Quotes of the Day:

"I used to think that the causes of war were predominantly economic. I came to think that they were more psychological. I am now coming to think that they are decisively "personal," arising from the defects and ambitions of those who have the power to influence the currents of nations."

– B. H. Liddell Hart

"Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel."

– Socrates

“In your actions, don’t procrastinate. In your conversations, don’t confuse. In your thoughts, don’t wander. In your soul, don’t be passive or aggressive. In your life, don’t be all about business.” 

– Marcus Aurelius

1. SOCEUR plays significant role in D-Day 80 festivities

2. On the Departure of Derek Chollet and Appointment of Tom Sullivan as Counselor

3. Resourcing to Win: Strategies for Optimizing Special Operations Budgets

4. How to Start a War Over Taiwan

5. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 24, 2024

6. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, June 24, 2024

7. Historic Moon Mission Moves China Ahead in Space Race With U.S.

8. In Rare Rebuke, U.S. Ambassador Accuses China of Undermining Diplomacy

9. Evan Gershkovich | A Letter From The Wall Street Journal Editor in Chief

10. Opinion | Egregious Pentagon delays reflect problem the military is just starting to solve

11.  Top State Department official to become Austin’s new chief of staff

12. Republicans will again try to slash defense secretary’s salary to $1

13. Vietnam reaffirms "strategic partnership" with US day after Putin visit

14. Tactical Nuclear Weapons, Explained

15. Marines revive historic 'Sledge' airfield on Peleliu in Pacific pivot

16. The US Is Learning the Wrong Cold War Lessons on China

17. More Debt Is Better Than More Billion-Dollar Climate Disasters

18. Trump ran up national debt twice as much as Biden: new analysis

19. Exclusive: Trump handed plan to halt US military aid to Kyiv unless it talks peace with Moscow

20. Why Cambodia Matters to the U.S.-China Rivalry

21. Cyber Attacks in Perspective: Cutting Through the Hyperbole

22. The Pivot That Wasn’t – Did America Wait Too Long to Counter China?

23. Should Ukraine Keep Attacking Russian Oil Refineries?

1. SOCEUR plays significant role in D-Day 80 festivities

Excerpt:

SOCEUR personnel felt the significance of D-Day 80 throughout the week and were thrilled to contribute to a week dedicated to honoring the memory of those who liberated Europe. Members of the command helped to facilitate the showing of “Operation Overlord” a film created by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) society in the Carentan Theater in Carentan, Normandy, France. For their efforts, SOCEUR was presented the OSS Congressional Gold Medal of Appreciation from OSS Society President Charles Pinck.

You can view the 15 minute film at this ink:  https://vimeo.com/922968344/b1184cee9c

SOCEUR plays significant role in D-Day 80 festivities

https://www.dvidshub.net/news/474634/soceur-plays-significant-role-d-day-80-festivities

Photo By Staff Sgt. Ariel Solomon | A multinational assembly of soldiers and civilians gather in La Cambe German Military... read more

FRANCE

06.24.2024

Story by Sgt. 1st Class Tim Beery 

U.S. Special Operations Command Europe    

 Subscribe74

Festivities and parades marked the streets, music filled the air, ceremonies dotted the landscape, and overall reverence permeated the atmosphere as hundreds of thousands embarked on Normandy, France, for the 80th commemoration of the landings on D-Day. Between wreath ceremonies, speeches, dedications, and numerous commemorative jumps, Special Operations Command Europe stood, ever present, honoring the past, focused on the current, and poised for the future of Europe.

From May 30 - June 9, servicemembers from SOCEUR assisted in all aspects of the D-Day celebrations, ranging from remembrance ceremonies to speeches, showings, and multiple jumps commemorating Airborne operations during World War II.

“Commemorative events such as these serve to honor the sacrifices U.S. service members made 80 years ago in securing peace and security,” said SOCEUR Commander, U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen Steven G. Edwards. “We remember their efforts in Europe, and we strive to inspire future generations to value a collective vision of global peace,” he said.

SOCEUR personnel felt the significance of D-Day 80 throughout the week and were thrilled to contribute to a week dedicated to honoring the memory of those who liberated Europe. Members of the command helped to facilitate the showing of “Operation Overlord” a film created by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) society in the Carentan Theater in Carentan, Normandy, France. For their efforts, SOCEUR was presented the OSS Congressional Gold Medal of Appreciation from OSS Society President Charles Pinck.

“We appreciate the opportunity to present this very important film in this setting,” said Pinck. “With the assistance of SOCEUR, and the City of Carentan, we are honored to present you with this medal to show our appreciation,” he said.

Accepting the award on behalf of SOCEUR was Lt. Col. Andrew Upshaw, an intelligence officer with SOCEUR.

“It is an honor, not only to accept this award on behalf of SOCEUR,” said Upshaw. “But to receive it here, in this city, and with our French friends. It means so much more. We truly appreciate the work the OSS society has done to create this incredible film, and we are honored to be able to help share it and keep its memory and purpose in the forefront.”

Facilitating the showing of “Operation Overlord” was not the only major effort SOCEUR assisted with during the D-Day week. Aircraft from the 352nd Special Operations Wing provided support for multiple jumps across the region, and special operations personnel participated in a 1,300 servicemember joint jump to commemorate airborne operations in 1944.

“Coming out of the plane was a really cool experience,” said an identity protected U.S. Army Green Beret who participated in the jump. “We know aircraft flew over this piece of land 80 years ago, and to come here and do it ourselves — to relive that history— is truly amazing.” he said.

Honoring history, while keeping a watchful eye on the present and future is the cornerstone for special operations in Europe, and across the world, according to U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Lawrence G. Ferguson, Commanding General of 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne). Ferguson, who spoke at a French resistance memorial ceremony, drew comparisons to initial Jedburgh teams who parachuted into occupied France in 1944 and lamented the need for special operations to remember why they do what they do.

“Special Operations Forces continue to uphold the ethos of cooperation and excellence in defense of our nation,” he said.

“Our commitment to global peace and security is a direct inheritance from the lessons learned and alliances formed during those fateful days in 1944. The challenges we face today may differ in form, but not in nature. Tyranny and injustice still threaten our collective peace and prosperity.”

Ferguson said the spirit of the initial teams and resolve continue to shape special operations in Europe. In honoring our past, SOCEUR reaffirms their mission to uphold these values. Reaffirming bonds with Allies such as France, bolsters security and further cements our mission to counter malign influence, build interoperability, rapidly respond to emerging threats and if necessary, follow in the footsteps of our forefathers and once again, defeat aggression.

2. On the Departure of Derek Chollet and Appointment of Tom Sullivan as Counselor

On the Departure of Derek Chollet and Appointment of Tom Sullivan as Counselor

PRESS STATEMENT

ANTONY J. BLINKEN, SECRETARY OF STATE

JUNE 24, 2024

HTTPS://WWW.STATE.GOV/ON-THE-DEPARTURE-OF-DEREK-CHOLLET-AND-APPOINTMENT-OF-TOM-SULLIVAN-AS-COUNSELOR/

For the past three and a half years, I have depended on Derek Chollet’s wise counsel and steady hand in helping navigate the toughest issues the United States faces. Derek is a quintessential five-tool player. Over the course of his career, he has served in positions across the national security community and academia, building a breadth of experience that the rest of us rely on every day. During his time at the State Department, he has taken on some of the toughest diplomatic assignments, from the Balkans and Burma to Pakistan and Northern Ireland, and for the past nine months has been key to shaping our response to the crisis in the Middle East.

While I am sad to lose Derek from our team at the State Department, I know the country will continue to benefit from his service at the Pentagon. Secretary Austin couldn’t have made a better choice for his next Chief of Staff.

I am appointing Tom Sullivan as the next Counselor of the United States Department of State. Tom has been my Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy since my first day as Secretary, serving in a position he previously held under Secretary Kerry. Tom has an unmatched depth of knowledge about how national security policy is formulated and implemented, one that he brings to bear every day on behalf of the American people. He has traveled the world with me and been by my side for meetings with heads of state, foreign ministers, and other world leaders as we rebuilt our alliances and partnerships, confronted Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, stabilized our relationship with China while standing up for American interests, and worked to build lasting peace, security, and stability in the Middle East. I look forward to continuing to draw on his wit and wisdom in this new role.

3. Resourcing to Win: Strategies for Optimizing Special Operations Budgets

Conclusion:

The recommendations of the PPBE Reform Commission aim to make the DoD budget process more strategically aligned, integrated, and flexible, which in theory will enable the DoD to respond more effectively to emerging threats and technological advancements. Whether or not DoD is able to implement the reforms is beside the larger point: resources are scarce and efficiencies must be realized to ensure U.S. National Security in an increasingly global and fluid operating environment.

U.S. Special Operations Command has a long history of being on the cutting edge of revolutionary transformation. In this fiscal context, USSOCOM has the opportunity to continue that legacy. The critical need for budget optimization in U.S. Special Operations cannot be overstated, and through the implementation of program optimization strategies, USSOCOM can improve its ability to meet future operational demands, maintain transparency and accountability in resource allocation, and better prepare for evolving strategic and operational environments. This proactive approach will ensure that USSOCOM remains a robust and responsive force capable of sustaining its critical role in ensuring the national security of the United States.

The alternative is irrelevance.

Resourcing to Win: Strategies for Optimizing Special Operations Budgets

Tony Arvanitakis, Christopher Kelley, and Jeremiah Monk of Veritas Rei Group

https://www.strategycentral.io/post/resourcing-to-win-strategies-for-optimizing-special-operations-budgets?postId=b86d03c7-af18-4adf-bc77-90144379dcc8&utm

"If you don't like change, you will like irrelevance even less."

- General Eric Shinseki

INTRODUCTION

Section 1004 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 directed the formation of a Legislative Commission to conduct a comprehensive examination of the Defense Department’s Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) process. This Commission’s charter was to examine the effectiveness of the PPBE process, consider potential alternatives, and provide recommendations to improve the process. In their final report released in March 2024, the Commission highlighted an urgent need for significant reform to the Department of Defense’s (DoD) resourcing process.[i] Such a reform is particularly crucial for the DoD in the current defense environment, where efficient resource allocation and budget optimization are essential to maintain Joint Force readiness and strategic advantage.

Simultaneously, subordinate Combatant Commands such as U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) find themselves in a period of sustained fiscal constraint. USSOCOM is further challenged by calls to transform its increasingly outdated Enterprise force structure and budget programs, with signals now emanating from Congressional Appropriators. As budgets tighten and the Department looks to make its resourcing process more efficient and strategy-oriented, the message to USSOCOM is clear: evolve or perish.

THE PPBE REFORM COMMISSION REPORT: KEY RECOMMENDATIONS

The PPBE Reform Commission's report offers several actionable recommendations, such as restructuring the budget, consolidating budget line items, increasing reprogramming thresholds, and improving access to budget documents. These changes aim to enhance the DoD's ability to respond swiftly to emerging threats and technological advancements. The report emphasizes five critical areas for improvement:

• Improving Alignment of Budgets to Strategy: Ensuring that financial resources are directly tied to strategic objectives.
• Fostering Innovation and Adaptability: Promoting a culture of innovation to adapt to evolving threats and operational demands.
• Strengthening Relationships Between DoD and Congress: Enhancing communication and collaboration with Congress to secure necessary support and funding.
• Modernizing Business Systems and Data Analytics: Leveraging modern information technologies to improve efficiency and the decision-making processes.
• Strengthening the Capability of the Resourcing Workforce: Building a more skilled workforce to manage and optimize resources more effectively.

IMPACT OF PPBE REFORM ON USSOCOM

The recommendations of the PPBE Commission propose the most dramatic renovation of the DoD’s budget process since its implementation in the early days of the Vietnam War. If fully realized, the proposed reforms aim to align defense budgets with national interests, ensure resource decisions are based on balanced alternatives, and use multi-year assessments to compare costs and benefits. They also emphasize fostering innovation and agility among leaders, utilizing modern business systems for better decision-making and communication, and providing skilled support staff. Additionally, the reforms seek to signal technological priorities to the industrial base, meet budget timelines with stakeholder input, and enhance transparency for Congress, the OMB, and the public.

This should be welcome news to a Combatant Command such as USSOCOM, to which the Commission’s proposal offers several advantages:

• Enhanced Strategic Alignment: By refining the PPBE process, USSOCOM could achieve better alignment with broader defense strategies. This would ensure that special operations forces are adequately resourced to meet evolving security challenges, thereby enhancing their strategic capabilities.
• Improved Resource Allocation: Streamlining the budgeting process could lead to more efficient allocation of resources. This would enable USSOCOM to prioritize critical missions and invest in advanced technologies and training programs, ultimately boosting operational readiness.
• Increased Flexibility: A reformed PPBE process might offer greater flexibility in responding to emergent threats. This would allow USSOCOM to rapidly adapt to changing environments and maintain a high level of preparedness.

Of course, there will be downsides. If implemented, commands like USSOCOM should prepare for a period of transition, which may feature such hurdles as:

• Bureaucratic Challenges: Implementing new processes could introduce bureaucratic hurdles, potentially slowing down decision-making and resource distribution. This might hinder USSOCOM’s ability to swiftly execute missions.
• Funding Uncertainties: Changes in the budgeting process could lead to uncertainties in funding, affecting long-term planning and stability. This could impact the development and sustainment of special operations capabilities.
• Operational Disruptions: The transition to a new PPBE framework might cause temporary disruptions in operations. Adjusting to new procedures and systems could divert attention and resources from critical missions.

CURRENT BUDGETARY CONTEXT FOR USSOCOM

The catch, of course, will be the ability of DoD (or Congress) to implement these recommendations. As General Shinseki noted, there is a real danger in failing to adapt to change. But one thing is certain: future budgets will not look as they did in the past, and increasing constraints will demand Commands be more efficient in their application of available resources.

When adjusted for inflation, commands with relatively flat budgets like USSOCOM will realize a decline in relative purchasing power. Since 2021, USSOCOM has realized only a minimal increase in nominal dollars. Accounting for recent inflationary figures (2022-2023 average of 6.2%), this flat budget effectively equates to a 6.2% decrease in relative purchasing power. Furthermore, with the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 capping FY24 Defense spending to $886 billion (a nominal increase of approximately 3% from FY23), USSOCOM can at best expect the command’s relative available budget to effectively shrink by 1-2% year-over-year moving forward.

While USSOCOM has realigned nearly $2.8 billion over recent budget planning cycles, the majority of the straightforward reprogramming options have since been exhausted. This financial context makes the efficient application of allocated resources that much more of an imperative for USSOCOM.

Furthermore, Congress is already signaling the imperative to optimize the U.S. SOF Enterprise. In their markup of the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee added verbiage that “directs DOD to address the size, structure, and posture priorities for special operations forces in the annual Defense Planning Guidance.” This is a clear indication that if USSOCOM doesn’t unilaterally address its function and form, the DoD will soon be legislated to do it for them – a clear shot across the bow to USSOCOM that should inspire the command to put into place a means to optimize and defend the command’s budget plans.[ii]

INTRODUCING PROGRAM OPTIMIZATION

One promising approach to achieving these goals is the introduction of program optimization reviews: analysis efforts that can help commands identify inefficiencies, potential savings, and realignment opportunities. Optimization reviews seek to assess not only the efficiency and effectiveness of budgetary programs, but also the sufficiency and proficiency of those programs to meet strategic objectives. These reviews can significantly enhance not only the spending power of a command’s annual budget request, but can also make that request more defensible in the face of scrutiny. By investing in this approach, commands can help ensure financial resources align with strategic objectives, foster innovation, and enhance decision-making through advanced data analytics – and free up additional resources for more efficient employment.

Please note the objectives of program optimization are shared with those of the PPBE Reform Commission. It is no secret the existing PPBE Process is unsuitable for the modern age, so one can reasonably expect DoD (or Congress) will adopt some if not all of the report’s recommendations. Thus, if USSOCOM is able to preemptively align its budgetary process objectives with those of the Commission’s report, it would find itself ahead of the DoD in not only the competition for scarce resources. The command would also be able to more proactively participate in the forthcoming Congressionally-directed force structure review.

While program optimization could be conducted internally, there are significant benefits to leveraging a neutral third party. External reviews offer an unbiased perspective, essential for objective evaluation and continuous improvement. Engaging third-party experts offers several benefits:

1. Objective Assessment: Unbiased reviewers can identify program drifts or misalignments free from internal politics.
2. Fresh Eyes: External experts removed from internal dynamics can spot inefficiencies and redundancies that internal teams may miss, such as redundant processes or misaligned resource allocations.
3. A Dedicated Team: Often the largest constraints on a programming division are time and people. This forces in-house reviews to be executed as additional duties, and thus become constrained in both quality and quality. A dedicated external team would be able to focus solely on delivering a more thorough report in a shorter amount of time, in turn allowing more programs to be reviewed in a given annual budget development cycle.
4. Expert Recommendations: With extensive experience, third-party reviewers provide informed recommendations for strategic realignments, process optimizations, and innovative solutions.
5. Enhanced Credibility: Independent reviews add credibility, building trust and support from stakeholders, including Congressional committees. This credibility is further enhanced if the reviewing entity can offer respected credentials, such as via a research university.
6. Baseline for Continuous Improvement: Regular reviews establish a baseline for continuous improvement, allowing progress tracking and necessary adjustments.
7. Resource Optimization: Identifying waste and cost-saving opportunities, independent reviews help reallocate resources more effectively, leading to significant cost savings.

Optimization goes beyond just realizing cost savings. An optimization assessment should also evaluate the capability delivered for the cost incurred to ensure that resources are being utilized effectively and strategically. This thorough accounting is crucial for reassessing the actual lifecycle costs and capabilities delivered, which can often diverge from initial projections due to unforeseen challenges and evolving operational requirements. A comprehensive optimization review can help programmers identify inefficiencies, validate the return on investment, and ensure that the most advanced and necessary capabilities are being fielded to support mission success. This process not only enhances transparency and accountability but also drives informed discussions and decisions among senior leaders, enabling them to make strategic adjustments that align with national defense priorities. Ultimately, optimization reviews help foster a culture of continuous improvement and strategic agility, ensuring that USSOCOM remains at the forefront of addressing complex global threats.

CONCLUSION

The recommendations of the PPBE Reform Commission aim to make the DoD budget process more strategically aligned, integrated, and flexible, which in theory will enable the DoD to respond more effectively to emerging threats and technological advancements. Whether or not DoD is able to implement the reforms is beside the larger point: resources are scarce and efficiencies must be realized to ensure U.S. National Security in an increasingly global and fluid operating environment.

U.S. Special Operations Command has a long history of being on the cutting edge of revolutionary transformation. In this fiscal context, USSOCOM has the opportunity to continue that legacy. The critical need for budget optimization in U.S. Special Operations cannot be overstated, and through the implementation of program optimization strategies, USSOCOM can improve its ability to meet future operational demands, maintain transparency and accountability in resource allocation, and better prepare for evolving strategic and operational environments. This proactive approach will ensure that USSOCOM remains a robust and responsive force capable of sustaining its critical role in ensuring the national security of the United States.

The alternative is irrelevance.

Tony Arvanitakis, Christopher Kelley, and Jeremiah Monk are the founders of Veritas Rei Group LLC, an SBA-certified SDVOSB that provides expert independent program assessments for federal government clients. For information on how Veritas Rei can help optimize your agency’s budgetary programs, please contact tony.arvanitakis@veritasrei.net.

NOTES

 [i] Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution Reform, “Commission on PPBE Reform: Defense Resourcing for the Future.” March 2024. https://ppbereform.senate.gov/finalreport/ (accessed June 18, 2024).

[ii] US Senate Committee on Armed Services, “FY24 National Defense Authorization Act [Markup] Executive Summary.” June 2024, 17. https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/fy25_ndaa_executive_summary.pdf (accessed 19 June 2024).

4. How to Start a War Over Taiwan

Excerpt:

Avoiding a violent conflict will take a great deal of diplomatic finesse, guided by a profound knowledge of local history and politics. This makes one wonder whom Pottinger is trying to convince. Is his main intended audience Taiwanese, Japanese, or American? He mentions, as a hindrance to deterrence, the “1930s-style isolationism that has infected pockets of the political discourse in America and Europe.” One can only assume that this is aimed at his former White House boss.

How to Start a War Over Taiwan

The New Yorker · by Ian Buruma · June 24, 2024

Books

“The Work of Art,” “The Other Olympians,” “The Coast Road,” and “Housemates.”

June 24, 2024

The question of Taiwan is fraught with bad history, which muddles our understanding of what is at stake in East Asia.Illustration by Álvaro Bernis

Catastrophic wars can start in peripheral places: Sarajevo, for the First World War; Gleiwitz, on the German-Polish border, for the Second. The contributors to “The Boiling Moat” (Hoover Institution), a short book edited by Matt Pottinger, believe that Taiwan, the democratically governed island situated off the coast of southeast China between Japan and the Philippines, could spark a major war, possibly even a nuclear one, pitting the U.S. and its Asian allies against China. According to their estimates, more than ten thousand Americans could be killed in action in just three weeks of combat. The cost in Chinese and Taiwanese lives, both civilians and soldiers, would presumably be much higher. And that is assuming that a local war doesn’t spread to the rest of the world. Pottinger was the Asia director on the National Security Council under Donald Trump, and so his opinions are worth paying attention to.

This isn’t to say that Pottinger’s hawkish views on the need for U.S. intervention in East Asia would earn him a place in a second Trump Administration. MAGA isolationism has always been in tension with the former President’s tough-on-China rhetoric, which, in turn, is in tension with his penchant for making deals with dictators. The contributors to “The Boiling Moat” are not MAGA types, either; they’re a mixture of military mavens, including a Japanese admiral and a former contractor for U.S. Special Operations Command, and hawks for democracy, such as Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former NATO secretary-general.

There are indeed good reasons to be worried about an East Asian conflict. Unlike previous Chinese leaders, who were, on the whole, content to let the Taiwan question rest until some kind of peaceful resolution could be found, Xi Jinping has avowed that “unification of the motherland” is the “essence” of his campaign to “rejuvenate the Chinese nation,” and has indicated that he is prepared to use military force to bring that about. After Lai Ching-te, the newly elected Taiwanese President, declared in his inaugural speech that the Republic of China (the official name for Taiwan) and the People’s Republic of China “are not subordinate to each other,” the P.R.C.’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, accused Lai and his supporters of betraying China and their “ancestors.” The Chinese defense minister, Dong Jun, used even more pugnacious words. Anyone who aspired to Taiwanese independence, he said, would be “crushed to pieces.”

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If a Chinese attempt to take Taiwan by force were to succeed, the consequences could be dire. East Asian countries, panicked by China’s control over their supply routes in the East China Sea and by America’s unwillingness or incapacity to protect them, might embark on a nuclear-arms race. Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, which provides the world with more than half of its chips, would fall into Chinese hands. And, because Taiwan is also the only functioning liberal democracy in the Chinese-speaking world (Singapore is an illiberal democracy), crushing Taiwan’s system of government would be a huge blow to democrats, greater even than the crackdown in Hong Kong.

Pottinger and his contributors think that the only way to stop China from launching an attack on Taiwan, and possibly starting a devastating war, is to build such a formidable system of military deterrence that China wouldn’t dare. Their book is a kind of PowerPoint briefing on how to turn the Taiwan Strait into a “boiling moat” filled with JASSMs (joint air-to-surface standoff missiles), LRASMs (long-range anti-ship missiles), HIMARS (high-mobility artillery rocket systems), P.J.D.A.M.s (powered joint direct attack munitions), uncrewed sea drones, and much other military hardware and software. Readers will need a taste for dense military prose to scale such sentences as “If tactical-level operators have organic I.S.R. [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] fires, and engagement authority, they can identify and attrit at close-range enemy forces that meet certain predetermined profiles (e.g., landing forces).”

Missiles, drones, and bombers are, however, insufficient to deter China, according to the book’s authors. Taiwan and Japan must be given a “new military culture.” Grant Newsham, an ex-marine who served as the Marine Corps attaché in Tokyo, thinks that the Japanese people must be prepared “physically and psychologically” for a war over Taiwan. He mentions movies that might “increase morale (the Top Gun effect).” Pottinger holds up the Israelis as a model: “Since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, the benefits of Israel’s warrior ethos have been on display again as Israelis have unified, despite bitter domestic political differences, to wage a war to destroy Hamas.” (This might not be the most happily chosen example.) And to tell the Japanese to become a nation of warriors again would be to push for complete reversal of the irenic nature of postwar Japan, and of the pacifist constitution written by Americans in 1947.

One can agree that Taiwan deserves to be defended against military aggression, but what’s missing in all this talk of missiles, drones, and the fighting spirit is any sense of politics or history. References to the past in “The Boiling Moat” are only of the crudest kind: Xi Jinping is compared to Hitler; the People’s Liberation Army is called “China’s Wehrmacht”; and the inevitable example of Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler, in 1938, is invoked as a warning against complacency.

Politics, too, is reduced to sloganeering about defending democracy in “counter-authoritarian partnerships.” In the concluding chapter, the book’s two European contributors write, “You cannot declare yourself neutral when it comes to the front line of freedom—in Donbass or in the Taiwan strait.” These are fine fighting words, echoing a statement by the former Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen: “The rallying cry for all democracies must be one for all, and all for one.”

She can be heard uttering these words in “Invisible Nation,” a documentary by Vanessa Hope, which presents an uncomplicated case for defending Taiwan’s democracy. The film offers a short history, pitting the admirable Taiwanese (and Americans) against the menacing Chinese. This take isn’t exactly wrong, but “Invisible Nation” has the air of a campaign movie for the independence-minded Democratic Progressive Party, now in power in Taiwan.

History, of course, is never uncomplicated. A concern for democracy and freedom was not always the reason for defending Taiwan. President Eisenhower went to the brink of nuclear war with China in 1954, after Mao attacked Quemoy (Kinmen) and Matsu, two minuscule islands off the mainland which formally belonged to the Republic of China, when it was under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s brutal military dictatorship.

The question of Taiwan is, in fact, fraught with bad history, which muddles our understanding of what is at stake in East Asia. As Sulmaan Wasif Khan observes in his rich and thoughtful book “The Struggle for Taiwan” (Basic), a “historian watching the situation from afar could not help being struck by the odd mix of mendacity, amnesia, and half-truths on display.” Start with China’s claim that Taiwan was always part of China, a cornerstone of Xi’s nationalism. In fact, for most of its history, Taiwan, or Formosa, as it was once called, was no more a part of the Chinese nation than, say, Gibraltar was a part of Britain. Until the seventeenth century, when the Dutch ruled the island as a colony, hardly any Chinese people lived there. The original inhabitants, whose descendants now make up a small minority in Taiwan, were Austronesian tribes who ruled themselves in a number of chiefdoms. Then the Dutch brought in tens of thousands of people from China to till the land. In 1662, the Dutch were ousted by a half-Japanese, half-Chinese swashbuckler named Zheng Chenggong, also known as Koxinga, whose exploits are still celebrated in a famous Kabuki play. Koxinga was a loyalist to the deposed Ming dynasty. He hoped to stage a rebellion from Taiwan against the Qing rulers, who were not Chinese but Manchus. Koxinga briefly established an independent kingdom on the island, but it was overthrown by the Manchus in 1683. Taiwan then became part of the Qing Empire.

After the Qing lost a war with Japan, in 1895, Taiwan became a Japanese colony. To demonstrate to the Western nations that Japan could also be a great imperial power, the Japanese presented Taiwan as a model colony: more modern, more industrialized, more technologically advanced than any part of the Qing Empire. Some of the grand Belle Époque architecture of the Japanese colonial period—government buildings, law courts, universities, museums—can still be seen in Taipei and other cities.

When Japan’s Asian empire was dissolved, in 1945, the fate of Taiwan remained open. President Roosevelt, at the Cairo Conference of 1943, had promised to hand over Taiwan to Chiang Kai-shek, who ruled parts of China that weren’t occupied by the Japanese. Still, Roosevelt could have made a different choice. As late as July, 1949, just months before the defeat of Chiang’s Nationalists (ChiNats) in the civil war with Mao Zedong’s Communists (ChiComs), George Kennan advocated “the establishment of a provisional international or U.S. regime which would invoke the principle of self-determination for the islanders.” This prospect, if it ever really existed, ended when the Generalissimo (“the Gimo,” to the Americans) retreated to Taiwan after the Communist victory, with more than a million of his troops and loyalists. When I first travelled to Taiwan, in the nineteen-eighties, many taxi-drivers in Taipei had once been soldiers in Chiang’s army. There were statues of the Gimo in front of schools and public buildings; maps of China illustrated the official goal of reconquering the mainland.

Mao did not pay much attention to Taiwan until Chiang turned it into a fortified base for his dream of ruling China once again. Meanwhile, the six million original inhabitants of Taiwan, most of whom had never been to China, did not take kindly to being subjected to Chiang’s harsh military junta. A rebellion in February, 1947, resulted in roughly twenty-five thousand Taiwanese dead and years of repression, known as the “white terror,” which led to the imprisonment of tens of thousands of people and the deaths of thousands of others.

President Eisenhower’s decision to come to Chiang’s rescue in the nineteen-fifties, when Mao started shelling Matsu and Quemoy, had nothing to do with defending democracy (even though the Republic of China was still known as Free China) and everything to do with getting tough on Communism. This was more an attitude than a well-thought-out policy, and Chiang, like many other anti-Communist strongmen around the world, knew how to exploit it in order to get what he wanted from the Americans.

Tensions between the “native Taiwanese,” or benshengren, most of whom were of Chinese origin, and Chiang’s mainlanders, or waishengren, who lorded over them, continued to simmer for decades. Political rebels and dissidents were almost always benshengren. At the same time, Chiang’s dream of toppling the “Communist bandits” in China never faded. I recall seeing old men in wheelchairs being pushed through the corridors of the parliament building in Taipei, acting as the official representatives of Chinese provinces they would never see again.

Chiang was still alive when, in 1972, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger had meetings with the Chinese Premier, Zhou Enlai, and then signed a communiqué in Shanghai stating that there was only one China and that Taiwan was a part of it. This in itself would not have bothered Chiang (who died three years later); he agreed that there was only one China. There would be no more talk of ChiNats and ChiComs; they were all Chinese now. The people who disagreed were benshengren dissidents who longed for independence. This aspiration did not sit well with Zhou, with Chiang, or, indeed, with Kissinger. As Khan writes, “Taiwan’s fate was irrelevant to Kissinger. This was about a rapprochement with China. The suppression of the Taiwan independence movement, Zhou agreed, could be left to Chiang Kai-shek. The much maligned generalissimo would be helping the PRC by making sure that Taiwanese independence did not make headway.”

In the course of the nineteen-eighties—a modus vivendi with China having been reached, and Deng Xiaoping opening the country for business—getting tough on Communism receded as a priority for Washington. Once useful anti-Communist strongmen became dispensable. In 1986, Ferdinand Marcos was driven into exile in Hawaii. The South Korean junta was pressed to accept democratic elections in 1987. And President Chiang Ching-kuo, the Generalissimo’s son, ended martial law in the same year. He even allowed a new opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party, to take part in elections.

The first democratically elected President of Taiwan, Lee Teng-hui, was a member not of the D.P.P. but of Chiang’s Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang (the K.M.T.). He was, however, native-born, and spoke Taiwanese (Hokkien Chinese), the language that most of his compatriots spoke, and he was more comfortable with Japanese, a legacy of his colonial education, than with Mandarin. Lee gave the official goal of unification a new twist: Taiwan would join China, yes, but only once China became a democracy. He also saw himself as a unifying figure in Taiwan, the leader who would overcome the tensions between the natives and the mainlander interlopers.

One might have assumed that the United States, having promoted itself as a champion of freedom and democracy, would have been delighted with this turn of events. In fact, it complicated U.S. policy toward China. Now that the Taiwanese could freely express their views and vote, it became clear that few people outside conservative factions of the K.M.T. had any desire to be part of mainland China. Taiwanese democracy promoted a Taiwanese national identity that was separate from mainland China. (I attended rallies for Tsai Ing-wen’s D.P.P. during the elections in 2020, when huge crowds chanted, “We are Taiwanese! We are Taiwanese!”)

This identity was cultural and historical as well as political. The Taiwanese language was now taught at schools, as was Taiwanese history. Taiwanese writers and artists, a bit like Catalan nationalists in Spain, emphasized the unique values of their native arts and culture, sometimes to a tiresome degree. There was a boom in movies about Taiwanese history and the peculiarities of Taiwanese life. More and more, citizens began to identify as Taiwanese, rather than as Chinese. D.P.P. politicians ran for office vaunting their native-Taiwanese credentials. And even the younger politicians in the K.M.T., which never officially let go of its identification with China, are comfortable speaking Taiwanese. By the time Chen Shui-bian was elected as the first D.P.P. President of Taiwan, in 2000, the busts of Chiang Kai-shek and the maps of China had begun to disappear. Meanwhile, China was becoming Taiwan’s largest trading partner, confusing their relations even further.

From Washington’s perspective, Taiwanese democracy became something of an irritant. Chiang Kai-shek, though headstrong and manipulative, had been easier to deal with than were democratically elected politicians whose flirtation with the idea of independence provoked belligerent Chinese reactions and complicated U.S.-China relations. Washington felt that it had both to defend democratic Taiwan and to reassure Beijing that Taiwanese independence would continue to be resisted. This “drove America crazy,” Khan writes. Washington “would affirm the ‘one China’ principle, then twist itself into knots explaining how its tilt toward Taiwan was consistent with that affirmation.” A frustrated President Clinton once exclaimed, “I hate our China policy! I wish I was running against our China policy.” As Khan observes, “In a way, he and every president since Nixon had been doing just that.”

Trying to keep Beijing onside by asserting that Taiwan is part of China while also defending a democratically elected government that believes otherwise doesn’t make for a coherent policy. Nor would the U.S. have any treaty obligation to defend Taiwan if China actually invaded. The official position is still to leave the Chinese guessing about the U.S. response. Yet President Biden stated, in a 2021 television interview with George Stephanopoulos, that the U.S. would indeed come to Taiwan’s rescue in a war, in the same way it would if Japan or a NATO member were under attack.

Biden probably wouldn’t have said this if China itself had not changed radically in the past decade. Under China’s relatively pragmatic leaders in the nineteen-nineties, the chances of a military conflict over Taiwan were slight. But Xi’s hostile nationalism, aimed at a complete restoration of the borders of the Qing Empire, by force if need be, is a greater threat to the status quo than Mao’s shelling of Matsu and Quemoy was. Whereas Taiwan could still be treated as an annoyance by Kissinger and Nixon, or even by Clinton, the United States now feels compelled to show it can be tough on China and risk war to defend Taiwan. This is, of course, no more a carefully considered position than “anti-Communism” was. When prominent U.S. politicians provoke Beijing with well-publicized visits to Taiwan, their only purpose is to show the American public that they can be tough on China.

Once again, Taiwan has become a pawn in a clash between Great Powers. The stakes are higher than ever. But to keep East Asia safe from a terrible war is not just a military problem. Khan is surely right to question how getting tough will alter Chinese conduct. A show of force is supposed to deter China from aggression. “But what if deterrence failed?” Khan writes. “Being deterred, after all, was a choice; China could choose not to be. What if the show of force backed China into a corner from which it felt it had no option but to lash out?”

Avoiding a violent conflict will take a great deal of diplomatic finesse, guided by a profound knowledge of local history and politics. This makes one wonder whom Pottinger is trying to convince. Is his main intended audience Taiwanese, Japanese, or American? He mentions, as a hindrance to deterrence, the “1930s-style isolationism that has infected pockets of the political discourse in America and Europe.” One can only assume that this is aimed at his former White House boss.

The Japanese press now talks a great deal about the question of moshitora—moshi means “if,” and tora is short for Torampu (Trump). What if Trump came back? The ex-President’s attitudes toward China are even less coherent than those of his predecessors. He has delighted in insulting China (“Chinese virus,” “Kung Flu”); he also started a trade war with China and has promised to slap sixty-per-cent tariffs on all Chinese imports. But his withdrawal, in 2017, from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which sets the rules for trade in the Pacific Rim, has weakened America’s influence in the region, and strengthened China’s.

If America’s old Taiwan policies were often muddled, Trump’s attitudes are so fickle that one can’t predict what he will do. “Depending on his mood,” as Khan writes, “he might have been as willing to provide Taiwan with nuclear weapons as to sell it to China for a trade deal.” With a President like that in charge, no amount of JASSMs and HIMARs is likely to keep East Asia, or, indeed, the rest of the world, safe.

Published in the print edition of the July 1, 2024, issue, with the headline “The Taiwan Tangle.”

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Ian Buruma, a professor at Bard College, is the author of books including “Spinoza: Freedom’s Messiah.”

The New Yorker · by Ian Buruma · June 24, 2024

5. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 24, 2024

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 24, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-24-2024

Key Takeaways:

• Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Head Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov stated that Western military assistance is arriving in Ukraine, but that it will likely not arrive at a scale that will significantly impact the frontline situation until at least mid to late July 2024.

• Budanov stated that a sufficient quantity of US-provided long-range ATACMS missiles could allow Ukrainian forces to strike the Russian-built Kerch Strait Bridge in occupied Crimea and sever an important Russian ground line of communication (GLOC) between occupied Crimea and Russia.

• Current US policy regarding Ukraine's use of Western-provided weapons allows Ukraine to strike anywhere within Russian-occupied Ukraine, which presumably includes using long-range ATACMS to strike the portion of the Kerch Strait Bridge within Ukraine's internationally recognized land and maritime borders.

• Kremlin officials absurdly attempted to link the June 23 Ukrainian strikes on legitimate military targets in occupied Sevastopol, Crimea and the likely Islamic State (IS) affiliate Wilayat Kavkaz terrorist attack in the Republic of Dagestan.
• The Kremlin is attempting to maintain a veneer of stability and normalcy in response to the Dagestan terror attack.

• The European Union (EU) adopted its 14th package of sanctions against Russia on June 24, including new restrictions against Russian funding to political parties and other "opinion-forming" organizations and Russian state media broadcasts within the EU.

• The EU approved a first tranche of up to 1.4 billion euros (about $1.5 billion) in military assistance for Ukraine from the proceeds of frozen Russian assets.

• The Kremlin continued efforts to coopt former Wagner Group personnel by introducing a new bill that would exempt much of the Wagner force from criminal responsibility for their participation in the Wagner armed rebellion on June 23 and 24, 2023.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky replaced Joint Forces Commander Lieutenant General Yuriy Sodol with Brigadier General Andriy Hnatov on June 24.

• Ukrainian forces recently regained lost positions near Vovchansk and Starysta, and Russian forces recently advanced near Siversk and Toretsk.

• The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) proposed depriving all Russian military districts of their status as joint headquarters.

6. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, June 24, 2024

Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, June 24, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-june-24-2024

Key Takeaways:

• Gaza Strip: Hamas is rebuilding its weapons production capacity in the Gaza Strip as part of a larger effort to reconstitute its military forces. Hamas has also begun trying to recruit and train 18-year-olds to this end.

• Iran: Iranian presidential candidates discussed socio-cultural issues during the third debate of the upcoming election. None of the presumed frontrunners suggested that they would support fundamental changes to long-standing regime policies.

• West Bank: PIJ detonated an IED around Bat Hefer, which is near the Israel–West Bank border. The attack comes amid an uptick in Palestinian militant activity in the area in recent weeks.

• Lebanon: Workers at Beirut-Rafik Hariri International Airport are reportedly concerned about an increase in Iranian weapons deliveries to Lebanese Hezbollah.
• Iraq: Hamas is reportedly planning to relocate its political leadership from Qatar to Iraq. Iran and the Iraqi federal government would reportedly provide security to Hamas leaders in Iraq.

7. Historic Moon Mission Moves China Ahead in Space Race With U.S.

A Sputnik moment? Nah. Probably not. How do Americans respond? Yawn....

As Kevin Costner said in Hidden FIgures, "Who gets there first makes the rules."

Historic Moon Mission Moves China Ahead in Space Race With U.S.

Outlines of a lunar iron curtain are starting to emerge as the U.S. and China vie to build bases at the lunar south pole

By Stu WooFollow and Clarence LeongFollow in Singapore, and Micah MaidenbergFollow in New York

June 25, 2024 2:35 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/historic-moon-mission-gets-china-one-small-step-ahead-in-space-race-41894d41?mod=latest_headlines

There is a new space race, this time between the U.S. and China. On Tuesday, China took an important step forward.

A Chinese spacecraft touched down on grasslands in China’s Inner Mongolia region, carrying the first-ever rock samples from the far side of the moon. A scientific breakthrough in itself, the success also advanced China’s plan to put astronauts on the moon by 2030 and build a lunar base by 2035.

Such momentum is worrying American space officials and lawmakers, who have their own ambitions to build moon bases.

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China has successfully landed a spacecraft on the moon’s far side. The Chang’e 6 probe aims to bring rock and soil samples back to earth before the end of June. Photo: Liwang/Xinhua/Zuma Press/CNSA

Unlike the original space race between the Americans and the Soviets, the goal of the U.S. and China isn’t just to make a short trip to the moon. It is to build permanent human outposts on its most strategic location, the lunar south pole. And as both nations gear up to build stations there one day, it is looking likely that tensions in orbit will mirror those on Earth.

Some U.S. officials fear China is planning a land grab. Chinese officials suspect the same of the Americans and are teaming up with Russia and other friendly nations for its south-pole outpost. 

The outlines of a lunar iron curtain, in which rival superpowers and their allies jockey to exploit the moon’s strategic importance, are already emerging.

China advances 

China’s lunar program has soft-landed on the moon four times since 2013. PHOTO: REUTERS

Tuesday’s successful completion of the Chang’e 6 mission shows that, by one measure, China is ahead for now. Its lunar program has now soft-landed on the moon four times since 2013, the latest mission scooping up rocks near the south pole with robotic arms.

Meanwhile, after a decadeslong moon-landing hiatus, two U.S. companies this year launched lunar-surface missions under NASA contracts. One lander tipped on its side after touching down. The other didn’t try to land because of technical problems. At least two more private missions, with funding from NASA, are slated to try to get to the moon later this year.

The recent moon-landing scoreboard is “4 to 0.5” in favor of China, said Simone Dell’Agnello, an Italian researcher who collaborated with Chang’e 6. “The first difference is that China has missions landing on the f—ing moon.”

All this is piling pressure upon the world’s most storied space agency. Through its Artemis exploration program, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration plans to conduct multiple landings in the coming years, develop a logistics station in lunar orbit and eventually build permanent camps on the moon’s surface.

But Artemis has faced repeated delays and cost overruns while relying on a complex mix of government workers and private contractors.

NASA completed an uncrewed test mission, Artemis I, around the moon in 2022. This year, it pushed back the next two flights, including Artemis III, which is to be humanity’s first crewed landing to the lunar surface since Apollo 17, in 1972.

NASA is working to improve the technology of a spacecraft’s heat shield, and collaborating with contractors, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which is developing a lunar lander for Artemis.

Some space experts say Artemis III’s new target date of 2026 is still too optimistic. NASA has been considering altering the plan for Artemis III, such that the mission wouldn’t include landing astronauts on the moon, according to people familiar with the matter. 

Bill Nelson, NASA’s administrator, said in an interview that landing astronauts in 2026 is indeed possible, pointing to SpaceX’s work advancing the vehicle it will use for that operation. “A lot depends on SpaceX,” he said.  

Space tensions build 

The idea that the U.S. was in a race with China was amplified in 2017 when a leading Chinese scientist at the state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences explained in a television interview why China was going to the moon.  

“The universe is like an ocean. The moon is the Diaoyu Islands and Mars is the Huangyan Island,” said Ye Peijian, using the Chinese names for disputed Pacific territories claimed by China—but also Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines.

Then in 2021, China and Russia signed an agreement to build a research base on the lunar south pole.

“My concern is if China got there first and suddenly said, ‘OK, this is our territory. You stay out,’” NASA’s Nelson told a congressional hearing in April.

An Artemis 1 spacecraft sits on board the USS Portland. PHOTO: SANDY HUFFAKER/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

A rocket carrying NASA’s Nova-C lunar lander lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center. PHOTO: CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH/SHUTTERSTOCK

At the hearing, Nelson said China’s territorial claims offer a warning of how China might behave. During a visit to the White House in 2015, Chinese leader Xi Jinping pledged that China wouldn’t militarize the South China Sea. But it has since built airfields and missile silos on islands claimed by the Philippines and other nations, insisting it has exclusive rights over the region.

Such behavior matters, Nelson said, because there may be only a few spots in the lunar south-pole region with the blend of resources needed for human outposts.

China’s foreign ministry has called Nelson’s remarks irresponsible, saying it is the U.S., not China, that threatens peace in outer space. 

Uncharted territory 

The current race will test legal norms in a way the original space race never did. A decades-old Outer Space Treaty signed by more than 100 countries, including the U.S. and China, generally precludes nations from making sovereign claims on the moon. But it doesn’t spell out what would happen if two countries tried to build a lunar base on the same spot.

Under the treaty, whoever builds a moon base could argue it is entitled to establish a 100-kilometer safety perimeter to protect its equipment, said Michelle Hanlon, executive director of the University of Mississippi’s Center for Air and Space Law. 

Lunar landings

U.S.

U.S.S.R.

China

Other countries

Planned landings

this year

Blue

Ghost

NEAR SIDE

Griffin

Note: Completed landings and those planned for 2024 as of January. China's Chang'e-4 and Chang'e-6 missions aren’t shown because it delivered equipment to the far side of the moon.

Sources: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Planetary Society (landings); U.S. Geological Survey (moon)

Carl Churchill/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

“Whichever country leads the exploration of space, whether it is back to the moon or on to Mars, you basically get to set the rules of the road for how we operate,” Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), chairman of the House Science Committee, said in an interview.

In an attempt to supplement the Outer Space Treaty—and boost momentum for its lunar program—the U.S. in 2020 started recruiting countries to sign the Artemis Accords, an arrangement that establishes a newer framework for peaceful space exploration, including requiring countries to share information about their activities on the moon. More than 40 countries have signed up so far.

A nationalistic Chinese state-run newspaper at the time called the Artemis Accords a play for American “space hegemony.” China hasn’t signed the accords and has instead recruited 10 countries, including Russia, Pakistan and South Africa, as partners for its south-pole base, called the International Lunar Research Station.

China’s foreign ministry, in response to questions from The Wall Street Journal, said that “each side has different views on whether the Artemis Accords align with existing outer-space laws,” and countries should discuss lunar cooperation at the United Nations. 

NASA and Chinese space officials just did so in Vienna, where the U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space annual session and sideline events are currently taking place.

“It was very kumbaya and ‘We’re all in this together,’ but no substance at all,” said Hanlon, who is at the meetings. 

Nelson, the NASA head, said in his interview with the Journal that he wishes China would sign the Artemis Accords.

For all its accomplishments, China’s space program has faced its own struggles and could encounter more. Its Long March 5 rockets, which launched the recently completed rock-sample mission, were delayed for years, and China trails the U.S. in several aspects. It hasn’t yet developed powerful reusable rockets, as the U.S. has.

Lure of the lunar south pole

Establishing a beachhead on the lunar south pole won’t be easy. Compared with equatorial regions where the Apollo missions went five decades ago, the moon’s south pole is tougher to land on because of rougher terrain and poorer lighting.

But the U.S. and China think it is worth the effort because of the south pole’s natural resources, especially water ice. Researchers in 2008 found evidence of its presence. While they are still studying its prevalence, the hope is that the ice could be turned into water or oxygen for astronauts, and perhaps into hydrogen for rocket fuel.

Astronaut Dave Scott took rock samples during the Apollo 15 mission.

DISCOVERY ACCESS, NASA/REUTERS

“Unlike the U.S.-Soviet space race of the 20th century, this new round of competition centers on the water ice at the lunar south pole, with its extraction and use as a common goal,” wrote four scientists affiliated with China’s Academy of Sciences in a paper published in May. “The ability to collect and utilize lunar resources is a mark of national prestige and geopolitical influence.”

Besides ice, the south pole contains areas of continuous sunlight, which can provide solar power. Researchers have also found evidence of what may be metal deposits, which they envision can be mined to build rockets on the moon in future decades. 

Some NASA officials and researchers believe it is more cost-effective to launch missions to Mars from the moon instead of Earth because of low lunar gravity.

“We’re talking about colonizing the solar system,” said Greg Autry, a NASA official during the Trump administration.

In China, state media provided enthusiastic updates on the Chang’e 6 mission. In early June, the lunar probe landed near the lunar south pole and unfurled a Chinese flag. Before it took off, it drew the Chinese character for China’s name in the soil. The picture of the scrawling went viral on Chinese social media.

On Tuesday, Chinese state television aired a live special of Chang’e 6’s landing. A red-and-white parachute opened above the singed spacecraft before it plopped onto its side on the grass, prompting applause from the ground-control crew. Minutes later, the head of China’s space agency declared the mission accomplished. Space-agency crew quickly reached the craft and planted a Chinese flag beside it.

“They have done generally what they said they were going to do. I congratulate them for that,” Nelson, the NASA head, said in his interview before Tuesday’s landing. “They have their approach, and we have our approach.”

The Chang'e-6 probe took rock samples from the far side of the moon.

CHINA NATIONAL SPACE ADMINISTRATION/XINHUA/AP

Write to Stu Woo at Stu.Woo@wsj.com, Clarence Leong at clarence.leong@wsj.com and Micah Maidenberg at micah.maidenberg@wsj.com

8. In Rare Rebuke, U.S. Ambassador Accuses China of Undermining Diplomacy

Sometimes you have to be blunt.

Excerpts:

“They say they’re in favor of reconnecting our two populations, but they’re taking dramatic steps to make it impossible,” Burns said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

The 68-year-old Burns, a veteran diplomat who took up his post in April 2022, used unusually forceful language to criticize what he described as an effort by Beijing to weaken America’s standing and disrupt its diplomatic activities in China.

The remarks by Burns show that, behind a fragile detente reached last year, there has been growing concern among U.S. officials about Beijing’s sincerity in improving relations.

Burns, who spoke to the Journal at his embassy office in the Chinese capital, also took aim at Beijing for what he described as efforts to stir up anti-American sentiment domestically, saying that he was particularly concerned about the recent stabbing of four Iowa college instructors in northeastern China.

China’s Foreign Ministry and State Council Information Office didn’t respond to questions from the Journal about the comments by Burns.

Relations between the U.S. and China appeared to be stabilizing after a November summit in San Francisco between Xi and Biden. While in California, Xi said he hoped some 50,000 American exchange students would come to China over the next five years.

In Rare Rebuke, U.S. Ambassador Accuses China of Undermining Diplomacy

Beijing has been stirring up anti-American sentiment and preventing people from attending embassy events, Nicholas Burns says in an interview

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/in-rare-rebuke-u-s-ambassador-accuses-china-of-undermining-diplomacy-f3e58d83?mod=latest_headlines

By Jonathan Cheng

Follow

Updated June 25, 2024 12:03 am ET

U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing this spring. PHOTO: MARK SCHIEFELBEIN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

BEIJING—In November last year, President Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping agreed to boost engagement between ordinary Chinese and Americans, part of an effort to repair fraying ties ahead of a tense election year in the U.S.

Instead, says Nicholas Burns, Washington’s ambassador in Beijing, China has actively undermined those ties, interrogating and intimidating citizens who attend U.S.-organized events in China, ramping up restrictions on the embassy’s social-media posts and whipping up anti-American sentiment.

“They say they’re in favor of reconnecting our two populations, but they’re taking dramatic steps to make it impossible,” Burns said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

The 68-year-old Burns, a veteran diplomat who took up his post in April 2022, used unusually forceful language to criticize what he described as an effort by Beijing to weaken America’s standing and disrupt its diplomatic activities in China.

The remarks by Burns show that, behind a fragile detente reached last year, there has been growing concern among U.S. officials about Beijing’s sincerity in improving relations.

The U.S. Embassy in Beijing. PHOTO: MARK SCHIEFELBEIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Burns, who spoke to the Journal at his embassy office in the Chinese capital, also took aim at Beijing for what he described as efforts to stir up anti-American sentiment domestically, saying that he was particularly concerned about the recent stabbing of four Iowa college instructors in northeastern China.

China’s Foreign Ministry and State Council Information Office didn’t respond to questions from the Journal about the comments by Burns.

Relations between the U.S. and China appeared to be stabilizing after a November summit in San Francisco between Xi and Biden. While in California, Xi said he hoped some 50,000 American exchange students would come to China over the next five years.

Since the San Francisco summit, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other senior U.S. officials have been welcomed to Beijing by top Chinese leaders. Chinese officials have invoked the “San Francisco vision” to call for more dialogue and cooperation between the two countries. China has struck a string of deals to send giant pandas to zoos in Washington, San Francisco and San Diego.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi departing the U.S. Embassy in Beijing last year. PHOTO: NG HAN GUAN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Despite the bonhomie, tensions have continued to simmer between the superpowers over China’s indirect support for Russia’s war in Ukraine and its increasing reliance on exports that have driven down prices in global markets. Strains in relations are also growing ahead of November’s presidential election in the U.S., where Biden and his rival, former President Donald Trump, have sharply criticized each other’s approach on China.

In the interview, Burns said that Beijing has ramped up its suppression of American diplomatic activities in China. He tallied 61 public events since November in which China’s Ministry of State Security or other government bodies pressured Chinese citizens not to go, or attempted to intimidate those who attended.

Some attendees of the U.S. Embassy-organized events—which include talks by mental-health specialists, panel discussions on women’s entrepreneurship, documentary screenings and cultural performances—have been interrogated by officials, sometimes at home late at night.

Beijing has also made it harder for Chinese students to attend U.S. universities, Burns said. University fairs across China have rescinded invitations for U.S. diplomatic staff to promote American colleges to high-school students and their parents, citing ideological or national-security concerns, the embassy said. Roughly half of participants chosen for U.S.-funded exchange programs, amounting to dozens of people, have pulled out over the past two years, pointing to pressure from authorities, schools and employers.

“What they tell us and what they tell the world is they want people-to-people engagement, and yet this is not just episodic. This is routine. This is nearly every public event,” Burns said. “This is a serious breach and we hope that the PRC will reconsider,” he added, using an acronym for the People’s Republic of China.

President Biden and China’s Xi agreed in November to boost engagement between ordinary Chinese and Americans. PHOTO: LI XUEREN/ZUMA PRESS

In one case, he said, a venue pulled the literal plug on a concert organized by the U.S. Embassy without explanation, saying there would be no electricity on the day of the event and effectively scuttling it. The venue hosted an event the prior night and then another one the night afterward with no apparent issue, embassy officials said.

“It’s not the sign of a confident government,” Burns said.

For its part, China has complained in recent years that Washington has restricted the movements of its diplomats in the U.S., for instance asking them to seek advance approval for certain travel. Beijing says its citizens are regularly subjected to racism and discrimination in the U.S. while Chinese students holding U.S. visas have been subjected to harsh questioning upon arrival and, in some cases, been turned away.

Burns dismissed the Chinese complaints, saying that more than 99% of student visa holders clear immigration without incident. “You’ve got to tell the truth on your visa applications, and if you don’t, you get caught,” he said, while allowing for the possibility of the occasional mistake by U.S. officials.

The U.S. issued some 105,000 new student visas to Chinese citizens in 2023, the highest since before the pandemic, and is approving them at an even faster pace this year. Burns said they could issue even more if the U.S. Embassy were allowed to hire Chinese employees, who help process the hundreds of thousands of visa applications each year.

People seeking visas to the U.S. outside the consulate in Shanghai last year. PHOTO: CFOTO/ZUMA PRESS

Burns said China hasn’t granted permission for the U.S. Embassy to hire any Chinese employee for three years now, including after the San Francisco summit. That means fewer local workers to handle the growing pile of visa applications, which Burns pointed to as evidence of the U.S.’s undiminished appeal among ordinary Chinese.

Despite Chinese citizens’ continued demand for U.S. visas, Burns said he was contending with a rise in anti-Americanism, which he suggested was stoked in part by officials in Beijing.

Earlier this month, a Chinese man stabbed four Iowa college instructors in a city park in northeastern China. Local police said the suspected assailant, a 55-year-old Chinese man, bumped into one of the four foreigners, three of whom were American citizens. Authorities said they apprehended the suspect, but they haven’t released any further information about the incident.

The four victims are recovering from their injuries, the embassy said. At least one of the instructors was discharged from the hospital and headed home, according to a family member.

“I’m not satisfied that we’ve been given sufficient information as to the motives of the assailant,” Burns said.

More broadly, he added, “I’ve been concerned for my two-plus years here about the very aggressive Chinese government…efforts to denigrate America, to tell a distorted story about American society, American history, American policy. It happens every day on all the networks available to the government here, and there’s a high degree of anti-Americanism online.”

Burns said it was difficult to counter that message, given that the U.S. Embassy’s attempts to reach ordinary Chinese people through its accounts on Chinese social-media platforms have increasingly been stymied by censorship. Links and comments have been blocked, even on relatively innocuous posts such as readouts of bilateral meetings with Chinese counterparts and discussions of wildlife conservation. 

Burns says he has challenged his Chinese counterparts in closed-door meetings about what he sees as a widening gap between Beijing’s public commitments and its actions.

“We’ve had innumerable conversations with the government of China about this and nothing has changed, and nothing gets fixed,” he said.

Write to Jonathan Cheng at Jonathan.Cheng@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications

Roughly half of Chinese participants chosen for U.S.-funded exchange programs have pulled out over the past two years, according to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to those chosen for the exchange programs as students. (Corrected on June 25)

U.S.-China Tensions

Tracking the complicated relationship of the world's two largest economies

Appeared in the June 25, 2024, print edition as 'U.S. Envoy Says China Undercuts Diplomacy'.

9. Evan Gershkovich | A Letter From The Wall Street Journal Editor in Chief

We all must support press freedom around the world.

Evan Gershkovich | A Letter From The Wall Street Journal Editor in Chief

The Journal reporter has been wrongfully detained in Russia for over a year

https://www.wsj.com/world/evan-gershkovich-a-letter-from-the-wall-street-journal-editor-in-chief-35c43825?mod=latest_headlines

June 25, 2024 5:30 am ET

Dear WSJ Reader,

Russian authorities said recently that our colleague, Evan Gershkovich, will face trial in a court in Yekaterinburg after 15 months of pretrial detention in Moscow.

To even call it a trial, however, is unfair to Evan and a continuation of this travesty of justice that already has gone on for far too long.

Let us be very clear, once again: Evan is a staff reporter of The Wall Street Journal. He was on assignment in Russia, where he was an accredited journalist.

But the Kremlin has clamped down severely on independent reporting, effectively turning journalism into a crime. Evan was seized by Russia’s security services, falsely accused of being a U.S. spy and thrown in prison.

READ EVAN GERSHKOVICH’S WORK

On the Ground in Putin's Russia: Coverage of a Country at War

When his case comes before a judge this week, it will not be a trial as we understand it, with a presumption of innocence and a search for the truth.

Rather, it will be held in secret. No evidence has been unveiled. And we already know the conclusion: This bogus accusation of espionage will inevitably lead to a bogus conviction for an innocent man who would then face up to 20 years in prison for simply doing his job. And an excellent job he was doing, at that.

Even covering the case presents challenges to us and other news organizations over how to report responsibly on the proceedings and the allegations.

We pride ourselves on our impartial and accurate reporting that doesn’t take sides and avoids bias.

Nor would we repeat baseless allegations that we know categorically to be untrue lest we amplify the slander against Evan.

We will state the facts clearly as we know them, as we did in our headline and story earlier this month when news of his indictment was announced: WSJ Reporter Evan Gershkovich, Falsely Accused of Espionage, Is Indicted in Russia.

As we pledged earlier this year, we will continue to tell Evan’s story until he can tell his own.

The proceedings, however, will not slow down or stop U.S. efforts to free Evan, according to Roger Carstens, the top U.S. hostage diplomat.

We hope very much that means Evan and other U.S. detainees in Russia will return home soon. It cannot be soon enough.

Sincerely,

10. Opinion | Egregious Pentagon delays reflect problem the military is just starting to solve

The primes are not going to like this.

Excerpt:

Thinking beyond the prime contractors is overdue and welcome, but remains the exception rather than the rule at the Pentagon, now on track to spend nearly $1 trillion next year on defense.

Opinion | Egregious Pentagon delays reflect problem the military is just starting to solve

The Pentagon, swamped by delays that sap readiness, tries a new approach.

By the Editorial Board

|

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June 24, 2024 at 4:52 p.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Editorial Board · June 24, 2024

Scratch one flat-top. The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis checked into Newport News in May 2021 for a scheduled overhaul and refueling stint, work that normally takes four years to complete. Last week, tucked into budget documents sent to Capitol Hill, came the news: The carrier needs an additional 14 months out of service. Now, the Stennis won’t be ready for duty until October 2026 — more than five years after it slipped into port.

Delay has been the Pentagon’s dance partner all spring. Program after weapons program has fallen behind its production schedule, which means cascading costs for taxpayers and declining readiness for the military. The problem stems from choosing systems that are too complicated, too exquisite and too costly to maintain — and relying on just a handful of prime contractors, most of which face little or no competition. On June 17, the Government Accountability Office, in its annual survey of 76 leading procurement programs, described the Pentagon as “alarmingly slow” in fielding weapons for every service.

Consider these alarms: In an uncommonly public report in April, Carlos Del Toro, the Navy secretary, announced that nine Navy ship programs were between one to three years behind schedule. The ships include the new Columbia-class submarine (12 to 16 months late); a new aircraft carrier (18 to 26 months late); and the first Constellation-class frigate (three years late). Del Toro called out dilatory contractors by name — General Dynamics Electric Boat, Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc. and Fincantieri Marinette Marine — and went so far as to suggest that the United States should consider building some of its warships overseas.

The delays are just as rampant at the Air Force. The first flight of its new ICBM, dubbed the Sentinel, is already two years behind schedule, while its price tag, once touted at $100 billion, has jumped by an additional 37 percent. That news triggered a little-used Reagan-era law that requires Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to certify that the program is worth pursuing. Meanwhile, a new Air Force trainer is more than two years behind schedule, and the service has halved its purchase of the jet in 2025 in part to help its manufacturer, Boeing, catch up.

Deliveries of Boeing’s new KC-46 Pegasus tankers were briefly halted earlier this year due to issues with its refueling boom, one of several delays that have beset an aircraft vital to U.S. force projection around the world. And dozens of F-35 fighters are parked at Lockheed Martin’s facilities waiting for long-delayed software upgrades.

Breaking the hammerlock that a handful of prime contractors has on Pentagon budgets and timetables won’t be easy. Del Toro is right to push Congress to buy more ships and their subsystems from faster-moving foreign manufacturers. Lawmakers such as Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) are right to press the Navy to move some portion of ship construction away from the overworked yards on the coasts and instead tap smaller, civilian facilities along the Great Lakes, where skilled labor shortages are less severe.

Inside the Pentagon, there are distinct signs that the prime contractor gravy train might be slowing. In April, the Air Force ended a 50-year arrangement with Boeing and instead asked a Reno, Nev.-area, firm, Sierra Nevada Corporation, to build the next generation command and control “Doomsday” plane. Pentagon officials like to talk about “off the shelf” equipment, but Sierra Nevada did better than that; it bought five used Korean Air 747s and is now refitting them for the mission.

The Army chief of staff, Gen. Randy A. George, deserves praise for canceling a new reconnaissance helicopter program in February, and the service gets extra credit for noting that the aircraft’s mission could “be more affordably and effectively achieved” by relying on unmanned and space-based sensors. In May, the Space Force canceled its contract with RTX (once known as Raytheon) for a missile-warning satellite because of delays and cost overruns. And it was encouraging this month to see two Pentagon agencies tap four smaller companies to build a new armed drone that can fly 500 miles using commercially available systems. “Widening the aperture to include more nontraditional aerospace companies offers the best chance at accomplishing our cost-per-unit goals, project timeline and production quantity goals,” a Pentagon official said.

Thinking beyond the prime contractors is overdue and welcome, but remains the exception rather than the rule at the Pentagon, now on track to spend nearly $1 trillion next year on defense.

The Washington Post · by Editorial Board · June 24, 2024

11. Top State Department official to become Austin’s new chief of staff

Top State Department official to become Austin’s new chief of staff

Defense News · by Noah Robertson · June 24, 2024

Derek Chollet, a senior State Department official nominated last year for the Pentagon’s top policy role, will become Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s new chief of staff.

Austin announced the decision in a statement Monday morning, calling Chollet “one of the most distinguished, far-sighted, and skillful national-security practitioners of his generation.”

The decision comes nearly two weeks after Austin’s longtime Chief of Staff Kelly Magsamen said she would leave her post in late June, after three and a half years in the role. It also puts to rest the long saga of Chollet’s nomination to lead the Pentagon’s policy shop, afflicted by personnel turnover since its former leader Colin Kahl left last summer.

Shortly after Kahl left, the White House submitted Chollet’s name to fill the role. But the confirmation stalled in the Senate, in large part due to Republican objections over his role in the Afghanistan pullout in 2021.

Those frustrations crescendoed last September in a contentious hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Since then there has been no progress in actually confirming Chollet. The decision to move him to the chief of staff role may also have to do with the calendar. There’s only seven months until January, when there could be a turnover in administrations depending on November’s election

Amanda Dory, a longtime Pentagon hand, is now serving as undersecretary of defense for policy on an acting basis.

Magsamen’s deputy, Caroline Zier, was initially set to take over the chief of staff role. Chollet, who has served in senior positions within the Pentagon before, will start in July.

About Noah Robertson

Noah Robertson is the Pentagon reporter at Defense News. He previously covered national security for the Christian Science Monitor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and government from the College of William & Mary in his hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia.

12. Republicans will again try to slash defense secretary’s salary to $1

Sigh... when will we see serious work done in Congress?

Republicans will again try to slash defense secretary’s salary to $1

militarytimes.com · by Leo Shane III · June 24, 2024

House Republicans will again try to slash Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s annual salary from $221,000 to just $1 in retaliation for a host of conservative complaints against current military policies.

An amendment to the chamber’s annual defense appropriations bill offered by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., over the weekend would mandate the salary change. It’s the second consecutive year she has offered the idea, which was adopted by House Republicans last fall but ultimately stripped out of the final legislation in negotiations with the Senate.

The pay reduction for the secretary of defense will be considered by the House Rules Committee on Tuesday and, if ruled in order, voted on by the full chamber later this week. It is one of more than 400 amendments to the $833.1 billion spending measure, many dealing with partisan fights and priorities.

RELATED

GOP green lights FY25 defense bill, but more social fights ahead

Abortion, diversity training and COVID prevention are again hot-button issues in the military appropriations plan for next year.

Austin, 70, has been repeatedly attacked by Republicans in committee testimony and on the House floor over the last few years for the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, the military’s diversity and equity policies, recruiting shortfalls in the ranks and COVID-19 vaccine policies.

In addition, several lawmakers demanded his resignation earlier this year after he hid his prostate cancer diagnosis from senior military officials and the White House, a move for which he has publicly apologized.

Democratic lawmakers have blasted the salary reductions as unrealistic and petty. If the proposal were to be adopted by the Republican-majority House again this year, it would likely again be blocked by the Democratic-majority Senate before becoming law. The White House could also veto any measure including the salary cut.

House leaders are hoping to finalize their draft of the annual military appropriations bill by the end of the week. Senate leaders have not announced a timeline for when they plan to advance their draft of the spending plan.

About Leo Shane III

Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.

13. Vietnam reaffirms "strategic partnership" with US day after Putin visit

Appears to be some good work by our diplomats here.

Does this undermine Putin's visit?

Vietnam reaffirms "strategic partnership" with US day after Putin visit

Newsweek · by Micah McCartney · June 24, 2024

ByChina News Reporter

The Vietnamese government lauded its seven-month-old "strategic" level ties with the United States just one day after top officials met in Hanoi with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Friday afternoon talks took place mere hours after Putin departed Vietnam following a two-day state visit to shore up ties amid mounting economic and diplomatic isolation over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Moscow is Hanoi's main arms supplier, and the two have enjoyed close ties for decades, with then-North Vietnam moving closer to the then-Soviet Union to hedge against China and for military assistance against U.S. forces in the Vietnam War.

Local media reported that during Friday's dialogue between Vietnamese Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Kritenbrink, the Southeast Asian country's top diplomat thanked the State Department for its role in upgrading bilateral ties last year. Son also expressed appreciation for the first Vietnam-U.S. Foreign Ministers' Dialogue held in Washington, D.C., in March.

The U.S. and Vietnam signaled increasingly friendly relations in September by upgrading bilateral ties to the level of Comprehensive Strategic Partnership during President Joe Biden's visit to the country. This move is part of U.S. efforts to counter China's influence in the Asia-Pacific.

Vietnam had already adopted the same designation for its relationship with China and Russia.

Newsweek reached out to the Russian and Vietnamese Foreign Ministries via email for comment.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, shakes hands with his Vietnamese counterpart To Lam. The two signed a series of agreements during their June 20 talks. Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, shakes hands with his Vietnamese counterpart To Lam. The two signed a series of agreements during their June 20 talks. Russian Foreign Ministry

Friday's meeting came one day after Putin met with his Vietnamese counterpart To Lam and Communist Party of Vietnam chief Nguyen Phu Trong.

The heads of state signed about a dozen agreements, including on Russian natural gas and fossil fuel exports. They also agreed to boost cooperation in oil and gas exploration, green technology, science, and education, Vietnam's Foreign Ministry wrote in a statement.

They also discussed international issues "of mutual interest" and agreed on the "importance of resolving disputes through peaceful means on the basis of compliance with the fundamental principles of the Charter of the United Nations and international law."

This reportedly included the South China Sea, where Beijing's sweeping claims over the waterway have landed it in territorial disputes with Vietnam and several other neighbors. It also included increasingly violent confrontations between China and the Philippines, a U.S. treaty ally.

Putin was fresh off his visit to North Korea, during which he and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed a new treaty pledging military aid if either country was attacked, a move criticized by the U.S. and South Korea.

The neighbors have been deepening ties since the 2022 invasion, with mounting evidence suggesting North Korea has provided missiles and artillery to replace those used up in Russian forces' offensives in Ukraine.

"Vietnam has had longstanding very close ties with Russia, so our only expectation is that when they have conversations with Russia—as China does, as other countries in the region do—we would hope that they would express their support for the principles of the U.N. Charter everywhere in the world," U.S. Department of State Spokesperson Matthew Miller said during Thursday's press conference.

Asked during Thursday's press conference whether there was a connection between Kritenbrink's visit and Putin's, given the timing, he said the trip had been planned well in advance.

About the writer

Micah McCartney

Micah McCartney is a reporter for Newsweek based in Taipei, Taiwan. He covers U.S.-China relations, East Asian and Southeast Asian security issues, and cross-strait ties between China and Taiwan. Send tips or suggestions to Micah at m.mccartney@newsweek.com.

Micah McCartney is a reporter for Newsweek based in Taipei, Taiwan. He covers U.S.-China relations, East Asian and Southeast Asian ...

To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here.

Newsweek · by Micah McCartney · June 24, 2024

14. Tactical Nuclear Weapons, Explained

A useful tutorial with an important conclusion:

War, it’s been said, is politics by other means. With nuclear or any other kind of weapons, whether those means are tactical or strategic depends on the objectives a nation is trying to achieve, not the damage it’s trying to do. Any nuclear detonation in a wartime environment would likely be for the furtherance of strategic objectives and almost certainly would result in strategic consequences. The term “tactical nuke” will almost certainly continue in use but should be thought of only as a reference to size and range, not desired outcomes.

Tactical Nuclear Weapons, Explained

Are they really tactical?

thedispatch.com · by Carl Graham · June 24, 2024

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent announcement of military rehearsals for the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in response to NATO’s support of Ukraine is only the latest in a series of hints, statements, and threats from the Russian government intimating a willingness to “go nuclear.”

But the characterization of these weapons as “tactical” as opposed to “strategic” is a holdover from Cold War terminology that has little applicability to today’s interconnected world, where the use of any nuclear weapon would have immediate and profound strategic consequences.

What is a tactical nuclear weapon?

Nuclear weapons are often categorized based on range, yield, and delivery method. Tactical nuclear weapons are generally described as relatively low-yield, short-range weapons delivered by battlefield systems such as artillery or tactical aircraft. Although exact definitions vary, yields can be less than 1 kiloton (kt) to upward of 100kt (for comparison, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were 15kt to 23kt), with ranges in the dozens to low hundreds of miles. This compares to theater or strategic systems, which are delivered by missiles or long-range bombers and have megaton (mt) yields with ranges measuring thousands of miles.

During the Cold War, these limited-yield weapons served to address military challenges for which NATO and the Soviet Union had no conventional response. Leaving weapons in storage, deploying them to battlefields and air bases, or mating them to delivery systems (loaded on aircraft or placed on artillery shells, for example) sent a strong message about how seriously a crisis or conflict was being taken by either side. This is the psychology of escalation that Putin is employing now, but is more applicable to a Cold War world with two distinct blocs and controlled information than today’s multipolar and interconnected world.

While the thought of using a nuclear weapon to destroy a tank formation seems nearly inconceivable today, the doctrine behind these weapons was developed by tacticians with living memories of two world wars and millions of casualties inflicted by both conventional and non-conventional arms. For someone who learned to duck and cover near the missile fields of Montana, Wyoming, or North Dakota, nuclear war was anything but unthinkable. Enormous intellectual capital went into formulating plans and doctrine for not just surviving but ultimately prevailing in a Cold War nuclear conflict.

Who possesses tactical nuclear weapons, and why?

First, a caveat: All of these numbers are open to debate and even questionable at the unclassified level because nations closely guard such information. But they do provide orders of magnitude for useful comparisons. The Center for Strategic and International Studies has compiled data consistent with numbers and capabilities presented below along with important caveats here.

The question of “who has what” perfectly illustrates why the term “tactical nuclear weapon” has outlived its usefulness. There are estimated to be more than 12,000 nuclear weapons in the nine declared and undeclared nuclear states. The United States is currently reducing its stockpile. French and Israeli stockpiles are relatively stable. And China, India, North Korea, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom, as well as possibly Russia, are thought to be increasing their stockpiles.

Of the more than 12,000 weapons, a little less than 20 percent can be categorized as non-strategic or tactical based on their sizes, ranges, and/or delivery mechanisms. Russia has by far the most tactical nuclear weapons with more than 1,500. The U.S. has 100 stored in Europe, and likely more stored on the U.S. mainland. India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel are estimated to have a little fewer than 500 among them. But Israel, India, North Korea, and Pakistan certainly don’t consider their “tactical” weapons as means to achieving tactical ends. The weapons exist to advance the strategic goals of regime survival or the threat of inflicting unacceptable punishment on potential adversaries.

So depending on where one sits, weapons with similar characteristics can be either tactical or strategic. The defining characteristic is in the objective, not the weapon. A nuclear state’s doctrine will define how it intends to translate means into ends, but it’s the ends that determine whether any military action is tactical, operational, or strategic.

Unfortunately, nuclear doctrine is not always clear. All nuclear states intentionally maintain some level of ambiguity in their statements about when and how they would use their nuclear arsenals to inject doubt into a potential adversary’s cost/benefit calculations and provide maneuvering room during a crisis. China and India, for example, have articulated so-called no first-use doctrines. In truth, it’s anybody’s guess whether they would adhere to their “no first use” rhetoric in an existential crisis. Russia explicitly states that it will use nuclear weapons to achieve its war objectives or to protect its sovereignty if it’s threatened. Israel doesn’t acknowledge its weapons, much less any doctrine.

U.S. nuclear doctrine is outlined by the Defense Department in periodic Nuclear Posture Reviews, the latest of which was published in 2022. It describes the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. policy as deterring strategic attacks, assuring allies and partners, and achieving U.S. objectives if deterrence fails. The underlying theme is a strategy of deterrence: having a strong and survivable enough arsenal to deter any potential adversary from using nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction against the United States or its allies. As simple as that sounds, it’s a policy that evolved over decades, just as technologies and adversaries have evolved.

Lower-yield nuclear weapons used for limited objectives are not necessarily considered as part of an escalation ladder leading to all-out nuclear war between major powers. If the use—or even threatened use—of such weapons either enables a decisive win or deters a decisive defeat, they could even be considered de-escalatory. This is certainly part of Russia’s strategy of provocation. It has an explicit “escalate to de-escalate” strategy that seeks to end fighting on its terms by threatening to take measures—including nuclear—the consequences of which are unpredictable.

But nobody really knows how or how quickly things might escalate once the taboo of using a nuclear weapon is broken. Command and control breakdowns could result in unauthorized use. Misinterpreted intentions could lead to further escalation. Other regional nuclear powers could see a superpower’s use of nuclear weapons as a green light to solve their own local conflicts using the same means. In today’s connected world, it is difficult to envision a scenario where nuclear weapons of any size could be used for any limited purpose and not have consequential strategic effects on all involved, and even many who are not.

Is any nuke really tactical?

Would a tactical nuclear weapon even be effective if used to achieve tactical, i.e. battlefield ends? That depends on the battlefield. Will friendly troops be required to travel through a contaminated zone? How would civilians and civilian infrastructure be affected? There are certainly cases where a small nuclear blast could destroy a target more quickly and efficiently than masses of conventional weapons and personnel. But despite any temporary tactical gains, its use would send a strategic message to the adversary and to the world. But such a message will almost certainly result in a strategic response, whether by military or other elements of national power. Not necessarily a like response, but one designed to have strategic impacts. So yes, nuclear weapons can have tactical effects. But these effects will be overshadowed by a much larger strategic fallout.

War, it’s been said, is politics by other means. With nuclear or any other kind of weapons, whether those means are tactical or strategic depends on the objectives a nation is trying to achieve, not the damage it’s trying to do. Any nuclear detonation in a wartime environment would likely be for the furtherance of strategic objectives and almost certainly would result in strategic consequences. The term “tactical nuke” will almost certainly continue in use but should be thought of only as a reference to size and range, not desired outcomes.

thedispatch.com · by Carl Graham · June 24, 2024

15. Marines revive historic 'Sledge' airfield on Peleliu in Pacific pivot

The Old Breed is something every person with any interest in or connection to the military (especially in the policy making and decision making capacity) must read to gain an appreciation for horror of war.

Marines revive historic 'Sledge' airfield on Peleliu in Pacific pivot

Eight decades after the U.S. military took the small island in ferocious fighting, the aged airstrip is back in service.

NICHOLAS SLAYTON

POSTED ON JUN 24, 2024 5:37 PM EDT

3 MINUTE READ

taskandpurpose.com · by Nicholas Slayton

In 1944, the tiny island of Peleliu was the site of the some of the fiercest fighting of World War II, as Marines and Army soldiers fought to seize an airfield carved into its coral rocks. Saturday, that legacy was revisisted as Marines began flying again from Peleliu, this time with an eye towards its value in the modern Pacific theater.

A Marine Corps KC-130J Super Hercules tanker assigned to 1st Marine Air Wing touched down on Peleliu June 22. It was a major milestone for the U.S. Marine Corps’ ongoing efforts to restore and update military installation in the Pacific, many of which have World War II roots. The airstrip was officially recertified earlier this month.

The fight for Peleliu was one of the bloodiest in U.S. history as almost 50,000 Marines and Army soldiers pried the tiny island away from 10,000 Japanese soldiers. Nearly one of every three Americans that landed at Peleliu was killed or injured, the highest rate of any amphibious landing of the war, according to the Marines.

“Today is a historic moment as we land a Marine Corps aircraft on the ‘Sledge’ runway,” Maj. Christopher Romero, commanding officer of Marine Corps Engineer Detachment Palau (MCED-P). “This remarkable achievement demonstrates the strategic importance of our mission and our dedication to regional stability and security.”

The name ‘Sledge’ honors Eugene Sledge, a Marine who fought in the Battle of Peleliu and wrote “With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa,” one of the books that was adapted for the HBO miniseries “The Pacific.” For the episode on Peleliu, the show focuses on Sledge’s experience as a mortarman during the landings and two months of fighting that followed.

According to the Department of Defense, the newly recertified airstrip, as well as other military improvements on the island, are “critical to enhancing U.S. military strategic capabilities in the Indo-Pacific region.” Peleliu is one of several locations in the Pacific where the U.S military has been upgrading or expanding its presence. That includes building up the military presence on Guam, putting newer aircraft in Japan and refurbishing sites that date back to the early 20th century. At Peleliu, more work is needed before the project is complete, but the recertification of the airstrip is a major milestone in restoring the site.

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The decades-old airfield had been essentially reclaimed by nature. Crews had to clear away large amounts of vegetation — and sweep the area for any unexploded ordnance from the war, an ongoing problem in the Pacific — before work on the airstrip proper could be done. The work also included supplemental projects, such as road improvements on the island.

The island, part of the nation of Palau, is notoriously small. A coral reef island, it is barely more than 5 square miles in size. Despite that, its airstrip was deemed a key step in the American island hopping campaign of World War II, pushing closer to the Japanese home islands (some, historians, though, question the value of the small island, and the high price paid for it, noting that the airfield never became a key outpost for airpower). The battle, which began Sept. 15, 1944, ran three months, ending with an American victory on Nov. 27. III Amphibious Corps, made up of Marines from the 1st Marine Division and soldiers from the 81st Infantry Division suffered at least 1,989 dead and more than 8,500 wounded. As part of the wider work on Peleliu today, the Marine Corps is expanding the Peleliu Civic Center Museum and adding pieces left over from the battle.

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Nicholas Slayton

Contributing Editor

Nicholas Slayton is a Contributing Editor for Task & Purpose. In addition to covering breaking news, he writes about history, shipwrecks, and the military's hunt for unidentified anomalous phenomenon (formerly known as UFOs). He currently runs the Task & Purpose West Coast Bureau from Los Angeles.

16. The US Is Learning the Wrong Cold War Lessons on China

Excerpts:

We should also remember that Chinese leaders have spent years since the end of the Cold War trying to learn the most relevant lessons of the Soviet collapse and avoid a similar fate. From their perspective, the list of mistakes made by their Soviet comrades was long — abysmal economic performance, and unaffordable arms race with the US, imperial overreach, and reckless use of force in the invasion of Afghanistan. But topping this list was the Soviet Union’s fatal blunder in picking Gorbachev as its leader in March 1985.

President Xi Jinping may have unlearned some of these valuable lessons, judging by his ambitious, costly, and risky policies such as escalating tensions with US-allied Philippines in the South China Sea, splurging $1 trillion on the Belt and Road Initiative, and cracking down China’s dynamic private sector.

While it remains to be seen if Xi is capable of course correction, we can be more sure that the CCP is unlikely to repeat the same mistake of making a Chinese Gorbachev Xi’s successor. It has been remarkably successful in rooting out genuine reformers from its senior ranks in the post-Cold War era.

We may have to wait decades to see the end game of the US-China rivalry. But applying the wrong lessons of the Cold War will not help the US win, especially because Chinese leaders seem to have a better grasp of how the Soviets lost it.

The US Is Learning the Wrong Cold War Lessons on China

Hoping for a repeat of history isn’t the wisest foreign-policy strategy for winning the 21st century version of the Washington-Moscow rivalry.

June 24, 2024 at 3:00 PM EDT

By Minxin Pei

Minxin Pei is professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and author of "The Sentinel State: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China."

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-06-24/us-is-learning-the-wrong-cold-war-lessons-on-china?sref=hhjZtX76

By now few question the proposition that the US and China are locked in an open-ended strategic rivalry, if not a new Cold War. But what the end game of this contest looks like is a hotly debated topic. Hawks in Washington are calling for “victory,” rejecting the strategy of a managed competition that prioritizes the prevention of an uncontrolled escalation and even a great power war.

The definition of victory, spelled out in an influential recent article in Foreign Affairs, appears to be the capitulation of the Chinese Communist Party and regime change, a triumph best achieved through a strategy of confrontation similar to Ronald Reagan’s policy toward the Soviet Union in the early 1980s.

It is tempting to bet that a Reaganesque approach will deliver the same outcome for the US in its rivalry with China as it did in the 1980s. But wishing a repeat of history may not be the wisest foreign-policy strategy for winning the 21st century version of the Washington-Moscow rivalry.

Throughout the Cold War, the US-led alliance maintained decisive economic and military advantages over the Soviet Union, increasing the odds of its ultimate victory. This fact may boost the argument that the US can also prevail over China because, despite its rapid gains in the economic and military domains in the last four decades, China is still a significantly weaker power, not to speak of the combined heft of the US and its rich Western allies.

But even overwhelming superiority in hard power does not guarantee victory. Weak adversaries, such as Iran, North Korea, and Cuba, have proved capable of surviving under adverse conditions for a long time despite predictions of their demise.

The narrative that Reagan’s confrontational tactics, in particular his military build up, were decisive in winning the Cold War is unsupported by evidence. Although Reagan escalated the pressure on the Soviets, his policy did not yield results during the first half of his presidency. It was the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev that directly contributed to the Soviet demise. Ironically, it was Reagan’s moderation after Gorbachev’s rise, not his continuing hardline policy , that did more to allow Gorbachev to continue “glasnost and perestroika” that destroyed the USSR from within.

In the Chinese case, the only plausible scenario of victory short of a catastrophic great power war would be the implosion of the Chinese Communist regime as the result of a similar political revolution.

Notably, advocates of victory over China through full-spectrum confrontation also hold out hopes for a Chinese Gorbachev, even though they do not explain how this strategy can help produce such a leader. Readers of Gorbachev’s memoirs know that his rise was anything but a pre-determined event.

Additionally, what made Gorbachev lose control over his “glasnost” and “perestroika” was the ethno-nationalist movements in the 15 republics of the Soviet Union and the anti-communist revolutionary movements in its satellite states in Eastern Europe. The simultaneous eruption of the twin revolutions, more than anything else, brought down the Soviet empire.

Counting on a similar scenario in China is unrealistic. Although China is also a multi-ethnic empire, its demography makes a similar implosion far less likely. When the Soviet Union dissolved, ethnic Russians made up only 51% of its population. By contrast, Han-Chinese, the dominant ethnic group, accounts for 91% of the country’s population. Bloody ethnic unrest, even uprisings, in Tibet, Xinjiang, and perhaps Inner Mongolia are quite likely in the event of Chinese version of “glasnost,” but the probability that ethno-nationalist movements in these regions can splinter China on their own is low due to their small population size (the total number of Uyghurs, Tibetans and Mongolians is about 24 million , or 1.7% of the Chinese population).

We should also remember that Chinese leaders have spent years since the end of the Cold War trying to learn the most relevant lessons of the Soviet collapse and avoid a similar fate. From their perspective, the list of mistakes made by their Soviet comrades was long — abysmal economic performance, and unaffordable arms race with the US, imperial overreach, and reckless use of force in the invasion of Afghanistan. But topping this list was the Soviet Union’s fatal blunder in picking Gorbachev as its leader in March 1985.

President Xi Jinping may have unlearned some of these valuable lessons, judging by his ambitious, costly, and risky policies such as escalating tensions with US-allied Philippines in the South China Sea, splurging $1 trillion on the Belt and Road Initiative, and cracking down China’s dynamic private sector.

While it remains to be seen if Xi is capable of course correction, we can be more sure that the CCP is unlikely to repeat the same mistake of making a Chinese Gorbachev Xi’s successor. It has been remarkably successful in rooting out genuine reformers from its senior ranks in the post-Cold War era.

We may have to wait decades to see the end game of the US-China rivalry. But applying the wrong lessons of the Cold War will not help the US win, especially because Chinese leaders seem to have a better grasp of how the Soviets lost it.

More From Bloomberg Opinion:

• China Will Struggle to Undo US Dominance: Daniel Moss
• There Is No Shame in Being Chinese: Shuli Ren
• How Not to Win the Influence War Against China: Karishma Vaswani

Want more Bloomberg Opinion? OPIN . Or subscribe to our daily newsletter.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Minxin Pei is professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and author of "The Sentinel State: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China."

17. More Debt Is Better Than More Billion-Dollar Climate Disasters

So much to learn about our debt.

This article may be too political. It will likely be drowned out by those on both sides of the climate change disaster.

One side: "good debt" is useful and necessary to defend against climate change.

Another side: our high debt is a reason not to waste money on climate change.

More Debt Is Better Than More Billion-Dollar Climate Disasters

Governments that delay spending now will have to spend far more in the future, when the costs to recover will be higher and the need more dire.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-06-24/more-debt-is-better-than-more-billion-dollar-climate-disasters?sref=hhjZtX76

June 24, 2024 at 6:00 AM EDT

By Mark Gongloff

Mark Gongloff is a Bloomberg Opinion editor and columnist covering climate change. He previously worked for Fortune.com, the Huffington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

There’s good debt and there’s bad debt. Good debt is a $465 million government loan for your fledgling electric-car company that helps it become the world’s biggest automaker. Bad debt is maxing out your credit cards to buy cartoon apes in 2022.

Depending on your politics, you might consider a government taking out loans to finance the clean-energy transition to be bad debt. But economists keep pointing out that a little bit of deficit spending to fight climate change today will save a whole lot of deficit spending tomorrow, to not only fight a rear-guard action against global heating but also to clean up the expensive mess it will make.

Unfortunately, the politics of green government spending aren’t exactly having a banner year. European parliamentary elections hit green parties particularly hard, the UK’s Labour Party has scaled back its climate plans, and the deeply climate-unfriendly Donald Trump stands a real chance of winning a return to the White House in November.

A lot of this anti-green momentum comes down to popular anxiety about high living costs in the wake of the Covid pandemic. Though clean energy is on the whole cheaper than fossil fuels, the transition can be costly in the short term, and poorly designed plans can saddle lower- and middle-income people with the burden, as my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Lara Williams has written. It’s become an effective wedge issue for right-wing politicians around the world. Inflation has also forced central banks to boost interest rates, making green investments much more expensive and raising the costs of servicing government debt that ballooned during the pandemic.

But none of this is happening in a vacuum. Whether voters or politicians care or not, the climate is changing, and the costs of that change are mounting. The US alone suffered a record 28 climate-related disasters last year costing $1 billion or more each, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. It’s matching that pace so far this year, even before what will probably be an active Atlantic hurricane season, turbocharged by sauna-like ocean water and the La Niña weather pattern. Adjusted for inflation, the US has averaged 20 such disasters per year over the past 5 years, compared with an average of just three per year in the 1980s.

Billion-Dollar Disasters Are on the Rise

Destructive weather-related disasters in the US have become more common as the climate warms, with even simple rainstorms doing significant damage

Source: NOAA

Note: CPI-adjusted

Many of the costs of disaster cleanup are borne by, you guessed it, those cash-strapped governments. They’re also on the hook for shoring up military bases, critical infrastructure, nuclear facilities and more against increasingly chaotic weather, while fighting forest fires and helping farmers and ranchers, to name a few of the expensive obligations detailed in a White House report in March.

Climate change’s biggest fiscal hit to governments may not be disaster clean-up and prevention but increased health care spending. Most of the estimated 2.2% boost to annual government spending triggered by unabated climate change will be chalked up to higher health care costs, according to an estimate by ETH Zurich climate economist Lint Barrage. Hotter weather exacerbates heart disease, diabetes, asthma, mental illness and other chronic conditions, while encouraging the spread of infectious diseases from dengue fever to toxic mushrooms.

Hotter weather also saps worker productivity and cognitive development in children. Throw that in with all the other climate-fueled nightmares, and economic activity will suffer. A heating planet could leave global GDP 20% lower by mid-century, according to one study. It might already have shaved 37% off GDP since 1970, according to a recent National Bureau of Economic Research study. That’s a lot of lost tax revenue for governments, particularly if they stubbornly refuse to tax the carbon spewed while powering their economies, cough the United States of America cough.

The net result is that delaying climate spending now will lead to even more climate spending in the future, when prices will be even higher and the need will be even more dire.

“Kicking the fiscal can down the road on measures that could accelerate the green transition will probably lead to greater macroeconomic and fiscal adjustments further down the line,” Capital Economics economist Hamad Hussain wrote in a report last week.

Hussain cited a 2021 study by the UK’s Office for Budget Responsibility, which estimated that delaying transition plans by a decade would cut that country’s long-term GDP by 3% compared with investing the money now, even as public spending would end up 50% higher. The government’s debt-to-GDP ratio would be 23% higher by 2050 if it delayed green spending by a decade than if it acted earlier.

“Pandemics, climate change and public debt dynamics are all subject to amplifying feedback mechanisms and tipping points that can result in spiraling and irreversible costs that put a premium on acting early,” the OBR wrote. “In making the transition to net zero, delaying decisive action to tackle carbon emissions by 10 years could double the overall cost.”

Zeroing out global emissions by 2050 to avoid the worst climate outcomes will cost $215 trillion, Bloomberg NEF recently estimated, a 10% increase over their estimate just a year earlier. That’s a bargain relative to the costs of inaction, but much of it will be borne by governments. Given that the benefits won’t immediately fill up a gas tank or a cereal bowl, it won’t be an easy political sell.

As it stands, green spending is losing the race against global heating. Failing to make these investments now is the fiscal equivalent of maxing out our credit cards on cartoon apes and then making only the minimum monthly payments, racking up huge interest charges in the process. It’s a great way to go bankrupt.

More From Bloomberg Opinion:

• Climate Change Notches a Win in Europe’s Elections: Editorial
• Biden Gives Red Districts an Inconvenient Gift: Denning & Davies
• This Heatwave Is a Disaster. Treat It as Such: Mark Gongloff

Want more Bloomberg Opinion? OPIN . Or you can subscribe to our daily newsletter.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Mark Gongloff is a Bloomberg Opinion editor and columnist covering climate change. He previously worked for Fortune.com, the Huffington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

18. Trump ran up national debt twice as much as Biden: new analysis

This data created a dustup on CNN this week.

Debt or deficit? What little I do know is that these are not interchangeable terms. Both are used in this article.

Jun 24, 2024 -Economy

Trump ran up national debt twice as much as Biden: new analysis

https://www.axios.com/2024/06/24/trump-biden-debt-deficits-election

• Neil Irwin

New ten-year borrowing by presidential term

As of June 21, 2024

Non-COVID reliefCOVID relief

Trump

$8.4t

$4.8t

3.6t

Biden

$4.3t

2.2t

2.1t

Data: Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget; Chart: Axios Visuals

Former President Trump ran up the national debt by about twice as much as President Biden, according to a new analysis of their fiscal track records.

Why it matters: The winner of November's election faces a gloomy fiscal outlook, with rapidly rising debt levels at a time when interest rates are already high and demographic pressure on retirement programs is rising.

• Both candidates bear a share of the responsibility, as each added trillions to that tally while in office.
• But Trump's contribution was significantly higher, according to the fiscal watchdogs at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, thanks to both tax cuts and spending deals struck in his four years in the White House.

By the numbers: Trump added $8.4 trillion in borrowing over a ten-year window, CRFB finds in a report out this morning.

• Biden's figure clocks in at $4.3 trillion with seven months remaining in his term.
• If you exclude COVID relief spending from the tally, the numbers are $4.8 trillion for Trump and $2.2 trillion for Biden.

State of play: For Trump, the biggest non-COVID drivers of higher public debt were his signature tax cuts enacted in 2017 (causing $1.9 trillion in additional borrowing) and bipartisan spending packages (which added $2.1 trillion).

• For Biden, major non-COVID factors include 2022 and 2023 spending bills ($1.4 trillion), student debt relief ($620 billion), and legislation to support health care for veterans ($520 billion).
• Biden deficits have also swelled, according to CRFB's analysis, due to executive actions that changed the way food stamp benefits are calculated, expanding Medicaid benefits, and other changes that total $548 billion.

Between the lines: Deficit politics may return to the forefront of U.S. policy debates next year.

• Much of Trump's tax law is set to expire at the end of 2025, and the CBO has estimated that fully extending it would increase deficits by $4.6 trillion over the next decade.

• High interest rates make the taxpayer burden of both existing and new debt higher than it was during the era of near-zero interest rates.
• And the Social Security trust fund is rapidly hurtling toward depletion in 2033, which would trigger huge cuts in the retirement benefits absent Congressional action.

What they're saying: "The next president will face huge fiscal challenges," CRFB president Maya MacGuineas tells Axios.

• "Yet both candidates have track records of approving trillions in new borrowing even setting aside the justified borrowing for COVID, and neither has proposed a comprehensive and credible plan to get the debt under control," she said.
• "No president is fully responsible for the fiscal challenges that come along, but they need to use the bully pulpit to set the stage for making some hard choices," MacGuineas said.

19. Exclusive: Trump handed plan to halt US military aid to Kyiv unless it talks peace with Moscow

Retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg and Fred Fleitz

Exclusive: Trump handed plan to halt US military aid to Kyiv unless it talks peace with Moscow

By Gram Slattery and Simon Lewis

June 25, 20243:36 AM EDTUpdated 5 hours ago

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-reviews-plan-halt-us-military-aid-ukraine-unless-it-negotiates-peace-with-2024-06-25/

WASHINGTON, June 25 (Reuters) - Two key advisers to Donald Trump have presented him with a plan to end Russia's war in Ukraine - if he wins the presidential election - that involves telling Ukraine it will only get more U.S. weapons if it enters into peace talks.

The United States would at the same time warn Moscow that any refusal to negotiate would result in increased U.S. support for Ukraine, retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, one of Trump's national security advisers, said in an interview.

Under the plan drawn up by Kellogg and Fred Fleitz, who both served as chiefs of staff in Trump's National Security Council during his 2017-2021 presidency, there would be a ceasefire based on prevailing battle lines during peace talks.

They have presented their strategy to Trump, and the former president responded favorably, Fleitz said. "I'm not claiming he agreed with it or agreed with every word of it, but we were pleased to get the feedback we did," he said.

However, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said only statements made by Trump or authorized members of his campaign should be deemed official.

The strategy outlined by Kellogg and Fleitz is the most detailed plan yet by associates of Trump, who has said he could quickly settle the war in Ukraine if he beats President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 election, though he has not discussed specifics.

The proposal would mark a big shift in the U.S. position on the war and would face opposition from European allies and within Trump's own Republican Party.

The Kremlin said that any peace plan proposed by a possible future Trump administration would have to reflect the reality on the ground but that Russian President Vladimir Putin remained open to talks.

"The value of any plan lies in the nuances and in taking into account the real state of affairs on the ground," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters.

"President Putin has repeatedly said that Russia has been and remains open to negotiations, taking into account the real state of affairs on the ground," he said. "We remain open to negotiations."

Ukraine's foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment on the plan.

NATO MEMBERSHIP ON HOLD

The core elements of the plan were outlined in a publicly available research paper, opens new tab published by the "America First Policy Institute," a Trump-friendly think tank where Kellogg and Fleitz hold leadership positions.

Kellogg said it would be crucial to get Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table quickly if Trump wins the election.

"We tell the Ukrainians, 'You've got to come to the table, and if you don't come to the table, support from the United States will dry up,'" he said. "And you tell Putin, 'He's got to come to the table and if you don't come to the table, then we'll give Ukrainians everything they need to kill you in the field.'"

According to their research paper, Moscow would also be coaxed to the table with the promise of NATO membership for Ukraine being put off for an extended period.

Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine in February 2022. Until some gains by Russia in recent months, the front lines barely moved since the end of that year, despite tens of thousands of dead on both sides in relentless trench warfare, the bloodiest fighting in Europe since World War Two.

Fleitz said Ukraine need not formally cede territory to Russia under their plan. Still, he said, Ukraine was unlikely to regain effective control of all its territory in the near term.

"Our concern is that this has become a war of attrition that's going to kill a whole generation of young men," he said.

A lasting peace in Ukraine would require additional security guarantees for Ukraine, Kellogg and Fleitz said. Fleitz added that "arming Ukraine to the teeth" was likely to be a key element of that.

"President Trump has repeatedly stated that a top priority in his second term will be to quickly negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine war," Trump spokesperson Cheung said. "The war between Russia and Ukraine never would have happened if Donald J. Trump were president. So sad."

The Biden campaign said Trump is not interested in standing up to Putin.

"Donald Trump heaps praise on Vladimir Putin every chance he gets, and he's made clear he won't stand against Putin or stand up for democracy," campaign spokesperson James Singer said.

UPPER HAND

Some Republicans will be reticent to pay for more resources to Ukraine under the plan. The U.S. has spent more than $70 billion on military aid for Ukraine since Moscow's invasion.

"What (Trump's supporters) want to do is reduce aid, if not turn off the spigot," said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations.

Putin said this month that the war could end if Ukraine agreed to drop its ambitions to join NATO and hand over four eastern and southern provinces claimed by Russia.

During a meeting of the United Nations Security Council last week, French and British ambassadors reiterated their view that peace can only be sought when Russia withdraws from Ukrainian territory, a position Kyiv shares.

Several analysts also expressed concern that the plan by Kellogg and Fleitz could give Moscow the upper hand in talks.

"What Kellogg is describing is a process slanted toward Ukraine giving up all of the territory that Russia now occupies," said Daniel Fried, a former assistant secretary of state who worked on Russia policy.

During a podcast interview last week, Trump ruled out committing U.S. troops to Ukraine and appeared skeptical of making Ukraine a NATO member. He has indicated he would quickly move to cut aid to Kyiv if elected.

Biden has consistently pushed for more Ukraine aid, and his administration supports its eventual ascension to NATO. Earlier in June, Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy signed a 10-year bilateral security agreement

Get weekly news and analysis on the U.S. elections and how it matters to the world with the newsletter On the Campaign Trail. Sign up here.

Reporting by Gram Slattery and Simon Lewis, and Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow; editing by Michelle Nichols, Kieran Murray and Cynthia Osterman

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Gram Slattery

Thomson Reuters

Washington-based correspondent covering campaigns and Congress. Previously posted in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Santiago, Chile, and has reported extensively throughout Latin America. Co-winner of the 2021 Reuters Journalist of the Year Award in the business coverage category for a series on corruption and fraud in the oil industry. He was born in Massachusetts and graduated from Harvard College.

20. Why Cambodia Matters to the U.S.-China Rivalry

Why Cambodia Matters to the U.S.-China Rivalry

TIME · by Sam Rainsy

BY SAM RAINSYJUNE 24, 2024 6:00 AM EDT

Sam Rainsy is the interim leader of the Cambodia National Rescue Party, the main opposition party that was banned from standing in the 2018 Cambodian General Election. He lives in exile in Paris.

Little could be more symbolic of the power struggle playing out in Southeast Asia than what is happening on the outskirts of Ream National Park, in southern Cambodia. China is building a naval base on the site of a former U.S.-built military facility, and appears to be settling in for the long haul. Vessels of the People’s Liberation Army have been docked in the area for months, and the two countries have conducted a series of substantial “Golden Dragon” joint military exercises from the nearby Sihanoukville Autonomous Port. China used the opportunity to showcase their army of “robodogs”—four-legged robots with rifles mounted on their backs—to the world’s media. These drills first began in 2016, shortly after Cambodia canceled joint exercises with the United States.

Relations between China and Cambodia have moved apace in recent years. Details of the Ream naval base built with Chinese aid were first reported in 2019. And, this year, in a further deepening of ties, Chinese-owned companies are due to start work on the Funan Techo canal, a 112-mile, $1.7 billion project that will connect the capital to the Gulf of Thailand. Upon completion, the canal could divert traffic from the Mekong River and establish a trade route for China, through Laos and Cambodia, that cuts out the need for passage through an increasingly pro-Western Vietnam. China and Cambodia have a “build-operate-transfer” financing agreement, which will see it remain in China’s hands for at least 50 years.

For China, this control serves a greater strategic purpose. In Cambodia, and in the regime of Hun Manet, it now has an “ironclad ally” beholden on its investment. Around 40% of Cambodia’s $10 billion foreign debt is owed to China. And this gives President Xi Jinping, and his ruling-CCP, enormous clout.

A Chinese army man tests a machine gun equipped on a robot dog before participating in the "Golden Dragon" on May 16.Heng Sinith—AP

The U.S. and Vietnam recently upgraded their relationship in an effort to counter this threat of Chinese creep in Southeast Asia. Just last month, a U.S. warship was driven away from the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea by the Chinese military, after it allegedly crossed into its territory. While another U.S. ally, the Philippines, is currently engaged in a fierce diplomatic battle over disputed territory in this region, which has resulted in the ramming and water-cannoning of Philippine ships. Although an international tribunal has rejected China’s expansive claims to areas of the South China Sea, it has persisted in occupying and building out several new islands, as well as maintaining a military presence across the region.

The role of Cambodia in China’s power-play within the Indo-Pacific cannot be understated. The autocratic Manet regime is a critical ally for China. The Chinese Foreign Minister was the first foreign official to congratulate, and then meet with, him following his inauguration as Prime Minister in 2023. And there is an increasing crossover in the tactics—and adoption of certain technologies, such as mass surveillance tools including CCTV, facial recognition software, and internet “firewall” technologies—that are being used to monitor and suppress regime critics, trade unionists, and activists. Independent news outlets have been shuttered, and female journalists, in particular, have become targets of harassment and many forced into exile.

Unfortunately, the U.S. response has so far been muted. On a visit to Cambodia this month, U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said that his ambitions with Manet were to “sit down and talk about how [we] might have a more positive and optimistic path in the future.” The visit was “not about securing significant deliverables and achievements.” This suggests a fundamental misread of what is happening in Southeast Asia. While the Biden Administration seems to perceive Cambodia as an amenable partner, Manet is double-dealing Beijing and Washington.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin listens as Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Manet speaks during a meeting at the Peace Palace in Phnom Penh on June 4, 2024.STR/AFP/Getty Images

Evidence for this includes Cambodia’s repeated attempts to engage with U.S. officials to join the Washington-backed Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF). At the same time, the Manet government continues to court investment from China, which remains its top direct investor.

For those in Washington, who are increasingly concerned by the rise of China and the looming threats to Western democracy not just in Southeast Asia but around the world, a reset is required with countries like Cambodia. The current all carrot, no stick approach risks further democratic decline in Cambodia and the growth of Chinese influence.

Last year, Democrat and Republican lawmakers sought to bring the Manet regime to greater heel, with the threat of targeted sanctions against key figures suppressing democratic institutions, political freedoms, and human rights in the country. Their draft congressional bill also called for a more defined set of U.S. policies toward Cambodia. While this congressional effort ultimately failed to get sufficient traction, it is the kind of approach that is essential to give teeth to U.S. ambitions to counter China’s influence in the region.

This is a critical moment, both for the U.S. and Southeast Asia. Treading lightly with repressive leaders such as Manet risks normalizing their continued assault on the freedoms and liberties of citizens of this region. It also begs the question of U.S. lawmakers, who are speaking out on the need to push back at Chinese creep in this region, but not doing enough to safeguard the values of democracy that they, and the citizens of Southeast Asia, so care for.

TIME · by Sam Rainsy

21. Cyber Attacks in Perspective: Cutting Through the Hyperbole

Conclusion:

Moving forward, researchers, journalists, government officials, and the public need to recognize how hyperbole is shaping the discussion about cyberattacks. Even seemingly gold-standard sources benefit from healthy skepticism and a grain of salt. Doing so could lead to a shift in US cyber strategy by enabling a more accurate assessment of risk and allowing for more aggressive pursuit of malicious cyber actors around the globe without the risk of escalation more common in traditional warfare.

Cyber Attacks in Perspective: Cutting Through the Hyperbole - Irregular Warfare Initiative

irregularwarfare.org · by Tom Johansmeyer · June 25, 2024

This article is part of Project Cyber, which explores and characterizes the myriad threats facing the United States and its allies in cyberspace, the information environment, and conventional and irregular spaces. Please contact us if you would like to propose an article, podcast, or event environment. We invite you to contribute to the discussion, explore the difficult questions, and help.

What would the most destructive and costly cyberattack in history look like?

The Department of the Treasury is exploring a federal mechanism for providing relief capital to the insurance industry in the event of a major cyber catastrophe. While the prospect of a cyber incident sinking the insurance industry and leaving society exposed is intensely remote, it highlights an underlying problem with our understanding of the destructive capacity of cyberattacks—hyperbole. If the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, represented a failure of imagination, then the fear we have of a significant cyberattack represents a failure to keep our imaginations under control.

History shows that it is easier to imagine a catastrophe than to produce it, but it fails to explain why. The last twenty-five years of economic loss data suggest cyberattacks aren’t nearly as costly as the annual hurricanes and hailstorms we experience.

Cyber Attacks in Perspective: Cutting Through the Hyperbole – Insider: Short of War

So why are we so afraid?

In many ways, our fear can be attributed to the relative newness of cyber risks in human history, meaning they need to be better understood by the public and with many precedents. Additionally, our misunderstanding is related to the thin historical data we have on them and, more critically, that our historical data relies heavily on a few specific, recent cases—the most prominent being the 2017 NotPetya attack. With a $10 billion price tag and impacts across 65 countries,NotPetya was called “the most destructive and costly cyberattack in history.” But the numbers tell a different story, and relying on NotPetya as our catastrophic example may mean researchers and analysts are staring down a paper tiger.

By exaggerating the effects of past attacks and framing them as but a taste of what’s to come, the cyber domain inspires fear in policy-makers, commanders, and the general public that is normally reserved for the most severe forms of kinetic warfare, such as nuclear strikes. As a result, cyber capabilities have become difficult tools to use, simply due to a fear that has not materialized which is based on hyperbolic claims. A misguided belief in their destructive power has effectively stifled innovation at all echelons—despite plenty of research suggesting the contrary. If there were ever a time for a hard reset on how cyber operations and their implications are perceived, this is it. If anything, cyber operations have proved to be de-escalatory, and by perpetuating a myth to the contrary, we lose access to an important alternative to traditional war. By setting the record on cyber straight, we take a step toward making the world a safer place.

How it started

NotPetya was born of war. Released three years after the start of hostilities in eastern Ukraine in 2014, NotPetya was one of several efforts by Russia to attack Ukraine in cyberspace. From 2014-2016, other Russian cyberattacks were operationally successful but often fell short of their desired impact. For example, the 2015 attack on the Ukrainian power grid is among the most effective attacks against an energy infrastructure. Still, only 230,000 people lost power for six hours—far short of what even a minor hurricane routinely achieves.

What happened in 2017 was different. A tool developed by the Russian defense intelligence agency (GRU), NotPetya, was deployed after GRU hackers gained access to the servers of a small Ukrainian software company. The exploit relied on a Windows vulnerability and was embedded into the company’s software products, like the Ukrainian accounting software MeDoc, and intended to cause damage to large swaths of the Ukrainian economy. Made to look like its ransomware predecessor, Petya, NotPetya locked the systems it encountered and demanded a $300 payment. However, the ransomware “face” of NotPetya was another case of maskirovka—the attackers had little interest in collecting ransom payments but instead used the feature to confuse forensic analysts, making it harder for them to divine who was behind the attack.

Although NotPetya has been attributed to Russia’s GRU, the code was derived from a leaked National Security Agency (NSA) tool called EternalBlue. A proverbial skeleton key of an exploit, EternalBlue, was used as part of the 2010 Stuxnetattack on the Natanz nuclear facility. After the tool was leaked, it was used in both the WannaCry and NotPetya attacks during the first half of 2017 and later in BadRabbit. Throughout 2017, therefore, waves of attack came with “roots [that] can be traced to the US.” The impact of those attacks underscores why the NSA sustained heavy criticism over hoarding zero-day vulnerabilities and developing powerful cyber tools that can be difficult to control. And it’s easy to see why.

NotPetya quickly spread beyond Ukraine to cause an estimated $10 billion in economic damage worldwide. The United States, France, Denmark, and Germany were among the 65 countries affected. The attack’s costs mounted quickly. According to its two insurance policies, pharmaceutical company Merck sustained nearly $2 billion in damage. Maersklost $300 million, and the newly merged FedEx/TNT lost roughly $1 billion. The insurance industry experienced nearly $3 billion in losses, indicative of the attack’s scale.

Meanwhile, the effects on NotPetya’s intended targets were far more modest. NotPetya is estimated to have impaired 0.5% of Ukraine’s gross domestic product (GDP). That amounts to $560 million, a significant but manageable cost.

Further, in a twist of poetic justice, Russia also fell victim to NotPetya. After losing control of the malware, two of Russia’s largest companies, the energy company Rosneft and the financial institution Sberbank, joined several Russian companies, including banks, travel agencies, and telecommunications providers, on NotPetya’s list of victims. Although the source of the list of Russian victims is suspect (as a blog post comment that looks like it came from a troll farm), the effects on several of the named Russian companies are reported elsewhere—including The Independent, cyber security firm Group-IB, and of course TASS.

Context is crucial

The global impact of NotPetya led the U.S. government to call it “the most destructive and costly cyberattack in history.” The declaration has since been amplified across the popular and academic press, cementing NotPetya’s place at the top of “most destructive cyberattack” lists and ingraining it into the still-early study of “cyber catastrophes.” The result is that NotPetya’s prominence in the literature has skewed our understanding of the threats associated with cyberattacks.

Based on my calculations and categorization, there have been 21 cyber catastrophes since 1998 and up to $310.4 billionin losses, adjusted for inflation. And among them, NotPetya is not the worst. Sure, the attack was significant, but adjusted for inflation, its $11.9 billion price tag is roughly 30% below the 25-year average for cyber catastrophe economic impacts.

When the U.S. government announced NotPetya as “the most destructive and costly cyber-attack in history,” it kicked off a narrative disconnected from the reality of NotPetya and our understanding of catastrophic cyber events. Everyone—researchers, scholars, security professionals, journalists … etc. —heard “the most destructive” and ran with it. There are several reasons why.

Cyber warfare—and cyber operations conducted by nation-state actors—are already shrouded in hyperbole. Whether you look at the 2015 attack mentioned above on the Ukrainian power grid or turn to the more recent cyber activity that preceded the 2022 invasion of Ukraine (and persisted after), the answer is the same. Cyber weapons, in practice, are more bark than bite. And it’s not just Russia. Operation Glowing Symphony offers a rare case of the US military confirming its offensive cyber operations against ISIS targets online. The operation was an interesting, clever, and successful case of offensive cyber activity until the offense stopped. In the end, cyber operations are most impactful when prosecuted, but their effects taper over time, and recovery and reconstitution often come quickly after an operation is finished.

None of this makes for great storytelling, but great stories about cyberattacks do exist—take Cliff Stoll’s Cuckoo’s Egg, for example—but they also rely heavily on exaggeration and hyperbole to describe cyber threats and impacts. Part of this is simply reader engagement—cyber or otherwise. Everyone loves a bit of excitement, and the real-world implications of cyberattacks, real or imagined, get your heart pumping.

The NotPetya story—rather than the NotPetya attack—is revealing. In late 2018, Wired Magazine published “The Untold Story of NotPetya, the Most Devastating Cyberattack in History,” which bakes hyperbole into the headline and never lets up. Throughout the piece, the author amplifies complex issues with nuance and considerable finesse to give a true-crime story feel. In many ways, reporting on cyberattacks reflects how reporting on bullets and bombs is more accessible than reporting on bits and bytes the human eye can’t see. Incorporating exaggeration and hyperbole makes a story interesting.

The Wired article has gone on to feed academic journal articles and news stories worldwide. In many ways, the article did not contribute to the NotPetya narrative but became it. The article also amplified the original 2018 White House announcement about NotPetya, further entrenching the hyperbolic interpretation of the attack into the public psyche.

A more context-appropriate reading of the 2018 White House announcement would convey that NotPetya was an attack of global importance worthy of the “international consequences” that followed, including sanctions and indictments. NotPetya was undoubtedly the costliest single cyberattack in more than a decade, and to date, it was the last cyber catastrophe event to exceed even $1 billion. The fact that NotPetya fails to live up to the exaggerated claim of being the costliest cyberattack in history does not diminish its importance, and a context-appropriate reading of the 2018 announcement would still drive that message home.

The lesson

The NotPetya attack is an excellent example of why words matter. At face value, calling NotPetya “the most destructive” cyberattack set a benchmark for how we think about future cyberattacks on US systems and how policy-makers think about future cyber operations against adversary systems. It categorized the nexus of economic security and cyber catastrophe risk into a false and misleading model, which could lead to years of missed opportunities to refine how the US researches, develops, and employs offensive and defensive cyber capabilities.

Understanding the accurate scale of NotPetya (and the broader history of economic losses from cyberattacks) will help to reset expectations and breathe new life into cyber operations at all echelons simply by giving a relatable sense of the destruction caused. This only works for the set of targets, though, where the economic impact is the consequence. Not all attacks are about money.

Nation-states are also highly vulnerable to cyber espionage, theft of intellectual property, and other efforts to gain and use private information. Events like the SolarWinds cyberattack have shown the significant societal implications of espionage. SolarWinds exploited a vulnerability in the Orion network management system, which is used by nearly 30,000 public and private organizations—including local, state, and federal agencies to manage their IT resources. Despite having devastating national security implications for SolarWinds, the total economic impact fell short of $200 million, making it more than 90% smaller than the Equifax breach alone. Nonetheless, the attack caused a loss of trust in government-run cybersecurity efforts—an essential national and societal security impact.

Because of measures like “loss of trust,” it’s difficult to estimate the total cost of cyber espionage campaigns. While it’s prudent to make “economic impact” one measure among a collection of measures used to gauge the severity of a cyberattack, non-financial implications must be contemplated, too.

Why this matters for US military cyber operations

The enduring lesson of NotPetya and the US government’s public statements about the attack is straightforward: hyperbole constrains military cyber operations. Overstating NotPetya’s impact adds to the “cyber Pearl Harbor” myth and fosters a misguided understanding of offensive cyber capabilities as decisive weapons of mass destruction. Helping the public (and government stakeholders) understand how cyber operations can be—and have been—used for de-escalation will not only reduce the temperature of cyber fears but could provide new flexibility in a domain of limited action. Despite the expanded authorities granted to US Cyber Command in the 2018 NDAA, offensive cyber operations continue to be constrained by the mistaken belief that cyberattacks will precipitate an escalation ladder similar to nuclear strikes. However, research continues to demonstrate otherwise.

Unfortunately, operational use of the cyber domain is also impeded by relatability. We understand concepts like “lethality.” When I walked through Sarajevo a few years ago, its 30-year-old battle scars possessed intuitive meaning—I could see the impact of war. A similar, tangible representation of cost or loss doesn’t exist for cyberspace operations. Therefore, without something concrete to touch, see, feel, or see, an aura of novelty remains around cyberattacks and cyberspace operations that leave the door open to storytelling and hyperbole—with it, the exaggerated claims that make for a click-able headline. The first step, therefore, is presenting a clear and accurate representation of the damage caused by past cyberattacks.

In addition to improving our reporting on cyber operations’ impacts and data collection efforts, we must find ways to make cyberspace more relatable. While a good story can solve the relatability problem when it is accurate, inflated accounts and hyperbole only give commanders and policymakers pause. Whether by comparing the damage caused by cyberattacks to natural disasters (which are much worse) or to the effects of kinetic warfare (also much worse), providing reference points for understanding the consequences of cyberattacks is long overdue for what was identified as a domain of warfare back in 1993. Analogous impacts on other domains may be imperfect. Still, they offer a first step toward eventually making the impacts of cyberattacks as intuitively relatable as bomb craters and war ruins.

Moving forward, researchers, journalists, government officials, and the public need to recognize how hyperbole is shaping the discussion about cyberattacks. Even seemingly gold-standard sources benefit from healthy skepticism and a grain of salt. Doing so could lead to a shift in US cyber strategy by enabling a more accurate assessment of risk and allowing for more aggressive pursuit of malicious cyber actors around the globe without the risk of escalation more common in traditional warfare.

Tom Johansmeyer is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent, Canterbury, researching the role of insurance at the nexus of cyber and economic security.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the official position of the Irregular Warfare Initiative, Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project, the Modern War Institute at West Point, or the United States Government.

Main Image: Screenshot of the splash screen of the payload of the original version of Petya. (Unknown via Wikimedia)

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irregularwarfare.org · by Tom Johansmeyer · June 25, 2024

22. The Pivot That Wasn’t – Did America Wait Too Long to Counter China?

It has always been a 360 degree pirouette as we keep returning to the conflicts in the Middle East.

Excerpts:

The United States cannot compete with China simply by doing more of the same. Washington needs new ideas and strategies, and it can start by rethinking its alliances. For example, the United States might organize collective responses not only to military attacks but also to economic ones. And when dealing with countries governed by distasteful authoritarians, the United States should double down on diplomacy instead of disengaging. Washington should also spend more money in developing countries and attach fewer political conditions to such support. And it should cozy up to China’s neighbors—particularly Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam—by offering economic enticements and security guarantees in exchange for the right to build bases, access maritime routes, and fly over their territory.

It would also be prudent for the United States to get tougher in the South China Sea, where China has constructed and enlarged artificial islands to reinforce its territorial claims. The U.S. Navy should escort fishing and oil exploration vessels from allied countries when China threatens their operations and should extend similar support to nonallied Southeast Asian countries, such as Vietnam, in exchange for greater support of U.S. military operations in the region. If China escalates its aggression in the area, the United States should signal that it will reconsider its neutrality on the question of disputed territories, such as the Paracel and Spratly Islands. Washington must also try to build consensus among Southeast Asian claimants regarding the sovereignty of those islands. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam squabble among themselves about maritime boundaries and natural resources—and China takes advantage of their disagreement. Getting allies on the same page would allow Washington to galvanize international support against Beijing’s aggression and expansionism. If Beijing continues to violate maritime laws, the United States and its Southeast Asian partners could threaten to expel China from international organizations and impose sanctions or export restrictions.

The United States has wasted a great deal of time, but it isn’t too late to deal with China’s rise. Blackwill and Fontaine have done a service by identifying the pitfalls ahead and by suggesting corrective measures. But prioritizing Asia is just the first step in managing competition between the United States and China. The next phase requires national mobilization. And the clock is ticking.

The Pivot That Wasn’t

Did America Wait Too Long to Counter China?

By Oriana Skylar Mastro

July/August 2024

Published on June 18, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Upstart: How China Became a Great Power · June 18, 2024

During the past two decades, many American leaders have argued that U.S. foreign policy must focus more on Asia. In 2009, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said that “the center of gravity of international affairs is importantly shifting from the Atlantic to the Pacific and Indian Oceans.” In 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the United States would “pivot to Asia” after having devoted too many resources to other areas of the world, particularly Afghanistan and the Middle East. And in 2022, President Joe Biden said that “the future of the twenty-first-century economy is going to be largely written in the Indo-Pacific.”

By any metric, Asia is the world’s most strategically important region today. It is home to over half the world’s population and boasts six of the world’s 25 largest economies, 14 of its 25 biggest militaries, and four of the nine countries with nuclear weapons. Asian-Pacific states have been engines of worldwide growth, accounting for over 70 percent of the increase in global GDP over the last decade; China alone has contributed a staggering 31 percent. The region hosts 19 of the top 100 universities, according to the Times Higher Education’s ranking, and ten of the 25 countries that filed the most patents in 2021. If the United States wants to remain the planet’s most powerful country, it will have to tap into Asia and prevent China from dominating it.

But as Robert Blackwill and Richard Fontaine demonstrate in their insightful new book, Lost Decade, the United States has repeatedly failed to achieve its promised shift. The efforts of successive administrations to complete the pivot, they write, have “foundered on the shoals of execution.” The United States has continued to allocate more military resources and pay more attention to the Middle East and Europe. Despite its sporadic attempts to engage more deeply with Asian countries, Washington did not coherently respond to China’s growing power in the second decade of this century. Blackwill and Fontaine soberly conclude that this is “perhaps the most consequential” U.S. policy failure since 1945.

The book helpfully describes the obstacles that lie ahead for any American president hoping to prioritize Asia. But the authors overlook some of the obstacles to their own recommendations and stop short of explaining what should happen once the United States does shift its resources to the region. Countering China requires more than just a pivot. Washington must mobilize, including by stocking more of the right weapons and gaining increased military access to China’s neighbors. Only then will the United States be able to deter Chinese aggression, strengthen its presence in Asia, and safeguard its interests in the region.

SLOW TO SHIFT

When the Obama administration declared that it would pivot toward Asia, the idea was to draw down U.S. involvement in the Middle East and curtail defense spending in Europe so that Washington could focus on spurring economic growth in Asia and countering China’s expanding influence. That would require the United States to spearhead the massive free-trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, move weapons and personnel to the Indo-Pacific, stock up on equipment suitable for a war with China, and intensify diplomacy in Asia. The pivot won bipartisan support and was embraced by successive administrations because there was already a consensus in Washington that the United States had misallocated its assets, favoring regions of waning importance.

And yet as Lost Decade illustrates, U.S. policymakers were slow to execute the shift and suffered the consequences of missteps in Asia policy that long predated the pivot. President Bill Clinton, for example, supported China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 based on the belief that economic interdependence would encourage China to liberalize and moderate its foreign policy ambitions. Yet that assumption proved faulty because China’s views about how to build and exercise power were different than those of the United States. President George W. Bush strengthened security alliances in Asia by ramping up military cooperation with Singapore, relocating military bases in Japan to reduce political friction with Tokyo, and participating in the first quadrilateral military exercise with Australia, India, and Japan. But his administration was distracted by conflicts in the Middle East and the “war on terror” and ultimately failed to devote more resources and attention to Asia.

John Lee

President Barack Obama and his top advisers recognized these failures and announced a pivot to Asia in part to make up for lost time. But their goals lacked clarity, and they did not thoroughly plan new policies, analyze their costs and benefits, consider alternative scenarios, or consult with allies. The result was a strategy that often seemed contradictory, caught between the need to assert a strong presence in Asia and the obligation to respond to emerging threats, such as Russia’s aggression toward its neighbors and instability in the Middle East. And even when Obama seemed to pivot, the effort fell short. For example, his administration announced in 2012 that it would base 60 percent of the U.S. naval fleet in the Asia-Pacific by 2020. But 60 percent was not enough to deter the growing Chinese navy, especially because many of those assigned vessels were to remain docked in California or Hawaii—far from the hot spots of potential conflict.

On the surface, Asia policy under President Donald Trump appeared more consistent, rooted firmly in competition rather than cooperation. Trump abandoned efforts to shape Chinese behavior and gave up on joining multilateral trade agreements, as with the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2017. Instead, he adopted a confrontational stance toward Beijing; he sanctioned Chinese officials and companies and worked to shrink bilateral trade deficits. But Trump’s approach was also riddled with contradictions. He threatened, for example, to withdraw troops from Japan and South Korea unless they paid more for U.S. military presence, undermining Washington’s alliances with those countries by casting doubt on the depth of its commitment.

Such actions left U.S. allies uncertain about their standing with the United States. When Biden came into office in 2021, he tried to reassure these jittery partners while also maintaining his predecessor’s assertive posture toward Beijing. He poured money into Taiwan’s defense capabilities through the Pacific Deterrence Initiative and Taiwan Enhanced Resilience Act. And he increased cooperation with Australia, Japan, and the Philippines. But his attention has been diverted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war, further delaying investment in new defense capabilities suited for deterring China.

REASONS OR EXCUSES?

Blackwill and Fontaine offer a variety of explanations for why so many presidents have so thoroughly failed to carry out a proper pivot: redirecting attention to Asia would have yielded them “no domestic political benefit”; despite many proclamations about the importance of shifting attention to Asia, there was never a clear catalyst for doing so; U.S. policymakers did not have a common understanding of what the pivot would entail and underestimated the challenge posed by China’s rise.

This analysis is mostly persuasive, but in many ways, the authors are too generous in their assessment of Washington. They excuse inaction by arguing that passing the Trans-Pacific Partnership “would have put members of Congress in the crosshairs of anti-trade voters.” They point out that moving military assets away from Europe and the Middle East could have undermined U.S. credibility in those regions. And they hold that Washington failed to give Asia its due because U.S. policymakers were “drawn to crises in other regions.”

It is true that U.S. leaders have been overstretched. But they have also been either unable to think creatively about different approaches or unwilling to take the risks necessary to ensure the pivot succeeds. For example, individual officials have often appeared to be too focused on careerist objectives, such as advancing to a coveted job or getting reelected, to gamble on unconventional China policies; better to stick with the status quo, they often seem to conclude. U.S. administrations have also tended to focus their diplomatic efforts on the developed world instead of on poorer countries, leaving a vacuum for Beijing to fill. Take the Solomon Islands. The United States shuttered its embassy there between 1993 and 2023, allowing China to make inroads in one of the poorest countries in the Pacific. In 2022, China and the Solomon Islands signed a security pact, which—according to a leaked draft of the deal—lets Chinese naval vessels resupply on the islands.

An important obstacle to pivoting the authors gloss over is the internal disagreement among U.S. policymakers as to the nature and timing of China’s threat and how to respond to it. Hawks, for example, see a Chinese invasion of Taiwan as imminent and favor a more proactive approach to defending the island, whereas doves discount that possibility and fear that an enhanced U.S. military presence might precipitate the very war it is trying to deter. Even Defense Department officials who agree that China poses a military threat disagree on whether the United States should prioritize near-term readiness or long-term modernization.

THE FULL 180

Blackwill and Fontaine offer a long to-do list for completing the shift to Asia. It includes continuing to strengthen U.S. alliances in the Indo-Pacific, joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (the trade deal that emerged after Washington pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership), “de-risking” economic ties with China, substantially increasing defense production, and moving U.S. military assets and personnel from Europe and the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific. They want Washington to garner more European support in the fight against China—for example, by encouraging allies to create joint standards for technology, cybersecurity, and human rights. The authors also suggest that the United States build coalitions with allies centered on specific issues, such as preventing economic coercion and intellectual property theft. At the same time, Blackwill and Fontaine call for intensifying bilateral U.S.-Chinese diplomacy by adhering to the “one China” policy, which acknowledges China’s belief that there is one China and Taiwan is a part of it, and by keeping open communications channels with Beijing. Finally, the authors recommend that Washington “support the forces of democracy and liberalism” by defending democratic institutions under pressure across the globe and fostering them in regions where they do not yet exist.

Many of these suggestions would help manage China’s rise, but they are not enough. For example, the United States needs not only to manufacture more military equipment but also to be smarter about what it produces. It needs weapons that can help maintain air dominance, conduct interdiction operations, defend against air and missile threats, and destroy hard targets buried deep underground. It should stockpile long-range antiship missiles, precision-strike missiles, extended-range air-to-surface missiles, and 155-millimeter artillery shells. The U.S. Navy must build more nuclear-powered attack submarines, which can deny an adversary the use of the sea by destroying hostile surface fleets, and more bombers, which can take out air defenses, strike enemy forces, and disrupt supply lines. It should, by contrast, invest less in aircraft carriers, cruisers, and destroyers because China has large arsenals that can take out surface ships.

But some of Blackwill and Fontaine’s recommendations seem infeasible. It would be good if Europe got on board with the United States’ China strategy, as the authors suggest. But they offer no hints as to how Washington could convince its European allies to prioritize strategic issues over economic ones—especially when those countries’ views on China vary widely. (There is a reason why ideas like these have been on the United States’ to-do list for almost two decades.) The authors’ suggestions also sometimes conflict. The goal of supporting liberalism, for example, can work against the need to pursue issue-based coalitions, which often demands cooperating with autocracies.

China is responsible for 31 percent of the increase in global GDP growth over the last decade.

The United States cannot compete with China simply by doing more of the same. Washington needs new ideas and strategies, and it can start by rethinking its alliances. For example, the United States might organize collective responses not only to military attacks but also to economic ones. And when dealing with countries governed by distasteful authoritarians, the United States should double down on diplomacy instead of disengaging. Washington should also spend more money in developing countries and attach fewer political conditions to such support. And it should cozy up to China’s neighbors—particularly Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam—by offering economic enticements and security guarantees in exchange for the right to build bases, access maritime routes, and fly over their territory.

It would also be prudent for the United States to get tougher in the South China Sea, where China has constructed and enlarged artificial islands to reinforce its territorial claims. The U.S. Navy should escort fishing and oil exploration vessels from allied countries when China threatens their operations and should extend similar support to nonallied Southeast Asian countries, such as Vietnam, in exchange for greater support of U.S. military operations in the region. If China escalates its aggression in the area, the United States should signal that it will reconsider its neutrality on the question of disputed territories, such as the Paracel and Spratly Islands. Washington must also try to build consensus among Southeast Asian claimants regarding the sovereignty of those islands. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam squabble among themselves about maritime boundaries and natural resources—and China takes advantage of their disagreement. Getting allies on the same page would allow Washington to galvanize international support against Beijing’s aggression and expansionism. If Beijing continues to violate maritime laws, the United States and its Southeast Asian partners could threaten to expel China from international organizations and impose sanctions or export restrictions.

The United States has wasted a great deal of time, but it isn’t too late to deal with China’s rise. Blackwill and Fontaine have done a service by identifying the pitfalls ahead and by suggesting corrective measures. But prioritizing Asia is just the first step in managing competition between the United States and China. The next phase requires national mobilization. And the clock is ticking.

• ORIANA SKYLAR MASTRO is a Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, a Nonresident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the author of Upstart: How China Became a Great Power.

Foreign Affairs · by Upstart: How China Became a Great Power · June 18, 2024

23. Should Ukraine Keep Attacking Russian Oil Refineries?

Should Ukraine Keep Attacking Russian Oil Refineries?

Debating the Costs and Benefits of Kyiv’s New Tactic

By Sergey Vakulenko; Michael Liebreich, Lauri Myllyvirta, and Sam Winter-Levy

June 25, 2024

Foreign Affairs · June 25, 2024

The Reality of Russian Resilience

Sergey Vakulenko

Writing in May in Foreign Affairs, Michael Liebreich, Lauri Myllyvirta, and Sam Winter-Levy argued that Ukraine should keep launching drone attacks on Russian oil refineries—and that the United States should not discourage it from doing so. They cited declines in Russia’s refined oil exports and export revenues, high wholesale gasoline and diesel prices in Russia, and Russia’s move to import 3,000 tons of fuel from Belarus to illustrate that the attacks have had a dramatic impact. Because the attacks have not yet driven a spike in global oil prices, the authors asserted, they carry relatively low risk and a high reward.

But a thorough cost-benefit analysis does not, in fact, suggest that the rewards have been significant—or that the costs to Ukraine will remain low. Since October, Ukraine has launched at least 20 attacks on Russian refineries. By now, substantial information has emerged from the Russian government’s weekly reports on gasoline and diesel production levels and prices that can be cross-checked against independent price-comparison websites, wholesale prices from commodity exchanges, and export values from ship-tracking services. It is crucial to contextualize this data in longer-term and international price trends to avoid falsely attributing changes to the Ukrainian attacks or attaching too much importance to the amplitude of any given change.

Seen in that light, the data shows that the attacks have had a limited effect on Russia’s fuel production and export volumes and that their impacts did not last long. The strikes “have dealt a significant blow to Russia’s refining capacity,” Liebreich, Myllyvirta, and Winter-Levy argue, driving Russian refined oil exports to “near-historic lows.” But there is much less to the data they refer to than meets the eye. Russian oil companies have indeed likely lost about $15 per barrel in revenue from the oil they have had to export in crude rather than refined form. But this is a drop in the bucket compared with Russia’s total earnings in oil revenue. In April 2024, for instance, Russia may have lost up to $135 million due to a switch from refined oil to crude oil exports. But that same month, it earned more than $16 billion for its overall exports of oil and oil products. And because the Russian government pays domestic companies a subsidy of $10 per barrel on all the refined oil products they export, the state may even be benefiting financially from a shift toward crude oil exports, which reduces the subsidies it must pay.

Russia’s importation of fuel from Belarus—a single trainload consisting of less than half a percent of Russia’s weekly gasoline consumption—does not indicate that Russia is experiencing a nationwide fuel shortage. The Kremlin’s much-noticed six-month ban on gasoline imports was enacted before the main wave of Ukraine’s refinery attacks as a preventive measure following Russia’s 2023 fuel crisis; that crisis was created by the Russian government’s own attempt to pass the costs of price controls on to oil companies. And the gasoline import ban was lifted in mid-May after the Kremlin determined that Russia had plenty of extra gasoline in storage. The changes in Russian domestic wholesale prices can be explained by broader international price shifts, rather than effects of the attacks. Of the 12 major refineries Ukraine has damaged between January and May, half were returned to full operation within three weeks and the rest within three months.

FUTURE SHOCK

The case in favor of the kind of strikes on Russian refineries that Ukraine has carried out so far asserts that they represent a low-cost way of hurting Russia without risking a major escalation or harming the global economy. But that is true only because the attacks’ practical effects on refineries were relatively small and short-lived; they have had little effect on the global economy precisely because they have had little effect on Russia. To make a real impact on the war’s outcome, Ukraine would have to ramp up these attacks dramatically, far more significantly reducing the volume of oil Russia can process and making it hard for Russia to supply enough fuel for its military and its domestic economy. Ukraine’s attacks would have to match the scale of the Allies’ World War II campaign against the German oil refining industry, which involved repeated raids by hundreds of bombers delivering more than 200,000 tons of explosives. A drone may be much more precise than a bomber, but it can only deliver a maximum of around 100 pounds of explosives.

A campaign of the necessary scale would surely incur a much higher risk of retaliation and escalation. Soon after Ukraine’s first attacks on Russian refineries, Russia counterattacked Ukraine’s single operational refinery—and then turned to Ukraine’s electric infrastructure. Prior to late 2023, Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s power infrastructure had employed light drones and targeted easy-to-hit transformers, incurring damage that could be fixed fairly quickly. In the spring of 2024, however, the Kremlin began methodically attacking Ukraine’s power generation capacity, aiming for turbines, generators, and control equipment with massive and effective strikes. In some cases, the damage to Ukrainian infrastructure has been so extensive that it cannot be repaired.

To make a real impact on the war, Ukraine would have to ramp up its attacks dramatically.

It is possible that Russia would have expanded its assault on Ukraine’s power stations in 2024 whether or not Ukraine had attacked its refineries. But although it may look as if Moscow is waging total war against Kyiv, the Kremlin in fact appears to be fighting a compartmentalized war, leaving certain areas of Ukrainian life relatively untouched—until it decides Ukraine has provoked it into escalating. For example, for two years, Russia refrained from attacking Ukraine’s gas infrastructure, probably because the Ukrainian company Naftogaz was still transporting Russian gas to some European customers. But on April 11, Russia hit two of Ukraine’s major gas storage facilities. It seems likely that this new wave of strikes was a reaction to Ukraine’s attacks on Russian refineries—and that an even bigger attack by Ukraine would provoke a bigger reaction by Russia.

A larger-scale campaign against Russian refineries might start to affect global fuel prices. Crippling the Russian refining industry would increase the global supply of crude oil, first driving its price down, but it would simultaneously reduce the supply of finished oil products, driving those products’ price up. Russian refining capacity constitutes seven percent of the world’s total. In 2023, Russia’s share of the global trade in diesel came to around 15 percent, or 700,000 barrels per day. The world could compensate for some reduction in Russia’s contribution to this trade by increasing plant utilization elsewhere, but a halving of Russia’s export volume would certainly create a shortage and increase diesel prices. So far in 2024, however, Russia’s decline in diesel production has comprised only 150,000 barrels per day from peak to trough, less than has occurred in previous years for operational reasons.

Many observers have high expectations for Ukraine’s attacks, starting with an intangible one: boosting Ukraine’s morale and damaging Russia’s. But it is important not to conflate a reputational injury and a marginal financial loss with a strategic and economic game-changer. It is also crucial to understand the attacks’ potential future unintended consequences for the rest of the world and not to underestimate Russia’s retaliatory capacity—in other words, to look at the full set of equations, not at the most attractive part of the picture.

SERGEY VAKULENKO is a Nonresident Scholar at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.

Liebreich, Myllyvirta, and Winter-Levy Reply

Michael Liebreich, Lauri Myllyvirta, and Sam Winter-Levy

As the head of strategy until early 2022 at Gazprom Neft, Russia’s third-largest oil refiner, Sergey Vakulenko brings deep expertise to this subject, and we appreciate his critique.

But his analysis has limitations. Vakulenko states that Ukraine’s strikes on Russian oil refineries are not a “strategic and economic game-changer”; we agree, and we did not claim otherwise. As we wrote in our original article, the strikes “will not force Moscow to capitulate, but they do make the war more difficult and expensive for Russia.” The attacks’ true costs to Russia remain hard to ascertain because the Kremlin has restricted access to economic and budgetary statistics, including oil and gas production figures. But most independent assessments suggest that Ukraine’s strikes took out ten to 15 percent of Russia’s refining capacity in the first quarter of 2024—a significant, though not devastating, cost to Russia’s war machine. Manufacturing and deploying the drones that can disable refineries is vastly cheaper than fixing those refineries; making repairs will become costlier as Russia is forced to consume its stores of specialized Western-supplied equipment. Indeed, Ukraine has already carried out follow-up attacks on some refineries that Vakulenko describes as back in operation, such as the Novoshakhtinsk refinery in southern Russia; the proportion of Russia’s gross refining capacity affected by drone strikes continued to rise throughout May.

For the most part, Vakulenko ignores our central point: that Ukraine’s refineries attacks are unlikely to drive up oil prices for Western consumers. This potential rise in oil prices is the primary reason that the Biden administration has urged Kyiv not to attack Russian refineries. But attacks on refineries reduce Russia’s domestic oil processing capacity, not the volume of oil the country can extract or export. As a result, they are likely to force Russia to export more crude oil, not less—which is exactly what has happened since Ukraine’s campaign began. Vakulenko does not dispute this, acknowledging that “crippling the Russian refining industry would increase the global supply of crude oil.” Instead, he worries that Ukraine may destroy so many Russian refineries that the rest of the world will be unable to fill the gap in refining capacity. But so far, oil refineries based outside of Russia have reported no spike in their profit margins, suggesting that the world is nowhere near experiencing a real shortage in refining capacity. In other words, Ukraine’s strikes are doing exactly what we expected: driving up Russia’s domestic fuel prices while pushing down global crude oil prices.

Ukraine’s strikes took out ten to 15 percent of Russia’s refining capacity in the first quarter of 2024.

Finally, the assertion that such attacks will provoke costly new forms of retaliation relies on a distorted reading of history. Vakulenko suggests that Russia attacked Ukraine’s “single operational [oil] refinery” only in 2024, “soon after Ukraine’s first attacks on Russian refineries,” and then “turned to Ukraine’s electric infrastructure.” In fact, Russia began targeting Ukrainian oil refineries within weeks of its February 2022 invasion. By June 2022, 18 months before the first Ukrainian drone hit a Russian oil refinery, Ukraine’s entire oil sector was forced to halt operations. Contrary to what Vakulenko writes, Russia did not “refrain from attacking Ukraine’s gas infrastructure” until it was forced to retaliate for Ukraine’s refinery strikes: as early as November 2022, for example, Russian missiles hit gas production facilities owned by Naftogaz, Ukraine’s state-owned oil and gas company. And Russia’s campaign against Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure began in October 2022.

As for Vakulenko’s claim that Russia’s initial bombing of Ukraine’s power grid was targeted and restrained, relying only on “light drones” until after Ukraine began to hit its refineries, the reality is that it was anything but. Between October and December 2022, Russia fired over 600 missiles and drones, hitting more than 100 energy-related targets and destroying or damaging 50 percent of Ukraine’s power infrastructure; by May 2023, not a single thermal or hydroelectric power plant had been left untouched.

The Ukrainian leadership is not naïve about Russia’s capacity to inflict destruction on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. If leaders in Kyiv nonetheless see a strategic benefit in conducting lawful strikes on Russian oil refineries with Ukrainian-made drones—and if the risk that a spike in oil prices poses to American consumers is likely to be insignificant—the Biden administration would be ill advised to go out of its way to restrain them.

Foreign Affairs · June 25, 2024

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