Quotes of the Day:
"The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year,
it is that we should have a new soul."
- G.K. Chesterton
"A new year is a clean slate, a chance to suck in your breath,
decide all is not lost and give yourself another chance."
-Sarah Overstreet
Stoic advice for the New Year:
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
- Marcus Aurelius
“He robs present ills of their power who has perceived their coming beforehand.”
– Seneca The Younger
“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing.”
– Seneca The Younger
“The uneducated person blames others for their failures; those who have just begun to be instructed blame themselves; those whose learning is complete blame neither others nor themselves.”
– Epictetus
“If it is not right, do not do it, if it is not true, do not say it.”
– Marcus Aurelius
“Our life is what our thoughts make it.”
– Marcus Aurelius
“It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.”
– Marcus Aurelius
1. China harvests masses of data on Western targets, documents show
2. Who Won in Afghanistan? Private Contractors
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1. China harvests masses of data on Western targets, documents show
We are all vulnerable and we are all involved in this "fight." Can we and will we step up?
China harvests masses of data on Western targets, documents show
China is turning a major part of its internal Internet data surveillance network outward, mining Western social media, including Facebook and Twitter, to equip its government agencies, military and police with information on foreign targets, according to a Washington Post review of hundreds of Chinese bidding documents, contracts and company filings.
China maintains a countrywide network of government data surveillance services — called public opinion analysis software — that were developed over the past decade and are used domestically to warn officials of politically sensitive information online.
The software primarily targets China’s domestic Internet users and media, but a Washington Post review of bidding documents and contracts for over 300 Chinese government projects since the beginning of 2020 include orders for software designed to collect data on foreign targets from sources such as Twitter, Facebook and other Western social media.
The documents, publicly accessible through domestic government bidding platforms, also show that agencies including state media, propaganda departments, police, military and cyber regulators are purchasing new or more sophisticated systems to gather data.
These include a $320,000 Chinese state media software program that mines Twitter and Facebook to create a database of foreign journalists and academics; a $216,000 Beijing police intelligence program that analyses Western chatter on Hong Kong and Taiwan; and a Xinjiang cybercenter cataloguing Uyghur language content abroad.
“Now we can better understand the underground network of anti-China personnel,” said a Beijing-based analyst who works for a unit reporting to China’s Central Propaganda Department. The person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss their work, said they were once tasked with producing a data report on how negative content relating to Beijing’s senior leadership is spread on Twitter, including profiles of individual academics, politicians and journalists.
These surveillance dragnets are part of a wider drive by Beijing to refine its foreign propaganda efforts through big data and artificial intelligence.
They also form a network of warning systems designed to sound real-time alarms for trends that undermine Beijing’s interests.
“They are now reorienting part of that effort outward, and I think that’s frankly terrifying, looking at the sheer numbers and sheer scale that this has taken inside China,” said Mareike Ohlberg, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund who has conducted extensive research on China’s domestic public opinion network.
Some of the Chinese government’s budgeting includes buying and maintaining foreign social media accounts on behalf of police and propaganda departments. Yet others describe using the targeted analysis to refine Beijing’s state media coverage abroad.
The purchases range in size from small, automated programs to projects costing hundreds of thousands of dollars that are staffed 24 hours a day by teams including English speakers and foreign policy specialists.
The documents describe highly customizable programs that can collect real-time social media data from individual social media users. Some describe tracking broad trends on issues including U.S. elections.
The Post was not able to review data collected by the systems but spoke to four people based in Beijing who are directly involved in government public opinion analysis and described separate software systems that automatically collect and store Facebook and Twitter data in real time on domestic Chinese servers for analysis.
Twitter and Facebook both ban automated collection of data on their services without prior authorization. Twitter’s policy also expressly bars developers from gathering data used to infer a user’s political affiliation or ethnic and racial origin.
“Our API provides real-time access to public data and Tweets only, not private information. We prohibit use of our API for surveillance purposes, as per our developer policy and terms,” said Katie Rosborough, a Twitter spokesperson, referring to the company’s Application Programming Interface (API), which allows developers to retrieve public data from the platform among other functions.
Facebook did not respond to requests for comment about whether it is aware of the monitoring or whether several companies, universities and state media firms listed as supplying the software were authorized to collect data on its platform.
China’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
'Public opinion guidance'
China’s systems for analyzing domestic public opinion online are a powerful but largely unseen pillar of President Xi Jinping’s program to modernize China’s propaganda apparatus and maintain control over the Internet.
The vast data collection and monitoring efforts give officials insight into public opinion, a challenge in a country that does not hold public elections or permit independent media.
The services also provide increasingly technical surveillance for China’s censorship apparatus. And most systems include alarm functions designed to alert officials and police to negative content in real time.
These operations are an important function of what Beijing calls “public opinion guidance work” — a policy of molding public sentiment in favor of the government through targeted propaganda and censorship.
The phrase first came to prominence in policymaking after the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations, when officials began exploring new ways to preempt popular challenges to the Communist Party’s power, and has since become integral to the underlying architecture of China’s Internet, where users are linked by real name ID, and Internet services are required by law to maintain an internal censorship apparatus.
The exact scope of China’s government public opinion monitoring industry is unclear, but there have been some indications about its size in Chinese state media. In 2014, the state-backed newspaper China Daily said more than 2 million people were working as public opinion analysts. In 2018, the People’s Daily, another official organ, said the government’s online opinion analysis industry was worth “tens of billions of yuan,” equivalent to billions of dollars, and was growing at a rate of 50 percent a year.
That surveillance network system is expanding to include foreign social media at a time when global perceptions of Beijing are at their lowest in recent history.
A Pew Research survey released in June showed that perceptions of China among 17 advanced economies had dipped to near historic lows for a second year in a row in the aftermath of the U.S. trade war, the Xinjiang human rights crisis, Hong Kong and the coronavirus pandemic.
In May this year, Xi called on senior officials to portray a more “trustworthy, lovable and reliable” image of China abroad, calling for the “effective development of international public opinion guidance.”
His comments reflect Beijing’s growing anxieties over how to control China’s image abroad.
“On the back of the Sino-US trade talks and the Hong Kong rioting incident, it’s becoming clearer day by day that the public opinion news war is arduous and necessary,” China Daily said in a July 2020 bidding document for a $300,000 “foreign personnel analysis platform.”
The invitation to tender lays out specifications for a program that mines Twitter, Facebook and YouTube for data on “well known Western media journalists” and other “key personnel from political, business and media circles.”
“We are competing with the US and Western media, the battle for the right to speak has begun,” it said.
The software should run 24 hours a day, according to the specifications, and map the relationships between target personnel and uncover “factions” between personnel, measuring their “China tendencies” and building an alarm system that automatically flags “false statements and reports on China.”
Warning systems like the one outlined in the China Daily document are described in over 90 percent of tenders that list technical specifications, The Post’s review of the documents show.
Two people who work as analysts in public opinion analysis units contracted by government agencies in Beijing told The Post that they receive automated alarms via SMS, email and on dedicated computer monitors when “sensitive” content was detected. Both of the people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to foreign media.
“Having responsibility for [the monitoring] is a lot of pressure,” said one of the people. “If we do our work poorly, there are severe repercussions.”
Highly sensitive viral trends online are reported to a 24-hour hotline maintained by the Cybersecurity Administration of China (CAC), the body that oversees the country’s censorship apparatus, the person said of their unit.
The person added that most of the alarms were related to domestic social media but that foreign social media had also been included in the units’ monitoring since the middle of 2019.
The person’s account is supported by four bidding documents for unrelated systems that mention direct hotlines to the CAC.
“In case of major public opinion, directly contact the staff on duty of the CAC by telephone to ensure that notifications are in place through various communication tools,” said one December 2020 tender for a $236,000 system purchased by the municipal propaganda department in eastern China’s Fuzhou city for monitoring Facebook and Twitter alongside domestic social media.
It specifies that reports to the CAC should include the details of individual social media users.
State media-led data mining
Suppliers of the systems vary. The China Daily awarded its contract to Beijing’s Communications University, one of a half dozen Chinese universities that have launched specialized departments to develop public opinion analysis technology.
However, some of the most prolific public opinion monitoring services are provided to police and government agencies by state media themselves.
The documents provide insight into the scope of foreign social media data collection done by China’s major state media outlets, which maintain offices and servers abroad, and their key role in providing Beijing with publicity guidance based on increasingly sophisticated data mining analysis.
The growing clout of Beijing’s propaganda efforts abroad, spearheaded by state media, has triggered alarms in Washington.
The People’s Daily Online, a unit of the state newspaper the People’s Daily, which provides one of the country’s largest contract public opinion analysis services, won dozens of projects that include overseas social media data collection services for police, judicial authorities, Communist Party organizations and other clients.
The unit, which recorded $330 million in operating income in 2020, up 50 percent from 2018, says it serves over 200 government agencies, although it is not clear how many request foreign social media data.
In one tender won by the People’s Daily Online, the Beijing Police Intelligence Command Unit purchased a $30,570 service to trawl foreign social media and produce reports on unspecified “key personnel and organizations,” gathering information on their “basic circumstances, background and relationships.”
It also calls for weekly data reports on Hong Kong, Taiwan and U.S. relations. Issued shortly before the 2020 U.S. presidential election results were ratified on Jan. 6, it also called for “special reports” on “netizens’ main views” related to the election.
“The international balance of power has been profoundly adjusted,” said the request for tenders. “Through the collection of public Internet information we can keep a close eye on the international community, analyze sensitivities and hot spots, and maintain the stability of Chinese society.”
In an April 2020 article, the chief analyst at the People’s Daily Online Public Opinion Data Center, Liao Canliang, laid out the ultimate goal of public opinion analysis.
“The ultimate purpose of analysis and prediction is to guide and intervene in public opinion,” Canliang wrote. “… Public data from social network users can be used to analyze the characteristics and preferences of users, and then guide them in a targeted manner.”
In the article, Liao points to Cambridge Analytica’s impact on the 2016 U.S. election as evidence of social media’s ability to mold public opinion.
“The West uses big data to analyze, research and judge public opinion to influence political activities. ... As long as there is a correct grasp on the situation, public opinion can also be guided and interfered with,” he wrote.
People’s Daily subsidiary Global Times, a firebrand newspaper known for its biting coverage of China’s critics, also has a unit gathering foreign social media data for China’s Foreign Ministry, Beijing’s Foreign Affairs Office and other government agencies.
In late 2019, the Global Times Online won a three-year contract worth $531,000 to provide a “China-related foreign media and journalist opinion monitoring system” that monitors overseas social media on behalf of China’s Foreign Ministry and produces comprehensive regular reports, as well as special briefings in “urgent circumstances.”
Documentation accompanying the project says that close to 40 percent of the Global Times monitoring unit’s staffers are senior Global Times reporters and that the publication maintains large overseas social media monitoring platforms.
A description on the website of the Global Times’s public opinion research center says the group conducts “overseas monitoring and overseas investigation services” and provides “comprehensive response plans” to government and private clients.
Both the People’s Daily and the Global Times were among the outlets designated as foreign missions in the United States.
The increase in China’s monitoring of foreign public opinion on social media coincides with efforts by Beijing to boost its influence on Twitter and other U.S. social media platforms.
In June 2020, Twitter suspended 23,000 accounts that it said were linked to the Chinese Communist Party and covertly spreading propaganda to undermine pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. This month, Twitter said it removed a further 2,048 accounts linked to Beijing and producing coordinated content undermining accusations of rights abuses in Xinjiang.
Experts say those accounts represent a small fraction of China’s efforts to boost pro-Beijing messaging on foreign social media.
'Extreme chilling effect'
Just under a third of the public opinion analysis systems reviewed by The Post were procured by Chinese police.
In 14 instances, the analysis systems included a feature requested by the police that would automatically flag “sensitive” content related to Uyghurs and other Chinese ethnic minorities. An additional 12 analysis systems included the police-requested capability of monitoring individual content authors over time.
“It must support information monitoring of overseas social media … and provide for targeted collection of designated sites and authors,” said one invitation to tender released by the Fuzhou city police in October that lists coverage of Facebook and Twitter as a requirement.
The monitoring of social media abroad by local police throughout China could be used in investigating Chinese citizens locally and abroad, as well as in flagging trends that stir domestic dissent, experts say.
“The public security monitoring is very much about stability maintenance, tracking people down and finding people’s identity, and when they monitor overseas social media, it’s also often with an eye to monitoring what news could cause trouble at home in China,” said the German Marshall Fund’s Ohlberg.
Companies providing overseas public opinion monitoring to police include a mix of private and state-owned firms, including the People’s Daily Online.
Six police contracts awarded since 2020 stated that the People’s Daily was chosen to conduct monitoring on the basis of its technical ability to gather data abroad.
“It’s the only one in the industry that deploys overseas servers. It is a public opinion service organization that can monitor and collect more than 8,000 overseas media without ‘overturning the wall,’ ” said the Guangdong Police Department in a $26,200 contract offer posted in July 2020, referring to the ability of the People’s Daily unit to collect overseas data outside China’s Great Firewall.
Experts say the increasingly advanced social media surveillance technology available to Chinese police could worsen the targeted harassment of Beijing’s critics.
“The Chinese government is one of the worst offenders when it comes to targeting individuals outside of the country,” said Adrian Shahbaz, the director for technology and democracy at the think tank Freedom House.
“It has an extreme chilling effect on how Chinese citizens outside of China are using social media tools, because they know that back home, their information is very easily monitored by Chinese authorities,” he said.
The China Public Security Bureau did not respond to a request for comment.
A police bureau in southern China’s Nanping city purchased a $42,000 system that “supports collection, discovery, and warning functions for ... Twitter and Facebook social media data according to different classifications and keyword groups, as well as overseas information lists,” according to bidding documents released in July 2020.
Other procurements for public opinion services outline programs purchased by Chinese police and Xinjiang government bodies to track “sensitive” ethnic language content abroad. (China’s mainly-Muslim Uyghurs are concentrated in Xinjiang.)
A $43,000 system purchased by police in central China’s Shangnan county included a “foreign sensitive information” collection system that requested Uyghur and Tibetan staff translators, according to the contracts.
Military procurement documents — less detailed than other types — did not offer much detail on the purpose of the foreign data collection but alluded to vague categories of data including “key personnel.”
One heavily redacted June 2020 contract issued by the People’s Liberation Army described a system that would trawl foreign sites and categorize data on the basis of affiliation, geography and country.
Source Data Technology, the Shanghai-based company that won the contract, says on its website that it uses “advanced big data mining and artificial intelligence analysis technology” to cover more than 90 percent of social media in the United States, Europe and China’s neighboring countries.
2. Who Won in Afghanistan? Private Contractors
Who Won in Afghanistan? Private Contractors
The U.S. military spent $14 trillion during two decades of war; those who benefited range from major manufacturers to entrepreneurs
WSJ · by Dion Nissenbaum, Jessica Donati and Alan Cullison
Two Army National Guardsmen from Ohio started a small business providing the military with Afghan interpreters that grew to become one of the Army’s top contractors. It collected nearly $4 billion in federal contracts, according to publicly available records.
Four months after the last American troops left Afghanistan, the U.S. is assessing the lessons to be learned. Among those, some officials and watchdog groups say, is the reliance on battlefield contractors and how that adds to the costs of waging war.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, military outsourcing helped push up Pentagon spending to $14 trillion, creating opportunities for profit as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq stretched on.
One-third to half of that sum went to contractors, with five defense companies— Lockheed Martin Corp. , Boeing Co. , General Dynamics Corp. , Raytheon Technologies Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp. —taking the lion’s share, $2.1 trillion, for weapons, supplies and other services, according to Brown University’s Costs of War Project, a group of scholars, legal experts and others that aims to draw attention to what it calls the hidden impact of America’s military.
A representative from Raytheon Company at a jobs fair for veterans in 2013 in Los Angeles.
Photo: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
A panoply of smaller companies also made billions of dollars with efforts including training Afghan police officers, building roads, setting up schools and providing security to Western diplomats.
During the past two decades, both Republican and Democratic administrations saw the use of contractors as a way to keep the numbers of troops and casualties of service members down, current and former officials said.
When fighting a war with an all-volunteer military smaller than in past conflicts, and without a draft, “you have to outsource so much to contractors to do your operations,” said Christopher Miller, who deployed to Afghanistan in 2005 as a Green Beret and later became acting defense secretary in the final months of the Trump administration.
In 2020, Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller speaks at the Pentagon.
Photo: AP
The large amounts of money being spent on the war effort and on rebuilding Afghanistan after years of conflict strained the U.S. government’s ability to vet contractors and ensure the money was spent as intended.
The U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, created to monitor the almost $150 billion in spending on rebuilding the country, catalogued in hundreds of reports waste and, at times, fraud. A survey the office released in early 2021 found that, of the $7.8 billion in projects its inspectors examined, only $1.2 billion, or 15%, was spent as expected on new roads, hospitals, bridges, and factories. At least $2.4 billion, the report found, was spent on military planes, police offices, farming programs and other development projects that were abandoned, destroyed or used for other purposes.
The Pentagon spent $6 million on a project that imported nine Italian goats to boost Afghanistan’s cashmere market. The project never reached scale. The U.S. Agency for International Development gave $270 million to a company to build 1,200 miles of gravel road in Afghanistan. The USAID said it canceled the project after the company built 100 miles of road in three years of work that left more than 125 people dead in insurgent attacks.
Maj. Rob Lodewick, a Pentagon spokesman, said the “dedicated support offered by many thousands of contractors to U.S. military missions in Afghanistan served many important roles to include freeing up uniformed forces for vital war fighting efforts.”
John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction since 2012, who documented the failures of contractors for years, said that many of them were doing their best to fulfill the demands placed on them by policymakers who made poor decisions.
“It’s so easy with a broad brush to say that all contractors are crooks or war profiteers,” said Mr. Sopko. “The fact that some of them made a lot of money—that’s the capitalist system.”
American use of military contractors stretches back to the Revolutionary War, when the Continental Army relied on private firms to provide supplies and even carry out raids on ships. During World War II, for every seven service members, one contractor served the war effort, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
More recently, the practice took off in the 1990s, around the time of the Gulf War. Then the decision after 9/11 to prosecute a global war on terror caught the Pentagon short-handed, coming after a post-Cold War downsizing of the American military.
In 2008, the U.S. had 187,900 troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, the peak of the U.S. deployment, and 203,660 contractor personnel.
A U.S. civilian contractor arrives at the Forward Operating Base Naray in 2006 near Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan.
Photo: Scott Peterson/Getty Images
The ratio of contractors to troops went up. When President Barack Obama ordered most U.S. troops to leave Afghanistan at the end of his second term, more than 26,000 contractors were in Afghanistan, compared with 9,800 troops.
By the time President Donald Trump left office four years later, 18,000 contractors remained in Afghanistan, along with 2,500 troops.
“Contracting seems to be moving in only one direction—increasing—regardless of whether there is a Democrat or Republican in the White House,” said Heidi Peltier, program manager at the Costs of War Project.
Ms. Peltier said the reliance on contractors has led to the rise of the “camo economy,” in which the U.S. government camouflages the costs of war that might reduce public support for it.
More than 3,500 U.S. contractors died in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to statistics from the Labor Department that it says are incomplete. More than 7,000 American service members died during two decades of war.
One entrepreneur who found an opportunity was Doug Edelman, who hails from Stockton, Calif., and opened a bar and a fuel-trading business in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek in 1998. Three years later, when the war began in neighboring Afghanistan, Bishkek morphed into a hub for U.S. troops and supplies. Mr. Edelman teamed up with a Kyrgyz partner to run two companies, Red Star and Mina Corp., which became vital links in the war effort, former colleagues said.
After winning a series of Pentagon single-source contracts, which allow the Pentagon to bypass the conventional bidding process, those colleagues said, Mr. Edelman’s firms supplied fuel for a Bishkek-based fleet of U.S. Air Force C-135 air tankers that performed midair refueling operations over Afghanistan. Inside Afghanistan, his company built a fuel pipeline at Bagram Air Base.
A U.S. contractor checks on a military vehicle at Bagram Air Base in 2013.
Photo: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images
His companies won billions of dollars in contracts, and Mr. Edelman earned hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a lawsuit filed in California in 2020 by a former colleague who said he was later cut out from equity in one of Mr. Edelman’s businesses. Mr. Edelman took up residence in the London mansion that once belonged to former media mogul Conrad Black, according to court filings and the former colleagues.
Mr. Edelman denied the allegations in his response to the lawsuit. He declined to comment.
The Mission Essential Group, the Ohio-based company that grew to become the Army’s leading provider of war zone interpreters in Afghanistan, exemplifies the arc of contracting in Afghanistan.
Mission Essential got its start in 2003 after two Army National Guardsmen, Chad Monnin and Greg Miller, commiserated in an Arabic language class over what they considered the poor quality of interpreters used by the military, and wanted to do better.
In 2007 it won a five-year, $300 million contract to provide the Army with interpreters and cultural advisers in Afghanistan.
Ayazudin Hilal, right, receives a Mission Essential award in 2011 in Kunar province, where he was working as a combat translator.
Photo: Getty Images
The company grew rapidly. Mr. Monnin, who former Mission Essential employees said had been known to sleep in his car to save money on hotel rooms, moved into a 6,400-square-foot, $1.3 million dollar home next to a country club golf course, according to public records. He bought a classic 1970s Ferrari sports car.
While interpreters were well-paid when the contracts were flush, former Mission Essential employees said, the pay for Afghans decreased as the business contracted.
As the military mission in Afghanistan began to scale back in 2012, Mission Essential said there was pressure to reduce costs. Mission Essential said it renegotiated contracts with Afghan linguists that reduced average monthly pay by about 20-to-25%.
Average monthly income for Afghan linguists fell from about $750 in 2012 to $500 this year, the company said.
“They were taking in billions from the U.S. government,” said Anees Khalil, an Afghan-American linguist who worked for a Mission Essential subcontractor for several months. “The way they were treating linguists was very inhumane.”
He and other former employees said some Afghan linguists working alongside U.S. soldiers in the toughest parts of the country were paid as little as $300 a month. The company said it had no records that anyone was paid $300 a month when working full-time.
Mission Essential said its interpreters were “extremely well paid compared to average incomes in the market” and that the company put a priority on ensuring they were well cared for. Mission Essential said it went to great lengths up until the very end to help its employees in Afghanistan escape Taliban rule.
“Supporting this work is not about profits,” said Mr. Miller. “It’s about preserving our national security and our American way of life.”
In January 2010, an Afghan interpreter working for Mission Essential on an Army Special Forces base near Kabul grabbed a gun and killed two U.S. soldiers. The families of the two soldiers killed—Capt. David Thompson and Specialist Marc Decoteau—along with Chief Warrant Officer Thomas Russell, who was injured, filed suit, accusing Mission Essential of failing to properly screen and oversee the interpreter. The families said their lawsuit aimed to get the government to address what they called inadequate supervision of contractors.
The Decoteaus walk up their driveway in Thornton, N.H. Their son, Marc Decoteau, was killed in Afghanistan in 2010.
Photo: Jim Cole/Associated Press
“These contracts are extremely lucrative and in our opinion financial considerations could have outweighed the proper performance of contract requirements,” said the families in a statement.
The two sides settled the suit in 2015 for undisclosed terms.
Mr. Miller called the 2010 shooting a “total tragedy,” and said it was the sole such incident in 17 years of the company’s work in war zones. He said Mission Essential had been cleared by the Army of any criminal culpability for the attack. The Army declined to comment.
By the end of 2010, Mission Essential said it employed nearly 7,000 linguists working with the U.S. military in Afghanistan. It made more than $860 million in revenue from the Defense Department in 2012.
As the troop surge wound down, Mission Essential’s federal contracts fell, according to public records. Mr. Miller said he and Mr. Monnin had different visions for how the company should grow. Mr. Monnin, who declined to comment on his work at Mission Essential, agreed to sell his share of the company to Mr. Miller.
Divisions also erupted between Mr. Miller and two board members in an unresolved lawsuit filed in 2018. Their suit accused Mr. Miller of hiring unqualified relatives, spending millions in company money on personal matters, having the company pay him $1 million for an airplane to fly his family members around and taking $500,000 a year in salary without board approval.
Mr. Miller said Mission Essential is a family business and that two of his brothers work for the company in positions they are “highly qualified” to fill. He said that the plane was used by executives to travel to business meetings around the country and was sold when it was no longer needed.
Mr. Miller denied the allegations and accused the board members in court filings of trying to use Mission Essential as their personal cash machine and of using illegal drugs, putting the company’s role as a federal contractor at risk. Mr. Miller accused the pair of using the courts to try and secure a better deal for giving up their stake in the company.
Those counterclaims are “unfounded and blatantly false,” said Katherine Connor Ferguson, the attorney for the board members, Scott Humphrys and Chris Miller, who isn’t related to Greg Miller.
By the time President Biden ordered the last American troops to leave Afghanistan in August, Mission Essential had cut its staff to about 1,000. Almost 90 employees were killed during the war, Mr. Miller said. The last 22 in Afghanistan worked alongside U.S. forces and flew out of Kabul on the final few planeloads of America’s troops in August, he said.
By then, Mr. Miller was working to reposition Mission Essential. The company secured a $12 million contract to provide the Army with interpreters in Africa and worked to diversify by buying a technology company.
—Elisa Cho, Jim Oberman and Ehsanullah Amiri contributed to this article.
WSJ · by Dion Nissenbaum, Jessica Donati and Alan Cullison
3. China hopes to flaunt the merits of its political system over America’s
An ideological conflict based on political warfare.
The World Ahead 2022
China hopes to flaunt the merits of its political system over America’s
The Economist · by David Rennie: Beijing bureau chief and Chaguan columnist, The Economist
The Communist Party congress will contrast with America’s mid-term elections
Nov 8th 2021
IF ALL GOES to plan for China’s Communist Party, 2022 will offer a study in contrasts that humiliates America. China’s leaders abhor free elections but they can read opinion polls. They see headlines predicting a drubbing for the Democratic Party in America’s mid-term congressional elections in November, condemning the country to the uncertainties of divided government, if not outright gridlock. Should those polls prove accurate, China’s propaganda machine will relish a fresh chance to declare that China enjoys order and prosperity thanks to one-party rule, while American-style democracy brings only chaos, dysfunction and decline.
In contrast, the year in Beijing will be dominated by the 20th party congress, a tightly controlled display of power staged amid the marble columns, red carpets and blazing chandeliers of the Great Hall of the People. That gathering, likely to be held in the autumn, will mark Xi Jinping’s first decade as China’s supreme leader. It may also suggest how much longer Mr Xi intends to stay in office: for five more years, or another ten, or (a less likely scenario) that he prefers to head into some form of semi-retirement, to rule from behind the scenes. Remarkably, it is possible that Mr Xi’s future plans will become visible only at the end of the congress, when he (or just possibly an unexpected successor as party chief) leads the new Politburo Standing Committee onto a carpeted dais in order of rank.
Should Mr Xi wish to signal that he will step down after another five years, he will need to be followed onstage by one or two plausible successors. There are, for now, no obvious candidates with the right combination of experience, age and close ties to Mr Xi. He may feel bound to remain in charge until at least the congress of 2032, when he will be 79 years old. That version of events will be signalled if Mr Xi is trailed onstage in November by a line of unthreatening men in dark suits: long-standing loyalists or fast-rising protégés who will be either too old or too young and inexperienced to succeed their current boss at the party congress of 2027.
Party congresses are held every five years. The meetings have been used in modern times to stage orderly transfers of power between generations of leaders. Because such high-level moves are, by custom, signalled five years ahead of time, Mr Xi has already broken with recent precedent by declining to anoint a successor at the party congress of 2017. That refusal to present an heir challenged a consensus established after the death of Mao Zedong that no single leader should amass too much power or stay too long in office.
In a further assault on those norms, Mr Xi had China’s constitution amended in 2018 to abolish term limits for the post of president—one of three powerful offices that he holds, alongside the far more important ones of party general secretary and chairman of the Central Military Commission, and the only one, until then, bound by a two-term constraint. Mr Xi’s supporters say he must stay in office as long as he sees fit to push through vital reforms. His critics, a muted and fearful bunch in today’s China, see a dangerous weakening of institutions needed to prevent one-man rule.
Whichever path Mr Xi chooses, the next congress is likely to resemble the communist equivalent of a coronation. China’s leaders see ever more reasons to be confident about the advantages of their political system. Until recently, they were rather defensive about their model of governance. Chinese diplomats worked in bodies such as the United Nations or the World Trade Organisation to tweak international norms or global rules to make the world more accepting of their country’s version of state capitalism and autocracy. Today, Chinese envoys are on the offensive, ready to promote their model as one that delivers better outcomes for more people than the West’s fractious individualism.
At the same time, officials in Beijing see threats at every turn. They are sure that America and its allies are bent on containing China. They are impatient with any criticism by foreigners, and quick to argue that Western governments chide China only to distract from their own failures. The mood in Beijing is a strange mix of confidence, hubris and paranoia. This strengthens Mr Xi. Describing the current world order, he likes to talk about “changes not seen in 100 years”. In such a moment, the Communist Party is betting that continuity at the top is the safest course. The gulf between America and China has been growing for some time. It will yawn shockingly wider in November.
David Rennie: Beijing bureau chief and Chaguan columnist, The Economist■
This article appeared in the China section of the print edition of The World Ahead 2022 under the headline “The crowning of Emperor Xi”
The Economist today
4. U.S. Military Focusing on ISIS Cell Behind Attack at Kabul Airport
U.S. Military Focusing on ISIS Cell Behind Attack at Kabul Airport
The suicide bomber who killed nearly 200 people, including 13 U.S. troops, had been freed from prison by the Taliban days before the attack.
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Victims of a suicide attack at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, arrived at a hospital in August.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
By
Jan. 1, 2022Updated 9:15 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON — Four months after an Islamic State suicide bomber killed scores of people, including 13 American service members, outside the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, U.S. and foreign intelligence officials have pieced together a profile of the assailant.
Military commanders say they are using that information to focus on an Islamic State cell that they believe was involved in the attack, including its leadership and foot soldiers. The cell members could be among the first insurgents struck by armed MQ-9 Reaper drones flying missions over Afghanistan from a base in the Persian Gulf. The United States has not carried out any airstrikes in the country since the last American troops left on Aug. 30.
The attack at the airport’s Abbey Gate unfolded four days earlier, during the frenzied final days of the largest noncombatant evacuation ever conducted by the U.S. military. It was one of the deadliest attacks of the 20-year war in Afghanistan.
The Islamic State identified the suicide bomber as Abdul Rahman Al-Logari. American officials say he was a former engineering student who was one of several thousand militants freed from at least two high-security prisons after the Taliban seized control of Kabul on Aug. 15. The Taliban emptied the facilities indiscriminately, releasing not only their own imprisoned members but also fighters from Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K, the group’s branch in Afghanistan and the Taliban’s nemesis.
“It’s hard to explain what the thinking was in letting out people who were a threat to the Taliban,” Edmund Fitton-Brown, a senior U.N. counterterrorism official, said at a recent security conference in Doha, Qatar.
Mr. Logari was not unknown to the Americans. In 2017, the C.I.A. tipped off Indian intelligence agents that he was plotting a suicide bombing in New Delhi, U.S. officials said. Indian authorities foiled the attack and turned Mr. Logari over to the C.I.A., which sent him to Afghanistan to serve time at the Parwan prison at Bagram Air Base. He remained there until he was freed amid the chaos after Kabul fell.
Eleven days later, on Aug. 26 at 5:48 p.m., the bomber, wearing a 25-pound explosive vest under his clothing, walked up to a group of American troops who were frisking those hoping to enter Hamid Karzai International Airport. He waited, military officials said, until just before he was about to be searched before detonating the bomb, which was unusually large for a suicide vest, killing himself and nearly 200 others.
Afghanistan Under Taliban Rule
With the departure of the U.S. military on Aug. 30, Afghanistan quickly fell back under control of the Taliban. Across the country, there is widespread anxiety about the future.
The attack raised ISIS-K’s international profile, and positioned it both as a major threat to the Taliban’s ability to govern the country and, according to American officials, as the most imminent terrorist risk to the United States coming out of Afghanistan.
“The group has gained some notoriety in a way that could be quite compelling for them on the transnational stage,” Christine Abizaid, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said in October at a national security conference in Sea Island, Ga. “At the same time, they’re fighting the Taliban. How that force-on-force engagement in Afghanistan will go will have some defining characteristics about what the transnational threat looks like.”
In October, Colin H. Kahl, the under secretary of defense for policy, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that ISIS-K could be able to attack the United States sometime in 2022. “We could see ISIS-K generate that capability in somewhere between six and twelve months,” he said.
The Parwan prison at Bagram and the Pul-e-Charkhi prison near Kabul were the Afghan government’s two main high-security prisons. The United States built Parwan in 2009 and transferred it to Afghan government control three years later.
The Taliban killed one prominent prisoner — a former top leader of the Islamic State in Afghanistan, Omar Khalid Khorasani — and released more than 12,000 others, including roughly 6,000 Taliban, 1,800 ISIS-K and nearly three dozen Qaeda fighters, according to U.S. officials.
“The fiasco in Afghanistan has put hundreds of terrorists back on the street,” said Bruce O. Riedel, a former C.I.A. officer who ran President Barack Obama’s first Afghanistan policy review.
One of them was Mr. Logari, the son of an Afghan merchant who frequently visited India and Pakistan for business. Mr. Logari moved to India in 2017 to study engineering at Manav Rachna University near New Delhi.
Recruited by ISIS-K, Mr. Logari was arrested in relation to the New Delhi plot and handed over to the C.I.A. by India’s foreign spy service, the Research and Analysis Wing, in September 2017, according to Indian media reports that were confirmed by American and Indian officials. A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment.
Mr. Logari spent time in both the Pul-e-Charki and Parwan prisons, American officials said, but it is unclear how he linked up with the ISIS-K attack cell in Kabul, or why and how he came to be the Abbey Gate bomber.
The Islamic State seized on the spectacular nature of the bombing, boasting about its size, location and timing in social media posts, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist media.
In the months since the attack, U.S. intelligence analysts and military officials say they have focused on learning more about the ISIS-K strike cell, and any future attacks it may be plotting against the West.
Created six years ago by disaffected Pakistani Taliban fighters, the group’s ranks fell to about 1,500 to 2,000 fighters last year, about half that of its peak in 2016 before U.S. airstrikes and Afghan commando raids took a toll, killing many of its leaders. In June 2020, an ambitious new commander, Shahab al-Muhajir, took over the group and has been trying to recruit Taliban fighters and other militants.
The violence has strained Afghanistan’s new and untested government and raised red flags in the West about the group’s potential resurgence.
President Biden and his top commanders have said the United States would carry out “over-the-horizon” strikes from a base in the United Arab Emirates against ISIS and Qaeda insurgents who threaten the United States.
Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the head of the military’s Central Command, said in early December that the departure of the U.S. military and intelligence assets from Afghanistan had made tracking the groups harder but “not impossible.”
Mujib Mashal contributed reporting from New Delhi.
5. Getting Back On Top: How to Rebuild the Navy
Getting Back On Top: How to Rebuild the Navy
The Navy recovered and rebuilt after the Vietnam War—a low point similar to the situation today. How it regained its position as the dominant navy in the world is an interesting and instructive tale.
By The Honorable John F. Lehman
January 2022 Proceedings Vol. 148/1/1,427
THE 1970s
The U.S. Navy emerged from the Vietnam War into a different world than that preceding the 1964 Tonkin Gulf incident. In some ways “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Elmo “Bud” Zumwalt was one of the most energetic and thoughtful officers to occupy that position, to be followed by two equally astute leaders—Admirals James Holloway and Thomas Hayward. Navy Secretary Graham Claytor (1977–79), a decorated World War II destroyer escort commander, was a powerful naval influence on Defense Secretary Harold Brown.
They and their staff officers developed and published their visions and concepts in a succession of cogent documents—Project Sixty, “Missions of the U.S. Navy,” Sea Plan 2000, Strategic Concepts of the U.S. Navy (NWP-1), the Sea Strike Strategy, and “The Future of U.S. Seapower”—that stimulated intense debate within the naval service (often in the pages of Proceedings) and would serve as springboards for the Maritime Strategy efforts of the 1980s. Vice Admiral Stansfield Turner’s transformation of the strategy curriculum at the Naval War College was sustained by subsequent CNOs and War College presidents, all of whom strove to boost Navy student officer attendance as well.
But successive Congresses—transfixed by wrongheaded notions of détente, peace dividends, and a narrow focus on only a few areas of the globe—often pushed back against the Navy’s views and refused to allocate sufficient funding to implement them.
Having for decades accepted overwhelming Soviet superiority on the ground in central Europe, U.S. defense planners worried that the capability gap there between the Warsaw Pact and NATO had only grown during the Vietnam War, destabilizing the overall East-West military balance. Likewise, U.S. nuclear superiority over the Soviets had given way to parity. In such a situation, reestablishing U.S. maritime superiority was critical to maintain overall stability. Yet Pentagon planners themselves helped the Soviets chip away at that superiority, as they sought to trade resources needed by U.S. maritime forces for an obsessive focus on central Europe and land-based forces.
The Navy’s ship designers, naval architects, aviation engineers, and associated contractors fashioned a new generation of fast, lethal, and sophisticated warships, aircraft, and weapons, including Nimitz-class carriers, Los Angeles–class submarines, Spruance-class destroyers, and Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates. Force levels plummeted, however, as worn out and obsolete hulls and airframes from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam were retired.
The Navy was populated by operators who were seasoned in forward operations under the sea, in the air, and in combat close to shore. But its mess decks were roiled by racial tensions, and drug abuse was rampant. The service honed scores of smart officers skilled in operations analysis, politico-military affairs, and strategic planning, who—due to demanding repeat staff tours and appropriate high-level education—understood the nature and benefits of the Navy in keeping the country safe. But the CNO’s staff (OpNav) was riven by community stovepipes and intraservice budget battles as defense spending tumbled and shipbuilding costs soared.
Admiral Zumwalt dealt brilliantly with the service’s racial issues. He also refocused the Navy on the Soviet threat, expressing particular concern over the Soviet Navy’s capability to interdict sea lines of communications between the United States and its allies across the Atlantic and Pacific. Analysts at the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA), the Navy’s federally funded research and development center, shared the CNO’s concern but believed that the main wartime Soviet naval effort would be to deploy ballistic-missile submarines as a strategic reserve in far-northern ocean bastions, protected by most of their remaining warships (which would deploy at ever-greater distances from the bastions as their capabilities improved, effectively severing the western sea lines of communication as a secondary effect). Late in the decade, the Intelligence Community, including the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), using some still–highly classified data and analyses, sided with CNA and began to educate the Navy’s operators.
Through it all, in response to national tasking, the Navy continued to deploy forward as much of the fleet as it could to enhance deterrence against the Soviets, reassure global allies, help resolve crises, and maintain its combat edge. Meanwhile, the Soviets continued their massive naval building program; developed worrisome naval employment concepts of their own; increased their combat reach from their home bases; and developed advanced naval bases in Cuba, east and west Africa, the Middle East, and—most galling of all—Cam Ranh Bay, in what was now the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Soviet design bureaus developed imaginative new submarine and surface warship designs, and Soviet shipyards built them in quantity, along with a new generation of offensive, long-range, land-based naval aircraft.
Construction of Los Angeles–class submarines started in 1972, and a process of continuous improvement and upgrades made these boats the backbone of the Navy’s subsurface fleet through the next four decades. Here the USS Philadelphia (SSN-690) is launched at Groton, Connecticut, in October 1974. Credit: U.S. Naval Institute Photo Archive
The U.S. Navy had its own string of advanced bases around the world that it could use, and it was allied with most of the world’s other naval powers. Despite the defeat in Vietnam, most of those bases remained available, with a new base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean showing great promise. Allies, for the most part, stuck by the United States, although many of their fleets—especially in Europe—grew progressively smaller. With the increased sophistication of evolving C3 systems, however, interoperability among the navies of the western alliance required constant tending by the leading power, the U.S. Navy. Transfer of precious but essential technological secrets was a growing issue, and—unbeknownst to the United States and its allies—spies were poking holes in the blankets of secrecy that cloaked many of their activities.
Throughout the 20th century, the U.S. Navy had become famous for the quantity and quality of its at-sea exercises. The Cold War reoriented the service’s exercise program to the Mediterranean, North Atlantic, and northeast Pacific, to improve combat readiness, experiment with new tactics and gear, reassure allies, and signal resolve to the Soviets. Throughout the Vietnam War, the Navy continued this rigorous exercise program, but by the late 1970s—in the interests of détente and false economies—it pulled in its horns. The U.S. Navy even began treating the Norwegian Sea as if it were a Soviet lake, much to Moscow’s delight.
Since the 19th century, the Navy had developed—at the Naval War College and elsewhere—a considerable war-gaming competence, gaining insights in ways not possible on the high seas. By the 1970s, however, the gaming was focused on examining discrete tactics—a worthy focus but neglectful of global maritime strategy. Fortunately, Naval War College professor Francis J. “Bing” West and others at Newport realized this shortcoming, and—once they were done working on Seaplan 2000—turned their attention to creating and implementing a new annual Global War Game, starting in 1979.
All of these developments—positive and negative—were magnified as the Carter administration entered its final years. Defense Secretary Harold Brown continued to support Navy development of extraordinary new systems, including the Aegis combat system, the SLQ-32 electronic warfare system, and others, but he did not provide enough funding to procure them in numbers. The Navy’s ship count continued to drop, but demands for deployments increased. Crisis after crisis required emergency deployments and repositioning naval power worldwide. But the administration continued to focus mostly on building up military power in West Germany, until the Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan illustrated the limits of such a narrow perspective.
Meanwhile, the intellectual ferment in the U.S. Navy began to have positive second-order effects. Successive CNOs built on the ideas of their predecessors. Admiral Holloway’s Naval Warfare Publication 1, Strategic Concepts of the U.S. Navy (NWP-1), emphasized the importance of seeing the Navy as an integrated body of warfare areas—strike, antisubmarine, antisurface, antiair, and amphibious—instead of a series of semiautonomous subsurface, surface, air, and special warfare stovepipes. This was reinforced by Admiral Hayward’s encouragement of the composite warfare commander (CWC) concept for carrier battle group command and control. CNO Hayward created a Directorate for Naval Warfare, organized by warfare areas, within OpNav, to help shape the Navy’s program objective memorandum (POM) and annual budget proposals and to foster better integration of platforms and weapons systems within the fleet. Admiral Hayward also reacted favorably to a recommendation by Robert Murray, the outgoing Under Secretary of the Navy, to set up a small cell of front-running officers, fresh from major command, to develop tactical and operational concepts that would be useful to OpNav and the fleet. As important, it would improve those officers’ own strategic and operational acumen, anticipating that many would later become influential flag officers. This group was established in Newport, Rhode Island, and called the Strategic Studies Group (SSG). Its first iteration was in 1981.
At the same time, the Navy continued to populate plans offices, especially in OpNav OP-06 and on fleet staffs, with appropriately educated and experienced experts in politico-military affairs and strategic planning. In 1978, Rear Admiral Robert Hilton, the Director for Strategy, Plans, and Policy (OP-60), reshuffled his team and put several leading strategists and NATO experts into a new Strategic Concepts Branch (OP-603), reporting directly to Hilton. His successor, Rear Admiral Arthur Moreau, continued this practice with enthusiasm.
Some OP-603 midgrade officers, along with denizens of other OpNav divisions, periodically came together on their own to argue about optimum approaches to address naval issues of the day. These meetings were professional but unofficial, informal, and not recorded. They were, however, yet another manifestation of the intellectual excitement within the naval officer corps of the time, in the face of a rising Soviet naval threat and U.S. administrations that did not appear to be responsive to the needs of the service—or the country—in maintaining maritime superiority.
THE 1980s
Admiral Thomas B. Hayward, Chief of Naval Operations (1978–82), created a directorate for naval warfare within the Navy staff, established the Strategic Studies Group in Newport, and helped solidify the composite warfare commander concept for battle group command and control. Credit: U.S. Naval Institute Photo Archive
As the 1970s ended, the American people had had enough of the false promises of too-narrow objectives, détente, and peace dividends, as well as falling force levels and rising defense costs. The election of President Ronald Reagan in November 1980 ushered in an era of “peace through strength.” I was fortunate to be named Secretary of the Navy in the new administration. The President, a strong bipartisan group in Congress led by Senators John Tower and Scoop Jackson, and I were determined to refocus the Navy on three major efforts:
• Articulate an aggressive, forward-leaning, global maritime strategy, involving not just the U.S. Navy, but also the other services and our naval allies, as part of a new national security strategy to reestablish maritime supremacy. The goal was to demonstrate to the Soviets that they could not win a war against NATO and would bankrupt their economy if they tried to keep up.
• Increase the U.S. Navy force goal to 600 battle force ships, including 15 carrier battle groups, 100 submarines, and amphibious lift for one Marine amphibious force and one Marine amphibious brigade. These requirements were derived directly from the operational needs of each theater surrounding the Soviet Union.
• Reduce defense costs, especially for procurement, by fostering and enforcing competition among suppliers.
When the administration took office, we were able to use the institutions and processes already in place—but denied funding by the previous administration—to reestablish U.S. global naval superiority. Combined with simultaneous improvements in Army and Air Force resources and fighting concepts, these efforts stabilized overall global military deterrence in our favor. We also added a number of key new innovations.
The Naval War College and the Naval Institute—and their fora and media—provided the Reagan administration ready-made outlets to reach the Navy and Marine Corps officer corps and beyond with the concepts of a maritime strategy and maritime superiority. So too did routine hearings on the Hill convened by the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, mostly to explain and gain support for the 600-ship force goal. We were fortunate that President Carter’s Defense Secretary, Harold Brown, had continued critical Navy research, development, prototyping, and testing programs on new platforms and systems. Except in a few cases, all we had to do was fund and procure many more of these items in the fleet, and fast. We used other gatherings and media as well to spread the logic of the buildup, and many of these concepts and explanations were picked up and reported by the trade press and broader mainstream media.
When the CNO’s SSG convened its first annual cohort in Newport, called SSG I, six front-running officers were handpicked by CNO Hayward, each from a different warfare community. They were directed to examine a NATO sea campaign against the Soviet Union’s vulnerable Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic, and Mediterranean flanks, and they established links with the Naval War College’s War Gaming Center and the Navy’s recently repurposed Washington-based Advanced Technology Panel (ATP). A robust travel schedule had the SSG visiting and exchanging ideas with unified and fleet commanders and their staffs. Once the group’s work was underway, I met with them and their successors periodically to glean what they had learned and ensure they knew my views on the operational and tactical subjects they were studying. I also met on occasion with the informal naval discussion group of mid-level officers that was functioning as a precursor to the current Strategy Discussion Group. And in a widely reported speech at the National Press Club in August 1981, I laid out important policies to increase affordability and decrease costs, which we were already pursuing vigorously.
Most important, I ensured that three of the Navy’s most aggressive, offensive-minded, and tactically astute flag officers—Vice Admiral James A. “Ace” Lyons Jr. and Rear Admirals Hank Mustin and Jerry Tuttle—started to prepare for a seminal at-sea exercise in the fall of 1981. In this exercise, called Ocean Venture, the U.S. Second Fleet, NATO Striking Fleet Atlantic, and other forces would surge into the northern Norwegian Sea to demonstrate and practice what a forward maritime campaign entailed, including imaginative cover and deception tactics, techniques, and procedures. Similar exercises would follow every year in the Mediterranean, northeast Pacific, and Arctic—not just talking the talk but walking the walk of a global, forward, offensive campaign against the Soviets.
In 1982, things really came together. Forward exercises were conducted in the northern Pacific and Mediterranean. For the first time in 20 years, two U.S. Navy attack submarines surfaced together at the North Pole. SSG I war-gamed their hypotheses and presented their findings to the Navy leadership, then went to fleet and staff assignments to use what they had learned about strategy and operational art. SSG II convened and began to examine ingenious new offensive Mediterranean and Pacific campaigns. The annual Global War Game reconvened at Newport, with a Mediterranean-focused scenario. And the Intelligence Community published a widely usable National Intelligence Estimate at the secret level that laid out its consensus view of Soviet naval strategy and policy, which U.S. naval planners could use to develop countermeasures.
Meanwhile, the Navy’s uniformed leaders tasked the strategy whizzes in OP-60 to create the first public version of a maritime strategy brief for widespread circulation within the defense establishment. It was then used to kick off the annual POM build in the fall. OP-60 put together a classified briefing that exceeded all expectations. I approved the brief and used it enthusiastically. Admiral Hayward’s Warfighting Directorate (OP-095) used it in its warfare appraisals, which informed the next stage of POM development, made easier by the briefing’s focus on CWC warfare areas and by the assignment to OP-095 of numerous SSG alumni.
That strategy briefing became the basis for hundreds of briefings, usually by OP-603 strategists, to appropriate audiences at war colleges, service academies, congressional committees and subcommittees, academic and U.S. Naval Institute fora, and Washington, fleet, and allied staffs. By 1984, having “murder-boarded,” honed, and presented the briefing, OP-603 reformatted it as a printed classified OpNav document, with text and graphics, which was signed out by CNO Admiral Watkins. It was updated and expanded in 1985 and joined that year by a classified Amphibious Warfare Strategy, drafted by a Navy–Marine Corps team and signed by the CNO and the Commandant of the Marine Corps (CMC) jointly. In 1986, the CNO, CMC, and I published an unclassified version of the strategy in a special edition of Proceedings. The message was the same as that of my early speeches, articles, and testimony: (1) We have an appropriate and effective maritime strategy that will ensure our nation maintains its vital maritime superiority; (2) The minimum force needed to execute the strategy is 600 ships, including 15 carrier battle groups; and (3) We have instituted new procurement policies that are bringing down the cost to the American taxpayer of naval systems needed to build and sustain a 600-ship Navy and carry out the strategy.
The Navy of the 1980s began to include numerous new systems, notably, reengined F-14s, Aegis cruisers, Tomahawk land-attack and antiship cruise missiles, improved Los Angeles–class submarines, four recommissioned battleships, vertical launch systems, close-in weapons systems, SLQ-32, and more. Force levels went from 521 battle force ships in 1981 to 594 in 1987. The Navy also instituted and refined new operational and tactical organizations, concepts, and procedures, including O-6-level carrier air wing commanders (also known as Super CAGs), the Naval Strike Warfare Center in Fallon, Nevada (a.k.a. Strike U), outer air battle tactics, and operational maneuver from the sea, to name a few.
I left office as Secretary of the Navy in 1987. The forward maritime strategy, the 600-ship force goal, annual global exercises, and constant tactical innovation were firmly in place. My successors Jim Webb and Will Ball subscribed to them. So, too, did CNO Admiral Watkins’ successor Admiral Carl Trost, who published three Proceedings articles on the continued validity of the strategy, even as the Soviets began to buckle and Congress began again to slash defense budgets.
When the Reagan administration set out to build a 600-ship Navy, it was able to do so by injecting additional funding into some already existing, excellent platforms and weapon systems, such as the F-14 Tomcat fighter (shown here). Credit: U.S. Naval Institute Photo Archive
In fact, the largest of the global, aggressive, forward at-sea exercises was the enormous Pacific Exercise ’89 led by Admiral David Jeremiah. The Global War Games at Newport also continued, with an ever-expanding number of participants. Successive SSGs continued to respond to CNO tasking, including SSG VII, which evaluated the strategy in the Pacific for Admiral Trost in 1986–87, and SSG IX, which recommended that the CNO repurpose the group, since they saw the Soviets as finished as an enemy. OP-603 strategists continued to brief the strategy around the clock, and Admiral Trost signed the last updated version of the OpNav strategy document in 1989.
Throughout this entire period, President Reagan called on elements of the Navy to help him deal with a global array of wars, crises, incidents, and diplomatic issues—in Grenada, Lebanon, Syria, Libya, the Arabian Gulf, and elsewhere. As each of these operations wound down, the Navy hastened to capture, disseminate, and use lessons learned—not only to improve future performance in similar circumstances, but also to refine tactics, techniques, procedures, and systems intended for use against the Soviets in accordance with the strategy. Lessons from the Falklands War were studied in particular—and used.
Finally, the Navy had once more become an elite calling Americans were proud to support and in which they were proud to serve. Popular culture reflected this attitude, from the success of books such as The Hunt for Red October to movies such as Top Gun, TV series including Winds of War, documentaries on finding the Titanic, the stage revival of South Pacific, and Cher’s unforgettable music video If I Could Turn Back Time.
As the decade ended, Navy morale and
warfighting competence were high, and the American people and their elected leaders again accepted maritime superiority as a strategic deterrent and war-winning necessity for the nation. Plus, of course, the Navy had helped win the Cold War itself.
KEY POINTS
So, how did the Navy recover and rebuild from the Vietnam War and improve in both quantity and quality to be the dominant Navy in the world by the end of the 1980s? It:
• Built well on the foundation of existing official and unofficial Navy institutions, including the geographic and numbered fleets, OpNav, Advanced Technology Panel, Naval War College, CWC concept, strategic planning subspecialty, the Naval Institute, and CNA—and fostered interorganizational synergies among all those elements
• Created new institutions, organizations, and purposeful activities as needed, including the SSG, Global War Games, Naval Strike Warfare Center, and “Super CAGs”—and fostered synergies among them
• Developed, promulgated, and refined a global, offensive, joint, and allied strategy
• Identified the most aggressive experts in strategy, operations, tactics, force planning, and cost-cutting; fostered their development; and placed them in critical positions to take advantage of their energy and effectiveness
• Focused intelligence efforts, including open-source analyses, on determining the Soviets’ strategy, operational concepts, vulnerabilities, and weaknesses, and disseminated them throughout the Navy’s operational leadership and the fleet, to counter the Warsaw Pact military decisively
• Expanded and learned from robust programs of at-sea exercises, war games, real-world operations, conferences, murder boards, and historical naval analyses
• Adopted justifiable and achievable force goals, consistently sticking to them and ensuring they were resourced
• Cut procurement costs, especially through competitive, firm fixed-price contracts, while opposing “gold plated” design changes
• Upgraded existing designs and systems and did not chase research & development “rainbows”
• Accomplished and integrated all these efforts through strong presidential, secretarial, CNO, and CMC leadership
The Navy and Marine Corps today face challenges similar to those of the late 1970s. The force is tired from 20 years of nonstop operations in the Central Command area of responsibility. Procurement has been insufficient to build and maintain a force needed to meet the demands levied against it. And the American people do not have a strong, visceral connection to the Navy—having been told by successive generations of political leaders from both parties that their country has the strongest, best military in the world, while they were at the same time cutting budgets and increasing demands year after year. All is not lost, however. We have been in such a situation before, and with strong political and military leadership, we can rebuild the Sea Services.
Coming in February
“Maritime Strategy for the 21st Century” by Thomas Mahnken
6. Beijing’s Movie War Propaganda—and Washington’s
Sigh.... Author: "American propaganda is bad"
The author fails to make the point that the Chinese entertainment industry is government (or party) controlled. The US entertainment industry is not government controlled rather implying that it is. And of course the author brings in someone like Bruce Cumings who accuses the US of genocide inthe Korean War.
Beijing’s Movie War Propaganda—and Washington’s
ROBIN ANDERSEN
New York Times (10/8/21): “The Battle at Lake Changjin was made with government support and guidance, underscoring the lengths the authorities will go to shape popular culture.”
To coincide with the 100th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Communist Party, the powerful Chinese Central Propaganda Department commissioned a blockbuster film that depicts a US defeat in the Korean War.
Under fire from US bombs, the heroic People’s Army fights a brutal ground battle and emerges victorious. Brave Chinese soldiers are caught in a hellish landscape as air attacks riddle the earth all around them. A villainous US Gen. Douglas MacArthur, shot Nazi-style from a low camera, shakes his fist and shouts into a microphone, “I believe we will succeed!” Spoiler: He doesn’t.
The New York Times (10/8/21) didn’t think much of the movie. It called it “aggrieved, defiant and jingoistic,” and pointed out that depictions of the Korean War have long been a staple of Communist Party propaganda. Despite its big budget—the film came with a $200 million price tag, the most ever spent on a film in China—the film got “mixed reviews,” though the Times acknowledged it was at least better than the “usual agitprop.”
The paper did worry that it was supported by the government, which helped with “script development, production and publicity,” and used “serving soldiers among the movie’s 70,000 extras.” Communist Party support for The Battle at Lake Changjin underscored “the lengths the authorities will go to shape popular culture.”
Chinese authorities, that is.
Them, not us
Each aspect of Chinese propaganda the Times complains about is routinely employed by US media, and they have been for years. But such facts are not mentioned.
There is no doubt that the film is propaganda. A piece pulled from CNN’s international wire (10/4/21) explained that for the 100th anniversary, Beijing ordered filmmakers to to “spread propaganda celebrating the anniversary of the Communist Party.” Movies would have to focus on themes of “loving the Party, the country and socialism,” and “singing the praises of the Chinese Communist Party, the motherland, the people and its heroes.”
But in the post-9/11 era, in which US popular culture has been dominated by the military, the main difference between China’s film industry and Hollywood’s is that the China Film Administration openly explains its propaganda goals. In the United States, filmmaking has been subsidized and guided by the Pentagon for years, but that influence is rarely identified as propaganda.
Twenty years ago this month, on November 11, 2001, Bush Administration communications strategist Karl Rove called a conclave in Beverly Hills, and four dozen members of the media industry elite showed up. Rove asked these “dream makers” to help the White House promote the “war on terror.” The industry complied.
Though military influence on film studios dates back to World War I (MRonline, 7/3/21), the military entertainment complex took off in the 21st century, and the long-time head of the Pentagon’s Film Liaison Office, Phillip Strub, became the most powerful man in Hollywood (SpyCulture, 12/11/18).
The Pentagon’s Hollywood power
Roger Stahl’s latest film, Theaters of War: How the Pentagon and CIA Took Hollywood, an educational documentary to be released in 2022 by the Media Education Foundation, examines this media/military merger, and looks at Strub’s influence on hundreds of films. On-camera interviews with journalists, scholars, writers (of which I am one), and even filmmaker Oliver Stone, detail the rules and their consequences.
Professor Trisha Jenkins explains: “The Pentagon is powerful in the film and TV industry because they have expensive toys. They have submarines, they have aircraft carriers,” not to mention helicopters, pilots and extras. Another UK scholar, Matthew Alford, follows with “that is going to give them rights, usually contracted in, to change the script.” Oliver Stone is featured saying, “You can call it censorship, you can call it propaganda—it’s all of these things.” But ultimately, as Canadian professor Tanner Mirrlees argues, “This is more insidious than actually state-controlled and state-produced propaganda, because it passes off as just entertainment.”
Blockbuster films like Iron Man (2008), Captain Marvel (2019) and even Superman (1978) are loaded with military hardware and influence. Indeed, the Air Force was very pleased that its personnel “came off looking like rock stars” in Transformers (2007) (American Forces Press Service, 6/21/07), and director Michael Bay “loves working with veterans” on other movies in the franchise (Military.com, 9/12/21).
Media scholars have long understood that stealth tactics of persuasion, able to deliver propaganda messages under the cover of entertainment, enhance those messages’ effectiveness. Not only did active duty Navy Seals star in Act of Valor, but the film grew out of a recruitment advertisement for the military. The previously super-secret SEALs are endowed with almost superhuman prowess; one is said to be “made of granite.” Though dramatically outnumbered, they vanquish every terrorist plot and never seem to miss a shot. And Marvel Comics’ superhero franchises have shilled for the Pentagon for years, creating the illusion of US militarism as a benevolent force.
All the equipment, tanks and army vehicles, crews and pilots so often featured in blockbuster films have earned enormous profits for studios. Meanwhile, many films not aligned with a positive military ethos, or that declined to present the military in a singularly positive light, have been turned down and never made. Previously, scholars estimated about 200-300 films had been made with Pentagon direction. “Then in 2018, we were able to account for about 900 films,” Roger Stahl told FAIR. But recently, with the help of journalist Tom Secker, he uncovered a blizzard of recently released documents that together show about 3,000 films shaped by Pentagon censors. Over the years, militainment has, in the words of Henry Giroux, created “a constant military presence in American life” and forged a civil society “more aggressive in its war-like enthusiasms.”
But the power of the Pentagon’s Film Liaison office and the influence it’s had on Hollywood is rarely discussed in corporate media. US media easily recognizes Chinese propaganda, but the “lengths the authorities will go to shape popular culture” in the US is not on their agendas.
Some papers are more adept at identifying the often-heavy-handed propaganda produced by Hollywood. The British Independent (10/24/21) asked, “If this mega Chinese blockbuster is propaganda, what are Bond and Captain Marvel?” Louis Chilton observed that when “transparent indoctrination is getting called out,” it’s a good thing; “if only we were so ready to spot propaganda when it’s a little closer to home.” He tags Captain Marvel (2019) as a “bare-faced piece of propaganda,” at times mimicking an “unusually elaborate advertisement for Air Force recruitment.”
Captain Marvel as recruitment tool
Captain Marvel features a fictional superhero who works for a very real air force.
The review of The Battle of Lake Changjin includes a photo of a little boy saluting for the camera in front of the film’s huge poster, no doubt to illustrate the film’s indoctrination of China’s young people. But consider Captain Marvel. Carol Danvers, Marvel Comics’ superhero, the strong, determined, female warrior empowered by absorbing a super-cosmic light force, was harnessed, pigeonholed and appropriated into a promotional product for the Air Force.
Partnering in the production of the film, the Air Force used Captain Marvel as an elaborate recruitment tool. It began with a photo of the star, Brie Larson, with Brig. Gen. Jeannie M. Leavitt, the first female fighter pilot, atop an F-15 at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. Larson joined simulated dogfights at Nellis, and explained, while promoting the film, that at “the core of [Carol Danvers] is the Air Force.”
The Air Force, together with the Navy and Marine Corps, are all short 25% of their pilot billets. The Air Force is on the hunt for the next generation of pilots, having been doling out cash incentives to prevent pilots from defecting to the private sector with little success. A glamorous superhero would be much more persuasive.
The weekend Captain Marvel was released, thousands of screenings included US Air Force ads highlighting female pilots like Carol Danvers: “Every superhero has an origin story. For us, it was the US Air Force.” Air Force personnel were featured at the film’s red-carpet premiere, and the Nellis-based Thunderbirds performed a thrilling flyover at the base.
Bathing in the reflected glow of a superhero, few will pause to consider the harsh realities of what it’s like for women in the Air Force. Just before the movie came out, a Smithsonian Magazine survey (1/19) found that two-thirds of women polled said they experienced gender discrimination while serving, and the same proportion reported being sexually harassed or assaulted. In 2019, the Department of Defense reported the number of sexual assaults at service academies rose from 507 in 2016 to 747 in 2018, a 47% spike. In 2018, at the Air Force Academy, 15% of women reported incidents of sexual assault.
The Pentagon has long claimed that a pillar of script selection is the accurate portrayal of the armed forces, something they can do better than fictional film directors. As one Air Force spokesperson explained, we partner with “any number of entertainment projects to ensure that the depiction of Airmen and the Air Force mission is accurate and authentic.” Touting the film as authentic hides the realities of sexual assault and the fact that women pilots in the Air Force amount to only 6.5 % “and fewer than 3% fly fighters.” In terms of accuracy, Carol Danvers is a fictional superhero, a comic book character with supernatural powers who flies unassisted through space and destroys alien spaceships!
China battles the US
Washington Post (10/14/21): “Studios often work closely with the government and army to ensure that their films fit with the official narrative of events.”
Though US media reviews consistently condemned The Battle at Lake Changjin as Chinese propaganda, they eschewed discussion of the Korean War itself. A few headlines seem to imply that the Chinese and US versions of the war were different in the film, but none articulated how.
A Washington Post review (10/14/21), headlined “Americans Vanquished, China Triumphant: 2021’s Hit War Epic Doesn’t Fit Hollywood Script,” opens with food: US troops eat “roast chicken” and the People’s Army “gnaw on frozen potatoes.” The second paragraph includes Chinese soldiers charging through snow into battle, shouting, “Resist American aggression and aid Korea,” compared to—nothing.
The actual conflict presented seems to be between China’s new commercial film success, which can now challenge Hollywood’s global dominance, “despite a debate over the movie’s historical accuracy,” though no inaccuracies are offered. Other examples make it hard to see how “macho action films” popular in China since 2017 present a different script from US films. No difference is offered between US films and those produced in China, where studios “work closely with the government and army to ensure that their films fit with the official narrative of events.” It’s simply implied that this doesn’t happen here.
In like manner, Chinese soldiers that died in battle in Lake Changjin are “valorized,” or turned into “martyrs,” as if US war films refrain from such blatant genre stereotypes. Even though the Post admits the Lake Changjin battle was a “successful campaign to hold off US troops during the Korean War,” it’s still referred to as a “foundational myth.”
The Hollywood Reporter (6/23/21) does the same. After describing the narrative as a Chinese victory—“the historic battle saw the PLA overcome long odds” to push “US military forces into retreat”—it went on to say, “It glorifies Chinese sacrifices and heroism.” Aren’t glory and heroism the main points of war blockbusters?
Ultimately for the Post, the conflict of this “politically charged debate” is about global film profits, which “underscores the uneasy relationship between Hollywood and China.” A decade ago, US blockbusters dominated the top 10 lists for Chinese ticket sales, but now those spots are often taken by Chinese produced movies. Forbes (10/2/21) and CNN (10/4/21) also picked up the battle of the box office theme, a topic far more suited to corporate film journalism than unpacking film content.
The real Korean War
Military.com (10/11/21) complains that Lake Changjin “ignores any facts that might detract from the heroic story it is trying to tell.”
The Battle at Lake Changjin depicts a Chinese victory over US troops at a place known to the US military as Chosin Reservoir. It was a turning point of the Korean War—or, as the war is known in China, the “War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea.”
Most corporate media reports on the film repeated these facts. A few outlets interjected that the film failed to mention that North Korea had invaded the South first, a statement that stands as the central justification for the US intervention.
The war in Korea has long been referred to as the “forgotten war.” Big journalism, now as in the past, has failed to pen a coherent narrative of the war, but it was a defining moment for US militarism. The first major combat of the Cold War, the sheer brutality of the US offensive left North Korea in shambles and killed 3 million people on both sides.
The US entered the war in July 1950 and began a relentless bombing campaign. By September 1950, official press communiqués from Gen. Douglas MacArthur announced a “paucity” of targets, as everything had already been bombed. One lamented, “It’s hard to find good targets, for we have burned out almost everything.”
After devastating the country, US forces pushed north toward the Chinese border, where they expected to confront about 30,000 Chinese soldiers. But “faulty intelligence” from the CIA vastly underestimated Chinese resistance, and UN and US forces confronted, instead, a Chinese army over 120,000 strong. The 17-day battle started on November 26 and lasted until December 13, 1950, and turned the war from a US-led rout of North Korean forces to a stalemate that still exists on the Korean peninsula.
When Military.com (10/11/21) reviewed the film, it gave an official US version of the battle: “Chinese forces surprised United Nations troops, and a force of 30,000 was confronted by 120,000 Red Army soldiers.” Nicknamed the “Frozen Chosin,” it’s “a heroic tale of survival against incredibly long odds as US-led forces successfully retreat to the port of Hungnam.” This tale of heroism that presents US forces as victims is made possible by the certainty that it will not be challenged.
‘Moral imbecility’
US Air Force planes bombing Korea.
Historian Bruce Cumings, a recognized authority on the war, speaking on a BBC documentary titled Korea: The Unknown War (1988), describes the genocidal bombing that killed perhaps 2 million civilians—one quarter of the peninsula’s population. American pilots “dropped oceans of napalm, left barely a modern building standing, opened large dams to flood nearby rice valleys and killed thousands of peasants by denying them food. It was “a conscious program of using Air Power to destroy a society.” Cummings expresses indignation that “this well-documented episode merits not the slightest attention or moral qualms in the United States.”
These sentiments are mirrored in I.F. Stone’s Hidden History of the Korean War. The investigative journalist slogged through MacArthur’s communiqués, characterizing them as “literally horrifying.” Stone noted the complete indifference to noncombatants displayed by the tactic of saturating villages with napalm to dislodge a few soldiers.
Another communiqué from a captain gloated, “You can kiss that group of villages goodbye.” These documents “reflected not the pity which human feeling called for, but a kind of gay moral imbecility utterly devoid of imagination—as if the flyers were playing in a bowling alley, with villages for pins.”
MacArthur wanted to continue to push north and bomb China, but President Harry Truman found the nerve, with some help from Congress, to fire the four-star general who had heckled him in public and challenged his policy. The fighting ended with an armistice on July 27, 1953. It was not won, it was negotiated. In the words of Cumings, “An American army victorious on a world scale five years earlier was fought to a standstill by rough peasant armies.”
‘Upsurge in seeking the truth’
Louis Chilton (Independent, 10/23/21): “Perhaps the issue with The Battle at Lake Changjin is not that it indoctrinates its audience, but that it fails to clothe its insidious political message in the requisite amount of subtlety.”
Cai Xia, a domestic critic of the Chinese government and former scholar at the Central Party School, wrote that Lake Changjin’s efforts to incite enmity for the United States had “unexpectedly triggered an upsurge in seeking the truth about the Korean War.” It would be surprising if US reviews of the film had inspired such knowledge-seeking in this country.
As Louis Chilton observed in the Independent (10/23/21), propaganda can look like The Battle at Lake Changjin, but it can also look like Brie Larson strapping herself into a fighter jet in Captain Marvel, or “Bradley Cooper squinting through the sight of a rifle in American Sniper.” Picking and choosing which to recognize “can only end badly.”
A precursor to previous US calls to war, laying the groundwork for full-on demonization of an enemy, has been the charge that the targeted country and its leaders are propagandists. As FAIR (10/6/21) observed, US corporate media have been making that charge with gusto recently, which should be a cause for concern to all of us.
Featured image: Publicity image from The Battle at Lake Changjin.
7. Russia to Require Netflix to Stream State Television Broadcasts - The Moscow Times
Hmmm...
Excerpts:
From March 2022, Netflix will be obliged to offer broadcasts from flagship state-owned Channel One, entertainment-focused NTV and the Russian Orthodox Church’s in-house channel Spas, which means “Saved,” to its users within Russia.
The laws that Netflix must now obey include controversial provisions banning the promotion of “extremism” — a restriction which has been used against supporters of the anti-Kremlin opposition.
Russia has in recent months tightened restrictions on foreign internet giants’ operations within its borders.
Russia to Require Netflix to Stream State Television Broadcasts - The Moscow Times
Russia’s state media watchdog will require Netflix to offer state television channels to its Russian customers after it added the U.S.-based streaming service to its register of “audio-visual services” Tuesday.
Roskomnadzor's register, which was created in late 2020, applies to online streaming services with over 100,000 daily users and requires them to comply with Russian law and register a Russian company.
Registered services are also required to provide streams of 20 major Russian federal television channels.
From March 2022, Netflix will be obliged to offer broadcasts from flagship state-owned Channel One, entertainment-focused NTV and the Russian Orthodox Church’s in-house channel Spas, which means “Saved,” to its users within Russia.
The laws that Netflix must now obey include controversial provisions banning the promotion of “extremism” — a restriction which has been used against supporters of the anti-Kremlin opposition.
Russia has in recent months tightened restrictions on foreign internet giants’ operations within its borders.
Google and Apple were both forced to remove content related to jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny and his associates ahead of Russia’s September parliamentary elections after authorities threatened to prosecute the tech giants' local employees.
Last week, Russia slapped Google and Meta with record fines totaling $125 million, accusing them of repeatedly failing to delete content Russian censors had flagged as illegal.
8. Opinion | Unraveling the long, bitter history between the United States and Russia
Opinion | Unraveling the long, bitter history between the United States and Russia
Joseph Weisberg’s Dec. 19 Outlook essay, “The U.S. and Russia are stuck in the past,” provided interesting perspectives on the Cold War era from both sides but failed to note the natural antagonism between the ideals of the United States and those of Russia/the Soviet Union.
Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1830s foresaw the differences between the two nations that he believed would dominate the future: “The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends, and gives free scope to the unguided strength and common sense of the people; the Russian centers all the authority of society in a single arm. The principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude.” When Tocqueville wrote about Russia, he had in mind the czarist system. But the Soviet Union and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s version of Russia are cut from the same cloth.
As a graduate student in 1975, I traveled to the Soviet Union to visit notable sites associated with Russian culture. Before I departed, a professor warned me about taking books (dissident or emigre authors in particular) that would cause a problem when my luggage was searched. Apparently, the Soviet system was so brittle that it could be destroyed by a book.
Regarding Mr. Weisberg’s insinuation that NATO expansion was provocative to a peaceable, neighborly Russia, most citizens of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia would scoff at the notion that NATO expansion was provocative.
It is worth recalling that the U.S. government never accepted the legitimacy of the Soviet seizure of the Baltic states, enabled by the Nazi-Soviet pact of August 1939. Mr. Weinberg’s implied approval of “the social advancement of millions of Soviet peasants in the decades after the revolution” was astonishing. Has he never heard of the Stalin-approved famine in Ukraine, the collectivization of Soviet agriculture, the exile of the “kulaks” to Siberia? He would benefit from reading Anne Applebaum’s book “Red Famine.”
Thomas Koepnick, Annandale
In 1980, I completed my doctoral dissertation in history at the University of California at Berkeley. My thesis argued that historians of the Cold War had missed an important aspect of that conflict. In particular, U.S. policy went beyond the defensive dimensions of “containment” strategy. Similarly, the Soviet Union was not content to simply fortify itself behind the “Iron Curtain,” so dramatically labeled by Winston Churchill. In fact, both sides had offensive designs.
As early as 1948, U.S. strategists were developing a covert and secret military strategy for fomenting a revolution in the U.S.S.R., backed by plans for an invasion that might even employ nuclear weapons. An important piece of that planning focused on supporting “insurgents” in Ukraine, the Baltic states and Poland and in Russia itself to overthrow the Communist regimes. Mid-1950s war plans also envisioned a blockade and economic warfare on several fronts.
The U.S.S.R. was reaching out to Communist parties worldwide to undermine the capitalist system and bring about the Marxist-Leninist dream of the proletarian revolution. Foreign political parties would be infiltrated; unions and workers’ organizations would be mobilized to weaken and then destroy the ruling elites. A worldwide revolution would explode, with the U.S.S.R. as its leader.
Both sides accused the other of pursuing strategies to defeat the other. The war, however “cold,” became a real-life mimicry of Joe Haldeman’s “The Forever War.”
Mr. Weisberg and Mr. Von Drehle are correct. Everyone seems to have forgotten the lessons of the past. We are locked in a forever war, doomed to repeat it, over and over. Until when?
John J. Yurechko, Locust Grove, Va.
Joseph Weisberg’s Dec. 19 Outlook essay was preposterous. Russia annexed Crimea, is preparing to attack Ukraine, meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, promoted cyberterrorism, jailed a prominent opposition leader, and murdered those who oppose and publicize corruption. Maybe Mr. Weisberg could explain how the United States is stuck in the past; present-day Russia is very much a cause for concern.
Paulius Klimas, North Potomac
9. Cross-strait relations full of uncertainties in 2022, calls for dialogue: scholars - Focus Taiwan
I am curious to hear from China hands. How effective is this coordination?
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the holding of a November 1992 meeting in Hong Kong between the China-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) and the Taiwan-based Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF).
The two semi-official organizations handle cross-strait relations on behalf of their respective governments.
The 1992 meeting gave birth to the so-called "1992 Consensus," a tacit understanding reached by the then-Kuomintang (KMT) government and the Chinese government, which says both sides of the Taiwan Strait acknowledged there is only "one China" with each country free to interpret what "China" means.
The quasi-official consensus served as a cornerstone for cross-strait exchanges during the KMT administration.
Cross-strait relations full of uncertainties in 2022, calls for dialogue: scholars - Focus Taiwan
Taipei, Jan. 1 (CNA) Two domestic China experts on Saturday called on Taipei and Beijing to search for opportunities for dialogue and cooperation in an attempt to ease yearslong cross-strait tensions.
Their remarks came after President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) reiterated in her New Year address that both sides of the Taiwan Strait shared the responsibility when it came to maintaining peace and stability in the region and calling on China to refrain from military coercion and to ease regional tensions via peaceful means.
In response, China's Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) accused Tsai's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of pursuing Taiwan independence and "continuing to manufacture lies, heightening hostility and trafficking in hatred in order to reap political benefits."
Asked to comment, Chao Chun-shan (趙春山), an honorary professor of China studies at New Taipei-based Tamkang University, told CNA that Taipei and Beijing are facing major political power reshuffles in 2022, which will create further uncertainty with regards to cross-strait relations.
The new year will see Taiwan host local elections - known as the "nine-in-one" elections - to choose the leaders of municipalities, cities, and counties, Chao said.
In China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will hold its 20th National Party Congress, shaking up the upper echelons of Chinese politics, he noted.
Though these political uncertainties might make it even more difficult to conduct official dialogue and exchanges, Chao said both sides should actively consider doing so.
He suggested centering any such exchanges on nonpolitical issues, such as on combating COVID-19 and cooperating in economic and trade issues, as a means of smoothing the path to talks.
Sharing a similar view with Chao, Chang Wu-ueh (張五岳), a fellow professor of China studies at Tamkang University, said Tsai's Saturday address and Xi Jinping's Friday speech had both contained the same rhetoric expressed over the last few years of cross-strait tensions.
This showed that cross-strait relations have been affected by the ongoing China-United States rivalry, Chang added.
Like Chao, Chang said 2022 would bring several important anniversaries regarding cross-strait relations, Sino-U.S. ties, and Sino-Japan ties.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the holding of a November 1992 meeting in Hong Kong between the China-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) and the Taiwan-based Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF).
The two semi-official organizations handle cross-strait relations on behalf of their respective governments.
The 1992 meeting gave birth to the so-called "1992 Consensus," a tacit understanding reached by the then-Kuomintang (KMT) government and the Chinese government, which says both sides of the Taiwan Strait acknowledged there is only "one China" with each country free to interpret what "China" means.
The quasi-official consensus served as a cornerstone for cross-strait exchanges during the KMT administration.
According to Chang, this year also marks the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Shanghai Communique between Beijing and Washington, which paved way for the establishment of diplomatic relations, and also the 50th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between China and Japan.
Taiwan, the U.S, and U.S.'s important allies in the region, namely, South Korea and the Philippines, will also hold major elections this year, Chang said.
All these important anniversaries and elections will create uncertainties with regards to cross-strait relations, he added.
Chang said that given the pandemic was expected to subside later this year, long-stalled cross-strait people-to-people exchanges could soon resume.
Should this arise, Chang said Taiwan's government needed to prepare contingency measures accordingly.
Beijing has adopted a hardline stance on cross-strait relations and cut off dialogue with Taiwan in 2016 when President Tsai Ing-wen first took office.
At the core of the issue is Tsai's refusal to recognize the "1992 consensus, which the DPP contends is a "mere illusion," as Beijing does not recognize the idea that each side is free to interpret what "one China" means.
(By Scarlett Chai and Joseph Yeh)
Enditem/ASG
10. The U.S. and China in 2022: A Year of Living Quietly? By James Stavridis
Excerpts:
Finally, this could be a good year to readdress trade, tariffs and equal business access to the Chinese and American markets. Talks begun by President Donald Trump’s administration never gained traction, Trump’s tariffs remain in place, the Chinese purchases of American goods haven’t happened, and the whole process seems adrift on the wide, empty sea. The two countries should try to solidify what makes sense from the talks so far, then work to gain headway on bigger trade issues. Our interwoven markets and businesses can be a foundation for better communication.
Militarily, the coming year might be a reasonable time to help Taiwan harden its defenses — to enable it to become a sort of porcupine, a spiny and indigestible entity that could deter China from using force to bring what they see as a “rogue province” to heel. This could include U.S. sales of anti-ship weapons, smart mines and cyber tools as well as small-scale exercises and training.
Naturally, the underlying conditions in this relationship pose challenges. But given the confluence of the Olympics and the 20th Party Congress, a small window of opportunity will be open. The imminent arrival in Beijing of Ambassador Nicholas Burns, a top career diplomat (and former American ambassador to NATO), is propitious. He can help ensure that the next year is spent setting the conditions for better relations.
The U.S. and China in 2022: A Year of Living Quietly?
Both countries will be distracted by events at home and can use the pause in tensions to lay the groundwork for better relations.
December 28, 2021, 8:30 AM EST
Despite all the tension and turmoil embedded in the U.S.-China relationship, it’s possible that 2022 may turn out to a bit of a breather. Over the next 10 months, President Xi Jinping has other fish to fry.
More important than tussling with the U.S. next year will be two national events: the February Winter Olympics and the mid-fall 20th Communist Party Congress. At the Beijing games, China will seek to demonstrate its mastery of both global spectacle and Covid-19. Even more important, Xi will want a quiet runup to the party congress — where he expects to gain another five-year term as leader, elevating him to the historic level of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.
While the U.S. and China have a rich basket of disagreements — human rights, territorial claims in the South China Sea, a shadowy conflict in the cyber sphere, an accelerating naval arms race and trade arguments — next year will probably not be confrontational. And Washington will be distracted by midterm elections, Covid mutations and sharp internal discord.
The U.S. should take advantage of this year of living quietly by taking the time to consider all aspects of its relationship with China.
The first step would be to finally publish the overarching China strategy that the National Security Council staff has been preparing. Ideally, this will contain a military component (providing for deterrence), a technology strategy (to plan for success in chip making, artificial intelligence and quantum computing), diplomatic prescriptions (for example, efforts to bind the U.S., India, Japan and Australia into the “Quad” and to bring the Europeans to the Pacific), a values section (human rights), and a creative strategic communication plan. Coalescing around such a coherent strategy would better enable the U.S. to face China.
The pause in tensions could also be used to advance an effort that both countries ultimately support: mitigating climate change. While the U.S. and China have not always seen eye to eye on timing and methods for limiting emissions, ocean acidification, overfishing and polar ice-melting, they have at times broadly joined arms to pull the rest of the world along. The coming year would be a good time to support John Kerry’s energetic push to get the two nations to agree on concrete next steps.
A third good use of the pause would be to work with China on preparing for the next pandemic. The world is going to be living with new Covid variants (Pi? Sigma? Tau? I’m Greek and know the letters) for a long time. And given our overcrowded world, urban masses and frenetic international travel, another pandemic is a certainty.
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Finally, this could be a good year to readdress trade, tariffs and equal business access to the Chinese and American markets. Talks begun by President Donald Trump’s administration never gained traction, Trump’s tariffs remain in place, the Chinese purchases of American goods haven’t happened, and the whole process seems adrift on the wide, empty sea. The two countries should try to solidify what makes sense from the talks so far, then work to gain headway on bigger trade issues. Our interwoven markets and businesses can be a foundation for better communication.
Militarily, the coming year might be a reasonable time to help Taiwan harden its defenses — to enable it to become a sort of porcupine, a spiny and indigestible entity that could deter China from using force to bring what they see as a “rogue province” to heel. This could include U.S. sales of anti-ship weapons, smart mines and cyber tools as well as small-scale exercises and training.
Naturally, the underlying conditions in this relationship pose challenges. But given the confluence of the Olympics and the 20th Party Congress, a small window of opportunity will be open. The imminent arrival in Beijing of Ambassador Nicholas Burns, a top career diplomat (and former American ambassador to NATO), is propitious. He can help ensure that the next year is spent setting the conditions for better relations.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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11. 5 Big Foreign-Policy Things We’re Watching in 2022
The 5:
1. Uttar Pradesh and the Future of India
2. Staffing Shortages on the High Seas
3. Political Developments in the Middle East
4. Voter Skepticism of Euroskeptics
5. Latin America’s Electoral Volatility
5 Big Foreign-Policy Things We’re Watching in 2022
Nobody can accurately predict the future (and if you can, please let us know), but we can identify some of the trends and events that may have significant impact in the future. Foreign Policy asked some of our smartest contributors to tell us what important trends, events, and elections they’re keeping an eye on in 2022. Here’s what they had to say.
1. Uttar Pradesh and the Future of India
by Sumit Ganguly, columnist at Foreign Policy as well as distinguished professor of political science and Rabindranath Tagore chair in Indian cultures and civilizations at Indiana University Bloomington
The most populous state in India, Uttar Pradesh (literally “northern province”), which has a total population of around 241 million, goes to the polls in March 2022 to elect a new legislative assembly as well as a new chief minister—and the outcome of the election will be immensely consequential for the future of India and its secular democracy.
The state’s current chief minister (the principal elected representative) is Yogi Adityanath (born Ajay Mohan Bisht), a Hindu priest and religious zealot who belongs to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The state has long had some of the worst social indicators in the country, and matters certainly have not improved since Adityanath assumed office in March 2017. Instead of focusing on socioeconomic development, he has spent the bulk of his energy demonizing Muslims and other minorities, building Hindu temples while caricaturing previous governments for ostensibly pampering Muslims, and squandering the state’s limited revenues on populist schemes, even as the state faces significant budgetary shortfalls.
Given that Uttar Pradesh enjoys the largest number of seats in both houses of India’s national parliament, maintaining control over the state’s legislature remains a critical imperative for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP Hindu nationalist government. To that end, Modi has been working closely with his acolyte Adityanath to boost the latter’s electoral prospects.
Not surprisingly, Modi has resorted to every possible tactic to win over the bulk of the state’s electorate. In late November, along with Adityanath, Modi laid the foundation stone for a new international airport in Uttar Pradesh not far from the national capital of New Delhi. And in early December, with considerable fanfare and publicity (and one eye firmly cocked on the Hindu majority in the state), Modi—with Adityanath in tow—visited one of India’s most prominent Hindu shrines, the Kashi Vishwanath temple, located in the Uttar Pradesh city of Varanasi.
As both Modi and Adityanath are ardent Hindu nationalists who share a common vision of transforming India into an ethnocracy, the electoral outcome in Uttar Pradesh this March will bear watching. Given the significant advantages of incumbency and a divided opposition, barring unforeseen pitfalls, there is a high likelihood that Adityanath will return to office. His victory could well pave the way for the triumph of Hindu majoritarianism.
2. Staffing Shortages on the High Seas
by Elisabeth Braw, columnist at Foreign Policy and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute
In 2022, I’ll be watching seafarer recruitment. “What an incredibly narrow subject to watch,” you might say. Not so. Ships transport 80 percent of the world’s trade by volume, which translates into 1.5 tons of goods delivered to each person on the planet every year. Without maritime shipping, we’d simply not receive most of the items we depend on every day.
But while shipping has been experiencing phenomenal growth as a result of globalization, people have become less willing to go to sea. People in the West, that is. Today’s more than 50,000 ships are crewed primarily by citizens of China, the Philippines, Indonesia, Russia, and Ukraine. India, too, ranks among the top suppliers of seafarers. Every country, especially the world’s most advanced economies, depends on these countries’ seafarers to transport vital goods.
Even before COVID-19, the shipping industry was battling staffing challenges. And what if seafarers, who must still endure longer-than-normal stays on their ships because pandemic-weary countries won’t let them disembark, decide they’ve had enough? If even one-tenth of the world’s estimated 1.6 million seafarers were to quit, the world would experience massive supply chain disruptions. The Ever Given’s misfortune in the Suez Canal in March 2021 and the delays at the Port of Los Angeles portend what that might look like.
For us ordinary citizens, shipping is out of sight, out of mind. Indeed, seafarers’ lives don’t interest most of us (well, except for that whole sea shanty TikTok trend that suddenly exploded around this time last year). But in 2022, I’ll intently be watching seafarer recruitment and retention—and so should everyone else who depends on their services, because few crises would affect us more than a seafarer recruitment one.
Remarkable, isn’t it, how people who get so little attention have the power to make our lives extremely convenient or extremely miserable?
Valérie Pécresse (center), the right-wing Les Républicains party’s candidate for the 2022 French presidential election, celebrates during a meeting following a closed-door session with party officials in Paris on Dec. 11, 2021. BERTRAND GUAY/AFP via Getty Images
3. Political Developments in the Middle East
by Steven A. Cook, columnist at Foreign Policy and Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow in Middle East and Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations
I cannot tell you how glad I was when Foreign Policy asked me to write up what I will be watching in 2022 as opposed to my predictions for 2022. Most predictions are wrong, which is why no one ever goes back in December to see what they predicted the previous December.
Anyway, here are three issues I’ll be watching in 2022.
First, how far will the ongoing rehabilitation of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad go? Assad, who folks predicted in March 2011 would go the way of Tunisia’s Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, is still around. He has serious financial problems, but with diplomatic outreach from Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Emirati Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, it seems Assad is being brought in from the cold. It is important to note that the Biden administration did not object too strenuously to the king’s phone call or the foreign minister’s visit with the Syrian president.
Second, I am watching whether Turkey will have elections in 2022 instead of 2023. Why President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is relatively weak, would want Turks to go to the polls early does not make sense to me, but a bevy of Turkish journalists, opposition figures, and analysts seem convinced this is the case. Perhaps it is wishful thinking on their part, but I am the first to admit that I might be missing something. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Finally, I am interested in how Islamist parties in the region respond to a change in their fortunes in 2021. The Moroccan Party of Justice and Development was almost wiped out in elections last September; Tunisia’s Ennahdha suffered a major setback with President Kais Saied’s suspension of parliament in July; Turkey’s Justice and Development Party has been unable to arrest a significant slide in its popularity (though it still commands the support of a third of Turks); and as the Turkish government seeks to break out of its regional isolation, it has been confronted with Egypt’s demand that it give up Muslim Brotherhood members in exchange for better bilateral relations. Islamists are known for always playing the long game, so how they adjust and regroup after a year of reversals will be among the more interesting Middle East stories in the coming year.
4. Voter Skepticism of Euroskeptics
by Caroline de Gruyter, columnist at Foreign Policy and Europe correspondent for NRC Handelsblad
In 2022, I will be looking out for European politicians who win elections without bashing the European Union. One of the main problems of the EU is that national politicians constantly use it as a scapegoat to win elections at home. Europe would be in much better shape if Europeans started to be honest about the EU and their own large role in decision-making in Brussels.
No one knows where the idea that voters prefer Euroskeptic politicians comes from. There is plenty of evidence that they actually prefer politicians who are honest and realistic about Europe, not hypocrites pretending to be Europhobes.
In 2016, for example, an advisor told Austrian economy professor Alexander Van der Bellen, then a presidential candidate, to be more critical of the EU, as that would make him more popular. Van der Bellen, a calm, grandfatherly former member of Austria’s Greens, refused. That would not be credible, he said: People had known him all his life defending European integration. So, even during a neck-and-neck race with a far-right, pistol-carrying Euroskeptic, Van der Bellen continued talking about Europe the way he always had. He won.
A few months later, many predicted Marine Le Pen would become president of France. But Emmanuel Macron proved them wrong. He won by a landslide, energizing the nation with one of the most sweepingly ambitious European agendas ever formulated by a presidential candidate.
2022 hadn’t even begun, and the first hypocrite already bit the dust: Former European Commissioner Michel Barnier, in trying to become the conservatives’ candidate in the upcoming French presidential election, suddenly began attacking the European Court of Justice and calling for the renationalization of some European powers. Until then, Barnier had been the favorite contender. But Les Républicains voters punished him, choosing Valérie Pécresse instead. Now Pécresse, a convinced European, has emerged as Macron’s main contender, leaving two far-right Euroskeptics behind her.
Let’s hope the rest of Europe takes note.
5. Latin America’s Electoral Volatility
by Christopher Sabatini, senior research fellow at Chatham House
COVID-19’s disproportionately harsh economic and social impact on Latin America is playing out in a wave of 2021 and 2022 elections. Key presidential elections in Chile, Ecuador, Honduras, and Peru and midterm legislative elections in Argentina, Mexico, and El Salvador displayed a distinct anti-incumbent or even anti-system flavor. (Nicaragua’s Nov. 7 elections don’t count—even as elections, really—with seven of the leading opposition leaders in jail or under house arrest, more than 40 civic and opposition leaders in prison, and tight restrictions on independent media and campaigning.)
Those trends will continue in the 2022 presidential elections in Brazil and Colombia as voters are showing high rejection rates of sitting presidents—though it remains a touchy matter whether Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro will accept electoral defeat or instead take a page from his mentor, former U.S. President Donald Trump
The churn in administrations and domestic political polarization are bringing stark shifts in foreign policies, trade relations, regional cohesion, and capacity to address broader security and geopolitical challenges. This policy volatility has opened up more opportunities for China to assert greater diplomatic and economic influence, at a time when the United States appears increasingly set on reasserting its influence and prestige—both globally and within its own hemisphere—against China.
While governments in Chile, Panama, Colombia, and Ecuador are (for now) trying to balance Western ties with the economic benefits of closer trade and investment relations with Beijing, others, such as Venezuela, Bolivia, El Salvador, and quite possibly Honduras in 2022, are going all-in on relations with China—but often without the diplomatic, economic, or political capacity to do so on their own terms.
The Biden administration’s trend of dividing the world into democracies and non-democracies and the corrupt vs. the honest and applying sanctions liberally against apostates without any broader clear policy definition will exaggerate those divisions and weaken U.S. influence in the Western Hemisphere.
12. Somalia Is Where U.S. Military Strategy Goes to Die
Excerpts:
Biden’s recent statements on Afghanistan and counter-terrorism strategy suggest rather strongly he won’t be expanding the American military effort, and that he has become increasingly skeptical about the efficacy of the military’s focus on knocking off the senior leadership of terrorist groups, for a very simple reason: Again and again, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia, these “successful” missions do not seem to have much strategic effect, and they are seen as highly controversial by the international community from both a strategic and a moral point of view. Invariably, competent replacements for fallen or captured leaders emerge, and their organizations adapt, evolve, and, as is the case with al-Shabab, thrive.
My best guess, based on what administration officials have been saying off the record, is that Biden will move along the lines suggested by Professor Williams, and foreground diplomacy and political coercion, while de-emphasizing military operations.
Somalia Is Where U.S. Military Strategy Goes to Die
The Bush administration used the “light footprint” strategy of Afghanistan to combat terrorism in Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Somalia, to name but a few. It has not gone well.
Updated Jan. 01, 2022 3:28AM ET / Published Dec. 31, 2021 11:08PM ET
Patrick Robert/Sygma via Getty Images
Twenty years ago—and less than one month after the catastrophic attack of 9/11—the United States mounted a decidedly unorthodox campaign in Afghanistan in an effort to destroy Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network, and to remove from power the Taliban regime in Kabul that hosted the perpetrators of the most devastating attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. Because Afghanistan was a remote, landlocked country with very little infrastructure, a conventional military invasion was deemed impossible just a few days after the most spectacular asymmetric warfare attack in modern history. It would have taken too long to plan and execute.
CIA counter-terrorism officers stepped into the breach. They believed that a handful of squad-sized CIA-Special Forces teams could be helicoptered into the country with satellite phones, laser range-finders, and a wealth of state-of-the-art communications equipment, link up with a loose coalition of warlords who were engaged in active resistance against the Taliban, and destroy most of the several thousand al-Qaeda fighters then in the country, along with even greater numbers of their Taliban allies. Most of the killing, the spooks told President George W. Bush, would be done by precision munitions delivered by American aircraft and drones. The indigenous militia commanded by the warlords, some on foot, some mounted on horses, could do the mopping up with the help of U.S. Special Forces, who would advise the ground commanders, coordinate their operations, and call in the air strikes.
In three months, more than 10,000 Islamic militants were killed, 7,000 were captured, and the Taliban and al-Qaeda were ejected from Afghan soil. The only bad news, which didn’t seem so bad at the time, was that bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar had escaped, along with a good many senior and mid-level operatives. We’d get them soon enough, the thinking went.
The Bush administration embraced this success, which seemed at the time to be almost as astonishing as the 9/11attacks themselves, and extended the “light footprint” strategy used in Afghanistan to combat terrorism in Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Somalia, to name but a few.
Recently, military and foreign policy experts have expressed concerns that the decade-long CIA/Special Forces-led campaign in Somalia against al-Shabab, a highly resilient and adaptable al-Qaeda affiliate, appears to be failing. The Biden administration, which has tightened up restrictions on when and where U.S. military commanders in the theater can order air strikes, is currently reviewing American strategy in the country.
Whatever it decides to do in Somalia, and we should know quite soon, will offer significant clues about how the administration intends to conduct counter-terrorism operations generally, even as the military and the CIA turn their focus to potential conflicts with China and Russia.
American military involvement in Somalia, one of the world’s most impoverished and anarchic states, goes back to the early 1990s, when extensive U.S. and U.N. efforts to stabilize the war-ravaged, half-starved country that occupies strategic terrain on the Horn of Afri came to an abrupt end after eighteen elite American soldiers were killed in a sprawling, chaotic street battle in Mogadishu against the forces of the powerful and wily warlord Mohammed Aidid in October 1993. That battle is the subject of the best-selling book by Mark Bowden, Blackhawk Down, which was later made into a riveting, if somewhat gory, film of the same name.
The United States withdrew from Somalia in humiliation and confusion, not to return again until 2005, when the CIA began to funnel large amounts of cash to a new generation of warlords in order to fight cells of al-Qaeda operatives who’d set up shop there. Al-Shabab, meaning “the Youth” in Arabic, seeks to establish a fundamentalist Islamic state in Somalia. It was born as a resistance movement to the rising power of the American supported warlords.
Since 2006, the United States has spearheaded a shadow war against the organization, largely with Special Forces and CIA paramilitary types. Americans have trained the fledgling Somali army, and a small, elite Somali counter-terrorist force, reportedly led by CIA officers in combat operations. America has been the leading contributor of development funds for the country’s frail government and social institutions, having spent $450 million in humanitarian aid in fiscal year 2019, and paid for the lion’s share of the cost for peacekeeping forces from the African Union, to the tune of $2.5 billion over the last decade.
The counter-terror program in Somalia has enjoyed some success. In 2011, a drone strike took out Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, an al-Qaeda operative who figured prominently in planning the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in which more than 200 people were killed and four thousand wounded. In September 2014, another drone strike killed Ahmed Abdi Godane, the senior leader of al-Shabab. An undisclosed number of other senior leaders of the organization have perished in the campaign.
In March 2017, Donald Trump removed many of the “rules of engagement” strictures on U.S. air strikes and upped the number of American service members in Somalia to about 700. Over Trump’s four years in office, the number of airstrikes increased sharply. By the time he left office, some 202 strikes had been carried out, compared to a mere 48 during Barack Obama’s eight years in office.
Yet despite the increased military pressure, al-Shabab has gained considerable strength and influence over the last year or so, and not only in the countryside. It has also infiltrated the government bureaucracy in Mogadishu, and controls most of the activity in the port there.
“Transparency International, a highly respected German non-profit agency, rates the Somali government as tied with that of South Sudan as the most corrupt in the world.”
Experts say the organization has continued to recruit successfully, and to expand its coffers through smuggling, extortion, and the collection of tolls. In 2020, according to U.S. government sources, al-Shabab collected no less than $120 million in revenue. Perhaps most disturbingly, the organization has managed to establish a shadow government in many parts of the countryside, a parallel political infrastructure along the lines of the Vietcong in South Vietnam, with its own courts, bureaucracy, and laws. Its extensive bomb-making activities are said to be increasingly sophisticated, and there has been no letup in civilian casualties from the attacks.
Al-Shabab now has about 5,000 fulltime fighters conducting attacks and IED operations against government security forces and the civilian population, but the terror network’s fighters are better led and more highly motivated than the government’s. “The bottom line,” writes Paul D. Williams, a leading expert on the conflict who is a professor at the George Washington University, “is that U.S. military actions have failed to blunt al-Shabab’s ability to attack Somalis and international personnel using a combination of asymmetric tactics—including ambushes, IEDs, suicide commando raids, and assassinations—and more conventional assaults on forward-operating bases.”
Major factors in al-Shabab’s recent success have been the weak and ineffectual performance of the current federal government, and the inability of the nation’s small political class to pull together and decide on long-term power-sharing arrangements. Despite billions in investment from various Western countries, the government in Mogadishu is deeply corrupt and wholly given over to infighting and intrigue.
This past April, when the current president, an American national named Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, refused to hold elections on schedule, fighting broke out between various government security forces in the capital. Transparency International, a highly respected German non-profit agency, rates the Somali government as tied with that of South Sudan as the most corrupt in the world, which is really saying something.
Tricia Bacon, a longtime former State Department expert on counter-terrorism who is now a professor at American University, writes that al-Shabab “draws strength from exploiting the government’s weakness—including the divisions between the Somali Federal Government and the federal member states, especially in the rural areas of Southern Somalia. Al-Shabab’s courts remain the preferred venue for dispute resolution, even among residents of Mogadishu who may not support the group’s aims or harsh forms of punishment. The roads it controls remain the best routes to travel within Somalia to avoid predation… While the airstrikes and military operations inflict losses, the fundamental weakness of the Somali state provides a vacuum that the group has and will continue to fill.”
What, then, will the Biden national security team do? One option would be to redeploy the 600 or so American troops that Trump withdrew at the very end of his term as president, with a view to stepping up military pressure. Another option: He could pull the plug on the American military effort entirely, as he did in Afghanistan, and put an end to one more “forever war.”
“Biden’s recent statements on Afghanistan and counter-terrorism strategy suggest rather strongly he won’t be expanding the American military effort.”
A third option, much favored by Professor Williams, would be for the administration to shift its focus from military operations to diplomacy, with a view to establishing a new power-sharing agreement between the states and the federal government, and then use a combination of carrots and sticks to try to bring al-Shabab into the political process, where it could share in power with other key parties.
Biden’s recent statements on Afghanistan and counter-terrorism strategy suggest rather strongly he won’t be expanding the American military effort, and that he has become increasingly skeptical about the efficacy of the military’s focus on knocking off the senior leadership of terrorist groups, for a very simple reason: Again and again, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia, these “successful” missions do not seem to have much strategic effect, and they are seen as highly controversial by the international community from both a strategic and a moral point of view. Invariably, competent replacements for fallen or captured leaders emerge, and their organizations adapt, evolve, and, as is the case with al-Shabab, thrive.
My best guess, based on what administration officials have been saying off the record, is that Biden will move along the lines suggested by Professor Williams, and foreground diplomacy and political coercion, while de-emphasizing military operations.
13. Will Biden's 2021 foreign policy failures reverberate in 2022? by John Bolton
Ambassador Bolton's conclusion:
America ends 2021 pointed in the wrong direction on national security. On this record, and given the rising challenges globally, 2022 could be grim indeed.
Will Biden's 2021 foreign policy failures reverberate in 2022?
The Hill · by John Bolton, Opinion Contributor · January 1, 2022
From a national security perspective, Americans will not remember 2021 fondly. Self-inflicted wounds, delusional policy objectives, underestimated strategic menaces and impotence against immediate threats unfortunately characterized the Biden administration’s approach.
Good news was sparse. But continuing a 61-year bipartisan tradition, Congress passed this year’s $768-billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), $25 billion above the president’s request. Of course, we still need a comparable, full-year appropriations bill to avoid limping along with underfunded continuing resolutions. We also still need to overcome President Obama’s eight years of inadequate resources, and rising inflation, which is eroding this year’s small increase. Since it could be worse, just passing the NDAA warrants celebration.
Turning to the bad news, America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was a strategic debacle, a national embarrassment, a rolling catastrophe for the Afghan people, a tonic for our adversaries and a downer for our friends. Both Presidents Biden and Trump contributed to this blunder. Although the global humiliation of the decision’s bungled execution, watched live by hundreds of millions of people, is largely Biden’s to bear, Trump’s indefensible predicate deal with the Taliban meant the tragedy would likely have unfolded the same under either president.
White House sources anonymously hoped Americans would largely forget the shame and sadness. Unfortunately, however, the hits just keep on coming. The White House conceded just months after withdrawal that ISIS-K was capable of mounting terrorist attacks against the United States in 6-12 months, and al Qaeda in 12-24 months.
In early December, CENTCOM’s commander grudgingly acknowledged that, contrary to Taliban commitments and Biden administration assurances, al Qaeda’s support had “probably slightly increased” and that “we should expect a resurgent ISIS” in Afghanistan. Hundreds of U.S. citizens and over 60,000 Afghans who worked with America (not counting their families) still seek asylum. Humanitarian disaster looms.
Finally, the media report a large influx of Pakistani sympathizers to Afghanistan to join the Taliban, thereby inevitably raising the risks of Pakistan and its substantial stock of nuclear weapons also falling to terrorists.
Speaking of nuclear-proliferation failures, Iran and North Korea were 2021 standouts. Since his inauguration, Biden has abjectly pleaded with Iran to revitalize the 2015 nuclear deal. Leaving aside that the deal itself is hopelessly flawed, and even assuming, contrary to fact, that Iran strictly complied with its provisions, Biden has irretrievably lost nearly a full year pursuing an illusion.
Of course, Tehran wants release from U.S. economic pressure, as does Pyongyang, but neither wants it enough to make the strategic decision to abandon pursuing deliverable nuclear weapons.
Biden seems unable to absorb this point. After a year of frenetic diplomacy and public optimism on Iran, and a year of frenetically doing essentially nothing on North Korea, the result in both cases is identical. Tehran and Pyongyang are one year closer to perfecting their nuclear and ballistic-missile technology, and for North Korea perhaps hypersonic cruise missiles. Time is always on asset for the proliferator, needed to overcome the complex scientific and technological obstacles to becoming a nuclear-weapons state. Iran and North Korea have both made good use of 2021. The United States stood idly by.
Before Christmas, the media again speculated about a U.S.-Israeli “Plan B,” implying the use of force to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons, presumably well above the low-level sabotage and disruption already inflicted on Tehran. Whether Israel has the will to use military force depends on its uneasy governing coalition, which clearly has the will to stay in office despite widespread policy differences.
Some coalition members seem unlikely ever to favor dispositive pre-emptive force against Iran, despite Israel facing what former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called a prospective “nuclear holocaust” launched by Tehran. As for America, its rhetoric and real deterrence capabilities seem less persuasive than ever. Iran likely believes it can defy the U.S. without consequences for at least three more years. Israel needs to act accordingly.
Which brings us to Russia and China, which appear to believe they either never lost parity with the U.S. or have now achieved it. Russian President Vladimir Putin had extensive discussions with Biden, including three hours in-person on June 17 in Geneva. By then, Biden had already gratuitously agreed to a five-year extension of the badly flawed New START nuclear-weapons agreement, wasting significant diplomatic leverage, since Putin had earlier been willing to accept a one-year increase.
Moreover, Biden had been rumored to be willing to concede that the Nord Stream 2 natural-gas pipeline was so close to completion that the U.S. would no longer try to stop it; an agreement with Germany to that effect was announced just a month after Geneva.
After the summit, Biden said “all foreign policy is a logical extension of personal relationships.” Amtrak Joe, like Donald Trump, may believe foreign policy is about personal relationships, but Putin knows it is about power, resolve and raison d’etat.
Putin has marked his man, and trouble lies ahead, most imminently in Ukraine. Biden’s reaction to the Kremlin’s pressure has been completely predictable: strong rhetoric about Russia’s belligerence, paeons to NATO’s importance, threats of economic sanctions and little else. Moscow has heard it all before and responded by formally annexing Crimea and taking effective control of substantial parts of eastern Ukraine.
If Biden has nothing new or different to offer, the crisis for Ukraine and other former USSR republics left in the “grey zone” between NATO and Russia will only grow in 2022. The risk of a Russian military incursion was unabated as 2021 ended.
Meanwhile, Beijing’s growing strategic threat should be paramount for Washington. Biden’s aimlessness on China is therefore not just troublesome, but dangerous. His lack of direction has one of two causes. Either he fails to understand the enormous scope of China’s threat, which spans the full spectrum of economic and politico-military affairs (which would be bad enough), or he is holding back, hoping desperately for Chinese cooperation on climate-change issues (which would be even worse).
Although Biden has not spoken definitively, at least some of his diplomacy is constructive. He has strengthened the nascent India-Japan-Australia-U.S. Quad, holding its first in-person summit and advancing a potentially critical strategic partnership. He agreed to the joint Australia-U.K.-U.S. effort to provide nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, a major advance in allied military cooperation. And, mirroring a 2020 U.S.-Palau deal, the U.S., Australia and Japan agreed to finance undersea communications cables to three Pacific island states, countering China’s relentless efforts to extend its influence.
Whether these agreements are only sui generis or form elements of an urgently needed, long-term strategy is unclear. But they manifestly do not address more pressing Indo-Pacific problems. Despite tough 2020 campaign talk about China, which was popular across America’s political spectrum, Biden’s concrete follow-through has been noticeably lacking, especially regarding Taiwan.
The Afghan withdrawal and Biden’s emphasis on climate change reverberate worryingly in Taipei as signals of Washington’s willingness to abandon Taiwan or trade it for something Biden deems more worthwhile. Throughout the Indo-Pacific, Taiwan is seen as a synecdoche for regional security. If China prevails there, whether militarily or diplomatically, America’s position in this vast region will be irretrievably weakened.
America ends 2021 pointed in the wrong direction on national security. On this record, and given the rising challenges globally, 2022 could be grim indeed.
John Bolton was national security adviser to President Trump from 2018 to 2019, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006 and held senior State Department posts in 2001-2005 and 1985-1989. His most recent book is “The Room Where It Happened" (2020). He is the founder of John Bolton Super PAC, a political action committee supporting candidates who believe in a strong U.S. foreign policy.
The Hill · by John Bolton, Opinion Contributor · January 1, 2022
14. China demands U.S. end "hostile" military operations near its borders
I guess to the revisionist, rogue, and revolutionary powers "hostile"must be America's middle name.
China demands U.S. end "hostile" military operations near its borders
Newsweek · by John Feng · December 30, 2021
China said it demanded an end to U.S. military operations in its nearby seas and skies when its defense representatives held talks with officers of American forces in the Pacific earlier this month.
A December 17 statement by Hawaii-based U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) said American and Chinese officials discussed maritime and aviation safety and professionalism, and also "reviewed safety-related events."
Maj. Gen. Chris McPhillips, director for Strategic Planning and Policy at USINDOPACOM, led the U.S. delegation. He said in an accompanying statement: "MMCA forum allows straightforward conversation to develop a common understanding on safe operational interactions between U.S. and PRC air and naval forces. MMCA serves as a guardrail for military encounters to reduce risk in the air and at sea, helping the two sides manage competition responsibly."
On Thursday, China's Defense Ministry used its final press conference of the year to air grievances about the U.S.'s defense posture and the growing perception of China's military threat among lawmakers on Capitol Hill. The ministry's spokesperson, Col. Tan Kefei, also was less reserved in his summary of this month's MMCA meeting with American officials.
Both sides "exchanged views on the current state of China-U.S. maritime and aviation safety" and discussed measures to address safety issues, he said.
"China made it very clear to the U.S. that the safety of vessels and aircraft is tied to national security," said Tan. "The root cause of China-U.S. maritime and aviation safety issues are the American warships and warplanes that have conducted long-term, high-intensity, close-in reconnaissance, measurements, extremely targeted exercises as well as frequent infringements and provocative actions in the sea and airspace near China.
"The U.S.'s stopping these hostile naval and air force operations is the fundamental solution to China-U.S. maritime and aviation safety issues."
Aircraft from Carrier Air Wing 11 and the Royal Malaysian Air Force fly above the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt during a joint exercise in the South China Sea on April 7, 2021. In a year-end press conference on December 30, 2021, China's Defense Ministry called on the United States to cease all military operations in its surrounding sea and airspace. Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Dartañon D. De La Garza/U.S. Navy
Tan also expressed Beijing's opposition to President Joe Biden's signing of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) earlier this week. The NDAA for 2022 includes a $768 billion defense package, part of which will better equip American forces in the Pacific.
The law also requires the Pentagon to produce a series of reports and analyses about China's military and diplomatic strategies across the globe. China is mentioned more than 130 times.
Tan described the NDAA as "full of Cold War mentality and ideological bias." Its contents "exaggerate the China threat theory" and include "groundless accusations" related to Beijing's policies toward Taiwan and Xinjiang, he said.
He said the law "undermines mutual trust between China and the U.S., and seriously poisons relations between the two countries and two militaries." Tan said bilateral ties at the state and military level were in a "dangerous place."
When Biden met his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, at a virtual summit in November, the two leaders agreed to maintain open lines of communication in order to avoid military accidents, unintended or otherwise.
Ely Ratner, the Pentagon's assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this month that the Defense Department was working to restore military-to-military communications with a focus on "crisis communications and crisis management."
Newsweek · by John Feng · December 30, 2021
15. Why American Special Forces are on the Cutting Edge of Artificial Intelligence Technology
Why American Special Forces are on the Cutting Edge of Artificial Intelligence Technology
SOCOM is partnering with the private industry and academia to improve its Artificial Intelligence capabilities.
Here's What You Need to Know: SOCOM has been a pioneer in the application of Artificial Intelligence. For example, the Naval Special Warfare Command (WARCOM) has been using Artificial Intelligence to find ways to make its SEAL and Special Warfare Combatant-Craft Crewmen (SWCC) operators more combat effective, while the Marines Special Operations Command (MARSOC) has been implementing Artificial Intelligence to better select and assess its future cadre of Marine Raiders.
Artificial Intelligence is everywhere today. From Amazon’s Alexa to unmanned aerial vehicles to space crafts to health care; Artificial Intelligence enables faster and better decisions if employed properly.
The U.S. military and intelligence community have been using this technology for decades now and it’s becoming increasingly more prevalent. With the apparent return of Great Power Competition—the struggle for influence, leverage, and resources between the U.S. and its near-peer competitors China and Russia—the special operations community, the tip of the spear of the U.S. military, has been investing more in Artificial Intelligence technologies
What is Artificial Intelligence?
In short, Artificial Intelligence utilizes computers and machine learning to simulate the human mind’s problem-solving and decision-making capabilities, easing the cognitive load on humans, enabling quicker decision-making and follow-on actions.
Nowadays, in an age of information overload, the issue the military and intelligence community have to deal with isn’t having too little data to work with as it once may have been, but rather how to process all of the available data to find and utilize what is important quickly and efficiently.
That is where Artificial Intelligence, as a filtering and selection mission-planning tool, can come in and sift out the data that is just noise to provide commanders, decision-makers, and troops with the only information they need to do their job. It’s a tall order, for sure, but doable with the right approach and priorities.
Artificial Intelligence & Special Operations
General Richard Clarke, SOCOM’s commander, has emphasized the importance of Artificial Intelligence and cyberwarfare, going as far as to suggest that the future of U.S. special operations might not be with the Delta Force operator on the ground but rather with the cyber commando behind a keyboard.
Within the Department of Defense, SOCOM has been a pioneer in the application of Artificial Intelligence. For example, the Naval Special Warfare Command (WARCOM) has been using Artificial Intelligence to find ways to make its SEAL and Special Warfare Combatant-Craft Crewmen (SWCC) operators more combat effective, while the Marines Special Operations Command (MARSOC) has been implementing Artificial Intelligence to better select and assess its future cadre of Marine Raiders.
“Artificial Intelligence should assist a commander or operator to make better decisions, not make the decisions for them, and that’s where I think a lot of people get it mixed,” Herm Hasken a partner and senior operations consultant at MarkPoint Technologies, told Sandboxx News.
Hasken has several combat deployments and extensive special operations and intelligence community experience, including time with the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), National Security Agency (NSA), as well as the chief cryptologist for the Special Operations Command (SOCOM).
MarkPoint Technologies provides body-worn sensors that process and distribute signals detected in the proximity of the operator to U.S. government partners. Such advanced computing introduced in the tactical domain gives an advantage to special operators and makes them more effective.
“In some cases, Artificial Intelligence might help you process and act upon very simple tasks in order to reduce the cognitive load on the operator—doing some things for you, so you won’t spend time worrying about it, receiving data and making sense of it in the midst of a deluge of data coming at you,” Hasken added.
SOCOM is partnering with the private industry and academia to improve its Artificial Intelligence capabilities. An online course collaboration between SOCOM and MIT is part of this outreach effort. In the launching of the course, Clarke said that Artificial Intelligence and data-driven technology are integral parts of SOCOM’s preparation to maintain its qualitative advantage over its competitors and also to ensure that its commandos are ready for renewed Great Power Competition.
A Precarious Edge
However, SOCOM, and indeed the Pentagon, are having trouble attracting top talent. In a recent Global SOF Foundation forum, Joint Artificial Intelligence Center Chief Technical Officer Nand Mulchandani said that pay, location, and the necessary inconveniences that come with military life—he offered a personal example of him having to fly from California to Washington D.C. to work because that is where a secured computer with access to a classified network is located—hamstring recruiting efforts. And although that has always been true about the military, it is slightly different when recruiting individuals with high-value skills and not just grunts or box kickers.
“SOCOM and JSOC need more data analytics and processing. Take for example the Iron Dome system in Israel. The only data it needs is that a missile is in the air, heading toward Israel, and where it can intercept and destroy it. That’s the only AI it needs. To detect, see, and stop it. If the AI can do the same for an operator, that’s the AI I want. I need to basically perform the same function: what’s coming after me, where do I meet it, and how do I stop it?” Hasken added.
Artificial Intelligence isn’t without vulnerabilities, both internal and external. Enemy tampering and attacks can hamper weapon systems and technology that rely on Artificial Intelligence, while a simple coding error or data oversight can have the same result, with potentially grave consequences for the troops on the ground. For example, a programmer can train Artificial Intelligence to look for specific faces of people for targeting purposes but small, intentional changes to those faces might mislead it, even if humans wouldn’t readily notice the difference.
To maintain a military edge over its near-peer competitors, the U.S. military and its special operations forces need to continue to invest in Artificial Intelligence but also have realistic aims that will translate into operational and tactical advantages on the ground.
This article first appeared at Sandboxx News.
16. The US Navy has a new vision for its carrier air wing. Here's how SEALs will help put those aircraft on target
The US Navy has a new vision for its carrier air wing. Here's how SEALs will help put those aircraft on target
US Navy aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson leads other US Navy ships during an exercise with the Indian navy in 2012.
- The US Navy is making plans to keep its carrier aircraft relevant in a conflict with a more capable adversary.
- China and Russia are developing capabilities that could restrict what those aircraft could do in a conflict.
- US special operators could help those aircraft see — and strike — in places adversaries want to keep them out of.
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Recently the Navy released a new vision for its aircraft carrier air wing that describes how it plans to keep its fighter jets relevant in the future.
In a potential conflict with a near-peer adversary, such as Russia or China, the Navy's aircraft carriers could make the difference, especially against China, because of its proximity to the sea.
But advances in Chinese and Russian military capabilities could significantly restrict aircraft carriers and minimize their effectiveness.
Special-operations units, especially US Navy SEAL Teams, could alleviate some of these concerns.
Flying into the future
US torpedo bombers unfold their wings for takeoff aboard USS Enterprise during the Battle of Midway, June 4, 1942.
Bettmann/Getty Images
American aircraft carriers showed their promise for the first time during the Battle of Midway in 1942, when aircraft from three US flattops sunk four Japanese aircraft carriers, setting the conditions for the Allied victory in the Pacific.
In the 70 years since then, naval aviation has become the go-to option for force projection across the world. When an aircraft carrier shows up in a hotspot, countries take notice.
But for that capability to remain effective, the Navy needs to evolve and incorporate new technologies and concepts. It will also need to address Chinese and Russian military advances.
One of the major limiting factors for US or allied aircraft carriers is China's anti-access/area denial (AD/A2) umbrella.
Composed of complementary webs of weapons, including anti-ship and anti-air cruise missiles, this umbrella could prevent aircraft carriers from sailing close enough to Chinese forces for the carrier's jets to strike.
By keeping carriers at bay, AD/A2 systems in the South China Sea and the Strait of Taiwan could prevent America's main force-projection tool from projecting force.
Naval Special Warfare
A Naval Special Warfare member conducts a visit, board, search, and seizure operation during an exercise aboard USS Carter Hall, January 24, 2020.
US Navy/MCS2 Russell Rhodes Jr.
Although the Navy's new vision for its air wings doesn't explicitly mention the SEALs or any other special-operations units, those units are being incorporated US naval aviation training.
Navy SEALs and Special Warfare Combatant-Craft Crewmen (SWCC) operators worked with the aircraft carrier and acted as its eyes and ears, directing airstrikes and close air support and enabling the flattop's air wing to conduct over-the-horizon targeting — striking targets that are beyond visual and sometimes sensor range.
SEAL Teams "are very versatile and can accomplish a wide range of mission sets," one of which is strategic reconnaissance, a former Navy SEAL officer told Insider.
"It isn't as sexy as it sounds and doesn't drive recruitment, but it's a very useful capability to have and to be proficient at. If you can place a couple of guys near the enemy without him even knowing they are there, then you have an advantage over him and you can use it to win," the former SEAL said.
Naval Special Warfare is an ideal partner to carrier strike groups as it can employ a series of special-operations watercraft, including stealth boats and mini-submarines, to clandestinely infiltrate or approach a target, paving the way for Big Navy's ships and aircraft.
Any-sensor, any-shooter
US Navy SEALs navigate during a combat swimmer training dive, May 18, 2006.
US Navy/CPO Andrew McKaskle
Part of the Navy's plan for Distributed Maritime Operations — simultaneous maritime operations in several places — is an integrated communications network that will support an "any-sensor/any-shooter" kill chain, a concept that aims to integrate the joint force.
For example, in a conflict, an F-35C over the South China Sea could use its advanced sensors to detect a Chinese destroyer and then transmit the vessel's position to other air, ground, or naval forces in the area. Those forces could then fire on the Chinese ships.
The idea is to have intelligence-sharing so robust that any target spotted by one unit is immediately visible, and attackable, by any other unit. Resilient communications networks are essential to doing that, which is where special-operations units could play a part.
Navy SEALs launch a SEAL Delivery Vehicles from a US submarine during an exercise, May 5, 2005.
US Navy/Chief Photographer's Mate Andrew McKaskle
The former SEAL officer wasn't certain how SEALs or other special operators would factor into the plan the Navy is now working on but said strategic reconnaissance would likely be part of it.
"It will put a couple of highly trained guys close to the enemy so they can provide timely intelligence to an inbound strike package that was launched, let's say, from an aircraft carrier a couple of hundred miles away and direct it to the target, the former SEAL said.
"Those guys on the ground would also be able to paint the target with infrared lasers to guide in any aircraft and ensure that the intended target is hit and destroyed" and then provide a battle-damage assessment after the strikes, the former SEAL added.
Naval Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewman in a Special Operations Craft-Riverine during training in Kentucky, August 24, 2007.
US Navy/Seaman Robyn B. Gerstenslager
Navy SEALs and SWCC operators on small islands or at sea could operate with a small footprint and great mobility, making it very hard for an enemy to spot them. They could use their presence and sensors to provide an early-warning capability for other Navy and allied forces.
Both China and Russia have deployed A2/AD capabilities, but Beijing is a greater long-term challenge to US interests, experts have said.
That gives more urgency to developing means to counter China across many domains, especially military power, the former SEAL said.
"China is definitely something to worry about. I don't want to sound like I'm beating the war drum, but as the old adage goes, to prevent a war you must prepare for war," the former frogman added.
Stavros Atlamazoglou is a defense journalist specializing in special operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins University graduate.
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
