Quotes of the Day:
“If you have reason to suspect that a person is telling you a lie, look as though you believed every word he said. This will give him courage to go on; he will become more vehement in his assertions, and in the end betray himself."- Arthur Schopenhauer
“The consummation of forming an army is to arrive at formlessness. Victory in war is not repetitious, but adapts its form endlessly. . . . A military force has no constant formation, water has no constant shape: The ability to gain victory by changing and adapting according to the opponent is called genius."- Sun Tzu
“What I fear is not the enemy’s strategy but our own mistakes." - Pericles
1. Indo-Pacific-Asia 2021: Ongoing Theater Of Cold War 2.0 And Possibly World War III? – Analysis
2. General Makes Case For Army’s Role In The Indo-Pacific
3. A Pentagon official said he resigned because US cybersecurity is no match for China, calling it 'kindergarten level'
4. Cartels and crypto
5. White House to host virtual ransomware summit with 30 countries — but not Russia
6. Jonathan, Diana Toebbe cited by expert psychiatrist, claiming that more than money motivates spies
7. The moment of truth over Taiwan is getting closer
8. How to Prevent an Accidental War Over Taiwan
9. Gaslighting nations—Erdogan makes a mockery of U.N. General Assembly—again
10. SAS secrets revealed by cut-and-paste error
11. Marine who criticized U.S. handling of Afghanistan withdrawal will plead guilty, seek favorable discharge
12. Opinion: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin must resign
13. Opinion | How the U.S. government can deter China’s threat in Taiwan
14. Escalation to Nuclear War in the Digital Age: Risk of Inadvertent Escalation in the Emerging Information Ecosystem
15. Killing Terrorist Leaders Is No Silver Bullet
16. Winning is the only thing
17. With all eyes on Taiwan, tensions are building on another Chinese frontier: India
1. Indo-Pacific-Asia 2021: Ongoing Theater Of Cold War 2.0 And Possibly World War III? – Analysis
A cold war is better than a hot war.
Excerpts:
In 2021, China’s military brinkmanship against the United States. Japan, India and in South China Sea has reached unprecedented provocatively high-levels which should be a “Wake-up Call” for political leadership and military planners in Washington and all Indo Pacific capitals. This arises from simple strategic logic that any major armed conflict between China and United States will leave no space for any “Fence Sitting” by Asian capitals, notably ASEAN capitals.
...
By all rational geopolitical co-relation of balance of power and all rational strategic logic of China bereft of “Natural Allies’ , China should rationally not even harbour the remotest ideas that it can worst the United States and its Allies, with NATO also now seized with the China Threat, in any World War III conflagration.
...
The United States has been in the process of ‘decoupling” its trade relations and involvement in the Chinese economy and the US-China Trade Wars begun by Former President Trump can only intensify in direct proportion to China’s unrestrained belligerence.
China so beleaguered economically with consequent domestic political convulsions runs into yet another major provocative brinkmanship of igniting a possible World War III to divert domestic upheaval attention to a war pandering to Communist China’s nationalism spinning around President Xi Jinping’s ‘Great China Dream”.
Concluding, it needs to be emphasised that global security and stability dynamics today resemble Europe on the eve of World War II when Hitler was on the rampage on Germany’s peripheries and the Western Powers were in abject appeasement of Hitler. World War II could have been averted if Western Nations had forsaken ‘Risk Aversion’ policies and the United States had intervened in 1939 only.
United States & Allies and its strategic partners like India can ill-afford to repeat 1939 in 2021. Communist China as a ‘Revisionist Nation” reminiscent of Hitlerian Germany has flung defiantly its military gauntlet at the United States from the Western Pacific to the Western and Southern confines of the India Ocean challenging global security and stability. It is high time that Communist China is checkmated and “Contained” before it pushes the ‘Free World’ into a possible World War III.
Indo-Pacific-Asia 2021: Ongoing Theater Of Cold War 2.0 And Possibly World War III? – Analysis
China’s escalating military belligerence in 2021 from Taiwan to India’s Himalayan Borders with China Occupied Tibet confirm the question I had posed as far back as April 2001 following Chinese fighter aircraft damaging United States EP3 surveillance plane and forcing it to land on Chinese Hainan Island. My O9 April 2001, Paper published by South Asia Analysis Group questioned China’s motives under the heading “Is China Generating a Second Cold War?”.
Pertinent to quote from this Paper was my major observation that: “It is symptomatic of the Chinese brinkmanship at display and portends that while China may not opt for an armed conflict with USA, it will however keep resorting to brinkmanship, keep confronting USA strategically and wear down the United States resolve to continue to be committed to the defence and security of the Asia Pacific and Taiwan in particular.”
In 2021, China’s military brinkmanship against the United States. Japan, India and in South China Sea has reached unprecedented provocatively high-levels which should be a “Wake-up Call” for political leadership and military planners in Washington and all Indo Pacific capitals. This arises from simple strategic logic that any major armed conflict between China and United States will leave no space for any “Fence Sitting” by Asian capitals, notably ASEAN capitals.
China has arrived at this wild ‘Global Threat’ stage by acts of omission and commission of United States geopolitical and strategic policies in the first two decades of the 21st Century. The United States was grossly oblivious to China’s military buildup in the decade upto 2010 militarily distracted by its ‘Wars of Choice’ in Iraq and Afghanistan. China without any US checkmating built up its formidable military machine especially Navy, Missiles Force and Force Projection Forces.
It was only around 2015 that the United States realised the full import of its Indo Pacific neglect which empowered China to emerge as the ‘Prime Challenge’ to United States global security and influence. More simply, in 2021 China so empowered, feels militarily powerful to emerge as a contending Superpower with the United States.
This national impulse of China received a ‘booster dose’ with Chinese President Xi Jinping assuming complete control of all military levers of power in China. It also fitted-in with his grandiose “Great China Dream”.
China’s marked climb-up on the military escalation ladder has zoomed up under what seems as the megalomaniac leadership of President Xi Jinping where China is in conflict on all its peripheries from Taiwan to India.
Undoubtedly, China therefore has enveloped Indo Pacific Asia in the blanket of Cold War 2.0 and the portents in 2021 seriously point towards a possible World War III if China does not push bank from the brink on its own volition or forced by the growing coalitions against China by US-led QUAD and AUKUS.
The Indo Pacific Theatre in 2021 thus already has emerged as the theatre of the ongoing Cold War III. It also needs to be highlighted that while Cold War 1.0 ended in 1991 with the dissolution of the Former Soviet Union and the dismantlement of Warsaw Pact Forces confronting NATO Forces in Central Europe, Cold War 1.0 continued in the Asia Pacific.
Communist China replaced the Former Soviet Union as the main protagonist in the Asia Pacific, now Indo Pacific. Unlike Central Europe where the NATO and Warsaw Pact Forces confrontation manifested in congealed lines of fortifications on the rolling plains of Central Europe, that visibility in Indo Pacific is denied by geography as the confrontations today between China and United States & its Allies are basically on the seas of Western Pacific, and specifically in the hotly contested South China Sea.
In terms of line-up of opposing military and naval forces in Cold War III, China is virtually alone with the exception of the nuclear proxies it has created in Pakistan and North Korea. Opposing them are the United States and its Allies like Japan and South Korea tied with defence treaties. Strategic partners like India under intense Chinese military confrontation for decades and more pointedly since April 2020 is now actively involved in QUAD.
China stands emboldened in its Cold War III confrontations secure in the belief that the Russia–China Strategic Nexus is available as a back-up. But I have my doubts whether Russia would stand by China in a full-fledged war with the United States. Russia can be expected to make all the right geopolitical noises in support of China but it is debatable whether China would see Russian Military Forces fighting on its side. It would be disastrous for Russia.
With China hyperactive in its Cold War 2.0 military confrontations and provocative military provocations all across the Indo Pacific Region from Japan to India and Australia the next pertinent question that arises is that whether China can succumb to the temptation of igniting World War III on its own volition or by misperceptions of United States lack of r resolve to militarily challenge China’s aggressive impulses of a ‘Revisionist Power’.
By all rational geopolitical co-relation of balance of power and all rational strategic logic of China bereft of “Natural Allies’ , China should rationally not even harbour the remotest ideas that it can worst the United States and its Allies, with NATO also now seized with the China Threat, in any World War III conflagration.
Chinese economy has already slowed down and likely to go down further. In my 2001 Paper quoted above I had asserted that: “Minus United States involvement in China’s economy, China’s economic growth could go into a downslide. China therefore is not in a viable position to sustain a ‘Second Cold War’ that it has sought to generate in Asia Pacific”.
The United States has been in the process of ‘decoupling” its trade relations and involvement in the Chinese economy and the US-China Trade Wars begun by Former President Trump can only intensify in direct proportion to China’s unrestrained belligerence.
China so beleaguered economically with consequent domestic political convulsions runs into yet another major provocative brinkmanship of igniting a possible World War III to divert domestic upheaval attention to a war pandering to Communist China’s nationalism spinning around President Xi Jinping’s ‘Great China Dream”.
Concluding, it needs to be emphasised that global security and stability dynamics today resemble Europe on the eve of World War II when Hitler was on the rampage on Germany’s peripheries and the Western Powers were in abject appeasement of Hitler. World War II could have been averted if Western Nations had forsaken ‘Risk Aversion’ policies and the United States had intervened in 1939 only.
United States & Allies and its strategic partners like India can ill-afford to repeat 1939 in 2021. Communist China as a ‘Revisionist Nation” reminiscent of Hitlerian Germany has flung defiantly its military gauntlet at the United States from the Western Pacific to the Western and Southern confines of the India Ocean challenging global security and stability. It is high time that Communist China is checkmated and “Contained” before it pushes the ‘Free World’ into a possible World War III.
2. General Makes Case For Army’s Role In The Indo-Pacific
Of course the converse to putting boots on the ground - e.g., removing them - may also be interpreted as a demonstration of will (or lack thereof), e.g. Korea.
General Makes Case For Army’s Role In The Indo-Pacific
“By putting boots on the ground,” Gen. Charles Flynn said, “we're demonstrating the will of the United States.”
The Army’s top officer in the Pacific is reminding people that the service’s capabilities and contributions as a land force is as important to the renewed competition in the Indo-Pacific as that of the Navy or Air Force.
“There is, when you look at a map, an awful lot of sea and air in that part of the region. But I don't want to miss the fact that more than half the globe's population lives in that region...And when I say that those people, they live on the land,” Gen. Charles Flynn, the commander of U.S. Army Pacific, said during a session at the Association of the United States Army’s 2021 annual meeting and exposition.
On land, competition over food, fresh water, and minerals is happening every day and the U.S. Army needs to be a counterweight to some of the destabilizing activities that China is involved in, he said.
Flynn also highlighted the important role local armies play in their country’s stability and in working with other countries. Working with these armies and building those relationships is a key contribution that the Army makes to the joint force in the region.
“So security, stability, and trust are all things that we're trying to make sure that we maintain our relationships and we maintain those relationships by being forward, by rehearsing in partnership with our allies and friends. And so the Army, and land power really does provide decisive campaign quality, joint integrated deterrence by being forward,” he said.
The interim national security strategic guidance from President Joe Biden’s administration highlighted the growing concern of competition with China. Flynn said China has been following “an incremental and insidious path because of the actions and behaviors that they continue to pursue, and some of the destabilizing activities that they're involved in, in the region.”
The Army will train its soldiers in Hawaii this month and Alaska in March, where the environment and conditions are similar to what they may encounter in the island chains, as well as on the Asian continent like India or South Korea, Flynn said. Soldiers also conduct training, exercises, and rehearsals with partners in the region. The Army’s Defender Pacific effort practiced joint integrated operations in several exercises from Guam to Thailand and the Philippines.
“This is a great illustration of exactly what we're trying to do out in the Pacific. And it does a couple of things here: it denies the [People’s Republic of China] key terrain, it increases our joint readiness by being forward and operating as a joint force. And it also increases the confidence of our allies and partners that we're going to be there, whether it's a typhoon or whether it's something worse,” he said.
Having forces forward in the region is important for the Army not just because of the work done with allies and partners, but also the ability to understand the environment and conditions that they must operate in. Right now, the service has “foundational capabilities” in the theatre that only they can provide to the joint force commander—engineering, logistics, signal, and integrated air and missile defense-- Flynn said, that is quickly scalable.
“Providing a persistent presence forward in the region is part of that posture equation. We do have to have those forces forward, we have to be there to understand the environment and the conditions that we're operating in. We have to be able to provide scalable command and control. We have to be able to provide planning, synchronization and coordination for Army capabilities, but for and on behalf of, the Joint Force,” he said.
The Pentagon has yet to release the force posture review that is expected to signal where troops and resources will be repositioned around the world. Nor has Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin released his new National Defense Strategy to replace the 2018 version.
Overall, having soldiers in the region allows the Army to be able to “see, sense, and understand” what is happening. And if something does happen where more people must deploy to the region, the Army is responsible for sustaining a joint force with infrastructure, distribution, and maneuver capabilities in the theatre.
“We've got to get those foundational capabilities that enable the joint force forward, we have to have persistent presence, we have to posture ourselves forward, bring capabilities that we know impose costs on our adversaries. Signal what we're doing out there. And then by putting boots on the ground, I think we're demonstrating the will of the United States to be forward in, as I said, the most consequential region, at the most consequential time against the most consequential adversary,” he said.
3. A Pentagon official said he resigned because US cybersecurity is no match for China, calling it 'kindergarten level'
"Kindergarten level." Quite a provocative assessment of our cyber defense capabilities.
A Pentagon official said he resigned because US cybersecurity is no match for China, calling it 'kindergarten level'
Nicolas Chaillan.
US Air Force
- Nicolas Chaillan served as the US Air Force's software chief and worked on Pentagon security.
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He quit in September and told the Financial Times last week that the US was far behind China on AI.
- "We have no competing fighting chance against China in fifteen to twenty years," he said.
10 Things in Politics: The latest in politics & the economy
A senior cybersecurity official at the Pentagon said he quit because he thought it was impossible for the US to compete with China on AI.
Nicolas Chaillan joined the US Air Force as its first chief software officer in August 2018. He worked to equip it and the Pentagon with the most secure and advanced software available.
But Chaillan quit on September 2. In his departing LinkedIn post, he cited the Pentagon's reluctance to make cybersecurity and AI a priority as a reason for his resignation.
Speaking to the Financial Times in his first interview since leaving, Chaillan said China was far ahead of the US.
"We have no competing fighting chance against China in fifteen to twenty years. Right now, it's already a done deal; it is already over in my opinion," he said.
Chaillan went on to say that the AI capabilities and cyber defenses of some government departments were at "kindergarten level," the FT said.
A number of US departments have been subject to hacking attempts and ransomware attacks in recent years.
In April 2020, the US Treasury, Department of Homeland Security, State Department, and Department of Defense were compromised in the SolarWinds hack. Hackers were able to spy on the digital activities of staff and access some of their emails.
Chaillan also told the FT that US national security was being compromised by Google's refusal to work with the Pentagon on AI.
Google stopped working with the Pentagon in 2018 after 12 employees quit over a project where Google helped the Pentagon make software that could improve the accuracy of drone strikes.
In China, Chaillan said, private cyber and AI companies were at Beijing's beck and call.
China is aiming to becoming the leading AI superpower by 2030, and a March report from the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence said the US was "not prepared to defend the United States in the coming artificial intelligence (AI) era."
Chaillan said it didn't matter whether the US spent three times as much as China on defense because it was being allocated to the wrong areas, the FT reported.
In the LinkedIn post announcing his departure, Chaillan said he was frustrated with the Pentagon's reluctance to commit to cybersecurity.
"I am just tired of continuously chasing support and money to do my job. My office still has no billet and no funding, this year and the next," he wrote.
Chaillan told the FT that he planned to testify to Congress about the threat posed by China.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
4. Cartels and crypto
Conclusion:
As we have seen this year, the frequency of ransomware attacks and other cybercrime continues to skyrocket and cryptocurrencies have emerged as a critical weapon for both nation state adversaries and cybercriminals. To protect not only the people of Texas’s 23rd but all of our citizens, the U.S. government must win the technological fight against the cartels. The battle has only begun.
Cartels and crypto
The Hill · by Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) and Samantha F. Ravich, opinion contributors · October 8, 2021
If the massive spike in traffic across the U.S.-Mexico border continues at its current pace, total border arrests in 2021 will be the highest since 2000, when nearly 1.7 million illegal border crossers were apprehended by U.S. authorities. Down in Texas’ 23rd District, which encompasses 40 percent of the total southern border, residents are no strangers to the dangers that come with illegal border crossings, specifically those connected to cartel activity. A worrisome new technological development has arisen that can potentially lay the groundwork for these criminal elements to increase their drug and human smuggling operations exponentially.
Latin American cartels have been on the leading edge of technological innovation for decades. Their drones, stealth submarines, and encrypted technologies rival the world’s best intelligence agencies. Therefore, it should come as no surprise to see that cartels have now embraced cryptocurrency as an avenue for currency that cannot be easily tracked or traced.
Because cryptocurrencies are still not widely accepted as a form of currencies, digital wallets must be paired with a bank account to convert the cryptocurrency back into money that the individual can use in the real world. While financial institutions and law enforcement can view transactions from bank accounts to the digital wallets that house the cryptocurrencies, investigators can quickly run into jurisdictional and subpoena issues as the money is moved from digital wallet to digital wallet and eventually sold for traditional currencies.
A 2020 DEA threat report states that cartels traditionally have used a variety of ways to launder their illicit proceeds, including vehicles, small aircraft, and by couriers. They also use wire transfers, shell and legitimate business accounts, funnel accounts, and structured deposits to move money while concealing the routing of illicit proceeds. Compared to the investment required to purchase the equipment and labor to move money through these traditional methods, cryptocurrencies are a cheap way to launder their ill-gotten gains. Moreover, while a pallet of cash can draw law enforcement attention to smugglers, millions of dollars can be housed on a thumb drive and transported anywhere in the world without a being scrutinized by investigators. A drop in seizures of hard currency, from $702 million in 2012 to $368 million in 2019, suggests newer technologies including cryptocurrency laundering are gaining ground, according to the 2020 DEA report.
This has become particularly noticeable in Latin America. Santiago Nieto, the head of Mexico’s financial intelligence, has described that cartels use crypto to evade law enforcement by laundering their money through the purchase of small amounts of Bitcoin and transferring it across borders undetected. And while a 2018 Mexican law mandated that registered crypto trading platforms report transfers exceeding 56,000 Mexican pesos (approximately $2,800), Mexican law enforcement has neither the manpower nor the technological prowess to do much with the information collected.
Beyond illicit financial activities, recent attacks on the financial institutions themselves have been attributed to Latin American drug cartels. According to a new report from cybersecurity firm IntSights, cartels have leveraged a wide variety of scams and malware to breach banks in Colombia and Brazil. "The marriage of violent drug gangs and the underground hacking community is a significant emerging threat as we move into 2020. The two worlds are combining their influence, skills, and experience to achieve common goals, primarily of the financial variety," the report said.
The combination of cartels and crypto may be heading to our shores and we need to prepare. Nieto has stated that “there’s a transition to committing crimes in cyberspace, like acquiring cryptocurrencies to launder money…and the pandemic is accelerating it. Late last year, a Mexican human trafficker, Ignacio Santoyo, was arrested after being linked by bitcoin to a prostitution ring that exploited over 2000 women across Latin America."
U.S. law enforcement must be given the tools and resources to fight 21st century crime. Tommy guns and paper warrants won’t do. One underappreciated agency that is positioning itself for this fight is the U.S. Secret Service (USSS). Known to the public for protecting the president, the USSS’s original mission was in protecting U.S. currency by fighting counterfeiters. These days, Secret Service investigates different threats to the dollar, including through computer system hacks and digital currency crimes. Along with the USSS, the FBI, IRS, and Homeland Security Investigations also investigate crypto crimes — underscoring the critical need of the whole government to meet this threat head-on. The FBI recently demonstrated its capabilities by recovering 63.7 of the 75 Bitcoin paid by Colonial Pipeline Co., the operator of the U.S.’s largest gas pipeline, to a Russian ransomware group, worth approximately $2.3 million.
As we have seen this year, the frequency of ransomware attacks and other cybercrime continues to skyrocket and cryptocurrencies have emerged as a critical weapon for both nation state adversaries and cybercriminals. To protect not only the people of Texas’s 23rd but all of our citizens, the U.S. government must win the technological fight against the cartels. The battle has only begun.
U.S. Congressman Tony Gonzales represents Texas's 23rd District and sits on the House Appropriations Committee. He previously served two decades as a cryptologist in the United States Navy. Samantha F. Ravich, Ph.D., is the chair of the Center for Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Samantha serves as a commissioner on the congressionally mandated Cyberspace Solarium Commission and previously served as deputy national security advisor for Vice President Cheney.
The Hill · by Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) and Samantha F. Ravich, opinion contributors · October 8, 2021
5. White House to host virtual ransomware summit with 30 countries — but not Russia
White House to host virtual ransomware summit with 30 countries — but not Russia
One major topic of conversation will be how countries can cooperatively trace and disrupt criminal use of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
The Biden administration is set to host a two-day virtual ransomware summit starting Wednesday, the largest international gathering of its kind to date, with one notable absence: Russia was not invited.
The White House plans for at least 30 countries to attend a series of meetings to be held over Zoom. The summit will be the most concrete step it has taken so far to build an international coalition to address ransomware, an epidemic of cybercrime where hackers remotely lock victims’ computers and demand an extortion payment to fix them.
“We see this meeting as the first of many conversations,” with allies, a senior Biden administration official said on a call with reporters Tuesday. The official requested to not be named as part of the terms of the call.
Notably, Russia was not one of the dozens of countries invited to the summit, the White House official said. The U.S. is having direct conversations with the Kremlin on the topic, the official said.
“We do look to the Russian government to address ransomware criminal activity coming from actors within Russia,” the official said. The White House has had “frank and professional exchanges in which we’ve communicated those expectations,” the official said.
U.S. law enforcement often knows the identities of key hackers behind ransomware attacks, and many reside in Russia, which does not extradite its citizens and has been reluctant to crack down on those who attack foreign targets.
One major topic of conversation will be how countries can cooperatively trace and disrupt criminal use of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, the official said.
Ransomware cost victims an estimated $74 billion in total damages last year, according to a study by the cybersecurity firm Emsisoft. While the U.S. has the most known cases, the problem is global: At least eight other countries suffered more than a thousand known ransomware attacks in 2020.
After hackers attacked a major oil pipeline owner and meat processor earlier this year, the White House launched a multi-pronged effort to confront ransomware, including sanctioning a cryptocurrency exchange that allegedly helped hackers launder their extorted bitcoins into cash.
Biden said he told Russian President Vladimir Putin during a June meeting that ransomware attacks from Russian citizens against U.S. critical infrastructure were off-limits. The White House has since cautioned that it would take months to see if such conversations will prove effective.
Jen Easterly, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said last week that Russian ransomware hackers have yet to make “any significant, material changes” to their usual rapid pace of attacks.
The countries slated to join the U.S. in the meeting are Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Lithuania, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, the Republic of Korea, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. The European Union will also be represented.
6. Jonathan, Diana Toebbe cited by expert psychiatrist, claiming that more than money motivates spies
It will be interesting to learn what did motivate them.
But what I am curious about is which country did they attempt to provide the information to. And kudos to that country for turning over the information to the FBI. That country likely knows that it would not have been able to use the technological information provided without compromising itself and exposing that it had obtained the information through espionage. This would have significantly damaged the alliance, partnership, or friendship with the U.S. if it exploited this information. But you would think these two traitors would have known that. What was motivating them to provide this kind of information to a likely US friend, partner, or ally?
Jonathan, Diana Toebbe cited by expert psychiatrist, claiming that more than money motivates spies
Tuesday, October 12, 2021
Money was likely not the only motivation behind a Maryland couple’s reported decision to try to sell sensitive U.S. submarine secrets to a foreign government, a leading expert in the psychology of espionage told The Washington Times.
Dr. David Charney, a Northern Virginia psychiatrist who has worked extensively with members of the intelligence community, also said husband and wife spy duos like those outlined in the FBI case are unusual.
“I look askance at the simplistic attribution, always, to money being the explanation,” said Dr. Charney. “You always have to take it further.”
Dr. Charney provided insights as Navy nuclear engineer Jonathan Toebbe and his schoolteacher wife, Diana, made their first appearance in federal court since their arrest Saturday in West Virginia.
The couple are accused of passing sensitive information about U.S. submarines to agents they thought were working for a foreign government but who were in fact undercover FBI agents.
Magistrate Judge Robert Trumble ordered the couple to remain behind bars pending a detention hearing Friday.
The 23-page affidavit released over the weekend described a months-long FBI sting operation after an undisclosed foreign government alerted the U.S. that Mr. Toebbe sent copies of submarine documents with a promise for more in exchange for cryptocurrency deposits.
While at face value, the episode appears to be an open-and-shut case involving information in exchange for money, Dr. Charney, who reviewed the affidavit but is not directly involved in the case, said he is certain that what motivated the couple, as with most spies, goes beyond money alone.
By all appearances, the Toebbe’s lived a comfortable life. Both had seemingly fulfilling careers and lived with their two children on a quiet middle-class street in Annapolis.
Dr. Charney said this does not always tell the whole story.
“You may look at somebody’s life as you will if you look at the pictures of the Toebbes online, and you would say, ‘Jeez, it looks pretty good,’” he said. “And even the story of his career seems pretty good, as does his wife’s. Well, then it doesn’t matter what you think. It matters what the person thinks within their now heart and mind as to how things have gone.”
Several key elements stood out in the Toebbe case.
First, husband and wife spy duos are unusual and Mrs. Toebbe’s involvement raises several questions, the psychologist said.
“It’s not unheard of, but it’s quite unusual, said Dr. Charney, who has served on defense teams for several accused spies and consults for federal agencies and private businesses on insider threats and counterintelligence.
Mrs. Toebbe, a private school teacher, is alleged to have conspired with her husband and served as a “lookout” on several of the dead drops, according to prosecutors.
If Mrs. Toebbe was involved to the degree that is reported in the complaint, it would point to an even more complex shared motivation, he said.
“Anytime you have two people that are carrying off a more complex scheme, they’ve got to have a shared outlook about things,” he said. “And that is not clear to me what that could be right now.”
Second, the case reportedly involves a high level of premeditation. Mr. Toebbe is accused of collecting sensitive information for years before releasing it to the foreign government.
While Mr. Toebbe was an amateur and had no training in spy tradecraft, Dr. Charney said, he operated with a level of sophistication beyond what he might expect.
According to the affidavit, in April 2020, Mr. Toebbe, a nuclear propulsion specialist for the Navy, sent a package containing sensitive “U.S. Navy documents,” including “technical details, operations manuals, performance reports” to a foreign government. The package also contained a letter from Mr. Toebbe in which he asked that the recipient forward the information to the country’s “military intelligence agency” and provided instructions for communicating via an encrypted platform.
In December, the foreign government handed the package over to an FBI attache in the country. There are just over 60 countries that work with the FBI in this capacity, and the fact that they turned the material over suggests that the country Mr. Toebbe contacted was not a direct adversary of the U.S.
Later that month, the FBI initiated contact with Mr. Toebbe while posing as a representative from the foreign government. Over several months, undercover agents coordinated with Mr. Toebbe to conduct several exchanges of classified information, including documents related to nuclear reactors on board the U.S. Navy’s advanced $3.5 billion Virginia-class submarines.
In several exchanges with the FBI posing as foreign spy handlers, Mr. Toebbe ruminated that he was set up.
“I must consider the possibility that I am communicating with an adversary who has intercepted my first message and is attempting to expose me,” he said in one encrypted communique. “Would not such an adversary wish me to go to a place of his choosing, knowing that an amateur will be unlikely to detect his surveillance?”
The exchange was telling, Dr. Charney said.
“He knew a fair amount more than any average person would know about secret ways of communicating,” he said. “But he wasn’t quite as smart as he thought he was. There was this kind of semi-naivety in how he operated. Which is interesting.”
The FBI, for example, has not said what specific country Mr. Toebbe intended to contact or whether Mr. Toebbe has been passing the information to other countries that did not alert the FBI.
Understanding the motivation behind the betrayal will be key in preventing further leaks, said Dr. Charney, though he added that counterintelligence efforts often focus on catching rather than preventing spies.
“If you don’t understand the complexity, the actual complexity of what motivates people, how are you going to build something as effective as prevention?”
7. The moment of truth over Taiwan is getting closer
Sounds ominous.
Excerpts:
To make it harder to rally US domestic support for intervention, China might choose to use “grey zone” methods that stop short of a full-scale invasion across the 100 miles of the Taiwan Strait. These could include a naval blockade, or the deployment of special forces charged with crippling Taiwanese infrastructure or capturing the country’s leadership.
China, in other words, is deploying its own form of “strategic ambiguity” over Taiwan — constantly reiterating its willingness to go to war, while leaving Washington and Taipei guessing over how and when that might happen. The fact that China has so far rejected America’s overtures to set up a military hotline that could be used to de-escalate conflicts, suggests the Xi government is content to keep the US guessing.
Both China and the US increasingly feel as if they are engaged in a potentially deadly poker game over Taiwan, as they attempt to bluff each other into backing down. Strategic ambiguity has kept the peace for decades. But a dangerous moment of clarity may be approaching.
The moment of truth over Taiwan is getting closer
Would America go to war over Taiwan? That question has seemed fairly abstract for decades. Now it is increasingly urgent.
The Chinese air force sent around 150 jets into Taiwan’s air-defence identification zone in the space of just four days this month — a record number that caused the Taiwanese air force to scramble repeatedly. Over the same period, the US and five other nations, including Japan and the UK, conducted one of the biggest naval exercises in the western Pacific in decades.
This flexing of military muscle was accompanied by confrontational rhetoric on both sides. Over the weekend, President Xi Jinping pledged in a speech that the “historical task of the complete reunification of the motherland . . . will definitely be fulfilled”. The Chinese leader stressed that his preference is to take over Taiwan by peaceful means. But, since voluntary surrender by Taiwan is close to inconceivable, that leaves military force.
The CIA has also just announced its formation of a new China Mission Center, describing China as “the most important geopolitical threat we face in the 21st century”. Its most urgent issue will be assessing Beijing’s intentions over Taiwan. Chiu Kuo-cheng, the island’s defence minister, warned last week that China would be able to invade by 2025 and described the current situation as the most dangerous in 40 years.
The public mood in both China and the US, which will influence the choices that the two countries’ leaders make, seems increasingly bellicose. The nationalist sentiment in China and its increasing focus on America is reflected in the current blockbuster film, The Battle at Lake Changjin — the story of a Chinese defeat of America in the Korean war.
In the US, 67 per cent of people polled now have negative views of China, up from 46 per cent in 2018. Another poll, taken in August, showed that for the first time more than half of Americans (52 per cent) favour using US troops to defend Taiwan if China invades, a striking result, given the non-negligible risk this would lead to world war three.
The Biden team believe that China is determined to displace the US as the world’s pre-eminent economic and military power, and they are determined to push back. They understand that much of the struggle will be about trade and technology. But they also know that a successful Chinese invasion of Taiwan would signal the end of US dominance of the Indo-Pacific.
Would the US go to war to prevent that happening? The short answer is that no one really knows. Not the military planners in Washington and Beijing, whose job it is to draw up elaborate plans for conflict over Taiwan. Nor, possibly, even America’s commander-in-chief, Joe Biden. So much would depend on the nature of the attack — and the domestic and international political situation at the time.
As the Cuba missile crisis of 1962 and the 1914 July crisis in Europe both demonstrated, world-shaking decisions about war and peace, are often made in a surprisingly haphazard fashion under the pressure of fast-changing events.
Maintaining a state of uncertainty is, in fact, a deliberate US policy — known as “strategic ambiguity”. The idea is to deter China from attacking Taiwan by suggesting that the US would defend the island, without issuing an explicit security guarantee that might, in itself, trigger a military showdown. Strategic ambiguity has helped America maintain the status quo over Taiwan for two generations.
But there is concern in Washington that Beijing’s calculations are shifting. Senior US officials believe the Chinese leadership has convinced itself that the US is in terminal decline — with the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan taken as the latest evidence.
Last week, Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, warned that it would be a “grave mistake” for countries to draw broader lessons about US resolve from Afghanistan. Sullivan’s comments reflect a US concern that an increasingly confident China could dismiss the possibility that America will go to war over Taiwan — or has decided that it would swiftly win a limited conflict. Leaked reports of US war-games suggesting that China would prevail in a fight over Taiwan will certainly have been noted in Beijing.
To make it harder to rally US domestic support for intervention, China might choose to use “grey zone” methods that stop short of a full-scale invasion across the 100 miles of the Taiwan Strait. These could include a naval blockade, or the deployment of special forces charged with crippling Taiwanese infrastructure or capturing the country’s leadership.
China, in other words, is deploying its own form of “strategic ambiguity” over Taiwan — constantly reiterating its willingness to go to war, while leaving Washington and Taipei guessing over how and when that might happen. The fact that China has so far rejected America’s overtures to set up a military hotline that could be used to de-escalate conflicts, suggests the Xi government is content to keep the US guessing.
Both China and the US increasingly feel as if they are engaged in a potentially deadly poker game over Taiwan, as they attempt to bluff each other into backing down. Strategic ambiguity has kept the peace for decades. But a dangerous moment of clarity may be approaching.
gideon.rachman@ft.com
8. How to Prevent an Accidental War Over Taiwan
It would be nice to be able to prevent a war.
Excerpts:
To prepare for the possibility of a military or paramilitary incident in the Taiwan Strait, the United States should prioritize maintaining reliable crisis communication channels with both China and Taiwan. Washington could also privately communicate some of Taipei’s redlines to Beijing and warn Chinese leaders against testing them. At the same time, it could work with allies and partners to impress upon China the destabilizing consequences of its coercive behavior against Taiwan. Where appropriate, the United States may even want to encourage Taipei to publicly reveal some of its thinking on Chinese military activities, signaling when and why it may have to respond with military force.
As China escalates its military coercion of Taiwan, the risk of an accidental crisis will only increase. Taiwan and the United States should continue to work together to deter a Chinese invasion of the island, but that agenda is no longer enough to prevent a conflict. Taipei and Washington must also develop responses to Chinese military pressure that reduce the risk of a potentially deadly miscue or blunder. Years ago, U.S. President Joe Biden reportedly told Chinese President Xi Jinping that “the only thing worse than a war is an unintentional war.” Now, as the risk of such a war over Taiwan increases, it is incumbent upon Biden to help stave it off.
How to Prevent an Accidental War Over Taiwan
Beijing and Taipei Are One Blunder Away From Open Conflict
On October 1, the 72nd anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Beijing sent 38 military aircraft into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone, the most it had ever sent in a single day. The following day, Beijing broke its record again by sending 39 aircraft into Taiwan’s ADIZ. And then on October 4, it sent 56, shattering the daily record once more in a year in which China has flown military aircraft into the ADIZ on 173 days.
China appears to be rehearsing for joint combat operations near Taiwan. In addition to increasing the frequency of its flights, China is integrating a large number of fighter jets with nuclear-capable bombers and assets focused on antisubmarine warfare and air surveillance. China is demonstrating its ability to conduct military operations against Taiwan at all hours, 365 days of the year. It may also be expanding and routinizing these flights to desensitize Taiwan and the United States to Chinese military operations near the island, allowing Beijing to more easily disguise preparations for an actual attack on Taiwan as part of “normal” activities.
China’s increasingly aggressive behavior makes a cross-strait emergency more likely. But the risk of a crisis stems less from the possibility of an immediate Chinese invasion than from an accident or a miscalculation that turns deadly—a midair collision between Chinese and Taiwanese jets, for instance, or a Chinese decision to violate Taiwan’s sovereign airspace that prompts Taiwan to shoot down the plane. Beijing will probably continue to escalate its coercive efforts, sending aircraft closer to Taiwan and possibly even over the island itself. At a certain point, Taipei will be forced to respond—whether with enhanced surveillance and warnings or with military force. The United States must therefore work with Taiwan to preempt and respond to China’s military activities without triggering a crisis. Preparing for a full-scale Chinese invasion of Taiwan is no longer a sufficient U.S. strategy. Washington must also prepare for a blunder or a miscue that has the potential to explode into open conflict.
TIT FOR TAT
As China has ratcheted up its coercive behavior, Taiwan has refined its responses. Initially, Taipei scrambled fighter jets to intercept each approaching Chinese aircraft. By early 2021, however, the daily strain of doing so had prompted Taiwan to rely more on ground-based air defense systems to monitor Chinese intrusions. And the island’s leaders know that even these measures will be insufficient if China continues to escalate: Taiwan’s 2021 Quadrennial Defense Review, for instance, states that Taipei will adopt a tougher response as the enemy draws closer. According to multiple media reports, officials from Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense, air force, and coast guard have openly discussed a range of responses to Chinese military operations, based on their nature and their distance to the island. Some reports suggest that Taiwan may have already established three separate zones: a “surveillance” zone for Chinese activities within 30 nautical miles of Taiwan, a “warning” zone for activities within 24 nautical miles, and a “destruction” zone for activities within 12 nautical miles.
Within the destruction zone, Taiwan’s air force has reportedly formulated some standard operating procedures—for instance, by preparing to intercept intruding aircraft or to force them to land. If such aircraft are perceived to have hostile intent, Taiwan’s air force could lock its radar on the aircraft, fire warning shots, or even strike first to shoot them down. To prevent escalation, individual Taiwanese pilots are not allowed to shoot first unless the air force headquarters orders them to do so. In a crisis, the air force may be able to authorize such strikes without further approval from Taiwan’s most senior military and political officials.
These potential responses are comparable to those one might expect from countries facing similar threats. South Korea, for instance, fired hundreds of warning shots in 2019, when Russian aircraft intruded into the airspace over the disputed Dokdo Islands, known in Japan as the Takeshima Islands. Indeed, it would be politically untenable for any Taiwanese leader not to defend Taiwan from Chinese incursions. Although U.S. officials might prefer that Taiwan’s leaders not expend their limited military resources responding to Chinese military flights, domestic political imperatives will likely force them to do so.
So far, Chinese military aircraft have yet to fly within 12 nautical miles of the main island of Taiwan, at least according to public reports. But China has flown progressively closer to southwest Taiwan and to Pratas Island, which Taiwan administers and which sits roughly 275 miles from Taiwan in the South China Sea. If tensions continue to rise, China’s past flight paths and training exercises suggest that Beijing could readily escalate air operations in at least one of three ways: by flying closer to Taiwan, including to the east side of the island or near the center or north of the Taiwan Strait; by undermining Taiwan’s control of Pratas or other offshore islands that Taiwan administers, likely with regular overflights; and, most provocatively, by flying directly over Taiwan.
Taipei could feel compelled to shoot down a Chinese aircraft.
The first option would expand the geographic scope of Chinese military activities beyond the southwest corner of the ADIZ and bring Chinese aircraft closer to more sensitive and less fortified regions of Taiwan. The second and third options are more dangerous, however. To challenge Taiwan’s administration of Pratas, China could routinize flights over it, forcing Taiwan to either defend its airspace or acquiesce to regular Chinese incursions. Such flights could also serve as a test of Taiwan’s defenses and response before China attempts a flyover of the main island.
China might also attempt to use one of these escalatory maneuvers to force Taipei to be the first to use kinetic force, which could then justify a larger Chinese punitive operation against Taiwan. The Global Times, a nationalist state-run daily, has called the reported division of Taiwan’s airspace into defensive zones “especially ridiculous,” declaring that the Chinese military is “prepared to send warplanes to fly across the island of Taiwan to declare sovereignty.” While Chinese officials have been less explicit, they have argued that military operations and exercises against Taiwan are legitimate and necessary to safeguard Chinese sovereignty.
If Beijing disregards Taiwan’s possible redlines, it risks triggering a crisis—especially if its military aircraft enter the island’s reported “destruction” zone. Aggressive maneuvering by Chinese or Taiwanese pilots could result in an unintended midair fatality akin to the one that occurred in 2001, when a Chinese fighter jet collided with a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft, resulting in the death of the Chinese pilot and forcing the U.S. plane to make an emergency landing in China. Should China attempt to fly military aircraft directly over Taiwan itself, Taipei could feel that it has no option but to shoot down the aircraft.
Even an accidental collision in the Taiwan Strait could spiral out of control. Since the 1958 Taiwan Strait crisis, when China shelled Taiwan’s offshore islands, neither side has suffered a fatality in a cross-strait encounter. If that were to change today, however, both sides would be ill equipped to manage the domestic political fallout—and both could be forced into tougher and more inflexible positions. If a Chinese fighter pilot were to be killed, moreover, Beijing could decide to eschew diplomacy until after it has punished Taiwan. And because cross-strait communication channels have been dormant for over five years, mutual misperceptions could easily result in further escalation.
CRISIS MANAGEMENT
To be sure, the United States must prepare for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, which means ensuring that it has the military capability to prevent China from capturing the island and making clear to Beijing that an unprovoked attack would come with a heavy price. But the United States must also prepare for the more likely near-term cause of a crisis in the Taiwan Strait: an accident or miscommunication that pushes both sides to the brink of war.
To that end, Washington should invest in making Taiwan more resilient and better able to withstand Chinese military pressure. It should also help Taiwan deter China’s most threatening activities and work with Taiwan to develop responses to its neighbor’s provocations. For instance, U.S. and Taiwanese officials could conduct tabletop exercises focused on heightened Chinese aggression that falls short of war, helping Taiwan’s national security leaders think through the implications of different responses, including defending potential redlines.
Washington should help Taiwan develop responses to China's provocations.
To prepare for the possibility of a military or paramilitary incident in the Taiwan Strait, the United States should prioritize maintaining reliable crisis communication channels with both China and Taiwan. Washington could also privately communicate some of Taipei’s redlines to Beijing and warn Chinese leaders against testing them. At the same time, it could work with allies and partners to impress upon China the destabilizing consequences of its coercive behavior against Taiwan. Where appropriate, the United States may even want to encourage Taipei to publicly reveal some of its thinking on Chinese military activities, signaling when and why it may have to respond with military force.
As China escalates its military coercion of Taiwan, the risk of an accidental crisis will only increase. Taiwan and the United States should continue to work together to deter a Chinese invasion of the island, but that agenda is no longer enough to prevent a conflict. Taipei and Washington must also develop responses to Chinese military pressure that reduce the risk of a potentially deadly miscue or blunder. Years ago, U.S. President Joe Biden reportedly told Chinese President Xi Jinping that “the only thing worse than a war is an unintentional war.” Now, as the risk of such a war over Taiwan increases, it is incumbent upon Biden to help stave it off.
9. Gaslighting nations—Erdogan makes a mockery of U.N. General Assembly—again
Excerpts:
Last year, Erdogan publicized, through the Turkish presidency's official Twitter account, hosting two Hamas chiefs: senior military leader Saleh al-Arouri and senior political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who are on Washington's list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists. Given that Erdogan joined Iran last year to oppose the Abraham Accords, which established diplomatic relations between Israel and its Middle Eastern neighbors, the Turkish president's advocacy for "peace" appears more like a mockery of ongoing diplomatic efforts.
The idea of a "United Nations" has changed radically from Roosevelt's vision. Today, the United Nations provides a podium that authoritarian regimes exploit to advance their agendas, mock international norms and gaslight victims. The United Nations itself appears incapable of developing any effective pushback against such abuse within its current institutional configuration. Thus, it is time for governments committed to Roosevelt's vision to take concerted action to prevent enemies of human rights from subverting international organizations and bullying vulnerable nations and communities. A good start would be to deploy the respective global Magnitsky laws that Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States passed to target the most egregious human rights violators and corrupt officials in authoritarian regimes, who time and again undermine the United Nations and its founding values.
Gaslighting nations—Erdogan makes a mockery of U.N. General Assembly—again | Opinion
Newsweek · by Aykan Erdemir , Foundation for Defense of Democracies On 10/12/21 at 8:00 AM EDT · October 12, 2021
The term "United Nations," which U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt coined in 1942, reflected a commitment, articulated in the Declaration of United Nations, to "defend life, liberty, independence and religious freedom, and to preserve human rights and justice." The Declaration formally established the coalition that would ultimately overthrow the Axis powers, bringing an end to the Second World War.
Fast forward eight decades: The world's worst violators of human rights, including China and Russia, now serve on the U.N. Human Rights Council, and the likes of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan make a mockery of multilateralism and international norms by gaslighting nations at the U.N. General Assembly. Roosevelt must be turning in his grave.
Erdogan, in particular, has made a habit of trolling the General Assembly, which meets in September every year, by repeatedly lecturing members that "the world [is] more than five"—a reference to the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council—suggesting that Turkey should get a permanent seat.
Yet it is hard to take seriously calls for governance reform from an autocrat who has dismantled democracy at home. Erdogan has gone as far as imprisoning a presidential contender—Selahattin Demirtas—for the last five years. A week before the Turkish president's U.N. address, the Council of Europe called on Ankara to free Demirtas, who remains in prison despite 2018 and 2020 rulings in favor of his release by the European Court of Human Rights, whose decisions are binding on Turkey.
This year, in costly and empty spectacles that cater mainly to a domestic audience, the Turkish president's U.N. stunts included the promotion of his recently launched book, A Fairer World is Possible, on New York's billboards and trucks. Erdogan also distributed the book to world leaders during the General Assembly. In his book, Erdogan calls for increasing the number of permanent members of the U.N. Security Council to 20, an effort to diffuse power. Erdogan's call poses a striking contrast to his hyper-centralization of control at home through the amassing of executive, legislative and judicial powers in what amounts to one-man rule.
As Erdogan struggled in vain during his New York visit to secure—in an attempt to boost his popularity back home—an in-person meeting with his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden on the sidelines of the General Assembly, the Turkish president avoided the angry tone that marked some of his plenary addresses in earlier years. Instead, he devoted most of his speech to relatively less contentious issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change.
It was ironic that when Erdogan lectured U.N. member states about the "irreparable consequences" of climate change, he did so as the president of the only G-20 country that did not yet ratify the Paris Climate Accords, alongside five other signatories: Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Yemen. Two weeks after Erdogan's U.N. talk and more than five years after Ankara's signing of the international agreement, the Turkish parliament finally ratified it, only after France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the World Bank's International Finance Corporation and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development offered financial inducements. Meanwhile, on Yale University's Environmental Performance Index, Turkey ranks 175 out of 180 countries in the "Biodiversity & Habitat" category, which "assesses countries' actions toward retaining natural ecosystems and protecting the full range of biodiversity within their borders." At home, Erdogan's trademark has been an out-of-control construction boom that has transformed Turkish cities into a dystopian urban jungle, unfit for human habitation. The Turkish president's aversion to climate activism goes as far as refusing to register Turkey's Green Party for over a year, in clear breach of the country's political parties law.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses the 76th Session of the U.N. General Assembly. EDUARDO MUNOZ/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Erdogan also lectured the world about the COVID-19 outbreak, hypocritically contending that underdeveloped countries and poor segments of societies have been "literally left to their fate in the face of the pandemic." Yet last year, the United Nations Children's Fund issued a warning after Turkey-backed armed groups interrupted the flow of water from the Alouk water station to regions of northeast Syria, where close to 500,000 reside, including tens of thousands of internally displaced persons sheltered at camps. The agency cautioned that the "interruption of water supply during the current efforts to curb the spread of the Coronavirus disease puts children and families at unacceptable risk." Since then, Erdogan's Syrian Islamist proxies have cut off water to the region numerous times, prompting accusations by experts of weaponizing water in the midst of a surge in COVID-19 cases.
Erdogan's bragging about his government's success in the fight against the Islamic State and in the prevention of "ethnic cleansing" in Syria must have sounded surreal to tens of millions of Turks, Kurds and Arabs, who have long complained about the Erdogan government's negligence, complicity and culpability since the beginning of the Syrian civil war. Only a month before Erdogan's U.N. speech, journalists exposed the lenient treatment by Turkish courts of Islamic State suspects, allowing them to walk free—including militants responsible for the abduction and enslavement of Yazidi girls. Meanwhile, frequent media reports describe the Erdogan government's ongoing demographic engineering efforts in northern Syria, which have led to the replacement of local Kurds, Assyrians and Yazidis with Ankara's Islamist proxies.
The top prize among Erdogan's gaslighting attempts goes to his comments about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In his U.N. speech, the Turkish president advocated for "reviving the peace process and the vision for a two-state solution without any further delay." Yet Erdogan remains one of the leading patrons of the terrorist-designated Palestinian organization Hamas, whose 1998 charter commits to the destruction of Israel.
Last year, Erdogan publicized, through the Turkish presidency's official Twitter account, hosting two Hamas chiefs: senior military leader Saleh al-Arouri and senior political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who are on Washington's list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists. Given that Erdogan joined Iran last year to oppose the Abraham Accords, which established diplomatic relations between Israel and its Middle Eastern neighbors, the Turkish president's advocacy for "peace" appears more like a mockery of ongoing diplomatic efforts.
The idea of a "United Nations" has changed radically from Roosevelt's vision. Today, the United Nations provides a podium that authoritarian regimes exploit to advance their agendas, mock international norms and gaslight victims. The United Nations itself appears incapable of developing any effective pushback against such abuse within its current institutional configuration. Thus, it is time for governments committed to Roosevelt's vision to take concerted action to prevent enemies of human rights from subverting international organizations and bullying vulnerable nations and communities. A good start would be to deploy the respective global Magnitsky laws that Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States passed to target the most egregious human rights violators and corrupt officials in authoritarian regimes, who time and again undermine the United Nations and its founding values.
Aykan Erdemir (@aykan_erdemir) is the senior director of the Turkey Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former member of the Turkish parliament.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Newsweek · by Aykan Erdemir , Foundation for Defense of Democracies On 10/12/21 at 8:00 AM EDT · October 12, 2021
10. SAS secrets revealed by cut-and-paste error
There but for the grace of ....
Think about this:
But The Mail on Sunday can reveal that simply by copying and pasting the text, every blanked-out detail can be read.
SAS secrets revealed by cut-and-paste error
SAS secrets revealed by cut-and-paste error: Plans for enhanced weapons said to be for UK Special Forces are disclosed in 'astonishing' new security blunder by defence officials
- Secret plans for a suite of enhanced weapons revealed in major security blunder
- Details of research were redacted in a document which was posted Gov website
- MoS can reveal that copying and pasting text reveals every blanked-out detail
PUBLISHED: 17:00 EDT, 9 October 2021 | UPDATED: 20:55 EDT, 9 October 2021
They're our elite fighting force but it seems even the world-beating SAS can be outwitted by a simple pen-pusher's error.
Secret plans for a suite of enhanced weapons, potentially for use by Britain's Special Forces, have been revealed in an astonishing new security blunder by defence officials.
Details of research into the next generation of munitions appeared to have been safely redacted in a document marked 'Official Sensitive' and posted on a Government website.
The Ministry of Defence last night said it was taking action to correct the security breach after this newspaper alerted officials to the blunder. Pictured, SAS soldiers circa 1996
But The Mail on Sunday can reveal that simply by copying and pasting the text, every blanked-out detail can be read.
Tory MP and former Army officer Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the Commons Defence Committee, said the weapons appeared to be destined for use by UK Special Forces.
The Ministry of Defence last night said it was taking action to correct the security breach after this newspaper alerted officials to the blunder.
The MoD announced last week that a new contract had been signed with an engineering firm that specialises in the use of explosive materials.
The Mail on Sunday has chosen not to reveal details of the research.
The lapse is the latest in a series of embarrassing security gaffes to rock the department this year, including a data breach of email addresses of dozens of Afghan interpreters who had worked with British forces and were at risk from the Taliban.
Former Labour Defence Minister Kevan Jones branded the latest foul-up 'farcical', saying the MoD was turning into the 'Ministry of Data Blunders'.
Mr Ellwood condemned it as an 'astonishing breach of security standards' and called on Defence Secretary Ben Wallace 'to ascertain how many other documents have been redacted and published in a similar way'.
British special forces soldiers with weapons during a military exercise
Last night, Mr Ellwood said: 'It is evident this contract relates to highly technical weapons systems that will be used by our Special Forces.
'And when new kit is brought on line, it introduces new tactics and protocols, which again give our elite forces the edge over adversaries. That is why details are redacted.'
The MoD last night said it took data security very seriously, adding: 'Due to a technical issue some redacted material was readable. This has been addressed.'
11. Marine who criticized U.S. handling of Afghanistan withdrawal will plead guilty, seek favorable discharge
Marine who criticized U.S. handling of Afghanistan withdrawal will plead guilty, seek favorable discharge
A Marine officer whose viral videos criticizing senior officials for how they withdrew from Afghanistan created a political uproar will plead guilty to several charges and seek a discharge that allows him to keep some military benefits, one of his lawyers said on Tuesday.
Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller is scheduled for court-martial at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina on Thursday, and faces charges that include disrespect toward superior commissioned officers, willfully disobeying a superior commissioned officer, and dereliction in the performance of duties. He burst into public view in August when, in the immediate aftermath of a suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. troops and about 170 Afghans, he posted a video while in uniform questioning why no senior leader had admitted making mistakes in how the withdrawal was carried out.
One of Scheller's attorneys, Tim Parlatore, said in a phone interview that he could not yet get into the specifics of a pretrial agreement because some of the details are “still up in the air.” But he said the case began with Scheller demanding accountability from others, and it would “make him a hypocrite” if the Marine did not accept responsibility for his own actions.
The Marine hopes to avoid jail time and secure either an honorable discharge or a general discharge under honorable conditions.
“Our hope is for him to get a letter of reprimand, and no more,” Parlatore said.
The possibility of a plea deal was first reported by Coffee or Die Magazine.
The case has been injected with partisan politics, with Scheller becoming a cause celebre among conservatives angry with the Biden administration and senior military officials.
Several dozen Republicans called for his release from pretrial confinement in a letter late last month, and the case has received significant attention in conservative media. It also has been spotlighted by retired Special Operations chief Edward Gallagher, a former client of Parlatore’s who was acquitted in 2019 of an alleged murder in Iraq and now advocates for other service members facing criminal charges.
Scheller has also criticized Republicans, including former president Donald Trump. In a Facebook post on Sept. 25, he wrote that “everyone” had told Scheller to “kiss the ring” and seek Trump’s help, but he said that he didn’t want to and that “I hate” how Trump “divided the country.”
“Tell your son to stop tweeting about me,” Scheller wrote, a reference to Donald Trump Jr. “Your whole family knows nothing about US or our sacrifices. I could never work with you.”
Scheller, a 17-year infantry officer who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, posted his first video on Aug. 26, shortly after a suicide bombing by Islamic State militants targeted U.S. troops and Afghans at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul as the United States carried out a chaotic evacuation effort. The airlift ultimately transported more than 120,000 people to safety, but some U.S. citizens and thousands of Afghans who assisted the war effort were left behind.
Scheller, wearing a camouflage uniform, identified himself by name and rank and said in a video that he knew one of the people killed in the bombing. Scheller said he knew he had “a lot to lose” by speaking out as he was close to earning a full military retirement, but thought risking his financial future gave him the moral high ground.
“People are upset because their senior leaders let them down, and none of them are raising their hands and accepting accountability or saying, ‘We messed this up,’ ” Scheller said.
Scheller was quickly removed as the commander of the Advanced Infantry Training Battalion at Camp Lejeune. A Marine Corps spokesman, Maj. Jim Stenger, said at the time that while it was an emotional time for a lot of Marines, “there is a forum in which Marine leaders can address their disagreements with the chain of command, but it’s not social media.”
Scheller responded with another video on Aug. 30 that appeared even more emotional. A former mentor of his, retired Col. Thomas Hobbs, had commented on his first video and said that if Scheller was honorable, he would resign his commission.
“You didn’t say, ‘is,’ as if challenging me,” Scheller responded to Hobbs in the video. “You said, ‘was,’ as if I wouldn’t do it.” Scheller then announced that he was resigning, and told viewers that if people followed him, they would bring “the system down.”
Hobbs, in a brief phone interview, said on Tuesday that Scheller served under his command at one point, and was one of his best company commanders. Hobbs said that while Scheller was a top performer, he warned him long ago that his arrogance could be his downfall.
“He hasn’t shown one spec of remorse or admitted he was wrong in any way,” Hobbs said. “I 100 percent believe it’s a ploy for him to run for office.”
Parlatore said that Scheller went through an “emotional roller coaster” after posting his first video, and that it has similarities to what many other veterans go through more privately.
“There is no question that there is some severe emotional distress throughout, and he definitely went to some very dark places,” Parlatore said. “This is unfortunately not uncommon for a lot of the veteran community.”
Scheller, in another video last month, said he was “filled with rage” after he saw colleagues in the Marine Corps turn on him, with some assuming that he was having a mental breakdown. Those feelings eventually shifted to pain and sadness, Scheller said.
“General officers, for the last 20 years, have given bad advice consistently,” he said. “And none of them have been held accountable.”
12. Opinion: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin must resign
Opinion: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin must resign
Resignation won’t atone for lives lost, or the debacle that American involvement in Afghanistan became, but it would at least demonstrate an understanding of professional ethics.
When I was a junior Marine, an oft-repeated joke among my peers went like this: “What’s the difference between the Marine Corps and the Boy Scouts?” Answer: “The Boy Scouts have adult leadership.” It was funny at the time, in the half-bitter way that such jokes are funny as an outlet for resentment among young men frustrated at their perceived lack of agency. The joke would make an appearance after incidents seemed to reveal an institution that was capricious, even willfully negligent towards those at the bottom of the pyramid. Snafus we still called them back then: trucks that never showed up on time, formations that dragged on interminably, and the inevitable delays waiting to be allowed off base in the evening before sampling the dubious delights of a garrison town. When all was said and done, however, these jokes were no more than that. Because we were proud to wear the uniform, proud of the institution to which we belonged — and willing to put our lives on the line for what it stood for.
For many of us who shared that pride, it’s been a nightmare to watch the collapse of Afghanistan. After a series of blunders at every level, from short-sighted policy decisions to inept tactical actions on the ground, I find myself struggling to make sense of it all. And now, thinking back, those jokes don’t seem quite so funny.
Making sense of it all is exactly what I plan to do here. I will not go on about the chaotic scenes at the airport in Kabul that were redolent with fear and humiliation. Or about the loss of 13 U.S. service members who probably didn’t need to die, not to mention the hundreds of Afghans who died with them. Or about the incident that was the last offensive action taken by the United States in a 20-year conflict that turned out to be representative of so much in that war – a pointless blunder in the form of a drone strike that failed to hit its target but instead devastated an innocent Afghan family. It was not even a case of “collateral damage” — that anodyne euphemism for civilians caught in the crossfire — but a completely avoidable mistake.
‘I take full responsibility’
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin (C), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley (L) and Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie (R), commander of US Central Command, testify before a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the conclusion of military operations in Afghanistan at the Rayburn House Office building on Capitol Hill on September 29, 2021 in Washington, DC. The committee held the hearing “to receive testimony on the conclusion of military operations in Afghanistan and plans for future counterterrorism operations.” (Photo by Olivier Douliery – Pool/Getty Images)
Instead, let’s discuss those responsible: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley; and Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command. That term – “responsible” – will make a reappearance throughout this essay, because none of these three men appear to have a firm grasp of its meaning. At various stages of the catastrophic finale to U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, all three announced publicly that they accepted full responsibility for what has happened – yet they render that admission hollow by failing to take any action that might demonstrate its gravitas.
These are not the frustrated ramblings of an armchair warrior or political hack. As a former Marine special operations and infantry commander, I have planned and executed numerous combat operations — most recently, as commanding officer of the coalition special operations task force given the mission of defeating ISIS in Iraq. In planning for any of those operations, if I had simply waited to be asked for my advice, as recent testimony before the Senate Armed Service Committee would have us believe that these three did – I would have been rightly fired by any one of them.
To be clear, I consider all three to be honorable men whom I know to have sacrificed much for their country. But I cannot fathom how three prominent men could serve a profession for some 120 years between them, and yet so fundamentally misinterpret the moral and intellectual demands of that same profession.
One of these three, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, is now a political appointee, and thus exempt from the same professional obligations as a military officer. But as someone who recently wore the uniform of a four-star general, which was an admission pass for his current role, he should at least understand the meaning of responsibility.
‘This is not a decision brief’
Gen. Lloyd Austin III, commander of U.S. Central Command, prepares to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee about the ongoing U.S. military operations to counter the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) during a hearing in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill September 16, 2015 in Washington, DC. Austin said that slow progress was still being made against ISIL but there have been setbacks, including the ambush of U.S.-trained fighters in Syria and the buildup of Russian forces in the country. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Austin’s appointment to the top of the Department of Defense stunned those of us who had personally observed his stumbling performance as commander of U.S. Central Command.
“This is not a decision brief,” a member of the Commander’s Action Group advised me in late 2015 as I waited to update Austin on preparations for a special operations task force to take on the Islamic State group in Iraq. “So don’t embarrass him by asking for one.”
This took me by surprise because the presentation was supposed to be exactly that: a thumbs up or down on whether to proceed with a particular course of action. Instead, my carefully delivered presentation concluded in awkward silence during which Gen. Austin nodded his thanks, then sniffed and tugged at his collar but offered no guidance. Eventually one of his long-suffering staff showed me the way to the door.
“I’m sorry, Andy, but it is what it is,” he said with genuine remorse, before adding: “Hey bro, make sure you kick ass out there.” That quietly delivered exhortation was more inspiring than anything I heard from Gen. Austin during his two years in command.
‘Around four or five’ for $100 million apiece
That briefing six years ago was only one of a number of incidents that earned Gen. Austin a reputation at CENTCOM for chronic decision-phobia.
As so often happens in any bureaucracy, facts that are clearly evident to subordinates never make it upward past the incumbent in the chain of command to those who make decisions about their suitability for higher office. What happens at CENTCOM stays at CENTCOM. Or so we thought — until an incident occurred that was so excruciatingly embarrassing that we were convinced it would rocket Austin into infamy before releasing him from further service with a velvet glove. This was his 2015 appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee to discuss CENTCOM’s efforts to train a credible force of Syrian fighters.
“Well, the number is quite low,” Austin mumbled after being asked how many fighters had been trained at a cost of some $500 million, “I believe around four or five.”
You could see members of the committee silently urging him to add a qualifier: “Is that around four or five thousand, or four or five hundred, General?”
Nope. It was four or five total, a faltering admission. Incidentally, I couldn’t help wondering at the time why the number was four or five. With barely a fire team at hand, Austin might have tried to be more precise.
Reputation vs. Current performance
We have a saying in the military that is immeasurably more mature than my earlier comparison between the Marine Corps and the Boy Scouts: “The most important thing you have is your reputation.” It may not be the most important thing, but a person’s reputation among peers and subordinates does provide a consistently accurate measure of credibility. This is why we consider it perfectly legitimate, even obligatory, outside the walls of a promotion board, to find out what peers and subordinates say about someone, before assigning him or her to an important position. Reputation, couched in these terms, will remain a credible and fair method of assessment until military performance evaluation reports formalize this function by including a 360-degree perspective.
Obviously, Secretary Austin’s performance before the SASC did not sully his reputation enough to prevent him from proceeding to the highest position in the Department of Defense, and if he was performing credibly in his current position, it would be churlish to mention his past lackluster performance at CENTCOM. But the trends that were apparent then continue today, this time with a much wider casualty radius.
Indeed all three men’s performance should be assessed in the context of their actions during the recent crisis — and it is here that I intend to focus. It’s a period of fewer than three months, but one, I imagine, that tested their mettle more than any other episode in their respective careers. As such, their words and actions during this period are supremely important.
The 90-Day Crucible
United States Marines honor their fallen during a Ramp Ceremony at Hamid Karzai International Airport, August 27.
The period under scrutiny begins with a press conference given by Austin and Milley in late July as the Kabul debacle gathered steam and culminates in last week’s appearance by all three in front of the Senate Armed Service Committee.
As the situation at the Kabul airport unraveled amidst heart-breaking scenes of desperation, Secretary Austin began by talking about his trip to the Pacific Theater, perhaps failing to understand that what was happening in Afghanistan was by far more important. The scenes at the Kabul airport were sending a message to the world about America’s reliability as a partner and demonstrating a consequent loss of influence — the coin of the realm in this era of so-called great power competition.
Finally, Austin got to the point foremost on everyone’s minds: “Now, let me briefly talk about where we are on Afghanistan … our drawdown continues in a safe and orderly manner.”
Gen. Milley reiterating his boss’s unfortunate statement: “CENTCOM and many others in the joint force, have paved the path for a safe, orderly and responsible transition.” I remember gaping in astonishment at this brazen claim.
Milley carefully avoided any phrase that might indicate meaningful insight or original thought and instead returned again and again to the kind of mindless “thank you for your service” slogans intended to pander to America’s superficial deference towards those in uniform: “We will always protect our nation,” “Our Joint Force is incredible because of the skill, determination of our men and women and their leaders, and there’s no task that they cannot accomplish.” And – said in various ways no less than five times: “We take an oath to the Constitution.”
Secretary Austin returned to the podium with panache, to explain why the United States will no longer have to worry about terrorism. “We’ve talked about, you know, setting up a err, um, a node to be able to conduct over-the-horizon strikes. That node is in place.” I hoped at the time that this “node” was worthy of more confidence than he expressed.
Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley testifies before a U.S. House Armed Services Committee hearing on the Pentagon’s fiscal year 2021 budget request on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., February 26, 2020. REUTERS/Amanda Voisard
Then came the coup-de-grace for any hope that these two men could be agents of national redemption. Milley again: “We will monitor the situation closely and make adjustments as needed.” How were we going to make such adjustments? Just two weeks earlier, with Bagram still in U.S. hands and with troops on the ground, the Pentagon had such options. But by executing the president’s ill-conceived order to withdraw this residual force, Austin, Milley, and the operational commander, McKenzie had withdrawn all options with it. Now there could be no more “making adjustments.” Milley’s statement was akin to a ship’s captain discussing engine room oil levels as the ship foundered beneath him.
It should also have been obvious to these three men with their vast amount of experience that any force introduced in extremis to the chaotic situation at the airport was at an inherent and pronounced disadvantage. And this isn’t hindsight speaking. It is something that any second lieutenant could have explained at that same press conference.
Despite all the false bonhomie, this was not a good showing for Austin and Milley. They failed to take the situation or their audience seriously, and thus forfeited the right to be taken seriously themselves. Two “bluff soldiers” giving sound-bites heavy with cliché and devoid of meaning, trying to distract a press pool sharper than themselves. They reminded me of two actors in a TV show, joking weakly as the water rose around their waists. But unlike the protagonists of such a show, these two men lacked the wherewithal to find a solution. And the water would soon be over their heads.
August 29: Circumstances of the drone strike in Kabul
Commanding General U.S. Central Command Kenneth F. McKenzie tours an evacuation control center at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Afghanistan, August 17. Marines are assisting the Department of State with an orderly drawdown of designated personnel in Afghanistan. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by 1st Lt. Mark Andries)
The tough-guy image requires senior officers such as Milley and McKenzie to treat the media with a curious mix of condescension and barely concealed hostility. Mature leaders try instead to find common ground. A desire to discover the truth should be central to that common ground.
Initially, neither Milley nor McKenzie appeared to took take seriously reports by The New York Times that the drone strike on August 29 had gone badly wrong. It was a “righteous strike,” crowed Milley with all the fervor of someone who has never experienced the results of such a strike first hand. Instead, he should probably have felt the first twinges of unease, as media reporting indicated that the strike had been anything but righteous.
The Chairman likely knew that the strike was based on information from a single source – the camera feed from an MQ-9 Reaper. This is a notoriously unreliable method of targeting and is a leading cause of drones being 30 times more likely than manned aircraft to cause civilian casualties. All three men surely were aware of these facts, given their past operational commands and extensive experience of such matters.
But as the news broke around them, the Pentagon’s reaction revealed much about the shortfalls in DoD leadership.
Instead of admitting that the media might have uncovered something, the Pentagon reacted to emerging evidence with a stumbling response that suggested a lack of transparency — or supreme incompetence. Gen. McKenzie said the decision to strike a white Toyota Corolla sedan, after having tracked it for about eight hours, was based on a standard of “reasonable certainty” that it posed an imminent threat to American forces at Kabul airport. Having been involved in similar situations, I know that these are tough calls to make. But anyone who has spent time in Afghanistan, indeed the Middle East, must be driven to question how “reasonable certainty” could be based on a description that matches one in five vehicles on Afghan roads. McKenzie’s statement illustrates how high pressure can lead commanders to confirmation bias, which has a pernicious effect on the clear-headed judgment that is most needed in these situations.
Confirmation bias is compounded by the type of leadership that doesn’t solicit advice. In this case, the pressure was not caused by time. An 8-hour surveillance usually offers plenty of time to validate the target by corroborating the initial source with other information. Maybe there was a good reason in this case not to do so, but it’s a question that McKenzie should have addressed instead of pretending that he didn’t need to. Given that much time, no experienced commander conducts a strike based on such a thin veneer of intelligence without pursuing another source.
I can only imagine that there was intense pressure up and down the chain of command to make this strike happen. At the policy level, to make good on the president’s steely-eyed vow to hunt down the killers of 13 U.S. service members and to show resolve and competence as a counterweight to the shambolic scenes at Kabul airport which showed the exact opposite. And for those lower down the chain, there was likely a more visceral motive – the desire for vengeance, a need to dispel for a moment the pall of humiliation that weighed heavily on all of us who had served in that war. These are all understandable emotions, but emotion is corrosive and has no place in the targeting process. Instead of feeding this emotion, and ratcheting up the pressure, it is the role of senior officers to take a step back and be the voice of reason.
“As the combatant commander, I am fully responsible for the strike and this tragic outcome,” McKenzie announced afterward. Noble words but ultimately hollow. No four-star general in the last two decades has resigned on a point of principle.
US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley (L), with Commander of US Central Command, Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, Jr. (R), and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, testifies before the House Armed Services Committee on the conclusion of military operations in Afghanistan, on Capitol Hill, September 29, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Olivier DOULIERY / POOL / AFP) (Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
The main theme of questions during the testimony focused on what advice the Trio had given the president about the plan to withdraw from Afghanistan, and whether they had foreseen this precipitous collapse. Their answers reveal a startling misconception about the nature of their responsibilities.
To understand the context of their testimony, it is necessary to go back to January 2021 and a comment made by Gen. Scott Miller, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan at the time, about the remnant of his command still in the country.
“This [reduced] force has the appropriate lethality and the U.S. government retains its counterterrorism capacity in Afghanistan,” Miller told Stars and Stripes in January.
This is no exaggeration. Those familiar with troop level calculus in support of partner nation operations know that much can be achieved by employing a relatively small number of personnel with the right qualifications, such as special operators, combat air controllers, signals intelligence collectors, drone operators, logistics personnel and information and electronic warfare specialists. Plus an element to provide force protection in the form of a company or two of infantry.
Furthermore, by leaving this force in place, the U.S. guaranteed the security of some 8,500 NATO troops involved in training the Afghan Army. Simply put, a small U.S. force could have remained in-country to provide support for the Afghan military, while retaining leverage for U.S. foreign policy in the region, at little cost in terms of risk or financial expenditure. Withdrawing them made no sense except as a piece of political theater for a misinformed domestic audience. The argument that the president was bound by his predecessors’ agreement with the Taliban is ultimately weak. Afghans understand better than most that negotiation is often an iterative process, and the Taliban proved that they are no exception by negotiating their way to victory in the closing weeks of the war. Indeed, the Taliban had arguably already broken the terms of the agreement they signed with the Trump administration by bypassing a negotiated settlement and by failing to eject al Qaeda from their midst — so the claim that President Biden was still bound by it is somewhat disingenuous. In any case, the new administration made no attempt to even try to renegotiate terms with the Taliban.
Taliban fighters drive an Afghan National Army (ANA) vehicle through the streets of Laghman province on August 15, 2021. (Photo by – / AFP) (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)
As for the subsequent collapse of Afghan forces, it’s hard to credit claims by the Trio that no one could have predicted such an event if that gesture of U.S. resolve was removed. How could strategic leaders not understand the heavy moral weight that even a small U.S. presence confers on any coalition effort? Even at the tactical level, anyone who has worked with the Afghan National Army could guess that this would happen.
The president’s decision not to take the advice of these three men had disastrous consequences that should clearly have been apparent to them at the time. Resigning would have at least drawn attention to their concerns; it would have highlighted the fact that they cared so much about what was to follow, that they were prepared to sacrifice their careers to avoid it happening. And – who knows – the threat of resignation by three of Biden’s most important military advisors might even have pushed the president to reconsider his decision. All of this remains counter-factual since none of these leaders decided that it was worth making a determined stand. And if none of what has happened in August — from the needless loss of 13 U.S. troops to the devastating effect that the episode has had upon America’s standing in the world – was considered by them worth falling on their swords, then what is?
As I watched Austin’s testimony, it brought to mind an exchange he had with the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) when he appeared before that panel several years earlier.
Although clearly aghast at Austin’s revelations about the pitiful outcome of CENTCOM’s Syrian Train and Equip Program, McCain showed none of the hollow theatrics recently displayed in that same forum by a succession of lawmakers, but instead commented simply that he hadn’t “seen anything like this testimony in over two decades on this committee.” This understated expression of incredulity was not intended to be a resume builder. I imagined McCain’s ghost sitting now behind the front row of senators, shaking his head at Austin’s subsequent progression to a position that allowed him to let the nation down yet again.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, left, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley talk before a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing to examine proposed budget estimates and justification for fiscal year 2022 for the Department of Defense in Washington on Thursday, June 17, 2021. (Evelyn Hockstein/Pool via AP)
During testimony that was at times almost as comic as it was painful, Milley took center stage, while the other two played supporting roles – a decision that they may now regret. Allowed unfettered access to the microphone, Milley kept digging a hole for himself by following the ludicrous with the absurd in a rambling monologue that said more about his unfitness for the job than any previous display. The theme of his comments amounted to, “Hey fellas, The President chose not to take my advice – so what do you expect me to do?” In so doing, he couldn’t resist making yet another statement of the obvious – a trend that appears to be a mainstay of his career: “Decision-makers are not required, in any manner, shape or form, to follow (military) advice,” Milley said.
It is here that Milley appears either disingenuous or just incredibly naïve. Wearing a uniform should not relegate anyone to being a mere cipher. From four-star generals who should – where appropriate – challenge policymakers on their assumptions, to junior drone operators and intelligence analysts endowed with intuition borne from repetitive experience, a culture dominated by those who don’t understand this imperative is one that is in trouble.
Despite my misgivings about their suitability for current office, the three men in the dock towered over their accusers in terms of human qualities such as honesty, character, and self-sacrifice. I took no pleasure in watching the snide needling by Sen. Josh Hawley – the character-challenged Trumpian sycophant who saluted rioters a day after their deadly attack on the Capitol in January. But Hawley is what he is: a political animal through and through, simply performing as his constituents demand. And, in discussing what else they might demand, Milley dragged himself further onto thin ice using a pick made fragile by faulty logic.
“This country doesn’t want generals figuring out what orders we’re going to accept and do or not. That’s not our job,” Milley replied to the question of why he had not resigned. He later added, “My dad didn’t get a choice to resign at Iwo Jima and those kids there at Abbey Gate, they don’t get a choice to resign,” the latter being a reference to the American troops who were killed by a suicide bomb at the Kabul airport in August.
Let’s unpack that authoritative-sounding statement. Gen. Milley was right to say that the enlisted service members who died didn’t have a choice when given that order. But Milley did. And by making the right choice, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs might have prevented their deaths. Those troops were implicitly relying on men like Milley and McKenzie — with all their homespun bluster — to make a stand in preventing the strategic and operational failures that placed them in that position. And in the final analysis, this might have prevented the tactically inept direction to man a security perimeter that allowed these young men and women no stand-off from approaching attackers.
U.S. Marines with Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force – Crisis Response – Central Command, assist with security at an Evacuation Control Checkpoint (ECC) during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 26. U.S. service members are assisting the Department of State with a non-combatant evacuation operation (NEO) in Afghanistan. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Staff Sgt. Victor Mancilla)
That’s the distinction between the role of the three men at the top of the pyramid and the position of junior enlisted personnel at its bottom. It’s a distinction clearly implied by the wording of the oath that all three took as officers, an oath which they continuously invoke in their own defense.
As for what the country wants, it must surely include general officers who haven’t surrendered their moral autonomy to the political administration of the day: Generals who understand that it is their responsibility to set the right balance between the mission and the men because they also have an obligation to subordinates – the sons and daughters of the American public that General Milley so readily brings to his defense. Generals that have thought deeply about what their obligation to the nation really entails.
This is an obligation that defies neat categorization. It can’t be captured on a PowerPoint slide or be easily explained in a chummy press conference. Understanding it demands intellectual and moral rigor. I would guess that these are the qualities that America expects of its generals.
Resignation won’t atone for lives lost, or the debacle that American involvement in Afghanistan became, but it would at least demonstrate that these men understand the ethics of their profession. It would help calibrate the moral compass of thousands of officers beneath them. It might even help all three find absolution if such a thing still matters to them.
Sadly, the men and women at the pinnacle of our institution are a product of a culture that doesn’t nurture initiative, disciplined disobedience, or a profound understanding of our professional ethics. “I’ve taken an oath to the Constitution” is only the beginning of that intellectual and ethical journey, not the destination.
The hearings were a blow to those of us searching for redemption among our senior uniformed leaders. Instead, they illustrate the pernicious effect that having men such as these in positions of the highest responsibility can have upon America’s standing in the world.
Resignation may solve little, but is simply the right thing to do. And, at the very least, it will clear the way for those better qualified to begin the task of restoring this nation’s credibility on the global stage.
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Andrew Milburn retired from the Marine Corps as a colonel in 2019 after a 31-year career as an infantry and special operations officer. His last position in uniform was Deputy Commander of Special Operations Central (SOCCENT), and prior to that commanding officer of the Marine Raider Regiment and Combined Special Operations Task Force – Iraq. Since retiring, he has written a critically acclaimed memoir, When the Tempest Gathers, and has had articles published in a number of national publications. He is a co-host of the Modern War Institute’s Irregular War Podcast, and Irregular War Initiative.
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13. Opinion | How the U.S. government can deter China’s threat in Taiwan
Excerpt:
Since Mr. Biden became president, the United States has sold $750 million worth of artillery to Taiwan and continued a deployment of Marine trainers to the island begun under President Donald Trump. The troubling truth, however, is that in recent years Pentagon war games and other assessments have shown that U.S. capabilities, even in combination with those of its allies, might not be sufficient to defeat a Chinese invasion. Even as it encourages more effort from Taiwan, Japan and others in the region, the United States itself needs to invest more heavily in the hard-power assets — especially naval forces — required to back up its commitments in East Asia. The president, however, proposed a defense budget that barely kept up with inflation, albeit with $5.5 billion earmarked for deterrence in the Pacific. On a bipartisan basis, the House has approved a bigger spending plan, with money for 13 new ships. That might impress China more than even the sternest words.
Opinion | How the U.S. government can deter China’s threat in Taiwan
The Washington Post · by Opinion by the Editorial Board Today at 9:18 a.m. EDT · October 12, 2021
The skies around Taiwan are thick with Chinese fighter jets and nuclear-capable bombers, with Beijing flying 150 sorties through the edge of the island’s air defense identification zone in early October alone. Whatever President Xi Jinping’s precise intention — to bully Taiwan and its allies, the United States included; to provoke them; or to inflame domestic nationalism — it is not benign.
As Mr. Xi’s crushing of Hong Kong’s free institutions shows, the “peaceful” reunification between his communist state and democratic Taiwan that he called for once again on Oct. 9 inherently threatens all 23 million people who live on the island. A hegemonic China would menace Japan, Australia and the Philippines, destabilizing the entire Indo-Pacific region. “There should be absolutely no illusions that the Taiwanese people will bow to pressure,” President Tsai Ing-wen responded, appropriately, on Oct 10. President Biden’s top foreign policy aides have also registered their disapproval.
The urgent question, for Taipei and for Washington, is not how to verbalize opposition to Beijing’s ambitions, but how to back it up in terms of military deterrence. China has spent hundreds of billions of dollars acquiring the capability to attack across the Taiwan Strait; Taiwan’s defense minister recently warned that the People’s Liberation Army will be fully ready to mount an invasion by 2025. Countering this, by raising the potential costs to China, looms as the greatest strategic challenge facing the Biden administration and, probably, its successors.
Unfortunately, while China has been focused on Taiwan, the United States has been tending to wider geopolitical interests, especially in the Middle East. Taiwan itself has neglected its own defense budget, devoting just under 2 percent of GDP in recent years. Taipei has taken encouraging, if belated, steps to remedy that, including a supplemental bill that would spend $9 billion partly on anti-ship missile capabilities to fend off a Chinese fleet. The Biden administration has announced a geopolitical pivot to meet the China threat, which includes the recently announced sale of nuclear submarines to Australia; closer ties with Japan and India; and diplomatic backing for Taiwan such as an appeal, supported by the European Union, for the island’s inclusion in the World Health Organization.
Since Mr. Biden became president, the United States has sold $750 million worth of artillery to Taiwan and continued a deployment of Marine trainers to the island begun under President Donald Trump. The troubling truth, however, is that in recent years Pentagon war games and other assessments have shown that U.S. capabilities, even in combination with those of its allies, might not be sufficient to defeat a Chinese invasion. Even as it encourages more effort from Taiwan, Japan and others in the region, the United States itself needs to invest more heavily in the hard-power assets — especially naval forces — required to back up its commitments in East Asia. The president, however, proposed a defense budget that barely kept up with inflation, albeit with $5.5 billion earmarked for deterrence in the Pacific. On a bipartisan basis, the House has approved a bigger spending plan, with money for 13 new ships. That might impress China more than even the sternest words.
The Washington Post · by Opinion by the Editorial Board Today at 9:18 a.m. EDT · October 12, 2021
14. Escalation to Nuclear War in the Digital Age: Risk of Inadvertent Escalation in the Emerging Information Ecosystem
Excerpts:
AI technology is already raising many questions about warfare and shifts in the balance of power, which are challenging traditional arms control thinking. How can decision makers mitigate the inadvertent escalation risks associated with AI and nuclear systems? Possible ways forward include arms control and verification, changes to norms and behavior, unilateral measures and restraint, and bilateral and multilateral stability dialogue.
Traditional arms control and nonproliferation frameworks of nuclear governance are not necessarily obsolete, however. Instead, we need to depart from conventional siloed, rigid, and stovepiped approaches and search for innovative frameworks and novel approaches to meet the challenges of rapidly evolving dual-use technology, the linkages between conventional and nuclear weapons, and the informational challenges in the new atomic age. Specific measures might include prohibiting or imposing limits on AI technology fusion in nuclear command-and-control systems, autonomous nuclear-armed missiles, and atomic weapons launch decisions.
Counterintuitively, perhaps, AI might also offer innovative solutions to revising legacy arms control frameworks or creating new ones that contribute to noninterference mechanisms for arms control verification—reducing the need for boots-on-the-ground inspectors in sensitive facilities. AI technology could also improve the safety of nuclear systems. For instance, it could increase the security and robustness of command-and-control cyber defenses by identifying undetected vulnerabilities and weaknesses. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has, for example, already begun to study the ways AI may be used to identify vulnerabilities in conventional military systems. AI might also help defense planners design and manage wargaming and other virtual training exercises to refine operational concepts, test various conflict scenarios, and identify areas and technologies for potential development.
Finally, expanding the topics and approaches for bilateral and multilateral initiatives such as confidence-building measures should include the novel nonkinetic escalatory risks associated with complexity in the AI and the digital domains (e.g., mis- and disinformation, deepfakes, information sabotage, and social media weaponization) during conventional crises and conflict involving nuclear-armed states.
Escalation to Nuclear War in the Digital Age: Risk of Inadvertent Escalation in the Emerging Information Ecosystem - Modern War Institute
Editor’s note: The following is based on an article the author recently published in the European Journal of International Security, entitled “Inadvertent Escalation in the Age of Intelligence Machines: A New Model for Nuclear Risk in the Digital Age.”
We are in an era of rapid disruptive technological change, especially in artificial intelligence (AI) technology. AI technology is already being infused into military hardware, and armed forces are continually furthering their planning, research and development, and in some cases deployment of AI-enabled capabilities. Therefore, the embryonic journey to reorient military forces to prepare for the future digitized battlefield is no longer merely the stuff of speculation or science fiction. This essay revisits Massachusetts Institute of Technology political scientist Barry Posen’s analytical framework to examine the psychological features of the security dilemma to consider how and why the novel characteristics of AI and the emerging digital information ecosystem may impact crisis stability and increase inadvertent escalation risk. Will AI-enabled capabilities increase inadvertent escalation risk? How might AI be incorporated into nuclear and conventional operations in ways that affect escalation risk? Are existing notions of inadvertent escalation still relevant in the digital age?
Escalation theorizing came into prominence during the Cold War with the development of nuclear weapons, particularly the need to conceptualize and control conflict below the level of total war. The Cold War history of nuclear weapons and escalation continues to provide the theoretical basis for escalatory strategies and undergird debates about nuclear deterrence, strategic planning, and how a conventional skirmish could become a nuclear war. On Escalation, Herman Kahn’s seminal work, conceptualizes a forty-four-rung escalation ladder metaphor, which moves from low-scale violence to localized nuclear war to conventional and nuclear attacks against civilian populations.
In Kahn’s analysis, the concept of escalation is, at its core, a fundamentally psychological and perceptual one. Similar to other related concepts such as deterrence and strategic stability, escalation relies on the actor’s unique understanding of context, motives, and intentions—especially in the use of capabilities. How actors resolve these complex psychological variables associated with the cause, means, and effects of a military attack—both kinetic and nonkinetic—remains a perplexing and elusive endeavor.
Kahn’s escalation ladder metaphor, like any theoretical framework, has limitations. Actors do not necessarily move sequentially and inexorably from the lower rungs to the higher rungs—that is, rungs can be skipped and actors can go up as well as down. Instead, there are many pathways and mechanisms between low-intensity conflict and all-out nuclear confrontation. Besides, adversaries can be at different rungs or thresholds along what Kahn describes as the “relatively continuous” pathways to war. Despite its limitations, Kahn’s escalation ladder is a useful metaphorical framework to reflect on the possible available options (e.g., a show of force, reciprocal reprisals, costly signaling, and preemptive attacks), progression of escalation intensity, and scenarios in a competitive nuclear-armed dyad.
Rethinking Escalation in the Digital Age
Barry Posen identifies the significant causes of inadvertent escalation as the security dilemma, the Clausewitzian notion of the fog of war, and offensively oriented military strategy and doctrine. Posen’s causes remain valid sources of inadvertent escalation, even in the AI-enhanced information age.
The Security Dilemma
In his seminal work on the topic, Robert Jervis defines the security dilemma as the “unintended and undesired consequences of actions meant to be defensive.” Elsewhere, Jervis describes how “many of the means by which a state tries to increase its security decrease the security of others”—that is, one state’s gain in security can inadvertently undermine the security of others. The security dilemma’s characteristics compound the likelihood of inadvertent escalation in the digital age.
First, while rational nuclear-armed states shares an obvious vested interest in avoiding an existential nuclear war, they also place a high value on their nuclear forces—both as vital national security assets and as symbols of national prestige and status.
Second, escalatory rhetoric or threats—especially in situations of military asymmetry— can easily be misperceived as unprovoked malign intent and not as a response to the initiator’s behavior, thus prompting action and reaction spirals of escalation.
Third, the state of heightened tension and the compressed decision-making pressures during a conventional conflict radically increase the speed at which action and reaction spirals of escalation unravel. With the proliferation of AI, these dynamics are compounded, reducing the options and time for de-escalation and increasing the risks of horizontal (the scope of war) and vertical (the intensity of war) inadvertent escalation.
Clausewitzian Fog of War
Inadvertent escalation risk can also be caused by the confusion and uncertainty associated with gathering, analyzing, and disseminating relevant information about a crisis or conflict—which has important implications for the management, control, and termination of war. The confusion and uncertainty associated with the fog of war can increase inadvertent risk in three ways. First, it can complicate managing and controlling military campaigns at a tactical level. Second, it can further compound the problem of offense-defense distinguishability. And third, it can increase the fear of a surprise or preemptive attack.
Taken together, these mechanisms can result in unintentional, possibly irrevocable, outcomes and thus obfuscate the meaning and the intended goals of an adversary’s military actions. Ultimately, the fog of war increases the risk of inadvertent escalation because misperceptions, misunderstandings, poor communications, and unauthorized or unrestrained offensive operations can impair the ability of defense planners to influence the course of war.
While disinformation and psychological operations in deception and subversion are not a new phenomenon, the introduction of new AI-enhanced tools enables a broader range of actors, both state and nonstate, to manipulate, confuse, and deceive using asymmetric techniques. Disinformation operations might erode credibility and undermine public confidence in a state’s retaliatory capabilities, targeting specific systems that perform critical functions in maintaining these capabilities. For example, cyber operations such as “left of launch” operations—in a revelation that echoes the disruption of Iran’s nuclear program through the Stuxnet cyberweapon—have been allegedly used by the United States to undermine Iranian and North Korean confidence in their nuclear forces and technological preparedness.
The potential utility of social media to amplify the effects of a disinformation campaign was demonstrated during the Ukrainian Crisis in 2016 when several members of Ukraine’s parliament were the victims of Russian information operations via compromised cellular phones. However, using these novel techniques during a nuclear crisis and how they might impact the fog of war is less understood and empirically untested.
During a nuclear crisis, a state might attempt to influence and shape the domestic debate of an adversary to improve its bargaining hand by delegitimizing (or legitimizing) the use of nuclear weapons during an escalating situation or by bringing pressure on an adversary’s leadership to sue for peace or de-escalate a situation. This tactic may, of course, dangerously backfire. Public pressures on decision makers might impel—especially thin-skinned or inexperienced—leaders, operating under the shadow of the deluge of twenty-four-hour social media feedback and public scrutiny, to take actions that they might not otherwise have. Moreover, a third-party actor to achieve its nefarious goals could employ active information techniques—spreading false information of a nuclear detonation, troop or missile movement, or missile launches—during a crisis between nuclear rivals to incite crisis instability.
Offensive Capabilities and Strategies
Because of a lack of understanding between nuclear-armed and non-nuclear-armed adversaries about where the new tactical possibilities offered by AI-enhanced weapon systems figure on the Cold War–era escalation ladder, the pursuit of new strategic nonnuclear weapons (cyber weapons, drones, missile defenses, precision munitions, and counterspace weapons) increases the risk of misperception. The fusion of AI technology into conventional weapon systems—whether to enhance autonomous weapons, remote reconnaissance sensing, missile guidance, or situational awareness—creates new possibilities for a range of destabilizing counterforce options targeting states’ nuclear-weapon delivery and support systems, such as cyber “kill switch” attacks on nuclear command-and-control systems.
Russia, the United States, China, and North Korea are currently pursuing a range of nonnuclear delivery systems (hypersonic glide vehicles, stealth bombers, and a variety of precision munitions) and advanced conventional weapons that can achieve strategic effects—that is, without the need to use nuclear weapons. The potential threat posed by these counterforce conventional weapons is compounded by the blurring between the employment of dual-use command-and-control systems to manage conventional and nuclear missions. Moreover, these technological advances have been accompanied by doctrinal shifts by certain regional nuclear powers (Pakistan, India, North Korea, and possibly China), which indicate a countenance of the limited use of atomic weapons to deter an attack (“escalate to de-escalate”) in situations where they face a superior conventional adversary and the risk of large-scale conventional aggression, akin to the potential use of tactical atomic weapons to counter a Warsaw Pact invasion along the inner German border during the Cold War.
Given the confluence of secrecy, complexity, erroneous or ambiguous intelligence data (especially from open-source intelligence and social media outlets), AI augmentation will likely exacerbate compressed decision-making processes and the inherent asymmetric nature of cyberspace information. For example, using AI-enhanced cyber capabilities to degrade or destroy a nuclear state’s command-and-control systems—whether as part of a deliberate, coercive counterforce attack or in error as part of a limited conventional strike—may generate preemptive “use it or lose it” situations. These risks should give defense planners pause for thought about using advanced conventional capabilities to project military power in conflicts with regional nuclear powers.
During, in anticipation of, or to incite a crisis or conflict, an actor could employ subconventional information warfare campaigns to sow division, erode public confidence, and delay an effective official response. The public confusion and disorder that followed an erroneous cell phone alert warning residents in Hawaii of an imminent ballistic missile threat in 2018 serve as a worrying sign of the vulnerabilities of US civil defenses against anyone seeking asymmetric advantages vis-à-vis a superior adversary. North Korea, for example, might conceivably replicate incidents like the Hawaii false alarm in a disinformation campaign by issuing false evacuation orders, issuing false nuclear alerts, or subverting real ones via social media in order to cause mass confusion.
During a crisis in the South China Sea or South Asia, for example, when tensions are running high, disinformation campaigns could have an outsized impact on crisis stability with potentially severe escalatory consequences. This impact would be compounded when decision makers heavily rely on social media for information gathering and open-source intelligence and are thus more susceptible to social media manipulation. In an extreme case, a leader may come to view social media as an accurate barometer of public sentiment, eschewing official evidence-based intelligence sources, regardless of the origins of this virtual voice. As an example, in the aftermath of a terrorist attack in India’s Jammu and Kashmir in 2019, a disinformation campaign—conducted by terrorists to gain the support of the population during insurgencies—spread via social media amid a heated national election. The resultant was inflamed emotions and Indian domestic political rhetoric that led to military retaliation against Pakistan, bringing two nuclear-armed adversaries close to an inadvertent conflict caused by disinformation, deception, and misperception.
This crisis provides a sobering glimpse of how information and influence campaigns between two nuclear-armed adversaries can affect crisis stability and the concomitant risks of inadvertent escalation. As seen in South Asia, the catalyzing effect of costly signaling and testing the limits of an adversary’s resolve (which did not previously exist) to enhance security instead increases inadvertent escalation risks and leaves both sides less secure.
The effect of escalatory rhetoric in the information ecosystem can be a double-edged sword for inadvertent escalation risk. On the one hand, public rhetorical escalation can mobilize domestic support and signal deterrence and resolve to an adversary, which makes war less likely. On the other hand, sowing public fear, creating distrust in the robustness of nuclear launch protocols, and threatening a rival leader’s reputation as a strategic decision maker risk escalating the likelihood of war. Domestic public disorder and confusion—caused, for example, by a disinformation campaign or cyberattack—can act as an escalatory force, putting decision makers under pressure to respond forcefully to foreign or domestic threats to protect a state’s legitimacy, self-image, and credibility. Ultimately, states’ willingness to engage in nuclear brinkmanship will depend on intelligence, mis- or disinformation, cognitive bias, and perception of, and the value attached to, what is at stake.
AI technology is already raising many questions about warfare and shifts in the balance of power, which are challenging traditional arms control thinking. How can decision makers mitigate the inadvertent escalation risks associated with AI and nuclear systems? Possible ways forward include arms control and verification, changes to norms and behavior, unilateral measures and restraint, and bilateral and multilateral stability dialogue.
Traditional arms control and nonproliferation frameworks of nuclear governance are not necessarily obsolete, however. Instead, we need to depart from conventional siloed, rigid, and stovepiped approaches and search for innovative frameworks and novel approaches to meet the challenges of rapidly evolving dual-use technology, the linkages between conventional and nuclear weapons, and the informational challenges in the new atomic age. Specific measures might include prohibiting or imposing limits on AI technology fusion in nuclear command-and-control systems, autonomous nuclear-armed missiles, and atomic weapons launch decisions.
Counterintuitively, perhaps, AI might also offer innovative solutions to revising legacy arms control frameworks or creating new ones that contribute to noninterference mechanisms for arms control verification—reducing the need for boots-on-the-ground inspectors in sensitive facilities. AI technology could also improve the safety of nuclear systems. For instance, it could increase the security and robustness of command-and-control cyber defenses by identifying undetected vulnerabilities and weaknesses. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has, for example, already begun to study the ways AI may be used to identify vulnerabilities in conventional military systems. AI might also help defense planners design and manage wargaming and other virtual training exercises to refine operational concepts, test various conflict scenarios, and identify areas and technologies for potential development.
Finally, expanding the topics and approaches for bilateral and multilateral initiatives such as confidence-building measures should include the novel nonkinetic escalatory risks associated with complexity in the AI and the digital domains (e.g., mis- and disinformation, deepfakes, information sabotage, and social media weaponization) during conventional crises and conflict involving nuclear-armed states.
Dr. James Johnson is a lecturer in strategic studies at the University of Aberdeen. He is also an honorary fellow at the University of Leicester, a nonresident associate on the ERC-funded Towards a Third Nuclear Age project, and a mid-career cadre with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Project on Nuclear Issues. Previously, he was an assistant professor at Dublin City University, a nonresident fellow with the Modern War Institute at West Point, and a postdoctoral research fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California. He is the author of Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Warfare: The USA, China, and Strategic Stability. His latest book project with Oxford University Press is entitled Artificial Intelligence & the Bomb: Nuclear Strategy and Risk in the Digital Age. Follow him on Twitter: @James_SJohnson.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Photo credit: Staff Sgt. Christopher Ruano
15. Killing Terrorist Leaders Is No Silver Bullet
Perhaps not. But it does surely help to remove terrorists from the battlespace.
Excerpts:
Too often, leadership decapitation is viewed as a panacea, as policymakers tout the removal of high-value targets to suggest a “turning point” that fails to materialize. It is correct to seek to decapitate terrorist organizations, but these are tactical actions, not strategic ones. If these tactical actions occur without a real strategy, they will have limited impact. Decapitation also fails to address the phenomenon of terrorist groups splintering, unless the proposed solution is to continuously target the leaders of those splinters as well, evoking well-worn clichés of playing “whack-a-mole.”
Finally, leadership decapitation is not a viable tactic when dealing with movements that adopt a “leaderless resistance” model, as pioneered by white supremacist extremists in the United States. Nor is leadership decapitation effective against movements and networks like al-Qaeda. One of the conclusions of Jordan’s case study on al-Qaeda is that it is an outlier. In Jordan’s words, “the al-Qaeda case is slightly different, in that al-Qaeda is not only one organization.” Yet, other than movements modeled around leaderless resistance and networks like al-Qaeda, there are few major terrorist threats that concern countries like the United States. This means that decapitation is, and may continue to be, of decreasing utility going forward, as other violent extremists adapt their approaches to mimic the organizational structures of terrorist groups that have been most successful in surviving.
Killing Terrorist Leaders Is No Silver Bullet - War on the Rocks
It is impossible to study international terrorism without reading and hearing repeatedly that the United States cannot kill its way out of the problem. When evaluating the efficacy of leadership decapitation in terms of a broader counter-terrorism or counter-insurgency campaign, it is critical to think beyond targeting individual leaders and to look more comprehensively at how to disrupt terrorist organizations writ large. In my own research on counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency, the preponderance of evidence suggests that it is more effective to disrupt terrorist organizations and insurgent networks by focusing on dismantling supply lines, attacking logistical capabilities, and denying insurgents the ability to enjoy external support from both state and nonstate actors. This doesn’t mean that killing high-value targets is ineffective, but rather that decapitation is merely one of many tactics that should be used as part of a wider strategy and that its effectiveness is often likely to be situational.
Accepting this premise still leaves open the questions of how effective decapitation strikes can be, and under what circumstances they are likely to yield the highest return on investment. In her book Leadership Decapitation: Strategic Targeting of Terrorist Organizations, Jenna Jordan seeks to answer the difficult question: Why does leadership decapitation of terrorist groups work in some cases, but not in others? Jordan’s book is a major contribution to the literature, and she should be recognized for her valuable research and commitment to bringing empirical evidence to bear on such a hotly contested issue. She deftly illustrates that removing high-value targets is not a panacea and, as the central focus of her book, examines when decapitation works, when it does not, and what accounts for variation across cases. There were two primary areas that I wished that Jordan had explored in more detail: the ways in which the new type of organizational approach that al-Qaeda pioneered affects the efficacy of decapitation strikes; and the known unknowns that can arise as a result of killing terrorist leaders.
The Organizational Structure of al-Qaeda
Befitting a scholarly work intended to develop generalizable findings, Jordan explores several different types of terrorist organizations. Taking a broader approach to case selection requires trade-offs when it comes to how deeply she can delve into any one group. All authors face trade-offs, and one can hardly fault Jordan for choosing to explore a broader universe of terrorist organizations. Nevertheless, I was left wanting a deeper dive into how decapitation strikes have affected al-Qaeda given its particularly complex organizational dynamics. Jordan calls al-Qaeda a “meta-organization” because it is “composed of many different and independent organizations and individuals characterized by their level of autonomy and their pursuit of shared goals.” I was left wanting more detail on al-Qaeda’s affiliates, especially in terms of how Jordan assesses the effects of decapitation strikes on these organizations and on their relationship to al-Qaeda central.
The first issue that deserves greater attention is the command and control exercised by al-Qaeda leaders. By the time U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden, the founder and longtime leader of al-Qaeda Central in May 2011, some analysts had written him off as a marginalized figure who spent his time in hiding and had little impact on the day-to-day operations of al-Qaeda’s global network. In reality, despite the suggestions that al-Qaeda’s top command was “isolated and irrelevant,” bin Laden remained an active leader who provided important input on tactics, operations, and strategy for the group. As Bruce Hoffman illustrated after reviewing documents found in bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound, the al-Qaeda chieftain remained a hands-on leader until his last days. A more focused look at al-Qaeda’s command and control apparatus, especially in periods immediately following decapitation strikes, could have provided more granularity at exactly how impactful these targeted strikes actually were on al-Qaeda’s operational tempo.
Second, and relatedly, although bin Laden may have been a hands-on leader, his actual degree of command and control was limited by al-Qaeda’s organizational structure, which is fundamentally different than ethno-nationalist or secessionist terrorist groups of the past. Thus, removing bin Laden had little impact on al-Qaeda’s affiliates in the Sahel, for example. Jordan’s book, while thorough in many respects, fails to discuss the interplay between the removal of top al-Qaeda leaders and how that impacted the day-to-day operations of the organization. From its earliest days, al-Qaeda proved it could operate as a hybrid entity, with its leadership spread between different countries. Both before and after bin Laden’s removal, al-Qaeda’s senior leadership remained involved in planning operations. Mid-level commanders were empowered to execute the organization’s strategic vision as they saw fit. Indeed, it was the “group of middle managers” that were able to “provide the connective tissue that links the top of the organization with its bottom and, thus, makes it possible for al-Qaeda to function as a coherent and operationally effective entity.” To the degree that targeted killing has been an effective tactic on its own against al-Qaeda, it has been where the United States used it to eliminate potential threats from external operations or to take out broad swaths of the al-Qaeda network, most notably against al-Qaeda in Iraq and al-Qaeda Central in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But this is not the same as leadership decapitation.
Third, although not limited to the case of al-Qaeda, the effectiveness of leadership decapitation also relies partly on who replaces the deceased leader, demonstrating the importance of organizational structure and how that is affected by leadership losses at the uppermost echelons. There are several interesting counterfactuals to ponder in the wake of bin Laden’s death, including whether he would have been able to hold al-Qaeda together and prevent the split that led to the Islamic State if he had still been alive. No one knows whether the outcome would have been better or worse had bin Laden survived — these are, after all, subjective concepts — but it does appear that Ayman al Zawahiri has struggled to inspire the same level of allegiance. Now that al Zawahiri is in charge, if there is a general consensus among U.S. analysts that he is a completely ineffective leader, then it could make sense to allow him to remain alive despite the desire for rough justice against someone with so much American blood on his hands.
Jordan notes that al-Qaeda and its affiliates were targeted 288 times between 1995 and 2016, although as she concludes, “leadership targeting has been an ineffective strategy against al-Qaeda.” She goes on to write that “decapitation has been unable to significantly degrade and defeat al-Qaeda or any of its franchises, and barring the complete breakdown of the group’s structure or support, is unlikely to bring about its defeat.” One of her overarching conclusions describes why al-Qaeda has been largely immune from decapitation — the groups that are the most difficult to weaken through this approach are those that are bureaucratized, have substantial communal support, and adhere to an Islamist ideology. Forebodingly, this also describes the Islamic State, suggesting that it, too, may be able to sustain a degree of longevity far beyond the norm for most terrorist organizations.
Known Unknowns
Targeting the leader of a terrorist organization may be temporarily worthwhile and bring certain benefits, but it also leads to a series of second- and third-order consequences, which are something that Jordan could have discussed more in her book. To begin with, decapitation can reshape the composition of a terrorist or insurgent group, and not always to the benefit of counter-terrorism or counter-insurgency forces. As Cynthia Irvin has demonstrated through her research on ethno-nationalist actors, terrorist groups and insurgent movements consist of some combination of ideologues, radicals, and politicos. Ideologues are often vehemently against any negotiations and see armed struggle as the only path to victory. Radicals, while preferring violent ends to achieve goals, may be amenable to a political solution if they deem one viable. Politicos, finally, are those within the organization squarely focused on ending the conflict through peace talks or a negotiated settlement if the terms are acceptable. If a counter-insurgent force believes that removing a recalcitrant leader could lead to the ascension of a more moderate figure, it may be worth taking the calculated risk of targeting the more militant leader.
On the other hand, it is possible that leadership decapitation will lead more extreme forces to rise to the fore, or create the conditions for more violent splinter groups to emerge. For example, as I’ve argued in my recent book although killing Abu Bakr al Baghdadi was undoubtedly necessary, it could create the conditions for the fracturing of the Islamic State. This, in turn, could lead to the emergence of new, and in some cases more violent and operationally capable, splinter organizations. Policymakers, government officials, and military leaders should be prepared to deal with splinter groups as they emerge in the aftermath of what seems to be a relatively successful campaign against the parent group. With the Islamic State, these splinters could form their own, new organization, or be absorbed into existing franchise groups in Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, or elsewhere. Research by Phil Williams and Paul Kan in the field of criminology, building on a concept initially developed by Richard Friman called “vacancy chains,” have shown how leadership decapitation efforts against violent drug trafficking organizations in Mexico have resulted in new opportunities for other criminal organizations. Some of them have proven more violent than the original target. Competition to fill power vacuums can also lead to a spike in violence as a “feeding frenzy” between groups eager to move into new territory brings with it battles over control of territory, supply lines, and access to both product and market. Jordan’s findings largely track with these conclusions, as she notes that decapitation does not increase the mortality rate of terrorist groups and, in some cases, even leads to more terrorist activity.
Another problem with decapitation strikes is the issue of “intel gain-loss,” or the decision over whether the value of collecting information from an enemy target is more worthwhile than destroying the target itself. If, by monitoring the leadership of a terrorist group, security and intelligence services are afforded an opportunity to gain a greater understanding of the contours of the organization, how it is structured, and how it operates, this could be an argument in favor of eschewing a decapitation strike and continuing to monitor various forms of intelligence, including signals intelligence and human intelligence. This is not to say that valuable intelligence cannot be gleaned from decapitation strikes — it can, especially when collection is focused on reactions within the group to the loss of a terrorist leader. Put simply, the point is that decapitation should not be the default setting, but should be viewed as complementary to other aspects of a well-defined strategy.
Conclusion
Despite the amount of attention paid to the subject of leadership decapitation in both counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism, it remains merely one of many approaches that security forces should adopt. A growing body of research, as discussed above, highlights the importance of targeting an organization’s logistical network, thus disrupting its flow of resources, including manpower, financing, and materiel. Terrorist groups seem more likely to survive the elimination of a leader, even a highly charismatic one like bin Laden, than they are to overcome the crippling of their supply infrastructure. This is especially the case when seeking to combat transnational organizations that can rely on a constellation of affiliates and franchise groups — a model adopted by both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State and one that provides the global jihadist movement with a level of resilience that blunts the impact of decapitation strikes.
Too often, leadership decapitation is viewed as a panacea, as policymakers tout the removal of high-value targets to suggest a “turning point” that fails to materialize. It is correct to seek to decapitate terrorist organizations, but these are tactical actions, not strategic ones. If these tactical actions occur without a real strategy, they will have limited impact. Decapitation also fails to address the phenomenon of terrorist groups splintering, unless the proposed solution is to continuously target the leaders of those splinters as well, evoking well-worn clichés of playing “whack-a-mole.”
Finally, leadership decapitation is not a viable tactic when dealing with movements that adopt a “leaderless resistance” model, as pioneered by white supremacist extremists in the United States. Nor is leadership decapitation effective against movements and networks like al-Qaeda. One of the conclusions of Jordan’s case study on al-Qaeda is that it is an outlier. In Jordan’s words, “the al-Qaeda case is slightly different, in that al-Qaeda is not only one organization.” Yet, other than movements modeled around leaderless resistance and networks like al-Qaeda, there are few major terrorist threats that concern countries like the United States. This means that decapitation is, and may continue to be, of decreasing utility going forward, as other violent extremists adapt their approaches to mimic the organizational structures of terrorist groups that have been most successful in surviving.
Colin P. Clarke, Ph.D., is the director of policy and research at The Soufan Group and a senior research fellow at The Soufan Center. He tweets at @ColinPClarke.
16. Winning is the only thing
Excerpts:
As I have written before, what is happening to the military was described nearly seven decades ago by the political scientist Samuel Huntington in his classic 1957 book The Soldier and the State. Huntington identified three variables affecting the relationship between American society and its military. The first is what he called the functional imperative, the ability of the military to respond to external threats to the U.S. The military must be capable of deterring war or winning it if it comes.
The second and third variables are components of what Huntington called the societal imperative, “the social forces, ideologies, and institutions dominant within the society.” The first of these components is our constitutional structure, the legal institutional framework that guides American politics and military affairs.
The second is the dominant ideology shaping political affairs, which Huntington identified as liberalism, “the gravest domestic threat to American military security,” due to its anti-military character. Huntington believed that in the long run, the social imperative would prevail over the functional imperative.
He argued that the anti-military instincts of liberal ideology tended to produce two outcomes. When the external threat was low, liberal ideology sought “extirpation,” the virtual elimination of military forces. When the external threat was high, liberal ideology pursued a policy of “transmutation,” refashioning the military along liberal lines by stripping it of its “particularly military characteristics.”
Transmutation has continued unabated, today manifesting as the elevation of “diversity” above even battlefield effectiveness. The problem with “diversity” as it is currently understood is that it undermines the sort of trust upon which unit cohesion, the cornerstone of military effectiveness, is based. Like all forms of identity politics, it pits individuals against each other.
The U.S. military is at a crossroads. Its leadership must validate the trust and respect afforded to it by the public, or risk watching that respect evaporate. It must demonstrate that it is an organization committed to success on the battlefield and that it is not a laboratory for anything that does not contribute to military effectiveness.
Winning is the only thing
The United States spends a great deal of money on its military. But public acquiescence in this funding could collapse if people come to believe that the U.S. military is not a profession based on honor and duty, the purpose of which is to ensure the security of the United States, but rather just another self-interested bureaucracy.
That is not an idle concern. People notice the conspicuous lack of success in our post-9/11 wars in Iraq and especially Afghanistan. They look with horror as the United States executes a disastrous exit from Kabul and wonder about accountability.
At the same time, they are subjected to stories about how the military is making “diversity” rather than military effectiveness its primary goal. Or stressing “climate change.” They rightly wonder if there might be some connection between the Pentagon’s pushing such fads and the lack of military success in recent years. Does the Pentagon even care about military success anymore?
It should, because success on the battlefield is the only justification for a military.
The Era of ‘Strategic Happy Talk’
There are many reasons for our recent failures of arms. The first can be traced back to the strategically inept approach that took root at the Pentagon during the decades after the fall of the Soviet Union and the American victory against Iraq in 1991. I have called this vision of U.S. national security “strategic happy talk.” It arose from the acceptance by national security professionals of the “end of history” narrative, which argued that liberal democracy had triumphed as the universal ideology. While conflict might continue on the peripheries of the liberal world order, the overall trend was toward a more peaceful and prosperous world. The economic component of the end of history narrative was “globalization,” the triumph of liberal capitalism.
The end of history narrative was complemented by that of the “technological optimists,” who contended that the United States could maintain its dominant position in the international order by exploiting the “revolution in military affairs." The eminent British strategist Colin Gray described the optimists as pursuing a technological El Dorado, a “golden city of guaranteed strategic riches.”
The rapid coalition victory over Saddam Hussein that drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait led some influential defense experts to eschew what they had presumably learned from Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian philosopher, who wrote that war is a “remarkable trinity” composed of, first, “primordial violence, hatred, and enmity” (the realm of the people); second, “chance and probability within which the creative spirit is free to roam” (the realm of the commander and his army); and third, the “element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes [war] subordinate to reason alone” (the realm of the government).
While the character of war is infinitely variable, the nature of war is basically immutable. It is a violent clash between opposing wills, each seeking to prevail over the other. In Clausewitz’s formulation, our will is directed at an animate object that often reacts in unanticipated ways. This cyclical clash occurs in a realm of chance and chaos.
Clausewitz contended that the human dimension is central to the proper understanding of war, which involves intangibles that cannot be quantified. War is shaped by human nature, the complexities of human behavior, and the limitations of human mental and physical capabilities.
Any view of war that ignores what Clausewitz called the “moral factors,” e.g., fear, the impact of danger, and physical exhaustion, is fraught with peril. As the Prussian observed, “Military activity is never directed against material forces alone; it is always aimed simultaneously at the moral forces which give it life, and the two cannot be separated.”
In contrast, these “experts” argued that emerging technologies and the revolution in military affairs had the potential to transform the very nature of war, rather than merely its character. In this view, emerging technologies and “information dominance” would eliminate “friction” and the “fog of uncertainty” in war, providing the commander and his subordinates nearly perfect “situational awareness,” thereby promising “the capacity to use military force without the same risks as before.” These “experts” ought to have known better. One consequence of the idea that technology could change the nature of war was the denigration of land power after the Gulf War of 1991.
But as T.R. Fehrenbach wrote in his classic study of the Korean conflict, This Kind of War: “You can fly over a land forever; you may bomb it and wipe it clean of life … but if you desire to defend it; protect it; and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did … by putting your young men into the mud.”
Some went so far as to suggest that future U.S. military power would be based on precision strikes delivered by air or space assets, perhaps coordinated and directed by a handful of special operations soldiers. Of course, the post-9/11 wars illustrated that ground forces still have an important role to play. But that recognition did little to dampen the enthusiasm for reliance on information technology and precision strikes.
The resulting “astrategic” understanding of conflict reflected a “business” approach to military affairs, stressing economic efficiency at the expense of effectiveness. But war is far more than a mere targeting drill. As our post-9/11 wars have demonstrated, success in destroying the “target set” does not translate automatically into achieving the political goals for which the war was fought in the first place. After all, wars are not fought just to fight, but in order to achieve desired political outcomes.
The Point of the Military Ethos
The triumph of strategic happy talk had several deleterious effects on our military. As noted earlier, one was denigrating the importance of ground combat, success in which depends in large measure on unit cohesion. After all, if success can be achieved by means of advanced technology, a military ethos that stresses the importance of such factors as unit cohesion can be dispensed with.
Anyone who has experienced war understands the dynamics of unit cohesion. It is based on a bond among disparate individuals who may have nothing in common except a commitment to a military mission. It was described by J. Glenn Gray in The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle: “Numberless soldiers have died, more or less willingly, not for country or honor or religious faith or for any other abstract good, but because they realized that by fleeing their posts and rescuing themselves, they would expose their companions to greater danger. Such loyalty to the group is the essence of fighting morale. The commander who can preserve and strengthen it knows that all other physical and psychological factors are little in comparison. The feeling of loyalty, it is clear, is the result not the cause of comradeship. Comrades are loyal to each other spontaneously and without any need for reasons.”
From time immemorial, leaders have aimed to forge a military ethos to create this sort of bond, without which there is no unit cohesion, which undermines military effectiveness. No military effectiveness, no military success.
What is that ethos? It has long been recognized that to achieve battlefield success, the military of necessity must instill behaviors that differ from those of liberal society. Indeed, a liberal democracy faces a paradox when it comes to the relationship between the military and the society at large it protects: The former cannot govern itself in accordance with the democratic principles of the latter.
Behavior that is acceptable, indeed even protected, in civil society is prohibited in the military. The military restricts the freedom of movement of its members, it restricts speech, and it prohibits certain relationships among members, such as fraternization. It stresses virtues that many civilians see as brutal and barbaric because they are necessary to success on the battlefield.
If the military fails, the society it protects may not survive. And long experience has taught us that certain kinds of behavior are destructive of good order, discipline, and morale, without which a military organization will certainly fail. The goal of military policy must be success on the battlefield, a purpose that cannot be in competition with any other, including “equal opportunity” or diversity. Unfortunately, many of those in positions of responsibility, including far too many members of the military itself, seem to have forgotten this imperative.
Huntington’s Warning
As I have written before, what is happening to the military was described nearly seven decades ago by the political scientist Samuel Huntington in his classic 1957 book The Soldier and the State. Huntington identified three variables affecting the relationship between American society and its military. The first is what he called the functional imperative, the ability of the military to respond to external threats to the U.S. The military must be capable of deterring war or winning it if it comes.
The second and third variables are components of what Huntington called the societal imperative, “the social forces, ideologies, and institutions dominant within the society.” The first of these components is our constitutional structure, the legal institutional framework that guides American politics and military affairs.
The second is the dominant ideology shaping political affairs, which Huntington identified as liberalism, “the gravest domestic threat to American military security,” due to its anti-military character. Huntington believed that in the long run, the social imperative would prevail over the functional imperative.
He argued that the anti-military instincts of liberal ideology tended to produce two outcomes. When the external threat was low, liberal ideology sought “extirpation,” the virtual elimination of military forces. When the external threat was high, liberal ideology pursued a policy of “transmutation,” refashioning the military along liberal lines by stripping it of its “particularly military characteristics.”
Transmutation has continued unabated, today manifesting as the elevation of “diversity” above even battlefield effectiveness. The problem with “diversity” as it is currently understood is that it undermines the sort of trust upon which unit cohesion, the cornerstone of military effectiveness, is based. Like all forms of identity politics, it pits individuals against each other.
The U.S. military is at a crossroads. Its leadership must validate the trust and respect afforded to it by the public, or risk watching that respect evaporate. It must demonstrate that it is an organization committed to success on the battlefield and that it is not a laboratory for anything that does not contribute to military effectiveness.
Mackubin Owens is a senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia and author of U.S. Civil-Military Relations After 9/11: Renegotiating the Civil-Military Bargain. He is currently writing a history of U.S. civil-military relations.
17. With all eyes on Taiwan, tensions are building on another Chinese frontier: India
Does CHina feel "surrounded?" ...from India in the South to the Uyghurs in the west to the 5 US alliances and the Quad in the Asia-Indo-Pacific region to freedom of navigation operations in the Indo-Pacific waters (to include the South China Sea and the Taiwan Straits), to the defense of Taiwan.
With all eyes on Taiwan, tensions are building on another Chinese frontier: India
CNN · by Analysis by Brad Lendon, CNN
A version of this story appeared in CNN's Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country's rise and how it impacts the world. Sign up here.
Hong Kong (CNN)China's increased military activity in the Taiwan Strait may have grabbed all the headlines in recent weeks, but thousands of miles to the west, another simmering territorial dispute on the country's borders looks more likely to boil over first.
And now, tensions appear to be rising again.
According to unverified reports, troops from both sides have been briefly detained by the other, as military positions are fortified and talks to deescalate the situation seem at an impasse.
In 1962, India and China went to war over the remote, inhospitable border regions high in the mountains, eventually establishing the LAC. But the two countries do not agree on its precise location and both regularly accuse the other of overstepping it, or seeking to expand their territory. Since then, they have had a series of mostly non-lethal scuffles over the position of the border -- until the June 2020 clash, the deadliest on the LAC in more than 40 years.
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After that battle, in which at least 20 Indian and four Chinese troops were killed, respective military leaders have held face-to-face talks to dampen lingering tensions.
The 13th of those meetings was held Sunday -- and it didn't end well. Earlier discussions had made some progress in calming the border, but a statement from the Indian Defense Ministry on Monday accused China of no longer cooperating.
"The Indian side pointed out that the situation along the LAC had been caused by unilateral attempts of the Chinese side to alter the status quo and in violation of the bilateral agreements," the statement said.
"The Indian side therefore made constructive suggestions for resolving the remaining areas but the Chinese side was not agreeable and also could not provide any forward-looking proposals."
Beijing sees the situation differently.
"China has made great efforts to promote the easing and cooling of the border situation and fully demonstrated its sincerity in order to maintain the overall situation of the relations between the two militaries. However, India still insisted on the unreasonable and unrealistic demands, which made the negotiations more difficult," said a statement from Col. Long Shaohua, spokesperson for the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Western Theater Command.
An extensive article in China's state-run Global Times tabloid ratcheted up the rhetoric, accusing India of "triggering new incidents along the eastern section of the border."
An Indian army convoy travels through Zoji La, a high mountain pass bordering China on June 13 in Ladakh, India.
But over the past few weeks, both Indian and Chinese media have run stories about the unverified fresh confrontations along the LAC, all of which have reportedly been resolved peacefully.
Global Times said the unverified encounters had strained relations along the border.
"Chinese experts have warned of the risks of a new conflict, saying that China should not only refuse to give in to India's arrogant demands at the negotiating table, but also be prepared to defend against new Indian military aggression," the report said.
That was followed by claims from PLA garrisons on the Himalayan frontier, describing "tense daily working conditions" with alarms going off, commanders leading patrols at the front and soldiers "writing appeals for battle assignments," according to Global Times.
The report also touted Chinese efforts to build infrastructure in the region, saying the moves had boosted troops' morale and ability to move to hotspots along the LAC.
As to why the India-China border situation should be heating up now, Chinese state media offers a familiar answer. Just as it does concerning tensions over Taiwan -- near which Chinese warplanes have flown more than 150 sorties this month alone -- Global Times points a finger at the United States.
"(India) sees that Washington attaches great importance to New Delhi, as US President Joe Biden has frequently interacted with the Indian government since taking office, and jointly discussed plans to thwart China's growth," Lin Minwang, professor with the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University, is quoted as saying in the Global Times report.
Indeed, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined Biden and the prime minsters of Australia and Japan in Washington last month for the first in-person meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, better known as "the Quad" -- an informal strategic forum of four democratic countries with a vested interest in countering China's rise in Asia.
In an opinion piece after the Quad summit, Li Haidong, professor at the Institute of International Relations of the China Foreign Affairs University, wrote the Quad members "will not stop hyping up the 'China threat' theory."
Amid the PLA Air Force incursions around Taiwan earlier this month, the Global Times said the US and Japan were pushing the situation around the self-ruled island to the brink, "creating a sense of urgency that the war maybe triggered at any time."
And a headline over Monday's Global Times story on the Himalayas said PLA border troops were "prepared for upcoming confrontations."
Taiwan and the Himalayas may be 2,800 miles (4,500 kilometers) apart and completely different environments, but in both territorial disputes with Beijing, the temperature appears to be rising -- and according to China, the US is at the center of it all.
All in on biodiversity
Giant pandas at the Shenshuping Base of China Conservation and Research Center for Giant Panda, which will become part of the Giant Panda National Park, in Sichuan, China, on September 3.
China is investing $232 million into a biodiversity protection fund for developing countries, President Xi Jinping said Tuesday during a United Nations biodiversity summit.
Xi announced the fund's creation during a virtual address at the COP15 conference held in Kunming, China. "China calls for and welcomes contributions from other parties to the fund," Xi said.
CNN has seen no accompanying documents that detail how the fund will operate.
Xi also said he would "establish a protected areas system" for China's national parks, which will place 230,000 square kilometers (88,800 square miles) of land under state protection -- a plan that has been in the works for years. The plan includes the massive Giant Panda National Park, which spans three provinces.
"Areas with the greatest importance to the natural ecosystem, and with the most unique natural landscapes, the most valuable natural heritage and the greatest biodiversity reserve will be included in the national parks system," Xi told the conference.
This week marks the opening of the largely ceremonial first phase of talks during the COP15 conference, with countries scheduled to meet in-person in Kunming from April to May next year.
The goal is to create a Paris-style legally binding UN agreement between participating nations to prevent biodiversity loss over the coming decade.
This isn't the first time the world has tried to come together on this issue. Leaders from 196 countries held a conference in 2010, resulting in a 10-year plan called the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. Last year, the deadline arrived -- and the world collectively failed to fully achieve a single goal, the UN concluded in its final report.
And the stakes are growing ever higher. A fifth of the world's countries now risk having their ecosystems collapse, according to Swiss Re, the world's largest reinsurer.
Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history -- and countries will need to invest hundreds of billions of dollars to develop sustainable supply chains if they are to protect our remaining ecosystems.
CNN · by Analysis by Brad Lendon, CNN
18.
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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.
