Quotes of the Day:
“Pick a leader who will make their citizens proud. One who will stir the hearts of the people, so that the sons and daughters of a given nation strive to emulate their leader's greatness. Only then will a nation be truly great, when a leader inspires and produces citizens worthy of becoming future leaders, honorable decision makers and peacemakers. And in these times, a great leader must be extremely brave. Their leadership must be steered only by their conscience, not a bribe.”
- Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
"To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don't be."
- Golda Meir
“My freedom to say 'No' directly underscores your freedom to say 'Yes'. RESPECT my freedom to PROTECT your freedom.”
- Mamur Mustapha
1. Russia Thinks America Is Bluffing - To Deter a Ukraine Invasion, Washington’s Threats Need to Be Tougher
2. Why More Americans Are Saying They’re ‘Vaxxed and Done’
3. The Crackdown in Kazakhstan Is a Win for Russia (Or Is It?)
4. Is the U.S. Military Actually Ready for a War?
5. Stabilizing Great Power Rivalries
6. An Unauthorized War - The Shaky Legal Ground for the U.S. Operation in Syria
7. Pacific may be most likely to see 'strategic surprise' -U.S. policymaker Campbell
8. China appoints chief of Xinjiang’s Armed Police Force to Hong Kong
9. Denying The Inevitable: Why The West Refuses To Accept China’s Superpower Status – OpEd
10. US can't tell if Russia using talks as pretense for war
11. Russia talks buy time for Ukraine but stark disagreements signal dead-end ahead (and key State Dept comments)
12. Syria Faces Omicron Amid a Shortage of Vaccines
13. FDD | Iran’s Inflation Rate in 2022 Will Depend on Fate of Nuclear Negotiations
14. Normalization is the new normal for the UAE and Israel
15. Air Force general calls B.S. on social media claims that female special ops trainee got ‘preferential treatment’
16. China makes a show of opening up the internet for the Olympics
17. The Metaverse Offers Much Potential For Terrorists and Extremists
18. New law gives veterans, Gold Star Families free lifetime access to America's national parks
19. Liberal elites want us to care about Jan. 6. But they don't care that our cities are burning | Opinion
1. Russia Thinks America Is Bluffing - To Deter a Ukraine Invasion, Washington’s Threats Need to Be Tougher
Excerpts:
The same dilemma applies to the Biden administration’s threat to cut off Russia’s ability to buy semiconductors, smartphones, or airline parts. Smartphones are mostly produced in China, for example, so any export controls on smartphone components would work only if China were willing to enforce them. Beijing could buck U.S. sanctions and dare Washington to retaliate—which would open a second front in a great-power financial war.
China has previously taken humiliating steps to avoid violating U.S. sanctions. Chinese state-owned banks, for example, refused to open accounts for Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, after the United States imposed sanctions on her. U.S. sanctions that have a chance of changing the Kremlin’s calculus, however, could force a rethink in Beijing. If there were ever a time to try to undermine American financial power, this would be it.
After all, in terms of their impact on the global economy, tough financial sanctions on Russia could well be the largest use of sanctions since the United States targeted Japanese finance and oil imports before World War II. This is why Russia may think the United States is bluffing when it threatens dramatic sanctions. The Kremlin believes it has a far higher tolerance for risk than its American or European counterparts.
If Biden is serious about using sanctions to shape Russia’s calculus, his administration needs to sharpen its messaging. The administration should name the Russian banks it would blacklist, the specific transactions it would prohibit, and the companies that would be in danger of going under. Then the Kremlin might start taking its sanctions threats more seriously.
Russia Thinks America Is Bluffing
To Deter a Ukraine Invasion, Washington’s Threats Need to Be Tougher
As talks between U.S. and Russian diplomats begin in Geneva over the fate of Ukraine, Europe stands on the brink of war. The U.S. strategy is to negotiate with Russia while threatening “devastating” sanctions if Russian President Vladimir Putin decides to invade his country’s eastern neighbor. Biden administration officials have outlined a range of sanctions they could impose on the Kremlin, from targeting Russia’s financial system to restricting its ability to import technology.
But the West’s threat of economic sanctions can work only if the proposed measures would make Russian military action against Ukraine expensive enough to alter the Kremlin’s cost-benefit calculus. Putin, however, sees Ukraine as crucial to Russia’s great-power status and to his own personal legacy. So for sanctions to work, they have to be costlier than the vast benefit Putin perceives in controlling Ukraine.
That doesn’t appear to be in the offing: notably, after Biden administration officials escalated their threats, the Russian stock market and its currency barely budged. The markets’ collective shrug mirrors the Kremlin’s view that the U.S. will not follow through on the harsh sanctions it has discussed. Russian policy makers know that many of the tactics that could seriously hurt Russia—such as curbing Russian commodity exports or blacklisting Russian banks—would be costly to the West, too, making it uncertain if the Biden administration would follow through on those threats. Finally, economically tough sanctions will require Chinese acquiescence, and that could create a host of other problems for the United States.
The Sanctions Must Bite
In the past, Putin has demonstrated that he’s willing to endure moderately costly sanctions in pursuit of reestablishing Russia’s dominance of its former satellite states. After Russia seized Crimea and occupied part of the Donbas region of Ukraine in 2014, the United States and Europe imposed restrictions on several big Russian firms, denying them access to international capital markets, which according to the International Monetary Fund reduced Russia’s GDP by somewhere between 1.0 and 1.5 percent. The United States also banned companies from doing business in Crimea and prohibited the export of certain oil-drilling technologies which has reduced Russian oil output, but not by a huge amount. The Kremlin concluded this was a fair price to pay for Crimea and the Donbas and has no plans to give either territory back, no matter how long these sanctions remain in place.
This time, Russia has set its goals even higher. Rather than trying to grab two chunks of Ukrainian territory, it wants to force the entire country back into its own sphere of control. To do so, Russia has assembled a vast invasion force on Ukraine’s border, one capable of driving through Ukrainian defenses all the way to Kyiv. Meanwhile, Russia maintains the ability to launch missile attacks and airstrikes on targets across Ukraine. If the Kremlin thought one percent of its own GDP was a fair price for Crimea and the Donbas, it would surely be willing to pay more to acquire the rest of the country.
Biden says he’s ready to impose “devastating” economic costs if Russia invades. His administration has threatened a “high-impact, quick-action response” on sanctions, one official recently told the New York Times. But even the most detailed statements from administration officials have focused on steps the U.S. might take, rather than those it will commit to. U.S. officials have discussed severe measures such as cutting Russia off from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), but this would require European support and may therefore be challenging to implement, though some European leaders have signaled they are open to considering such measures.
Washington’s promise to work with allies on sanctions may be seen as a sign of weakness.
Washington’s promise to work with allies on sanctions, meanwhile, may be seen as a sign of weakness, not strength. Deference to allies—in particular, Germany—is what led Biden to decline to sanction the Nord Stream 2 pipeline (which transports oil from Russia to Germany) earlier this year. Now, Germany and France are resisting a European Union effort to specify which sanctions they’d impose if Putin in fact invades Ukraine. The new German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, started his premiership with a call for dialogue with Moscow, which in German diplomatic parlance too often means “concessions.” The Western allies are sending dangerously contradictory messages about their willingness to impose anything beyond a financial slap on the wrist.Meanwhile, within the U.S., Congress has focused on sanctions without serious economic bite. Some members of Congress are fixated on canceling the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, a measure that would impose close to zero economic cost on Russia. If Nord Stream 2 gets canceled, Russia will simply keep shipping gas to Europe via existing routes. There is already a surplus of pipeline capacity, so the volume of Russian gas sales to Europe would be unchanged. The Kremlin may see the focus on Nord Stream 2 as evidence that the United States is not serious about imposing costs.
Sanctioning Russian oligarchs and Putin’s cronies, another measure that has strong Congressional support, is equally unlikely to change the Kremlin’s calculus. There is good reason to prevent them from laundering money through Western financial systems, but doing so would have little impact on the Kremlin’s foreign policy. Russia’s business elite would prefer to continue traveling to the West and keep their foreign bank accounts. But they don’t decide Russia’s foreign policy: Putin does, with advice from a small circle of security service chiefs, most of whom are already under sanction.
Given that U.S. domestic debate focuses on low-cost measures, and given that Europe is divided over whether to back costly sanctions, Putin may think the United States is bluffing when it threatens tough sanctions. Washington has powerful sanctions in its arsenal, such as blacklisting Russian banks. It has applied these kinds of measures in the past against Iran and North Korea. There’s no doubt the United States could obliterate Russia’s connections with the global financial system: U.S. officials have discussed blacklisting major Russian banks, preventing banks from converting rubles into dollars, and disconnecting Russia from the SWIFT interbank communication network. But implementing any of these measures would be costly to allies in Europe. It would also directly affect China, the largest consumer of Russian commodities. And that could bring about complications the Biden administration would prefer to avoid.
The Chinese Factor
The United States didn’t have to carefully weigh China’s potential reaction to imposing sanctions on the Kremlin in 2014. This was largely because the measures didn’t hit China in a meaningful way. Few Chinese-made goods were affected by the export controls, and China had no meaningful investments in Crimea. As a result, Beijing could condemn the sanctions but allow its companies to abide by them in the few instances that they had an impact on business.
But if Washington imposes much harsher sanctions, the Chinese response might be far different. China is Russia’s largest trading partner, after all. It’s unclear if Chinese companies would stop dealing with a major Russian firm that the United States chose to blacklist. Doing so would help strengthen U.S. financial power—and prove the potency of tools that could easily be used against China in the future. Russia and China have already collaborated to establish alternative payments mechanisms if U.S. sanctions obstruct their banking systems. If China chose to reject U.S. sanctions and its companies didn’t comply, it would put Washington in a tight spot. Chinese companies would be in violation of U.S. law, but any legal action against them would require risky escalatory measures such as imposing penalties on major Chinese firms. The alternative, however, would be to accept that China need not follow U.S. sanctions, which would dramatically undermine their economic reach.
Beijing could buck U.S. sanctions and dare Washington to retaliate.
The same dilemma applies to the Biden administration’s threat to cut off Russia’s ability to buy semiconductors, smartphones, or airline parts. Smartphones are mostly produced in China, for example, so any export controls on smartphone components would work only if China were willing to enforce them. Beijing could buck U.S. sanctions and dare Washington to retaliate—which would open a second front in a great-power financial war.China has previously taken humiliating steps to avoid violating U.S. sanctions. Chinese state-owned banks, for example, refused to open accounts for Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, after the United States imposed sanctions on her. U.S. sanctions that have a chance of changing the Kremlin’s calculus, however, could force a rethink in Beijing. If there were ever a time to try to undermine American financial power, this would be it.
After all, in terms of their impact on the global economy, tough financial sanctions on Russia could well be the largest use of sanctions since the United States targeted Japanese finance and oil imports before World War II. This is why Russia may think the United States is bluffing when it threatens dramatic sanctions. The Kremlin believes it has a far higher tolerance for risk than its American or European counterparts.
If Biden is serious about using sanctions to shape Russia’s calculus, his administration needs to sharpen its messaging. The administration should name the Russian banks it would blacklist, the specific transactions it would prohibit, and the companies that would be in danger of going under. Then the Kremlin might start taking its sanctions threats more seriously.
- CHRIS MILLER is Assistant Professor at The Fletcher School and a Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
2. Why More Americans Are Saying They’re ‘Vaxxed and Done’
Excerpts:
But a pandemic is more than the sum of individual healthy-adult experiences. Viruses are societal multiplication problems. When a double-digit share of a public-school system comes down with Omicron, school is out, and the effects ripple through local families. When a double-digit share of a medical system comes down with Omicron, doctor and nurse availability plummets, and the effect ripples through the hospital. With workers out across industries, entire cities stop functioning. In Washington, D.C., last week, some schools had to delay opening not because of the virus but because snowplows couldn't make the roads safe enough to get there—too many snowplow drivers were out sick.
My synthesis view is that we should start with the obvious. If I were COVID czar, my rules for early 2022 would be to try desperately to keep schools open and in person, follow through on vaccine mandates for nursing homes, distribute free rapid tests to allow people to identify their own infectiousness when they mix households with vulnerable people, and expand vaccine PSA programs, since the vaccines seem by far the most effective intervention against the virus. If we’re lucky, on the other side of this Omicron wave, “vaccinated and done” won’t be one of many viewpoints in an unfolding COVID Rashomon. It will be something like reality.
Why More Americans Are Saying They’re ‘Vaxxed and Done’
COVID has always divided Americans. The Omicron wave is even dividing the vaccinated.
To understand how ideologically scrambling the Omicron wave of has been, consider this: It's got some 2022 Democrats sounding like 2020 Republicans. In spring 2020, many Republicans, including President Donald Trump, insisted that COVID was hardly worse than the flu; that its fatality risk was comparable to an everyday activity, like driving in a car; and that an obsessive focus on cases wouldn’t give an accurate picture of what was going on in the pandemic.
In the current Omicron wave, these Republican talking points seem to have mostly come true—for most vaccinated non-senior adults, who are disproportionately Democrats.
But Democratic talking points about the severity of COVID and the need for commensurate caution remain valid and not only for the sick and elderly. Ironically, they are especially true for the unvaccinated—a disproportionately Republican group that has seen their hospitalization rates soar this winter to all-time highs. About 9,000 Americans are dying of COVID every week. Preliminary state data suggest that more than 90 percent of today’s deaths are still among unvaccinated people. This year, COVID is on pace to kill more than 300,000 unvaccinated people who would, quite likely, avoid death by getting two or three shots.
The messiness of Omicron data—record-high cases! but much milder illness!—has deepened our COVID Rashomon, in which different communities are telling themselves different stories about what’s going on, and coming to different conclusions about how to lead their lives. That’s true even within populations that, a year ago, were united in their desire to take the pandemic seriously and were outraged by those who refused to do so.
A virus that seems both pervasive and mild offers an opening to people who are, let’s call them, “vaxxed and done.” The attitude of the VADs is this:
For more than a year, I did everything that public-health authorities told me to do. I wore masks. I canceled vacations. I made sacrifices. I got vaccinated. I got boosted. I’m happy to get boosted again. But this virus doesn’t stop. Year over year, the infections don’t decrease. Instead, virulence for people like me is decreasing, either because the virus is changing, or because of growing population immunity, or both. Americans should stop pointlessly guilting themselves about all these cases. In the past week, daily confirmed COVID cases per capita were higher than the U.S. in Ireland, Greece, Iceland, Denmark, France, the U.K., Spain, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, and even Australia, one of the most COVID-cautious countries in the world. As the coronavirus continues its unstoppable march toward endemicity, our attitude toward the virus should follow a similar path toward stoicism. COVID is becoming something like the seasonal flu for most people who keep up with their shots, so I’m prepared to treat this like I’ve treated the flu: by basically not worrying about it and living my life normally.
It’s hard to put a number on how many people are in this group, but we have some hard data to prove that their ranks are growing. This past December, airports processed twice as many travelers compared with the same period in 2020, despite many flights being canceled. On several days, TSA-checkpoint numbers exceeded their totals from pre-pandemic 2019. This is not the picture of a country that is hunkering down for Omicron. It is the limited snapshot of a mostly vaccinated population with millions of people who are eager to move on.
I have a lot of sympathy for this group’s case, especially as it relates to schools. The risk of COVID to vaccinated teachers and even unvaccinated students seems lower than we initially thought. Meanwhile, the costs of remote schooling seem higher than we feared. The White House and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona have come out strongly in support of keeping schools open. Other Democratic leaders, like Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, are fighting reluctant teachers to keep school in person. Even among pro-vaccine Americans, a growing number of people seem to be saying they are done with remote school as a baseline COVID policy.
But there is an opposing group. Let’s call them the “vaxxed and cautious.” Here’s my best summary of their perspective:
Why on earth would we suddenly relax measures now, during the largest statistical wave of COVID ever recorded in the U.S.? We shouldn’t treat Omicron like any old seasonal flu, because it’s not like any old seasonal flu. It’s likely deadlier for those without immunity and almost certainly several times more transmissible for everybody else. We have no idea what the effects of Omicron on long COVID will be, but evidence of lingering symptoms should make us wary of just letting tens of millions of people get needlessly infected. Moreover, the health-care system is already worn down and at risk of being overloaded. Record-high caseloads are societally debilitating, creating long chains of infections that are bound to reach some immunocompromised people and the elderly, thus causing needless death. For all these reasons, we should take individual measures to throttle the spread of this virus.
If you feel a bit torn between these ideologies, I understand. I’m a bit torn myself.
In the past few weeks, several people have told me that they feel extremely safe personally but remain worried about passing along the virus to vulnerable people in their networks. So what should they do? This is not a problem with an easy answer, because the gap between individual risk and societal risk in this pandemic has never been wider. The risk of death from Omicron for boosted, healthy adults under 50 seems to be somewhere between that of riding a bike and going on an airplane. In isolation, this statistic makes the vaxxed-and-done perspective a no-brainer: Nobody consults the CDC website to decide if it’s safe to bike down the street.
But a pandemic is more than the sum of individual healthy-adult experiences. Viruses are societal multiplication problems. When a double-digit share of a public-school system comes down with Omicron, school is out, and the effects ripple through local families. When a double-digit share of a medical system comes down with Omicron, doctor and nurse availability plummets, and the effect ripples through the hospital. With workers out across industries, entire cities stop functioning. In Washington, D.C., last week, some schools had to delay opening not because of the virus but because snowplows couldn't make the roads safe enough to get there—too many snowplow drivers were out sick.
My synthesis view is that we should start with the obvious. If I were COVID czar, my rules for early 2022 would be to try desperately to keep schools open and in person, follow through on vaccine mandates for nursing homes, distribute free rapid tests to allow people to identify their own infectiousness when they mix households with vulnerable people, and expand vaccine PSA programs, since the vaccines seem by far the most effective intervention against the virus. If we’re lucky, on the other side of this Omicron wave, “vaccinated and done” won’t be one of many viewpoints in an unfolding COVID Rashomon. It will be something like reality.
3. The Crackdown in Kazakhstan Is a Win for Russia (Or Is It?)
Conclusion:
On balance, thirty years post-Cold War Moscow appears to have regained the upper hand in the region, as its key role in propping up the Kazakhstan regime has just shown. Nevertheless, this Russian short-term gain may yet prove problematic, for with the United States going from Afghanistan and Russia embedded more deeply in Central Asia, the conflicts and fissures that remain in the region, including what happens in Afghanistan, are now Moscow’s to deal with.
The Crackdown in Kazakhstan Is a Win for Russia (Or Is It?)
A few days ago, as violence in Kazakhstan escalated, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a key decision to dispatch 2,500 Russian troops as “peacekeepers” reportedly authorized by the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Moscow-controlled military alliance of several post-Soviet states. Putin’s decision to airlift troops into Kazakhstan just days before the much-anticipated meetings with the U.S. and NATO to discuss Russian demands concerning the future of Ukraine and European security writ large has sent an unmistakable message that he remains determined to follow Russia’s neo-imperial course aimed at restoring control over the post-Soviet domain. Belarus, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan are also sending troops to assist in this Russian “peacekeeping” mission.
The crisis in Kazakhstan is the first time that the CSTO collective defense clause has been invoked; Russian media announced that the forces were being sent to Kazakhstan at President Tokayev’s request. Tokayev’s decision to issue shoot-to-kill orders to his military and security forces, coming on the heels of a phone call with Putin, makes it plain that he has fully coordinated with Moscow his decision to suppress the protest.
Pointedly, Russian media has blamed the unrest in Kazakhstan on the United States, comparing the eruption to the 2014 revolution in Ukraine. The Kremlin has also issued a statement that Kazakhstan is able to “independently solve its domestic problems” and – somewhat comically – warned against foreign interference.
Russia’s military entry into Kazakhstan has several important geostrategic consequences. First, it ensures that Russian access to the Baikonur Cosmodrome military base remains unrestricted, and it has given the Russian military full control of the Almaty airport. Ostensibly, the overarching goal of the force is to protect ethnic Russians living in Kazakhstan, who today still constitute about one-fifth of the total population.
Most of all, however, this Russian military intervention sends a clear message to the United States, as well as to China and Turkey that Moscow intends to claim Kazakhstan as part of its exclusive sphere of influence, regardless of the inroads Beijing and, to a lesser extent, Ankara has made there in recent years. Putin’s decision to send in a Russian expeditionary force is an unmissable sign for the others that he intends to keep a firm grip on Central Asia’s resource base. At stake are both Russia’s unrestricted access to the region and in Kazakhstan specifically to the country’s deposits of key raw materials. It has at least one-fifth of the world’s uranium deposits (some estimates put the number much higher), it is the second-largest producer of chromium, and it has the Caspian Sea’s largest proven oil reserves.
Putin’s message, that when it comes to Central Asia, Russia is ready to play hardball, appears to have registered both in Beijing and Ankara. China has issued a statement that the events in Kazakhstan are an “internal affair” of that country, called for the restoration of social order and, increasingly in alignment with Russia’s actions, offered Tokayev increased “law enforcement and security cooperation” assistance to oppose another “color revolution.” President Erdogan made a call to Tokayev and reportedly expressed Turkey’s solidarity with Kazakhstan and his hopes that a new government will quickly emerge to stabilize the situation and end-all tensions.
Notwithstanding Russian propaganda to the contrary, the protests in Kazakhstan have all the markings of a genuine social rebellion against the country’s dictator and its oligarchs. The Kazakhs have expressed not just their fury at the sudden increases in energy prices, but have also registered their rejection of the extant repressive system. This rising tide of popular anger and frustration, especially among the young, is likely to remain a potent factor going forward. Although the current crackdown by Kazakh security forces will most likely succeed in putting down this round of protests, it is far from certain that public discontent will not erupt again soon.
Here, Russia is running the risk, similar to what happened in Ukraine, that its military involvement in Kazakhstan may in fact trigger a backlash in a country that historically has had close relations with Russia; in fact, the Russian language is still widely spoken in Kazakhstan and remains the lingua franca in all of Central Asia. Hence, Putin’s exploitation of the revolt in Kazakhstan to strengthen Russia’s grip on Central Asia is not necessarily all good news for his strategy to rebuild the Russian empire. The eruption in Kazakhstan, alongside the ongoing war in Ukraine, means that Russia will from now on have to manage instability in two regions.
The larger objective of what Putin has been aiming at in Eastern Europe and now also in Central Asia, is to reverse the geostrategic consequences of the end of the Cold War and create a world where Russian spheres of influence would be explicitly recognized by the West and, preferably, sanctioned by treaty. In this strategy, Eastern Europe and Central Asia are to become undisputed spheres of Russian domination yet again.
Significantly for Putin’s design, the scheduled talks with the United States, NATO and the OSCE to address Russia’s most recent demands concerning the security architecture in Eastern and Central Europe will go as planned, notwithstanding the Russian military having been sent to Kazakhstan. Officially, the United States has called for all sides in the unfolding Kazakh crisis to “show restraint.” Other European governments, including the UK, have expressed concern about the situation and called for an end to violence, while the EU has called on Russia to respect Kazakhstan’s sovereignty. But Putin is right to expect little more from the West other than diplomatic demarches and public statements of concern. Last but not least, Moscow has announced that it will not agree to include Kazakhstan on the agenda of the U.S. – Russia talks in Geneva.
The crisis in Kazakhstan presents Putin with an opportunity to push forward his neo-imperial plans for restoring Russia’s control over much of Eurasia, and more specifically to consolidate further Russia’s military presence in Central Asia where Moscow has been making steady gains for several years at the expense of Washington. Even while the U.S. was still at war in Afghanistan, Putin managed to tighten Russia’s links to Kyrgyzstan enough to bring about the closure of a U.S. military base there.
Geography favors Russian access to the region, as the five ex-Soviet states in Central Asia stretch strategically between Russia, China, Iran, and Afghanistan. The departure of the United States from Afghanistan has further redefined the parameters of great power competition in Central Asia. Today Russia maintains military bases in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. In Kazakhstan, it operates an anti-ballistic missile testing range, while the Baikonur Cosmodrome is in effect a Russian military installation. Those bases are augmented by Russian naval presence in the oil-rich Caspian Sea.
On balance, thirty years post-Cold War Moscow appears to have regained the upper hand in the region, as its key role in propping up the Kazakhstan regime has just shown. Nevertheless, this Russian short-term gain may yet prove problematic, for with the United States going from Afghanistan and Russia embedded more deeply in Central Asia, the conflicts and fissures that remain in the region, including what happens in Afghanistan, are now Moscow’s to deal with.
Andrew A. Michta is dean of the College of International and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, a former professor at the U.S. Naval War College, and a former Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. He is also a 1945 Contributing Editor.
The opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, the U.S. Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.
4. Is the U.S. Military Actually Ready for a War?
Excerpt:
The U.S. military today is focused on budget battles, procurement issues, social engineering, and the permanent quest of large central military staffs to increase their hold on everything from strategy to force architecture. As important as these are, they distract from warfighting. The understanding that the U.S. is in an interwar period does not exist. The notion that the military’s first task is to defeat our increasingly powerful adversaries is a relic from the unexamined past. If it animated the U.S. high command, there would be unrelenting emphasis on selecting officers more like Grant than McClellan for promotion at all ranks. Rather than end the careers of exceptionally promising naval officers for mistakes made during exercises or mishandled paperwork, the Navy should end its witless confusion between “loss of confidence” and the insistence for perfection as reasons to relieve excellent commanders. This would be followed by similar attention to training, planning, and equipping for wars with a major adversary — or two. This would include realistic war-gaming (i.e., where the U.S. side can lose), organizational structures that allow unitary command of such geographically separate regions as Ukraine and the East China Sea, and serious strategic and historical education to parallel and complement what the greatest generation — that means Nimitz, Halsey, Marshall, and Patton — learned about strategy from combat in World War I.
Is the U.S. Military Actually Ready for a War?
January 10, 2022 6:30 AM
There are some worrying indicators within the military bureaucracy about our readiness. They should be fixed immediately.
T
he U.S. faces both the immediacy of great-power competition and the prospect of great-power war. Both of these require a military that is wholly prepared for combat. This preparation includes all the standard aspects of military power — personnel, matériel, and training. But most important and least measurable is intellectual readiness. There is no sign that the armed services, or the defense establishment more broadly, are intellectually prepared for a Sino–American clash.
A military organization’s first peacetime task is preparing for combat. Americans could be forgiven for forgetting this fact, given the state of our contemporary political debate, some of which has drawn the military into the political fray. This political tension combines with recent American combat experience to further conceal the military’s true purpose. Since 2004, American counterterrorist policy has degenerated into long-term “small wars” that any British Royal Marine, French Legionnaire, or pre-1940 American Marine would recognize, but that sit poorly alongside post–Cold War public perceptions. None of these conflicts were clear-cut wars ending in the enemy’s destruction; they were open-ended commitments, difficult for the public to understand because they did not resemble traditional warfare and asked no sacrifice of most Americans.
These conflicts demand officers who take the initiative, operate without extensive support, and are extremely proficient in small-unit tactics and comfortable working with local political actors. Some of these skills translate to great-power warfare, but most are practiced at the lower levels of command. This is especially true of naval and air officers. At no point since Vietnam have they been asked to wage a long-term air-control campaign, and at no point since 1945 have they been required to secure sea control against a capable adversary.
The most recent approximation of conventional warfare came in 2003 against an outdated and ill-led Iraqi army. The U.S. Navy has not faced a conventional competitor since 1991, and has not fought in conventional naval combat since 1945. It is not, however, the lack of major-power combat experience that should cause unease.
The United States’ entire national style is defined by the application of overwhelming matériel superiority against an adversary. Exceptions exist — for example, Grant and Sherman’s operational brilliance late in the Civil War — but in general, major American wars follow an identical pattern: an initial defensive period, during which the U.S. mobilizes resources, followed by a punishing counterattack that overwhelms the adversary.
The key, again, is matériel superiority, which in today’s U.S. military amounts to a bootless faith that technology and industrial capacity can prevail against foes with greater initial military competence. But there is no end in sight to China’s arms buildup. The U.S. ought to consider the possibility that China will possess larger forces than ours, and we should look upon the exceptional military competence of Israel as a model. Underscoring this is the U.S.’s vastly diminished ability to equal American industry’s extraordinary World War II output. The U.S. may not have its former ability to overcome a powerful enemy with matériel in time to prevail.
Moreover, the notion that sheer mass enabled past American victories stems from a warped reading of strategic history. In each conflict, the U.S. did have supremely talented commanders at the highest levels — again, Grant and Sherman in the Civil War, Dewey in the Spanish–American War, Pershing and Sims in World War I, and Eisenhower, Patton, Nimitz, Halsey, and others in World War II. Yet in most cases, it took U.S. statesmen time to identify their generals. Lincoln burned through three commanders before settling on Grant in 1864. Roosevelt took several months to choose Eisenhower, while Nimitz assumed command of the U.S. Pacific Fleet only after the war began. Pershing was promoted in part for his well-timed recent Mexican service.
However, the issue is that the U.S. military has so deeply imbibed the matériel element of strategic history that its ability to identify command talent is a troubling question. The post–Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act (of 1986) promotion system rewards bureaucratic aptitude over military skill, a natural consequence of the same legislation’s radically dilated Joint Chiefs of Staff and combatant command (COCOM) staffs. The expanded control that Goldwater-Nichols gave to the central command drained the military services’ ability to shape strategy.
Hence the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs move at a glacial pace and increasingly overmanage, with the former most recently conducting an independent naval-force-structure study rather than devolving to the services the responsibilities that ought to result from their operational knowledge. And the services are now encouraged to compromise current combat capabilities for future advances, most notably in the Navy’s “Divest to Invest” scheme, which relies on small surface combatants that are years away from deployment in numbers and on unmanned systems without public prototypes.
The U.S. military today is focused on budget battles, procurement issues, social engineering, and the permanent quest of large central military staffs to increase their hold on everything from strategy to force architecture. As important as these are, they distract from warfighting. The understanding that the U.S. is in an interwar period does not exist. The notion that the military’s first task is to defeat our increasingly powerful adversaries is a relic from the unexamined past. If it animated the U.S. high command, there would be unrelenting emphasis on selecting officers more like Grant than McClellan for promotion at all ranks. Rather than end the careers of exceptionally promising naval officers for mistakes made during exercises or mishandled paperwork, the Navy should end its witless confusion between “loss of confidence” and the insistence for perfection as reasons to relieve excellent commanders. This would be followed by similar attention to training, planning, and equipping for wars with a major adversary — or two. This would include realistic war-gaming (i.e., where the U.S. side can lose), organizational structures that allow unitary command of such geographically separate regions as Ukraine and the East China Sea, and serious strategic and historical education to parallel and complement what the greatest generation — that means Nimitz, Halsey, Marshall, and Patton — learned about strategy from combat in World War I.
The results of our military’s inability to imagine, plan, and exercise accordingly to deter or defeat China are more readily apparent. A People’s Liberation Army victory in the western Pacific that crippled U.S. forces almost certainly would prompt negotiations and the emergence of a Chinese-shaped world — that is, a world led by the genocidal regime that harvests dissidents’ organs. Too much rides on the question of the U.S. military’s first task, warfighting, to be swallowed by intellectual laxity, to disappear into Byzantine central staffs, or to continue to be distracted by social desiderata.
Note: Harry Halem, a research assistant at Hudson Institute, aided with research for this article; he is a graduate student at the London School of Economics.
SETH CROPSEY — Mr. Cropsey is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute and the director of its Center for American Seapower. He served as a naval officer and as a deputy undersecretary of the Navy.
5. Stabilizing Great Power Rivalries
Excerpts:
How should U.S. and Western policymakers and military planners understand the threat trajectory of great power rivalry in the Indo-Pacific region?
Due to their position and size in the global economy, U.S.-China competition is unavoidable. However, conflict is far from inevitable. Despite the trends, the two countries can still take action to promote a more stable rivalry. Both sides can take steps to expand channels for communication, increase dialogues and diplomatic flexibility in managing disputes, expand direct people to people exchanges, and discourage unnecessarily inflammatory and incendiary rhetoric against the other side.
Stabilizing Great Power Rivalries
Insights from Timothy Heath.
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The Diplomat author Mercy Kuo regularly engages subject-matter experts, policy practitioners, and strategic thinkers across the globe for their diverse insights into U.S. Asia policy. This conversation with Dr. Timothy Heath – senior international defense researcher at the RAND Corporation and former senior analyst for the USPACOM China Strategic Focus Group ̶ is 304th in “The Trans-Pacific View Insight Series.”
What are the top three findings related to the Indo-Pacific from your recent RAND report “Stabilizing Great Power Rivalries”?
A top finding is that the United States and China are experiencing an intensifying rivalry that will likely last many years. By rivalry, we mean a competitive relationship between two powers characterized by rough parity, mutual perceptions of acute threat, a shared history of intractable disputes and an expectation of potential future conflict. The current U.S.-China rivalry can be dated perhaps to the 1996 Taiwan crisis, but its intensity has waxed on and off over the years. Since the 2010s, the rivalry has become increasingly antagonistic and competitive.
Another of our findings is that rivalries such as that experienced by the U.S. and China can be unstable or relatively stable. Unstable rivalries historically have been more prone to armed conflict, and for obvious reasons it would be best if the U.S. and China could avoid such risks.
A third finding is that the general trajectory of the U.S.-China relationship unfortunately appears headed towards increased instability. Symptoms of this trend can be seen in the investments by both countries in military capabilities aimed partly at one another. Similarly, disputes between China and the United States have expanded across virtually all policy domains, including trade, investment, and technology. Many of these disputes are core to the economic prosperity and political stability of each nation.
Explain the defense policy implications of China-U.S. great power rivalry vis-à-vis regional security architecture in Northeast and Southeast Asia.
The accelerating U.S.-China rivalry carries profound implications for the security architecture in Northeast and Southeast Asia. The rivalry is a main driver of the region’s political polarization. Although countries have in recent years found opportunities to play the great powers off each other to extract maximum benefits, it will probably get harder to do so. Countries are also already learning that more generous benefits can accrue to countries that choose to align more closely with Beijing or Washington. But this same decision could come at the cost of antagonizing the rival country. Australia, for example, gained security and diplomatic benefits when it opted to work closely with the United States to build nuclear submarines. However, this decision also resulted in greater tensions with Beijing and various forms of Chinese economic diplomatic and economic retaliation. In coming years, many decisions, even those that seem technical and apolitical, may take on political overtones as the rivalry intensifies. We are already seeing this trend in the controversy over whether countries adopt Chinese or U.S. forms of 5G technologies in their information networks.
Identify the key variables underpinning China-U.S. great power competition and cooperation.
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We identified two groups of factors and a set of perceptions that appeared to most impact prospects for stability or instability in a great power rivalry. One group concerned the “national policies” of each country. These are the policies voluntarily undertaken by each country relevant to the other rival. Examples include policies that affect military capabilities, demonstrate restraint, show acceptance of the other side’s legitimacy, limit competition to peripheral issues, establish communication channels, promote personal relationships among elites, affect allies and partners, and comply with shared established norms and rules. As applied to the U.S.-China relationship, these have generally trended towards greater instability in the rivalry.
Another set of factors concerned the “context” or “structural” variables. These are not necessarily determined by national policies but can affect incentives to exercise restraint or not. Examples include the relative balance of military offensive-defensive capabilities, the objective costs of aggression, the influence of domestic interest groups, the prioritization of status, honor, and prestige, contestation over resources, existence of a common enemy, interdependence, the means to react proportionally. These have more of a mixed influence, with some factors such as the influence of domestic interest groups and lack of a common enemy pointing to greater instability, while interdependence and a mutual recognition about the potentially high costs of aggression adding a restraining influence.
What is the impact of Chinese great power ambitions on U.S. military doctrine?
China’s great power ambitions have included a stated desire to subjugate Taiwan, control the East and South China Seas, and achieve regional primacy. These ambitions clash with a U.S. desire to sustain a status quo that it has long found favorable to its own interests. The intense competition and sense of threat that pervade the U.S.-China rivalry stem in large part from incompatible goals related to the Indo-Pacific region. Although China has so far relied primarily on economic and diplomatic tools to further its goals, the possibility that China might resort to arms to impose its will cannot be fully discounted, Accordingly, the U.S. military will likely continue to have an important responsibility in defending U.S. allies and partners from potential Chinese aggression.
How should U.S. and Western policymakers and military planners understand the threat trajectory of great power rivalry in the Indo-Pacific region?
Due to their position and size in the global economy, U.S.-China competition is unavoidable. However, conflict is far from inevitable. Despite the trends, the two countries can still take action to promote a more stable rivalry. Both sides can take steps to expand channels for communication, increase dialogues and diplomatic flexibility in managing disputes, expand direct people to people exchanges, and discourage unnecessarily inflammatory and incendiary rhetoric against the other side.
CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR
Mercy A. Kuo
Mercy Kuo is Executive Vice President at Pamir Consulting.
6. An Unauthorized War - The Shaky Legal Ground for the U.S. Operation in Syria
Excerpts:
Expansive precedents take root with unfortunate speed in national security law. There is already evidence that legal innovations originating in Syria won’t necessarily stay in Syria. The Trump administration relied on the theory of ancillary self-defense, which was first introduced to justify hostilities around al-Tanf and elsewhere in eastern Syria in 2017 and 2018, to justify the 2020 killing of Soleimani in Iraq. In that case, the administration claimed (along with other legal theories) that the 2002 Iraq war authorization, which unfortunately remains on the books long after Saddam Hussein’s demise, provided authority for the strike on Soleimani, an Iranian general, because he posed a threat to U.S. forces in Iraq.
Domestic and international legal constraints on the use of force are designed to promote deliberation and ensure that the costs and benefits of war are adequately weighed before one is waged. What is going on in Syria illustrates how creative legal theories cooked up by the executive branch and unchallenged by Congress erode these constraints and increase the likelihood of future conflict. To restore the limits on war making, the Biden administration and its allies in Congress should start rebuilding the safeguards that too many administrations have chipped away.
An Unauthorized War
The Shaky Legal Ground for the U.S. Operation in Syria
The hundreds of U.S. troops who are still stationed in Syria, on a mission to “maintain the enduring defeat” of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), are fighting an off-and-on battle with Iranian-backed militias. Just last week, the United States conducted strikes against fighters described as “Iran-supported malign actors” who attacked a base housing U.S. troops in eastern Syria. It is not the first time this has happened. Since 2016, U.S. forces in Syria have fought not only members of ISIS but also Syrian government troops, Iranian-backed militias, and Russian mercenaries. This longer list of adversaries shows what a complex and perilous environment U.S. forces are operating in and raises questions about the underlying legal rationales for their deployment.
Both domestic and international laws restrict war making, and thus, in principle, the president is restrained from unilaterally using military force whenever he or she desires. U.S. law makes exceptions for cases of self-defense and conflicts that are approved by Congress, and international law similarly allows for self-defense and force approved by the UN Security Council. But with both Congress and the UN Security Council reluctant to approve conflicts for both policy and political reasons, the U.S. government has figured out creative ways to circumvent these bodies. Nowhere is that clearer than in Syria, where successive U.S. administrations have engaged in clever legal maneuvering to fit a wide range of U.S. operations within the scope of domestic laws. The original rationale for going to war in Syria in 2014 was to fight ISIS and al Qaeda. Although Congress did not authorize the campaign against ISIS in advance, it subsequently appropriated funding for U.S. counter-ISIS operations. Yet since 2016, U.S. forces in Syria have also battled a handful of other foes with no congressional authorization or even debate.
In a sense, the United States may have backed itself into a corner in Syria. Close observers of the situation (including my own organization, the International Crisis Group) argue that the several hundred U.S. troops on the ground there for counter-ISIS purposes have come to play an essential role in girding northeast Syria against what could well be a bloody free-for-all should they withdraw. Ideally, the executive branch would work with Congress on new legislation that squarely defines the contours of U.S. military activities in Syria. At the same time, there seems virtually no likelihood that the Biden administration, which believes it already has the authority it needs for these activities and has expressed its intention to maintain these deployments, will seek that authorization from Congress. Nor is there much chance that Congress, which is divided on the continued U.S. presence in Syria and has grown accustomed as a body to dodging its responsibility for matters of war and peace, will take a consequential vote on U.S. operations in Syria.
But even if the result is that the administration maintains its current course in Syria, the legal contortions the U.S. government has taken there should not be allowed to become a precedent. In order to keep this from happening, it is important to acknowledge the myriad ways in which the U.S. government has stretched its current authority and consider how a reinvigorated framework for congressional engagement might avoid seeing future administrations take similar liberties in similar scenarios.
WHAT THE LAW SAYS
Under international law, the UN Charter prohibits the use of force and assigns to the Security Council the responsibility for authorizing it in the service of maintaining international peace and security. The exercise of the “inherent right of . . . self-defence,” enshrined in Article 51 of the charter, is an exception to this prohibition. Any such defensive measures must be both necessary and proportionate to the threat, and they must be reported to the Security Council in what are called “Article 51 letters.”
Article I of the U.S. Constitution, meanwhile, gives Congress the power to “declare War.” Congress has exercised this power through formal declarations of war (as in 1941 against Japan) and in recent decades through the functional equivalent of statutory authorizations for the use of military force. For example, the United States has waged the war on terrorism primarily under the broadly worded war authorization passed by Congress a week after 9/11, the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF. Originally intended to allow the U.S. military to fight those responsible for the terrorist attacks (understood to include at least al Qaeda), the authorization does not explicitly specify the enemy and thus has been used by the executive branch in the 20 years since to justify U.S. military operations against an ever-expanding raft of groups, many of which didn’t even exist in 2001.
In addition to conflicts authorized by Congress, the president has some independent authority to use force under Article II of the Constitution, which names the president the commander in chief of the “Army and Navy of the United States.” Although the scope of this authority is contested, it includes defending the United States and U.S. forces from sudden attack.
In order to place limits on the president from using this authority to take the country to war on his or her own, in 1973, during the waning days of the Vietnam War, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution. Under this law, in the absence of congressional authorization, the president must report within 48 hours when U.S. forces are introduced into “hostilities” (which the executive branch interprets to include airstrikes and exchanges of fire with hostile forces) or introduced into situations of imminent hostilities. Once such a report is submitted to Congress, a 60-day clock starts ticking. By the end of the countdown, U.S. forces must withdraw from hostilities unless Congress has specifically authorized their actions.
A COMPLEX BATTLEFIELD
When the Syrian civil war broke out, in 2011, the United States condemned atrocities by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad but refrained from direct military intervention in the conflict. But once ISIS launched a campaign of slaughter, rape, and enslavement against the Yazidis in Iraq and threatened U.S. personnel and the Iraqi government in September 2014, the Obama administration ordered airstrikes against the group, first in Iraq and then in Syria. A year later, President Barack Obama sent ground troops into the country to assist (in an ostensibly noncombat role) local fighters to combat ISIS. Iran and Russia had already taken the Syrian government’s side in the civil war, providing military support in the form of fighters, equipment, and airstrikes.
When the United States initiated military operations in Syria, both its domestic and its international legal justifications were tied to the idea that these activities served a counterterrorism mission. As a matter of domestic law, the Obama administration adopted the theory that Congress had already authorized the use of force against not only al Qaeda but also ISIS in Syria. Under this interpretation, the 2001 AUMF authorized U.S. military operations against ISIS on account of the ties between Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (the founder of ISIS’s predecessor organization, al Qaeda in Iraq) and Osama bin Laden—even though ISIS had publicly split from al Qaeda. Under this theory, the Obama administration didn’t need Congress to declare war in 2014 against ISIS because it had effectively already done so in 2001, despite the fact that the group had not existed then.
To cover its bases in international law, the United States sent an Article 51 letter to the UN Security Council, saying that it was acting against ISIS in Syria in self-defense—on behalf of both Iraq and itself. The United States argued that it was necessary to use force in Syria without the consent of the Syrian government, because Syria was unable or unwilling to counter the threat posed by ISIS and al Qaeda. Variations of this theory had been invoked for centuries by countries using force against nonstate actors, and other members of the counter-ISIS coalition, such as the United Kingdom and Germany, also relied upon it for operations in Syria. Although other countries such as Russia and Iran have embraced the “unable or unwilling” theory in different contexts, it remains contested by some countries, such as Mexico.
The range of U.S. operations in Syria does not fall neatly into the counter-ISIS mission.
Upon arriving in Syria, U.S. forces quickly began to exchange fire with groups other than ISIS and al Qaeda. In September 2016, the United States and coalition partners launched a series of airstrikes on Syrian government forces in Deir ez-Zor Province, mistaking them for ISIS fighters. Hostilities between U.S. and Syrian forces escalated during the administration of President Donald Trump, with much of the fighting concentrated around the military base the United States had set up in al-Tanf, in southeastern Syria. Although the U.S. troop presence there was established as part of the counter-ISIS mission, U.S. officials such as John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, saw it as principally aimed at countering Iran. In May and June 2017, the U.S. military repeatedly battled fighters supporting the Syrian government, carrying out airstrikes against ground forces and shooting down two drones.
Farther north, in June 2017, U.S. Navy pilots shot down a Syrian jet that had attacked the Syrian Democratic Forces, the largely Kurdish militia supported by the United States. The following February, the U.S. military fought a four-hour battle with pro-Assad forces after they had attacked U.S. troops and the SDF at a small outpost in eastern Syria. U.S. forces killed hundreds of enemy troops in the battle, many of them Russian mercenaries.
In December 2019, U.S. warplanes struck Kataib Hezbollah, a Shiite paramilitary group, in both Iraq and Syria, in response to rocket fire by Iranian-backed groups against U.S. troops in Iraq. That round of hostilities would later involve the United States killing General Qasem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, and Iran attacking U.S. troops in Iraq with ballistic missiles. In August 2020, U.S. soldiers had a gunfight with Syrian troops at a checkpoint, killing one of the Syrian fighters.
Distinct from these hostilities on the periphery of the counter-ISIS mission in eastern Syria, the Trump administration also launched airstrikes against the Syrian government in 2017 and 2018 in response to its use of chemical weapons.
Fights between U.S. troops and Iranian-backed militias have continued during the administration of President Joe Biden. In February and June 2021, in response to attacks on its forces in Iraq, the U.S. military launched airstrikes against Iranian-backed militias in Syria along the Iraqi border. And in October of that year, U.S. forces at al-Tanf were hit by five so-called suicide drones, which according to The New York Times were dispatched in retaliation for earlier Israeli strikes on Iranian forces in Syria. Two months later, a British fighter jet shot down a drone approaching the al-Tanf outpost. Then, in the first week of 2022, U.S. forces in northeast Syria, acting to defend themselves and their SDF partners, attacked Iranian-backed launched strikes against pro-Iran fighters who returned fire. These incidents speak for themselves regarding the potential for escalation.
LAWYERING UP
The range of U.S. operations in Syria does not fall neatly into the counter-ISIS mission the United States claimed it had authority for when it first sent forces there. In order to accommodate the inconvenient facts of U.S. combat in Syria, the executive branch has resorted to creative lawyering. Although the Obama administration did not offer a legal theory for its erroneous strikes on Syrian troops, the Trump and Biden administrations have articulated justifications for fighting non-ISIS forces, and these rationales differ in some respects.
The Trump administration shoehorned attacks against pro-Syrian government forces into the 2001 AUMF through a theory of “ancillary self-defense.” Under this interpretation, U.S. forces and their partners were undertaking a mission authorized by the 2001 AUMF (against al Qaeda and ISIS), and the AUMF therefore gave U.S. forces the right to defend themselves, even from groups not covered by the AUMF. By relying on the 2001 AUMF as authority for these strikes, rather than the president’s commander-in-chief authority from Article II of the Constitution, the Trump administration skirted the War Powers Resolution. It avoided having to report its actions to Congress and triggering the resolution’s 60-day clock for withdrawal.
Under international law, the Trump administration relied on a similar theory of ancillary self-defense. Building off the underlying claim of self-defense against ISIS, the administration argued in a report to Congress that the “necessary and proportionate use of force in national and collective self-defense against ISIS in Syria includes measures to defend U.S., Coalition, and U.S.-supported partner forces while engaged in the campaign to defeat ISIS.” In other words, the administration claimed that in acting in self-defense against ISIS, it could defend itself against any other group that might threaten it along the way.
These theories are not universally accepted, but even if one accepts them in principle, the Trump administration’s application of them to the fighting in Syria is questionable. To the extent that aspects of the underlying mission are not in fact counter-ISIS, these rationales are particularly strained. Statements by Trump himself suggesting U.S. troops were in northeast Syria primarily “to secure the oil,” and the apparent intention of some Trump-era officials to exploit the U.S. presence in al-Tanf in the course of a larger strategy designed to contain Iran, further undermined their credibility.
The creative legal interpretations that enabled the expansion of U.S. hostilities in Syria should not become the norm.
Perhaps to guard against such strains, Biden administration officials have emphasized that forces in al-Tanf have become more involved in counter-ISIS activities in recent months as the threat of potential ISIS reconstitution has grown.
The Biden administration has invoked the president’s constitutional authority to justify actions against Iranian-supported forces rather than relying on an expansive reading of the 2001 AUMF. It did this in connection with U.S. airstrikes against Iranian-backed militias in Syria in February and June 2021. In notifying Congress of these strikes under the War Powers Resolution, the administration explained that the president acted to protect U.S. personnel and deter future attacks. Although it has not explained itself, the new administration apparently takes the position that neither notification started the 60-day clock under the War Powers Resolution for withdrawing U.S. forces from hostilities.
Yet the administration’s failure to send notifications to Congress within 48 hours regarding the October drone attack on al-Tanf and the fighting during the first week of 2022, even though they seem to constitute fresh hostilities, raises questions about whether the White House is relying on an unduly narrow interpretation of “hostilities” in order to avoid triggering the War Powers Resolution’s 60-day clock. Or perhaps the administration has reverted to relying upon the 2001 AUMF as authority for such hostilities, as the Trump administration did. It is possible the administration may not be guided by any particular legal theory or interpretation but is simply picking and choosing between using the 2001 war authorization and Article II of the Constitution as authority in Syria in order to maximize operational flexibility and avoid explaining itself.
Whereas Congress arguably ratified the conflict against ISIS through subsequent budgetary appropriations, giving de facto permission by funding the fight, there has been no such congressional endorsement of the widening war against other foes in Syria. Indeed, in a November letter sent to Biden, a bipartisan group of members of the House of Representatives posed questions regarding the legal basis for recent hostilities in Syria, particularly those involving non-ISIS forces. As of early January, the White House had not responded.
PUTTING THE GENIE BACK IN THE BOTTLE
Moving forward, the Biden administration and Congress need to work together to curtail legal theories for war making that bypass the constraints of the UN Charter and the Constitution, as such gamesmanship avoids adequate consideration of the costs and benefits of conflict and undercuts legal frameworks that were intended to prevent imprudent war making. The creative legal interpretations that enabled the expansion of U.S. hostilities in Syria should not become the norm.
There are some steps the Biden administration can take that would at least keep these theories from becoming even more expansive. The administration should articulate more precisely the limits of the “unable or unwilling” theory—that is, at what point it will no longer be necessary to use force in Syria as a matter of self-defense under international law. It should also more clearly spell out its definition of “hostilities” under the War Powers Resolution and why recent attacks on U.S. forces in Syria did not fit it. And it should do so in a responsible way, mindful that this definition of hostilities could be used by successor administrations. The administration should also explain whether it subscribes to the Trump administration’s theory that the 2001 AUMF provides ancillary authority to fight other non-AUMF foes and, if so, under what circumstances it relies on the AUMF as opposed to Article II of the Constitution.
New legislation is also necessary. It is long past time for Congress to reform the 2001 AUMF. To prevent future administrations from stretching the law even further, a new war authorization bill should specify explicitly who the enemy is. At a minimum, revising the 2001 AUMF would help cauterize the existing, seemingly open-ended scope of the law by foreclosing any claims of ancillary authority. Congress should also take the long overdue step of reforming the War Powers Resolution to create a responsible definition of its terms such as “hostilities” and a template for the future use of force authorizations, one that tries to steer their successors away from the overly broad language used in 2001.
Expansive precedents take root with unfortunate speed in national security law. There is already evidence that legal innovations originating in Syria won’t necessarily stay in Syria. The Trump administration relied on the theory of ancillary self-defense, which was first introduced to justify hostilities around al-Tanf and elsewhere in eastern Syria in 2017 and 2018, to justify the 2020 killing of Soleimani in Iraq. In that case, the administration claimed (along with other legal theories) that the 2002 Iraq war authorization, which unfortunately remains on the books long after Saddam Hussein’s demise, provided authority for the strike on Soleimani, an Iranian general, because he posed a threat to U.S. forces in Iraq.
Domestic and international legal constraints on the use of force are designed to promote deliberation and ensure that the costs and benefits of war are adequately weighed before one is waged. What is going on in Syria illustrates how creative legal theories cooked up by the executive branch and unchallenged by Congress erode these constraints and increase the likelihood of future conflict. To restore the limits on war making, the Biden administration and its allies in Congress should start rebuilding the safeguards that too many administrations have chipped away.
7. Pacific may be most likely to see 'strategic surprise' -U.S. policymaker Campbell
Yes we can be surprised. But we need to be able to anticipate as best we can. (learn, adapt, and anticipate).
Excerpts:
"If you look and if you ask me, where are the places where we are most likely to see certain kinds of strategic surprise - basing or certain kinds of agreements or arrangements, it may well be in the Pacific," he told an Australia-focused panel.
Campbell called it the issue he was "most concerned about over the next year or two," adding: "And we have a very short amount of time, working with partners like Australia, like New Zealand, like Japan, like France, who have an interest in the Pacific, to step up our game across the board."
Pacific may be most likely to see 'strategic surprise' -U.S. policymaker Campbell
The Asia Group Chairman and CEO Kurt M. Campbell attends the China Development Forum in Beijing, China March 23, 2019. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo
WASHINGTON, Jan 10 (Reuters) - The Pacific may well be the part of the world most likely to see "strategic surprise," the U.S. Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Campbell said on Monday, in comments apparently referring to possible Chinese ambitions to establish Pacific-island bases.
Campbell told Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies the United States has "enormous moral, strategic, historical interests" in the Pacific, but had not done enough to assist the region, unlike countries such as Australia and New Zealand.
"If you look and if you ask me, where are the places where we are most likely to see certain kinds of strategic surprise - basing or certain kinds of agreements or arrangements, it may well be in the Pacific," he told an Australia-focused panel.
Campbell called it the issue he was "most concerned about over the next year or two," adding: "And we have a very short amount of time, working with partners like Australia, like New Zealand, like Japan, like France, who have an interest in the Pacific, to step up our game across the board."
Campbell did not elaborate on his basing reference, but lawmakers from the Pacific island republic of Kiribati told Reuters last year China has drawn up plans to upgrade an airstrip and bridge on one its remote islands about 3,000km (1,860 miles) southwest of the U.S. state of Hawaii.
Construction on the tiny island of Kanton would offer China a foothold deep in territory that had been firmly aligned to the United States and its allies since World War Two.
Kiribati said in May the China-backed plans were a non-military project designed to improve transport links and bolster tourism. read more
Campbell said ways the United States and its allies needed to do more in the Pacific included in countering COVID-19, over the issue of fishing, and in investment in clean energy.
Campbell followed up on remarks he made last week that Washington needed to "step up its game" on economic engagement in Asia. read more
He said Australia had privately urged the United States to understand that as part of its strategic approach, it needed "a comprehensive, engaged, optimistic, commercial and trade role."
Campbell has touted the so-called AUKUS pact, under which the United States and Britain have agreed to help Australia acquire nuclear submarines - as well as summits between the United States, Australia, India and Japan - as evidence that U.S. partnerships are causing China "heartburn."
But some Indo-Pacific countries, many of which count China as their largest trading partner, have lamented what they consider insufficient U.S. economic engagement after former President Donald Trump quit a trade deal now called the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Biden told Asian leaders in October Washington would launch talks on creating an Indo-Pacific economic framework, but few details have emerged and his administration has avoided moves towards rejoining trade deals critics say threaten U.S. jobs.
Australia's Washington ambassador, Arthur Sinodinos, told the CSIS panel Australia continued to raise the issue with the U.S. Congress and "we haven't given up hope" of a reconsideration of U.S. trade policy.
Reporting by David Brunnstrom, Kirsty Needham, Rami Ayyub and Costas Pitas; Editing by Sandra Maler and Lincoln Feast.
8. China appoints chief of Xinjiang’s Armed Police Force to Hong Kong
What will this mean for the people in Hong Kong, particularly those who appear to resist Beijing?
China appoints chief of Xinjiang’s Armed Police Force to Hong Kong
China has chosen an official who led antiterrorism special forces in its far-western Xinjiang region as the new commander of the People’s Liberation Army’s garrison in Hong Kong, sparking concerns that Beijing will crackdown even harder on the region.
Major General Peng Jingtang, chief of the Armed Police Force in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, was appointed to the position at the direction of Chinese President Xi Jinping, China’s official Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.
General Wang Xiubin, commander of the Southern Theater Command, announced the appointment a few days ago, the report said.
Peng Jingtang said that he would uphold the "one country, two systems" policy, defend national sovereignty, and safeguard Hong Kong's long-term prosperity and stability, according to the report.
Chinese authorities have used heavy-handed tactics in Hong Kong to quell pro-democracy demonstrators. They imposed, for example, a national security law purportedly to reestablish order following political upheaval.
Activists have said they believe the law is too restrictive and meant to suppress the freedoms and individual rights that Hong Kong residents enjoy under the "one country, two systems" policy.
Outside analysts said Peng’s assignment to the Hong Kong Garrison, where he will oversee thousands of soldiers, does not bode well for the semiautonomous territory.
Anders Corr, principal at Corr Analytics, a political risk advisory firm, called Peng a “bloodthirsty Chinese military commander” whose appointment is a “very bad wind that is blowing in Hong Kong at his point.”
“For years Peng led the Chinese Communist Party’s crackdown in Xinjiang, and there’s an ongoing genocide there, so it’s a very bad thing for Hong Kong,” he told RFA Monday.
When Peng led the People’s Armed Police in Xinjiang, he bragged to Chinese state media in 2019 about a squad he trained that had fired as many shots as all other security forces in Xinjiang had during the previous three-year period, Corr said.
For years, Chinese authorities have brutally suppressed predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang, including detaining an estimated 1.8 million of them in an extensive network of internment camps where they are subject to violence and other human rights abuses.
Western countries, the United Nations and rights groups have condemned China’s actions against the Uyghurs, with some declaring that the abuse amounts to genocide and crimes against humanity.
China has denied the allegation of abuse and said that the detention centers are training facilities meant to prevent terrorism and extremism in Xinjiang.
Maya Wang, senior China researcher in the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, said that the appointment of Peng and other top police officials to Hong Kong is “a significant and ominous development.”
“It’s one example in which there is worry that Hong Kong would be managed more like Xinjiang or Tibet were in the future,” she told RFA.
Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
9. Denying The Inevitable: Why The West Refuses To Accept China’s Superpower Status – OpEd
Excerpts:
Here is precisely where many analysts go wrong, arguing, as Rachman did, that “China’s economic weight, as the world’s largest trading power and manufacturer, gives it significant political leverage internationally. […] But Beijing’s economic power is not always politically decisive”.
This limited thinking is based on the assumption that, to be ‘political’ is to follow the same blueprint used by the US and its western partners in their approach to foreign policy, diplomacy and occasional wars. China’s take on politics, however, has always been quite different. According to Beijing’s thinking, China does not need to invade countries to earn the designation of a political actor. Instead, China is simply tapping into its own historical trajectory of utilizing economic influence in its quest for greatness, and arguably, empire. The fact that the Road and Belt Initiative – a long-term strategy aimed at connecting Asia with Africa and Europe via land and maritime networks – is a modern interpretation of the Silk Road, which was a network of ancient trade routes which linked China to the Mediterranean region, is enough to tell us about the nature of the Chinese model.
...
Not only is China very much a political actor but one would contend that presently, it is the most important political actor in the world, as it gradually but surely challenges American and western dominance on various fronts – military in Asia, economically and politically elsewhere. China’s influence can also be observed beyond Asia and Africa, in Europe itself, as even Washington’s own allies are openly divided in their approach to the brewing US-China cold war and America’s insistence on repelling the encroaching Chinese danger.
“A situation to join all together against China, this is a scenario of the highest possible conflictuality. This one, for me, is counter-productive,” French President Emmanuel Macron said during a discussion broadcast by Washington-based think tank, the Atlantic Council, in February.
It behooves us all to abandon the notion that China is only interested in business and nothing else. This stifling thinking regarding China helps perpetuate the notion that the US has used its global dominance to achieve other noble objectives, for example, ‘restoring’ democracy and defending human rights. Not only are the degradation of China and the elevation of the US essentially racist, but also entirely untrue.
Denying The Inevitable: Why The West Refuses To Accept China’s Superpower Status – OpEd
An article by Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times last July is a prime example of western intelligentsia’s limited understanding of China’s unhindered rise as a superpower. “Becoming a superpower is a complicated business. It poses a series of connected questions about capabilities, intentions and will,” Rachman wrote.
To help us understand what this claim precisely means, the FT writer uses an analogy. “To use a sporting analogy, you can be an extremely gifted tennis player and genuinely want to be world champion, but still be unwilling to make the sacrifices to turn the dream into reality.”
At least, in Rachman’s thinking, China is capable of being a political actor, though it remains incapable of vying for the superpower status, as it supposedly lacks ‘the will’ to make the required ‘sacrifices’.
Although I visited Beijing only once, a few years ago, I, or even any casual visitor to the Chinese capital, could attest to the powerful collective economic engine that fuels not only China but much of the world economy. While Chinese officials do not outright profess that their ultimate aim is to make their country a superpower – for, frankly, rarely are superpowers aware of the mechanisms that lead to such status – the Chinese leadership fully fathoms the nature of the challenge at hand.
Take Chinese President Xi Jinping’s speech in October 2019, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of China. “Over the past 70 years, under the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the Chinese people, with great courage and relentless exploration, have successfully opened the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Along this path, we have ushered in a new era,” he said. Note Xi’s constant references to ideology, nationalism, forward-thinking and insistence on China’s central position in this ‘new era’. Xi was elevated to the status of Mao Zedong – as a ‘core leader’ in 2019 and ‘helmsman’ in 2021 – precisely due to his role in transitioning China in terms of power, politics and global prestige.
Indeed, the sooner we acknowledge that China is an influential political entity that operates according to a clear and decisive political strategy, the more meaningful our understanding of the geopolitical transformation in Asia, and the rest of the world, will be.
Since the rise of Britain as a colonial power, thus the advent of a new world order, determined almost exclusively by western powers, the global center of power, starting in the 18th century, had shifted away from Asia and the Middle East.
Later on, starting in the mid-twentieth century, the main competition that colonial western powers had been forced to contend with came from the Soviet Union, its Warsaw Pact, and their international allies, mainly Europe’s former colonies in the Southern hemisphere.
The collapse of the Soviet Union, starting in 1989, ushered in the return of western control, this time led by the United States as the world’s only hegemon and neocolonial master.
It quickly became obvious, however, that the post-Soviet global paradigm was unsustainable, as Europe’s economic influence was rapidly shrinking and Washington’s desperate attempt at policing the world was failing due, in part, to its own miscalculations but also to the stiff resistance it faced in its new colonial domains, mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The cost of war, aside from its incalculable massive destruction and human toll – according to a very modest estimate, almost one million people were killed in US military adventures since 2001 – has also come at a great cost to the already weakening US economy. Brown University’s Costs of War Project, published in September 2021, has calculated that the US has spent up to $5.8 trillion in its failed military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001. The same report has also estimated that an additional $2.2 trillion will be spent over the next 20 years in health care and disability coverage for veterans.
The US involvement in long wars with undefined objectives opened up unprecedented geopolitical spaces that Washington and its western allies have dominated over the course of decades. For example, the US had near-total geopolitical control over much of South America starting with the introduction of the Monroe Doctrine, in 1823. The same assertion can be made about Africa which, despite the formal end of colonialism in the long-exploited continent, continued to revolve around the same western colonial powers of yesteryears. However, a noticeable shift in the West’s geostrategic influence in these regions began taking place in the last three decades.
While the West was fighting essentially futile wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of the intentionally ill-defined ‘war on terror’, regional and international political actors moved in to fill the gaps created by American and western absence from their various regions of influence. Russia has speedily offered itself as a military and strategic ally and alternative to the US in parts of the Middle East, Africa and South America – in Syria, Libya and Venezuela respectively – as China moved in to fulfill a much larger economic role, branding itself as a fair partner, especially if compared to western powers.
It was not until the gradual US retreat from Iraq in 2011 that Washington announced its ‘Pivot to Asia’, a new military and political stratagem aimed at offsetting the Chinese influence in the Asian Pacific region. Much of former US President Barack Obama’s first term in office was dedicated to America’s political strategic realignments in the Asia Pacific.
“The United States is a Pacific power, and we are here to stay,” Obama declared in a speech to the Australian parliament in November 2011. “As we end today’s wars, I have directed my national security team to make our presence and missions in the Asia-Pacific a top priority.”
However, the American geopolitical shift may have arrived belatedly. For one, the repercussions of America’s military undertakings in Central Asia and the Middle East – as time has clearly demonstrated – were far too severe and costly to be simply canceled out by a declaration of a new strategy. Two, China had, by then, built a complex network of alliances in Asia and around the world, allowing it to cement real bonds with many nations, especially those concerned or fed up with the West’s obsession with military superiority and interventions.
According to a report published in October by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, over the last twelve years, China has been Africa’s largest trading partner. “China has created 25 economic and trade cooperation zones in 16 African countries,” the report reads, “and has continued to invest heavily across the continent throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a government report about Chinese–African economic and trade ties.”
In contrast, according to data published by Statista Research Department in August, “after a peak in 2014, foreign direct investment (FDI) in Africa from the United States dropped to 47.5 billion U.S. dollars (from 69.03) in 2020.”
Here is precisely where many analysts go wrong, arguing, as Rachman did, that “China’s economic weight, as the world’s largest trading power and manufacturer, gives it significant political leverage internationally. […] But Beijing’s economic power is not always politically decisive”.
This limited thinking is based on the assumption that, to be ‘political’ is to follow the same blueprint used by the US and its western partners in their approach to foreign policy, diplomacy and occasional wars. China’s take on politics, however, has always been quite different. According to Beijing’s thinking, China does not need to invade countries to earn the designation of a political actor. Instead, China is simply tapping into its own historical trajectory of utilizing economic influence in its quest for greatness, and arguably, empire. The fact that the Road and Belt Initiative – a long-term strategy aimed at connecting Asia with Africa and Europe via land and maritime networks – is a modern interpretation of the Silk Road, which was a network of ancient trade routes which linked China to the Mediterranean region, is enough to tell us about the nature of the Chinese model.
That in mind, China has also taken many steps that are unmistakably ‘political’ even from the selective definition of western intelligentsia. One of the many treaties that China has initiated, co-founded or joined is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which, as of September, included Iran as well. The Shanghai Pact is a Eurasian political, economic, and security alliance that was established in 2001 and has served to counterbalance western, US-led transnational organizations.
Until the last decade, Beijing had resorted to economic cooperation as the most productive way of facilitating its arrival to the global stage as a potential or a fledgling superpower. However, one may argue that, not until Obama’s ‘Pivot to Asia’, Donald Trump’s trade war, and Joe Biden’s incessant threats to China over Taiwan, did Beijing begin accelerating the political dimension of its strategy. China’s so-called ‘wolf diplomacy’ is one of Beijing’s most trusted tactics through which clear and repeated messages are sent to Washington and its allies, that the rising East Asian nation will not be kowtowed or intimidated. The “wolf warrior diplomacy” describes a more assertive and even confrontational style employed by Chinese diplomats to defend China’s national interests.
According to the common western understanding, China, or any other country for that matter, that dares operate outside the dictates of western agenda, is a threat or a potential threat. However, even when China’s economic fortunes were rising, following Deng Xiaoping’s successful economic reforms campaign in 1978, the country was not seen as a ‘threat’ per se, as Beijing’s economic rise fueled Asia and, by extension, the global economy, eventually even mitigating the Great Recession of 2008, which itself resulted from the collapse of US and European markets. China only became a threat when it dared define its geopolitical objectives in the Asia Pacific region, starting in the South and East China Seas.
Not only is China very much a political actor but one would contend that presently, it is the most important political actor in the world, as it gradually but surely challenges American and western dominance on various fronts – military in Asia, economically and politically elsewhere. China’s influence can also be observed beyond Asia and Africa, in Europe itself, as even Washington’s own allies are openly divided in their approach to the brewing US-China cold war and America’s insistence on repelling the encroaching Chinese danger.
“A situation to join all together against China, this is a scenario of the highest possible conflictuality. This one, for me, is counter-productive,” French President Emmanuel Macron said during a discussion broadcast by Washington-based think tank, the Atlantic Council, in February.
It behooves us all to abandon the notion that China is only interested in business and nothing else. This stifling thinking regarding China helps perpetuate the notion that the US has used its global dominance to achieve other noble objectives, for example, ‘restoring’ democracy and defending human rights. Not only are the degradation of China and the elevation of the US essentially racist, but also entirely untrue.
(Romana Rubeo, an Italy-based journalist and editor, contributed to this article.)
10. US can't tell if Russia using talks as pretense for war
Excerpts:
The NATO allies most vulnerable to Russian threats have taken comfort from the U.S. posture entering the talks.
“This is certainly not a week where something extraordinary will be decided,” Juri Luik, the Estonian ambassador to NATO, said Monday. "The USA has made it clear that if there is a conflict, if Russia further invades Ukraine, the USA will bring its troops to Eastern Europe, in addition to economic sanctions and political steps.”
Ryabkov’s commentary after the meeting left Putin with wide latitude, according to Western observers.
“He expressed some optimism saying ‘the American side took the Russian proposals very seriously.’ This allows Putin to claim he forced the US to take RU interests into account and possibly back down w/o losing face,” tweeted Andrea Kendall-Taylor, the Center for New American Security’s trans-Atlantic security program director. “Ryabkov simultaneously reinforced that security guarantees are the priority, allowing Putin to use this as a pretext for a military escalation.”
US can't tell if Russia using talks as pretense for war
by Joel Gehrke, Foreign Affairs Reporter | | January 10, 2022 05:55 PM
An initial meeting between senior Russian and U.S. officials ended with uncertainty from the United States about whether the talks mark the beginning of de-escalation or represent a pretense for intensified war with Ukraine.
“The Russians would tell you that they were an open bid for serious negotiation, and we will see if that is indeed the case,” Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman told reporters Monday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin necessitated the meeting by amassing Russian military forces around Ukraine’s borders, paired with a demand that Western nations agree to a practical contraction of NATO if they want to avoid war. Sherman floated some “preliminary ideas” for “reciprocal actions” that might ease the crisis, but her insistence that the U.S. wouldn’t negotiate NATO policy with Russia left a wide gulf between the two sides.
“Something that is absolutely important for us is categorically unacceptable for Americans,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said, per state media. “This is bad since it shows that the American side underestimates the seriousness of what is going on.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s team countered that Moscow shouldn’t underrate the range of options available to NATO.
“The Russians are the ones with 100,000 troops on the border, but the trans-Atlantic alliance … we have forms of leverage, many of which we have mapped out and we have discussed extensively, in various fora, with our European partners and allies and others,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said. “There may be the idea out there that the Russians are the only [ones] with leverage. I think that misunderstands what we have available to us.”
Blinken and U.S. lawmakers have forecast an unprecedented battery of economic sanctions if Russia proceeds with another invasion of Ukraine. Sherman also gestured toward some room for negotiation on topics such as “missile placement” and “reciprocal limits on the size and scope of military exercises” in Europe.
“We also made clear that the United States is open to discussing the future of certain missile systems in Europe — along the lines of the now-defunct [Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty] between the U.S. and Russia,” she said, referring to a treaty that the U.S. withdrew from in 2019 after Russia developed and deployed missiles banned by the pact. “The Russians addressed the concerns that we had that led to the ultimate demise of the INF Treaty. This was not a negotiation, so we were putting ideas on the table today. And we have a long way to go, but, of course, there are ongoing concerns about intermediate-range missiles.”
Blinken and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who leads the junior member of Germany’s coalition government, also have suggested that the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline linking Germany and Russia might be blocked if the attack takes place.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party, however, wants the pipeline to be activated regardless of Putin’s policy toward Ukraine.
”Nord Stream 2 is, so to say, nearly connected to the grid, with only the lack of legal permits hindering the final start of operations,” SPD General Secretary Kevin Kuehnert said last week. “At some stage, there must be political and legal peace in such a discussion.”
The NATO allies most vulnerable to Russian threats have taken comfort from the U.S. posture entering the talks.
“This is certainly not a week where something extraordinary will be decided,” Juri Luik, the Estonian ambassador to NATO, said Monday. "The USA has made it clear that if there is a conflict, if Russia further invades Ukraine, the USA will bring its troops to Eastern Europe, in addition to economic sanctions and political steps.”
Ryabkov’s commentary after the meeting left Putin with wide latitude, according to Western observers.
“He expressed some optimism saying ‘the American side took the Russian proposals very seriously.’ This allows Putin to claim he forced the US to take RU interests into account and possibly back down w/o losing face,” tweeted Andrea Kendall-Taylor, the Center for New American Security’s trans-Atlantic security program director. “Ryabkov simultaneously reinforced that security guarantees are the priority, allowing Putin to use this as a pretext for a military escalation.”
Ryabkov, for his part, expressed pleasure just in the fact of having the conversation.
“Now, a spade was called a spade, which in itself has a therapeutic effect on our relations with the West,” he said.
11. Russia talks buy time for Ukraine but stark disagreements signal dead-end ahead (and key State Dept comments)
I was concerned about talks with Russia without Ukraine.
This is a key statement from DEPSECSATTE:
Sherman was just as unequivocal in her rejection of the demand. She said the U.S. was willing to negotiate with Russia on missile deployments and on nuclear arms control, as well as to discuss limiting the scope and scale of military exercises, provided such moves were reciprocal.
But she said: “We were firm, however, in pushing back on security proposals that are simply non-starters for the United States. We will not allow anyone to slam closed NATO’s open-door policy, which has always been central to the NATO alliance. We will not forego bilateral cooperation with sovereign states that wish to work with the United States. And we will not make decisions about Ukraine without Ukraine, about Europe without Europe, about NATO without NATO. As we say to our allies and partners, nothing about you, without you.”
Russia talks buy time for Ukraine but stark disagreements signal dead-end ahead
Politico · by David M. Herszenhorn · January 10, 2022
Press play to listen to this article
GENEVA — A day of diplomacy between the U.S. and Russia forestalled a new invasion or imminent military strike on Ukraine — at least for this week and perhaps even for months.
But in dueling news conferences at the end of roughly eight hours of talks in Geneva on Monday, the lead negotiators, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, set forth irreconcilable differences on key security issues that left an ominous specter of future conflict hanging over Europe.
In perhaps the starkest divide, Ryabkov again demanded hard guarantees that Ukraine and Georgia would “never ever” join NATO, and Sherman flatly rejected the idea, calling it one of several “non-starters for the United States.”
The divisions created an odd situation in which both sides seemed to acknowledge that talks were ultimately doomed to fail, at least on some core points, and yet expressed openness to continued, open-ended engagement with neither side setting deadlines.
Sherman sought to create a lengthy timeline for discussions, noting that some of Russia’s demands would potentially involve new arms control treaties that would take months if not longer to negotiate. Ryabkov, for his part, said there needed to be faster results.
“We are not talking about months or weeks, we need quick response,” he said. “We need to get things going.” But even on his core demand about Ukraine’s prospects for NATO membership, Ryabkov tacitly acknowledged a potentially long calendar, saying Moscow hoped for a declaration at the NATO leaders’ summit scheduled for late June in Madrid.
Perhaps of most immediate relief to Kyiv and its Western supporters, Ryabkov flatly dismissed the idea that Moscow intended to launch a new invasion of Ukraine, where it seized and annexed Crimea by force in 2014 and has armed and financed a separatist war in the eastern region of Donbass that has killed more than 14,000 people.
“Essentially it is said that Russia wants to trade its, quote-unquote, threat against Ukraine for more flexibility on the part of U.S. and the West,” Ryabkov said. “This is not the case because we have no intention to invade Ukraine. And thus, there is nothing to trade with.”
Ryabkov came back to the point in various ways, using different language. “There is no intention to attack Ukraine from Russia,” he said at one point. “None.” At another point, he said: “There is no single reason to fear some kind of escalatory scenario.”
But he also said Russia had zero intention of pulling back the 100,000 or more troops plus tanks and other heavy weaponry that it has amassed on the Ukrainian border, asserting once again — and without basis — President Vladimir Putin’s claim that Ukraine and Western powers, including the U.S., may be planning some kind of “provocation.”
Russia has insisted that the troop mobilization is part of military exercises. “All the drills to prepare the troops and the forces, it is being implemented inside our country within our borders,” he said.
“Training and activities with respect to moving capabilities around will continue in Russia because this is what is absolutely required to maintain the necessary level of operative readiness of our armed forces in the situation where the security environment for Russia changed dramatically to the worse in recent time,” Ryabkov said.
Moscow’s continued assertion of potential provocations — Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, for instance, recently alleged without evidence that U.S. mercenaries have delivered chemical weapons to eastern Ukraine — leaves open the possibility that Putin could order a military strike at any moment.
Putin’s grievances
Some European officials and diplomats have speculated that Putin has never intended to invade Ukraine, which would carry enormous costs in terms of casualties that could number in the tens of thousands, and economically, as a result of punitive sanctions that the West has warned it will impose in response to an attack.
Rather, they say Putin has capitalized on an extremely favorable set of circumstances — U.S. President Joe Biden’s desire to focus his foreign policy on China, a new and still inexperienced governing coalition in Germany, the U.K. consumed with lingering Brexit issues, and Western governments still largely distracted by the COVID pandemic and related economic fallout.
With all that as cover, Putin has used the threat of invasion to revisit decades-old grievances about NATO’s eastward expansion, as well as to express genuine fury over the situation in Ukraine, which despite the ongoing war in Donbass has continued to make steady progress in is integration with the EU and shows no sign of turning back to Russia.
The raw anger that the Kremlin still feels over NATO’s presence on its borders — Putin insists that the West broke a promise by allowing former Eastern bloc countries like Poland to join the alliance — was evident in Ryabkov’s remarks in Geneva on Monday.
“We underscore that for us, it’s absolutely mandatory to make sure that Ukraine, never, never ever becomes member of NATO,” he said. “So we would favor a formal replacement — eventually at the forthcoming Madrid summit of NATO — of the Bucharest formula of 2008 that says, Ukraine will become member of NATO, with exactly the wording I mentioned now: Ukraine and Georgia will never ever become member of NATO.”
He continued, “We are fed up with loose talk, half promises, misinterpretation of what happened at different forms of negotiations behind closed doors. We do not trust the other side … We need ironclad, waterproof, bulletproof, legally binding, guarantees — not assurances, not safeguards — guarantees, with all the words — shall, must — everything that should be put in this …. Never, ever becoming a member of NATO. It’s a matter of Russia’s national security.”
Sherman was just as unequivocal in her rejection of the demand. She said the U.S. was willing to negotiate with Russia on missile deployments and on nuclear arms control, as well as to discuss limiting the scope and scale of military exercises, provided such moves were reciprocal.
But she said: “We were firm, however, in pushing back on security proposals that are simply non-starters for the United States. We will not allow anyone to slam closed NATO’s open-door policy, which has always been central to the NATO alliance. We will not forego bilateral cooperation with sovereign states that wish to work with the United States. And we will not make decisions about Ukraine without Ukraine, about Europe without Europe, about NATO without NATO. As we say to our allies and partners, nothing about you, without you.”
The insistence by Washington on not negotiating either on behalf of NATO allies or on behalf of Ukraine has come partly as a result of pressure from European capitals, as well as the EU, which are insisting on asserting a greater role and are no longer willing to trust the U.S. to manage their security affairs.
But it has also proven a useful negotiating posture, allowing the U.S. to push some of Russia’s demands onto the table in wider-format meetings where it is likely to encounter a chorus of disagreement. Moscow has long sought to re-establish its Cold War superpower status and much prefers to be in a direct conversation with Washington. And Putin generally operates on a belief that the U.S. can dictate policy to NATO allies.
Ryabkov, at his news conferences, also voiced other complaints, including accusations that the U.S. had abandoned the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which the U.S. insists fell apart because of Russia’s own repeated violations of its terms.
The Russian negotiator continued to hold out the possibility of armed conflict, repeating the potential need for Russia to defend against attacks by Ukraine or the West — an assertion that Sherman pointedly rejected.
“We’re worried … [about] possible provocations on the part of Ukraine, deliberate provocations on their own or in concert, in cooperation with like minded countries in the West, like the U.S., like others, U.K. included, that may create a situation where the probability for some clashes will grow,” Ryabkov said. “We need to avoid this and diplomacy should have an upper hand. That was the whole purpose of our exercise last night and today in Geneva.”
Sherman said Russia must decide if it genuinely wants a diplomatic solution, but she called out the Kremlin for its prior attacks on Ukraine.
“One country cannot change the borders of another by force, or dictate the terms of another country’s foreign policy, or forbid another country from choosing its own alliances,” she said. “These are basic tenets of the international system, and they are principles that Russia has previously agreed to — many times over the years.”
Sherman said the U.S. wanted to see a pullback in forces as a step toward any future agreements.
“We’ve been clear, and we were clear today, that the United States would welcome genuine progress through diplomacy,” she said, adding: “If Russia stays at the table, and takes concrete steps to deescalate tensions, we believe we can achieve progress. But if Russia walks away from the diplomatic path, it may well be quite apparent that they were never serious about pursuing diplomacy at all.”
Jacopo Barigazzi and Cristina Gonzalez contributed reporting.
Politico · by David M. Herszenhorn · January 10, 2022
12. Syria Faces Omicron Amid a Shortage of Vaccines
Excerpt:
The Omicron variant has demonstrated its ability to break through the vaccine’s defenses, although the infections it causes appear to be substantially less lethal. What this means for Syria is difficult to forecast. With few vaccines or other mitigation measures in place, Omicron may spread so fast that its diminished lethality does not prevent a wave of illness from overwhelming hospitals while the death toll spirals. At the same time, Syria may race ahead of other nations toward herd immunity if Omicron becomes ubiquitous. What’s certain is that Syrians will have to make the best of a desperate situation while the Damascus regime prioritizes its own survival.
Syria Faces Omicron Amid a Shortage of Vaccines
As in other countries, statistics do not convey the extent of the suffering.
5 percent of Syrians are fully vaccinated against Covid-19, placing the country’s vaccination rate just below Somalia in the global rankings. The Delta variant ripped through Syria in September and October, stressing what remained of a healthcare system already broken by a decade of war. So far, the hyper-contagious Omicron variant has proven to be less lethal than its predecessors, yet few countries are as ill-prepared as Syria to handle its arrival.
Syria’s official infection and fatality rates are fictional numbers that get included in trusted sources of public health data. The New York Times, the World Health Organization (WHO), and Johns Hopkins’ Coronavirus Resource Center all republish the figures provided by the Damascus regime. By their lights, fewer than 3,000 Syrians have died from Covid-19, a fatality rate lower than that of Finland and Norway.
First-hand reports from hospitals have been telling a very different story ever since the first major wave of infections hit Syria in the summer of 2020. Medical staff told foreign reporters that they were working around the clock with inadequate protective gear while intelligence officers monitored the wards. During the Delta wave, the extent of the regime’s underreporting came into slightly better focus.
After a decade of war, Syria remains divided into three principal regions. The Assad regime controls the major cities and ports in the western half of the country. Washington’s Syrian Kurdish allies, who helped dismantle the ISIS caliphate, now govern the region northeast of the Euphrates. Finally, anti-Assad rebels aligned with Turkey and al-Qaeda hold sway in the northwest, where the prewar population of roughly 1.3 million has grown to over 4 million.
The overcrowding in the northwest is the result of the mass flight of civilians from areas under regime control. Living in tents and ruins, the displaced survive thanks to humanitarian aid that arrives from nearby Turkey. This aid included thousands of coronavirus tests, which began to generate a flow of infection data that Damascus could not censor.
While testing capacity in northwest Syria remained far below that of neighboring countries, let alone Europe or the United States, the impact of Delta was plainly visible last summer. After reporting less than 1,000 new cases in all of July, the northwest began to confirm 1,000 new infections per day in late August, according to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). After the northwest reported 12,000 new cases in August and more than 34,000 cases in September, the wave appeared to break in October.
Yet the percentage of positive tests ranged from the mid-30s to the upper-50s, indicating that asymptomatic infections mostly went uncounted. For the period from August through October 2021, OCHA reported a death toll of 1,120, likely an undercount given both a lack of hospital beds and an aversion to treatment at poorly equipped facilities where infections spread easily.
Despite having a population roughly three times greater than the northwest, the areas under Assad’s control reported a far lower case count. The regime reported about 15,000 new infections in September, when Delta peaked, and just 324 deaths from August through October. At a minimum, the WHO and other statistical authorities should announce that they have lost confidence in the figures coming out of Damascus and stop disseminating them. For the WHO, this would represent a notable first step toward ending its years of deference to a regime that bombs hospitals and punishes disfavored populations by depriving them of healthcare.
As in other countries, statistics do not convey the extent of the suffering. In Syria, the pandemic’s disruption of the economy has worsened widespread hunger, while hunger has prevented Syrians from taking measures to restrain the pandemic. Unmasked and unvaccinated, a vegetable seller named Essam Hassan told a Voice of America (VOA) reporter last October that he cannot afford to miss even a few hours of work, or his family would miss meals. “Hunger is more frightening than coronavirus,” Abdullah Omar, the owner of a children’s clothing shop told VOA. Reporters have heard these sentiments continuously over the past two years.
Yet those with severe infections learn how frightening it is to be sick when the healthcare system is in shambles. In the northwest, where airstrikes have deliberately targeted medical facilities, the number of seriously ill patients often exceeded the number of beds available in intensive care units (ICUs) during the delta wave. Patients who need an ICU bed “either have to wait for a patient to be moved from the wing, or to die so another can replace them,” as a physician named Absi Mohamad Fouad explained to Reuters in September. Those who do get beds have to contend with shortages of oxygen and other critical supplies.
COVAX, a global vaccine distribution program led by the WHO and its partners, initially held out the best hope for countries like Syria. The program set out with the goal of providing enough vaccines for 20 percent of the population in every participating country. It never came close. Shipments arrived late or not at all. Some vaccines passed their expiration dates or became useless because they were not stored in freezers. An adviser on vaccination policy at Medecins Sans Frontieres described the program as “naively ambitious.”
Officially, Syria has administered 2.9 million doses of the vaccine, with just over 850,000 individuals now fully vaccinated. Whether those numbers are reliable is much harder to say. Determined to ship the greatest possible number of vaccines, COVAX never put in place guardrails to ensure equitable distribution, even though the recipients included repressive dictatorships on par with Syria, such as Myanmar and North Korea.
Intermittently, the WHO has reported on the extent to which vaccines have reached those parts of Syria outside of Assad’s control. Since the northwest can receive aid via truck from across the Turkish border, some meaningful shipments have reached its 4 million inhabitants. Yet Assad determines whether any vaccines make it from Damascus out to the northeast. In mid-November, the WHO reported that more than 687,000 Syrians were vaccinated in areas where the regime controlled distribution. Of those, some 42,000—or just 6 percent—lived in the northeast, a ratio far out of line with the area’s population, which is between a quarter and a third as large as the population under Assad’s control.
The Omicron variant has demonstrated its ability to break through the vaccine’s defenses, although the infections it causes appear to be substantially less lethal. What this means for Syria is difficult to forecast. With few vaccines or other mitigation measures in place, Omicron may spread so fast that its diminished lethality does not prevent a wave of illness from overwhelming hospitals while the death toll spirals. At the same time, Syria may race ahead of other nations toward herd immunity if Omicron becomes ubiquitous. What’s certain is that Syrians will have to make the best of a desperate situation while the Damascus regime prioritizes its own survival.
David Adesnik is a senior fellow and director of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
K.M. Schaefer recently completed an internship at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Image: Reuters.
13. FDD | Iran’s Inflation Rate in 2022 Will Depend on Fate of Nuclear Negotiations
FDD | Iran’s Inflation Rate in 2022 Will Depend on Fate of Nuclear Negotiations
fdd.org · by Saeed Ghasseminejad Senior Iran and Financial Economics Advisor · January 10, 2022
Iran’s annual inflation rate in 2021 was 43.4 percent, according to the Statistical Center of Iran, but President Ebrahim Raisi is determined to reduce inflation in 2022, since high inflation harms the economy and may foment political unrest. Tehran’s ability to control prices depends on several factors, but the critical element is U.S. sanctions, which have limited the regime’s access to hard currency and global trade.
At 43.4 percent, the 12-month average inflation rate for 2021 was 12.9 percentage points above its 2020 level of 30.5 percent. The global recession of 2020 and the pervasive inflation of 2021, both caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, played a role in the volatility of inflation rates across the globe and in Iran specifically.
However, inflation in Iran has diminished somewhat over the last few months because of multiple factors, including looser U.S. sanctions enforcement and higher Iranian export revenue. Nevertheless, the improving trend makes the Raisi administration hopeful that the worst inflation may have passed. Raisi has made controlling inflation a pillar of his economic policy and has accordingly submitted a contractionary budget to the Majles, or parliament.
Still, Tehran’s ability to curb inflation in 2022 rests primarily on the fate of the ongoing nuclear negotiations, which could lead to the lifting of U.S. sanctions, and on the regime’s fiscal and monetary discipline. The sanctions affect inflation through several channels. First, sanctions reduce Iran’s ability to export goods and generate revenue. Second, sanctions make Iran’s imports more expensive. Third, they reduce Tehran’s access to its export revenue and currency reserves.
Furthermore, if sanctions remain in place, they signal further trouble ahead, adding to inflationary expectations in the market. The Raisi administration may be able to improve inflation slightly in the short term by addressing other factors that push prices up. But without fixing the sanctions problem, inflation will remain high.
Having the fiscal and monetary discipline to follow a contractionary policy can help curb inflation. To advance such a policy, Raisi can limit spending, cut Iran’s fiscal deficit, and refrain from suppressing interest rates. Nevertheless, this task is easier said than done, as it could trigger a recession and would put Raisi at odds with powerful pressure groups, constituencies, and ideological forces. In so doing, it could create political unrest. Navigating this maze requires political skills and technocratic competence that Raisi and his team probably lack.
For example, one way to narrow the deficit is to increase tax revenue, yet taxing an already impoverished population is both difficult and dangerous. Furthermore, key sources of potential revenue are effectively off-limits, since major politically connected players in the economy pay little to no tax. These players include various foundations such as Astan Quds Razavi, which Raisi himself used to run. The president, who probably would like to succeed Iran’s 83-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is unlikely to challenge key figures and institutions and force them to pay their taxes.
If Raisi fails to secure full or partial sanctions relief and does not follow disciplined fiscal and monetary policies, inflation will likely remain above 40 percent. Alternatively, if he manages to secure complete or partial sanctions relief and follows a contractionary policy over the next year, he can reduce inflation by the end of 2022.
For now, Raisi seems to be trying to impose monetary and fiscal discipline and use sanctions-busting schemes to dampen inflation. But the fate of Iranian inflation in 2022 is ultimately in Khamenei’s hands. He alone will decide whether to strike a deal with Washington that places meaningful restraints on Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
Saeed Ghasseminejad is a senior advisor on Iran and financial economics at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he contributes to FDD’s Iran Program and Center on Economic and Financial Power (CEFP). For more analysis from Saeed, the Iran Program, and CEFP, please subscribe HERE. Follow Saeed on Twitter @SGhasseminejad. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_Iran and @FDD_CEFP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, non-partisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Saeed Ghasseminejad Senior Iran and Financial Economics Advisor · January 10, 2022
14. Normalization is the new normal for the UAE and Israel
Excerpts:
While security must have been one of the top priorities in the budding partnership between the UAE and Israel, it certainly has not been the only one. If and when the Iranian threat has been dealt with, peace between the two countries will prove to be durable, while economic cooperation will continue to fuel their strong relationship.
This expanding partnership, and even apparent disagreements on security, should be seen as reassuring. The UAE and Israel are two countries in the region with mostly overlapping security interests, but some notable differences. They are both wealthy, developed economies but radically different in their comparative advantages. They can cooperate in some fields to mutual benefit, compete in others, agree discreetly on some issues, and disagree politely on others.
A year on from the initial agreement, and despite all the sour grapes from critics and cynics, normalization seems to be, well, the new normal.
Normalization is the new normal for the UAE and Israel
Hussain Abdul-Hussain & Shany Mor
January 10, 2022 01:19
Short Url
https://arab.news/5kd9c
Conventional wisdom holds that the normalization of relations between Israel and the UAE is, at most, an expression of mutual antagonism toward Iran, driven by concern about Tehran’s nuclear program and its support for terrorist militias throughout the Middle East.
This month’s historic meeting of Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Emirati Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed puts paid to that conventional wisdom. For one thing, the UAE and Israel have differing approaches to the Iran issue. For another, the cooperation the countries seek goes far beyond security and shared enemies.
An examination of the leaders’ joint statement after their meeting, together with a close look at who the Israeli prime minister did and did not meet in Abu Dhabi, suggests that it is the economy, rather than security, that is pulling the two sides closer together. Bilateral trade between the two nations reached close to $800 million by the end of September. In March, the UAE announced a $10 billion fund to “invest in strategic sectors in Israel.”
According to the joint statement, Bennett and MBZ discussed “private- and public-sector cooperation in R&D, technology, food security, climate, water, energy, environment, health and tourism.” Security was not listed as one of the topics.
The nations said they plan to create “a joint research and development fund,” alongside “a corresponding joint business council,” that would wed startup nation Israel to the entrepreneurial UAE, with its advanced banking and marketing industries, and allow the two to deal with problems that vary from “climate change and desertification” to “clean energy and future agriculture.”
Bennett and his hosts also explored the possibility of reaching a “comprehensive economic partnership agreement.” In September, the UAE’s state-owned Mubadala bought a $1 billion stake in an Israeli natural gas field.
In addition to meeting MBZ and Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed, Bennett met Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology Sultan Al-Jaber, and Minister of Culture Noura Al-Kaabi.
Note that he did not have a one-on-one with National Security Advisor Tahnoun bin Zayed, the third man from the top in the UAE. Tahnoun had just returned from a visit to Iran last week, a meeting that raised eyebrows in the Israeli security establishment.
Bennett’s meeting with officials in charge of industry and culture but not security and intelligence suggests that — at least publicly — the UAE and Israel do not wish to be seen as creating an anti-Iran front or alliance.
True, during their one-on-one meeting, which lasted more than two hours, MBZ and Bennett must have talked about Iran. If so, no one knows what they said — but we can speculate that Bennett updated MBZ about Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s trip to Washington, and also on reports that Israel is preparing a strike against nuclear targets in Iran, given that the Vienna talks are going nowhere.
While MBZ might have expressed private support for a possible Israeli strike on Iran, he must have told his guest that the UAE cannot be publicly supportive of any such action. The UAE is a stone’s throw from Iran and might want to sit out any military conflagration for fear that Iranian missiles could wreak havoc on a country whose prosperous economy depends on stability.
The UAE and Israel share many of the same concerns about Iran and many of the same commitments and strategies — but not all. They are separate countries with differing interests and differing priorities. They don’t need to have identical interests and policies on Iran for a deepening of ties, just as they did not need normalization to cooperate on the Iranian threat.
In effect, the UAE faces the same dilemma that South Korea does regarding the nuclear weapons of its northern neighbor. Seoul, a densely populated city with an extremely advanced and developed economy, is within the range of North Korean missiles and fears that, in case of war over the North’s nukes, the South’s capital might suffer if missiles start flying.
Iran’s situation is slightly different. Tehran is unlikely to hit the UAE, or any of its neighbors, unprovoked. Unless the fighter jets that strike Iran take off from the UAE, Tehran will not drag its southern Gulf neighbor into a war.
Just like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait, the UAE would most likely be rooting for Israel in private and offering intelligence and other discreet logistical support if war was to break out between the Jewish state and Iran. Yet Gulf states remain cognizant of their Achilles heels — geographic proximity to Iran.
While security must have been one of the top priorities in the budding partnership between the UAE and Israel, it certainly has not been the only one. If and when the Iranian threat has been dealt with, peace between the two countries will prove to be durable, while economic cooperation will continue to fuel their strong relationship.
This expanding partnership, and even apparent disagreements on security, should be seen as reassuring. The UAE and Israel are two countries in the region with mostly overlapping security interests, but some notable differences. They are both wealthy, developed economies but radically different in their comparative advantages. They can cooperate in some fields to mutual benefit, compete in others, agree discreetly on some issues, and disagree politely on others.
A year on from the initial agreement, and despite all the sour grapes from critics and cynics, normalization seems to be, well, the new normal.
• Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Shany Mor is an adjunct fellow. Follow Abdul-Hussain on Twitter @hahussain.
• Follow Mor on Twitter @ShMMor. The FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News' point-of-view
15. Air Force general calls B.S. on social media claims that female special ops trainee got ‘preferential treatment’
Air Force general calls B.S. on social media claims that female special ops trainee got ‘preferential treatment’
“[M]ost of what the author asserted about this trainee’s experience is either factually incorrect or missing important context which would completely change the perception,” said Lt. Gen. James “Jim” Slife in a Facebook post on Thursday.
Slife was responding to a story that was widely shared on the unofficial Air Force subreddit, Twitter, and even the Instagram account of Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Tex.). Written by an anonymous source claiming to be an Air Force combat controller, the story detailed how a female special tactics officer quit the challenging selection process and training pipeline multiple times, only to be reinstated by the leadership of AFSOC and the 24th Special Operations Wing.
The candidate “became known for quitting and getting preferential treatment,” the story said. “She quit during various points of her training, and yet all accounts were ‘brushed under the rung’ since she was closely looked at, and her status monitored by Congress and AFSOC leadership (O-6 and above) on a weekly basis.”
The Air Force special warfare selection process and training pipeline is among the most difficult in the world. For example, the two-year combat controller training pipeline historically washes out 70 to 80% of its candidates. Air Force combat controllers and pararescue jumpers are trained to the same technical and physical standards as other special operators such as Army Green Berets and Navy SEALs. However, combat controllers and PJs also receive extensive training in the form of air traffic control and combat medicine, respectively, so they can control a crowded airspace, call in airstrikes, and evacuate wounded friendly troops from deep behind enemy lines.
U.S. Air Force combat controllers from the 21st Special Tactics Squadron, Fort Bragg, N.C., conduct air traffic control operations on the edge of the Geronimo Landing Zone at Fort Polk, La. during Joint Readiness Training Center rotation 13-09, Aug. 20, 2013. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Parker Gyokeres)
Very few women have attempted the Air Force special warfare pipeline since the positions were opened to them in 2015. In April 2021, Sandboxx reported that a female airman had passed selection and was in the process of becoming a combat controller, while three other women were also somewhere in the pipeline. When asked by Task & Purpose, AFSOC spokesperson Capt. Savannah Stephens declined to specify how many women are currently in the special warfare training pipeline in an effort “to not create unfair pressure,” she said.
That pressure may have turned up even more now that the story written by the alleged combat controller has been released. According to the story, the airman first quit in 2018 during Special Tactics Officer Phase II, which the author described as a “challenging, week-long selection process to get into the” special tactics community. The airman quit during a pool session, but was still given the chance to finish, the author said.
The author shared the name of the airman, but Task & Purpose is referring to her only by her rank of captain until more aspects about the story can be confirmed.
“It is against societal norms for the [special tactics] community to keep a quitter through the entirety of Phase II,” the author wrote. “[H]owever, since [the captain] was one of the first females to go through Phase II, the hype of having a female present radiated through the community.”
The way it was posted to social media, the story cuts out after the 2018 STO Phase II training and picks up again in January 2020, when the captain began the two to three year STO training pipeline at Hurlburt Field, Florida. This was where the captain “quit during various points of her training,” including once during a pool session in front of multiple other students, but was kept in the course anyway, the author said. The captain was then “allowed to attend a special offering of a more relaxed version of the Pre-Dive course.”
Later, the captain “self-eliminated” again during a solo land navigation event. When that happens, pipeline students usually return to their previous duty assignment, reclassify to another job or leave the military, the author explained. Instead, the captain “met with numerous senior leaders” from the 24th Special Operations Wing and AFSOC.
U.S. Air Force Special Tactics Officer and Combat Rescue Officer candidates perform pushups during an assessment and selection March 22, 2021 at Hurlburt Field, Florida. STO/CRO selection is an arduous process, which screens candidates to become leaders in the elite Air Force Special Warfare community, leading global access, precision strike and personnel recovery. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Ridge Shan)
“The SOW Commander (at the time), Col. Matthew Allen, and vice commander, Col. Allison Black, talked to [the captain] about staying in the training pipeline despite her effort to self-eliminate/quit,” the author wrote. The colonels even offered the captain “a highly selective spot at a Tier One Special Mission Unit,” despite that unit typically requiring an entirely separate selection process, the author said.
Things got even more complicated in the spring of 2021, when the captain wrote an after-action report that was sent straight to Lt. Gen. Slife. The AAR “launched an investigation into the treatment of women in the AFSOC community,” the author wrote. “Operators, students, instructors and leaders from across the community were questioned about their interactions with [the captain] and the future of women in the organization.”
Later that spring and summer, the captain went to work directly for Lt. Gen. Slife, where she “worked to audit courses and designed new combat control standards,” the author said. While there, the captain also filed an equal opportunity complaint “which painted a false narrative that instructors from the 352nd Special Warfare Training Squadron coerced her into quitting the pipeline,” the author wrote, despite the captain being “known to tell other ST trainees that she quit of her own free will and that she disliked the ST community as a whole.”
Finally, in December, special tactics airmen were informed that the captain’s training status would be “actively re-instated on 3 January 2022, despite her choice to quit and her negative viewpoint of ST,” the author wrote. She would pick up the pipeline where she left off, as per the wishes of Slife and Col. Jason Daniels, the current 24 Special Operations Wing commander, the author said.
“To be clear, there are lots of females that contribute enormously to Special Operations missions,” wrote Rep. Crenshaw, a Navy SEAL veteran, in his Instagram post. “But they get to that point by following strict standards which ensure they can be relied upon in combat. Subverting those standards will cost lives.”
Slife pushed back on the account, however, saying it was incorrect or missing context. But neither he nor his command offered any specific examples of parts of the story that were inaccurate.
“[I]n order to avoid adding to the attention and pressure this trainee is facing—attention and pressure the author did not experience during his own journey—we will not address specific details related to her experiences,” Slife said.
Staff Sgt. Alaxey Germanovich, 26th Special Tactics Squadron combat controller, leads U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army Special Tactics service members as they perform memorial pushups following an Air Force Cross ceremony Dec. 10, 2020, at Cannon Air Force Base, N.M. Barbara Barrett, Secretary of the Air Force, presented the medal to Staff Sgt. Alaxey Germanovich, 26th Special Tactics Squadron combat controller, for his actions during a fierce firefight in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan, April 8, 2017. Germanovich’s efforts were credited with saving over 150 friendly forces and destroying 11 separate fighting positions. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Michael Washburn)
AFSOC spokesperson Capt. Savannah Stephens echoed Slife’s statement when Task & Purpose asked for more details.
“For privacy and operational security, we will not further discuss specific details surrounding any individual candidates’ selection and training progression to not create unfair pressure,” Stephens said. “All candidates must meet the standard requirements and are assessed equally on their ability to lead in physically and mentally challenging environments.”
Stephens also declined to answer specific questions about the captain’s alleged after-action report and equal opportunity complaint.
“We do not have information on a EO complaint, if filed, these details would be protected under the privacy act,” she said.
One thing Slife did write extensively about was the difference between standards and norms.
“The anonymous email’s author is concerned about training standards,” the general said. “We can unequivocally say the standards—which are tied to mission accomplishment—have not changed.”
While the standards remain the same, the norms have not, Slife said.
“How we bring trainees through the training pipeline today is different than the way we brought them through the pipeline 15 years ago because our understanding of the best way to get trainees to meet standards and be ready to join the operational force has evolved,” he explained. “It will continue to do so.”
Slife then called the author’s story an example of cyber-bullying.
“Singling out a fellow service member for public abuse is bullying and harassment, which are unacceptable deviations from both our standards, our norms and values as airmen,” he said.
Capt. Kristen Griest and U.S. Army Ranger School Class 08-15 render a salute during their graduation at Fort Benning, Ga., Aug. 21, 2015. Griest and class member 1st Lt. Shaye Haver became the first female graduates of the school. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Steve Cortez/ Released)
The female captain is not the first woman to face criticism for attempting a special operations pipeline. For example, Capts. Kristen Griest and Shaye Haver, the two first women to graduate Army Ranger School, were offered the chance to start the training over again along with five male candidates after failing the first phase twice. When they finally graduated in 2015, they were accused of passing the course under lowered standards.
“They basically had too [sic] pass them from my understanding,” wrote one Facebook user, according to ABC News. “Obama had already made plans to speak at their graduation before they even graduated.”
In response, the U.S. Army Fort Benning Facebook page clarified that both male and female Ranger candidates are allowed to recycle, and the female students were given the same opportunities as male students.
“I’m definitely glad I took” the chance to recycle, Griest told Military.com. “I didn’t hesitate to take any chance to continue the course.”
Until AFSOC reveals more details about its female special warfare candidate, it’s unclear how much of the account is true. What is clear though, is that there is a perception the military will lower training standards in order to graduate its first female special operators. That perception has been around as long as women have been in the military but has intensified since 2015 as ground combat jobs previously closed to women were opened up to them.
Despite not being officially allowed in combat units until recently, women have fought capably alongside their male peers for years.
“I’ve stood in combat next to men who had no right being there and had no business being there, and I’ve stood next to women in combat who were fighting just as hard as any other man out there,” Medal of Honor recipient former Marine Sgt. Dakota Meyer told Task & Purpose in 2019. “As long as the standard is met, I don’t see that there’s any argument against women serving in combat.”
It’s the standards which keep coming up as the flashpoint for debates about women serving not just in special operations, but across the military. Capt. Griest herself weighed in on the debate in regards to the new Army Combat Fitness Test last February, criticizing the Army’s plan to separate soldiers’ test scores by gender.
“Once the Army determines the right standard to which soldiers should train, the final version of the ACFT should hold men and women in combat arms to it equally and should maintain branch-based minimum standards,” Griest wrote. “Failing to do so will further marginalize women in these units rather than protect them, and will hurt the Army rather than prepare it.”
As shown by the recent account of the Air Force special warfare candidate, any perception that the standards have been lowered ignites a firestorm. And that leaves the Air Force in a bind over whether to reveal more details on how much of the account is actually true.
Read more on Task & Purpose
16. China makes a show of opening up the internet for the Olympics
Operative word is "show?"
PSA in the conclusion:
The bottom line: "The Chinese government has the tools and capabilities to track and monitor what athletes are accessing and what they say, and they are not afraid to use coercive measures if they feel that's necessary," said Steven Feldstein, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
China makes a show of opening up the internet for the Olympics
Axios · by Ashley Gold,Ina Fried,Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian
The Chinese government has promised Olympic athletes free access to social media platforms and other websites in the Olympic Village in Beijing, but internet use may still be fraught with restrictions and risks.
Why it matters: China's aim in temporarily opening its "great firewall" is simply to boost its global reputation ahead of the Games, not to champion an open internet, experts say. And they expect heavy surveillance of online activity to continue, even for visitors who are allowed to access sites that would otherwise be blocked.
- "It's a way for China to easily spread positive narratives about the Beijing Olympics, in the midst of all of their human rights criticisms," said Kenton Thibaut, resident China Fellow at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab.
What they're saying: "They put on these airs as if they're allowing freedom of speech and movement, things that are synonymous with the liberal tradition of the Olympics, but in reality, all of it is carefully monitored," said Victor Cha, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
What to watch: "Even though they allow access to social media, I don't think any athlete is going to tweet out something about Hong Kong or Taiwan," Cha said.
- "They will work with the IOC to clamp down on any athletes that do say anything, and then they'll count on the games to sort of capture everybody's imagination," he said.
The state of play: Chinese authorities have said Olympic participants and foreign media will have uncensored access to the internet through special SIM cards.
- The U.S. Olympic organizing committee is warning athletes and officials that "performing mission critical business and personal communications will be difficult at best while operating in China," according to a technology advisory being shared with athletes and national sport organizing bodies.
- "[I]t should be assumed that all data and communications in China can be monitored, compromised or blocked," the document states.
As for what athletes can say on the internet from Beijing, that's another matter.
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The International Olympic Committee has touted athletes' right to free online speech as long as they don't violate local laws, but Chinese law gives authorities the flexibility to prohibit whatever online speech they deem to be illegal.
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Chinese athletes will face intense scrutiny; Chinese authorities have arrested dozens of Chinese citizens for content they posted on foreign social media. But it's not clear how authorities view non-Chinese citizens posting freely on foreign websites.
- Chinese authorities also frequently use denial of market access to punish speech by non-Chinese citizens.
Context: Numerous governments, including the U.S., have announced a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics games due to the Chinese government's ongoing genocide against the Uyghur population in the northwest region of Xinjiang.
- Activists and rights groups have urged corporate sponsors to push Beijing on its Xinjiang policies and withdraw their sponsorship.
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Chinese streaming platforms dropped Boston Celtics games after center Enes Kanter called Chinese President Xi Jinping a "brutal dictator" on social media in October 2021. Houston Rockets games also disappeared from the Chinese internet after general manager Daryl Morey tweeted in support of the 2019 Hong Kong protests.
Also, just because athletes can get online in China, doesn't mean they shouldn't take precautions.
- "If [athletes] are using their supplied Wi-Fi, they would just have to assume that everything they're doing is being monitored," Thibaut said.
- Security experts recommend using a separate phone, a virtual private network, SIM cards not provided by China, and avoiding logging into services or sharing other sensitive information.
Flashback: At the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, reporters discovered they could not access many websites, despite the IOC and Chinese officials' repeated promises of unfettered web access before the Games began. The IOC later admitted they had agreed to some web restrictions.
What they're saying: Some athletes anonymously told the New York Times in December that they are afraid to criticize the Chinese government publicly for fear of reprisal.
-
But some are speaking out anyway. “To be silent is to be complicit,” Clare Egan, a biathlete from Maine, told the Times.
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U.S. pairs skater Timothy LeDuc said on Sunday that Uyghurs in China faced a "horrifying" situation. "I read somewhere the other day that it's the largest number of people held in internment and labor camps since World War II," LeDuc said.
The bottom line: "The Chinese government has the tools and capabilities to track and monitor what athletes are accessing and what they say, and they are not afraid to use coercive measures if they feel that's necessary," said Steven Feldstein, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Axios · by Ashley Gold,Ina Fried,Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian
17. The Metaverse Offers Much Potential For Terrorists and Extremists
This is the key question:
If corporations cannot serve as reliable sole guardians of the metaverse, then who can, and how?
Although the arrival of a full-fledged metaverse is still some years in the future, the potential threats posed by the metaverse require attention today from a diverse range of people and organizations, including academic researchers, those developing the metaverse and those tasked with protecting society. The threats call for thinking as much or more creatively about the metaverse as those with malevolent intent are likely to do. Everyone needs to be ready for this new reality.
The Metaverse Offers Much Potential For Terrorists and Extremists
The coming immersive virtual reality version of the internet will bring all the problems of today's 2D version
By JOEL S. ELSON, AUSTIN C. DOCTOR and SAM HUNTER,
THE CONVERSATION
JANUARY 10, 2022 12:00 PM ET
The metaverse is coming. Like all technological innovation, it brings new opportunities and new risks.
The metaverse is an immersive virtual reality version of the internet where people can interact with digital objects and digital representations of themselves and others, and can move more or less freely from one virtual environment to another. It can also involve augmented reality, a blending of virtual and physical realities, both by representing people and objects from the physical world in the virtual and conversely by bringing the virtual into people’s perceptions of physical spaces.
By donning virtual reality headsets or augmented reality glasses, people will be able to socialize, worship and work in environments where the boundaries between environments and between the digital and physical are permeable. In the metaverse, people will be able to find meaning and have experiences in concert with their offline lives.
Therein lies the rub. When people learn to love something, whether it is digital, physical or a combination, taking that thing from them can cause emotional pain and suffering. To put a finer point on it, the things people hold dear become vulnerabilities that can be exploited by those seeking to cause harm. People with malicious intent are already noting that the metaverse is a potential tool in their arsenal.
To be clear, we do not oppose the metaverse as a concept and, indeed, are excited about its potential for human advancement. But we believe that the rise of the metaverse will open new vulnerabilities and present novel opportunities to exploit them. Although not exhaustive, here are three ways the metaverse will complicate efforts to counter terrorism and violent extremism.
First, online recruitment and engagement are hallmarks of modern extremism, and the metaverse threatens to expand this capacity by making it easier for people to meet up. Today, someone interested in hearing what Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes has to say might read an article about his anti-government ideology or watch a video of him speaking to followers about impending martial law. Tomorrow, by blending artificial intelligence and augmented reality in the metaverse, Rhodes or his AI stand-in will be able to sit on a virtual park bench with any number of potential followers and entice them with visions of the future.
Similarly, a resurrected bin Laden could meet with would-be followers in a virtual rose garden or lecture hall. The emerging metaverse affords extremist leaders a new ability to forge and maintain virtual ideological and social communities and powerful, difficult-to-disrupt ways of expanding their ranks and spheres of influence.
Second, the metaverse offers new ways to coordinate, plan and execute acts of destruction across a diffuse membership. An assault on the Capitol? With sufficient reconnaissance and information gathering, extremist leaders could create virtual environments with representations of any physical building, which would allow them to walk members through routes leading to key objectives.
Members could learn viable and efficient paths, coordinate alternative routes if some are blocked, and establish multiple contingency plans if surprises arise. When executing an attack in the physical world, augmented reality objects like virtual arrows can help guide violent extremists and identify marked targets.
Violent extremists can plot from their living rooms, basements or backyards – all while building social connections and trust in their peers, and all while appearing to others in the digital avatar form of their choosing. When extremist leaders give orders for action in the physical world, these groups are likely to be more prepared than today’s extremist groups because of their time in the metaverse.
Finally, with new virtual and mixed reality spaces comes the potential for new targets. Just as buildings, events and people can be harmed in the real world, so too can the same be attacked in the virtual world. Imagine swastikas on synagogues, disruptions of real-life activities like banking, shopping and work, and the spoiling of public events.
A 9/11 memorial service created and hosted in the virtual domain would be, for example, a tempting target for violent extremists who could reenact the falling of the twin towers. A metaverse wedding could be disrupted by attackers who disapprove of the religious or gendered pairing of the couple. These acts would take a psychological toll and result in real-world harm.
It may be easy to dismiss the threats of this blended virtual and physical world by claiming it isn’t real and is therefore inconsequential. But as Nike prepares to sell virtual shoes, it is critical to recognize the very real money that will be spent in the metaverse. With actual money come real jobs, and with real jobs comes the potential for losing very real livelihoods.
Destroying an augmented or virtual reality business means an individual suffers genuine financial loss. Like physical places, virtual spaces can be designed and crafted with care, subsequently carrying the significance people afford things in which they have invested time and creativity building. Further, as technology becomes smaller and more integrated in people’s daily lives, the ability to simply turn off the metaverse and ignore the harm could become more challenging.
How then to face these emerging threats and vulnerabilities? It is reasonable for corporations to suggest that hate or violence will not be allowed or that individuals engaging in extremism will be identified and banned from their virtual spaces. We are supportive of such commitments but are skeptical that these are credible, especially in light of revelations about Meta’s dangerous behavior on its Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp platforms. There is profit to be had in hate and division.
If corporations cannot serve as reliable sole guardians of the metaverse, then who can, and how?
Although the arrival of a full-fledged metaverse is still some years in the future, the potential threats posed by the metaverse require attention today from a diverse range of people and organizations, including academic researchers, those developing the metaverse and those tasked with protecting society. The threats call for thinking as much or more creatively about the metaverse as those with malevolent intent are likely to do. Everyone needs to be ready for this new reality.
18. New law gives veterans, Gold Star Families free lifetime access to America's national parks
We drove Skyline Drive in Virginia this fall. The Park Ranger asked if we were veterans and then said we did not have to pay the entry fee.
New law gives veterans, Gold Star Families free lifetime access to America's national parks
| USA TODAY
"When you take your oath, if you go into the service, to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, you really are protecting the homeland," the National Park Service's new director and Navy veteran Chuck Sams told USA TODAY. "I think this is a great recognition of that responsibility you took on to serve your nation."
In 2020, the National Park Service announced that veterans and Gold Star Families, who've lost loved ones in the line of service to this country, would receive free access to the park service's 423 sites around the country. This new law makes the move permanent and also cements the free annual passes available for active-duty military.
"Our legislation - named after Arizona veteran Alexander Lofgren - represents a small thanks for our military community’s brave service and promotes access to our beautiful national parks," the bill's lead sponsor in the Senate, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz, said in a statement.
National Parks: Rarely visited parks worth going out of your way for
These are among America's least visited national parks, excluding remote places like Alaska, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa and Dry Tortugas.
Staff video, USA TODAY
The outdoors as therapy
Lofgren, a congressional aide for Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz, and former volunteer for Sinema, died at Death Valley National Park last April.
Before joining Grijalva's office as a Wounded War Fellow in 2019, he served four years in the Army as a combat engineer and deployed to Afghanistan in 2011, according to the announcement of his hiring.
Grijalva said Lofgren loved the outdoors and used it as therapy.
"Alex working with us here saw that nature, our open spaces, our state and federal park lands and wilderness areas and public places were therapeutic, that they were important in the reintegrations of veterans back into our civilian life here after they completed their service to the nation, and he was a huge proponent of that," Grijalva told The Arizona Republic, part of the USA TODAY Network.
"As a veteran, I know firsthand the importance of national parks as a place of connection and healing when dealing with the visible and invisible wounds of war," Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., said in a statement.
He and fellow veteran Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, introduced the bill in the House last summer.
Following the law's signing, Miller-Meeks, a doctor who served 24 years in the Army, said in a statement, "We often say that we support the physical and mental health of our veterans, and it is great to see legislation pass that will do great things for the health of our heroes."
19. Liberal elites want us to care about Jan. 6. But they don't care that our cities are burning | Opinion
Actually all those who support and defend the Constitution, not just "liberal elites," are concerned about the actions of January 6 and they should be concerned about the issues throughout the country that are causing "cities to burn." The difference is January 6th was direct action against our Constitution and the peaceful transfer of power. That should not be a partisan issue. You are either for the Constitution or against it.
But we need to stop the "whataboutism" and address both problems.
Liberal elites want us to care about Jan. 6. But they don't care that our cities are burning | Opinion
I remember the call from my husband on May 31. It was our anniversary, and he was out running errands before he came home—not because we had plans, but because there was a curfew in place in Minneapolis. He called to tell me he had to drive to a nearby suburb to pick up a medical prescription. "Our Walgreens on Hennepin Avenue isn't there anymore," he said. "It was burned to the ground."
Over the spring and summer of 2020, thousands of businesses were looted, damaged, or totally destroyed during the George Floyd protests—especially here, where Floyd was killed. Every day we read heartbreaking stories of business owners begging and pleading with rioters to spare their livelihoods, many of them uninsured, pleas that went unheeded. There was over $2 billion in property damage.
And yet, to follow the mainstream news, you'd be forgiven for thinking the destruction of cities across the country—the decimation of small businesses, many of them owned by lower income people of color—wasn't the biggest story of violence in recent history. That honor, to hear the media tell it, is reserved for an hours-long mobbing of the Capitol in Washington, D.C. The Capitol riot on January 6, 2021 has been the lead story in the liberal mainstream media all week long.
This breathless, week-long commemoration—along with the sacrosanct solemnity with which January 6 is discussed in elite liberal circles—exposes whose lives really matter: the elites in D.C. ivory towers and Manhattan newsrooms. And it exposed whose lives don't.
Minneapolis erupted in violence following the death of George Floyd. There was no law, only disorder. The metro buses were shut down, curfews were in place, grocery stores and drug stores looted and burned. The Third Precinct police station was gutted.
But the narrative from most of the journalists who flew in from New York was of a city and by extension a country facing the racial reckoning it deserved. There were no rioters, to hear the media tell it; the mobs throwing Molotov cocktails shattering windows were demonstrators and "mostly peaceful" protesters. The violence was framed as a necessary airing of grievances. The collateral damage to businesses and lives were cast as a pittance compared to the national discussion on race relations and policing in America.
But that was just the beginning of the abandonment of underserved cities and urban neighborhoods by the people charged with representing and protecting them.
Police vehicles burn after being set on fire by demonstrators in the Fairfax District as they protest the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died while while being arrested and pinned to the ground by the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, on May 30, 2020 in Los Angeles. - Demonstrations are being held across the US after George Floyd died in police custody on May 25. (Photo by Mark RALSTON / AFP) MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images
This is what happens when the national journalists go back to New York. When the politicians are done making statements about social justice. When they are done marching with arms linked to activists in the streets. After they issue press statements about reform, they go home to safe streets and secure homes.
They don't see and don't write about the funeral for 6-year-old Aniya Allen, whose tiny casket was carried through the city by horse-drawn carriage. They don't attend the funeral of good Samaritan Kavanian Palmer, who was shot and killed while trying to stop a carjacking.
These elites don't seem to think so but all the lives lost to unspeakable violence matter. The estimated $2 billion in damage after the riots matters. America cannot continue as a properly functioning democracy if our great cities are self-destructing. It should be the top concern of every elected official.
Instead, all they are concerned about is their own self-importance and grandstanding in front of cameras glorifying what amounted to a day-long temper tantrum—to be sure, one marred by crime and violence.
They do nothing to help us. But while the residents of Minneapolis were trapped inside a burning city, D.C. elites put up rows of barriers and barbed wire to keep people out. When Senator Tom Cotton wrote an op-ed in the New York Times calling for military intervention to restore order, it was condemned and the editor who gave it the green light fired. After the January 6 riot, tellingly referred to by somber-faced journalists as an "insurrection" and "domestic terrorism," the National Guard was stationed in D.C. for months.
The narcissism is just staggering. But it goes much deeper than that. Pitting groups against each other and stoking fear and anger is how our elites—our politicians and journalists among them—keep themselves in power, while average Americans are left with the tragic aftermath.
This is the disappointing but unsurprising reality of a society partitioned between the powerful and the powerless. The powerful have the luxury of nursing their trauma by sitting down for dewy-eyed interviews and twilight vigils, with news networks holding all-day specials. The powerless go to food shelters because their grocery store burned down and beg for justice when another child is gunned down in the street.
The powerful hold probing investigations and organize congressional hearings. The powerless sit with their unanswered prayers at loved ones' funerals and watch their businesses get boarded up again.
The real threat to democracy is an elite class who has shown us they value their pain, their inconvenience, and their lives more than ours. How can they ask us to care about one riotous day last January when every day in cities across America, the lives of the most vulnerable are in danger, their livelihoods threatened?
A powerful overclass apathetic to the concerns of the people they are supposed to represent, and for whom they work, is the real miscarriage of justice they claim as their own.
Jenna Stocker is the managing editor of Thinking Minnesota and a freelance writer. She holds a degree in accounting from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota.
The views in this article are the writer's own.
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.
