RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 1

Authoritarian regimes are increasingly making use of regional cooperation organizations like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to bolster each others' regime security in the name of counter-terrorism, experts told a recent seminar.

In an Orion Policy Institute online seminar held days after Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping returned from a leadership summit of the regional Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), experts said authoritarian regimes are increasingly bolstering each other's domestic security in the name of pursuing "terrorists", "separatists" and "extremists."

Edward Lemon, assistant professor of international affairs at Texas A&M University, said authoritarian regimes rarely act alone, often relying on bilateral cooperation with local governments and regional organizations like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

"Authoritarian regional organizations are built around the codification of authoritarian norms," Lemon told an online seminar run by the Institute on Sept. 28. "They bypass human rights, facilitate swift extraditions and bolster regime protections."

"In some cases [they actually grant] extraterritorial powers to law enforcement to physically go into the jurisdiction of members of an international organization ... and extradite or ... render and take back members of the diaspora," he said.

He said such groupings often form platforms for sharing information about overseas activists and run joint investigations into individuals who are seen as a threat to a regime.

"[This] privileges ... regime security over any concerns over individual human rights or the countries' obligations to international human rights law or norms," Lemon said.

He said the top priority of the SCO is to combat "terrorism", "extremism" and "separatism," which are all terms derived from China's national security framework.

Once an organization is listed as a terrorist organization by one of the member states, it will be labelled a terrorist organization by all member states, he said.

Members and other leaders attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, Sept. 16, 2022. Credit: Kremlin Pool Photo via AP

Criminalizing opponentsMathieu Deflem, sociology professor at the University of South Carolina, said authoritarian regimes often use existing global structures to pursue activists overseas, particularly Interpol.

"Interpol is one of the instruments of that embeddedness, and a very practical and ... effective instrument as well," Deflem said. "It is nowadays well known that Interpol has been abused by authoritarian regimes."

"They take advantage of international communications systems to track down political opponents and to target them as criminals, so we have the criminalization of political dissent," he said.

"The members [and] the leadership of Interpol are not doing nearly enough to counter that, and to hold onto the principles of their own organization," Deflem said.

He called on U.S. law enforcement agencies to put pressure on Interpol to set up an external review watchdog, rather than relying solely on current internal oversight mechanisms.

Meanwhile, digital technology is an important part of all forms of transnational repression, according to Marcus Michaelsen, a researcher at the Free University of Brussels.

Phishing and commercial spyware can effectively infiltrate dissidents' phones and computers to collect information and spy on dissidents for repressive regimes, he said.

"Regimes perceive these external influences as a threat, and in response they try to control the activities of their populations abroad," Marcus Michaelsen, independent researcher into transnational repression, told the seminar.

He said digital technologies are an essential component of all forms of transnational repression.

"The very same technologies that allow exiles and diasporas to stay involved in their home country's affairs also help regimes to reach across borders."

Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, was subject to a Interpol Red Notice from China for almost 20 years before it was deleted in 2018. Credit: AFP

Open targetsTransnational activists rely heavily on social media to stay in touch with their home countries, and this makes them more vulnerable to being targeted by their home governments for monitoring, he added.

"In the more aggressive forms of targeted surveillance, regime agents try to gain access to the accounts and devices of activists, for their correspondence and confidential data," Michaelsen said, adding that regime-backed hackers often use phishing messages to gain access to accounts and devices.

Sometimes, social engineering is also used, based on openly available social media information, to "lure targets" into clicking on compromised links, he said, citing invitations to seminars, interview requests as possible forms of phishing to deliver malware to users' devices, sometimes using sophisticated spyware.

Michaelsen said major overseas social media platforms are sometimes infiltrated or subjected to political pressure to delete accounts and posts that are critical of the regimes.

"Another form of digital transnational repression is online harassment, smear campaigns and trolling," Michelson said. "These regime agents will use false and distorted information, verbal threats and abuse against activists to intimidate them, to put them under pressure, or taint their reputation."

Dana Moss, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame, agreed, but said online monitoring can also lead to violent outcomes.

"Regimes' attempts to control and coerce and punish their diasporas is a growing global threat," she told the seminar, adding that the threat isn't just a digital one.

"[Their] repertoire also includes assassinations, violent attacks. We've seen a lot of kidnappings, forced renditions and coerced return back home," Moss said.

Loved ones back home are also used as leverage, she said.

"People might be threatened that something will happen to their families if they don't return home for persecution or trial or detention," Moss said.

"For women, these tend to be very sexualized and very scary."

Smear campaigns

Moss said smear campaigns are often very effective if overseas activists are accused of "terrorism," she said.

"This perks up the ears of security agencies in their host societies, and often puts them under suspicion for doing something wrong when they haven't done," she said.

The CCP's law enforcement agencies routinely track, harass, threaten and repatriate people who flee the country, many of them Turkic-speaking Uyghurs, under its SkyNet surveillance program that reaches far beyond China's borders, using a variety of means to have them forcibly repatriated, according to the rights group Safeguard Defenders.

The number of Chinese nationals seeking political asylum overseas has skyrocketed under Xi Jinping, whose administration has set up a coordinated international operation called "Operation Foxhunt" to force Chinese nationals to return home.

Figures released by the United Nations' refugee agency UNHCR showed that while around 12,000 Chinese nationals sought asylum overseas in 2012, the year that Xi took office as CCP general secretary, that number had risen to nearly 120,000 by 2021.

Washington-based non profit Freedom House called on governments in a February 2022 report to start systematically recording cases of transnational repression, based on an internationally agreed definition of the term, then ensure that law enforcement officials, personnel at key agencies, and those working with refugees and asylum seekers are trained to recognize the targeting of exiles and diasporas.

Governments should also start screening applicants for diplomatic visas for a history of engaging in transnational repression and expel diplomats who are known to be involved in these practices.

They should also use their influence to bolster respect for the asylum system and stop processing applications in third countries, the report said, calling for an international response to the problem.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

5. How the US can focus its fight against foreign influence operations

Excerpts:

The United States has a massive intelligence ecosystem that gathers more information on more issues than any other country in the world. The true value of this vast amount of information lies in how it is curated, analyzed, and presented to policymakers. To aid in this vital process, the US government has a guide—the National Intelligence Priorities Framework (NIPF)—to identify intelligence priorities and assist agencies and departments with where to focus their efforts.

...

But that does not mean the task is unnecessary or in violation of American civil liberties. Establishing a multi-agency task force of experts could be a viable first step: It would act as a manager tasking intelligence collection to better understand foreign influence operations; as a consumer of the newly gathered intelligence; and as an analyst producing formal reports for policymakers, as well as educational pieces for the US public to understand what it is seeing and hearing in the media, within social movements, and across politics. The goal would be to understand the “how” and “why” of foreign-influence campaigns and identify offensive campaigns in response that could advance US foreign-policy goals.

Difficult decisions need to be made around what is and is not included in the NIPF. Although there are only so many resources available to collect and analyze intelligence, prioritizing foreign-influence activities is vital. The information space is now at least as important—if not more so—than what happens on the physical battlefield.

How the US can focus its fight against foreign influence operations

By Jennifer A. Counter

atlanticcouncil.org · by dpeleschuk · September 30, 2022

Intelligence is all about decisions: How to allocate limited personnel and technological resources when national security is at stake, and how to convey complex information and resulting assessments to policymakers for awareness and action. The decisions are seemingly endless but are vital to producing the best analysis for key officials on topics that have the greatest impact on national security.

The United States has a massive intelligence ecosystem that gathers more information on more issues than any other country in the world. The true value of this vast amount of information lies in how it is curated, analyzed, and presented to policymakers. To aid in this vital process, the US government has a guide—the National Intelligence Priorities Framework (NIPF)—to identify intelligence priorities and assist agencies and departments with where to focus their efforts.

During the Cold War, the NIPF focused on political, economic, and proliferation issues related to the Soviet Union and its allies, from the performance of the Soviet economy to details about new fighter jets being developed by Moscow and deployed to other countries. In a post-September 11 world, the fight against terrorism took center stage, with an emphasis on determining where the next attack against the United States or its allies could come from as well as gleaning the goals of various organizations and locations of their leaders.

The world is now in another new era, one in which information—and what is viewed as truth—is a central national-security concern. As such, the NIPF needs to include requirements that push analysts to discover how adversaries manipulate the information environment to meet their goals. It should task the Intelligence Community with assessing where, how, and to what extent states and organizations weaponize propaganda, mis- and disinformation, as well as political and social manipulation. While conversations on this issue date back to the mid-1990s, the day-to-day impact of such influence campaigns—combined with the technological capability to spread them quickly—means the United States must finally act.

Tweets, Facebook posts, and YouTube videos are not disparate pieces of content, but rather puzzle pieces that, when combined, reveal to intelligence analysts what their adversaries are working toward. From the actors actually carrying out these influence campaigns across the digital media space to the entities that oversee their strategic implementation, the entire system is akin to a completed piece—one which analysts and policymakers alike need to see in order to fully understand an adversary’s goals and objectives.

Understanding what adversaries plan to do in the short (one-year) and medium (three-year) term is vital to building domestic defenses. That’s why the following questions should serve as a starting point for developing new NIPF requirements:

What are the strategic goals of an adversary’s use of influence campaigns?
Who are the targets of influence campaigns, and why were they chosen?
What are the objectives of influence campaigns against the United States and its allies, and are there any specific timelines?
Who is responsible for crafting each adversary’s influence strategy?
What fiscal allocation is provided to those programs?
What government and non-government ministries, offices, or groups are responsible for conducting influence operations? How and why are they selected?
How are influence activities validated, measured, and evaluated?
What training is provided to tactical- and operational-level influence staff?
What tactics are used in influence campaigns? How are they selected based on target audiences?

Though by no means comprehensive, these basic influence-related requirements in the NIPF can compel the Intelligence Community to allocate resources toward building out a more robust understanding of how adversaries approach influence campaigns and exactly who is calling the shots. Understanding how influence is being used against the United States and its allies could also help the government better position all its agencies—from the State and Commerce departments to members of the Intelligence Community—to build offensive influence campaigns that persuade key audiences of Washington’s own goals and objectives.

Servicing NIPF priorities is no longer exclusively the domain of human-intelligence collectors at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Department of Defense, the signals-intelligence collectors at the National Security Administration, and counterintelligence agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Open Source Enterprise and similar US government organizations can use their open-source intelligence (OSINT) resources—both human and technology-based—to support the effort. Because foreign-influence operations often play out in the public domain, they can usually be identified, traced, and evaluated to determine their effectiveness against the targeted audience. Experts can piece together the goals and objectives of a specific campaign through OSINT, saving scarce resources such as a CIA operations officer’s time for higher-level collection on those who are actually conceiving, managing, and implementing influence campaigns.

Currently, the US government does not have a lead organization to manage offensive or defensive influence activities. As the Department of Homeland Security recently found, how a government entity frames intelligence-gathering on adversarial actions against US and allied audiences is politically fraught. Americans are culturally sensitive to any suggestion that the government could manipulate their views on issues or their access to information—from traditional news to social media content. A recent effort to establish a government office that works to limit Americans’ exposure to mis- and disinformation was viewed across the political spectrum as untenable and inappropriate.

But that does not mean the task is unnecessary or in violation of American civil liberties. Establishing a multi-agency task force of experts could be a viable first step: It would act as a manager tasking intelligence collection to better understand foreign influence operations; as a consumer of the newly gathered intelligence; and as an analyst producing formal reports for policymakers, as well as educational pieces for the US public to understand what it is seeing and hearing in the media, within social movements, and across politics. The goal would be to understand the “how” and “why” of foreign-influence campaigns and identify offensive campaigns in response that could advance US foreign-policy goals.

Difficult decisions need to be made around what is and is not included in the NIPF. Although there are only so many resources available to collect and analyze intelligence, prioritizing foreign-influence activities is vital. The information space is now at least as important—if not more so—than what happens on the physical battlefield.

Jennifer Counter is a nonresident senior fellow in the Forward Defense practice of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

6. The deficiency of "information"

To accompany this important analysis from Matt Armstrong (one of our nation's experts on political warfare and everything to do with "infleuence") here is a twitter threat:

Carrying the Gun

@carryingthegun

Both terms are poorly defined and poorly understood today.

But I’m not sure I agree with @mountainrunner

that folks confuse “information warfare” with political warfare.

I think - if people are thinking about these at all - they’d consider them two separate things.

Matt Armstrong

@mountainrunner

I don't recall saying that folks confuse one for the other. On the contrary, by using information warfare, they miss the complexities and breadth of political warfare. ClearIy, I need to be more clear and add that explicit statement.

Carrying the Gun

@carryingthegun

Replying to @mountainrunner

You're correct. The way I read it led to my inference - not yours - that folks might confuse the two.

I'd love to see a future article where you parse the two.

David Maxwell

@DavidMaxwell161

Interestingly the new JP 3-04, "Information in Joint Operations" was published last month. Although unclassified it requires a CAC card to access it on the JEL. The draft I reviewed last spring eliminated the term "information operations" as well as 1/X

David Maxwell

@DavidMaxwell161

"information operations intelligence integration," "information related capability," information superiority." JP 3-04 wll assume proponency for "information environment," "knowledge management," "operations in the information environment," "relevant actor," & "target audience"

David Maxwell

@DavidMaxwell161

Keep in mind that is from the draft and it could have been adjsuted in the final version but I would need to have access to confirm. Perhaps someone with access can share the "information."

The deficiency of "information"

Reflecting on the Cognitive Crucible pod interview of Russ Burgos + my Friday video chat

Matt Armstrong

3 hr ago

mountainrunner.substack.com · by Matt Armstrong

I recently listened to the Cognitive Crucible podcast with Professor Russ Burgos entitled “Information supply, demand, and effect.” Recorded two weeks ago, on 13 September, this was a terrific and timely discussion that had me rewinding and taking copious notes. [Full disclosure: I’m on the Board of Advisors of the Information Professionals Association, which hosts the Cognitive Crucible podcast.]

With the CC interview with Russ focused on the military, incidentally, this past Friday, 30 September, I participated in a Glasshouse video chat where I talked about national-level (and non-military issues) around what I prefer to call political warfare. I will repeat my near-mantra that I oppose the label “information warfare” because information is a munition and because the term evokes a narrow aperture, which Russ spoke to in his discussion on definitions.

Thanks for reading Arming for the War We're In! Subscribe for free to receive new posts.

Back to Russ. The following is not a summary but my comments on some of the points raised in the interview. If you’ve read this far, you’ll likely find Russ’s comments worth the one hour of your time.

First, Russ pointed out that the military “talks a lot about information” but lacks a definition of information. He exposes the point that information in the Defense Department is or can be, just about anything. In these “continuity errors,” the effects of the misuse and even misappropriation, these are my words here, of information is relevant and critical. We need to know, he said, what terms mean so we know what we mean when we use those terms.

“Definitions can lead us astray,” Russ pointed out, correctly implying that good definitions can foster focus. I enjoyed Russ’s focus on the semantics of defining information while labeling DOD’s use of “information” as promiscuous. While “cyber” was not mentioned, it was felt in the examples Russ gave to demonstrate the promiscuous or “loosey-goosey” use of “information” that leads to the overly expansive use of “information” that dilutes its meaning and value.

The “social dimension of information and influence” is, he said, “mostly present by omission in our current doctrinal understanding.” This point is understated in the interview and quickly passed over, yet it’s a critical point in his argument that our information operations are heavily “supply-side” focused.

Russ’s argument that we focus too heavily on the “supply-side” of information operations is important. We all have examples of hearing arguments that since country/actor x is doing y, we must do something to negate y. Russia does this, so we must do that. Setting aside this framework is inherently reactive, focusing on supply ignores the consumer and, by extension, if and why it is effective. Russ provides a great analogy with counter-battery fire: their artillery hurls a shell, so we must hurl something back to cancel it out. Edward R. Murrow’s famous “last three feet” statement also spoke to the defectiveness of this hurling idea: sending information thousands of miles (i.e., radio broadcasts) was easy, while the personalized and adaptable face-to-face, the last three feet, was the truly important part of influence.

It seems that the focus on the “supply-side” reflects post-1970s propaganda studies. I haven’t done a detailed analysis, but in my lay review of texts on discussing propaganda, texts from the 1940s and 1950s focused on why information operations were successful, while after the 1960s, texts tended to ignore questions around enabling efficacy and focus on the mere existence of information operations. Again, this is not the result of a serious literature review, merely my takeaway from reading books from these different periods. For example, a key takeaway of Nazi domestic propaganda by contemporary observers during and after WWII was not that the messaging existed, but a critical factor of success was dependent on the elimination of alternative sources of information. This lesson was a supporting argument for the Smith-Mundt Act, despite what some writers have suggested (without contemporary support for their modern theory around their false assertions of a prohibition on domestic access to the materials of the vast information operations authorized by the legislation).

Russ discussed focusing on the message could mask the need to focus on the desired effect. He brought up campaigns against drunk driving and smoking and how awareness was there but changed behavior was limited. Here, I was thinking about the difference between “the battle for hearts and minds” and “the struggle for minds and wills.” Readers are likely familiar with the former, and long-time readers of my writings should have heard the latter. For well over a decades, I’ve said publically that I’d love to see a dissertation looking at the likely effects “hearts and minds” had on US foreign policy post-9/11 while considering the potential differences if “minds and wills” were substituted. First, the former “battle” suggests a sports match where we chalk up a W or L and move on to the next event. Contrast this with the latter’s “struggle” which properly sets up an enduring event that may continue to exist even if there is an apparent pause. I’ve used the analogy of a tug of war: the two sides may have laid down the rope, but someone else pops in and gives the rope a jerk because it suits them, for example, and activities may resume. (You may see the connection to political warfare.)

Second, “hearts and minds” focuses on a popularity contest while “minds and wills,” a term used in the 1940s and 1950s, naturally focus message creators on affecting the will to act. “Why don’t they like us?” is a natural product of the former, while seeking if and why their information is effective is embedded in the latter, just as is embedding effects into our thinking about our “information” operations.

Consider this story shared with me many years ago. A bombmaker in Afghanistan is rolled up and asked why he makes bombs for people targeting ISAF forces. His reason: he is trying to make enough money to move his family to the US. We won his heart but did not affect his will to act appropriately.

Returning to the DOD’s promiscuity with “information,” an interesting implied problem was using a typology for “information” rather than a taxonomy. The typology vs. taxonomy point never came up, but, for me, there were neon lights around the issue. Russ described the plethora of definitions in the DOD dictionary that have “information” in their name. As Russ pointed out, in an actual dictionary, there would be “information” and “slugged off,” as he put it, would be the sub-definitions. The existing DOD dictionary is a typology, while Russ’s preference would be a taxonomy.

The taxonomy model also came up when Russ referred to the Russian division of information into two: “information-technical” and “information-psychological.” This recalled, for me, the problem with our use of “cyber” to be nearly anything that touches the digital world. It is important to remember that data is separate from influence, which was Russ’s point. However, this led to possibly the lone disagreement I had with Russ’s comments during the interview.

When asked for his definition of information, Russ said he currently used (subject to revision as he continues to work on this, he noted) a definition from the American Psychological Association: information “is knowledge about facts or ideas that is gained through investigation, experience, or practice to enable choice or reduce uncertainty.”

Let me be pedantic as I focus on the semantic point here and strongly disagree with the above definition. A quick background, first. Way back before I returned to the international relations field in 2004 (by the way, I launched the Mountainrunner blog in November 2004), I was in the technology sector and spent many years working on what was then called “knowledge management” systems (is it still? I don’t know). I was involved in knowledge management system design and development (soup to nuts, so to speak, selecting and customing the software systems, structured and unstructured data capture, including paper, redundant servers, and the storage area network… this was long before any cloud). Back then, data <> information <> knowledge. For example, a piece of data could be the price of a stock, but that means little without a bunch of that data, including dates and other prices on other dates (I worked for a large mutual fund company). Information would be a series of prices with dates, for example. Knowledge may be derived from the broader information pool and generally by joining other information (relevant news events, personal expertise, etc.) and other knowledge. The experience, practice, and experience with choices are what enable the transformation of mere information into knowledge. Reducing knowledge to “information” diminishes the multitude of factors involved, such as history and personal experience, just two elements in the “information” world – the “information-psychological” world – Russ spoke about.

Again, I recommend listening to Russ’s interview.

If you’ve read this far, you may also be interested in my appearance on the Cognitive Crucible pod recorded on 3 May 2021. That discussion with John was largely but not exclusively on the disinformation, misinformation, and facts around the Smith-Mundt Act. Too many think it’s an incidental law about not propagandizing Americans, but it’s not. With the rising recognition of political warfare, or “information warfare” if you must, the law and what it authorized are more relevant now than perhaps even in the 1940s and 1950s. Also, there’s the recent video chat about USIA, political warfare, and why the US has trouble in the “information warfare” space.

[Edit 1630 CET 2 October 2022: my comments above and elsewhere should not be construed as a suggestion that information warfare is political warfare by another name. They are not the same. The narrowness of “information warfare” as inherent by the very word “information” and what “information” evokes is substantively less than political warfare. I would say that information warfare is a subset of political warfare, except that information warfare is a problematic term of dangerous self-limitations. The use of information warfare, as suggested by Russ’s dive into the DOD’s “promiscuous” use of the term, misses the complexities and breadth of political warfare.]

Postscript

For a historical tidbit for those interested in organizational histories around information operations, Alton Frye wrote about an incredible series of events in his 1967 book, Nazi Germany and the American Hemisphere 1933-1941. I really enjoyed reading this book. Frye really dove into the archives and served up the results with easy to read style that was, at least for me, a joy and a page-turner. (My copy of Frye’s book was, based on the name written in the book, previously owned by Dr. RHS Stolfi, a professor emeritus at the Naval Postgraduate School.) It seems the German foreign ministry before a Nazi was installed as foreign minister, was upset with Nazi influence operations in South and Central America. The Nazi heavy-handedness was interfering with the diplomatic efforts to split the various countries away from the US and into economic bilaterals with Germany and generally supported Germany's aspirations. When Nazi Joachim von Ribbentrop was installed as foreign minister, an organizational battle ensued between him and Joseph Goebbels. The point of contention was Ribbentrop’s argument that he owned the international propaganda role and Goebbels owned the domestic propaganda operations. The two even set up rival press clubs in Berlin to “compete for the favors of foreign journalists,” Frye wrote. Ribbentrop convinced Hitler the foreign ministry owned “all propaganda intended for foreign consumption” and had movers from the foreign ministry go to Goebbels’s ministry to remove the machinery for printing, etc. Goebbels’s men “barricaded themselves in their rooms,” the Reich’s Press Chief later wrote, “and the Propaganda Minister himself promptly telephoned Hitler for help.” Hitler ordered both ministers to sit on Hitler’s train and come to an agreement. After three hours, “both men emerged red-faced and informed Hitler…that an agreement [on the division of roles] was impossible. Furious,” the Press Chief wrote, “Hitler withdrew and dictated a compromise decision which largely annulled his [previous] written order.” The power struggle between the two ministers was never resolved until the Allies resolved it later. Think again if you think the alleged masters of propaganda got the bureaucracy turf fights right.

Thanks for reading Arming for the War We're In! Subscribe for free to receive new posts.

mountainrunner.substack.com · by Matt Armstrong

7. Putin Is Trying to Outcrazy the West

The world is really upside down with Russia becoming a north Korea – "the north Koreanization of Russia." Can Putin out crazy crazy? Unfortunately neither Putin nor Kim are really crazy and we should not assume tey are.

Excerpts:

Such a Russia would not be just a geopolitical threat. It would be a human tragedy of mammoth proportions. Putin’s North Koreanization of Russia is turning a country that once gave the world some of its most renowned authors, composers, musicians and scientists into a nation more adept at making potato chips than microchips, more famous for its poisoned underwear than its haute couture and more focused on unlocking its underground reservoirs of gas and oil than on its aboveground reservoirs of human genius and creativity. The whole world is diminished by Putin’s diminishing of Russia.

...

I celebrate none of this. This is a time for Western leaders to be both tough and smart. They need to know when to swerve and when to make the other guy swerve, and when to leave some dignity out there for the other driver, even if he is behaving with utter disregard for anyone else. It may be that Putin has left us no choice but to learn to live with a Russian North Korea — at least as long as he is in charge. If that is the case, we’ll just have to make the best of it, but the best of it will be a much more unstable world.

Putin Is Trying to Outcrazy the West

nytimes.com · by Thomas L. Friedman · September 30, 2022

Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

With his annexation of parts of Ukraine on Friday, Vladimir Putin has set in motion forces that are turning Russia into a giant North Korea. It will be a paranoid, angry, isolated state, but unlike North Korea, the Russian version will be spread over 11 time zones — from the Arctic Sea to the Black Sea and from the edge of free Europe to the edge of Alaska — with thousands of nuclear warheads.

I have known a Russia that was strong, menacing, but stable — called the Soviet Union. I have known a Russia that was hopeful, potentially transitioning to democracy under Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin and even the younger Putin. I have known a Russia that was a “bad boy” under an older Putin, hacking America, poisoning opposition figures, but still a stable, reliable oil exporter and occasional security partner with the U.S. when we needed Moscow’s help in a pinch.

But none of us have ever known the Russia that a now desperate, back-against-the-wall Putin seems hellbent on delivering — a pariah Russia; a big, humiliated Russia; a Russia that has sent many of its most talented engineers, programmers and scientists fleeing through any exit they can find. This would be a Russia that has already lost so many trading partners that it can survive only as an oil and natural gas colony of China, a Russia that is a failed state, spewing out instability from every pore.

Such a Russia would not be just a geopolitical threat. It would be a human tragedy of mammoth proportions. Putin’s North Koreanization of Russia is turning a country that once gave the world some of its most renowned authors, composers, musicians and scientists into a nation more adept at making potato chips than microchips, more famous for its poisoned underwear than its haute couture and more focused on unlocking its underground reservoirs of gas and oil than on its aboveground reservoirs of human genius and creativity. The whole world is diminished by Putin’s diminishing of Russia.

But with Friday’s annexation, it’s hard to see any other outcome as long as Putin is in power. Why? Game theorist Thomas Schelling famously suggested that if you are playing chicken with another driver, the best way to win — the best way to get the other driver to swerve out of the way first — is if before the game starts you very conspicuously unscrew your steering wheel and throw it out the window. Message to the other driver: I’d love to get out of the way, but I can’t control my car anymore. You better swerve!

Trying to always outcrazy your opponent is a North Korean specialty. Now, Putin has adopted it, announcing with great fanfare that Russia is annexing four Ukrainian regions: Luhansk and Donetsk, the two Russian-backed regions where pro-Putin forces have been fighting Kyiv since 2014, and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, which have been occupied since shortly after Putin’s invasion in February. In a grand hall of the Kremlin, Putin declared Friday that the residents of these four regions would become Russia’s citizens forever.

What is Putin up to? One can only speculate. Start with his domestic politics. Putin’s base is not the students at Moscow State University. His base is the right-wing nationalists, who have grown increasingly angry at Russia’s military humiliation in Ukraine. To hold their support, Putin may have felt the need to show that, with his reserve call-up and annexation, he is fighting a real war for Mother Russia, not just a vague special military operation.

However, this could also be Putin trying to maneuver a favorable negotiated settlement. I would not be surprised if he soon announces his willingness for a cease-fire — and a willingness to repair pipelines and resume gas shipments to any country ready to recognize Russia’s annexation.

Putin could then claim to his nationalist base that he got something for his war, even if it was hugely expensive, and now he’s content to stop. There is just one problem: Putin does not actually control all the territory he is annexing.

That means he can’t settle for any deal unless and until he’s driven the Ukrainians out of all the territory he now claims; otherwise he would be surrendering what he just made into sovereign Russian territory. This could be a very ominous development. Putin’s battered army does not seem capable of seizing more territory and, in fact, seems to be losing more by the day.

By claiming territory that he doesn’t fully control, I fear Putin is painting himself into a corner that he might one day feel he can escape only with a nuclear weapon.

In any event, Putin seems to be daring Kyiv and its Western allies to keep the war going into winter — when natural gas supplies in Europe will be constrained and prices could be astronomical — to recover territories, some of which his Ukrainian proxies have had under Russia’s influence since 2014.

Will Ukraine and the West swerve? Will they plug their noses and do a dirty deal with Putin to stop his filthy war? Or will Ukraine and the West take him on, head-on, by insisting that Putin get no territorial achievement out of this war, so we uphold the principle of the inadmissibility of seizing territory by force?

Do not be fooled: There will be pressure within Europe to swerve and accept such a Putin offer. That is surely Putin’s aim — to divide the Western alliance and walk away with a face-saving “victory.”

But there is another short-term risk for Putin. If the West doesn’t swerve, doesn’t opt for a deal with him, but instead doubles down with more arms and financial aid for Ukraine, there is a chance that Putin’s army will collapse.

That is unpredictable. But here is what is totally predictable: A dynamic is now in place that will push Putin’s Russia even more toward the North Korea model. It starts with Putin’s decision to cut off most natural gas supplies to Western Europe.

There is only one cardinal sin in the energy business: Never, ever, ever make yourself an unreliable supplier. No one will ever trust you again. Putin has made himself an unreliable supplier to some of his oldest and best customers, starting with Germany and much of the European Union. They are all now looking for alternative, long-term supplies of natural gas and building more renewable power.

It will take two to three years for the new pipeline networks coming from the Eastern Mediterranean and liquefied natural gas coming from the United States and North Africa to begin to sustainably replace Russian gas at scale. But when that happens, and when world natural gas supplies increase generally to compensate for the loss of Russia’s gas — and as more renewables come online — Putin could face a real economic challenge. His old customers may still buy some energy from Russia, but they will never rely so totally on Russia again. And China will squeeze him for deep discounts.

In short, Putin is eroding the biggest source — maybe his only source — of sustainable long-term income. At the same time, his illegal annexation of regions of Ukraine guarantees that the Western sanctions on Russia will stay in place, or even accelerate, which will only accelerate Russia’s migration to failed-state status, as more and more Russians with globally marketable skills surely leave.

I celebrate none of this. This is a time for Western leaders to be both tough and smart. They need to know when to swerve and when to make the other guy swerve, and when to leave some dignity out there for the other driver, even if he is behaving with utter disregard for anyone else. It may be that Putin has left us no choice but to learn to live with a Russian North Korea — at least as long as he is in charge. If that is the case, we’ll just have to make the best of it, but the best of it will be a much more unstable world.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

nytimes.com · by Thomas L. Friedman · September 30, 2022

8. Indo-Pacific Component Commanders Stress Importance of Partners

This underscores one important point. As a global power we cannot fight alone - and perhaps because we are a global power with global responsibilities we must fight with our friends, partners, and allies. Unilateral operations will be few and far between and then only on a limited, precise, and small scale.

Indo-Pacific Component Commanders Stress Importance of Partners

defense.gov · by Jim Garamone

All the military component commanders of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command stress the need for partnership in the immense region of the world.

Group Photo

Sailors assigned to the Independence-variant littoral combat ship USS Charleston pose for a photo with service members from nations participating in the Royal Australian Navy’s Exercise Kakadu 2022 in Darwin, Australia, Sept. 13, 2022. The exercise brought together about 3,000 personnel, 15 warships and more than 30 aircraft from 22 countries.

SHARE IMAGE:

Photo By: Navy

VIRIN: 220913-N-YQ414-492M

Reporters traveling with Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III interviewed with the component commanders: Air Force Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach, the commander of Pacific Air Forces; Navy Adm. Samuel Paparo, commander of the Navy's Pacific Fleet, and Army Maj. Gen. Peter N. Benchoff, the chief of staff of U.S. Army Pacific.

They discussed the readiness of U.S. forces in the region to defend U.S. interests, and all emphasized the work soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Guardians do to build interoperability, understanding and procedures to work with allies, partners and friends.

The United States is a Pacific power with vital national interests spread throughout the region.

"Our objective is to, to help contribute to a free and open Indo-Pacific," Wilsbach said at his headquarters at Hickam Air Force Base. "We do that through mostly airpower, and we obviously have many airmen, and we have aircraft that can generate that air power. But one other way that we do this is through allies and partners."

Warm Welcome

Airmen assigned to U.S. Pacific Air Forces welcome Japan Air Self-Defense Force leadership to Hickam at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, Sept. 25, 2022. The JASDF 403rd Tactical Airlift Squadron joined PACAF’s 535th Airlift Squadron, participating in a three-day exercise and familiarizing aircrews from both services with the Kawasaki C-2 and the C-17 Globemaster III.

SHARE IMAGE:

Photo By: Air Force Staff Sgt. Alan Ricker

VIRIN: 220925-F-JA727-0044M

China is the pacing threat in the region, but Russia also maintains significant forces in the Pacific. "Clearly, China wants to be the world's only superpower, and they actually believe that everybody else has to be a loser, and they can be the only winner," Wilsbach said. "It's clear that they want to impose their will on the world, especially their close neighbors. And that's, that's counter to our objective of [being] free and open."

Pacific Air Forces is at a very high readiness level across the region from Alaska and Hawaii to Guam, Japan, and Korea, the general said. The airmen train hard and they interact with allies and partners all the time. "We get interoperability with those allies and partners," he said.

He spoke about the recently concluded Pitch Black exercise hosted by Australia. As the name implies, it is an exercise that emphasizes operating in low light. "There were 17 countries flying," he said. "And often when you have that many countries flying in one exercise, you actually have to reduce the complexity of the exercise so that everybody can participate."

But that didn't happen; there was not reduction in complexity, he said. "It was about as complicated as a mission as we train to. Watching the mission unfold, I was extremely impressed with the professionalism and the airmanship that was displayed by all 17 countries."

Pitch Black

A Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey conducts aerial refueling with a KC-130J Super Hercules, not pictured, over Australia, Aug. 29, 2022, during Pitch Black, the Australian air force's largest and most complex large force exercise.

SHARE IMAGE:

Photo By: Marine Corps Cpl. Evan Jones

VIRIN: 220829-M-AV179-3188C

Pitch Black

A service member stands next to a Marine Corps KC-130J Super Hercules aircraft during Pitch Black, the Australian air force’s large force employment exercise, at Royal Australian Air Force Base Tindal, Australia, Aug. 24, 2022.

SHARE IMAGE:

Photo By: Marine Corps Sgt. Jackson Ricker

VIRIN: 220824-M-BH827-1020M

The mission was safe, professional and executed with a high degree of skill and precision. "They achieved their objective for the overall objective for the mission," he said. "It was not an easy mission to do."

That same partnership happens with naval forces in the region. Paparo said he wants to see every U.S. Pacific Fleet operation partnered.

"Our connections from headquarters to headquarters, and our connection with embedded officers and staff, and in our connections with liaison officers — I don't think we've ever been more partnered than we are right now," the admiral said. "And, so, the lash ups from Korea, down to Australia and to the east to Tahiti, among all the partners, have really never been tighter."

U.S. Pacific Fleet has a significant effort to coordinate its bilateral and multilateral operations, and they are constant. The command is finishing up Noble Eagle, an exercise where two Canadian frigates, two Australian frigates, two Japanese destroyers and a U.S. destroyer operated dynamically throughout the South China Sea. The flotilla operated with common operating pictures and common command and control for 11 days.

"Our combined afloat readiness and training exercises with Singapore, with Malaysia, with Indonesia, with Bangladesh are examples" of partnered exercises, the admiral said. "In the areas where we must be bilateral, we are. In the ways that we can be multilateral, we are."

Final Checks

Soldiers do final checks while awaiting UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters as part of their combined air assault training during Cobra Gold in Thailand, Feb. 28, 2022. Cobra Gold is an international training exercise that supports readiness and emphasizes coordination on civic action, humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief.

SHARE IMAGE:

Photo By: Army Sgt. Brendon Green-Daring

VIRIN: 220228-A-MF526-0009

Convoy Ops

Soldiers conduct convoy operations in Thailand, Feb. 19, 2022, during Cobra Gold, an international training exercise.

SHARE IMAGE:

#specialforces #greenberet #greenberetfoundation #deoppressoliber #rememberthefallen #sof #specialoperations

Photo By: Katie Nelson

VIRIN: 220219-A-DO523-210C

Army forces in the Pacific also look to exercise and operate with allies and partners. Exercises with partners have grown in complexity and in members. Exercises like Cobra Gold in Thailand and Balikatan in the Philippines have grown "more multinational because our allies and partners out here see a change in the security requirements," Benchoff said.

Interoperability in ground forces is a problem, but the exercise program ensures the forces can communicate, can share information and intelligence, can operate effectively in operations from humanitarian relief to conflict, the general said.

The soldier-to-soldier aspect of these exercises is also important. "Us sleeping under a tree with an ally or a partner is instrumental to the joint force," he said. "These personal contacts go a long way to building interoperability."

Army forces work with other ground forces to help nations build capabilities. The Security Force Assistance Brigade works to keep soldiers forward to work with and train partner ground forces. This presence is invaluable, Benchoff said.

The challenges across the region require a unified approach, all three men said. China and Russia are competitors. North Korea is a rogue state that can surprise defense officials. The threat from extremist groups always exists.

The only constant is the need for allies, and Indo-Pacific Command is working on that.

Spotlight: Focus on Indo-Pacific Spotlight: Focus on Indo-Pacific: https://www.defense.gov/Spotlights/Focus-on-Indo-Pacific/

defense.gov · by Jim Garamone

9. How Western Errors Let the Taliban Win in Afghanistan

Excerpts;

I did the seemingly simpler thing. On the basis of the needs expressed, I organized a coordination meeting, inviting the ambassadors and the heads of the military contingents of all the countries involved, for 4 p.m. on Aug. 15. Everyone came, including the United Nations, the European Union, the United States, and all delegations present in the airport.

From that point, it was a continuous negotiation among the Americans, British, and others. I spent my days and often nights in contact with colleagues and military representatives of the various contingents to smooth out any misunderstanding that could risk disturbing the cooperation I was trying to foster and without which we would have risked leaving most of our Afghan colleagues behind. The atmosphere improved as the hours passed, the numbers of people leaving began to rise, and we soon started to see results as planes filled and took off.

The images of the thousands of desperate Afghans crowding around the airport gates trying to get in to board a plane to a different life will remain etched in our collective memory for a long time.

Was it supposed to end like this? Not necessarily. The epilogue of the Afghan intervention constitutes the final stage of a series of other Western misadventures that ended in almost the same way, starting from Vietnam onward, in which the common threads are always the same.

How Western Errors Let the Taliban Win in Afghanistan

NATO’s last man in Kabul helped facilitate the airlift and had a front-row seat to the Taliban takeover of the capital.

OCTOBER 2, 2022, 4:45 AM

Foreign Policy · by Stefano Pontecorvo · October 2, 2022

By Stefano Pontecorvo, a veteran Italian diplomat and NATO’s last Senior Civilian Representative for Afghanistan.

At 6:21 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 27, 2021, NATO’s Afghan adventure formally ended. At that moment, the Italian C-130 on which I was flying as the last representative of the Atlantic Alliance to leave the country crossed the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. For the first time in 20 years, Afghanistan was without a NATO presence.

We had left behind just under 7,000 U.S. and British soldiers, under national command, who would soon withdraw after having destroyed all the sensitive material left at Kabul’s airport, following the chaotic evacuation of Afghan personnel. We left the country and left it badly—in the hands of the same Taliban we had thrown out of power in just a few weeks 20 years earlier. And we left a country that had believed in us, condemning Afghans once again to a very different future from the one we had given them a glimpse of.

The U.S. and NATO exit from Afghanistan may seem simply an episodic defeat. In a broader context, however, the Afghan withdrawal adds to a series of U.S. failures, from Lebanon to the Arab Spring, Iraq, Somalia, Syria—all these adventures ended badly, and the situation left behind was worse. We find ourselves today with the same security problems we had 20 years ago.

The collapse began well before the tragic events of July and August 2021. The Afghan state and its economic and social fabric were progressively disintegrating under the weight of endemic corruption, weak democratic institutions, and political mistakes the West had committed and allowed others to commit.

The constant calls for an early withdrawal from Afghanistan made by successive U.S. presidents and European leaders over the past 20 years convinced the Taliban and their supporters, but above all the Afghan people, that the West did not collectively have the determination necessary to carry out the task.

The signing, on Feb. 29, 2020, of the Doha Agreement between the United States and the Taliban, which sanctioned the withdrawal of foreign forces from the country, was the beginning of the end for the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

People are evacuated from Kabul on Aug. 24, 2021.

In a handout photo from the U.S. Air Force, people are evacuated from Kabul on Aug. 24, 2021. Master Sgt. Donald R. Allen/U.S. Air Forces Europe-Africa via Getty Images

The Doha Agreement, controversial since its negotiation, had the explosive effect for Afghanistan of formalizing a precise date for the end of the international military presence in the country, which was the only element capable of keeping the system in that condition of unstable equilibrium to which the authorities and the population had become accustomed and which had held in check the growing Taliban activity that the Afghan security forces were unable to defeat on their own.

This article is adapted from L’ultimo aereo da Kabul: Cronaca di una missione impossibile (The Last Plane From Kabul: Chronicle of an Impossible Mission) by Stefano Pontecorvo (Piemme, 320 pp., €18.50, June 2022).

The deal was presented as a peace agreement, but it was always clearly aimed at allowing the withdrawal of U.S. (and international) forces by securing them against Taliban attacks.

Contrary to the wise practice of negotiating from a position of strength, the United States entered the negotiations from a position of relative weakness, given the imperative to find a way to safely leave the country within a relatively short time frame.

The effect of the agreement was profoundly disruptive as it definitively broke the balance of power in Afghanistan in favor of the Taliban, from whom nothing was asked except the safety of U.S. and allied troops and anti-terrorism guarantees that were more cosmetic than real.

The agreement also signaled to the Taliban and to the Afghan population that the United States and the West did not have the determination and strategic patience to finish the work that had started with the 2001 invasion and carry out the plan for a peaceful Afghanistan.

In this environment, the announcement on April 14, 2021, that U.S. President Joe Biden had decided to go ahead with the U.S. withdrawal kneecapped the Doha talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government, which continued for a short time before being suspended altogether.

Between the initial announcement of the U.S. withdrawal in February 2020 and the confirmation of its date by the new U.S. administration in April 2021, there had been an evolution in the sentiment of the Afghan population toward the United States and NATO—and our Afghan colleagues were no exception. Rather than friends and benefactors, we were now portrayed as untrustworthy and, more and more openly, as traitors.

By July 2021, the Taliban were confident and on the offensive. The pace of the Taliban conquest of the country was impressive. On June 25, the Taliban controlled 99 of the 412 districts in the country; by July 14, they controlled 218. Taliban fighters stopped on the outskirts of Kabul for a couple of days, not only to wait for the finalization of the agreement that was emerging but also because of the instructions given by the Taliban’s senior leadership council, the Quetta Shura, which wanted the Taliban leaders of Kandahar and of the South to take possession of Kabul.

Still, Western officials did not expect the Afghan government to flee or for Kabul to fall so quickly. Indeed, a memorandum marked “For Official Use Only”—drawn up following a coordination meeting of the U.S. National Security Council on the afternoon of Aug. 14 and later leaked to the press—gives a snapshot of the dramatic lack of preparedness with which Washington faced the evacuation.

As Taliban forces entered Kabul and approached the presidential palace on Aug. 15, President Ashraf Ghani abruptly fled the capital in a helicopter bound for Uzbekistan. The news of the president’s flight, which spread like wildfire, immediately led to the few remaining Afghan guards abandoning their posts together with the staff of the civilian airport, which by the afternoon was completely unguarded. Eight Taliban arrived a few hours later, apparently out of curiosity—but then stayed and took possession of it—settling down to drink tea and Coca-Cola in the VIP room on the ground floor.

On the evening of Aug. 16, given the lack of a U.S. guarantee to secure the capital, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, in agreement with Abdullah Abdullah, the head of the High Council for National Reconciliation, invited the Taliban to enter Kabul to “protect the population and prevent the country and the city falling into chaos.”

A Taliban fighter tries to take a picture of a remaining C-17 flight taking off in Kabul on Aug. 29, 2021.

A Taliban fighter tries to take a picture of a remaining C-17 flight taking off in Kabul on Aug. 29, 2021. MARCUS YAM/LOS ANGELES TIMES/Getty Images

To say that the evacuation took place in a surreal atmosphere is an understatement. The planning that the various countries, starting with the United States, had belatedly put in place collided with a reality that no one had imagined, the disappearance of the Republic already in mid-August, putting us in a situation for which, consequently, no one was ready.

As often happens, there was a discrepancy between the realism of the intelligence services and the military and the picture that is painted at the political level. As late as July 8, 2021, Biden was publicly declaring that the Afghan government was unlikely to fall, whereas the coalition military did not hide that the Afghan state was shaky and the armed forces were not in a position to fight. These signals were clearly provided to the U.S. leadership and to the other members of the coalition, who reacted in opposite ways: Washington insisting on the withdrawal and the others calling for a revision of conditions and dates.

Meanwhile, the crowd had grown around the airport and became unmanageable in the absence of any control. The few government guards had vanished, and the Taliban had not yet ventured to the military part of the airport. When they arrived, we noticed it, not because the crowd became more orderly but because the only way the Taliban knew to keep people at bay was to shoot rounds upon rounds of bullets in the air.

The unease was increased by the fact that we had no knowledge of what was happening outside the walls and of the developments regarding the timing of operations, which largely depended on the decisions that would be made in Washington. In Kabul, the Americans were grappling with the sheer size of the problem they had on their hands and struggling to reorganize the evacuation and the consular functions at the airport that they could no longer perform in the city.

Planes of various nationalities, scattered in the region among the Gulf, Pakistan, and neighboring countries, waited for passengers who could not get through the airport gates. The troops did their best, but the planes, including the U.S. ones, took off empty or nearly empty.

The U.S. bases in the Gulf became refugee camps, set up quickly, in which those who were evacuated were herded for weeks in makeshift facilities with temperatures of over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

I did the seemingly simpler thing. On the basis of the needs expressed, I organized a coordination meeting, inviting the ambassadors and the heads of the military contingents of all the countries involved, for 4 p.m. on Aug. 15. Everyone came, including the United Nations, the European Union, the United States, and all delegations present in the airport.

From that point, it was a continuous negotiation among the Americans, British, and others. I spent my days and often nights in contact with colleagues and military representatives of the various contingents to smooth out any misunderstanding that could risk disturbing the cooperation I was trying to foster and without which we would have risked leaving most of our Afghan colleagues behind. The atmosphere improved as the hours passed, the numbers of people leaving began to rise, and we soon started to see results as planes filled and took off.

The images of the thousands of desperate Afghans crowding around the airport gates trying to get in to board a plane to a different life will remain etched in our collective memory for a long time.

Was it supposed to end like this? Not necessarily. The epilogue of the Afghan intervention constitutes the final stage of a series of other Western misadventures that ended in almost the same way, starting from Vietnam onward, in which the common threads are always the same.

Foreign Policy · by Stefano Pontecorvo · October 2, 2022

10. Timothy Lomperis: Ukraine's lesson for Vietnam, Afghanistan

Obvious lessons we rarely learn.

Excerpts:

The main lesson that I’ve drawn from my research is that any hand-off plan needs to have a small residual American military force remain in-country to block insurgents from attempting a frontal military power grab. In 1973, then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger negotiated a peace agreement with North Vietnam that included many provisions, but not one for a residual American military force. He has since acknowledged that this was his critical mistake. Without it, South Vietnam fell in two short years.

...

Rather, the key lesson comes from the current war in Ukraine: the will to fight by those defending their homeland. Whatever the level of American support, this will to fight was lacking in both South Vietnam and Afghanistan. In both countries, overwhelming government advantages in troop numbers over the insurgents (in Afghanistan it was ten to one), could not substitute for this lack of will by local government troops. The final blow to the will to fight in both countries was delivered by their national leaders, who abandoned their fellow countrymen in the final insurgent offensive. Both presidents—Nguyen Van Thieu in Vietnam and Ashraf Ghani in Afghanistan—fled in their regime’s final two weeks; and, in both cases, their armies simply dissolved.

In sharp contrast, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, in his army fatigue muscle T-shirts, is a constant inspiring daily presence boosting the morale of his fellow citizens. He has become the Winston Churchill of the twenty-first century. Inspired by him, and their deep love for their homeland, the vastly outnumbered Ukrainian forces, both in troops and equipment, are inflicting crushing losses on increasingly demoralized Russian troops. The influx of mostly American military weaponry into Ukraine certainly helps, but nothing can substitute for the zeal of the Ukrainian will to fight. Thus, in our continued support for the preservation of a free and independent Ukraine, nothing should be spared.

Timothy Lomperis: Ukraine's lesson for Vietnam, Afghanistan

thedailytimes.com

Oct 1, 2022

For as long as I can remember, the United States has been fighting so-called “limited wars” and counterinsurgencies in support of one foreign policy objective or another. The two longest, and therefore most costly in blood and treasure, have been the Vietnam War (1960-1975) and the recent war in Afghanistan (2001-2021). The former was to stop a communist revolution and the latter was to deny a haven for Islamic terrorists. They deserve some scrutiny because these two, and most of the others — Korea, Iraq, Bosnia, Libya, and Syria — have not turned out well.

I served two tours of duty in Vietnam in 1972 and 1973, and then spent my entire academic career in search of a key lesson from that divisive conflict. Initially, two candidate lessons caught my eye. First, insurgencies take a long time. So, when a country like the United States with global foreign policy interests intervenes in a local insurgency, it needs a handoff plan when, over time, other national priorities take over. America had such a handoff plan for Vietnam called Vietnamization. This meant that America gradually handed over the bulk of fighting to the Vietnamese. It worked for a while, but collapsed in the end. In Afghanistan, other priorities from other conflicts kept interfering — like the war in Iraq and then the ISIS take-over of huge swaths of Syria — so that a handoff plan never developed.

Second, once a hand-off plan is in place, it is a bad idea to publicly announce a schedule for American troop withdrawals. Such pronouncements have the effect of demoralizing both the remaining American and local forces, in addition to providing the enemy with information for developing its own plan of counterattack after the remaining foreign forces have been withdrawn. In Vietnam, the draw-down was so prolonged that the combat effectiveness of the remaining American troops degenerated, and this had a contagious impact on Vietnamese troops. In contrast, in Afghanistan when President Obama announced a surge of American troops in 2010, he declared that he would start withdrawing these troops just six months later. As a hand-off plan, this was useless because so little could be accomplished in so short a time.

The main lesson that I’ve drawn from my research is that any hand-off plan needs to have a small residual American military force remain in-country to block insurgents from attempting a frontal military power grab. In 1973, then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger negotiated a peace agreement with North Vietnam that included many provisions, but not one for a residual American military force. He has since acknowledged that this was his critical mistake. Without it, South Vietnam fell in two short years.

Seeking to compensate for this, the virtually unanimous recommendation to President Biden from the entire Pentagon for Afghanistan was to provide for a residual American military force in-country after any peace agreement had been reached. But Biden ignored this advice, and the rapid collapse of the government in Afghanistan to the insurgent Taliban last year is still staggering.

Upon further reflection, I am not sure that a residual force really is the key lesson for such conflicts. In my memoir, “The Vietnam War from the Rear Echelon” (2011), I reluctantly concluded that even with an American residual force remaining in Vietnam, Saigon would have fallen anyway.

Rather, the key lesson comes from the current war in Ukraine: the will to fight by those defending their homeland. Whatever the level of American support, this will to fight was lacking in both South Vietnam and Afghanistan. In both countries, overwhelming government advantages in troop numbers over the insurgents (in Afghanistan it was ten to one), could not substitute for this lack of will by local government troops. The final blow to the will to fight in both countries was delivered by their national leaders, who abandoned their fellow countrymen in the final insurgent offensive. Both presidents—Nguyen Van Thieu in Vietnam and Ashraf Ghani in Afghanistan—fled in their regime’s final two weeks; and, in both cases, their armies simply dissolved.

In sharp contrast, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, in his army fatigue muscle T-shirts, is a constant inspiring daily presence boosting the morale of his fellow citizens. He has become the Winston Churchill of the twenty-first century. Inspired by him, and their deep love for their homeland, the vastly outnumbered Ukrainian forces, both in troops and equipment, are inflicting crushing losses on increasingly demoralized Russian troops. The influx of mostly American military weaponry into Ukraine certainly helps, but nothing can substitute for the zeal of the Ukrainian will to fight. Thus, in our continued support for the preservation of a free and independent Ukraine, nothing should be spared.

Tim Lomperis is a Maryville resident, former military intelligence officer, author and political science professor emeritus at Saint Louis University. He worked in the Vietnamese Resettlement Program from 1975-76. Email him at tjlomperis@gmail.com.

thedailytimes.com

11. On this October Day 2002 and 2012 - Special Forces KIA

Mark Jackson was killed by a vehicle (motorcycle) IED before IEDs were "popularized" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The cost of the GWOT is paid in blood from these men and military personnel like them.

Green Beret Foundation

34,233 followers

2h •

2 hours ago

Today we remember Sgt. 1st Class Mark Jackson killed in a terrorist bombing in the Philippines on this day in 2002. We also remember Sgt. 1st Class Aaron Henderson who died of wounds suffered from an improvised explosive device on this day in 2012.

SFC Jackson was assigned to 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) U.S Army and SFC Henderson was assigned to 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) - US Army.

Memorial Wall: https://lnkd.in/e3vgw9n

De Oppresso Liber!

Mark W. Jackson

SFC

https://greenberetfoundation.org/memorial-wall/

06/07/1962 - 10/02/2002

OEF-P OPERATIONAL DETACHMENT ALPHA 145

SAGINAW, MI

Sergeant First Class Mark Wayne Jackson was born at Saint Luke Hospital in Saginaw, Michigan to the proud parents of William Alva and Janice Marie Jackson on June 7th, 1962.

He spent his youth between Saginaw, Michigan, Bridge Port, Michigan and Swan Valley, Michigan. While growing up, Sergeant First Class Jackson balanced his time between academics, hunting, fishing, football, wrestling and track. He graduated from the Swan Valley School system in June 1981. After graduation, Sergeant First Class Jackson got a job as a mason tender in Tawas, Michigan, and later enrolled in Delta College.

Sergeant First Class Jackson started his military career in 1983 with attendance to Basic Training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, as a member of the United States Army Reserve. Additionally, he completed the Motor Transport Operators course and on the job training as an artillery soldier in B Battery, 4th Battalion, 38th Field Artillery at Bad Axe, Michigan. While assigned there he was promoted from Private First Class through Sergeant.

In February of 1986, Sergeant First Class Jackson joined the Active Army and attended the cannon crewman course at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and continued on to Airborne School at Fort Benning, Georgia, as a Private First Class. He was assigned to C Battery, 1st Battalion, 319th Field Artillery Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. While assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division, he attended a Combat Lifesaver Course, Unit Armors Course and Jungle Warfare Training at Fort Sherman, Panama. He was promoted to Specialist in January 1987.

In November 1987, Sergeant First Class Jackson was assigned to A Battery, 2nd Battalion, 20th Field Artillery Regiment in Hanau, Germany. He participated in numerous training exercises, attended Primary Leadership Development Course (PLDC), and completed Basic Non-commissioned Officers Course (BNOC). He was promoted to Sergeant in November 1988.

In March 1990, Sergeant First Class Jackson was assigned to the 18th Airborne Corps, Noncommissioned Officers Course where he taught PLDC and BNOC and acted as the Reenlistment NCO. While assigned to the 18th Airborne Corps, he was promoted to the rank of Staff Sergeant and attended the Instructor Training Course, Ranger Course, Advanced Noncommissioned Officer Course, and the Jumpmaster Course.

In August 1993, Sergeant First Class Jackson volunteered for Special Forces Training. He graduated from the Special Forces Weapons Sergeants Course at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and went on to complete the Basic Military Language Course for Persian Farsi in August 1994.

In September 1994, Sergeant First Class Jackson was assigned to Company C, 1st Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. He served on Operational Detachment Alpha 536. During his time in the 5th Special Forces Group, he participated in numerous overseas deployments to Kuwait, Jordan, Bahrain, and Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti. Additionally, he attended the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape High Risk course, Tank Commander

Certification Course, Aviation in Foreign Internal Defense Course, and the Special Forces Assistant Operations Course. In November 1998, Sergeant First Class Jackson attended the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, for basic Arabic and graduated from in December 1999.

In December 1999, Sergeant First Class Jackson was assigned to Company A, 2nd Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) at Fort Lewis, Washington, and became a member of Operational Detachment Alpha 142. He served as the Assistant Operations Sergeant for numerous deployments in South East Asia.

In August 2002, Sergeant First Class Jackson was assigned as the Operations Sergeant of Operational Detachment Alpha 145. On October 2nd 2002, while participating in Operation Enduring Freedom, Sergeant First Class Jackson was killed in the Republic of the Philippines.

Sergeant First Class Mark Jackson was a highly decorated soldier whose awards include the Legion of Merit, Purple Heart, Meritorious Service Medal with oak leaf cluster, the Army Commendation Medal with three oak leaf clusters, the Joint Service Achievement Medal, the Army Achievement Medal with five oak leaf clusters, the Southwest Asia Service Ribbon with Bronze Service Star, the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal with arrowhead, the Army Good Conduct Medal fifth award, the National Defense Service Ribbon with Bronze Star, the Noncommissioned Officer Professional Development Ribbon with three device, the Army Service Ribbon, and the Army Overseas Service Ribbon. Sergeant First Class Jackson's decorations include the Expert Infantry Badge, the Master Parachutists Badge, the Military Free Fall Badge, the Special Forces Tab, the Ranger Tab, the Jordanian Parachutist Badge, the Bahraini Parachutist Badge, the Russian Parachutist Badge, the Korean Parachutist Badge, and the Royal Thai Army Parachutist Badge, and the Armed Forces of the Philippines Merit Medal (Posthumously).

Sergeant First Class Jackson is survived by his father William, mother Janice, brother Richard, and sister Kimberly.

Aaron A. Henderson

SFC

https://greenberetfoundation.org/memorial-wall/

04/19/1979 - 10/02/2012

OEF COMPANY A, 2ND BATTALION, 5TH SPECIAL FORCES GROUP (AIRBORNE)

HOULTON, ME

Sgt. 1st Class Aaron A. Henderson, 33, of Houlton, Maine, died Oct. 2 of wounds sustained from an improvised explosive device attack on Sept. 30, in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

He was assigned to Company A, 2nd Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), Fort Campbell, Ky., and was deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

Henderson enlisted as an administrative specialist in the U.S. Army in 2000. Upon completion of his initial training, he was assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 24th Transportation Battalion at Fort Eustis, Va. His next assignment was with U.S. Army Garrison – Japan, Camp Zama, Japan, where he served as the Officer Management Branch NCOIC.

Henderson volunteered for the Special Forces Assessment and Selection Course and graduated from the Special Forces Qualification Course in 2006. Upon earning his Special Forces Tab, he initially reported to HHC, 5th SFG (A) as the communications chief. He was then assigned to 2nd Bn., 5th SFG (A) as a Special Forces senior communications sergeant. He served on three deployments to Iraq and one to Afghanistan with 2nd Bn.

His military education includes: Special Operations Command Jumpmaster Course, Senior Leader Course, U.S. Army Combatives Course Level 1, Advanced Special Operations Techniques Course, Combat Diver Qualification Course, U.S. Army Ranger School, Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape Course, Special Forces Qualification Course, Advanced Leaders Course, U.S. Army Airborne School, Combat Life Savers Course, and Warrior Leader Course.

Henderson's military awards and decorations include the Bronze Star Medal, Purple Heart, Meritorious Service Medal, four Army Commendation Medals, five Army Achievement Medals, Iraqi Campaign Medal with four campaign stars, the Noncommissioned Officer Professional Development Ribbon with a three device, Overseas Service Ribbon with a two device, NATO Medal, and Driver and Mechanic Badge (Wheeled).

Henderson is survived by his mother and his brother.

– DE OPPRESSO LIBER –

12. US, Australia and Japan vow to work together against China

US, Australia and Japan vow to work together against China

The United States is pressing a diplomatic offensive to counter Chinese influence in the Asia-Pacific region
The defence ministers of the US, Australia and Japan agreed on Saturday to boost military cooperation in the face of China’s growing ambitions

Agencies

+ FOLLOW

Published: 9:20am, 2 Oct, 2022

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/article/3194551/us-australia-and-japan-vow-work-together-against-china?utm_source=rss_feed

The defence ministers of the United States, Australia and Japan agreed on Saturday to boost military cooperation in the face of China’s growing ambitions.

During their talks in Hawaii, the ministers also “strongly condemned” China’s ballistic missile launches across the Taiwan Strait in August after US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, the Japanese defence Ministry said.

“We will continue to strengthen trilateral cooperation to contribute to the realisation of a free and open Indo-Pacific,” Japanese Defence Minister Yasukazu Hamada told reporters.

“We are deeply concerned by China’s increasingly aggressive and bullying behaviour in the Taiwan Strait, and elsewhere in the region,” US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said as he welcomed his counterparts from Australia and Japan to the US military headquarters for the Pacific region.

Why mainland China is holding military drills in Taiwan Strait following US Speaker Pelosi’s trip

“Our interest lies in the upholding of the global rules-based order. But we see that order under pressure in the Indo-Pacific as well, as China is seeking to shape the world around it in a way that we’ve not seen before,” said the Australian minister, Richard Marles.

Hamada also said the ministers confirmed their opposition to “any act that escalates tensions” in reference to the Chinese test-firings of ballistic missiles, some of which fell in Japan’s exclusive economic zone.

China conducted large-scale military drills in response to Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan, which China regards as a breakaway province to be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary. Beijing opposes official contact between the self-ruled island and the United States.

US VP Harris ends Asia trip with DMZ visit, slams North Korean missile tests

29 Sep 2022

The ministers vowed to encourage a peaceful resolution of cross-strait issues, the ministry added.

Vice-President Kamala Harris travelled last week to Japan and South Korea and said the United States would act without fear or hesitation throughout Asia, including the Taiwan Strait.

Beijing considers Taiwan to be a renegade province and also claims the thin and busy channel of water that separate the two.

Harris also travelled to Seoul and visited the demilitarised zone between the two Koreas. Her visit was designed to show Washington’s commitment to defending South Korea against North Korea.

The United States is pressing a diplomatic offensive to counter Chinese influence in the region.

US seeks to reassure Pacific island nations with US$810 million package

30 Sep 2022

On Thursday Washington announced an US$810 million aid package for Pacific Island nations where the United States plans to intensify its diplomatic presence.

To enhance interoperability among their forces, the three countries pledged to expand trilateral drills and facilitate cooperation in defence equipment, technology and information gathering, according to the ministry.

The defence ministerial meeting between Japan, the United States and Australia was the first since they met in Singapore in June on the sidelines of the Asia Security Summit, known as the Shangri-La Dialogue.

Reporting by Agence France-Presse, Kyodo

13. Readout of Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III's Trilateral Defense Ministers Meeting

I wonder why India was not there to make the Quad?

Readout of Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III's Trilateral Defense Ministers Meeting

defense.gov

Release

Immediate Release

Oct. 1, 2022 |

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III, Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence Richard Marles, and Japanese Minister of Defense Hamada Yasukazu convened a Trilateral Defense Ministers Meeting (TDMM) in Hawaii on October 1. The defense leaders met to review progress on a wide range of concrete initiatives discussed at the last TDMM held in Singapore in June.

During the meeting, the ministers exchanged views on the regional security environment, and discussed deepening trilateral defense cooperation on enhanced information sharing, exercises, and science and technology initiatives. With the second TDMM of 2022 having reaffirmed strategic alignment among the three leaders, the ministers committed to taking concrete, practical steps together in order to anchor stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region.

Indo-Pacific Austin Defense Secretary Japan Australia Exercises Science technology

defense.gov

14. Top Philippine defense official holds first in-person meeting with US counterpart

Seems like the SECDEF had some productive meetings in Hawaii. I hope he was able to get a little leave to rest and recuperate. (But I doubt it).

Top Philippine defense official holds first in-person meeting with US counterpart

In Hawaii, Jose Faustino Jr. and Lloyd Austin reaffirm a commitment to stronger bilateral military ties.

BY Basilio Sepe and Luis Liwanag for BenarNews

2022.09.30

Longtime allies the Philippines and United States reaffirmed their commitment to strengthening bilateral military cooperation on Friday, as their top defense officials met in-person for the first time since a new government took office in Manila.

Acting Philippine Defense Secretary Jose Faustino Jr. and his American counterpart, Lloyd Austin, both articulated their support for stronger cooperation after meeting in Hawaii on Friday (Manila time) to discuss a range of security concerns.

The administration of President Ferdinand E. Marcos Jr., who was elected in a landslide in May, has moved swiftly to firm up ties with the U.S., marking a departure from the previous administration. Under former President Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines drifted away from its alliance with America and closer to China, despite territorial wrangling in the South China Sea.

The first face-to-face meeting between the defense officials also took place amid mounting tensions in the Taiwan Strait. Security officials and analysts had earlier said that if a conflict broke out there, the Philippines, as a decades-old ally of the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, could offer a staging area for responding U.S. forces.

Austin said that he had a “robust dialogue” with Faustino “on positioning the alliance to address emerging challenges.”

Both countries are bound by a 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty that calls on each side to come to the other’s aid in times of external attacks. The Americans had earlier reminded China of this in the midst of its military expansionism in the South China Sea.

“You’ve heard me say a couple of times that I cannot imagine a day when the United States and the Philippines aren’t allies. It’s who we are,” Austin said during a joint press conference at the headquarters of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, according to transcripts released to the Philippine journalists in Manila.

“Again, I consider us to be more family.”

Austin noted that both countries reaffirmed the Visiting Forces Agreement, which allows for large-scale joint exercises, as well as an agreement granting permission to the American forces to pre-position defense assets on Philippine soil.

Both are “critical to our alliance cooperation and strengthening our combined capabilities,” he said.

Of particular concern are developments in the South China Sea, where China, the Philippines as well as other Southeast Asian nations have competing claims. In 2016, an international court of arbitration ruled in favor of Manila in a landmark case that the Philippines brought against China.

But instead of seeking to enforce the ruling, the previous president, Duterte, pursued warmer relations with China in exchange for the promised largesse of Chinese investments. Although he took a tougher stance before ending his term this year, analysts have said that Duterte did too little, too late to counter Chinese expansionist moves in the maritime region, while he constantly launched verbal attacks against the U.S.

His successor, Marcos, is seeking to reverse that strategy.

While in New York last week, he and U.S. President Joe Biden held a one-to-one meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly to discuss, among other things, boosting the bilateral alliance.

Faustino said the Philippines still believed that “diplomacy and dialogue” were crucial in resolving the South China Sea question.

“This includes continuing … engagement with China in both bilateral and multilateral platforms and multilateral dialogues, without prejudice to the Philippines position in the West Philippine Sea to facilitate mutual trust and understanding,” Faustino said, using the Philippine term for the South China Sea.

However, the “volatile situation” in the disputed sea region remains “the Philippines’ foremost security concern,” the acting Filipino defense chief told reporters in Hawaii.

The Philippines’ defense and security engagement with the U.S. “remains the key pillar of the Philippine-U.S. bilateral relations,” Faustino said, noting that the defense treaty was the bedrock of his country’s “national defense policy.”

“We look forward after this bilateral meeting [to having] a more robust cooperation particularly in issues pertaining to external threats to our country, and coming up with other avenues of operation where we could discuss things with mutual interest to the U.S. and Philippines,” he said.

Taiwan Strait

The top defense officials also discussed tensions in the Taiwan Strait.

Aside from Taiwan’s location near the Philippines’ northernmost tip, tens of thousands of Filipinos work on the island that Beijing considers a renegade province and they could be in danger if the Taiwanese came under attack, Faustino said.

“While the Philippines adheres to the One China Policy, we urge all concerned parties to exercise restraint, and that diplomacy and dialogue must prevail,” he said, adding that Manila’s most pressing concern at this time was the safety of its estimated 150,000 citizens working in Taiwan.

Washington, meanwhile, does not “want to see any type of unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait,” Austin said. “We are focused on making sure that we are working together to maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

The meeting in Hawaii took place ahead of a 12-day training exercise involving 2,550 U.S. Marines and some 630 Filipino counterparts.

The exercises, dubbed Kamandag, are to be held in various provinces, including in areas facing the West Philippine Sea. Troops from the Japan Self-Defense Force as well as from the Korea Marine Corps are expected to join as observers, the Philippine military said.

The drills, it said, aim to “enhance bilateral cooperation and interoperability among participating forces in the conduct of combined tactical operations.”

Specifically, the training is meant to enhance the capability of the two sides in the field of special operations, coast defense, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) response and Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear operations, the Philippine military said.

Maj. Gen. Charlton Sean Gaerlan, the Philippine Marine chief, said his side hoped to learn from the Americans about advanced techniques in amphibious operations and special operations, particularly in “territorial defense capabilities.”

“Through this exercise, we are able to learn from their techniques, tactics, and procedures to develop our interoperability strategy in the Philippine Marine Corps, especially as we operationalize our Marine Corps Operating Concept for Archipelagic Coastal Defense,” he said.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service.