Quotes of the Day:
"In everyday life the exchange of opinion with others checks our partiality and widens our perspective; we are made to see things from their standpoint and the limits of our vision are brought home to us.... The benefits from discussion lie in the fact that even representative legislators are limited in knowledge and the ability to reason. No one of them knows everything the others know, or can make all tie same inferences that they can draw in concert. Discussion is a way of combining information and enlarging the range of arguments”
- John Rawls, A Theory of Justice
“I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. … Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.”
- John Adams, The Letters of John and Abigail Adams
“If you are a leader or someone who works for the interest of a community, first make sure that you understand the interest of the people who make up that community. In this way, you will have a good chance of minimizing, perhaps, avoiding the us versus them mentality.”
- Duop Chak Wuol
1. What is America's role in the world?
2. A U.S. Military Base Needs to Make 13,000 Afghan Evacuees Feel at Home
3. Private groups aiding thousands in Afghanistan worry about dwindling funds
4. Special ops soldiers evade late-night ninja attack at California airport
5. Soldiers after War
6. The U.S. Military's Biggest Enemy Isn't Russia or China Anymore
7. Our International Institutions Are Failing Us (Or Are We Failing Them?)
8. Those Left Behind in Afghanistan
9. The CCP’s Culture of Fear
10. Why Havana Syndrome is a 'global experiment in mass suggestion'
11. How Xi Jinping lost Australia
12. How We Fell into the Terrorist Trap and Have Yet to Find Our Way Out
13. How a Divided U.S. Views Its Armed Forces and Their Role
14. We Now Know Why Biden Was in a Hurry to Exit Afghanistan
15. From Our Files 09/30/21 (UW, terrorism, and guerrilla conflicts)
16. ‘Black Hawk Down’ Rangers receive Silver Stars 28 years after Mogadishu heroics
17. All-female guard change at Tomb of the Unknown Soldier makes history
18. System Rivalry: How Democracies Must Compete with Digital Authoritarians Artificial Intelligence
1. What is America's role in the world?
Commentary from:
NOAH ROTHMAN
DAMIR MARUSIC
ANNE R. PIERCE
SHADI HAMID
MICHAEL RUBIN
BRIAN KATULIS
VICTORIA COATES
TOOMAS HENDRIK ILVES
ALBERTO M. FERNANDEZ
REBECCAH HEINRICHS
JONATHAN SCHANZER
What is America's role in the world?
Once, when the writer Ian Frazier was traveling through northern Russia, his host flipped a light switch only to realize the bulb had burned out. He changed the lightbulb, and the room was illuminated. He looked at Frazier with satisfaction and said, “Ah, America!”
Frazier understood this to be an example of the phenomenon wherein certain places in the world exist to those outside them as a concept, an idea. He was speaking not of America but of “America,” the feeling you get when, perhaps, something works as it should, a problem has a simple and practical solution.
What does “America” mean to the world today? The foreign-policy consensus in Washington, D.C., has broken apart, and the conclusion of America’s mission in Afghanistan represents the end of an era, a two-decade post-9/11 posture. It is therefore time to reassess what America’s role in the world is now, and what it should be going forward. The Washington Examiner asked 11 of the sharpest observers of foreign policy that question. Here are their answers.
NOAH ROTHMAN
When the practitioners of U.S. foreign policy find themselves in a self-excavated pit, it’s often because they have committed to upholding an idea of what America’s role in the world should be rather than what America’s role in the world is.
The United States is the world’s sole superpower, the only nation capable of sustained power projection to any theater on Earth. It is the world’s largest economy, with a capacity for innovation and growth relatively unencumbered by the retributive political fetters on prosperity that are common in most other nations, attracting a steady flow of migrants who continually revitalize its body politic. It is a nation founded on the liberal principles that emerged in the Enlightenment: Religious liberty, inviolable property rights, and the freedoms of expression and association are foundational. Without them, the edifice collapses.
These truths attract their share of critics, some of whom long for an America that does not exist. They wish that it could retreat into itself, and that its manifest power would not attract rivals. They pine for a state that was not riven by the disaggregating and disorienting effects of commerce — one with a more homogenized and, therefore, predictable sociopolitical culture. They sneer at the idea that nihilists and authoritarians rise in rivalry to our freedoms, their competing theories of social organization unable to survive alongside the model we set. They wish that all these challenges would somehow disappear. But they will not.
To the extent that any sort of “consensus” exists among those who cycle in and out of government, it is around the idea that America’s conduct on the world stage can be administered independent of these facts. It is an assumption that leads the United States to sacrifice willingly its power in deference to international organizations and talk shops. It’s an idea that convinces politicians that “soft power” can succeed without the necessary collateral of “hard power.” It is an idea that animates those who believe that America is more an idea than a state.
Joe Biden likes to say that the United States leads as a beacon to the world not by “the example of our power, but by the power of our example.” But the United States is not merely a collection of liberating ideas, nor a machine dedicated to the protection and preservation of its interests through force. It is both. Any successful American foreign policy will acknowledge this and proceed accordingly.
Noah Rothman is associate editor of Commentary magazine.
DAMIR MARUSIC
President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was met with howls of dismay from various quarters. While the bulk of the criticisms rightly focused on the messiness of the retreat and raised moral questions about the debt we owed the wretched Afghan people left in the lurch by our departure, some went further. Would the hit to America’s credibility abroad hamper our efforts in the coming generational struggle with China?
The question of credibility in international relations has been debated since at least the time of Thucydides. It has never been resolved, and it repels simplistic declarations one way or the other. It last bubbled up during the wrenching debates that convulsed the country in the wake of the withdrawal from Vietnam. That departure did have complicated effects on Cold War American foreign policy but was not as catastrophic as the most impassioned warnings at the time would have had us believe.
One argument against overinterpreting the Afghanistan withdrawal’s hit to credibility suggested itself in the subsequent weeks. The Biden administration’s announcement of the AUKUS coalition against China, partnering with Australia and the United Kingdom, completely transfixed the global foreign-policy community. The Chinese, in particular, protested vociferously. No one suggested that America’s commitment to the new Anglo alliance was less than completely credible.
That said, the withdrawal from Afghanistan will certainly affect the idea that the United States can and will remain equally committed to providing security and order across the world. It has prompted every current client of the United States to wonder just how high it sits on Washington’s hierarchy of priorities. Most profoundly, Europeans are waking up to the reality that if a shooting war between the U.S. and China were to happen tomorrow, America would unhesitatingly shift many of its forces away from the continent.
Overall, this is a healthy correction in expectation. Nothing is more damaging to the United States's reputation than standing by commitments it no longer can fully honor.
Damir Marusic is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and co-founder of Wisdom of Crowds .
ANNE R. PIERCE
How many moral and strategic setbacks must America endure to see that unless free people are vigorous in defense of the ideals and security of democracy, forces of oppression and domination grow? With World War II and the conquests and horrors of fascist Germany and Japan, we learned this lesson the hard way … for a time. When the Cold War ended, largely because the United States prioritized alliances and deterrence, contained and pressured the Soviet Union, and upheld an appealing democratic alternative, many believed it would be the last time such military might or Free World ardor would be needed. They unlearned the lesson of the post-World War II order.
Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. administrations have continuously reinvented American foreign policy as if the power and influence we’d achieved, and the global pull of our democratic example, weren’t worth preserving. True, there are new challenges of terrorism, WMD proliferation, Chinese and Russian expansionism, and adversaries’ use of terror sponsorship, paramilitary groups, disinformation, and cyberwar. But, for that very reason, American foreign policy must rediscover moral and strategic resolve. Instead, there has been an untethered, experimental quality to our world posture, with defense priorities changing with each presidency, concern for human rights wavering, and relations with allies and treaties in flux.
With Afghanistan an egregious example, America too often squanders hard-fought gains, exhibits moral relativism, and appeases enemies while undermining friends. Barely consulting NATO while “coordinating” with the brutal Taliban, the United States withdrew forces without securing weapons and intelligence, or evacuating all imperiled U.S. citizens and Afghan allies. U.S. troops’ limited presence achieved outsize good. When their withdrawal resulted in chaos and horrors, the U.S. sent troops back — to a vulnerable, surrounded position — then withdrew again, still without completing the evacuation. America thereby left our own behind, condemned Afghan women and civilians to a terrible fate, relinquished counterterrorism surveillance, ceded influence to Russia, China, and Iran, and destroyed trust.
We must rethink retrenchment that is designed to avoid “endless war” yet only emboldens aggressors and terrorists, who in turn escalate hostilities and atrocities. We should “never again” legitimize or empower genocidal regimes or groups. We must fortify and modernize our military, multiply and connect European and Asian alliances, and stand up for human rights. The world suffers when American foreign policy is unprincipled, unwise, and unreliable, and would benefit from a Trumanesque/Reaganesque foreign policy revival.
Anne R. Pierce, Ph.D., is the author of A Perilous Path: The Misguided Foreign Policy of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry and other works. For information about the author and her books and articles, see www.annerpierce.com . Twitter: @AnneRPierce .
SHADI HAMID
Sometimes, I’m tempted to conclude that, despite laying claim to the skills and talents of the best and brightest , America is uniquely bad at foreign policy, particularly as it relates to anything having to do with Muslims or the Middle East. American strategy can be frustratingly inelastic: Presidents will insist on rigidity and stubbornness despite a changing context. But it’s more than that; there has been a certain callousness displayed by the last three presidents. As one person put it to me on Twitter, “Obama was regretfully callous, Trump was proudly callous, Biden may be sanctimoniously callous.”
I supported the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, although President Joe Biden’s bungling of it, and the apparent inability to extend sympathy to those left behind, made me doubt myself. But the bigger question, now that Americans seem to have stopped caring about Afghanistan, is what comes next? Does the Afghanistan withdrawal allow for a deeper reassessment of a failed bipartisan consensus?
Well, it depends on how one defines the consensus.
On the Middle East and South Asia, the consensus, as I read it, still lives, although not necessarily in the way one might expect. Each of the last four presidents — Biden, Trump, Obama, and Bush — maintained American support for some of the region’s most odious dictators, including in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain. To be sure, George Bush initially put pressure on authoritarian allies but quickly backed down once he saw that democratization in conservative societies benefited Islamists rather than so-called “moderates.” Barack Obama’s enthusiasm for Arab democracy lasted a few months in the early, euphoric days of the Arab Spring. But here, too, democratization was messier than expected, leading to the election of groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood rather than the young, English-speaking liberals in Tahrir Square whom Americans loved to idealize. Just two years later, the Obama administration refused to call the 2013 coup in Egypt a coup and gave the military an effective green light to end the country’s deeply flawed, though still very real, democratic experiment.
Getting serious about democracy promotion is often viewed as part of the old bipartisan consensus that must now be discarded — a product of hubris and grand, misguided ambitions. Yet, this is where things get mixed up. Not supporting dictatorships, by using our economic and military leverage to pressure dependent regimes to be less repressive, is very different from the folly of 20-year nation-building adventures.
If the central struggle of our time is one between democracies like ours and autocracies like China’s, then it seems odd that we would choose to deemphasize further the role of the democratic idea abroad. Ideas, ideals, and ideology are likely to become more rather than less important, whether the rest of us like it or not.
MICHAEL RUBIN
A lesson from the pre-9/11-era: What happens in Afghanistan doesn’t stay in Afghanistan. Critics say President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan returns us to that time and re-empowers al Qaeda, but what is at stake is, in fact, far greater.
Biden justified the withdrawal as part of his promise to end “forever wars.” In reality, he is turning his back on traditional deterrence and containment. While White House partisans compared the Kabul airlift to Berlin’s, the former was about abandonment in the face of totalitarian terror, while the latter manifested a commitment to fight it. The same logic that compelled Biden to abandon Afghanistan could just as easily lead America to leave Japan, Korea, or Germany.
At stake is not just the Taliban but rather the post-World War II liberal order. North Korea, Iran, and China seize and trade hostages for diplomatic concessions. Syrian President Bashar Assad flouts the post-World War I prohibition on using chemical weapons. The Islamic State operates from Mosul to Mozambique. Under the slogan “The world is bigger than five,” Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attacks the privileges of the permanent members of the Security Council. When pundits and practitioners preach multipolarity, few conceptualize what it would mean to make autocratic regimes like Russia and China co-equals. They now have a taste, as China openly perpetrates genocide against Uyghurs and international organizations such as the World Health Organization and the World Bank manipulate or repress data in order to assuage Beijing’s communist rulers.
When Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously told President George H.W. Bush, “Don’t go wobbly on me now.” The United States remains the world’s most powerful country, but its political leadership needs a Thatcher-like intervention, for if the United States refuses to project its power, the order that allowed democracies, economies, and human rights to thrive for 75 years will collapse.
Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
BRIAN KATULIS
The ship of U.S. foreign policy is adrift and taking on water, the consequence of the corrosive effect of a combination of factors: increasing global disorder, a quarter-century of unforced errors by U.S. foreign policy leaders and practitioners, and an increasingly bitter, politicized domestic debate about national security.
A shared sense of national purpose has been steadily eroded by the domestic tribalism over U.S. foreign policy, a mix of dysfunction and division at home exploited by America’s competitors and adversaries in the world.
The captain of this ship, President Joe Biden, has sought to chart a new course in the world, yet despite grand pronouncements, it is not that far off from the one charted by his immediate predecessor. Like all large ships, U.S. foreign policy is hard to turn in a different direction, all the more so when the combination of forces that keep America adrift in the world are still in place.
If there’s a common thread between the foreign policies of the current administration and the two previous ones, it’s the worldview of a “gated community” mindset . Pull back from the world, take care of our own, build walls, and don’t try so hard to pursue joint actions on transnational threats. The gated community mindset doesn’t worry so much about what happens on the other side of national borders. As a result, the value of human life and respect for the common good have declined in U.S. foreign policy debates.
President Biden will redouble efforts to achieve some progress on climate change, and his administration will organize a summit for democracy aimed at signaling virtues without being willing to bear much of a burden or pay much of a price on the toughest of cases, such as Syria or Afghanistan. The efforts to shore up America’s ability to compete with China will continue, but it will likely be hampered by the internal political divisions between and within the two leading parties.
The political sectarianism over U.S. foreign policy at home will only heat up as 2022 and 2024 draw nearer. Yet most of the divisive debates will serve to confuse ordinary Americans and make Russia, China, and Iran happy as they see America stymied by its own dysfunction. A handful of leaders and thinkers in America will try to reach across ideological divides to dump buckets overboard and plug holes from stern to bow.
But the ship of U.S. foreign policy will continue to take on more water without a revised sense of an inclusive nationalism and a captain who inspires a broader swath of the public to keep things afloat.
Brian Katulis is a senior fellow at American Progress, where his work focuses on U.S. national security strategy and counterterrorism policy.
VICTORIA COATES
Over the last decade, it has become clear that the People’s Republic of China poses a generational threat to the United States and will challenge America for superpower status in short order. The post-Cold War assumption that the trend toward liberal democracy and capitalism was evolutionary and inevitable has proven to be not only false but also China’s opening to exploit and pervert the very institutions we built to encourage that trend.
The good news, however, is that despite China’s impressive economic growth, the predatory and aggressive practices it uses to attain that success also make prospective partner nations wary. This is to America’s advantage so long as our leaders unapologetically promote the rewards of being on our team — and make clear that it is going to be necessary to choose a side in this fight.
As China has demonstrated with the Belt and Road initiative, global influence in this struggle will not be exclusively expanded by military might. Investment and development are now equally if not more powerful, and while the PRC has prioritized providing the cheapest and easiest product, the United States can offer a vastly superior solution. Chinese investment is targeted at either harvesting resources for domestic consumption or adding assets to the PRC’s ledger. It is fundamentally rapacious, and so exploitative of its erstwhile partners.
In contrast, American economic partnerships can strengthen our allies because true market dynamism flourishes only in an atmosphere of mutual profit. But in order to fulfill the promise of that dynamism, U.S. leaders must stimulate competition and creativity in the sort of free marketplace China abhors.
As we emerge from the COVID-19 crisis, the world faces, to borrow a phrase, a time for choosing. Whether wittingly or not, the virus originated in the PRC, starkly demonstrating the devastation China is capable of unleashing on the world. But the United States cannot simply assume others will “make the right choice” if we want to continue to shape global outcomes to our advantage.
America has the opportunity to show the world that while the People’s Republic of China wants vassals and subjects, we seek partners and allies who will share in our security and prosperity. The United States can promise a radically different future for the world, one fueled by abundant energy and filled with the promise of unlimited innovation, if we have the will and purpose to offer it.
Victoria Coates is the director for the Middle East and North Africa at the Center for Security Policy. She served as deputy national security adviser for the Middle East and North Africa and as senior policy adviser to the secretary of energy in the Trump administration.
TOOMAS HENDRIK ILVES
The changing American role abroad is illuminated by the adjustments its own allies are contemplating. In a world in which the U.S. has fundamentally redefined its security posture, Europe needs seriously to redefine its own.
For at least two decades, America’s long “pivot to Asia” should have been foreseen as an obvious foreign and security policy response to China’s inexorable move from its “peaceful rise” phase to “near peer” and now to “peer adversary” status. Russia is no longer an existential threat to America but rather a semirogue nuisance power. Terrorism is a persistent threat to be dealt with ad hoc, but one that does not require a global war on terror or the democratic transformation of failed states. In this world, it has been aptly put, China is climate change, a fundamental reordering, while all else is weather.
Europe needs to find its own umbrella and galoshes. Minimally, that means truly taking charge of its own security. Yet 30 years after the end of the Cold War, Europe persists in an adolescent rebellion toward the U.S. from which it touts a vague “strategic autonomy.” This defines European security not in terms of the all too real threats it faces but rather as autonomy from an imaginary American “other.” The U.S. today sees its own national security in Asia, not, as it has for most of the years since 1945, Europe.
The abrupt departure of the U.S. from Afghanistan, where Europe was treated as an afterthought, seems to have woken up some on the continent to the new reality: “Strategic autonomy” has thus far meant inaction. In dealing with its most immediate adversary, Russia, the European Union has failed to respond to at least a decade of unacceptably aggressive actions, including invasions, failed coups, murders, and terrorist acts on EU territory; support for and encouragement of European separatist movements; massive anti-vaccination disinformation social media campaigns and repeated attempts to sway European elections, most recently in Germany. While existential for Europe, for the U.S., these fall merely in the category of “Russia as a nuisance power.” NATO will still defend Europe in the improbable case of Russian war-making, but the rest are now Europe’s challenges, not America’s.
After 70 years of a strong U.S. presence, it would not be unreasonable for Europe to play a role in the Middle East and North Africa as well. Like it or not, the American focus on its “Quad,” with AUKUS and its military deployments in the Pacific, counts on Europe to step up to the plate to deal with at least its own and nearby security threats.
Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the former president of Estonia, is a distinguished nonresident fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis.
ALBERTO M. FERNANDEZ
The debacle that capped the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan seemed a clarifying moment in American foreign policy. As shocking as the details were, as high the cost in blood and treasure, a reckoning on what America’s role in the world should be was long overdue. A clear bipartisan majority of the public wanted out of Afghanistan, even if people were troubled by the handling of the withdrawal.
Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump were right to focus on China’s adversarial character and to recalibrate defense efforts accordingly. But the United States faces an even bigger existential risk in becoming a Western version of the old Soviet Union: a decaying population, a creaky economy and ideology, but armed to the teeth. Deadly, broke, and woke is not sustainable. The fact that the dollar still remains the world’s fiat currency has allowed us to borrow billions to maintain a still formidable military edge over other nations.
But military might cannot be divorced from real dynamism forever. America’s dominance abroad in the 20th century rose on the back of its economic success. The U.S. does too much on the global stage, is still too distracted and spendthrift, its power still too diffused into too many exotic causes driven by Beltway globalist paternalism. In 2020, we discovered the dangers of relying on the Chinese to make our medicines and communication technology. Everything else should be secondary to reestablishing a national economic base that fills our coffers and employs our citizens.
Opposing China, reforging atrophied U.S. ties within the Western Hemisphere, and nurturing our traditional relationships with Israel and our Arab allies are all commonsense, logical stances, but they are complementary to and flow from an economic nationalism on which a strong and disciplined foreign policy must be grounded.
Alberto M. Fernandez is vice president of the Middle East Media Research Institute. Previously, he served as president of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks and coordinator for strategic counterterrorism communications at the State Department.
REBECCAH HEINRICHS
The world watched America retreat under the shaking fist of the Taliban, strengthen Russia by waiving sanctions on Nord Stream 2, and leave France out in the cold when secretly striking a security alliance with Australia and the United Kingdom. It is no wonder allies are questioning America’s role in the world.
Pax Americana has reigned since the end of World War II. Accurately assessing what’s at stake now requires understanding how that era came about and what kept it going. The era’s relative peacefulness was not the result of an evolution of human behavior, as some would think, as if it was inevitable or intrinsic. Neither was it thanks to the march toward global government, permanent multilateral institutions, and fixed treaties, as if bureaucracy had finally triumphed over sovereignty. No, that era was earned by American power and shaped by the prudent decisions of patriotic statesmen. Now, with multiplying threats and the Chinese Communist Party’s determination to supplant the U.S., what can be done to prolong American preeminence?
First and foremost, we must strengthen our primacy. This means bolstering our economy through deregulation and freeing critical supply chains from a Chinese chokehold. It means energy independence is a nonnegotiable national security imperative for the free world. And it means the economy must support and encourage the building and flourishing of families enough to arrest the country’s demographic spiral.
Second, we must invest wisely in our military. Focus on the weapon systems we need to deter the most serious peers — China and Russia, both of which are engaged in rapid nuclear weapons buildups. We should leverage modern technology to make our weapons more lethal while training our warfighters to be a step ahead of any peer or rival.
Third, we should put to much better use the collective strength of our alliances. We need a strong NATO to deter Russia. We need a strong Quad to weaken and deter China. We need Israel and Gulf partners and others to help us destroy terrorist cells and counter the Iranian regime.
It seems daunting. President Joe Biden seems clearly unable to understand, let alone do, what is necessary. But perhaps we still have enough cumulative strength and the sheer grace of Providence until we as a people demand leaders who are.
Rebeccah Heinrichs is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and an adjunct professor at the Institute of World Politics.
JONATHAN SCHANZER
OBITUARY: The U.S.-Led World Order died in Afghanistan on Aug. 30, 2021, three days shy of its 76th birthday. Cause of death was internal bleeding from self-inflicted wounds.
The Order was born Sept. 2, 1945, on the USS Missouri. Early on, it protected the world from socialism and communism. Later, it defended millions of people from terrorism. Though it was maligned in recent years, the U.S.-Led World Order was a devoted champion of democracy around the globe. Its enduring legacy is the spread of unprecedented technological, medical, and economic advances worldwide.
Death was slow and painful. It began with the 2003 partisan debate about the war on terrorism and was compounded by the 2008 Great Recession. These challenges, among others, led to the election of President Barack Obama, who openly questioned whether the USLWO was a force for good. He yielded billions of dollars in sanctions relief to the Islamic Republic of Iran while minimizing the threat of Islamism and other malign ideologies.
Obama was succeeded by President Donald Trump, who cajoled “free-riding” allies to spend more on collective security, straining the U.S.-Led World Order. He reversed some of Obama’s worst policies, notably on Iran, but his transactional “America First” foreign policies eroded the Order further.
Succeeding Trump was Joe Biden, who vowed to heal these wounds, but instead made them worse. Exacerbating the decline was a foreign policy establishment (née Blob) funded by clicks, big business, China, and Qatar.
The U.S.-Led World Order is survived by the Five Eyes and NATO, as well as allies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. But without a strong America, they are all justifiably worried about the rise of China, which is the most likely candidate to inherit the world order.
Futile attempts by the current administration to revive the USLWO will continue regularly at the White House briefing room. Successful resuscitation will require summoning the ghost of Ronald Reagan.
Jonathan Schanzer is senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
2. A U.S. Military Base Needs to Make 13,000 Afghan Evacuees Feel at Home
A U.S. Military Base Needs to Make 13,000 Afghan Evacuees Feel at Home
A shortage of volunteers and no timeline for permanent resettlement strain efforts
On Thursday, the U.S. government allowed reporters into Fort McCoy for the first time, providing a curated and brief look into evacuees’ lives.
Afghan adults, mostly men—some in traditional clothes, others in Western attire—walked through the grass inside a fenced-off perimeter or milled about streets that run between barracks built decades ago. Children played soccer or Frisbee in grassy areas. American military police sauntered down the streets like cops on the beat, returning waves and hellos from people sitting on barracks stoops.
Sameer Amini once worked at the embassy in Kabul and arrived in the U.S. about a month ago with his wife and two children.
“We have a space to sleep, we have toiletries, we have hygiene, medical, food,” he said. “Obviously, it’s not a home, but as a temporary home, as a transit area, we have everything that we are saying we should have.”
U.S. military police patrol Fort McCoy, one of the U.S. bases hosting Afghan who are being processed for resettlement.
Photo: pool/Reuters
In other buildings, children cut out construction paper in an activity area while others took English-language lessons in a co-ed classroom. Older boys and young men ferried plastic bags full of boxed meals to their families’ barracks.
Fort McCoy hosts the largest number of Afghans among the eight U.S. military bases that are processing tens of thousands of Afghans who fled their country following the Taliban takeover. Many of those at the base had worked with American forces or diplomats and brought their families with them. Some had fought alongside American forces as Afghan National Army soldiers.
Despite experience among American soldiers who deployed to Afghanistan and Afghans who worked with Americans, however, some cultural misunderstandings have taken place.
In August, soldiers at Fort McCoy and Afghans were confused and upset by hygiene practices. Every toilet on base was Western style, with a seat and toilet paper. But a number of Afghans are accustomed to restrooms that allow them to squat so they don’t have to physically touch the toilet. It led to some cases of Afghans relieving themselves outside, according to soldiers, aid workers and Afghans
Instead of retrofitting or constructing squat toilets, the Americans talked to Afghans on the propriety and ubiquity of Western toilets, base officials said. All toilets on base remain Western style.
In the early days of the resettlement effort, a contractor running the chow hall served up shrimp for meals, an unfamiliar food for many Afghans. They didn’t eat it, said army officials.
Afghans on base complained of hourslong lines for food before officials streamlined the process with color-coded wristbands and meal cards to ensure people weren’t coming back to the line multiple times and hoarding food, according to base officials.
Feedback came from individual Afghans approaching soldiers to voice complaints, but also through shuras, or formal meetings of elders representing the community. Senior U.S. Army officers with Afghanistan combat experience were appointed mayors to help address some issues and make changes, according to base officials.
The shrimp disappeared, as did American rice, swapped for basmati rice. New spices, hummus and dates were added to the chow hall’s menu. Everything is certified halal, according to Col. Jennifer McDonough.
Base leadership built clotheslines near the buildings for Afghans who wanted to hand wash their laundry, after a number of them arrived with nothing more than the clothes they were wearing. Base officials said not all evacuees have been to the clothing-donation center, a process that involves bussing them across base to warehouses.
As the Wisconsin winter approaches, there is no timeline for when the evacuees’ paperwork will be processed and when they will be resettled, according to base officials and Afghans. Much of that is beyond the Army’s purview, depending instead on the Departments of State and Homeland Security.
A volunteer, Sandra Hoeser plays Frisbee, with Afghan refugees at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin.
Photo: Barbara Davidson/Associated Press
“We don’t know exactly about that, like how long that will take, nobody has an answer for that,” said Nasir Ahmad, a U.S. military interpreter awaiting his final processing for a visa and a work permit.
Some Afghans hope to get paperwork completed and to leave the base before cold weather sets in and have declined accepting winter boots from the donation center, according to soldiers at the warehouse. The soldiers have pushed evacuees to take the boots, just to be safe.
At Fort Pickett, in Virginia, Abdul, who worked for the U.S. Embassy and asked for his full name to be withheld for security reasons, says his wife recently gave birth to their third child, and officials at the Virginia base have been unable to provide them with a bassinet.
The U.S. also lost their luggage, he said. As a result, the family was forced to wear the same set of clothes for weeks. When his wife gave birth about 10 days ago, relatives came to the hospital and delivered a bag of clothes for the family. They couldn’t deliver the clothes to the base because there was no way to get personal deliveries, he said.
While Abdul has asked to leave the base and stay with relatives in California, officials are refusing to let them leave until the family can be formally resettled, a process that Abdul has been told could take weeks, or even months.
“We’re happy,” he said, “we stay patient.”
The Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond immediately to a request for comment, but U.S. officials have previously said that if Afghans left early they would be required to give up federal benefits.
One logistical obstacle ahead is that the military effort operates in tandem with aid groups, such as the American Red Cross, which ended operations on Sept. 30.
The resettlement effort is led by the Department of Homeland Security, but the military is responsible in large part for providing the federal manpower and logistics.
While the federal government provides housing and food, a substantial amount of clothing, toiletries and other support came from the American Red Cross, whose departure is leaving the government scrambling to fill staffing and supply shortages at bases across the country, according to people familiar with the effort and internal DHS emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
At Fort McCoy in Wisconsin, the local DHS coordinator said in an email days before the Red Cross was preparing to leave, “We are unaware of who will step in to cover their 24/7 response as well as the approx. 80 personnel.”
Afghan evacuees at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin have access to a donation center, where shoes, among other basics, are available.
Photo: barbara davidson/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
“Anything that involves providing for the well-being and safety of Afghan nationals, we ensure that is provided for,” said a DHS spokesman in an interview, adding that donations from the public and outside groups helped the effort. The spokesman said the resettlement effort involved a “whole of government and a whole of society approach.”
At Fort McCoy the volunteer group Save Our Allies has backfilled many of the Red Cross functions. Another volunteer group, Team Rubicon, has been part of the effort since its early days and will remain.
The federal government requested hundreds of volunteers to take over the Red Cross effort, which has provided some 800 support personnel since the start of the mission.
“This temporary support was intended to be a bridge, providing urgent care to families until long-term, sustained support for evacuees could be put in place,” Red Cross spokeswoman Jenelle Eli said in an email.
—Jessica Donati in Washington contributed to this article.
3. Private groups aiding thousands in Afghanistan worry about dwindling funds
Our Vision: Every Afghan who risked their life for our safety will find a safe haven and a new start. Our mission is to Aid, Evacuate, and Integrate.
(note, truth in advertising: I support this organisation and I am a member of the board of directors)
Private groups aiding thousands in Afghanistan worry about dwindling funds
By Jonathan Landay
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Stacia George hired buses to take hundreds of Afghans, including many who worked for the U.S. government, to the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif after the Taliban seized Kabul. She planned for charter jets to whisk them to new lives outside Afghanistan.
But a month later, the former U.S. government aid official said, some 300 remain stranded because the Taliban have allowed only a few charter flights and restricted departures to foreign nationals and Afghans with authorization from other countries.
Vague U.S. security vetting procedures for Afghans seeking to leave also are contributing to the delays that George said are bleeding her organization of tens of thousands of dollars a day.
"Money we would have used to buy seats on a plane is now going to housing and feeding people," said George. "Every hour that passes is money."
Her organization, Afghanistan Transit Initiative, which says on its website it has raised $1.4 million of its $10 million goal, is not the only private group helping Afghans that is worried about a funding crunch.
Money concerns are growing among other non-profit groups supporting thousands of vulnerable Afghans seeking evacuation from Taliban rule amid reports the Islamist militants are conducting house searches, reprisal killings and other abuses.
Organizers of Human First Coalition, a non-profit run by military veterans and former U.S. officials, have supplemented donations with $6 million from their own 401k retirement accounts, said Joy Shanaberger, the group's fundraising director.
"We have about a $2 million a week burn rate," said Shanaberger. "We still have 10,000 people in our care and many more on the wait list."
HELPING THOSE IN HIDING
The non-profit groups emerged from ad hoc networks formed by current and former U.S. officials, veterans and others to bolster what they saw as a shambolic U.S. rescue operation that ended the 20-year U.S.-led war in Afghanistan in August.
Through ties forged in combat or aid programs, social media and encrypted communications, the groups are running on-the-ground networks that arrange shelter, food and medical care for vulnerable Afghans who were not evacuated.
Many Afghans being cared for by the groups are in hiding. They have little or no money for rent, medical care or food, the costs of which have soared amid shortages and a drought.
"These are people who can't go out or they get killed," said Zac Lois, a retired U.S. special forces captain who oversees operations for Task Force Pineapple, one of the largest volunteer evacuation group.
But donations are diminishing "because once the news cycle moves on, the focus moves with it," he said. "We are burning through capital at an exorbitant rate."
If the groups run out funding, "then the question becomes what do we do now because we are committed to our friends," Lois said. "You don't leave people behind."
Organizers declined to disclose how they get money to their networks, concerned the cash-strapped Taliban will find out. But, they said they strictly comply with U.S. laws, including seeking humanitarian licenses from the U.S. Treasury to avoid running afoul of U.S. sanctions against the Islamists.
The groups say there are tens of thousands of vulnerable Afghans seeking evacuation. They include some 20,000 who worked for the U.S. government and applied for U.S. Special Immigration Visas, who with their families could total some 90,000 people.
'GOOD INTENTIONS'
Group organizers are in regular contact with the U.S. government, which they said should take over funding private charter flights and negotiate landing rights in countries where evacuees could wait while their applications for U.S. visas or humanitarian parole into the United States are processed.
"This is certainly the role the government or international agencies should be executing," said Jesse Jensen, a retired U.S. Army Ranger and an organizer of Task Force Argo, a volunteer group trying to evacuate Americans and Afghans who served the U.S. government. "We can't do this indefinitely."
President Joe Biden's administration is working to arrange evacuations of remaining U.S. citizens, green card holders and SIV holders and their families. But it has not agreed to pick up the costs of private charter flights, the private groups said.
A State Department spokesperson said that despite the groups' "good intentions," every flight they chartered during and after the 17-day U.S. evacuation operation in Kabul had problems ranging from passengers without passports or falsified documents to unaccompanied minors.
"Because of these complications and associated security risks, we are reevaluating our support for these privately organized charter flights to determine how best to ensure the fidelity of the manifests," the spokesperson said.
Private organizers push back on the idea that the people on their manifests are not properly vetted.
"Most of these are people we know and served with," said Lois of Task Force Pineapple.
Still, Human First Coalition spokesman Alex Plitsas said he understood the State Department's concerns because "a lot of random people" have contacted private groups seeking evacuation.
(Reporting by Jonathan Landay; Editing by Ross Colvin and Daniel Wallis)
4. Special ops soldiers evade late-night ninja attack at California airport
I guess some things cannot be made up. I bet a Ninja attack was not in the threat brief.
Special ops soldiers evade late-night ninja attack at California airport
It was past midnight Sept. 18 when an unidentified Army staff sergeant taking a smoke break was approached by a ninja on Iyokern Airfield, in California.
Yes, a ninja.
The unknown man, in “full ninja garb to include a katana sword,” walked up to the staff sergeant, who was assigned to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, and asked if the soldier knew him.
“No,” he replied to the clearly masked-man, according to the leaked incident report posted to Reddit.
Maj. Chris Lancia, the 160th SOAR’s spokesperson, confirmed to Army Times that the report was authentic.
An incident report detailing the Sept. 18, 2021, ninja attack on members of the 160th SOAR in California. (https://reddit.com/r/army)
The unidentified ninja then asked, “Do you know where my family is?” Again, the staff sergeant reportedly responded, “no.”
The ninja then began to slash at the staff sergeant with a sword, striking his phone, knee and leg.
The staff sergeant “immediately began running through the parking lot trying to evade the unknown person,” the incident report reads.
He jumped a fence — fully taking advantage of his special operations training — and entered the administrative building.
Inside was another 160th SOAR soldier — an unidentified captain — who began locking doors and called 911.
Both soldiers were confirmed to be part of the elite 160th SOAR, known by their unit nickname, the “Night Stalkers.”
“The person in ninja garb was kicking and punching doors and windows,” the report read. The assailant then left, and returned moments later with a large block of asphalt, which he proceeded to throw through a window, striking the captain in the head.
The ninja then made a rather stealth-less getaway, and was subsequently arrested elsewhere by local police.
While the staff sergeant received multiple stitches to his leg and the captain received stitches to his head, both have been returned to full duty, Lancia confirmed to Army Times.
Lancia said that the unit is proud of how the soldiers handled the situation.
“We’re pleased with the way they responded to the threat,” he said. “By disengaging and allowing local authorities to handle it, they potentially avoided more injuries to themselves and to the assailant.”
Despite being an odd situation, “this was the best case outcome,” he added. “We’re able to joke about it because of how well [the soldiers] handled it and because no one was seriously injured.”
Lancia could not, however, comment on if the sword used was a katana or a ninjatō, nor on the authenticity of the assailant’s ninja garb.
The regiment’s public affairs officer also declined to comment on whether purple hearts would be awarded for the soldier’s injuries suffered in Mortal Kombat.
Despite one Reddit user’s comment that this was the Army’s attempt at taking tobacco cessation more seriously, Lancia confirmed that the ninja is not believed to have any sort of Army affiliation.
Observation Post is the Military Times one-stop shop for all things off-duty. Stories may reflect author observations.
Rachel is a Marine Corps veteran and Master's candidate at New York University. She's currently an Editorial Fellow for Military Times.
5. Soldiers after War
As an aside, I think we should read George Washington's farewell address on a regular basis.
And as another aside, this article speaks to me and is why I think we need to continue to study both the classics and literature because they have so much to teach us. I know liberal studies are not fashionable these days when the focus is on STEM and coding and weapons systems and platforms. But war is still fought in the human domain and we need to understand the human condition.
Excerpts:
Soldiers and, so, veterans, are uniquely creatures of politics. The state calls their identity into being and then dismisses them, framing that identity with so many legislative words and regulations. Yet their official activity, however camouflaged by the facades of modern democratic institutions, is the rawest of all political activities, if we embrace Clausewitz’s dictum about war being “the continuation of politics through other means.” When soldiers are trained and deployed on the battlefield to close with and destroy an enemy, they are the physical executors of government power.
This training involves the cultivation of an Achillean thumos, or spiritedness, which enables them to do what they need to do in the face of death. Thinkers from Plato to sociologist Willard Waller have wrestled with the puzzle of how to understand thumos and how to deploy it toward civic ends after and outside a time of war. If soldiers are bred to a sense of great purpose, what happens when purpose disappears from their day-to-day lives?
As these thinkers have understood, spiritedness is a neutral force, but one that is always on the lookout, as it were, for a cause to serve.
Soldiers after War
Neither scarcity nor cost primarily fuelled the riotous energy of the crowd hoisting its cudgels to swarm the Capitol in the name of grain. Those were tangible-enough complaints, but food was merely the expression of a deeper-felt injury: the insult of being denied a role in political society. For that injury, the rioting Romans were determined to overthrow the entire government and eliminate the symbol, in their minds, of senatorial rule: Rome’s elite warrior, Coriolanus.
Coriolanus, Shakespeare’s tragic drama, is frequently taught as an Ur-text on civil-military relations, which explores the volatile tensions between the great- or spirited-souled individual on whom the city relies to defend it. A question posed by the play is this: Can an “absolute” warrior live peaceably in a civil society?
But the play also presents a larger Shakespearean argument, which may have more bearing on the situation of today’s warriors than does the character of the protagonist, Coriolanus. In the drama, Shakespeare asks what happens to a society when an identifiable subsection of it is effectively denied a political role within it. Shakespeare suggests that this kind of denial works a type of festering moral injury. But when that festering injury breaks open, politicians will hastily ascribe it to the absence of tangible benefits like money or health care rather than examine the underlying source.
Today we are likely to have heard of “moral injury” only for post-9/11 veterans. The term is used to describe some psychological aftershocks of a twenty-year war on terror, which these soldiers were burdened with fighting. We have assumed that such moral injury occurred while the soldiers were deployed in Afghanistan or Iraq. But what if we’ve missed a more hidden injury? What if it occurs less when a soldier deploys than afterwards, when the soldier officially separates from the military? In the process of separation, the soldier goes from having been intertwined in a national purpose to being shuffled aside and deposited into a “caste” of veterans—who are generally assumed, by the majority that has not served, to be too scarred to blend seamlessly back into civilian circles. Thus, in this view, they are to be placated by ever-increasing government benefits.
Soldiers and, so, veterans, are uniquely creatures of politics. The state calls their identity into being and then dismisses them, framing that identity with so many legislative words and regulations. Yet their official activity, however camouflaged by the facades of modern democratic institutions, is the rawest of all political activities, if we embrace Clausewitz’s dictum about war being “the continuation of politics through other means.” When soldiers are trained and deployed on the battlefield to close with and destroy an enemy, they are the physical executors of government power.
This training involves the cultivation of an Achillean thumos, or spiritedness, which enables them to do what they need to do in the face of death. Thinkers from Plato to sociologist Willard Waller have wrestled with the puzzle of how to understand thumos and how to deploy it toward civic ends after and outside a time of war. If soldiers are bred to a sense of great purpose, what happens when purpose disappears from their day-to-day lives?
As these thinkers have understood, spiritedness is a neutral force, but one that is always on the lookout, as it were, for a cause to serve.
George Washington, in his 1796 Farewell Orders to the Armies of the United States, advised his veterans of the tense psychological dynamics they would face once they were separated from military service. He urged them to view their service as one rung of experience on the ladder of their personal identity and to direct their energies, as soon as they could, into industrial, commercial, and agrarian pursuits so as to “prove themselves not less virtuous and useful as Citizens, than they [were] persevering and victorious as soldiers.”
World War II veterans heeded similar advice: Nearly fifty percent of them eventually owned or operated businesses. Social scientist Robert Putnam has famously attributed America’s postwar civic vibrancy to the WWII generation’s purposeful communal engagement. This activity did not occur in a vacuum, however. It was a result of veterans being shown that their spiritedness could be deployed to benefit their communities—that veterans, in other words, could be social assets.
This is politics with a capital “P”—the type of communal activity, as Aristotle writes, toward which human beings yearn and in which they are designed to engage.
Since January 6, there has been much handwringing over the presence at the Capitol of military-related individuals, some of them ostensibly related to extremist groups. Yet the hand-wringers have not asked whether we have understood, over the past twenty or as many as fifty years, nearly the life span of our all-volunteer military, how to re-integrate a professional warrior caste full of spiritedness into the larger body politic, instead of publicly continuing to treat its members as a distinct minority made up of tragic patients. By ignoring this question, we have dismissed these warriors from the larger community to which they rightfully belong. Is it a wonder, then, that a small number of them, accustomed to seek a sense of identity through social purpose, respond positively when recruited to what looks like such a purpose?
In Coriolanus, the people acquire their own political officers, the tribunes, to be their voice. But Shakespeare shows how these tribunes, for their own political gain, manipulate the people to Rome’s detriment. Today’s American veterans, citizens of a liberal democracy, do not need or want political representatives separate from those of their civilian peers. Rather, they do need government and society to believe again, and routinely to adopt, a public narrative teaching that veterans can and should be social assets, with a community-building role to fulfill after their military service.
Rebecca Burgess is senior editor of American Purpose and managing director of the Classics of Strategy and Diplomacy Project. She’s currently writing a book on veterans and American political development.
6. The U.S. Military's Biggest Enemy Isn't Russia or China Anymore
A critique of SOCOM's alleged new "rebranding" effort.
Excerpts:
Then, less than two weeks later, we saw additional evidence that America is more interested in optics than battle. The United States Special Operations Command, better known by its acronym, SOCOM, and its subcomponents are home to apex warriors in SEAL Team 6, the Green Berets, and Rangers. These are the toughest of the tough, and they have been inspiring young commando wannabes for decades.
But according to the Military Times, Army Lt. Col. Katie Crombe said that SOCOM’s subcommand, Special Operations Command Central, wants to rebrand itself and recruit people other than these rough-and-tumble guys who kick down doors and who happen to have killed many of America’s top enemies.
“I kind of went back to what we feel about the posters and the stamps, or the branding, of special operations—you know, the night vision goggles and the operator with all of the gear going into a building,” she said. “And I thought, you know, that’s not what we need to be advertising fully right now, for us.”
She said the people she wants to recruit are “much different than that,” and suggested that the civil affairs and psychological operations elements of SOCOM might be given more weight.
The U.S. Military's Biggest Enemy Isn't Russia or China Anymore
The Russian ad featured tough-looking men doing situps, jumping out of airplanes, and cocking rifles on a snow-covered battlefield. The Chinese ad showed infantrymen firing rounds as they ran next to advancing tanks.
The U.S. Army video was a cartoon about a woman with two moms who marched for equality and joined the Army so she could “shatter some stereotypes.”
Those of us who served in the U.S. military hated the comparison, but not because we oppose diversity. I was in the Navy and Army Special Forces, and I can tell you the U.S. military has been diverse for decades. In a tight spot, none of us care if the trained soldiers next to us are men or women, gay or straight, or how many moms they have. All we want are skilled warriors who love America and have our back when the bullets start flying.
What worried us is a possible lack of focus. It’s becoming more apparent that the leadership is more interested in a military that looks a certain way rather than one that wins wars. Is it so worried about diversity that it might lose sight of the military’s purpose? Are the optics of diversity and inclusion becoming the mission?
By late summer, these vague worries became full-blown fears.
First, we watched in Afghanistan as the administration put the State Department in charge of a military mission to evacuate thousands of Americans and allies from Afghanistan. When the State Department’s hope for a safe, orderly withdrawal was dashed by surging Taliban forces, it turned to the Taliban for support while our military stood back and watched.
U.S. armed forces had the capacity to leave the airport and rescue Americans who were trapped in the city, but they didn’t have permission from the White House. They had the know-how to retake another airport, but the White House didn’t want that. The decision was made not to use our forces to protect Americans.
Giving the State Department the lead was telling. For whatever reason, the administration didn’t want the evacuation of Afghanistan to be seen as a military operation, and the result was one of America’s most embarrassing overseas debacles.
Then, less than two weeks later, we saw additional evidence that America is more interested in optics than battle. The United States Special Operations Command, better known by its acronym, SOCOM, and its subcomponents are home to apex warriors in SEAL Team 6, the Green Berets, and Rangers. These are the toughest of the tough, and they have been inspiring young commando wannabes for decades.
But according to the Military Times, Army Lt. Col. Katie Crombe said that SOCOM’s subcommand, Special Operations Command Central, wants to rebrand itself and recruit people other than these rough-and-tumble guys who kick down doors and who happen to have killed many of America’s top enemies.
“I kind of went back to what we feel about the posters and the stamps, or the branding, of special operations—you know, the night vision goggles and the operator with all of the gear going into a building,” she said. “And I thought, you know, that’s not what we need to be advertising fully right now, for us.”
She said the people she wants to recruit are “much different than that,” and suggested that the civil affairs and psychological operations elements of SOCOM might be given more weight.
I served under SOCOM as an Army Green Beret, and this sounds like an attempt to keep our special operations forces out of the fight, or at least out of focus. This would be a startling decision on the heels of 20 years of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq that saw SOCOM forces bear some of the heaviest fighting.
SOCOM’s civil affairs personnel liaise with local populations that are affected by war, and psy-ops personnel use nonviolent means to influence people in a region, typically through efforts like radio broadcasts and dropping pamphlets.
Both are necessary components of SOCOM, but Crombe’s comments sound like an attempt to take the fight out of some of America’s most specialized fighting units under the guise of finding “creative solutions.”
These developments—a video that portrays our military as a social club, the failure to give our armed forces permission to protect Americans in Afghanistan, and the potential softening of our Special Forces—point to a worrying trend.
Our tragic and deadly exit from Afghanistan proved once more than America still needs rough men ready to do violence on our behalf. Let us not eliminate that option in the name of optics.
Jason Beardsley, a Green Beret and Navy veteran, represents veterans, active-duty sailors and their families as executive director of the Association of the United States Navy.
7. Our International Institutions Are Failing Us (Or Are We Failing Them?)
Excerpts:
But are the institutions themselves the problem?
An institution is made up of its members. And for it to work well, the members need to be committed to the mission and share a level of trust amongst each other. So maybe the more honest approach is for members to look in the mirror when considering the recent events.
...
China is obviously the common thread across these failures, but that’s not really the point here.
Where exactly the fault lies does not matter for our institutions. But they need their members to trust each other and cooperate in order to carry out their missions. Without that trust and cooperation, any institution is doomed to fail.
Maybe it’s time to remind ourselves what we wanted out of our institutions in the first place and ask if we still want those things—whether it’s financing and research to end world poverty, helping countries set rules to facilitate international trade, or providing science-based work to promote global health and disease eradication. These goals were deemed worthy after World War II. Are they still worth pursuing?
Our International Institutions Are Failing Us (Or Are We Failing Them?)
Forbes · by Christine McDaniel · October 2, 2021
... [+]Getty Images
Our international institutions seem to be failing us. Just look around:
Economists, analysts and other writers who have long looked to the World Bank’s “Doing Business” report for key data on country rankings recently learned the numbers were manipulated. These were data irregularities, according to the World Bank. This is devastating news because its self-proclaimed mission is to “provide a wide array of financial products and technical assistance, and help countries share and apply innovative knowledge.” What’s worse is that the person who reportedly oversaw the manipulation of the rankings now heads the International Monetary Fund.
Then there’s the new head of the World Trade Organization, who is rumored to already be over the job and threatening to quit due to the inability of the organization to move anything forward. The mission of the WTO is to deal with the global rules of trade between nations. Its main function “is to ensure that trade flows as smoothly, predictably and freely as possible.” Willing participants have signed on to eliminate tariffs on high tech goods and increase potential for market access in government procurement, but the most pressing trade issues of the current day—overfishing, intellectual property and cyber theft, and subsidies—seem beyond its reach.
Finally, there’s The World Health Organization. “Dedicated to the well-being of all people, and guided by science,” it seeks to lead and champion “global efforts to give everyone, everywhere an equal chance to live a healthy life.” Yet the organization appears incapable of even completing an investigation into the origins of a virus that has circled the globe, killed 4.55 million people (and counting), and continues to cripple the world economy.
But are the institutions themselves the problem?
An institution is made up of its members. And for it to work well, the members need to be committed to the mission and share a level of trust amongst each other. So maybe the more honest approach is for members to look in the mirror when considering the recent events.
Here’s more context on each:
The World Bank’s 18-year-old Doing Business report has been widely successful at providing data on the ease of doing business in 190 countries at a detailed level. A recent report into its data scandal reveals that the problem was rooted in a desire to appease China, one of the development agency’s largest members and donors.
MORE FOR YOU
The World Trade Organization has seen over 30 new members accede to the single global trade regime, including China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and other nations that do not always aspire toward lower trade barriers and greater transparency. WTO membership today covers 98 percent of global commerce, and tariffs and other trade barriers among members have come down since its inception in 1995. But Beijing’s persistent use of subsidies is broad and deep and distorts global markets, yet WTO rules may be too limited to provide a fix. So much so that the United States no longer sees the use of continuing with a dispute settlement system. Meanwhile, China’s practices of intellectual property and cyber theft—state-sponsored, no less—have led the United States to impose tariffs on Chinese imports with no end in sight.
Finally, the World Health Organization is credited with successful campaigns to combat or even eradicate smallpox, polio, Ebola, HIV-AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis, among others. But its ability to study the most recent global communicable disease, Covid-19, has been hampered by China’s lack of cooperation, which is most unfortunate given the mounting scientific evidence that it originated there. Instead of being a team player and joining other countries in learning the origins and how to keep this from happening again, China has taken offense at the call for cooperation and is impeding members’ ability to move forward.
China is obviously the common thread across these failures, but that’s not really the point here.
Where exactly the fault lies does not matter for our institutions. But they need their members to trust each other and cooperate in order to carry out their missions. Without that trust and cooperation, any institution is doomed to fail.
Maybe it’s time to remind ourselves what we wanted out of our institutions in the first place and ask if we still want those things—whether it’s financing and research to end world poverty, helping countries set rules to facilitate international trade, or providing science-based work to promote global health and disease eradication. These goals were deemed worthy after World War II. Are they still worth pursuing?
... [+]Getty Images
In a recent piece, my colleagues and I explore a new approach that involves unconventional, decentralized solutions. We write that when national-level negotiations are ineffective, new avenues should be explored. Recently, the world witnessed the efficacy of open-source, collective brainstorming on the origin of Covid-19. That effort led to the publication of key findings that prompted President Biden’s call for an investigation by the U.S. intelligence community.
Whether we remain committed to the goals of our predecessors or wish to revisit them, present-day geopolitical realities call for new ways of sharing information to rebuild trust and advance common interests.
Forbes · by Christine McDaniel · October 2, 2021
8. Those Left Behind in Afghanistan
Excerpts:
Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, sent a letter on Sept. 10 to Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin requesting details of how many U.S. service members have family members trapped in Afghanistan.
McCaul, representing Texas’s 10th district, wrote that the families of several Texans who serve in the military are still trapped in Afghanistan. “They have been working night and day to safely evacuate their family members. But their efforts so far have not been successful,” he wrote. “[W]hen they need us the most, the federal government has turned our backs on them. If we abandon the family members of our service men and women in Afghanistan, they will certainly be slaughtered by the Taliban.”
Nearly three weeks later, neither the Pentagon nor the State Department have responded to McCaul’s letter.
The U.S. service member who spoke to Foreign Policy said his family is running out of safe houses. Secure in the United States, he sometimes stays up until 2 a.m., either trying to find more U.S. government agencies to call about his family’s case or keeping in contact with his family to ensure they are safe.
“I do not know what to tell my family because they spend a lot of nights waiting for any news or help,” he said. “And then nothing happens.”
Those Left Behind in Afghanistan
A month after the U.S. withdrawal, Afghans who worked for the U.S. war effort are in hiding. Few see a way out.
Foreign Policy · by Robbie Gramer, Jack Detsch, Amy Mackinnon · October 1, 2021
The text message came in just after 2:30 a.m. “[T]here is a major search operation going on in Kabul tonight. … If possible try to stay out of sight, and away from central areas.” The message instructed its recipients to hide their documents and computers and listed the districts of Kabul the Taliban were targeting that night for house-to-house searches.
For Ahmed (whose real name is being withheld for security reasons) and other Afghans who worked for the government, messages like these are a way to stay hidden, stay ahead of the Taliban, and most importantly, stay alive. The text groups, sent over encrypted messaging apps like Signal, have cropped up among Afghans and U.S. veterans remotely trying to help their former comrades evade massive sweeps by the Taliban and other militant groups searching for those who aided the failed U.S. war effort for two decades.
Ahmed worked on and off for the U.S military and State Department for years, putting his life on the line and, at one point, surviving an attack from an improvised explosive device. Like thousands of other Afghans who helped the U.S. war effort, he could not escape the country during the chaotic U.S. evacuation. Now, he and other former U.S. partners find themselves in a deadly game of wits: hopping between safe houses day by day as the Taliban, Islamic State, and other extremist groups hunt down former U.S. allies to jail them or, more often, beat or kill them.
Several other Afghans who worked for the U.S. government and are now in hiding said in phone interviews they fear Washington’s interest in helping them evacuate is fading over time. They have yet to be contacted by the State Department on any evacuation plans, and they believe that despite statements to the contrary coming from Washington, they are being left to fend for themselves.
“Even if you put aside the Taliban, ISIS is very dangerous for us,” said another former contractor for the U.S. State Department and military, who is also in hiding and spoke on condition of anonymity. “They announced that if they find anyone who worked for the United States in any way, if they find them, they will kill them. Every day I hear of three or four other former workers for the U.S. military or government [who were] kidnapped by unknown gunmen and are not seen again.”
All those still in the country said their chances of evading capture are decreasing by the day.
“I cannot stay in one location very long, but I also cannot know how long I can keep us like this,” Ahmed said. “Eventually, I feel I will be found.”
An air crew assigned to assist evacuees sits aboard a C-17 Globemaster III aircraft in support of the Afghanistan evacuation at Kabul’s airport on Aug. 21. Taylor Crul/U.S. Air Force via Getty Images
In the weeks surrounding the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, seemingly everyone in Washington directed their focus to the evacuation efforts.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken scrapped a long-planned trip to Africa—his first as U.S. President Joe Biden’s top diplomat—to focus on evacuation efforts. State Department officers said embassies and consulates in India, Mexico, and elsewhere took shifts around the clock to process evacuees from afar. And virtually every member of Congress was speaking out and lighting up the administration’s phone lines for updates on rescuing U.S. citizens and Afghan allies.
Senior State Department officials insist the department is working around the clock to help people evacuate Afghanistan, but their focus appears to be centered on the small number of remaining U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents in the country, not on Afghans who supported the U.S. war effort and became eligible for “special immigrant visas” (SIVs).
Now, people with SIVs are pinning their hopes on outside organizations, including some made up of U.S. veteran groups and former U.S. special forces, to secure charter flights out of the country, sometimes with little to no assistance from the State Department. Some groups—including Digital Dunkirk, Pineapple Express, and Project Dynamo—have had limited success in helping Afghans and their families evacuate. Others are trying to help trapped Afghans find safe houses or sending group chat alerts about Taliban raids in various districts of Kabul.
This story draws on interviews with more than a dozen sources and experts, including Afghans still in hiding. Many—but not all—say they are losing hope Washington can rescue them.
The U.S. government won’t—or, more likely, can’t—yet say precisely how many SIV applicants are among the roughly 124,000 people it successfully evacuated in the chaotic last weeks of the war as processing is still ongoing. It’s thought that tens if not hundreds of thousands of Afghans and their extended families who may be eligible for such visas have been left behind.
This story draws on interviews with more than a dozen sources and experts, including Afghans still in hiding, Biden administration officials, career diplomats, and congressional aides. The Afghans spoke on condition of anonymity. They shared documents verifying their employment history with U.S. government agencies and contractors, and their work history was verified by former U.S. service members and contractors who worked with them.
Many—but not all—say they are losing hope Washington can rescue them.
In Washington, the mood on how to help trapped Afghans varies widely. Some are filled with a profound sense of guilt and grief, others face seething frustration at seemingly endless bureaucratic hurdles, and still others hold out hope they can still rescue SIV applicants.
“I’m a United States senator, and I continue to have difficulty ascertaining who is in charge,” fumed Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal at a Senate hearing on Afghanistan on Tuesday. The matter has pushed relations between the Biden administration and Congress—already tense—to new low points.
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Senior Biden administration officials arranged a closed-door briefing with lawmakers on Sept. 22 to update them on evacuation efforts. The meeting seemed only to exacerbate the bad blood. Some Republican lawmakers angrily stormed out of the meeting, according to several congressional aides familiar with the matter, saying officials from the Defense Department and Department of Homeland Security didn’t answer basic questions on the situation.
“It’s still a mess,” said one senior aide for the House Foreign Affairs Committee who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We have asked repeatedly for an actual accounting of who is still there, even just how many [U.S. citizens] in the country are you still working with, and we still cannot get anything.”
A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on the briefing, saying the department as a general matter does not comment on classified briefings.
“We have asked repeatedly for an actual accounting of who is still there, even just how many [U.S. citizens] in the country are you still working with, and we still cannot get anything.”
“We are committed to working with Congress and our interagency partners on ways to further streamline the SIV program beyond that which we have achieved over the last nine months,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson insisted the department would honor its commitments to Afghans who assisted the U.S. government. “We continue to make good on our pledge to U.S. citizens, [legal permanent residents], and Afghans to whom we have a special commitment. We will be relentless in helping them depart Afghanistan, if and when they choose to do so,” the spokesperson added.
Matt Zeller, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan who co-founded No One Left Behind, a nonprofit that helps Afghans who assisted the U.S. military, voiced frustration at the lack of a clear plan from the U.S. government to help SIV applicants evacuate. He’d been sounding the alarm bell on the SIV backlog for years.
Zeller said he has hope for the Afghans left behind, but in the near term, they need to erase every connection they had to the United States. “My message for them now is: One, they need to take all their documents and links to us, take digital photos of those, they need to upload them into the cloud, and then they need to burn everything,” he said. “Because they can’t have any physical connection to us. Anyone who does will face retribution.”
“The next thing they need to do is go into hiding,” he added. “They need to make it seem as if our lives together never occurred, and they need to be patient. Because right now, the reality is right now we don’t have good means of getting them out.”
Still, evacuation efforts haven’t completely halted. One charter flight arranged by nonprofit group Project Dynamo left Afghanistan in recent days to the United Arab Emirates with more than 100 U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents onboard. The flight gave other outside groups a glimmer of hope that evacuation efforts could continue.
Daniel Elkins, executive director of the Special Operations Association of America, which is helping SIVs, said the U.S. government and private groups can’t give up—and the current crisis presents an opportunity for the two to band together.
“I see a lot of people being pessimistic,” he said. “But man, we need to keep our faith. These people are counting on us; we can’t throw in the towel.”
Executive director of the International Trade Centre, Arancha González Laya, talks with John Bass, then-U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, during an United Nations debate on his country’s private sector at the Geneva Conference on Afghanistan in Geneva on Nov. 27, 2018. DENIS BALIBOUSE/AFP via Getty Images
At the State Department, John Bass, a seasoned career diplomat and former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, is leading the task force to coordinate evacuation efforts and secure the safe passage of roughly 100 U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents still stuck in the country.
Evacuating Afghans remains a lower priority for the Biden administration than extricating U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents, according to multiple people familiar with the effort, leaving thousands of former interpreters and others who helped the two-decade-long U.S. effort far back in the queue.
“The initial priority is on supporting departures of American citizens and lawful permanent residents and their immediate families,” the same State Department spokesperson said. “As space becomes available, we will facilitate departures for other priority groups, which includes SIV holders, and other Afghans at risk to whom we hold special commitments.”
The spokesperson added the department would not disclose details of its evacuation efforts for security reasons.
When asked about specific numbers, the spokesperson referred Foreign Policy to a congressional hearing on Sept. 13. During the hearing, Blinken said around 20,000 people are in the SIV pipeline, a backlog in a system rive with dysfunction. Three weeks after the hearing, the department did not provide any updates on those numbers.
And in Afghanistan, the situation is getting more complicated as the country nears a cold season that will make it more difficult for flights to leave the mountainous country and could make overland routes more treacherous, spike the price of fuel, and raise the cost of keeping vulnerable Afghans in safe houses. Although the Taliban cooperated to allow a Project Dynamo’s private flight out of Afghanistan over the weekend, people involved with evacuation efforts don’t think the fragile truce with the newly empowered militant group will last.
“The longer the Taliban is in power, the more comfortable they are in using their power,” said Evanna Hu, who organized the so-called Afghanistan Evacuation Coordination Team of ex-U.S. officials, aid workers, and volunteers. “They are letting the ‘troublemakers’ leave and then might crack down.”
“The longer the Taliban is in power, the more comfortable they are in using their power.”
But those who are getting out on private charter flights are among the lucky ones. Afghanistan remains closed to commercial air traffic, and many Afghans lack the documents needed to travel. The Taliban said they have stopped issuing passports until further notice, leaving most special immigrant visa applicants unable to get out. And even those who are able to get out are subject to scrutiny and red tape. One former senior Afghan diplomat said evacuees headed to the United Arab Emirates without documents have waited weeks to be processed.
“They are in a shambles,” the former diplomat said of Afghanistan’s embassies abroad, which would have processed that paperwork had its government not collapsed. “Some are operating as independent entities.”
“All are saying they can’t operate under, or report to, the new savages in Kabul,” the former diplomat added.
The Biden administration still lacks basic information about some of the people left behind and remains at the mercy of U.S. citizens and green card holders to provide information about their own whereabouts, said Alex Plitsas, an Army combat veteran working on the evacuation effort. But lack of data has left religious and human rights groups trying to get their colleagues out of Taliban country frustrated.
“We’re definitely not getting clear answers on anything,” said Rabbi Will Berkovitz, who runs the Seattle-based Jewish Family Service, which has been working to get dozens of SIV and green card holders out of Afghanistan.
“This is why there needs to be a point person with authority to give clear communication, direction, create a plan, and operationalize it. All we hear is, ‘we are working on it,’” he added.
A Taliban fighter stands guard on the tarmac at the airport in Kabul on Sept. 12. KARIM SAHIB/AFP via Getty Images
Among those stranded are dozens of journalists working for U.S. government-funded media outlets, namely Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), who are eligible for U.S. visas. Many of the journalists continue to work despite the Taliban’s increasing attacks on the media, which have forced more than 150 news outlets to close.
As journalists funded by the U.S. government, they face double jeopardy. At least four journalists working for the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, have been killed in Afghanistan in the past three years, including Mohammad Ilyas Dayee, who was assassinated in a targeted bombing attack in November 2020.
“Many vulnerable Afghan journalists remain in the country, some without the travel documents necessary for international travel,” said Jamie Fly, president and CEO of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. “It is essential that the United States and other governments do more to facilitate their immediate departure from Afghanistan and processing for entry into countries that can host them. Time is of the essence.”
An estimated 500 RFE/RL employees and their families, as well as those of Voice of America, were left behind during the evacuations.
Also among those stranded are the families of U.S. service members who are Afghan citizens and eligible for SIVs. Foreign Policy spoke to one U.S. service member, a former Afghan interpreter who secured a visa to the United States and then joined the U.S. Army to go back and serve in Afghanistan under the American flag.
“With all the efforts and attempts that I made, nobody has gotten out. They are moving around under harsh conditions, trying to stay safe,” said one U.S. service member whose family is still in Afghanistan.
He said his immediate family is in imminent danger and moving from house to house to avoid being taken by the Taliban or other militant groups. He worked for months to navigate the U.S. visa system to get his family out, even enlisting the help of former top U.S. military commanders he worked with. But he has hit wall after bureaucratic wall, even as a currently serving member of the U.S. military.
“With all the efforts and attempts that I made, nobody has gotten out. They are moving around under harsh conditions, trying to stay safe,” he said. Foreign Policy is withholding his name and the name and details of his family for security reasons.
Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, sent a letter on Sept. 10 to Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin requesting details of how many U.S. service members have family members trapped in Afghanistan.
McCaul, representing Texas’s 10th district, wrote that the families of several Texans who serve in the military are still trapped in Afghanistan. “They have been working night and day to safely evacuate their family members. But their efforts so far have not been successful,” he wrote. “[W]hen they need us the most, the federal government has turned our backs on them. If we abandon the family members of our service men and women in Afghanistan, they will certainly be slaughtered by the Taliban.”
Nearly three weeks later, neither the Pentagon nor the State Department have responded to McCaul’s letter.
The U.S. service member who spoke to Foreign Policy said his family is running out of safe houses. Secure in the United States, he sometimes stays up until 2 a.m., either trying to find more U.S. government agencies to call about his family’s case or keeping in contact with his family to ensure they are safe.
“I do not know what to tell my family because they spend a lot of nights waiting for any news or help,” he said. “And then nothing happens.”
Foreign Policy intern Zinya Salfiti contributed reporting for this article.
Foreign Policy · by Robbie Gramer, Jack Detsch, Amy Mackinnon · October 1, 2021
9. The CCP’s Culture of Fear
Excerpts:
Will the Xi juggernaut succeed? The problems are that Xi is no Mao, in either intelligence or charisma, and the society that he rules is better informed and much more sophisticated than the one Mao ruled. When Xi’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announces a “Research Center for Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy” and another called “Research Center for Xi Jinping Economic Thought,” do intelligent people really go rushing to study “thought” that lies inside Xi’s mind, waiting to be appreciated? Of course not. People in the Mao era, whether in enthusiasm or in pain, took Mao’s commands to heart; in Xi’s case, the conformity is a mere shell.
In the short run, the most frightening possible outcomes for the Xi juggernaut are two: that it will fly or that it will crash. Successful flight would be bad news for the Chinese people and for the people of the world. No one needs a model of technofascism that, with its facial recognition software and DNA registration, goes beyond what even Orwell imagined. On the other hand, a crash would also be bad news, at least for a time. It would bring chaos and likely bloodshed. One of the major accomplishments of the decades-long CCP rule is that it has obliterated all structures in society that might replace it. Whatever happens, I see no grounds for optimism in the short run.
Chinese civilization has survived paroxysms of tyranny before, however, and in the long run it will likely do so again. Mao admired the first emperor of Qin (ruled 221–206 BCE) and the second emperor of Sui (ruled 604–618 CE). Like Mao, these two unified the realm, ruled by “legalism,” drafted corvée workers and soldiers (Mao did this in the 1930s and 1940s), assembled large armies, and eventually earned reputations for “burning books and killing scholars.” Qin, Sui, and the CCP all built Great Walls (be they stone ones or a Great Firewall in cyberspace), and all launched campaigns against Central Asian peoples (Xiongnu, Uighurs).There are other parallels, some better than others, but neither Qin nor Sui, despite their scorching violence, killed Chinese humanism. One might fear that Xi has technology to help him, while Qin and Sui did not. But I agree with the China scholar Minxin Pei, who has argued that, with or without high tech, the crux of tyrannical behavior still lies within the human mind, not in machines. Notions of “proper behavior”—for example, that people in superior social positions have duties to be fair to people in lower ones and are subject to moral criticism from bystanders if they are abusive—are deeply embedded in Chinese culture. Such values have, despite everything, survived Mao, and will outlast Xi Jinping.
The CCP’s Culture of Fear
Perry Link
In China under Xi Jinping, idealism is passé and conformity a shell for the ruthless pursuit of hierarchical power and private interests.
October 21, 2021 issue
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Roughly two thousand years ago, the arrival in China of Buddhism from India brought major changes not only to China’s belief systems but to many aspects of its daily life. Buddhism’s approach on the whole was gentle, and indigenous Chinese versions of it eventually flourished. Zen was a Chinese invention. Then, beginning about two hundred years ago, the only comparably large foreign cultural influence on China began with the arrival of British gunboats on the Chinese coast. This was more disturbing. To China the West seemed to say, “Catch up or perish.” How to modernize became a Chinese obsession that led to many things, including the fevered contortions that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has put the country through over the past seventy years.
One way to measure China’s urge to transform itself is to note how often the word new has been used by Chinese leaders. In 1902 the concept of the “new citizen” took hold in Liang Qichao’s New Citizen Journal. Twenty years later the May Fourth Movement came to be known as the New Culture Movement. In 1934 Chiang Kai-shek launched his New Life Movement. The Communist takeover in 1949 was the advent of New China, and the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s touted a “new socialist man.” After Mao Zedong died in 1976, the next few years were called “the new period.” Today, Xi Jinping’s watchword is “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.” It is important to note that new in these cases never refers to the same thing; each is a new new.
The tragedy of CCP policies in China can be seen as arising from excessive zeal for shortcuts. More successful East Asian transitions to the modern world, such as those in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, have done better by going step-by-step. Impatient for global preeminence, the CCP has rushed ahead several times and crashed. The Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s, which followed Mao’s plans for “surpassing Britain and catching up with America,” ended in the starvation of 30 million or more people. Cultural Revolution demands such as “make revolution in the depths of your soul” and “love Chairman Mao more than your parents” were intended as magical paths to a new human nature that China would exemplify for the world, but in fact they were a body blow to Chinese culture whose consequences have lasted until today. Deng Xiaoping’s one-child policy, intended in the late 1970s to jump-start a modern economy, led by the late 2010s to problems in labor supply and elder support sufficiently severe as to require abrupt reversals.
Xi Jinping’s recent flights of fancy suggest the same pattern. Some of his claims resemble Mao’s of the late 1960s: the East is rising over the West; China is a new model for the world; the Great Leader is correct by definition; Chinese people everywhere can identify with the New China and feel proud. During the “scar” years after the Cultural Revolution, Chinese intellectuals and officials were virtually unanimous in saying that nothing like it could happen again. At the time, I believed them. Now, I’m afraid I don’t. Cyber versions of Cultural Revolution “struggle sessions” have already appeared. A return of the Cultural Revolution, adapted for the new era, is certainly possible.
In appraising the history of the CCP, it is important to distinguish between members who joined out of idealism in its early years and those who joined out of self-interest after the mid-1950s. Eloquent memoirs by people like Li Shenzhi, Wei Junyi, Liu Binyan, Fang Lizhi, Zi Zhongyun, and others show how young people were drawn to the party for its announced goals (including free speech and democracy) in the 1930s and 1940s and risked their careers and even their lives to join. In 1991 the journal Yanhuang chunqiu (China Through the Ages) began carrying reminiscences by these now-elderly people, detailing how the CCP had misled them in their early years. Since they were time-honored revolutionaries, the regime could not easily shut them up. But the journal was suppressed in 2016.
When the astrophysicist Fang Lizhi, who later became a well-known dissident, went to Peking University in the fall of 1952, his dormitory building was not yet ready. He and his classmates had to sleep and do their physics homework on a gymnasium floor. Still, Fang was rapturous. He “felt a glow inside” and competed with his girlfriend to see who could join the Communist Party first. The distinguished journalist Liu Binyan, similarly smitten in the early 1950s by the idea of a new society, was working hard to bring it about when, abruptly, the government labeled him a “rightist.” Startled, his first reaction was to think: My goodness! I must be a rightist and not realize it. Chairman Mao cannot be wrong. I’ll have to look inside myself, dig this problem out, and correct it.
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Experiences like this eventually led ardent young CCP followers to see another distinction: that between the core of the party and themselves. They began to realize that they had radically misperceived Mao. No modern socialist, indeed not a modern leader of any kind, Mao had more in common with the charismatic leaders of peasant rebellions in earlier Chinese dynasties. For those adventurers, as for Mao, the aim was to achieve unquestioned power in as broad an area as possible. The Red Turbans in the fourteenth century, the White Lotus at the end of the eighteenth, the Taipings in the mid-nineteenth, and the Communists in the twentieth shared these elements: an egalitarian ideology that in fact concealed a hierarchical, exploitative, and highly secretive ruling structure, which in turn featured a magical, semidivine leader at the top who possessed some kind of tianshu (heavenly text) that prescribed how to live and also offered promises of ideal worlds to come.
In the 1980s, when I first heard the term liumang zhengfu (gangster government) used to refer to the CCP regime, I thought I was hearing hyperbole from people who were suffering under it. But in later years, I often heard it from even-tempered veterans of the CCP movement who originally had been supporters. And the term fits. The CCP runs on hierarchical power, on personal loyalties that are outside the law, and on ruthless pursuit of private interests that employs pretense, manipulation, and, where “necessary,” lethal force. It is more like the mafia than a modern government. I hesitate to use words like “mafia” or “gangster,” because some readers will simply conclude that “Link is an extremist” and stop reading. Aware of that cost, I use them anyway. There are also costs, indeed greater ones, to sheltering readers from difficult truths.
It is worth noting that the “heavenly texts” of peasant rebel groups have often had foreign origins. The foreignness added to their mystical aura and to the charisma of the semimagical leader who promoted them, and it could lend credibility to their promise of a coming heaven on earth. The Red Turbans and White Lotus magic texts were about the Maitreya Buddha, a bodhisattva from distant India who had achieved complete enlightenment and could preach the pure dharma for all to hear. The Taipings’ exotic religion was an odd form of Christianity according to which the magic leader, Hong Xiuquan, was the younger brother of Jesus Christ, and his followers could go to Heaven. For Mao, the Marxist classics similarly were foreign, a touch magical, and predicted a coming paradise on earth. Stalin gave Mao much practical support, too, and that was vital; the “heavenly texts” of Marxism were a useful bonus.
Mao duly placed himself in the Marxist pantheon: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao. He was a “great Marxist thinker.” He borrows some Marxist terms, to be sure, but how much Marx did he read? In the last few years I have been working on a detailed biography of Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who died in 2017 while serving a lengthy prison sentence for “incitement of subversion of state power.” To me it is obvious that Liu read Marx far more conscientiously than Mao ever did.
Mao’s unstinting interest was in power. Before 1949 his CCP and its army escaped the Kuomintang government, evaded the brunt of a Japanese attack, and then defeated the Kuomintang in a civil war. Ends justified means throughout. Capture a city by starving 150,000? If it works, do it. After 1949, eliminate counterrevolutionaries—several million? Fine. Mao actually established quotas, by district, of people to be killed. Moreover, his goal, from beginning to end, was not power for the CCP but power for himself. Mao began outmaneuvering and purging rivals in the 1930s and continued doing so into the 1970s.
The Great Leap Forward, sometimes taken in the West to have been a utopian effort to bring communism to the Chinese countryside, was, for Mao, something very different. It was a (failed) strategy to overproduce in agriculture and to use the surplus harvests and freed-up labor to support heavy industry, which he desired in order to increase his might. While millions of Chinese farmers starved in the resulting famine, Mao shipped grain to the Soviet Union in exchange for know-how—not only in construction but, very likely, in atomic bomb technology.
A fine example of how the outside world has misperceived Mao’s motives is the lore that has grown up around the phrase “women hold up half the sky.” Mao has been seen as a feminist, an egalitarian, a leader in progressive thought. Nonsense. The evidence of his extreme disrespect for women could not be clearer. And in fact, Mao did not say, “Women hold up half the sky.” He said, “Women can hold up half the sky.” His implication was that they were not yet holding up half, but could: they could get out of the house, go into the fields, go into the factories, and work, alongside the men, to push the Mao project forward. (By the way, Mao’s words became a set phrase and extremely common. In Chinese, no one doubts that the word “can” is there. )
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One of the most devastating results of the campaigns of late Maoism, from 1957 to 1976, was the hollowing out of the idealistic language of the early 1950s. Phrases like “serve the people” turned into dead words, but one still had to mouth them and moreover had to do it “correctly.” That made systematic pretending necessary. Manipulation of ideological language became an important life skill. At the extreme, during the Cultural Revolution, people were required to attend “study sessions” in which they took turns at biaotai (display of a viewpoint). Viewpoints were presented as one’s own but scrutinized by others for hints of divergence from “correctness.” Finding flaws in someone else’s presentation could earn one credit.
Contemporaneously with this language shift came a dramatic shift in reasons people joined the CCP. Chinese society now offered a single ladder of success; joining the party was the first step toward almost anything. Idealism was passé. It had been replaced by imitation idealism, which worked so long as the imitation was done “correctly.”
During the decade after the death of Mao, an interesting countercurrent in this trend appeared. Some people who, despite everything, were still inspired by ideals decided to join (or rejoin) the party, not because they saw it as a vehicle for their ideals but because it was the only gateway through which to try to make a difference. Fang Lizhi, who had been expelled from the party in the late 1950s, rejoined in the late 1970s on this principle and urged his graduate students, most of whom were good-hearted young physics geeks, to do the same. His reasoning? The Communist Party runs our society whether we like it or not. We have no choice but to adjust to this fact—just as we have no choice but to adjust to the weather. What we can do is to get inside the party and try to make it less awful than it otherwise would be.
Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images
A propaganda poster of President Xi Jinping, Beijing, March 2018
During the 1980s Chinese intellectuals sought dialogue with the party. Certain leaders—Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang, Hu Qili, Tian Jiyun, and others—showed themselves to be relatively liberal-minded and would sometimes even listen to voices in society. But this pattern ended with the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators on June 4, 1989. Not only were liberal intellectuals so disgusted that they no longer had an appetite for dialogue, there now was no one in the leadership with whom to have it. Hu Yaobang had died and the other reform-minded leaders were either imprisoned or frightened into silence.
In the late 1980s popular complaints about guandao corruption—by which officials who have control of factories, mines, and other “work units” use their political power to divert public resources toward private ends and thereby gain enormous unearned profits—were circulating in society and became the grounds for many of the protests in the streets. In the post-massacre 1990s, as the top leaders dropped even the pretense of interacting with society, they turned to a pillaging of the Chinese economy that resembled guandao but dwarfed it. High-ranking officials lopped off great chunks of the economy—electricity, IT, banking, shipping—and placed control in the hands of their own families, who then raked in stupendous wealth. This pattern seeped downward as they essentially said to those under them, “We give you license to plunder as long as you prevent ‘trouble’ by keeping the lid on in your area.”
It is important to understand why the CCP, having become as cynical and materialist as it is today, still needs ideology. The pretense of “socialism” remains highly conspicuous in party rhetoric even though Marx, were he to return to earth, would find the claim baffling. Why do it? Certainly not for nostalgia. Broadly speaking there are two reasons—one for international purposes and the other for domestic ones.
To present the label “socialist” to foreigners—among many of whom the term resonates warmly, or at least neutrally—is effective. Foreigners are generally unaware of the mafia-like nature of the CCP and cannot see how it diverges utterly from the socialist claim to put group interests above individual interests. (By such a criterion, Taiwanese society is much more “socialist.”) The CCP can use the term “socialist” on the international scene to instill a sense of moral equivalence between itself and democratic governments. It can say: “‘The two sides’ have ‘different systems,’ so mutual respect is needed. You speak for your people through democracy and we represent ours through socialism.” The huge fact in the background—so huge that people don’t see it—is that the CCP does not represent the Chinese people. It represents a group that seized power in 1949 and holds it still. To imply moral equivalence between “the two sides” is soft-spoken fraud.
This point was on display (although unnoted by many Westerners) in Anchorage, Alaska, in March 2021, when US secretary of state Antony Blinken sat across a table from Yang Jiechi, officially presented as director of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission of China. There were “the two sides”—as symbolically clear as they could be. Each man had to guard his words—not only for what they meant in the room but for what they would sound like to audiences back home. But who were the audiences? Here the two cases diverged radically. Blinken had to have in mind the possible reactions of the US media, of other US politicians (including in the opposition party), and, ultimately, of American voters. In short, he had to look diffusely in several directions, including downward. Yang, by contrast, peered upward, and not diffusely in the least. His crucial audience was a single person, Xi Jinping. He was in Anchorage to say what Xi wanted to be said in Anchorage. People who know Yang personally have told me that he did not sound like his normal self at the meeting. He sounded rehearsed. I would be surprised if important passages in Yang’s statements were not dictated directly by Xi.
The domestic function of socialist ideology in China is different, although in one respect it is akin to the international function. When Chinese people who live far from the corridors of power behold the shining ideology’s ponderous claims of glory and correctness amid seas of red-and-gold pomp, they tend, as do foreigners who hear phrases like “Chinese socialism” and “the two sides,” to accept the assertion that “we are legitimate.” Inside the system, though, ideological language has another function. Mao’s “Serve the People,” Deng’s “Four Principles,” Jiang Zemin’s “Three Represents,” Hu Jintao’s “Scientific Development Doctrine,” Xi’s “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era”—as well as many less prominent examples too numerous to list here—are pieces one plays on a political chessboard in order to get what one wants. The meaning of the chess pieces is not nearly as important as the act of playing them correctly, and such acts are important because they declaim one’s loyalty to power.
Phrases that originate from present-day leaders are naturally more important than earlier phrases, but the linguistic pedigrees reach as far back as Mao—and it has to be that way, because the party’s claim to legitimacy also reaches back to Mao. The lineage of top-leader thought is an ideological third rail that must not be touched. It is hard to say whether the CCP regime actually would collapse if the line were broken, but it is easy to say that every ruler since Mao has feared that this would be the case.
In the CCP’s system, advancement in an official career depends overwhelmingly on the views of one’s superior. But when a superior wants to punish someone, he or she still needs formal reasons, which can be such things as “corruption” (even if arbitrarily defined), sexual misbehavior (even if invented), failure to meet quotas or to “maintain stability,” or—and here is where ideology is vital—evidence that one’s speech has been “incorrect.” A correct performance in the language game is more important than what a person actually thinks, and everyone knows that missteps can bring punishment.
There is a spectrum of punishments that begins with police “visits” to discuss whether your future wouldn’t be better if you didn’t say or do certain things; then proceeds to subtle threats that, for example, your children might not get into the schools that you like; and then to the harsh end of the spectrum: 24-7 monitoring, house arrest, prison, torture, death. In the society at large, knowledge of this spectrum of punishment creates a generalized fear that induces self-censorship. By “fear” here, I do not mean a sharp pang of panic. Because the hazards are so constant and unchanging, people get used to them and just avoid them—rather as a hiker steps around boulders on a mountain path. We might speak of “fossilized fear.” It does not need to be sharp in order to be effective in guiding behavior.
Western social scientists sometimes use survey research to try to uncover popular thought in China. On many topics this is possible, if done carefully. But on political topics, especially about support for the CCP, it is not. Fossilized fear plays too big a part—as does the twin problem of bad information about what the CCP actually does. We might recall Fang Lizhi’s comparison of the presence of the CCP to the presence of the weather. “Do you support it?” comes as an odd question.
The years 2002 to 2008 saw the rise and fall of the most hopeful democracy movement in China since 1949. Informally known as the Rights Defense Movement or Citizens Movement, it was different in nature from the efforts in the 1980s to engage in dialogue with the CCP elite and to effect change from the top down. The 1980s had ended with rejection and a massacre. Now, the idea was to work from the bottom up. Activists went among the people and listened to their problems; then helped them, using the Internet, to establish that other people shared their complaints; then often succeeded in exposing miscreant officials; and eventually were able, at least sometimes, to use the pressure of public opinion to change behavior and even to bring about new laws.
This approach owed something to precedents from Václav Havel in Czechoslovakia and Adam Michnik in Poland, but most of the strategy and tactics were homegrown. The Citizens Movement had no formal structure or appointed leaders. Its activists included Liu Xiaobo, Wen Kejian, Liu Junning, Ai Xiaoming, Teng Biao, Hu Jia, Cui Weiping, He Weifang, Liu Di, Yu Jie, Xu Zhiming, Wang Yi, Zhang Zuhua, Pu Zhiqiang, Guo Yushan, Guo Feixiong, and many others. The movement ended in December 2008 when Liu Xiaobo, who was the titular sponsor of Charter 08, a blueprint for democratic society that the group had produced, was taken from his home by police and never returned. Signers of the charter were “invited to tea,” and Charter 08 was expunged from the Chinese Internet and all state media.
This happened under Hu Jintao, who headed the CCP from 2002 until 2012. Hu succeeded in keeping a lid on society, but problems arose during those years. A wealth gap, cronyism in business, and environmental problems all worsened, and popular protests (recorded by the police as “masses incidents”) increased sharply in number. At the top, within the powerful Standing Committee of the Politburo, Hu reputedly was a leader by consensus, allowing the committee’s eight other members to manage their own bailiwicks while Hu jockeyed at the center. A widespread view among Chinese intellectuals was that, near the end of Hu’s term, he was “passing the flower to the beating of a drum.” (The reference is to a game in which people sit in a circle and pass a flower from one to the next while a drum beats; whoever holds the flower when the drum stops beating “loses” and has to sing a song or accept some other punishment.) The image was a way to portray Hu’s apparent longing to get out of the hot seat.
My impression of Xi as he came to power in 2012 was that, after elbowing his rival Bo Xilai aside, he had a strong sense that something had to be done to respond to the country’s problems. Passing a flower was not it. But what could he do? A man of limited intellect, not well read, and with little knowledge of the outside world, Xi could imagine nothing beyond going back to Mao’s model, which at least he knew. So he opted for the recentralization of power, the building of a personality cult, the stoking of a crude nationalism, harsh repression at home, and a chip on the shoulder abroad. Given the political culture that I have sketched in this essay, these steps could meet with initial success even if guided by a mediocre hand.
Will the Xi juggernaut succeed? The problems are that Xi is no Mao, in either intelligence or charisma, and the society that he rules is better informed and much more sophisticated than the one Mao ruled. When Xi’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announces a “Research Center for Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy” and another called “Research Center for Xi Jinping Economic Thought,” do intelligent people really go rushing to study “thought” that lies inside Xi’s mind, waiting to be appreciated? Of course not. People in the Mao era, whether in enthusiasm or in pain, took Mao’s commands to heart; in Xi’s case, the conformity is a mere shell.
In the short run, the most frightening possible outcomes for the Xi juggernaut are two: that it will fly or that it will crash. Successful flight would be bad news for the Chinese people and for the people of the world. No one needs a model of technofascism that, with its facial recognition software and DNA registration, goes beyond what even Orwell imagined. On the other hand, a crash would also be bad news, at least for a time. It would bring chaos and likely bloodshed. One of the major accomplishments of the decades-long CCP rule is that it has obliterated all structures in society that might replace it. Whatever happens, I see no grounds for optimism in the short run.
Chinese civilization has survived paroxysms of tyranny before, however, and in the long run it will likely do so again. Mao admired the first emperor of Qin (ruled 221–206 BCE) and the second emperor of Sui (ruled 604–618 CE). Like Mao, these two unified the realm, ruled by “legalism,” drafted corvée workers and soldiers (Mao did this in the 1930s and 1940s), assembled large armies, and eventually earned reputations for “burning books and killing scholars.” Qin, Sui, and the CCP all built Great Walls (be they stone ones or a Great Firewall in cyberspace), and all launched campaigns against Central Asian peoples (Xiongnu, Uighurs).There are other parallels, some better than others, but neither Qin nor Sui, despite their scorching violence, killed Chinese humanism. One might fear that Xi has technology to help him, while Qin and Sui did not. But I agree with the China scholar Minxin Pei, who has argued that, with or without high tech, the crux of tyrannical behavior still lies within the human mind, not in machines. Notions of “proper behavior”—for example, that people in superior social positions have duties to be fair to people in lower ones and are subject to moral criticism from bystanders if they are abusive—are deeply embedded in Chinese culture. Such values have, despite everything, survived Mao, and will outlast Xi Jinping.
10. Why Havana Syndrome is a 'global experiment in mass suggestion'
Wow. This is quite a claim. I am sure all the victims of Havana Syndrome will not accept this.
Why Havana Syndrome is a 'global experiment in mass suggestion'
All in the mind? How the mysterious Havana Syndrome is a 'global experiment in mass suggestion' and NOT targeted attacks expert claims
- There are cases across the world, but expert says it's all in the mind
- Targeting a huge hotel with soundwaves 'defies the laws of physics'
- Mass psychogenic illness documented as far back as the middle ages
- The Philippines government used Katy Perry songs to break up a riot
- Is Havana Syndrome really just a case of hearing cicadas and crickets?
- What has the Cold War, dog poo and mosquitos got to do with it all?
PUBLISHED: 10:04 EDT, 1 October 2021 | UPDATED: 10:17 EDT, 1 October 2021
Daily Mail · by Padraig Collins For Daily Mail Australia · October 1, 2021
Since Havana Syndrome emerged in late 2016, the US government has made the mysterious phenomenon an intelligence priority and spent tens of millions of dollars investigating potential microwave weapon attacks by foreign adversaries.
But medical sociology expert Dr Robert Bartholomew is so convinced it's a case of mass delusion, he's co-authored a book on it with Robert Baloh - Havana Syndrome: Mass Psychogenic Illness and the Real Story Behind the Embassy Mystery and Hysteria.
The unexplained illness, which was first recorded in Cuba, has since spread to US embassies across the world (and also some Canadian), with a reported 130 cases. Symptoms include hearing loss, severe headaches, memory issues, dizziness and brain injury.
The Embassy of the United States of America in Cuba, which is where Havana Syndrome was first allegedly encountered
Dr Bartholomew doesn't mince his words. He means what he says and says what he means.
'There is more evidence for Bigfoot than there is for Havana Syndrome,' the US expatriate who is based at the University of Auckland, told Daily Mail Australia.
'The evidence overwhelmingly points to mass hysteria, or as it is commonly referred to by scientists - mass psychogenic illness. Havana Syndrome is a result of incompetent government officials and bad science. I would go so far as to rename it Havana Syndrome Delusion - the absurd belief, in the wake of persistent evidence to the contrary, that diplomats are being targeted with an energy weapon.'
He says it is possible to use noise as a weapon, just not in the way Havana Syndrome victims maintain it is.
'In the Philippines, the government blasted Katy Perry music to break up a demonstration. Other than that, it doesn't work very well because of the laws of physics.'
Katy Perry's music was blasted by the Philippines government to break up a demonstration
Dr Bartholomew says there are four theories as to what causes Havana Syndrome.
Sonic weapon
'The first theory that popped up was that it's a sonic weapon that used soundwaves to make people sick. This one is really far fetched because these people in Havana weren't targeted in the embassy. They were targeted in their homes, and mainly in two big hotels. To target somebody in a huge hotel would defy the laws of physics - 99 per cent of the soundwaves would bounce off the outer wall. It just doesn't work that way.'
Pesticides
'The second explanation was that it was pesticides that were being sprayed to kill mosquitos that were carrying the Zika virus. The problem with that is, there's no neurotoxin in the world that only affects American and Canadian diplomats and their families.'
Frey Effect
'The third explanation is this microwave stuff, the Frey Effect [an auditory phenomenon where microwave or radio frequencies generate clicking sounds inside the head]. This gained popularity after the National Academy of Sciences came out with their report and said it could be the Frey Effect. But they weren't sure. If you look closely at the report, it was just a guess. The person that identified the mechanism in the Frey Effect is Ken Foster at the University of Pennsylvania, he's a bio-engineer. I contacted him and he said it's definitely not the Frey Effect.'
Mass psychogenic illness
'So you're left with the only plausible explanation, which is mass psychogenic illness. The first people infected were intelligence officers on the same small station. This is a defining feature of mass psychogenic illness. It follows social networks and it usually begins in these small, cohesive groups and spreads outwards, and that's exactly what happened. These people all belong to a common work environment. There's a high degree of stress, they're in a foreign country, they knew they were being surveilled 24/7. It's a classic setup for mass hysteria.'
Dr Robert Bartholomew has written a book called Havana Syndrome: Mass Psychogenic Illness and the Real Story Behind the Embassy Mystery and Hysteria.
Dr Bartholomew says mass psychogenic illness has been around for centuries in various forms.
'It used to be called mass or epidemic hysteria. In the past three or four decades it's been called mass psychogenic illness. The phenomena has been around for millennia. There are clear cases dating back to the dancing mania of the middle ages and beyond. I have collected about 3,500 cases going back to the middle ages.
'It started in a small CIA unit in Havana, Cuba in late 2016. And that's exactly what you would expect from mass psychogenic illness. It starts in small, close-knit groups and then spreads from there, usually to people of lower status, which is exactly what happened here.
'And so you have these CIA officers walking around near their houses, noticing that there are these strange sounds at night. And then one day, one of them felt unwell, felt they had dizziness, ear pain and they went to the clinic at the embassy and the guy made an observation that "You know, it was almost like somebody was pointing a device at my head".'
This should have set off alarm bells in the medical community, but didn't.
'After that emerged, they heard from two other officers from the same unit, that they had heard these strange sounds as well. Then a theory emerged that they were being harassed with some secret weapon.'
It turns out there's a long history of Cuban agents harassing American diplomats in Havana that went back decades.
'All of the diplomats that were sent to the new embassy in Havana that opened in 2015 (after diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba were reinstated under President Barack Obama) had been briefed about it.
"Because during the Cold War, Cuban agents were notorious for harassing diplomats. They would sneak into their houses at night while they slept and throw dog poo on the floor, open up all the windows so you get mosquitos, all sorts of things.
'So when they went over there they were paranoid. They were on the lookout for this stuff and they know they are being surveilled 24-7, so you've got this sense of anxiety already.'
Dr Bartholomew says belief in Havana Syndrome amounts to a 'global experiment in mass suggestion'.
'What's happened is the (US) State Department issued a warning to their embassies all over the world, to diplomats and intelligence officers to be on the lookout for "anomalous health incidents" that may or may not be accompanied by strange sounds.
Alleged Havana Syndrome attacks on American spies and diplomats continue to grow across the world
A Pentagon memo asks 2.9 million military service members to report symptoms of Havana Syndrome
'What do you think is going to happen? Now people all over the world are on alert for anything unusual in terms of health. People have mysterious health incidents all the time, or just health incidents in general.
'So now it gets redefined as "Oh, it must be Havana Syndrome".
Dr Bartholomew is fired up and passionate in his criticism of Havana Syndrome as a non-existent condition.
'It's a big waste of money, it's an international wild goose chase that has wasted tens of millions of dollars by the US government, gotten people needlessly upset, wasted valuable time and resources during the pandemic and during a time in the world when we're fighting global warming and this money could be used better elsewhere,' he says.
'All they had to do was follow the facts. The didn't follow the facts. You can summarise this case in one sentence - When you hear the sounds of hoofbeats in the night, first think horses, not zebras.
'The State Department looked for unicorns. They were going for the most exotic hypothesis, which was some kind of sonic weapon. Why in the world would you think you were being targeted by some kind of sonic weapon? Yes, some people heard noises, but the noises weren't the same. There were high-pitched noises, there were low-pitched noises, they were all over the place.
'They were all having ear pain. Well, it's not uncommon to have hear noises and have popping sounds in your ear.'
But why is the US government wasting time, money and resources on Havana Syndrome? Part of the answer lies in an FBI report into the issue that has not been made public, but part of which has been leaked.
'Honestly, I think they've figured it out,' says Dr Bartholomew.
'We know recently, from the leaked FBI report that they concluded that it was mass psychogenic illness. And I think intelligence agencies have figured this out. They know it's mass hysteria.
'But it's embarrassing that over the last five years, under the Trump and now Biden administration, you've got the same individuals in these agencies who concluded that the sounds of crickets and cicadas were actually a secret weapon. It's ridiculous and it's embarrassing.
'When this comes out, now it's like "What are we going to do here?" They've painted themselves into a corner. Now after five years, to come out and say "Sorry, we misinterpreted insect sounds for some kind of secret foreign weapon, it's going to be hugely embarrassing and it highlights their incompetence.'
'The first theory that popped up was that it's a sonic weapon that used soundwaves to make people sick. This one is really far fetched,' says Dr Bartholomew. Pictured: The energy weapon that other experts have said 'could cause Havana syndrome' is said to be a smaller version of this 1990s Soviet microwave generator, which is kept at the University of New Mexico
The effects on white matter tract in the brain is one of the symptoms claimed for alleged victims of Havana Syndrome, but Dr Bartholomew says there is a far more benign explanation.
'In December 2017 information was leaked to the media that doctors examining a number of Havana Syndrome patients had discovered significant white matter tract changes in their brain,' he says.
But when the full report came out, the facts did not back up the very selective leak.
'Of 21 patients. three had white matter tract changes. Two were mild and one was moderate. If you walk down the streets of Sydney or Melbourne today and randomly pick 21 people, that's exactly what you would expect to find, because white matter tract changes are common in everything from migraine to depression, to normal ageing. So the claims of white matter tract changes are a myth, but they were out there for nearly a year before the study came out.
Despite not believing in Havana Syndrome, Dr Bartholomew has great sympathy for the people who are being treated for it.
'It's not that they're making it up. They're having real symptoms, but they're caused by their lives. They're psychological.'
The cover of Havana Syndrome: Mass Psychogenic Illness and the Real Story Behind the Embassy Mystery and Hysteria, by Robert Baloh and Robert Bartholomew, which is out now
Daily Mail · by Padraig Collins For Daily Mail Australia · October 1, 2021
11. How Xi Jinping lost Australia
When did China ever "have" Australia so that they could lose it?
How Xi Jinping lost Australia
Canberra went from welcoming the ‘Asian Century’ to arming itself with nuclear-powered submarines in less than a decade of the Chinese president’s rule.
Politico · by David M. Herszenhorn · September 27, 2021
SYDNEY — Nearly 10 years ago, Australia thought it was on the cusp of a beautiful friendship with China: It was opening up its economy to Beijing, wanted to teach Mandarin in schools and invited the Chinese president to address parliament.
Now, that’s all over.
These days, Australia is buying up nuclear-powered submarines to fend off Beijing, barring the country from key markets and bristling at its relentless attempts to coerce Australian politicians and media.
In part, the head-spinning shift reflects rising global wariness of China’s increasingly pugilistic behavior.
But for Chinese President Xi Jinping, it also offers a remarkable example of how his relentless attempts to control the economic and cultural climate overseas can rapidly boomerang — even in a country receptive to Beijing’s overtures. Instead of bullying Australia into submission, Xi’s “wolf warrior” tactics simply pushed Australia right back into its traditional military nexus, with the U.S. and U.K., costing Beijing a potentially valuable partner in the region.
Here’s how things turned sour so quickly.
2012: Australia foresees an ‘Asian Century’
When Xi took control of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, the Australian government was in the midst of a geostrategic pivot.
In its 2012 Australia in the Asian Century White Paper, Canberra set out national objectives that included teaching Asian languages such as Mandarin in schools, strengthening trade relations with Beijing and opening up its economy to Asia.
The white paper was part of Australia’s broader move away from its colonial Commonwealth roots and position as America’s deputy sheriff in the Asia-Pacific, and toward carving out a role as a regional power in its own right.
Canberra naturally turned to Beijing, the largest player in the region — and then, as now, its top trading partner — for a landmark free-trade agreement and relationship reset.
Australia and China concluded negotiations for the trade pact in November 2014, with Xi invited to address a joint sitting of Australia's parliament — an honor usually reserved for U.S. commanders in chief.
“We should increase mutual understanding and be sincere and trustworthy partners,” Xi told parliament, adding China and Australia were “not burdened by historical problems between us … We have every reason to go beyond a commercial partnership to become strategic partners who have a shared vision and pursue common goals.”
Some thought it was the dawn of a new age between the two countries. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t.
2013: Xi wants the ‘dominant position’
While Australia was pivoting to China, Beijing was orchestrating its own pivot: Xi had delivered a very different address to his countrymen before his speech to the Australian parliament.
In January 2013, shortly after becoming the chairman of the Communist Party and just months before becoming Chinese president, Xi laid out plans to make China a global superpower through economic and technological might.
“We must concentrate our efforts on bettering our own affairs, continually broadening our comprehensive national power,” Xi told his Communist Party comrades in the speech. The focus would be on “building a socialism that is superior to capitalism, and laying the foundation for a future where we will win the initiative and have the dominant position.”
That meant going after the Western alliance —with Australia as the weakest link. So while publicly promising sincerity and trust, Xi secretly sought to squeeze the island nation.
Reports emerged that China had reached deep into the Australian political establishment, seeking to steer policy in China’s favor. Investigations found Beijing-linked businesses were the largest sources of donations with foreign ties, and the money went to both sides of the political spectrum.
The financial intrusions rattled Australian politics. In 2017, Australian Labor Party Senator Sam Dastyari was forced to resign over his ties to Chinese Communist Party-linked donors.
Beijing sought control and influence in overt ways, too.
Later in 2017, China’s security chief warned Labor leadership the party would risk losing support among Australia’s Chinese diaspora community if it didn’t back an extradition treaty Beijing wanted.
Meanwhile, China was also building its military might in the region, making sweeping claims to the South China Sea and squeezing Hong Kong and Taiwan — moving southward toward Australia.
The combined effect drew from the entire "wolf-warrior" playbook, named after a popular Chinese action film.
And it backfired.
2021: Break-up complete
Australia, having once extended Beijing a hand of friendship, is now back in the arms of its old associates.
Earlier in September, Canberra announced a wide-ranging security partnership with the U.S. and U.K. The pact, dubbed AUKUS, comes amid a broader Australian attempt to pivot its economy away from China.
“The level of Chinese economic coercion and cyber espionage against Australia was once unimaginable, so our security agencies have learned to consider worst-case possibilities,” said Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College at the Australian National University and author of "Indo-Pacific Empire."
AUKUS, he said, “is an alignment made in Beijing.”
Under the new Anglo-American alliance, the U.S., U.K. and Australia have agreed to share advanced technologies with one another, including artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, quantum computing, underwater systems and long-range strike capabilities. Australia also abandoned a submarine deal with France worth more than €50 billion to acquire American nuclear-powered submarines instead.
“It’s a remarkable collapse in Australia-China relations and a massive deterioration in Australia’s security outlook that’s led to this outcome,” said Michael Shoebridge, a director at the influential Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) think tank, which receives funding from the Australian and other governments.
Xi “caused a trifecta of changes” that would have been unthinkable just a decade ago, Shoebridge said: A shift in Australian policy that deemed nuclear-powered technology too sensitive and expensive as recently as 2016; and a shift in U.S. and U.K. policy that allowed the two nations to share nuclear tech with each other only until recently.
“That’s a pretty radical, remarkable shift in three nations’ politics in just five and a bit years,” Shoebridge added.
Indeed, the change was percolating in 2016 when Canberra blocked bids by two Chinese companies to buy electricity distributor Ausgrid, citing national security concerns. Two years later, Australia fully banned Chinese tech giant Huawei from its 5G network.
U.S. Marines regularly rotate through Darwin for training exercises, and Australia’s Defense Minister Peter Dutton earlier this year proposed expanding their numbers and forming a joint training brigade with Australian troops.
Dutton warned Canberra must be prepared for whatever lurks “on or below the horizon” amid growing tensions with China.
Where’s the EU?
When Australia tore up its submarine deal with France, President Emmanuel Macron’s instinct was to blame Canberra and Washington.
But what neither Macron — nor the EU leadership — mentioned was the economic and security threat China has posed to Australia in recent years.
It's not that EU officials were oblivious to Beijing's coercive tactics against Canberra. Australia's Trade Minister Dan Tehan, visiting Brussels earlier this year at a time when trade talks were still on a good track, admitted Canberra was keen to have closer trade ties with the EU while facing intense economic pressure from Beijing.
“What I can say is, from an Australian point of view, what we’ve done is to stick true to our principles," Tehan told POLITICO in April. "If that leads to consequences, where we might run into disputes with certain countries, then … we will put out our sovereignty first.”
France is now threatening to cut off trade talks between the EU and Australia, accusing Canberra of being an untrustworthy partner in the wake of AUKUS.
“The complete absence in the current media coverage of whether the seriousness of Australian security concerns were fully appreciated within French circles is symptomatic of a core European shortcoming,” said Alessio Patalano, professor of war at King’s College London.
It’s an omission that longtime observers find glaring.
“The systemic challenge of China hugely outweighs the relationship difficulties between France and Australia,” said ASPI’s Shoebridge.
Did Xi still win?
The fact numerous European leaders swiftly turned on Australia and the U.S. in the wake of the AUKUS announcement has some wondering whether Xi ultimately won out despite losing Australia's goodwill.
According to Shoebridge, that’s a simplistic view. He argues once the dust settles, the EU, including France — will come back to the transatlantic table.
“I don’t think it will play much to China’s favor,” Shoebridge said. “The thing that will keep driving [the West] together are the actions of China under Xi.”
Shoebridge pointed to research that shows the collapse of public perceptions of China around the world.
“Now Xi has to face an Australia with accelerating military capabilities, up to and including nuclear submarines, brought about due to the direction he’s taking China,” he said.
Zoya Sheftalovich reported from Sydney. Stuart Lau reported from Brussels.
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Politico · by David M. Herszenhorn · September 27, 2021
12. How We Fell into the Terrorist Trap and Have Yet to Find Our Way Out
"...ensure the resilience of our core values." This phrase is the key to survival, success, the foundation of our national narrative (and the counter-narrative of our adversaries) and political warfare and both conventional and irregular warfare.
Conclusion:
In truth, the only existential threat terrorism has ever posed to the United States is in the manner we have chosen to respond to it. We talk a lot in the counterterrorism community about the need to strengthen the resilience of critical systems and infrastructure, but not enough about the need to ensure the resilience of our core values, although these are equally essential to our success. Our deliberate decision to depart from the democratic values that built the post–World War II international system and forged the largest military alliance in history was, to paraphrase Napoleon Bonaparte’s wily minister of police, Joseph Fouché, worse than a crime, it was a blunder. We fell right into the trap that was laid for us, and this has left us weaker, not just in our struggle against terrorism, but also in the arena of great power competition. Until we face up fully to our past mistakes, recommit unswervingly to the values that made America the envy of the world, and stop playing the role the terrorists want us to play, we will surely be condemned to lose more small wars and insurgencies in the future.
How We Fell into the Terrorist Trap and Have Yet to Find Our Way Out - Modern War Institute
In 2003 I was a special adviser in the Coalition Provisional Authority, working to recover evidence of atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein’s regime. I had signed up believing that our intervention would symbolize the triumph of the rule of law and liberal democracy over tyranny. However, this narrative was soon drowned out by the scandal of detainee abuse in Abu Ghraib, which communicated a very different message to many in the Islamic world—that the United States might not, in fact, be any better than Saddam had been.
My experience in Iraq gave me a profound appreciation for the critical role that legitimacy plays in successful military operations—and this is especially true in the field of counterterrorism. In the twenty years since the 9/11 attacks, most of the military and security studies literature reflecting on the US-led post-9/11 wars has focused on battlefield tactics, the challenges of nation building, or major political inflection points. But there has been very little consideration of what one might call the “moral battlespace,” and the profoundly negative impact that far-reaching decisions to depart from established moral and legal standards early in the conflict had on the success of American arms in the field. Heavy-handed reactions in counterterrorism almost always prove to be counterproductive in the long run. This principle is true in the American experiences over the past twenty years, as operating counter to our avowed values undermined our legitimacy, drowned out our messaging, and weakened our partnerships with allies.
The Terrorist Trap: Provoking Overreaction to Legitimize a Cause
In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the United States, angry and hurting, was willing to embrace what Vice President Dick Cheney memorably called the “dark side” of counterterrorism. In doing so, we fell right into the trap that had been laid for us by those who carried out the attacks. Al-Qaeda strategists like Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Abu Bakr Naji made no secret of their hope that the 9/11 attacks would provoke the United States into overreacting in response. They expected that this would, in turn, radicalize a significant constituency within the Islamic faith to violence, expose the flaws and hypocrisies that they believed existed within democratic states, and saddle the United States with an asymmetric military and financial burden that it could not bear indefinitely. It is hard not to conclude, as we look at the state of affairs in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and within the United States, that they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
Perhaps the most egregious human rights misstep made by the United States was the decision to authorize the use of enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) at CIA black sites and military detention facilities, as well as to render suspected terrorists to less fastidious allies like Egypt and Syria where they could be tortured with impunity. Most of the EITs authorized by the Bush administration, such as the use of stress positions, walling, and sleep deprivation, amounted in international criminal jurisprudence (at the very least) to “cruel, inhuman or degrading” treatment, and America itself prosecuted Japanese waterboarding of US Air Force personnel during World War II. Credible, but invested, voices such as former CIA Directors Michael Hayden and John Brennan have claimed that some actionable intelligence was elicited by the use of these techniques, but they have consistently failed to produce a single well-documented case to back up their assertions. Two extremely thorough investigations by the Senate Armed Services and Select Intelligence Committees drew a similar blank. It seems safe to conclude that almost twenty years since the arrival of the first detainees at Guantánamo Bay, any tactical utility of EITs has been, at best, marginal.
The “Nonbiodegradable” Legacy of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo
The strategic damage done to America’s reputation by the use of these controversial practices has, to borrow the vivid phrasing used by General David Petraeus, proved “nonbiodegradable.” The leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, was certainly quick to take advantage of the publicized abuse of US detainees in a communiqué by commenting: “I do not think that any intelligent person remains who believes in the monstrous lie of promised democracy after the revelations of Abu Ghraib and the joke of Guantánamo.” Indeed, General Stanley McChrystal would later recall: “In my experience, we found that nearly every first-time jihadist claimed Abu Ghraib had first jolted him to action.” Furthermore, these revelations alienated key allies, with the former director general of the British Security Service (MI5), Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, publicly acknowledging in 2007 that the United Kingdom had “greater inhibitions than we once did” in some aspects of sharing intelligence.
The military commissions process established by executive order in November 2001 proved equally counterproductive. The Bush administration adopted the process with the express intention of denying suspects brought before the commissions in Guantánamo Bay the full range of due process rights that they would have enjoyed on American soil. To date, the military commissions in Guantánamo have only convicted eight people, mostly through problematic plea deals. Furthermore, three of those convictions have subsequently been overturned on appeal. Both the 9/11 and USS Cole trials are still underway. I attended both arraignments at Camp Justice as an observer almost ten years ago. These trials are, by a considerable margin, already the longest criminal trials in US history—the previous record holder, the McMartin Preschool Abuse Trial in California, lasted a mere seven years. And there is still no end in sight. As a result, we still lack definitive probative accounts of the 9/11 and USS Cole attacks. Furthermore, the victims have still not seen even a small measure of justice done, the world has been treated to the unedifying spectacle of the United States hiding behind the state secrets privilege and tying itself in knots to keep details of its treatment of the defendants out of the legal record, and just this May a military commissions judge was prepared to allow the use of testimony obtained by torture in a legal proceeding for the first time in American history. Meanwhile, over the same period, federal courts have successfully convicted more than 450 individuals detained in the United States for terrorism-related offenses associated with al-Qaeda and ISIS, demonstrating that regular legal tools can both be effective and provide transparency.
The Trouble with Targeted Killing
Targeted killing—a term used here to refer to lethal strikes committed outside a defined theater of active armed conflict—is perhaps the one area where there is a less one-sided debate to be had. A favorite tactic during the Obama administration, drone strikes have unquestionably claimed the lives of top leadership figures in al-Qaeda and its affiliates, as well as plenty of mid-ranking cadres. These were significant tactical victories, and Osama bin Laden acknowledged the toll drone strikes were taking on al-Qaeda in internal documents recovered from his hideout in Abbottabad, but even the killing of bin Laden himself did not amount to a knockout blow. And if one applies former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s test of whether we are killing more terrorists than we are making, the picture becomes much more complicated. After all, as Bruce Hoffman noted recently, there are four times as many Islamist terrorist organizations active around the world today than there were in 2001.
We know from extensive research that experience of state violence, whether direct or indirect, is one of the primary drivers of terrorism. It is not so easy to kill one’s way to victory in a counterterrorism campaign. Terrorist groups are typically dynamic enterprises with fluctuating and elastic membership. Individuals join and leave the fight in response to a variety of internal and external factors, but the desire to avenge the loss of a loved is one of the most commonly cited motivations for taking up arms. When the injury is perceived as being unjust that effect is magnified. US drone strikes have not proved to be as surgical and precise as their proponents claim. At the most conservative credible independent estimate, at least 424 innocent civilians, including 172 children, were killed by strikes in Pakistan between 2004 and 2020—an approximate ratio of one civilian for every four alleged combatants killed. In truth, US drone strikes have become a powerful recruitment tool with the founding emir of the Pakistani Tehrik-i-Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, once boasting, “Each drone strike brings me three or four more suicide bombers.”
Human Rights Observance as an Effective Counterterrorism Approach
On balance, there does not seem to be much evidence of clear strategic utility to having employed any of the controversial tools described above, and this should be explicitly acknowledged by military leaders. In fact, what is most striking is how their use plays directly into the strategic goals of our terrorist adversaries. Terrorists are typically prolific self-publicists, and group after group has published pamphlets, communiqués, and manuals explaining both what they are trying to achieve and how they are hoping to achieve it. Terrorist doctrine is sophisticated and well established, and groups all over the world adhere to the same basic strategic approach, key pillars of which are provoking states into overreaction, polarizing society to drown out moderate voices, and actively contesting the legitimacy of the state in the eyes of its stakeholders. Yet, we seem to have devised our response without even taking our enemy’s doctrine into account.
The twentieth anniversary of the September 11 attacks presents us with an opportunity to take a long, hard look back at the past two decades—the decisions that were taken, often in the heat of the moment, and the potential roads not taken. It seems obvious now that hard power alone is not enough. We can win every fight and still lose the war. In the moral battlespace, America used to be able to call upon tremendous reserves of soft power. In the 1990s, the United States became the world’s unipolar power not because of its military might but because the political system it espoused had triumphed unambiguously over its rivals. It has been fashionable in recent years to say that America should lead by the power of its example, not the example of its power—but to do that you have to live your values. Political spin cannot hide the contradictions between America’s self-image as a beacon of freedom and the stain left by practices such as enhanced interrogation and targeted killing. Hypocrisy is kryptonite to a nation’s reputation.
In truth, the only existential threat terrorism has ever posed to the United States is in the manner we have chosen to respond to it. We talk a lot in the counterterrorism community about the need to strengthen the resilience of critical systems and infrastructure, but not enough about the need to ensure the resilience of our core values, although these are equally essential to our success. Our deliberate decision to depart from the democratic values that built the post–World War II international system and forged the largest military alliance in history was, to paraphrase Napoleon Bonaparte’s wily minister of police, Joseph Fouché, worse than a crime, it was a blunder. We fell right into the trap that was laid for us, and this has left us weaker, not just in our struggle against terrorism, but also in the arena of great power competition. Until we face up fully to our past mistakes, recommit unswervingly to the values that made America the envy of the world, and stop playing the role the terrorists want us to play, we will surely be condemned to lose more small wars and insurgencies in the future.
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.
Image credit: Sgt. Ben Brody, US Army
13. How a Divided U.S. Views Its Armed Forces and Their Role
Some very interesting statistics. I am surprised by some ("rebuilding political and physical infrastructure after war or extended conflicts" - nation building). I wonder if there is a subtle difference between "rebuilding" with emphasis on "re" versus national building (as in building a new nation)? Do respondents identify that subtle difference? Do they support rebuilding as in returning to normalcy in the conflict zone in accordance with its history, customs, culture, and politics versus building something new (and in the worst case new as in our image)?
How a Divided U.S. Views Its Armed Forces and Their Role | RealClearPolitics
Presidents and policymakers in Washington place tremendous demands on the nation’s all-volunteer military, whether it’s a U.S. Navy carrier group providing tsunami relief on the far side of the Pacific Ocean or special forces units on horseback hunting terrorists in the Hindu Kush. According to a new RealClear Opinion Research poll, Americans support the entire array of these military undertakings — and, for the most part, trust the men and women in uniform to carry them out.
This confidence spans the political spectrum, which is reassuring in a political environment so polarized that war itself is now evaluated through a partisan prism. Asked their views about missions ranging from protecting human rights abroad to defending Taiwan against an invasion from China, significant majorities of registered voters expressed support for all of them.
Highest on the list at (82%) was using the military to protect human rights “like the rights of women, children, religious or ethnic minorities.” Responding to natural disasters was tied for second place at 76% with the more traditional military duty of “curbing aggression” by U.S. adversaries.
“The American electorate is supportive of a wide range of military missions,” said John Della Volpe, director of polling for RealClear Opinion Research. “We found, though, that when asked about how they prefer to see our armed forces deployed, voters are more likely to support use of ‘soft power’ than ‘hard power.’” (Click the chart image to enlarge it.)
This expressed willingness to use military power in support of human rights has limits, however, especially when it runs into the harsh realities of long wars. The dichotomy reveals itself when Americans are asked about ending the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. By a margin of 52% to 38% (with the rest undecided), voters support President Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan.
Certainly, the U.S. military presence there represented an effort at protecting the rights of women, children, religious, or ethnic minorities. But public support wanes even for a goal favored by 82% of Americans when it’s perceived as an endless commitment. The U.S. role in Afghanistan began as a hunt for 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden and to punish and replace the Taliban extremists who harbored his terrorists. It eventually devolved into a seemingly permanent occupation while the U.S. tried to impose a working democracy on a tribal society, an elusive goal that entailed costly efforts to liberate Afghan women and girls. For most Americans, 20 years was enough.
Even though the Afghanistan withdrawal was negotiated by Donald Trump and carried out by Joe Biden — meaning it was literally a bipartisan decision — deep partisan divides revealed themselves in the survey, with Republicans being far more critical of the current commander-in-chief than were Democrats.
While much of this gap is attributable to our own brand of tribal politics, the chaotic and deadly nature of the U.S. retreat is also driving Republicans’ attitudes.
“It was a surrender and not a withdrawal,” one 63-year-old Republican poll respondent commented. “Biden left Americans behind, he armed terrorists, and got 13 of our service members killed.”
But it wasn’t only Republicans who expressed this view of Biden. “The way he handled it was terrible,” said a 47-year-old female independent from New Jersey.
“The way they did it,” added a male Democrat, 64, from Pennsylvania.
Other findings from the RealClear survey also suggest that the Trump-Biden decision to quit Afghanistan would be even more popular had the evacuation gone more smoothly. Queried in an open-ended question about why they opposed the withdrawal, fully 40% of respondents gave some version of “bad planning/failed execution/happened too fast.” Another 18% cited Americans or allies being left behind. Only 14% expressed worries about the Taliban coming to power or the U.S. abandoning the Afghan people. Even fewer (12%) mentioned terrorism or national security concerns.
In other words, Biden (and Trump) appear to have read the mood of the electorate properly.
Other highlights of the most recent survey include the following:
- Pronounced generational gaps characterize voters’ views of foreign policy and the military. China, for instance, was named as America’s most significant foreign adversary (from list of seven choices) based on strong feelings from Republicans and older voters. Gen Xers, Millennials, and Gen Z are more likely to list terrorist groups and the Taliban. Another example: By a margin of more than 2-to-1, Millennials and “Zoomers” favor teaching critical race theory at the U.S. military academies, while a majority of the Silent Generation/Baby Boomer cohort are opposed.
- A majority of respondents say the divided nature of American politics “makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the military to do its job well, win wars and defend America’s interest around the world.” Democrats, led by African Americans, are more willing to believe the military can find ways to remain above the fray, but even among Democrats, the concern is widespread.
- Doubts are more pronounced as voters are asked to go up the chain of command. Asked whether they trust the rank-and-file military to “do the right thing when it comes to making military decisions,” the trust is overwhelming: Some 74% of all voters answered affirmatively, led by Republicans (83%). When the same question was asked about “the generals,” this trust declined precipitously — to 55%. It went down even further when the question was phrased to ask about “the Pentagon” (47%) and, predictably, even more when the current or previous command-in-chief’s name was invoked (39% for both Biden and Trump). Congress is even lower: 34% for Democrats on Capitol Hill; 31% for Republicans.
- As for altering the dynamic in which 1% of Americans do all of our fighting, majorities of voters support the status quo — regardless of their political affiliation. Asked about bringing back the draft, 51% of Americans say no, with only 33% in support.
“Although young voters — those who would be most impacted — oppose the draft 61% to 24%, this issue is one of the few in which Democrats and Republicans are almost completely aligned,” noted Della Volpe. “Opposition to the draft is steadfast.”
What Lincoln Foresaw
When members of this all-volunteer military force are performing humanitarian missions with unrivaled speed and know-how, they show America to its best advantage. This was certainly the case when an armada of ships in the U.S. Navy’s Lincoln Strike Group, including the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, brought fresh water, food, and medicine to thousands of people stranded and battered by the 2004 tsunami that wreaked such death and carnage in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. This is the kind operation that unites Americans across party lines.
Thinking of it that way, the aircraft carrier is well-named. Abraham Lincoln knew earlier than most of his countrymen that even in the mid-19th century, America was a nation so powerful that anyone who attacked it wouldn’t get very far.
That didn’t mean there was nothing to fear. In January 1838, a 28-year-old Abraham Lincoln exhorted Americans to not let their political passions lead them to mob rule.
“At what point shall we expect the approach of danger?” he asked in a speech in Springfield, Ill. “Shall we expect some trans-Atlantic military giant to step the ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the Earth (our own excepted) in the military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, would not by force take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.”
No. The threat, Lincoln told us, was from domestic terrorism. From mob rule, and a willingness to act lawlessly to further our political aims. All these years later, Americans sense the truth of this warning.
Asked in the RealClear Opinion Research survey to name the United States “most formidable” current foreign adversary, voters dutifully ranked China first (28%), followed by terrorist groups “like ISIS or al-Qaeda” (20%); the Taliban (10%); Russia (8%); cyber-terrorists (7%); North Korea (6%); and Iran (2%). This makes sense. But when asked an open-ended question without mentioning the foreign angle, the answers were different, and revealing.
Asked “What do you believe to be the greatest threat to America today?” the highest percentage answer (14%) was Islamicist terror groups such as ISIS and the Taliban. But four of the next five answers were domestic in nature and the fifth, the coronavirus pandemic, is both a foreign and domestic threat. And when asked directly whether they were more concerned about foreign or domestic threats facing the country, 58% said domestic, with 42% answering foreign.
We are worried, in other words, about our neighbors and our dysfunctional politics. “The greatest threat to America today is political extremism,” replied a 57-year-old Georgia woman, a political independent. “It seems we can't accomplish anything in a bipartisan way. Our energies and resources are spent in arguments rather than rational conversations about complex and nuanced issues. This domestic bickering leaves us vulnerable to threats from abroad.”
Although they tend to point fingers across the political divide rather than at those on their own side, many Democrats and Republicans concur.
“I believe that the greatest threat to America today comes from within our own boundaries,” added a male Republican, 59, from North Carolina. “This instability does not create the strong social fabric that is necessary when being faced with political attacks from outside our boundaries.”
“The greatest threat to America,” warned a 22-year-old female Democrat from Ohio, “is America.”
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon.
14. We Now Know Why Biden Was in a Hurry to Exit Afghanistan
Quite an indictment of our military leadership over the past two decades.
Excerpts:
Milley and Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the head of Central Command, both acknowledged at the hearing that the U.S. military was flying blind through much of its 20-year war in Afghanistan, the longest war in American history. The officers of the day tried to mold the Afghan army in their own image, making them too dependent on U.S. technology and support, so that once we withdrew, collapse was inevitable. Milley also noted that he and the other officers paid too little attention to Afghan culture and to the corrosive effects of the Afghan government’s corruption and lack of popular legitimacy. So, Biden might well have been thinking, why should he pay attention to anything these guys had to say on the war in Afghanistan, which they’ve been wrong about from the very beginning?
Biden made several missteps, some of them disastrous, in the pace and sequence of the withdrawal. Most of all, he should have pulled out all the spies, contractors, U.S. citizens, and Afghan helpers before pulling out all the troops. But on the big picture, he was right, and the generals, as they now grudgingly admit, were wrong.
We Now Know Why Biden Was in a Hurry to Exit Afghanistan
He made several missteps, but on the big picture, he was right.
Slate · by Fred Kaplan · September 29, 2021
There was a moment in Tuesday’s Senate hearing on the withdrawal from Afghanistan when it became clear why President Joe Biden decided to get the troops out of there as quickly as possible.
It came when Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained why he and the other chiefs—the top officers of the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines—all agreed that we needed to pull out by Aug. 31. The Doha agreement, which President Donald Trump had signed with the Taliban in early 2020 (with no participation by the Afghan government), required a total withdrawal of foreign forces. If U.S. troops had stayed beyond August, Milley said, the Taliban would have resumed the fighting, and, in order to stave off the attacks, “we would have needed 30,000 troops” and would have suffered “many casualties.”
And yet, as Milley also testified on Tuesday, he, the chiefs, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and other military officers advised Biden to keep 2,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan beyond the Aug. 31 deadline. The difference is that those troops wouldn’t be attached to any “military mission.” Instead, they would “transition” to a “diplomatic mission.”
However, it is extremely unlikely that the Taliban would have observed the semantic distinction. In their eyes, 2,500 U.S. troops would be seen as 2,500 U.S. troops, regardless of whether their mission was officially said to be “military” or “diplomatic.” Therefore, the Taliban would resume fighting, as Milley said they would, and Biden would then have been faced with a horrendous choice—to pull out while under attack or send in another 30,000 troops.
Some historical-psychological perspective is worth noting. In the first nine months of Barack Obama’s presidency, the generals were pushing for a major escalation of the war in Afghanistan—an increase of 40,000 troops—and a shift to a counterinsurgency (aka “nation-building”) strategy. Biden, who was then vice president, was alone in suggesting an increase of just 10,000 troops, to be used solely for training the Afghan army and for fighting terrorists along the Afghan-Pakistani border. As Obama recalls in his memoir, Biden urged the new and relatively inexperienced president not to be “boxed in” by the generals. Give them 40,000 troops now, and in 18 months, they’ll say they need another 40,000 to win the war. As Obama later acknowledged, Biden was right.
And so, as Milley was advising Biden to keep 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, even while acknowledging that another 30,000 might be needed if the Taliban resumed fighting, it’s easy to imagine Biden thinking, “They’re trying to box me in, just like they did before, just like they’ve always done since the Vietnam War,” which was raging when Biden first entered the Senate in 1973 and has shaped his views on war and peace ever since.
Milley and Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the head of Central Command, both acknowledged at the hearing that the U.S. military was flying blind through much of its 20-year war in Afghanistan, the longest war in American history. The officers of the day tried to mold the Afghan army in their own image, making them too dependent on U.S. technology and support, so that once we withdrew, collapse was inevitable. Milley also noted that he and the other officers paid too little attention to Afghan culture and to the corrosive effects of the Afghan government’s corruption and lack of popular legitimacy. So, Biden might well have been thinking, why should he pay attention to anything these guys had to say on the war in Afghanistan, which they’ve been wrong about from the very beginning?
Biden made several missteps, some of them disastrous, in the pace and sequence of the withdrawal. Most of all, he should have pulled out all the spies, contractors, U.S. citizens, and Afghan helpers before pulling out all the troops. But on the big picture, he was right, and the generals, as they now grudgingly admit, were wrong.
Slate · by Fred Kaplan · September 29, 2021
15. From Our Files 09/30/21 (UW, terrorism, and guerrilla conflicts)
Passing this along for the simple entry from 1986, some 35 years ago:
A Pentagon study says bureaucratic infighting and the inability of leaders to understand unconventional warfare leaves the U.S. unprepared to deal with terrorism and guerilla conflicts.
From Our Files 09/30/21
FROM OUR FILES
- Sep 29, 2021
- Sep 29, 2021
5 years ago — 2016
Dr. Randall Linton, 63, president and CEO of Mayo Clinic Health System for northwestern Wisconsin, announces he plans to retire in April.
10 years ago — 2011
Black River Fall commemorates the 100-year anniversary of a 1911 flood that that ravaged and almost obliterated the city’s business area.
20 years ago — 2001
In his weekly radio address, President George W. Bush condemns Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders for harboring terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden; hundreds gather at an Eau Claire memorial service for city native John Hart, who is presumed dead after the World Trade Center attack.
35 years ago — 1986
A Pentagon study says bureaucratic infighting and the inability of leaders to understand unconventional warfare leaves the U.S. unprepared to deal with terrorism and guerilla conflicts.
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16. ‘Black Hawk Down’ Rangers receive Silver Stars 28 years after Mogadishu heroics
American heroes. The Rangers are listed below. There are still many more names that have not been made public (as far as I know).
Think about these words from Chaplain Struecker:
Struecker, who would commission as an officer after 10 years of enlisted service and serve as a chaplain until retiring as a major in 2011, described the book as an “extraordinarily accurate" accounting of the battle. The movie, he said, followed the book closely, though it took some liberties — blending several events into a single incident or multiple characters into a single individual.
“What you see in the movie 'Black Hawk Down' basically happened,” he said. “It's about as accurate as you're going to get. It's not a documentary, but for a major motion picture, I don't know how you can make it much more accurate.
“The difference, for those of us who were there, right, is the violence,” Struecker said. "It isn't even close to the real thing — the level of violence, of course.”
‘Black Hawk Down’ Rangers receive Silver Stars 28 years after Mogadishu heroics
Jeff Struecker is presented the Silver Star on Friday, Oct. 1, 2021 at Fort Benning, Ga., by Army Gen. Richard Clarke, head of U.S. Special Operations Command for actions in the infamous October 1993 Battle of Mogadishu. Struecker was a staff sergeant and squad leader with the Army’s 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment during the battle made famous by the book and movie “Black Hawk Down.” (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
FORT BENNING, Ga. — During 23 years in the Army — much of it in the elite ranks of the 75th Ranger Regiment — Jeff Struecker saw combat in Panama, Iraq and Afghanistan, but nothing compared to the infamous October 1993 gunfight through the streets of Mogadishu.
“I’d been to combat a couple of times before Somalia and a lot of times after, but I’ve never seen heroism, I’ve never seen fighting, like we saw among these guys on the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia,” said Struecker, one of 18 veterans who fought in the battle officially known as Operation Gothic Serpent and awarded the Silver Star for valor Friday. “Nothing came close to Somalia. I mean not even close.”
The Silver Stars presented in a ceremony at Fort Benning, Ga., for those who were serving 28 years ago in the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment were upgrades of Bronze Star medals with combat “V” for valor that the Rangers were presented months after returning from Somalia. The Battle of Mogadishu, in which 18 American soldiers were killed, was later made famous by the best-selling book “Black Hawk Down” and the Hollywood movie of the same name.
For Struecker, the honor was “bittersweet” and unexpected. He said others who fought in that battle were more deserving of the Silver Star, the nation’s third highest honor for battlefield heroics. He said he was particularly proud to see some of the other troops from that fight honored.
“It’s truly an honor,” said Sean Watson, who was a sergeant first class at the time and would go on to retire as a command sergeant major in 2015. “I believe that being an awardee is actually a representation of everybody in the position I was in. They earned it — they’re the ones who really earned this.”
The Army announced in July, 60 veterans of the battle — mostly Army special operators, many of whom have not been named publicly — would receive award upgrades for their actions in the fight. That includes 58 Silver Stars and two Distinguished Flying Crosses. Award ceremonies are planned for other units in the future, Army officials said Friday.
John M. Collett is presented the Silver Star on Friday, Oct. 1, 2021 at Fort Benning, Ga., by Army Gen. Richard Clarke, head of U.S. Special Operations Command for actions in the infamous October 1993 Battle of Mogadishu. Collett, then a specialist, was a squad automatic weapon gunner with the Army’s 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment during the battle made famous by the book and movie “Black Hawk Down.” (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
The fight
The battle broke out as American special operators — primarily Rangers, and other elite soldiers from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment and 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, or Delta Force — set out to capture two top lieutenants of warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid, who was responsible for attacks on U.N. peacekeeping troops working to end civil war in Somalia.
The assault force was inserted into the city by helicopter, and another element was to follow that group into the city in Humvees, according to the Army, which said many elements of the battle remain classified despite the enormous attention it has received publicly.
Struecker, then a staff sergeant with the Rangers’ 3rd Battalion, was leading a squad assigned as the ground reaction force to support the helicopter-borne troops entering Aidid’s stronghold in the Bakara Market. The helicopter assault force went in first to search for the warlord’s henchmen and the ground force came into the market later, according to the Army’s description of the battle.
It was the Rangers’ seventh mission in Somalia, but this one, Struecker said, was in broad daylight in a well-defended part of Mogadishu with an unknown number of enemy fighters.
“This is the middle of bad-guy territory, and we’re kicking down the door and walking into the heart of it,” he said. “You know as soon as you get in it’s going to be a fight, and it's going to be a fight the whole time that you're in there, and it's going to be a fight until you get out. All of us knew that. What I don't think anyone anticipated was the sheer numbers.”
That U.S. force of less than 200 operators would find itself in a fight with some 10,000 to 12,000 well-armed Somali fighters. After the assault force nabbed Aidid’s aides, militants attacked the troops and shot down two MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters with rocket-propelled grenades — something the Army had never seen before, officials said.
It set off a frantic mission to secure the locations of the downed Black Hawks and recover wounded and fallen Americans. U.S. special operators would spend 18 hours running and fighting their way through the city’s streets, according to the Army.
Struecker, 52, led his ground unit through the city three times as the battle raged. Their Humvees were “like bullet magnets,” he recalled. His Silver Star citation credits him with repeatedly sacrificing “his own personal safety” to help other soldiers.
“We go back and forth, in and out of the city all night long,” Struecker said. “The Humvees are the biggest, easiest target to hit out there, and so we’re losing guys right around me.”
Dominick Pilla, a sergeant and machine gunner, was just behind Struecker when he was shot and killed — the first American death in the battle. His Silver Star citation credits Pilla with “suppressing numerous enemy positions while under fire himself.” His heroics, it added, saved “the lives of all the other Rangers” with him at the time. He was 21.
Meanwhile, Watson — a platoon sergeant at the time who had entered the fight by helicopter — moved his force toward one of the downed Black Hawks, fighting their way through the city. His Silver Star citation credited him with securing the crash site from enemy forces “until reinforcements came the next morning.”
It was brutal work, Watson said. But he was awed by the actions of the Rangers and others around him.
“It was something to behold from my position to watch what was going on — the way they performed,” he said. “It was beyond compare.”
Sean T. Watson is presented the Silver Star on Friday, Oct. 1, 2021 at Fort Benning, Ga., by Army Gen. Richard Clarke, head of U.S. Special Operations Command for actions in the infamous October 1993 Battle of Mogadishu. Watson, then a sergeant first class, was a platoon sergeant with the Army’s 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment during the battle made famous by the book and movie “Black Hawk Down.” His platoon was inserted into the operation by helicopter and later helped secure the location of the crashed MH-60 Black Hawks, which was struck by enemy rocket-propelled grenade fire. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
The fall out
Three of the four pilots in the downed Black Hawks would die, and the fourth was captured and later released.
Two Delta Force operators — Master Sgt. Gary Gordon and Sgt. 1st Class Randy Shughart — were posthumously awarded Medals of Honor for their actions to secure the site of one of the Black Hawk crashes to recover survivors. Both of those operators were among the U.S. dead in the fight.
In all, 73 U.S. troops were injured in the battle, according to the Army. The botched mission left a long-lasting mark on American foreign policy after television news broadcast images of an U.S. soldier’s body dragged through Mogadishu’s streets as locals cheered.
The defense secretary at the time, Les Aspin, would resign his post in wake of the battle. Ultimately, former President Bill Clinton elected to end the mission to capture Aidid and he removed all U.S. forces from Somalia by March 1994. U.S. troops would not return to the country until 2007.
The book “Black Hawk Down” would be published in 1999, receiving high praise for its detailed retelling of the battle. In 2002, the movie brought the Battle of Mogadishu onto American screens in the months after the first U.S. troops invaded Afghanistan in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Struecker, who would commission as an officer after 10 years of enlisted service and serve as a chaplain until retiring as a major in 2011, described the book as an “extraordinarily accurate" accounting of the battle. The movie, he said, followed the book closely, though it took some liberties — blending several events into a single incident or multiple characters into a single individual.
“What you see in the movie 'Black Hawk Down' basically happened,” he said. “It's about as accurate as you're going to get. It's not a documentary, but for a major motion picture, I don't know how you can make it much more accurate.
“The difference, for those of us who were there, right, is the violence,” Struecker said. "It isn't even close to the real thing — the level of violence, of course.”
Watson said he rarely talks about his time in Mogadishu, and he does not think about it very often, either. Later, he deployed to Afghanistan three times and saw combat there. But, like Struecker, he said the fighting there was incomparable to Mogadishu.
“I felt very fortunate that I never was in the extreme position that I was in Somalia ever again,” he said. “Was I prepared for it? Yes, I was. I was very prepared. And it was a lot. And, thankfully, [fighting] never, ever occurred at that level again for me.”
Current U.S. Army Rangers look at photos of 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment Rangers in action in Somalia in 1993 before 18 former members of the unit were awarded Silver Stars for their actions in the infamous Battle of Mogadishu that year. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
At A Glance:
The Army on Friday presented 18 Silver Star medals to former members of the Fort Benning, Ga.-based 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment for their actions in Mogadishu, Somalia, on Oct. 3 and Oct. 4, 1993. The awards were upgrades of the Bronze Star medals with combat “V” device for valor that the Rangers received shortly after the battle — among the most infamous fights in recent decades in which U.S. troops fought.
Those receiving the Silver Star on Friday were (ranks at the time of the battle):
Sgt. Alan Barton
Sgt. John C. Belman
Staff Sgt. Kenneth P. Boorn
Spc. James M. Cavaco*
Spc. John M. Collett
Staff Sgt. Michael Collins
Sgt. James C. Joyce*
Pfc. Brad M. Paulsen
2nd Lt. Larry D. Perino
Spc. Robert R. Phipps II
Sgt. Dominick M. Pilla*
Sgt. Randall J. Ramaglia Jr.
Pfc. John D. Stanfield
Cpt. Michael Steele
Spc. Richard Strous
Staff Sgt. Jeffrey D. Struecker
Spc. Joseph F. Thomas
Sgt. 1st Class Sean T. Watson
*Denotes posthumous award to Rangers who died of wounds suffered in Somalia
Corey Dickstein
17. All-female guard change at Tomb of the Unknown Soldier makes history
All-female guard change at Tomb of the Unknown Soldier makes history
An all-female guard change at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier took place for the first time this fall.
The historic moment in the 84-year vigil happened on the 30,770th day of continuous guarding of the tomb, located in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, with the 38th Sergeant of the Guard, according to a tweet from the Army's Old Guard on Friday.
"The military guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is changed in an elaborate ceremony which happens every hour on the hour from October 1 through March 31, and every half hour from April 1 through September 30," says the Arlington National Cemetery website.
Soldiers from the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment guard the Tomb of the Unknown 24/7 in all weather, even inclement cases such as hurricanes.
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"We commemorate the achievements of these trail-blazing Tomb Guards," the Old Guard posted on Instagram, adding this "historic event" was a first but not the last.
"With diversity in our ranks, race, gender, or any characteristics will never hinder, but only enhance the execution of our sacred mission," the post said. "As we recognize this monumental day, we reflect on the Unknowns and their ultimate sacrifice. The world will never know their names. Their life's poetry was silenced in the defense of this great nation. We will never forget their sacrifice, and we will never falter as our standard will remain perfection."
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier has provided a final resting place for an unknown soldier who served in World War 1, in addition to unknown soldiers from later wars in 1958 and 1984, according to the cemetery website.
The 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier falls on Nov. 11.
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18. System Rivalry: How Democracies Must Compete with Digital Authoritarians Artificial Intelligence
Excerpts:
China as Model of Digital Authoritarianism
Solutions: How to Combat the Digital Authoritarian Model
1. Develop and Showcase a Democratic Model of Digital Restraint at Home
2. Exercise Leadership in International Tech Diplomacy and Standard Setting:
3. Invest in Tech Innovation as a Means of Advancing Democratic Values
In sum, domestic practices, international norms, and technology innovation and standards are intertwined with digital governance systems. The strength of the digital authoritarian model stems from the fact that these elements are working in tandem. Democracies must recognize these interdependencies and demonstrate leadership in all three realms, simultaneously and in a coordinated fashion.
The tech practices we showcase in our domestic context, the norms for which we advocate in international tech fora, and the investments we make in emerging technologies and democratic information infrastructure will be mutually reinforcing. If this complex set of tasks is embraced and tackled with the sense of urgency and purpose it deserves, a prosperous, secure democratic future can be solidified. These are the essential elements from which we can build a democratic digital society.
System Rivalry: How Democracies Must Compete with Digital Authoritarians Artificial Intelligence
Combatting the spread of AI-enabled repression
September 27, 2021
Artificial intelligence (AI) may still hold the potential to solve some of the world’s most intractable problems and help fulfill the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but when it comes to risks to privacy and civil liberties, AI already has been a game changer in favor of authoritarian states. AI-enabled tools have turbocharged every pre-existing form of repression including: mass and targeted surveillance, censorship, and the spread of propaganda. Contrary to the original expectation that it would be impossible for repressive states to control the open internet, AI has facilitated a whole new level of state control over communications infrastructure and the information realm. Its technological advantages include scaled capacity to scan for forbidden content and filter out dissenting views. In the other direction — the production of ideas — autocrats have found new ability to control public narratives and shape civic discourse with AI-generated and amplified content. New social engineering tools, such as China’s social-credit system, mold citizens’ motivations and behaviors. Beyond violating privacy and civil liberties, these systems have the potential to destroy, in significant part, human agency and human dignity.
The larger threat posed by all these AI-enabled technologies is that they are facilitating the spread of digital authoritarianism: an encompassing techno-social system and governance model that involves control and security for the state as opposed to liberty and security for citizens. Rather than view the challenge as a series of discrete apps used for repression, democracies should see digital authoritarianism through the lens of system rivalry and recognize that they face competition from a powerful, repressive governance model spreading around the world.
This model is being propagated through a variety of means. It certainly includes the diffusion of technology, but it also includes the diffusion of values, norms, and concepts related to appropriate uses of and constraints on technology. The authoritarian model is also spread through propaganda and economic coercion, sometime referred to as “sharp power,” and even through concerted efforts to influence tech standard-setting bodies, where repressive potential can be embedded in tech protocols for the future. These elements generally come as a package deal.
China as Model of Digital Authoritarianism
The starkest example of digital authoritarianism is China’s version, which is manifesting global influence on multiple layers. First, China has become a role-model of AI-driven domestic repression, with highly escalated surveillance capacities in their own “smart cities” and panopticon-level control in regions deemed “security threats,” such as Xinjiang. They have demonstrated stunningly effective control over the domestic information realm and the ability to steers citizens’ behavior with powerful incentives built into their social credit system. China also is advancing development of a sovereign digital currency that will substantially enhance their repressive powers at home.
Second, China is exporting these repressive capacities and normalizing their use around the world. Through broader economic trade and development initiatives, such as its Belt and Road and Digital Silk Road, China has built entire infrastructure systems through which it has gained leverage over fragile states that will last for decades to come, as well as new sources of data that can be sucked back to Beijing.
Third, China is shaping debate in international normative arenas by flooding the zone of multilateral tech-related diplomacy. Their advocacy has been very effective within normative bodies like the UN Human Rights Council, where China has swayed the majority of delegations to support their repressive uses of technology in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. They also have demonstrated an ability to exert influence at tech standard-setting bodies, like the International Telecommunications Industry (ITU), where interoperability standards for the future are set. Their aim has been to push China’s preferred protocols as the global default for Internet of things (IOT) and other emerging technologies.
Fourth, in the global marketplace of ideas, China is spreading propaganda about the weakness of democracy, using so-called “Wolf Warrior” diplomats who aggressively attack the competence of democracies, particularly the United States, its only superpower rival. China has also advanced internet governance concepts like “cyber sovereignty,” which is essentially an updated version of a long-standing authoritarian position that repression within sovereign, now cyber borders, should not be criticized by external actors based on international human rights law and principles.
Finally, we cannot ignore the fact that China’s growing global influence started with massive strategic investment in emerging technology. China recognized very early that dominance in technology would translate into power across other realms – military, economic, geopolitical, normative. The Chinese Communist Party publicly committed to win the AI-race against the US by 2030 and has made deep investments in other emerging technologies, such as quantum computing. Their current push to be first in developing a sovereign digital currency is another manifestation of their sophisticated understanding of the linkage between technology prominence and global power.
The bottom line: The Chinese government is on a mission to remake the 21st century global order in its own image and in accordance with its own repressive values. Democratic governments and stakeholders need to recognize the existential threat posed by this competing digital authoritarian model.
Solutions: How to Combat the Digital Authoritarian Model
Democratic stakeholders must move past trepidation about the scale and complexity of the threat and push toward practical action. As a first step, we need to recognize that we can’t beat something with nothing. While authoritarians have capitalized on AI and digital technologies for repression and control, democratic governments have been caught off-guard and without a compelling alternative vision of digital society that reflects democratic values. These are two sides of the same problem: without a proactive democratic plan, we are defenseless against an energetic digital authoritarian approach.
Admittedly, digitization and the AI-systems it has spawned have dramatically altered the context in which democracies must operate and human rights must be protected. But it is time for democratic leaders to face this reality and proactively engage in this radically changed digital environment with a human rights-based approach. The aggressive spread of authoritarian applications, concepts and practices must be met with a more attractive democratic alternative. In effect, a good offense will be our best defense.
The most promising prescriptions fall into three buckets of action.
1. Develop and Showcase a Democratic Model of Digital Restraint at Home
First, democracies need to get their own digital technology policies and practices in order. When it comes to government use of data and digital tools, rather than proactive values-based leadership, we have witnessed an unconscious drift toward unrestrained access to data and unchecked practices that violate privacy and civil liberties and undermine the rule of law. A significant part of the problem has been inadequate recognition, within government or the private sector, of the centrality of privacy to the exercise of all fundamental freedoms. In addition, the process principles of necessity, proportionality, and legality, which are essential features of the existing international human rights law framework and provide the basis for assessing the legitimacy of infringements on fundamental rights, have been ignored, in the main, in law enforcement and surveillance practices. Simply put, democratic governments have not developed adequate institutional constraints on their own use of data and AI-tools to sufficiently differentiate their practices from those of authoritarians.
Similarly, when it comes to regulatory efforts to combat “harmful” online content, many democracies see AI-scanning and filtering requirements as a silver bullet, without assessing the necessity and efficacy of those tools, or the proportionality of the infringement on liberty to the harms they seek to prevent. Flawed platform regulations promulgated by democracies have been copied directly in authoritarian leaning contexts, leading to a downward global spiral on core commitments to free expression and access to information. This trend demonstrates that the practices and regulatory approaches relied upon by democracies in their domestic contexts have significant unintended effects on global norms. Democratic governments must come to appreciate how important adherence to the rule of law and to the process principles of necessity and proportionality matters in a globalized digital environment.
To address this situation, democratic governments should develop and commit to human rights impact assessment processes — with necessity, proportionality and legality assessments built in — for their own procurement, use and regulation of data, platforms, and AI-enabled tools. Given the significant impact private sector technology companies have on the enjoyment of fundamental rights (especially privacy, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and association, and the right to democratic participation), democratic governments also should mandate that private sector companies engage in human rights impact assessments in their development and deployment of products and services.
2. Exercise Leadership in International Tech Diplomacy and Standard Setting:
Second, democracies must reassert leadership in international arenas where cyber norms, tech standards and governance processes are established. These are the arenas in which system rivalry is playing out. While authoritarians have flooded the zone of multilateral cyber diplomacy and international technology policy, democracies have retreated from leadership due to their own lack of clarity about what adherence to human rights law and principles entails in the digital context.
An essential point here: We do not need new principles. Rather, we need to reinforce confidence in the continued relevance and applicability of existing international human rights law framework — which is globally recognized and has the status of international law. That said, we do need to undertake the hard work of articulating how to adhere to our existing international human rights framework in practice, in a radically changed digital context. A global multistakeholder process must be initiated to resolve disagreements among democratic actors about the legitimacy of different data practices, platform regulations, and applications of AI-enabled tools. Rebuilding the democratic alliance around a shared understanding of how to adhere to international human rights law in digital society should be treated as a strategic priority, on par with cybersecurity and more traditional dimensions of national security.
3. Invest in Tech Innovation as a Means of Advancing Democratic Values
Last, but not least, democracies need to recognize that normative leadership and technological leadership go together. If our goal is to spread democratic values rather than authoritarian norms, we must lead in technological innovation, particularly in AI and quantum computing. Dominance in those realms will translate into leverage and influence in normative realms and tech standard setting bodies. In addition, we need to become far more proactive in exporting democratic digital infrastructure as part of our trade and economic development aid programs, rather than ceding the opportunity to China to embed values into digital infrastructure in the developing world.
* * *
In sum, domestic practices, international norms, and technology innovation and standards are intertwined with digital governance systems. The strength of the digital authoritarian model stems from the fact that these elements are working in tandem. Democracies must recognize these interdependencies and demonstrate leadership in all three realms, simultaneously and in a coordinated fashion.
The tech practices we showcase in our domestic context, the norms for which we advocate in international tech fora, and the investments we make in emerging technologies and democratic information infrastructure will be mutually reinforcing. If this complex set of tasks is embraced and tackled with the sense of urgency and purpose it deserves, a prosperous, secure democratic future can be solidified. These are the essential elements from which we can build a democratic digital society.
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
