Quotes of the Day:
“You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw”
- Vladimir Ilich Lenin
“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.”
-Malcolm X
"Political action is the highest responsibility of a citizen."
- John F. Kennedy
1. U.S. and Russia Take More Measured Stance in Ukraine Talks
2. How Ukraine Feels About a ‘Minor Incursion’ by Russia
3. Ukraine tension: US 'lethal aid' arrives in Kyiv amid border build-up
4. Ukraine and the Threat of Citizen Resistance
5. Fact vs. Fiction: Russian Disinformation on Ukraine
6. Russia’s Top Five Persistent Disinformation Narratives
7. Kremlin-Funded Media: R T and Sputnik's Role in Russia's Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem
8. Read the never-issued Trump order that would have seized voting machines
9. U.S., Russia Agree to Keep Negotiating to Defuse Ukraine Crisis
10. Opinion | As invasion looms, Ukrainians are calmly defiant
11. Were Drone Strikes Effective? Evaluating the Drone Campaign in Pakistan Through Captured al-Qaeda Documents
12. Is China Putting ‘Wolf Warriors’ on a Leash?
13. Leaked Oath Keepers list names 20 current military members
14. American deterrence's missing half
15. Biden’s Asia Policy, 1 Year In
16. New CMSI Report—“Chinese Special Operations in a Large-Scale Island Landing”
17. Ukraine crisis: 8 things to watch for
18. Did the CIA use pop music to help elect president of the Philippines?
19. Feds drop case against Gang Chen, MIT professor accused of ties to China
20. Opinion | What an Antisemite’s Fantasy Says About Jewish Reality
21. Ambassador (Ret.) Greta C. Holtz - Chancellor, College of International Security Affairs at NDU
22. This Marine-turned-journalist interviewed the Taliban commander he had fought against
23. THAAD, in first operational use, destroys midrange ballistic missile in Houthi attack
24. Inside the Oath Keepers' Plan for an Armed Takeover of the US Capitol
25. China adopted 'three-warfare' strategy aiming to expand global influence: French MoD think tank
26. Liam Collins: This Special Forces officer ran into combat, jumped into Afghanistan
27. Ukraine got a signed commitment in 1994 to ensure its security – but can the US and allies stop Putin's aggression now?
1. U.S. and Russia Take More Measured Stance in Ukraine Talks
Is anyone optimistic? Is there any hope for an acceptable outcome?
U.S. and Russia Take More Measured Stance in Ukraine Talks
The conciliatory tone and absence of ultimatums suggested that both sides were trying to keep tensions in check and give diplomacy time.
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Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, in Geneva on Friday.Credit...Pool photo by Alex Brandon
Jan. 21, 2022
GENEVA — The United States and Russia scaled back their confrontational rhetoric over Eastern European security on Friday, agreeing to extend negotiations as the Biden administration pursues a fragile diplomatic path to averting a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken told his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, in a hastily scheduled meeting in Geneva that the United States would provide written responses next week to Russia’s demands that the West unwind its military presence in Eastern Europe.
Both sides said that the two diplomats planned to speak again after that, and they left the door open to another conversation between President Biden and President Vladimir V. Putin to try to resolve the crisis.
Even as the threat of a Russian invasion remained real, the conciliatory tone and absence of ultimatums suggested that both sides were trying to keep tensions in check and give diplomacy time to play out. And the longer negotiating timeline stood in contrast to Mr. Biden’s comments two days earlier when he said he believed Mr. Putin was ready to use military force.
“We didn’t expect any breakthroughs to happen today,” Mr. Blinken told reporters after the meeting. “But I believe we are now on a clearer path in terms of understanding each other’s concerns.”
Mr. Lavrov described the talks as “a useful, honest discussion,” while Mr. Blinken called them “direct, businesslike” and “not polemical.” Mr. Lavrov largely refrained from the heated language that other Russian officials had used after previous discussions this month, and he told reporters that Mr. Blinken had agreed “that it is necessary to have a more reasonable dialogue.”
“I hope the emotions subside a bit,” Mr. Lavrov said.
Still, Friday’s meeting was only one moment in a crisis, redolent of the Cold War’s worst times, that has been gathering for weeks. Analysts said the risks of a Russian invasion of Ukraine had not abated, with troops, tanks and missiles continuing to be shipped across Russia toward the Ukrainian border.
Ukraine’s military intelligence service estimates that 127,000 Russian troops are now deployed within attacking distance, including in Ukraine’s northern neighbor, Belarus, where Belarusian and Russian forces will conduct joint military exercises next month.
A satellite image showing tanks, artillery, and support equipment in Yelnya, Russia, on Wednesday.Credit...Maxar Technologies/EPA, via Shutterstock
Sam Charap, a Russian security analyst at the RAND Corporation, said war was still not inevitable — but that he did not see any new signs on Friday, despite the softer rhetoric, that Russia or the United States was ready to compromise on key issues that have proved intractable in previous negotiating sessions.
“It doesn’t look like either side is particularly interested in moving off the positions they were on a week ago,” Mr. Charap said.
Russia’s demands include a legally binding agreement to halt NATO’s eastward expansion, and a withdrawal of NATO troops from countries like Poland and the Baltic nations that were once aligned with or part of the Soviet Union. The United States has dismissed those proposals as nonstarters, and Mr. Blinken reiterated after Friday’s meeting that Ukrainians had a “sovereign right” to “write their own future.”
“There is no trade space there — none,” said Mr. Blinken, who completed a whirlwind diplomatic trip to Europe on Friday, after stops in Kyiv and Berlin.
Still, Mr. Blinken said he believed there was a way to develop agreements with Russia “that ensure our mutual security.” In Washington, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said Mr. Biden would travel to Camp David with his national security team this weekend to discuss the situation.
“We will also continue to consult with our allies and partners and we will respond next week in writing,” Ms. Psaki said.
Western officials had been watching the talks and hoping that a more measured approach would emerge. One note of optimism came from the United Nations secretary-general, António Guterres, who was asked about the prospects of a Russian invasion of Ukraine in the hours after the Blinken-Lavrov meeting had concluded.
“I am convinced it will not happen, and I strongly hope to be right,” Mr. Guterres told reporters at a news briefing at the U.N. headquarters in New York. Mr. Guterres did not explain his reasons for taking that position.
In and around Ukraine, tensions continued to rise. Russia’s ferrying of more troops, armor and advanced antiaircraft systems toward Belarus, a Russian ally, put a growing force within range of Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.
A member of the Ukrainian military on the front line in the Luhansk area of eastern Ukraine.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
And the United States has authorized Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to send Stinger antiaircraft missiles to Ukrainian forces, augmenting the Javelin anti-tank missile deliveries to Ukraine that Britain began this month. The State Department also confirmed this week that the Biden administration had approved an additional $200 million in defensive military aid to Ukraine, atop $450 million in the past fiscal year.
The delivery of the stinger missiles would be a potent symbolic gesture from the United States. The C.I.A. provided the weapons systems to mujahedeen fighters during the Soviet war with Afghanistan in the 1980s, allowing them to shoot down hundreds of planes and helicopters and precipitate the eventual Soviet withdrawal.
Understand the Escalating Tensions Over Ukraine
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Ominous warnings. Russia called the strike a destabilizing act that violated the cease-fire agreement, raising fears of a new intervention in Ukraine that could draw the United States and Europe into a new phase of the conflict.
The Kremlin’s position. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has increasingly portrayed NATO’s eastward expansion as an existential threat to his country, said that Moscow’s military buildup was a response to Ukraine’s deepening partnership with the alliance.
Still, after weeks of heated words, there were signs that both sides were trying to keep tensions in check and give diplomacy time. Their agreement on Friday to keep negotiating extends a run of talks that started on Dec. 30 with a phone call between Mr. Putin and Mr. Biden, and continued with a series of three meetings across Europe last week that provided no breakthroughs but kept Russia from declaring it had no choice but to use force.
It is unclear who might benefit more from a delay if Russia does eventually invade Ukraine — a decision that American officials believe Mr. Putin has not yet made. The United States might welcome more time to rally and coordinate allies and plan contingency options. But the Russians may value the appearance of an extended, good-faith diplomatic effort before any potential invasion, and may use the time to mobilize more troops.
Mr. Blinken’s acknowledgment that the United States would provide a written response to Russia’s demands was the clearest the Biden administration has been that it would fulfill this request. Senior American officials said that the Kremlin’s insistence on written responses reflects the centralized nature of a system in which Mr. Putin holds overwhelming power and the government bureaucracy has limited influence. They believe Mr. Putin wants to see America’s specific position with his own eyes.
Mr. Lavrov repeated Russia’s denials that it had any plans to attack Ukraine and said he and Mr. Blinken had agreed to speak again after the United States provided its response. Mr. Putin has warned that Russia would take unspecified “military-technical” actions to ensure its security if the West did not agree to its demands.
“I can’t say whether or not we are on the right path,” Mr. Lavrov said. “We will understand this when we get the American response on paper to all the points in our proposals.”
Mr. Biden prompted some diplomatic blowback on Wednesday when he said that a “limited incursion” by Russia into Ukraine could prompt arguments among NATO members about a proportional response. Mr. Biden clarified the comment on Thursday, insisting that any Russian military move into Ukraine would provoke “a severe and coordinated economic response.”
A NATO night exercise in Latvia in October.Credit...Valda Kalnina/EPA, via Shutterstock
Mr. Blinken echoed that position on Friday. But when asked about Mr. Biden’s early-December declaration that he considered the direct involvement of American troops to be “off the table,” Mr. Blinken did not waver from that line.
“It is our determination to do everything we can to to defend it and to prevent or deter aggression directly toward it,” he said of Ukraine. But because Ukraine is not a NATO member, a status which under the alliance’s Article Five would legally commit America to its military defense, Mr. Blinken made clear that devoting American forces to a conflict is not an option. “It’s not covered by the Article Five commitment,” he said.
U.S. officials had expressed low expectations for Mr. Blinken’s meeting with Mr. Lavrov, and in brief remarks beforehand both envoys expressed little hope for a breakthrough.
Still Mr. Blinken has voiced some optimism. On the car ride to the meeting with Mr. Lavrov at a waterfront hotel, Mr. Blinken noted whitecaps on a blustery Lake Geneva, according to a senior State Department official. He told his colleagues that he hoped the meeting would calm the waters.
Anti-tank equipment with the Sea of Azov in the background close to the line of separation from pro-Russian rebels, near Mariupol, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Friday.Credit...Andriy Dubchak/Associated Press
Reporting was contributed by Michael Schwirtz from Kyiv, Steven Erlanger from Brussels and Rick Gladstone from New York.
2. How Ukraine Feels About a ‘Minor Incursion’ by Russia
There are historians who dispute the impact of Acheson's statement on Kim Il-sung's decision to go to war in Korea. But there are those who will invoke it.
Korea: Historians debunk some popular myths about the Korean war
https://www.utimes.pitt.edu/archives/?p=3016
Remember the Acheson Line
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2018/01/01/fountain/Remember-the-Acheson-Line/3042765.html
Dean Acheson and the Place of Korea in American Foreign and Security Policy, 1945-1950
https://s-space.snu.ac.kr/bitstream/10371/88698/3/4.%20Dean%20Acheson%20and%20the%20Place%20of%20Korea%20in%20American%20Foreign%20and%20Security%20Policy%2C%201945-1950.pdf
Dean Acheson's Press Club Speech Reexamined
https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/jcs/2002-v22-n1-jcs_22_1/jcs22_1art04.pdf
How Ukraine Feels About a ‘Minor Incursion’ by Russia
Did Biden commit a blunder like Dean Acheson’s on Korea?
WSJ · by The Editorial Board
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
Photo: sergei supinsky/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
President Biden on Wednesday effectively invited Vladimir Putin to make a “minor incursion” into Ukraine when he admitted that aggression short of a full invasion could prompt “a fight about what to do and not do” in response. This may be an honest assessment of trans-Atlantic divisions, but Kyiv’s response shows the comment was strategic malpractice.
Ukraine was not pleased. “We want to remind the great powers that there are no minor incursions and small nations. Just as there are no minor casualties and little grief from the loss of loved ones,” President Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted Thursday.
His foreign minister was more direct. “Speaking of minor and full incursions or full invasion, you cannot be half-aggressive. You’re either aggressive or you’re not aggressive,” Dmytro Kuleba told the Journal. “We should not give Putin the slightest chance to play with quasi-aggression or small incursion operations. This aggression was there since 2014. This is the fact.”
He’s right, and it’s notable that the Ukrainians are making their unhappiness known. Kyiv knows it faces what could be an existential crisis and generally strikes a more upbeat public tone about relations with the West. But such a dangerous comment from a U.S. President deserves a pointed response.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki, now a veteran in cleaning up after Mr. Biden, rushed out a statement Wednesday night clarifying that “if any Russian military forces move across the Ukrainian border, that’s a renewed invasion, and it will be met with a swift, severe, and united response from the United States and our Allies.” She added that “aggression short of military action” also “will be met with a decisive, reciprocal, and united response.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken also tried to repair the damage in Berlin on Thursday, and he gave a fine speech about the stakes for the world in what he called this “contrived crisis.” But the Kremlin must already be calculating that Mr. Biden isn’t confident he can drum up the Western unity that Mr. Blinken claims.
The Journal reported Thursday that the U.S. is also allowing the Baltic states, which are NATO members, to send U.S.-made antitank weapons and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine. That’s welcome, but it also puts the small Baltic democracies in Mr. Putin’s sights. The U.S. could have sent those long ago.
Mr. Biden’s “minor incursion” remark calls to mind Truman-era Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s famous mistake in omitting South Korea from the U.S. defense perimeter in Asia in January 1950. Within months North Korea invaded the South.
At the press conference, Mr. Biden was assessing the current state of affairs between the U.S. and Europe, but he isn’t a foreign-policy analyst speaking on a Washington panel. The world listens when a President speaks. His job is to try to shape reality in terms favorable to American interests. That means leading the West toward a unified and stern response to any aggression against Ukraine—not commenting on how tough a job that is.
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
WSJ · by The Editorial Board
3. Ukraine tension: US 'lethal aid' arrives in Kyiv amid border build-up
Ukraine tension: US 'lethal aid' arrives in Kyiv amid border build-up
22 January 2022, 12:24 GMT
Updated 56 minutes ago
IMAGE SOURCE,US EMBASSY KYIV
Image caption,
The US embassy in Kyiv released photos of Saturday's shipment as it pledged ongoing support for Ukraine
The US embassy in Kyiv released photos of Saturday's shipment as it pledged ongoing support for Ukraine
Some 90 tonnes of US "lethal aid" has arrived in Ukraine, amid tensions over Russia's troop build-up on the border.
It was the first shipment of a recently approved package of US military aid for Ukraine, and included ammunition for "front-line defenders".
The delivery followed US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visit to Kyiv this week, where he warned of a tough response if Russia was to invade.
Moscow has denied any plans to attack or invade Ukraine.
US President Joe Biden approved the $200m (£147.5m) security support package in December.
The US embassy in Kyiv said the shipment demonstrated its "firm commitment to Ukraine's sovereign right to self-defense".
"The United States will continue providing such assistance to support Ukraine's Armed Forces in their ongoing effort to defend Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity against Russian aggression," it wrote on Facebook.
Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov thanked the US for the aid.
Tensions over Ukraine
Russia has seized Ukrainian territory before - Crimea, in 2014 - and the head of the military alliance Nato has warned there is a real risk of a fresh conflict in Europe after an estimated 100,000 Russian forces amassed on the border.
Moscow has denied it is planning an invasion, but President Vladimir Putin has issued demands to the West which he says concern Russia's security, including that Ukraine be stopped from joining Nato.
He also wants Nato to abandon military exercises and stop sending weapons to eastern Europe, seeing this as a direct threat to Russia's security.
4. Ukraine and the Threat of Citizen Resistance
Fri, 01/21/2022 - 7:41pm
Ukraine and the Threat of Citizen Resistance
Brian S. Petit
Ukraine is bracing for a Russian invasion. Undermatched, undersized, and militarily less capable, Ukraine will lose a conventional, combined arms fight, should it come. Facing this prospect, Ukraine is investing in and publicizing its hedging strategy: citizen resistance.
Is this Ukrainian citizen resistance strategy a publicity-heavy bluff that offers more bark than bite? Or is this strategy – organized enough to be credible and opaque enough to produce surprises - exactly on point?
Citizen resistance potential is frustratingly difficult to measure. It is even harder to predict its form and function when placed under the stress of invasion. Citizen resistance movements, at least the hastily organized ones supporting a status quo ante proposition, have characteristics like a school of fish. They are an unknowable number, adopt an indeterminate-but-common movement direction, come stippled with sensors, shapeshift according to pressure applied, and can absorb attacks from larger predators. Anything so fashioned can and will gain an adversary’s attention.
I spent much of my time as a U.S. Army special operations officer either fighting resistances or supporting them. For the past five years (out of uniform), I have been involved in the academic and practical side of evaluating, modeling, and crafting resistances, to include working with East Europe and Black Sea partners. Here is the sticky problem at hand: How does an outmatched state employ resilience mechanisms and resistance movements to contest and repel invading powers?
Ukrainian citizen resistance against an invading foreign army is credible but not predictable. It is prepared but not systematized. It is rehearsed but not synchronized. Peering into the fuzzy interplay between a population and a possible war, the bits that we can see are telling. Ukrainians have enough resistance infrastructure that is visible and enough that is hidden to be make this threat convincing and, beneficially, not entirely knowable. We cannot know the outcome, but the Ukrainian citizen resistance scheme, as is, will shape Russian strategic and tactical assessments. It follows then, in some manner that is precisely indeterminate, that the Ukrainian resistance threat will alter Russian calculations.
There are three main reasons why I think Ukraine’s threat of state-sponsored partisan warfare presents a considerable threat to an invading force.
Public Messaging That Triggers Public Mobilization
“Eight years have passed and there are very many people with military experience who are prepared with weapons in their hands to fight,” stated Ukrainian Gen. Oleksandr Pavlyuk, Commanding General of the Ukrainian Joint Operations Forces contesting separatists on the eastern front. “We’ll start a partisan war,” Pavlyuk warned in a Radio Liberty interview on December 2, 2021.
Strong public messaging does not a deterrent make. But public messaging does not have to exactly match capability to be effective. By design, the Ukraine government’s official statements send one clear message to internal Ukrainian audiences and send another message to external audiences, namely, Russia.
To Ukrainian ears, this is a battle cry to prepare and mobilize in order to resist a foreign invader. Match this emotional appeal to the existing structural component of Ukrainian resistance and you have accomplished, at minimum, a collective psychological mobilization. On the higher end, Ukraine has signaled to its population that the time is now to choose the manner in which one can appropriately contribute to national resistance. Ukraine has mapped out paths for its citizens to aid the resistance, from the front lines to the soup lines. Unlike the surprise and shock when Russia invaded in February 2014, Ukrainians are able to process and plan ahead of time with structured avenues of resistance options.
Mobilizing and directing citizen resistance energy requires organization and administration. Ukraine is working to develop this “messy middle” with regional Territorial Defense Forces that provide both population protection and active defense. These Territorial Defense Forces include a mix of civic actors, patriotic volunteers, service sector managers (power, water, transportation), and armed units. If a Russian invasion occurs, expect gaps between the top-down government defense plans and the decentralized bottom-up citizen actions. Even the most well-prepared and rehearsed total defense plans, such as witnessed in Sweden, struggle to get a tight wrap on connecting localized, civic agencies with national-level responders.
Should invasion prove to be something more subtle than trespassing tanks, these Territorial Defense Forces are key sensors that can detect micro-changes in the environment. Russia’s employment of deception, maskirovka (“disguise”), relies on creating chaos and confusion to penetrate and exploit. Russia employed maskirovka masterfully in 2014 in Crimea, check-mating Ukrainian armed forces inside their bases and at a low state of readiness. Ukraine’s revised Territorial Defense Force structure and capabilities are still under development, but they are designed to act as a sensor network to avoid strategic surprise. Territorial Defense Forces, as the name suggests, are not designed to be expeditionary nor highly lethal. They are intended to leverage that classic insurgent advantage: intimate knowledge of the local area.
Ukrainian messaging to its population, in this pre-crisis moment, is clear and repetitive. It is enough to trigger these citizen resistance layers to activate their plans, networks, and contingencies, both official and unofficial.
To Russian military generals, this messaging signals that a decisive defeat to Ukrainian armed formations will be followed by a second task: detect, suppress, and defeat civilian resistance actors and actions. This is costly. The wild-eyed, AK-wielding-citizen is a specter that must trouble Kremlin planners. Ukraine is signaling that, if invaded, it will open new and ambiguous fronts. In the Russian planner’s room, this introduces enough friction to alter calculations and require contingencies.
Managing the Messy Margins of Militias
In late February 2014, Russian launched a surprise attack on Crimea. Ukraine was psychologically shocked and militarily unprepared to contest. With Crimea occupied and facing Russian-separatist unrest in eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian government pushed the proverbial emergency button. On March 13, 2014, the Ukrainian parliament authorized the formation and deployment of volunteer armed groups – militias – to defend the nation.
This legislative act was no masterful top-down plan. It was a gamble taken by a nation undergoing both a political crisis and a ground invasion. The law carved out a basic framework – a risky and unpredictable one – that authorized citizens to assemble, organize, arm, and contest invading Russian forces and internal, pro-Russian militias.
Mobilizing the Ukrainian citizenry to take up arms or otherwise resist against a willful and skillful invading Russian army was an article of faith more than a military plan. Yet here, seven years later, it is evident that the gambit paid off. It did not result in a clean military victory, but it showed the immense value proposition of allowing and enabling willing citizens to engage in combat, often on undefinable fronts.
The waging of militia warfare, no matter how righteous the cause, invites messy margins. Do not expect full compliance of Amnesty International standards for human rights, nor expect a tidy register accounting for every bullet and band-aid. Militias attract many brave patriots who serve nobly but they also attract extremists, sociopaths, loners, and thrill seekers. In 2014-15, a number of home-grown Ukrainian militias rallied around right-wing extremism as their guiding philosophy. These units generate that classic Faustian bargain: they productively fight the enemy but they weaken the legitimacy of the resistance and the sponsoring state.
The Azov Battalion was one such fringe militia. Azov was formed in the crisis days of March, 2014 under far-right nationalist, Andriy Biletskiy. Azov, with its neo-Nazi costuming and extremist orientation, became a public relations headache for Ukraine. Units like Azov also provided Russia with an easy avenue to frame ethnic Russians in Ukraine as victims of violent, fascist groups. Of note, the Azov Battalion did conduct high-risk, dangerous urban warfare, notably capturing the city of Mariupol from Russian separatists in June 2014. This battle was not the skirmish warfare typical of militias; this was high-intensity combat with significant tactical consequences. Aside from their obvious liabilities, Azov and other controversial fighting groups did hard and productive combat on behalf of the state.
Over time and with a feel for each unique situation, Ukraine regularized, transitioned, or demobilized irregular units that fought in the breach. Aidar, Right Sector, Azov, Donbas, and Dnepr 1 are but a few of these volunteer units. Many remain, reflagged or wholly reorganized, under the regulating hand of the defense or interior ministries. The evolution of the Azov Battalion is instructive. The unit, formed in May 2014, was nominally de-politicized and incorporated into the National Guard of Ukraine in November, 2014. In the court of public opinion, such units teetered between heroes and pariahs. Ukraine honored each side of this narrative and provided off-ramps that respectfully recognized service while disincentivizing counter-productive ideologies. In my experience, in the highly imperfect discipline of demobilizing irregulars, Ukraine managed this thoughtfully and capably.
In the aggregate, Ukrainian militias produced viable combat power on behalf of the state when the official state security services could not or did not answer the call. Involving militias is to invite a quasi-directional threat. Even militias attacking an invading enemy can threaten their own government, if not physically, then indirectly, in terms of legitimacy. Ukraine managed that proposition well enough from 2014 to 2017. To its credit, Ukraine didn’t stop there; the government of Ukraine moved forward with the difficult work of migrating these lessons into laws and policies that better govern the use of citizens resistors and home-grown irregular units.
Resistance Law and Policy
On July 29, 2021, Zelensky signed into law a unique piece of legislation contributing to total national defense. The law took effect January 1, 2022. Roughly translated as “On The Fundamentals of National Resistance,” this law (5557) further codified the roles and responsibilities of ministries in harnessing citizen resistance potential and regulating its most obvious forms: territorial forces units, volunteer battalions, irregular contributors, and other citizen-centric tasks.
The Commander of the Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Major General Hryhoriy Halahan, spoke on the implications of Law 5557. “The introduction of such a system is historically justified. After all, the national resistance movement against the Russian-Bolshevik occupation on the territory of Ukraine operated during the 1920s, with the “Kholodny Yar” insurgents being its most famous representatives. Here we can also mention the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. It was the national resistance that managed to stand against Russian aggression in 2014. Now the adoption of the draft law is necessary to resolve, in particular, the development of the resistance movement, which will be subordinated to the SOF. Most importantly, the bill №5557 provides for ensuring full-fledged social and legal protection …”
Gen. Halahan’s statement ties this law to the Ukrainian resistance movements of the past that contested Russian and, later, Soviet occupation. He closes by addressing a more modern concern: citing the protections afforded to resistors who willingly come forth to join resistance movements. By any measure, this is crafty policy that illuminates pathways to lawfully resist a foreign invader.
A concurrent law passed the same day added some 11,000 manned slots to Territorial Defense Forces. These two laws taken together represent both a vertical and a horizontal thickening of Ukraine total defense. The low density, special skill formations like Ukraine special operations forces are vertically building capability to support and enable select resistance formations. The horizontal growth via the territorial defense units is bringing resistance and resilience to scale in and amongst the local civic institutions and influencers.
In revising its resilience and resistance legal framework, Ukraine borrowed some key ideas and framing concepts from some of the leaders of the Total Defense discipline: Switzerland, Sweden, Estonia, Lithuania, Singapore. Ukrainian strategists are also students of the Resistance Operating Concept, an intellectual and practical guide to incorporating resistance and resilience into national defense. NATO’s Comprehensive Defense Handbook is another apropos source. What Ukraine added that these nations lack is the practical, recent experience of managing and guiding violent resistance energy into productive paths. Less acknowledged, but surely part of this plan, are the lessons from a different set of actors: insurgents, irregulars, dark networks, cyber sleuths.
Assessing Deterrence
Will Ukraine’s threat of partisan warfare deter a Russian invasion? Taken in isolation, no one should plan on it. Taken together with international cost-imposition, diplomatic off-ramps, Ukrainian conventional capabilities, and pledged external support, this threat does put a finger on Russia’s decision scale.
A Ukrainian insurgency asymmetrically raging against invading Russian formations presents, at once, a romantic and a grisly picture. I do support such a resistance strategy – deep breath - but I try to not be too evangelical or blindly optimistic. Raising and fighting a citizen-based national resistance is to invite privation, violence, and death into communities. When an enemy cannot distinguish between combatants and bystanders, target lists expand and reprisals ensue. Even when a resistance is winning, it is paying dear costs. Ukraine knows this cost. But so, surely, does Russia.
About the Author(s)
Brian S. Petit is the CEO of The Garfield Syndicate, LLC. He is a retired U.S. Army Colonel, Special Forces. Brian teaches and consults on strategy, planning, special operations, and resistance. He is an adjunct lecturer for the Joint Special Operations University where he focuses on resilience and resistance
5. Fact vs. Fiction: Russian Disinformation on Ukraine
Fact vs. Fiction: Russian Disinformation on Ukraine - United States Department of State
The Department of State, working with the U.S. interagency, is aware of several Russian military and intelligence entities that are engaged in information confrontation targeting Ukraine. These activities include the spread of disinformation and propaganda attempting to paint Ukraine and Ukrainian government officials as the aggressor in the Russia-Ukraine relationship. Such measures are intended to influence Western countries into believing Ukraine’s behavior could provoke a global conflict and convince Russian citizens of the need for Russian military action in Ukraine. Below are examples of Russian lies about the current crisis and its causes – and the truth.
FICTION: Ukraine and Ukrainian government officials are the aggressor in the Russia-Ukraine relationship.
FACT: False statements from the Putin regime blame the victim, Ukraine, for Russia’s aggression. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, occupies Crimea, controls armed forces in the Donbas, and has now amassed more than 100,000 troops on the border with Ukraine while President Putin threatens “retaliatory military-technical” measures if his demands are not met.
FICTION: The West is pushing Ukraine toward a conflict.
FACT: Moscow instigated the current crisis by placing more than 100,000 troops on the border of Ukraine, with no similar military activity on the Ukrainian side of the border. Russian military and intelligence entities are targeting Ukraine with disinformation attempting to paint Ukraine and Ukrainian government officials as the aggressor in the Russia-Ukraine relationship. The Russian government is trying to trick the world into believing Ukraine’s behavior could provoke a global conflict and to convince Russian citizens of the need for Russian military action in Ukraine. Russia blames others for its own aggression, but it is Moscow’s responsibility to end this crisis peacefully through de-escalation and diplomacy. Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2014, occupies Crimea, and continues to fuel conflict in eastern Ukraine. This follows a pattern of Russian behavior of undermining the sovereignty and territorial integrity of countries in the region – invading and occupying parts of Georgia in 2008, and failing to honor its 1999 commitment to withdraw its troops and munitions from Moldova, where they remain without the government’s consent.
FICTION: Russia’s deployment of combat forces is a mere repositioning of troops on its own territory.
FACT: Deploying more than 100,000 Russian troops, including battle-hardened combat forces and offensive weaponry with no plausible innocuous explanation, to the borders of a country that Russia has previously invaded and still occupies in places is no mere troop rotation. It is a clear, renewed Russian threat to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The buildup is paired with active disinformation measures designed to undermine confidence in the Ukrainian government and create a pretext for further Russian incursion.
FICTION: The United States has planned chemical weapons attacks in the Donbas.
FACT: The United States and Russia are parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention. In accordance with its obligations under that international agreement, the United States does not use chemical weapons. However, the Russian government has twice used chemical weapons in recent years to attack and attempt to assassinate opponents, including on foreign soil. Rather than fuel conflict in eastern Ukraine as Russia has done, the United States has provided more than $351 million in humanitarian assistance to those affected by Moscow’s aggression there since 2014. Russia is using statements from high-level officials as well as disinformation and propaganda outlets to intentionally spread outright falsehoods to attempt to create a pretext for military action.
FICTION: Russia is defending ethnic Russians in Ukraine.
FACT: There are no credible reports of any ethnic Russians or Russian speakers being under threat from the Ukrainian government. There are, however, credible reports that in Russia-occupied Crimea and in the Donbas, Ukrainians face suppression of their culture and national identity and live in an environment of severe repression and fear. In Crimea, Russia forces Ukrainians to assume Russian citizenship or lose their property, their access to healthcare, and their jobs. Those who peacefully express opposition to Russia’s occupation or control face imprisonment on baseless grounds, police raids on their homes, officially sanctioned discrimination, and in some cases torture and other abuses. Religious and ethnic minorities are investigated and prosecuted as “extremists” and “terrorists.”
FICTION: NATO has plotted against Russia since the end of the Cold War, encircled Russia with forces, broken supposed promises not to enlarge, and threatened Russia’s security with the prospect of Ukrainian membership in the Alliance .
FACT: NATO is a defensive alliance, whose purpose is to protect its member states. All Allies reaffirmed at the June 2021 Brussels Summit that “the Alliance does not seek confrontation and poses no threat to Russia.” In fact, in 2002 President Putin himself stated “Every country has the right to choose the way it ensures its security. This holds for the Baltic states as well. Secondly, and more specifically, NATO is primarily a defensive bloc.”
NATO does not encircle Russia – Russia’s land border is just over 20,000 kilometers long. Of that, less than one-sixteenth (1,215 kilometers), is shared with NATO members. Russia has land borders with 14 countries. Only five of them are NATO members.
In response to Russia’s use of military force against its neighbors, NATO deployed four multinational battlegroups to the Baltic States and Poland in 2016. These forces are rotational, defensive, proportionate, and requested by the host nations. Before Russia’s illegal seizure of Crimea, there were no plans to deploy Allied troops to the eastern part of the Alliance.
NATO never promised not to admit new members. NATO enlargement is not directed against Russia. Every sovereign nation has the right to choose its own security arrangements and to enter into defensive regional alliances for purposes of self-defense. This is a fundamental principle of European security, reflected in the UN Charter, and is one that Russia has affirmed in myriad international and regional instruments such as the Helsinki Final Act.
Map depicting NATO borders with Russia. Boundary representation is not necessarily authoritative.
FICTION: The West shuns diplomacy and goes straight to measures like sanctions.
FACT: The United States and our partners are engaging in intensive diplomacy to resolve this crisis, including directly with the Russian government. President Biden has spoken with President Putin twice and U.S. officials have held dozens of high-level meetings and phone calls with Russian and European counterparts as part of a comprehensive diplomatic effort to resolve this situation peacefully. What remains to be seen is whether Russia is willing to meet its responsibilities as a member of the global community and take steps to de-escalate the crisis it has generated. But we have also made clear, publicly and privately, that we and our partners will impose swift and severe economic costs on the Russian economy should President Putin choose to further invade Ukraine.
6. Russia’s Top Five Persistent Disinformation Narratives
And just to add to and reinforce the good work of State and the Global Engagement Center:
Russian New Generation Warfare and the Future of War
As a result, it follows that the main guidelines for developing Russian military capabilities by 2020 are:
i. From direct destruction to direct influence;
ii. from direct annihilation of the opponent to its inner decay;
iii. from a war with weapons and technology to a culture war;
iv. from a war with conventional forces to specially prepared forces and commercial irregular groupings;
v. from the traditional (3D) battleground to information/psychological warfare and war of perceptions;
vi. from direct clash to contactless war;
vii. from a superficial and compartmented war to a total war, including the enemy’s internal side and base;
viii. from war in the physical environment to a war in the human consciousness and in cyberspace;
ix. from symmetric to asymmetric warfare by a combination of political, economic, information, technological, and ecological campaigns;
x. From war in a defined period of time to a state of permanent war as the natural condition in national life.
•Thus, the Russian view of modern warfare is based on the idea that the main battlespace is the mind and, as a result, new-generation wars are to be dominated by information and psychological warfare, in order to achieve superiority in troops and weapons control, morally and psychologically depressing the enemy’s armed forces personnel and civil population. The main objective is to reduce the necessity for deploying hard military power to the minimum necessary, making the opponent’s military and civil population support the attacker to the detriment of their own government and country. It is interesting to note the notion of permanent war, since it denotes a permanent enemy. In the current geopolitical structure, the clear enemy is Western civilization, its values, culture, political system, and ideology.
Russia’s Top Five Persistent Disinformation Narratives - United States Department of State
Over many years, Russia has fabricated a set of false narratives that its disinformation and propaganda ecosystem persistently injects into the global information environment. These narratives act like a template, which enables the Kremlin to adjust these narratives, with one consistency – a complete disregard for truth as it shapes the information environment to support its policy goals.
Russian military and intelligence entities are engaging in this activity across Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem, to include malign social media operations, the use of overt and covert online proxy media outlets, the injection of disinformation into television and radio programming, the hosting of conferences designed to influence attendees into falsely believing that Ukraine, not Russia, is at fault for heightened tensions in the region, and the leveraging of cyber operations to deface media outlets and conduct hack and release operations.
Here are five major reoccurring Russian disinformation themes that the Kremlin is currently readjusting in an attempt to fill the information environment with false narratives about its actions in Ukraine.
Theme #1: “Russia is an Innocent Victim”
Russian government officials falsely portray Russia as a perpetual victim and its aggressive actions as a forced response to the alleged actions of the United States and our democratic allies and partners. To further these claims, Russia turns to one of its favorite labels to attempt to hit back: “Russophobia.” After invading Ukraine in 2014, the Russian government and state-controlled disinformation outlets began to accuse anyone who questioned Russia’s actions of being xenophobic Russophobes.
For example, Russia claims that the international community’s negative reaction to its invasion of an independent country was simply because people feared and hated Russia. According to the chart below, Russophobia was not an issue of major concern to the Russian Foreign Ministry or state-funded disinformation outlets until the Russian military invaded Ukraine. Claims of “Russophobia” persist across a range of topics and are employed whenever the Russian government wants to play the victim, when it is actually the aggressor.
Graph showing mentions of the words “Russophobia” and “Russophobe” by the Russian Foreign Ministry, Sputnik and RT, 2001–17. (Source: DFRLab)
Theme #2: Historical Revisionism
When history does not align with the Kremlin’s political objectives, Russian government officials and their proxy voices deny historical events or distort historical narratives to try to cast Russia in a more favorable light and serve its domestic and geopolitical agenda. For example, the 1939 non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which helped precipitate World War II, is politically inconvenient for the Putin regime. In 2020, in an attempt to minimize and rationalize Stalin’s decision to align himself with Hitler, Putin published a twisted version of the start of World War II, downplaying the Soviet role and shifting blame for the war to other countries. Russia often takes this a step further by labeling those who disagree with its twisted version of history as Nazis or Nazi sympathizers.
The Kremlin also applies this formula to the history of Ukraine’s statehood, NATO’s conduct during the collapse of the Soviet Union, its GULAG prison system, the famine in Ukraine known as Holodomor, and many other events where the Kremlin’s historical actions do not serve its current political goals.
Theme #3: “The Collapse of Western Civilization is Imminent”
Russia pushes the false claim that Western civilization is collapsing and has strayed from “traditional values” because it works to ensure the safety and equality of LGBTQI+ people and promotes concepts such as female equality and multiculturalism. The demise of Western civilization is one of Russia’s oldest disinformation tropes, with claims of “the decaying west” documented since the 19th century.
This “values”-based disinformation narrative evokes ill-defined concepts including “tradition,” “family values,” and “spirituality.” Russia argues it is the bastion of so-called “traditional values” and gender roles and serves as a moral counterweight to the “decadence” of the United States and Western countries. For example, President Putin has claimed the West has practically cancelled the concepts of “mother” and “father,” and instead has replaced them with “parent 1 and 2,” while Foreign Minister Lavrov wrote that Western students “learn at school that Jesus Christ was bisexual.”
Theme #4: “Popular Movements are U.S.-sponsored ‘Color Revolutions’”
The Kremlin has difficulty accepting that all individuals should have the human right to freedom of expression, and that the government should be accountable to its people. Russia has accused the United States of either instigating uprisings or plotting “color revolutions” in Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, Ukraine, and throughout the Middle East and Africa. If a popular movement is pro-democracy and pro-reform and not deemed to be in Russia’s geopolitical interests, the Kremlin will often attack its legitimacy and claim that the United States is secretly behind it. These baseless accusations often target local and international civil society organizations, as well as independent media that expose human rights abuses and corruption. The Kremlin seeks to deny that people in neighboring countries could have agency, dignity, and independent aspirations to advocate for themselves, just as it denies these qualities to the people of Russia.
Theme #5: Reality is Whatever the Kremlin Wants It to Be
The Kremlin frequently tries to create multiple false realities and insert confusions into the information environment when the truth is not in its interests. Often intentionally confusing, Russian officials make arguments designed to try to shift the blame away from the Russian government’s role, even if some of the narratives contradict one another. However, in time, presenting multiple conflicting narratives can itself become a technique intended to generate confusion and discourage response. Other elements in Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem, such as the abuse of state-funded disinformation outlets and weaponized social media, help push multiple false narratives.
It was clear to the world, for example, that Russia attempted to assassinate former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with the nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury, England, on March 4, 2018. In the four weeks following that incident, Russian state-funded and directed outlets RT and Sputnik disseminated 138 separate and contradictory narratives via 735 articles, according to the Policy Institute at King’s College London.
Russia has used the same technique of flooding the information space with many false claims following other events, such as the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, and Russia’s 2008 invasion and ongoing occupation of Georgia, to distract conversations from their role in the events. Again, the purpose is to confuse and distract others and manipulate the truth to suit Kremlin interests.
7. Kremlin-Funded Media: R T and Sputnik's Role in Russia's Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem
Some good work from the GEC. The 33 page report can be downloaded here.
I recommend this web page at Satte to follow these kinds of reports and information on disinformation. We all do have a shared responsibility to not be influenced by adversary disinformation.
Disarming Disinformation: Our Shared Responsibility
GEC Special Report
U.S. DEPARTMENT of STATE Global Engagement Center
Kremlin-Funded Media: R T and Sputnik's Role in Russia's Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem
Russian state-funded and state-directed media outlets RT and Sputnik are critical elements in Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem. In an August 2020 report, the U.S. Department of State’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) outlined the five pillars of Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem. RT and Sputnik are key state-funded and directed global messengers within this ecosystem, using the guise of conventional international media outlets to provide disinformation and propaganda support for the Kremlin’s foreign policy objectives. RT and Sputnik also interact with other pillars of the ecosystem by amplifying content from Kremlin and Kremlin-aligned proxy sites (some of which are connected to Russian intelligence), weaponizing social media, and promoting cyber-enabled disinformation.
RT and Sputnik serve primarily as conduits for the Kremlin’s talking points while equating themselves with publicly funded, transparent and journalistically independent media organizations such as the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Voice of America (VOA). RT and Sputnik’s opaque organizational structure and lack of financial transparency obscure the true extent of the Russian government’s control over the outlets’ editorial processes and staffing decisions. Moreover, Russian government officials and the outlets’ leadership have openly discussed RT and Sputnik’s role as tools of state propaganda.
RT and Sputnik’s role as disinformation and propaganda outlets is most obvious when they report on issues of political importance to the Kremlin. A prevalent example is Russia’s use of RT and Sputnik to attempt to change public opinions about Ukraine in Europe, the United States, and as far away as Latin America. When factual reporting on major foreign policy priorities is not favorable, Russia uses state-funded international media outlets to inject pro-Kremlin disinformation and propaganda into the information environment.
RT and Sputnik’s audience reach is difficult to measure in part because RT has reportedly inflated its broadcast statistics in the past, but also because both outlets operate as part of a network composed of numerous brands, websites, and social media accounts publishing content in many languages. Despite the inflation, researchers have found that RT Arabic’s online reach, measured in terms of website hits, social media followers and likes, and social media video view counts, is comparable to those of prominent pan-Arab media outlets and BBC News Arabic. According to the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, RT has “garnered a significant audience,” in Latin America, specifically highlighting the growth of RT’s Facebook page during the COVID-19 pandemic.1 Even if their audience statistics are incorrect, this does not diminish their demonstrable ability to play a key role in the laundering of narratives across Russia’s disinformation ecosystem. Additionally, academic research shows RT’s content has the ability to change the opinions of its viewers. One recent study reported that American consumers exposed to RT content are more likely than those not exposed to prefer that the United States withdraw from its global leadership position, even when the consumers are aware that RT is funded by the Russian government.
8. Read the never-issued Trump order that would have seized voting machines
It is hard to believe such an order could be drafted in the White House and that there are people who think it should have been executed. This could be a useful litmus test to determine who truly supports and defends the Constitution. In my opinion, you cannot support the Constitution and support this order.
Read the never-issued Trump order that would have seized voting machines
The Jan. 6 select panel has obtained the draft order and a document titled "Remarks on National Healing." Both are reported here in detail for the first time.
Former President Donald Trump attends a border security briefing June 30, 2021 in Weslaco, Texas. | Brandon Bell/Getty Images
01/21/2022 12:21 PM EST
Among the records that Donald Trump’s lawyers tried to shield from Jan. 6 investigators are a draft executive order that would have directed the defense secretary to seize voting machines and a document titled “Remarks on National Healing.”
POLITICO has reviewed both documents. The text of the draft executive order is published here for the first time.
The executive order — which also would have appointed a special counsel to probe the 2020 election — was never issued, and the remarks were never delivered. Together, the two documents point to the wildly divergent perspectives of White House advisers and allies during Trump’s frenetic final weeks in office.
It’s not clear who wrote either document. But the draft executive order is dated Dec. 16, 2020, and is consistent with proposals that lawyer Sidney Powell made to the then-president. On Dec. 18, 2020, Powell, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Trump administration lawyer Emily Newman, and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne met with Trump in the Oval Office.
In that meeting, Powell urged Trump to seize voting machines and to appointher as a special counsel to investigate the election, according to Axios.
A spokesperson for the House’s Jan. 6 select committee confirmed earlier Friday that the panel had received the last of the documents that Trump’s lawyers tried to keep under wraps and later declined to comment for this story on these two documents.
The draft executive order
The draft executive order shows that the weeks between Election Day and the Capitol attack could have been even more chaotic than they were. It credulously cites conspiracy theories about election fraud in Georgia and Michigan, as well as debunked notions about Dominion voting machines.
The order empowers the defense secretary to “seize, collect, retain and analyze all machines, equipment, electronically stored information, and material records required for retention under” a U.S. law that relates to preservation of election records. It also cites a lawsuit filed in 2017 against Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
Additionally, the draft order would have given the defense secretary 60 days to write an assessment of the 2020 election. That suggests it could have been a gambit to keep Trump in power until at least mid-February of 2021.
9. U.S., Russia Agree to Keep Negotiating to Defuse Ukraine Crisis
U.S., Russia Agree to Keep Negotiating to Defuse Ukraine Crisis
Washington to provide response to the Kremlin’s demands to cease what Moscow sees as threats to its security from NATO, Western powers
By William Mauldin in Geneva, Ann M. Simmons in Moscow and Vivian Salama in Kyiv, Ukraine
Updated Jan. 21, 2022 5:06 pm ET
Washington and Moscow on Friday agreed to continue talks triggered by Russia’s military buildup near the Ukrainian border, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying the U.S. would formally address the Kremlin’s concerns that Western powers threaten Russian security and its demands regarding the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Mr. Blinken, after meeting his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, said that the U.S. would also submit its own security proposals and that the two sides planned to meet again. In Washington later, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki indicated the U.S. wouldn’t concede to the Kremlin’s key demand that Ukraine be forbidden to join the NATO alliance.
“We’ve been very clear about what we are not negotiating on, which is the sovereignty of Ukraine, which is this question that is continuously raised about Ukraine’s right to pursue joining NATO,” she said. “That’s up to NATO countries to make that decision.”
Mr. Blinken said after meeting Mr. Lavrov, “There is no trade space there—none.”
President Biden will meet with his national-security team this weekend at Camp David, Ms. Psaki said, adding that he was open to another summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russia has massed about 100,000 troops near Ukraine in response to what it says are threats to its security from NATO and Western powers. The move has created one of the worst crises between Russia and the West since the Cold War, with many fearing Russia will invade its smaller neighbor.
Moscow has said Russia feels threatened by the possibility that NATO could expand toward its borders and adds that Ukraine shouldn’t be free to join an alliance that the Kremlin sees as a danger to its interests.
“I would suggest that the status of Ukraine is now more important for Russia than for Ukraine itself,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told The Wall Street Journal earlier this month.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
What message should Secretary of State Antony Blinken convey to his Russian counterpart? Join the conversation below.
Russian officials have denied any intention to invade Ukraine, but the Russian Foreign Ministry warned Friday after the talks that “further ignoring the legitimate concerns of the Russian Federation…will have the most serious consequences.”
Moscow’s main goal has been to prevent NATO’s eastward expansion, in particular into Ukraine, which in recent years has made clear its desire to join the alliance. Russia has also demanded that NATO curb military exercises in Ukraine and other former Soviet states and restrict military deployments on the territory of the alliance’s Eastern European members. The Kremlin in December requested a written response to its demands, a move the U.S. had resisted until Friday.
While U.S. and Western officials have rejected those demands, Mr. Blinken agreed on Friday to respond in detail to Russia’s concerns and propose reciprocal moves to improve security in the region.
“We will share with Russia a response to the concerns that it’s raised, our own concerns, and put some ideas on the table for consideration, and then we plan to meet again after Russia’s had the opportunity to look at that paper,” Mr. Blinken told reporters after meeting with Mr. Lavrov. “And we’ll see where we go from there.”
Mr. Lavrov said Friday the reaction from the U.S. to Moscow’s demands amounted to more of the same.
Satellite Images Show Russia’s Military Buildup Near Ukraine
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Satellite Images Show Russia’s Military Buildup Near Ukraine
The U.S. said about 100,000 Russian troops have been deployed near the Ukrainian border. Satellite images show the growing presence of military equipment at several locations. Photo: Maxar Technologies
“Today we heard some repetition of arguments about the freedom to choose alliances,” he said. “But…the freedom to choose alliances is determined by the need not to take any steps that will strengthen the security of one state to the detriment of the security of other states.”
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The main points of the U.S.’s written response are unlikely to differ from what Washington officials have said publicly. NATO countries have rejected calls to freeze the alliance’s membership, though President Biden said Wednesday that it was “not very likely” that Ukraine would be admitted to NATO in the near term. U.S. officials have already laid out proposals for reciprocal reductions in missile deployments and military exercises in Europe.
Following the talks, a senior U.S. official said it was hard to see the diplomatic track succeeding if Moscow didn’t de-escalate in the region, which the U.S. has previously defined as a redeployment of troops away from the border.
After multiple rounds of talks, Russian and American interests haven’t overlapped enough to make progress. Washington expects to know more after Mr. Putin gets the written response and Moscow responds in turn, senior administration officials said.
A Russian armored vehicle drives off a railway platform after arrival in Belarus.
PHOTO: /ASSOCIATED PRESS
“We didn’t expect any major breakthroughs to happen today, but I believe we are now on a clear path in terms of understanding each other concerning each other’s positions,” Mr. Blinken said.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said Kyiv hoped and expected the U.S. wouldn’t give in to Moscow’s demands on NATO.
“All the Americans promised is a response in writing, that’s it,” Mr. Reznikov told the Journal. “I think [Russia] will get an answer of, ‘Sorry, we will respect all integrity, all sovereignty, all rights to be a member of international ally organizations, according to international law.’ ”
Mr. Reznikov cited the refrain from Mr. Blinken and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg that Kyiv wouldn’t be sidelined in an ultimate resolution: “Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.”
“We hope that we see that on paper also,” Mr. Reznikov said.
Meanwhile, both sides have continued to move weapons into position for a possible fight. While U.S., European and Russian diplomats held negotiations in Europe last week, Russia began moving tanks, infantry-fighting vehicles, rocket launchers and other equipment westward from their bases in its Far East, according to U.S. officials and social-media reports.
Russia on Thursday announced it would hold large-scale naval exercises involving 140 warships and 60 aircraft in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. On Friday, the Russian navy began a trilateral exercise with Iranian and Chinese ships in the Indian Ocean.
In addition to the troops near Ukraine’s border, Russia is moving troops and S-400 surface-to-air missile systems into Belarus, which borders Ukraine and NATO members Poland, Latvia and Lithuania. Moscow says the troops will take part in joint snap military exercises next month.
The aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman and a fleet of accompanying ships will take part in a NATO-led exercise in the Mediterranean Sea starting Monday, the Pentagon said. Spokesman John Kirby said the 11-day long NATO exercises were unrelated to tensions along the Ukrainian border.
Germany, however, has declined to permit the export of lethal weapons directly to Ukraine, or even indirectly through third countries like Estonia, which has acquired German-origin artillery. It is an illustration of the broader strains within the Western alliance that have emerged in recent weeks over how to assist Ukraine—and what to include among the severe economic penalties U.S. and European officials have said would be imposed if Russia attacks.
—Michael R. Gordon, Alex Leary and Nancy A. Youssef in Washington contributed to this article.
Corrections & Amplifications
Before Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s meeting with his Russian counterpart on Friday, he had said he wouldn’t provide any written statements on Russia’s requests. Following Friday’s meeting, Mr. Blinken said he would provide a written response. Before Mr. Blinken had changed course, an earlier version of this article incorrectly said he would provide a written response. (Corrected on Jan. 21)
Appeared in the January 22, 2022, print edition as 'U.S., Russia Will Keep Talking To Try to Defuse Ukraine Crisis.'
10. Opinion | As invasion looms, Ukrainians are calmly defiant
Excerpts:
It falls to Biden to find a way to contain this bullying Russian leader without triggering an all-out war in the heart of Europe. The best advice I heard, echoed by the most thoughtful analysts in Kyiv and Warsaw, is that the United States and its allies must check the balance of intimidation — by taking action themselves rather than responding to Moscow. Impose severe sanctions on Russia now, rather than after it has rolled into Ukraine. If Putin persists in covert actions in the West, match him.
“You cannot permit the Russians to believe you are afraid of an escalation. They will use it time and again,” argued one of Poland’s wisest Russia analysts during a conversation on Wednesday in Warsaw. “Restraint does not stabilize Putin. It encourages him.” To paraphrase the analogy coined by the Brookings Institution’s Robert Kagan, Putin thinks that accommodationist Americans are now, similar to Europeans, from Venus — while warlike Russians are very much from Mars.
It’s a dizzying and frightening prospect, to imagine a war triggered by a doomed attempt to rewrite history. The most reassuring note is that Ukrainians, in the eye of the storm, don’t appear all that worried. I posed to Ukraine’s defense official the question asked by Gen. David H. Petraeus at the beginning of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, “Tell me how this ends.” He answered without hesitation: with Ukrainian sovereignty over all of its territory.
Opinion | As invasion looms, Ukrainians are calmly defiant
KYIV, Ukraine — With 100,000 Russian guns pointed at their heads, Ukrainians appear to take a stoical pride in not seeming rattled. They appear ready for what could be a savage war. Their main worry is that the United States and its allies will get so nervous they will yield to Russian pressure.
Driving through Maidan Square in a light snow on Friday afternoon, with traffic snarled and the lights of the city blazing, you could almost think this was normal life, on the eve of what could be a Russian invasion. Some people with money are buying dollars and property abroad. But the restaurants are full, and Ukrainians appeared to get the jitters only when President Volodymyr Zelensky told them this past week not to panic.
Over several days of intense conversation here, I heard the same message of resistance. Russian President Vladimir Putin might imagine that Ukrainians share his almost mystical conviction that Russia and Ukraine are the same country, but if so, he’s wildly mistaken. Putin’s eight years of war against Ukraine, beginning with his seizure of Crimea in 2014, have made him nothing but enemies here. Polls say that even a large majority of Russian-speaking Ukrainians oppose him.
“Don’t trust Putin. Don’t fear Putin,” said former president Petro Poroshenko on Friday during a conversation with a group organized by the German Marshall Fund. (I’m a trustee of GMF but came here as a journalist, along with Sylvie Kaufman of the French newspaper Le Monde and a half-dozen others, including two German parliamentarians and analysts from NATO and the European Union.)
It was partly bravado, but a defiant Oleksiy Danilov, the head of the national security and defense council, told our group: “Since 2014, we have been in a state of war with Russia. There are no people other than us who will defend us. Even if we don’t receive weapons [from the West], we will strangle them with our bare hands.”
Ukraine is where the dissolution of the Soviet Union was ratified in 1991, when 92 percent of Ukrainians voted for independence in a referendum. Putin has said that he regards the Soviet collapse as a tragedy that he is determined to avenge — and that resolve has led him inexorably toward this confrontation. He sent troops to the border in April, paused for a round of diplomacy with President Biden in Geneva in June, and then stormed back to the Ukraine border in October with what U.S. intelligence concluded was a force ready to invade all the way to Kyiv.
As the Biden administration mobilized NATO resistance, Putin has doubled down repeatedly, saying that he wants to dismantle the post-Cold War architecture of Europe and insisting on promises that Ukraine will never join NATO. On Friday, against a firm NATO rejection of that ultimatum, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov went even further, demanding that the alliance withdraw its troops from Russian neighbors Bulgaria and Romania.
Putin has left little room for maneuver or compromise. He evidently feels that now is the time to strike — when the United States is politically divided, with what he apparently sees as a weak and compromising president. Biden did not help himself when he talked Wednesday about his expectation of a small Russian invasion — a suggestion of accommodation that he had to reverse the next day. It’s also unfortunate that NATO’s unity has appeared fragile this week with France and Germany both appearing uncertain about following the United States’ lead.
Putin has prepared well for this strategic moment. Russia’s financial reserves are substantial enough to ease the impact of sanctions, at least initially, and energy prices are high. And Russia’s military alliance with China hasn’t been this strong in decades. Putin’s popularity has been sagging, but given Russia’s prospects for long-term decline, it probably won’t get any better. For the Russian leader, this is a window of opportunity that won’t last.
“What I am concerned about is that Russia is putting itself in such a position that it can’t step back,” argued Dmytro Razumkov, a young member of the Ukrainian parliament who led Zelensky’s party there and has now formed one of his own.
A similar view that there might be no escape came from Ihor Zhovkva, the senior foreign policy adviser in Zelensky’s administration. “Ukraine is not in a panic,” he told us. “We understand we will have to fight. This is our destiny.”
Over and over, here and in Warsaw, I heard an argument that the United States must stop being reactive in dealing with Putin. The Russian leader loves to provoke anxiety in the West, and he has shown with Ukraine that he’s ready to turn the dial way up. He’s apparently convinced that the United States and Europe in the end will prefer accommodation to an ever-escalating crisis.
“Putin wages war without any rules,” says a senior Ukrainian defense ministry official, sitting across from a painting depicting a wild cavalry charge by warriors from several centuries past. The Russians have a name for Putin’s form of intimidation. They call it “bespredel,” a Russian mafia term that means, “without limits.”
It falls to Biden to find a way to contain this bullying Russian leader without triggering an all-out war in the heart of Europe. The best advice I heard, echoed by the most thoughtful analysts in Kyiv and Warsaw, is that the United States and its allies must check the balance of intimidation — by taking action themselves rather than responding to Moscow. Impose severe sanctions on Russia now, rather than after it has rolled into Ukraine. If Putin persists in covert actions in the West, match him.
“You cannot permit the Russians to believe you are afraid of an escalation. They will use it time and again,” argued one of Poland’s wisest Russia analysts during a conversation on Wednesday in Warsaw. “Restraint does not stabilize Putin. It encourages him.” To paraphrase the analogy coined by the Brookings Institution’s Robert Kagan, Putin thinks that accommodationist Americans are now, similar to Europeans, from Venus — while warlike Russians are very much from Mars.
It’s a dizzying and frightening prospect, to imagine a war triggered by a doomed attempt to rewrite history. The most reassuring note is that Ukrainians, in the eye of the storm, don’t appear all that worried. I posed to Ukraine’s defense official the question asked by Gen. David H. Petraeus at the beginning of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, “Tell me how this ends.” He answered without hesitation: with Ukrainian sovereignty over all of its territory.
11. Were Drone Strikes Effective? Evaluating the Drone Campaign in Pakistan Through Captured al-Qaeda Documents
Were Drone Strikes Effective? Evaluating the Drone Campaign in Pakistan Through Captured al-Qaeda Documents - Texas National Security Review
tnsr.org · by Bryce Loidolt · January 11, 2022
Were Drone Strikes Effective? Evaluating the Drone Campaign in Pakistan Through Captured al-Qaeda Documents
At a time when the United States seems likely to rely heavily on targeted killing as an instrument of counter-terrorism, scholars, policymakers, and other analysts remain divided over its utility. These disagreements have been especially pronounced in scholarship and commentary regarding the U.S. drone campaign in Pakistan. This systematic review of declassified Arabic-language correspondence among senior al-Qaeda leaders and operatives suggests that drone strikes eroded the quality of al-Qaeda’s personnel base, forced the group to reduce communications and other activities, and compelled it to flee its safe haven in Pakistan’s tribal regions. Yet, the results were sometimes incomplete and took years of sustained pressure to achieve. U.S. policymakers should acknowledge these limitations and plan to supplement future lethal targeting campaigns with other complementary counter-terrorism instruments.
These disagreements over the effectiveness of the drone campaign in Pakistan matter not just because they revolve around the use of force against one of the more consequential terrorist groups of the 21st century, but also because of the campaign’s broader relevance to the future of U.S. counter-terrorism efforts. If lethal targeting can yield immediate and apparent success, it would suggest that the United States might be able to inflict damage on or contain transnational terrorist groups while keeping opportunity costs tolerable. A null or counterproductive effect would suggest just the opposite and could call into question the reliability of lethal targeting writ large.
Through a comprehensive evaluation of declassified internal correspondence between al-Qaeda leaders recovered in bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound, this study aims to provide a direct assessment of the effects of U.S. drone strikes on al-Qaeda’s organizational capabilities and performance. That is, the study asks: Did the drone campaign render al-Qaeda unable to replace personnel killed in the campaign with equally skilled operatives, undermine its organizational efficiency or internal control, and reduce its reliance on its safe haven in Pakistan’s tribal regions, as many policymakers claim and theories of its effectiveness imply? If so, when in the campaign did these effects become apparent?
This study uncovers novel evidence that U.S. drone strikes did have an appreciable effect on many of these dimensions of al-Qaeda’s organizational capabilities. This challenges a bevy of theories and claims regarding the ineffectiveness of high-value targeting and precision airpower in general and the U.S. drone campaign in Pakistan in particular. It also finds, however, that these results were less pronounced than some of the more sanguine assessments might expect and that they emerged quite late in the drone campaign. Targeted killing should thus not be thought of as a necessarily expedient or flawless option for pacifying or disrupting the ability of terrorist groups to plot and execute attacks.
The remainder of this paper proceeds as follows. It begins by reviewing the literature and commentary on precision airpower, targeted killing, and the U.S. drone campaign, deriving three sets of divergent claims about the effectiveness of drone strikes. It then reviews the present study’s research design, before investigating the veracity of these competing predictions through the use of new primary-source documents. It concludes with a discussion of the implications of this study for scholarship and policy.
Debating the Drones
U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan have been the topic of much policymaker commentary and scholarly attention, yet there is little unanimity as to their effectiveness. In this section, I outline predictions and claims made by optimistic and pessimistic schools of thought on the drone campaign’s impact on al-Qaeda. The section is organized around contradictory prognoses regarding the effects of drone strikes on al-Qaeda’s personnel quality, organizational efficiency and control, and safe-haven viability.
12. Is China Putting ‘Wolf Warriors’ on a Leash?
Excerpts:
Conclusion
There are a number of factors at play making the current moment an opportune time for Beijing to adjust its diplomatic messaging. With Xi set to take a precedent-breaking third term as president at the year-end Communist Party Congress, as well as China’s hosting of a controversial Winter Olympic Games next month, domestic concerns this year are likely to take precedence over foreign ones. Moreover, with former President Donald Trump and his more vocal foreign policy hawks now replaced by a less strident Biden administration, China may be moderating its tone in-kind, with an eye toward stabilizing its rocky relationship with the U.S.
While we haven’t seen a wholesale shift away from the fiery discourse recently seen from certain diplomats and foreign ministry officials, the evidence laid out above does point to a departure from the more outrageous behavior of the wolf warriors. Realistically, we shouldn’t expect to see substantive changes to China’s messaging on U.S. decline, Western encirclement of China, or human rights whataboutisms, yet it appears a modest change in tone is underway.
Some have pointed out that wolf warrior diplomacy has not served Beijing’s strategic interests, and that it may in fact be undermining them. While this possibility has no doubt occurred to Chinese leaders, observers shouldn’t expect any abrupt shift in the rhetoric of Chinese ambassadors or foreign ministry spokespeople; quickly moving away from wolf warrior diplomacy could be seen as capitulation by Beijing. Instead, those interested in China’s communications with other nations should track subtle changes in discourse and decision-making, shifts that could gradually serve to course-correct China’s diplomatic statecraft, while also saving political face.
Is China Putting ‘Wolf Warriors’ on a Leash?
Recent signs indicate that Beijing wants to moderate – but not abandon – the assertive tone of its diplomats.
By Aidan Powers-Riggs and Eduardo Jaramillo
January 22, 2022
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On December 20, 2021, former Chinese ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai delivered a biting keynote address to a symposium co-hosted by the China Institute of International Studies in Beijing. In front of assembled dignitaries including Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister and state councilor, Cui criticized the current state of China’s diplomacy, warning against “carelessness, laziness, and incompetence.” He admonished his fellow diplomats to “always have the country at large in mind, and not always think about being an internet celebrity.”
The comments were a thinly-veiled dig at the increasingly sharp-edged messaging emerging from China over the past several years, as its diplomats have embraced a uniquely aggressive approach now widely known as “wolf warrior” diplomacy.
Named for an ultra-nationalistic blockbuster film series, wolf warrior diplomacy describes a distinctly confrontational, guns-blazing style of diplomatic rhetoric aimed at hitting back against criticisms of China. Tough diplomacy is certainly not a new feature of Chinese foreign policy, but this strident brand of diplomatic posturing reflects a China far more confident in its international standing compared with eras past.
While the hardline tactics of China’s wolf warriors have evidently received the blessing of top leadership in Beijing, Cui’s public remarks make clear that their approach has also generated pushback within China’s foreign policy establishment. Other high-profile figures within China’s diplomatic and policy circles, including veteran diplomat Fu Ying and leading international relations scholar Yan Xuetong, have likewise offered rebukes of China’s combative diplomacy in recent years.
As China’s global reputation continues to plummet since the onset of COVID-19 (even as positive views of the United States have resurged from historic lows in 2020), it appears that calls for a more measured diplomatic strategy may be beginning to resonate among China’s central leadership. Key events throughout 2021 indicate that leaders in Beijing are recalibrating China’s external messaging, signaling to the wolf warriors that a gradual softening of tone is in order.
Taming the Pack
Among the clearest signs that a rethink is underway in Beijing were President Xi Jinping’s remarks to a group study session of the CCP Central Committee’s Political Bureau in May of 2021. At the session, Xi emphasized the need for China to improve its international communication, in order to “enlarge the circle of friends who understand China.” To achieve this, he called for officials to create a “trustworthy, lovable, and respectable” image of China abroad. While many analysts were initially skeptical that these directives would constitute a major turning-point in China’s diplomacy, a number of notable shifts in China’s diplomatic personnel and foreign messaging since June suggest that efforts have since been made to curb the wolf warriors’ excesses.
The recent fall of Hu Xijin, the former top editor of the nationalistic Chinese media outlet the Global Times and an early adopter of China’s brand of caustic online commentary, is possibly the highest profile case of a wolf warrior being called to heel. While Hu announced that he was retiring on Weibo in mid-December, some sources claim his departure was directed by Beijing, with a view to “strengthening the paper’s political guidance.” Hu had often used his megaphone to insult other countries (calling Australia the “gum stuck to China’s shoe”) and whipped up nationalist fervor in support of reunification of Taiwan (recently calling for airstrikes to “eliminate” U.S. troops on the island). Such comments, along with bizarre reactions to Western concerns over missing tennis star Peng Shuai, seem to have had a negative effect on Hu’s career.
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2021 also saw the downfall of another prominent wolf warrior, former Chinese ambassador to Sweden Gui Congyou. Gui was summoned by Sweden’s foreign ministry more than 40 times over two years, and frequently lashed out in comments to local media at perceived slights against China, at one point famously declaring, “We treat our friends with fine wine, but for our enemies we have shotguns.” Gui’s penchant for harsh rhetoric caught up with him after he seemingly threatened Swedish journalists who criticized China; with several Swedish politicians calling on Beijing to remove him from his post, Gui resigned in September of last year.
While some prominent voices have run into trouble thanks to their aggressive antics, others appear to have been rewarded for their more moderate tone. Xiao Qian, a former Chinese ambassador to Indonesia with a reputation for a more professional communication style, was appointed ambassador to Australia in November. At a time when Australia-China relations are incredibly toxic, the appointment of a new, more restrained ambassador could signal a desire to get the relationship back on firmer footing.
Even Zhao Lijian, China’s pugnacious foreign ministry spokesman widely considered a pioneer of wolf warrior diplomacy, seems to have taken his foot off the gas pedal when it comes to certain hot-button issues. Zhao rose to international prominence (and infamy) in early 2020, grabbing headlines for relentlessly promoting conspiracy theories on Twitter suggesting the COVID-19 pandemic originated in Fort Detrick, a U.S. military base in Maryland. His tweets referencing COVID-19’s origins slowed in 2021, however; Zhao posted 13 times about Fort Detrick between April 8, 2021 and September 3, 2021, and then abruptly stopped. His final post about the theory came around a week before a phone call between Xi and U.S. President Joe Biden.
Conclusion
There are a number of factors at play making the current moment an opportune time for Beijing to adjust its diplomatic messaging. With Xi set to take a precedent-breaking third term as president at the year-end Communist Party Congress, as well as China’s hosting of a controversial Winter Olympic Games next month, domestic concerns this year are likely to take precedence over foreign ones. Moreover, with former President Donald Trump and his more vocal foreign policy hawks now replaced by a less strident Biden administration, China may be moderating its tone in-kind, with an eye toward stabilizing its rocky relationship with the U.S.
While we haven’t seen a wholesale shift away from the fiery discourse recently seen from certain diplomats and foreign ministry officials, the evidence laid out above does point to a departure from the more outrageous behavior of the wolf warriors. Realistically, we shouldn’t expect to see substantive changes to China’s messaging on U.S. decline, Western encirclement of China, or human rights whataboutisms, yet it appears a modest change in tone is underway.
Some have pointed out that wolf warrior diplomacy has not served Beijing’s strategic interests, and that it may in fact be undermining them. While this possibility has no doubt occurred to Chinese leaders, observers shouldn’t expect any abrupt shift in the rhetoric of Chinese ambassadors or foreign ministry spokespeople; quickly moving away from wolf warrior diplomacy could be seen as capitulation by Beijing. Instead, those interested in China’s communications with other nations should track subtle changes in discourse and decision-making, shifts that could gradually serve to course-correct China’s diplomatic statecraft, while also saving political face.
13. Leaked Oath Keepers list names 20 current military members
We should all do due diligence when we join organizations. This does not seem like a large number. What comes to my mind is the future of the security clearance process. Will the Oath Keepers organization (asmiliar oens) become one of those that might be grouped into the broad category of have you ever been a member of an organization that seeks the overthrow of the US or engages in political violence against the US?
Leaked Oath Keepers list names 20 current military members
Supporters of President Donald Trump riot at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021. (Yuri Gripas, Abaca Press/TNS)
(Tribune News Service) — When they enlisted in the military, they swore an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and to obey the orders all the way up to those from the president of the United States.
But then, while still in the service, they went on to swear a different allegiance — one to the now extremist, anti-government Oath Keepers. Dozens of military members vowed they would never obey potential government orders that group leaders considered acts of war or cause for a revolution.
At least 20 are still serving.
USA TODAY confirmed with all five branches of the U.S. military that 81 people signed up for the Oath Keepers while in uniform. The names are from a hacked list that a watchdog group shared with journalists last fall. The military members are in addition to the 40 current and former law enforcement officers USA TODAY confirmed in October 2021.
The Defense Department has known for decades that its members were joining extremist groups but often did not punish them, instead keeping in place a vague policy that banned their active participation, such as through fundraising or recruiting.
In December, the Defense Department clarified more than a dozen examples of active participation, but it's unclear whether joining the Oath Keepers and remaining a member of the militia would run afoul of the new rules.
Fourteen of the 20 service members who are still in uniform signed up for the Oath Keepers using their military email addresses. The Department of Defense generally bans service members from using military email for personal affairs and expressly bans them from using their emails in ways that would "reflect adversely" on the military or "other uses that are incompatible with public service."
Defense Department officials should have known about the issue as early 2018, when a person with the Southern Poverty Law Center sent her contact a copy of another leaked membership list, which had information through 2015. Of the 20 active members USA TODAY found in the list released in the fall, 16 also appeared on the 2015 list. And of the 130 military emails on the list this fall, 124 of them also appeared on the 2015 list.
Several of those who identified themselves as current military on their sign-up forms described the tactical skills they could bring to the Oath Keepers. Jeremiah Pulaski, who said he was an Army veteran living in Arizona, said: "I'm not sure I'm an Infantry man so I'm limited. But if needed I'll get the job done."
Lt. Col. Uriah Orland, a Department of Defense spokesman, said in a statement: "We do not tolerate extremists in our ranks or any extremism activity. Any individual or individuals we identify who have extremist behaviors or extremist tendencies are addressed immediately. When we become aware of these individuals or their activities, we refer them to appropriate authorities."
The Pentagon has had multiple opportunities over the past several years to limit attempts by extremist groups like the Oath Keepers from gaining traction in branches of the military. But it has taken little to no action until current Department of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin vowed to make progress on extremism in the ranks following the Jan. 6 insurrection.
At least 106 of the individuals charged with crimes related to the insurrection were linked to a far-right or extremist organization, according to federal charging documents. At least 26 were members of the Oath Keepers.That number includes the 11, such as founder Stewart Rhodes, who were charged with seditious conspiracy or allegedly trying to overthrow the government, the harshest charges yet filed in the Jan. 6 attack.
"This is a really, really serious problem," said Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of Global Project Against Hate and Extremism and former head of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project. "And time is of the essence."
"Too many active-duty troops have been caught up in domestic terrorism investigations in recent years," Beirich said, "and you just say the words 'Timothy McVeigh,' or 'Eric Rudolph,' and you realize what the dangers are of a white supremacist or other kind of extremist who's learned a lot in the military and then uses it against the American people."
'I thought it was patriotic'
Four of the 20 currently serving military members told USA TODAY they signed up for the group about a decade ago and are no longer involved. USA TODAY reached out via phone and email to the others but did not receive responses.
Some said they saw Oath Keepers ads in magazines or gun shops. Others said they heard about a National Rifle Association-type group that cared about the Constitution.
The membership list in question likely includes all people who signed up for the Oath Keepers since 2009, even ones who allowed their memberships to lapse.
Sgt. Anthony Guadagnino works as a recruiter for the New York Army National Guard in Troy, New York. He said signing up for the group was a mistake.
"I thought it was patriotic," he said. "It's not."
William Potting, a Marine, said he heard about the group around 2013. He saw it in a Facebook group for supporters of former Congressman Ron Paul's presidential campaign.
"It looked like a veterans' group that was pro-Constitution," he said. "After awhile, the emails were just junk mail. They were constantly sending me emails, so I unsubscribed."
Charles Martin, who serves in the Navy, said about a decade ago he and his wife saw a framed copy of the U.S. Constitution on the wall of an Army surplus store. He said the store owner gave him a flyer to fill out for the Oath Keepers that included an offer to win a framed Constitution.
"They kept emailing me and I just moved their crap to my spam folder and never dealt with them," Martin said.
Fire control specialist Joshua Hockman with the Army National Guard serving in Florida, said he hasn't been involved in about a decade, and never finished paying his dues.
Matthew Vanderboegh, who has served in the U.S. Army Reserve since 2000, signed up for the Oath Keepers in 2010 and wrote on the sign-up form he could help with "recruitment" and "pass out flyers." He is the son of the co-founder of Three Percenters, a far-right militia named for a debunked theory involving the American Revolution that at times has allied with the Oath Keepers.
In 2016, Vanderboegh took over a Three Percenters blog, where he wrote about the future of the movement, recommended a book on militia training to his followers, and coordinated a T-shirt order. He did not respond to several emails from USA TODAY.
Some members' comments on the sign-up form indicated they knew what the Oath Keepers were preparing for and were ready to use their military training to help the group.
"If the time comes I will execute my duty as a III Percenter and Oath Keeper," wrote Scott Wassmer, who identified himself as a Coast Guardsman from Wisconsin. He left the service in 2015, according to the Coast Guard.
Vincent DiCello, a former Navy pilot who declined to comment, wrote on the Oath Keepers sign-up form that he has "electronic warfare background" and "recruiting training" and said he was an "expert shot" with a pistol and rifle.
'A true national security risk'
Rep. Jackie Speier, D-California, who has been using her seat to help end extremism in the military since at least 2019, called USA TODAY's findings alarming.
"This is a true national security risk, and we have an obligation to take steps to protect other service members and to make sure that we are recruiting people who have the appropriate profiles," she said.
Orland, from the Department of Defense, said individual supervisors and leaders are responsible for individual discipline, and that commanders can use "the full range of administrative and disciplinary actions, including administrative separation or appropriate criminal action."
However, the longtime Pentagon policy only prohibited service members from actively advocating for extremism such as supremacy and gang doctrines, not from being affiliated with such groups in the first place. A working group Austin put together following the Jan. 6 insurrection clarified the policy on active participation in December but fell short of banning all types of involvement in extremist groups.
"As a result of the January 6 attack and the number of military service members and veterans and law enforcement officers (who were involved in the attack), I think there's a growing recognition that there needs to be the due diligence done on individuals who are going to have positions of trust within the government," Speier said.
Of the five branches USA TODAY contacted for this story, the Navy took the strictest stance, saying it would not tolerate such behavior. Four of the 20 currently serving members of the military were in the Navy.
"Sailor participation in supremacist or extremist activities is directly contrary to professionalism standards which all Sailors are expected to follow," said Navy spokeswoman Priscilla Rodriguez. "We will investigate reports of misconduct and those found in violation of the Navy's policies will be held accountable."
'My heart wasn't really in it'
Another 61 veterans from the Oath Keepers membership list, almost all men, are now retired but signed up while in uniform. The majority joined between 2009 and 2013. Most were in the Army, the largest branch of the military and where Rhodes, the group's founder, served.
Daniel Medoff, 38, was serving in the Army when he signed up in 2009. He was fresh off a tour in Iraq and serving at a hospital in Germany when an ad for the Oath Keepers "popped up" online one day. "My heart wasn't really in it, it was just more the thrill of it — that addiction of feeling like I could belong somewhere," Medoff said.
Coast Guard veterans Matthew Rupp and Michael Marion signed up with their Coast Guard email addresses. Cody Meridith joined with his Navy email while he was serving. The three men told USA TODAY that they did not realize what the Oath Keepers were about when they sent in money or joined, describing an organization that has changed drastically over the past decade.
Rupp, who retired from the Coast Guard in 2019, said he sent in $15 around 2013 in response to a magazine ad about helping out with disaster relief. Then the Oath Keepers sent him a pamphlet in the mail. "Once I got the pamphlet, I realized it was a load of horsesh—," he said. "It was not as described."
The Oath Keepers have used apocalyptic and revolutionary language to lure military veterans and law enforcement since their founding in 2009. The Oath Keepers say their interpretation of the Constitution trumps the federal government's power, and the group lists 10 specific orders that military service members or law enforcement officers must never obey. The list includes a hypothetical situation where the government orders citizens to disarm.
In 2014, members of the Oath Keepers stood in solidarity with a rancher in Nevada who had for years refused to pay the federal government to let his cattle roam on federal land. The rancher echoed long-debunked beliefs held by the militia movement that the federal government cannot own land, and that true power rests with county sheriffs. Two of the 61 veterans joined that year, and another two joined in 2015.
The group plunged itself into racial justice protests in Ferguson, Missouri, even after the local police department told them to stand down, and later into rallies for former President Donald Trump. Rhodes simultaneously started appearing on conspiracy theory sites such as Infowars.
'Preparing for a civil war'
Even though the Oath Keepers have become more extreme over time, it has always been an anti-government group preparing for a civil war under the guise of advocacy for the Constitution.
Kathleen Belew, a history professor at the University of Chicago, said that while some extremist groups target people of color but still support the government, the Oath Keepers' primary target is the federal government, which includes the military.
"Our active-duty troops take an oath to protect our nation, our Constitution — from enemies, foreign and domestic," she said. She called the Oath Keepers part of a militant white power groundswell that has "attempted to overthrow the United States or to target its elected officials, its agents, its infrastructure, and its people."
Belew invoked language from the military oath of enlistment, when members say they will defend the Constitution "against all enemies, foreign and domestic."
"They've been enemies domestic," she added.
Susan Corke, the intelligence project director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the Oath Keepers target military and law enforcement specifically to take advantage of their tactical training.
"Their ultimate goal is a hard-right ethnostate, and they're prepared to take up arms to do so, and they're actively preparing," Corke said. "The tactical expertise of military and law enforcement is very, very attractive to the Oath Keepers."
'Willing to do anything that is legal'
Dozens of people on the Oath Keepers membership list used an email address ending in .mil, the Department of Defense's domain ending, and at least 14 of those are still serving.
This is an apparent violation of Pentagon regulations about the use of military email accounts for uses that would "reflect adversely" on the Defense Department or "other uses that are incompatible with public service." But it's not clear if members who used their emails simply to join the group have violated the vague policy banning active participation in extremist groups.
"It's disturbing that people are in touch with Oath Keepers, but you gotta wonder who would be silly enough to use their work email for this," said Jim Lewis, a senior vice president for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Jason Kobylarz, a U.S. Army veteran who signed up for the Oath Keepers in 2010, said people likely used their military email addresses because they weren't tech savvy and it was the only email they had at the time. He said it probably went against a policy, but no one seemed to be enforcing it.
Todd Pegg, an Army colonel and commandant at the Virginia Military Institute, appeared on both lists USA TODAY used for this investigation. The records say he signed up for an annual membership on March 30, 2010. He denied ever being involved with the Oath Keepers. He is currently on military leave.
Col. Bill Wyatt, spokesperson for the Virginia Military Institute, said Pegg "is not now nor has he ever been affiliated with the Oath Keepers. He suspects they got his name from a gun show he attended in the past." Wyatt said he did not know the name of the gun show.
Bradley Baker, who is currently serving with the U.S. Coast Guard, signed up with his military email. He wrote on the form: "I feel very strongly in the Oath Keepers message and I would be willing to do anything that is legal to help the cause."
Lt. Cmdr. Brittany Panetta, a spokeswoman for the Coast Guard, said that branch conducted a "preliminary inquiry" into Baker that included a scan of government systems and Coast Guard networks and "uncovered no affiliation" between the guardsman and the Oath Keepers. She did not elaborate on details about the scan.
Jonathan Fox, of Virginia, signed up using a military email representing the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a Department of Defense Agency "focused exclusively on countering and deterring weapons of mass destruction and emerging threats."
Reached at home, Fox said he was no longer with the Oath Keepers and declined to comment further. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency said in an email that the agency does not confirm or deny people's employment.
'People with a split allegiance'
This isn't the first time the Pentagon has learned that service members had joined the Oath Keepers.
Beirich, from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said when she was running the SPLC's intelligence project in 2018, she sent the military a membership list from 2015. Orland, the Department of Defense spokesman, said he did not have information on that list.
Of the 20 active members USA TODAY found in the list released last fall, 16 also appeared on the 2015 list.
Lorax B. Horne, a member of the Distributed Denial of Secrets collective, which released the second Oath Keepers membership list, said the organization has not received a data request from the military.
The U.S. military, which includes about 1.3 million active-duty members across the five branches, plus some 800,000 reservists, has had other warnings about extremists in its ranks.
In 2006, the Southern Poverty Law Center found that military personnel were under such intense pressure to recruit for the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan that the Pentagon "relaxed standards to prohibit racist extremists from serving in the armed forces." The group sent those findings to then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
In 2009, federal intelligence agents at the Department of Homeland Security published a report warning extremists were attempting to recruit current and former members of the military. The report evoked outrage from Republican politicians and their allies in conservative media, and it was quickly buried. The unit that wrote the report was disbanded.
"This has been a problem that the Pentagon has been aware of, at least since the late 1970s," said Belew, the Chicago professor. "We have, over and over again, dealt with the disappearance of weapons for military posts and bases; with targeted recruitment on posts; with people with a split allegiance to groups that would like to overthrow the United States while they're serving."
Contributing: Dinah Voyles Pulver and Bart Jansen, USA TODAY
14. American deterrence's missing half
Excerpts:
If American deterrence fails, it may not be because the United States’s adversaries doubt U.S. military capabilities, which remain formidable, so much as they doubt American willpower. In the end, this may prove to be a miscalculation. After all, there are multiple polls suggesting hardening resolve, particularly towards China. Moreover, popular opinion never directly translates into foreign policy. The United States has overcome internal rifts in the past, and may do so once again.
Even so, if the United States aims to strengthen deterrence, American adversaries should never be given the opportunity to believe that the U.S. is so beset with its own doubt and divisions that it lacks the strength and motivation to act decisively abroad. Unfortunately for the U.S. and its Defense Department, shifting those perceptions requires much more than an extra $25 billion. It requires something money cannot buy: repairing the social fabric here at home.
American deterrence's missing half
The Hill · by Raphael S. Cohen, Opinion Contributor · January 22, 2022
After much hemming and hawing, Congress in December finally passed a $768 billion defense authorization bill, some $25 billion over what the Biden administration had requested. For defense hawks, this is good news. With China becoming increasingly belligerent towards Taiwan, Russia poised to invade Ukraine and Iran stiff-arming nuclear negotiations, the United States faces intensifying threats on a range of fronts.
Indeed, many of the bill’s core provisions center on bolstering deterrence — from an authorization of $300 million to support Ukraine's armed forces to $4 billion for the European Defense Initiative to $7.1 billion for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative. Beneath the dollar signs, however, lies an unsettling truth: All these added authorizations (assuming that they are fulfilled with resources in a final appropriations bill) may be a necessary but insufficient condition to dissuade the United States’s adversaries.
While the Department of Defense is the only Cabinet agency whose core mission revolves around deterrence, the department is in reality only responsible for half of what we should consider deterrence. Military force provides what Nobel Prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling termed the “power to hurt.” Successful deterrence, then, requires something more — the ability to credibly signal the willingness to use that power if necessary. The will to use force, however, is ultimately a political question that rests not with the Department of Defense but with political leadership and, more fundamentally, the American public. Support for deterrence by the American public is, today, very much in question.
The American public is angry. Much of this anger is focused not abroad but at home. Over the last year, multiple polls have found that Americans now view one another as a bigger threat than those faced beyond our borders. Americans also lack confidence in most government institutions. While Congress has been distrusted for decades, this malaise now extends to the presidency. There are even signs that Americans’ trust in the military – historically one of our most admired institutions – is fraying, particularly after the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and the military and its leaders stepping into the middle of the nation’s culture wars. Most ominously, a plurality of Americans now believe another civil war is “likely.”
This darkening backdrop of internal division translates into an unsteady American hand in world affairs. In Gallup polls from last year, a mere 39 percent of Americans had confidence in the government’s ability to handle international problems — the lowest it’s been since Gallup began asking this question, in 1997. Support for the United States to “lead or be more engaged” has also dropped to under half the population. And a Eurasia Group survey found that a plurality of Americans wanted to reduce the U.S. military presence and its defense commitments to Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
Whether the United States has the willingness to wield the “power to hurt” is, at best, an open question. Americans remain deeply divided. What America wants out of its military is unclear. For example, while a survey by the internationalist Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that, for the first time, bare majorities of Americans backed using force to defend Taiwan or Ukraine if China or Russia were to invade, a competing survey from the restraint-oriented Charles Koch Institute found the opposite.
If American deterrence fails, it may not be because the United States’s adversaries doubt U.S. military capabilities, which remain formidable, so much as they doubt American willpower. In the end, this may prove to be a miscalculation. After all, there are multiple polls suggesting hardening resolve, particularly towards China. Moreover, popular opinion never directly translates into foreign policy. The United States has overcome internal rifts in the past, and may do so once again.
Even so, if the United States aims to strengthen deterrence, American adversaries should never be given the opportunity to believe that the U.S. is so beset with its own doubt and divisions that it lacks the strength and motivation to act decisively abroad. Unfortunately for the U.S. and its Defense Department, shifting those perceptions requires much more than an extra $25 billion. It requires something money cannot buy: repairing the social fabric here at home.
Raphael S. Cohen is a senior political scientist and director of the Strategy and Doctrine Program of RAND Project AIR FORCE
The Hill · by Raphael S. Cohen, Opinion Contributor · January 22, 2022
15. Biden’s Asia Policy, 1 Year In
Excerpts:
Clearly the Biden administration recognizes the need to up its economic game in Asia to protect and bolster the commercial success that U.S. companies and workers have achieved in this region. That is why it is now developing a new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework to address priorities such as supply chain resiliency, decarbonization, digital technologies, and workers’ rights. Substantive and impactful initiatives in these areas are urgently needed if the Framework is to be taken seriously and win buy-in. But the fact remains that however much the Framework succeeds in strengthening U.S. economic engagement in the region, it is unlikely to be viewed as a convincing alternative to the CPTPP, which has steadily garnered credibility and appeal.
Although Washington circles seem to take it as an article of faith that the United States will not rejoin this high-standard agreement, it would be smart to now take a hard look to determine what revisions would be needed to make the deal serve our interests and to bring it in line with the economic, commercial, and technological realities of the day. The CPTPP’s growing appeal in the region, and Beijing’s decision to join it, warrant taking a fresh look at this option in year two of the Biden administration.
In assessing U.S. Asia policy in 2021, the Biden team deserves high marks for rebuilding alliances and partnerships while boosting competitiveness at home. Through in-person and virtual meetings, it has stepped up diplomatic engagement, championed democratic values, boosted security relationships, and set up creative new mechanisms to address shared challenges. Now comes the hard part. The next challenge is to produce tangible outcomes that can help make the Indo-Pacific region in 2022 more stable, prosperous, democratic, connected, healthy, and better prepared for the next black swan event.
Biden’s Asia Policy, 1 Year In
One year into the Biden administration, what should we make of its policy toward Asia and the Indo-Pacific?
By Danny Russel and Wendy Cutler
January 20, 2022
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Even before taking office last year on January 20, U.S. President Joe Biden had announced the appointment of an “Asia Czar” at the White House, reached out to key leaders in the region, and pledged to take on the challenges posed by the United States’ most serious competitor, China. So, one year into the Biden administration, what should we make of his policy toward Asia and the Indo-Pacific?
Both Biden and his foreign policy team brought to bear considerable diplomatic experience and a carefully reasoned approach to international affairs, prioritizing domestic renewal and the rebuilding of U.S. partnerships and international influence. To some extent, this approach simply made a virtue of necessity, given the urgency of multiple domestic issues, beginning with the COVID-19 pandemic. But Biden, who had learned a thing or two about dealing with communists during the Cold War, saw that the Chinese leadership was convinced that the U.S. and the West were in decline. They seemed equally certain that China had a favorable wind at its back with both a “window of opportunity” and the strong gravitational pull of its economy. The Biden team rightly calculated that unless and until the United States showed itself to be back on a credible path of domestic renewal, the Chinese side would remain inflexible and uncooperative.
From the outset, the Biden presidency was faced with far more than the usual set of challenges that greet a newcomer to the Oval Office. At home and abroad, the new administration confronted thorny problems on virtually every front – economic, social, political, health, environmental, and geopolitical. Asia was certainly no exception, although an early series of initiatives and outreach won back a degree of confidence in the United States and bought the administration some time. These included rejoining the Paris climate accord and the World Health Organization on day one, quickly hosting leaders from Japan and South Korea in Washington, dispatching cabinet secretaries and later the vice president on visits to the region, and in March holding a virtual summit with the leaders of Japan, India, and Australia to reboot the Quad, followed by an in-person meeting between the four leaders in September.
Solidifying the Quad 2.0 is perhaps the Biden administration’s most significant Indo-Pacific accomplishment in year one. Both the early virtual summit and the September face-to-face meeting in Washington deftly dealt with the critical issue of China by jujitsu-ing it – forgoing bombastic anti-China invective in favor of a much more subtle and potent approach. In 2021, the Quad shrewdly focused not on China, but on what the four countries could offer the region through collective action focused on real priorities such as vaccine distribution. This and other work launched by the Quad in effect challenged China in a race to the top and gave countries in the region something even more valuable than vaccines – a credible alternative to what China was selling. Going forward, the Quad process will have to keep delivering on its ambitious promises, and find a way to include others even if on an issue-specific basis, but it remains a highly creative and effective early move by the Biden team.
In Northeast Asia, the Biden administration has bonded with two consecutive Japanese prime ministers who, thanks to China, are now willing to do far more to bolster the alliance and regional security. Biden quickly resolved the ugly fight his predecessor had picked over South Korean subsidies for stationing U.S. forces on the Korean Peninsula and has adeptly handled some of Seoul’s questionable initiatives, like an ill-considered “end-of-war declaration” that would bolster Pyongyang’s campaign to delegitimize the U.S.-South Korean alliance. And when it comes to North Korea, no U.S. administration over the last four decades has had much to show for its attempts to curb Pyongyang’s steadily growing WMD threat. Given that reality, an administration’s North Korea policy is better measured by its mistakes, and on that score the Biden team has done well in avoiding them. It has opened the door to diplomacy but avoided the trap of trying to entice the North with unilateral concessions and has quietly bolstered defense and deterrence without the risky bluster of “fire and fury.”
Southeast Asia in 2021 has been a more difficult terrain for the Biden team. The disastrous military coup in Myanmar, setbacks to democratic governance in partner countries, and the region’s timorous “go along to get along” approach to China have been complicating factors. And while the Biden administration has sustained and enhanced the United States’ role in protecting maritime rights in the South China Sea, there is simply no viable diplomatic track to manage the conflicting territorial claims between China and the smaller claimant states. Although a surprising number of senior administration officials were able to travel to Southeast Asia and Biden joined the virtual ASEAN Summits, the constraints of COVID-19 put a damper on the kind of robust U.S. engagement that the region wants. If Biden’s reported plan to host the region’s leaders (minus Myanmar) early this year materializes, it will be a major achievement, but will need to be followed up with concrete initiatives.
Relations with Australia have flourished, and despite the flawed rollout of the AUKUS agreement, which infuriated the French by abruptly canceling Australia’s multi-billion dollar submarine contract, the creation of a cutting-edge defense technology consortium that loops in a trusted major European partner, the United Kingdom, is a significant, strategic move. Like the Quad 2.0, AUKUS reflects an impressive degree of ambition and creativity. Furthermore, China helped in cementing the Australia-U.S. alliance by vindictively restricting a range of Australian imports to convey its displeasure with Canberra’s call for an international investigation into the origins of COVID-19, among other complaints.
But what about China?
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Biden’s diagnosis that getting America’s house in order is a prerequisite for dealing effectively with China was indeed correct, as was his focus on making common cause with like-minded allies, partners, and democracies. The problem has been that those two things are excruciatingly difficult to achieve and take considerable time to establish. In the meantime, China is not standing still and continues to gain ground through trade agreements, the Belt and Road Initiative, and its push to surpass the United States in technology by pouring massive amounts of subsidies and other types of financial assistance into domestic companies.
At home, the administration’s early progress on the pandemic has been set back by the Delta and Omicron variants. Its domestic renewal agenda, despite initial gains, has been stymied by trench warfare in Congress. Its foreign policy agenda has been hindered by the sluggish pace of selecting, vetting, and confirming key sub-cabinet officials and ambassadors. And its options for dealing with Xi Jinping’s truculent China have been skewed by an equally hardline Washington consensus that views China as the new Evil Empire. The political pressure to look tough on China seems at times to have produced more chest-bumping than checkmating.
That said, the Biden administration didn’t opt to rush into premature deal-making, nor to let China set the terms for the relationship. It rejected the flawed barter arrangement that Beijing was pushing – China’s cooperation on global issues in exchange for concessions on areas the Chinese Communist Party decrees are “core issues,” such as Taiwan and human rights. And while the initial diplomatic engagement by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was marred by an unseemly on-camera squabble, the administration has done its best to leverage Biden’s decade-long relationship with China’s supreme leader, Xi Jinping. But despite Biden’s outreach at the November 15 virtual summit, there has been little visible progress beyond toned-down rhetoric on both sides, and the bilateral relationship remains dangerously fraught on many fronts.
In assessing the administration’s overall approach to Asia and the Indo-Pacific in its first year, however, the absence of a credible economic and trade agenda may be the major shortcoming of Biden’s first-year Asia policy. After all, the economic arena is the true battleground in Asia. As demonstrated by the entry into force of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) earlier this month, and of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) three years ago, trade agreements are prized in the region as vitally important vehicles to achieve growth, innovation, and development – as well as essential complements to a strategic agenda. Countries throughout the region would prefer that trade agreements include U.S. participation as both a means to secure access to innovative American products and services, not to mention the lucrative U.S. market, and to balance their exposure to China.
However, the stark reality is that none of them are waiting around for Washington to get cracking on trade agreements – an issue that remains mired in domestic politics. And in the meantime, China is making significant strides to fill this gap by strengthening regional supply chains, setting international standards, and shaping the rules of the road for trade and investment. And, in the irony of all ironies, last September Beijing submitted its formal application to join the CPTPP, the high-standard agreement shaped by the United States, only to be abandoned by the previous administration.
Clearly the Biden administration recognizes the need to up its economic game in Asia to protect and bolster the commercial success that U.S. companies and workers have achieved in this region. That is why it is now developing a new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework to address priorities such as supply chain resiliency, decarbonization, digital technologies, and workers’ rights. Substantive and impactful initiatives in these areas are urgently needed if the Framework is to be taken seriously and win buy-in. But the fact remains that however much the Framework succeeds in strengthening U.S. economic engagement in the region, it is unlikely to be viewed as a convincing alternative to the CPTPP, which has steadily garnered credibility and appeal.
Although Washington circles seem to take it as an article of faith that the United States will not rejoin this high-standard agreement, it would be smart to now take a hard look to determine what revisions would be needed to make the deal serve our interests and to bring it in line with the economic, commercial, and technological realities of the day. The CPTPP’s growing appeal in the region, and Beijing’s decision to join it, warrant taking a fresh look at this option in year two of the Biden administration.
In assessing U.S. Asia policy in 2021, the Biden team deserves high marks for rebuilding alliances and partnerships while boosting competitiveness at home. Through in-person and virtual meetings, it has stepped up diplomatic engagement, championed democratic values, boosted security relationships, and set up creative new mechanisms to address shared challenges. Now comes the hard part. The next challenge is to produce tangible outcomes that can help make the Indo-Pacific region in 2022 more stable, prosperous, democratic, connected, healthy, and better prepared for the next black swan event.
16. New CMSI Report—“Chinese Special Operations in a Large-Scale Island Landing”
New CMSI Report—“Chinese Special Operations in a Large-Scale Island Landing”
- Published on January 21, 2022
https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-maritime-reports/18/
Professor of Strategy (tenured full professor) at Naval War College
About the Authors
John Chen is Chief of Data Solutions and a Lead Analyst at Exovera’s Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, where he works on foreign policy, national security, and S&T issues using Chinese-language sources. He is also a Nonresident Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub. He holds degrees from Dartmouth College and Georgetown University.
Joel Wuthnow is a senior research fellow in the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs within the Institute for National for Strategic Studies (INSS) at the U.S. National Defense University. His research areas include Chinese foreign and security policy, Chinese military affairs, U.S.-China relations, and strategic developments in East Asia. In addition to his duties in INSS, he also serves as an adjunct professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Click here to read a curated compilation with summaries of Dr. Wuthnow’s major published works.
Summary
PLA special operations forces (SOF) would likely play important supporting roles in an amphibious assault on Taiwan. Their capabilities and training are geared towards several missions undertaken during the preparatory and main assault phases of the landing, including infiltration via special mission craft and helicopter, reconnaissance and targeting, obstacle clearance, strikes and raids, and extraction missions. While PLA SOF have made progress in recent years, several longstanding challenges could affect their performance in an island landing: integrating advanced special mission equipment for complex and dangerous missions, coordinating their operations with non-SOF supporting and supported forces, and overcoming the Chinese military’s penchant for centralized command. Even if PLA SOF are only partially effective, however, their support to the main assault force could diminish Taiwan’s ability to defend itself from a large-scale invasion.
Introduction
One important but sometimes overlooked factor that will influence the success of a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) attempt to seize Taiwan is special operations forces (SOF) support to the main assault force.1 Special operations have contributed to amphibious assaults in several modern campaigns, including Normandy (1944), the Falkland Islands (1982), and Grenada (1983). U.S. joint doctrine for amphibious operations continues to assign SOF multiple roles, including military information support, civil-military operations, foreign humanitarian assistance, special reconnaissance, direct action, and preparation of the environment.2 During the preparatory and primary landing phases of a Taiwan invasion, and even during a potential “mop up” campaign against resistance fighters, the PLA would likely utilize SOF for similar purposes.3 Depending on their performance, these forces could enable or frustrate the operations of conventional PLA units, or perhaps have no effect at all.
This report addresses the potential role of PLA SOF in a Taiwan campaign from three perspectives.4 First is doctrine. By analyzing authoritative PLA publications, including the Lectures on the Science of Special Operations, we find that PLA SOF are assigned three roles, including a primary role in special reconnaissance and secondary roles in strikes/raids on key targets and in information operations. Second is force structure and capabilities. The PLA Navy (PLAN), PLA Air Force (PLAAF), PLA Army (PLAA), and People’s Armed Police (PAP) all possess SOF relevant to a Taiwan contingency, including some forces that have expanded in recent years. The PLA has also acquired special mission equipment relevant to amphibious missions, such as underwater personnel delivery systems. Third is training. Based on PLA print and television media reports, PLA SOF have focused on squad-level and individual skills training, but there is also evidence of SOF involvement in larger combined-arms exercises. However, we found that joint training is limited, and there is almost no open-source evidence of SOF actively preparing for information operations.
The PLA has worked steadily over the last decade to ready SOF for an island landing scenario by refining doctrine, bolstering capabilities, and improving training. However, there are several variables that will influence these units’ performance, including their technical proficiency and potential greater use of unmanned systems, which could replace humans in some roles but increase technical proficiency requirements; degree of jointness, including the need for larger and more frequent exercises with non-SOF units and continued reforms to joint command structures at and below the theater level; and the degree to which commanders try to micromanage SOF activities on the battlefield, which could lead to suboptimal results if those forces hesitate to act without explicit approval. The Taiwan and U.S. defense establishments should work to evaluate these challenges and weaknesses and determine whether plans for Taiwan’s defense adequately consider PLA SOF. … … …
Conclusion
… While not discussed in Chinese doctrinal sources, it is also likely that PAP or other special forces would remain on Taiwan following a successful landing to conduct counterinsurgency-type missions. One area where doctrine may still be ahead of practice is information operations. It is unclear from open-source reports that SOF are preparing for on-island propaganda work, or are training with other relevant PLA units, including the SSF, for this mission.
While PLA SOF have made progress in recent years, several variables will influence their performance in an island landing. One is whether SOF can field and integrate better special mission equipment for complex and dangerous missions. While China’s defense industry undoubtedly continues to improve manned special mission equipment for SOF, researchers have also stressed the utility of unmanned undersea and aerial vehicles for dangerous special operations like mine and obstacle clearing.91 Coordination and effective application of unmanned systems will call for more demanding training and recruitment requirements within PLA SOF.
Another variable is whether SOF can effectively coordinate their operations with non-SOF supporting and supported forces. How much coordination is necessary would likely vary by unit composition and mission type. SOF units with a diverse range of organic capabilities, specialized hardware, and dedicated support units may require less joint coordination than units tasked to accomplish special operations in which the mission rather than the unit is defined as “special.” Elite commando units like the U.S. Navy’s SEAL Team Six with dedicated transport and intelligence support units may require little interaction with main landing forces, but others, such as brigade-sized army units that would deploy alongside and directly support the main landing forces, may need to coordinate more extensively. In the latter case, which appears to describe the majority of the PLA’s SOF units, the lack of permanent joint structures below the theater level could diminish the effectiveness of joint operations involving special forces, potentially leading to catastrophic results similar to the failed U.S. hostage rescue attempt in Iran during Operation Eagle Claw.92 Moreover, some relevant units, including from the SSF, PAP, and Airborne Corps, are outside the theater structure, leading to questions about joint command even at that level. Evidence that these potential shortcomings are being addressed would be inclusion of Airborne Corps and PAP SOF in theater command-led exercises; the establishment of permanent lower-level joint commands or liaison arrangements; and real-world operations, perhaps in counter-terrorism missions within China and farther from home, that would require SOF to learn lessons and adapt.
Chinese special operations would also have to reconcile the imperative for small, clandestine operations behind enemy lines with a desire for unified command under the joint command construct. Generally, there is a tension between the Leninist emphasis on centralization and the need to grant autonomy to lower PLA commanders. This could be especially problematic in special operations: centralized command could lead to poor performance if small units fail to act due to the lack of explicit authorization, or if they are forced to maintain radio communications and thus reveal their positions to the enemy. Evidence from training or updated doctrine could offer signs of whether SOF teams are given adequate autonomy in the field.
Nevertheless, even partially effective special operations could diminish Taiwan’s defenses and thus should be explicitly addressed in defensive concepts. Taiwan’s articulation of a more “asymmetric and innovative” way of defeating an island landing, which has been discussed in recent years under the “overall defense concept” label, should explicitly acknowledge the threat posed by Chinese special operations forces preceding and during all phases of an island landing and determine whether additional changes to tactics and capabilities are needed.93 Those approaches should also identify PLA weaknesses, such as lack of technical proficiency, limited jointness, and potential overreliance on radio communications for command and control, and tailor responses accordingly. It is also worth exploring whether, and how, U.S. SOF may work with their Taiwan counterparts to evaluate the dangers posed by PLA SOF, share best practices, and conduct joint training.94
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Professor of Strategy (tenured full professor) at Naval War College
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17. Ukraine crisis: 8 things to watch for
Excerpts:
War still isn’t inevitable — in all likelihood only Putin himself knows what’s coming — but we’re entering a very dangerous phase in this crisis.
Here are eight factors to keep an eye on in the days and weeks to come:
1. Diplomacy: Is there a deal to be had?
2. Troop movements
3. Putin and China
4. Germany and France
5. The Donbas
6. Cyberwar
7. The Russians in Ukraine
8. The weather
Ukraine crisis: 8 things to watch for
From troop movements to the Olympics to the Ukrainian winter, Grid’s global security reporter offers a checklist of news and developments to watch for in the days and weeks ahead.
After Friday morning’s meeting in Geneva between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the crisis between Ukraine and Russia remains fluid and unpredictable. The ranks of Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s borders are growing by the day, and the political differences between the parties to the conflict look as irreconcilable as ever. “It’s up to Russia,” Blinken said after the meeting. Added Lavrov: “I can’t say whether or not we are on the right path.” Earlier this week, referring to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin’s plans, President Joe Biden said, “My guess is he will move in.”
Hear more from Joshua Keating about this story:
War still isn’t inevitable — in all likelihood only Putin himself knows what’s coming — but we’re entering a very dangerous phase in this crisis.
Here are eight factors to keep an eye on in the days and weeks to come:
1. Diplomacy: Is there a deal to be had?
Though the Blinken-Lavrov meeting ended without agreement on the core issues, Lavrov did say that dialogue would continue. This in itself is a moderately promising sign; last week, Lavrov’s deputy, Sergei Ryabkov, had declared talks “at a dead end.” So the biggest thing to watch in the coming weeks is whether meetings continue to be scheduled; as long as they do, it’s a sign that the Russians haven’t dismissed the possibility of resolving this around a negotiating table in Geneva rather than on the battlefields of the Donbas.
The Russian government continues to maintain that it will be satisfied with nothing short of, as Ryabkov puts it, “watertight, bulletproof, legally binding guarantees” that Ukraine and other ex-Soviet states will never join NATO. The Biden administration continues to reject this condition.
The Americans have offered talks on other issues including arms control in Eastern Europe and limits on military exercises, but Russia considers these distractions from the main issue: For them, it’s NATO or nothing.
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And so, a game of diplomatic chicken is in play: Would Russia rather go to war, and suffer the resulting international backlash, than let Ukraine go its own way? Would the NATO allies and Ukraine rather suffer that war than make an admittedly painful compromise? Something has to give. Sometimes ironclad negotiating positions can become a little less ironclad as talks progress, so keep an eye out in the days to come for signs of either side’s position weakening.
2. Troop movements
At the start of this year, Russia had amassed roughly 100,000 troops along Ukraine’s borders. In the days and weeks ahead, watch for the reinforcements. Satellite imagery shows tanks, rocket launchers and other military equipment moving westward toward Ukraine from Russia’s bases in the far east. These are in addition to the Russian troops that have moved into Crimea, the territory Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. The Ukrainian defense ministry estimated this week that 127,000 Russian troops have now been deployed; U.S. intelligence suggests the contingents within striking distance of Ukraine could eventually swell to 175,000.
Russian battle group A Jan. 20 satellite image of a battle group stationed in Yelnya, Russia, about 130 kilometers east of the Russia-Belarus border. (Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies.)
Russia has also begun moving an unspecified number of troops into Belarus, Ukraine’s northern neighbor. Military analysts have suggested Russia could use Belarus as a staging ground for one prong of an invasion, so this is an ominous sign. While Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko is a close ally of Putin, he has often tried to remain above the fray of Russia’s foreign conflicts; he didn’t recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea for several years. But this latest development suggests that Lukashenko — isolated and under heavy sanctions since a rigged election in 2020 — has gone all-in on backing Russia.
3. Putin and China
Is there something about the Olympics that puts Russia’s president in a fighting mood? The 2008 war in the former Soviet republic of Georgia began while Putin, then prime minister, was in Beijing for the Summer Games. Russia’s annexation of Crimea took place in the days just following the Sochi Winter Games. Now Russia may be on the brink of war, and Putin is once again preparing to head to the Olympics. Given the widespread diplomatic boycott of the Beijing games, Putin will be the most high-profile world leader in attendance, and he’s not going just to cheer on Russia’s hockey team. He’s almost certainly looking for some backup on the Ukraine front.
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So as the Games begin, watch for the Putin-Xi Jinping meetings. According to the Kremlin, Putin plans to brief the Chinese leader on the crisis when he heads to China for the Feb. 4 opening ceremonies. Ever since its relations with the West soured following the Crimea annexation, Russia has sought to deepen its economic ties with China. In the event of war in Ukraine, Russia would count on China’s support — or at least China’s indifference — to blunt the impact of Western sanctions. The U.S. has threatened to cut off Russia’s access to the SWIFT network — the critical global electronic communications system used by financial institutions to carry out transactions. Russia has sought to enlist China’s participation in an alternative financial communications system. Putin no doubt also hopes the two autocratic allies would stick together in the event of a showdown with the U.S. at the U.N. Security Council.
Beijing is unlikely to take a strong stance either way on the crisis. However, China is also looking to establish a regional sphere of influence in the face of U.S. opposition and may be weighing plans to annex its own troublesome neighbor, Taiwan; for these reasons alone, Xi is no doubt watching the crisis and the world’s response with interest.
4. Germany and France
So far, the U.S. and its European allies have been mostly on the same page in their response to the crisis, a unity that’s been missing in some previous flare-ups with Russia. Putin’s Ukraine rhetoric and buildup may have unintentionally given his rivals in NATO a new common purpose. But it’s still worth keeping an eye on what’s going on in certain European capitals.
This is the first major international crisis facing the newly minted German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Scholz’s Social Democratic Party has traditionally favored a more conciliatory approach toward Russia — former chancellor Gerhard Schröder is infamously now chairman of the Russian state oil company Rosneft — but the new chancellor has appeared tough so far, at least in terms of his rhetoric. Critically, he signaled this week that Germany might halt the proposed (and controversial) Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline — which would double Russian gas exports to Germany — if Russia launches an invasion. Germany has been reluctant to play politics with the pipeline, given the risk to its own domestic economy and energy supplies, so this would be a fairly serious step. On the other hand, Germany, despite pressure from many of its NATO allies, is still refusing to provide Ukraine with weapons.
A possible fault line in the united Western front, which also bears watching in the days to come, emerged this week when French President Emmanuel Macron suggested that Europe should hold its own negotiations with Russia, separate from Washington. Macron, who has called in recent years for Europe to operate with more “strategic autonomy,” favors a return to the so-called Normandy Format talks between France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia, which have been mostly dormant for the last couple of years.
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To jaw-jaw is better than to war-war, as the saying goes, but the concern with multiple, concurrent formats of talks is that the message could get muddled.
5. The Donbas
Watch the goings-on in this region in southeastern Ukraine. For all the focus on NATO and geopolitics, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that this conflict is also being driven to a great extent by events within Ukraine itself, specifically in the Donbas, much of which is currently under the control of Russian-backed separatists. Russia’s current military buildup began after a drone attack by the Ukrainian military on the rebels in October, a strike that seemed to indicate a shift on the battlefield in Ukraine’s favor. Russia accuses Ukraine of failing to implement agreements it has made to grant these regions more autonomy. The Ukrainian objection is that doing so would, in effect, grant the Kremlin control over a significant amount of Ukraine’s territory.
If Putin decides to attack, there’s a good chance he would use an attack on the separatists — either real or imagined — as a pretext for invasion. Putin has accused the Ukrainian government of waging “genocide” against Russian speakers in this region, and it’s not hard to imagine him arguing that a military invasion is really meant to protect those people. This is more or less how the 2008 war in Georgia began. Another possibility: Members of Russia’s parliament this week proposed that Russia formally recognize the two separatist enclaves, Donetsk and Luhansk, as independent states. These governments could then invite Russian troops into their territory for their own protection.
The Biden administration has already accused Russia of sending agents into Ukraine to instigate a “false flag” operation against the separatists in order to justify an invasion. The Russian foreign ministry has accused the West of preparing “provocations” of its own in Ukraine. Keep an eye out for attacks on the ground in the Donbas, which could spiral into something larger.
6. Cyberwar
Watch for more cyberattacks. A ground invasion is likely to be accompanied by massive cyberattacks, meant to sow chaos and cripple the Ukrainian government and military, and their ability to respond. Or, if Russia chooses a more limited approach, the attack itself could take the form of a cyber strike rather than a conventional military assault. Ukraine has been a testing ground for Russia’s considerable cyber capabilities before. In 2015, Russian hackers disabled the power grid in parts of Ukraine. In 2017, the malware known as NotPetya knocked Ukrainian banks, government agencies, energy hubs and communications services offline before spreading to dozens of other countries and causing billions of dollars in damage — still the most destructive cyberattack in history.
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Last week, Ukrainians got a fresh taste of what may lie in store. About 70 Ukrainian websites, including important government agencies, were defaced with sites warning users to “be afraid.” This act of vandalism turned out to be something of a cover for a more serious attack: Two days later, Microsoft announced that it had discovered destructive malware on sites belonging to several government agencies. This malware, which was designed to look like ransomware but didn’t actually have a way for users to recover their data, bore discomfiting resemblance to the old NotPetya malware.
As cybersecurity journalist Kim Zetter notes, Russia has “already demonstrated an ability to hit critical infrastructure and an interest in conducting multi-pronged and widespread operations.” If these attacks start getting more frequent, or more severe, it’s a bad sign.
7. The Russians in Ukraine
In an ominous indication that the Russians are indeed losing patience with diplomacy, 18 people from Russia’s embassy in Kyiv, mainly the wives and children of diplomats, were driven to Moscow this week. More evacuations in the days to come could indicate that Moscow has well and truly given up on diplomacy.
8. The weather
As ill-fated invaders from Napoleon’s Grande Armée to the Nazi Wehrmacht learned, the fearsome Russian winter can be one of the country’s most valuable military allies, to the point that it acquired the nickname “General Frost.” But in the age of climate change, the old general is not as reliable as he used to be.
The best time for a Russian invasion would be while the ground is frozen, before Ukraine’s famous spring thaw, or rasputitsa, sets in, turning the Ukrainian countryside into mud and making the movement of heavy vehicles and equipment a nightmare. Normally, the ground would be frozen by mid-January, but in many parts of Ukraine, the frost has been delayed by a milder-than-normal winter. According to the New York Times, the Biden administration has enlisted meteorologists to assess potential ground conditions in Ukraine in the coming weeks. So, on top of everything else in this crisis, keep an eye on the weather along the Russian-Ukrainian frontier.
18. Did the CIA use pop music to help elect president of the Philippines?
Some interesting history.
All CIA case officers must know how to write songs. We did not know that is their special power! (note attempt at humor).
Did the CIA use pop music to help elect president of the Philippines?
Spring 1953, a popular mambo song with characteristic jazzy Cuban rhythms blared out across Manila.
Railing against widespread corruption, the song Magsaysay Mambo called on Filipinos to vote for the young defence secretary, Ramon Magsaysay.
The candidate was known for campaigning in impoverished areas avoided by his rivals, his love of dancing and having led a campaign against Communist insurgents known as the Hukbalahap — the Huk rebellion.
But Magsaysay Mambo may not be the kind of clever, grass roots campaign gimmick that helped propel Magsaysay to a landslide win.
Instead, The National can tell the story of how CIA officer Edward Lansdale — described by former CIA director William Colby as “one of the greatest spies in history” — may well have written the catchy pop song.
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Edward Geary Lansdale, who died in 1987, was a US Air Force officer who served in the Office of Strategic Services and the Central Intelligence Agency. Getty
In an attempt to help America win the Cold War, he may inadvertently have started a now long-running political tradition.
Political pop songs are a staple in Philippine elections. Two candidates for the election in May this year, Manny Pacquiao and Vice President Leni Robredo, have each released original pop campaign songs.
Pacquiao, for example, announced his entry into the political arena as his boxing career ended with the ballad One Pacquiao for the Nation, (which was played at the end of his campaign announcement).
They follow a tradition of scores of original compositions, from Arsenio H Lacson’s Lacson Mambo in 1959 to dictator Ferdinand Marcos’s March of the New Society — the last political jingle until the return of democracy in 1987.
That year, jingles returned, with senator Leticia Ramos Shahani commissioning her own song for the new democratic era.
But Mambo Magsaysay was a milestone.
The candidate’s soundtrack was played at rallies in the barrios on community PA systems, Time magazine recalled.
And the reporter recalled clearly how — like the CIA — Magsaysay saw the Soviet Union as a threat, recalling the candidate telling him: “If I lose, the Philippines becomes a banana republic beholden to the communists.”
The song was timely — that year, Tito Puente, a Puerto Rican mambo singer, played in Manila during a postwar Latin jazz craze that swept the nation.
Magsaysay Mambo was also perhaps one of the smarter US moves in the much, much broader “Cultural Cold War”, a soft-power fight for influence between the US and the Soviet Union that included funding concerts, albums, art shows, events, books, films and newspapers.
Lansdale himself in fact outlined helping write the song and how he planned to distribute it ahead of the vote in his now declassified cables, today stored at the Hoover Institution archives in Stanford, California.
Lansdale's apparent involvement in writing the song briefly appears in Max Boot's excellent biography of the spy, A Road Not Taken.
Cables show that the master records were pressed in the US and then smuggled by the CIA into the Philippines to be mass-produced and distributed, rather than attempting to smuggle in thousands of copies.
The National has seen documents that show how the CIA hedged its bets on the soon-to-be hit single, distributing not one but two songs for Magsaysay.
Officially, the mambo hit was written by Raul Manglapus, campaign manager for Magsaysay and future foreign minister, who moonlighted as a jazz pianist.
“I called it the Magsaysay Mambo and it was very popular,” he told The New York Times in 1974.
Manglapus later claimed to have had “jam sessions with Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia and King Aduldet Phumiphol of Thailand” — both “excellent saxophonists".
Interviewed in 1986, Rosita de la Vega, a nightclub singer who performed the hit, said it was arranged by Angel Pena, a well-known pianist on the Manila jazz scene.
Pena, who died in 2014, seems to have had some political contacts, performing jazz for the king of Thailand at the Thai embassy in Manila in 1963.
Rosita de la Vega singing at a Manila nightclub, circa 1953. Photo: Weekend Magazine
The National contacted a relative of Pena, but she could not remember him discussing details of his early career.
And a lengthy 1986 interview with De La Vega in the Filipino Weekend Magazine makes no mention of Lansdale.
Publicly, there is no mention of Lansdale having a hand in writing the song. Nor could anyone The National spoke to alive today confirm the CIA spy's claim to have written the lyrics.
So, what actually happened?
Music as a weapon
“There are two master records, one for the Magsaysay March, the other for the Magsaysay Mambo,” the now-declassified CIA cable from Lansdale to his handlers says.
“These are to be sent to a recording company in the United States in order that a ‘STAMPER’ be made out of them.”
A stamper is a negative impression of the master disc for mass production.
The cable goes on to say that the record's master disc can be reproduced by “any recording company” in the Philippines.
The documents represent a subtle hedging of bets on public taste — the second song, the forgotten Magsaysay March, appears pompous in comparison with the hit, with stilted lyrics about wanting the “bell of liberty”.
Mambo Magsaysay proved simply to be the better song and survived the ages, being revived as a protest anthem during the 1986 pro-democracy uprisings — ironically against the US-backed dictator Marcos.
The lyrics to the song 'Mambo Magsaysay'. Photo: Hoover Institution Library & Archives
The cable also shines more light on the Cultural Cold War typically associated with covert CIA action in postwar Europe between the early 1950s and the late 1960s, mainly accomplished through the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF).
CFF was a network of artists, writers and musicians in 35 countries, the vast majority of whom had no idea they were working for a CIA influence operation to counter the cultural appeal of socialism.
Many unwittingly contributed to CIA-funded concerts, art exhibitions — including abstract expressionist exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York — and literary magazines — including Paris Review in the US and France, Encounter in the UK and Quest in India.
Some of the art and literature world’s biggest names were unwitting contributors, including Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who wrote a piece for the CCF-funded Mundo Nuevo magazine. Jazz legend Louis Armstrong benefited from covert US government-backed music tours, with painters Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko among others who exhibited at CIA-funded shows.
“The agency also funded high American culture, including international performances by the Boston Symphony, via fake foundations and front organisations. They wanted to give the lie to communist propaganda that the US lacked high artistic traditions,” says Hugh Wilford, author of The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America.
So, could a CIA agent like Lansdale really have been involved without it coming out?
“They probably would have used some commercial firm to distribute Magsaysay Mambo, which they would have dealt with via intermediaries — rather like they produced a movie in this period, the cartoon version of Orwell’s Animal Farm, using an independent production company,” Prof Wilford says.
CCF was less active in the Philippines than in Europe, sponsoring a quarterly magazine, Comment, which was edited by celebrated author Francisco Sionil Jose. A related front organisation, Committee for a Free Asia, established a long-range radio transmitter in Manila for Radio Free Asia to broadcast propaganda into China, countering a similar Russian broadcast effort in Asia.
“This was not just a clash of two nuclear weapon states, it was also a clash of cultures, of two systems that were trying to map out the future for everybody, and offer images and ideas of a better future for everybody, be that a capitalist democratic future or some kind of communist collectivist future,” says Giles Scott Smith, a lecturer in diplomatic history at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
“So, if you think of the Cold War in those terms, as a battle of ideas, then the whole cultural realm, from popular culture — movies, right through to things like cartoons — and then high culture, including theatre, art, literature, all of that was brought into this, this extensive, global-wide battle of ideas,” he says.
That puts the spotlight on Landsdale, an almost mythical figure in the CIA’s history. But he doesn’t appear, at least publicly, to have worked with CCF and instead appears to have acted on his own instincts.
Who was Edward Lansdale?
A former PR copywriter, Lansdale’s military career began with the CIA's forerunner, the Office of Strategic Services.
He later smuggled arms to anti-communist groups in North Vietnam concealed in coffins, spread folklore myths in the hills of the Philippines — prodding government troops to put “vampire bite” wounds on a dead communist Huk fighter — and helped to fund publications to discredit America’s enemies.
His reputation led him to play a key role in Operation Mongoose, a plot to overthrow Cuba's Fidel Castro, although he later said he felt the operation was a fool’s errand.
To Joan Orendain, however, Lansdale was just Uncle Ed.
Ms Orendain, now 82, is the daughter of Lansdale’s colleague Johnny Orendain, a lawyer turned key ally of the CIA in Manila as the US sought to defeat the communists.
Orendain, who worked with Lansdale from the start of his intelligence posting in Manila in 1945, went on to work with Lansdale in South Vietnam, pioneering what would become known as “hearts and minds” — winning over the people through political warfare and social influence operations by establishing things such as health clinics, a project known as Operation Brotherhood.
A lawyer and amateur historian, Ms Orendain believes Lansdale could have written the words to Magsaysay Mambo.
“I don’t really know who composed the lyrics, but Manglapus could very well have done so,” she says. “It’s quite possible that both Manglapus and Uncle Ed composed the lyrics jointly.”
“The giveaway may be the rhyme 'our democracy will die, kung wala si [without] Magsaysay', which sounds like something Uncle Ed would write,” she says, referencing his gift for words.
She recalls Lansdale’s musical streak.
“Uncle Ed always carried a harmonica with him — a professional one, which he whipped out of his pocket as the spirit moved him. He loved singing, and taught us our favourite songs Buffalo Gals Won’t You Come Out Tonight, Red River Valley, Where Have You Been Billy Boy. He absolutely loved to sing.”
“On provincial sorties, he would bring out his harmonica and make people sing local folk songs in Tagalog while he played on his harmonica,” she says.
Lansdale was known for his common touch, and was considered by some as an Asian equivalent to TE Lawrence.
He soon positioned himself to influence media perceptions on the campaign trail, having helped Magsaysay defeat the Huk rebels while organising a PR campaign for the young candidate.
Both men’s success was helped by the fact that the incumbent, Elpidio Quirino, was beset by health problems and was widely seen as having won the previous election by distributing fake ballots.
That was a point the Magsaysay Mambo authors didn’t miss, as the song contains the lyrics, “the birds, they voted in Lanao”, a province of Mindanao where voter fraud was thought to be rife in the 1949 election.
Washington was less than impressed by the fact that Quirino allowed a rebellion by the Huks — marginalised, impoverished farmers who had turned to communism to gain the upper hand in a seven-year war.
US diplomatic cables from the time describe Huk motivations as pushing back against exploitation by powerful landlords. Stories of civilians being tortured by the army were commonplace.
Washington decided that Quirino was a lost cause as Magsaysay distinguished himself by advocating an approach focused on social and political reforms to address the Huks' grievances.
But information operations were key.
“Ed worked with a printing press and its offices in the heart of town which Johnny occupied during the Magsaysay campaign, to publish the daily Free Philippines, a tabloid-sized daily eight-page, put together specifically for the campaign,” Ms Orendain says.
“They’d write articles slamming the government, exposing corruption. You know, the president bought a bed for 5,000 pesos, that kind of thing,” she says, describing Quirino as notoriously corrupt.
“Every opportunity was taken. Ed never missed a beat to further their message,” she says.
Jazz ambassadors
Orendain and Lansdale’s efforts were a spectacular success, gaining Lansdale the nickname “Edward Landslide”, but it would not last: Magsaysay died in a plane crash in 1957.
By that time, Lansdale and Orendain’s efforts in South Vietnam were well under way.
And the CIA's efforts in Manila floundered with the charismatic Magsaysay gone.
Agent Joseph Burkholder Smith recalled in his autobiography, Portrait of a Cold Warrior, how the agency funded a number of candidates in the 1959 election with the brief “find a new Magsaysay”.
One of those candidates was the official Magsaysay Mambo writer, Raul Manglapus.
But the new CIA effort did not stop future US ally Ferdinand Marcos — whom Washington did not yet favour — from securing victory in 1965.
“Manglapus fled the Marcos regime and really suffered, he became politically irrelevant,” Ms Orendain recalls.
But before Manglapus was forced into exile, he told The New York Times he’d had “the pleasure of playing with Duke Ellington a few months before the [Marcos] takeover” in 1972.
In an ironic twist, history had come full circle, for Ellington was playing as part of a US State Department-funded trip to Manila, an element of a US cultural influence operation called “the jazz ambassadors” — the same programme that Louis Armstrong toured with.
That public diplomacy programme was in full swing after the CFF was exposed as a front in 1966, shocking the world.
Manglapus was playing with a US government-funded jazz legend weeks before the Philippines slid into a 14-year dictatorship — which was also backed by the US.
“You know, we've been through a dictatorship that killed thousands of Filipinos and imprisoned thousands more, including my brother, by the way, and Landsdale's godson,” Ms Orendain says.
With elections looming in May this year and a son of Marcos on the ballot, she says she is not sure if foreign powers would still be funding Filipino campaign pop songs.
“I can't think of any candidate who had as catchy a tune as Magsaysay did. Since then, there have been a few, but none of them are memorable.”
Updated: January 21st 2022, 5:40 PM
19. Feds drop case against Gang Chen, MIT professor accused of ties to China
Feds drop case against Gang Chen, MIT professor accused of ties to China
The Justice Department has dropped its case against Gang Chen, an MIT professor charged last year with hiding work he did for the Chinese government, saying it “could no longer meet its burden of proof at trial.”
“As prosecutors, we have an obligation in every matter we pursue to continually examine the facts while being open to receiving and uncovering new information,” U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Rachael Rollins said in a statement. “Today’s dismissal is a result of that process and is in the interests of justice.”
Chen was arrested and charged on Jan. 14, 2021, with two counts of wire fraud, one count of failure to file a foreign bank account report (FBAR) and one count of making a false statement in a tax return, according to the FBI.
“From the filings, it looks like new information seriously undercut the government’s ability to prove the case,” wrote Andrew Lelling, who was the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts at the time the charges were filed. “In that scenario, dismissal is the right thing to do.”
Chen, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in China, at the time of his arrest headed MIT’s Pappalardo Micro/Nano Engineering Laboratory and serves as director of the Solid-State Solar Thermal Energy Conversion Center.
Chen issued a brief statement Thursday thanking his friends, colleagues and family who had stood by him over the past year.
“While I am relieved that my ordeal is over, I am mindful that this terribly misguided China Initiative continues to bring unwarranted fear to the academic community and other scientists still face charges,” he wrote in the statement, referencing a DOJ program to prosecute intellectual property espionage that benefits China. “I will have more to say soon.”
Yoel Fink, a professor of material science and engineering at MIT who was a leader of faculty support and principal writer of an open letter of support for Chen, called Thursday “a day I’m proud to be a part of MIT because of the response of my colleagues at MIT and MIT’s president.”
Fink said his concerns began a year before the arrest of Chen, when he looked into allegations against Harvard professor Charles Lieber, who was arrested and convicted in December of similar charges.
From his experience with the Lieber case, Fink examined and poked holes in the federal government’s case against Chen and presented his findings and arguments in a faculty meeting presentation that began with a slide reading “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” This was a call back to Boston-based Army attorney Joseph Welch’s 1954 televised takedown of Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
Among the letter’s concerns over the charges was what its authors viewed as improper attribution to Chen directly for money actually received by the university at large.
The presentation became an open letter eventually signed by roughly 200 MIT faculty, including Nobel Prize winners, that spurred MIT President L. Rafael Reif to issue a statement standing by Chen and declaring MIT’s relationship with Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China, a principal focus of the charges, to be a departmental relationship and not an individual one with Chen.
Conviction of wire fraud could have sent Chen to prison for up to 20 years and he could have faced a fine of up to $250,000 — and worse, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Robert Fisher, Chen’s lead counsel, said it had been “a long year” in a phone call 30 minutes after a federal judge allowed the motion to dismiss. He added in a statement that “Our defense was this: Gang did not commit any offenses he was charged with. Full stop.”
“Having had faith in Gang from the beginning, we can all be grateful for a just outcome to a damaging process,” MIT President Reif wrote in a Thursday afternoon statement. “We are eager for his full return to our community.”
20. Opinion | What an Antisemite’s Fantasy Says About Jewish Reality
Excerpts:
It’s also the likeliest reason there was so much obvious hesitancy to describe the attack in Texas as antisemitic. Unlike the Pittsburgh shooter or the “Jews will not replace us” crowd at Charlottesville — white, right-wing, mostly Christian and therefore “privileged” — the Texas assailant was a British Muslim of Pakistani descent. Not white. Not privileged. Not right-wing. In the binary narrative of the powerful versus the powerless, his naked antisemitism just doesn’t compute: Powerless people are supposed to be victims, not murderous bigots. If he had ranted against Israel for oppressing Palestinians, it might have made more sense. And if he had donned a MAGA hat, we would certainly have had a much fuller exploration of his antisemitism, without time wasted exploring his other motives or state of mind.
For American Jews, this small silence about what happened last week should be profoundly worrisome, and not just as a matter of a journalistic lapse. It’s bad enough that the Jewish state, which gained what power it has because its neighbors threatened it with extinction, is still treated by so many as a global pariah — its sympathizers abroad risking social or professional ostracism by mere association. It’s bad enough, too, that the foul antisemitism of the right, yoked to its old themes of nativism, protectionism, nationalism and isolationism, is erupting into the public square like a burst sewage pipe.
Now American Jews find ourselves at perhaps the most successful period in our history, at a moment when much of the progressive left has decreed that privilege is a sin and that those who hold power should be stripped of it. Anyone with a long view of Jewish history should know how quickly economic and social privilege can turn to political and personal ruin, even — or especially — in countries where it might seem unthinkable.
There’s much to be thankful for about how things ended last week in Texas, and about the outpouring of love and support, across faiths, for a little Jewish community. But the wise counsel for Jews is to be grateful for last week’s good luck, while taking it as a warning that our luck in America may run out.
Opinion | What an Antisemite’s Fantasy Says About Jewish Reality
Bret Stephens
What an Antisemite’s Fantasy Says About Jewish Reality
Jan. 21, 2022
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A man travels 4,800 miles from the north of England to the heart of Texas.
Once there, appearing to be homeless, he gains entry into a synagogue just before its Shabbat services. The rabbi welcomes him with a cup of tea. With a handgun, he takes the rabbi and others hostage for 11 hours while demanding the release of a convicted terrorist held in a nearby prison. He phones a prominent New York rabbi to help push for the terrorist’s release. A hostage reports him as saying, “I know President Biden will do things for the Jews.” A witness, who sees the drama unfold on a livestream, watches him “ranting about Jews and Israel” and saying he has chosen his target because “America only cares about Jewish lives.”
Antisemitism? You would think it could not be more obvious, as everyone from the prime minister of Israel to the president of the United States to the Council on American-Islamic Relations agrees. But first you’d have to climb over a strange wall of obfuscation, misdirection and doubt.
“He was singularly focused on one issue, and it was not specifically related to the Jewish community, but we are continuing to work to find motive,” the F.B.I. special agent in charge, Matthew DeSarno, said shortly after the standoff ended, presumably referring to the assailant’s bid to free the imprisoned terrorist. Both The Associated Press and the BBC parroted the line, with the Beeb tweeting, “Texas synagogue hostage standoff not related to Jewish community — F.B.I.”
The A.P. later deleted a tweet making a similar claim. And the F.B.I. amended its case on Sunday, calling the attack “a terrorism-related matter, in which the Jewish community was targeted.” On Thursday, the F.B.I. director, Christopher Wray, finally acknowledged that it was an antisemitic attack.
Yet the only substantial reporting I found from a major American news organization that explicitly acknowledges the antisemitic nature of the attack was one astute story in The Washington Post. Instead, there was a focus on the assailant’s supposed mental illness, along with additional reporting on the ever-increasing security-consciousness of synagogues worldwide.
Compare that with the mountain of reporting regarding the anti-Asian hate that allegedly animated the killer in last year’s attacks on Atlanta-area massage parlors. Or compare it with the coverage of the unquestionably racist 2015 shooting at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. For that matter, compare it with the naked Jew-hatred that drove the killer in the 2018 synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh, which has been extensively reported and discussed. (His immediate “motive” was opposition to immigration.)
In the days since the attack, the F.B.I.’s head-in-sand approach, along with so much of the media’s strange pattern of omission, has been the chief topic of discussion in every Jewish circle to which I belong. How can it be, we ask ourselves, that Jews should be victimized twice? First, by being physically targeted for being Jewish; second, by being begrudged the universal recognition that we were morally targeted, too? And how can it be that in this era of heightened sensitivity to every kind of hatred, bias, stereotype, -ism and -phobia, both conscious and unconscious, there’s so much caviling, caveating and outright denying when it comes to calling out bias aimed at Jews?
*
The answer begins with the shapeshifting nature of antisemitism, which some perpetrate, others participate in (sometimes unwittingly), and a still greater number fail to recognize for what it is — in part because each successive mutation doesn’t exactly resemble its predecessor.
What we generally call antisemitism is a 19th-century coinage that helped turn an ancient religious hatred into a racial hatred. As racial hatred came to be considered uncouth after World War II, anti-Zionism (that is, blanket opposition to a Jewish state, not criticism of particular Israeli policies) became a more acceptable way of opposing Jewish political interests and denigrating Jews. Should Israel cease to exist, new forms of bigotry will surely develop for the next stage of anti-Judaism, adapted to the prevailing beliefs of the times.
The common denominator in each of these mutations is an idea, based in fantasy and conspiracy, about Jewish power. The old-fashioned religious antisemite believed Jews had the power to kill Christ. The 19th-century antisemites who were the forerunners to the Nazis believed Jews had the power to start wars, manipulate kings and swindle native people of their patrimony.
Present-day anti-Zionists attribute to Israel and its supporters in the United States vast powers that they do not possess, like the power to draw America into war. On the far right, antisemites think that Jews are engaged in an immense scheme to replace white, working-class America with immigrant labor. Tucker Carlson and others have taken this conspiracy theory mainstream, much to the delight of neo-Nazis like David Duke, even if they are careful to leave out the part about Jews.
The man who attacked the synagogue entertained the same type of fantasy. Just as Willie Sutton was said to rob banks because “that’s where the money is,” this assailant took Jews hostage because that’s where the power was (or so he thought). The F.B.I.’s moral idiocy — there are no other words for it — in denying the specifically antisemitic nature of the attack lies in the idea that he could have imagined himself choosing just about any means to achieve his end, like taking hostages at the nearest church or convenience store. Similarly, the focus on his mental health evades the central fact that, crazy or not, his malice was not random. He aimed his gun at Jews.
The fantasy about Jewish power may seem outlandish, but it’s far more pervasive than many think — which gets to the point of people participating in antisemitism even when they aren’t knowingly perpetrating it.
Who, for instance, is most responsible for devising the war in Iraq? If your first-pass answer is “Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams and Perle,” you might ask yourself why you are naming second- and third-tier Bush administration officials, all of them Jewish, when all the top decision makers — Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice — are Christians. (If your response to this is that Wolfowitz et al. were the ones who pulled the strings, then you’re an antisemite.)
***
But there’s a larger context here, which has to do with prevailing assumptions about power itself.
A moral conviction of our time, especially prevalent on the cultural left, is that the powerful are presumptively bad while the powerless are presumptively good. These categories aren’t just political. They are also social, economic, ethnic and racial. It’s why so many conversations today revolve around the concept of “privilege” — a striking redefinition of success that removes the presumption of merit from those who have it and the stigma of failure from those who don’t.
It’s also the likeliest reason there was so much obvious hesitancy to describe the attack in Texas as antisemitic. Unlike the Pittsburgh shooter or the “Jews will not replace us” crowd at Charlottesville — white, right-wing, mostly Christian and therefore “privileged” — the Texas assailant was a British Muslim of Pakistani descent. Not white. Not privileged. Not right-wing. In the binary narrative of the powerful versus the powerless, his naked antisemitism just doesn’t compute: Powerless people are supposed to be victims, not murderous bigots. If he had ranted against Israel for oppressing Palestinians, it might have made more sense. And if he had donned a MAGA hat, we would certainly have had a much fuller exploration of his antisemitism, without time wasted exploring his other motives or state of mind.
For American Jews, this small silence about what happened last week should be profoundly worrisome, and not just as a matter of a journalistic lapse. It’s bad enough that the Jewish state, which gained what power it has because its neighbors threatened it with extinction, is still treated by so many as a global pariah — its sympathizers abroad risking social or professional ostracism by mere association. It’s bad enough, too, that the foul antisemitism of the right, yoked to its old themes of nativism, protectionism, nationalism and isolationism, is erupting into the public square like a burst sewage pipe.
Now American Jews find ourselves at perhaps the most successful period in our history, at a moment when much of the progressive left has decreed that privilege is a sin and that those who hold power should be stripped of it. Anyone with a long view of Jewish history should know how quickly economic and social privilege can turn to political and personal ruin, even — or especially — in countries where it might seem unthinkable.
There’s much to be thankful for about how things ended last week in Texas, and about the outpouring of love and support, across faiths, for a little Jewish community. But the wise counsel for Jews is to be grateful for last week’s good luck, while taking it as a warning that our luck in America may run out.
21. Ambassador (Ret.) Greta C. Holtz - Chancellor, College of International Security Affairs at NDU
Congratulations to Ambassador Greta Holtz as the new Chancellor at CISA. What a great American. She is a great choice to lead CISA. Note her special operations experience as well as her distinguished diplomatic career.
Ambassador (Ret.) Greta C. Holtz
Chancellor, CISA
Ambassador Greta C. Holtz enjoyed 35 years as a career diplomat with extensive experience in the Middle East region. She retired in April 2021 with the personal rank of Minister Counsellor. Ambassador Holtz served as Senior United States Coordinator for Operation Allies Refuge in Qatar from August - October 2021 and as Chargé d’affaires in Qatar from June 2020 until April 2021. She was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, and she was the Senior Foreign Policy Advisor (POLAD) to the Commanding General of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) from 2017-2019. She served as the United States Ambassador to the Sultanate of Oman from 2012 to 2015 and was the Vice-Chancellor at National Defense University’s College of International Security Affairs from 2016 to 2017. Ambassador Holtz was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communication in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, and she ran the United States Provincial Reconstruction teams in Iraq from 2009-2010.
Additional overseas assignments include Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Tunisia, Syria, and Turkey, and her domestic assignments include serving as the director of the Middle East Partnership Initiative, the United States Coordinator for the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe, and a Senior Watch Officer in the Operations Center.
Holtz has a B.S. in political science from Vanderbilt University, an M.A. in International Relations from the University of Kentucky’s Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, and an M.A. in National Security Strategy from the National War College. She speaks French, Arabic, and Turkish.
Ambassador Holtz is the recipient of numerous State Department Superior Honor Awards, two Presidential Rank nominations, Vanderbilt University’s Phi Alpha Theta Distinguished Alumnus Award, the Christopher Medallion, (CIA); Joint Meritorious Civilian Service Award from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Joint Civilian Service Commendation Award from the President of National Defense University; Joint Civilian Service Achievement Award from the Chancellor of NDU’s College of International Security Affairs.
22. This Marine-turned-journalist interviewed the Taliban commander he had fought against
TM Gibbons-Neff is truly a great American.
This Marine-turned-journalist interviewed the Taliban commander he had fought against
NPR · by Terry Gross · January 20, 2022
Thomas Gibbons-Neff served two tours in Afghanistan, and is now a New York Times reporter. He recently interviewed a high-level Taliban commander about a battle they had both been engaged in.
TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. After serving two tours as a Marine in Afghanistan from 2008 to 2010, my guest Thomas Gibbons-Neff returned in 2015 as a reporter for The Washington Post. In 2017, he joined The New York Times and continued to make occasional reporting trips to Afghanistan. In 2020, he joined the Times' Kabul bureau. That gave him the chance to do something quite unusual. After Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, Gibbons-Neff interviewed a Taliban commander who, 11 years earlier, attacked the company of Marines in which Gibbons-Neff was a corporal. As Gibbons-Neff writes, he had tried to kill me as I had tried to kill him.
That Taliban commander is now a high-level Taliban commander. The interview took place in an office in the Taliban government headquarters, which is in a building that Americans refurbished years ago. That interview is an example of some of the more personal writing Gibbons-Neff has done as part of his reporting from Afghanistan. Another is his article about the effort he participated in to rescue more than 120 Times employees and their families after Afghanistan fell to the Taliban. That rescue required the help and cooperation of the Taliban, another unusual relationship with his former enemy. Gibbons-Neff is in the U.S. and will soon return to Afghanistan, this time as The New York Times' Kabul bureau chief.
Thomas Gibbons-Neff, welcome to FRESH AIR.
THOMAS GIBBONS-NEFF: Thanks for having me.
GROSS: Why did you want to return to Marjah and write a piece about the Taliban commander who you fought against when you were a Marine? And his name is Mullah Abdul Rahim Gulab.
GIBBONS-NEFF: I always wanted to go back to Marjah. I mean, as - I was there as a 22-year-old corporal and fought in one of the bigger operations of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. And my perspective then was of an infantryman - right? - sent there to find and kill the enemy. And all these years later, going back kind of let me understand Marjah from a much different perspective. I guess as a journalist, you're there trying to absorb, not trying to kind of impose.
And when we went back in November of last year, we weren't there originally to interview Taliban commanders, or I wasn't there to interview someone I had fought against. That kind of came secondary. And that - after we had gone to the district center and talked to the governor there and asked if we could, he rounded up a few fighters, a few Taliban fighters, who had been in Marjah in 2010 and fought the Americans. So it kind of - it was a stroke of luck. And then that kind of interview came to be.
GROSS: So did you recognize him as somebody who had fought against you?
GIBBONS-NEFF: No, no. I didn't recognize him. Basically, he had said that he had been in Marjah in February of 2010, and where my unit had landed was a specific village we called the Koru Chareh. It's a little different in Pashto. But, you know, when we got to talking, he said, well, he was there, too, and then we kind of narrowed down what days. Mind you, this entire time I didn't disclose that I had been a Marine. I was more asking for the Taliban perspective on a very significant U.S. battle since it was the first big operation of the 2009 surge that then-President Obama had announced.
GROSS: Why didn't you tell him that you were a Marine and that you had fought against each other?
GIBBONS-NEFF: I mean, there was a lot of reasons. I think after that article came out, there was definitely a lot of comments that asked that same question. The Afghan reporter that I was traveling with wasn't entirely comfortable, for one. I think we had kind of gone into it knowing, you know, if he thought it was comfortable, he would give me the nudge. He didn't feel comfortable, and also, we were in a room with about 10 other Taliban, Talib fighters, who were all armed. And just - this isn't 10 years after the end of the war. This isn't 20 years after the war. I mean, the war had ended in August and kind of unclear how that would land. You know, maybe it'd be fine in the room, but outside the room, it might not have gone over well.
GROSS: And the Taliban commander you were interviewing had an M-4 carbine rifle right next to you, leaning against a chair - an American weapon, by the way, right?
GIBBONS-NEFF: Right. An American weapon that looked very much - I mean, was the rifle I carried, not the exact rifle but the same type, in 2010.
GROSS: So do you know if the Taliban commander, Mr. Gulab, ever read your article about your interview with him?
GIBBONS-NEFF: No, I don't know. My colleague Yaqoob has his number, and I was hoping that maybe when we go back, reaching out to see if he ever comes to Kabul and would want to maybe sit down and talk again.
GROSS: So you're not concerned about him reading it.
GIBBONS-NEFF: No. No, I'm not concerned.
GROSS: So before we talk about interviewing him and getting the Taliban perspective on the battle that you fought in, tell us what this battle was about in Marjah.
GIBBONS-NEFF: Sure. Right. So I guess you could say the battle for Marjah, or known as Operation Moshtarak, was about seizing the district of Marjah, which was considered by U.S. military commanders as kind of the last Taliban stronghold in central Helmand and that it was important because it was near the provincial capital. And it was several thousand American troops, Afghan government forces, some international troops, in the middle of February 2010 landed and attacked this district from several directions. And it kind of became the set piece battle of - the first set-piece battle of Obama's surge at the time.
GROSS: Before we get the Taliban perspective, what are your memories of the battle in Marjah? Was it a turning point for you as a Marine?
GIBBONS-NEFF: I mean, I think what happened in Marjah, for me - I mean, again, you asked earlier, you know, what was it like? Why did I go back to this place? I mean, it was kind of a huge moment in my life. I was in charge of six other Marines and Navy corpsman. I was very young. You know, my first deployment in 2008, while there was certainly fighting, it was kind of nothing on the scale or pace of what it looked like in 2010. And we knew there was a lot riding on it - right? - that this was this big deal.
I mean, before we deployed, we watched as President Obama made his announcement that he was sending more forces to Afghanistan, when he spoke at West Point. And we knew that when we saw that speech that we would be somehow involved and - which we were. So to kind of go into this battle with all that in mind, our commander saying this is going to be some historic event, and then as it played out, you know, the killing and dying, our friends being shot, our friends dying - I mean, it kind of just became this place cemented in my memory that I, you know, wanted to revisit because it kind of, I think, in a lot of ways shaped who I was as a person.
So in those early hours, you know, nothing had really happened. It was very cold. One of my teammates asked if the entire deployment was going to be this boring. And then there was this call to prayer that I remember very well because the mullah speaking through the mosque speaker was very angry. You know, it wasn't so much a call to prayer as it was yelling of some sort. We didn't have an interpreter with us. And then shortly after that, the shooting started. And it kind of went on for a few days. I mean, those initial - that initial day, we were kind of surrounded on at least three different sides and - as we tried to fight up to our objective, which was this two-story building on the edge of this village, the Koru Chareh village.
GROSS: So the Taliban leader who fought against you, Gulab - what are some of the things he told you from his perspective about that battle that were kind of revelatory for you?
GIBBONS-NEFF: I think one of the most interesting things - and that's in the article - is just how nonchalant he recalled, you know, dropping his weapons and going up to Americans right after a firefight and greeting them and saying, you know, where are the - and the Americans would ask, where are the Taliban? And he said, I don't know - even though he was one. And during that deployment - or our deployments, we kind of knew that, right? We knew that they had this tactic of firing and dropping their weapons, and we had always thought that they had fled.
I was just at a funeral over the weekend, and some of the - my Marine friends were there, and we were talking about that. We had always just thought they left. Like, they had fled the district or had gone east or west or north or south, but they weren't around us after something like that. But he was kind of saying, we were right there. We were - we just looked at you in the eye and kept walking, and we did nothing. And that just felt like a confirmation of something. But, you know, this idea that they were among us as we patrolled, you know, a decade ago was definitely - we could just feel it, like, kind of, like, a movement of, like, oh, well, that's how it was.
GROSS: And it kind of confirms that there were many times you couldn't differentiate between allies and enemies.
GIBBONS-NEFF: Absolutely.
GROSS: So they would drop their weapons. And when they'd pass Marines or other Americans and you'd ask, like, where are the Taliban, they'd say, oh, we don't know, as if they were not Taliban themselves. What would they do with their weapons?
GIBBONS-NEFF: They would, you know, drop them in a ditch. I mean, Mr. Gulab said - and the other locals would come and pick up the weapons and take them to their homes. Or maybe they'd put them, you know, in the ground somewhere or in a haystack. And I think some - one of the other interesting things, he said, was that they had used kids, you know, children to spot our patrols as the Americans left and came back, which is something we also kind of suspected. But again, he just said it so nonchalantly that it was, you know, very common practice.
GROSS: Using children was a common practice.
GIBBONS-NEFF: Yeah.
GROSS: Well, let me reintroduce you here, and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Thomas Gibbons-Neff, and he is a former Marine who served in Afghanistan from 2008 to 2010. He returned to Afghanistan as a reporter, first for The Washington Post, then The New York Times. He's about to become the Times' Kabul bureau chief. We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF JULIAN LAGE GROUP'S "IOWA TAKEN")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. If you're just joining us, my guest is Thomas Gibbons-Neff. He served as a Marine in Afghanistan from 2008 to 2010. He returned to Afghanistan first as a reporter for The Washington Post, then for The New York Times. He's currently in the U.S., but he's about to return to Afghanistan as the Times' Kabul bureau chief.
So one of the things you mentioned was that the commander told you that the Taliban used children, and they used children to alert the Taliban when American troops were arriving. I think in the article, you wrote they used children to hide the weapons. Like, when they would drop their weapons and say, oh, we don't know where the Taliban are, when they ran into Americans, it was sometimes the children who would take the weapons and hide them. Knowing that children played a role in the Taliban and helped enable the Taliban to attack, what did you think about in terms of having encounters with children while you were a Marine? I mean, were you aware then that children were being used by the Taliban and that children could conceivably be a danger to you?
GIBBONS-NEFF: Yeah, we were very aware of that. When we would go into compounds, the Taliban would send children to follow our boot prints and would come in and kind of look us in the eye and then run out to tell the Taliban where we were. I mean, that happened a couple times. I don't know if that's exactly how it played out, but it certainly felt that way. So I think I alluded to it in the article. But I mean, there were certainly conversations about how to deal with that. And it was - you know, among members of my team, it was - there were a lot of conversations about how to contend with a 10-year-old who comes in and potentially endangers all of our lives.
GROSS: Yeah, I mean, you don't want to kill a child. You don't want to lose your own life, either. Is that specifically what you're referring to?
GIBBONS-NEFF: Correct, yeah.
GROSS: So what was the outcome of this battle?
GIBBONS-NEFF: I mean, August 15 would say it would be a total loss. I mean, I think from February of 2010 for a few years afterward, as the Marines stayed in Marjah, it was mostly secure, I guess. They pushed the Taliban out of the district except for a few incursions. And then after they handed it over to the Afghan army in 2014, 2015, the Taliban quickly came back and took most of the district except for a few outposts that remained that were kind of completely surrounded. And that went on for years until July of last year when the Taliban took the district completely as the Afghan military shrunk and provincial capitals collapsed.
GROSS: Was it an emotional experience for you to meet face-to-face with the commander of Taliban who you fought against?
GIBBONS-NEFF: I mean, absolutely. I think there's, like, a certain level in that conversation where I can't really believe where I am. I'm in the district center of Marjah, a place that I had fought a decade before, and I'm sitting here in front of someone who almost absolutely shot at me and someone who I almost absolutely shot at on some level and just kind of having this back-and-forth in the back of my head. I guess as I left the room after the interview, I just had this kind of feeling. It just felt like it was over. It's kind of hard to describe. But I think that was the phrase I kind of just, like - I muttered in my head. You know, it's over. I think I had gone as far as humanly possible to kind of return and have - I don't want to say closure, but it just - it felt like the end of something.
GROSS: You lost a couple of your men in that battle.
GIBBONS-NEFF: Right. So two of my friends were wounded - or two of my teammates were wounded in the first day. And then we had lost someone from our platoon and a very good friend of mine in May of 2010, along with my old platoon commander, who was a good friend, a week before that.
GROSS: Were you thinking about them during the interview?
GIBBONS-NEFF: I mean, it's hard not to. I mean, I think they're kind of - I mean, during that entire trip to Marjah, they were never far from my thoughts. But it was more, I think, just being there and kind of taking a couple of seconds. I think during the interview, I was just more focused on talking to the commander and kind of just being aware of where I was in time and space, not so much everything that had happened leading up to it.
GROSS: When you returned to Marjah to talk to the Taliban commander, you also reported on what Marjah is like now. So did life seem any better or worse in Marjah?
GIBBONS-NEFF: I think one of the hard things about traveling around Afghanistan after the fall of the Western-backed government and the end of the American war, the war since 2001, is describing the situation where there is this humanitarian disaster that's unfolding. There is this economic downturn that is almost certainly a crisis. But talking to the Afghans about just their current situation, they value having security, being able to go from A to B to visit their family, not worrying about a roadside bomb, being shot in a crossfire between government and Taliban forces.
I mean, at the moment, before this - you know, I mean, again, last time I was there was last month. They seem to hold that above everything else despite the crisis that's unfolding around them. And, I mean, that's just Afghan resilience, really. But it's certainly something to appreciate.
GROSS: After fighting with the Marines in Afghanistan, why did you want to later return as a reporter?
GIBBONS-NEFF: I think - you know, people ask that question all the time. And people like to say, like, oh, well, you went - you deployed twice there, and now you're a reporter. You must know a lot about the country, must really lend to your experience or make you more experienced as a journalist. In reality, that's not the case at all. I mean, going there as an infantryman in the Marine Corps with little understanding of the culture, you leave with little understanding of the culture because you're kind of just focused on not dying and your friends not dying. And that's really it. So I guess you learn a lot about violence. You learn a lot about what American foreign policy looks like at the edge of the empire, I like to say.
But it's tough to leave a country that you spent, you know, almost two years of your life in and not know really anything about it or understand why you were there or what you did and - especially to the people of Afghanistan. So I didn't know I wanted to be a reporter when I left in 2010, but that kind of all funneled down to that idea of going back. And people like to say, oh, you're a New York Times journalist. Like, that's a really - you know, it's a high-profile position. But in reality, I've kind of just built this time machine - right? - where I can go back to Marjah and figure out why everything went the way it did.
GROSS: What else do you feel like you have been able to understand about why you were there as a Marine, you know, why the Marines were there?
GIBBONS-NEFF: I think one of the things that it's kind of crystallized is just how misguided the U.S. government and the U.S. military and the Pentagon was year after year of the war there to the point where it's just kind of mind-numbing that these strategies with good intentions were poorly thought, poorly executed. And, you know, by the time that it got to the president, you know, generals were kind of just repeating talking points that nobody really believed in.
GROSS: Can you give us an example?
GIBBONS-NEFF: I mean, I think Marjah's a good example. I think that it's pretty well-outlined - this idea of, like, a government in a box, like, your whole build strategy is this idea that you could go into a rural area in Afghanistan and bring in a totally new government and think that it would work and that it would align with what the people of Afghanistan wanted or the people of the District of Marjah wanted and then, you know, giving them all this aid and support and having it not really work out and then pretending it did or at least acknowledging that it would take decades upon decades upon decades of that similar level of support to maintain it on any level.
But just kind of doing it for a few months and then moving onto the next place, next battlefield, next district - but, yeah, I mean, one example is the U.S. lost the war, not to be flippant.
GROSS: Well, let me reintroduce you here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Thomas Gibbons-Neff. He served as a Marine in Afghanistan from 2008 to 2010. He returned to Afghanistan as a reporter first for the Washington Post, then The New York Times. And he's about to become the Times' Kabul bureau chief. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF STEFANO BOLLANI'S "ALOBAR E KUDRA")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to the interview I recorded yesterday with Thomas Gibbons-Neff. He served as a marine in Afghanistan from 2008 to 2010. He returned as a reporter first for The Washington Post and then The New York Times. He's about to become the Times' Kabul bureau chief.
I want to ask you about another personal story that you wrote about recently for the Times. After Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, there were so many Afghans who were desperately trying to get out of Afghanistan and escape Taliban rule. There were over 120 New York Times employees and their families who wanted to get out, and you helped them do it. You worked with an Afghan New York Times correspondent, Mujib Mashal, who grew up in Kabul, and you also worked with some Taliban to get the families to safety. They, I suppose, acted as escorts. Were you part of how the deal was arranged with the Taliban? What can you tell us about how the deal was arranged for the Taliban to help New York Times employees and their families escape?
GIBBONS-NEFF: Right. So Mujib was in Kabul, and he was working with the Qataris, who were working with the Taliban, so he arranged kind of the escort. And I was on the military side of Kabul International Airport working with the U.S. military and their liaisons to try and figure out how we would get all our people who were in the city into the airport. And meanwhile, my colleague Christina Goldbaum was in Doha coordinating everything else as far as, you know, transport, housing. One of our colleagues was lost in the base system where these refugee camps had sprung up. So it was kind of this effort across pretty much every dimension of what was going on, not just in Kabul but in Qatar and the United States, etc.
GROSS: How did you coordinate with Mujib Mashal, who was working with the Taliban?
GIBBONS-NEFF: So that was pretty much all done over WhatsApp, which was incredible. And I'm really lucky that my phone - I didn't drop my phone or break it because if I had, that would have been it. But it was this kind of dayslong process of getting buses, trying to figure out which gate at the airport to go to and then going from there. I mean, it had been a pretty brutal saga for our Afghan colleagues, who were at one point stuck in the airport and then beaten by the Taliban in one of their first attempts to get over to the military side.
GROSS: Is this while they still had Taliban escorts?
GIBBONS-NEFF: No, this was prior to that. The first attempt was on those early days, August 15 and then August 16, when we had moved our Afghan colleagues to the civilian side of the airport. And then in an attempt to get them to the military side as they went up to get through after hours of coordinating with the U.S. military, the Taliban came into the airport to clear the crowd, and our people were caught in the middle.
GROSS: Were you able to achieve a level of trust between the military side and the Taliban side?
GIBBONS-NEFF: I mean, that trust really just kind of played out when our people came across at the airport. I think it was around 2 or 3 in the morning of August 20 or August 19. It might have been the 20. And when the Marines had pushed out of the domestic terminal to this blue gate and Mujib came with three Taliban fighters, one of whom was a commander - and I hadn't really thought about it until then, but the Marines were standing there and they had their weapons. And as the Taliban kind of appeared in the darkness with theirs, there was, I think, a brief moment where I just recalled in any other scenario they would be shooting at each other but just how calm the Marines were and how calm the Taliban were. It was this moment where I knew things had certainly changed from my time in 2010.
GROSS: Do you think you're seeing a different side of the Taliban now? It sounds like maybe, at least for some of them, the war posture is over and that they're a little more humane or maybe not. I don't know. I'd love to hear your impressions about that.
GIBBONS-NEFF: I think just from that interaction and then from the interactions with Mr. Gulab in Marja, I think there's a distinct feeling of happiness that the killing is over - right? - the violence. I think that was kind of conveyed to the Marines at the gate that this could be put behind on some level. And same with Mr. Gulab in Marja where he said something along the lines of we're not killing them and they're not killing us. And I think that says a lot. I mean, whether every Talib feels the same way is up for discussion. I'm sure that's certainly not the case. And as what I've seen, it's definitely not the case. But I think there is a resounding - some level of closure, right? The Taliban have won, and they feel that and the Marines at that gate kind of knew that their time in Afghanistan was over.
GROSS: Yeah. So people, you know, they're not - the Taliban aren't killing Afghans, and the Afghan military isn't killing the Taliban, and the Americans aren't killing the Taliban. Are Taliban letting women out of the house? Are Taliban letting girls go to school?
GIBBONS-NEFF: Again, I think that's the next iteration of, you know, who the Taliban are now, right? There's always that debate of Taliban version two vs. version one. And depending on who you talk to, they're the same old Taliban from the 1990s. No, they're new. And they've kind of figured out how to navigate the international community and they're trying to get women back to school - and that's certainly the case, you know, high-schoolers in certain provinces with promises that by a certain date in the spring that they'll all be able to go back to school. But again, that hasn't happened yet, and that's up for discussion.
But how the Taliban treat women now, I think they've come to understand that it is this public relations weapon - right? - whether they're squashing a protest in Kabul because they're so afraid of the optics or in an interview saying, well, they're all going to be able to go back to school, they know that it is leverage for the international community. But I think at their core, I mean, it is a hard-line religious movement. And I don't think much will change as far as how they view women in the workforce, outside the home, etc., etc. I don't think that there's going to be much movement on that.
GROSS: Let me get back to The New York Times employees and their families in Afghanistan, who you helped get out of Afghanistan after the country fell to the Taliban. Did the families finally get out? And what was the last step in getting them into the airport and on the plane?
GIBBONS-NEFF: Right. So more than 120 New York Times employees and their family members were evacuated. And, I think, in total, it's more than 200 after a couple other flights followed. That last step was - right, that meeting at the gate with the Taliban and the Marines. The Taliban let them go. The Marines let them in, read through the manifest and then moved them to a bus, and then to a flight about 10 hours later to Doha, Qatar. And then from there, to Mexico City, and then from there to Houston, Texas, where they are all - they're on humanitarian parole and are there living in apartments in Houston.
GROSS: Have you kept track of any of them?
GIBBONS-NEFF: Yeah. Of course. I mean, they're friends before colleagues, certainly.
GROSS: How are they doing?
GIBBONS-NEFF: They are doing, I think, as well as can be after what happened in August. I mean, I've kind of learned and been accustomed to varying levels of trauma, death and loss and violence. But I had never been exposed to, you know, the trauma of a refugee, of leaving everything behind and going to this very new and alien place. And that's been hard. I think there was this idea that we would get them to the airport in Kabul and get them on a flight, and there would be some feeling of, oh, we did it. We helped. It's over.
But it never really is over. I mean, it's just one challenge after the next. And talking to my friends in Houston, my colleagues, and kind of understanding - or trying to understand - what it's like to leave their home behind into this place has been difficult. And it's kind of another feeling of helplessness, I think. That's one thing that Afghanistan teaches you relatively quickly is that feeling helpless as these things kind of happen around you is common - and then to kind of have it again and in the United States, knowing I don't know how to help any more than I have.
GROSS: Let's take another break here, and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Thomas Gibbons-Neff. He served two tours as a Marine in Afghanistan from 2008 to 2010. Then he returned as a reporter for The Washington Post, then for The New York Times. And he's about to become the Times' Kabul bureau chief. We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF SOLANGE SONG, "WEARY")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Thomas Gibbons-Neff. He served as a Marine in Afghanistan from 2008 to 2010. He returned as a reporter for The Washington Post and then for The New York Times. He's about to become the Times' Kabul bureau chief.
One of the stories you recently wrote was about a tribute to suicide bombers that was hosted - is that the right word? - by Siraj Haqqani. Can you describe what this tribute was like?
GIBBONS-NEFF: Sure. That was over the fall. And that was Siraj Haqqani, who is the head of the Haqqani network and the minister of interior, put a conference of sorts together or a ceremony at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, and basically lauded the contribution of, you know, the legions of suicide bombers that had carried out attacks over the course of the war. And many of their family members were in attendance, and promised - or at least pledged on some level that they would be given a certain amount of money, maybe some land, because he said that their efforts were key in winning the war for the Taliban.
GROSS: You spoke to people who had lost friends or family from suicide bombers or who were injured themselves. What was their reaction to this tribute to suicide bombers?
GIBBONS-NEFF: I mean, as expected, I mean, they thought it was obscene.
GROSS: How has your life in Afghanistan changed from when you were reporting when the Americans were there and the American-backed government was in control compared to now, with the Taliban taking over the government?
GIBBONS-NEFF: I think it's - you know, as a white, foreign male, I mean, not that much has changed, right? I think the Taliban are in this honeymoon phase, especially with journalists, as they kind of appeal for legitimacy. They - journalists, for the most part, have been left or - excuse me. Western journalists have been left pretty much unbothered. For everybody else, though, I mean, it's - for Afghans, for women, for Afghan reporters, local reporters, I think it's much, much different.
GROSS: What are they up against?
GIBBONS-NEFF: I mean, they're kind of up against this government that is, you know, certainly a government, but it just - it depends what each interaction will turn into, right? I don't think - I think there's just a level of uncertainty interacting with the Taliban, being in certain situations that, you know, it could go one way or it could go another. I mean, I think there's certainly a certain feeling that I have as a foreign journalist in Afghanistan that lends to that kind of hesitancy or nervousness when it comes to, say, you know, interacting with the Taliban at a checkpoint. And that's amplified tenfold, a hundred-fold, as an Afghan, as an Afghan woman, as a minority, etc.
GROSS: I'm going to preface this question with, you probably hate when people ask you this. I'm pretty sure you hate it. But I feel like I have to ask it. Having served for two tours as a Marine in Afghanistan, what do you feel like the war accomplished?
GIBBONS-NEFF: Yeah, it's definitely...
GROSS: You hate it. Yeah, I'm sorry.
GIBBONS-NEFF: Yeah, it's tough. I mean, it's - I guess it's tough to answer that because there are certainly a lot of people who benefited over those 20 years - a generation of Afghans who are educated and went to school who couldn't before. There's certainly infrastructure in Afghanistan that wasn't there before and cellular networks that kind of let people get information on their phones in rural areas that they never would've had the opportunity to in the late '90s, or maybe even throughout the 2000s, if, you know, the Taliban weren't overthrown.
But at the same time, it's not hard to look at all the violence, all the death - you know, whether it's my friends or Afghans in rural parts of the country that no one will really ever hear about. I don't know. That's a - it's a - I don't think I've ever really figured out the answer to that question, to be honest. It just makes me sad, very sad.
GROSS: Why did you enlist? Did you believe in the war at the time when you enlisted?
GIBBONS-NEFF: Yeah. My dad was a Vietnam vet. It kind of felt like it ran in the family. I grew up in, like, a well-to-do suburban Connecticut town. I was short. I always had something to prove or felt like I did. It's all right. I mean, September 11 was a catalyst, I think, for a lot of people who enlisted to fight in the so-called global war on terror. But, yeah, I just kind of always felt like it was something I was going to do.
GROSS: Do you think about how young you were right after high school when you enlisted?
GIBBONS-NEFF: About - I mean, just my lack of understanding and knowledge and...
GROSS: Yeah, I mean, how much do you know when you graduate high school (laughter), you know?
GIBBONS-NEFF: I mean, nothing.
GROSS: You make this decision that could get you killed for a war that you may or may not really understand. And, you know, you're - what? - 18. How old were you?
GIBBONS-NEFF: Yeah - 18, 19 when I went to boot camp.
GROSS: Yeah.
GIBBONS-NEFF: Yeah. I mean, the thing was - right? - it was - there was 9/11. There was al-Qaida. There was Afghanistan. There was weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or something. And, you know, you get to Afghanistan, and you're not fighting al-Qaida. In my first deployment, there was this big sandstorm. And in the middle of the night, someone - I think on radio watch - woke up and yelled, you know, SEAL Team 4 killed bin Laden, which was a total lie and a rumor but had somehow gotten to our guy on radio watch.
And I kind of woke up and thought - I was like, does that mean the war's over? Does that mean we get to go home? I mean, that was 2008. And we certainly weren't fighting al-Qaida in Helmand Province. We were fighting local Talibans or disenfranchised farmers, probably, and no one who had anything to do with the whole reason we were there in the first place.
GROSS: Well, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, thank you so much for talking with us. I wish you good health, and be safe.
GIBBONS-NEFF: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
GROSS: Thomas Gibbons-Neff is the acting bureau chief for The New York Times Kabul Bureau and is about to become the bureau chief. After we take a short break, Ken Tucker will review Neil Young's new album. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF HIOR CHRONIK'S "WE ARE ALL SNOWFLAKES (FEAT. YOSHINORI TAKEZAWA)")
NPR · by Terry Gross · January 20, 2022
23. THAAD, in first operational use, destroys midrange ballistic missile in Houthi attack
THAAD, in first operational use, destroys midrange ballistic missile in Houthi attack
WASHINGTON — A multibillion-dollar missile defense system owned by the United Arab Emirates and developed by the U.S. military intercepted a ballistic missile on Monday during a deadly attack by Houthi militants in Abu Dhabi, marking the system’s first known use in a military operation, Defense News has learned.
The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System, made by Lockheed Martin, took out the midrange ballistic missile used to attack an Emirati oil facility near Al-Dhafra Air Base, according to two sources granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak about the UAE’s activities. The Emirati base hosts U.S. and French forces.
The attack, which used cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and drones, killed three civilians and wounded six others, UAE’s ambassador to the United States, Yousef Al Otaiba, said earlier in the week.
“Several attacks, a combination of cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and drones, targeted civilian sites in the UAE. Several were intercepted, a few of them [weren’t], and three innocent civilians unfortunately lost their lives,” Al Otaiba said at a virtual event sponsored by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.
The Emirati Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The UAE was a key member of the Saudi-led coalition that entered Yemen’s civil war in 2015, after the Houthis had overrun Yemen’s capital of Sanaa the previous year and ousted the country’s president from power. Although the UAE has largely withdrawn forces from the conflict, it remains heavily involved in the war and supports local militias on the ground in Yemen.
U.S. Central Command on Friday confirmed “a potential inbound threat” had forced U.S. service members at Al-Dhafra into their bunkers, in a “heightened alert posture” for about 30 minutes Sunday night. Airmen were directed to keep their protective gear close for 24 hours afterwards.
“Everything was professional and disciplined. The ‘all clear’ was called at 9:27 p.m. local time,” said Capt. Bill Urban, a spokesman for the command. “There was no mission impact.”
Lockheed Martin declined to comment.
THAAD, which is designed to counter short-, medium- and long-range ballistic missiles, was initially developed in the 1990s. It struggled in early testing, but has had a consistent reliability track record in flight tests since Lockheed Martin in 2000 won the development contract to turn THAAD into a mobile tactical army fire unit.
The U.S. has deployed THAAD throughout the world, including to Guam, Israel, South Korea and Japan. In 2017, Saudi Arabia agreed to buy THAAD in a deal thought to be worth up to $15 billion. The UAE was the first foreign customer for the system and trained its first units in 2015 and 2016.
The Army operates seven THAAD batteries, but has long had a requirement to field nine total. The MDA has lacked the funding to build the final two, but U.S. lawmakers added funding in the fiscal 2021 budget to build an eighth THAAD battery.
The Houthis have used drones and missiles to attack Saudi Arabia and oil targets in the Persian Gulf over the course of Yemen’s war, now in its eighth year. Monday’s attack was the UAE’s first acknowledgement of being hit by the Houthis. Several civilians have died in Saudi Arabia from cross-border Houthi attacks.
This week, Abu Dhabi asked the U.S. for help bolstering its defenses against missiles and drones and halting weapons from being transported to the Houthis, according to a statement the UAE’s Embassy in Washington posted to Twitter.
In a call Wednesday between Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Austin “underscored his unwavering support for the security and defense of UAE territory against all threats.” The Pentagon has since declined to provide specifics about the UAE’s request.
Abu Dhabi was also consulting with congressional gatekeepers on U.S. arms sales this week. The embassy said Al Otaiba met Wednesday with House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y.
Ahead of Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez’s meeting with Al Otaiba, Menendez said, “We’ll see what their request is. I certainly recognize some of the challenges they’re having.”
Congressional aides said lawmakers have generally been open to Abu Dhabi’s requests for weapons to defend against Houthi attacks, but Emirati officials are likely to face questions over the country’s growing ties to China and accusations its forces have intervened in Libya’s ongoing war.
U.S. officials would also have to consider the suitability and production schedules for the equipment Abu Dhabi is requesting, according to a Senate aide granted anonymity to talk about diplomatically sensitive arms sale talks. If the UAE is seeking Patriot missiles, there’s reportedly an interceptor shortage fueled by Houthi drone and rocket attacks against Saudi Arabia.
“The Saudis are using up their Patriots at a good clip, and these things, you don’t just pick them up at Walmart,” the aide said. “The Emiratis could be asking for things very appropriately, but before anything comes from it and arrives in country, it could be years.”
Gulf Arab states, as well as the U.S., U.N. experts and others, have previously accused Iran of supplying arms to the Houthis, a charge Tehran denies.
Bilal Saab, a former Pentagon official now at the Middle East Institute, said the Houthis’ use of missiles suggests Iranian involvement, even after diplomatic talks in December between Iranian and Emirati officials in Tehran.
”Clearly those talks were ineffective,” Saab said. “The very use of ballistic missiles signals to me that the Iranians knew about it, were on board or at least had a role.”
President Joe Biden said Wednesday his administration, following the strikes, is considering restoring the Houthis to the U.S. list of international terrorist organizations.
Al Otaiba had urged the move, and the Emirati Embassy welcomed it in a statement that said, “Case is clear — launching ballistic and cruise missiles against civilian targets, sustaining aggression, diverting aid from Yemeni people.”
Agnes Helou in Beirut and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts from Kenyon College.
Joe Gould is senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry.
24. Inside the Oath Keepers' Plan for an Armed Takeover of the US Capitol
I expect there will be pushback on this, starting with the headline.
Inside the Oath Keepers' Plan for an Armed Takeover of the US Capitol
military.com · by Konstantin Toropin,Steve Beynon · January 21, 2022
A day before the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, people from three different states wheeled cart after cart laden with weapons and ammunition through an otherwise unremarkable Comfort Inn Ballston hotel located in Virginia, just a stone's throw from the Pentagon, according to prosecutors.
The guns were stashed in several hotel rooms and in cars parked inconspicuously outside, along with enough food and water to last 30 days. The group, all affiliated with the Oath Keepers, were preparing for battle.
The Oath Keepers, a far-right militia that is led by Army veteran Stewart Rhodes, created the military-style fast-reaction force as part of its plans to keep former President Donald Trump in power after he lost the November presidential election. At the last moment, the group decided not to deploy the armed force waiting around Washington, D.C., but a division of its members breached the U.S. Capitol as part of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot. The event marked the first time in American history the transfer of presidential power was not peaceful.
The recent indictment of 11 Oath Keepers members on sedition charges, including Rhodes and four other veterans, has revealed many new details about what the group had planned for that day. Those details, drawn from hundreds of pages of court documents, disclose a willingness to take up arms against the government that nearly half of those members had served.
The Oath Keepers weren't lacking in resources or motivation. The anti-government group is heavily inspired by the U.S. military, with its logo a clear nod to the Army's elite Ranger tab -- the mark of a soldier who has perfected fundamental ground combat skills. Federal law enforcement agencies say recruiting veterans is a key goal of the extremist organization.
On Thursday, USA Today reported that at least 81 troops signed up for the Oath Keepers while still serving. At least 20 of those members are still in the military, according to the newspaper.
However, despite the seeming danger of the alleged plans as laid out by prosecutors, experts who spoke to Military.com say the scheme was a haphazard effort -- and those veterans had limited military experience.
Military.com reached out to the lawyers for the eight Oath Keepers named in this story. Several provided statements, and Jon Moseley, one of the lawyers for Kelly Meggs, spoke with Military.com on the phone. Those remarks are included in this story. A voicemail left at the Comfort Inn at Ballston was not immediately returned. Military.com reached out to the hotel's parent company -- Choice Hotels -- but did not receive a response before publication.
There's a dichotomy, the experts interviewed warned. It's easy to dismiss the far-fetched plans and those who crafted them as loony conspiracy theorists who like to dress up like soldiers long after their service has wrapped. But they had a plan that resembles the skeleton of any military mission: There were rehearsals of the Capitol siege, leadership figures were established, the militia had multiple means of communication, a so-called "quick reaction force" was set up, members performed reconnaissance of the Capitol grounds, and they had loose plans for secondary missions after an initial attack.
"If you have some clue and some money, you can do some damage. That's the scary part of this," a retired special operations noncommissioned officer told Military.com on the condition of anonymity because of concerns about speaking publicly on extremism. "This was an actual plan."
Gun Boxes, Rifle Cases and Suitcases Filled with Ammunition
Just days after the election, Rhodes floated the idea of an armed group positioned outside the capital with its stricter gun laws. On Nov. 10, 2020, he told conspiracy theorist Alex Jones that the Oath Keepers had "men already stationed outside D.C. as a nuclear option in case they attempt to remove [Donald Trump] illegally, we will step in and stop it." Rhodes emphasized that these people were "armed" and "prepared to go in, if the president calls us up."
On Dec. 23, Rhodes explained to the Oath Keepers in an open letter that "many of us will have our mission-critical gear stowed nearby just outside of D.C." The letter, which is referenced in his indictment, goes on to say that he and others may have to "take to arms in defense of our God given liberty."
Rhodes was the clear force behind the plan taking shape, as seen by his careful management in texts released by the prosecution. Jon Lewis, a researcher for the George Washington University Program on Extremism and an expert on the Oath Keepers, explained that Rhodes is "the lifeblood of the direction of the organization."
"By and large, the Oath Keepers are what Stewart Rhodes makes of them," Lewis told Military.com in an interview. He added that "it's not local chapters, who on their own, are deciding to mobilize -- it is Rhodes."
According to the sedition indictment, at some point the idea of an armed reaction team took on the name "QRF" or quick reaction force. Typically, the term is used by the military to describe a team that can quickly respond when troops are engaged by enemy forces. Several of Rhodes' accomplices were positioned at the Comfort Inn Ballston in Arlington, Virginia, eight miles from the Capitol. The hotel also served as the home of a weapons cache and a base of operations ahead of the assault -- the idea of the QRF being that the assigned Oath Keepers could respond to the Capitol with weapons to assist others who might be entangled with law enforcement or National Guard troops. There were also plans for a follow-on insurgency, presumably in D.C. and northern Virginia.
Moseley said that the plan was "focused on the idea that the president might invoke the Insurrection Act and they would be called up as militia."
"They wanted it to be in case there was a civil disorder," he added.
In addition to the plans, Rhodes purchased nearly $20,000 worth of weapons, including a shotgun and an AR-style rifle, ammo, night vision goggles and other gear.
Still frames taken from security camera footage at the Comfort Inn in Ballston, Virginia captured several Oath Keepers transporting cases that prosecutors allege contained guns that were intended to be used for the QRF. These images were filed in court documents that argued for the continued pre-trial detention of one of the Oath Keepers charged with lesser crimes stemming from the January 6 insurrection. (Image from court filings in the case of Jason Dolan)
All of this would be in an effort to keep the then-defeated Donald Trump in power by stopping the certification of an election that he had lost, a goal that was backed by the mob of thousands at the Capitol on Jan. 6 who assaulted police and called for the execution of Vice President Mike Pence.
According to prosecutors, this QRF team was led by two men: Thomas Caldwell and Edward Vallejo.
Much of the logistical planning seems to have been done by Caldwell, a 65-year-old retired Navy Reserve member who served from 1976 to 1995 as an intelligence officer, according to the service. He retired as a lieutenant commander, but records do not give any indication as to why he left just one year shy of the typical 20-year mark that would have granted him a pension.
Little else is known about Caldwell's service since older service records are transferred to the Military Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri, and are not readily accessible by the service branches or the public. His lawyer, in arguing for his release from pretrial detention, told the court that Caldwell went on to work as a "section chief" for the FBI from 2009 to 2010 and also formed a consulting firm that performed "often classified" work for several government agencies, although these claims could not be verified.
In late December, Caldwell, who lives in Virginia, decided that the Comfort Inn, located minutes from Arlington National Cemetery and the Pentagon, would serve as the base for the Oath Keepers force.
The main sedition indictment alleges that at least three rooms were rented out by Oath Keepers teams from North Carolina, Arizona and Florida. "These QRF teams used the rooms to store and guard the firearms that they and other co-conspirators contributed," the indictment said.
In a filing arguing for Vallejo's detention pending his trial, prosecutors noted that Oath Keepers from Florida "dropped off at least three luggage carts' worth of gun boxes, rifle cases, and suitcases filled with ammunition with their QRF team." Meanwhile, "a second QRF team from North Carolina consisted of four men who kept their rifles ready to go in a vehicle parked in the hotel lot," the filing said.
"Later, Vallejo and other members of the Arizona QRF team wheeled in bags and large bins of weapons, ammunition, and essential supplies to last 30 days," prosecutors allege.
Kelly Meggs, head of the Florida Oath Keepers chapter, said he personally brought "a few thousand" rounds of ammunition in a group chat, according to court documents.
Meggs' attorney noted that he is pushing to see the full transcript of many of the exchanges cited by the prosecution.
Several other Oath Keepers, including Joseph Hackett and Kenneth Harrelson were also spotted by surveillance video from the Comfort Inn rolling in what prosecutors say were rifle cases. Both men were later arrested and found in possession of AR-style rifles. Harrelson served in the Army from 2007 to 2011 as a machinist. According to an Army spokesman, he never deployed overseas. As a machinist, Harrelson's duties likely focused more on maintaining combat vehicles and equipment, instead of training for combat itself.
Caldwell himself contributed a .22 caliber rifle, which he later tried to downplay as "a beginner gun" to federal officials, according to his detention filings. "Yet Caldwell felt the need to conceal this 'show and tell' item under a sheet when carrying it through the hotel," the filing pointedly added.
When activated, the plan, as described by the Oath Keepers' own text messages in court documents, was to bring the guns to the teams at the Capitol either by road or water.
"1 if by land[,] North side of Lincoln Memorial[,] 2 if by Sea[,] Corner of west basin and Ohio is a water transport landing !!" Meggs wrote in a chat conversation with other Oath Keepers leaders.
That landing spot for a boat in D.C. would put them still roughly two miles and a 40-minute walk, while laden with weapons, from the Capitol.
The plan was serious enough that Caldwell texted a person associated with the Three Percenters militia on Jan. 3 asking whether there was a boat available.
"If we had someone standing by at a dock ramp (one near the Pentagon for sure) we could have our Quick Response Team with the heavy weapons standing by, quickly load them and ferry them across the river to our waiting arms," Caldwell told the unnamed contact, according to a court document filed by prosecutors opposing his release.
Caldwell's message went on to suggest that the people in the boat could "more or less be hanging around sipping coffee and maybe scooting on the river a bit and pretending to fish, then if it all went to s---, our guy loads our weps [sic] AND Blue Ridge Militia weps and ferries them across."
Caldwell, through his lawyer, said that he is "totally innocent of these ridiculous charges."
"I challenge the DOJ to set forth one scrap of evidence that either myself or any Trump supporter had a specific plan to forcibly enter the Capitol building," he added.
"Just say the word."
On the day of the riot, Vallejo was eager to deploy. Prosecutors say that at 2:24 p.m., shortly after rioters first began to breach the Capitol, the Oath Keeper from Arizona said in group chat: "Vallejo back at hotel and outfitted. Have 2 trucks available. Let me know how I can assist." And then again 14 minutes later: "QRF standing by at hotel. Just say the word ..."
Around this time, a "stack" of unarmed Oath Keepers clad in paramilitary garb, including five named in the sedition indictment, had breached the Capitol building after marching up the east steps in formation. The "ground team lead" for this group was Harrelson.
Harrelson's attorney, Bradford Geyer, said his client is "a disabled veteran who served his country honorably" and that he is "totally innocent of all charges."
Jessica Watkins, another Army veteran, was also in this team. An infantryman who served from 2001 to 2003, Watkins deployed to Afghanistan for four months in 2002 and left as a private, according to the Army, whose records show she served under a different first name.
According to the indictment, she spent the weeks leading up to the siege texting people she called "recruits" about "military style basic" training classes her Ohio-based militia was holding.
There's scant evidence veterans are more likely to fall into extremist ideology compared to the general population. Yet experts warn veterans not only bring their own tactical expertise to the table but inherent social credibility, possibly serving as a force multiplier for radical groups.
People wearing hats and patches indicating they are part of Oath Keepers attend a rally at Freedom Plaza Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2021, in Washington, in support of President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
About an hour after the first Oath Keepers made it into the Capitol, a second stack that included three militia members who were later indicted, moved into the building through the same set of doors. This second group was led by Joshua James, an Army veteran who served as an infantryman from 2006 to 2008 and deployed to Iraq for four months in 2007, according to information provided by the service. According to reporting from Time, James earned a Purple Heart before being medically discharged after sustaining injuries in a bomb blast in Iraq.
At one point during the day of the riot, Vallejo tried, but failed, to launch a "drone with a 720p cam for recon [reconnaissance] use," court documents allege.
Ultimately, the QRF was never sent to the Capitol. The Oath Keepers never had a clear plan as to the conditions when the armed teams would mobilize, court records suggest. While Rhodes seemed to envision using them "in the event of a worst case scenario, where the President calls us up as part of the militia to to[sic] assist him inside DC," others envisioned a full-blown conflict.
A member of Vallejo's team from Arizona told a podcast recorded on Jan. 6 that "The question is: Is there a shot heard round the world moment? The possibility definitely exists." The quote, cited by prosecutors in Vallejo's detention filing, apparently references the Revolutionary War battle of Lexington and Concord.
Ultimately, prosecutors allege that "a deployment ... proved unnecessary, because the co-conspirators were able to breach the Capitol with the forces they had."
Moseley pointed to this fact as important context. "The most significant thing is, although they brought guns to Virginia, they did not, in fact, use them," he said.
Instead, many of the Oath Keepers went back to their hotels and then an Olive Garden in Virginia for dinner, where the conversation topic ranged from the news of the killing of Ashli Babbitt to Trump’s relationship with veterans, and invoking the Insurrection Act, according to one interview log filed with the court.
'Yet They Went to Olive Garden'
Lewis, the extremism researcher, noted that the group really doesn't have a strong track record for military-style operations. It had laid plans for past actions, but "very few of them ended up in anything close to violence."
"The planning does suggest ... at least on paper, in their own words, a desire to embrace a kind of military style, operational plan," Lewis said.
Current and former members of U.S. special operations, who are often tasked with training militias overseas, said in interviews with Military.com that the Oath Keepers could have done devastating damage at the Capitol despite weaknesses in their plans.
"They had poor tradecraft," a current Special Forces officer, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press on the matter, told Military.com. "But they had a basic layer of procedures, a level down maybe from a platoon or squad leader. They were moderately skilled maybe, but not enough to be intimidating to someone familiar with a military environment. These people didn't look like professionals."
Ultimately, it's not clear that the military service of Rhodes, Caldwell, Watkins, James and Harrelson played any direct role in the plan for the QRF or the events of Jan. 6 that couldn't have been achieved by a similarly motivated group of civilians. Rhodes and Caldwell's service concluded more than 15 years ago, while the three younger Oath Keepers all did brief military tours.
Prosecutors allege in court records that, after the events in Washington, the teams and weapons that had assembled for that day split up. Rhodes and James met up in Alabama, the latter's home state, gathered up "all available firearms" and went to Texas. Vallejo ended up joining them instead of driving back to his home in Arizona. When James asked whether Meggs and the other Florida Oath Keepers would join them, he was told that "Fl stays home until shots are fired!"
Rhodes is now in federal custody, arrested in Texas on Jan 13 -- just over a year after his team of Oath Keepers stormed the halls of Congress. Vallejo was arrested the same day in Arizona. The rest of the group had already been facing charges for other crimes stemming from the attack on the Capitol, and most remain in jail. Caldwell was released in March 2021 on medical grounds, and he remains under house arrest while his case continues to move forward.
Lewis explained that the allegations paint the image of a "really weird dichotomy" where the Oath Keepers use military language and have QRFs ready "and yet they went to Olive Garden."
"They use these encrypted messaging applications and codenames ... and tried to have good OPSEC [operational security], but then some of them just posted pictures of themselves on the steps of the Capitol on Facebook," Lewis said.
-- Konstantin Toropin can be reached at Konstantin.Toropin@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @ktoropin.
military.com · by Konstantin Toropin,Steve Beynon · January 21, 2022
25. China adopted 'three-warfare' strategy aiming to expand global influence: French MoD think tank
Conclusion:
The report concludes that while Chinese strategy has brought certain tactical successes, it has been a strategic failure overall, China being its own worst enemy in terms of influence. The abrupt degradation of Beijing’s reputation since the arrival of Xi Jinping, particularly in the last couple of years, confronts China with a growing unpopularity problem that may indirectly come to weaken the Party, including vis-à-vis its own population, the report claimed.
China adopted 'three-warfare' strategy aiming to expand global influence: French MoD think tank
AFP
Beijing is increasingly comfortable with infiltration and coercion and its influence operations have been considerably hardened in recent years, according to a recent report by IRSEM (Institute for Strategic Research of the French Ministry for the Armed Forces).
The report titled ‘Chinese Influence Operations A Machiavellian Moment’ claims that a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) policy that consists in eliminating internal and external enemies, controlling groups that could defy its authority, constructing a coalition around the Party to serve its interests, and projecting its influence abroad – and the “Three warfares,” which represent the core of China’s “political warfare,” i.e. a form of non-kinetic proneness to conflict aimed at overcoming an opponent without a fight through the creation of an environment favorable to China. A wartime and peacetime undertaking, it encompasses public opinion, psychological, and legal warfare (the latter being close to what is called “lawfare” in English), according to the report.
The main actors implementing Chinese influence operations are emanations from the Party, the State, the Army, and the companies, report claimed. “Within the Party, this includes the Propaganda Department, which oversees ideology, controls the entire media spectrum and all the cultural production in the country; the United Front Work Department (UFWD), with its twelve offices reflecting its main targets; the International Liaison Department (ILD), which maintains relations with foreign political parties; the 610 Office, which has agents across the world acting outside any legal framework to eliminate the Falun Gong movement. The Chinese Communist Youth League (CYL) should also be included in this group, serving at once as a link toward young people, as an incubator for future Party executives, and as a force that can be mobilized when needed – even if it is not a formal structure of the Party but rather a mass organization.”
Within the state, two bodies in particular are involved in influence operations: The Ministry of State Security (MSS), which is the main civilian intelligence agency, and the Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO), in charge of the propaganda aimed at Taiwan, claimed the report.
“Within the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the Strategic Support Force (SSF) is at the forefront, especially through its Network Systems Department. It has the resources and is entrusted with missions in the informational domain. More precisely, the principal actor identified in this domain is Base 311, headquartered in Fuzhou, which is dedicated to the implementation of the “Three Warfares” strategy. It also operates media companies as civilian covers and a fake hotel to hide a training center.”
The report further alleged that the public and private companies play an important role in collecting the data needed to decide who should be targeted by influence operations, when, and how. “Infrastructures are particularly useful in data collection – buildings and submarine cables for instance – as are new technologies: digital platforms such as WeChat, Weibo and TikTok, companies like Beidou and Huawei, and databases that provide insight into what researchers call China’s “techno-authoritarianism” or “digital authoritarianism” are all used to prepare and feed influence operations abroad. The Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission, which has apparently inherited intelligence missions previously entrusted to the former 2APL, should also be included in this list.”
“The actions carried out by Beijing in its influence operations abroad pertain to two main and non-mutually exclusive objectives: first, to seduce and captivate foreign audiences by crafting a positive representation of China, which can be illustrated by four specific narratives (the Chinese “model,” its tradition, benevolence, and strength); and then, and above all, to infiltrate and coerce. Infiltration aims at slowly penetrating the opposing societies to hamper the very possibility of an action contrary to the Party’s interests. Coercion corresponds to the progressive enlargement of the Chinese “punitive” or “coercive” diplomacy toward a policy of systematic sanctions against any state, organization, company, or individual that threatens the Party’s interests. Both are generally carried out via a web of intermediaries. Overall, these practices target the following categories - Diasporas, with the dual objective of controlling them – so that they do not represent a threat for the Chinese power (Beijing carries out a transnational campaign of repression which, according to the NGO Freedom House, is the “most sophisticated, global, and complete in the world”) – and mobilizing them to serve its interests,” according to the report.
“The media, as Beijing’s explicit goal is to establish “a new world media order.” Indeed, the government has invested €1.3 billion annually since 2008 to impose a tighter control over its global image. The major Chinese media outlets have a global presence, in several languages, on several continents, and on all social networks, including those blocked in China (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram), and they invest large amounts of money to augment their digital audience artificially. Beijing also seeks to control the Chinese-language outlets abroad, which has proven so successful that the CCP now effectively enjoys a near-monopoly among them, and it also seeks to control the mainstream media.”
The report concludes that while Chinese strategy has brought certain tactical successes, it has been a strategic failure overall, China being its own worst enemy in terms of influence. The abrupt degradation of Beijing’s reputation since the arrival of Xi Jinping, particularly in the last couple of years, confronts China with a growing unpopularity problem that may indirectly come to weaken the Party, including vis-à-vis its own population, the report claimed.
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26. Liam Collins: This Special Forces officer ran into combat, jumped into Afghanistan
Another great American who continues to serve.
Liam Collins: This Special Forces officer ran into combat, jumped into Afghanistan
Retired Army Col. Liam Collins executed more than 300 combat operations in the Middle East from 2001 to 2004, capturing dozens of high-value targets in Iraq and Afghanistan along the way.
The former Special Forces commander has received numerous military awards and decorations including the Distinguished Service Medal, a Bronze Star with valor, the Army Commendation Medal for heroism, the Special Forces Tab, the Ranger Tab, the Sapper Tab, the Master Parachutist Badge, and the Military Free Fall Badge with a Bronze Star for combat jump.
Collins has been recognized for personal bravery during combat on two separate occasions, both stemming from actions he took while conducting deployments in the Middle East.
The 27-year veteran downplayed those military accolades as part of his duty to the country, however, and said it’s the way he entered the Army – and the countries in which he fought – that make his story unique.
Military academyCollins’s military journey began in 1988, during his senior year of high school. The Appleton native was set to graduate but lacked firm plans for postsecondary education. His parents told him that he could attend any college or university he desired, under one condition.
“I just had to pay for it,” Collins said.
Opportunities presented themselves in the form of low-tuition colleges, but Collins sought a better education than most could provide. Fortunately, he had something universities wanted.
Collins was a distinguished runner in both track and cross country, and Division III schools had expressed interest in signing him, but Collins knew that he could compete at a higher level – both athletically and academically.
He decided to try out for a more highly ranked institution instead.
“I knew that West Point was a really good academic school, and I knew that I wouldn’t have to worry about paying for it,” Collins said of the military academy which offers free enrollment to its cadets. “And I figured if ultimately I didn’t like it, I could go somewhere else.”
The tryout for West Point’s track team was different than he had expected. Collins found himself toe-to-toe with top recruits who ran the mile in 4 minutes, 15 seconds or less. Racing against them, Collins would need to finish a 1600-meter sprint within 25 seconds of the other runners.
“If I didn’t make the team, I wasn’t going to stay there,” Collins said.
Not only did Collins make the squad; he competed each of his four years at the academy and was eventually named team captain.
Rising through the ranks
As well as he performed on the track, Collins also excelled in the classroom. The Class of 1992 graduate finished the academy ranked 22 out of 930 cadets and received a Superintendent’s Award for placing among the top 5 percent in physical, academic and military excellence.
Collins graduated as a commissioned officer, and in 1993, joined the 82nd Airborne Division. He spent two years as a platoon leader before being promoted to construction officer and air officer for the entire battalion. The position afforded him the opportunity to plan airborne operations and simulate raids on buildings – a skill that would come in handy later on in his military career.
“There wasn’t much going on in the world at that time,” Collins said of his early years as a lieutenant.
By 1996, the 25-year-old Collins figured that the time had come to choose a long-term career. Special Forces was a relatively new branch within the Army, and though he knew little about it, Collins saw it as a better fit for what he hoped to do on a day-to-day basis.
He devoted the next two years to training and in 1998 joined a Special Forces group in Stuttgart, Germany. There, Collins and his team supported submissions in Bosnia by planning search-and-rescue operations.
“They wanted to make sure it was done right,” Collins said of the post-Bosnian War effort.
A special breed of soldier
Members of his detachment urged Collins try out for another Special Operations unit, arguing that he was the only officer in the group young enough to do so. During try-out for the unit at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, he broke his leg during training. The injury was painful but didn’t stop the 30-year-old from hiking approximately 100 miles through the mountains with all equipment in tow.
“I knew it was the only chance I would have,” Collins said, adding that the pain was worth the reward.
Collins made the unit and proceeded to high-altitude low-opening (HALO) school, which he completed in 2001. He took command of his own Special Operations Forces element that July.
His teams were doing an interagency exercise in Hungary when they learned that terrorists had attacked the U.S. Their return flight was one of the only ones in American airspace at that time, and the aerial view of Washington D.C. left Collins with a sight that he would never forget.
“We flew right over the Pentagon, and you could see it still burning,” Collins said.
Special Forces units were deployed to Afghanistan within in a matter of weeks. Collins became one of the first soldiers to enter the country in October 2001, as part of a short-duration mission.
That mission began with a high-altitude parachute infiltration from 18,000 feet.
“It was the highest anyone’s jumped into combat,” Collins said. “We had to have oxygen on us because the air’s too thin up there. We basically had our rifle tied to our side, and all of our military equipment. So it isn’t like skydiving, ‘Let’s go have some fun and jump out with a parachute on.’ You’ve got all the equipment you’re jumping into combat with (attached to you).”
Collins and his team spent a few days on the ground, before being rotated out and sent back to Bosnia in early 2002. Over the next two years, Collins would conduct three more deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq, executing more than 300 combat operations and capturing dozens of high-value targets.
Some missions involved tight-roping from a helicopter during the early hours of the morning, and infiltrating a building in which those targets were located.
In 2005, Collins accepted a position as chief of current operations for the U.S. Special Operations Command unit in Washington D.C. He later served as director of both the Combating Terrorism Center and the Modern War Institute at West Point, where he taught from 2009 until his retirement in 2019.
Collins and his family moved to Waunakee, Wisconsin, shortly thereafter. The retired colonel said he enjoys retirement and the additional time he gets to spend with loved ones, but still considers his years as a Special Forces commander the most rewarding part of the past three decades.
“I used to joke, but I’m not joking. Bill Gates – or you name your person – there’s no way they could replicate what we were able to do,” Collins said, “because you couldn’t buy the people that we had. These were all patrons that were serving and doing it for their nation. And you couldn’t replicate that with all the money in the world.”
27. Ukraine got a signed commitment in 1994 to ensure its security – but can the US and allies stop Putin's aggression now?
As an aside this is one of the reasons why Kim Jong-un does not trust agreements with the US or the international community (to include Russia). This example is especially true with Ukraine since they gave up nuclear weapons in return for security guarantees.
Ukraine got a signed commitment in 1994 to ensure its security – but can the US and allies stop Putin's aggression now?
Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images - The Conversation
This diplomatic activity manifested in security assurances for Ukraine embedded in what has become known as the Budapest Memorandum. With the entrance of Ukraine into the international order as a non-nuclear state, Russia, the United States and the U.K. pledged to “respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.” The memo reaffirmed their obligation to “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.” The signatories also reaffirmed their commitment to “seek immediate” UN Security Council action “to provide assistance to Ukraine … if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression.” These assurances upheld obligations contained in the U.N. charter and the 1975 Helsinki Final Act.
In light of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its current threat to Ukrainian sovereignty, it’s fair to ask: What is the significance now of the Budapest Memorandum?
An armed man, believed to be a Russian serviceman, patrols outside a Ukrainian military base in 2014, during Russia’s move to annex Crimea. VASILY MAXIMOV/AFP via Getty Images
Ukrainian regrets
The memorandum, signed in 1994, is not legally binding.
Nonetheless, it embeds and reaffirms the solemn assurances that are the hallmark of the international system. These include respect for state sovereignty, the inviolability of international borders and abstention from the threat or use of force.
Ukraine’s decision to give up nuclear weapons signaled its desire to be seen as a member in good standing of the international community, rather than an outlier.
Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses a crowd in Moscow on March 18, 2018, during an event celebrating the anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images
‘No changing of borders by use of force’
Whether the strong actions – such as the promise of military support for Ukraine and the threat of sanctions on Russia, backed by diplomacy by the United States and its allies – will be enough to deter Russia is uncertain and, many say, unlikely.
The size and scope of Russian military buildup are deeply troubling: Shifting 100,000 troops across Russia’s vast territory is a costly operation. The Kremlin is unlikely to pull back that kind of force without any diplomatic or military wins, such as closing the door to Ukraine’s future membership in NATO, which the United States has ruled out.
International law matters, but it does not determine what states do. Strong deterrence, diplomacy and international solidarity can influence Russian decision-making. The U.S. is also actively working with Ukraine, an essential element to a successful diplomatic and deterrence strategy.
Ultimately, however, the de-escalation decision is Russia’s to make. The role of the U.S., its NATO allies, and Ukraine is to make sure the consequences of Russia’s decisions are clear to the Kremlin and that they can be carried out with strong and united Western backing in the event Russia chooses the path of war.
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The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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.
