretary General Kao Kim Hourn was also relatively candid, lamenting how “[f]rom the ASEAN side, there is a strong desire to assist Myanmar but it is not easy.”

“What we should be doing is to ensure that violence is eliminated. That is the bottom line,” he added, underscoring the need for sustained commitment to resolving the issues since “Rome was not built overnight.”

ASEAN founding members Malaysia and the Philippines also called on the region to step up to challenges in its own backyard in order to reclaim centrality in shaping the Indo-Pacific. Malaysia’s Foreign Minister Zambry Abdul Kadir echoed Anwar by emphasizing the need for the regional body “to come as a force together” lest it remains ineffectual in addressing the crisis in Myanmar.

Marcos Jr, who had just arrived from earlier trips to the White House and the coronation of King Charles III in London, warned of broader threats to regional security in a veiled criticism of China and Russia.

“Today, ASEAN faces a complex geopolitical environment which includes rivalries amongst great powers, climate change and technological disruptions, amongst others. ASEAN itself is not immune to its own challenges as we continue to navigate our differences in the region towards a general consensus of action,” Marcos said.

More specifically, Marcos also highlighted rising tensions in the South China Sea and emphasized the “necessity to resolve all sovereignty and jurisdictional issues pertaining to the South China Sea by peaceful means without resort to force.”

In their joint statement, ASEAN leaders welcomed “the initiative to expedite the [Code of Conduct] negotiations” to more effectively manage the South China Sea disputes, namely through “develop[ing] guidelines for accelerating the early conclusion of an effective and substantive COC.”

Jokowi, in his chairman’s statement, called on disputing parties to manage their disputes with self-restraint and in accordance with international law.

Follow Richard Javad Heydarian on Twitter at @Richeydarian

asiatimes.com · by Richard Javad Heydarian · May 12, 2023

19. Is Chinese power about to peak?

Excerpts:

Yet the most likely scenario is in the middle ground. The speed of China’s rise in the past two decades has been destabilising, forcing adjustments in the global economic and geopolitical order. That phase of intense economic disruption may now be over. And for all its troubles China’s economy is unlikely to shrink, triggering the kind of nihilistic and destructive thinking that Messrs Brands and Beckley fear. Mr Xi is unpredictable but his country’s long-run economic prospect is neither triumph nor disaster. Faced with decades of being a near-peer of America, China has good reason to eschew hubris and resist invading Taiwan. A crucial question is whether the superpowers can avoid misreading each other’s intentions, and thus stumbling into a conflict. Next week we will examine America’s global leadership—and how it should respond to China in the coming age of superpower parity.

Is Chinese power about to peak?

The country’s historic ascent is levelling off. That need not make it more dangerous

May 11th 2023

The Economist

The rise of China has been a defining feature of the world for the past four decades. Since the country began to open up and reform its economy in 1978, its GDP has grown by a dizzying 9% a year, on average. That has allowed a staggering 800m Chinese citizens to escape from poverty. Today China accounts for almost a fifth of global output. The sheer size of its market and manufacturing base has reshaped the global economy. Xi Jinping, who has ruled China for the past decade, hopes to use his country’s increasing heft to reshape the geopolitical order, too.

There is just one catch: China’s rapid rise is slowing down. Mr Xi promises a “great rejuvenation” of his country in the coming decades, but the economy is now undergoing something more prosaic: a great maturation. Whereas a decade ago forecasters predicted that China’s GDP would zoom past America’s during the mid-21st century (at market exchange rates) and retain a commanding lead, now a much less dramatic shift is in the offing, resulting in something closer to economic parity.

This change in economic trajectory is the subject of fierce debate among China-watchers (see our special Briefing). They are thinking again about China’s clout and its rivalry with America. One view is that Chinese power will fall relative to that of its rivals, which could paradoxically make it more dangerous. In a book last year, Hal Brands and Michael Beckley, two scholars, popularised a theory they called “Peak China”. The country faces decay, they argue, and has reached “the point where it is strong enough to aggressively disrupt the existing order but is losing confidence that time is on its side”. Their study opens with an imagined war over Taiwan.

The Peak China thesis rests on the accurate observation that certain tailwinds are turning to headwinds, hindering Chinese progress. The first big gust comes from demography. China’s working-age population has been declining for about a decade. Last year its population as a whole peaked, and India has now overtaken it. The Communist Party’s attempts to convince Chinese couples to have more children are not working. As a result, the UN thinks that by mid-century China’s working-age population could decline by over a quarter. Wave goodbye to the masses of young workers who once filled “the world’s factory”.

Adding workers is one way for an economy to grow. Another is to make better use of the existing population. But China’s second problem is that output per worker is unlikely to rise as fast as forecasters once hoped. More of its resources will go to caring for the elderly. After decades of building houses, roads and railways, spending on infrastructure faces diminishing returns. Mr Xi’s autocratic tendencies have made local entrepreneurs more nervous, which may reduce China’s capacity to innovate in the long run. Geopolitical tensions have made foreign firms eager to diversify supply chains away from China. America wants to hobble China’s capabilities in some “foundational” technologies. Its ban on exporting certain semiconductors and machines to Chinese firms is expected to cut into China’s GDP.

All of this is dampening long-run forecasts of China’s economic potential. Twelve years ago Goldman Sachs thought China’s GDP would overtake America’s in 2026 and become over 50% larger by mid-century. Last year it revised that prediction, saying China would surpass America only in 2035 and peak at less than 15% bigger. Others are more gloomy. Capital Economics, a research firm, argues that the country’s economy will never become top dog, instead peaking at 90% of America’s size in 2035. These forecasts are, of course, uncertain. But the most plausible ones seem to agree that China and America will approach economic parity in the next decade or so—and remain locked in this position for decades to come.

How might China handle this flatter trajectory? In the most optimistic scenario, Mr Xi would make changes to boost productivity growth. With income per person less than half of America’s, China’s population will be keen to improve their living standards. He could try to unleash growth by giving the animal spirits of China’s economy freer rein and his people more freedom of movement. The Chinese government could stop relying on wasteful state-owned banks and enterprises to allocate capital. And it could adopt a less prickly posture abroad, easing geopolitical tensions and reassuring firms that it is safe to do business in China. Such reforms might ultimately make China more powerful—but also, one would hope, less aggressive. The trouble is that Mr Xi, who is 69 and now probably China’s ruler for life, shows no sign of embracing economic or political liberalisation.

Pessimists fear that China will become more combative as its economic trajectory falters. There are plenty of reasons to think this plausible. Mr Xi stokes a dangerous nationalism, to persuade ordinary Chinese that critics of his rule are slighting China itself. China’s military budget is forecast to rise by over 7% this year, in line with nominal gdp. Its military spending is lower than America’s, but still catching up. Its navy could be 50% bigger than America’s by 2030, and its nuclear arsenal will almost quadruple by 2035. “Beijing’s economic power may be peaking, but no other country is so capable of challenging America globally,” write Messrs Brands and Beckley.

Peer review

Yet the most likely scenario is in the middle ground. The speed of China’s rise in the past two decades has been destabilising, forcing adjustments in the global economic and geopolitical order. That phase of intense economic disruption may now be over. And for all its troubles China’s economy is unlikely to shrink, triggering the kind of nihilistic and destructive thinking that Messrs Brands and Beckley fear. Mr Xi is unpredictable but his country’s long-run economic prospect is neither triumph nor disaster. Faced with decades of being a near-peer of America, China has good reason to eschew hubris and resist invading Taiwan. A crucial question is whether the superpowers can avoid misreading each other’s intentions, and thus stumbling into a conflict. Next week we will examine America’s global leadership—and how it should respond to China in the coming age of superpower parity. ■

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The Economist

20. Kissinger at 100: A Legacy with Lessons for Us All

That is quite a thesis question in the subtitle.

Kissinger at 100: A Legacy with Lessons for Us All

How can America continue to lead the world without leaders who can combine high theory and grounded pragmatism, as Kissinger does?

The National Interest · by Ahmed Charai · May 11, 2023

On May 27, Henry Kissinger will celebrate his one-hundredth birthday and a long life of exceptional consequence in the two highly competitive worlds of diplomacy and ideas.

Fleeing Nazi Germany, Kissinger arrived in the United States in 1938 as a bookish teenager with no immediate prospects. Thirty years later, he commanded U.S. foreign policy, first as national security advisor, then as the emblematic secretary of state to two presidents, Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford. He shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973.

In his four years as secretary of state, he helped end America’s most controversial war, split China from Russia (the hegemonic power that propelled China’s leader to power), and redrew the boundaries of several nation-states. His books, real doorstoppers crammed with careful research and close argument, continue to climb bestseller lists and compel the attention of leaders and thinkers across the world. Decades after leaving office, he continues to be consulted by chief executives, presidential candidates, and network-television bookers.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies, chaired by another great man, a patriot and one of the most enlightened men in the American establishment, John Hamre, organized a reception in honor of Kissinger to celebrate his extraordinary accomplishments. Hamre began by reviewing history and Kissinger’s mark on it.

First, there was the Vietnam War. As the deadly presidential approached, Vietnam had settled into deadly stalemate. The year began with North’s massive Tet Offensive, which the United States desperately beat back. By September, the Viet Cong ceased to exist as a separate fighting force, but that meant no victory for the United States. The North Vietnamese Army was becoming an increasingly lethal force with its growing divisions of Soviet tanks, aircraft, and increasingly effective anti-aircraft missiles. As long as the USSR and China backed the North, the United States could never defeat it.

The stalemate was evident, and it divided America. Protests, both anti- and pro-war (the pro-soldier “hard hat revolt” in Central Park was one the largest protests in the 1960s), divided America. On television, Americans saw burning wreckage in Saigon and burning draft cards in Seattle. The public was tiring of the war.

It was Kissinger who led the peace talks. Yes, South Vietnam collapsed in 1975. But, two years earlier, the U.S. military was able to make a secure and, above all, dignified withdrawal.

It is to Kissinger that we owe the famous policy of détente with the Soviet Union. For the first time, the United States and the USSR agreed to significantly slow the nuclear arms race. As a result, several regional conflicts de-escalated. Nuclear war was avoided, and lives were spared in Southeast Asia, southern Africa, and among the Pacific islands—every place where communist guerillas fought with the local successor states to colonial powers.

To strengthen America’s position in Asia, the Nixon administration made a diplomatic rapprochement with mainland China, from which the United States had been estranged since 1949, when the Communists had won control. To seal the new relationship, Nixon took a spectacular trip to China in February 1972.

After October 6, 1973, Israeli officials telephoned Kissinger to say that they were fighting off an invasion. Egyptian forces were attacking in the Sinai while the Syrian army was in Israel’s north. The so-called fourth Arab-Israel War had begun. Nixon dispatched Kissinger to negotiate with Israel, Egypt, and Syria—Kissinger’s famous “shuttle diplomacy.”

At the end, there was a new and, this time, lasting peace. These served a few important American interests: it stopped the cycle of invasions, halted the embargo by Arab oil-exporting states, and set the stage for a historic peace treaty between Israel and Egypt (the Camp David Accords of the Carter years). Kissinger may be the only Nobel Peace Prize winner to secure more peace after winning the prize than before.

These successes make him a diplomat of historic stature. The intensity and scope of these diplomatic initiatives, and their success—in the sense that they all resulted in agreements—have no parallel in American history, and perhaps no parallel in the history of Israel. With his prodigies of diplomacy, Kissinger left his mark on the twentieth century.

While Kissinger admits that prophets have “the most passionate vision,” he said he prefers statesmen to them because they recognize on-the-ground realities and can see value in incremental gains.

Sadly, the current political climate does not encourage the emergence of leaders like Kissinger. His book devoted to “leadership” exemplified the importance of building consensus on the major issues. It is not by tweeting or posting on Facebook that a political leader can develop a vision that gives him the status of a statesman. Instead, as Kissinger writes, leaders are made by the cautious study of history.

All democracies suffer from the same ailment: An intellectually impoverished political class that is more obsessed with polls and social networks than a vision for their societies.

But this is a problem that even short-term thinkers should consider: How can America continue to lead the world without leaders who can combine high theory and grounded pragmatism, as Kissinger does?

Ahmed Charai is the Publisher of Jerusalem Strategic Tribune. He is on the board of directors of the Atlantic Council, the International Crisis Group, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the Center for the National Interest.

Image: mark reinstein / Shutterstock.com

The National Interest · by Ahmed Charai · May 11, 2023

21. What Ukraine Still Needs to Win

Excerpts:

Kyiv’s upcoming counteroffensive will likely determine the war’s future trajectory. A successful offensive will not only liberate additional territory but will likely inspire further Western aid, strengthening Ukraine’s position in future fighting and any eventual peace negotiations. But the Kremlin is betting that if the counteroffensive fails, Western resolve will falter and Russia will turn the tide over time.

By maximizing support for Kyiv now, Washington and its allies can bolster Ukraine’s battlefield prospects, helping it make good on assistance already delivered. This additional aid is not charity but a prudent investment in U.S. interests. By helping Kyiv defeat Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked aggression, the United States defends its NATO allies in Europe and diminishes its second-greatest adversary. It also strengthens deterrence of America’s top foe, China.

The United States has a vital interest in defeating Moscow’s unprovoked aggression. The best way to do so is to redouble support for Ukraine now. There’s no time to lose.

What Ukraine Still Needs to Win

thebulwark.com · by John Hardie · May 11, 2023

As Kyiv gears up for its spring counteroffensive, some U.S. officials are privately casting doubt on what Ukraine can achieve. To be sure, the Ukrainian military will face serious hurdles in overcoming well-entrenched Russian forces. But policymakers must not just admire the problem—they should do everything they can to help Ukraine defeat it. After all, Ukraine’s battlefield prospects depend to a great extent on how much support it receives from the West.

Washington can still do more to fulfill President Biden’s promise to “help Ukraine defend its sovereignty and its territorial integrity.” Specifically, the United States and its allies should help Kyiv fill its need for more armored fighting vehicles, air defense, long-range precision strike capabilities, and artillery ammunition.

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Media reports and other open-source evidence indicate that since late last year, Kyiv has sought to stand up or fill out at least 18 maneuver brigades. These brigades comprise several thousand soldiers apiece, largely equipped using Western-donated vehicles. Ukraine is also expanding existing units to form nine National Guard assault brigades, at least some of which contain mechanized units.

Washington and its allies have donated hundreds of infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), armored personnel carriers (APCs), and tanks to help Kyiv equip some of these new brigades. But Ukraine still has only a fraction of what it needs. According to Ukrainian military protocol, Kyiv needs over 2,000 IFVs and APCs and more than 700 tanks to equip its three army corps fully. Although that’s admittedly a tall order, the West has failed to meet even Ukraine’s more modest request for 600-700 IFVs and 300 tanks. Open-source evidence indicates that since October, Washington and its allies have delivered only around 200 IFVs, 400 APCs, and 200 or so tanks, plus a modest number of French assault vehicles.

Most of all, Kyiv needs more IFVs. These vehicles are key for supporting tanks and dismounted infantry in combined-arms operations, which the Ukrainian military will have to execute to retake large swathes of territory. In many cases, Ukrainian mechanized infantry units have to rely on Western-donated Humvees or mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles (MRAPs) in place of IFVs, sacrificing protection and firepower. If not properly equipped, Kyiv’s forces will suffer higher casualties even if their counteroffensive ultimately succeeds, as one former Ukrainian commander recently noted. The United States and its allies should help fill this gap.

Ukraine is running dangerously low on interceptors for its Soviet-made surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems, most importantly for its long-range S-300s and medium-range Buk-M1s. Because Russia has failed to destroy most of these systems, Ukraine has managed to hold the Russian Air Force at bay and blunt the impact of Moscow’s missile and drone strikes. But if Ukraine can’t replenish or replace its Soviet-made air defenses, that could change—with potentially major impacts on the war.

Unfortunately, Ukraine doesn’t produce S-300 or Buk-M1 interceptors. Few nations are both willing and able to provide Ukraine with their own Soviet-made air defense systems or interceptors. And years of underinvestment in ground-based air defense have left Washington and its allies unable to replace these systems with Western alternatives in a timely manner.

But while a medium-term air defense vulnerability may be inevitable to some degree, the West can do more to mitigate it. To start, Washington should continue pressing friendly countries that possess Soviet-made SAM systems to donate them to Ukraine. Greece and Bulgaria both operate variants of the S-300 but have thus far refused to relinquish them. Nations unwilling to part with entire systems could perhaps at least send some interceptors that are compatible or can be integrated with Ukraine’s existing systems. If they haven’t already, the Western allies could also try to help Kyiv refurbish any old Soviet-made interceptors it has in storage.

Ukraine’s supporters should also strive to ensure it has enough interceptors for the few Western-made SAM systems it’s received in recent months, such as the NASAMS medium-range air defense system. To provide Kyiv with additional NASAMS batteries, Washington could offer to backfill immediate allied donations using the six batteries Raytheon is currently building for Ukraine. The West could also expand deliveries of Hawk medium-range SAM systems. While outdated, these systems could at least complicate operations by Russian aircraft.

Meanwhile, Washington and its allies should begin working now to meet Ukraine’s air defense needs over the longer term. In addition to laying the groundwork to provide Kyiv with Western fighter jets such as the F-16, the West, working with Ukrainian industry, should explore launching production of Soviet-made interceptors in a NATO country.

Ukraine needs better long-range strike capabilities. In addition to helping Ukraine mass produce cheap long-range “suicide drones,” Washington should send Kyiv the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS). By allowing Ukraine to hit key logistics nodes, command-and-control posts, and other high-value Russian military targets currently beyond its reach, ATACMS could help undermine Russia’s ability to resist advancing Ukrainian forces.

Modern variants of this missile have an up to 300-kilometer range and carry a powerful 500-pound unitary warhead. In other words, they can strike targets at around three to four times the range of Kyiv’s current Western-provided rocket artillery munitions, with a warhead about 2.5 times bigger. Ukraine could use these missiles to strike targets such as the Kerch Bridge, on which Russia relies to supply its forces in southern Ukraine.

Despite repeated requests from Kyiv and pressure from Congress, the Biden administration has for over a year refused to send Ukraine ATACMS, fearing Russian escalation. But that risk is overstated. Putin appears keen to avoid a direct conflict with the United States, making Moscow unlikely to retaliate militarily against a NATO member. And despite Russian nuclear saber-rattling, Putin has refrained from using a tactical nuclear weapon against Ukraine in response to previous Ukrainian strikes in Crimea and Russia. Washington could further mitigate the risk by stipulating that Kyiv may uses these missiles only against targets in occupied Ukrainian territory, including the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula.

More recently, the Pentagon has contended that the U.S. military cannot afford to spare any ATACMS. But this claim, too, seems dubious. Congress would do well to make the administration prove it cannot afford to give even a small number of these missiles to Ukraine.

Kyiv suffers from a shortage of artillery ammunition. In March, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said Ukrainian forces expend roughly 110,000 155mm shells per month. That’s less than one-fifth of the number they could fire if not constrained by a shortage of ammunition, Reznikov said, and far less than the number fired by Russia. This “shell hunger” has already undermined Ukraine’s ability to repulse Russian forces in the eastern city of Bakhmut. If not resolved, it could undercut Kyiv’s spring counteroffensive. The Ukrainian military estimates that effort will require almost 360,000 shells per month, according to Reznikov.

The problem, as NATO’s secretary general noted in February, is that Ukraine expends artillery rounds “many times” faster than the West can make them. In recent months, Washington and its allies have sent Ukraine additional shells to try to shore up its supplies ahead of the counteroffensive. But a senior Pentagon official said those deliveries represent a “last-ditch effort,” as Western ammunition stockpiles are dwindling. The United States and European Union are working to ramp up production, but that will take time, potentially leaving Ukraine with a dangerous gap in the interim.

Washington can take steps now to ease Ukraine’s artillery ammunition shortage. For one, the Pentagon should expeditiously heed congressional calls to reevaluate U.S. munitions requirements for a potential war with Russia, whose military will need years to recover from its heavy losses in Ukraine. This could free up additional shells for Ukraine, which will use them to continue degrading Russian forces. In other words, the more shells the Ukrainians use to destroy the Russian army now, the fewer the Pentagon will have to keep in reserve in case it has to fight the Russian army in the future.

Washington should also heed Kyiv’s requests for DPICM artillery-fired cluster munitions. The DPICM, or Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munition, is a type of warhead designed to release smaller explosive bomblets, increasing lethality. The United States reportedly has almost three million DPICM rounds in its inventory, many of which are still serviceable and can be fired by Ukraine’s Western-donated artillery systems. While cluster munitions admittedly do pose a heightened threat to civilians and friendly forces, Ukraine’s elected representatives believe the rewards outweigh the risks. Washington should respect that judgment.

Kyiv’s upcoming counteroffensive will likely determine the war’s future trajectory. A successful offensive will not only liberate additional territory but will likely inspire further Western aid, strengthening Ukraine’s position in future fighting and any eventual peace negotiations. But the Kremlin is betting that if the counteroffensive fails, Western resolve will falter and Russia will turn the tide over time.

By maximizing support for Kyiv now, Washington and its allies can bolster Ukraine’s battlefield prospects, helping it make good on assistance already delivered. This additional aid is not charity but a prudent investment in U.S. interests. By helping Kyiv defeat Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked aggression, the United States defends its NATO allies in Europe and diminishes its second-greatest adversary. It also strengthens deterrence of America’s top foe, China.

The United States has a vital interest in defeating Moscow’s unprovoked aggression. The best way to do so is to redouble support for Ukraine now. There’s no time to lose.

thebulwark.com · by John Hardie · May 11, 2023

22. War Books: Science Fiction and Modern War

War Books: Science Fiction and Modern War - Modern War Institute

mwi.usma.edu · by MWI Staff · May 12, 2023

Editor’s note: Welcome to another installment of our weekly War Books series! The premise is simple and straightforward. We ask an expert on a particular subject to recommend five books on that topic and tell us what sets each one apart. War Books is a resource for MWI readers who want to learn more about important subjects related to modern war and are looking for books to add to their reading lists.

This week, we’re switching things up and looking exclusively at works of science fiction. As longtime MWI contributor and former adjunct scholar Mick Ryan reminds us, there are many good reasons for military and defense professionals to read science fiction. Doing so encourages diversity in professional development, nurtures innovative thinking, and, perhaps most fundamentally, reminds readers of the enduring nature of war. We asked our staff to share their top five recommendations and the results are below.

We can learn a lot about the future of conflict and society from science fiction. From The War of the Worlds to The Sirens of Titan to Dune to Star Wars, science fiction has served as an allegory, a guiding narrative, and a mirror of society and war itself. Science fiction has this power not because of anything the story says, per se. Rather, it is because the environment an author creates forces readers to confront an uncertain future, born from the major issues that we see today, and ask: But what if?

Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi

From Scalzi’s perspective, there is an easy solution for the recruiting issues confronting today’s all-volunteer force: alter the standards. In his future, scientific advancement has made certain demographics, like people over the age of seventy-five, eligible for service. Buried in a compelling plot line of humanity’s race to colonize the galaxy while fending off every other species by using sophisticated weapons, artificial intelligence, and biotechnological augmentation is an ordinary pensioner grappling with the epitome of a warrior’s identity crisis. What are we doing here? How did we get to this point? Are we even human anymore?

On Basilisk Station, by David Weber

Meet Honor Harrington. She’s a Royal Manticoran Navy officer who finds herself relegated to command a poorly armed light cruiser patrolling a remote backwater. Paired with a potentially disloyal executive officer and a disgruntled crew whose members blame her for their assignment, Harrington’s struggles in command while addressing a potential astropolitical crisis will resonate with leaders and those aspiring to be leaders.

The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman

Critically acclaimed after its 1974 debut. Haldeman’s novel narrates an unending, unjustified war against an alien race. However, the substance of the book is an exploration of the internal relationships of fellow military service members. The book follows the life of a soldier which spans eons due to time dilation from redeployment travel across the galaxy. Each time the protagonist returns, reintegrating into both the military and society is a major struggle as identity and values change with the decades and centuries between campaigns. It gives a new perspective to not just the civil-military relationship, but the friction intrinsic to the generational gaps between service members in the military itself.

Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein

The quintessential sci-fi classic, Heinlein explores a future where there was a novel solution to society’s civil-military tensions. While enlistment is voluntary for all adults, an initial term of service is a requirement for full citizenship. This ensures a certain minimum of empathy and harmony among politicians and military leadership but raises deeper questions about motivations for military service and the relationship between society, veterans, and the military.

Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution, by P.W. Singer and August Cole

Written by the same authors behind Ghost Fleet, what really distinguishes Burn-In from other near-future dystopian pieces is its thorough grounding in research of ongoing artificial intelligence and technological innovations in the real world. The secondary effects on society are evident throughout the story as the protagonist, an FBI agent, investigates a conspiracy with the help of her prototype android partner. The book’s focuses on the emerging implications that these innovations will have upon society as a whole.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Richard Akerman (adapted by MWI)

mwi.usma.edu · by MWI Staff · May 12, 2023

23.  A Quintessential Factor in Strategy Formulation: The Unequal Dialogue

A short but fascinating and thought provoking essay.

Excerpts:

Madeleine Albright pointedly asked, “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”[xi] She was right, and if Clausewitz were alive, he would surely agree since strategy in practice requires a dialogue to inform policy. The U.S. military declaring ultimatums like the Powell doctrine betrays the very nature of war and ignores its political dimension. Dialogue and engagement are necessary to craft strategic options in which elected leaders decide upon. A wartime president, Abraham Lincoln, initially struggled with his military leaders to foster a challenging yet necessary dialogue.

Lincoln’s longest-serving commander, General McClellan, was reluctant like Powell, to use the military. This aversion to act affected the overarching strategy to employ multiple simultaneous concentrations to strike against the Confederate Army.[xii] Lincoln once remarked, “if General McClellan did not want to use the army… [he] would like to borrow it.”[xiii] Eventually, Lincoln found a suitable general in Ulysses S Grant and they maintained a healthy dialogue to manage the Civil War strategically. Lincoln lacked extensive military experience, but through self-study and discipline, he fought a war and saved the union.[xiv] Lincoln had an inquisitive mind, and he asked the hard questions, eliciting best military advice to inform policy and align strategic ends. Churchill struck a similar chord in World War II when handling his military leaders.

A Quintessential Factor in Strategy Formulation: The Unequal Dialogue - Military Strategy Magazine

militarystrategymagazine.com

“At the summit, true strategy and politics are one.”

—Winston Churchill[i]

Strategy formulation requires the full engagement and involvement of political authority to bound policy effectively. Policy frames objectives, but the constant interplay of myriad forces create strategy. Strategy remains the mediating implement to connect national instrument (diplomatic, military, informational, economic) objectives to political ends. What has been described as an “unequal dialogue” is a quintessential factor in developing strategic ends (i.e., a nation’s policy).[ii] In the U.S., elected leaders solicit input across the interagency and the military to determine the nation’s ends, but ultimately, civilians make the final decision. The dialogue across the national security apparatus is both essential and, purposefully, unequal. This article argues the relevance and critical relationship of Carl von Clausewitz’s theory of war with Cohen’s unequal dialogue to illustrate how a republic can create an environment where strategy emerges from the interactive participation of its leaders. Historical and contemporary examples are woven throughout to support this argument.

Analyzing On War, Brodie describes Clausewitz’s desire of statesmen to understand the language of war to ensure its proper execution.[iii] Expressed this way, it is political leaders, who must influence the direction of war. There has been a negative perception that political influence in war is wrong. Set the policy and let the generals fight the war some have said.[iv] If there are issues, military leaders have wrongly argued, it is the level of political influence to blame.[v] However, it is not the statesman’s influence but the policy itself requiring a re-examination. This responsibility is not the statesman’s alone; repeated attempts to divorce war from its political primacy have been costly. Take the experience of Vietnam, for example.

Books on Vietnam remind of this error where military professionals did not judge the true character of the war, articulate it to civilian decision-makers, and offer appropriate strategies to iterate on.[vi] Remembering this lesson, Casper Weinberger developed a doctrine aimed to guide future policy on war, to forever leave behind the specter of Vietnam.[vii] He argued that US forces should only be used to achieve clear policy objectives and he went so far as to make additional conditions that were not very Clausewitzian.[viii] Weinberger argued, and Colin Powell would later enforce, that military forces should not deploy without overwhelming force and the ‘exit strategy’ must be crystal clear.[ix] Powell, using this script, would later evoke this doctrine to argue against the use of military forces in Bosnia.[x]

Madeleine Albright pointedly asked, “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”[xi] She was right, and if Clausewitz were alive, he would surely agree since strategy in practice requires a dialogue to inform policy. The U.S. military declaring ultimatums like the Powell doctrine betrays the very nature of war and ignores its political dimension. Dialogue and engagement are necessary to craft strategic options in which elected leaders decide upon. A wartime president, Abraham Lincoln, initially struggled with his military leaders to foster a challenging yet necessary dialogue.

Lincoln’s longest-serving commander, General McClellan, was reluctant like Powell, to use the military. This aversion to act affected the overarching strategy to employ multiple simultaneous concentrations to strike against the Confederate Army.[xii] Lincoln once remarked, “if General McClellan did not want to use the army… [he] would like to borrow it.”[xiii] Eventually, Lincoln found a suitable general in Ulysses S Grant and they maintained a healthy dialogue to manage the Civil War strategically. Lincoln lacked extensive military experience, but through self-study and discipline, he fought a war and saved the union.[xiv] Lincoln had an inquisitive mind, and he asked the hard questions, eliciting best military advice to inform policy and align strategic ends. Churchill struck a similar chord in World War II when handling his military leaders.

Churchill masterfully balanced politics and the interplay of conflicting forces. Churchill held steady through the chaos and friction of war, avoiding rigid plans and dogmatic process.[xv] He knew Clausewitz’s timeless trinity and stirred his nation through its darkest hours. Clausewitz’s trinity in war is a dynamic and unstable interaction of the forces of violent emotion, chance, and rational calculation on all sides.[xvi] In his maxims on war, Colin Gray explains that the rationale or reason is primarily associated with government and he argues this is “vitally significant” since policy is “shaped, reshaped, and driven by the dynamic verdicts of the battlefield.”[xvii] This describes the reciprocal relationship between war and policy which requires a permanent dialogue across the enterprise to form strategy properly.

Churchill was ruthless with his “unsparing interaction with military subordinates about their activities.” For example, he made difficult decisions to preserve a fragile alliance by ordering his generals to avoid civilian casualties in France from air bombardment.[xviii] Churchill decided not to use metal chaff to confuse German radar which would save bomber crew lives. He instead balanced risk and determined that it was more important to not give away these countermeasures in order to inflict greater damage on the Germans.[xix] This same level of restraint and wisdom was exercised in Bletchley Park whereas ships were sacrificed at sea not to give away the fact that the Enigma cipher code had been cracked.[xx] These political calculations and the audit of military judgment during war informed and improved strategy. It was not a detailed blueprint or fully laid out plan but rather a continuous dialogue that was not equal. It was strategy-making.

The unequal dialogue is unpacked and further codified in Supreme Command by Elliot Cohen.[xxi] He advocates for competitive views, which may be contentious but adheres to Clausewitz’s dictum of civilian leaders’ unambiguous final authority.[xxii] Churchill was criticized for his political interference in war, but Cohen argues it was necessary. British strategy benefited from the seemingly interrogative behavior and unequal dialogue. This was no easy feat, and Cohen illuminates Churchill’s “unremitting attention and effort” to “absorb vast quantities of technical, tactical, and operational information” to make difficult but required decisions in war.[xxiii] Contemporary examples show where this dialogue went wrong, and generals may have abused their reputational power.[xxiv]

Years after the Bosnia debate on troop numbers, Colin Powell returned to the oval office to advise the nation’s first black president.[xxv] Obama set out a series of strategy sessions designed to create the dialogue needed for a new reset of the nation’s policy on Afghanistan. His national security apparatus had conflicting views, and Obama wanted Powell’s advice. General Petraeus, on the other hand, influenced his agenda through the media and various back-channel interlocutors to support a decision to send more troops for his desired counterinsurgency campaign. Then-Vice President Biden crafted an alternative strategy with his national security advisor, Antony Blinken, to counter the McChrystal assessment and Petraeus troop surge, called “counterterrorism plus.”[xxvi]

President Obama was leaning toward Biden and Blinken’s strategy which would focus the military on targeting and eliminating terrorist vice the expensive nation-building and troop intensive counterinsurgency. The president was upset with the uniformed leaders backing him into a corner to send large numbers of troops. Powell told the president, “This is the decision that will have consequences for the better part of your administration. Mr. President, don’t get pushed by the left to do nothing. Don’t get pushed by the right to do everything. You take your time and you figure it out.”[xxvii] With time and tremendous experience behind him, Powell finally found the value in the unequal dialogue with civilian masters. Unfortunately, with publicly popular generals driving a strong narrative, coupled with leaks to the public, Obama was led down a road where he decided upon a troop increase of 30,000.[xxviii]

The president placated the military leadership, but his direction was clear, the military was not to do counterinsurgency operations or nation-building.[xxix] Ignoring the president’s political direction, generals continued to push their own agenda and mission creep set in. The military gravitated to counterinsurgency operations and more and more troops flowed into Afghanistan despite the initial intent to minimize a large ground presence. Ironically, it is President Biden who returned to office with a conviction to end the war in Afghanistan. Aside from the abrupt and chaotic withdrawal, much of the blame for this strategic failure in Afghanistan harkens back to multiple administrations and scores of military general officers. Strategy formulation suffered from the absence of an unequal dialogue.

Conclusion

The U.S. has entered the twenty-first century with key strategic failures to learn from. Indeed, it is vital for the republic to reflect and learn from these recent interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan to avoid repeated mistakes. Good strategic thinking and an unequal dialogue are needed to ensure the nation can prepare and strategize for the vexing challenges ahead. Historical case studies are useful to illuminate examples of where dialogue and strategic alignment did or did not work. The theoretical conventions of Clausewitz’s theory of war and Cohen’s unequal dialogue remain helpful to navigate the complexity of war and strategy in case studies. The reciprocal relationship between war and policy is essential to the conduct of war and strategy creation. It should be taught at more educational institutions. Leaders, especially in the military, need to subordinate egos and parochial matters to the nation’s interests, and appreciate the unequal dialogue with elected civilians. They must marshal appropriate evidence to support their best military advice in this unequal dialogue, but when the policy direction is set, translate those ends into military strategy and win the nation’s wars.

References

[i] Quote is taken from Nobel Prize in Literature book by Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis 1915, Vol 2 (New York: Rosetta Books, 2013), 11.

[ii] Eliot Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime (New York: Anchor Books, 2003) 12 and see recommendations in Nathan Freier, At Our Own Peril: DoD Risk Assessment in a Post-Primacy World, (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Army War College Press. 2017), 93-101.

[iii] Bernard Brodie, "A Guide to the Reading of On War," in Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, 705.

[iv] Helmuth Graf Von Moltke, Moltke on the Art of War: Selected Writings, Edited by Daniel J. Hughes (New York: Ballantine Books, 1993), 8-9 and in Jehuda Wallach, Kriegstheorien, Ihre Entwicklung im 19. Un 20, Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main: Bernard & Graefe, 1972), 84.

[v] This has been a strong argument by historians with an orthodox view on Vietnam. See the preface in Mark Moyar, Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), xi-xix.

[vi] Harry Summers, On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War (New York: Presidio Press, 1995) and H.R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam (New York: Harper Collins, 1998).

[vii] Casper Weinberger, Fighting for Peace: Seen Critical Years in the Pentagon (New York: Warner Brooks, Inc., 1990) 433-445.

[viii] Hew Strachan, The Direction of War: Contemporary Strategy in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 19-20.

[ix] Strachan, The Direction of War, 19-20

[x] Strachan, The Direction of War, 19

[xi] Colin Powell, with Joseph Persico, My American journey (New York, 1996, 1st Ed 1995), 576.

[xii] John Lewis Gaddis, On Grand Strategy (New York: Penguin Press, 2018), 183.

[xiii] James M. McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief (New York: Penguin, 2008), 52.

[xiv] Eliot Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime (New York: Anchor Books, 2003).

[xv] Eliot Cohen, “Churchill and his Generals: He made their lives miserable, but could they have won the war without him?” The Quarterly Journal of Military History 9, no. 1 (Autumn 1996).

[xvi] Clausewitz, Carl Von. On War. Translated and edited by Michael Howard and Peter Paret. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976) 89.

[xvii] Colin S. Gray, Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims of War, Peace, and Strategy (Lincoln: Potomac Books, 2009) 29

[xviii] Cohen, Eliot. “Churchill and his Generals: He made their lives miserable, but could they have won the war without him?” The Quarterly Journal of Military History 9, no. 1 (Autumn 1996): 48.

[xix] Cohen, “Churchill and his Generals,”48

[xx] David Kahn, Seizing the Enigma: The Race to Break the German U-boat Codes 1939-1943 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2012).

[xxi] Eliot Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime (New York: Anchor Books, 2003).

[xxii] Carl Von Clausewitz, On War. Translated and edited by Michael Howard and Peter Paret. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976).

[xxiii] Cohen, Eliot. “Churchill and his Generals: He made their lives miserable, but could they have won the war without him?” The Quarterly Journal of Military History 9, no. 1 (Autumn 1996), 48.

[xxiv] Manuel Fischer and Pascal Sciarini, “Unpacking Reputational Power: Intended and Unintended Determinants of the Assessment of Actors’ Power,” Social Networks 42 (2015): 60–71, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2015.02.008.

[xxv] Bob Woodward, Obama’s Wars (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 168.

[xxvi] Woodward, Obama’s Wars, 102, 159-60, 166, 219, 234-35.

[xxvii] Woodward, Obama’s Wars, 168.

[xxviii] Woodward, Obama’s Wars, 278.

[xxix] Woodward, Obama’s Wars, 285.

militarystrategymagazine.com

24. Only Humility Can Save Us From AI

Excerpts:

In a book that frequently lapses into clunky language, Toffler wrote the following warning with utter clarity—for my money, better than the editorialists of the Financial Times, and on the same point:

[T]echnological questions can no longer be answered in technological terms alone. They are political questions. Indeed, they affect us more deeply than most of the superficial political issues that occupy us today. This is why we cannot continue to make technological decisions in the old way. We cannot permit them to be made haphazardly, independently of one another. We cannot permit them to be dictated by short-run economic considerations alone. We cannot permit them to be made in a policy vacuum. And we cannot casually delegate responsibility for such decisions to businessmen, scientists, engineers or administrators who are unaware of the profound consequences of their own actions.

And yet that is exactly what we seem to be doing.

Another thinker helps us understand why, and his conclusions are hardly encouraging. In his book Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (and others), the Yale University political scientist James C. Scott wrote about the propensity of humans to make “heroic assumptions” about the power of our own cleverness to come up with solutions to whatever problem rears its head. The book explores what Scott calls “high modernism”—essentially, the effort to use science and theory to order and regularize the social world, and to use theories of the future to remake the present. Scott defines high modernism in these terms:

It is best conceived as a strong, one might even say muscle-bound, version of the beliefs in scientific and technical progress that were associated with industrialization in Western Europe and in North America from roughly 1830 until World War I. At its core was a supreme self-confidence about continued linear progress, the development of scientific and technical knowledge, the expansion of production, the rational design of social order, the growing satisfaction of human needs, and, not least, an increasing control over nature.

The lesson of AI and of formidable breakthroughs to come, such as quantum computing, though, is that we may now be reaching the point where something most unnatural to humans is the only thing that can save us: humility.

Only Humility Can Save Us From AI

We may be reaching the point where something most unnatural to humans is the only thing that can avert disaster.

Howard French

Howard W. French

By Howard W. French, a columnist at Foreign Policy. Click + to receive email alerts for new stories written by Howard W. French Howard W. French

Foreign Policy · by Howard W. French · May 11, 2023

In an unnervingly placid voice, a computer endowed with its own intelligence speaks to a human being and offers him some advice. “I can see you are really upset about this,” the machine says. “I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly. Take a stress pill and think things over.”

The scene, of course, is from one of the greatest films of the 20th century, the 1968 sci-fi thriller 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the name of what remains perhaps the most famous computer ever is HAL, short for heuristically programmed algorithmic computer. The astronaut who looms large on the screen as HAL addresses him with a chilling purr is named Dave, but he is really a stand in for all of us.

Nothing attests for that more than the fact that we may now be approaching the moment when the prescient and terrifying vision of the movie’s creators, the director Stanley Kubrick and author Arthur C. Clarke, may finally be coming to life—or perhaps better, turning into an objective reality right before our eyes.

The film 2001 can be interpreted in many ways, but at its heart lies a tale of technological dystopia in which a sentient and all-powerful computer with no history of ever having committed an error goes horribly rogue, taking over a manned spaceship and coolly killing its crew members. Two of the astronauts go into a space pod to ensure they won’t be overheard while they make plans to shut HAL down. One of them is soon lost in the void, murdered by the computer. After finding himself trapped outside the spaceship, the lone survivor, Dave, then orders HAL to open its doors and let him back in.

“I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that,” HAL answers in his crushingly smooth voice.

“What’s the problem?” Dave asks.

“I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do,” HAL replies. “This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.”

Even though Dave and his last surviving fellow crew mate had been careful enough to prevent HAL from overhearing their plans, they had not counted on the computer’s ability to read their lips from afar, through the small window of their pod. Dave ultimately succeeds in getting back into the mothership and disabling HAL. But the scariest part of this movie may be the thought that if Kubrick and Clarke were making their masterpiece today, it is highly unlikely that they would have thought that humans could have come out of this predicament so well.

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For months now, I have been following developments in the world of artificial intelligence (AI) and its most popular manifestations, such as ChatGPT. And the impression that these developments have left me with is that however fast we imagine the landscape of this technology to be capable of changing, our visions just keep falling behind. I was put in the mind of HAL and 2001, though, because of an item that I came across scarcely a week ago that makes the movie’s lip reading seem already hopelessly antiquated. There may soon be no need to bother with such an indirect method, because in the brave new world of AI, scientists and engineers are already perfecting ways of reading people’s brain activity—i.e., their thoughts—simply by monitoring the electrical signals that we all give off.

In recent weeks, there has been a cascade of warnings from the people who know the field of AI best, as well as from what you might call curious bystanders—people much like me—hinting that humanity has unleashed a monster that it may not be able to control. Beyond the stream of warnings about how AI could soon be used to do things like rig elections, commit financial fraud on a huge scale, help unleash new weapons systems, and facilitate the worst kinds of political propaganda, we are now inundated with reports of AI’s negative effects in the present through its applications that have already entered the workplace and consumer marketplace.

Driven by its capacities, computer giant IBM, for example, is eliminating thousands of jobs, and fear of the looming threat to AI could pose to jobs in myriad other industries, such as writers in Hollywood, is creating anxiety and disruption. Meanwhile, off-the-shelf technology that you or I can already buy and use is quickly creating the capacity to essentially make convincing virtual clones of ourselves.

Perhaps the most famous of the many warnings about all of this so far came from Geoffrey Hinton, an AI pioneer who recently resigned from Google. In an interview with BBC News that brought to mind a future of Terminator-style automatons, potentially rogue doomsday machines, and an unlimited array of disaster scenarios that could be brought about by AI technology in the hands of what are often called bad actors, he warned:

Right now, what we are seeing is things like GPT4. It eclipses a person in the amount of general knowledge it has, and it eclipses them by a long way. In terms of reasoning, it is not as good, but it already does simple reasoning. And given the rate of progress, we expect things to get better quite fast, so we need to worry about that. Right now, they are not more intelligent than us as far as I can tell, but I think they soon may be.

The very next speaker in that BBC News segment was Junaid Mubeen, a research mathematician and expert on the human-AI interface. Toward that conversation’s end, he concluded darkly that “[Hinton’s] own warning does seem to be coming quite late in the day. And there is a sense that maybe the genie is out of the bottle now, and there is no real accounting for what happens next.”

These days, op-eds in leading Western newspapers have been full of fine-sounding but vague advice about how to get ahead of this potential threat. This week, for instance, the Financial Times editorial board urged the tech industry to “agree and implement some common principles on transparency, accountability and fairness,” adding that where computer algorithms are used in what it called “critical, life-and-death areas, such as healthcare, the judicial system and the military,” government preapproval should be required.

But I have to say that this feels very namby-pamby, and let me tell you why. Google is a good place to start any explanation of why a proposal like this seems so impossible. The company that rose to huge profitability on its search engine business had long been working quietly on figuring out how to integrate AI into its products but had held off, fearing that the risks had not yet been fully understood. Then along came Microsoft with a powerful new product of its own called Edge, which incorporated ChatGPT (which Microsoft has invested in) into its browser and search products, betting that their power and novelty would allow Microsoft to make dramatic gains in a market that Google has long owned virtually by itself.

The point that flows from this might be called principle No. 1: Profit will usually trump prudence where big and sudden gains seem attainable. Google, observing this principle, has eagerly followed Microsoft, as one might expect, throwing much of its erstwhile caution to the wind.

Principle No. 2 goes beyond corporate greed, which many people have taught us is a positive force in capitalism, and into the realm of the equally powerful logic of nation-states. Is it possible to imagine a world where China does not seek to match the recent advances that big U.S. corporations have made in AI applications? For me, the answer is an obvious “no,” and in fact, China has rushed in recent weeks to roll out products it hopes can rival those of Google and Microsoft. And this is not just about the world’s two superpowers, either. Others who wish to catch up, or at least keep pace, will inevitably throw their hats into the ring in a contest that fairly mirrors nuclear proliferation.

Not to be entirely hopeless here, but it is pretty much impossible to predict where this will all go once another technology that looms just over the horizon eventually matures: quantum computing. Marrying that to AI would exponentially magnify the challenge that humanity faces in keeping machines in a secure place.

Yet my most serious fears date to a much earlier time, when some visionaries were already beginning to see all this coming. The movie 2001: A Space Odyssey came out in 1968. Two years later, it was followed by another cultural blockbuster, but one that is mostly forgotten now. In 1970, in a book called Future Shock that became an enormous bestseller in its day, the author Alvin Toffler—along with his uncredited collaborator and wife, Heidi—foresaw the entire human dilemma that I have described here, even if some of the specific technological details eluded their imaginations more than 50 years ago, as seems reasonable.

In a book that frequently lapses into clunky language, Toffler wrote the following warning with utter clarity—for my money, better than the editorialists of the Financial Times, and on the same point:

[T]echnological questions can no longer be answered in technological terms alone. They are political questions. Indeed, they affect us more deeply than most of the superficial political issues that occupy us today. This is why we cannot continue to make technological decisions in the old way. We cannot permit them to be made haphazardly, independently of one another. We cannot permit them to be dictated by short-run economic considerations alone. We cannot permit them to be made in a policy vacuum. And we cannot casually delegate responsibility for such decisions to businessmen, scientists, engineers or administrators who are unaware of the profound consequences of their own actions.

And yet that is exactly what we seem to be doing.

Another thinker helps us understand why, and his conclusions are hardly encouraging. In his book Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (and others), the Yale University political scientist James C. Scott wrote about the propensity of humans to make “heroic assumptions” about the power of our own cleverness to come up with solutions to whatever problem rears its head. The book explores what Scott calls “high modernism”—essentially, the effort to use science and theory to order and regularize the social world, and to use theories of the future to remake the present. Scott defines high modernism in these terms:

It is best conceived as a strong, one might even say muscle-bound, version of the beliefs in scientific and technical progress that were associated with industrialization in Western Europe and in North America from roughly 1830 until World War I. At its core was a supreme self-confidence about continued linear progress, the development of scientific and technical knowledge, the expansion of production, the rational design of social order, the growing satisfaction of human needs, and, not least, an increasing control over nature.

The lesson of AI and of formidable breakthroughs to come, such as quantum computing, though, is that we may now be reaching the point where something most unnatural to humans is the only thing that can save us: humility.

Foreign Policy · by Howard W. French · May 11, 2023

​

​25. Signals intelligence teams reposition to face China, Russia

Signals intelligence teams reposition to face China, Russia

Defense News · by Todd South · May 11, 2023

TAMPA, Fla. — Special operations signals intelligence teams say they need smaller, more versatile gear that gathers and shares data on the breadth of radio frequencies in all domains — land, sea, air and now space.

The mission has shifted dramatically as the United States ratchets up competition in the frequency bands with peer competitors like Russia and China, a far cry from deciphering mobile phone signals from violent extremists, officials said.

That’s one request to industry within a small slice of a larger portfolio under U.S. Special Operations Command Program Executive Office-Special Reconnaissance.

On Wednesday, a panel of program managers ticked off the varied sensor, communications and intelligence gear the office wants during the Global SOF Foundation’s SOF Week here.

Their efforts to upgrade and improve collection and dissemination of data continues in an ever-more crowded radio frequency spectrum across, and beyond, the globe.

Chris Wilson, acquisition program manager for signals intelligence, spelled out some of the emerging needs as the nation targets peer and near-peer competitors, while it continues to collect information on violent extremist organizations.

The office is developing next-generation sensors and antennas, all domain flexible, tactical sensors, and cross-platform modular payloads for air, surface and subsurface maritime sensors. Their new work includes software-reconfigurable space payloads for satellites and a larger national “reachback” capability for sharing intelligence from the tactical to strategic levels.

The office’s portfolio also includes the Joint Threat Warning System-Air, primarily used by U.S. Air Forces Special Operations Command. The drone portion works through payloads on Group 1 to 3 drones. The equipment detects, locates and exploits signals across the radio frequency spectrum. All of this is for threat warning and situational awareness in airborne platforms.

JTWS-Ground serves a similar function on ground vehicles and individual operators. It fields frequency-specific data collection equipment to detect similar threats at the ground level.

The JTWS-Maritime conducts the same functions, but with gear that can be installed on waterborne platforms and removed for use off-platform.

In June, Wilson’s team is set to experiment with smaller electronics intelligence hardware that can go on or off boats. The current systems are too heavy to remove from boats for operations, he said.

Another area newly added to the portfolio is space-based payloads for high-altitude frequency detection, including software-defined radios and sensors for satellites.

Wilson told the audience a key focus moving forward is using software “squirts” to remotely update or reconfigure satellite-based hardware for different types of missions or needs.

Lastly, the Silent Dagger package is a scalable intelligence cell type of platform in a box that includes laptops, phones, transceivers and other hardware and gives small teams the connectivity and intelligence usually held by higher-echelon units such as brigades or divisions.

“We have this in a garrison capability, and we have this in deployable systems, so it’s forward deployed with reach back to the national intelligence community’s databases,” Wilson said.

The team is also looking to tie smaller sensors to the system so that at the edge of the tactical footprint, operators can feed into and pull out necessary data from those massive databases, he said.

In the next one to two years, Wilson’s said his team is looking for gear with advanced and complex signals, advanced radio frequency filtering, modular payload-compliant sensors and advanced networking for more precise geolocation.

“For a long time, we were really focused on counter-[violent extremist organizations] and when you’re focused on counter-VEO, from our perspective, it’s the communications methods that those violent extremist organizations would use,” he said.

His office was “heavy” on those collection methods — radio frequencies in the mobile phone or push-to-talk transmitter’s range, for example.

“As we shift though, we have to look at capabilities that go after the comms methods for any other type of [radio frequency] capabilities that our strategic competitors would use, including machine to machine and things like that,” Wilson said.

In the three to five-year timeframe, the team needs enhanced antennas, which means low profile, and improved performance for those new antennae.

As operators see a more frequency-crowded battlefield, automated signal processing is key to reducing the burden of manual frequency configuration by operators.

They need to be able to process data and signals intelligence in remote locations without connections to more powerful computing present in large formations or stateside.

High altitude and space payloads are key for integrating space assets. And they must be able to hide their own signals transmissions and collections efforts in the radio frequency spectrum.

Beyond the six-year mark, the team is looking for sensor autonomy and sensor data communicating from field locations to vehicles and air or maritime vessels on the move.

About Todd South

Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.

26. China slams Japan after deployment of Patriot PAC-3 missile near Taiwan

China slams Japan after deployment of Patriot PAC-3 missile near Taiwan

firstpost.com · by Ajeyo Basu · May 10, 2023

World

With military analysts in Beijing criticising Japan's placement of a US-made Patriot missile defence system at Miyako Island, which is close to Taiwan, the breach between archrivals China and Japan is certain to grow

May 10, 2023 16:39:39 IST

Taiwan fears a growing threat from China and is hoping the Patriot PAC-3 missile defence system can deflect Chinese missiles headed its way Image Courtesy AP

With military analysts in Beijing criticising Japan’s placement of the US-made Patriot PAC-3 missile defence system at Miyako Island, which is close to Taiwan, the breach between archrivals China and Japan is certain to grow.

At a news conference on May 8, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said that the Air Self-Defense Force has stationed Patriot PAC-3 ground-to-air guided missiles at its Miyako Island installation in Miyakojima, Okinawa Prefecture.

In the “first island chain” close to Taiwan, this is seen to be a key strategic node.

Matsuno also told the media that the PAC-3 missiles from Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force had been stationed at the Ishigaki and Yonaguni islands in addition to the Miyakojima deployment.

Matsuno explained that the Patriot missiles are intended to intercept any future launches of long-range ballistic missiles from North Korea.

Ballistic missiles that North Korea claimed to be artificial satellites were fired; the missiles twice passed close to these three islands, once in 2012 and again in 2016.

However, as reported by the state-owned Global Times, Chinese analysts have harshly criticised the deployment.

The analysts emphasised that Taiwanese media had noticed that the deployment locations are closer to Taiwan than North Korea, adding that this “is yet another Japanese attempt to interfere in the Taiwan question.”

Regular patrols and drills encircling the island of Taiwan as well as through the Miyako Strait into the West Pacific are conducted by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) between the island of Taiwan and Yonaguni Island.

The focus of China’s military exercises has also changed significantly, with the PLA soldiers emphasising the practise invasion of Taiwan by surrounding it and cutting it off from any “external interference.”

China launched extraordinary live-fire drills in reaction to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August of last year, firing numerous missiles towards the waters between northeastern and southwestern Taiwan.

Taiwan has had to strengthen its air defences in response to China’s escalating hostility and “grey zone tactics” against the island nation.

The Skybow III and Patriot missiles that were deployed to the northern half of the state in February of this year make up the majority of Taiwan’s air defence. Taiwanese media, however, saw Japan’s deployment of a PAC battery close to the island as a favourable move given China’s pattern of military escapades in the Taiwan Strait.

Taiwan fears a growing threat from China and is hoping the Patriot PAC-3 missile defence system can deflect Chinese missiles headed its way.

The Taiwanese news organisation “Taiwan News” has reported that these southern Japanese islands are closer to Taiwan than North Korea. The possibility that the deployment could possibly be intended to intercept Chinese missiles is raised by this.

It highlighted that while Yilan County in northeast Taiwan is only 362 kilometers away from Miyako Island, Kaesong, the southernmost metropolis of North Korea, is 1,459 kilometers away. Although Japanese or Taiwanese officials have not supported such theories, Chinese analysts are brimming with suspicion.

According to Wei Dongxu, a military expert in Beijing, Japan’s placement of Patriot missiles on its southwest island chain has nothing to do with the nearby Korean Peninsula.

The analyst went on to say that the move is extremely aggressive towards China since its real objective is to arm the islands with anti-air and anti-ship missiles and prepare for a military intervention in the Taiwan dispute.

Wei counselled China to bolster its defences against any military incursion attempts from hostile outside forces. Just a few days prior, the PAC-3 Patriot missile defence system in Ukraine performed brilliantly by intercepting and downing a Russian hypersonic Kinzhal missile.

Modern military hardware that Kyiv is receiving from its partners in the West, mainly the United States, is now being tested in Ukraine. China, for its part, has been closely observing the combat effectiveness of Western military hardware against the powerful military force of Russia.

Ukrainian officials have been clamouring for the PAC-3 Patriot missile defence systems, which can take down the super-maneuverable ballistic missiles, ever since Russia launched a volley of ballistic and cruise missiles on Ukraine, causing devastation on the troubled nation last year.

Finally, these systems were shipped to Ukraine in April, and it is said that they were then installed in Kyiv, the country’s capital. The PAC-3 stunned the Russian and Ukrainian military earlier this month when it successfully shot down a Russian hypersonic missile. Due to their speed and erratic flight paths, hypersonic missiles are thought to be able to penetrate air defence systems.

Thus, China may feel even more uneasy if a PAC-3 Patriot missile defence system is deployed close to Taiwan. The American system has turned into a pain in the neck for its rivals, China and Russia.

Updated Date: May 10, 2023 16:39:39 IST

firstpost.com · by Ajeyo Basu · May 10, 2023

27. 'Don't Kill Me': Russian Solider Surrendered to a Drone From Ukraine

I recall similar stories from a few years go. We need to ensure we have standard drone TTPs for taking enemy surrenders and train on this (only half tongue in cheek - this will likely happen again).

'Don't Kill Me': Russian Solider Surrendered to a Drone From Ukraine

19fortyfive.com · by Peter Suciu · May 12, 2023

Video footage of a Russian soldier surrendering to a Ukrainian drone was shared on the Telegram social messaging platform earlier this week.

The Russian trooper, who can be seen in an exposed trench near the besieged city of Bakhmut, spotted a drone above him.

Realizing that the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was carrying a hand grenade, the soldier laid down his weapon and frantically signaled that he would surrender.

“Crazy video of a Russian soldier pleading to a Ukrainian drone not to kill him. The Ukrainian have mercy & send another drone with a written message, telling him to walk to their lines and surrender The Russian obeys, but other Russians try to shell him,” Eastern European news agency Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) said in a post on Twitter while sharing the video clip.

The drone was reportedly operated by a unit of the Ukrainian 92nd Separate Mechanized Brigade, and in addition to the grenade, it was also carrying a note that instructed how he could give himself up. He was told to climb out of the trench and follow the drone back to the Ukrainian lines. That included crossing open ground.

A Russian Lone Survivor

Though the Ukrainian forces didn’t shoot at the lone soldier, the Russian still had to dodge fire from his own forces before he reached the Ukrainian positions to be taken prisoner.

“We accompanied him all the way to Ukrainian positions. Captivity in Ukraine gives you more chances to survive than service in the Russian army,” Yurii Fedorenko, the commander of the 92nd Mechanized Brigade’s drone company, told The Guardian on Thursday.

The soldier is now in custody, and this story has been noted by the government in Kyiv.

“The enemy noticed the drone and began to make gestures to show a desire to surrender,” said Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukrainian deputy prime minister. “Infantrymen and scouts accompanied him all the way to Ukrainian positions.”

Portent of the Situation in Bakhmut

Even as it was just a single individual who sought to live this week, the video comes as Russian forces have reportedly given up nearly a mile and a half of ground in the besieged city of Bakhmut, which has been the scene of fighting for nearly 10 months.

“We are effectively counterattacking,” Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskiy, commander of the Ukrainian Ground Forces 3rd Assault Brigade said in a post on Telegram on Wednesday. “On some sections of the front, the enemy could not withstand pressure from Ukrainian defenders and had to retreat up to 2 kilometers.”

The Russian 72nd Motorized Rifle Brigade has also suffered major losses as it was forced to retreat.

The loss of the recently taken ground has further exposed a rift between Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the pro-Russian Wagner Group mercenary force, and the Kremlin. It was Wagner forces that had fought for weeks to take the positions.

“Our army is fleeing. The 72nd Brigade [pissed away] 3-square kilometers this morning, where I had lost around 500 men,” Prigozhin said in a video he shared on social media earlier this week.

Fighting continues in and around Bakhmut, and it has evoked comparisons to the Battle of Stalingrad that was fought during the Second World War.

Crazy video of a Russian soldier pleading to a Ukrainian drone not to kill him.

The Ukrainian have mercy & send another drone with a written message, telling him to walk to their lines and surrender

The Russian obeys, but other Russians try to shell him pic.twitter.com/cgmizL2gMt

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) May 10, 2023

Author Experience and Expertise

A Senior Editor for 19FortyFive, Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu.

19fortyfive.com · by Peter Suciu · May 12, 2023

28. ‘War Is Fun’: The Navy SEAL Who Went to Ukraine Because He Couldn’t Stop Fighting

Another troubled soul.

‘War Is Fun’: The Navy SEAL Who Went to Ukraine Because He Couldn’t Stop Fighting

Daniel Swift was in his element waging America’s war on terror from Afghanistan to Yemen. After his marriage failed back home, he found a new purpose: killing Russians.

By Ian Lovett

 and Brett Forrest

May 12, 2023 5:30 am ET

Daniel Swift’s nerves were shot. By the start of 2019, his Navy SEAL colleagues said, he was hardly eating or sleeping.

He had separated from his wife. A court had barred him from seeing his four children, and he was facing legal charges for false imprisonment and domestic battery.

Mr. Swift told fellow SEALs in San Diego, where he was based, that he was planning to go to Africa to fight wildlife poachers. They brushed off the comment, convinced that Mr. Swift, a soldier’s soldier, would never abandon his post. 

A week later, he disappeared. Navy investigators searched for him, but Mr. Swift was always a step ahead. 

He resurfaced in March of last year when he slipped into a group messaging chat of current and former SEALs. He was now fighting Russians in Ukraine, he texted. He petitioned the group for supplies, and later invited members to join him on the front lines. None did. Some advised him to come home. Others marveled as word of his exploits spread.

Mr. Swift was among thousands of young men who flooded to Kyiv from the West, including American veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many said they were drawn to the cause of a democratic country resisting a larger autocratic one.

But there was another side to Mr. Swift’s quest, as revealed in interviews with his colleagues and a memoir he published online under a pseudonym. Mr. Swift was part of a large group who spent years fighting America’s war on terror and have struggled to settle back into civilian life. 

The military has acknowledged the impact on servicemembers and their families, particularly special forces, who suffered the outsized casualties during the later years of the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

Long deployments have pushed up divorce rates, while suicides among special forces spiked to the highest in the military. The government has launched programs to help lessen the psychological burden on spouses as well as troops.  

Daniel Glenn, a psychologist who works with veterans at the University of California, Los Angeles, said many tell him that the U.S. military does a great job preparing them to go to war, but not to return from it. 

“They’ve been in some of the most intense, dangerous, awful situations. They’re really good at that,” he said. “Comparatively, back in the civilian world, everything feels mundane. It’s hard to have anything that feels like a rush or makes you feel alive.”

Daniel Swift serving in Severodonetsk, Ukraine.

Many of the men who fought with Mr. Swift said this feeling was part of what drew them to Ukraine. 

“A lot of people won’t admit it, but lots of people are here because war is fun,” said a 43-year-old U.S. Army veteran. Civilian life, he added, didn’t offer the same camaraderie or sense of purpose: “War is easy in many ways. Your mission is crystal clear. You’re here to take the enemy out.” 

‘Viet Dan’

Mr. Swift had wanted to be a Navy SEAL since childhood. After graduating from high school in rural Oregon in 2005, he married his high-school sweetheart and enlisted in the Navy. 

Two years later, he enrolled in the SEALs selection program, a grueling process highlighted by “Hell Week,” when candidates train physically for more than 20 hours a day, run more than 200 miles and sleep for about four hours total.

The vast majority of candidates wash out. Mr. Swift, just 20 years old, made it. Soon after, his wife gave birth to their first child.

A teetotaler, Mr. Swift sometimes drove fellow SEALs on bar crawls, though he often stayed in and studied tactics in military manuals.

On deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, he won a reputation for dependability, a rare Legion of Merit award and a nickname, “Viet Dan,” inspired by his fondness for action.

“Tough kid, humble, quiet, and a little bit crazy,” said a SEAL who was the third in command of Mr. Swift’s first platoon.

In 2013, when his wife was pregnant with their fourth child, Mr. Swift decided to quit. “I thought maybe God was trying to tell me to settle down and be a family man,” he wrote in his memoir, which he self-published in 2020. 

He joined the Washington state police and reveled in time off with his kids, exploring logging roads through the woods, cooking hot dogs and shooting guns. 

The new job didn’t suit him, though. Police officers were rewarded for giving out tickets rather than helping people, he wrote in his book. Sitting in his cruiser scanning for speeders, Mr. Swift texted friends in the SEALs and told them he missed life among them, according to Navy comrades.

In 2015, a friend from the SEALs died, and Mr. Swift decided to re-enlist as a fight with Islamic State beckoned. “I wanted my piece of the pie,” he wrote.

In Iraq again, Mr. Swift took on Islamic State militants in city streets. Later, he deployed to Yemen.

Navy SEAL candidates train during ‘Hell Week.’ PHOTO: PETTY OFFICER 1ST CLASS ABE MCNATT/U.S. NAVY

Most candidates wash out of the SEALs selection program. PHOTO: PETTY OFFICER 1ST CLASS ABE MCNATT/U.S. NAVY

The overseas missions took a toll on his marriage. In October 2018, shortly after Mr. Swift returned from seven months in Yemen, his relationship with his wife collapsed.

In court documents, Maegan Swift said he’d returned home angry, prone to yelling at her. He disputed this account in his book, but both agreed that one night when they were arguing at home, she threatened to call the police if he prevented her from leaving with the kids.

Mr. Swift went to the bedroom and returned with a pisto​l.​

He said in the book that it was unloaded and that he told her: “See what happens when the cops try and take my children from me.” 

Ms. Swift moved the children to her sister’s house while Mr. Swift was traveling. When he returned, a scuffle ensued as he tried to put his younger daughter in his car and Ms. Swift and her sister tried to stop him. Mr. Swift said he was fending off the women as they attacked him; they said he choked Ms. Swift’s sister. The police arrived and arrested him. 

Ms. Swift declined to comment for this article.

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A Navy psychologist said Mr. Swift had adjustment disorder, a term for difficulty re-entering civilian life, Mr. Swift wrote in his memoir. He dismissed the diagnosis.

Mr. Swift was charged in state court with false imprisonment, child endangerment and domestic battery, which threatened his military career. If convicted of a felony, Mr. Swift would lose his right to carry a gun, and this prospect shook him, according to SEALs who knew him. Being a warrior was nearly all he’d known.

Most of all, he worried about losing his kids, the oldest of whom was 11. 

Mr. Swift wrote that while the U.S. government has helped veterans cope with war trauma, “what we don’t seem to care about is when they return home to things they’ve been fighting for, only to have them ripped away.” 

“I have been face to face with death multiple times, and it has never been more traumatic than having my children taken away,” he wrote.

In the early months of 2019, Mr. Swift disappeared. His passport pinged at immigration control in Mexico, then in Germany, a former SEAL colleague said. 

Mr. Swift tried to join the French Foreign Legion, according to another SEAL colleague, but was rejected because the recruiters worried his kids could be a distraction. He ended up in Thailand where he fought kickboxing matches and taught English.

He wrote his memoir, he said, to explain himself to his children. “If you ever want to talk to me just make a Facebook page,” he wrote, addressing his kids. “I look.”

He titled the book “The Fall of a Man.”

No retreat

After Russia invaded Ukraine in February of last year, news reports of the war’s child victims reminded Mr. Swift of his own children and stirred him to action, he later told friends.

He entered Ukraine in early March and joined a platoon running missions behind enemy lines near Kyiv, according to soldiers who fought with him there.

During his first operations, he taped body armor to his chest under a white Fruit of the Loom T-shirt because he arrived without a vest to hold bulletproof plates. His teammates called it the “Dan special.” 

Conducting reconnaissance and hunting armored vehicles with a Javelin antitank missile, he soon developed a reputation as highly skilled, methodical and most comfortable in the middle of a firefight, according to men who fought with him. 

Adam Thiemann, a former U.S. Army Ranger, recalled one mission, where he and Mr. Swift set off with five others to ambush a Russian barrack. Outside the compound, they surprised a handful of uniformed Russian soldiers and quickly killed them. The Ukrainian commander ordered a retreat. Mr. Swift, who’d been quiet up to that point, was incredulous. 

“Retreat?” Mr. Swift said, according to Mr. Thiemann and another team member. “We didn’t even get shot at.” 

When Russian troops pulled back from Kyiv at the end of March, many foreign fighters went home, feeling they’d helped fend off the existential threat to Ukraine. Mr. Swift stayed.

His foreign legion team—a unit of Ukraine’s military intelligence, made up of about 20 foreigners and a Ukrainian commander—was dispatched to the city of Mykolaiv in the country’s south. 

There, Mr. Swift led the squad on aquatic missions, often using inflatable boats to travel across open sea at night to target Russian positions, according to several soldiers in his unit. 

During down time, teammates said, he was quiet and uncommonly disciplined. He didn’t drink or smoke, and worked out obsessively. Even near the front, he’d go out for long solo runs.

Daniel Swift, right, with team members in Mykolaiv, Ukraine.

Men fighting with Mr. Swift in Ukraine said he would accompany them for shawarma in Mykolaiv, walking around shirtless in jeans and sandals and getting waitresses’ phone numbers. In photos, he rarely smiled; he was more likely to crack a joke during missions, they said.

He told only a few comrades about his life outside the military. 

One teammate, a 29-year-old American who goes by the call sign Tex, said Mr. Swift confided in him about his troubles at home.

“He loved his kids,” Tex said. “A lot of things didn’t bother Dan. But the thought of his kids maybe being told who he was and not actually knowing him, that worried him.”

In early June, the team headed to the eastern city of Severodonetsk, which the Russians were flattening with artillery. 

The group had earned a reputation for taking on missions that others turned down. As the situation in Severodonetsk grew worse, Mr. Swift joked that if they were surrounded, at least they could shoot in every direction. 

On its last trip into the city, the team tried to hit a building where they believed about 10 Russians were hiding. As soon as they fired the first rocket, however, they found themselves under heavy assault. Dozens of Russians were in the building. Mr. Swift ended up trapped in a corner, trading machine-gun fire with a Russian. 

The legion team’s Ukrainian commander, Oleksiy Chubashev, was shot through the neck.

With a Russian tank approaching, Mr. Swift laid down covering fire to free a group of pinned-down comrades, who put Capt. Chubashev on a stretcher and carried him out the back of the building. 

Mr. Swift joined them outside to help carry the stretcher. A video seen by The Wall Street Journal shows them hauling the body through the city in daylight, without cover, while artillery shells whistle and crash around them. 

After about a half a mile in the June heat, an exhausted young soldier dropped his corner of the stretcher. 

“Dan just tore into him,” a member of the team from Minnesota recalled. “He never yells. But he screamed, like, ‘What are you saving your energy for?’ ” 

Capt. Chubashev died before making it back to base.

The next morning, Mr. Swift sat down beside several teammates who were drinking coffee. He said he was thinking about calling his children.

The men were shocked. They didn’t know he had kids. 

Soon after, Ukrainian forces started to retreat from Severodonetsk. Several of the men on Mr. Swift’s team decided they’d had enough. They went home. 

‘I’ll walk out’

Mr. Swift, by contrast, began setting up for life in Ukraine. He was looking for an apartment in Kyiv and sorted out a Ukrainian visa for a Thai woman he’d met when he was living there. He spoke of establishing an academy in Ukraine after the war to teach military tactics.

He returned to Mykolaiv, where he again led aquatic missions into Russian-held territory. 

In August, Mr. Swift led an attack on a Russian-held village across the Inhulets River. Working with Ukrainian special forces, the team forced the Russians to retreat, calling in a strike on a house full of enemy soldiers and taking seven prisoners.

But they ended up sheltering in a basement under Russian artillery fire. Mr. Swift called the unit’s new Ukrainian commander, asking to pull back, according to team members. The commander said no. 

Mr. Swift pulled the team out anyway. In the middle of the night, he and the team medic swam upriver to retrieve a half-inflated boat to bring their comrades and gear back across to Ukrainian-held territory. When they got back to the base, Mr. Swift quit and moved to another foreign legion team.

A spokesman for Ukraine’s foreign legion declined to comment.

By the new year, Ukraine’s hold on Bakhmut, in the eastern Donetsk region, was tenuous. Mr. Swift’s unit, dispatched there, found Ukrainian troops scattered in basements around the city sheltering from withering Russian artillery fire.

“I’m just here in the basement,” Mr. Swift said in a phone call with a former Green Beret, who’d fought with him earlier in the war. “Trying to plan missions that are not going to get us killed.” 

Mr. Swift was scheduled to leave Bakhmut later in January and planned to meet the Thai woman in Romania and bring her to Kyiv.

On the night of Jan. 17, Mr. Swift led a small team of Western fighters into a cluster of homes and began clearing them of fighters from the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, according to Mr. Swift’s unit commander. As Mr. Swift led his squad between buildings, a Russian soldier fired a rocket-propelled grenade.

A projectile, either shrapnel or a bullet, penetrated Mr. Swift’s helmet and lodged in his brain. 

His commander found Mr. Swift lying prone, yet coherent. As the unit hurried to evacuate, Mr. Swift fought to remain lucid and asked for help getting to his feet. “I’ll walk out,” he said.

He lost consciousness and died three days later at a trauma center in Dnipro, a nearby regional capital. He was 35 years old.

A memorial service for Daniel Swift in Lviv, Ukraine. PHOTO: STANISLAV IVANOV/GLOBAL IMAGES UKRAINE/GETTY IMAGES

Mr. Swift died while still a SEAL, though AWOL, in a war to which the U.S. hasn’t committed troops. This has complicated his family’s effort to collect benefits from Washington.

A Navy spokesman said Mr. Swift was considered to be an active deserter at the time of his death, and that “we cannot speculate as to why the former Sailor was in Ukraine.” The Pentagon has yet to make a ruling on the family’s petition.

On Feb. 11, several SEALs attended Mr. Swift’s funeral in Oregon. In a video viewed by the Journal, one by one they punched metal SEAL pins into the surface of his casket, a SEAL ritual to the fallen.

Nikita Nikolaienko contributed to this article.

Write to Ian Lovett at ian.lovett@wsj.com and Brett Forrest at brett.forrest@wsj.com

​

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com