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- Katherine Mansfield
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- R. E. Johnson
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- James Baldwin
On this day in U.S. Army SF history........25 Sep 1961 –Department of the Army Message 578636, designated the Green Beret as the official and exclusive headgear of the Army Special Forces.
1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 24, 2023
2. Special Operations News - September 25, 2023 | SOF News
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1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 24, 2023
Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-24-2023
Key Takeaways:
- Elements of three Russian divisions are actively defending against Ukrainian assaults around the Ukrainian salient in the Orikhiv area in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
- Ukrainian forces are attacking along three directions within the Orikhiv salient as of September 24.
- Russian sources report that Ukrainian forces broke into Verbove on September 22 and continued attacking the settlement with armored vehicles as of September 24.
- Ukrainian forces are attacking north of Verbove and could isolate the 56th VDV Regiment deployed in Novofedorivka from its sister regiments in the Verbove area according to Russian sources.
- Russian forces continue to expend significant combat power on counterattacking to hold their current positions and appear to be resisting the operationally sound course of action of falling back to prepared defensive positions further south.
- The Russian military command may be ordering these counterattacks to buy time, but it is unclear how the Kremlin intends to use time bought at such a price.
- The Russian sacrifice of combat power to hold every meter may alternatively be intended to support the Kremlin’s informational and hybrid warfare objectives.
- The Russian resistance to ceding ground may also be tied to Russian military commanders’ and officials’ attempts to use the counteroffensive to achieve political goals, or it could result from Putin’s micromanagement.
- Ukrainian forces may be able to achieve an operationally significant breakthrough in the southern frontline if several key assumptions hold.
- Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 24.
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 24, 2023
Sep 24, 2023 - ISW Press
Download the PDF
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 24, 2023
George Barros, Kateryna Stepanenko, Riley Bailey, Angelica Evans, and Frederick W. Kagan
September 24, 2023, 9:00 pm ET
Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
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 cut-off for this product was 3pm ET on September 24. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the September 25 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.
ISW is providing an assessment of a very dynamic situation in the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive near Orikhiv in western Zaporizhia Oblast. ISW emphasizes that the situation remains dynamic and unclear and that the tactical situation is likely changing rapidly. It is too early to forecast if Ukrainian forces will achieve an operational breakthrough in this sector of the front.
Elements of three Russian divisions are actively defending against Ukrainian assaults around the Ukrainian salient in the Orikhiv area in western Zaporizhia Oblast. Elements of the Russian 42nd Motorized Rifle Division (58th Combined Arms Army, Southern Military District) are deployed and are defending at the southernmost point of the Ukrainian penetration and are engaging Ukrainian forces in Novoprokopivka (13km south of Orikhiv).[1] Elements of the Russian 76th Air Assault Division deployed to the Ukrainian salient’s western flank near Kopani (11km southwest of Orikhiv) towards Robotyne (10m south of Orikhiv) and are counterattacking there.[2] Elements of the 7th Air Assault Division are deployed on the Ukrainian salient‘s eastern flank near the Verbove-Novopokrovka line and are counterattacking there.[3] Sources affiliated with the Russian Airborne (VDV) Forces report that the 56th Air Assault Regiment (7th Air Assault Division) is deployed about 5km north of Verbove near Novofedorivka.[4]
A Russian source claimed that the 7th and 76th VDV Divisions were ordered to conduct an operational encirclement of the Ukrainian salient, but that they failed to do so and that the 7th VDV Division’s effectiveness significantly declined after a successful Ukrainian strike against the division headquarters on September 19.[5] ISW offers no assessment about these reported orders to encircle Ukrainian forces beyond noting that it would be a sound practice for Russian forces to conduct counterattacks against Ukrainian forces’ flanks within limits.
Ukrainian forces are attacking along three directions within the Orikhiv salient as of September 24. Ukrainian forces are conducting attacks from Robotyne against Novoprokopivka.[6] Ukrainian forces are attacking directly into Verbove’s western side.[7] Ukrainian forces are also attacking north of Verbove.[8]
Russian sources report that Ukrainian forces broke into Verbove on September 22 and continued attacking the settlement with armored vehicles as of September 24. Geolocated combat footage posted on September 24 shows a Ukrainian BMP operating within Verbove’s westernmost village limits.[9] A VDV-affiliated source reported that Ukrainian forces entered Verbove for the first time on September 22 and continued pushing east.[10] The VDV source later reported that Ukrainian forces occupy half of Verbove as of September 24.[11] The VDV source accused the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) of trying to conceal Ukraine’s tactical progress in Verbove, rhetorically stating, “For how long can Shoigu’s MoD hide the breakthrough in Verbove?“[12] Several Russian sources reported on September 24 that Ukrainian forces continue deploying vehicles against Verbove, including Bradley infantry fighting vehicles.[13] Some Russian sources are vehemently denying any Ukrainian breakthrough in Verbove as of September 24.[14] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces captured new unspecified locations near Verbove on September 24.[15]
Ukrainian forces are attacking north of Verbove and could isolate the 56th VDV Regiment deployed in Novofedorivka from its sister regiments in the Verbove area according to Russian sources. A Russian VDV source warned that there is a “real threat” of Ukrainian forces reaching the 56th VDV Regiment’s rear near Novofedorivka on September 21.[16] The VDV source warned on September 22 that Ukrainian forces are within 7km of encircling the 56th VDV Regiment and that the regiment would be in a difficult position if its commander did not make a decision to withdraw from Novofedorivka to other previously prepared positions.[17] ISW does not assess that an encirclement of the 56th VDV Regiment is likely, though Ukrainian forces may isolate it from the rest of the 7th VDV Division if Ukrainians manage to outmaneuver it from Verbove’s north and the regiment inexplicably remains in its current positions.
Ukrainian military journalist Konstyantyn Mashovets reported on September 22 that Ukrainian forces are attempting to bypass Verbove from the north.[18] A prominent Kremlin-linked milblogger reported on September 24 that Ukrainian forces improved their positions near Novofedorivka’s flank.[19] Another prominent Russian milblogger reported on September 23 that Ukrainian forces attempted to attack an unspecified tactical height with an elevation of 136.7 meters near Verbove and that Ukrainian forces were deploying vehicles from the north to the south near Verbove.[20] ISW assesses that this tactical height of 136.7 meters is likely located approximately 3.5km northwest of Verbove based on an analysis of digital elevation data around Verbove. (It is customary in militaries to identify locations based on terrain elevations as marked on commonly used military maps, but ISW does not have access to the Russian maps to check for such markings.)
NASA FIRMS/VIIRS thermal anomaly data collected between September 22-24 shows an unusually intense cluster of heat anomalies north of Verbove. These anomalies, while not dispositive, are a supporting indicator of combat north of Verbove and support the Russian and Ukrainian reports of Ukrainian activity between Novofedorivka and Verbove.
ISW cannot assess the extent of this Ukrainian attack north of Verbove and has not collected enough geospatial information to map it confidently at this time.
A Russian source affiliated with the VDV expressed panic at the prospect of significant Ukrainian advances in the Verbove area. A Russian milblogger, whose stated mission is to protect VDV Commander Colonel General Mikhail Teplinsky from removal or arrest, warned on September 22 and 23 that the 56th VDV Regiment was under imminent threat of encirclement following the reported Ukrainian advance into Verbove.[21] The milblogger asserted that the commander of the 56th VDV Regiment was unable to make any decision about withdrawal and called on the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) to allow Teplinsky to remedy the situation.[22] The milblogger noted high losses and poor morale among the 56th VDV Regiment and claimed that more than half of the personnel of the 7th and 76th VDV Divisions are mobilized personnel.[23] Other Russian sources, including those with close ties to the VDV, have not yet described the situation in Verbove or among VDV forces as this dire. The Russian milblogger may be exaggerating the situation in the Verbove area to negatively portray the Russian military command and advocate for Teplinsky to have more control over tactical and operational decision-making.
The milblogger compared the poor morale in the 56th VDV Regiment to the general morale of the Soviet military during its invasion of Afghanistan and of the Russian military during its campaign in Chechnya. This level of poor morale may have significant impacts on the Russian defense in the area as relatively elite VDV units appear responsible for conducting counterattacks, which require high morale.[24] It is less likely to affect the operations of units under direct attack, however, unless it reaches the point of causing surrenders, which is unlikely among VDV units even comprised of mobilized personnel.
Russian forces continue to expend significant combat power on counterattacking to hold their current positions and appear to be resisting the operationally sound course of action of falling back to prepared defensive positions further south. The Russian command constructed a multi-echeloned defense in southern Ukraine that would have allowed the Russian command to deploy defending Russian forces in depth throughout subsequent defensive layers. Russian forces have instead expended considerable amounts of manpower, materiel, and effort to hold the forwardmost defensive positions in southern Ukraine and have only withdrawn to subsequent defensive positions at the direct threat of Ukrainian advances.[25] Russian forces’ elastic defense requires that one echelon of Russian forces slows a Ukrainian tactical advance while a second echelon of forces counterattacks to roll back that advance. Counterattacking requires significant morale and relatively high combat capabilities, and the Russian military appears to rely on relatively elite units and formations to counterattack, likely at the expense of these forces’ degradation.[26]
Some Russian and Ukrainian sources have acknowledged that some Russian counterattacks in the wider Robotyne area have been senseless.[27] A defense in depth should afford these units respite from further degradation through withdrawal to a subsequent defensive layer. This withdrawal would allow the Russian command to conserve critical combat power for more operationally significant counterattacks and efforts to attrit attacking Ukrainian forces, although the task of conducting an orderly withdrawal under fire or pursuit is quite challenging and risky. American military analysts Michael Kofman and Rob Lee recently assessed that Russian forces have underutilized the depth of their defense and have yet to execute “a true defense in depth” in which Russian forces trade “space for attrition” and that the Russian command’s decision to defend forward has allowed Ukrainian artillery units to attrit Russian forces.[28] ISW concurs with this assessment. ISW has observed a concerted Ukrainian effort to attrit Russian forces even as Ukrainian forces make significant tactical gains, and the Russian resistance to withdrawing to defensive positions further south is likely compounding the asymmetric attrition gradient Ukrainian forces are trying to create. Russian counterattacks aimed at holding forward positions have been tactically significant, but it remains unclear if these counterattacks will have lasting operational importance.
The Russian military command may be ordering these counterattacks to buy time, but it is unclear how the Kremlin intends to use time bought at such a price. Russian forces appear to be unwilling to surrender tactical areas and are focusing instead on fighting for every meter instead of benefiting from the depth of their prepared defenses. Ukrainian military journalist Konstyantyn Mashovets observed that the Russian military command is achieving its objective of buying more time from these counterattacks but questioned what the Russian military command intends to do with this time.[29] Mashovets argued that the sacrifice of combat-ready forces and assets during defensive operations only makes sense in two situations: if it allows time to organize defensive systems at another prepared line or if it buys time for the organization of a more substantial counterattack or counteroffensive. Mashovets added that both scenarios assume that Russia has additional reserves and the ability to rapidly deploy these reserves to a new defensive line or an operational direction where it plans to carry out a new offensive.[30] Mashovets concluded that regardless of the Russian intent behind buying time, the Russian military command still needs additional reinforcements in the western Zaporizhia direction in addition to forces already concentrated on this frontline for Russian forces’ current counterattacks to be operationally sound.
The Russian sacrifice of combat power to hold every meter may alternatively be intended to support the Kremlin’s informational and hybrid warfare objectives. Russian President Vladimir Putin first acknowledged the start of the Ukrainian counteroffensive on June 9 by emphasizing two key and persistent narratives: that Ukrainian forces will not achieve significant successes due to well-prepared Russian defenses and that the Ukrainian forces are suffering heavy losses in personnel and Western military equipment.[31] Putin and the Kremlin have been framing Russian defensive operations as a major battlefield victory, and persistent Russian counterattacks allow the Kremlin to claim these operations as individual victories amidst the general lack of Russian battlefield advances elsewhere. These efforts likely intend to erode support and trust in Ukrainian forces in Ukraine and the West. Putin may have ordered the Russian military command to hold all Russia’s initial defensive positions to create the illusion that Ukrainian counteroffensives have not achieved any tactical or operational effects despite substantial Western support. This informational undertaking can only succeed in the long run if Russian forces can actually prevent Ukrainian forces from breaking through and liberating large areas, however.
The Russian resistance to ceding ground may also be tied to Russian military commanders’ and officials’ attempts to use the counteroffensive to achieve political goals, or it could result from Putin’s micromanagement. A Kremlin insider source claimed that Putin reportedly gave Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu a deadline of one month until early October 2023 to improve the situation on the frontlines, stop Ukrainian counteroffensives, and have Russian forces regain the initiative to launch an offensive operation against a larger city.[32] The insider‘s claim, if true, may indicate that the Russian military command may be ordering relentless counterattacks in hopes of forcing the Ukrainian counteroffensive to culminate, even at a high cost to Russian military capabilities. ISW has previously observed instances in which the Russian MoD, fearing the imminent loss of Putin’s favor, intensified its efforts to purge commanders who offered honest but negative views and advice and pursued unachievable military objectives at the expense of Russian forces.[33] The Russian MoD, for example, launched an unsuccessful and costly offensive on Vuhledar in February 2023 to undermine the domestic Russian informational effects of the Wagner Group’s progress in Bakhmut and maintain favor with Putin.[34] Russian insider sources and milbloggers who have advocated for Teplinsky claimed that Shoigu has been focusing on setting conditions to convince Putin to remove Teplinsky from command – which would likely be achievable if Shoigu is able to achieve Putin’s objectives during the counteroffensive.[35] One pro-Teplinsky channel even claimed that Chief of the Russian General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov had already removed Teplinsky from overseeing the defensive operation in southern Ukraine, although ISW cannot confirm the validity of this claim at this time.[36]
Ukrainian forces may be able to achieve an operationally significant breakthrough in the southern frontline if several key assumptions hold. A significant Ukrainian success will be more likely if:
1) Russian forces do not have the necessary reserves or combat power to maintain Russian defenses in western Zaporizhia Oblast;
2) Ukrainian forces retain enough combat power to continue pushing after exhausting Russian combat power; and
3) Russian defensive positions behind the current battle area are not as heavily mined or well prepared as the fortifications that Ukrainian forces have breached.
This hypothesis is invalid if any of these assumptions are invalidated. There are indicators that these assumptions remain valid as of this writing. ISW continues to assess that the Russian military does not have sufficient forces deployed to western Zaporizhia Oblast to completely man its defenses in depth and that Ukrainian forces should be able to operate through Russian field fortifications more rapidly if they are not properly manned.[37] Ukraine’s operations in Bakhmut have kept Russian forces committed to eastern Ukraine and away from the southern front and helped deny the creation of a strategic reserve.[38] Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Head Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov stated on September 22 that the Russian military deployed its “reserve army” (the 25th Combined Arms Army [CAA]) “roughly north of Bakhmut” to defend against Ukrainian counteroffensive efforts in eastern Ukraine.[39] It remains unclear if Ukrainian forces have enough reserve forces and combat power to continue conducting offensive operations in the south until the Russian defenses break to effectively exploit an operational breakthrough. It also remains unclear how heavily mined or well prepared the Russian positions south of the current battle area are.
The Ukrainian counteroffensive is in an extremely dynamic phase and ISW is not prepared to offer any confident forecast of events despite recent positive indicators. Recent promising reports of Ukrainian tactical progress, including breaking through some Russian field fortifications, in the Orikhiv area should not be read as a guarantee that Ukraine is on the cusp of a significant operational success. Observers should be patient with Ukraine's campaign design and should expect Ukraine’s counteroffensive to continue through winter 2023 and into spring 2024. Ukraine does not need to achieve a sudden and dramatic deep penetration to achieve success.
Key Takeaways:
- Elements of three Russian divisions are actively defending against Ukrainian assaults around the Ukrainian salient in the Orikhiv area in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
- Ukrainian forces are attacking along three directions within the Orikhiv salient as of September 24.
- Russian sources report that Ukrainian forces broke into Verbove on September 22 and continued attacking the settlement with armored vehicles as of September 24.
- Ukrainian forces are attacking north of Verbove and could isolate the 56th VDV Regiment deployed in Novofedorivka from its sister regiments in the Verbove area according to Russian sources.
- Russian forces continue to expend significant combat power on counterattacking to hold their current positions and appear to be resisting the operationally sound course of action of falling back to prepared defensive positions further south.
- The Russian military command may be ordering these counterattacks to buy time, but it is unclear how the Kremlin intends to use time bought at such a price.
- The Russian sacrifice of combat power to hold every meter may alternatively be intended to support the Kremlin’s informational and hybrid warfare objectives.
- The Russian resistance to ceding ground may also be tied to Russian military commanders’ and officials’ attempts to use the counteroffensive to achieve political goals, or it could result from Putin’s micromanagement.
- Ukrainian forces may be able to achieve an operationally significant breakthrough in the southern frontline if several key assumptions hold.
- Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 24.
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 continued offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on September 24 but did not make any confirmed gains. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks near Bilohorivka, Donetsk Oblast (33km south of Kreminna).[40] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Captain Ilya Yevlash stated that Russian forces continue to transfer reserves to the Kupyansk and Lyman directions and noted that the Russian attack near Bilohorivka was the first Russian attack in these directions in “a long time.”[41] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces achieved unspecified tactical success near Petropavlivka (7km east of Kupyansk) and Synkivka (9km northeast of Kupyansk) over the past week.[42] A Russian news aggregator claimed on September 23 that Russian forces are gradually taking control of Ukrainian positions near Synkivka and Petropavliva and recaptured a number of Ukrainian positions near Novoyehorivka (26km southwest of Svatove).[43]
Ukrainian forces reportedly conducted ground attacks near Kreminna on September 24 but did not make any confirmed advances. A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces improved their positions near Novoyehorivka.[44] Russian sources, including the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD), claimed on September 23 and 24 that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Torske (14km west of Kreminna) and the Serebryanske forest area (11km south of Kreminna).[45]
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 counteroffensive operations on Bakhmut’s southern flank and reportedly forced Russian troops to retreat behind the railway line east of Klishchiivka (6km southwest of Bakhmut).[46] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces are continuing assaults south of Bakhmut, and Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Captain Ilya Yevlash reiterated that Ukrainian positions are approximately three kilometers away from the Russian ground line of communication (GLOC) on the T0513 highway.[47]
Russian sources claimed that Russian forces captured Orikhovo-Vasylivka (10km northwest of Bakhmut) on September 24.[48] Russian sources claimed that elements of the Russian 106th Guards Airborne (VDV) Division seized Orikhovo-Vasylivka and that Russian forces are currently clearing the settlement, although ISW has not observed visual confirmation of these claims.[49] A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger also noted that Russian forces carried out two simultaneous attacks from Dubovo-Vasylivka (6km northwest of Bakhmut) towards Hryhorivka (10km northwest of Bakhmut) and towards Orikhovo-Vasylivka.[50] A Russian news aggregator claimed that Russian forces continued to attack Bakhmut’s northern flank on September 23 to push Ukrainian forces from heights near Orikhovo-Vasylivka and Berkhivka (5km northwest of Bakhmut).[51] Russian sources also claimed that Russian forces counterattacked near Kurdyumivka (12km southwest of Bakhmut) and Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut).[52] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults east of Bohdanivka (6km northwest of Bakhmut), southeast of Bila Hora (13km southeast of Bakhmut), and near Klishchiivka.[53]
A Ukrainian serviceman stated that Russian forces concentrated reserves and artillery systems in the Bakhmut direction to stop Ukrainian advances in the area.[54] The serviceman stated that Russian forces have more manpower and artillery system in the Bakhmut direction than Ukrainian forces and noted that Russian counterattacks are hard to repel. This reported relatively high concentration of Russian manpower and equipment in the Bakhmut area suggests that the Ukrainian counteroffensive operations are continuing to draw and fix a significant contingent of Russian forces in the Bakhmut direction, which is their stated purpose.[55]
Russian forces continued offensive operations on the Donetsk City-Avdiivka line on September 24, but did not advance. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces attempted to restore lost positions in the Avdiivka area and conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Marinka (just west of Donetsk City) and Pobieda (5km southwest of Donetsk City).[56] A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked on the southern approaches to Avdiivka and conducted assaults near Marinka and Krasnohorivka (6km west of Donetsk City).[57]
Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)
A Russian news aggregator claimed on the evening of September 23 that Russian forces attacked near Mykilske (4km southeast of Vuhledar).[58]
Russian sources claimed on September 24 that Ukrainian forces conducted unsuccessful limited attacks in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area over the past week. A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that small Ukrainian infantry groups occasionally conducted unsuccessful assaults on Russian positions in this area.[59] Another Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces recently retreated after conducting unsuccessful attacks along the Novodonetske-Novomayorske (12-18km southeast of Velyka Novosilka) line in the past week.[60]
Russian forces reportedly used a lull in fighting to repair Russian defenses in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on September 24. The Russian “Vostok” Battalion, operating in the area, claimed that Russian forces used a break in Ukrainian attacks to repair Russian defenses, particularly Russian minefields.[61] The “Vostok” Battalion claimed that the Russian defense in the area was “overloaded” during the fighting and that Russian forces now devote every day without fighting to reconstitution.[62]
Ukrainian forces continued attacks in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 24 and advanced into Verbove (18km southeast of Orikhiv). Geolocated combat footage published on September 24 indicates that Ukrainian forces advanced to Verbove’s western outskirts.[63] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces advanced near Verbove, approached the outskirts of Novoprokopivka (16km south of Orikhiv), and improved their positions near Novofedorivka’s (21km southeast of Orikhiv) flank.[64] The milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces continued to advance towards Verbove and Novoprokopivka over the past week.[65] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian Forces continued offensive operations in the Melitopol (western Zaporizhia Oblast) direction, pushed Russian forces from their positions near Verbove, and consolidated newly secured positions.[66] Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued assaults near Robotyne (10km south of Orikhiv), Verbove, and Novoprokopivka.[67] Most Russian sources continued to claim on September 23 and 24 that Ukrainian forces have not broken through the Russian defense along the Robotyne-Verbove (10km south to 18km southeast of Orikhiv) line and that Russian forces retain control over Verbove.[68] A Russian milblogger claimed on September 24 that elements of the Russian 291st Motorized Rifle Regiment (42nd Motorized Rifle Division, 58th Combined Arms Army, Southern Military District) repelled a Ukrainian attack near Robotyne.[69]
Russian sources continued ground attacks in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 24 but did not make any claimed or confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful attacks near Robotyne.[70] A Russian milblogger also claimed that Russian forces attacked the western outskirts of the settlement but did not specify an outcome.[71] Another Russian milblogger posted footage claiming to show elements of the Russian 108th Guards Air Assault (VDV) Regiment (7th Guards VDV Division) operating along the Robotyne-Verbove line.[72]
Russian sources claimed that three Ukrainian HIMARS missiles struck Tokmak in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast on September 24.[73]
Russian sources continued to express concern over recent Ukrainian activity in the Dnipro River delta and on the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast on September 24, although ISW has not observed visual confirmation of these claims. A Russian milblogger claimed on September 24 that Ukrainian forces continued offensive actions on islands in the Dnipro River delta.[74] The milblogger also claimed that Ukrainian forces have created a “bridgehead” near Oleshky (7km southeast of Kherson City) and expanded their positions near Pidstepne (19km east of Kherson City) on the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast in the past week.[75] Another Russian milblogger claimed on September 24 that Ukrainian forces expanded their positions on the southwestern part of Kozatskyi Island (northwest of Nova Kakhovka).[76] Ukrainian Southern Operational Command Spokesperson Captain First Rank Nataliya Humenyuk stated on September 24 that Russian forces have recently intensified aviation activity in the Kherson direction and conducted more than 20 strikes near Kherson City and Beryslav (64km northeast of Kherson City) over the last day.[77] The recent intensification of Russian air strikes in the area indicates that Russian military command may share the milbloggers’ concerns about limited Ukrainian activity along the Dnipro River.
A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed on September 24 that Russian border guards repelled a Ukrainian attempt to land forces on Cape Tarkhankut (115 km northwest of Sevastopol) in occupied Crimea on the night of September 22 to 23 and another attempt on the night of September 23 to 34.[78]
Russian forces reportedly conducted a strike on Snake Island on September 24. Humenyuk and Ukrainian Operational Command South reported that Russian forces targeted Snake Island with four guided aerial bombs to prevent the development of the Ukrainian temporary corridor for civilian merchant vessels through the Black Sea.[79] A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that Russian forces struck Snake Island with two bombs and insinuated that Ukrainian forces used the island as a logistics base for the sabotage and reconnaissance groups that attempted to land on Crimea.[80]
Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)
Former Wagner personnel may become instructors for irregular people’s militias and territorial defense units in Rostov Oblast. Chairman of the Rostov Oblast combat veterans “Oplot” organization Valery Bova stated on September 24 that an unspecified number of former Wagner personnel will arrive in Rostov Oblast to train volunteers in Rostov Oblast people’s militias and territorial defense units.[81] Bova stated that former Wagner personnel will receive funds from ”Oplot” founders and that these volunteer formations will not receive arms until they receive permission from relevant Russian law enforcement agencies.[82] Seventy people have reportedly submitted applications to join “Oplot’s” territorial defense reserve since August, and “Oplot” reportedly plans to train 300 personnel within six months.[83] Wagner fighters have previously trained analogous people’s militias in Kursk and Belgorod oblasts starting in winter 2022-2023.[84]
Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian citizens into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)
Russian occupation administrations in Ukraine officially elected acting occupation heads to their posts on September 23 following illegal regional elections. Occupation legislative assemblies elected acting Kherson Oblast occupation head Vladimir Saldo, acting Zaporizhia Oblast occupation head Yevgeny Balitsky, acting Luhansk Oblast occupation head Leonid Pasechnik, and acting Donetsk Oblast occupation head Denis Pushilin as official heads of their respective occupation administrations.[85] Russian occupation officials used coercive efforts during regional elections in occupied Ukraine, and the Kremlin likely predetermined these electoral results.[86]
Pushilin reportedly signed a decree on September 18 that will regulate the movement of occupation employees under martial law, likely setting conditions for future Russian evacuation efforts.[87] Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) People’s Militia personnel and civilian employees of the Donetsk Oblast occupation administration will have to submit planned travel to their managers no later than a month ahead of time.[88] The decree likely aims to allow Russian occupation administrations to decide when to allow occupation officials to evacuate and to discourage mass movement out of occupied territories.
Pushilin also signed a decree on September 18 banning large gatherings in occupied Donetsk Oblast.[89] The decree will forbid weekday gatherings on streets or in other public places between 2300 and 0400.[90] The decree likely aims to allow Russian occupation authorities to conduct mass crackdowns in the event of public resistance to Russian occupation.
Significant activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks and Wagner Group activity in Belarus)
Russian and Belarusian forces extended joint exercises through October 1. The Belarusian Hajun Project reported that joint exercises at the Borisov Combined Arms Training Ground in Minsk Oblast, the Brest Training Ground in Brest Oblast, and the Lepelsky Training Ground in Vitebsk Oblast will last until September 30.[91] Joint training exercises at the training ground of the Belarusian 6th Mechanized Brigade and the Neman Aviation Training Grounds in Grodno Oblast will reportedly last until September 29 and exercises at the Domanovo Training Ground of the Air Force and Air Defense Forces and the Obuz-Lesnovsky Combined Arms Training Ground in Brest Oblast will reportedly last until October 1.[92]
ISW will continue to report daily observed Russian and Belarusian military activity in Belarus as part of ongoing Kremlin efforts to increase their control over Belarus and other Russian actions in Belarus.
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. Special Operations News - September 25, 2023 | SOF News
Special Operations News - September 25, 2023 | SOF News
sof.news · by SOF News · September 25, 2023
Curated news, analysis, and commentary about special operations, national security, and conflicts around the world.
Photo / Image: SOF operators train in unforgiving terrain at Pituffick Space Base, Greenland to demonstrate operational capabilities that are critical for integrated deterrence and layered defense during Arctic Edge 23. Courtesy photo USSOCOM.
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SOF News
Cuts to ARSOF. Army special operations forces may be subject to personnel cuts – perhaps as much as 10 to 20 percent to help fund Army modernization. The proposal is under consideration for the Army’s fiscal 2025 budget request. “Possible Personnel Cuts at Army Special Operations Command Loom”, by Frank Wolfe, Defense Daily, September 19, 2023.
General (Ret.) Clarke. A former commander of the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) has been appointed to the Board of Directors of Platform Aerospace. (Newswire, Sep 22, 2023)
LTG (Ret.) Beaudette. PenFed Foundation has announced that Lieutenant General (Ret.) Fran Beaudette is their new Ambassador. Beaudette spent his U.S. Army career in Special Forces and was a former commander of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC). The PenFed Foundation is a national nonprofit organization that supports veterans in their transition from service to success. Affiliated with PenFed Credit Union, the Foundation has provided more than $55 million in financial support to veterans, active-duty service members and military families. (yahoo!finance, Sep 21, 2023)
SOF, OSINT, and Contracting Firms. An article by Matt Taibbi explains in detail the world of open-source intelligence contracting firms that support the U.S. special operations community. Not sure how much is fact and how much is fiction – but it is an interesting read. Of course, the article is published by ScheerPost . . . so there’s that. “Forget Bellingcat – Meet a Real “OpenSource” Watchdog”, Scheerpost, September 23, 2023.
AFSOC SR. U.S. Air Force SR is a specialized military unit that deploys advanced technology and covert operations deep behind enemy lines to provide critical battlefield intelligence, develop targets, and achieve global access, air, space, and cyberspace superiority. September 13, 2023, “United States Air Force Special Reconnaissance”, by Ahmed Hassan, Grey Dynamics.
Green Beret to Run for VA Congressional Seat. A Special Forces veteran is joining the race to flip Virginia’s 7th Congressional District from Democratic control, stating that he “could no longer remain silent on the sidelines.” Republican Derrick Anderson, a veteran who served six tours in Iraq and Afghanistan during the war on terror, is entering what is shaping up to be one of the House’s most competitive races in 2024. “Green Beret veteran launches campaign for Rep. Abigail Spanberger’s Virginia Seat”, Washington Examiner, September 18, 2023.
AFSOC, MQ-9s, and a ‘UAS Network’. MQ-9s may likely grow beyond their traditional role as intelligence and strike platforms. They would become mobile control centers for a network of small drones or other systems which could form an “expansive sensing grid” to find targets or create a communications pathway for special operations forces that will be in the deep battlespace. “AFSOC Wants MQ-9 Reapers to Act as ‘Capital Ships’ for Smaller Drones”, by David Roza, Air & Space Forces Magazine, September 19, 2023. See also “U.S. Air Force Special Ops to Demo MQ-9 Air-Launching UAS”, Aviation Week, September 22, 2023.
MH-60 Loaded With Extras. The Army’s Night Stalker Black Hawks are loaded with sensors, defensive systems, and communications gear to take on the hardest of missions. “Special Ops MH-60 Seen Absolutely Crammed With Modifications”, The Drive, September 21, 2023.
AFSOC Strategic Guidance. Air Force Special Operations Command has released the 2023 AFSOC strategic guidance. The strategic guidance aligns with the 2022 National Defense Strategy and sets forth a framework for Air Commandos, their readiness, and pathfinding efforts. The command is transforming to properly prepare, prevent, and prevail against any adversary in today’s complex and uncertain operational environment. “COMAFSOC releases 2023 Strategic Guidance”, AFSOC, September 22, 2023.
Combat Diver Competiton. The inaugural U.S. Army Special Operations Command Best Combat Diver Competition will take place in Key West Sept. 25-27, hosted by the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. The competition determines the best two-man ‘dive buddy’ team while promoting the Army Special Operations Forces core attributes of Integrity, Courage, Perseverance, Personal Responsibility, Professionalism, Adaptability, Team Player and Capability, according to a military press release. “Military Special Ops Teams Compete in Key West Sept. 25-27”, Keys Weekly, September 21, 2023.
Former 10th Group Doc Now in Space. Lt. Col. Frank Rubio has spent a full year in space, longer than any other U.S. astronaut. He has been serving as a flight engineer aboard the International Space Station (ISS). He is a former UH-60 Black Hawk pilot as well as a former battalion surgeon for 3rd Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) at Fort Carson, Colorado. “Soldier sets record with year on International Space Station”, U.S. Army, September 20, 2023. See also “He should’ve returned to Earth months ago. Instead, he broke a NASA record”, The Washington Post, September 21, 2023. (subscription)
GB – Out of the Fight, But Not Forgotten. A retired Green Beret with the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne), suffered severe injuries in 2018 during a combat mission in Afghanistan. But his teammates have not forgotten him. His injuries left him paralyzed after his L1 and L2 vertebras shattered, and his spinal cord was damaged. Additionally, he underwent surgery to remove his left pancreas, diaphragm, and intestines. The Special Forces soldier was recently moved into a new home that has been specially outfitted for his needs. “Retired 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) Green Beret Finds a New Home”, by Broderick Hennington, DVIDS, September 22, 2023.
Exercise Polar Dagger. As Big Navy continues to work to bring the SEALs back into the conventional fleet fold after decades of largely autonomous special operations, a SEAL team recently took part in an Arctic exercise to showcase a role they could potentially play in the next conflict. The effort came during Operation Polar Dagger, an exercise that took part in the frigid environment off Alaska in the Bering Sea. “SEALs operate in the Arctic during Polar Dagger”, by Geoff Ziezuleqicz, Navy Times, September 22, 2023.
MC-130s, Beaches, and the Pacific. Special operations aircraft may be using beaches in the future to provide critical logistics in the Indo-Pacom region where runways are few in number and under threat. “Special Ops C-130s Using Beaches as Runways Eyed for Pacific Fight”, The WarZone, September 19, 2023.
26th MEU(SOC) and Baltic Sea Exercise. Marines and Sailors of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable) concluded exercise Northern Coasts 2023, a multinational naval exercise series in the Baltic Sea region held in September. “26th MEU(SOC) Concludes Baltic Sea Exercise – Northern Coast 2023”, DVIDS, September 22, 2023.
AF Special Warfare Initial Training to be ‘Streamlined’. The Air Force Special Operations Command is looking to trim down the training pipeline for its special operations personnel. Some training in the pipeline will be moved to unit level training. “Old is new again as Air Force special ops branch revamps training”, by Rachel S. Cohen, Air Force Times, September 19, 2023.
International SOF
Spetsnaz Depleted. The Ukraine conflict has taken its toll on Russian special operations forces. Some were squandered during the opening states of the war in Ukraine. More recently, they have been used on the front lines in the role of conventional infantry. Analysts project that it may be years before personnel can be trained up to replace the losses. “Cannon Fodder: Russia’s Special Forces Has Been Slaughtered Thanks to Ukraine War”, 1945, September 23, 2023.
Royal Marines and Their New Rifle. The U.K. Royal Marines are on the absolute cutting edge with their newest DMR. Specifically, the Royal Marines have adopted an LMT AR-10-type rifle in 6.5 Creedmoor with HUXWRX suppressors and the Leupold Mk5 HD. (The Fire Arm Blog, Sep 21, 2023).
Life of a Swedish Mercenary. A ghost writer relates his experience working with a former Swedish special operator who resigned from the military and spent years in northern Iraq working with the Kurds. “A Swedish Mercenary in Iraq: A Ghostwriter’s Ode to Axel Stal”, by Jonas Vesterberg, Soldier of Fortune Magazine, September 13, 2023.
FSB Alpha Group. Learn about the history, organization, training, equipment, mission, and more of Russia’s special forces unit that is part of the Russian Federal Security Service’s (FSB) Special Purpose Center. “FSB Alpha Group: Russia’s Elite A Team”, Grey Dynamics, September 22, 2023.
SOF History
OSS. On September 20, 1945, Executive Order 9621 disbands the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).
5th SFG(A). On September 21, 1961, the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) was activated at Ft. Bragg.
SFOD-K. On September 23, 1961, Special Forces Operational Detachment – Korea was formed. Det-K started as a series of TDY assignments from the 1st Special Forces Group in Okinawa. By November 1961, SFOD-K became known as the FA 40th Detachment, under the operational control of the Korea Military Assistance Group. It was redesignated on 16 October 2005 as the 39th Special forces Detachment (Airborne).
Amphib Scouts of WWII. On Sept. 24, 1943, the 7th Amphibious Force Special Service Unit #1, a top-secret scout unit in the Pacific made up of American and Australian military and natives from Papua New Guinea and other Pacific islands, began the reconnaissance of Cape Gloucester.
Green Beret. On September 25, 1961, Department of the Army Message 578636 designated the Green Beret as the official and exclusive headgear of the Army Special Forces.
GSG 9. On September 26, 1972, GSG 9 of the German Federal Police was founded.
Ukraine Conflict
ATACMs. An important weapon for Ukraine’s military may soon be provided by the United States. The Biden administration is reported to have decided to send the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) to Ukraine. It is a tactical ballistic missile that can be fired from the HIMARS. The ATACMS extend the ability for Ukrainian missile strikes to the naval port of Sevastopol, Crimea (Google Maps) and the Kerch Bridge (SOF News). Some critics say this decision is ‘better late than never’. Phillips Obrien provides a detailed analysis in his “Weekend Update”, Phillips Newsletter, September 24, 2023.
Russian Black Sea Naval Commander Dead? Russian Admiral Viktor Sokolov may have been killed in a missile strike called ‘Operation Crab Trap’ against the Russian fleet’s headquarters in Sevastopol, Crimea. The attack took place on Friday, September 22, 2023, with the use of Storm Shadow missiles. “Russia’s Black Sea Commander Alleged Dead After Strike Against Fleet’s HQ”, SANDBOXX, September 22, 2023.
Paladin Howitzers Scoring in Ukraine Conflict. The Paladin self-propelled Howitzers are keeping the Russians pinned down and surviving to fight another day. The Paladin M109 Self-propelled Howitzer is playing a big role in Ukraine’s counteroffensive push. The Paladin’s ability to rapidly reposition after firing has made them a vexing challenge for Russian artillery troops. “Ukraine Situation Report: M109 Paladins Are Proving Too Wily For Russian Gunners”, by Howard Altman, The WarZone, September 18, 2023.
Foreign Fighters and Ukraine. Brian Petit, a retired Special Forces officer, provides his perspective on the foreigners who travel to Ukraine to participate in the fight against Russian aggression. He goes further – exploring the opportunities to incorporate foreign fighters into our own military. “A Backdoor Call to Arms: Foreign Fighters in National Defense”, Irregular Warfare Initiative, September 7, 2023.
Ukraine’s Covert Combat Kayak. The country has two seas – the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. In addition, it has thousands of big and small rivers. So, the use of kayaks by its special operations forces is a logical outcome. Read more in “It’s a kayak with a grenade launcher. And it could be game-changer in Ukraine”, ABC News, September 22, 2023.
Partisan Warfare. Read how old Russian military theories can give new insight into resistance to occupation in Ukraine. “The Art of Partisan Warfare is not Dead”, Irregular Warfare Center, September 21, 2023.
Commentary
IW – Quite Regular and Not Going Away. Michael Miklaucic, a Senior Fellow at National Defense University and the Editor-in-Chief of the PRISM journal, says the national defense community needs to acknowledge that most future struggles will take place in the gray zone of irregular warfare. IW really isn’t all that irregular. U.S. armed forces have been engaged in irregular warfare for 92 of the last 125 years, while in conventional warfare for only 17 of those years. Read more in “The Relentless Regularity of Irregular Warfare”, Real Clear Defense, September 16, 2023.
Genocide in Nagorno-Karabakh? While the world is focused on the war in Ukraine another conflict is ‘quietly’ taking place in the Armenia – Azerbaijan region. Read about it in “California’s Armenian diaspora sees another genocide happening in homeland”, The Fresno Bee, September 23, 2023. See also “The Choice in Nagorno-Karabakh: Ethnic Cleansing or Self-Determination?”, E-International Relations, September 22, 2023.
National Security
Report – Abrams Modernization. On September 6, 2023, the Army announced that it would close out the current version of the M-1A2 effort and develop a newer version of the Abrams tank. The current version of the tank can no longer grow its capabilities without adding extra weight, and the Army needs to reduce its logistical footprint. The new version will allow for quicker technology upgrades and require fewer resources. This will result in a more survivable, lighter tank that will be more effective on the battlefield at initial fielding and be easier to upgrade in the future. Read more in “The Army’s New M-1E3 Abrams Tank Modernization Program”, Congressional Research Service, CRS IF12495, September 18, 2023, PDF, 3 pages. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12495
Border Crisis. The news does not get any better. The ‘sanctuary cities’ are crying ‘no mas’ yet illegal immigrants continue to pour across the border. U.S. officials last month encountered 232,972 people entering the United States without authorization through the southwest border, up from 183,494 in July, according to numbers released by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). “Border apprehensions up nearly 27 percent from July to August”, The Hill, September 22, 2023. See also “Biden sets record for illegal immigrant border encounters in August ever recorded”, Washington Examiner, September 22, 2023.
NYC – “No More Hotel Rooms”. The governor of New York says that “we don’t have capacity.” See “Hochul says New York has reached a limit with its immigrant crisis”, Washington Examiner, September 21, 2023.
Cyber Strategy. The U.S. Department of Defense has published (released to public 12 Sep 2023) an unclassified summary of its 2023 Cyber Strategy. “DoD Releases 2023 Cyber Strategy Summary”, SOF News, September 14, 2023.
CRS Report – Taiwan: Defense and Military Issues. U.S. policy toward Taiwan has long prioritized the maintenance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. To dissuade the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from using force to try to gain control of self-governing Taiwan (which officially calls itself the Republic of China or ROC), the United States has supported Taiwan’s military deterrence efforts. At the same time, the United States has been strengthening its ability to deter PRC military aggression in Asia. One challenge for the United States has been how to deepen military ties with Taiwan without triggering the conflict that U.S. policy seeks to prevent. Congressional Research Service, CRS IF12481, updated September 19, 2023, PDF, 3 pages. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12481
Help Special Operations Forces (SOF) personnel with spine injuries receive the healthcare options, education, and care they need.
Afghanistan
Afghan Allies in U.S. Stuck in Immigration Limbo. Luke Coffey, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, writes about the tens of thousands of at-risk Afghan allies that are stuck in legal ambiguity here in the United States or those members of Afghan special operations forces that remain in hiding from the Taliban in Afghanistan. Congress can fix this with passage of the Afghan Adjustment Act – hopefully, our Representatives and Senators will do the right thing. “America’s Afghan Allies Are Still Desperate for Help”, Foreign Policy, September 18, 2023.
Temporary Protected Status. The Biden administration announced on September 21, 2023, that it has extended and redesignated Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Afghanistan. The extension will benefit the thousands of Afghan nationals who were covered under the initial TBS decision made on May 20, 2022 – they will be able to re-register for an additional 18 months of protection and receive work authorization. The redesignation also allows for over 14,000 newly arrived Afghans to apply for TPS for the first time. “Extension of TPS for Afghans”, Afghan Report, September 22, 2023.
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December 8, 2023
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SOF News Book Shop
View our selection of books about special operations forces at the SOF News Book Shop.
Books, Podcasts, Videos, and Movies
Play – The Team Room. In the fall of 2023, a play about a Special Forces team will run for two weeks in the Washington, D.C. area. “Special Forces A-Team 824 serves at Camp Diamond, West Virginia. On the morning of September 10, 2001, they report for a routine week of duty and training exercises. The audience steps into the world of Army Special Forces operators, during their last day of peace and a sudden transition to war. Team Room Foundation. https://teamroomfoundation.org/
Podcast – Green Beret Chris Robishaw. A retired Special Forces officer discusses his journey into the military, Special Forces selection, his perspective on leadership, the soldier’s lens on war, building international relations with allied forces, his transition story, the Kabul evacuation, his work in the Ukraine, veteran mental health, overcoming cancer, and much more. “Chris Robishaw – Episode 824”, Behind the Shield, September 17, 2023, 2 hours.
Podcast – China’s Political Warfare. Listen to examples of China’s information operations and how they intersect with a variety of global security challenges. Hear some recommendations on how to counter China’s political warfare and build resilience against it. Irregular Warfare Podcast, Modern War Institute at West Point, September 22, 2023, one hour. https://mwi.westpoint.edu/irregular-warfare-podcast-chinas-political-warfare/
Video – Airborne Operation. Nice video of Air Commandos from the 21st Special Tactics Squadron jumping from an MC-130J Commando II. (1st SOC Wing, 21 Sep 2023, 22 seconds). https://www.dvidshub.net/video/898062/crews-conduct-four-ship-formation-flight-jump-operations-jcoc
Report – Military Suicide Prevention and Response. The Congressional Research Service has published a 3-page document that covers topics about suicides in the military services. CRS IF10876, updated September 19, 2023, PDF. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10876
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sof.news · by SOF News · September 25, 2023
3. France to Withdraw Troops From Niger After Military Coup
What other countries could suffer a coup to oust French (or other) forces. Is this something Wagner or other PMCs (perhaps favorable to China) might orchestrate to drive out French or other forces?
France to Withdraw Troops From Niger After Military Coup
The New York Times · by Aurelien Breeden · September 24, 2023
President Emmanuel Macron said he had recalled the country’s ambassador, after weeks of escalating tensions with Niger’s new military leaders.
Supporters of the military junta outside the Niger and French military bases in Niamey this month.
By Elian Peltier and
Sept. 24, 2023, 4:24 p.m. ET
France will withdraw nearly 1,500 troops from the West African nation of Niger by the end of the year, President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday, a decision that could upend the West’s security footprint in the region, including the future of 1,100 American troops based in Niger.
In an interview on French television, Mr. Macron also said that the country’s ambassador to Niger would leave “within the next hours.” He added, “And we are ending our military cooperation with the de facto authorities in Niger, because they no longer want to fight terrorism.”
The short announcement comes after weeks of escalating tensions between France and the new military leaders in Niger, who seized power in a coup in July. It also caps years of waning influence for France, a former colonizer in West Africa whose economic presence and military clout in the region remains considerable despite being increasingly challenged by juntas and foreign powers like Russia.
Mr. Macron had refused to heed calls by Niger’s new leaders to recall troops and his ambassador, a position that most analysts and even French and European diplomats based in West Africa said had become untenable.
“We’re not here to take part in political affairs, to be hostages, in a way, of the putschists,” Mr. Macron said in an interview with the TF1 and France 2 television channels. He added that France would coordinate with the authorities in Niger to ensure French troops depart in an “orderly manner” over the coming months.
Niger’s military leaders had not responded as of Sunday night.
For weeks, tens of thousands of protesters in Niger’s capital, Niamey, have regularly demonstrated in front of the base hosting French military forces. At a recent protest attended by a New York Times reporter, demonstrators trampled on a French flag, carried a coffin they said was meant for Mr. Macron and brandished signs reading, “Death to France.”
After the coup that ousted the civilian president, Mohamed Bazoum, Western countries suspended their aid and security partnerships with Niger, one of the world’s poorest countries, whose leader was seen as one of the last reliable allies in a region now dominated by men in uniform.
As Western countries have recalled troops training Nigerien soldiers in recent weeks, the future of Western involvement in the Sahel region — the world’s epicenter of jihadist activity — remains uncertain.
Niger is a key transit country in the migration route to Europe, and in recent years the European Union has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into buffering its northern areas with transit centers and repatriation flights.
This month, the United States announced that it was moving its troops from the base in Niamey, where the French soldiers are also positioned, to an outpost in Agadez, in the north, where it operates drones monitoring insurgents’ activities in the region.
On Sunday, Mr. Macron defended France’s track record in the region, arguing that it had intervened militarily only at the request of countries like Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, and that those countries would have fallen prey to terrorist groups without French troops.
“The putschists are the friends of disorder,” Mr. Macron said, pointing to a recent uptick in violence perpetrated by Islamist terrorist groups in countries where French troops were forced out, like Mali.
The president said France would continue to help African countries fight against terrorism. “But we only do it if it is at the request of democratically elected authorities and regional authorities,” Mr. Macron said.
He added, “We are not here to take part in coups or to interfere.”
Elian Peltier is the West Africa correspondent. He joined The Times in 2017 and was previously based in Paris and London. He now lives in Dakar, Senegal. More about Elian Peltier
Aurelien Breeden has covered France from the Paris bureau since 2014. He has reported on some of the worst terrorist attacks to hit the country, the dismantling of the migrant camp in Calais and France's tumultuous 2017 presidential election. More about Aurelien Breeden
The New York Times · by Aurelien Breeden · September 24, 2023
4. Blasting Bullhorns and Water Cannons, Chinese Ships Wall Off the Sea
Photos and graphics at the link: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/23/world/asia/china-sea-philippines-us.html
Blasting Bullhorns and Water Cannons, Chinese Ships Wall Off the Sea
By Hannah BeechPhotographs and Video by Jes Aznar
Sept. 23, 2023
The New York Times · by Hannah Beech · September 23, 2023
This is what it looks like when a Chinese naval vessel bears down on your fishing boat.
We know because we were there. This boat was carrying Times journalists off the island of Palawan, in the Philippines, looking at how China was imposing its territorial ambitions on the South China Sea.
An international court says China has no claim to these waters. The Chinese navy boat guarding Mischief Reef said differently.
By
Photographs and Video by Jes Aznar
Sept. 23, 2023Updated 6:24 a.m. ET
The Chinese military base on Mischief Reef, off the Philippine island of Palawan, loomed in front of our boat, obvious even in the predawn dark.
Radar domes, used for military surveillance, floated like nimbus clouds. Lights pointed to a runway made for fighter jets, backed by warehouses perfect for surface-to-air missiles. More than 900 miles from the Chinese mainland, in an area of the South China Sea that an international tribunal has unequivocally determined does not belong to China, cellphones pinged with a message: “Welcome to China.”
The world’s most brazen maritime militarization is gaining muscle in waters through which one-third of global ocean trade passes. Here, on underwater reefs that are known as the Dangerous Ground, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, or P.L.A., has fortified an archipelago of forward operating bases that have branded these waters as China’s despite having no international legal grounding. China’s coast guard, navy and a fleet of fishing trawlers harnessed into a militia are confronting other vessels, civilian and military alike.
Chinese Facilities on Mischief Reef
Source: Satellite image Aug. 4, 2023, by Planet Labs, analysis by Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab
By Agnes Chang
The mounting Chinese military presence in waters that were long dominated by the U.S. fleet is sharpening the possibility of a showdown between superpowers at a moment when relations between them have greatly worsened. And as Beijing challenges a Western-driven security order that stood for nearly eight decades, regional countries are increasingly questioning the strength of the American commitment to the Pacific.
While the United States makes no territorial claims to the South China Sea, it maintains defense pacts with Asian partners, including the Philippines, that could compel American soldiers to these waters. Just as anxiety over nearby Taiwan has focused attention on the deteriorating relations between Washington and Beijing, the South China Sea provides yet another stage for a contest in which neither side wants to betray weakness. Complicating matters, Chinese diplomats and military officers are engaging less at a time when open communication could help defuse tensions.
China’s arming of the South China Sea has also forced Southeast Asian fishermen — from nations like the Philippines that Chinese diplomats have referred to as “small countries” — to abandon the fishing grounds they have depended on for generations. It is putting tremendous pressure on those governments.
A Chinese People’s Liberation Army ship intercepting a boat carrying Times journalists in May off Mischief Reef.
“I told the Chinese, ‘Your leadership talks about shared prosperity, but what you are doing cannot make it more plain that you think we are just stupid people who can be fooled and bullied,’” said Clarita Carlos, who until January served as the national security adviser of the Philippines. “The interconnected oceans should be our common heritage, and we should be working with marine scientists from every nation to fight the real enemy: climate change.”
“Instead,” she added, “the Chinese are building military bases on artificial islands and bringing guns to the sea.”
During a four-day sail through a collection of rocks, reefs and islets called the Spratlys that are within the Dangerous Ground, New York Times journalists saw the extent to which China’s projection of power has transformed this contested part of the Pacific Ocean. Not since the United States embarked on its own campaign of far-flung militarization more than a century ago, leading its armed forces toward a position of Pacific primacy, has the security landscape shifted so significantly.
It is hard to imagine how China’s armed presence in the South China Sea will be diminished absent a war. With its bases built and its military vessels deployed, Beijing is forcefully defending its assertions of “indisputable sovereignty.”
That posture was on display in May as The Times’s small, chartered boat passed within two nautical miles of Mischief Reef.
Source: ESRI, Flanders Marine Institute
By Agnes Chang
A P.L.A. Navy tugboat lingering in the vicinity had failed to stop us, perhaps because of the early-morning hour. But as we approached the Chinese military base, the tugboat, about 2.5 times the size of our vessel, churned water to reach us, turning on its floodlights and blasting its horn repeatedly. Over the radio, we were told that we had intruded into Chinese territorial waters.
Our boat was Philippine-flagged, and an international tribunal convened by the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled in 2016 that Mischief Reef was part of the exclusive economic zone and continental shelf of the Philippines. China has ignored that ruling. In a radio exchange, we said we were allowed to sail through these waters.
The P.L.A. tugboat responded with more barrages of its horn, a sonic assault so piercing that we felt it in our bodies. Then, with its floodlights nearly blinding us, the P.L.A. tugboat rushed at our vessel, swiping within 20 meters of our much smaller boat. This was a clear breach of international maritime protocol, maritime experts said.
Chinese vessels have been challenging other vessels over a contested part of the West Philippine Sea.Credit...Jes Aznar for The New York Times
As dawn broke, we could see both the fortifications on Mischief Reef and an array of Chinese vessels closing in from different directions: half a dozen maritime militia boats and a recently commissioned navy corvette designed to carry anti-ship missiles. The navy tugboat stayed near, too.
On other occasions, Chinese coast guard and militia vessels have rammed, doused with water cannons and sunk civilian boats in the South China Sea. In 2019, for instance, 22 Filipino fishermen were left to float amid the wreckage of their boat for six hours after a Chinese militia vessel struck them.
Chinese-built structures in May on Mischief Reef, off the Philippine island of Palawan.
Danger extends overhead. In May, a Chinese fighter jet sliced past the nose of a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance plane flying through international air space over the South China Sea, echoing an incident last December when a Chinese fighter came within 20 feet of an American plane.
Zhou Bo, a retired P.L.A. colonel who is now a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said that claimant nations and the United States — which conducts regular air and sea patrols in the South China Sea — should accept Beijing’s contention that this is Chinese turf.
“The U.S. should stop or decrease its operations there,” he said. “But since it is impossible, so the danger will grow. A stronger P.L.A. can only be more resolute in defending China’s sovereignty and national interests.”
Mr. Zhou added that he thought the risk of a conflict between the United States and China was higher in the South China Sea than in the Taiwan Strait, another theater of geopolitical friction.
Frictions in the South China Sea are greatest in places where Southeast Asian countries have defied the Chinese mandate that the waterway, scooped out on Chinese maps with a dashed line, belongs to Beijing. In waters close to Vietnam and Malaysia, Chinese vessels have disrupted attempts to explore and develop oil and natural gas fields. The Chinese coast guard has forcibly prevented its Indonesian counterpart from arresting Chinese fishermen operating well within Indonesian waters.
A Chinese warship patrolled the waters near the military outpost on Mischief Reef, within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, in May.
Chinese forces frequently harass Philippine coast guard boats trying to access a tiny contingent of Philippine marines stationed on Second Thomas Shoal, which, like nearby Mischief Reef, also lies within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. (Control over such a zone gives a country the rights to all resources within it, although foreign flagged boats are allowed free passage through most of the waters.)
In February, a Chinese coast guard ship directed a military-grade laser at a Philippine coast guard boat trying to resupply the marines at Second Thomas, temporarily blinding some sailors, according to the Philippine side. The Chinese coast guard has also unleashed high-intensity water cannons at the resupply boats, as recently as last month. In both cases, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that the Philippine vessels were violating Chinese territorial sovereignty, forcing the Chinese to intervene.
As we left Mischief Reef, with Chinese vessels still shadowing us, we saw just how lopsided the contest is at Second Thomas. In 1997, the Philippines, outmanned and underfunded, beached a World War II era navy ship on the shoal, creating a makeshift base from which its soldiers could defend Philippine waters.
Clockwise from top left: Blasting a water cannon at a Philippines coast guard vessel near Second Thomas Shoal last month; a Chinese vessel employing a laser against a Filipino ship; the wreckage of a Filipino fishing boat after it was rammed by a Chinese ship in 2019; and a Chinese fighter jet flying perilously close to a U.S. Air Force refueling plane last December.
With the marooned navy ship in the distance, we watched as the same Philippine coast guard vessel that had been targeted by the military laser was flanked by a pair of Chinese coast guard ships more than double its length. The radio crackled with verbal jousting.
“Since you have disregarded our warning,” a Chinese coast guardsman said, “we will take further necessary measures in accordance with the law, and any consequences entailed will be borne by you.”
“We will deliver food and other essentials to our people,” the Philippine side answered.
The Philippine boat barely made it through to resupply the marine base. Every week brings such a David and Goliath showdown, and the chance for a dangerous miscalculation.
“The Chinese are flouting the maritime rules of engagement and intentionally violating the good rules of conduct,” said Gregory B. Poling, the director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “They’re making foreign vessels veer, sometimes at the last moment. One day, a foreign vessel is not going to veer off. And then what?”
Chinese coast guard ships flanking a Philippine coast guard resupply ship in May near Second Thomas Shoal.
Despite its lack of territorial claims in the South China Sea, the American Seventh Fleet regularly cruises these waters to ensure freedom of navigation for all nations, according to the U.S. Navy. (Beijing contends that the presence of American military ships, particularly patrols near Chinese-controlled bases, inflames tensions.) And security pacts bind the American military to several Asian countries. The Philippines, which was once an American colony, is tied to the United States in a mutual defense treaty that Vice President Kamala Harris said last year would extend to “an armed attack on the Philippine armed forces, public vessels or aircraft in the South China Sea.”
This month, U.S. and Philippine warships sailed together in the South China Sea, and the two navies plan a joint patrol later this year.
American support has not always been so full-throated. In 2012, Chinese vessels occupied Scarborough Shoal, off the coast of the Philippines’ most populous island, even after the United States thought it had brokered a deal for both the Philippines and China to withdraw from the reef to cool tensions. Despite the Chinese incursion, American forces did not defend the shoal. Chinese boats have essentially controlled Scarborough ever since.
Around the same time, China began constructing what it said were “typhoon shelters” for fishermen on several South China Sea reefs it controlled. Then Chinese dredgers began piling sand on the atolls. Airstrips and barracks appeared. In 2015, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, stood in the White House Rose Garden and said that “China does not intend to pursue militarization” of the Spratlys, despite satellite evidence that China was doing just that.
A Chinese P.L.A. tugboat near Mischief Reef.
“The U.S. response was pretty much limited to statements that they opposed it, but not much more,” said M. Taylor Fravel, the director of the security studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an author of books on China’s defense strategy and territorial disputes, noting that the development of the P.L.A.’s South China Sea military bases was done in three phases from 2014-2016. “It’s reasonable to speculate that a much harder response to the first wave would have prevented the next two waves.”
The 2016 tribunal ruling that dismissed China’s “historical claims” over most of the South China Sea came just as the Philippines was ushering in a new president, Rodrigo Duterte, who made close ties with China a signature of his six years in power. Mr. Duterte ignored the tribunal ruling, even though it favored his country. Since President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. took office last year, his administration has spoken out against the Chinese presence in the South China Sea. Mr. Marcos has also granted the United States access to a handful of military bases on Philippine soil and is allowing for the building of others.
After we left Second Thomas Shoal, we sailed toward the Philippine island of Palawan, home to nearly a million people. Green hills rose on the horizon as we neared Sabina Shoal, a rich fishing ground for centuries. In recent years, the Chinese have placed buoys here. The Philippine coast guard has removed them.
Right on Sabina Shoal, where delicate coral once thrived, we saw boats arranged in a defensive formation. Ropes tied some of the vessels together. Chinese flags flew. Men bantered over the radio in a southern Chinese dialect. No fishing nets were in evidence.
Chinese-flagged boats anchored in May at Sabina Shoal, near the Philippine island of Palawan.
China has said that such trawlers are commercial fishing vessels, and a Chinese appetite for seafood has created the world’s largest fishing fleet. But these South China Sea boats, experts say, rarely fish. Instead, they act as a maritime militia, swarming contested waters and unoccupied reefs for days or even months. They have steel hulls and advanced satellites, and some have rammed smaller Southeast Asian fishing boats. If a storm descends, they shelter at Chinese naval bases, like those built on Mischief, Fiery Cross and Subi reefs, satellite imagery shows.
We could see empty Chinese instant noodle packets floating in the water. We heard the Philippine coast guard over the radio, urging the Chinese boats to leave Sabina. There was no response. The Philippine entreaties faded.
Hannah Beech is the senior correspondent for Asia based in Bangkok. She was previously the Southeast Asia bureau chief. More about Hannah Beech
The New York Times · by Hannah Beech · September 23, 2023
5. Philippines to remove barrier placed by China in South China Sea - national security advisor
Philippines to remove barrier placed by China in South China Sea - national security advisor
Reuters
- Summary
- Philippines condemns China floating barrier near disputed shoal
- Philippines says barrier violates Filipinos' fishing rights
MANILA, Sept 25 (Reuters) - The Philippines will take "all appropriate actions to cause the removal of barriers" in a disputed area of the South China Sea, the country's national security advisor said on Monday.
The Philippines on Sunday shared images of a floating barrier blocking fishing vessel access in the Scarborough Shoal with Chinese coast guard ships nearby, and said it would protect the rights of its fishermen.
"We condemn the installation of floating barriers by Chinese coast guard," national security adviser Eduardo Año said in a statement.
"The placement by the People's Republic of China of a barrier violates the traditional fishing rights of our fishermen," he added.
The country's foreign ministry on Monday said that the barriers were a violation of international law and that the Philippines would "take all appropriate measures to protect our country's sovereignty and the livelihood of our fisherfolk".
The Chinese embassy in Manila did not respond to requests for comment.
China claims 90% of the South China Sea, overlapping with the exclusive economic zones of Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and the Philippines. Beijing seized the Scarborough Shoal in 2012 and forced fishermen from the Philippines to travel further for smaller catches.
Philippine coast guard and fisheries bureau personnel discovered the floating barrier, estimated at 300 m (1,000 feet) long, on a routine patrol on Friday near the shoal, locally known as Bajo de Masinloc, according to Commodore Jay Tarriela, a coast guard spokesperson.
"We have to be very careful (not to commit) any diplomatic misstep," Tarriela said in a radio interview on Monday before the government's comments, when asked whether the coast guard was planning to remove the barrier.
Tarriela said that according to Filipino fishermen, the Chinese coast guard usually installs such barriers when they monitor a large number of fishermen in the area, then remove it later.
Reporting by Enrico dela Cruz; Editing by Kanupriya Kapoor
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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6. Poland’s spat with Ukraine angered many in Europe, and was a gift for Putin
Poland’s spat with Ukraine angered many in Europe, and was a gift for Putin
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/23/europe/poland-ukraine-europe-relations-putin-intl/index.html
Analysis by Luke McGee, CNN
Published 3:25 AM EDT, Sat September 23, 2023
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Poland, Ukraine dialing down tensions in grain dispute
03:17 - Source: CNN
CNN —
Europe’s support for Ukraine faced an unexpected curveball this week as Poland – hitherto Kyiv’s staunchest ally on the continent – seemed to declare it would stop sending arms to its neighbor.
The move came after Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky criticized Warsaw for continuing to ban Ukrainian grain imports, and is the latest example of more confrontational behavior from Poland’s government toward Kyiv, just ahead of a tight general election in the country.
The political theater has raised a number of important questions, most important among them, will this be the moment that Europe’s steadfast resolve against Russia’s full-scale invasion finally cracks?
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So how did a dispute over grain imports escalate into a diplomatic crisis? The European Union placed a temporary ban on grain imports from Ukraine in May, to avoid a bottleneck of cheap grain that risked undercutting farmers in Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. The EU suspended the ban last week, angering those countries, who vowed to keep restrictions in place, and in turn sparking protests from Poland.
Poland is weeks away from a national election on October 15 in which the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) is expected to suffer losses. Anyone who follows European politics will tell you that agriculture is incredibly important. Farmers are motivated political agents and citizens tend to care about food security, sometimes disproportionately and irrationally. And the PiS will need rural votes to remain in power.
It therefore makes sense that the Polish government would want to make a tub-thumping, headline-grabbing, nationalist gesture. However, this relatively marginal spat spiraled out of control on Tuesday when Zelensky told the UN general assembly: “It is alarming to see how some in Europe, some of our friends in Europe, play out solidarity in a political theater – making a thriller from the grain.”
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Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki responded on social media the next day, saying: “We no longer transfer weapons to Ukraine because we are now arming Poland.”
Poland has since moved to walk back those comments, promising that it will still send weapons it has already committed to provide. Polish President Andrzej Duda has said his prime minister’s words were “interpreted in the worst possible way.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, pictured at the UN headquarters in New York City on September 20, 2023, has been caught in a diplomatic spat with Poland over a grain dispute.
Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, pictured on September 8, 2023, seemed to declare Poland would stop sending weapons to Ukraine, sending relations between both countries into a tailspin.
Wojtek Jargilo/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
The dispute raised important questions about European unity.
The first and most important point, however, is that no European officials seriously believe that there is about to be a dramatic change in policy when it comes to supporting Ukraine – especially from Poland.
“This is all elections blabla… farmers are a PiS constituency,” says a senior European defense source. “Poland will continue to provide arms to Ukraine. As long as it takes. I have no doubts about that,” says a NATO official. “Poles have a vital interest in Ukraine winning this war as otherwise they will be exposed to their arch enemy (Russia) directly, but they have to play muscles now because of the elections,” says an EU official.
Despite the expectation that this is all noise aimed at a domestic audience, it is hard to overstate the level of anger at Poland.
A senior EU diplomat told CNN: “Ukraine already offered Poland a solution on grain. Which is why they’re so pissed off at Poland. As are 24 member states who have been bullied for 18 months by Poland for not doing enough to support Ukraine.”
This sentiment was echoed by sources at NATO, within the EU institutions and from national capitals across Europe.
The contempt is perhaps best characterized by one EU Commission official, who said: “It needs to be seen in the context of the upcoming elections, the nationalist agenda of the current government and aggressive stances on the grain issue, migration and anything they see as a ‘threat’ to national interests of Poland.
“They also attack Brussels and the EU when it fits their agenda. It’s a desperate effort to mobilize the voter – if you have no substance to offer then you start to create and blame an outside enemy to cover up for domestic policy failures.”
The most serious takeaway from all of this is what it might mean for Ukraine in the long-term. The West is currently making a great effort to fold Ukraine into its institutions. The country is currently trying to join both the EU and NATO, for which it has unanimous support.
That support, however, already comes with caveats and conditions. Most EU member states accept that in order to accommodate Ukraine, there will need to be substantial reform to how the EU operates.
Zelensky's mixed reception in Washington may be a taste of political storm to come
If Ukraine were to join as things stand, lots of the funding that currently goes to member states in the form of subsidies – including for agriculture – would instead go to Ukraine. Try selling that to Polish farmers.
The current EU structures would also give its newest member massive influence in the institutions, namely the parliament and council of member states.
When it comes to NATO, there are members of the alliance who don’t love the idea of a country literally at war having access to the article 5 mechanism – the “all for one and one for all” trigger that impels allies to support one another.
For a military alliance, many of the NATO countries don’t particularly like spending money on defense for themselves, let alone each other.
Poland’s arms tantrum allows countries who feel they have been strong-armed – not least by Poland – to support Ukraine can now legitimately push back on the wisdom of the West throwing so much support to a country that is not even in the alliance.
The final reason that officials across Europe are furious about this week’s events is that it hands Russian President Vladimir Putin a propaganda coup.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, when asked about the spat, used it to say “there are certain tensions between Warsaw and Kyiv. We predict that these tensions will increase.”
Russia’s misinformation war is often described by diplomats as a zero-sum game: what is bad for the West is good for Russia. Public spats between the West makes it easy to claim that the West is divided, and a divided West is certainly a good thing for the Kremlin.
CNN’s Radina Gigova and Anna Chernova contributed reporting.
7. U.S. Shared Intelligence With Canada After Alleged Assassination of Sikh Separatist
U.S. Shared Intelligence With Canada After Alleged Assassination of Sikh Separatist
Ottawa’s interception of electronic communications among Indian diplomats drove it to publicly accuse New Delhi of a role in shooting
By Dustin Volz
Follow and Paul Vieira
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Updated Sept. 24, 2023 1:14 pm ET
Mourners carried the casket of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar during his funeral service in British Columbia this year. PHOTO: DARRYL DYCK/THE CANADIAN PRESS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON—Canadian intelligence agencies intercepted communications among Indian diplomats indicating that New Delhi was involved in the killing of a Sikh separatist leader in British Columbia earlier this year, a Western official familiar with the matter said.
Those intercepts, combined with a stream of intelligence shared by the U.S., led Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, to publicly accuse India of playing a role in the shooting of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was gunned down in the parking lot of a Sikh temple.
U.S. officials are reluctant to talk about the alleged assassination plot at the same time the Biden administration is eager to forge closer ties with India to counter China, though President Biden’s national-security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said last week the accusation was a “matter of concern.” U.S. spy agencies recently provided briefings to the congressional intelligence committees about the assassination plot, according to congressional aides.
While Canada generated the most in-depth intelligence about the assassination plot on its own, U.S. spy agencies shared intelligence that helped firm up and contextualize Ottawa’s conclusion that India was responsible, according to the Western official.
The specific U.S.-produced intelligence was given to Ottawa after the alleged assassination occurred, the official said, and while considered helpful it was Canada’s interception of electronic communications among Indian diplomats that chiefly drove its conclusion and public accusation.
The New York Times earlier reported on the U.S.’s role in supporting Canada’s assessment of India’s involvement and the intelligence developed internally by Canada.The U.S. ambassador to Canada, David Cohen, told Canada’s CTV News in an interview broadcast on Sunday that shared intelligence among the Five Eyes intelligence network “helped lead Canada to making the statement that the prime minister made” in the legislature, alleging an Indian government role in Nijjar’s death. Cohen didn’t elaborate on which country provided the intelligence and what it contained.
“There was a lot of communication between Canada and the United States about this,” the ambassador said, adding U.S. officials have asked India to cooperate in Canada’s investigation. “If the allegations prove to be true, it is potentially a very serious breach of the rules-based international order.”
A spokeswoman for Trudeau declined to comment. A spokesman for Canada’s public-safety minister didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Trudeau last week declined to elaborate on what evidence authorities have, and didn’t answer a question on whether he would share what security officials know. Last Monday, he told lawmakers in a rare national-security address in Canada’s Parliament that authorities were pursuing “credible allegations” of Indian government involvement in the fatal shooting of a Canadian Sikh leader. Nijjar, 45 years old, was killed in June in the parking lot of a Surrey, British Columbia, Sikh temple, where he served as president. Police say witnesses have told them two masked suspects fled in a getaway car.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Canada’s Parliament that authorities were pursuing ‘credible allegations’ of India’s involvement in the killing. PHOTO: JUSTIN TANG/THE CANADIAN PRESS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Canada also expelled a diplomat from India, who Canada’s foreign minister said was the Canadian head of India’s foreign-spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing.
The Indian government has called Canada’s allegation “absurd and motivated.” It said that “such unsubstantiated allegations seek to shift the focus from Khalistani terrorists and extremists, who have been provided shelter in Canada and continue to threaten India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” India expelled a Canadian diplomat, and called on Canada to share what evidence it has.
Trudeau said officials have shared the allegations with their Indian counterparts—including directly with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Group of 20 leaders’ summit in New Delhi this month—“and we hope that they engage with us so that we can get to the bottom of this very serious matter.”
It isn’t unusual for the U.S. to furnish tightly guarded intelligence to close allies, including Canada. Both are part of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partnership of English-speaking countries that also includes the U.K., Australia and New Zealand. On a routine, continuing basis, Five Eyes nations share some of the most secretive intelligence with one another that is sometimes considered off-limits to other important Western allies, such as Germany.
The intelligence delivered to Ottawa wasn’t a routine summary of intelligence but a tailored package of insight developed after the assassination, the official said. U.S. officials informed spy agencies in Canada that they didn’t appear to have intelligence about plans concerning the assassination before it occurred, the official said, but would have done so if they had such material in their possession.
Write to Dustin Volz at dustin.volz@wsj.com and Paul Vieira at Paul.Vieira@wsj.com
Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the September 25, 2023, print edition as 'U.S., Canada Shared Intelligence Following Sikh Separatist’s Killing'.
8. Finland Raced to Join NATO. What Happens Next Is Complicated.
Excerpts:
Then there is the issue of where Finland fits in NATO’s three operational commands, responsible for different geographical areas. The five Nordic countries would prefer to be in the same command, run from Norfolk, Va., which is navy-focused and defends the Atlantic sea routes, the Nordics and the Arctic. The logic is that in war, reinforcements would be likely to come from the West, across the Atlantic.
But Norfolk is not yet fully operational. And given the war in Europe and the current threat from Russia, NATO has placed Finland in the land-oriented command based in Brunssum, the Netherlands, which is charged with defending Central and Eastern Europe, including Poland and the Baltic nations. Finland hopes that is temporary, but so far, officials say, the integration has been going smoothly.
Finland has already increased its defense budget, in part to pay for the purchase of F-35 fighter jets and new ships to better patrol its seas and hunt for submarines. It vows to spend at least 2 percent of gross domestic product on the military, as NATO desires.
Joining NATO will require significant cultural, political, legal and military changes, Mr. Kuusela, the defense official said, and it will take years. But of all the countries of Europe, he said, Finland would be the last to underestimate the long-term Russian threat.
Finland Raced to Join NATO. What Happens Next Is Complicated.
By Steven Erlanger
Reporting from Helsinki, Finland
Sept. 25, 2023
Updated 5:21 a.m. ET
The New York Times · by Steven Erlanger · September 25, 2023
After decades of going it alone in security issues, Finns are finding that life in a large alliance is complex, expensive and deeply political.
Finnish soldiers participating in a military exercise in Rovajarvi, Finland, in May. Finland joined the NATO alliance in April of this year, ending decades of military nonalignment.Credit...Janis Laizans/Reuters
Sept. 25, 2023Updated 5:21 a.m. ET
Barely a year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Finland cast aside decades of military nonalignment and self-reliance and joined the NATO alliance.
That happened with breathtaking speed, as these matters go, but gaining membership may have been the easy part. Now comes the complicated process of integrating itself into the alliance and its requirement of collective defense — with all of its financial, legal and strategic hurdles.
“Joining NATO is an expensive business, and supporting Ukraine is an expensive business, and there’s no end to that in sight,” said Janne Kuusela, director-general for defense policy at Finland’s Ministry of Defense.
Membership in NATO has long been considered a cheap benefit, given the American nuclear umbrella and the principle of collective defense. But NATO also has extensive requirements of its members — not just spending goals for the military, but specific demands from each country for certain capabilities, armaments, troop strengths and infrastructure as defined by the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe.
Achieving that will demand some difficult and costly decisions from the government and military officials as they learn to think strategically outside Finland’s borders and adapt its forces and their capabilities to the alliance’s needs.
They will have to decide how to move troops and equipment to Norway, Sweden or the Baltic States in the event they need reinforcements, for instance, or whether to participate in other NATO tasks like patrols in Kosovo or the Mediterranean.
At the same time, Finnish officials and analysts say, Finland will not alter its intention of defending every inch of its own territory, given its 830-mile border with Russia, a doctrine considered old-fashioned in the age of modern warfare. It sees itself as remaining capable of self-defense for now, so unlike many of the NATO countries that border Russia, Finland is considered unlikely to ask for a rotating presence of allied troops.
“The whole security and foreign-policy establishment believes that no such troops are needed now, but it’s not a categorical no,” said Matti Pesu of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, a research institution.
Finland shares an 830-mile long border with Russia, which it sees as a potential aggressor.
At the same time, the country is negotiating a bilateral defense cooperation agreement with the United States, the kind of accord Washington has with many countries around the world, making joint exercises easier to plan and quicker to implement. It will cover what kind of U.S. troop presence Finland would allow and where, and what sort of equipment NATO’s most powerful country will be able to bring to Finland for exercises or prepositioning. The agreement also governs issues like judicial jurisdiction should U.S. troops commit a crime.
The negotiations are complicated, said Elina Valtonen, Finland’s foreign minister, in an interview. Given its history of fending off Russian assaults, she said, Finland is protective of its sovereignty.
“Of course, it’s a balance, how to also defend your sovereignty against an aggressive and unpredictable neighbor, who does not respect the same values that we do with our friends and allies,” she said. “But Finland is a country where, typically, we like to have agreements, we like to have treaties, we are very legalistic.”
Finland’s relationship with the United States is considered as important as the one with the larger alliance, especially given the American nuclear deterrent that protects all NATO members. Finnish law prevents the importation or storage of nuclear weapons on its soil. But Finland will have to decide its policy on nuclear deterrence and the nature of its involvement in shaping NATO’s nuclear policy.
Relations with neighboring Russia have also inevitably changed. Before invading Ukraine, Russia demanded a roll back of NATO’s borders and warned Finland against membership. But the invasion caused a rapid shift in Finnish public opinion. Support for membership soared from about a quarter of the population before the invasion to more than 80 percent.
Initial Russian reaction to Finland’s joining NATO was muted, given Moscow’s preoccupation with Ukraine. And with Russia having redeployed many of its forces from near Finland to Ukraine, few see any immediate threat.
But Finns see Russia as a permanent potential aggressor, and recent statements by Russian officials, perhaps aimed at changing popular Russian perceptions of Finland, have treated it as “a member of an enemy alliance,” said Mr. Pesu.
In a sort of rear guard action, he said, Russia “wants to intimidate us and limit NATO presence and Finnish integration into the alliance.”
Russia has even been dismantling monuments to the Finnish war dead in Karelia, which it seized from Finland in World War II. Those tributes had been erected with Russian permission in a more cooperative time.
Gen. Timo Kivinen, the commander of Finland’s defense forces, shoulders much of the responsibility for his country’s integration with NATO.Credit...Mauri Ratilainen/EPA, via Shutterstock
Much of the responsibility for integration with NATO rests with Gen. Timo Kivinen, the commander of Finland’s defense forces. At the core, he said in an interview, is Article Three of NATO’s charter, “which underlines that the first priority to defend a country lies with the country itself.” To him, it is as important as Article Five, which treats an assault on one member country as an assault on all.
He is familiar with the inner workings of NATO, since Finland has long been a partner nation and involved in NATO exercises; several hundred NATO troops have been stationed almost continuously in Finland since April 2022. Even as a candidate member, Finland began the first stage of alliance defense planning that July.
Now, as a full member, the planning is more intensive, but there is much to consider, he said, to align Finland’s defense plans with those of the larger alliance.
Article Five will require more from Finland, General Kivinen said. “We need to be capable to contribute to NATO collective defense outside Finland’s borders, and that’s new,” he said. It will have an impact on Finland’s forces “when we go on to develop those deployable capabilities, those capability targets” that NATO demands, he added.
There are other NATO missions as well, like air policing outside Finland, naval task forces and possible participation in the multinational forces the alliance has deployed in other frontline countries. Finland will also have to decide what officers to provide to which NATO headquarters, and how it wants to influence alliance policies.
The war has made northern Europe and the Arctic more important for the security of the whole alliance. So, General Kivinen said, it is also vital that Sweden, a longtime defense partner for Finland, get into NATO soon.
That would make alliance planning easier, especially in determining how best to defend the Arctic, the Baltic region and four of the five Nordic countries — Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark (Iceland is the fifth). Already these four have agreed to operate their approximately 250 fighter jets as a joint operational fleet and also to provide air policing for Iceland.
An American soldier instructs a Finnish soldier on a recoilless rifle during a military exercise in Rovajarvi, Finland, in May. Finland has long been a partner nation of NATO, participating in military exercises and hosting several hundred NATO troops in the country.Credit...Janis Laizans/Reuters
Then there is the issue of where Finland fits in NATO’s three operational commands, responsible for different geographical areas. The five Nordic countries would prefer to be in the same command, run from Norfolk, Va., which is navy-focused and defends the Atlantic sea routes, the Nordics and the Arctic. The logic is that in war, reinforcements would be likely to come from the West, across the Atlantic.
But Norfolk is not yet fully operational. And given the war in Europe and the current threat from Russia, NATO has placed Finland in the land-oriented command based in Brunssum, the Netherlands, which is charged with defending Central and Eastern Europe, including Poland and the Baltic nations. Finland hopes that is temporary, but so far, officials say, the integration has been going smoothly.
Finland has already increased its defense budget, in part to pay for the purchase of F-35 fighter jets and new ships to better patrol its seas and hunt for submarines. It vows to spend at least 2 percent of gross domestic product on the military, as NATO desires.
Joining NATO will require significant cultural, political, legal and military changes, Mr. Kuusela, the defense official said, and it will take years. But of all the countries of Europe, he said, Finland would be the last to underestimate the long-term Russian threat.
Johanna Lemola contributed reporting.
Steven Erlanger is The Times’s chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe, based in Berlin. He previously reported from Brussels, London, Paris, Jerusalem, Berlin, Prague, Belgrade, Washington, Moscow and Bangkok. More about Steven Erlanger
The New York Times · by Steven Erlanger · September 25, 2023
9. Analysis | ‘This is not just Putin’s war’: How Finland’s top diplomat sees Ukraine
Excerpts;
Finland has a long, difficult history of living next to Russia and finding accommodation with the Kremlin. Are there conversations about what living with Russia looks like in the aftermath of this war?
It’s very good question. And I think what many haven’t perhaps realized is that this is not just Putin’s war. It seems that the Russian machinery, so to speak, has been preparing for this for a very long time. They have been actively waging war since [the 2008 invasion of] Georgia and 2014 against Ukraine, with the illegal annexation of Crimea. Of course, Putin has been in power during this time, but for more than two decades, he has built an infrastructure around this. And there could have been two decades for somebody [in Russia] to tell him that it’s not okay.
So if Putin goes it’s very unlikely that somehow Russia will become a peaceful normal democracy. I would claim that us in the West, we would not wish for anything simply more perhaps than that the ordinary Russian would have a say in the direction that the country is taking, that Russia would open up for civil society and become a normal democracy. But while hoping for that, we have to prepare for the worst and the worst is that Russia remains like it is and perhaps even worse in the future.
Analysis | ‘This is not just Putin’s war’: How Finland’s top diplomat sees Ukraine
The Washington Post · by Ishaan Tharoor · September 25, 2023
When Russia launched its full-fledged invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Finland had a center-left ruling government in power in Helsinki. It was also, as it had been for generations, outside the umbrella of the NATO alliance.
A bit more than a year later, Finland formally joined the military bloc, spurred into the alliance by the reality of Russian aggression and President Vladimir Putin’s neo-imperialist revanchism. Overnight, NATO’s border with Russia doubled in length.
In June, Finland inaugurated a new center-right government. Though its domestic agendas are different from its predecessor, with a far-right faction in the ruling coalition, its approach to supporting Ukraine and the broader Western effort to resist Russia’s invasion has endured. On the sidelines of U.N. meetings in New York last week, I spoke with Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen on life in NATO and the prospects of the war. The conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Today’s WorldView: How does it feel to be a full-fledged NATO member after all these years?
Valtonen: It feels good. Personally, I’ve been advocating Finnish membership in NATO for as long as I can remember. Now, there’s a very strong majority of Finns who are in favor of us being in NATO and, if it wasn’t so, Finland never would have joined. There are these Russian narratives around that NATO is a threat or NATO enlargement is a threat, but it’s important to realize that NATO in and of itself doesn’t enlarge. It’s the free people in democratic societies who vote or choose to join, and that was the case for Finland and Sweden, as well, once they are let in. We were pretty close to NATO anyway so in a way it was just a natural step. Our military was almost 100 percent interoperable with NATO as it was.
I think we feel more secure and that was obviously the reason we wanted to join. But it has to be said that we take pride in being net contributors to NATO. We reached the 2 percent [of gross domestic product] target of defense spending easily this year. And we have very strong capabilities, which can be of significant use to the alliance, including one of the largest reservist armies in Europe even though we are a small population.
Sweden’s accession is still awaiting Turkish approval, and the recent signs aren’t that positive. Is there a scenario where Sweden doesn’t join NATO for quite some time?
There might be different scenarios. Turkey is a sovereign country and they are free to decide as they wish, but I’m pretty confident that they will move soon. President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan promised already in July that he would give a green light to Sweden. Now, the parliament in Turkey has been in recess, and they are coming back in October. So I would wish that in October, they are ready to go ahead.
How do you assess the current trajectory of the war in Ukraine? There are growing concerns about the pace of the Ukrainian counteroffensive and the West’s political and economic ability to sustain Kyiv.
In democracies, the political climate can always change, but I am confident that our core values and the future that all of us as individuals here in the free West are driving for [mean that] it really pays off to help Ukraine. Aiding Ukraine is not charity. It’s standing up for the European way of life, in this case, Western values and of course, it’s the [country’s] sovereignty, territorial integrity, and those are the values that we share. What would happen if we let go of Ukraine or stopped helping them? Perhaps there wouldn’t be Ukraine, but there certainly would be a very empowered Russia. And I don’t think anybody benefits from that, especially not neighboring countries.
The war has imposed a strain on both Western and Ukrainian capacity. Are you not worried about divisions widening in the months to come?
It’s up to the Ukrainians to decide how much more they can do and will do. It’s their country, their sovereignty that they are defending first and foremost. Of course, they are at the same time defending us as well — the entire rules-based world order.
It’s struck everybody by surprise how united the West was at the beginning and still is. I don’t think the West has ever been this united. And let’s just keep it this way. It’s very important that we do understand that Ukrainians are heroically fighting for all of us and therefore we should help them.
In Europe, it was fashionable for a time to let go of our defense industry and divest our defense forces, to not increase defense spending. We now have to do the opposite, not just for Ukraine, but strategically for the future. We have to invest heavily into the defense industry. It’s very worrying that we see Russia producing more than they did before the war, when it comes to weapons and ammunition. We just have to realize that in order to stay safe in the future, to be able to live the European way, we just have to take better care of ourselves when it comes to defense and security. Everybody has to do their bit. And that’s the Finnish message. And we’re trying to lead by example.
It’s a wrap on #UNGA78 for Ministers @elinavaltonen and @VilleTavio.
The #UNGA high-level week was an opportunity to emphasise the significance of #multilateralism and international rules-based cooperation in solving global challenges.#FIUNGA78 @FinlandUN pic.twitter.com/MeSvYBYUoS
— MFA Finland (@Ulkoministerio) September 22, 2023
Finland has a long, difficult history of living next to Russia and finding accommodation with the Kremlin. Are there conversations about what living with Russia looks like in the aftermath of this war?
It’s very good question. And I think what many haven’t perhaps realized is that this is not just Putin’s war. It seems that the Russian machinery, so to speak, has been preparing for this for a very long time. They have been actively waging war since [the 2008 invasion of] Georgia and 2014 against Ukraine, with the illegal annexation of Crimea. Of course, Putin has been in power during this time, but for more than two decades, he has built an infrastructure around this. And there could have been two decades for somebody [in Russia] to tell him that it’s not okay.
So if Putin goes it’s very unlikely that somehow Russia will become a peaceful normal democracy. I would claim that us in the West, we would not wish for anything simply more perhaps than that the ordinary Russian would have a say in the direction that the country is taking, that Russia would open up for civil society and become a normal democracy. But while hoping for that, we have to prepare for the worst and the worst is that Russia remains like it is and perhaps even worse in the future.
Finland, like its Baltic neighbors, recently implemented a ban on Russian vehicles entering the country, per an interpretation of E.U. sanctions. Is this fair to ordinary Russians?
Yes, sanctions do hurt normal people. And in a country like Russia, it could easily say that it’s perhaps not fair because it’s not a normal democracy. People can’t really choose. But I don’t think we have a choice. Russia and the Russian people do realize that waging such an unfair and illegal war simply comes with a price. And it’s very important that we show that.
The Washington Post · by Ishaan Tharoor · September 25, 2023
10. Welcome to Cyber Realism: Parsing the 2023 Department of Defense Cyber Strategy
Excerpts:
Next Steps for Cyber Realism
Of course, the 2023 Department of Defense Cyber Strategy could say quite a bit more in some areas. The United States has consistently condemned Russian cyber attacks against civilian populations and publicly detailed the legal basis of U.S. cyber operations. But despite this, the strategy acknowledges only that the United States will “reinforce norms of responsible behavior in cyberspace” while leaving the norms themselves undefined. The strategy also states that the United States will build the cyber capacity and capability of allies and partners, but it says less about the utility of cyber cooperation and how it might intersect with U.S. diplomatic aims. Such questions will need to wait for the first U.S. International Cyber Strategy, to be released by the State Department later this year.
There are also important points that the strategy does not address at all. There is no discussion, for instance, about how the Pentagon delineates cyber and information effects, despite the creation of new doctrine and bureaucratic entities intended to address this very problem. Furthermore, while the strategy articulates various lines of effort, it does not explore how the military should prioritize the development and employment of cyber capabilities against various threats, along differing time horizons, and at different thresholds of severity. Developing a cyber capability to deter high-end military aggression, for instance, might look quite different from developing a capability to sustain low-level friction. With regard to such an important foundational question as “What is the best use of the U.S. military’s formidable cyber arsenal?” the strategy remains silent.
Overall, the 2023 Cyber Strategy’s pragmatic frame is apparent throughout the document. In its treatment of cyber operations as one tool among many, its focus on the utility of cyber below the threshold of armed conflict, and its deliberately narrow discussion of the role of the U.S. military in cyberspace, the strategy brings a dose of realism to a field that quite literally emerged out of science fiction. The Pentagon’s thinking about the cyber domain, once abstract and speculative, has become grounded in real-world lessons and examples. And the cyber enterprise itself, having won its seat at the table, must now consider how to use that seat most effectively.
Welcome to Cyber Realism: Parsing the 2023 Department of Defense Cyber Strategy - War on the Rocks
warontherocks.com · by Nick Danforth · September 25, 2023
Released to the public on Sept. 12, the Department of Defense’s 2023 Cyber Strategy differs from its predecessors in its lack of bold new buzzwords. The 2015 strategy reimagined deterrence for the cyber domain, and the 2018 strategy articulated “defend forward” as a new foundational concept. But despite being informed by years of major cyber developments — the significant legal and policy changes that enabled U.S. Cyber Command to engage in more frequent offensive cyber operations, as well as the ongoing demonstration of military cyber capabilities in the Russo-Ukrainian War — the 2023 Cyber Strategy offers nothing as momentous.
Having both contributed to the drafting of the new strategy, we believe that this modesty is a good thing. Instead of minting new cyber bumper stickers, the strategy seeks to rationalize and contextualize concepts that already exist. While it may appear as though the strategy has something for everyone (as most strategies do), a closer examination reveals that cyber’s role is consistently limited, caveated, or subsumed by broader frameworks.
Three examples stand out. First is a move away from cyber for cyber’s sake and toward situating cyber effects as one important tool among many for U.S. policymakers — what the Pentagon now calls “integrated deterrence.” Second is a reaffirmation of concepts introduced in 2018 (defend forward and persistent engagement) and a vision for how U.S. Cyber Command might operate below the threshold of armed conflict — what the Pentagon now calls “campaigning.” Third is an attempt to right-size expectations about Department of Defense’s role in civilian cybersecurity.
In short, if the 2023 Cyber Strategy has a theme, it is one of cyber realism. By considering the comparative advantage of cyber capabilities and acknowledging the limits of cyber capacity, the United States is better prepared to direct finite cyber resources against multiplying threats.
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Turning the Page on “Cyber Pearl Harbor”
This realism is overdue. For at least two decades, policy discourse around cyber threat, cyber risk, and cyberwar has come to resemble a slowly deflating balloon. Initially, practitioners and experts expressed fears of “cyber doom.” Cyberspace was portrayed as the new “Wild West,” defined by lawlessness and brimming with nefarious actors. Cyber threats were described in the same breath as nuclear armageddon until the two seemed almost to merge: “cybergeddon.” The prospect of a crippling surprise cyber attack against the United States — a “cyber Pearl Harbor” — gripped the imaginations of U.S. policymakers and the American public alike.
As the theoretical danger of cyber attacks became associated with that of nuclear weapons, cyber theorists understandably looked to Cold War–era ideas of nuclear deterrence and coercion to describe how to keep cyber capabilities in check. The result was cyber deterrence: visions of a complex dance of cleverly choreographed cyber attack and counterattack, playing out beyond sight and at the speed of light.
And yet the reality of cyber operations has never measured up to these dramatic expectations. Beyond a few “perfect storm” events like the 2010 Stuxnet cyber campaign, which disrupted Iran’s nuclear enrichment program (and which is very much the exception that proves the rule), the strategic impact of cyber operations appears quite modest. U.S. Cyber Command’s 2016 Operation Glowing Symphony certainly created friction for the Islamic State, but the bluster of dropping “cyber bombs” was largely overblown. Similarly, the U.S. military successfully disrupted the efforts of the Internet Research Agency, a Russian-linked troll farm, to sow disinformation during the 2018 midterm elections and conducted similar operations in both 2020 and 2022. But these were targeted and scoped campaigns with limited effects. Even in Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine — the largest conventional war of the twenty-first century — the dreaded Russian cyber “shock and awe” has failed to achieve strategic effects.
But the cyber domain can hardly be ignored, either. The total number of publicly known cyber attacks recorded each year continues to rise precipitously. Hostile, state-aligned cyber activity has inflicted tremendous harm on the United States, whether China’s 2015 exfiltration of 22.1 million federal employee records from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Russia’s hack-and-leak operation targeting the 2016 presidential election, or emerging evidence of China’s mid-2021 compromise of Guam’s critical infrastructure via Volt Typhoon. Yet even in these most spectacular cases, such cyber activities have not led to escalation between rival states, much less escalation into armed conflict. Instead, the role of cyber operations during interstate competition looks more like a form of subversion, intelligence activity, or sub-crisis maneuvering.
As Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy Mieke Eoyang recently declared, “There are no mushroom clouds in cyber war.” If the prospect of earth-shattering, strategic weapons and complex deterrence schemes does not capture the reality of military cyber, then U.S. cyber policy needs a better frame. The 2023 Cyber Strategy seeks to provide one.
No More “Cyber for Cyber’s Sake”
Traditional cyber deterrence has often looked to a reciprocal, within-domain model, drawing from Cold War–era nuclear deterrence theories. To prevent cyber attacks, so the argument went, the United States had to develop its own strategic cyber capabilities and credibly threaten to use them. This model has remained popular despite the ways in which the mechanics of cyber operations awkwardly diverge from those of traditional nuclear deterrence. These include the challenges of attribution, the ephemeral nature of cyber accesses and exploits, and the fact that demonstrating a cyber capability might enable a target to patch their systems and mitigate the threat. Despite this growing list of caveats, it has remained a common argument that the best way to counter cyber threats is with cyber effects.
The 2023 Cyber Strategy brings this debate back to earth. As the document states, “Cyber capabilities held in reserve or employed in isolation render little deterrent effect on their own.” This is the first time that a high-level U.S. defense document has been so frank about the limits of cyber deterrence theory. Rather, the strategy continues, cyber capabilities are “most effective when used in concert with other instruments of national power, creating a deterrent greater than the sum of its parts.” This is a clear articulation of integrated deterrence, the concept that grounds both the 2023 National Security Strategy and the 2023 National Defense Strategy.
Although integrated deterrence has come under a fair bit of criticism for its attempts to blend military and nonmilitary means in a more holistic (and less defense-centric) national security posture, it makes a great deal of sense in a cyber context. How often have cyber threats been extinguished with cyber capabilities alone? Conversely, how often has cyber intelligence helped guide other instruments of national power? Cyber effects might rarely be decisive on their own, but it would be hard to find a modern national security challenge that does not have a cyber dimension — and a potential role for the military’s cyber capabilities.
If the new strategy accomplishes just one thing, it might be this: freeing military cyber from its silo and defining it as a more useful, practical tool for senior leaders in the Pentagon and White House alike.
Cyber Operations Were Made for Campaigning
Despite early speculation that the Joseph Biden White House might significantly curtail the operational authorities delegated to U.S. Cyber Command during the Donald Trump administration, it appears that no such changes have been made. Instead, the 2023 Cyber Strategy reaffirms the concepts of defend forward and persistent engagement, first introduced in the 2018 strategy and U.S. Cyber Command’s 2018 Command Vision, respectively. Those documents cast cyber operations as a perpetual contest between the United States and its adversaries, premised on speed, adaptability, and offensive action. A continuation of defend forward and persistent engagement also suggests a continuation of the delegated authorities necessary to make them work.
The 2023 Cyber Strategy proceeds to fold defend forward and persistent engagement into the broader strategic construct of “campaigning.” Campaigning, which joins integrated deterrence as the second major conceptual foundation of the 2022 National Defense Strategy, entails the “conduct and sequencing of logically linked military activities to achieve strategy-aligned objectives over time.” Although the concept of military campaigns is nearly as old as that of militaries themselves, campaigning also encompasses noncombat activities such as training exercises or freedom of navigation operations that can be used to achieve discrete military or nonmilitary goals. In current Department of Defense strategy documents, campaigning is portrayed as the answer to adversaries’ gray zone activities, enabling the U.S. military to undertake its own operations below the threshold of armed conflict.
Campaigning is a concept uniquely well suited to cyberspace and the day-to-day reality of cyber operations. The 2023 Cyber Strategy outlines several such campaigning activities: generating insights about cyber threats; disrupting and degrading malicious cyber actors by defending forward; and advancing joint force objectives, specifically by making adversaries “doubt the efficacy of their military capabilities as well as the belief that they can conduct unattributed coercive actions against the United States.” Each of these activities requires a rapid and continuous operational tempo. Each falls somewhere short of an act of war. Incorporating defend forward and persistent engagement within the logic of campaigning reflects another form of cyber realism: rather than serving as standalone concepts, they have become part of the drumbeat of interstate competition.
A Leaner Cyber Mission
Just as the 2023 Cyber Strategy is deliberate in its discussion of the utility of cyber operations, it is also frank about the limits of these operations. Far from committing the Pentagon to new, open-ended cyber missions, the strategy more often scopes and refines those missions that already exist.
This shift is especially apparent in the strategy’s treatment of homeland defense. “We once aspired to defend every network,” explained Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space John Plumb in a recent speech on the strategy, “but that is impractical.” Part of the reason arises from legal and normative concerns. Beyond the department’s statutory role in ensuring the cyber security of the defense industrial base, there are few authorities under which military cyber forces may directly interface with domestic civilian networks. These authorities are limited for a reason: Americans have a long history of skepticism about the use of military capabilities on U.S. soil, physical or virtual.
There are also practical reasons for this change. For one, the military is not especially well suited to defending civilian networks. Beyond providing a reassuring presence, there is probably little that a cyber protection team or National Guard cyber unit can do in an emergency that could not be done by a private network administrator or third-party vendor already familiar with the affected enterprise network. Even as policymakers push for more and more cyber “surge capacity” between defense and private or federal civilian networks, it is difficult to find cases in which these authorities have been activated, much less meaningfully employed.
By contrast, the entire defend forward mission set — the act of finding and disrupting malicious cyber activity before it can strike the U.S. homeland — is something that can only be pursued by military cyber operators equipped with appropriate authorities and capabilities. The 2023 Cyber Strategy steers the limited capacity of military cyber toward tasks for which it is uniquely well suited. At the same time, it seeks to bolster that capacity with internally facing reforms to cyber recruiting and retention as well as closer cooperation and information sharing with U.S. private industry. In this way, the Pentagon appears to recognize that the growth of cyber threats is outstripping the growth of military capacity to counter these threats directly and, therefore, the need to prioritize the allocation of cyber resources.
Next Steps for Cyber Realism
Of course, the 2023 Department of Defense Cyber Strategy could say quite a bit more in some areas. The United States has consistently condemned Russian cyber attacks against civilian populations and publicly detailed the legal basis of U.S. cyber operations. But despite this, the strategy acknowledges only that the United States will “reinforce norms of responsible behavior in cyberspace” while leaving the norms themselves undefined. The strategy also states that the United States will build the cyber capacity and capability of allies and partners, but it says less about the utility of cyber cooperation and how it might intersect with U.S. diplomatic aims. Such questions will need to wait for the first U.S. International Cyber Strategy, to be released by the State Department later this year.
There are also important points that the strategy does not address at all. There is no discussion, for instance, about how the Pentagon delineates cyber and information effects, despite the creation of new doctrine and bureaucratic entities intended to address this very problem. Furthermore, while the strategy articulates various lines of effort, it does not explore how the military should prioritize the development and employment of cyber capabilities against various threats, along differing time horizons, and at different thresholds of severity. Developing a cyber capability to deter high-end military aggression, for instance, might look quite different from developing a capability to sustain low-level friction. With regard to such an important foundational question as “What is the best use of the U.S. military’s formidable cyber arsenal?” the strategy remains silent.
Overall, the 2023 Cyber Strategy’s pragmatic frame is apparent throughout the document. In its treatment of cyber operations as one tool among many, its focus on the utility of cyber below the threshold of armed conflict, and its deliberately narrow discussion of the role of the U.S. military in cyberspace, the strategy brings a dose of realism to a field that quite literally emerged out of science fiction. The Pentagon’s thinking about the cyber domain, once abstract and speculative, has become grounded in real-world lessons and examples. And the cyber enterprise itself, having won its seat at the table, must now consider how to use that seat most effectively.
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Emerson T. Brooking is a resident senior fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council. From August 2022 to August 2023, he was a cyber policy advisor in the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy and served on the writing team for the 2023 Department of Defense Cyber Strategy.
Erica D. Lonergan is an assistant professor in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. She previously served on the writing team for the 2023 Department of Defense Cyber Strategy and was a senior director on the Cyberspace Solarium Commission.
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense.
Commentary
warontherocks.com · by Nick Danforth · September 25, 2023
11. One Team, One Fight? Integration versus Assimilation and the Problem of Othering
Excerpts:
One way to address this buy-in issue is to prioritize integration for junior and mid-grade officers in tactical or operational units. This targeted approach should seek to preempt the misunderstandings through education and socialization that lead to negative perceptions. One promising model for this comes from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Using the Small Steps model, the ODNI learned that incremental and small-scale approaches work much better than large mandated programs for building workplace diversity. So ODNI developed a simple program focusing on exposure through small events like coffee and small-group or individual-level interactions to help build diversity resilience.
Military leaders can similarly develop targeted strategies at their organizations to improve civ-mil integration at more junior levels. Again, areas benefiting from technical expertise likely provide ideal avenues for engagement. But implementing solutions without first acknowledging and addressing problematic mindsets practically guarantees failure.
The new workplace dynamic in DoD organizations will increasingly see uniformed and civilian personnel working closely together. While improving, work is needed to address the current othering perspective adopted by many. The military can create a new generation of workers, both military and civilian, who grow together and embrace, not simply accept, each other’s differences. For the military, the first step is quite simple: it needs to shift its mindset to push junior leaders to integrate, not assimilate, civilians into our workplaces.
One Team, One Fight? Integration versus Assimilation and the Problem of Othering - Modern War Institute
mwi.westpoint.edu · by James Settles · September 25, 2023
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Editor’s note: This is the latest article in “Rethinking Civ-Mil,” a series that endeavors to present expert commentary on diverse issues surrounding civil-military relations in the United States. Read all articles in the series here.
Special thanks to MWI’s research director, Dr. Max Margulies, and MWI research fellow Dr. Carrie A. Lee for their work as series editors.
One day at work, I overheard a conversation between two DoD civilians and their military supervisor. The officer asked who was attending an upcoming meeting. In a resigned tone, one of the civilians said they weren’t planning to attend. Typically, skipping a meeting is cause for celebration. But the reason given by one of the civilians caught my attention. She glumly stated, “we others aren’t wanted by the military in that discussion.”
In addition to its almost two million uniformed members, DoD employs approximately 890,000 civilians—making it the fourth largest employer of civilians in the world. The past twenty years of combat supported by DoD civilians has reaffirmed the necessity of a dual civilian/military national defense workforce. Moreover, rapid advances in technology have increased the need for civilians who provide much-needed technical skills in fields such as space, cyber, medical, and logistics. While some occasions may call for more exclusively civilian or military efforts given specific skills, going forward, most DoD organizations will likely see increases to integrated workspaces.
Despite this growing need, embracing civilians within military culture, traditions, and organizational structures remains a challenge. The 2022 Defense Business Board report found that “civilian development is not seen as a priority within the DoD culture.” There is a less discussed reason for civilian workforce integration failure: the cultural phenomenon of othering that occurs within military formations. A simple way to understand othering is as an in-group/out-group dynamic based on specific characteristics. Often, othering groups establish a hierarchy based on their purported, and self-identified, superiority.
When these microproblems arise, military and civilian leaders’ feelings toward one another often harden into a view that the “others” are obstacles or problems. The insidious consequence of othering comes when these biases begin to degrade the relationship between military leaders and civilians. The lack of trust between parties then transforms skepticism into dysfunction.
To holistically understand the problem, we must begin by examining how microlevel and early-stage integration failures at lower levels of the military establish a basis for othering. While there is no panacea for integrating distinct cultures, changes at the microlevel present a vital opportunity to establish positive and meaningful interactions and foster uniformed military members’ understanding of DoD civilians and contractors.
Unlike many of their civilian counterparts, all senior uniformed leaders have spent their careers within the rigid military structure. Thus, perceptions formed at tactical units, on small bases, and in offices that contain junior personnel provide insights into how factors may set in motion a series of long-lasting negative feelings between groups—and drive othering. The military needs a first step to improve this integration. That first step is shifting the mindset on what it means to integrate civilians into military organizations. The recommended shift is not organizational or policy-oriented, but cognitive. Before workforce integration strategies that promote training or career development can hope to achieve success, the military culture must undergo a shift in who is considered part of the in-group. Fixing the relationship between the two parties will improve cohesion in support at the junior level and reinforce civilian control at the senior level.
Understanding the Civ-Mil Landscape for Workforce Integration
Civilians have long been vital to the DoD workforce. They have a longstanding record of military workforce augmentation and are integrated into every level of the military, from small unit–level organizations who conduct missions in the field to the highest levels of the military that create internal policy and inform strategic decisions. Indeed, the ratio of civilians and contractors to uniformed service members is at near-historic highs. DoD has approximately 890,000 civilian employees and another approximately 390,000 contractors. Meanwhile, the uniformed military totals around 1.3 million active duty personnel.
The most integrated DoD workspaces, like those in the National Capital Region, often find ways to bridge their civilian and military workforces. As an example, the workforce of the Defense Intelligence Agency is split between 74 percent civilian and 26 percent military members. As a result, DIA devotes significant amounts of time and energy to creating workforce integration among its personnel. It accomplishes this integration through exposure and training during onboarding, maintaining offices dedicated to facilitating integration between groups, and promoting workplace collaboration. Other DoD entities in the National Capital Region, such as at the Defense Logistics Agency, which has twenty-four thousand civilians and just eight hundred military personnel, prioritize workforce and culture integration through detailed strategic planning.
Unfortunately, unsuccessful workforce integration often happens in many DoD organizations outside the beltway as the workforce ratios skew toward uniformed members. One reason this dysfunction happens is that at its core, the military values assimilation, often at the expense of integration. While integration brings together distinct elements in a complementary way while allowing the retention of unique qualities, assimilation sees the dominant culture subordinate the other. But civilians cannot—and should not—assimilate.
In fact, not assimilating is one of the many benefits civilians provide to the military. Civilians offer military organizations unique advantages, such as longevity and expertise in a specific field, which are more challenging to attain in the uniformed military. But perhaps most important, civilians offer military units and organizations diverse perspectives and worldviews from their distinct cultural upbringings, practices, and experiences that add depth to decision-making.
Yet, many military leaders struggle to understand that they cannot force civilians to assimilate. The predictable outcome is that differences between the two sides create an in-group/out-group dynamic. A lack of understanding between groups often crystallizes into deeply entrenched negative perceptions toward the other side. Simply put, we have an othering problem.
Take, for example, something seemingly superficial like work attire, which can cause othering. On the one hand, the military’s use of uniforms is an important unifying symbol of collective identity and adherence to specified standards. On the other hand, civilians adhere to a separate set of criteria for workplace attire that allows for more individuality. Yet this physical difference also serves as a point of friction for rigid, inexperienced military officers who struggle to connect with someone simply because of how they dress and are reticent to recognize the value proposition of integrating individuality into organizations that equate conformity with loyalty.
Military and civilian communities’ conceptions of time serve as another significant source of othering. One example is the differing views on work hours or duty day. On the one hand, the US code directs specific rules for civilian government employees’ work hours, and leaders who want a government civilian to work extra hours must authorize overtime or comp time. On the other hand, while there are rules that govern military member health and welfare, leaders can direct military members to perform certain work, such as guard shifts, at any time, day or night, based on mission requirements. Different sets of distinct rules in an integrated workspace result in an unnatural sorting based on work scheduling constraints, and often lead to a wrongheaded perception that civilians do not care about the mission or unit as much as the military. The frustration of military leaders pressed for mission accomplishment is understandable, and there may be civilian employees who attempt to manipulate the process. But the frustration could also come from a lack of experience and knowledge of the government civilian work culture, not because their employees or coworkers are lazy or uncommitted.
Perceptions Matter
Negative interactions with the perceived other may have an outsized impact because these interactions are formative and create a group narrative. At its core, othering is part of the human condition. It also connects to people’s desire to belong to a group. If one group sees itself as distinct from another (or better), that distinction influences the intergroup relationship dynamic. Moreover, perceptions formed by lived experience can have a powerful and anchoring effect. Once created, it is hard to shift or adjust those perceptions. As a result, simple misunderstandings or differences can turn into collective mistrust.
Negative perceptions can create a host of problems. When individuals form problematic perceptions, fissures fester and create a toxic and sometimes hostile working environment. A search of Reddit using the keywords “DoD civilians” is all it takes to uncover the vocal animosity from some military members toward the other. And while this may not be a representative sample of the general military population, it is still important to consider the causes of such vitriolic speech and sentiments. These voices speak to dysfunction within the workforce. What starts as small pockets of dissatisfaction with the culture can and does grow into a dominating overarching narrative.
If the narrative that civilians and the military do not like to work together solidifies, the next generation of national security professionals may pass on serving. Without a doubt, a loss of recruitment for civilians or military because of othering creates a national security dilemma. As DoD modernizes, especially in technology, gaining and retaining talent becomes vital. A 2021 report by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence found that the talent deficit poses the most significant challenge to enabling technological dominance. Yet, in 2023 only one service, the Marine Corps, expects to meet its recruiting goals. DoD will likely need to expand the civilian workforce in response to this declining recruitment, particularly within key technical positions. Surveys indicate that members of Generation Z prioritizes personal well-being, work-life balance, and diversity when contemplating where to work, more than previous generations. As a result, the value proposition to the next potential workforce must consider work culture equally crucial to other drivers of recruitment. With fewer Americans eligible to serve in the military, augmenting the workforce at the tactical and junior level with civilians shifts from a benefit to a mission-critical requirement.
Furthermore, the implications of the challenges mentioned will not stay tethered to the tactical level. At the strategic level, cultural challenges such as mistrust of the other also manifest. Increasingly, experts sound the alarm over the relationship between the military and civilian leadership. Indeed, just recently, twenty-one former senior defense officials signed an open letter reaffirming the core principles of civilian control of the military. Additionally, these specific instances of mistrust echo a broader, nationwide decrease in trust in the military.
Mindset Shift at the Unit Level
While neither civilian nor military cultures will ever completely align, proper integration requires acknowledgment that exclusionary frameworks degrade cohesion. Simply put, it’s okay to be different. But if both sides can accept the other as part of their respective in-groups, those superficial differences become less important. However, changing minds is hard to do. Negative perceptions formed early create an anchoring bias that could harden in a profoundly personal way for many individuals. Furthermore, change must occur in a culturally viable way to stick.
Can less experienced military leaders embrace, rather than accept, cultural change in their organizations? Absolutely, they can. Doing so will require top-down support and emphasis to adopt the perspective change. As senior leaders prioritize addressing integration at the junior level, military leaders must simultaneously look inward. The future workforce appears increasingly immune to performative acts. Thus, they will watch leaders’ actions rather than listen to their words.
Military members can gain early, easy wins by rethinking everyday interactions with their civilian counterparts. A 2021 study by an Army officer serving in the Army War College Fellows Program, “Effectively Integrating Army Civilians in Tactical Units,” discovered that many Army civilians felt ignored during large gatherings focused on military issues and members. The proposed solutions, such as increased communication and deliberate inclusion of civilians for organizational events, highlight how the military can improve its approach to civ-mil interactions by prioritizing the human experience.
Empathy and humility allow military leaders not simply to acknowledge the perspectives and needs of workmates as valid but, more importantly, to embrace the unique value they create. Moreover, uniformed service members should recognize that their civilian counterparts will closely watch interpersonal interactions to see if they are welcomed or simply tolerated. A mindset shift must occur before actions or policy prescriptions can succeed.
These changes must occur at the small-unit level. Indeed, the evidence suggests that top-down modifying actions, such as training, without unit-level buy-in will result in failure. An example of this phenomenon comes from the effectiveness of diversity acceptance following training. A 2019 Harvard Business Review study found that many commonly used diversity training techniques failed to yield meaningful and lasting results. Similarly, already established civ-mil integration training requirements in the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act or the 2020 Army Civilian Implementation Plan may underperform or fail if forced upon an audience that does not buy in.
One way to address this buy-in issue is to prioritize integration for junior and mid-grade officers in tactical or operational units. This targeted approach should seek to preempt the misunderstandings through education and socialization that lead to negative perceptions. One promising model for this comes from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Using the Small Steps model, the ODNI learned that incremental and small-scale approaches work much better than large mandated programs for building workplace diversity. So ODNI developed a simple program focusing on exposure through small events like coffee and small-group or individual-level interactions to help build diversity resilience.
Military leaders can similarly develop targeted strategies at their organizations to improve civ-mil integration at more junior levels. Again, areas benefiting from technical expertise likely provide ideal avenues for engagement. But implementing solutions without first acknowledging and addressing problematic mindsets practically guarantees failure.
The new workplace dynamic in DoD organizations will increasingly see uniformed and civilian personnel working closely together. While improving, work is needed to address the current othering perspective adopted by many. The military can create a new generation of workers, both military and civilian, who grow together and embrace, not simply accept, each other’s differences. For the military, the first step is quite simple: it needs to shift its mindset to push junior leaders to integrate, not assimilate, civilians into our workplaces.
James Settles is an active duty Army strategic intelligence officer assigned to the Joint Staff. He holds graduate degrees from Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and the National Intelligence University.
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: Staff Sgt. George B. Davis, US Army
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mwi.westpoint.edu · by James Settles · September 25, 2023
12. China’s Economic Turmoil Was Inevitable
Conclusion:
Chinese success is not a story of laissez-faire capitalism but one of gradual and pragmatic liberalization. That spirit of pragmatism has largely vanished from China. Since 2013, the Chinese government has adopted a statist view of economic growth. At the same time, an obsession with national security matters has weaponized the state at the expense of the private sector. Beijing has betrayed and rejected its own success formula, and the economy is paying the price. Ultimately, it is the Chinese people who will suffer for as long as their government gets wrong these basic economic decisions.
China’s Economic Turmoil Was Inevitable
The Illusory Success of State Capitalism
September 25, 2023
Foreign Affairs · by Yasheng Huang · September 25, 2023
As China’s economy steadily grew in recent decades, its advocates championed the country as an antithesis—and an antidote—to liberal economics and politics. This argument seemed credible as China grew rapidly under an autocratic and economically statist system. At the same time, the United States—that beacon of Western democracy—was suffering from economic and political sclerosis.
This contrast between the Chinese and U.S. systems, and their disparate performances, led to questions regarding the effectiveness of the Western model of free markets and liberal democracy. Perhaps, as some observers have argued—including, most recently, the economist Keyu Jin—the Chinese economic miracle could be evidence of an alternative playbook to that which enabled the West’s success. China has risen, in this view, thanks to the power of statism and the wisdom of Confucianism craftily combined with the efficiency of the private sector. As China’s growth rate consistently averaged nine percent a year, the basic ingredients in standard economics came into doubt. Perhaps market finance, the rule of law, and property rights were unnecessary and, from the perspective of Chinese culture, undesirable and counterproductive contrivances.
These arguments have become less credible lately, as Chinese growth slows and capital flees in search of overseas havens. In August alone, capital outflows amounted to $49 billion. Chinese capitalists are leaving, too, fearful for their safety and the security of their property. At this moment of maximum statism under Chinese President Xi Jinping, the country’s growth is faltering badly, revealing the effect of an increasingly interventionist government. Contrary to the widespread view, China’s economic miracle happened because the government retreated from the commanding heights of central planning and left room for the market economy. Economic statism is not the savior of the Chinese economy—it is an existential threat to it.
STATE OF PLAY
Many have sought to use China as an advertisement for statism, but the country’s economic success actually had little to do with it. Although Confucianism and statism are perennial features of the Chinese system, the economy’s superlative growth only began in 1978, after Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping launched a program of economic reforms. These reforms were, in many ways, utterly conventional—slowly opening the Chinese market to the world, allowing greater entrepreneurship, reducing government price controls, and privatizing state-owned industries—and their collective effect was a reduction of the power of the state. Rather than China’s growth being a testimony to the expanding power of the state relative to the market, the opposite is true.
This can be seen through a study of the first phase of significant Chinese growth in the 1980s. It was powered by small-scale rural entrepreneurship. Tens of millions of entrepreneurs from humble backgrounds built factories which flooded China with consumer durables, construction materials, food, and labor-intensive goods. This miracle owed nothing to the wisdom of the Chinese Communist Party, as Deng acknowledged in 1987. Hailing the rural economy as “our greatest success,” he declared that it was “one we had by no means anticipated. . . . [These enterprises] were like a new force that just came into being spontaneously. . . . The Central Committee [of the Chinese Communist Party] takes no credit for this.” The Chinese state endorsed—or benignly neglected—the spontaneous, bottom-up explosion of rural entrepreneurship, and the reformist leadership deserved full credit for not stifling it. The virtues of omission, however, should not be confused with those of commission. The Chinese economy took off because the state let go, not because it intervened.
A comparison of Chinese regions also shows this to be the case. The regions that have performed most strongly economically since 1978, including Guangdong and Zhejiang, have been the most market oriented and have experienced the least state interventionism. On the other hand, those regions in which the state intervenes the most, such as in China’s northeast, are mired in high debt and struggle with lower rates of growth.
SAFETY AND SECURITY
Classic economic theory holds that, in order to create the conditions conducive to economic growth, entrepreneurs need strong property rights. Yet China has never had these. Their absence has fed the myth that China grew because of statist finance and industrial policy.
But a study of the historical record reveals the flaws in this assumption. In 1979, the Chinese government released the capitalists who had been imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution. These businessmen then had their confiscated bank deposits, bonds, gold, and private homes returned to them. This episode shows that—although China has never had a U.S.-style constitution—Beijing moved away from Maoist totalitarianism under Deng, thereby instilling a sense of security and confidence among Chinese entrepreneurs.
Under Xi, this has changed. Chinese capitalists have once again been marginalized, harassed, sidelined, and arrested. An extreme instance of this treatment occurred in July 2021. Sun Dawu, an agriculture billionaire, was sentenced to 18 years in prison, ostensibly for violating land regulations but, in reality, for his outspokenness. China is moving backward, toward the Cultural Revolution, and away from Deng’s reforms, a development not lost on Chinese entrepreneurs. They have become reluctant to invest and are trying to move their capital abroad. Far from reaping a reward, Beijing is paying a price for its lack of the rule of law.
THE ISLAND ENGINE
Hong Kong has always been an outlier. From the end of British rule in 1997 to the enactment of the National Security Law in 2020, the city preserved property rights, a free press, and the rule of law. Many high-tech Chinese firms, recognizing the desirability of this business environment, established Hong Kong domiciles. The territory has always been the largest investor in China, though many Hong Kong investors are Chinese firms. These companies established themselves in Hong Kong to acquire its legal protections and enjoy asset security. They then plowed their capital into China. This kind of institutional laundering was legally ambiguous, but for many years the pragmatic reformist leaders chose to look away, allowing Chinese entrepreneurs to enjoy Hong Kong’s rule of law and market finance while building their businesses in China.
Hong Kong’s advanced capital market—and access to global capital in general—funded the early rounds of Chinese high-tech startups that began in the 1990s. Before the rise of China’s own venture capital industry, foreign capital was needed to fund Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, and many other high-tech startups. Much of the money came through Hong Kong. This was a globalization story par excellence credited to China’s open-door policy; to the knowledge and expertise of foreign capital; and to the hard work, ingenuity, and vision of Chinese entrepreneurs.
The forces that created China’s high-tech economy were the same as those responsible for the rural miracle of the 1980s. Both low- and high-tech Chinese entrepreneurship were caused by liberalization—globalization for the high-tech sector and financial reforms for the rural sector. Statist finance, eviscerating the autonomy of Hong Kong, and a retreat from globalization can only undermine the vitality of Chinese entrepreneurship and China’s growth engine.
THE INFRASTRUCTURE MYTH
Statism has been crucial in building China’s impressive infrastructure. But there is an inconvenient truth: the Chinese economy took off well before the gargantuan expansion of infrastructure in the country. The large-scale building of Chinese highways, for example, happened in two waves—one in the late 1990s and the other after 2008. In other words, China built its infrastructure after more than two decades of rapid growth. Growth enabled savings and raised government revenues as well as land values, and it funded state projects. Statism did not give rise to growth; growth gave rise to statism.
Infrastructure is beneficial to growth. But the Chinese infatuation with it poses a threat to future economic prospects. Continuously building roads, railways, and ports has plunged China into precarious indebtedness, and because of this infatuation, Beijing has chosen to invest in physical infrastructure at the expense of education and health in rural China. This prioritization has already had damaging effects. For example, the poor state of China’s primitive rural healthcare system in part justified the draconian COVID-19 measures in 2022, inflicting severe and possibly permanent damage to the Chinese economy.
China has also underinvested in its human capital relative to the size of its population. Among middle-income countries, China has the lowest proportion of high school graduates in its labor force, according to research done by Stanford University. There is the increasing possibility that the Chinese economy may stagnate, as growth stalls. Should this poor economic performance become prolonged, the Chinese brand of statism will be to blame.
VANISHED PRAGMATISM
Chinese success is not a story of laissez-faire capitalism but one of gradual and pragmatic liberalization. That spirit of pragmatism has largely vanished from China. Since 2013, the Chinese government has adopted a statist view of economic growth. At the same time, an obsession with national security matters has weaponized the state at the expense of the private sector. Beijing has betrayed and rejected its own success formula, and the economy is paying the price. Ultimately, it is the Chinese people who will suffer for as long as their government gets wrong these basic economic decisions.
Foreign Affairs · by Yasheng Huang · September 25, 2023
13. It’s Time for the West to Embrace Ukraine’s Way of War, Not Doubt It
Excerpts:
Ukraine’s ingenuity is yielding results. Ukraine maintains the battlefield initiative and its forces are advancing in Zaporizhia Oblast and near Bakhmut. Ukraine continues to liberate its territory and people and is slowly but steadily breaking through an incredibly formidable Russian prepared defense — and the Russian forces are unable to stop the advance, which is now moving in two directions.
Additionally, Ukrainian asymmetrical tactics in the Black Sea are preventing Russia’s Black Sea Fleet from operating freely, forcing Russia to reposition naval assets, and increasingly challenging Russian forces in Crimea — all operational developments of strategic significance.[2]
Ukraine’s way of war has yielded repeated successes against Russian forces. Ukrainian forces have, with Western support, defeated Russian objectives repeatedly: in Kyiv, in Kharkiv, in Kharkiv Oblast, in Kherson, and now, to a growing extent, in Ukraine’s south. Ukraine has prevented Russian forces from establishing air dominance and is eroding Russian naval superiority and increasingly making the Russian military’s presence less tenable in Crimea — realities that were previously unthinkable to many.
Ukraine’s adaptive decision-making in the current counteroffensive is enabling the Ukrainian advance and preventing Russia from accumulating enough forces to defend against a potential breakthrough. Ukrainian decision-making has not been flawless — and neither has the West’s, for that matter. However, Ukrainian adaptations to battlefield realities, especially when considering the immense constraints Ukraine is operating under, have been effective. Ukraine’s decision to pivot away from the type of large-scale mechanized breaches that its counteroffensive brigades were trained by NATO to perform, in hindsight, has enabled Ukraine’s progress.
IT’S TIME FOR THE WEST TO EMBRACE UKRAINE’S WAY OF WAR, NOT DOUBT IT
Sep 25, 2023 - ISW Press
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/it%E2%80%99s-time-west-embrace-ukraine%E2%80%99s-way-war-not-doubt-it
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It’s Time for the West to Embrace Ukraine’s Way of War, Not Doubt It
By Nataliya Bugayova
Ukrainian forces have adapted. Ukraine’s military decision-making is sound. Now is not the time for Western doubt but for the West to embrace Ukraine’s way of war and commit to sustaining Ukraine’s initiative on the battlefield.
The summer 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive faced a major challenge after Russia had months to build up its defenses in occupied Ukraine. The culmination of Ukraine’s 2022 counteroffensives — the first being the liberation of Kharkiv, followed by the Kherson offensive, attributable in no small part to the delayed provision of Western military aid — allowed Russia to build its defense in depth and prevented Ukraine from launching a third phase of its counteroffensive in winter 2022–2023.
But the Ukrainian forces have done what successful militaries do — they have adapted and are now advancing. Ukraine recognized the realities of Russian defenses much faster than Western policymakers, who were expecting a rapid Ukrainian breakthrough. ISW previously wrote in July that Ukrainian forces had adapted their tactics after they encountered initial setbacks and were increasingly successful in using small infantry assaults backed by precision fires to make inroads against Russian defenses.[1]
Ukraine’s ingenuity is yielding results. Ukraine maintains the battlefield initiative and its forces are advancing in Zaporizhia Oblast and near Bakhmut. Ukraine continues to liberate its territory and people and is slowly but steadily breaking through an incredibly formidable Russian prepared defense — and the Russian forces are unable to stop the advance, which is now moving in two directions.
Additionally, Ukrainian asymmetrical tactics in the Black Sea are preventing Russia’s Black Sea Fleet from operating freely, forcing Russia to reposition naval assets, and increasingly challenging Russian forces in Crimea — all operational developments of strategic significance.[2]
Ukraine’s way of war has yielded repeated successes against Russian forces. Ukrainian forces have, with Western support, defeated Russian objectives repeatedly: in Kyiv, in Kharkiv, in Kharkiv Oblast, in Kherson, and now, to a growing extent, in Ukraine’s south. Ukraine has prevented Russian forces from establishing air dominance and is eroding Russian naval superiority and increasingly making the Russian military’s presence less tenable in Crimea — realities that were previously unthinkable to many.
Ukraine’s adaptive decision-making in the current counteroffensive is enabling the Ukrainian advance and preventing Russia from accumulating enough forces to defend against a potential breakthrough. Ukrainian decision-making has not been flawless — and neither has the West’s, for that matter. However, Ukrainian adaptations to battlefield realities, especially when considering the immense constraints Ukraine is operating under, have been effective. Ukraine’s decision to pivot away from the type of large-scale mechanized breaches that its counteroffensive brigades were trained by NATO to perform, in hindsight, has enabled Ukraine’s progress.
Ukraine’s decision to keep pressure on Russian forces throughout the entire frontline instead of focusing all of Ukraine’s combat power on one line of attack in the direction of Melitopol, which some Western advisors preferred, was a good adaptation. Ukraine’s decision to hold and conduct counterattacks in Bakhmut allowed it to pin down a substantial portion of the combat power of Russia’s relatively elite airborne (VDV) forces and deny the creation of a strategic Russian reserve.[3] The recent Ukrainian advances in Zaporizhia Oblast are likely forcing the Russians to laterally redeploy their units away from around Bakhmut, where Ukrainian forces are advancing too.[4]
The United States should embrace its partnership with a competent ally who also leads. We are used to partners that require us to lead — from proxy forces we trained to our allies who rely on us for security. In Ukraine, however, the United States has a partner that is leading on the battlefield and knows its operational environment, its enemy, and its own capabilities and limitations. The Ukrainians have repeatedly demonstrated that they understand this war and can adapt. Most importantly, Ukraine still maintains a relentless will to fight.
Now is not the time for Western doubt. The West must reinforce its military and diplomatic commitments and lean in to help sustain Ukraine’s battlefield momentum. Ukraine is still facing an existential challenge from Russia, which requires Western aid to militarily defeat.
Leaning in means embracing Ukraine’s campaign design.
It means ensuring that the Western training of Ukrainian troops is done in conditions in which Ukraine fights at its best.
It means accelerating the development and delivery of specific capabilities that Ukraine needs with two goals: delaying the culmination of Ukraine’s current counteroffensive to ensure it achieves its maximum possible effect (maximally liberates critical terrain, depletes Russia’s capabilities, and forces Russia into suboptimal force allocations across the frontline to expose Russian forces to new lines of counterattacks) and setting conditions for the current counteroffensive’s follow-on phase. Ukraine’s supporters must empower Ukraine to prevent Russian forces from enjoying a breather on the battlefield in winter 2023–2024 as they did in winter 2022–2023.
The West should also reframe expectations about how Ukraine’s weather conditions in the fall and winter may affect the prospects for the Ukrainian counteroffensive. Ukrainian operations can and will likely continue even in rain and mud, even if they occur at a slower pace. Ukraine can intensify its pace again when muddy conditions end in the spring of 2024 if the West provides Ukraine proper support. The key is denying Russia the reprieve it desperately needs over the winter. Last year the West did not proactively resource Ukrainian momentum after Ukraine’s successful counteroffensives in the Kharkiv region and Kherson in 2022, which allowed Russia to regroup and dig in. We must learn from that mistake.
The West should also help shape strategic communications to set proper expectations around Ukraine’s progress. Ukraine can win this war militarily, but it will take more than one counteroffensive operation. It will take as many campaigns as it takes for Ukraine to liberate its territory and its people. The West should be prepared to support them all because the fundamentals shaping this conflict have not changed: Ukraine can win this war, Russia can only be defeated on the battlefield, and what is at stake includes Ukraine’s existence and vital US interests.
The West embracing Ukraine’s way of war is key to preserving the dominance of Western and Ukrainian decision-making. The Kremlin is trying to slow or impair Western and Ukrainian decision-making — one of the few ways in which Russian President Vladimir Putin can advance his objectives. Slowed Western decision-making resulting in lagging military aid deliveries can provide Russia with relief. Giving Russia such relief — be it at the operational (winter 2022–2023) or strategic level (the years between Russia’s first and second invasions of Ukraine) — proved catastrophic. Given the gift of time, Russia will regroup and attack again. However, Russia’s Achilles heel remains its inability to rapidly pivot when faced with relentless pressure or consecutive setbacks. Faced with constant pressure over time with no relief, the Russians will likely start to crack. This is the effect Ukraine’s current counteroffensive strategy is seeking to achieve, and it can only be realized if the West embraces Ukraine’s way of war for this phase of the counteroffensive and beyond.
[1] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine%E2%80%99s-sustaine...
[2] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...
[3] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine%E2%80%99s-operatio...
[4] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...
14. ‘I am willing to wait for months’: Chinese Tiananmen critic ready for long haul in Taiwan transit lounge
‘I am willing to wait for months’: Chinese Tiananmen critic ready for long haul in Taiwan transit lounge
Chen Siming pleads for safe passage to US, saying his situation is ‘dangerous and urgent’ amid Beijing’s pursuit of him
The Guardian · by Helen Davidson · September 24, 2023
A Chinese dissident who has taken refuge in a Taiwan airport during a stopover has said he is prepared to wait months if needed, in order to get safe passage to a third country.
Chen Siming is known for regularly commemorating the Tiananmen Square massacre of 4 June 1989 – an event banned from discussion or acknowledgement inside China – and has been repeatedly detained around the anniversary.
China unveils Taiwan economic ‘integration’ plan as warships conduct manoeuvres off coast
Read more
In a video posted to social media shortly after his arrival in Taiwan on Friday, Chen said that recently the authorities’ targeting of him had grown “more and more cruel and crazy”.
He is now asking the government in Taiwan to assist him in resettling in a third country, ideally the US, saying his “situation was dangerous and urgent”.
“I am willing to wait for months, because I feel safe in Taiwan,” Chen told the Guardian. “I want to go to the United States. I think Taiwan is very safe and there are no security problems. Taiwan has democracy and liberty as its shelter, so Taiwan is safe for me personally. But security is not my first option in where I settle, I have a lot of work to do in the US.”
Chen was travelling from Thailand to Guangzhou, China, transiting through Taipei’s Taoyuan international airport on Friday. He did not board the second flight, and has refused requests to return to Thailand, where he has said he fears deportation to China.
Security is not my first option in where I settle, I have a lot of work to do in the US.
Chen Siming
A similar case suggests Chen could be waiting some time. In 2018-2019 two Chinese dissidents, Yan Bojun and Liu Xinglian, spent four months in a Taiwan airport transit area after also flying in from Thailand and refusing to reboard a flight to Beijing. The United Nations high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) gave them temporary asylum status, and after a long impasse, the pair flew to Singapore and were then allowed to reenter Taiwan legally on short-term humanitarian visas. They eventually resettled in Canada.
Chen told the Guardian he had fled to Laos from China in July, but was urged by friends to move on after the arrest there of human rights lawyer Lu Siwei later that month. In Bangkok he registered with the UNHCR for a refugee assessment, and said he was quickly granted a one-year asylum ID.
E-Ling Chiu, the national director of Amnesty International Taiwan, called on Taiwan’s government to allow Chen out of the airport into Taiwan and assist his transfer to a third country.
Chen Siming sits beside a notice that reads ‘Commemorate June 4 on 2021 June 4’ in central China’s Hunan province on that day. Photograph: AP
Chiu said Taiwanese authorities had previously deported asylum seekers back to their last point of departure. “If the Taiwanese government take a deportation position, they can send him back to Thailand,” she said. “But if they deport him back to China it will violate the non-refoulement principle. It’s not acceptable.”
Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, which handles Taiwan-China matters, told the Guardian it was handling the case of the stranded dissident, but would not provide further details.
Taiwan does not have a refugee program that offers a pathway to protection, but it has decriminalised the act of arriving unlawfully to seek political asylum. The prospect of a streamlined refugee process is politically fraught in Taiwan, where political parties and the public cite fears of Chinese infiltration and espionage. Advocates say a proper and transparent process would see background checks carried out on applicants, as other countries do.
“It’s a fear of the threat of China, but [not having a system] is not a rational solution,” Chiu said.
William Nee, a research and advocacy coordinator for the Chinese Human Rights Defenders organisation, said there were “a lot of people desperate to leave China”, pointing to the dangerous journeys taken by Chen and Lu into Beijing-friendly Laos, and the growing number of Chinese people crossing the Darien Gap between South and Central America, into Mexico and then the US.
Taiwan’s government needed to “work constructively” with other countries to find protection for Chen, Nee said.
The UNHCR, which does not have a presence in Taiwan, has been contacted for comment.
The Guardian · by Helen Davidson · September 24, 2023
15. Do We Stand At a 'Tipping Point' in Global Security?
Excerpts:
So do we stand at a tipping point in global security? I would say we are certainly approaching such a point in Eastern Europe and the Western Pacific, where aggressors are defying defenders of the regional Eurasian order to make good on their security commitments, and hope to discredit them and the system if they can’t. If aggressors succeed on the regional level, they could well hollow out the global order as a whole, casting us into a dark world.
It behooves us to stand against their effort—putting forth an effort equaling that of our forebears.
Do We Stand At a 'Tipping Point' in Global Security?
19fortyfive.com · by James Holmes · September 25, 2023
Remarks presented by our own Dr. James Holmes at Global Security Forum ’23, World Affairs Council of Connecticut, Hartford, CT, September 22, 2023.
The question posed by the organizers is: Will Taiwan be a tipping point in global security? Well, why don’t we start at the beginning and ask what a tipping point is.
Canvassing different dictionary definitions, there are some common denominators. A tipping point always involves a change of state. It always involves cause-and-effect. And it always involves time, time being the time consumed during the phase shift from one condition to another. Some definitions add that change is dramatic at the tipping point or irreversible after it. I don’t necessarily go along with those claims. Even a sweeping transformation may be hard to perceive when it happens, while changes of state are reversible in many cases.
Because I got my start as a marine engineer working with boilers, engines, and generators, I incline to Malcolm Gladwell’s definition of a tipping point as a “boiling point.” I like it because it vividly conveys the image of a change from one state to another, and because it brings in the human factor where other definitions do not.
The boiling point, of course, is the temperature at which a substance begins changing from one physical state to another, such as from liquid water to steam within a boiler. Boiler tenders light fires, bring the water up to the boiling point, and initiate a phase change from water into vapor, which has very different properties. Once the boiling process is complete you can “superheat” steam, raising the temperature until it is dry vapor useful for spinning the turbines in machinery. But the change is not irreversible, because you can condense steam after extracting energy from it. You send it through a heat exchanger, it reverts to water, you feed it into the boiler again, and the steam cycle starts all over.
So you can approach the boiling point from below and above, and engineers do so as a matter of routine. Human beings can regulate changes of state.
The boiling-point metaphor is also enlightening because the rate at which you inject thermal energy — heat — into the system affects how the boiling process comes about, and it affects the system itself. You can bring up the temperature slowly and evenly to avoid damaging the plant. Machinery hates fast transients, which is why you warm it up before putting it into operation. Or you can turn up the heat suddenly and swiftly. That puts a lot of stress on the machinery, even as it hastens the onset and pace of the phase shift.
The boiling point makes a surprisingly illuminating analogy from the physical sciences to the realm of diplomacy and strategy. A stimulus can be applied slowly and gradually to some system — for our purposes today, the system being the rules-based international order put in place after World War II, as well as the hemispheric defense system here in the Americas. A slow stimulus of limited magnitude makes a weak catalyst for a bold, decisive political or military response from custodians of the system. It tends to summon forth a tepid response. In politics as in the sciences, then, tipping points are neither inevitable nor irrevocable. People — defenders as well as opponents of the system — have a say in them.
If a weak to moderate stimulus tends to provoke a weak to moderate reaction, a sudden, wrenching stimulus tends to apply an irresistible catalyst for action. You see this pattern in my go-to historical analogy for thinking about U.S. naval and military preparedness for a Pacific war today. Namely, the fall of France to German arms in 1940. That trauma launched the United States into an all-out military buildup.
Before 1940, Congress and the Franklin Roosevelt administration had been gradually rebuilding the U.S. Navy from its interwar low as storm clouds gathered in Europe and Asia. The rise of Nazism, Italian fascism, and Japanese militarism in the 1930s was the counterpart to gradually infusing heat into our imaginary power plant. So long as the threat appeared remote and abstract, it brought about an incremental response from Washington DC in terms of lawmaking and shipbuilding.
That changed when France, regarded as Europe’s foremost military power and bulwark against totalitarianism, collapsed within weeks of a German Army onslaught. Its fall was the equivalent of suddenly redlining the burners in our imaginary boiler, with all the stresses on hardware that an abrupt, fiery transient entails. Events in Europe shattered old ways of thinking in Washington. The German triumph scared the daylights out of U.S. lawmakers and policymakers, prompting them to pass the Two-Ocean Navy Act of 1940, a measure that in effect authorized the construction of a second, shinier, more advanced U.S. Navy to go along with the existing fleet. Once the two-ocean navy took to the sea starting in 1943, the United States had enough ships to station what amounted to a standalone navy on each coast for the first time in its history.
So cataclysm in Europe drove the American government, military, and society past a tipping point between a time when war seemed far away and hypothetical and a time when it seemed to be bearing down on them in the Western Hemisphere, threatening to collapse the hemispheric safety zone Americans and their neighbors had long enjoyed. A shock in Europe, and the political and military actions it prompted, stood the republic in good stead in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters during World War II.
So why hasn’t Russia’s war on Ukraine driven us past a tipping point in similar fashion, goading us to mount another massive effort to prepare for war? You’d think it would. The global order over which we preside is under assault. Once again a major European nation has come under attack from a predatory neighbor at the same time a domineering Pacific power beats war drums every day. But you don’t get the same sense of urgency that was displayed by decisionmakers in the summer of 1940. Let me posit three candidate explanations as to why Ukraine has not jolted the system into action today the way France did back then. This may help us gaze through a glass darkly, glimpsing the fallout should China attack Taiwan.
-First: Unlike France, Ukraine has not fallen. That Ukraine could stand or even prevail cushions the psychological shock from Russia’s invasion, just as the shock effect back then would have been feebler had France partially ridden out the German invasion in 1940 the way it had in 1914. It took the United States until 1917 to intervene in World War I, and in fact the victor in the 1916 presidential election ran on a platform of staying out of Europe’s war. Today seems to be more 1914 than 1940.
-Second: Putin would love to fracture NATO, but unlike Hitler he does not seem hell-bent on conquering all of Europe and thus manifesting a direct threat to the Americas. Limited Russian aims muffle the stimulus for an all-out response from the United States, its allies, and its partners.
-Third: The Pacific aggressor, Communist China, has not yet made open war on its neighbors the way imperial Japan did starting in 1931, when it invaded Manchuria. China’s aggression is low-grade aggression. Forbearance is a deliberate choice, not out of goodwill but because of strategy. Beijing prefers to compete in the “gray zone” precisely to avoid applying a catalyst for wholesale alliance-building and military preparations on the part of guardians of the regional and global order. It seems to hope to sweep East Asia past a tipping point from the global rules-based order into an age of Chinese regional dominion — but to usher in this change of state with as little turbulence as possible. In that sense Chinese Communist overseers are like a marine engineer heating up the plant to the boiling point slowly and steadily. As I said before, it is possible to pass a tipping point with little drama. And in fact that would delight foes of the system.
So do we stand at a tipping point in global security? I would say we are certainly approaching such a point in Eastern Europe and the Western Pacific, where aggressors are defying defenders of the regional Eurasian order to make good on their security commitments, and hope to discredit them and the system if they can’t. If aggressors succeed on the regional level, they could well hollow out the global order as a whole, casting us into a dark world.
It behooves us to stand against their effort—putting forth an effort equaling that of our forebears.
About the Author
James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and a Nonresident Fellow at the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs. The views voiced here are his alone.
19fortyfive.com · by James Holmes · September 25, 2023
16. Putin Has a Problem: Ukraine Wants Every 'Square Inch' of Territory Back from Russia
Putin Has a Problem: Ukraine Wants Every 'Square Inch' of Territory Back from Russia
19fortyfive.com · by John Rossomando · September 24, 2023
Regaining sovereignty over every square inch of Ukrainian territory remains Ukraine’s primary objective. Uneven training and equipment of its armed forces and the lack of air supremacy have ground its counteroffensive to a snail’s pace. More recently, the pace of isolated attacks against targets in occupied Crimea has picked up in pace with a series of partisan raids and missile attacks.
Western limitations imposed on Ukraine’s use of its weaponry have hamstrung the Ukrainians in their ability to bring the war to the Russians. Britain’s Storm Shadow cruise missiles have a range of up to 347 miles. Germany’s Taurus missiles have a range of 310 miles.
The missiles can hit targets on occupied Crimea; however, they could also theoretically be used to target Moscow.
Ukraine Looks For Wonder Weapons to Win
Ukraine has put a premium on replacing its Soviet-era weaponry with the latest American and European weapons. These include HIMARS rockets, ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles, M-1 Abrams tanks, M-2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, Challenger 2 tanks, Leopard tanks, and F-16s among others.
Russian propagandists were quick to point out when they knocked out these Western armored vehicles.
Defeating the Russian army will not be an easy task. Vladimir Putin and his inner circle remain determined to hold onto Ukraine until the bitter end and waste as many men as possible to ensure that Ukraine does not win.
Ukraine had major successes in 2022 with the liberation of Kharkiv and the northern parts of the country near Kyiv; however, those same successes have not been replicated along the southern front. Russian troops are demoralized in some areas; however, they continue to wage a stubborn resistance.
Ukraine’s Army Needs Improvement
No matter how good the weapons the Ukrainians have are, they are only as good as Ukraine’s soldiers and leaders. Due to uneven training and heavy losses the Ukrainian army has struggled to break through Russian lines and sever the land bridge linking the Donbas with Crimea.
Ukraine has struggled to employ combined-arms tactics that have infantry, armor, and airpower working together against their determined enemy.
“Even if Ukraine were able to fix all these tactical issues, it would still struggle to overcome Russian defences without more mine-clearing equipment, short-range air defence, air power and a significant advantage over Russia in stocks of artillery ammunition. Ukraine’s forces are highly motivated but face a daunting task against minefields, entrenchments and competent Russian defenders,” Franz-Stefan Gady is the founder and CEO of Gady Consulting and a consulting senior fellow with the Institute for International Strategic Studies, and Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, wrote in a piece that appeared in The Economist in July. “A Ukrainian force that has struggled to coordinate the different parts of its ground force will find it even harder to integrate them with air power, which Ukraine currently lacks. Integrating Western air power—Ukraine hopes to get American f-16 fighters soon—and using it effectively is likely to take years. It would be rash to pin too much hope on it when it arrives: having air power does not guarantee air superiority, which is not easily gained or maintained on a battlefield where advanced air defences are plentiful and the opponent’s air force outnumbers yours.”
Victory is a Way Away
Ukraine’s troops are getting better, but so are the Russians. Sobriety and realism are needed. Ukraine is determined to regain its territory, but Russia is just as determined to keep its conquests.
A major goal for the Ukrainian army should be reforming its operations to develop a more qualitative edge over Russia. Victory could be years away. Anyone who thinks it will be around the corner is lying to themselves and to those around them.
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
From the Vault
‘Vacuum Bombs Destroyed’: Ukraine Footage Shows Putin’s Thermobaric Rockets Destroyed
BOOM! Ukraine Video Shows Precision Strike on Russian Air-Defense System
19fortyfive.com · by John Rossomando · September 24, 2023
17. The Rise and Fall of China’s Wolf Warrior Diplomacy
Excerpts:
To some extent, wolf warrior diplomacy has been declining of late, and China’s diplomacy is entering a period of adjustment. This is reflected in the fact that Zhao Lijian has been transferred to a relatively low-profile department within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Lu Shaye will probably retire soon.
In a group study session of the Politburo, Xi Jinping “stressed adopting a narrative tone that reflects openness and confidence, yet conveys modesty and humility, in a bid to shape a reliable, admirable and respectable image of China.” These moves appear to be an attempt to tone down China’s confrontational diplomatic and media rhetoric and soften Chinese foreign policies. Beijing does not want its foreign policies to jeopardize its economic relations with the West, particularly during times of domestic economic slowdown.
It will still take time to see how Beijing is adjusting its foreign policies, particularly its relations with the West. If the adjustment is substantive and comprehensive, wolf warrior diplomacy may only have been a temporary phenomenon. It further suggests that Chinese diplomacy displays belligerence at certain times – reflecting a kind of stress feedback from Beijing on sensitive diplomatic issues and conflicts – but that does not suggest a fundamental shift in China’s foreign policies.
However, as indicated by the three domestic factors discussed above, the seeds of wolf warrior diplomacy are still present in Chinese politics despite the ongoing diplomatic adjustment. China should reconsider its relations with the West carefully, develop a long-term strategic vision, and not allow short-term and tactical needs to drive long-term strategies. Wolf warrior diplomacy, or other types of coercive diplomacy, may help the Chinese government avoid losing face at home and in the international community, but its long-term effects could be far-reaching and negative.
The Rise and Fall of China’s Wolf Warrior Diplomacy
China’s shift toward coercive diplomacy has domestic sources that are important to consider, even as the government signals a new approach.
By Duan Xiaolin and Liu Yitong
September 22, 2023
thediplomat.com · by Duan Xiaolin · September 22, 2023
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China’s practice of “wolf warrior diplomacy,” a new style of coercive diplomacy, has aroused global anxieties over Beijing’s assertiveness in recent years. There are several high-profile examples.
In March 2020, Zhao Lijian, then the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, fueled a conspiracy theory that the United States military could have brought COVID-19 to China during the Military World Games, held in Wuhan in October 2019.
Later in 2020, Zhao posted an image on Twitter depicting an Australian soldier cutting the throat of an Afghan child, after the release of the Brereton Report into alleged war crimes by Australian forces. The tweet caused a diplomatic standoff between China and Australia.
China’s Ambassador to France, Lu Shaye, is another outspoken wolf warrior diplomat. Lu spoke highly of China’s approach to the COVID-19 pandemic and criticized the West’s policies for combating the virus. Lu repeatedly insulted French lawmakers, scholars, and media for their pro-Taiwan rhetoric. In the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Lu questioned the sovereign status of the former Soviet Republics in eastern Europe, including Ukraine, in an interview in April 2023.
Unlike Chinese diplomats under Deng Xiaoping, who were mostly cautious and bureaucratic and rarely engaged foreign media, wolf warrior diplomats in the Xi Jinping era have been proactive in defending China’s national interests against perceived foreign hostility, while they are apparently keen to attract popular attention.
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Domestic Sources of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy
It is worth noting that only a small number of Chinese diplomats are referred to as “wolf warriors” – a term that Chinese officials strongly dislike. These diplomats’ controversial comments and actions usually relate to sensitive issues such as Xinjiang, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, which are termed China’s “core interests” in the official discourse.
Another salient feature of wolf warrior diplomacy has been the defense of China’s COVID-19 pandemic control policies, outside of China’s traditional geostrategic interests. How China and Western states variously handled the pandemic has been described as “a contest among states with different regimes, national powers, governing capabilities, and even civilizations” (制度之争, 国力之争, 治理能力之争, 甚至是文明之争). In this sense, Chinese diplomats have been proactive in defending China, for example, when Western states insisted on an investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 virus or criticized the efficacy of China’s “zero COVID” policy.
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China’s wolf warrior diplomacy has domestic sources that are important to consider, with three major factors at play: individual incentives; institutional changes in China’s waixuan (外宣, external propaganda) system; and China’s use of strategic diversion.
First, on a personal level, diplomats have several incentives to act proactively and harshly. Chinese diplomats may be motivated by a desire to enhance their personal prestige and career prospects, as well as to demonstrate loyalty to their superiors. The practice of wolf warrior diplomacy and the subsequent media exposure it brings can serve as a short cut for some opportunistic diplomats to out-compete their colleagues and secure a promotion.
There is also a possibility that some wolf warrior diplomats are not motivated only by opportunistic gains, but by fear that they will be criticized by their superiors or by domestic nationalists for being too “soft” if they do not take a harsh line. There is a tradition in Chinese politics that it is politically expected for a bureaucrat or diplomat to act proactively against perceived foreign interference, rather than to act diplomatically.
Second, bureaucratic changes in China’s waixuan system have encouraged wolf warrior diplomacy and propaganda. In Deng Xiaoping’s era, Chinese diplomacy, including waixuan, served the domestic needs of economic development. Beijing reiterated that the objective of waixuan was to minimize external misunderstandings about salient issues, to promote China’s investment climate, and to strategically promote a friendly international atmosphere. Yet waixuan has evolved to become an incompatible mixture of diplomacy and propaganda that has incentivized more assertive behavior in foreign affairs.
A dangerous trajectory is “waixuan neixuan hua” (外宣内宣化) referring to the trend of conducting waixuan using the same methods as neixuan – domestic propaganda). Waixuan now puts more emphasis on the promotion of Chinese socialism and its economic development model, its foreign strategies, and China’s policies on Taiwan, Xinjiang, Tibet, the South China Sea, and human rights, and tolerates no foreign interference in China’s geostrategic interests and domestic politics. In practice, Beijing has asked Chinese diplomats to more directly confront perceived foreign interference on issues related to China’s core national interests.
Third, strategic diversion is important to understanding China’s wolf warrior diplomacy. This is manifested in Beijing’s diversionary tactics of “talking tough” and “blaming others” in times of diplomatic crisis in order to shake off blame, create scapegoats, and instigate nationalistic sentiments. For example, the provincial government in Hubei failed to contain the spread of COVID-19 in the early stages of the outbreak, which led to international criticism. Chinese diplomats routinely steered clear of this narrative and instead emphasized the effectiveness of the central government’s later-stage response, and China’s contributions to resolving the global public health crisis.
Earlier, as pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong escalated, the Chinese government blamed interference by “hostile foreign forces” led by the United States and the United Kingdom, in addition to “anti-China destabilizing forces” inside Hong Kong. By blaming domestic and foreign forces for the discontent in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, Beijing has avoided publicly acknowledging its own policy failures in those regions and minimized the negative impact of those failures on the regime. This has allowed Beijing to buy more time and push through tactical reforms while preserving the basic political system.
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The Decline of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy?
To some extent, wolf warrior diplomacy has been declining of late, and China’s diplomacy is entering a period of adjustment. This is reflected in the fact that Zhao Lijian has been transferred to a relatively low-profile department within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Lu Shaye will probably retire soon.
In a group study session of the Politburo, Xi Jinping “stressed adopting a narrative tone that reflects openness and confidence, yet conveys modesty and humility, in a bid to shape a reliable, admirable and respectable image of China.” These moves appear to be an attempt to tone down China’s confrontational diplomatic and media rhetoric and soften Chinese foreign policies. Beijing does not want its foreign policies to jeopardize its economic relations with the West, particularly during times of domestic economic slowdown.
It will still take time to see how Beijing is adjusting its foreign policies, particularly its relations with the West. If the adjustment is substantive and comprehensive, wolf warrior diplomacy may only have been a temporary phenomenon. It further suggests that Chinese diplomacy displays belligerence at certain times – reflecting a kind of stress feedback from Beijing on sensitive diplomatic issues and conflicts – but that does not suggest a fundamental shift in China’s foreign policies.
However, as indicated by the three domestic factors discussed above, the seeds of wolf warrior diplomacy are still present in Chinese politics despite the ongoing diplomatic adjustment. China should reconsider its relations with the West carefully, develop a long-term strategic vision, and not allow short-term and tactical needs to drive long-term strategies. Wolf warrior diplomacy, or other types of coercive diplomacy, may help the Chinese government avoid losing face at home and in the international community, but its long-term effects could be far-reaching and negative.
This article is based on the findings of a research paper published in The Pacific Review, an international relations journal covering the interactions of the countries of the Asia-Pacific.
GUEST AUTHOR
Duan Xiaolin
Duan Xiaolin is an assistant professor in the Global Studies program at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen).
GUEST AUTHOR
Liu Yitong
Liu Yitong is a teaching assistant in the Global Studies program at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen), having received an M.A. from the program.
thediplomat.com · by Duan Xiaolin · September 22, 2023
18. World War III: Could China 'Annihilate' U.S. Military Bases in a War?
World War III: Could China 'Annihilate' U.S. Military Bases in a War?
19fortyfive.com · by Brandon Weichert · September 24, 2023
The United States will be at war soon with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), or at least that’s what many in Washington, D.C. believe. Should such a conflict erupt, given the geographical makeup of the region, the ability for the US military to reliably, quickly respond to any Chinese provocation, say against Taiwan, would be critical.
That is why for many years, the United States has enhanced its force presence in what it now calls the Indo-Pacific.
On social media today, there is a picture of the Earth that has gone viral. It is unlike any other picture of the planet you may have seen. The entire image is blue and along the wee edges of the image are some yellowish bits indicating land. This is an image of the Pacific Ocean side of the Earth. This massive expanse of water is what separates the United States from China.
For the United States to be primed to respond in a timely fashion to any potential Chinese attack—or even a blockade—of Taiwan, the Americans must pre-position the bulk of their forces to bases nearer to China. They must also move their naval assets closer to China.
Geography is Not on America’s Side in the Pacific
The only problem with this strategy is that, given the finite amount of territory upon which to base their air, Marine, and naval assets, they risk turning those regions and warships into easy targets for China’s massive—and growing—missile arsenal.
You see, even though America’s military is more technologically advanced than China’s (though even that cannot be taken for granted in key areas), since any potential conflict with China would be waged closer to their shores, means that America would have to project power across vast distances to stop whatever nefarious goals that China has as it relates to Taiwan.
The United States faces a double-edged sword: it needs to have its forces deployed nearer to China so that it can reliably respond to any provocation by China. Those forces must be large enough to rollback what will be basically a full-court press (militarily speaking) by China.
At the same time, by basing its forces within firing range of China’s massive missile arsenal, Washington is leaving open the serious possibility that the Chinese will be able to basically weaken American forces so much that the Americans couldn’t respond.
This is certainly the Chinese strategy.
Between China’s forward-deployed missiles targeting bases, such as Guam, and China’s large anti-ship ballistic missile arsenals, should China opt to launch a bolt-from-the-blue attack on Taiwan, they will have the advantage over the Americans.
Beijing’s forces would be able to catch the Americans totally by surprise and their long-range missiles could swamp whatever defenses around US military facilities in the Indo-Pacific existed. China’s anti-ship missiles could also prevent the Americans from moving their potent aircraft carriers into the region, meaning China would have free reign.
The Way Forward
A better solution would be to harden US military bases in the region. That process has already been underway for years. The US military needs to make its bases in the region able to withstand as much of a pounding as China’s missile forces can dish out.
Another defensive action American forces can take would be to deploy anti-missile systems, such as Patriot Missiles and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) to US bases in large numbers. These systems have a track record of knocking down incoming ballistic missiles. The point would not be to take out all the missiles.
Given China’s arsenal, that’d be impossible.
Rather, it would be to provide time for US airplanes to get off the ground so that they could continue to be combat effective—at least for a period of time.
But the real important element here, as always when speaking about China, would be the submarine factor. While China possesses capabilities to identify and track US Navy submarines, these platforms are notoriously difficult to accurately track at all times.
By deploying large numbers of these forces to the region, the Americans can ensure that they will have the ability to respond to any threat China poses to Taiwan, irrespective of whether China gets some knock-out blows to US military bases with their missile arsenal.
Submarine Launched Drones Needed
Further, the Navy is developing submarine-launched drones. These systems would be key in any fight against China, especially if China is able to keep the US Navy’s aircraft carriers back, due to fear that these expensive warships could be sunk by China’s anti-ship missiles.
The presence of submarine-launched drones could prove decisive in key surveillance and bombing missions against a Chinese military that has effectively damaged US military bases in the region and deterred US aircraft carriers from entering the region.
The US military cannot take its basing strategy in the region for granted. It must be prepared to lose substantial numbers of its forces before they can even enter any fight against China, thanks to China’s massive missile arsenal. There are some methods for mitigating the threat. Submarines, hardening of bases, and deploying reliable missile defenses are key.
A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (Encounter Books), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert occasionally serves as a Subject Matter Expert for various organizations, including the Department of Defense. He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
From the Vault
‘Vacuum Bombs Destroyed’: Ukraine Footage Shows Putin’s Thermobaric Rockets Destroyed
BOOM! Ukraine Video Shows Precision Strike on Russian Air-Defense System
19fortyfive.com · by Brandon Weichert · September 24, 2023
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
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