"Unconventional warfare needs to remain the heart and soul of U.S. Special Operations Command and component commands."
- Brandon Webb
"Yesterday's the past, tomorrow's the future, but today is a gift. That's why it's called the present."
- Bil Keane
"Sixty years ago, at dawn on June 25, the Korean War broke out when Communist North Korea invaded the Republic of Korea. In response, 16 member countries of the United Nations, including the United States, joined with the Republic of Korea to defend freedom. Over the next three years of fighting, about 37,000 Americans lost their lives. They fought for the freedom of Koreans they did not even know, and thanks to their sacrifices, the peace and democracy of the republic were protected... On the 60th anniversary of the Korean War, I remain grateful to America for having participated in the war. At that time, the Republic of Korea was one of the most impoverished countries, with an annual per capita income of less than $40. In 2009, my country became a member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Development Assistance Committee, the first aid recipient to become a donor and in only one generation." - Myung-bak Lee, "A Note of Thanks" in The Los Angeles Times (25 June 2010)
1. How The Epoch Times Created a Giant Influence Machine
2. Iran, China and North Korea have the most to gain from a Biden presidency
3. FDD | Yes, Virginia, the Trump Administration Does Have a China Strategy
4. How Big Tech factors into the US-China geopolitical competition
5. The China challenge: 'To get a sense of how bad relations might get, look back to Menzies'
6. Xi invokes Chinese military might with US in mind
7. Far-Right Groups Are Behind Most U.S. Terrorist Attacks, Report Finds
8. How China Threatens American Democracy
9. Are troops really leaving Germany? It's not totally clear.
10. Australia's other special forces war: killing Islamic State
11. From the bottom up, Army focusing on trust, relationships
12. Indonesia Deports 4 Uyghur Terrorism Convicts to China, Experts Say
13. Senate urged to defund anti-communist task force (Philippines)
14. The U.S. Just Set a New Daily Record for COVID-19 Cases
15. Who Really Owes $1.6 Trillion Of Student Loans?
16. Human Centered Design Is Revolutionizing How We Respond To Emergencies
17. JBLM has become an illegal dumping ground, endangering soldiers and the environment
18. Reflections on Becoming a (Amateur) Military Writer
19. The end of democracy? To many Americans, the future looks dark if the other side wins.
1. How The Epoch Times Created a Giant Influence Machine
Worthy of study. I agree with Steve Bannon, the growth of the Epoch Times and its influence operation is quite impressive.
How The Epoch Times Created a Giant Influence Machine
Since 2016, the Falun Gong-backed newspaper has used aggressive Facebook tactics and right-wing misinformation to create an anti-China, pro-Trump media empire.
Credit...Adam Ferriss
For years, The Epoch Times was a small, low-budget newspaper with an anti-China slant that was handed out free on New York street corners. But in 2016 and 2017, the paper made two changes that transformed it into one of the country's most powerful digital publishers.
The changes also paved the way for the publication, which is affiliated with the secretive and relatively obscureChinese spiritual movement Falun Gong, to become a leading purveyor of right-wing misinformation.
First, it embraced President Trump, treating him as an ally in Falun Gong's scorched-earth fight against China's ruling Communist Party, which banned the group two decades ago and has persecuted its members ever since. Its relatively staid coverage of U.S. politics became more partisan, with more articles explicitly supporting Mr. Trump and criticizing his opponents.
Around the same time, The Epoch Times bet big on another powerful American institution: Facebook. The publication and its affiliates employed a novel strategy that involved creating dozens of Facebook pages, filling them with feel-good videos and viral clickbait, and using them to sell subscriptions and drive traffic back to its partisan news coverage.
In an April 2017 email to the staff obtained by The New York Times, the paper's leadership envisioned that the Facebook strategy could help turn The Epoch Times into "the world's largest and most authoritative media." It could also introduce millions of people to the teachings of Falun Gong, fulfilling the group's mission of "saving sentient beings."
Today, The Epoch Times and its affiliates are a force in right-wing media, with tens of millions of social media followers spread across dozens of pages and an online audience that rivals those of The Daily Caller and Breitbart News, and with a similar willingness to feed the online fever swamps of the far right.
It also has growing influence in Mr. Trump's inner circle. The president and his family have shared articles from the paper on social media, and Trump administration officials have sat for interviews with its reporters. In August, a reporter from The Epoch Times asked a question at a White House press briefing.
It is a remarkable success story for Falun Gong, which has long struggled to establish its bona fides against Beijing's efforts to demonize it as an "evil cult," partly because its strident accounts of persecution in China can sometimes be difficult to substantiate or veer into exaggeration. In 2006, an Epoch Times reporter disrupted a White House visit by the Chinese president by shouting, "Evil people will die early."
Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump's former chief strategist and a former chairman of Breitbart, said in an interview in July that The Epoch Times's fast growth had impressed him.
"They'll be the top conservative news site in two years," said Mr. Bannon, who was arrested on fraud charges in August. "They punch way above their weight, they have the readers, and they're going to be a force to be reckoned with."
A 2018 gathering in Taiwan for practitioners of Falun Gong, which backs The Epoch Times.Credit...David Chang/EPA, via Shutterstock
But the organization and its affiliates have grown, in part, by relying on sketchy social media tactics, pushing dangerous conspiracy theories and downplaying their connection to Falun Gong, an investigation by The Times has found. The investigation included interviews with more than a dozen former Epoch Times employees, as well as internal documents and tax filings. Many of these people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation, or still had family in Falun Gong.
Embracing Mr. Trump and Facebook has made The Epoch Times a partisan powerhouse. But it has also created a global-scale misinformation machine that has repeatedly pushed fringe narratives into the mainstream.
The publication has been one of the most prominent promoters of "Spygate," a baseless conspiracy theory involving claims that Obama administration officials illegally spied on Mr. Trump's 2016 campaign. Publications and shows linked to The Epoch Times have promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory and spread distorted claims about voter fraud and the Black Lives Matter movement. More recently, they have promoted the unfounded theory that the coronavirus - which the publication calls the "CCP Virus," in an attempt to link it to the Chinese Communist Party - was created as a bioweapon in a Chinese military lab.
The Epoch Times says it is independent and nonpartisan, and it rejects the suggestion that it is officially affiliated with Falun Gong.
Like Falun Gong itself, the newspaper - which publishes in dozens of countries - is decentralized and operates as a cluster of regional chapters, each organized as a separate nonprofit. It is also extraordinarily secretive. Editors at The Epoch Times turned down multiple requests for interviews, and a reporter's unannounced visit to the outlet's Manhattan headquarters this year was met with a threat from a lawyer.
Representatives for Li Hongzhi, the leader of Falun Gong, did not respond to requests for comment. Neither did other residents of Dragon Springs, the compound in upstate New York that serves as Falun Gong's spiritual headquarters.
Many employees and Falun Gong practitioners contacted by The Times said they were instructed not to divulge details of the outlet's inner workings. They said they had been told that speaking negatively about The Epoch Times would be tantamount to disobeying Mr. Li, who is known by his disciples as "Master."
Falun Gong's Dragon Springs compound in Otisville, N.Y.Credit...Julie Jacobson/Associated Press
The Epoch Times provided only partial answers to a long list of questions sent to its media office, and declined to answer questions about its finances and editorial strategy. In an email, which was not signed, the outlet accused The Times of "defaming and diminishing a competitor" and displaying "a subtle form of religious intimidation if not bigotry" by linking the publication to Falun Gong.
"The Epoch Times will not be intimidated and will not be silenced," the outlet added, "and based on the number of falsehoods and inaccuracies included in the New York Times questions we will consider all legal options in response."
Clarifying the Truth
Falun Gong, which Mr. Li introduced in China in 1992, revolves around a series of five meditation exercises and a process of moral self-improvement that is meant to lead to spiritual enlightenment. Today, the group is known for the demonstrations it holds around the world to "clarify the truth" about the Chinese Communist Party, which it accuses of torturing Falun Gong practitioners and harvesting the organs of those executed. (Tens of thousands across China were sent to labor camps in the early years of the crackdown, and the group's presence there is now much diminished.)
More recently, Falun Gong has come under scrutiny for what some former practitioners have characterized as an extreme belief system that forbids interracial marriage, condemns homosexuality and discourages the use of modern medicine, all allegations the group denies.
When The Epoch Times got its start in 2000, the goal was to counter Chinese propaganda and cover Falun Gong's persecution by the Chinese government. It began as a Chinese-language newspaper run out of the Georgia basement of John Tang, a graduate student and Falun Gong practitioner.
By 2004, The Epoch Times had expanded into English. One of the paper's early hires was Genevieve Belmaker, then a 27-year-old Falun Gong practitioner with little journalism experience. Ms. Belmaker, now 43, described the early Epoch Times as a cross between a scrappy media start-up and a zealous church bulletin, with a staff composed mostly of unpaid volunteers drawn from the local Falun Gong chapters.
"The mission-driven part of it was, let's have a media outlet that not only tells the truth about Falun Gong but about everything," Ms. Belmaker said.
Falun Gong's leader, Li Hongzhi, in 1999. He has referred to The Epoch Times and other outlets as "our media."
Mr. Li, Falun Gong's founder, also saw it that way. In speeches, he referred to The Epoch Times and other Falun Gong-linked outlets - including the New Tang Dynasty TV station, or NTD - as "our media," and said they could help publicize Falun Gong's story and values around the world.
Two former employees recalled that the paper's top editors had traveled to Dragon Springs to meet with Mr. Li. One employee who attended a meeting said Mr. Li had weighed in on editorial and strategic decisions, acting as a kind of shadow publisher. The Epoch Times denied these accounts, saying in a statement, "There has been no such meeting."
The line between The Epoch Times and Falun Gong is blurry at times. Two former Epoch Times reporters said they had been asked to write flattering profiles of foreign performers being recruited into Shen Yun, the heavily advertised dance performance series that Falun Gong backs, because it would strengthen those performers' visa applications. Another former Epoch Times reporter recalled being assigned to write critical articles about politicians including John Liu, a Taiwanese-American former New York City councilman whom the group viewed as soft on China and hostile to Falun Gong.
These articles helped Falun Gong advance its goals, but they lured few subscribers.
Matthew K. Tullar, a former sales director for The Epoch Times's Orange County edition in New York, wrote on his LinkedIn page that his team initially "printed 800 papers each week, had no subscribers, and utilized a 'throw it in their driveway for free' marketing strategy." Mr. Tullar did not respond to requests for comment.
Ms. Belmaker, who left the paper in 2017, described it as a bare-bones operation that was always searching for new moneymaking ventures.
"It was very short-term thinking," she said. "We weren't looking more than three weeks down the road."
A Trump Pivot
By 2014, The Epoch Times was edging closer to Mr. Li's vision of a respectable news outlet. Subscriptions were growing, the paper's reporting was winning journalism awards, and its finances were stabilizing.
"There was all this optimism that things were going to level up," Ms. Belmaker said.
But at a staff meeting in 2015, leadership announced that the publication was in trouble again, Ms. Belmaker recalled. Facebook had changed its algorithm for determining which articles appeared in users' newsfeeds, and The Epoch Times's traffic and ad revenue were suffering.
In response, the publication assigned reporters to churn out as many as five posts a day in a search for viral hits, often lowbrow fare with titles like "Grizzly Bear Does Belly Flop Into a Swimming Pool."
"It was a competition for traffic," Ms. Belmaker said.
Genevieve Belmaker, who worked at The Epoch Times for 13 years, said she had seen it go from a bare-bones operation to a driver of online traffic.Credit...Kyle Johnson for The New York Times
As the 2016 election neared, reporters noticed that the paper's political coverage took on a more partisan tone.
Steve Klett, who covered the 2016 campaign for the paper, said his editors had encouraged favorable coverage about Mr. Trump after he won the Republican nomination.
"They seemed to have this almost messianic way of viewing Trump as the anti-Communist leader who would bring about the end of the Chinese Communist Party," Mr. Klett said.
After Mr. Trump's victory, The Epoch Times hired Brendan Steinhauser, a well-connected Tea Party strategist, to help make inroads with conservatives. Mr. Steinhauser said the organization's goal, beyond raising its profile in Washington, had been to make Falun Gong's persecution a Trump administration priority.
"They wanted more people in Washington to be aware of how the Chinese Communist Party operates, and what it has done to spiritual and ethnic minorities," Mr. Steinhauser said.
All In on Facebook
Behind the scenes, The Epoch Times was also developing a secret weapon: a Facebook growth strategy that would ultimately help take its message to millions.
According to emails reviewed by The Times, the Facebook plan was developed by Trung Vu, the former head of The Epoch Times's Vietnamese edition, known as Dai Ky Nguyen, or DKN.
In Vietnam, Mr. Trung's strategy involved filling a network of Facebook pages with viral videos and pro-Trump propaganda, some of it lifted word for word from other sites, and using automated software, or bots, to generate fake likes and shares, a former DKN employee said. Employees used fake accounts to run the pages, a practice that violated Facebook's rules but that Mr. Trung said was necessary to protect employees from Chinese surveillance, the former employee said.
Mr. Trung did not respond to requests for comment.
According to the 2017 email sent to Epoch Times workers in America, the Vietnamese experiment was a "remarkable success" that made DKN one of the largest publishers in Vietnam.
The outlet, the email claimed, was "having a profound impact on saving sentient beings in that country."
The Vietnamese team was asked to help Epoch Media Group - the umbrella organization for Falun Gong's biggest U.S. media properties - set up its own Facebook empire, according to that email. That year, dozens of new Facebook pages appeared, all linked to The Epoch Times and its affiliates. Some were explicitly partisan, others positioned themselves as sources of real and unbiased news, and a few, like a humor page called "Funniest Family Moments," were disconnected from news entirely.
A screenshot of America Daily, a right-wing politics site that an Epoch Times editor helped start.
Perhaps the most audacious experiment was a new right-wing politics site called America Daily.
Today, the site, which has more than a million Facebook followers, peddles far-right misinformation. It has posted anti-vaccine screeds, an article falsely claiming that Bill Gates and other elites are "directing" the Covid-19 pandemic and allegations about a "Jewish mob" that controls the world.
Emails obtained by The Times show that John Nania, a longtime Epoch Times editor, was involved in starting America Daily, along with executives from Sound of Hope, a Falun Gong-affiliated radio network. Records on Facebook show that the page is operated by the Sound of Hope Network, and a pinned post on its Facebook page contains a promotional video for Falun Gong.
In a statement, The Epoch Times said it had "no business relationship" with America Daily.
Many of the Facebook pages operated by The Epoch Times and its affiliates followed a similar trajectory. They began by posting viral videos and uplifting news articles aggregated from other sites. They grew quickly, sometimes adding hundreds of thousands of followers a week. Then, they were used to steer people to buy Epoch Times subscriptions and promote more partisan content.
Several of the pages gained significant followings "seemingly overnight," said Renee DiResta, a disinformation researcher with the Stanford Internet Observatory. Many posts were shared thousands of times but received almost no comments - a ratio, Ms. DiResta said, that is typical of pages that have been boosted by "click farms," firms that generate fake traffic by paying people to click on certain links over and over again.
The Epoch Times denies using click farms or other illicit tactics to expand its pages. "The Epoch Times's social media strategies were different from DKN, and used Facebook's own promotional tools to gain an increased organic following," the outlet said, adding that The Epoch Times cut ties with Mr. Trung in 2018.
But last year, The Epoch Times was barred from advertising on Facebook - where it had spent more than $1.5 million over seven months - after the social network announced that the outlet's pages had evaded its transparency requirements by disguising its ad purchases.
This year, Facebook took down more than 500 pages and accounts linked to Truth Media, a network of anti-China pages that had been using fake accounts to amplify their messages. The Epoch Times denied any involvement, but Facebook's investigators said Truth Media "showed some links to on-platform activity by Epoch Media Group and NTD."
"We've taken enforcement actions against Epoch Media and related groups several times," said a Facebook spokeswoman, who added that the social network would punish the outlet if it violated more rules in the future.
Since being barred from advertising on Facebook, The Epoch Times has moved much of its operation to YouTube, where it has spent more than $1.8 million on ads since May 2018, according to Google's public database of political advertising.
Where the paper's money comes from is something of a mystery. Former employees said they had been told that The Epoch Times was financed by a combination of subscriptions, ads and donations from wealthy Falun Gong practitioners. In 2018, the most recent year for which the organization's tax returns are publicly available, The Epoch Times Association received several sizable donations, but none big enough to pay for a multimillion-dollar ad blitz.
Mr. Bannon is among those who have noticed The Epoch Times's deep pockets. Last year, he produced a documentary about China with NTD. When he talked with the outlet about other projects, he said, money never seemed to be an issue.
"I'd give them a number," Mr. Bannon said. "And they'd come back and say, 'We're good for that number.'"
'The Moral Objective Is Gone'
The Epoch Times's pro-Trump turn has upset some former employees, like Ms. Belmaker.
Ms. Belmaker, now a freelance writer and editor, still believes in many of Falun Gong's teachings, she said. But she has grown disenchanted with The Epoch Times, which she sees as running contrary to Falun Gong's core principles of truth, compassion and tolerance.
"The moral objective is gone," she said. "They're on the wrong side of history, and I don't think they care."
Recently, The Epoch Times has shifted its focus to the coronavirus. It pounced on China's missteps in the early days of the pandemic, and its reporters wrote about misreported virus statistics and Chinese influence in the World Health Organization.
A screenshot of an Epoch Times video, "Digging Beneath Narratives," on YouTube.
Some of these articles were true. But others pushed exaggerated or false claims, like the unproven theory that the virus was engineered in a lab as part of a Chinese biological warfare strategy.
Some of the claims were repeated in a documentary that both NTD and The Epoch Times posted on YouTube, where it has been viewed more than five million times. The documentary features the discredited virologist Judy Mikovits, who also starred in the viral "Plandemic" video, which Facebook, YouTube and other social platforms pulled this year for spreading false claims.
The Epoch Times said, "In our documentary we offered a range of evidence and viewpoints without drawing any conclusions."
Ms. Belmaker, who still keeps a photo of Master Li on a shelf in her house, said she recoiled whenever an ad for The Epoch Times popped up on YouTube promoting some new partisan talking point.
One recent video, "Digging Beneath Narratives," is a two-minute infomercial about China's mishandling of the coronavirus. The ad's host says The Epoch Times has an "underground network of sources" in China providing information about the government's response to the virus.
It's a plausible claim, but the video's host makes no mention of The Epoch Times's ties to Falun Gong, or its two-decade-long campaign against Chinese communism, saying only that the paper is "giving you an accurate picture of what's happening in this world."
"We tell it like it is," he says.
Ben Smith contributed reporting. Jack Begg contributed research.
2. Iran, China and North Korea have the most to gain from a Biden presidency
Interesting analysis. Very strange subtitle: "U.S. allies must not be allowed to control U.S. foreign policy with hostile countries."
I do not mean to highlight this excerpt as a partisan position (though the author expresses his view in the article) but it illustrates the two competing world views we have in the US. Do alliances enhance US national security or not. The answer to that question is critical to the way ahead for US foriegn policy and national security. And the focus of the Administration on the Quad and Quad Plus would seem to be counter to Mr. Babbin's analysis. I hope that whether Trump is re-elected or Biden is elected the US will continue to pursue an Asiasn security structure that is built on strong realtionships with friends, partners, and allies.
Mr. Trump's willingness to act independently of our allies - or in contravention of their wishes - is a great strength. Mr. Biden's unwillingness to do so is an enormous weakness. A part of that weakness was often demonstrated during his Senate career and years as vice president in his consistent strong support of the United Nations.
Iran, China and North Korea have the most to gain from a Biden presidency
U.S. allies must not be allowed to control U.S. foreign policy with hostile countries
washingtontimes.com · by The Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com
By Jed Babbin - - Saturday, October 24, 2020
Illustration on the coming role of America in the world by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times more >
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
While Americans have much at stake in next week's election, our major foreign adversaries and allies have at least as much. Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and the NATO nations anxiously await the result because it will determine how we deal with them in the next four years.
Each of them expects different results from President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden because they know each will deal with the threats they pose differently. Mr. Trump has proven that he will act in America's interests with or without support from our allies. From Mr. Biden's record, we must conclude that he is a dedicated multilateralist who will not act without the support of our allies.
Iran has the most to gain from Mr. Biden's election. Mr. Trump revoked the highly dangerous deal with Iran that President Obama signed and, by doing so, distanced us from the other signatories to the deal, Russia, China, France, Germany and the UK. Mr. Biden - eager to please France, Germany and the U.K. - promises to rejoin the deal despite the obvious danger it poses to our national security.
Iran will benefit substantially from any relief from Mr. Trump's "maximum pressure" sanctions campaign, which Mr. Biden will certainly grant despite the fact that Mr. Trump's sanctions have rendered the Iranian economy a shambles. Russia and China have already blocked an extension of the now-expired U.N. arms embargo on Iran. They - and other nations - will sell Iran advanced weapon systems that will make it more dangerous than it is now.
How either candidate's victory would benefit Russia and China are more complex questions.
Mr. Trump has gone too far in his praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin, at one time saying he trusted Mr. Putin as much as he trusts our intelligence community. But he has taken strong actions against Russia. For example, he has provided the lethal aid to Ukraine which the Obama-Biden administration had refused and has exited the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia because of Russian deployment of precisely the weapons prohibited by that treaty. He also imposed two rounds of economic sanctions as a result of Russia's attempted poisonings of former GRU Col. Sergei Skripal and his daughter.
In February. Mr. Biden disagreed with Mr. Trump's refocusing foreign policy on revanchist Russia and aggressive China, saying that there are other priorities such as climate change. In his last speech as vice president, Mr. Biden said that Russia was the greatest threat to the "international liberal order" and that Washington has to work with Europe to stand up to Russian President Putin.
Ever-dependent on the approval of other nations, Mr. Biden won't stand up to Russia without support from our European allies. That support won't be forthcoming because many are thoroughly intimidated by Mr. Putin and, like Germany, are becoming dependent on Russian energy.
In his strongest statement on China, Mr. Biden said, "I'll rally our allies to set the rules of the road and push back on Beijing's aggressive and predatory behavior." That means that Mr. Biden, ever the multilateralist, won't take a stronger stance than our allies will allow. Our European allies will oppose any policy that will lessen their trade with China or attempt to restore the balance of power in the Pacific region which now is badly tilted in China's favor.
Mr. Trump is already trying to rally old and new Asian and Pacific allies through his Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (among the U.S., India, Australia and Japan) to form an alliance to contain Chinese aggression in the Pacific. Mr. Biden won't put American teeth into that nascent alliance because doing so would require expansion of U.S. air and naval forces from their current strength. He will abandon what should become an Asian NATO.
North Korea, despite its slanders of Mr. Biden (the North Korean government has said he is an "idiot" and worse) would have a better chance of another one-sided agreement like the one signed by then-president Bill Clinton with Mr. Biden than Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump, for all his kind words about North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, is firm in his policy of severe sanctions against Mr. Kim's regime. It's possible that Mr. Biden would be suckered into another Clinton-like deal. Mr. Trump won't be.
Mr. Trump's willingness to act independently of our allies - or in contravention of their wishes - is a great strength. Mr. Biden's unwillingness to do so is an enormous weakness. A part of that weakness was often demonstrated during his Senate career and years as vice president in his consistent strong support of the United Nations.
When many large countries such as China paid virtually nothing in U.N. dues, Mr. Biden, in 1999 sponsored legislation that compelled U.S. payment of $1 billion in dues "arrearages." Despite his former chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Biden supported Mr. Obama's pretense of obtaining "ratification" of his Iran nuclear deal from the U.N. instead of the Senate.
What Mr. Biden does not seem to understand is that while we need respect our allies, we also have to lead them. Those which decline to pursue essential mutual goals, such as preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, cannot be allowed to control our foreign policy.
* Jed Babbin, a deputy undersecretary of Defense in the George H.W. Bush administration, is the author of "In the Words of Our Enemies."
3. FDD | Yes, Virginia, the Trump Administration Does Have a China Strategy
Conclusion: The administration, and its partners, want to institutionalize as many elements of Comprehensive Multinational Defense as possible so that it can weather any changes in government in any of the partners. This is because they know it is the only strategy that can counter the Chinese Communist Party's relentless, brutal, "scientific approach" to resurrecting and expanding the reach of the Middle Kingdom's Comprehensive National Power. The strategy is clear, and focused, and likely the only thing that will work. Beijing knows it, which is why it is doing all is can to drive wedges in core elements like the Quad. Indo-Pacific allies and partners know it as well, and many are doing what they can to join and lead. It is starting to work. The only question is, will it continue?
FDD | Yes, Virginia, the Trump Administration Does Have a China Strategy
The administration is pursuing a whole-of-government approach to counter China's concept of Comprehensive National Power.
fdd.org · by Cleo Paskal Non-Resident Senior Fellow · October 23, 2020
On October 26, a week before the U.S. presidential election, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper will begin two days of high-level talks in Delhi. In person.
That shouldn't be a surprise. If one puts politics aside, and connects the many and varied dots, one can see that the U.S. administration has a clear China strategy that is well thought out, multifaceted, and based on a deep understanding of China. It even has a name.
But before getting to the administration's strategy, we need to understand what it is designed to counter - China's concept of Comprehensive National Power (CNP).
Comprehensive National Power
Comprehensive National Power is a dominant framework in the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) view of the world. CCP think tanks and organizations use it to shape policies and gauge success.
The premise is that a nation's Comprehensive National Power can be given a numerical value based on a specific but exceptionally wide range of factors, from military strength, to soft power, to access to natural resources, to advances in research and development, and much more.
Retired U.S. Coast Guard Captain Bernard Moreland - whose last posting was as U.S. Coast Guard liaison to Beijing - explains: "One of the important things to understand about CNP is that it is an objective metric. Beijing constantly calculates and recalculates China's CNP relative to other nations the same way many of us watch our 401(k) grow. For us in the West, concepts like 'national power' are subjective vague concepts. The [Chinese Communist Party is] obsessed with engineering and calculating everything and believe that all issues can be reduced to numbers and algorithms. This is what they mean when they euphemistically refer to 'scientific approaches.'"
The result is that any possible tactic - legal or otherwise - is considered fair game in serving the CCP's goal of increasing China's Comprehensive National Power. That includes using proxies and diversions to make counteractions more difficult.
In an October 21 article for Foreign Affairs, U.S. National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien detailed some of the many ways Beijing is trying to advance its CNP. They include intellectual property theft, co-optinginternational organization, using fishing boats for military action, hostage diplomacy, coercive economic policies, use and intimidation of Chinese nationals overseas to advance China's interests, infiltrating and corrupting foreign education systems, debt traps, bribery, blurring the lines between state, commercial and military activities, and more. Much, much more.
Additionally, according to Comprehensive National Power logic, a country's relative CNP can also increase if competitors drop down in the ranking. So, say the Chinese economy is going to be affected by an epidemic. It makes sense to not actively limit the disease's spread so that it becomes a pandemic, and other countries are affected as well.
These actions - considered by many at least immoral if not illegal - are not aberrations. They are part of the CCP's system. And for years the system has been working; China's Comprehensive National Power has been increasing.
Comprehensive National Defense
This is where the Trump administration comes in. From early on, it was clear China was core concern. The administration's December 2017 National Security Strategy called China a "revisionist power." It explained that "China seeks to displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, expand the reaches of its state-driven economic model, and reorder the region in its favor," adding "A geopolitical competition between free and repressive visions of world order is taking place."
In June 2019, the Department of Defense published the "Indo-Pacific Strategy Report: Preparedness, Partnerships and Promoting a Networked Region." It opened with "The Indo-Pacific is the Department of Defense's priority theater." The reason: "the People's Republic of China, under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, seeks to reorder the region to its advantage by leveraging military modernization, influence operations, and predatory economics to coerce other nations."
In November 2019, the Department of State published the "Free and Open Indo-Pacific: Advancing a Shared Vision" report, which wrote, "The People's Republic of China (PRC) practices repression at home and abroad. Beijing is intolerant of dissent, aggressively controls media and civil society, and brutally suppresses ethnic and religious minorities. Such practices, which Beijing exports to other countries through its political and economic influence, undermine the conditions that have promoted stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific for decades."
The Trump administration understands China. Still, as in many other countries, actions proposed by those concerned with defense, security, and intelligence were at times curtailed by those coming from the economic side, as has been seen by the slow movement on banning TikTok.
However, overall, beginning early in the term, and really gaining speed after COVID-19 muted some of the internal dissent that was still pushing for "engagement" with Beijing, the Trump administration set about countering China's Comprehensive National Power with actions that incorporated reciprocity, whole-of-government efforts, economic levers, and more. It, in fact, put together elements of a Comprehensive National Defense.
While not perfect, or always consistent, many of the defensive actions were bold and smart - and many closed areas of access China never should have been allowed to develop in the first place.
According to Grant Newsham, retired U.S. Marine Colonel and former head of intelligence for Marine Forces Pacific:
The PRC's trade cheating and intellectual property strong-arming and theft were well known for many years. Yet, the Trump administration was the first to take a systematic and forceful approach to the issue; pressuring China and trying to insert reciprocity into the trade relationship. This started shortly after Trump took office and despite resistance from Wall Street titans and certain business interests that were cozy with the PRC. Has Trump's economic pushback on China been perfect? No. But he's done more than anyone since China was allowed into WTO almost twenty years ago and allowed to play by its own rules.
In one specific example, U.S. funds invest billions in China, in spite of the financials of the companies being opaque, and the funds potentially going to Chinese military-linked companies actively working on technologies to undermine and attack the United States. After action by the president, the Thrift Savings Plan - which includes pensions of veterans - dropped a plan to invest tens of billions in China. This was the first time something like that happened.
There were myriad other firsts as well. Looking at CCP espionage, influence and interference activities in the U.S. alone, some of the administration's publicly known countermeasures in just the last few months have been:
Closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston, reportedly a node for such operations.
Requiring senior PRC officials to obtain approval before visiting U.S. university campuses and meeting with local officials (this is reciprocity for Chinese regulations on U.S. officials).
Pompeo's designating the center that manages the Confucius Institutes as "an entity advancing Beijing's global propaganda and malign influence," requiring it to register as a foreign mission.
Requiring multiple Chinese state-linked media organizations in the U.S. to register as "foreign missions" and share information on their U.S.-based employees with the government.
Arrests of Chinese researchers who lied about their links to the Chinese military in order to gain access to U.S. research labs. Additionally over 1,000 Chinese students deemed to have military links had their student visas revoked and prospective students from China are now required to show that they don't have links to the Chinese military.
A Department of Justice crackdown, including arrests, of U.S.-based researchers illicitly participating in China's "Talents" program that is "designed to attract, recruit and cultivate high-level scientific research" to advance Beijing's CNP.
Guidance for immigration law that now makes it nearly impossible for members of a Communist Party to become U.S. permanent residents or citizens.
Requirements for U.S. think tanks to report if they have foreign funding.
Additionally, adds Newsham: "President Trump is also the first to have seriously tightened up on Chinese investment and acquisitions - to include of advanced technologies - in the USA. Trump has gone after Huawei and ZTE, major Chinese telecom companies that were both trade cheats, but also operate as extensions of Chinese intelligence surveillance." Admittedly, there are still tensions within the administration, and hits and misses, so while ZTE issues remain to be fully addressed, the push against Huawei has been more effective.
Some close to the administration have even raised concerns about a potential GNC deal with Chinese-owned Harbin Pharmaceuticals as many of the company's outlets (which require customers to provide substantial personal information) are near U.S. military bases and are popular with personnel. A Chinese parent company could gain access to a trove of sensitive information about military personal and activity via the purchase. They understand China so well, the administration knows that thanks to the mechanics of Comprehensive National Power, even the sale of a seemingly innocuous sports-oriented company is a national security concern.
There has been such widespread defensive action by this administration against China's Comprehensive National Power it's hard to keep track - especially given the obfuscating miasma of day-to-day political coverage. In case you missed them, other recent examples include: an Executive Order to secure U.S. supplies of critical minerals, an Executive Order on "Ensuring Essential Medicines, Medical Countermeasures, and Critical Inputs Are Made in the United States," an export ban involving semiconductors, and, after China passed its National Security Law, stripping Hong Kong of its special economic status
The rational for this whole-of-government, indeed whole-of-nation, Comprehensive National Defense was made explicit in an unprecedented series of coordinated top-level speeches in the summer of 2020. On June 24, U.S. National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien made a speech about the implications of CCP ideology. On July 7, FBI Director Christopher Wray spoke about CCP espionage, influence, and interference operations. On July 16, Attorney General William Barr spoke about CCP economic influence and intimidation. And on July 23, Pompeo spoke about "Communist China and the Free World's Future" at the Nixon library, driving home the point that the engagement approach launched by Nixon - while well meaning - has failed, and it was time for a new approach.
A major component of that new approach brings us to the possible name of the administration's underlying China strategy. Comprehensive National Defense is not enough, as China thrives off pressuring and picking off countries one by one - as it has been trying to do recently with its economic pressure on Australia and hostage blackmail with Canada.
Comprehensive Multinational Defense
What is required is what Moreland has termed Comprehensive Multinational Defense (CMD).
Since those first documents, the Trump administration has emphasized the importance of working with allies and partners, and adapting and building structures to underpin those relationships, allowing them to survive changes in governments. It was one of the reasons for the May 2018 change of the name of U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM) to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM), highlighting the importance of India to the region, and to U.S. strategy.
The work on relationship building in the Indo-Pacific has been consistent and extensive. The Quad (the United States, India, Japan, and Australia) was resurrected and recently held foreign minister-level meetings in Tokyo. It was important enough to be attended by Pompeo in person, even though the president had recently been diagnosed with COVID-19. And now, Australia has been added to the Malabar exercises, where the four militaries will work on interoperability in a public outing of the Quad that CCP strategic accountants must assume will take serious points off Beijing's Comprehensive National Power numbers.
The United States has also backed the South China Sea claims of partners, increased engagement with ASEAN, upgraded the U.S.-Mekong Partnership, signed a defense cooperation deal with the Maldives (an important node in the Indian Ocean), sent a high level delegation to Taiwan, and more. Again, just in the last few months.
Apart from a range of high profile freedom of navigation operations, it has also been working on developing interoperability with partners. For example with India it held the first tri-service exercises, a U.S. Navy P-8 submarine-hunter was refueled at India's Andaman and Nicobar islands, and an Indian warship was refueled by a U.S. Navy tanker in the Arabian Sea. This is apart from all the advances in information-sharing that are happening at a much quieter level.
And then there is the multi-billion dollar Pacific Deterrence Initiative wending its way through Congress with bipartisan support. The PDI is specifically designed to bolster the capabilities of and interoperability with allies and partners in the region. Additionally, there is substantial U.S. encouragement of like-minded countries in the region working together outside of the United States' direct engagement, which has seen India and Japan, and India and Australia, sign logistics agreements, making operationalizing the Quad more seamless.
These are not small decisions and they don't happen by accident. There have been lacunae, mistakes, and missteps, and there is a lot left to do, but if anyone doubts the seriousness with which the administration takes the building of a Comprehensive Multinational Defense, watch closely for big announcements about more foundational agreements during Pompeo and Esper's visit to India. And, though it will likely be missed in the fog of election reporting, after India, Pompeo won't head back to the United States - he will head to Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Indonesia to shore up even more ties with Indo-Pacific partners.
The administration, and its partners, want to institutionalize as many elements of Comprehensive Multinational Defense as possible so that it can weather any changes in government in any of the partners. This is because they know it is the only strategy that can counter the Chinese Communist Party's relentless, brutal, "scientific approach" to resurrecting and expanding the reach of the Middle Kingdom's Comprehensive National Power.
The strategy is clear, and focused, and likely the only thing that will work. Beijing knows it, which is why it is doing all is can to drive wedges in core elements like the Quad. Indo-Pacific allies and partners know it as well, and many are doing what they can to join and lead. It is starting to work. The only question is, will it continue?
Cleo Paskal is a non-resident fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and associate fellow at Chatham House. Follow her on Twitter @CleoPaskal.
4. How Big Tech factors into the US-China geopolitical competition
Conclusion: "There is a great power contest under way to define international architecture, though the U.S. may not have recognized it. This contest will decide global ideology, economics and security. The contest will be decided by scale. We might not like Big Tech, but we need it. This is a contest for the whole pie."
How Big Tech factors into the US-China geopolitical competition
The Hill · by Emily de La Bruyère and Nathan Picarsic, opinion contributors · October 22, 2020
On Oct. 6, the House Judiciary Committee issued a report calling for new antitrust regulations to rein in Big Tech. This report comes after a 15-month antitrust probe into technology firms Google, Apple, Amazon, Twitter and Facebook - and with it, findings that the tech giants all hold monopoly power.
Congress is making the wrong call - not because of what was in the House report, but because of what was not: These 450 pages, the antitrust probe, and the national conversation about Big Tech writ large ignore the strategic context. They assume that the U.S. system sits in a vacuum; that the alternative to Big Tech is small, or smaller, tech.
It is not. The alternative to U.S. Big Tech is China's Big Tech.
In fact, Big Tech is the closest thing that the United States has to a strategic response to China's asymmetric, global offensive; to the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) quest for international information dominance, its digital authoritarianism and its tech-fueled, military-civil fusion strategy.
Beijing has diagnosed that advances in information technology are bringing about a new global order: A new set of networks, standards and platforms that will define global exchange of goods, ideas and people. The CCP wants to set those standards, build those platforms and oversee those networks. China seeks commercial, informational and military ends, all of them fused into a comprehensive vision of national power - and international control. "Whoever controls the flow of resources, markets and money," wrote retired People's Liberation Army commander Wang Xiangsui in 2017, "is hegemon of the world."
This is not an abstract threat. Beijing's global architecture is well established. In 2019, Beijing successfully promulgated 83 standards through the International Standards Organization (ISO), addressing everything from aviation and shipping to petrochemicals. The Beijing-backed Global Energy Interconnection Development and Cooperation Organization (GEIDCO) has signed agreements with over 30 national governments. Alibaba's AliPay has 1.3 billion users. WeChat reportedly has been installed on over 100 million devices outside China from the Google Play store alone. TikTok has a similar profile in the U.S., with projections of over 100 million users; the ByteDance-owned video sharing app exceeds 2 billion downloads globally.
These are not compartmentalized commercial players. They contribute to a platform geopolitics that propels a new form of coercive power. The potential of this information strategy is evident in China's National Transportation Logistics Platform, known as LOGINK internationally - though LOGINK itself is only one example of Beijing's larger platform geopolitics.
Governed by China's Ministry of Transportation, LOGINK might be thought of as a "super app" for international logistics. It docks into international information systems and infrastructures - including 14 of the world's 20 largest ports - aggregating their data into what it describes as a "one-stop window." LOGINK collects data on logistics, storage, transportation, packing, loading and unloading, processing and distribution. LOGINK provides users with access to that information, as well as logistics software, communication portals, supply chain coordination, transportation monitoring and other services built on its data foundation.
International logistics information and systems are, at present, siloed and fragmented. Users flock to LOGINK for the same reason they do to Facebook or Gmail: Because it provides a valuable service. Except that this platform is controlled by an authoritarian government. LOGINK explicitly supports the CCP's international strategy.
Beijing intends to develop the foundational platform of modern logistics and exchange. If it succeeds, China will claim superior information on the movement of goods and operations of infrastructure, internationally. That information promises commercial rewards. It also promises military benefit.
And today's information technology systems do not just provide access to information. As the debate over Big Tech acknowledges, modern platforms also grant the ability to shape information and incentives. On the LOGINK platform, Chinese applications and vendors might be the most prominently promoted and highest rated, à la "Amazon's Choice," regardless of quality. Supply chains or shipping routes incorporating Chinese players might be recommended, whether or not they are the most efficient. The integration with customs agencies that LOGINK oversees might, for some actors, overlook transport of controlled or illicit goods.
The reverse also holds. Information access might stall for a country that, say, recognizes Taiwan. A port shipping necessary rare earth elements to the United States or Japan might go offline amid geopolitical tensions.
Beijing is promoting LOGINK as an international standard for information logistics. Through partnerships with other countries, international organizations and corporate players, including China's Big Tech, Beijing has ensured that LOGINK almost certainly will be endorsed as such.
LOGINK constitutes and example of Beijing's strategic threat. Beijing's platform geopolitics extends more broadly and through other networks, standards and platforms. Like LOGINK, these tend to succeed because they fill market demand for aggregated information, with the imprimatur of government legitimacy and scale. That scale is effectively unrivaled, thanks to integration with China's otherwise opaque and protected market.
The U.S. Navy cannot defend against this large-scale, fused military and civilian, informational threat. Nor can a slew of small and medium-sized tech companies competing among themselves for slices of the pie. But Big Tech companies can.
There is a great power contest under way to define international architecture, though the U.S. may not have recognized it. This contest will decide global ideology, economics and security. The contest will be decided by scale. We might not like Big Tech, but we need it. This is a contest for the whole pie.
Emily de La Bruyère and Nathan Picarsic are senior fellows at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) with a focus on China policy, and the co-founders of Horizon Advisory, a consulting firm focused on the implications of China's competitive approach to geopolitics.
5. The China challenge: 'To get a sense of how bad relations might get, look back to Menzies'
I still recommend Richard MacGregeor's boo, "The Party," even though it is a decade old. I think it still provides important insights into the CCP.
This is an Australian view of Chinese relations.
The China challenge: 'To get a sense of how bad relations might get, look back to Menzies'
The Guardian · by Richard McGregor · October 24, 2020
Forced to move house during the lockdown - legally, I might add, as lifting boxes was mercifully classified as an essential service - I stumbled across an old poster that seemed eerily in tune with the times. The poster had been plastered around inner city Melbourne in late 1978 in the days after Sir Robert Menzies died. "Pig Iron Bob Dead At Last" the headline blared. A smaller strap across the top read: "Obscene Imperialist Rites for Militarist Witch Hunter." A bushy-browed Menzies was shown waving his right arm, an image that had been cropped to give it a whiff of a Hitlerian salute.
Looking afresh at the poster after so many years, my first instinct was to admire the agility of its North Korean-style invective, vituperative insults and historical fury all jammed into a few words. It was only a few days later, when one of Menzies's Liberal party successors, Scott Morrison, got to his feet at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra for the country's annual defence strategic update that the full extent of its modern resonance hit me.
Speeches like the one delivered by Morrison are designed to peer over the horizon to threats that look uncertain and unformed today, but could materialise into something serious in decades to come. Morrison was anything but vague in his depiction of the coming storms in the Indo-Pacific. He went back to the future for guidance, mentioning the 1930s four times. It's an era, he said, that he'd been "revisiting on a very regular basis, and when you connect the economic challenges and the global uncertainty, it can be very haunting".
A cartoonist illustrating a column about the speech drew the prime minister looking in the mirror and seeing Winston Churchill. Much as Morrison might have been thrilled, the comparison struck a lazy note for me, with, in the apparent absence of a local hero, a touch of cultural cringe as well.
Before Covid-19, before the first wave of mysteriously stricken patients began to crowd into hospitals in Wuhan, and the lies and the chaos and the lockdowns that followed as the virus spread out from the giant inland city to the rest of China and then overseas, I used to make lists of all the things that Australia and China were battling over. Cyber attacks, Taiwan, the South China Sea, Huawei, the Pacific Islands, Hong Kong, foreign interference, universities, Xinjiang, Australian prisoners held in China, Crown casinos, and a multitude of spying allegations. As soon as one issue dropped off the front pages, another one rushed to take its place. Even the two countries' sports stars were fighting, with champion swimmer Mack Horton accusing his rival, Sun Yang, of being a drug cheat.
Resonant: a leftwing poster commemorating the death of Bob Menzies in 1978. Photograph: Chips Mackinolty
The virus lifted the mutual acrimony to a new level. In Canberra's telling, the Australian government's call for an independent investigation into Covid-19 was an entirely reasonable response to a pandemic that had cratered the global economy. In Beijing, the Foreign Ministry denounced it as a "political manipulation" made at the behest of Washington. Or, as one Chinese netizen put it, Australia was "this giant kangaroo serving as a dog of the US". Beijing announced trade sanctions on beef and barley to drive home its displeasure. Both nations warned their citizens that traveling to each other's countries was dangerous. It didn't really matter, as no one could travel anyway, but in terms of political signalling, it was potent. This was a relationship headed downhill fast.
To get a sense of just how bad things might get, let's go back to Australia's longest serving prime minister, and the disrespectful send-off that some old-fashioned socialists in Melbourne provided for him in 1978.
Menzies was given the nickname "Pig Iron Bob" by waterside workers in 1938. They were protesting against the sale of pig (crude) iron to Japanese steelmakers, which Menzies, as the then attorney general, forced through in the face of industrial action. Coming just after the Imperial Army's massacre of Chinese in Nanjing, the waterside workers objected to Australian resources being used to feed the Japanese war machine. In that respect, the "Pig Iron Bob" posters didn't make sense. Far from being a "militarist", the criticism of Menzies was that he hadn't, at that point, been hawkish enough. Nonetheless, once the Pacific war was under way and Australian troops were on the frontline battling the Japanese, many conservatives, with the benefit of hindsight, came to sympathise with the communist union. Menzies himself, on the left at least, struggled to live the nickname down.
These days, the Australian government has a close relationship with Japan and views China as the major threat to peace and stability in the region. This, by the way, drives Chinese diplomats in Australia around the bend. It doesn't take long once you meet for them to remind you that China and Australia were allies in the Pacific war. That's certainly true, though the diplomats don't like to be reminded in turn that Australia was allied at the time not with Mao Zedong's communists, but Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists, who, after losing the civil war, fled to Taiwan, an island which remains unfinished business to this day. The diplomats also seem blind to the fact that China under Xi Jinping has much in common these days with the Japan of the 1930s.
But back to pig iron, which, like iron ore, is an essential ingredient in making steel. Luckily for Australian resource companies, and the Treasury, which collects taxes from them, China's economy is still heavily reliant on building things which use steel. Even though its share of global of economic output is about 20%, China makes more than half of the world's steel. As a journalist based in Tokyo in the 1990s, I had to track the annual iron ore price negotiations between Australian miners and Japanese steel mills, at that time by far our biggest customer. Analysts in Tokyo and around the world would pore over the latest signs from local steel mills of an uptick in production, which at that time averaged in total about 100m tonnes a year. Anything more would be a bonanza for the miners. China, however, has reached into another dimension. It is making nearly 1bn tonnes of steel a year, to build new cities and infrastructure, 10 times what Japan used to produce.
For a country like Australia, located nearby and sitting on huge reserves of high-quality resources, China's steel boom has been a once-in-a-lifetime windfall. China is Australia's biggest export market, and iron ore sales comprise the biggest component of that. Even as the pandemic persisted in much of the world, Australian iron ore exports were reaching record levels in 2020 as China's economy recovered and steel production along with it. The shiploads leaving Western Australia for ports along China's east coast have been fetching fat prices too, as production from mines in Brazil, Australia's main competitor, were disrupted by accidents and the coronavirus.
Scott Morrison speaking at Adfa. 'Morrison was anything but vague in his depiction of the coming storms in the Indo-Pacific.' Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
So, when Morrison looks in the proverbial cartoonist's mirror, does he worry that one day, instead of seeing a wartime hero like Churchill looking back at him, it will be a prewar Menzies in his place? In other words, does he worry that China's relations with the west will become so bad that his job as prime minister will be not to reap the benefits of iron ore sales, but instead face the prospect that he might have to restrict them? "Steel Scott", anyone? I know it doesn't have quite the same stench as "Pig Iron Bob" but it could take on a more sinister ring in the hands of a skilled political opponent.
Morrison has hardly discouraged such hyperbole. After his speech at the defence academy, he told the Sydney Morning Herald that he had deliberately thrown in those multiple references to the 1930s because he thought the Australian people weren't sufficiently aware of the potential dangers ahead. "That's why I thought it was important to stress the point," he said. Morrison wasn't just thinking of the end of that decade, but its opening years as well, which ushered in the Great Depression and a sustained economic downturn, which in turn contributed to the conditions which created the world war that followed.
Before Covid-19, such grave historical references wouldn't have passed the laugh test. Slow the sales of our single most valuable export, at a time when we need economic growth and tax revenues more than ever? But don't think that the idea of Canberra interrupting iron ore sales to China hasn't crossed the minds of senior executives in the C-suites of our big miners. Nor have the Chinese missed the signals themselves, which is why they are focused on securing alternative suppliers for core industrial resources, by reviving iron ore mines in Guinea, West Africa, as well as cultivating closer ties with Brazil.
Naturally, the high-stakes debate over China lends itself to extremes. On either side of this debate, accusations that single out individuals as either warmongers or traitors are commonplace these days. The debate has been transformative in other ways, too. After decades in which the idea of strong government has been under sustained ideological attack in many western countries, state power and state capacity are back in vogue.
China, of course, never bought into the small government movement and has always been committed to building and maintaining a powerful state. After mishandling the start of Covid-19 in Wuhan, the Communist party in China clicked into gear at a frightening tempo to bring the virus under control. Without the need for any messy, democratic debate about civil rights or so forth, the government was able, almost overnight, to lock down more than 700 million people in residential detention; seal provincial, city, county and village borders; shut factories while commandeering the entire output of some businesses to supply emergency medical equipment; order the wearing of masks; mobilise military and paramilitary units; build pop-up hospitals; mandate testing of tens of millions of citizens; and track the movements of residents using mobile phone apps. The mobilisation of the state, businesses, and people at such short notice was a potent reminder that the ruling party has virtual war powers at its fingertips in any declared emergency, even in the absence of conflict with a foreign power.
'For some, the idea of perpetual conflict with China, overlaid by the miseries of Covid-19, is an exhausting prospect,' writes Richard McGregor. Photograph: KK Ottersen
The conservative Morrison government has had to embrace the state in Australia during Covid-19 and try to plug gaps in strategic industries, with little thought for budget deficits, all very much the hallmarks of a wartime administration. Australia also created a national cabinet to manage the crisis. China, of course, as a single-party state, has had one all the time.
For some, the idea of perpetual conflict with China, overlaid by the miseries of Covid-19, is an exhausting prospect. For others, the prospect of standing up to China looms as an exhilarating, clarifying experience. The response of some Australian politicians to the China challenge, and their enthusiastic, unyielding belief that Australia has reached a historic turning point, reminds me of the way that friends of the late Christopher Hitchens tried to explain the hitherto leftwing polemicist's fervent support for George W Bush's 2003 Iraq war. "He's always looking for the defining moment, as it were, our Spanish civil war, where you put yourself on the right side, and stand up to the enemy," one of Hitchens's friends, the writer Ian Buruma, told the New Yorker. Hitchens himself foresaw "a war to the finish between everything I love and everything I hate", and a question on which history would judge him.
Andrew Hastie, the Liberal backbencher and chair of the intelligence committee, is one case in point. He arrived in Canberra with the views that you might expect of a veteran of the special forces' mission in Afghanistan: believing the so-called war on terror spawned by the 11 September attacks to be the paramount challenge of the 21st century. But learning about China has been a gamechanger for Hastie. He has come to see Xi Jinping as a latterday Joseph Stalin, and Australia as complacent as France before the Nazi invasion - and that was before Covid-19.
The likes of Morrison - and Hastie - have made up their minds about which direction the world is heading. They see themselves as the guardians of their country and its values at a hinge point in history. Hopefully, their strategy of standing tough alongside allies against China, which is one that you see emerging around the developed world, will deter the rising superpower.
Otherwise, we can only hope they are wrong about China. It is all very well to want to look in the mirror and see Winston Churchill staring back at you. Churchill was certainly a hero, but only after one of the most destructive wars in history.
* This essay will be part of the anthology Fire, Flood and Plague, edited by Sophie Cunningham and published by Penguin Random House in December
6. Xi invokes Chinese military might with US in mind
We have been warned.
Excerpts:
By commemorating the anniversary "China is declaring to the US that it was not afraid of the US in the past, and is still not afraid of the US now", said Shi Yinhong, professor of international politics at Renmin University.
"It's to prepare for a possible limited military conflict with the US", Shi said.
Xi invokes Chinese military might with US in mind
On Korean War anniversary, Xi said China stood ready to fight anyone 'creating trouble... on China's doorstep'
asiatimes.com · by Jing Xuan Teng · October 24, 2020
President Xi Jinping on Friday warned of China's military resolve to defeat "invaders", speaking on the 70th anniversary of the Korean War, the only time Chinese forces have fought the United States.
In a long speech, heavy on patriotism and flecked by anecdotes of heroism by Chinese forces, Xi said victory in the 1950-53 conflict was a reminder that his nation stood ready to fight anyone "creating trouble... on China's doorstep".
Beijing frequently uses war anniversaries to fire thinly covered warnings to the US of the military strength of the "new China".
The Korean War is a key foundation story for the ruling Communist Party.
Friday's anniversary comes as the party is called out by US President Donald Trump, in a bitter row spanning trade, tech, human rights and the status of Taiwan, which China says is an inviolable part of the mainland.
Without explicitly naming the US, Xi loaded up with the historical precedent of the Korean war and took swings at modern day "unilateralism, protectionism and extreme egoism".
"Chinese people don't create troubles, nor are we afraid of them," Xi said to applause.
"We will never sit back and watch any damage to our national sovereignty... and we will never allow any force to invade or divide the sacred territory of the motherland."
On Wednesday, the Pentagon announced it had agreed to sell over one billion dollars' worth of missiles to self-governing Taiwan, the sharpest potential flashpoint with US forces.
'Sacrifice'
The Korean War was the first and so far only time Chinese and US forces have engaged in large-scale direct combat.
According to the Chinese government, more than 197,000 Chinese soldiers died during the three-year war, which saw the US-led United Nations coalition pushed back to the 38th parallel bisecting the Korean Peninsula, after China weighed in on the side of North Korea's communist army.
The war, essentially fought to a bloody stalemate, is hailed in China as a victory and an example of resilience and spirit against a more advanced foe.
"When China was very poor, it didn't surrender to US pressure," an editorial in the nationalist Global Times said this week.
"Today, China has grown to be a strong country, so there is no reason for China to fear the US threats and suppression."
With tensions at their highest in decades between Beijing and Washington, China is making much of the 70th anniversary of its forces entering the fight, intended as much for domestic consumption as it is a warning to its superpower rivals.
Chinese state media have unleashed a wave of propaganda with daily interviews with Chinese veterans who survived the war during prime-time news over the past week.
An action-thriller "Sacrifice", directed by three of the biggest names in Chinese cinema and depicting a small band of Chinese troops holding off US forces in the final days of the war hit cinemas across the country on Friday.
"This should be seen as a message directly addressed to the United States, there is no ambiguity here", Alice Ekman, an analyst specialising on China at the European Union Institute for Security Studies said before the speech.
"Xi is invoking the spirit of war in a broad sense."
China and North Korea have worked to improve relations in the past two years after they deteriorated as Beijing backed a series of UN sanctions against Pyongyang over its nuclear activities.
Xi and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have met five times since March 2018, even as nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang have hit a standstill.
By commemorating the anniversary "China is declaring to the US that it was not afraid of the US in the past, and is still not afraid of the US now", said Shi Yinhong, professor of international politics at Renmin University.
"It's to prepare for a possible limited military conflict with the US", Shi said.
- AFP
Asia Times Financial is now live. Linking accurate news, insightful analysis and local knowledge with the ATF China Bond 50 Index, the world's first benchmark cross sector Chinese Bond Indices. Read ATF now.
7. Far-Right Groups Are Behind Most U.S. Terrorist Attacks, Report Finds
White supremacist groups have carried out a majority of "terrorist plots and attacks" this year, according to a report by a think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
An armed demonstrator at a far-right group's rally in Portland, Ore., in September. A think tank linked violence by far-right and far-left groups, in part, to this year's unrest.
White supremacists and other like-minded groups have committed a majority of the terrorist attacks in the United States this year, according to a report by a security think tank that echoed warnings made by the Department of Homeland Security this month.
The report, published Thursday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, found that white supremacist groups were responsible for 41 of 61 "terrorist plots and attacks" in the first eight months of this year, or 67 percent.
The finding comes about two weeks after an annual assessment by the Department of Homeland Security warned that violent white supremacy was the "most persistent and lethal threat in the homeland" and that white supremacists were the most deadly among domestic terrorists in recent years.
The think tank researchers found that the threats of violence were linked in part to this year's mass protests and confrontations with protesters from a variety of factions. The report said that "far-left and far-right violence was deeply intertwined" and that far-left groups, including anarchists and antifascist organizations, were responsible for 12 attacks and plots so far this year, or 20 percent of the total number, up from 8 percent in 2019.
The report by C.S.I.S., which describes itself as a nonpartisan center, found that far-left extremists most frequently targeted law enforcement, military and government facilities and personnel.
"Part of the issue we're seeing is with people congregating, whether it's for protests or other issues, in cities, is it has basically brought together extremist individuals from all sides in close proximity," said Seth Jones, the director of the Transnational Threats Project at the center. "We've seen people on all sides armed, and it does raise concerns about escalation of violence in U.S. cities."
The report also linked the threat of violence to the country's charged politics, the coronavirus pandemic and its financial fallout. It warned that violence could rise after the presidential election because of increasing polarization, growing economic challenges, concerns about racial injustice and the persistence of coronavirus health risks.
It said that if the Democratic presidential candidate, Joseph R. Biden Jr., wins the election, white supremacists could mobilize, with targets likely to be Black people, Latinos, Jews and Muslims. A Republican presidential victory could involve violence emanating out of large-scale demonstrations, the report said.
There were some encouraging signs. The number of fatalities from domestic terrorism has been relatively low so far this year, compared with some periods of U.S. history.
Five fatalities were caused by domestic terrorism in the first eight months of this year, compared with the past five years, in which total fatalities ranged from 22 people to 66.
The study attributed the lower number of fatalities to effective intervention by the F.B.I. and other law enforcement agencies.
The relatively low number of fatalities that resulted from a high number of terrorist incidents showed that extremists this year have wanted to send messages through threats and intimidation, the report found. Many of the incidents involved vehicles or weapons, so there was a high potential for fatalities, but "an apparent lack of will," it said.
In an endnote, the researchers said they did not classify the shooting in Kenosha, Wis., that killed two protesters in August, as a terrorist attack. They said that the person charged in the shooting, a teenager whose social media accounts showed strong support for the police, "lacked a clear political motive for the killings."
Mr. Jones said the number of small, structured groups had increased over the last couple of years, as part of a broader increase in organized violence recently compared with the 1960s and '70s, when attacks tended to be carried out by relatively decentralized extremists.
A continued increase in organized violence in the United States, perpetrated by groups with sophisticated structures for training and fund-raising, Mr. Jones said, would be "a very concerning development."
Demonstrators were targeted in a large percentage of the attacks from both far-right and far-left groups, the report found.
Bruce Hoffman, a professor at Georgetown University focusing on terrorism and insurgency, said the number of attacks directed against demonstrators was alarming.
"It is fundamentally concerning that Americans exercising their right to freedom of assembly and speech at protests are increasingly targeted,"said Mr. Hoffman, who was not involved in the center's report. "I think all Americans have to find that worrisome. That's not our country."
8. How China Threatens American Democracy
No one should be able to argue with this conclusion (except the Chinese and their fellow authoritarian regimes): "Lasting peace comes through strength. The United States is the strongest country on earth, and it must speak out, fight back, and above all, stay true to its principles - especially freedom of speech - which stand in stark contrast to the Marxist-Leninist ideology embraced by the CCP."
For decades, conventional wisdom in the United States held that it was only a matter of time before China would become more liberal, first economically and then politically. We could not have been more wrong-a miscalculation that stands as the greatest failure of U.S. foreign policy since the 1930s. How did we make such a mistake? Primarily by ignoring the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party. Instead of listening to the CCP's leaders and reading its key documents, we believed what we wanted to believe: that the Chinese ruling party is communist in name only.
Today, it would be a similarly grave mistake to assume that this ideology matters only within China. In fact, the CCP's ideological agenda extends far beyond the country's borders and represents a threat to the idea of democracy itself, including in the United States. Chinese President Xi Jinping's ambitions for control are not limited to the people of China. Across the globe, the CCP aims to spread propaganda, restrict speech, and exploit personal data to malign ends. The United States, accordingly, cannot simply ignore the CCP's ideological objectives. Washington must understand that the fight against Chinese aggression first requires recognizing it and defending ourselves against it here at home, before it is too late.
WORDS ARE BULLETS
The CCP is a self-proclaimed Marxist-Leninist organization, and Xi, as the party's top general, sees himself as Stalin's successor. Marxism-Leninism is a totalitarian worldview that maintains that all important aspects of life should be controlled by the state, and the CCP's intent to dominate political thought is stated openly and pursued aggressively. For many years, the CCP's leaders have emphasized the importance of "ideological security." A 2013 Chinese policy on the "current state of ideology" held that there should be "absolutely no opportunity or outlets for incorrect thinking or viewpoints to spread."
"Chinese leaders have always believed that power derives from controlling both the physical battlefield and the cultural domain," the journalist and former Australian government official John Garnaut has noted. "Words are not vehicles of reason and persuasion. They are bullets. Words are for defining, isolating, and destroying opponents." Within China, this approach means mandatory study sessions on communist ideology and the required use of smartphone apps teaching "Xi Jinping Thought." It means heavy censorship of all media. Outside sources of information are banned-from foreign newspapers to Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp. The CCP reinterprets religious texts, including the Bible, to support its ideology and locks up millions of Muslim Uighurs and other minorities in reeducation camps, where they are subjected to political indoctrination and forced labor.
Efforts to extend this control of information and expression globally are well underway. Nearly every Chinese-language news outlet in the United States is owned by the CCP or follows its editorial line. Americans hear pro-Beijing propaganda on more than a dozen FM radio stations.
Chinese-owned TikTok deletes accounts criticizing CCP policies. Since August 2019, Twitter has removed more than 170,000 CCP-linked accounts for spreading "manipulative and coordinated" propaganda. It is no coincidence that China has expelled so many Western reporters in recent months-Beijing wants the world to get its news about China, and especially about the origins of the novel coronavirus, from its own propaganda organs.
The CCP is increasingly using its leverage to control American speech.
In addition to influencing the information Americans receive regarding China, the CCP is increasingly using its leverage to control American speech. When the general manager of the Houston Rockets basketball team tweeted his support for peaceful protesters in Hong Kong, the CCP announced that Rockets games would not be shown on Chinese TV and pressed others associated with the league, including star players, to criticize the tweet. Under pressure from the CCP, American, Delta, and United Airlines removed references to Taiwan from their websites and in-flight magazines. Mercedes Benz apologized for posting an inspirational quote from the Dalai Lama. MGM digitally changed the nationality of an invading military from Chinese to North Korean in a remake of the movie Red Dawn. In the credits for its 2020 remake of Mulan, Disney thanked public security and propaganda bureaus in Xinjiang, where the CCP has locked up millions of minorities in concentration camps.
The CCP is also gathering leverage over individuals by collecting Americans' data-their words, purchases, whereabouts, health records, posts, texts, and social networks. This data is collected through security flaws and backdoors in hardware, software, telecommunications, and genetics products (many operated by CCP-subsidized businesses such as Huawei and ZTE) as well as by theft. Beijing hacked Anthem Health Insurance in 2014; the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which holds security clearance information on millions of government employees, in 2015; Equifax in 2017; and Marriot Hotels in 2019. In these instances alone, the CCP gathered key information on at least half of all living Americans, including their names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, credit scores, health records, and passport numbers. The CCP will use this data the same way it uses data within China's borders: to target, influence, harass, and even blackmail Americans to say and do things that serve the CCP's interests.
The CCP also uses trade to coerce compliance. For example, when Australia called for an independent investigation of the coronavirus's origin and spread, Beijing imposed an 80 percent tariff on Australian barley exports, threatened to stop buying Australian agricultural products altogether, and signaled it would prevent Chinese students and tourists from traveling to Australia. Most recently, the CCP reportedly ordered importers to stop buying Australian coal.
Reshaping international organizations is another part of China's plan. China has sought leadership positions within many global bodies and now heads four out of the 15 United Nations specialized agencies, more than France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States (the other permanent members of the UN Security Council) combined. Beijing uses the leaders of these agencies to co-opt international institutions, parrot its talking points, and install Chinese telecommunications equipment in their facilities. Secretary-General Zhao Houlin of the International Telecommunications Union has aggressively promoted Huawei sales; International Civil Aviation Organization Secretary-General Fang Liu blocked Taiwan's participation in General Assembly meetings and covered up a Chinese cyber-hack of the organization. China's membership on the UN Human Rights Council has enabled the CCP to prevent criticism of its abuses in Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang. In many cases, the CCP's reach extends to the heads of international organizations who are not themselves Chinese officials. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of the World Health Organization dutifully repeated false Chinese talking points on the novel coronavirus outbreak-even opposing international travel restrictions on China while praising China's own domestic travel restrictions.
DECISIVE ACTION
American policymakers, under President Donald Trump's leadership, are aware of what the CCP is doing and are taking decisive action to counter it across the board. The Department of Justice and the FBI are directing resources to identify foreign agents seeking to influence U.S. policy. The DOJ, for example, informed Chinese state media company CGTN America of its obligation to register as a foreign agent as specified under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires registrants to disclose their activities to federal authorities and appropriately label information materials they distribute. The State Department designated the U.S. operations of nine Chinese state-controlled propaganda outlets as "foreign missions"-which places personnel and property reporting requirements on them-and implemented a policy requiring Chinese diplomats to notify and, in some cases, seek permission from the U.S. government before meeting with state and local government officials and academic institutions.
The Trump administration is also working to highlight China's malign behavior, counter false narratives, and compel transparency. U.S. officials are leading efforts to educate the American public about the exploitation of the United States' free and open society to push a CCP agenda inimical to U.S. interests and values. That includes combating Beijing's co-optation and coercion of its own citizens (and American citizens) in U.S. academic institutions and working with universities to protect the rights of Chinese students on American campuses, providing information to counter CCP propaganda and disinformation, and ensuring an understanding of ethical codes of conduct in an American academic environment. Chinese military researchers are no longer allowed to pursue certain advanced technological degrees in the United States. But real Chinese students, coming here to learn rather than to steal, are always welcome.
The FBI opens a new case on Chinese economic espionage every ten hours.
The administration has also countered the malign activities of Chinese companies abetting CCP efforts. It has sanctioned companies such as Huawei that answer to the CCP's intelligence and security apparatus, including by imposing restrictions on Huawei's access to U.S. semiconductor technology. It is blocking companies controlled by the Chinese government from purchasing American businesses with sensitive technologies and private information about American citizens; the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act signed into law in 2018 has greatly expanded the United States' ability to screen foreign investments that put national security at risk. The Defense Department recently submitted to Congress a list of companies linked to the People's Liberation Army that have operations in the United States so that the American people are fully informed about the companies they are doing business with.
Washington has also imposed restrictions on dozens of Chinese companies (as well as Chinese government entities) complicit in China's campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, forced labor, and surveillance against Uighurs and other minorities. Officials involved in these abuses can no longer travel to the United States, and certain goods produced using Uighur forced labor cannot be imported. Meanwhile, the DOJ has concentrated resources on prosecuting Chinese technology theft-the FBI opens a new case on Chinese economic espionage every ten hours. The Securities and Exchange Commission is working to protect investors by insisting that publicly listed Chinese companies adhere to the same standard of public oversight and accounting that firms in the United States and other countries must follow. And the administration left the UN Human Rights Council in response to the travesty of its co-optation by China and terminated the United States' relationship with the World Health Organization because its response to the pandemic showed that it, too, is beholden to the CCP.
RECTIFICATION OF NAMES
These steps mark just the beginning of a longer process of correcting 40 years of a one-sided, unfair relationship with China, one that has severely affected the United States' economic and, more recently, political well-being. The Trump administration has spoken with candor and shone the spotlight of transparency on the CCP's true character and will continue to so-what Confucius called a "rectification of names," making words correspond to reality. The CCP operates as a global influence and propaganda organization, and the United States must recognize it as such, neutralizing attempts to dominate global discourse by recommitting to our own values and reinvigorating the common terminology that binds us together with our allies and partners. In doing so, we will improve the resiliency of our institutions, alliances, and partnerships to prevail against the challenges China presents-ideologically and otherwise.
Washington must also continue to impose costs on Beijing in order to compel it to cease or reduce actions harmful to the United States' vital national interests and those of our allies and partners. The United States can no longer let the CCP grow stronger at our expense or with our assistance. The days of American passivity and naivety are over, and we will continue to speak about and respond to the CCP as it is, not as former U.S. policymakers had wished it to be. The 2017 National Security Strategy calls this approach "principled realism."
Lasting peace comes through strength. The United States is the strongest country on earth, and it must speak out, fight back, and above all, stay true to its principles - especially freedom of speech - which stand in stark contrast to the Marxist-Leninist ideology embraced by the CCP.
9. Are troops really leaving Germany? It's not totally clear.
An amendment to the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act could put a hold on the repositioning of forces, but that's if the plan survives beyond October at all.
"I do believe that if there's a change in the administration, that this will not happen," Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., told Military Times on Oct. 15 during a press call.
From the beginning, the plan was mired by politics.
President Donald Trump had been threatening Germany for years, questioning what more than 40,000 permanent troops were doing in that country.
In fact, minutes after Esper made a rare Pentagon briefing room appearance to unveil the plan on July 29, Trump insinuated to reporters outside the White House that Germany had it coming.
"Germany is not paying their bills," he said. "They're delinquent. It's simple."
He was referring to a goal NATO's member nations set for themselves, to be contributing 2 percent of their gross domestic product by 2024. A handful of countries have met that benchmark - including Bulgaria, Romania, Greece and Poland - but Germany is among the majority of countries who haven't.
"They owe NATO billions and they know it," Trump told reporters a month earlier. "Why should we be doing what we're doing if they don't pay?"
American troops have been stationed in Germany since the end of World War II, for an evolving set of reasons. The physical defense of Germany is not at the top of that list. Since World War II, most of that presence has existed to deter the Soviet Union from attacking or invading its neighbors.
U.S. bases have also provided a lily pad for troops deploying to the Middle East and Africa, as well as a crucial battlefield trauma center at Landstuhl, where thousands of wounded troops have had their life-threatening injuries tended to.
More recently, as Russia has increased its own military activity along its western border, American troops have been training and exercising with local forces from the Balkans to the Baltics, lest Soviet Union history repeat itself.
Esper's plan acknowledged this current reality, offering that though thousands of troops would be returning stateside from Germany, they would "begin continuous rotations farther east in the Black Sea region, giving us a more enduring presence to enhance deterrence and reassure allies along NATO's southeastern flank."
The plan involves moving 11,900 troops total of out Germany. About 5,600 would move to other parts of Europe, like Belgium and Italy. That number also includes 2,500 Air Force personnel who will stay at RAF Mildenhall, England, rather than complete a long-planned transfer to Germany.
Another 6,400, including the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, would head back to the States and become part of a rotational force that would deploy to Eastern Europe.
But critics have asked the Pentagon where that 12,000 number came from, and whether ideas like moving the U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command headquarters to Belgium are just to make the math work.
"I don't think this plan was particularly well thought out and I worry about a number of aspects of its implementation," Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., HASC's chairman, said during a hearing Sept. 30.
As an insurance policy, Gallego and his fellow House Armed Services Committee member, Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., added an amendment to the House's version of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, which would block the Pentagon from reducing troop levels in Germany.
"Part of what our military does is build those alliances and makes sure we don't have to actually use the military," Smith said during a mark-up of the bill. "All of those things should be thought about before we announce we're going to yank 10,000 troops out of Germany. By the way, the president has not yet been clear on what he's doing."
The amendment passed 49-7.
"The president may have his feelings, but this conversation also involves Congress, and Congress has a very different perspective when it comes to NATO," Gallego said. "I did not want this to happen quietly in the night."
Making moves?
Esper told reporters during his July briefing that some units would be ready to start moving out of Germany in a "matter of weeks," but by all accounts, everyone has stayed put.
Two Pentagon officials who testified before HASC on Sept. 30 could not provide further details on the plan - including a timeline or a cost analysis.
"I'm really having a problem connecting the dots with whether this is going to solve a problem, that I don't think exists," Jim Langevin, D-R.I., said. "In fact, I think it's going to create more problems than anything it's going to solve."
Though the Pentagon has proposed moving 12,000 troops out of Germany, officials could not offer details about the cost or the proposed timeline for carrying out the plan.
Meghann Myers, Joe Gould, Aaron Mehta
A Pentagon spokesman told Military Times on Tuesday that, three months later, those concrete transfers of personnel are still nascent.
"We are currently developing plans for the projected moves, which includes consultations with our allies and partners in the region, as well as members of Congress," Army Lt. Col. Thomas Campbell said in a statement. "The planning process is expected to take several months to complete."
And once the plans are laid, the physical movements will also take a while.
"It is a physics problem," Retired Gen. Mark Hertling, formerly of U.S. Army Europe, said during Gallego's press call. "You can't do that quickly."
In addition to moving thousands of troops and their families, their equipment - heavy ground vehicles, its air component's helicopters - would also have to come home. They, they have to go somewhere.
Many of the Army's heavy armored units are at Forts Hood and Bliss in Texas, or Fort Riley, Kan. They would be a natural fit in terms of posts that have the space for training on those vehicles, but housing, schools, daycares and more will require enough capacity to absorb thousands of families.
Despite the long lead time, DoD is not hedging on the plan in case Trump loses re-election and the withdrawal is no longer a priority, according to Campbell.
"The election is having no impact on the pace of planning," Campbell said. "This is a very complex series of moves and we want to make sure the plans are right, in order to execute them in a way that meets Secretary Esper's intent of enhancing deterrence against Russia and strengthening NATO, while ensuring we take care of service members and their families."
10. Australia's other special forces war: killing Islamic State
At the end of 2013 Australia's Special Operations Task Group (SOTG) rotated out of Afghanistan for the last time. Over 20 rotations, lasting roughly six months each, they had done the bulk of the fighting in what had been Australia's longest war, and its bloodiest since Vietnam. Approximately 8000-12,000 enemy combatants had been killed by Australians, mostly by SOTG. On the other side of the ledger, Australia had lost 41 servicemen, roughly half coming from the task group.
The war had been physically and mentally draining for Australia's top war fighters. It had also potentially been morally compromising for some, with an upcoming report from the Inspector General of the Australian Defence Force expected to examine at least 55 alleged incidents of war criminality by task group operators.
At the start of 2014 most at Special Operations Command (SOCOMD) believed a long period of relative inactivity was coming; a necessary interval during which the physical and mental wounds of Afghanistan could begin to heal.
But by the end of the year Australian special forces had been inserted into another Middle Eastern battlefield at least as bloody as Afghanistan; one unique in Australian warfare, as our forces faced a significant number of Australian citizens fighting against them.
The publicly available information about Operation Okra, against the proto-theocracy calling themselves Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham, ISIS or IS, stated that Australia's special forces were playing a minor role away from any fighting, as advisers and trainers.
But in fact Australian soldiers and intelligence officers were heavily involved in the fight, including key roles in the battles to liberate Ramadi and Mosul, as well as contributing personnel to a secretive intelligence cell in Amman, Jordan, run by the CIA and United States Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) that tracked and in some instances killed foreign fighters who had joined IS - including Australian citizens.
In June 2014 the case for international action against IS became compelling after its jihadists swept from Syria into northern Iraq, linking up with insurgent cells in a number of primarily Sunni cities and towns and attacking police and army checkpoints.
In the face of motivated resistance and with the spectre of the populace rising against them, the predominantly Shiite Iraqi federal forces fled from a number of cities, including the country's second-largest, Mosul.
Fleeing Iraqi forces left behind a huge amount of US-supplied armour and weaponry, including 2300 armoured Humvees, 75,000 machine guns and 40 M1A1 Abrams battle tanks (in comparison, Australia's entire main battle tank force consists of 59 M1A1 Abrams, purchased in 2007 at a cost of $550 million).
President Barack Obama, who had only recently removed the bulk of US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, was reluctant to commit to the Middle East again, but had no choice after the emboldened and newly armoured IS threatened Baghdad, where thousands of US government officials and contractors worked.
A US aircraft carrier and two guided missile ships were sent to the Gulf, US Delta Force teams were inserted to connect with Iraqi forces, and a US Army element led by General Dana Pittard was sent to organise the defence of Iraq's capital.
Working at the US embassy, Pittard gathered intelligence about the genocidal intent of IS and even saw first-hand an IS massacre via footage from an MQ-1 Predator drone sent north of the capital for reconnaissance.
Once the protection of Baghdad was assured, he sought approval to set up a command-and-control element in the US embassy from which a program of manhunts by air strike could be conducted, with a "kill chain" - from intelligence to air strike - in one room.
The US State Department told Pittard it wouldn't be appropriate to conduct such an activity in an embassy. "They were telling the wrong guy," says Pittard. "I knew we were doing this stuff from embassies all over the world. It was relatively new, what we were doing, but Special Ops and the CIA had been doing something similar, just not on this scale."
Eventually Pittard got his way and the strike cell was born. It was a place where many Australians would serve during the conflict.
The Baghdad strike cell would later migrate from the embassy to the city's international airport, not because of diplomatic conventions but because it needed more planes and staff.
Coalition partners were called upon, including Australia. Of particular interest were Australia's special forces, who had been integrated into US warfighting systems in Afghanistan and could, in Pittard's words, "operationalise the kind of risks" he wanted to take in his strike cell.
As well as the Australian bombers, Hercules transports and the E-7 Wedgetail surveillance plane sent into the theatre, special forces soldiers were deployed.
Announcing Australia's commitment to Iraq in September 2014, then prime minister Tony Abbott said: "We are not deploying combat troops but contributing to international efforts to prevent the humanitarian crisis from deepening."
As Abbott gave his speech, Australian special forces were either on their way to al-Minhad Air Base in the United Arab Emirates or there already, awaiting approval from the Iraqi government for a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that would allow them to insert into Iraq with the necessary legal cover.
These operators were primarily from 2 Commando Regiment, and it is believed this is because Perth's Special Air Service Regiment had been grounded in preparation for the IGADF investigation into possible war crimes.
When the SOFA wasn't forthcoming for the Australian force in the UAE, the operators were issued diplomatic passports, investing them with the same legal protection as Australia's diplomats overseas.
A special forces operator named in my book Mosul: Australia's Secret War inside the ISIS Caliphate as Nathan Knox (not his real name) described arriving at al-Asad Air Base in Iraq's north-western Anbar Province, which had been almost completely overrun by IS.
"Just outside the base you could see ... tracer rounds and gunfire from [the towns of] Ramadi and Fallujah, so we knew we were getting into something different from Afghanistan."
At al-Asad the Australian soldiers saw the full brutality of the conflict. They worked in a tactical operations centre (which later became a strike cell), calling in air strikes in the adjacent towns and cities occupied by IS.
After each strike the Australians were tasked with arranging the delivery of the bodies of those killed in the strikes and "biometrically enrolling" them - checking their identities against a huge, international database of suspected jihadists.
This work was done with Iraqi partner forces who often mutilated the corpses of their enemy and, in at least one instance, executed prisoners at al-Asad.
These partner forces included the Popular Mobilisation Forces, a Shiite Iraqi militia working either under the direction of or alongside the expeditionary Quds Force led by Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani, who was seen by the Australians at al-Asad. Soleimani himself was killed by a US air strike near Baghdad airport in January of this year. That strike also killed Jamal Jaafar Mohammed, the deputy head of the Popular Mobilisation Forces.
"Most of [the Iraqi soldiers partnered with Australia Special Forces] have never heard of Switzerland, let alone the Geneva Convention. It's their country and they're going to do what they want to do. My job was just to keep my head down and do my job to the best of my abilities," says Knox.
"I can put my hand on my heart and say I never saw an Australian commit a war crime - but I saw dozens of war crimes. Every partner force I've been with overseas committed war crimes in front of us."
As well as contributing with air assets and special forces to the fight in Iraq, Australia contributed personnel to Operation Gallant Phoenix, an intelligence cell based in Amman, Jordan, monitoring IS foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria.
Run by the US but with law enforcement and military intelligence officers from all of the Five Eyes nations (Australia, the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand) in attendance, Gallant Phoenix represents perhaps the most sensitive element of Australia's involvement in the fight against IS, with little public information available about its activities.
It is described on New Zealand's Ministry of Defence website as "a multinational and information-sharing and intelligence mission", but Pittard says that it was also empowered to create what the military calls "kinetic effects" - air strikes.
It seems that from Jordan air strikes were planned or facilitated against Australian citizens in Iraq who had joined IS and were either fighting in Iraq or Syria or planning terrorist attacks in Australia.
When I asked former prime minister Abbott about one specific Australian target I suspected had been killed in a targeted air strike, he told me he was briefed before the killing, adding: "My attitude was that anyone working for ISIS was a legitimate target."
It's likely that a number of Australians fighting and working with IS in Iraq and Syria were monitored by Gallant Phoenix and killed in targeted air strikes, including notorious Sydney jihadist Khaled Sharrouf, Mohamed Elomar and Mohammad Ali Baryalei.
Throughout 2015 and 2016 Australian soldiers rotated in and out of the Iraqi strike cells, as did specialised Australian Joint Terminal Attack Controllers and Combat Control Team from the Royal Australian Air Force.
In these cells they facilitated thousands of air strikes, killing scores of IS fighters, destroying materiel including the Humvees and tanks seized in Mosul, and creating the conditions under which Iraqi cities might be retaken.
Meanwhile Australian special forces were also training the men of the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) and Iraqi Special Operations Force (ISOF), units that would be conducting the ground assaults in the Iraqi cities occupied by IS.
When the time came to retake those cities - Ramadi in August 2015, Mosul in October 2016 - Australian special forces teams were chosen to support the Iraqi CTS and ISOF.
In Mosul the Australians helped build and run a strike cell to support the assault, first in the eastern suburb of Bartella and then in a Tactical Assembly Area just south of the city, alongside two US Navy SEAL teams.
During the fight for Mosul, one of the largest and bloodiest urban battles since World War II, Australian soldiers were exposed to chemical weapons and attacked with mortars, rockets and drones.
Australia's role in this conflict in Iraq largely came and went without the public noticing much, thanks in no small part to the lack of military casualties. Death, however, was commonplace in the Australians' area of operations.
"The politicians and the senior officers in Canberra ... used task verbs like 'destroy,' 'neutralise,' 'disrupt', that all means the same shit: kill," says Knox. "They don't know what these people looked like [after they died], but I do."
FORT HOOD, Texas - The training begins with a bar scene. Two male soldiers act out a night of celebrating a promotion, but one soldier is feeding shots to the other while just sipping a beer. The sober soldier begins getting closer to his drunken friend, occasionally putting a hand on him, leaning across, touching more than normal.
Sgt. 1st Class Crystal Basham, the lead sexual assault response coordinator for the 1st Cavalry Division, pauses the scene to ask whether anyone would step up and stop this. What if the drunken soldier were a woman?
The scenario is one of five presented to small groups of soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, at the 1st Cavalry Division's SHARP 360 facility - an interactive training center opened in April 2018 as an alternative to the standard training mandated by the Army's Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention program, known as SHARP.
<gallery>
Basham and her team use real-life examples of sexual harassment and assault, and role-play how to intervene.
In the bar scene, "we focus on male-on-male assault, because when we ask males, 'What do you do on a daily basis to ensure you're not sexually assaulted?' we hear them say they don't really think about it," Basham said. Most male soldiers say they provide the women in their lives a list of ways to protect themselves. "We ask, 'Why don't you do this for yourself?' "
This lesson is reinforced during scenes that play out in a mock barracks room, gym, office and field training. Soldiers who attend the training tell her it beats a PowerPoint presentation.
"They get same information, but it's the delivery of it," Basham said. "It gives them an opportunity to really see it."
Maj. Gen. Jeff Broadwater, 1st Cavalry Division commander, has observed soldiers training at the 360 facility and brought his commanders to better understand as well.
"You have more interactions and it leads to better discussions and better knowledge of certain situations that we want to be aware of as we go," he said. "We're all getting better and identifying problems, to address those problems and move forward."
<element>
The 360 facility, built in an abandoned building on the west side of the base, is just one part of the training made mandatory under the division's Operation Pegasus Strength. The trust-building initiative among soldiers and leaders takes a holistic approach to improving soldiers' well-being. It aims to remove three "corrosives" that destroy trust - sexual assault and harassment; extremism and racism; and suicide, Broadwater said when the training began last month.
Spc. Eunylda Marin, a 22-year-old fire support specialist within the division's 2nd Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment, said the scenarios were "eye-opening."
"We were told, 'Soldiers look to the left and right. Look front and behind. That's what a predator looks like. Look again, that's what a victim looks like,' " she recalled. "So you don't really know. We're all wearing the same uniform, so it's hard to tell."
Her takeaway: It's important to always be aware of what's going on.
"There's no such thing as an innocent bystander. If you feel like something's wrong or see something wrong, it's better to intervene and be wrong rather than not to intervene. It's important to take care of everyone's safety," Marin said. "That hit me. It's something I will definitely take more seriously. It's really unfortunate that some events happened and could have been stopped by something as simple as saying, 'Hey, what are you doing?' "
<element>
The facility also has two rooms designed to reinforce what soldiers learn - a quiz game and an escape-room style game where soldiers learn about resources on base in exchange for keys to free Spc. Teddy, a human-size teddy bear dressed in an Army combat uniform.
Before the year's end, each of the 29 battalions in the division will take one week to focus on holistic health and trust, with at least half a day at the SHARP 360 facility. The week includes a mix of physical fitness events and classes. Some attempt to destigmatize the need for behavioral health resources, and others promote nutrition and stress management and articulate resources available for everything from financial assistance to discrimination reports.
Pegasus Strength is nested in the same ideas as a weeklong trust-building initiative held last month within the division's higher command, III Corps. Soon the corps will expand that initiative under the name Operation People First to the other three divisions under its command.
"We do have some significant issues to tackle here at Fort Hood," Maj. Gen. John Richardson IV said during a recent phone interview. A common denominator of these issues was a "trust deficit that has built over time between soldiers and the chain of command."
Initiatives and information from Army Forces Command and the Pentagon show that these issues aren't limited to Fort Hood. Across the formation, rates of suicide have climbed during the coronavirus pandemic, and soldiers and families continue to feel neglected when it comes to safe living conditions in base housing and the barracks.
<element>
Army leaders said this month that they have seen about a 30% jump in the number of active-duty suicides this year, and the increased numbers coincide with the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. James McConville described the support system that the Army hopes to build around each soldier as the "golden triangle." Three points - a leader, family and friends - surround a soldier to provide a greater support system.
"These are difficult times and leaders need to think through how we are taking care of our families during this environment," McConville said last week during the Association of the U.S. Army annual conference. "We have single [and] dual working parents. We need to take a hard look at how we are supporting our soldiers."
The weeklong conference also included the announcement of huge funding infusions for base living quarters.
Nearly $9 billion will flow into barracks projects over the next 10 years, starting with $780 million this year, McConville said.
"We want to make sure we have quality barracks, and we are putting billions of dollars into those facilities to make sure that we have that quality," he said. "It is going to take some time, but we are committed to making that happen."
These positive changes help rebuild trust, Richardson said.
"The chain of command is not responsible for houses, but they are responsible for families," he said. "We are getting the chain of command in contact with the families and beginning that connective tissue" of the golden triangle.
Marin, who oversees three soldiers, said she has taken these lessons to heart. She carries them with others from the strong leadership she said she has had during her time in the Army. When things get difficult, she tells her soldiers they will adapt and overcome. Then it will get easier.
"Throughout the line I've had so many great [noncommissioned officers] and officers. They taught me to exhaust every avenue before giving up on something. I always treat my soldiers like they are real people. If they need help, I'm always right there helping them out. I won't stop until I figure out any way I can help them, because that's the leadership I got," Marin said. "It's only fair that I give that to future leaders."
12. Indonesia Deports 4 Uyghur Terrorism Convicts to China, Experts Say
To certain incarceration in a gulag.
Indonesia Deports 4 Uyghur Terrorism Convicts to China, Experts Say
Four Uyghur Muslims convicted in 2015 of terror-related offenses in Indonesia were deported last month after the Chinese government paid the fines imposed on them, two counter-terrorism experts told BenarNews on Friday.
When asked where they had been sent, both experts confirmed that the four men were deported to China, where authorities are believed to have held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in a network of internment camps as part of an extralegal campaign of incarceration that began in early 2017.
"They were deported in September and the fines were paid by the Chinese government," Deka Anwar, a researcher at the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC), told BenarNews.
The four - Ahmet Mahmud, Altinci Bayram, Ahmet Bozoglan and Abdul Basit Tuzer - were sentenced to six years in prison and were fined 100 million rupiah (U.S. $6,812) by a Jakarta court after being found guilty of entering the country by using fake passports and for attempting to join the Islamic State-affiliated Eastern Indonesia Mujahideen (MIT) militant group.
Muhammad Taufiqurrohman, a senior researcher at the Center for Radicalism and Deradicalization Studies (PAKAR), said that the four men were repatriated to China after immigration officers transported them to a detention center from Nusa Kambangan, an island-prison complex off Java, on Sept. 17.
"Immigration officers came to Nusa Kambangan with a letter to pick them up, saying they were to be transferred to an immigration detention center," Taufiqurrohman told BenarNews. He also confirmed the information that Chinese authorities had paid the Uyghur men's fines.
On Friday, BenarNews contacted the Chinese embassy in Jakarta for comment on the four men's deportation, but officials there did not immediately respond.
The spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Teuku Faizasyah, said he had no information on the matter and asked BenarNews to contact the Ministry of Law and Human Rights.
Reinhard Silitonga, the director general of corrections at the Ministry of Law and Human Rights, told BenarNews he couldn't confirm whether the four men had been deported.
And officials at the immigration department could not be reached immediately to confirm that the Uyghurs had been expelled.
'Vocational centers'
PAKAR's Taufiqurrohman said Indonesia carried out the deportation of the four men in secret because many in the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation criticize China's alleged mistreatment of the Uyghurs, who mostly live in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in northwestern China.
"The [Indonesian] government would be heavily criticized and be labelled complicit in the Chinese government's oppression of Uyghur Muslims," if the deportation of the four Uyghurs was made public, Taufiqurrohman said.
For more than three years, the Chinese government has allegedly imprisoned hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs in detention camps and subjected those not detained to intense surveillance, religious restrictions and forced sterilizations, said a report published in June by the Council on Foreign Relations, a U.S.-based think-tank.
Chinese officials have repeatedly denied these allegations, saying the camps are centers for vocational training and that the thousands of Uyghur Muslims arrested had links to extremism.
BenarNews informed Usman Hamid, executive director of Amnesty International in Indonesia, about Deka's and Taufiqurrohman' assertion that Indonesia had deported the four Uyghurs who had been in prison on terrorism charges.
Usman said the Indonesian government must provide an explanation on the fate of the four Uyghurs.
"The Indonesian government must immediately provide an official statement regarding the truth of the report about the deportation of the four Uyghurs," Usman said.
"Deporting them to a country that could put them at real risk of human rights violations is illegal under international law. We understand that the pandemic situation poses challenges to the government, but deporting foreigners who are at risk of being subjected to human rights violations is not a solution."
Four years ago, Indonesia had turned down a request from the Chinese government to exchange a fugitive Indonesian banker captured in China for the four Uyghur prisoners serving terrorism-related sentences.
Indonesia told China that a prisoner swap wasn't possible because the charges against the four Uyghurs were different from those against the Indonesia banker.
Back then, an Indonesian official who requested anonymity said Indonesia would face international pressure if the country agreed to deport the Uyghur prisoners to China.
"Giving Uyghurs back to China is the same as killing them. Most probably, the Chinese government will execute them instantly," the official told BenarNews in April 2019.
In the years since, the Indonesian government has faced criticism at home and abroad for its silence on the alleged mistreatment of Uyghurs in XUAR.
"Indonesia - which has played a positive role in the Rohingya refugee crisis - has shown its commitment to promoting rights elsewhere in the region. It should do no less for China's Muslims," Human Rights Watch said in January.
Last December, thousands of people took to the streets in Indonesia and Malaysia to protest China's treatment of the Muslim minority community.
"The Indonesian government must not remain silent about the suffering there, because according to our constitution, occupation and oppression must be abolished," a 48-year-old protester told BenarNews during a demonstration outside the Chinese embassy in Jakarta.
Days before the protest, Moeldoko, President Joko Widodo's chief of staff, said Indonesia would not interfere in Chinese domestic affairs when asked why the government was not more vocal about the Uyghur issue.
"Each country has its own sovereignty to regulate its citizens. The Indonesian government won't interfere in the domestic affairs of China." Moeldoko said.
His comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported that Beijing had launched a "concerted campaign" to convince Indonesia's religious authorities and journalists that the Xinjiang camps were a "well-meaning effort" to provide job training.
Expatriate communities in Turkey, other nations
Thousands of Uyghurs have fled China since their alleged persecution began in 2012, and made their way to Turkey and other countries.
IPAC's Deka said that between 2014 and 2016, at least 13 Uyghurs had entered Indonesia illegally via Malaysia and joined radical groups.
They had left China, via the border with Laos, for Thailand, and then continued their journey to join the thousands of Uyghur asylum seekers in Malaysia, Deka said.
"In Malaysia, they got help to forge documents so they could go to Turkey. However, many of those who made it to Turkey were eventually deported back to Kuala Lumpur. Some of them then crossed to Batam via Johor," said Deka, referring to an Indonesian island near Singapore.
"In Batam, they were picked up by members of the Bahrun Naim network," he added, referring to an Islamic State fighter from Indonesia who died in Syria in 2018.
The four Uyghurs convicted in 2015 came to Indonesia with the intention of joining the militant MIT group and "performing acts of terror," said the judge who led a panel of jurists that convicted the men.
While the Uyghurs' lawyer had argued that they were Turkish citizens vacationing in Indonesia, government lawyers said the men had fake Turkish passports and were en route to meet Indonesia's most wanted terrorist of that time, Santoso, when they were arrested in Central Sulawesi in September 2014.
Santoso was killed by security forces in July 2016.
Deka and Taufiqurrohman said the four Uyghurs were among the last Uyghur militants in Indonesia after others were killed by police and troops hunting for MIT militants in Central Sulawesi.
Six Uyghur men who joined MIT were killed in 2016 during a large security operation in Poso regency.
13. Senate urged to defund anti-communist task force (Philippines)
MANILA, Philippines - The Senate is being urged to defund the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict after its spokesperson got himself in hot water yet again for issuing a veiled threat against actress Liza Soberano.
Rep. Carlos Zarate and Rep. Ferdinand Gaite from the left-leaning Bayan Muna party-list urged their counterparts in the upper chamber to defund the anti-communist task force and rechannel its funds to healthcare, jobs and aid for workers affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
"We have here a task force that is only spreading lies, disinformation and fake news that would be funded by around P19 billion of taxpayers' money that could have been allocated to fighting the COVID pandemic, give aid to those left jobless by the pandemic and help our agriculture," Zarate said in a statement on Saturday.
The realignment of P16.44 billion from the anti-communist task force to health and social services is among the proposed amendments of the left-leaning Makabayan bloc, which includes Bayan Muna, to the P4.5-trillion national budget for next year.
The bloc called it a "pork barrel" fund which gives the task force discretion on how to distribute it to barangays.
"It is only Congress who has the power of the purse yet thus we cannot allow such a mere task force dictates where and when to use such a very large unitemized and discretionary lump-sum," the Makabayan bloc said in its letter to the House Committee on Appropriations.
The House of Representatives passed last week the budget on third and final reading, subject to amendments of a small committee formed to tackle proposed changes to the spending bill.
The lower chamber is set to transmit the 2021 budget to the Senate on October 28.
History of red-tagging
The anti-communist task force has a history of red-tagging individuals and groups it claims to be fronts of the Communist Party of the Philippines.
Support for and even membership in activist groups is not the same as taking up arms against the government.
In its latest move, its spokesperson, Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade Jr., accused women's party Gabriela of being a front of the underground communist women's organization Malayang Kilusan ng Bagong Kababaihan.
Parlade also warned Soberano, who spoke at a webinar of Gabriela Youth, that she will "suffer the same fate as Josephine Anne Lapira," a communist rebel who was killed in an encounter with soldiers, if she does not leave the group.
His comments drew flak from netizens and lawmakers, who raised that red-tagging endangers the lives of those accused as communists.
But Parlade refused to apologize for his comments, telling ANC's "Headstart" that this is all part of a propaganda war against communist rebels.
Human rights commissioner Gwendolyn Pimentel-Gana, however, said that Parlade's statement "is a form of suppression and restriction that serves to dissuade those who speak up for their beliefs and advocacies."
Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana has since called to convene the anti-communist task force to discuss Parlade's statement.
In the meantime, he advised Parlade to remain quiet. - with a report from The STAR/Romina Cabrera
14. The U.S. Just Set a New Daily Record for COVID-19 Cases
Just days before a momentous and unpredictable Presidential election, the United States has reached a new record high in the number of daily COVID-19 infections, surpassing the peak in mid-July during the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic's domestic toll. As of Oct. 23, there was a weekly average of 21.2 infections per 100,000 residents, up from 20.5 on July 19 and ticking rapidly upward. The country also set a new single-day record on Oct. 23 with 83,757 new cases.
There have been clear signs for weeks of a third wave of the pandemic in the U.S. as the weather gets colder and the virus has migrated from metropolitan regions to more rural settings. But it was far from certain, at the beginning of October, that the resurgence would surpass that of the summer, even though the figures were climbing far sooner than the timeline of the most promising vaccine trials, one of which was temporarily halted after a volunteer became ill but is set to resume soon.
We know now that the third wave will be worse than the second, which was far worse than the first, when cases peaked at 9.7 per 100,000 on April 7.
The twin threads of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 Presidential Election that have cornered the headline market all year were perhaps destined to converge, but the timing couldn't have come any more conspicuously, as deadlines for requesting and submitting mail-in ballots loom or have passed in many states and polling locations scramble to enact safety measures for those who vote in person.
The COVID-19 pandemic has ground many sectors of life to a complete halt or, at best, a crawl. Even after the election results are clear, which is unlikely to be next Tuesday evening, all signs suggest the winner will take the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2021 at a generous distance from Chief Justice John Roberts-if not by Zoom.
15. Who Really Owes $1.6 Trillion Of Student Loans?
Interesting fact. Most student loan debt is for graduate school. I did not know that though I had often heard that masters degree programs were the cash cows for universities.
Who really owes $1.6 trillion student loan debt? It's not who you think.
Here's what you need to know.
Student Loans
The latest student loan debt statistics show that 45 million borrowers collectively owe more than $1.6 trillion in student loan debt. However, these headline statistics miss the details of who really owes these student loans. Let's breakdown the latest Brookings research and Federal Reserve data of federal student loans, which account for more than 90% of all outstanding student loans:
1. Highest income-earners owe the most student loan debt
Highest-income households: owe 60% of outstanding student loan debt and make about 75% of all student loan payments.
Lowest-income households: owe less than 20% of outstanding student loan debt and make only of student loan payments.
This data reflects economic realities that those with a college degree earn more income and those with higher income are able to make more student loan payments. Lower-income student loan borrowers may be enrolled in an income-driven repayment plan, which could lower their student loan payment to as low as $0 per month.
2. Very few people owe more than $100,000 of student loan debt
Only 6% of borrowers owe more than $100,000 in student loan debt.
Only 2% owe more than $200,000.
Approximately 18% of borrowers owe less than $5,000 in student loan debt, which represents 1% of all student loan debt.
3. Most student loan debt is for graduate school
Most student loan debt is from graduate school, not college.
The latest data shows that 56% of student loan debt comes from graduate school.
Of the 56%, approximately 36% hold a master's degree and 30% hold a professional or doctoral degree.
Typically, although not always, borrowers with a graduate or professional degree earn more income than a borrower with only a college degree.
Those who attend graduate school tend to be more financially secure
Final Thoughts
The latest Federal Reserve data suggests that student loan debt is most concentrated among higher income earners who hold graduate degrees. This doesn't mean that low income borrowers are not burdened by student loan debt or face financial struggle; many do. At the same time, the impact of Covid-19 advanced financial struggles for millions of Americans, which has included lost wages, job and healthcare. Brookings suggests that proposals for broad student loan forgiveness or to cancel student loan debt should be thoughtful in terms of who they target. There is also the underlying issue of educational opportunity, including who has access to attend college and graduate school.
According to Brookings, however, "these updated statistics provide an important reminder that broad policies to forgive student debt across the board or to waive monthly payments will not effectively address the acute problems facing those most affected by the pandemic, many of whom were in the most precarious situations even before this crisis. Instead, they will exacerbate the long-term trend of economic inequality between those who have gone to college or graduate school and those who have not."
Pay off student loans
Know your options to pay off student loans. Here are some options to consider, all of which have no fees:
16. Human Centered Design Is Revolutionizing How We Respond To Emergencies
Conclusion: "Design has always held a unique place in our history. It is clear from early records that aesthetics have always been important to us and now doctors are discovering that it can also improve our health. Will it one day also create solutions that become legacies the way Olmsted's design for Central Park has inspired and supported generations? Bio inspired design through material innovation is creating solutions for reversing Global Warming so that Earth can become a legacy to our ability to change, to revere beauty over profit and human well being over greed. TM's work is an example of how, design together with government, can create solutions that impact the lives of people around the world in an instant, an instant that may well ripple forward for years to come."
Human Centered Design Is Revolutionizing How We Respond To Emergencies
"I want to design how veterans get care. I want to design the experience for immigrants to onboard to our so ciety and feel welcome. My grandfather told me, 'Keep your head in the clouds and feet on the ground.' I live by that every day." ~ Shaun Modi, Owner, TM
Example of Next Nav in Action
TM
What would the world look like if designers did more than design attractive products? What if they were also involved in creating policy for the future and creating solutions that put humans first, in times of emergency? Government and healthcare agencies are beginning to reach out to designers to solve some of our toughest challenges.
In March, COVID-19 marched across America, leaving health and government organizations scrambling to find solutions. TM, a San Francisco based design firm started in 2014 by Shaun Modi and Steph Bain - both architects of Airbnb's original ecosystem - is a team that government agencies are turning to when they are looking to make sense of enormous amounts of complex data in ways that make it easier and faster to create strategic clarity and agile responses to crisis like the pandemic. In three months the TM team, led by John Ashenden, were able to provide one of the country's biggest health providers with important data to help combat the pandemic.
One doesn't often think of design in the context of government, healthcare or national defense, yet, history is filled with monuments to the power of design to create solutions that both aid and inspire generations. During the Great Depression, Roosevelt commissioned the Gold Gate Bridge to create jobs. Almost 100 years later, it inspires thousands of people every day, while also connecting them to the beating heart of San Francisco and Silicon Valley. The Golden Gate bridge is a fitting metaphor for how design aesthetics can join together with utility to create solutions that connect and support human greatness.
Anthem, the Indianapolis, Indiana-based insurance giant realized when the Pandemic hit, that it was missing a key tool that would allow it to accurately gauge, predict, and visually represent information about the virus's path and impact in order to make better decisions. They also needed a way to be more agile so they could respond quickly to a dizzying array of variables and constantly changing data. They needed ways to make decisions that would save lives and they needed it fast. For example, where would COVID rise next? Which hospitals would need ventilators? They also needed ways to predict future states such as, "what would happen when schools began to reopen?
For Anthem, TM devised a two-phase approach to ensure that crucial information would be shared without delay. Less than two weeks after the first conversation, a website went live providing key COVID stats. By June, a full-fledged tool called C19 Explorer was up and running. It draws from Anthem's data-science partners CloudMedx and XY.ai as well as government sources like the CDC, providing crucial real-time insights and predictive data that Anthem and its clients have been using to accurately gauge risk and readiness in communities across the country. "We were a large organization in paralysis," says Anthem vice president Bobby Samuel. "TM was able to help us mobilize by sharing a vision of how we could use all this data. In just weeks they were able to make something intuitive and useful."
Today much of design is invisible, working with artificial intelligence, blending the tangible with the intangible. Unseen, AI brings with it the power to make fast, accurate decisions, while traditional graphic design delivers compelling visual stories about information that multiple users can all understand. Together, these create a common language between industries and people, avoiding the mistakes that occur through differences in terminology. During TM's work with Anthem, the hard work was behind-the-scenes, solving for how to scrape data from multiple sources and formats and bring it together into one platform. Visibly, the C19 Explorer platform creates rich visuals and communicated information in ways that state, local and federal organizations can understand. As humans we tend to trust what we see. Through the combination of design and AI, C-19 is doing more than creating a common language for the health care industry and government, it is building trust.
Modi, who is a huge fan of the civic-minded 20th century design giant Raymond Loewy (who helped shape everything from America's railroads to Air Force One's iconic livery) firmly believes there should be a designer in every boardroom and high-level government office in America. Why? The design process is powerful because it can often close the gap between what a client thinks its customers want and what they actually need by putting the human beings they are trying to solve for at the center of their research. Design can provide quick solutions to crisis because it is creates a common language where different groups can meet. It is iterative, fast-moving, and collaborative.
When the pandemic began, TM partnered with the Department of Defense's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center to spearhead Project Salus (named for the Roman goddess of safety and wellbeing), which brought together tech giants, government organizations and universities to develop a predictive dashboard that would help identify critical supply chain shortages if they were to occur. As part of this collaborative effort, the TM team worked with the military's decision-making system called the OODA loop, which stands for "observe, orient, decide, act." It's the creation of the famed 20th century fighter pilot and military strategist Col. John Boyd. The TM team found many parallels between the OODA loop the design process, so much so, that they've now incorporated some of its methods into their own design process.
"In the military you see a total focus on mission." "There is no room for personal preference or ego. People work around the clock to keep everyone in our country safe. Teamwork is key. In the military, the chain of command has a longitudinal and latitudinal cascade of impact with different user personas to solve for, much like the steps in a user journey."
NextNav, another project the TM team worked on, is a great illustration of how design can create solutions for emergency response and help start-ups communicate their value to investors. NextNav is the creator of a GPS-like system used by police and fire departments called the Metropolitan Beacon System (MBS). Unlike GPS, MBS functions indoors and includes a Z axis (altitude) in addition to X (longitude) and Y (latitude) axes. TM was tasked with making the data as legible and useful as possible via a mobile app in high-stress situations.
TM began the project by interviewing first responders up and down the chain of command and discovered that a key challenge in emergency situations is simply coordinating efforts between response units from different districts, each operating under its own commanders. In an office-tower fire, for instance, there could be firefighters from multiple units working together throughout the building. There was no easy way to share critical information such as how many firefighters are on a floor, which floors they are on, or their names. TM worked on honing NextNav's interface to synthesize numerous data feeds and render three-dimensional information into a quick and easy-to-read screen. "The real challenge with this project was capturing that other dimension, the vertical dimension, in a simple and clear way," says Ashenden. "Was there an alternative to a 3D view? I was concerned 3D could be stressful in a mobile phone to pan, zip and zoom around. We wanted something that would feel familiar in terms of patterns to those who have used mapping apps." (The solution? An altimeter-like overlay that sits on top of a two-dimensional map.)
NextNav raised $120 Million in series E funding in the wake of TM's work, and NASA has said it will use the MBS network as part of its research into urban drone delivery and automated aerial vehicles. According to NextNav, TM's refinement of MBS's usability was the key factor in the latest round of funding. "The buildup to getting that money was being able to credibly articulate to investors and the board of directors what this raw technology could enable," says Rob Rovetta, Vice President of Program Management at NextNav.
We are facing a difficult future thanks to our part in creating global warming. Many would argue that we are where we are precisely because we have not put human well-being in the center of our decisions. Human centered design is powerful precisely because it puts human well-being first when making decisions. Over the past six years, TM has worked with clients ranging from Google to Volkswaggen, and their design-driven approach has produced measurable impacts for clients - saving them money and speeding up workflows. For example, working with the German startup Konux, TM designed AI-enhanced software to help trains throughout Europe run on time.
Design has always held a unique place in our history. It is clear from early records that aesthetics have always been important to us and now doctors are discovering that it can also improve our health. Will it one day also create solutions that become legacies the way Olmsted's design for Central Park has inspired and supported generations? Bio inspired design through material innovation is creating solutions for reversing Global Warming so that Earth can become a legacy to our ability to change, to revere beauty over profit and human well being over greed. TM's work is an example of how, design together with government, can create solutions that impact the lives of people around the world in an instant, an instant that may well ripple forward for years to come.
17. JBLM has become an illegal dumping ground, endangering soldiers and the environment
I am saddened to read this. Fort Lewis was always one of the most beautiful installations. I guess now soldiers are going to have to defend their training areas from illegal dumpers.
JBLM has become an illegal dumping ground, endangering soldiers and the environment
A few times a week, Phil Asay, 82, and his Australian shepherds - JaK and eM - go for a walk near state Route 507 on the southeast side of Joint Base Lewis-McChord. JBLM uses those 23,000 acres for training exercises, but people like Asay can get recreational passes to use the area.
Asay says no matter where he walks, there's garbage.
"I've found discarded boats, a whole set of tires and even a Toyota someone was in the process of stripping out here," Asay said.
Illegal dumping has become a top priority for JBLM's leadership. On average, 150 tons of garbage is illegally dumped on the base, according to 2019 report.
The $500,000 spent annually to clean up dumpsites across the installation covers the cost of dump trucks, cleaning materials and even, on occasion, hazmat teams, but that amount does not include the cost of labor. If they were to include labor costs, JBLM garrison commander Col. Skye Duncan estimated, the cost would be in the millions.
The base tries to recoup the expense with fines that range from $50 to $5,000 and civil lawsuits against individuals who are caught dumping, but the cases are difficult to pursue.
Maj. Meghan Starr, JBLM's provost marshal, said their best chance is to catch someone in the act. She said at least three people were caught dumping garbage the week of Oct. 12. They'll be charged with illegal dumping and trespassing.
Starr sees the solution to the trash problem in two parts: prevention and enforcement.
"On the prevention side, we're thinking, 'OK, how do we put the safety of our soldiers first?'" Starr said. "And then enforcement is just ticketing and trying to get back some of the cost of the cleanup."
From household trash to hazardous materials
Ted Solonar, deputy director of emergency services on JBLM, said the illegal dumping problem has escalated from household trash to garbage that has clearly been left by a business.
"What we're seeing now goes beyond misdemeanor tickets - it goes to a criminal level and a concerted effort to dump large amounts of stuff like construction materials," Solonar said. "I hate to call it sophisticated, but people have developed techniques to dump large quantities and quickly get out of there."
Solonar said that kind of dumping is not only dangerous, it actively interferes with the Army's training activity.
He explained that training exercises can take months of planning, and units are booked into training areas back-to-back. So, if a unit encounters a dumpsite that is potentially hazardous, that forces the exercise to stop altogether, and the unit is often unable to simply resume once it's cleaned.
Those hazardous sites are of particular concern to JBLM leadership. Not only do they pose a significant health risk to soldiers, but the Army has to invest time and money into additional training so soldiers can identify potentially hazardous materials. According to Duncan, this is not training they'd normally be getting.
Twice per year, JBLM sends hundreds of soldiers to the training areas to clean up dumpsites for one week. Duncan said JBLM used to publicize their biannual clean up but have stopped because people were "pre-dumping" materials.
"We're always going to do some form of cleanup because we want to leave our training area better than we found it," Duncan said. "But we are not enlisting soldiers for this purpose."
Asay said the fact that soldiers have to become glorified trash collectors is what angers him most about the garbage dumping problem.
"What's really disheartening to think about is these young men and women who join the Army expecting to get skills and job training," Asay said. "I don't know a single one who wants to learn how to be a trash collector."
Asay fondly recalls his time as an officer with the 176th Signal Company, on then Fort Lewis, but said illegal dumping was a problem in the 1970s as well. He said he remembers having to send soldiers out to clean the training areas every week.
"It would completely interrupt our training because we'd have to sacrifice a squad every single week to pick up trash," Asay said.
The 'Trash Cop'
As part of their effort to prevent illegal dumping, JBLM started an illegal dumping program in 2005, led by an environmental investigator, Greg Mason, also known as the "Trash Cop."
Mason investigates the dumpsites to look for identifiable things like receipts, mail, shipping containers and even Starbucks cups because the labels will have names and dates.
He uses those items to identify potential culprits. In one instance, boxes full of financial records led him to multiple local mechanics.
Asay and other civilians who use the training areas for recreation report dumpsites to Mason, who will often leave a glove to let people know he's seen that site.
Other preventative measures include closing off roads leading to the training areas. The base has already closed around 60 paths and plans to close another 60, according to Duncan.
Duncan said people are encouraged to call in to report dumpsites or dumping that's in progress. JBLM officials do not want people to engage with perpetrators.
"If you can safely get some identifying information like a license plate, that's helpful, but we do not want people to engage with them," Duncan said.
The training areas are not fenced off - to give recreational users access - but there are numerous signs warning civilians they've entered the base. In fact, recreational users who already need a permit must also call range control before entering the area to make sure there is no active training exercise.
Solonar said JBLM relies on people like Asay to be their "eyes and ears" when it comes to this problem, but if they aren't able to maintain the training area, they might have to shut down recreational use altogether.
"This practice is destroying the great training areas we have here, but there's also an environmental cost," Solonar said, adding that JBLM training areas contain some of the last remaining prairie habitats in the Northwest. "We've protected that environment for 100 years, and we want to protect it 100 more, but we need help."
Asay said he hopes people will be deterred if they know there are people like him who watch over the area.
People who spot dumpsites on JBLM are encouraged to call the base's non-emergency line at 254-912-4442 or 254-912-4446.
18. Reflections on Becoming a (Amateur) Military Writer
Good advice. I would add for young first time writers, consider that you have an opportunity to publish at Small Wars Journal.
Reflections on Becoming a (Amateur) Military Writer
In September, I celebrated one year since my first article was published. When I posted to Twitter about this fact, the always article hunting Nick Alexander suggested I write a reflection on my first year of writing. This is the result.
The aim of this is two-fold:
To reflect on the experiences and lessons from this first year, and
To challenge some of the myths I've heard my peers say about writing and encourage others to begin their military writing journeys.
The first part of any reflection is to re-cap the experiences had. For me, that's having nine articles published (and writing many more that haven't been yet). But it has also included exploring different ideas, engaging with new people (around the world), and having my thoughts challenged (regularly).
So, from my experiences, here's some of what I've learnt:
Writing is a learning journey. Each time you set out to write something you learn more about the topic, but also about yourself. Beyond this, what you write will often be part of someone else's learning journey, helping to shape their thoughts. Bring people with you on your journey.
Writing is a conversation. When you write, you're contributing to a conversation about a topic. This means you're not trying to provide the final answer, rather you're adding to the sum of knowledge with a different perspective to make it a more diverse and rounded discussion.
Explore what interests you. Since you're not trying to provide the answers, you can explore the things that interest you, in the ways that interest you most. Let the things you're passionate and excited about guide you.
There aren't many sea monsters, but people will disagree with you. Since writing is a conversation, you will get people who agree with you and those who don't. I learnt this lesson on my first article, thanks to Paul Barnes. This is all part of the fun of engaging in the contest of ideas, and it's rarely personal.
Your idea isn't yours once you publish. Once you've published, your idea takes on a life of its own. Don't feel that you have to protect it or even continue to agree with it. This is all part of your intellectual growth and the maturation of your ideas. Let others build on it.
You don't have to say anything profound. In fact, you probably won't say anything profound. But that's not what matters. What matters is that you're contributing to the intellectual development of yourself, of others, and of the profession by adding your voice. And you don't need to be the next Clausewitz to do it. Although, if you do say something profound, own it!
Everyone has something valuable to add. In speaking with my peers about writing, a lot of them have shared that they don't think they have anything to say. Yet in speaking with them, they all have fantastic ideas and perspectives on a whole range of topics. So, take the leap and write about your thoughts, because you will only be adding value to the profession of arms.
Blog writing isn't like academic writing. This one is largely aimed at my ADFA peers, but it applies outside this audience too. Writing for blogs is a lot more conversational and relaxed than academic writing and it's a lot shorter. So, don't feel that you'll be writing a major essay or report, because you won't be. Unless you enter an essay, competition or write for a journal.
Editors are your friend. The editors are there to make your writing better, to help you communicate your idea more clearly and concisely. They'll probably tell you things you'd rather not hear about your idea and writing. But take their advice. It's there to save you pain and help your idea make an impact.
Keep writing. Writing can be hard, tiring, boring, and repetitive, but stick with it. Writing is an important part of your personal development, and it's an important means of communication, so keep working at it.
These are just a few of the lessons that I've learnt from my first year of military writing. I've really enjoyed this year of writing and I'm looking forward to many more. I hope this article has dispelled some of the myths and barriers surrounding military writing, particularly for my fellow junior members. It's important to join the conversation, to test our ideas, and develop our intellectual edge. It's especially important for junior members to write because we offer very different opinions to those above us, ones that can often surprise and lead to new insights. I hope to see some new writers soon. Good luck.
Chris Wooding is a Trainee Officer in the Australian Army studying at the Australian Defence Force Academy. He is a Contributing Author for Grounded Curiosity. You can continue the discussion with him on Twitter @cr_wood1.
19. The end of democracy? To many Americans, the future looks dark if the other side wins.
Regardless of what you think about the OpEd text or about the state of partisanship in the US I think the title alone succinctly describes the American divide. The question for those on both sides is whether they want to continue the great American experiment and will they continue to embrace the ideals embodied in our Declaration of Independence,, our Constitution, and the Federalist Papers. If we can answer yes to those questions then we should be able to bridge the divide and return some medium of civility to the discourse and respect for those who have different political views. Both slides should commit to the great American experiment and our Constitution. If we do that we can overcome any partisan divide. The result of this election does not have to be "the ied of the world as we know it" to borrow from REM.
The end of democracy? To many Americans, the future looks dark if the other side wins.
A psychiatrist examining what's happened to America's soul chooses for his book cover the iconic image from "Planet of the Apes" - a charred, half-buried wreck of the Statue of Liberty.
A minister who believes America is God's chosen nation decides that a Joe Biden victory would mean doom, a crushing of the nation's essence.
And a filmmaker whose work has celebrated the raucous mess of American politics concludes that the reelection of President Trump would be "the end of democracy."
One week before Americans choose their path forward, the quadrennial crossroads reeks of despair. In almost every generation, politicians pose certain elections as the most important of their time. But the 2020 vote takes place with the country in a historically dark mood - low on hope, running on spiritual empty, convinced that the wrong outcome will bring disaster.
"I've never seen anything like it," said Frank Luntz, a Republican political consultant who has been convening focus groups of undecided voters for seven presidential cycles. "Even the most balanced, mainstream people are talking about this election in language that is more caffeinated and cataclysmic than anything I've ever heard.
"If you are a believer in climate change, reelecting Trump is literally the end of the world. If taxes are your issue, you think a Biden victory will bankrupt you. If your top concern is health care, you think a Biden loss will kill you."
There's a long history of lurid foreboding in American politics. Among the nation's founders were pamphleteers who made their names decrying the dire future the colonists faced if their revolution failed. But the current language is so apocalyptic that even those who are steeped in the country's episodes of extreme rhetoric are alarmed.
"I didn't take it seriously for a long time, but in the last six weeks, it's become very concerning," said Michael Barkun, a political scientist at Syracuse University who studies political extremism. "This idea that the other side winning the election will produce a precipitous decline and the disintegration of institutions is completely at variance with American history."
Historians say that in past bouts of insecurity and self-doubt, Americans often focused on foreign threats - the ideological battle with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the worry over unrest in the Middle East after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
But now, the worry on the right that a Democratic win will plunge the nation into catastrophic socialism and the fear on the left that a Trump victory will produce a turn toward totalitarianism has created "a perilous moment - the idea that if the other side wins, we're in for it," said Peter Stearns, a historian of emotions at George Mason University.
"The two sides have come to view each other not as opponents, but as deeply evil," he said. "And that's happening when trust in institutions has collapsed and each group is choosing not to live near each other. It seems there's no middle ground."
The rejection of the other side is so thoroughgoing that 31 percent of Biden supporters in Virginia say they would not accept a Trump victory as legitimate and 26 percent of Trump supporters are similarly unwilling to accept a Biden victory, according to a new Washington Post-Schar School poll.
From rumors of civil war to threats of voter intimidation, Americans' concerns about the election and its aftermath have arisen as once-fringe ideas have leached into the mainstream. One-third of Republican voters said in a Daily Kos/Civiqs poll in the fall that they believe there's truth to the QAnon fantasy of a deep state elite that secretly controls the government. The FBI concluded in May that QAnon and similar "political conspiracy theories very likely will [foster] increasing political tensions and ... criminal or violent acts."
Americans are especially susceptible to a dark, pessimistic view of the country right now because several powerful forces are undermining institutions that people have trusted for centuries, according to scholars who have studied the shift in popular attitudes:
●A populist president with a showman's predilection for apocalyptic language. A flowering of unfounded beliefs: QAnon, "fake news," fear of rampaging immigrants. A revolution in technology and media that has dramatically altered how Americans consume news and learn about politics.
●Add a frightening pandemic, a burst of protest and anger over racial inequalities, and a sudden economic collapse and the result is pervasive mistrust, a sense that the world's most powerful nation can no longer come together in common cause.
"We're facing a difficult time," Barkun said. "The threat - the virus - is invisible and that makes it more frightening. There's an increasingly widespread belief that authority - scientific, political, informational - is suspect. It can be more comforting to believe in an unpleasant outcome than to embrace uncertainty."
In sharp contrast with other presidents, Trump has positioned himself not as a unifying ambassador of hope, but as a fellow victim. He tweets conspiracy theories, laments "hoaxes" aimed at him, devotes his inaugural address to a dystopian vision of "American carnage," and campaigns for reelection as a breakwater against anarchy in the streets and a nefarious plot against the suburbs.
For many years, a rule of thumb in American politics was that the candidate with the sunnier outlook was likely to win. The other presidents elected in the past three decades appealed to American optimism and aspirations. Bill Clinton ran as "the man from Hope." George W. Bush presented himself as a "compassionate conservative." Barack Obama centered his campaign on "hope and change."
Biden this month warned that "the country is in a dangerous place. Our trust in each other is ebbing. Hope seems elusive. Too many Americans see our public life ... as an occasion for total, unrelenting partisan warfare."
After Trump repeatedly suggested that he might refuse to accept the results of the election, Biden last month expressed concern about "whether [Trump] generates some kind of response in a way that unsettles the society or causes some kind of violence."
For his part, Trump is arguing that the country will collapse into "mob rule" if Biden wins. "No one will be safe," the president said.
Chosen by God
Frank Amedia's America is on the edge of the abyss, a place where people of faith expect Armageddon and people on the other side conspire to scrap freedoms.
TV evangelist Pat Robertson announced on his show last week that "there's going to be a war" after the election. Robertson prophesied that America will experience "civil unrest of great proportions ... then a time of peace, then maybe the end."
Not to be outdone, Amedia, pastor of Touch Heaven Ministries in Canfield, Ohio, and a former adviser to the Trump campaign on Christian policy, delivered his own vision of what the country will face if Biden wins: "Progressive Marxist socialism," "lawlessness," even an embrace of "animalism" - "somebody can marry a cow and have perverse sex with them."
On camera, Amedia, who hosts "Potus Shield," a YouTube series devoted to praise of the president, predicts an apocalyptic future if Trump loses, a time of secular riots and biblical upheaval. But off camera, the preacher seems more anguished than angry, more searching than seething.
"Both sides agree that the soul of the nation is at stake," he said in an interview. "I know that other nations faltered by becoming divisive, amoral, totally based on personal ambitions and agendas. We seem to be there."
Amedia believes Trump was chosen by God to lead the United States, but he has no illusion that the president is an admirable character. Amedia laments the "sad political discourse in the country that has developed into a win-at-almost-any-cost mentality. How did we end up with Joe Biden and Donald Trump? We're supposed to have certain ideals and I don't think either of them musters up to it."
The pastor, who is 68, wants to believe that America's energetic and idealistic young people will pull the country back from a disturbing rejection of truth, science and faith.
Skepticism of science and antagonism toward intellectuals have surged at stressful junctures in American history, in battles over the teaching of evolution, fluoridation of the water supply, or acceptance of same-sex relationships.
"That skepticism can be healthy and democratic," said Stearns, the George Mason University historian. "But what we're seeing now, with a serious erosion of respect for authority, is new and different. It reflects a division that I think can bring us close to violent civil war."
Amedia shares the fear that the country is tumbling toward violent conflict and wider spread of dangerous conspiracy notions. The only way to avert such a fall, he said, is through wiser and more widely accepted leadership.
"Why are some people joining into causes and movements? Why are they finding some credence in things like QAnon?" Amedia asked. "They're trying to fill a void. In this season of anxiety, people want something that's beyond this feeling of loss of control. Our house is out of control - our presidency, our Congress, the virus. People want leadership that's fair and open. Why must we choose between right and left? Why can't we be for both Black justice and right-to-life? Why can't we accept the science and the faith?"
The pastor plans to continue his "Potus Shield" prayers for the president whether Trump or Biden wins.
"That's what we're supposed to do as Americans," he said. "In my church, we accept the results whatever they are, and we're going to be the voice that brings the unity. Sometimes, when things have gotten a little too easy, people need to get put into a little bit of a pressure cooker to discover what their real values are. Maybe that's where we are. How can we heal the wound with respect for each other?"
'Good luck to us'
Four years ago, R.J. Cutler, a documentary filmmaker who focused on American political culture in "The War Room" and "A Perfect Candidate," said that the country was heading into a time "when any bad thing seems possible, when we no longer know the ground rules about the weather, about democracy, about very basic things."
The reality of Trump's presidency has been worse than he anticipated, Cutler says now, and he is certain that a second term would be a disaster.
"I'm one of those people that believes it's the end of democracy and we're in for a totalitarian state," he said. Trump "wants his cultural enemies silenced. He wants to control communication. The culture will fight back, but this guy's going to put people in prison. To quote my mother, 'Good luck to us. ' "
Cutler's view represents not only the perspective of an artist who lives in liberal Los Angeles, but a broader swath of left-of-center Americans who believe Trump's reelection would threaten the stability of the government, the future of the electoral system and even the fate of the Earth.
Many on the left experience what social scientists call "extinction anxiety," the belief that, as Barkun put it, "society as we know it is going to be destroyed and Trump will accelerate that because the system has run out of resilience. It's particularly surprising to hear from the left that the system has lost the capacity to absorb Trump's actions."
Whether that anxiety stems from fears about climate change, racial discord, or the way social media platforms funnel users to a diet of ever more extreme political views, the effect is a despair that has only been exacerbated by the isolation and uncertainty resulting from the coronavirus pandemic.
Cutler, who has devoted recent years to making movies about the lives of "Saturday Night Live" pioneer John Belushi and pop singer Billie Eilish, remains hopeful that if Biden wins, "you're going to see a cultural rebound," a time of creativity and of searching for solutions to long-festering problems.
But even if his side wins, Cutler said it's hard to imagine that the country would simply turn a corner and start fresh. "We've become a stratified culture. There's no longer one truth. I mean, there are people who think California's on fire because we haven't swept the ground."
A post-Trump period could be a "a political and cultural free-for-all," Cutler said, in which some Americans, finally freed from coronavirus restrictions, might fall into "a time of hedonism," while others remain fixated on social divisions that will not disappear quickly.
"Just because Trump goes away - if he really goes away - the forces he unleashed and the forces that arose in response don't go away."
Death and rebirth
When Thomas Singer, a psychiatrist in San Francisco, was casting around for a cover picture for his book on what has happened to the soul of America, his view of the country had grown dire.
"Things were falling apart," he said. "Our inner experience, as individuals or groups, on the left or the right, is that there's something very damaged about everything that makes us American. We're shattered."
He stumbled on the famous image at the end of the original 1968 version of "Planet of the Apes," the harrowing discovery of the ruined Statue of Liberty sunken into a beach - a haunting symbol of a nation that lost its ideals and collapsed.
"Sometimes art anticipates reality," Singer said. "This was an apocalyptic sense that democracy as we know it will crumble."
But in the time between choosing that image and publishing his book, Singer came to a different conclusion about America in the time of Trump.
The psychiatrist, who is 78, recalls the anguish that the divided country went through in 1968, "this sense that everything was coming apart." Yet as a young man, he said, he and his peers never believed their future was doomed.
Now, however, he hears young people lament that they have no path forward, that the Earth is in fatal decline, that new technologies threaten the future of work.
Though many of the forces contributing to that despair were at work before Trump came along, Singer sees the president as an engine of mistrust.
"He has contributed enormously to this sense that we can't agree on what's real anymore," he said. "He thrives on chaos. He is profoundly rebellious - and that goes to the absolute core of American identity."
That view of Trump as a quintessentially American renegade - one in a series of rebels without a cause - has nudged Singer toward the view that the president is not simply a destructive force or, as Trump sees himself, a disrupter.
Rather, the psychiatrist says Trump, perhaps unwittingly, is giving the country another chance to do what it has always done best - to battle and shout and rage in what the poet Walt Whitman called America's essential characteristic, a "barbaric yawp" of conflict that breeds innovation and renewal.
"The soul of the nation gets forged in that collision of ideas, about race, about money and capitalism, about the individual versus the collective," Singer said.
Populist surges like the one that helped Trump win in 2016 - fueled by the exasperation of Americans who believed that neither party addressed lost jobs, diminished communities and emptied malls and downtowns - have burned out within a few years, fading away as economic expansion, war or political reform eased people's insecurities.
Singer fears a second Trump term, which he believes would further undermine trust and social cohesion. But now he wonders if the president may have forced the country to confront and maybe resolve some of its deepest problems.
"A leader, like a parent, sets a model for behavior," Singer said. "Biden is a return to deeply cherished American values of decency and goodwill. Trump has flushed out all of our raw divisions. I'm hopeful that people will find their unruly and chaotic American soul and cry out. The result may be profoundly renewing about race, climate, maybe health care.
"Ultimately, Trump may serve a valuable purpose," he said. "In the human experience, death and rebirth go together."
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:
"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."
