Quotes of the Day:
"I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I will tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”
- Robert A. Heinlein -The Moon is A Harsh Mistress
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
- Isaac Asimov
"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."
- Marie Curie
1. Taiwan's Special Operations Forces
2. GW to Offer Hacking for Defense Course This Spring
3. Big Tech fails to stand with America against China
4. 'The grim reaper for the enemy': CIA's 'legendary' Iran chief forced to retire
5. China’s Hypersonic Test Raises Questions About US Missile Defense, Deterrence
6. Iran Won’t Stop Until It Has a Nuclear Weapon
7. Al Qaeda field commander reported killed in Mali
8. Analysis: Islamic State confirms Sahelian leader’s death, criticizes Al Qaeda
9. Why China’s Hypersonic Missile Tests Are So Concerning
10. Taiwan says odds of war with China in next year 'very low'
11. There's a good reason why this Air Force general only wears 3 ribbons on his dress uniform
12. Pentagon Personnel Costs at Historic High
13. NATO in the Far East: Containing the Red Dragon
14. The Weakness in the U.S.' Understanding of Taiwan
15. The Nobel Peace Prize and Free Speech in the Philippines
16. Afghanistan and the Future of US Foreign Policy
17. Why the Pentagon Should Abandon ‘Strategic Competition’
18. US admits Pentagon doesn’t know how to defend against China’s hypersonic missiles
19. 30 State Department Nominees, Including NATO Ambassador, Advance To Full Senate
20. The Thing: How the KGB used kids to plant a bug in the US embassy
1. Taiwan's Special Operations Forces
Articles such as these suffer from credibility issues when they describe SOF and SOF concepts incorrectly such as in these excerpts. The Marine Raiders are not "specialized light infantry." The authors would also benefit from studying the SOF methodology for the resistance operating concept as a contribution to (unconventional) deterrence.
Second, the U.S. SOF detachment’s military role provides a hint about U.S.-Taiwanese strategic thinking. Once again, the SOF deployment is neither a credible deterrent nor a tripwire. Yet, any military deployment carries with it an explicit strategic purpose. In this case, the nature of the force offers a clue when placed alongside previous unconfirmed deployments to Taiwan. All SOF are cross-trained in multiple mission sets, ranging from direct action to Foreign Internal Defense, the U.S. military’s term for counterinsurgency. But a force of two dozen Marine Raiders has a more specific mission than simple training – this deployment is at most one platoon, and perhaps simply multiple squads with a staff sergeant. Moreover, a SOF unit, the U.S. Army’s 1st Special Forces Group, is already subordinate to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and traditionally is used for these sorts of missions, rather than Marine Raiders. Additionally, given their role as specialized light infantry, it is less likely that these SOF will be used to train Taiwanese tank, armored vehicles, or anti-aircraft crews.
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This policy, however, hinges upon a more central question. An insurgency requires time. It is an attritive strategy intended to probe an enemy and slowly accumulate power until a catalytic moment arrives, in this case, an American and allied counterattack. This effort must last for more than days or weeks. Supporting an insurgency as a matter of policy implies that the U.S. has committed to a multi-month or even multi-year war with China, which far prefers a lightning strike followed by victory. Effective U.S. deterrence should aim to prevent this.
Taiwan's Special Operations Forces
The confirmation on 7 October that U.S. Special Operations Forces have been training the Taiwanese military since last year is a welcome sign of policy continuity between otherwise non-contiguous administrations.
Mr. Biden's China policy has been diffuse at best. Despite accusing Mr. Trump of conducting incoherent foreign policy, the Biden team often acts on contradictory lines of effort. Biden's Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a three-day summit in Anchorage in March 2021, which devolved into diplomatic grandstanding. Mr. Blinken presented a list of concerns from the U.S. and its allies to which China's de facto foreign policy architect, Politburo member Yang Jiechi, responded acrimoniously. After accounting for inflation, Mr. Biden's proposed defense budget would have reduced spending in real terms, forcing the armed services, most notably the Navy, to choose between combat readiness and future procurement.
The Biden administration has functionally abandoned its promised investigation into COVID-19's origins and refused to mention China's role in the pandemic, Chinese genocide in Xinjiang, or its coup in Hong Kong during his UN General Assembly address. John Kerry was resurrected from political irrelevance, and now Biden's "Climate Czar," maintained in April that combating the specter of climate change outweighed any other consideration vis-a-vis China. Mr. Biden, alongside British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, orchestrated the AUKUS pact, which alienated France and will not provide Australia with viable submarine capabilities for a minimum of twenty years then denied its relevance to U.S.-China rivalry. In the aftermath of China's 150-aircraft airspace incursions into Taiwan between 1 and 4 October, Biden referred to a non-existent "Taiwan Agreement" that supposedly would guide Sino-American relations. Unlike a more skilled political leader – for example, British Liberal Prime Minister HH Asquith – Mr. Biden shows neither the desire nor competence to integrate the spending demands of his base with the political-military requirements of deterring China.
The trend is clear: each beneficial action is concurrent with either undermining resolve or creating additional negative consequences.
The announcement of U.S. presence in Taiwan will not have a transformative military effect. It appears that only around two dozen Marine “Raiders” – the Marine Corps’ term for its Special Operations Forces – are on the island, an amount too small to serve even as a “tripwire” to deter escalation.
It is, however, an important symbol, much like U.S. Ambassador to Palau John Hennessey-Niland’s visit to Taiwan in late March 2021. No U.S. military presence in Taiwan has been acknowledged publicly since 3 May 1979, when the U.S. stood down its U.S.-Taiwan Defense Command and recognized the Beijing regime as China's legitimate government. This symbol's importance lies not in its existence but in its admission. U.S. forces have been sighted in Taiwan in the past, in June and November 2020 during the Trump administration. But in each case, the Executive Branch did not publicly acknowledge their existence – in the clearest case, and only the U.S. Army released a video of Green Berets on the island. Moreover, Chinese intelligence is capable enough to have identified these forces months ago. The difference, in this case, is the mode of transmission, a statement by "anonymous defense officials," which implies a planned leak from the Biden administration but not a formal public admission.
Foreign policy relies on this sort of communication. Great-power politics is, at risk of understatement, difficult. Political decision-making is opaque, particularly with an authoritarian oligarchy like China, and must consist of subtle nods and intentional omissions more often than formal statements. Interpreting this signal raises two implications about the Biden administration’s China policy.
First, despite its lack of focus and coordination, there is at minimum an element within the Biden administration that regards Taiwan as worthy of direct military support. This support remains halting and half-hearted, but it clearly exists. Moreover, a limited military presence allows the U.S. to support a Taiwanese diplomatic push for greater international recognition. Even a small SOF contingent can become the nucleus of a new U.S. Taiwan Defense Command with a de jure independent Taiwan's legal support. China certainly understands this signal. It likely will continue its pressure on the island republic, escalating its rhetoric and threatening the U.S. and Japan to prevent their greater recognition of Taiwan. But Japanese political figures have made multiple public statements that they would view a Chinese attack on Taiwan as a “mortal threat” to Japan’s sovereignty, most notably from then-Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso, who was subsequently moved to his current position as Liberal Democratic Party Vice President. And while Japan has refrained from commenting on the AUKUS pact, it remains a public member of the "Quad," the political-agreement-cum-informal-alliance that will form the core of an anti-Chinese coalition far more effectively than AUKUS. Thus, an integrated U.S.-Japanese diplomatic approach is clearly possible, which the U.S. SOF deployment facilitates.
Second, the U.S. SOF detachment’s military role provides a hint about U.S.-Taiwanese strategic thinking. Once again, the SOF deployment is neither a credible deterrent nor a tripwire. Yet, any military deployment carries with it an explicit strategic purpose. In this case, the nature of the force offers a clue when placed alongside previous unconfirmed deployments to Taiwan. All SOF are cross-trained in multiple mission sets, ranging from direct action to Foreign Internal Defense, the U.S. military’s term for counterinsurgency. But a force of two dozen Marine Raiders has a more specific mission than simple training – this deployment is at most one platoon, and perhaps simply multiple squads with a staff sergeant. Moreover, a SOF unit, the U.S. Army’s 1st Special Forces Group, is already subordinate to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and traditionally is used for these sorts of missions, rather than Marine Raiders. Additionally, given their role as specialized light infantry, it is less likely that these SOF will be used to train Taiwanese tank, armored vehicles, or anti-aircraft crews.
Thus, it is likely that this platoon of Marine SOF is training the Taiwanese both in conventional tactics and guerrilla warfare methods. Indeed, this was the initial purpose of American SOF. Although SOF are best-known for their activities in the Vietnam War, these units were “stood up” to train NATO allies in guerrilla tactics and, in the event of a Warsaw Pact offensive, conduct an unconventional campaign in Soviet-occupied territory to facilitate a NATO counteroffensive.
Most public discussion over Taiwan’s defense emphasizes the island republic's challenge in defeating a Chinese invasion, absent American and allied support. This is the critical quandary that bedevils American planners. China's missile arsenal effectively pushes American carriers around 400-500 miles away from the Chinese coastline to remain secure from shorter-range, more numerous anti-ship cruise missiles. The current Carrier Air Wing lacks the missiles, long-range strike aircraft, and range extenders to conduct effective strikes at this range. Thus, the U.S. and its allies will rely on a limited number of stand-off munitions and submarines to contest a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
Scant discussion considers whether an effective insurgency on Taiwan would facilitate American and allied goals. In one sense, it clearly would. By diverting resources and attention from a likely fleet action in the Philippine Sea or a breakout into the Indian Ocean, a Taiwanese insurgency would quickly complicate China's attempts to end a Pacific war. Moreover, mobile anti-air and anti-ship missiles working in concert with guerrilla light infantry operating in Taiwan's mountainous interior would consistently threaten Chinese ships and aircraft transiting the Miyako Strait or Bashi Channel into the Philippine Sea. Insufficient numbers of forward-deployed American and allied naval forces alongside the long time required to move forces to the region suggest that preparing an insurgency may be a prudent complement to conventional force in defending Taiwan. More broadly, the U.S. must consider establishing, initially in secret then openly, a multinational command center – in U.S. military parlance a Joint Combined Operations Center – that coordinates planning and training between Taiwanese, Japanese, American, and perhaps Australian, British, and South Korean forces, depending upon diplomatic circumstances. This step would prove a coherence to Mr Biden’s China policy that is currently lacking.
This policy, however, hinges upon a more central question. An insurgency requires time. It is an attritive strategy intended to probe an enemy and slowly accumulate power until a catalytic moment arrives, in this case, an American and allied counterattack. This effort must last for more than days or weeks. Supporting an insurgency as a matter of policy implies that the U.S. has committed to a multi-month or even multi-year war with China, which far prefers a lightning strike followed by victory. Effective U.S. deterrence should aim to prevent this.
Seth Cropsey is a Senior Fellow at Hudson Institute and director of Hudson’s Center for American Seapower. He served as a naval officer and as deputy Undersecretary of the Navy.
Harry Halem is a research assistant at Hudson and a graduate student at the London School of Economics.
2. GW to Offer Hacking for Defense Course This Spring
What a coup for George Washington University to pry Chris Taylor and this course from Georgetown. It is a great course for the students, companies, program managers, and national security.
Excerpts:
Mr. Taylor called the Hacking for Defense the best kept secret in the United States education system, and GW will officially be in on the secret this spring.
“GW is the perfect university to be hosting Hacking for Defense,” Mr. Taylor said. “If you think about the quality of the schools at GW, the proximity to the problems all around and the quality of the students who are there, I think this is a no-brainer for people. It will change the way you think how you use everything at GW.”
GW to Offer Hacking for Defense Course This Spring
The Department of Defense is partnered with the entrepreneurial course aimed at solving national security challenges.
By Nick Erickson
Starting this spring semester, George Washington University graduate students will be able to take Hacking for Defense, a course that takes an entrepreneurial and interdisciplinary approach in solving national security challenges in the United States.
The congressionally funded class, listed as MGT 6290, is in partnership with the Department of Defense and offered through GW’s School of Business (GWSB). It is a program of the National Security Innovation Network (NSIN), powered by BMNT, Inc. and the Common Mission Project with a hands-on structure as students will split into teams and create a business model designed to address some key areas of need in intelligence and defense. GW will be one of 50 schools in the country to teach the course that started in 2016 at Stanford University.
Students will modify their project countless times throughout the semester as they present weekly for sponsors, mentors, military liaison, corporate partners, investors and journalists. In years past, several solutions and products built during the course have become companies, including Capella Space and Ox Intel.
GW’s location in the heart of the federal government just 10 minutes across the Potomac from the Pentagon gives students prime access in seeing their work’s impact outside of the classroom.
“This is what you come to GW for,” said GWSB Vice Dean for Strategy Liesl Riddle. “You come to be in the center of it all.”
Ayman El Tarabishy, deputy chair of the Department of Management, will teach the course alongside Chris Taylor, a former national security industry CEO and entrepreneur.
Mr. Taylor also spent 14 years as an enlisted infantryman and Force Recon Marine. He has taught Hacking for Defense at various institutions since its inception. He said the course is demanding as students will conduct more than 100 interviews during the semester, but having it on their transcripts will set them up for success as they enter the job market.
“I can’t tell you how many different students have said to me that having Hacking for Defense on their resume made a big impact during an interview with a private sector or government job they’re applying for,” Mr. Taylor said.
Hacking for Defense allows students to experience a multidisciplinary and multifunctional work environment. It also fits the School of Business’ commitment to experiential learning, giving GW students a leg up in applying what the theories and methods used in a classroom to a real-world setting that produces concrete results.
It's not just limited to business students. Course organizers want to see a wide spectrum of problem solving needed to succeed in the team-oriented structure. They are encouraging students from every graduate school at GW to apply.
In addition, GW is excited to have a course that serves its robust veteran community. The GWSB’s full-time MBA program is ranked as the 13th best MBA program for veterans by U.S. News World and Report. GWSB's latest MBA program, the MBA in Security Technology Transition, launched in fall 2020 in partnership with the Department of Homeland Security, is also popular with veterans.
“GW is General George Washington's university. It is only natural that the university plays key role in helping assist the transition from military to civilian life,” Dr. Riddle said. “And in my mind, Hacking for Defense, as well as the MBA in security technology transition, are just two of the ways we are doing that.”
Hacking for Defense will build upon GW’s commitment to student innovation. The university has been a regional Node for the I-Corps program, a National Science Foundation program helping researchers and entrepreneurs launch their ideas and discoveries to the marketplace. In August, GW was one of 10 schools named to the Mid-Atlantic I-Corps Hub. Jim Chung, associate vice president for research at GW’s Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, said Hacking for Defense is the next generation of the I-Corps program.
“It’s the future of what you will be seeing,” Mr. Chung said in a video release about the course. “If you are going to be doing anything in innovation, you need to understand this methodology, and there is no better way than learning it by getting this kind of exposure through the Hacking for Defense program.”
Mr. Taylor called the Hacking for Defense the best kept secret in the United States education system, and GW will officially be in on the secret this spring.
“GW is the perfect university to be hosting Hacking for Defense,” Mr. Taylor said. “If you think about the quality of the schools at GW, the proximity to the problems all around and the quality of the students who are there, I think this is a no-brainer for people. It will change the way you think how you use everything at GW.”
3. Big Tech fails to stand with America against China
Excerpts:
Yet, Google’s morality is skewed.
The company has developed a major AI center in China and launched ventures that military leaders warn will "help an authoritarian government exert control [over] its own population." In 2019, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford said Google was "indirectly benefiting the Chinese military."
Chinese companies are beholden to the Chinese Communist Party. The backing of the Chinese state seems to have given Beijing a decisive advantage in an area where the U.S. can’t afford to lose.
The reluctance of Google and other Big Tech companies to help the national defense is a significant historical departure. Big business played an important role in achieving U.S. victories in both world wars and the Cold War that followed.
Big Tech’s lack of patriotism has hurt the national interest. Should the Chinese Communist Party win the wars of the future, some of the largest U.S. corporations may very well be to blame.
Big Tech fails to stand with America against China
U.S. corporations have been essential to defeating America’s enemies.
During World War II, big business made the United States the "arsenal of democracy." It helped to defeat genocidal fascism. Innovation, spurred by cooperative efforts between government and business, was equally important to winning the Cold War.
Unfortunately, today, many U.S. tech giants are unwilling to help their country counter totalitarian China. Worse still, others are aiding the Chinese Communist Party.
On Sept. 2, the U.S. Air Force’s software chief, Nicolas Chaillan, resigned in protest at the current situation. In an Oct. 10 interview, Chaillan told the Financial Times that he quit over the slow pace of the technological transformation of the U.S. military.
"We have no competing fighting chance against China in 15 to 20 years," he warned . "Right now, it’s already a done deal; it is already over in my opinion." Beijing, he told the Financial Times, is well on its way to global dominance in sectors that will be key to the future: artificial intelligence, cybercapabilities, and machine learning.
By contrast, the cyberdefenses of several U.S. government agencies were at a "kindergarten level," Chaillan said. He lamented the Pentagon bureaucracy, lack of funding, and incapable leaders being put in charge of critical units. But Chaillan cited another reason for the U.S. falling behind: Big Tech companies.
Google, he said, was reluctant to work with the Pentagon on artificial intelligence. That's a problem.
As Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin observed in July 2021, "Tech advances like AI are changing the face and pace of warfare." China, Austin told the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, seeks to be "globally dominant in AI by the year 2030." Such an occurrence would have potentially horrific consequences for the future. Much of the blame can be laid at Big Tech’s door.
In 2017, the U.S. Defense Department, acknowledging that it needs "to do much more and move much faster" in order to "integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning," launched Project Maven. The Pentagon hoped to find ways to use AI to update its capabilities. It sought, for example, to use AI to analyze data captured by U.S. drones.
But the Pentagon’s request for help from the private sector prompted a revolt by Google workers.
Thousands of Google employees wrote an open letter to chief executive Sundar Pichai saying that "Google should not be in the business of war." They called for Project Maven to be canceled and that "Google draft, publicize and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology."
In June 2018, Google leaked to U.S. press outlets that it would not extend the 18-month contract to help the Pentagon with Project Maven. The Washington Post claimed that the move came after Google faced "employee resignations for helping develop technological tools that could aid in warfighting."
Google executives have since decried the impression that they’re not interested in U.S. national security ventures. In 2020, the company announced a limited contract with the Pentagon to counter cyberthreats.
Yet, Google’s morality is skewed.
The company has developed a major AI center in China and launched ventures that military leaders warn will "help an authoritarian government exert control [over] its own population." In 2019, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford said Google was "indirectly benefiting the Chinese military."
Chinese companies are beholden to the Chinese Communist Party. The backing of the Chinese state seems to have given Beijing a decisive advantage in an area where the U.S. can’t afford to lose.
The reluctance of Google and other Big Tech companies to help the national defense is a significant historical departure. Big business played an important role in achieving U.S. victories in both world wars and the Cold War that followed.
Big Tech’s lack of patriotism has hurt the national interest. Should the Chinese Communist Party win the wars of the future, some of the largest U.S. corporations may very well be to blame.
The writer is a Washington, D.C.-based foreign affairs analyst. His views are his own.
4. 'The grim reaper for the enemy': CIA's 'legendary' Iran chief forced to retire
'The grim reaper for the enemy': CIA's 'legendary' Iran chief forced to retire
Tue, October 19, 2021, 4:45 PM·10 min read
The CIA symbol on the floor of the agency's headquarters in Langley, Va. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
The CIA’s Iran chief, described by his colleagues as “legendary,” is being forced to retire as the center he oversees is folded back into the agency’s larger Middle East division, according to former CIA officials.
The official, Mike D’Andrea — nicknamed the “Dark Lord” or “Prince of Darkness” and known by the undercover name "Roger"— had been granted waivers that allowed him to continue working at the CIA past the mandatory retirement age, according to former agency officials. But the agency declined his most recent retirement exception, according to these officials. D’Andrea’s retirement was first reported by the New York Times.
“They decided not to extend him again,” said a former senior CIA official. “It was basically, ‘Look, you’re not going to go any higher, we need new thinking, we need new people,’ and so they eased him out. He didn’t volunteer.”
A small cadre of other senior CIA officials who had been receiving retirement waivers were also told their tenure would no longer be extended, said another former senior agency official.
"Mike has had a long and distinguished career serving his country," a CIA spokesperson told Yahoo News. "We are grateful for his decades of leadership on some of the most difficult issues we face at CIA."
D’Andrea has run the agency’s Iran operations since 2017. It was the final assignment in a career that former colleagues consider among the most consequential in the agency’s recent history.
CIA officials often credit D’Andrea, who led the agency’s counterterrorism efforts from 2006 to 2015, with revolutionizing the CIA’s terrorist-hunting efforts, and particularly the armed drone program that would, under his watch, eviscerate al-Qaida leadership.
The CIA’s drone program arose at the dawn of the war on terror, with senior agency counterterrorism officials looking for ways to repurpose unmanned surveillance aircraft as killer drones.
The CIA “built identical houses to what you’d find in Afghanistan” at a Nevada test site, recalled a former senior agency official. “And [the missiles fired from the drones would] go through one end of the house and out the other side without exploding. So they had to work on different warheads that would go through one wall and detonate inside, and this kind of stuff.”
A man claiming to be an al-Qaida member addresses a crowd in Yemen's Abyan province in 2009. (AFP via Getty Images)
The CIA was conducting legal drone strikes soon after 9/11, targeting members of al-Qaida in Afghanistan. But it was under D’Andrea’s leadership that the drone program really took center stage.
The CIA would conduct over 500 strikes using armed drones during the Obama administration, killing thousands of militants and hundreds of civilians. Critics questioned the legality of the program and decried the civilian deaths, though CIA officials say the agency was careful to avoid taking innocent lives.
Even so, D’Andrea was “probably the most lethal leader in the U.S. government for his tenure,” said a former senior CIA official. “He was the grim reaper for the enemy.” The agency’s counterterrorism program under D’Andrea was “bone-crushing and relentless,” recalled this former official.
“If he was a combatant commander, he would have been sitting in the galley for the State of the Union, he would have had all the accolades, and then some, that David Petraeus ever had,” said another former senior CIA official. “He ran that war.”
D’Andrea’s biography and quirks became part of his legend: the soft-spoken, professorial figure notorious for keeping all the lights dimmed in his office; the chain smoker who would spend hours exercising on the elliptical, drinking Mountain Dew; and the middle-aged convert to Islam who ran a lethal campaign targeting Muslim religious extremists.
With D’Andrea at the helm, the CIA’s counterterrorism center functioned like a continuous, rolling decapitation operation for al-Qaida leadership, according to former officials.
“There came a point where the life expectancy of the al-Qaida chief of operations was about a month,” said the former senior official. “Every time they’d name a new guy, bam, he was gone.”
A U.S. drone aircraft lands at Afghanistan's Jalalabad Airport in 2015. (Noorullah Shirzada/AFP via Getty Images)
Al-Qaida operators became so scared of the CIA’s drone program that their fear began to affect the organization’s morale, said the former official. The CIA even once picked up signals intelligence between two senior al-Qaida officials in which one declined a promotion — ostensibly because he was worried about the added risks, according to this official. “The guy was saying, ‘I don’t want the job; I’m happy where I am,’” recalled the former official.
Under D’Andrea’s watch, the CIA scored an epochal victory when it pinpointed Osama bin Laden to the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad; in 2011, Navy SEALs raided the compound and killed bin Laden.
The dark prince’s dedication to his work was unsurpassed, say former officials, who described him often pulling 12- or 14-hours days, seven days a week.
During D’Andrea’s tenure as the CIA’s top counterterrorism official, he would sleep in the office every few days on a cot, say officials, and would often be awake and reading cable traffic by 4 or 5 a.m.
“God forbid you showed up at 7:30 a.m. to get ready for the 8:00 meeting,” recalled a former senior official. “You were f***ed.” There were at least 50 people in those daily meetings — all experts on various terrorism issues — "and no one in that room knew more than he did,” said this former official.
Some former officials described D’Andrea as understandably demanding; others, as simply cruel. He was like a “one-man gauntlet of death, throwing stuff at you to make sure your op [was] tight,” said a former CIA official.
People gather outside Osama bin Laden's compound in Abottabad, Pakistan, where he was killed during a raid by U.S. special forces, May 3, 2011. (Getty Images)
Some CIA personnel crumpled under the pressure, said former officials. But D’Andrea also elicited fierce loyalty from those who worked under him, and he would take the time to mentor junior officers in the agency, citing mistakes from earlier in his own career as examples to be avoided.
Under D’Andrea, a number of African American CIA officers rose up to senior counterterrorism positions, according to a former official, a notable trend in an organization that has struggled with diversity issues, particularly in its senior leadership.
D’Andrea’s focus on al-Qaida was singular — to the exclusion of other counterterrorism threats, which sometimes irritated others in government.
“The military came to us and said, 'We need help on the Haqqani network ... the Haqqani network is killing soldiers,'” recalled a former senior CIA official. “And D’Andrea’s response, undiplomatically, was, 'Well, that’s your problem. Our problem is al-Qaida. That’s what we’re getting paid for: to go after al-Qaida.'”
The counterterrorism chief “had a philosophy that he articulated,” recalled the former official. “He said there are a handful of Salafists [members of an ultraconservative branch of Sunni Islam] who need to be killed. There’s no amount of convincing and negotiating and discussion. They’re like mad dogs; you kill these people, you put them down.”
D’Andrea’s intense — and, as some former officials portrayed it, almost maniacal — focus on al-Qaida, coupled with his propensity for micromanagement, would lead to what former officials describe as the darkest moment of his career: a 2009 suicide bombing by a Jordanian triple agent in Khost, Afghanistan, that killed seven CIA officers.
British Royal Marines scramble out of a Chinook helicopter during a vehicle checkpoint operation in Afghanistan in 2002. (Scott Nelson/Getty Images)
It was the deadliest day for the CIA in decades, and many agency officials blamed D’Andrea. He “staffed his places with his people, in a way that was entirely inappropriate,” said a former senior CIA official. Some believed the CIA base chief in Khost had lacked the necessary operational experience.
Even worse, some officials believed, was the way D’Andrea overstepped important boundaries in managing the CIA’s handling of the Jordanian agent. “He was in the weeds providing tactical direction, and it broke down the chain of command in Kabul and Amman,” said the same former official.
Though some say D’Andrea mellowed with age, even fans of the former CIA counterterrorism chief say he could be abrasive and prickly — qualities that sometimes led to bruising bureaucratic battles inside and outside of agency headquarters in Langley, Va., and ultimately extinguished his chances at a long-desired ascension to the job of deputy director of operations (DDO), the highest-ranking position within the CIA’s clandestine service, say former officials.
During the Obama administration, D’Andrea clashed repeatedly with John Brennan when Brennan ran White House counterterrorism efforts, according to former officials.
An Afghan police officer looks at a guard post that was damaged in an attack in Khost, Afghanistan, in 2009. (Nishanuddin Khan/AP Photo)
Then, in 2013, Brennan was named CIA director. “That really got f***ed up, when Brennan came over to be director,” recalled a former senior CIA official. It was “the final nail in the coffin” for D’Andrea’s dream of becoming DDO, said the former official.
D’Andrea and another decorated senior CIA officer, a Russia and counterintelligence specialist, were engaged in a “blood-sport” competition for the job, recalled another former senior agency official. “It was almost like you couldn’t pick one or the other,” said this person. So Brennan picked neither man. The other DDO candidate retired, recalled this former official — but D’Andrea stayed on.
In 2015, a CIA drone strike mistakenly killed an American civilian and an Italian civilian in Pakistan. Some officials believe that, for Brennan, this was the final straw. D’Andrea was relieved of leadership of counterterrorism operations.
“Throughout his long and distinguished CIA career, Mike D’Andrea was an exceptionally talented and dedicated intelligence professional who was responsible for some of the most significant counterterrorism successes in the years after 9/11,” said Brennan in a statement to Yahoo News.
Former CIA Director John Brennan, center, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, right, at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in 2018. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
D’Andrea could have retired. But he bided his time in a position charged with reviewing CIA covert operations already in progress, a job that that former colleagues say was a clear diminution from his previous role.
The Trump administration, looking to get tough on Iran, provided new opportunities. In 2017, D’Andrea was picked to lead the CIA’s Iran Mission Center, which was spun up under the leadership of then-Director Mike Pompeo. D’Andrea oversaw a program focused on running aggressive covert operations against Tehran, say former officials.
The CIA recently announced it was moving Iran operations back into its broader Middle East mission center as part of a larger bureaucratic reshuffling. Its director is now retiring along with it.
For many CIA officials, D’Andrea’s legacy remains secure. “What I would emphasize is: America was a safer place because of Mike D’Andrea,” said another former senior CIA official, who credited him with keeping the pressure on al-Qaida. “These guys could not stick their head out to catch a breath without getting whacked.”
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Read more from Yahoo News:
5. China’s Hypersonic Test Raises Questions About US Missile Defense, Deterrence
Excerpts:
Air Force Col. Kristopher Struve, vice director of operations for North American Aerospace Defense Command, said on Monday, “The thing that concerns us with hypersonics is our warning time and our warning capability, as these things launch high and then cruise at a lower altitude than we see our normal ICBMs. So it's that ability to provide a warning to our national leadership, what that threat is and it's really a policy on.” U.S. policymakers have some thinking to do about how to treat hypersonic missiles that can strike from orbit, Stuve said at an event hosted by the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance. One question is whether the United States should defend countries that lack hypersonic missiles as it pledged to defend non-nuclear armed states during the Cold War.
“Do we want to add technology to be able to intercept them [and] defeat them or do we want to treat them underneath our nuclear umbrella?” he said, “I think it is probably a great discussion [and] very different than [the one that might occur around] a regional hypersonic threat.”
The test should make the U.S. less confident in its estimations of China’s current and future capabilities, said Air Force Brig. Gen. Christopher Niemi, the director of strategy, plans, programs, and requirements for Pacific Air Forces.
“In the past, we put a lot of confidence in our assessment of what an adversary like China will do in the future and we use that to inform how we want to make our investments,” Niemi said. “One of the lessons I've taken from my own experience [is] that we should look at what is possible from a physics perspective, as opposed to what we think they're going to do, because China, again and again, has proven that if it is possible within physics and it will surface in other hole in our swing that they will do it.”
For its part, China has asserted that the test was not of a potential weapon but of a spacecraft, a claim The War Zone concluded “doesn’t add up.”
China’s Hypersonic Test Raises Questions About US Missile Defense, Deterrence
Basic questions about how to defeat or deter orbital weapons remain undecided.
The “deeply concerning” test of a Chinese hypersonic missile shows that the United States has “a lot of work to do” on technology and policy, military officials and lawmakers said yesterday.
The August test, first reported in the Financial Times, featured a hypersonic glide vehicle that entered orbit. Hypersonic weapons descend at more than five times the speed of sound while retaining enough maneuverability to evade missile defenses designed for the more predictable paths of ICBMs. China’s recent orbital test suggests that a weapon based on its vehicle could have essentially unlimited range.
China was thought to be considering such a capability, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said last month. Speaking at an Air Force Association event, he compared it to the Soviet Union’s Fractional Orbital Bombardment System, “which is a system that basically goes into an orbit and then de-orbits to a target. And if you use that kind of approach, you don’t have to use a traditional ICBM trajectory, which is directly from the point of launch to the point of impact. It’s a way to avoid defenses and missile warning systems. So that’s a potential thing that can be done. There’s also the potential to actually put weapons in space. And these are potential things we’re talking about at this point in time.”
In 2019, Gen. Paul Selva, then vice chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described the problem thus:
“If you’re going Mach 13 at the very northern edge of Hudson Bay, you have enough residual velocity to hit all 48 of the continental United States and all of Alaska. You can choose [to] point it left or right, and hit Maine or Alaska, or you can hit San Diego or Key West. That’s a monstrous problem.”
Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., said on Monday, “China’s capabilities are extraordinary. We have a lot of work to do to make sure that we’re defending the United States of America in the case of potential aggression. I hope it never comes to that but we need to make sure that we’ve got a strategy and approach to neutralize these threats as they arise.”
Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., said that the test “underscored the important decision President Biden made to end our combat operations in Afghanistan, because we can’t do everything. We have limited resources. We have extraordinary threats, and it’s our job to decide how we’re going to allocate those very limited resources to the biggest and the growing and the most evolving threats. That’s what we’re working to do.”
The Pentagon is working toward the launching of a new constellation of low-earth-orbit satellites to track maneuverable hypersonic weapons more closely, to provide additional response options. Several service branches are working on hypersonic weapons of their own.
Air Force Col. Kristopher Struve, vice director of operations for North American Aerospace Defense Command, said on Monday, “The thing that concerns us with hypersonics is our warning time and our warning capability, as these things launch high and then cruise at a lower altitude than we see our normal ICBMs. So it's that ability to provide a warning to our national leadership, what that threat is and it's really a policy on.” U.S. policymakers have some thinking to do about how to treat hypersonic missiles that can strike from orbit, Stuve said at an event hosted by the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance. One question is whether the United States should defend countries that lack hypersonic missiles as it pledged to defend non-nuclear armed states during the Cold War.
“Do we want to add technology to be able to intercept them [and] defeat them or do we want to treat them underneath our nuclear umbrella?” he said, “I think it is probably a great discussion [and] very different than [the one that might occur around] a regional hypersonic threat.”
The test should make the U.S. less confident in its estimations of China’s current and future capabilities, said Air Force Brig. Gen. Christopher Niemi, the director of strategy, plans, programs, and requirements for Pacific Air Forces.
“In the past, we put a lot of confidence in our assessment of what an adversary like China will do in the future and we use that to inform how we want to make our investments,” Niemi said. “One of the lessons I've taken from my own experience [is] that we should look at what is possible from a physics perspective, as opposed to what we think they're going to do, because China, again and again, has proven that if it is possible within physics and it will surface in other hole in our swing that they will do it.”
For its part, China has asserted that the test was not of a potential weapon but of a spacecraft, a claim The War Zone concluded “doesn’t add up.”
Jacqueline Feldscher and Marcus Weisgerber contributed to this post.
6. Iran Won’t Stop Until It Has a Nuclear Weapon
Excerpts:
The notion that Israel can come to the rescue with a military strike is also doubtful. Jerusalem has had its share of tough-talking prime ministers, but so far it has relied on sabotage and targeted assassinations to stall Iran’s nuclear program. Such measures won’t alter Iran’s atomic trajectory. Tehran’s advances in centrifuge development will soon make pre-emption impossible.
No force in history has proved more powerful than self-delusion. Mr. Khamenei has already thought what the West still believes is unthinkable. He believes he is on the cusp of getting even. The White House and Congress should start thinking about what to do after Iran’s first detonation to ensure an Iranian bomb becomes a liability for the regime, not an asset.
The administration should try to marshal an international consensus against trade with Tehran by first getting the French, the European country most serious about nonproliferation, on board. Congress could pass legislation restricting access to U.S. markets for those who trade with Iran.
If nothing is done, realism and defeatism—the two often travel together—could play decisively to the regime’s advantage.
Iran Won’t Stop Until It Has a Nuclear Weapon
Khamenei and his regime haven’t gone to all this trouble merely to become a ‘threshold state.’
WSJ · by Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh
The Islamic Republic of Iran is led by an ardent ideological regime that frequently relies on conspiracies to explain its predicament. Leaders of the regime speak incessantly about the cabal of Zionists and Jews who control America and plot against the Islamic revolution. Mr. Khamenei and his henchmen haven’t spent billions and endured a tidal wave of sanctions and social unrest only to get close to a nuclear weapon. They will build the bomb as soon as they can and justify it afterward.
The Iranian theocracy has gradually transformed itself. Mr. Khamenei has purged the pragmatists from Iranian leadership. The reformers who rallied around Mohammad Khatami (president from 1997 through 2005) and believed the theocracy could be softened, even superannuated, through the ballot box have been banned from the corridors of power. Even conservatives who contemplated diplomatic engagement with the West to enhance the regime’s status and economic power, like former President Hassan Rouhani (2013-21) and former Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani (2008-20), are denied a seat at the table. Iran is becoming less subtle. The new president, Ebrahim Raisi, is the personification of the new elite—cruel, dogmatic and indifferent to Western sensibilities.
As the guardians of the theocracy see it, the U.S. uses institutions like the United Nations Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency to pressure regimes into submission. Nonproliferation norms and international conventions are meaningless to Tehran. As Mr. Khamenei recently said, “Whenever you made your affairs contingent on Westerners’ cooperation, you failed, and whenever you moved forward and showed initiative without trusting Westerners, you succeeded.” Iran won’t try to join a global community that is designed and run by its enemies.
Iran has other compelling reasons for developing atomic weapons. So far, the theocracy has relied on Shiite proxies and militias to project its power and influence across the Middle East in a relatively low-cost and effective way. To ensure that Iran can counter the West, Israel and the Arab Gulf States, the regime will need more weapons. Building armies, armadas and air forces is expensive and requires too much foreign input; relying on proxies against well-armed adversaries is precarious. Hegemony on the cheap can come only from the atomic bomb.
There is no longer any meaningful obstacle to the regime’s nuclear ambitions. The Biden administration is too predictable and fearful. The debacle in Afghanistan and the rhetoric about ending “forever wars” has emboldened Tehran, which now toys with the U.S. through on-and-off nuclear talks. In his truculent address to the U.N. General Assembly last month, Mr. Raisi mocked America. “From the Capitol to Kabul,” he said, “one clear message was sent to the world: The U.S. hegemonic system has no credibility, whether inside or outside the country.”
Sanctions have damaged Iran’s economy, but they haven’t slaked the thirst for nuclear arms. Revolutionaries aren’t bankers; they don’t conduct cost-benefit assessments.
The notion that Israel can come to the rescue with a military strike is also doubtful. Jerusalem has had its share of tough-talking prime ministers, but so far it has relied on sabotage and targeted assassinations to stall Iran’s nuclear program. Such measures won’t alter Iran’s atomic trajectory. Tehran’s advances in centrifuge development will soon make pre-emption impossible.
No force in history has proved more powerful than self-delusion. Mr. Khamenei has already thought what the West still believes is unthinkable. He believes he is on the cusp of getting even. The White House and Congress should start thinking about what to do after Iran’s first detonation to ensure an Iranian bomb becomes a liability for the regime, not an asset.
The administration should try to marshal an international consensus against trade with Tehran by first getting the French, the European country most serious about nonproliferation, on board. Congress could pass legislation restricting access to U.S. markets for those who trade with Iran.
If nothing is done, realism and defeatism—the two often travel together—could play decisively to the regime’s advantage.
Mr. Gerecht, a former Iran targets officer in the Central Intelligence Agency, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council for Foreign Relations and the author of “The Last Shah: America, Iran and the Fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty.”
WSJ · by Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh
7. Al Qaeda field commander reported killed in Mali
Remove another terrorist leader from the battlespace.
Al Qaeda field commander reported killed in Mali | FDD's Long War Journal
Purported photo of Saghid Ag Alkhoror, emir of JNIM’s Katibat Gourma. (Source: Hamidou Diallo)
Saghid Ag Alkhoror, a field commander and leader of a sub-unit within al Qaeda’s Group for Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), was reportedly killed yesterday in a French operation in Mali’s northern Timbuktu region.
JNIM has not yet issued a statement on the reports as of the time of publishing.
The French military tweeted yesterday that its forces within the counter-terrorism Operation Barkhane launched an operation that killed “five terrorists from Katibat Gourma” north of the town of Gossi in northern Mali.
France has not yet provided more information on the operation as of the time of writing, but its forces have been focusing its efforts more closely in the Liptako-Gourma area in recent weeks.
Fahad Ag Almahmoud, the secretary-general of the Imghad Tuareg Self-Defense Group and Allies (GATIA), a pro-Bamako Tuareg militia in northern Mali backed by France, later tweeted, however, that among those killed in the operation was Saghid Ag Alkhoror.
Almahmoud also confirmed the operation took place near the town of Tin Assakok in Mali’s Timbuktu region.
Katibat Gourma was created in 2014 as a sub-unit within one of JNIM’s main constituent groups, Ansar Dine. The jihadist battalion was initially led by Almansour Ag Alkassoum, a veteran Malian jihadist, until his death in late 2018.
French and allied forces have sometimes referred to the sub-unit as Katibat 3A for Alkassoum’s initials.
Katibat Gourma is responsible for dozens of attacks against Malian, French, and other forces along the Mali-Burkina Faso borderland since its inception.
Ag Moussa was himself killed by French forces last November in Mali’s northern Menaka region. It is unclear how long Ag Moussa acted as the emir of Katibat Gourma and indeed if he still acted in this capacity at the time of his death. It is clear, however, that Saghid Ag Alkhoror took over as emir following Ag Moussa’s stint.
Other recent Al Qaeda figures killed in the Sahel
The reported death of Saghid Ag Alkhoror follows several other important or influential al Qaeda leaders killed in the Sahel by the French in recent years.
Earlier this month, French forces also killed Oumar Mobo Modhi, one the main improvised explosive device (IED) technicians of Ansaroul Islam, an al Qaeda-linked group, in a strike in Burkina Faso.
While Ansaroul Islam is nominally independent, it was created in 2016 by a Burkinabe veteran of al Qaeda’s jihad in Mali and other Mali-based al Qaeda leaders. In more recent years, most of its elements have been officially subsumed under the wider JNIM hierarchy or defected to the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara.
In June of this year, Baye Ag Bakabo, a Tuareg jihadist linked to several kidnappings of Westerners in Mali performed by al Qaeda, was killed by French forces in northern Mali.
Meanwhile, in June 2020, the overall leader of AQIM, Abdelmalek Droukdel, was also killed in a French operation in Mali’s far northern Kidal region.
Despite these deaths, however, al Qaeda’s forces continue to be a serious threat to security not only in Mali but in the wider Sahel region overall.
Caleb Weiss is a contributor to FDD's Long War Journal and a senior analyst at the Bridgeway Foundation, where he focuses on the spread of the Islamic State in Central Africa.
Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.
8. Analysis: Islamic State confirms Sahelian leader’s death, criticizes Al Qaeda
Analysis: Islamic State confirms Sahelian leader’s death, criticizes Al Qaeda | FDD's Long War Journal
Image from the Islamic State’s interview with Abu Walid al Sahrawi in last week’s Al-Naba newsletter, including the honorific “May Allah accept him” indicating his death.
The Islamic State confirmed on Thursday that its longtime chief in Africa’s Sahel region, Abu Walid al Sahrawi, is dead. Sahrawi was reported killed by French forces in August in a tweet from French President Emmanuel Macron last month.
While not detailing the events around his death, the jihadist group’s weekly newsletter, Al Naba, used the honorific phrase “May Allah accept him,” a common jihadist phrase used for killed fighters and leaders, alongside Sahrawi’s name.
The weekly newsletter used the phrase as a subtle confirmation of Sahrawi’s death as part of an interview with the jihadist commander, the second half of an interview originally conducted late last year.
The group has not issued a more formal confirmation of Sahrawi’s death. The Islamic State has not publicly named a successor. Abu Walid’s longtime deputy in ISGS, Abdelhakim al-Sahrawi, also died earlier this year in northern Niger.
Prior to his death, Abu Walid was the emir of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), a branch of the Islamic State officially under the hierarchy of its West African Province (ISWAP), but which operates with a great deal of autonomy from ISWAP.
Sahrawi previously served as a senior leader in and the spokesman for the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), an al-Qaeda-linked group among the constellation of al Qaeda groups in the Sahel in the early 2010s. In that role, Sahrawi was allied with Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who was originally a commander in al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
Disagreements with AQIM’s leadership led Belmokhtar to establish his own force in 2012. MUJAO later merged with Belmokhtar and his men in 2013 to form Al Murabitoon. But Sahrawi and a cadre of fighters broke away to establish a branch of the Islamic State in Mali just two years later.
Sahrawi first swore bay’ah (an oath of allegiance) to the so-called caliphate in May 2015. However, the Islamic State did not publicly recognize it until Oct. 2016, when the group’s Amaq News Agency released a short statement acknowledging Sahrawi’s oath, as well as a video of him reading his pledge.
Since then, Sahrawi’s ISGS has grown to be one of the most potent jihadist force across the Sahel, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of civilians and local and international military troops. The U.S. government offered a reward of up to $5 million for information on Sahrawi’s whereabouts as a result.
At the same time, Sahrawi became a key figure in the global rivalry between the Islamic State and al Qaeda. Just like the first part of his interview with the Islamic State’s Al-Naba newsletter, much of the second half of Sahrawi’s interview is thus dedicated to critiquing al Qaeda in the Sahel.
Critiques of Al Qaeda’s localized strategy
Sahrawi spends a considerable amount of time discussing the Sahel’s tribal and ethnic dimensions across Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger before discussing al Qaeda’s role in these dynamics and the infighting between ISGS and al Qaeda.
Al Qaeda’s men have long leveraged and exploited tribal and communal grievances and dynamics in the Sahel in order to more fully ingrain itself within the local fabric.
According to Sahrawi, al Qaeda, in form of its Group for Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), “is today attempting to push the different components of northern Mali, from the tribes and government militias, to stand with it against the mujahideen [the Islamic State’s men].”
Further, the jihadist commander accusses JNIM of inflaming tensions through its heavy recruitment among the Fulani of central and southern Mali. For instance, Sahrawi states “sometimes it [JNIM] describes the fighting [with the Islamic State] as a means to prevent the Fulani from controlling Tuareg or Arab lands.”
“Even though,” Sahrawi continues, “most of its soldiers are Fulani and not Tuareg or Arab! JNIM then uses double speech in front of the Tuareg and Arab tribes, in which it warns them about the displacement of the Fulani tribes!”
Much like in the first half of Sahrawi’s interview, the leader states that the conflict between ISGS and JNIM did not happen until ISGS began poaching Fulani members away from JNIM.
Turning to Burkina Faso, Sahrawi accuses JNIM of “volunteering to fight a war against the Islamic State” and working with what it says are Christian and pagan militias.
For instance, Sahrawi states that al Qaeda in Burkina Faso has “overcome its differences and conflicts with the pagan and Christian militias in order to immerse itself with thousands of the sons of the Fulani tribes in its war against the mujahideen [Islamic State].”
In contrast, however, Sahrawi states that ISGS, which also allies itself with local communities, only facilitates relations with the local tribes that “do not associate with apostate parties and movements, nor their leaders and chiefs.”
By delineating the two group’s strategies with the local communities, Sahrawi is attempting to portray ISGS as a non-manipulative force.
In this regard, Sahrawi also notes that JNIM relies on local tribes and communities “in order to achieve their goals and they [JNIM] use them [local communities] as playing cards in order to put pressure on the Crusader regimes.”
Condemns Al Qaeda’s negotiations
In addition to critiquing al Qaeda’s strategy of implanting itself within the Sahel, Sahrawi also turns his ire on the jihadist group’s relations with regional states, particularly Mauritania and Burkina Faso, and others – groups and entities the Islamic State regards as apostates and infidels.
However legitimate JNIM’s reported willingness to negotiate in good faith with Mali, its rivals in the Islamic State have nevertheless condemned JNIM’s offer. As such, Sahrawi states this is just the latest in a series of negotiations between al Qaeda and various “apostate” entities in the Sahel.
For instance, Sahrawi says that one of JNIM’s predecessor groups, Ansar Dine, which he states “acted as a political facade of al Qaeda” during its occupation of northern Mali, negotiated with influential tribal leaders in northern Mali to stop the targeting of Algeria.
Further, he also states that al Qaeda negotiated with the French company Areva in 2011 to receive payments in exchange for not targeting the company’s assets in northern Niger. Ironically, Sahrawi’s MUJAO later worked with Mokhtar Belmokhtar’s Katibat al Mulathameen to target an Areva facility in northern Niger just two years later.
The late jihadist leader then turns to the long reported truce between al Qaeda and Mauritania, which Sahrawi confirms as true. According to Sahrawi, various jailed al Qaeda members in Mauritania facilitated talks between the terrorist organization and the Mauritanian state in which Mauritania would pay al Qaeda to not attack within its territory.
This reported truce was discussed in several documents found in Osama bin Laden’s compound and later declassified by the US government. No independent confirmation has emerged of this deal but several other jihadists, including al Qaeda’s Abu Hafs al Mauritani, have spoken to its authenticity.
Likewise, Sahrawi indicates that al Qaeda and Burkina Faso had a similar agreement in the past – though it is clear, given the focus Burkina Faso now plays in JNIM’s overall operations, any supposed deal between the two no longer exists.
Rounding out his interview, Sahrawi then turns to his own men, stating that they keep working to defend the Muslims of the Sahel against “those who mislead the Muslims and who try to divert them from their religion.”
This line serves as yet another jeer at al Qaeda and summaraizes the main thesis of Sahrawi’s interview, as the jihadist leader makes the case that JNIM are hypocrites that manipulate local communities and tribes for their own benefit.
At the same time, Sahrawi states that while JNIM says it is fighting ‘apostates,’ it routinely negotiates with them.
Much like with the first half of Sahrawi’s interview last year, the Islamic State is likely hoping this line of argument will discredit JNIM’s reputation as a well-organized jihadist entity composed of various groups made from the Sahel’s various ethnic groups.
Caleb Weiss is a contributor to FDD's Long War Journal and a senior analyst at the Bridgeway Foundation, where he focuses on the spread of the Islamic State in Central Africa.
Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.
9. Why China’s Hypersonic Missile Tests Are So Concerning
A powerful except here:
This devastating assessment, read in the context of intelligence and leadership failures like 9/11, the invasion of Iraq, the rapid downfall of the Afghan government, and now this launch of a Chinese nuclear-capable hypersonic missile, just to name a few, is, as the PNSR authors say, “undeniable.”
As a 15-year veteran of the U.S. IC, I have nothing but respect for my former colleagues. They are among the most dedicated, intelligent, and patriotic Americans our nation can produce. Nevertheless, talent and determination does not always overcome institutional decay and inefficiency, and there is now a clear record of failure that demands reform.
In the final analysis, then, the August launch of a Chinese nuclear-capable hypersonic missile is not transformative in a technological sense. But we can hope that we will one day look back on this development as the moment when the United States transformed itself into a nation that is truly prepared to confront a growing threat from an increasingly hostile and capable China.
Why China’s Hypersonic Missile Tests Are So Concerning
(Photograph by BeeBright/Stock/Getty Images.)
This weekend, the Financial Times reported that, back in August, China successfully tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile that went into space and orbited the globe before reentering earth’s atmosphere and landing within a couple dozen miles of its intended target. The article’s authors, Demetri Sevastopulo and Kathrin Hille, also claim American intelligence agencies were “surprised” by the test and that it “showed that China had made astounding progress on hypersonic weapons and was far more advanced than U.S. officials realized.”
Now nerds like me are all speculating about the implications of this development. What does this capability mean for the balance of power between the United States and China? Are the two nations now officially in a “cold war?” Are U.S. companies and technologies assisting China’s military rise? And, why were our intelligence agencies “surprised?”
I’ll take each of these questions in turn.
First, the capability that China demonstrated in August is not unique, but it is important. The United States, Russia, China, and other nations have been researching hypersonic missiles for quite some time. The United States has been pursuing these weapons since at least the early 2000s—with the Pentagon seeking to spend nearly $4 billion on hypersonic R&D in 2022. In 2019 Russia said it had already deployed a regiment of hypersonic nuclear-capable missiles. Likewise, American officials have known that Beijing is pursuing hypersonics and putting real money into these efforts. But apparently, we did not appreciate the progress of these programs (more on that later).
The appeal of hypersonics is that they are more likely to overcome strategic missile defense systems and to hit their targets with very little warning. While nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMS) actually fly faster than hypersonic missiles (about 15,000 miles per hour versus 3,600 mph), ICBMS have to fly a parabolic trajectory that is relatively easy to predict and to intercept. Hypersonic “glide vehicles” like the one tested by the Chinese, however, are able to maneuver and change their flight path while still going very, very fast. This makes them much more difficult to detect, to predict, and to intercept. Strap a thermonuclear warhead to one of these things and you’ve got a very serious problem.
There is now reason to believe that China may actually be leading the U.S. in the development of these weapons. While hypersonics are not the only way that China could deliver a nuclear warhead, they are a formidable threat in and of themselves and a potent reminder the American military superiority is not inevitable.
This, then, leads to the second question about a possible new “cold war.”
Importantly, this is not a technical term. The “Cold War” simply refers to U.S.-Soviet tensions between roughly 1945 and 1991. It’s called a cold war because the two superpowers were not openly, directly in a shooting (or “hot”) war, but were instead locked in a series of confrontations and low-level conflicts over 46 years. While tensions between the U.S. and China have not reached these same heights, there is good reason to believe they are following a similar path.
A growing consensus believes Western efforts to encourage democratic reforms in China through greater economic engagement has failed. Even more, there is broader recognition that China’s civil-military fusion and coercive economic, social, and political policies are becoming a direct threat to American citizens and interests.
Whether you want to call this a “cold war” or not, the clear reality is that the United States and China are assuming increasingly adversarial postures toward one another, and this is driving a new technological and military arms race. Which brings us to our third question.
Shortly after the Financial Times published its story, Wisconsin GOP Rep. Mike Gallagher, who is on the House Armed Services Committee, issued this statement:
We know from a recent Washington Post report that Phytium (a Chinese company thought to be the maker of the nation’s hypersonic missiles) uses US-derived technology to power a military supercomputer that models hypersonic flight … As a result, US-derived technology produced by TSMC [a Taiwan-based semiconductor company that uses American cutting-edge chip designs] still enables Phytium’s malign work. This needs to change … American entities have a clear choice: they can side with our country, or they can side with the genocidal communist regime that now threatens our cities. They can’t do both. It is time to choose.
While most U.S. companies would never admit to directly helping the Chinese military to imperil U.S. interests, the truth is that many are doing just that.
As I have argued previously, Beijing’s near-total control of public and private research and data within its own borders—including every bit and byte of data generated by Western companies operating in China—means that the Chinese military is able to leverage this information for its own ends. Microsoft’s Beijing-based Research Asia Lab, for example, is the company’s largest outside of the U.S. and is credited as being “the single most important institution in the birth and growth of the Chinese AI ecosystem over the past two decades.”
I, therefore, tend to agree with Rep. Gallagher: It is time for U.S. companies to choose a flag.
The fourth and final question is perhaps the most comprehensively concerning. This is the question about how the U.S. intelligence community (IC) could have been surprised by China’s hypersonic program.
The Financial Times reporting doesn’t make clear what specifically surprised the IC but, unfortunately, we ought not be surprised by this surprise.
Thirteen years ago, more than 300 top-tier national security professionals and scholars worked together on the Project on National Security Reform (PNSR), producing a 700-page report assessing the U.S.’s national security capabilities and institutions, and making several hundred specific recommendations for change. The commission’s findings were arresting and they were not hidden by bureaucratic language. Here are the first two paragraphs of their executive summary:
We, twenty-two members of the Guiding Coalition of the Project on National Security Reform, affirm unanimously that the national security of the United States of America is fundamentally at risk. The U.S. position of world leadership, our country’s prosperity and priceless freedoms, and the safety of our people are challenged not only by a profusion of new and unpredictable threats, but by the now undeniable fact that the national security system of the United States is increasingly misaligned with the rapidly changing global security environment.
The legacy structures and processes of a national security system that is now more than 60 years old no longer help American leaders to formulate coherent national strategy. They do not enable them to integrate America’s hard and soft power to achieve policy goals. They prevent them from matching resources to objectives, and from planning rationally and effectively for future contingencies. As presently constituted, too, these structures and processes lack the means to detect and remedy their own deficiencies (emphasis added).
This devastating assessment, read in the context of intelligence and leadership failures like 9/11, the invasion of Iraq, the rapid downfall of the Afghan government, and now this launch of a Chinese nuclear-capable hypersonic missile, just to name a few, is, as the PNSR authors say, “undeniable.”
As a 15-year veteran of the U.S. IC, I have nothing but respect for my former colleagues. They are among the most dedicated, intelligent, and patriotic Americans our nation can produce. Nevertheless, talent and determination does not always overcome institutional decay and inefficiency, and there is now a clear record of failure that demands reform.
In the final analysis, then, the August launch of a Chinese nuclear-capable hypersonic missile is not transformative in a technological sense. But we can hope that we will one day look back on this development as the moment when the United States transformed itself into a nation that is truly prepared to confront a growing threat from an increasingly hostile and capable China.
10. Taiwan says odds of war with China in next year 'very low'
"Never assume the enemy will not attack. Make yourself invincible." - Sun Tzu
Taiwan says odds of war with China in next year 'very low'
A Taiwanese flag flaps in the wind in Taoyuan, Taiwan, June 30, 2021. REUTERS/Ann Wang/File Photo
TAIPEI, Oct 20 (Reuters) - The odds of war with China in the next year are "very low," a top Taiwanese security official told lawmakers on Wednesday, amid heightened tensions between Taipei and Beijing, which claims sovereignty over the island.
Taiwan has repeatedly said that it will defend itself if attacked, but wants to maintain the status quo with China even as it complains of repeated sorties by the Chinese air force in its air defence identification zone, or ADIZ.
"I think generally, within one year, the probability of war is very low," National Security Bureau Director-General Chen Ming-tong told a parliamentary defence committee meeting.
"But there are many things you still have to pay attention to, called contingent events."
Earlier this month, President Tsai Ing-wen said Taiwan would not be forced to bow to China, but reiterated a desire for peace and dialogue with Beijing.
Barring any "contingent events," Chen said, "in the next one year, two years, or three years, during President Tsai's term, I think there won't be a problem."
Chen cited the COVID-19 pandemic as an example of an unexpected event that has fundamentally changed society.
"Nobody expected that," he said.
Earlier this month China mounted four consecutive days of mass air force incursions into Taiwan's ADIZ, which covers a broader area than Taiwan's territorial air space. Taiwan monitors and patrols ADIZ in order to give it more time to respond to any threats.
While China's aircraft did not enter into Taiwan's airspace, flying primarily in the southwestern corner of its ADIZ, Taiwan views the increased frequency of incursions as part of Beijing's intensifying military harassment.
China defended its military activities as "just" moves to protect peace and stability, blaming the tensions on Taiwan's "collusion" with foreign forces - a veiled reference to the United States.
Taiwan says it is an independent country called the Republic of China, its formal name.
Defence Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said last week that Taiwan will not start a war with China but will "meet the enemy full on."
Military tensions with China are at their higher point in more than 40 years, Chiu said earlier this month, adding China will be capable of mounting a "full scale" invasion by 2025.
Reporting by Sarah Wu; Editing by Ben Blanchard & Simon Cameron-Moore
11. There's a good reason why this Air Force general only wears 3 ribbons on his dress uniform
Excerpts:
But sometimes what awards you choose to showcase speaks far louder than how many you’ve earned.
That’s what stood out to airmen when Air Force Gen. Mike Minihan, the brand-new commander of Air Mobility Command, took nearly all of his 32 ribbons off his uniform for his most recent official service photo. Of those 32 ribbons, Minihan left only three on his chest, all of which were unit-based, rather than individual awards. One of Minihan’s public affairs officials said the general’s intent was to signal his commitment to team accomplishments over individual glory.
There's a good reason why this Air Force general only wears 3 ribbons on his dress uniform
Tell me you put the team first without telling me you put the team first.
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If you know anything about generals, you know that they typically sport a lot of ribbons on their dress uniforms. These strips of colored fabric, sometimes referred to as “chest candy” by service members, represent accomplishments achieved over one’s career. So when someone walks into a room with a chest that looks like it’s covered in paint swatches from a hardware store, it sends a message that they’ve “been there” and “done that.”
But sometimes what awards you choose to showcase speaks far louder than how many you’ve earned.
That’s what stood out to airmen when Air Force Gen. Mike Minihan, the brand-new commander of Air Mobility Command, took nearly all of his 32 ribbons off his uniform for his most recent official service photo. Of those 32 ribbons, Minihan left only three on his chest, all of which were unit-based, rather than individual awards. One of Minihan’s public affairs officials said the general’s intent was to signal his commitment to team accomplishments over individual glory.
“Gen. Minihan’s decision to wear these three ribbons is in accordance with AFI 36-2903 guidance to wear ‘all or some’ [ribbons], and the some he selected aligns with his team-focused leadership approach,” Lindsey Wilkinson, the deputy director of public affairs for Air Mobility Command, told Task & Purpose.
The spokeswoman said Minihan started wearing fewer ribbons on his service dress uniform during his stint as deputy commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command from 2019 to 2021.
“Gen. Minihan opted to reduce the number of decorations he wears on his service dress at certain events including retirements and promotions that honor others,” Wilkinson said. “He believes that the event should not be about him or his accomplishments, but the member he is there to honor or recognize.”
U.S. Air Force Gen. Mike Minihan, right, incoming Air Mobility Command commander, receives his new rank during his promotion ceremony at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, Oct. 5, 2021. Minihan was promoted to the rank of general. (U.S. Air Force Photo by Airman 1st Class Isaac Olivera)
The ribbons left on Minihan’s uniform include the Joint Meritorious Unit Award with three oak leaf clusters, the Meritorious Unit Award with four oak leaf clusters, and the Air Force Outstanding Unit Award with “V” for valor and two silver leaf clusters, Wilkinson said. An oak leaf cluster represents each instance the individual has received the award, a silver leaf cluster represents five separate oak leaf clusters; and a “V” denotes personal valor in combat, according to the Air Force.
Though his command profile doesn’t list each of his 32 ribbons, it says Minihan has received three Legions of Merit, six Air Medals, seven Aerial Achievement Medals, the Republic of Korea Cheonsu Medal, awarded by the President of South Korea for “outstanding meritorious services in the interest of national security,” and the Order of Saint Maurice, which is given to people who have “demonstrated a significant contribution in support of the Infantry,” according to the National Infantry Association.
Minihan’s decision may appear to be little more than a unique wardrobe choice for a four-star general, but it struck an immediate chord on social media, particularly in circles frequented by current and former service members.
“Mini is hands DOWN one of the most amazing officers this Air Force has,” said one commenter reacting to a post about Minihan’s ribbon count on Reddit. The comment received 221 points, meaning hundreds of onlookers shared the commenter’s opinion.
“This man 100% takes care of his airmen,” the commenter continued. “I am so thrilled he has this job. He’s going to knock it out of the park.”
“He’s the epitome of a hard charging [tactical airlifter,” said another. “Undoubtedly one of the best leaders I ever got to work for. This is such a win for AMC.”
Lt. Gen. Michael Minihan, center, pilots a C-130J Super Hercules over Central Arkansas, Sept. 17, 2021. A command pilot with more than 3,400 flight hours, Minihan completed his senior officer course on the C-130J during a recent visit to LRAFB. Minihan was promoted to the rank of General prior to assuming command of Air Mobility Command on Oct. 5, 2021. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Jayden Ford)
One airman who worked in aircraft maintenance at Dyess Air Force Base, Texas and as a flight engineer at Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas when Minihan was there, told Task & Purpose that Minihan “was always approachable, you never felt like you had to be on edge around him.”
The four-star general “always truly made you feel as if you were the only person that mattered at that moment when the two of you spoke,” said the airman, who stayed anonymous because they were not authorized to speak with the press.
“You could see the weight of being a commander lift when he strapped in and took control of the aircraft and he always wanted to know about young crew members he hadn’t flown with before,” the airman said.
“He would ask where you were from, how long you’ve been flying, if you had kids, a wife, etc,” the airman said, referring to Minihan’s service as a pilot of C-130 Hercules, KC-10 Extender and C-32 transport aircraft.
Other commenters described Minihan as “a stand up guy,” a “level-headed dude,” and a “pretty awesome commander.” It’s rare praise on the Air Force subreddit, where service leadership is routinely criticized. One airman who said they had a mental health breakdown during a large-scale training exercise remembered Minihan handing off responsibility for the exercise to a lower-ranking commander so he could check in on the airman.
“Report got back up to him that one of his airmen was in distress and he dropped the whole [operational readiness exercise] on the [operations group commander] and sprinted to where I was, to make sure I was okay,” the airman posted on Reddit. “I would follow Mini anywhere. I envy all of AMC, and wish I could go work for him again.”
Lt. Gen. Michael Minihan, center, speaks with a group of Airmen prior to piloting a C-130J Super Hercules flight at Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas, Sept. 17, 2021. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Jayden Ford)
If all this praise sounds excessive, remember that the Air Force, like many of its sister services, is struggling with a mental health and suicide crisis that many airmen attribute to poor leadership. Minihan’s efforts to step up for his airmen made an impact, and for someone as high up in the military food chain as a four-star general to drop his individual ribbons further emphasizes that commitment.
Air Mobility Command will need that kind of leadership going forward. The command provides the airlift, aerial refueling and aeromedical evacuation to keep the rest of the military fighting around the world. Earlier this year, the command made headlines for its key role transporting 124,000 people out of Afghanistan during the last days of the 20-year American war there. As the U.S. military prepares to fight over vast distances in a possible future conflict with China, the command also has to contend with a complete boondoggle of an acquisition process for its next aerial refueling tanker, which the military desperately needs because the current fleet is falling apart.
No matter how he plans to tackle those challenges, Minihan seems to want to do it in a particular way: together with his airmen. As Wilkinson put it, the general “believes any success he has had is a reflection of the Airmen and Joint Service members he’s had the privilege to lead and serve alongside over his 32 years of service.”
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12. Pentagon Personnel Costs at Historic High
We need more robots and technology to replace the human costs. (note sarcasm)
"In times of war and not before,
God and the soldier we adore.
But in times of peace and all things righted,
God is forgotten and the soldier slighted."
-Rudyard Kipling”
Pentagon Personnel Costs at Historic High
DEFENSE DEPARTMENT
10/19/2021
By
Army photo
Since 9/11, personnel-related expenditures have ballooned for the Defense Department. While reining in such costs could free up money for modernization, doing so would come with political and manpower risks that may give policymakers pause, analysts say.
The total cost of military personnel includes regular pay and special pay, plus other benefits such as health care, retirement, housing and subsistence allowances.
Last year, the Pentagon employed about 1.4 million active-duty troops and 800,000 civilians and maintained a reserve component of more than 800,000 members, according to a new Center for Strategic and International Studies report by defense budget analyst Seamus Daniels, “Assessing Trends in Military Personnel Costs.”
“While today’s U.S. military is near its smallest size since the end of World War II in terms of active-duty end strength, personnel costs are at a historic high — surpassed only by the height of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Daniels wrote. “Left unaddressed, high personnel costs may limit resources for Department of Defense modernization initiatives and could threaten the long-term sustainability of the force.”
Between fiscal years 2000 and 2012 during the peak of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, the average cost per service member increased a whopping 64 percent — adjusted for inflation — while the average cost per Defense Department civilian grew by over 25 percent. The average cost per active-duty service member is now close to $140,000, while total personnel-related costs — including costs for running the Defense Health Program, family programs and other initiatives — exceed $200 billion, according to the study.
Drivers of this cost growth include military pay raises above the Employment Cost Index — which measures private sector labor costs — as well as increases in housing, health care and retirement payments, the report said.
Regular military compensation now substantially exceeds the Pentagon’s benchmark goal of the 70th percentile of earnings for civilians — or the point at which 30 percent of comparable civilians would earn more, according to a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office,
“Alternative Approaches to Adjusting Military Cash Pay.”
In 2020, the Defense Department spent about 25 percent of its $630 billion base budget on cash pay and benefits for current service members, according to CBO.
“In 2018, regular cash pay for enlisted personnel was at roughly the 90th percentile of the earnings of civilian workers with comparable years of experience and some college education, about 20 percentiles above the benchmark. In addition, research indicates that, overall, DoD has successfully met its staffing needs for the force,” the study said. “Those data raise questions about whether DoD is paying more for its personnel than is necessary to meet its goals.”
The department could potentially cut back and still reach its recruitment and retention targets while pursuing modernization, the report said. However, in the future, “if pay growth was too slow, regular cash pay would eventually fall below DoD’s goal, which could make it difficult for the department to achieve its recruiting and retention goals,” it cautioned.
Daniels suggested a number of policy options that could potentially help control expenditures, including: capturing the cost of current personnel policy actions on future expenditures; shifting the makeup of compensation; exploring cost-sharing opportunities in compensation and benefits; gradually increasing the years of service required for military retirement; rethinking personnel requirements for platforms, missions and operations; and reexamining the allocation of roles and missions among the military services.
“Growth in costs associated with personnel could hinder DoD as it tries to operationalize its strategy and prioritize the modernization of key military capabilities,” the CSIS report said. “However, tackling high personnel costs is not without its challenges that have bedeviled previous attempts at reform.”
Compensation is an integral part of the military’s recruitment and retention efforts, it noted.
“Policymakers may be hesitant to make adjustments to pay and benefits that disrupt those activities,” the study said. “They may similarly look to avoid the political ramifications of making difficult decisions and politically unpopular changes to the current system. Adjusting the military compensation system will require careful cooperation between the administration, senior military leaders, DoD civilian leaders and Congress — and a willingness on all sides to expend political capital.”
13. NATO in the Far East: Containing the Red Dragon
Excerpt:
After decades of considering the rise of China as a threat outside the purview of NATO’s focus, the United States must now effectively integrate its NATO partners into the “pivot to Asia.” Multilateral Western engagement should 1) enhance intelligence and counterintelligence sharing; 2) integrate NATO allies into Pacific Pathways; 3) coordinate the denial of further Chinese port leasing; 4) secure defense supply chains; 5) purge malicious Chinese hardware and software from NATO defense systems; and 6) continue to modernize the alliance’s nuclear architecture. If NATO can incorporate these mutual defense measures into a revamped grand strategy, it will be better prepared for a more muscular China.
NATO in the Far East: Containing the Red Dragon - Modern War Institute
In mid-2020, Chinese and Indian forces faced off in a series of violent skirmishes in the Galwan Valley along the Sino-Indian border. Troops engaged in brutal hand-to-hand combat before national leaders facilitated a de-escalation of the situation. For the first time in decades, China chose this specific moment, during the height of the global COVID outbreak, to test the resolve of its southern, democratic neighbor. Was this belligerence simply a ploy to deflect blame for the Wuhan outbreak or cater to nationalist sentiment, or was there more meaning to this test?
With China increasing its aggressive posture across the Far East, the Galwan incursion’s timing and casus belli achieved both domestic and regional objectives. As tensions rise in the South China Sea and central Asian nations like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan are positioning themselves to secure rare earth metals, China’s posture toward its regional neighbors speaks profoundly to its willingness to compete beyond economics. The United States should further embrace its battle-tested, trans-Atlantic alliances to prepare for the great power challenges of the next decade. With the Belt and Road Initiative expanding Chinese influence through infrastructure projects worldwide, NATO now sees China’s rise beyond parlor talk or purported American paranoia; it is a reality that must be addressed multilaterally.
In June 2021, NATO leaders met in Brussels to renew commitments to multilateral Western security. As autocratic regimes challenge democratic systems with cyberattacks, information operations campaigns, and border skirmishes, the alliance directed much of its energy toward a rising China, in a move that mirrors the sentiment of domestic audiences across the Western world. The pivot represents a sharp turn away from the last decade’s focuses on counterterrorism and Russian challenges. While there is little doubt that terrorism is a dark and lethal force to contend with—and that Moscow will remain a disruptive force in cyberspace and on the European continent—there is finally consensus beyond American shores that the greatest threat to Western hegemony emanates from Beijing.
In September 2021, the announcement of the AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, United States) pact further emphasized the West’s resolve in the Pacific. Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia, in a joint press release with President Joseph Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, described AUKUS as “a partnership where our technology, our scientists, our industry, [and] our defense forces are all working together to deliver a safer and more secure region that ultimately benefits all.” The first initiative will deliver American nuclear submarines to Australia, which meant the cancellation of the earlier French contract to deliver diesel-electric submarines. France directed its anger and disappointment toward Australia and the United States in what French officials called “a major breach of confidence and a very bad signal,” going so far as to recall their ambassadors from Washington and Canberra.
After decades of considering the rise of China as a threat outside the purview of NATO’s focus, the United States must now effectively integrate its NATO partners into the “pivot to Asia.” Multilateral Western engagement should 1) enhance intelligence and counterintelligence sharing; 2) integrate NATO allies into Pacific Pathways; 3) coordinate the denial of further Chinese port leasing; 4) secure defense supply chains; 5) purge malicious Chinese hardware and software from NATO defense systems; and 6) continue to modernize the alliance’s nuclear architecture. If NATO can incorporate these mutual defense measures into a revamped grand strategy, it will be better prepared for a more muscular China.
Enhance Intelligence and Counterintelligence Sharing
The United States and its allies rely heavily on each other to exchange intelligence within Five Eyes, NATO, and theater-level sharing agreements. Intelligence partnerships between NATO and the democracies of Asia must be updated to enable a faster flow of contextual intelligence. As an example of progress, discussions within the international security community are occurring on how to effectively add nations like Japan into the coveted Five Eyes alliance. National compartmentalization is still necessary to protect partners’ self-interests, but administrative processes for exchanging timely and contextual intelligence with foreign entities should be modernized to ensure that procedures act as safeguards rather than barriers. If democratic intelligence and defense agencies cannot move collectively in this area, our partnerships will be unable to achieve unity of effort if called upon for mutual defense.
Integrate NATO Allies into Pacific Pathways
Pacific Pathways, a series of bilateral training exercises between the United States and its Asian partners, should be expanded to include European forces. Although some of these exercises do not always achieve the upfront goal of bilateral interoperability, they do provide a sense of shared mission and cohesion. Training together with partners like Japan, the Republic of Korea, India, and Thailand provides American headquarters elements the opportunity to exercise mission command and stress logistics systems. Multi-month deployments also show our Indo-Pacific partners that America maintains a vested interest in the readiness of their armed forces. Lastly, exercises like Pacific Pathways expose American forces to various operational environments, doctrinal frameworks, and capability sets.
Pacific Pathways is about building relationships. If NATO nations are serious about challenging Chinese aggression, the United States should invite NATO units to serve alongside American expeditionary forces in the Pacific. This will build capacity in the East and will demonstrate to China that NATO acts on its communiqués. It will also have the added effect of stimulating NATO defense spending to complement proportionally high contributions by the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Canada, and Spain.
Coordinate the Denial of Further Chinese Port Leasing
Late to the game, the Chinese government has taken a page out of the American, British, French, and Russian playbooks on force projection. The Chinese government is laying the groundwork for the next century of Chinese naval and commercial expansion, welcomed to host nations’ shores thanks to injections of capital. Recently, Chinese companies have legally completed deals, unlocking immense strategic access for the Chinese government. While competition is inherent to geopolitics, NATO members and other democracies should attempt to block port leasing as long as China flouts international norms like the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, specifically with regard to exclusive economic zones (EEZs) in the South China Sea. If China does not abide by the two-hundred-nautical-mile rules that define EEZs, NATO members must work in unison with available economic levers to influence Chinese behavior.
In Africa, the PLA retains a significant presence in and around the port of Djibouti after starting construction on a base there in 2016. Chinese conglomerate COSCO also secured a foothold at Europe’s doorstep at the Greek port of Piraeus, purchasing a 51 percent majority holding after privatization in 2016. COSCO is now expected to raise its stake in Piraeus after a September 2021 Greek court ruling. If China continues to take advantage of the West’s free-market systems to gain strategic advantage, NATO members must respond with new regulations, competing bids, and incentive packages to block these efforts.
Secure the Defense Supply Chain
NATO’s vision for 2030 directly addressed technological innovation and supply chain shortcomings, launching the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA). Under the agreement, DIANA will include joint “offices and test centres across the Alliance, and it will manage a database of trusted sources of investment.” Members “also agreed to establish a multinationally funded NATO Innovation Fund, to which Allies can contribute on an opt-in basis, to invest in start-ups working on dual-use and emerging and disruptive technologies in areas that are critical to Allied security.” The United States should embrace the tenets of DIANA, as well as NATO’s commitment to the ethical implementation of artificial intelligence in “emerging and disruptive technologies.”
In the United States, the passage of the United States Innovation and Competition Act is a step in the right direction to secure the United States’ own defense supply chains. Much of the nation’s defense materiel is made domestically per the Buy American Act and executive order, but a glaring weak spot is the lack of semiconductor and rare earth metal production capacity. While this bill does much to mitigate the shortcomings of the last decades, additional public-private partnerships must be formed to realize the full potential of American industry and innovation. The government should incentivize and invest in the discovery and acquisition of rare earth metals, both domestically and abroad with allied nations, and should accelerate the growth of semiconductor foundries on American shores. Though some of the incremental investments of 2020 and 2021 are welcome news to domestic producers, the United States must use every legislative and executive tool available to expand domestic capacity and reduce reliance on foreign sources. To its credit, the Department of Defense continues to seek additional funds to reduce supply chain threats to critical industries like semiconductors. To offset government costs and stimulate capacity, the United States should market new excess American defense chips exclusively to NATO partners and democratic allies in Asia and the Pacific.
Purge Malicious Hardware and Software from NATO Defense Systems
Over the last decade, Chinese telecom giant Huawei sold large numbers of hardware and wireless devices across the world, saturating overseas markets with products the United States and NATO allies consider a security threat. In addition to NATO efforts aimed at collective cyber defense, the United States should encourage other democracies in Asia and the Pacific to review the use of Chinese technology in their defense systems. Though there is the risk of further destabilizing relations with China, as seen with the arrest of Huawei executives and subsequent reprisals against Western businesspeople in China, the West should focus first and foremost on the threat of spyware, which must be rooted out of critical infrastructure.
Continue Nuclear Modernization Efforts
Political and defense leadership among the world’s most powerful democracies is coming to terms with the rise of China and what it means for our shared future. The United States, NATO, and Asian democracies should collectively harden infrastructure and supply chains to prepare for a generations-long standoff with an ambitious China that acts with strategic foresight and intends to increase its global influence and force projection. This article offers only a few initial targeted solutions to face this threat, with the hope that shared defense and economic interests will deter China from increasing its aggressive behavior. However, Chinese actions in the South China Sea, in the Galwan Valley, and elsewhere over the last few years do not offer any sort of expectation that this will be the case. Readiness is the best antidote, with geostrategic, physical, and operational security all playing major roles in preparations. We must take care of our NATO, Asian, and Pacific alliances and partnerships, and strengthen them for what is to come.
Captain Michael Greenberg is currently assigned to the Department of History at West Point as an instructor. He is a Northwestern University graduate and earned a MA in Terrorism, Security, & Society in the War Studies Department at King’s College London and a MA in History at New York University. His most recent operational assignment was in the Pacific where he served with 1-2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team as a military intelligence company commander and infantry S-2.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: Lisa Ferdinando
14. The Weakness in the U.S.' Understanding of Taiwan
Excerpts:
Again, speaking historically, Culver noted, “Deadlines for unification typically have been driven more by internal CCP leadership dynamics and legacy-making than ordering a firm set of multi-domain operations to commence to produce something the CCP can call ‘unification’ by a certain date.”
He predicted, “Perhaps [by] 2030 or 2035, the PLA [the Chinese People’s Liberation Army] probably will have the organizational and warfighting capacity for a Taiwan operation that it has always lacked.”
But even then, according to Culver, “China’s proposals initially could be fairly lenient…but a key condition would be the end of a U.S.-Taiwan security framework without Beijing’s explicit approval.”
As for the current situation, Culver said he disagrees with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Commander Adm. Philip Davidson, who just six days earlier had told the Senate Armed Services Committee that, “Taiwan is clearly one of their [the CCP’s] ambitions. … And I think the threat is manifest during this decade, in fact, in the next six years.”
The Weakness in the U.S.' Understanding of Taiwan
Fine Print
Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders (releasing in November 2021) He also won an Emmy in 1981 and the 2010 Arthur Ross Award from the American Academy for Diplomacy.
OPINION – Taiwan today, appears to be the newest test for a potential American military intervention.
“The CCP’s [Chinese Communist Party] ultimate objective isn’t invasion, but instead a process between China and Taiwan authorities to negotiate the formal, long-term political relationship across the [Taiwan] Strait. Military, economic, information, and diplomatic coercion and inducements would all be in play, and the red line for threatened military force would shift from preventing permanent separation to a refusal by Taipei to begin the political process.”
Speaking was John Culver, a retired, 35-year Central Intelligence Agency analyst during a Brookings Institute interview on March 30. From 2015 to 2018, Culver served on the National Intelligence Council as national intelligence officer for East Asia.
Here’s what’s wrong.
One lesson from Vietnam 50 years ago, and more recently from Afghanistan, should be that U.S. policymakers need to listen to experts.
What follows was my attempt to do so, having not closely followed Taiwan issues beyond reading with concern, the recent calls for a U.S. military buildup in the region to deter an inevitable Chinese attack on that island nation.
Asked about whether he believed Taiwan now plays a high priority in China’s domestic politics, Culver replied, “One of my core assumptions is that things said by the CCP about Taiwan are generally not directed solely or principally at the Taiwan public, but instead at China’s own domestic population, or at the U.S. government and a few other foreign governments — principally Tokyo and Canberra.”
Culver added that since the current Taiwan leadership “has not taken highly provocative or precipitous actions,” he doesn’t expect “the role of Taiwan in China’s politics to change due solely — or even mostly — to the 20th Party Congress in 2022, unless provoked by Taiwan’s own election cycle, which would be gearing up for the January 2024 polls.”
In a broad historical sense, Culver said, “Taiwan is an issue that the CCP sees as a threat to its legitimacy, not an opportunity to be seized. That has meant that CCP policy toward Taiwan is largely about what it wants to avoid, not what it wants to achieve — reactionary, not exploitative.”
Culver went on, “But that is changing. Especially since Xi in 2019, and more recently, has framed ‘reunification’ as a requirement for achieving the ‘China Dream’ tied to the CCP’s longstanding goals for 2049, the 100th anniversary of the PRC’s founding. We should worry that Xi may decide to take risks that his more constrained predecessors since Mao Zedong would not.”
Again, speaking historically, Culver noted, “Deadlines for unification typically have been driven more by internal CCP leadership dynamics and legacy-making than ordering a firm set of multi-domain operations to commence to produce something the CCP can call ‘unification’ by a certain date.”
He predicted, “Perhaps [by] 2030 or 2035, the PLA [the Chinese People’s Liberation Army] probably will have the organizational and warfighting capacity for a Taiwan operation that it has always lacked.”
But even then, according to Culver, “China’s proposals initially could be fairly lenient…but a key condition would be the end of a U.S.-Taiwan security framework without Beijing’s explicit approval.”
As for the current situation, Culver said he disagrees with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Commander Adm. Philip Davidson, who just six days earlier had told the Senate Armed Services Committee that, “Taiwan is clearly one of their [the CCP’s] ambitions. … And I think the threat is manifest during this decade, in fact, in the next six years.”
Culver said, intentionally or not, Davidson and others assume “that as soon as the PLA is ‘ready,’ China will launch an invasion, or that the CCP will launch an opportunistic war to shore up domestic legitimacy. None of this is true,” he said, “in terms of China’s goals, its view of the usefulness of military force, or how the CCP’s legitimacy has been trending or is likely to trend over the decade.”
He worried, however, that the factors that have held together the status quo since the 1979 U.S.-China diplomatic recognition “have eroded and are likely to continue to erode.”
In his list of destabilizing factors Culver put, “The emergence of full-blown U.S.-China strategic rivalry, which increases Taiwan’s attraction to both major U.S. political parties as a litmus test of ‘standing up to China.’”
Taiwan was central again at a Brookings webinar last Tuesday, titled, “The Role of Domestic Politics in U.S.-Taiwan Relations.”
There, Culver’s worry came to life.
“There is this discourse that Taiwan is some kind of a weapon system that the U.S. can use in this new cold war that we’re going to have with China, or maybe it’s a new hot war, depending upon who you’re listening to.”
Speaking was Dr. Shelley Rigger, the Brown Professor of Political Science at Davidson College, who is widely recognized as one of America’s leading experts on Taiwan, having published numerous books, monographs, and articles on Taiwan’s political developments.
Dr. Rigger was explaining, “the kind of hawkish — we need to take China down, and Taiwan’s going to be one of our assets for doing that,” approach, which she was hearing from the pundit, media class in the U.S.
Appearing with Dr. Rigger were two other experts on Taiwan — Richard C. Bush, who, at Brookings, is a senior fellow and former director of its Center for East Asia Policy having earlier been for five years the chairman and managing director of the American Institute in Taiwan. The other expert was Shirley Lin, a senior fellow at Brookings’ Center for East Asia Policy Studies, and author of the 2016 book, “Taiwan’s China Dilemma: Contested Identities and Multiple Interests in Taiwan’s Cross-Strait Economic Policy,” and one of the first Asian partners at Goldman Sachs.
Since all three praised the annual National Day speech that Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen gave in Taipei just nine days ago, I looked at her text to see where she focused her attention.
Although President Tsai had titled his speech, “Forging a stronger consensus: Standing united to protect Taiwan,” her main early thrust was on the need for all Taiwanese political parties to work together to meet the challenge of the coronavirus pandemic. Next, was economic growth and the need to increase foreign trade.
It was late in her talk that President Tsai mentioned “the routinization of Chinese military activity in Taiwan’s southwestern air defense identification zone [that] has seriously affected both our national security and aviation safety.” But she followed quickly by calling for “maintaining the status quo…We hope for an easing of cross-strait relations and will not act rashly, but there should be absolutely no illusions that the Taiwanese people will bow to pressure.”
She said, “We will continue to bolster our national defense and demonstrate our determination to defend ourselves in order to ensure that nobody can force Taiwan to take the path China has laid out for us.”
Taiwan’s defense budget, however, faces competition.
Taiwan has for years, kept its defense budget below two percent of gross national product (GNP) because it competes with the domestic needs of the general population.
As Richard Bush put it last week at Brookings, “The population is aging, the birthrate is low, so the increasing number of people who by law, deserve pensions is going to go up. Moreover, you will continue to have demands for funding to build infrastructure and otherwise keep Taiwan economically competitive. The problem that Taiwan faces is that it’s operating with a basically fixed-sized budget pie, and so, the fight for resources can be intense. The percentage of the government budget that goes to defense has remained about 11 or 12 percent over a decade, even though the threat to Taiwan has increased. It’s bizarre.”
Taiwan’s defense budget for its calendar year 2022, was originally set at a record $16.89 billion, but last week, the government proposed added spending over the next five years, of another $8.69 billion or roughly $1.7 billion-a-year. That would put defense spending at about 2.3 percent of GDP. The U.S. spends over 3.3 percent of GDP on defense.
Former CIA analyst Culver said, “Polling indicates that most Taiwanese don’t feel very threatened — there’s little domestic pressure to massively increase military spending or return to lengthy universal conscription. Most Taiwan people aren’t worried about imminent attack, because 40 years since U.S. de-recognition of the Republic of China, [the former non-communist mainland regime then in Taiwan] have passed without war, but also because some think that Taiwan could not prevail without massive U.S. military intervention, so there’s little point in building up Taiwan’s own military.”
Culver’s view was that “U.S. policy for Taiwan should follow the Tsai administration’s example of basing its legitimacy on the vibrant quality of its democracy and economic freedom,” adding, “There are an array of steps the United States can take with regard to Taiwan on trade, multinational democratic forums, health policy, and even security affairs…We need to think more clearly about how we can adapt our actions to best support Taiwan as it faces these challenges and I think expanding our economic relationship radically is a good way to do that.”
Trade with Taiwan was also brought up last week by Brooking’s Taiwan economic specialist Shirley Linn who said, “The most important and practical way for the U.S. to help Taiwan is to sign bilateral economic agreements and help others sign bilateral agreements with Taiwan.”
Their mention of trade echoed something in President Tsai’s National Day speech: “We resumed talks with the United States under our bilateral [1994] Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA).”
I did not know that U.S. trade talks with Taiwan under TIFA had been suspended since 2016, because of a variety of regulatory and concessionary disagreements going back to 2007, including Taiwan’s ban on additives used in U.S. agricultural products.
During all that time, Lin said, “Taiwan’s trade and investment with China actually has increased. Twenty-five percent of Taiwan’s total trade is with China, which is a historic high, and still, the majority of Taiwan’s cumulative investment in the world is in China. Compare this with Taiwan’s trade with the U.S. The U.S. had been Taiwan’s leading trade partner until 2003, and now the U.S. is only 13 percent of Taiwan’s total trade, and only 14 percent of Taiwan’s cumulative foreign direct investment outbound.”
So, unless the U.S. leads and provides incentives to deepen its Taiwan economic relationship, and gets other countries to join, China is eventually going to be a much more convenient partner for Taiwan.
As Lin put it, “If Taiwan does not become more internationalized and more integrated with the West, it’s going to be — unavoidably going to be — in the long term, part of China…because it is the most viable solution to Taiwan’s economic and other problems.”
That is Beijing’s long-term, economic game which can lead to an involuntary but peaceful unification.
Meanwhile, the U.S., as usual, is focused on the short-term game — military involvement.
Read more expert-driven national security news, insights and perspective in The Cipher Brief
15. The Nobel Peace Prize and Free Speech in the Philippines
The Nobel Peace Prize and Free Speech in the Philippines
The awarding of the prize to pioneering journalist Maria Ressa points to the deterioration in press freedom under President Duterte.
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The awarding of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize to journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov highlighted the role of independent media outlets in challenging authoritarian governments around the world. In the case of the Philippines, it put a spotlight on how truth-seekers like Ressa have stood their ground in the face of the relentless state-backed attacks targeting the media during the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte.
The Nobel prize was announced on October 8, the same day that Senator Bato dela Rosa filed his certificate of candidacy as president representing the ruling party. Bato was a former police chief who enforced Duterte’s notorious anti-drug campaign (known locally as Tokhang) in 2016 and 2017. It is ironic that the ruling party presented the Tokhang implementer as its standard-bearer in the 2022 elections on the day Ressa was recognized by the Nobel Committee for her work exposing the abuses of the police and other security forces.
This explains why the presidential palace was slow to praise Ressa’s Nobel victory. The president and his subordinates know fully well that the award reflects the decline of press freedom in the country. When a half-hearted greeting to Ressa was finally given by the president’s spokesperson, it was quickly followed up by a denial that freedom of expression has been suppressed under the Duterte administration.
For winning the Nobel, Ressa is qualified to receive the Senate Medal of Excellence, but Duterte’s allies wanted this to be placed on a vote. Senator Bato is among those who are questioning the merits of honoring Ressa by echoing the assertion of the president’s spokesperson about press freedom being alive and robust in the time of Duterte.
This claim can be easily disputed by citing last year’s forced closure of ABS-CBN, the country’s biggest media network, after its franchise renewal application was denied by Congress. Duterte made no secret about his intent to shut down the broadcaster and his allies in Congress made sure that this was successfully carried out. Thousands of jobs were lost, the public’s right to information was eroded, and the silencing of a media giant has created a chilling effect among the ranks of media practitioners.
Aside from closing down ABS-CBN, the Duterte government can be accused of failing to end the culture of impunity as media killings remain unabated in the past five years. Attacks against the media have worsened, according to the monitoring of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP).
“When 20 of us have been killed, four of us have been jailed, when there have been 37 cases of libel brought against our own, and 230 cases of varied attacks in our ranks, we feel the big chill,” the NUJP said in response to the statement of the president’s spokesperson, who denied that journalists are worried about the rise of censorship in the country.
It should be added that free speech was curtailed even during the pandemic. Authorities invoked the state of emergency to criminalize the posting of so-called “fake news.” Several critics and activists were detained for the alleged violation of health protocols. Journalists are among those victimized by redbaiting operations, which usually ends in an act of violence or incarceration as in the case of 22-year-old Frenchie Mae Cumpio, who was arrested based on a trumped-up accusation that she is part of the armed communist movement.
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Recently, the military was pinpointed by a government agency as being the source of cyber attacks targeting alternative news websites. Another worrisome development is the purging of “subversive” books from at least three universities upon the instigation of the police and military.
It is against this alarming backdrop that we should review the work of Ressa and how she wielded her pen to explain how the Duterte government weaponized laws and social media to stifle free speech. This has angered Duterte so much that he has personally attacked Ressa on numerous occasions. His government had filed eight charges against Ressa and the news company she founded, Rappler. These are obviously politically motivated and intended to intimidate Ressa and other hard-hitting journalists. Ressa’s response to “hold the line” and defend the truth became the battle cry of many journalists facing persecution. She never wavered in her duty as a journalist despite the intensified harassment she received from the president and his cyber troll army.
For her courageous work of speaking truth to power, Ressa deserves to receive the Nobel Peace Prize and she is right to share the honor with fellow journalists who are standing their ground and fearlessly confronting Duterte’s authoritarian regime.
For the allies of the president in the Senate who are hesitant to offer another medal to Ressa, the least they can do is recommend the dropping of the eight remaining charges against the first Filipino Nobel laureate.
16. Afghanistan and the Future of US Foreign Policy
Conclusion:
Finally, successful diplomacy involves a thorough understanding of the culture, regional dynamics, and strategic goals of respective countries relevant to achieving national objectives. The US experience in Afghanistan reveals the importance of clearly defining what national objectives are before invading a country. Afghanistan further divulged how diplomacy is a critical component to any military campaign or international strategy. As the US campaign evolved in Afghanistan, regional diplomacy should have also adapted. However, this was extremely difficult to do as there was no clear definition of what quantified victory or end to the conflict. As the US and Central and South Asia adjust to a post-US occupied Afghanistan, the US must pay close attention to the new regional dynamics as they unfold. As ISIL-K and AQ remain uncontested under Taliban rule, US alliances, economic influence, and international relationships are more important now than ever.
Afghanistan and the Future of US Foreign Policy
By David S. Clukey
Introduction
September 11, 2021 marked 20 years since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2011 (911) and shortly before this solemn commemoration, on August 30, the United States (US) withdrew the last of its military forces from Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA).[1] Prior to the withdrawal, US forces had been on the ground in Afghanistan since October 7, 2001. In these two decades, the US spent over $2 trillion USD[2] and invested over 2,300[3] in human capital to offer Afghanistan a chance for prosperity. Unfortunately, the way the US withdrew from Afghanistan appeared as curious as it did haphazard. On a global stage, the US orchestrated a series of diplomatic, tactical, and strategic missteps that were all preventable. Although cringeworthy and tragic, these recent missteps offer opportunity for reflection and lessons to learn from; as did the way the US approached the war in Afghanistan.
“Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.” – Ernest Hemingway
The great irony is the US capitulated to the very terrorist group it drove from power 20 years earlier, and in doing so, created a pathway to enable the Taliban to recreate the conditions that precipitated 911 to begin with. In order to better understand the events that led to this and assist decision makers preclude a costly calamity like this in the future, this essay examines three US policy failures consisting of: (1) connection to the conflict; (2) mission creep; and (3) diplomacy, and how these lessons may shape future US foreign policy and armed conflicts.
Background
Before examining policy failures, this section illuminates three interconnected US national security challenges immediately resultant from the withdrawal: (1) terrorist safe-haven, (2) deterrence and access, and (3) legitimacy and credibility. Historic references are used to illuminate similarities to the contemporary environment, and the US Interim National Security Guidance serves a baseline to consider the rationale behind recent foreign policy decisions.
Safe-haven. In 1996 al Qaeda (still in Afghanistan) was granted nənawā́te (Pashto: ننواتې, "sanctuary")[4] by the Taliban. This sanctuary offered al Qaeda the time and space necessary to plan, coordinate and train for the terrorist attacks of 911; observed, as the deadliest concurrent terrorist attacks in world history[5]. Notwithstanding economic implications, the attacks of 911 resulted in the immediate loss of 2,996 people (including 19 hijackers) and over 6,000 casualties.[6] This is also not accounting for long term latent health issues experienced by New York City residents and First Responders or the US servicemembers, contractors and civilians killed, wounded or affected through overseas deployments over the next 20-years in support of the Global War on Terrorism and subsequent Overseas Contingency Operations.
In August 2021, following the US departure, al Qaeda retained safe haven in Afghanistan, as did a resurgent Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – Khorasan Province (ISIL-K); again, under Taliban rule. Although al Qaeda (AQ) and ISIL-K are very different networks, both are designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the US Department of State[7], and similar to the Taliban, each follows strict Sunni Islamic fundamentalist ideologies. Compellingly, the US persists in counter-terrorism (CT) operations against these and other known terrorist networks in Afghanistan. However, CT operations are surgical in nature and do not influence the broader humanitarian crisis nor assuage harsh Taliban fundamentalist rule over Afghan citizens.
Deterrence & Access. The White House published Interim National Security Strategic Guidance in March 2021. This guidance calls for the US to “promote a favorable distribution of power to deter and prevent adversaries from directly threatening the US and our allies, inhibiting access to the global commons, or dominating key regions.”[8] Afghanistan has found itself as a “dominating key region” in the great power competition throughout the ages. Its geographical position “sits at the heart of Central Asia, at the meeting point of ancient trade routes – known together as “The Silk Road” – that go out to all parts of Asia.”[9] Invaders unsuccessfully competed for this key region for its access; earning Afghanistan the nickname, “Graveyard of Empires.”
In the last 200 years, Western Powers have been drawn to Afghanistan as well, including the former British Empire (Anglo-Afghan Wars) throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries; the former Soviet Union (Soviet-Afghan War) from 1978 – 1989[10]; and most recently the US from 2001 – 2021. Regarding the US involvement, outside of preserving Afghan sovereignty and developing its military capabilities, the US military retained pressure on the Taliban, al Qaeda, and ISIL-K. Secure military installations in Afghanistan, replete with airfields, offered the US proximity to competitors: China, Russia and Iran. Ceding a nation state to known terrorists, whose sovereign borders are safe to characterize as a “dominating key region”, with “access to global commons” may prove problematic to US national security interests and regional goals.
The Interim National Security Strategic Guidance also calls for the US to “lead and sustain a stable and open international system, underwritten by strong democratic alliances, partnerships, multilateral institutions, and rules”.[11] In the Aftermath of the events that preceded the withdrawal, its curious to consider how democratic alliances and partnerships were considered in these equations. Particularly, when the US left Afghanistan in the middle of the night without notifying its long-term Afghan-partners. More compelling, is how this “abandonment” will affect US foreign relations in the future. Long term consequences remain unknown; however, the immediate results have not presented US credibility in a positive light.
Legitimacy & Credibility. The US lost legitimacy and credibility on a global stage in Afghanistan in an eerily similar fashion to the fallout from Saigon, Vietnam in 1975. As Afghan citizens flooded the gates of HKIA, triaged by Taliban and US forces in complete chaos, images of Afghan’s falling to their death from a US C-17 flooded news and social media. These scenarios were preventable had the US executed a deliberate withdrawal it had 20-years to design; or pursued any other scalable alternative. Understanding it is impossible to consider every variable, it was no secret the rampant corruption and inefficiencies of the Afghan government and its national security forces. History offered insight to predict the mass exodus of refugees, humanitarian crisis, and disarray prior to the Taliban’s symbolic march into Kabul.
The US announcement of the withdrawal timeline emboldened the Taliban, and the rate at which the Afghan government and military forces collapsed was no surprise to anyone who had ever spent any time in the country. Over 20-years of intelligence reports, analytical assessments of Afghan government and military capabilities, systemic challenges and lists of current and former Afghan employees and key personnel were readily available for decision makers to consider. The timing of the withdrawal also raises questions. Afghanistan has a predictable fighting season with much less activity during winter months. The sequence of departure and abdication of Bagram Airfield placed the US Department of State remaining in Afghanistan in a precarious position. Many questions, few assurances; however, this is irrelevant to the countless Afghan families and American’s remaining under harsh Taliban rule, many imperiled to retribution.
Connection to the conflict
It’s important to note the US conducted a limited war, not an all-out war, in Afghanistan. Over its almost 20-year timeframe approximately 770,000 Americans deployed to Afghanistan, and “approx. 28,267 U.S. troops deployed there five or more times.”[12] The current US military strength in 2021 is 1.4 million[13] and the total US population is 333,449,281.[14] The current active-duty military consists of under 1% of the US population; in contrast, 11% of the US population served during World War 2[15] (total war). This metric illuminates a marked difference in the way the US sources its military and effects the way America conducts contemporary warfare under an all-volunteer force (AVF). This dynamic inadvertently creates a division between the civilian and military (CIV-MIL) population with an inherent implication of limited connection to the conflict/conflicts by the broader population. The US conducted a protracted limited war against the Taliban insurgency with strict rules of engagement and a proverbial “Rolodex” of commanders and priority focus. A small percentage (%) of troops were committed to fighting, a larger % to training, and the largest % to support operations.
The Vietnam experience compelled the US to professionalize its military, and in 1977 an AVF was created. A 30-year assessment conducted by Rand Corporation in 2006 proposed four reasons the AVF was successful: (1) “attention and leadership from top management, (2) the use of quantitative analysis to test, adjust, and evaluate AVF policies, (3) the need to develop programs for attracting the necessary type and number of recruits, and (4) adequate financial resources.”[16] The AVF succeeded in professionalizing the force, quantifiably realized through US military victories in Panama, Grenada, and the Gulf War. Quantitative analysis did not account for the effects of over 20-years of sustained conflict, significant cultural and educational changes in the US throughout the 2000s, and the inadvertent creation of a warrior class.
Across the US military, recruiters struggle to find candidates that meet the bare minimum requirements for military service. In contemporary America, only 3 out of 10 youth meet the moral, medical, and intellectual aptitude necessary to serve. This concerning metric combined with only 1% of US society currently serve and 7% have served, has created a widening CIV-MIL divide. "This disconnect is characterized by misperceptions, a lack of knowledge and an inability to identify with those who serve”[17] This widening gap combined with over 20-years of sustained conflict, post COVID-19 economic opportunities (reduced unemployment), and recruiting challenges, has realized a disconnection from American’s conflicts, by most American citizens. This lack of connection is extremely dire when it pertains to deciding whether or not US military intervention is required, as the implications of employing military capabilities are not fully understood. Currently, congress has the lowest number of Veterans since World War II.[18], The last US President to serve in the military was George W. Bush whose term closed in 2009.
Mission Creep
When the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001, US Army Special Forces Teams, with Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) collaboration, aligned with Afghan warlords and leveraged US airpower in a joint-combined effort to defeat the Taliban. The mission was clear and the inherent tasks understood. Over time, the US deviated from this economy of force architecture and deployed larger formations of conventional military forces. In two notable instances the US lost the initiative, the first occurred in 2005, following the first Afghan Presidential election, with the demobilization of over 30,000 trained Afghan Militia Forces under the name of sovereignty.[19] The demobilization corresponded with the establishment of large conventional force headquarters or Regional Commands (RC). It was at this point, connection to the local populations and situational awareness decreased, and administrative bureaucracy, barriers, constraints and strict rules of engagement (ROE) emerged. The second instance occurred in 2014, when an unprecedented culturally aligned and hierarchically nested campaign plan, focused on security, governance and development, called Village Stability Operations (VSO), was cut short after realizing quantifiable achievements. The US directed downsizing of its military footprint killed the campaign and the initiative; it never recovered.
After Karzai took office in 2004, the US became nation builders and allocated more and more resources to training the developing the fledging Afghan nation state. US commanders in Afghanistan changed annually, as did the campaign’s priorities and focus. The Taliban in exile and those hiding in Afghanistan exploited this disorder to regroup and organize. The US settled into forward operating bases (FOB) and no longer maintained presence in local villages to retain pressure and weed out insurgents. The Taliban bide its time, assessed and adapted to the US strict ROE and reliance on technology. It began to harass and attack US bases, supply lines, and patrols in an all-out insurgency. Since the US was no longer in the villages, they became targets for recruitment, support and intelligence; Taliban strength and influence grew. Conditions in Iraq deteriorated, US losses mounted and more resources needed. US politicians grew weary and feared public outrage from losses in Afghanistan whose conditions also worsened with time.
Senior military commanders and politicians failed to realize conditions in Afghanistan degenerated not because of a lack of resources or intelligence assessments, but because the US was no longer fighting a war. After 2004, the US fought perceptions and self-imposed constraints, as senior military officers vied for opportunities to command in combat. Mission creep filled the void of an overt Taliban presence, and because of this lack of focus and consistent realignment of priorities, the US presence lingered. Instead of retaining pressure on the Taliban and deliberately committing the might of the US military, and ISAF[20]partners, in contested areas, commanders accepted risk in some areas and deemed them too difficult to access. Forces were misallocated and “hot spots” were never dealt with decisively.
The mission is Afghanistan was no longer clear. As service members, contractors and civilians gathered on FOBs, the Taliban continued to recruit and train in the periphery. Mission creep eroded moral and the overall mission, and only served to truly benefit the defense industry, contractors; notably, Halliburton through its subsidiary KBR,[21] and of course, the Taliban. Of note, Special Operations Forces (SOF) and select conventional units continued to fight, but these efforts did not involve the full capabilities of the joint-combined force, were limited in scope, and did not adequately leverage all instruments of national power.
Diplomacy
When the US military left Bagram Air Field (BAF) in the middle of the night on July 6, 2021 without notifying Afghan partners it had worked with for almost 20-years; diplomacy failed.
When the US withdrew under a timeline dictated by the Taliban leaving countless Americans stranded in Afghanistan; diplomacy failed.
When the US wittingly withdrew from Afghanistan, leaving the fledgling Afghan Government to fend for itself, after observing city after city fall to the Taliban; diplomacy failed.
The US did not fully understand what defined victory in Afghanistan prior to the invasion or what constituted an end to the conflict. This lack of clarity affected the US’s ability to advance its national interests in the region through a well-conceived diplomatic strategy with bordering nations Pakistan and Iran. Although US relations with Pakistan were/are much better than with Iran, the US relationship with Pakistan is complex. The US-Pakistan “partnership” struggled due to divergent strategic objectives.[22] Pakistan’s tensions with bordering India, desire for a Pakistan-friendly Afghan Government, and for the US to cease drone strikes within its sovereignty,[23] offered the US bargaining tools. The US sought to eliminate al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and desired full support from Pakistani Government.[24] Pakistan tacitly supported the Taliban in Afghanistan from its inception as well as Islamist militants operating in the Indian Kashmir. Pakistan was concerned full support to the US, through policy reversal, would have negative external repercussions and create internal instability.[25] This conundrum realized Pakistani support, never full support, as it worked to accommodate and protect its interests.
The US strained relations with Iran compromised any means to exploit the Iranian position regarding the Sunni-Shia divide. US interactions with Iran throughout its tenure in Afghanistan remained aggravated. The US and Iran went tit for tat through Iran proxy harassment, mostly in Iraq, culminating with a US retaliatory drone strike against Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. Retrospectively, the US understanding of the Sunni-Shia dynamic could have been extremely useful to encourage Iranian support against the Taliban. Iranian interest in Taliban territorial gains in Afghanistan is evident through a recent initiative. Following the US withdrawal; Iran, concerned about the Taliban’s expanded Sunni influence and in an effort to fill the security vacuum, formed “a new Shia militia Hashd Al-Shi’i (Shiite Mobilization) to execute a forward defense strategy.”[26] This approach was accomplished through revisiting a 1980s tactic and “rebranding the Fatemiyoun Unit,” [27] a proxy force composed of Afghanistan's Hazara Shias.
US diplomatic efforts theoretically could have called for reduced sanctions in return for support against Taliban resourcing and safe haven. Considering Iran’s desire for regional hegemony,[28] a proposed entente with reduced sanctions would offer a manageable alternative to enable Iran the financial stability to pursue goals without accomplishing them. The US could have exercised a warmer relationship with Iran and established an informal alliance to influence their relationships with Russia (Chechnya), Uzbekistan and North African Republics for broader US goals. Specifically, to monitor and restrict foreign fighter involvement in Afghanistan (isolate the area). Iranian influence could also have hypothetically decreased the speed of improvised explosive device (IED) adaptations in Afghanistan, and better regulated movements of foreign arms and ammunition into the country.
Conclusion
This essay examined three aspects of US foreign policy that if conducted differently may have positively influenced the outcomes of US efforts in Afghanistan. Firstly, a country’s connection and understanding of its military by its leadership and citizenry influences military commitments, outcomes, and the foreign policy that shapes it. Secondly, military forces are organized and trained to fight and win wars, clarity of mission and desired results (end state) are paramount to success. Mission creep detracts from this clarity and can compromise a campaign. Army Field Manual 3-0, Operations, explains wars are won by “employing all instruments of national power—diplomatic, informational, military, and economic” to achieve national strategic objectives. Changing the-mission before the original mission is accomplished can undermine desired effects and create a misalignment of the instruments of national power.
Finally, successful diplomacy involves a thorough understanding of the culture, regional dynamics, and strategic goals of respective countries relevant to achieving national objectives. The US experience in Afghanistan reveals the importance of clearly defining what national objectives are before invading a country. Afghanistan further divulged how diplomacy is a critical component to any military campaign or international strategy. As the US campaign evolved in Afghanistan, regional diplomacy should have also adapted. However, this was extremely difficult to do as there was no clear definition of what quantified victory or end to the conflict. As the US and Central and South Asia adjust to a post-US occupied Afghanistan, the US must pay close attention to the new regional dynamics as they unfold. As ISIL-K and AQ remain uncontested under Taliban rule, US alliances, economic influence, and international relationships are more important now than ever.[29]
[1] Shortly after gaining control of Kabul, the Taliban renamed Hamid Karzai International Airport as “Kabul Airport”.
[10] Grau Lester W., Second Printing, August 1996, “The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan”, National Defense University Press Washington, D.C. (pdf accessed October 1, 2021)
[19] Everything in Afghanistan is local; this is due to the Pashtunwali concept of nanga that calls to defend personal rights and the rights of their tribe with honor; extremely difficult to do from afar. When demobilized, AMF were asked to volunteer for the Afghan National Army (ANA) or Afghan National Police (ANP); both options realized a significant salary reduction, and more importantly, both options required volunteers to leave their local areas.
[20] International Security Assistance Force I(ISAF), was a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) multinational headquarters formed on August 11, 2003 that consisted of 51 NATO and partner nations, mandated by the United Nations (UN) to assist security and develop Afghan capabilities. Sourced from the NATO website, “ISAF's mission in Afghanistan (2001-2014) (Archived)”, NATO - ISAF's mission in Afghanistan (2001-2014) (Archived) (accessed on October 4, 2021)
[21] “The Pentagon budget peaked in 2010 at over $800 billion. Currently, one-third of all contracts go to five major weapons companies: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman. They collectively received over $166 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2020 alone. Other companies benefiting post 911, 20 years, include logistics and construction firms like Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR). Congressional Research Service (CRS) estimated FY2020 spending for contractors of all kinds increased to $420 billion; over half of the Pentagon budget.” Hartung, William, September 23, 2021, “The Profits of War, How Corporate America Cashed in on the Post-9/11 Pentagon Spending Surge”, Strategic Culture Foundation, The Profits of War — Strategic Culture (strategic-culture.org) (accessed October 5, 2021)
References
Grau Lester W., Second Printing, August 1996, “The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan”, National Defense University Press Washington, D.C. (pdf accessed October 1, 2021)
About the Author(s)
Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) David S. Clukey, U.S. Army Special Forces, has been on thirteen overseas deployments, with eight deployments and six combat tours to Afghanistan with the U.S. Army Special Forces (SF) (2004-2014). He has extensive global counterterrorism experience, a Master of Science (MS) in Defense Analysis from the Naval Postgraduate School, and Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Arizona State University, W.P. Carey School of Business.
17. Why the Pentagon Should Abandon ‘Strategic Competition’
But it is the American way to create a pithy new buzzword or buzz phrase.
“The American defense community is especially prone to capture by the latest catchphrase, the new-sounding spin on an ancient idea which as jargon separates those who are truly expert from the lesser breeds without the jargon.” Colin Gray
“Again, unfortunately, we are dealing with jargon, which, as usual, bears only a faint resemblance to well defined, specific concepts.”* Clausewitz
Excerpts:
This would involve practicing new operational concepts and revealing new capabilities that would allow the United States to win a conflict against China or Russia—all with the aim of enhancing deterrence. Front-line allies and partners in Asia and Europe should be managing daily military competition, enabling U.S. forces to conserve their readiness, husband the resources to develop needed capabilities and new operational concepts, and train for high-intensity combat operations in a highly contested environment.
The next NDS should prioritize preparedness for great-power conflicts and not mention strategic competition, except to say it is the responsibility of other U.S. agencies. This better aligns with the U.S. military’s unique contributions to national security, sends the message that competition is not the Defense Department’s bailiwick, and puts the U.S. military in support of other civilian agencies, which the current administration has argued. The end result is a long-term strategy that makes hard choices, can better meet future challenges, and highlights the department’s strengths.
Even so, the Pentagon will need to make sure that one magic word or concept is not substituted for another. If strategic competition is struck from the next NDS, favored concepts such as “integrated deterrence” must be clearly defined to avoid the same. The strategy should clearly delineate the portions of integrated deterrence that are the military’s responsibility, which are strategic and conventional deterrence, and what is not.
A catch phrase should not become the way to obtain outsized or unnecessary resources that ultimately undermine a defense strategy’s main objective, and the Pentagon should be cautious—please.
Why the Pentagon Should Abandon ‘Strategic Competition’
The broad, undefined mission has undermined its original intent.
By Becca Wasser, a fellow in the defense program and co-lead of the Gaming Lab at the Center for a New American Security, and Stacie Pettyjohn, a senior fellow and director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security.
Nearly every child is taught when making a request to “say the magic word”: please. The U.S. Defense Department has recently been taught it too needs to say the magic word in every force, capability, or resource request. But the magic word isn’t please; it’s the phrase “strategic competition.”
The National Defense Strategy (NDS) sets U.S. military priorities and is produced every four years to align with a new administration. As the Pentagon develops the next NDS, scheduled to be delivered in February 2022, it has an opportunity to right where the last strategy went wrong: the concept of strategic competition.
The 2018 NDS ushered in an era in which long-term “inter-state strategic competition” with China and Russia reigned. Further complicating matters, Trump administration officials often interchangeably used the phrase great-power competition to describe this development. The concept became a priority mission without a clear definition of what it meant, the actions that comprised it, or what “winning” the competition looked like. Although this might seem innocuous, the establishment of this broad, undefined mission for the Defense Department has had deleterious effects and undermined the strategy’s original intent.
Nearly every child is taught when making a request to “say the magic word”: please. The U.S. Defense Department has recently been taught it too needs to say the magic word in every force, capability, or resource request. But the magic word isn’t please; it’s the phrase “strategic competition.”
The National Defense Strategy (NDS) sets U.S. military priorities and is produced every four years to align with a new administration. As the Pentagon develops the next NDS, scheduled to be delivered in February 2022, it has an opportunity to right where the last strategy went wrong: the concept of strategic competition.
The 2018 NDS ushered in an era in which long-term “inter-state strategic competition” with China and Russia reigned. Further complicating matters, Trump administration officials often interchangeably used the phrase great-power competition to describe this development. The concept became a priority mission without a clear definition of what it meant, the actions that comprised it, or what “winning” the competition looked like. Although this might seem innocuous, the establishment of this broad, undefined mission for the Defense Department has had deleterious effects and undermined the strategy’s original intent.
The Biden administration reportedly favors the strategic competition terminology but is differentiating their idea from the Trump-era concept. Although administration officials maintain that strategic competition conveys a focused and disciplined approach, it is likely to have the reverse effect as competition is not a means nor an end in itself. The Trump administration at least emphasized competition with great powers, which delineated the important threats and deprioritized threats like North Korea, Iran, and terrorism. The Biden administration, therefore, appears to be making the next NDS’s centerpiece a term that is even broader and fuzzier than its predecessor.
That would be a mistake. Instead of fixating on strategic competition, the administration should focus the next NDS on strengthening nuclear and conventional deterrence against China and Russia. Specifically, it should narrow the aperture to bolstering strategic stability to prevent the use of nuclear weapons and deterring conventional aggression by preparing to defeat these rivals in a high-end conflict.
Implementation of the 2018 NDS failed because strategic competition became a loophole to circumvent the strategy’s hard choices. It confused public and congressional debates about what was needed to deter Chinese and Russian aggression. Strategic competition has led defense leaders to take on issues far beyond the military’s traditional purview, from countering electoral disinformation to protecting allies and partners from economic coercion to limiting the growing influence of Chinese and Russian corporations in far-flung countries around the globe.
Although these issues do impact the department, the military should not be at the forefront of addressing them. Focusing the Pentagon away from strategic and conventional deterrence—two uniquely military missions—is not conducive or effective, particularly when there are other U.S. government institutions better suited to lead and manage these issues.
The concept has also broadened the Defense Department’s geographic focus. Although the Pentagon maintains a global mandate intrinsic to its unique power-projection capabilities, the 2018 NDS made it clear that the military’s focus should be on defending allies and partners in China’s and Russia’s backyards.
But just as the Cold War played out in the peripheries, Beijing and Moscow have not limited their activities to Europe and the Indo-Pacific and have invested in places such as Africa and the Middle East. Strategic competition has thus become U.S. military commanders’ way in Africa and the Middle East of driving attention and resources toward countering malign Chinese and Russian activities in their regions.
This, in turn, has diverted resources away from priority regions, required large investments in operations and maintenance instead of the military modernization required to deter Beijing and Moscow over the long term, and consumed readiness, leaving a force less prepared to fight and win in a future conflict.
Moreover, strategic competition usurped another priority mission laid out in the 2018 NDS: preparing for potential future conflict with China and Russia. Instead, the department has continued to invest considerable resources in forces that would be less useful in a high-end conflict, partly due to strategic competition’s daily demands, as U.S. military forces are needed to patrol allied airspace in Europe and counter Chinese military and paramilitary coercion in the South and East China Seas. Many in Congress have seized on the idea of competing today, which requires increasing the United States’ military presence in the Indo-Pacific and Europe.
These near-term, day-to-day activities have taken precedence over long-term force structure and modernization efforts required to build a force capable of defeating Beijing and Moscow. Congress has also impeded attempts by the military services to divest of less relevant weapons to free up resources for new technologies, further compounding the problem. This means the Pentagon is buying more of the same to compete, leaving it woefully underprepared to deter and defeat the most pressing future threats.
Strategic competition has become the magic word to use for a successful resource grab. When requesting forces, capabilities, or additional funding, categorizing the request as essential to competing against China or Russia—whether or not that is the case—has become a surefire way to get it fulfilled.
This has been particularly useful for combatant commanders who oversee places such as the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America and have emphasized the need for a U.S. military presence to counter Beijing’s and Moscow’s growing influence to successfully acquire more forces and capabilities. For example, U.S. aircraft carriers have deployed to the Middle East at a far greater rate than the 2018 NDS would have suggested under the guise of countering malign Iranian behavior and reducing Chinese and Russian influence in the region through a demonstration of power and commitment.
Resulting frequent and supposedly “dynamic” deployments—or unpredictable military force deployments—have had a questionable impact on adversary behavior and eroded U.S. military readiness, critical to the department’s ability to successfully fight China and Russia. It has also enabled the military services to justify their preferred weapons programs, operational concepts, and missions by tying these to competition’s imprecise mission.
The result has been a U.S. military still not ready to meet or capable of meeting future challenges in the 2018 NDS’s priority areas. The strategic competition concept enabled the Pentagon to shy away from reorienting to the actual problems at hand.
With the end of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, the Biden administration has eliminated a distraction from achieving its objectives. In this peacetime environment, interservice rivalry is likely to heat up, increasingly tempting each military service to justify its topline by pointing to strategic competition. The Biden administration must close the competition loophole in the 2022 NDS to ensure the force remains focused on high-end deterrence.
To do so, the Pentagon should focus on deterring Chinese and Russian aggression by improving its ability to defeat an attack should deterrence fail. The 2022 NDS would explicitly prioritize China while sustaining a lesser focus on Russia and accept risks against other threats. It would also require the Pentagon to invest in long-term conventional and nuclear modernization to produce the capabilities required to deny China or Russia their objectives, deter escalation, and maintain the United States’ military-technological edge.
This approach resists temptations of day-to-day competition and responding to each Chinese and Russian provocation, which is risky, costly, and ultimately a losing proposition. Rather than trying to match Chinese and Russian activities around the globe with showy deployments of bombers, ships, or troops, U.S. force demonstrations should focus on the primary regions and threats.
This would involve practicing new operational concepts and revealing new capabilities that would allow the United States to win a conflict against China or Russia—all with the aim of enhancing deterrence. Front-line allies and partners in Asia and Europe should be managing daily military competition, enabling U.S. forces to conserve their readiness, husband the resources to develop needed capabilities and new operational concepts, and train for high-intensity combat operations in a highly contested environment.
The next NDS should prioritize preparedness for great-power conflicts and not mention strategic competition, except to say it is the responsibility of other U.S. agencies. This better aligns with the U.S. military’s unique contributions to national security, sends the message that competition is not the Defense Department’s bailiwick, and puts the U.S. military in support of other civilian agencies, which the current administration has argued. The end result is a long-term strategy that makes hard choices, can better meet future challenges, and highlights the department’s strengths.
Even so, the Pentagon will need to make sure that one magic word or concept is not substituted for another. If strategic competition is struck from the next NDS, favored concepts such as “integrated deterrence” must be clearly defined to avoid the same. The strategy should clearly delineate the portions of integrated deterrence that are the military’s responsibility, which are strategic and conventional deterrence, and what is not.
A catch phrase should not become the way to obtain outsized or unnecessary resources that ultimately undermine a defense strategy’s main objective, and the Pentagon should be cautious—please.
Foreign Policy · by Becca Wasser, Stacie Pettyjohn · October 19, 2021
18. US admits Pentagon doesn’t know how to defend against China’s hypersonic missiles
Excerpts:
While the report suggests that China has developed missiles that can avoid U.S. missile defense systems, some analysts have argued that the latest innovation adds little to China’s ability to strike the U.S.
“China already has ~100 nuclear-armed ICBMs that can strike the U.S.,” Middlebury Institute’s Jeffrey Lewis wrote on Twitter. "A new system to evade our defenses is only threatening if we were planning all along to destroy/intercept China’s ICBMs in a crisis. Which we definitely weren’t.”
Wood, the arms control diplomat, implied that U.S. officials had tried to avoid spurring a scramble for hypersonic missiles.
“We had held back from pursuing military applications for this technology,” he said.
US admits Pentagon doesn’t know how to defend against China’s hypersonic missiles
U.S. military forces “don’t know how to defend” against China and Russia’s most advanced missile systems, a senior U.S. diplomat has acknowledged.
This comes after a shocking report that China tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile earlier this year. The Chinese government has disputed the report, claiming they were testing a spacecraft instead.
Ambassador Robert Wood, who represents the United States at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. (Jamey Keaten/AP)
“Hypersonic technology is something that we have been concerned about,” said Ambassador Robert Wood, who represents the United States at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. “We just don't know how we can defend against that technology, neither does China, neither does Russia.”
That admission followed a report that China tested a hypersonic missile in August that orbited the globe but missed its target by more than 20 miles. Chinese officials deny conducting a weapons test, but Wood cited the development as a catalyst for a hypersonic arms buildup.
“We have seen China and Russia pursuing very actively the use, the militarization of this technology, so we are just having to respond in kind," he said.
China maintains that the reported missile test was in fact “a spacecraft” designed to make round trips.
“This was a routine test of spacecraft to verify technology of spacecraft's reusability. It is of great significance to reducing the cost of using spacecraft and providing a convenient and cheap way for mankind's two-way transportation in the peaceful use of space,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters Monday. "Several companies around the world have conducted similar tests.”
Intercontinental ballistic missiles “share many similar technologies and processes inherent in a space launch program,” an overlap that U.S. officials and analysts have underscored in the context of Iran’s development of technology that could deliver a nuclear warhead.
"We have made clear our concerns about the military capabilities China continues to pursue, capabilities that only increase tensions in the region and beyond,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in response to the reported test.
While the report suggests that China has developed missiles that can avoid U.S. missile defense systems, some analysts have argued that the latest innovation adds little to China’s ability to strike the U.S.
“China already has ~100 nuclear-armed ICBMs that can strike the U.S.,” Middlebury Institute’s Jeffrey Lewis wrote on Twitter. "A new system to evade our defenses is only threatening if we were planning all along to destroy/intercept China’s ICBMs in a crisis. Which we definitely weren’t.”
Wood, the arms control diplomat, implied that U.S. officials had tried to avoid spurring a scramble for hypersonic missiles.
“We had held back from pursuing military applications for this technology,” he said.
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19. 30 State Department Nominees, Including NATO Ambassador, Advance To Full Senate
Still no ambassador for South Korea or for special envoy for north Korean human rights.
30 State Department Nominees, Including NATO Ambassador, Advance To Full Senate
Just two Biden ambassadors have been confirmed so far.
President Biden’s pick to serve as the top representative to NATO on Tuesday got one step closer to starting her job, more than 100 days after she was nominated.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a batch of 30 State Department nominees in a business meeting, including Julianne Smith, who is nominated to be America’s ambassador to the alliance. However, these senior diplomats are still waiting to be confirmed by the full Senate, where lawmakers have so far blocked them from moving forward and stalled the administration’s plans to prioritize diplomacy and foreign policy.
The Biden administration is far behind historical norms for the number of confirmed personnel at the State Department at this point in the term. Part of the delay is that some subcommittees did not have a senator willing to preside as ranking member for a nomination hearing, so could not consider the personnel, said Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., the chairman of the full committee.
“We have been unable to move forward with a number of nomination hearings at the subcommittee level because we have had no Republican who has stepped up to serve as the ranking member,” he said at the business meeting. “All members are reminded that serving from time to time as the chair or ranking member is an expectation for members of this committee.”
The committee confirmed 30 nominees by voice vote, including David Cohen to be ambassador to Canada, Claire Cronin to be ambassador to Ireland, Mark Gitenstein to be the U.S. representative to the European Union, former Republican senator Jeff Flake to be ambassador to Turkey, former senator Tom Udall to be ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa, and Thomas Nides to be ambassador to Israel.
Two nominees who had been expected to be confirmed by the committee on Tuesday were held back due to objections by at least one lawmaker. The nominations of Barbara Leaf to be assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs and C.S. Eliot Kang to be assistant secretary of state for international security and non-proliferation, were not sent to the full Senate. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who has blocked a number of State nominees over the Biden administration’s handling of the Russian Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, has put a hold on Leaf’s nomination, Politico reported.
The White House on Monday slammed Republicans in the Senate for the “unprecedented delays, obstructions, [and] holds” on nominees, including those at the State Department.
“There has been, time after time, obstruction that has prevented qualified nominees from being in vital positions, whether it's in the national security roles in the Defense Department [or] the State Department, where we've seen ambassadors held for weeks and months,” White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said at the briefing. “So, I would say the blame is clear. It is frustrating. It is something that we wish would move forward more quickly. And there is historical precedent, of course, of moving these forward through a faster process.”
The Senate has confirmed just 20 State Department officials nominated by President Joe Biden, according to data from the Brookings Institution. In their first 300 days, the George W. Bush administration had 133 State Department officials, the Obama administration had 92 and the Trump administration had 55. Biden will hit 300 days in office on Nov. 16.
Biden has just one confirmed ambassador serving abroad. Ken Salazar was confirmed in August to serve as the ambassador to Mexico. Linda Thomas-Greenfield was confirmed in February as the ambassador to the United Nations, which is based in the United States.
20. The Thing: How the KGB used kids to plant a bug in the US embassy
Those sneaky communists.
The Thing: How the KGB used kids to plant a bug in the US embassy
sandboxx.us · by Stavros Atlamazoglou · October 19, 2021
A few weeks before the end of World War II, a delegation of youngsters from the Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization presented Ambassador W. Averell Harriman, the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, with a carved wooden plaque of the Great Seal of the United States.
A sign of friendship in the closing days of the “Great Patriotic War,” as Russian history refers to the struggle against the Axis powers, the carved wooden replica of the great seal was an acknowledgment of American-Soviet friendship, presented by youths from an organization that was somewhat similar to America’s Boy Scouts. It seemed like an important step toward easing the already-rising tensions between the two powerful nations.
Little did the American diplomats know, the gift held a more sinister purpose.
“The Thing”
“
The Thing from outside. Four U.S. ambassadors and countless other diplomats talked about classified matters in front of the KGB without knowing it (Wikimedia.org).
Of course, the carved wooden replica of the Great Seal hadn’t been made by Russian third graders but the KGB, the intelligence service of the Soviet Union, and it contained a resonant cavity microphone that was designed specifically to hear the classified discussions of U.S. diplomats while cleverly hidden in the carving.
The device was comprised of a copper cylinder with a silver-plated interior that acted as a resonant cavity in which the microphone was placed. A soft metal membrane was placed in front of the Coca-Cola can-looking cylinder. Sounds, like moving or talking, in the proximity would cause the membrane to vibrate and transmit a signal that could be captured by a surveillance team outside the building.
Location of listening device and antennae
The man behind the ingenious device was Léon Theremin, who also invented a musical instrument that bears his name. Appropriately enough, a Theremin is an electronic musical instrument that can be played without any physical contact.
Born in Saint Petersburg, Theremin came to the U.S in the 1920s to work on and invent musical instruments. But in 1938, one year before World War II broke out, financial issues related to his taxes prompted Theremin to leave America suddenly, and he returned to the Soviet Union.
It wasn’t a happy homecoming. Once back in the Soviet Union, Theremin was thrown into the brutal gulag prison system, where he worked in a covert laboratory with other incarcerated engineers and scientists. Nine years later, in 1947, Theremin was released, but he continued working for the Soviet NKVD, and later its successor, the KGB. The Thing wasn’t his only claim to fame during this time. Theremin also developed “Buran,” an infrared microphone that shares its name with the Soviet space shuttle.
A Gift from Us to You
American and British diplomats and intelligence officers working in the Eastern Bloc were always aware that the KGB was tracking their movements and encounters. But at the onset of the Cold War, few could imagine the lengths to which the Russians had already gone to eavesdrop on classified diplomatic correspondence and conversations held behind the embassies’ doors. From 1945 to 1952, no one knew about The Thing; no one other than the KGB and the Soviet leadership, that is.
But luck would have it that the KGB operation was foiled by sheer fortune. In 1951, a British military officer at the British embassy was listening to some open Soviet channels when he overhead voices speaking in English with British accents in the background. He suddenly realized that he was listening to the British air attaché, who was in another part of the same embassy, through Soviet channels.
A few months later, a U.S. military officer had a similar encounter when, while listening to Soviet channels, he overheard a discussion that seemed to come from the Spaso House, which was the U.S. ambassador’s private residence in Moscow. He reported what he heard, and a State Department specialist was able to reproduce the results. To their amazement, they could hear U.S. diplomats having classified discussions by listening in on the Soviets.
The KGB logo. For almost 50 years, the Russian intelligence service proved to be a tough opponent to the West (Wikimedia.org).
The State Department decided to get to the bottom of it and sent two additional security specialists to check for bugs, or listening devices. They found nothing. Then, in 1952, George Kennan became the new U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union. Suspicious of the Soviets, he requested additional sweeps for bugs at the embassy and Spaso House. State Department security specialists once more found nothing.
That was until Joseph Bezjian, a creative security specialist, took the initiative and sought to catch the KGB unawares.
Instead of flying to Moscow on an official visit, Bezjian flew as a house guest of Ambassador Kennan and sent his equipment beforehand. Then he and Kennan arranged an ambush to lure the Russians out. Kennan dictated an unclassified memo while Bezjian swept his study for any kind of listening equipment. His equipment honed in on a carved wooden replica of the Great Seal of the United States that was hanging on the wall in the ambassador’s study.
Bezjian inspected the replica and, to his surprise, found that he could open it. Inside he found The Thing mounted in a special cavity. Fearing that the Soviets would attempt to steal it and thus save face from the imminent diplomatic embarrassment that was to follow, Bezjian took The Thing with him to bed that night, before sending it back to the U.S. first thing the next day.
How The Thing looked from the inside. You can see the small mini Coca-Cola can-shaped device that held the microphone (Wikimedia.org).
When the FBI agents received the device, they found something that resembled a microphone with an attached antenna. What was odd, however, was that there were no cables, wires, batteries, or external power source to be found inside. Dumbfounded by the Soviet bug and unable to officially identify what it was, they called it The Thing and send it to the Naval Research Lab.
“The Great Seal. Remember the Great Seal that some [Russian] third-graders carved for the president? I have seen that great seal. I’ll tell you, third graders did not carve that great seal,” Richard “Dickie” George, a veteran NSA officer and former technical director of the agency’s Information Assurance Directorate (IAD), said in a talk at Dartmouth University.
“That is really nice. It also has a really nice listening device inside it. So, it worked for a little while.,”
U.S. diplomats reveal “The Thing” to the United Nations and the world in 1960 (Wikimedia.org).
The Information Assurance Directorate is the defensive arm of the NSA and is responsible for cyber warfare and defensive programs; it ensures that U.S. communications are safe from foreign intelligence services and criminal hacking groups.
To be sure, intelligence services planting bugs in everyday objects has been common practice throughout the years. For example, during the Cold War, the KGB tried every trick in and out of the book to bug U.S. and British embassies in Moscow and the other capitals of the Eastern Bloc. During one such attempt, they placed a small listening device inside a typewriter so they could listen to what American and British diplomats were writing.
From 1945 to 1952, before it was discovered, The Thing eavesdropped on the classified and confidential discussions of the four U.S. ambassadors and of Secretary of State George Marshall, the man behind the “Marshall Plan,” who visited Moscow in 1947 for a council of foreign ministers.
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sandboxx.us · by Stavros Atlamazoglou · October 19, 2021
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
