Quotes of the Day:
"The tranquility that comes when you stop caring what they say. Or think, or do. Only what you do"
- Marcus Aurelius
"In the future, we should anticipate seeing more hybrid wars where conventional warfare, irregular warfare, asymmetric warfare, and information warfare all blend together, creating a very complex and challenging situation to the combatants; therefore it will require military forces to posses hybrid capabilities, which might help deal with hybrid threats."
- Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono
“Don’t be buffaloed by experts and elites. Experts often possess more data than judgment. Elites can become so inbred that they produce hemophiliacs who bleed to death as soon as they are nicked by the real world."
-Colin Powell
1. Chinese detective in exile reveals torture inflicted on Uyghurs
2. WhatsApp outage ‘a nightmare’ for group working to rescue Afghans, American citizens
3. A U.S. Military First: The War in Afghanistan Ended With Zero M.I.A.s
4. Most Americans support resettling Afghans in US: Poll
5. Our Foreign Policy Elite Has Learned Nothing From Afghanistan
6. Is Ukraine Really Pivoting Towards China?
7. What we know about the retired Green Beret recently arrested over the Jan. 6 Capitol riot
8. Taiwan and the Fight for Democracy
9. A debt limit default looms. Here’s why the Pentagon should be concerned.
10. Congress moves toward requiring women to register for the draft
11. Belt and Road Meets Build Back Better
12. How Not to Build a State
13. History hasn’t ended
14. One of These Things is Not Like the Others: Increasing Diversity Through Recruiting
15. ‘Unease’: NATO faces uncertainty amid Afghanistan withdrawal, China’s rise
16. Hypersonic Missiles: The Alarming Must-have In Military Tech
17. Should America Fight A War with China over Taiwan? Hell No.
18. Quad: A Mini-NATO In Disarray – OpEd
19. Chinese war film about victory over US trounces Bond at box office
1. Chinese detective in exile reveals torture inflicted on Uyghurs
A report of brutal torture with graphic descriptions that some will find troubling to read.
Despite the tragedy and immense suffering I am always inspired by people who have the will to survive.
Excerpt:
"I survived from this psychological torture because I am a religious person," Bekali said. "I would never have survived this without my faith. My faith for life, my passion for freedom kept me alive."
Chinese detective in exile reveals torture inflicted on Uyghurs
CNN · by Rebecca Wright, Ivan Watson, Zahid Mahmood and Tom Booth, CNN
(CNN)The raids started after midnight in Xinjiang.
Hundreds of police officers armed with rifles went house to house in Uyghur communities in the far western region of China, pulling people from their homes, handcuffing and hooding them, and threatening to shoot them if they resisted, a former Chinese police detective tells CNN.
"We took (them) all forcibly overnight," he said. "If there were hundreds of people in one county in this area, then you had to arrest these hundreds of people."
The ex-detective turned whistleblower asked to be identified only as Jiang, to protect his family members who remain in China.
In a three-hour interview with CNN, conducted in Europe where he is now in exile, Jiang revealed rare details on what he described as a systematic campaign of torture against ethnic Uyghurs in the region's detention camp system, claims China has denied for years.
"Kick them, beat them (until they're) bruised and swollen," Jiang said, recalling how he and his colleagues used to interrogate detainees in police detention centers. "Until they kneel on the floor crying."
During his time in Xinjiang, Jiang said every new detainee was beaten during the interrogation process -- including men, women and children as young as 14.
"Everyone uses different methods. Some even use a wrecking bar, or iron chains with locks."Jiang, former Chinese detective
The methods included shackling people to a metal or wooden "tiger chair" -- chairs designed to immobilize suspects -- hanging people from the ceiling, sexual violence, electrocutions, and waterboarding. Inmates were often forced to stay awake for days, and denied food and water, he said.
"Everyone uses different methods. Some even use a wrecking bar, or iron chains with locks," Jiang said. "Police would step on the suspect's face and tell him to confess."
The suspects were accused of terror offenses, said Jiang, but he believes that "none" of the hundreds of prisoners he was involved in arresting had committed a crime. "They are ordinary people," he said.
Jiang said he was deployed to Xinjiang "three or four" times from his normal posting at a police station in China. The short-term deployments came with extra pay.
The torture in police detention centers only stopped when the suspects confessed, Jiang said. Then they were usually transferred to another facility, like a prison or an internment camp manned by prison guards.
In order to help verify his testimony, Jiang showed CNN his police uniform, official documents, photographs, videos, and identification from his time in China, most of which can't be published to protect his identity. CNN has submitted detailed questions to the Chinese government about his accusations, so far without a response.
CNN cannot independently confirm Jiang's claims, but multiple details of his recollections echo the experiences of two Uyghur victims CNN interviewed for this report. More than 50 former inmates of the camp system also provided testimony to Amnesty International for a 160-page report released in June, "'Like We Were Enemies in a War': China's Mass Internment, Torture, and Persecution of Muslims in Xinjiang."
"The so-called genocide in Xinjiang is nothing but a rumor backed by ulterior motives and an outright lie."Zhao Lijian, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman
The US State Department estimates that up to 2 million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities have been detained in internment camps in Xinjiang since 2017. China says the camps are vocational, aimed at combating terrorism and separatism, and has repeatedly denied accusations of human rights abuses in the region.
"I want to reiterate that the so-called genocide in Xinjiang is nothing but a rumor backed by ulterior motives and an outright lie," said Zhao Lijian, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, during a news conference in June.
On Wednesday, officials from the Xinjiang government even introduced a man at a news conference they said was a former detainee, who denied there was torture in the camps, calling such allegations "utter lies." It was unclear if he was speaking under duress.
'Everyone needs to hit a target'
The first time Jiang was deployed to Xinjiang, he said he was eager to travel there to help defeat a terror threat he was told could threaten his country. After more than 10 years in the police force, he was also keen for a promotion.
He said his boss had asked him to take the post, telling him that "separatist forces want to split the motherland. We must kill them all."
Jiang said he was deployed "three or four" times from his usual post in mainland China to work in several areas of Xinjiang during the height of China's "Strike Hard" anti-terror campaign.
A guard patrols Number 3 Detention Center in Dabancheng in western China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
Launched in 2014, the "Strike Hard" campaign promoted a mass detention program of the region's ethnic minorities, who could be sent to a prison or an internment camp for simply "wearing a veil," growing "a long beard," or having too many children.
Jiang showed CNN one document with an official directive issued by Beijing in 2015, calling on other provinces of China to join the fight against terrorism in the country "to convey the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping's important instructions when listening to the report on counter-terrorism work."
Jiang was told that 150,000 police assistants were recruited from provinces around mainland China under a scheme called "Aid Xinjiang," a program that encouraged mainland provinces to provide help to areas of Xinjiang, including public security resources. The temporary postings were financially rewarding -- Jiang said he received double his normal salary and other benefits during his deployment.
But quickly, Jiang became disillusioned with his new job -- and the purpose of the crackdown.
"I was surprised when I went for the first time," Jiang said. "There were security checks everywhere. Many restaurants and places are closed. Society was very intense."
During the routine overnight operations, Jiang said they would be given lists of names of people to round up, as part of orders to meet official quotas on the numbers of Uyghurs to detain.
"It's all planned, and it has a system," Jiang said. "Everyone needs to hit a target."
If anyone resisted arrest, the police officers would "hold the gun against his head and say do not move. If you move, you will be killed."
He said teams of police officers would also search people's houses and download the data from their computers and phones.
Another tactic was to use the area's neighborhood committee to call the local population together for a meeting with the village chief, before detaining them en masse.
Describing the time as a "combat period," Jiang said officials treated Xinjiang like a war zone, and police officers were told that Uyghurs were enemies of the state.
He said it was common knowledge among police officers that 900,000 Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities were detained in the region in a single year.
Jiang said if he had resisted the process, he would have been arrested, too.
'Some are just psychopaths'
Inside the police detention centers, the main goal was to extract a confession from detainees, with sexual torture being one of the tactics, Jiang said.
"If you want people to confess, you use the electric baton with two sharp tips on top," Jiang said. "We would tie two electrical wires on the tips and set the wires on their genitals while the person is tied up."
"Some people see this as a job, some are just psychopaths."Jiang, former Chinese detective
He admitted he often had to play "bad cop" during interrogations but said he avoided the worst of the violence, unlike some of his colleagues.
"Some people see this as a job, some are just psychopaths," he said.
One "very common measure" of torture and dehumanization was for guards to order prisoners to rape and abuse the new male inmates, Jiang said.
Abduweli Ayup, a 48-year-old Uyghur scholar from Xinjiang, said he was detained on August 19, 2013, when police picked him up at the Uyghur kindergarten he had opened to teach young children their native language. They then drove him to his nearby house, which he said was surrounded by police carrying rifles.
On his first night in a police detention center in the city of Kashgar, Ayup says he was gang-raped by more than a dozen Chinese inmates, who had been directed to do this by "three or four" prison guards who also witnessed the assault.
"The prison guards, they asked me to take off my underwear" before telling him to bend over, he said. "Don't do this, I cried. Please don't do this."
Abduweli Ayup said he was gang-raped by more than a dozen Chinese inmates acting on the orders of guards.
He said he passed out during the attack and woke up surrounded by his own vomit and urine.
"I saw the flies, just like flying around me," Ayup said. "I found that the flies are better than me. Because no one can torture them, and no one can rape them."
"I saw that those guys (were) laughing at me, and (saying) he's so weak," he said. "I heard those words." He says the humiliation continued the next day, when the prison guards asked him, "Did you have a good time?"
He said he was transferred from the police detention center to an internment camp, and was eventually released on November 20, 2014, after being forced to confess to a crime of "illegal fundraising."
His time in detention came before the wider crackdown in the region, but it reflects some of the alleged tactics used to suppress the ethnic minority population which Uyghur people had complained about for years.
CNN is awaiting response from the Chinese government about Ayup's testimony.
Now living in Norway, Ayup is still teaching and also writing Uyghur language books for children, to try to keep his culture alive. But he says the trauma of his torture will stay with him forever.
"It's the scar in my heart," he said. "I will never forget."
'They hung us up and beat us'
Omir Bekali, who now lives in the Netherlands, is also struggling with the long-term legacy of his experiences within the camp system.
"The agony and the suffering we had (in the camp) will never vanish, will never leave our mind," Bekali, 45, told CNN.
Omir Bekali holds his official form stating he was released from detention on bail in November 2018, pending trial.
Bekali was born in Xinjiang to a Uyghur mother and a Kazakh father, and he moved to Kazakhstan where he got citizenship in 2006. During a business trip to Xinjiang, he said he was detained on March 26, 2017, then a week later he was interrogated and tortured for four days and nights in the basement of a police station in Karamay City.
"They hung us up and beat us on the thigh, on the hips with wooden torches, with iron whips."Omir Bekali, former Xinjiang detainee
"They put me in a tiger chair," Bekali said. "They hung us up and beat us on the thigh, on the hips with wooden torches, with iron whips."
He said police tried to force him to confess to supporting terrorism, and he spent the following eight months in a series of internment camps.
"When they put the chains on my legs the first time, I understood immediately I am coming to hell," Bekali said. He said heavy chains were attached to prisoners' hands and feet, forcing them to stay bent over, even when they were sleeping.
He said he lost around half his body weight during his time there, saying he "looked like a skeleton" when he emerged.
"I survived from this psychological torture because I am a religious person," Bekali said. "I would never have survived this without my faith. My faith for life, my passion for freedom kept me alive."
During his time in the camps, Bekali said two people that he knew died there. He also says his mother, sister and brother were interned in the camps, and he was told his father Bakri Ibrayim died while detained in Xinjiang on September 18, 2018.
Xinjiang government officials responded to CNN's questions about Bekali during the Wednesday news conference, when they confirmed he had been detained for eight months on suspected terror offenses. But officials said his claims of torture and his family's detention were "total rumors and slander." His father died of liver cancer, they said, and his family is "currently leading a normal life."
Omir Bekali was told his father died in detention in Xinjiang on September 18, 2018. Chinese officials said he died from liver cancer.
'I am guilty'
From his new home in Europe, former detective Jiang struggles to sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time. The enduring suffering of those who went through the camp system plays on his mind; he feels like he's close to a breakdown.
"I am now numb," Jiang said. "I used to arrest so many people."
Former inmate Ayup also struggles to sleep at night, as he suffers with nightmares of his time in detention, and is unable to escape the constant feeling he is being watched. But he said he still forgives the prison guards who tortured him.
"I don't hate (them)," Ayup said. "Because all of them, they're a victim of that system."
"They sentence themselves there," he added. "They are criminals; they are a part of this criminal system."
Abduweli Ayup looks at one of the children's book written in Uyghur that he uses to keep the language alive.
Jiang said even before his time in Xinjiang, he had become "disappointed" with the Chinese Communist Party due to increasing levels of corruption.
"They were pretending to serve the people, but they were a bunch of people who wanted to achieve a dictatorship," he said. In fleeing China and exposing his experience there, he said he wanted to "stand on the side of the people."
Now, Jiang knows he can never return to China -- "they'll beat me half to death," he said.
"I'd be arrested. There would be a lot of problems. Defection, treason, leaking government secrets, subversion. (I'd get) them all," he said.
"The fact that I speak for Uyghurs (means I) could be charged for participating in a terrorist group. I could be charged for everything imaginable."
When asked what he would do if he came face-to-face with one of his former victims, he said he would be "scared" and would "leave immediately."
"I am guilty, and I'd hope that a situation like this won't happen to them again," Jiang said. "I'd hope for their forgiveness, but it'd be too difficult for people who suffered from torture like that."
"How do I face these people?" he added. "Even if you're just a soldier, you're still responsible for what happened. You need to execute orders, but so many people did this thing together. We're responsible for this."
CNN · by Rebecca Wright, Ivan Watson, Zahid Mahmood and Tom Booth, CNN
2. WhatsApp outage ‘a nightmare’ for group working to rescue Afghans, American citizens
Excerpts:
But the impact was far worse for multitudes of Facebook’s nearly 3 billion users, showing just how much the world has come to rely on it and its properties — to run businesses, connect with communities of affinity, log on to multiple other websites and even to order food.
It also showed that, despite the presence of Twitter, Telegram, Signal, TikTok, Snapchat and a bevy of other platforms, the world struggles to replace the social network that has evolved in 17 years into all but critical infrastructure. Facebook’s request Monday that a revised antitrust complaint against it by the Federal Trade Commission be dismissed because it faces vigorous competition from other services seemed to ring a bit hollow.
The cause of the outage remains unclear. Madory said it appears Facebook withdrew “authoritative DNS routes” that let the rest of the internet communicate with its properties. Such routes are part of the internet’s Domain Name System, a central component of the internet that directs its traffic. Without Facebook broadcasting its routes on the public internet, apps and web addresses simple could not locate it.
So many people are reliant on Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram as a primary mode of communication that losing access for so long can make them vulnerable to criminals taking advantage of the outage, said Rachel Tobac, a hacker and CEO of SocialProof Security.
WhatsApp outage ‘a nightmare’ for group working to rescue Afghans, American citizens
While Twitter is full of jokes about the outage that plagued Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp Monday, it’s no laughing matter to Safi Rauf.
“It’s a nightmare,” Rauf —who depserved as a linguist and cultural advisor embedded with Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan and now runs a major rescue effort for those left behind — told Military Times. “I have people all over Afghanistan I can not communicate with.”
Rauf founded the Human First Coalition. It is one of several ad hoc organizations that sprung up during the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan when it became clear tens of thousands of people who helped the U.S. and its allies over the course of 20 years of conflict would be left behind, possibly facing retribution from the Taliban. The messaging service WhatsApp has played a significant part of the communications effort, Rauf said. All told, he is in contact with about 2,500 people in Afghanistan.
“I have people all over Afghanistan trying to communicate with me through WhatsApp and I can not get a hold of them,” he said.
Human First Coalition has helped rescue more than 6,000 people from Afghanistan, including about 1,000 American citizens and their families, Rauf said.
The outage, he said, “is a concern” for those still needing help. Several former interpreters have reached out to Military Times via WhatsApp on a regular basis.
“It sucks,” Bryan Stern — who founded Project Dynamo, which recently worked with Human First Coalition and other groups to get a flight of more than 100 people out of Afghanistan — told Military Times. “The entire world uses WhatsApp and similar apps. It’s like a phone outage.”
Mike Jason, a retired Army colonel and executive director of Allied Airlift 21, which has helped rescue about 700 people, told Military Times that the outage “is affecting out ability to get info from our Afghans.
“However,” he added, “we had established alternate communication platforms and those are still available, so it’s more an inconvenience.”
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Facebook, which owns Instagram and WhatsApp, suffered a worldwide outage Monday that extended for hours. Facebook’s internal systems used by employees also went down. Service began to be restored as of Monday evening.
The company did not say what caused the outage, which began around 11:40 a.m. ET. Websites and apps often suffer outages of varying size and duration, but hourslong global disruptions are rare.
“This is epic,” said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis for Kentik Inc, a network monitoring and intelligence company. The last major internet outage, which knocked many of the world’s top websites offline in June, lasted less than an hour. The stricken content-delivery company in that case, Fastly, blamed it on a software bug triggered by a customer who changed a setting.
Facebook’s only public comment so far was a tweet in which it acknowledged that “some people are having trouble accessing (the) Facebook app” and that it was working on restoring access. Regarding the internal failures, Instagram head Adam Mosseri tweeted that it feels like a “snow day.”
But the impact was far worse for multitudes of Facebook’s nearly 3 billion users, showing just how much the world has come to rely on it and its properties — to run businesses, connect with communities of affinity, log on to multiple other websites and even to order food.
It also showed that, despite the presence of Twitter, Telegram, Signal, TikTok, Snapchat and a bevy of other platforms, the world struggles to replace the social network that has evolved in 17 years into all but critical infrastructure. Facebook’s request Monday that a revised antitrust complaint against it by the Federal Trade Commission be dismissed because it faces vigorous competition from other services seemed to ring a bit hollow.
The cause of the outage remains unclear. Madory said it appears Facebook withdrew “authoritative DNS routes” that let the rest of the internet communicate with its properties. Such routes are part of the internet’s Domain Name System, a central component of the internet that directs its traffic. Without Facebook broadcasting its routes on the public internet, apps and web addresses simple could not locate it.
So many people are reliant on Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram as a primary mode of communication that losing access for so long can make them vulnerable to criminals taking advantage of the outage, said Rachel Tobac, a hacker and CEO of SocialProof Security.
Howard Altman is an award-winning editor and reporter who was previously the military reporter for the Tampa Bay Times and before that the Tampa Tribune, where he covered USCENTCOM, USSOCOM and SOF writ large among many other topics.
3. A U.S. Military First: The War in Afghanistan Ended With Zero M.I.A.s
Excerpts:
When the military became an all-volunteer force in the 1970s, he said, conventional troops adopted many of the professional values of the elite forces like the Green Berets, including a line from the Ranger Creed: “I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy.”
“Instead of conscripts, soldiers became a profession, with professional standards,” Mr. Wong said. “Leaving no one behind came to be seen as what professionals do.”
He said the kind of warfare that American troops encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan only strengthened that resolve. The broad strategies of the generals often appeared muddled to the rank and file, and many troops questioned whether they were doing any good.
“In those cases, leaving no man behind can serve as a replacement for a clear, worthwhile mission,” Mr. Wong said. “In a morally ambiguous war, it becomes the one true mission everyone can agree on.”
He pointed out that nearly all of the Medals of Honor awarded since 2001 have been given not for achieving some tactical feat, but for risking life and limb to save others.
Even so, Mr. Hatch, the former SEAL Team Six operator, cautioned it would be a mistake for the military to congratulate itself for bringing everyone home. Mr. Hatch, who is now a student at Yale University, said he struggled for years with the psychological fallout of war, and knows many people who also felt trapped by their combat experiences.
“After I came home, there were a few years of my life where I was definitely a captive,” he said. “I needed a hostage rescue from my own living room. I know people whose lives are broken, and who will never get released. I would argue they are still missing in action — they are prisoners of war.”
A U.S. Military First: The War in Afghanistan Ended With Zero M.I.A.s
After two decades of combat, there were no American troops missing in action, reflecting a major shift in military priorities.
President Biden, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and others watched in August as a member of the military killed in Afghanistan arrived at Dover Air Force Base.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
By
Oct. 5, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
When the last American military cargo jet flew out of Afghanistan in August, marking the end of the United States’ longest war, it also signaled a largely overlooked accomplishment. For the first time in the nation’s history, a major conflict was ending without the U.S. military leaving any troops behind: no one missing in action behind enemy lines, and no nameless, unidentified bones to be solemnly interred in the Tomb of the Unknowns.
It is a stunning change from previous wars that ended with thousands of troops forever lost, their families left to wonder what had happened to them.
Christopher Vanek, a retired colonel who commanded the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment, spent a combined six and a half years deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, and took part in a number of high-profile search-and-rescue operations. He said rescues became the priority. Even for low-ranking troops with little strategic importance, he said, the military spared no effort to find the missing.
When two Navy sailors were missing in 2010 in Logar Province, south of Kabul, “all combat operations came to a screeching halt,” Mr. Vanek recalled. “We had 150 aircraft working on trying to find them. We put Special Ops in some dangerous situations. We refocused our entire effort from fighting and killing Al Qaeda to recovering these men.”
The bodies of both sailors were located and retrieved several days later.
There are several reasons no one was left behind this time. In Afghanistan, combat smoldered more often than it blazed, and lacked the large-scale chaos that led to many losses in the past. Modern DNA analysis can identify any service member from a sample of just a few shards of bone. And unlike the jungles of Vietnam or the surf-pounded beaches of Tarawa Atoll, it was comparably difficult to lose sight of a comrade in the dry, open terrain of Afghanistan.
But the driving factor, experts say, is a military culture that has changed considerably since the draft ended in the 1970s. That culture now makes the recovery of troops — dead or alive — one of the military’s highest priorities.
“It has come to be seen as almost a sacred commitment from the nation to those who serve,” Mr. Vanek said. “It’s hard to overstate the amount of resources that were committed to look for someone who was lost.”
A lab where part of a DNA identification process takes place at Dover Air Force Base.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
The mission to save the Navy sailors in 2010, for instance, was a repeat of the huge scramble a year earlier after Bowe Bergdahl, an Army private, walked away from his post and was captured by the Taliban.
A number of troops were wounded searching for and trying to rescue Private Bergdahl. Mr. Vanek said he asked the commanding general at the time whether the price of the effort to save one private was too high. He recalled the general telling him, “It’s important that every service member out here knows the country will do anything in its power to ensure they are never left on the battlefield.”
Sending that message comes with real costs, which are overwhelmingly borne by the military’s most elite Special Operations forces, who were repeatedly tapped for high-risk hostage rescues and body recoveries.
The father of Pvt. Bowe Bergdahl held a POW/MIA flag embroidered with his son's name in 2013. The military scrambled to find Private Bergdahl after he walked away from his post and was captured by the Taliban.Credit...Jae C. Hong/Associated Press
“Straight rescues are hard as hell because the enemy holds all the cards,” said Jimmy Hatch, who was part of the Navy’s premier hostage rescue group, SEAL Team Six, when it tried to rescue Private Bergdahl in 2009. “You have to get close, and you have to be fast, because the enemy could kill the hostage.”
That mission did not find Private Bergdahl — he was not recovered until five years later, in a prisoner exchange with the Taliban. But it did end Mr. Hatch’s career. He was shot during the raid, went through 18 operations to reconstruct a shattered femur, and struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Still, he said, trying to save the private was the right thing to do. When asked why, he paused, then said simply, “We’re Americans.”
That thinking is an about-face from the way the United States once regarded the loss or capture of troops on the battlefield. For generations, they were seen as an unfortunate but unavoidable byproduct of war. In many cases, little effort was put into rescuing the captured or returning the dead to their families.
During the Civil War, thousands of prisoners of war languished for years in dismal camps, where many died of malnutrition or disease. Soldiers who fell on the battlefield often died an anonymous death. Of those buried in military cemeteries, nearly half are listed as “unknown.”
After that war, the task of sorting out the missing was taken up not by the War Department but by a single nurse, Clara Barton, who opened a private Missing Soldiers Office that identified more than 20,000 missing soldiers between 1865 and 1867.
In World War I, all American troops were required to wear “dog tags” bearing their name, but troops who were killed on open ground were often left where they fell. “You can’t do much about them,” one private said at the time. “In most of the attacks, if they were killed, they just had to lie there until they disappeared into the mud.”
To this day, their bones still turn up occasionally in farmers’ fields.
Waiting for the president to arrive at a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times
After that war, the United States dedicated the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery to honor thousands who were lost, and the military instituted new practices to better recover and identify combat casualties. But each new improvement was overwhelmed by the chaos of the next war.
World War II left 79,000 Americans unaccounted for. The Korean War, another 8,000. Vietnam, 2,500 more. In Korea and Vietnam, rescue efforts were few and many American troops wasted away in prison, facing torture and other hardships.
Understand the Taliban Takeover in Afghanistan
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Who are the Taliban? The Taliban arose in 1994 amid the turmoil that came after the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989. They used brutal public punishments, including floggings, amputations and mass executions, to enforce their rules. Here’s more on their origin story and their record as rulers.
Who are the Taliban leaders? These are the top leaders of the Taliban, men who have spent years on the run, in hiding, in jail and dodging American drones. Little is known about them or how they plan to govern, including whether they will be as tolerant as they claim to be. One spokesman told The Times that the group wanted to forget its past, but that there would be some restrictions.
After Vietnam, though, the nation’s attitude began to change, according to Mark Stephensen, whose father was a fighter pilot who was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967.
Mr. Stephensen was 12 when his father’s jet crashed, and his family was given little information. Desperate for resolution, the family banded together with others to form the National League of POW/MIA Families, lobbying politicians and buttonholing generals in the halls of the Capitol to demand action. Over time, they made their cause a must-support bipartisan issue.
“Before that, people who were missing in action were not a priority,” said Mr. Stephensen, who is now vice president of the group. “The Pentagon was a ponderous bureaucracy with lots of process and no results. But they soon realized M.I.A.s were a liability. Some of the generals would rather face a hail of bullets than the anger of the league.”
President Ronald Reagan became a vocal backer and flew the organization’s black-and-white flag above the White House. Sympathetic politicians eventually made accounting for the missing a requirement for any normalization of relations with Vietnam.
The remains of Mr. Stephensen’s father were returned in 1988.
Col. Mark Stephensen went missing in action after his plane was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967. His remains weren’t returned until 1988.Credit...via Mark Stephensen
Families of missing troops have remained a potent political force, pushing for better science, more resources and bigger budgets for recovery efforts. The federal government spent $160 million in 2020 on recovering and identifying lost war dead.
Change also came from within the military, said Leonard Wong, a retired Army War College researcher who studied the growing importance that the military places on leaving no one behind.
When the military became an all-volunteer force in the 1970s, he said, conventional troops adopted many of the professional values of the elite forces like the Green Berets, including a line from the Ranger Creed: “I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy.”
“Instead of conscripts, soldiers became a profession, with professional standards,” Mr. Wong said. “Leaving no one behind came to be seen as what professionals do.”
He said the kind of warfare that American troops encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan only strengthened that resolve. The broad strategies of the generals often appeared muddled to the rank and file, and many troops questioned whether they were doing any good.
“In those cases, leaving no man behind can serve as a replacement for a clear, worthwhile mission,” Mr. Wong said. “In a morally ambiguous war, it becomes the one true mission everyone can agree on.”
He pointed out that nearly all of the Medals of Honor awarded since 2001 have been given not for achieving some tactical feat, but for risking life and limb to save others.
Even so, Mr. Hatch, the former SEAL Team Six operator, cautioned it would be a mistake for the military to congratulate itself for bringing everyone home. Mr. Hatch, who is now a student at Yale University, said he struggled for years with the psychological fallout of war, and knows many people who also felt trapped by their combat experiences.
“After I came home, there were a few years of my life where I was definitely a captive,” he said. “I needed a hostage rescue from my own living room. I know people whose lives are broken, and who will never get released. I would argue they are still missing in action — they are prisoners of war.”
4. Most Americans support resettling Afghans in US: Poll
Interesting data that gives us some hope.
Most Americans support resettling Afghans in US: Poll
AP-NORC poll shows Americans from across the political spectrum support resettling Afghan refugees in the country.
Despite intense polarisation over immigration policies in the United States, a new poll released on Monday shows the majority of Americans are in favour of resettling Afghans who worked with US troops in Afghanistan.
The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found that 72 percent of Americans said they supported granting refugee status to people who worked with the US or Afghan governments during the war in Afghanistan, if they pass security checks.
The survey, which comes weeks after the US military completed its planned withdrawal from Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover of the capital Kabul, showed that support crossed political divides.
Seventy-six percent of Democrats said they backed resettling Afghans who worked with US or Afghan government forces, compared to 74 percent of Republicans, the poll found. Overall, just 9 percent of Americans said they were opposed.
Observers say the findings demonstrate that most Americans regard giving the Afghans a refuge from potential Taliban retaliation as a duty after the nearly 20-year war.
Most Americans stress the importance of rigorous security vetting of Afghan refugees [Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters]
“We owe it to them,” Andrew Davis, a 62-year-old Republican and Army veteran in Galloway, Ohio, told The Associated Press. “It’d be dangerous for them to stay there, I think, if they helped us.”
Davis said he supported accepting former Afghan employees of the US or Afghan governments and was open to doing the same for other Afghans who felt in danger from the Taliban. But he stressed the importance of security vetting for all Afghan refugees to screen out any security risks.
“If we can do that … I do think we should take them in,” he said. “I mean, they’re obviously at threat.”
On September 30, Congress passed a resolution that includes $6.3bn in additional funding for Afghan resettlement, as well as benefits for Afghan parolees who were admitted to the country under humanitarian parole.
Thousands of Afghans have arrived in the US to date. Many are living on military bases as they wait for immigration processing before being allowed to start their lives in host communities across the country.
“I want to be the representative of the Afghan people here in America” Hashima, a 23-year-old Afghan woman, told Al Jazeera last month from Fort McCoy military base in Wisconsin.
“I wanted to have the full freedom to reach my goals,” said Hashima, who is only being identified by her first name due to safety concerns.
Most Haitian migrants who arrived in the US last month hoping to claim asylum are being expelled under ‘Title 42’ public health rule [Mexico’s National Migration Institute/Handout via Reuters]
Monday’s poll comes as President Joe Biden faces a critical moment on immigration, with rights groups and other advocates urging the US leader to take a more “humane” approach than his predecessor Donald Trump did amid waves of arrivals on the US southern border.
Last month, more than 14,000 mostly Haitian migrants gathered under a bridge in south Texas hoping to gain asylum in the US.
The Biden administration responded by detaining and expelling more than 6,000 on flights to Haiti, a country facing multiple political and humanitarian crises. Thousands of others went back to Mexico in fear of deportation.
Polls show that unlike US attitudes towards Afghan refugees, Americans’ opinions are much more divided when it comes to asylum seekers arriving at the southern border.
An ABC News/Ipsos poll published on September 29 found that 58 percent of Americans are in favour of allowing migrants arriving at the southern border to stay in the US until their asylum cases are heard.
But the poll revealed a significant partisan gap, with 83 percent of Democrats supporting allowing asylum seekers to stay in the country while their cases are pending, compared to 27 percent of Republicans.
5. Our Foreign Policy Elite Has Learned Nothing From Afghanistan
The buried lede: the wars were debt financed. I really wish a lesson we would learn is if we are going to war that is less than an existential threat to the U.S. that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force must include a plan to pay for the war. That would be either a tax increase or the sale of bonds (though I suppose that is still a form of debt financing). Perhaps Congress should pass a law saying anything less than declared war cannot be debt financed.
Excerpts:
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were debt-financed at a cost of $2 trillion. The final bill of health care for veterans of the wars, encompassing disability, burial, and related expenses, will probably come to another $2 trillion, Knickmeyer reports. The Senate Finance Committee questioned these costs just once over the past 20 years; the Senate Appropriations Committee queried them five times. Should that level of oversight be taken to exemplify the freedom we were bringing to people 7,000 miles away?
We think more easily of the saved than the drowned: “We saved the women. What will the Taliban do to them now?” American intervention improved the lives of some Afghan women, and many of those who hoped to leave will not be able to. It is harder to say—harder, even, to remember—that we also killed many of the innocent and tortured brothers and husbands; or that the wedding parties we slaughtered in misjudged drone strikes also contained somebody’s children.
Some years ago a friend, a Cold War liberal, surprised me by saying out of nowhere, “Americans are better than other people—don’t you think?” It was clear from the context that this was not a chauvinist remark. The sense was rather that Americans, from a combination of national temperament and luck, were more generous than other people; and if on occasion we did real harm, it came from a reckless exuberance of goodwill. I didn’t agree at the time, and don’t agree now, but I believe this is the way a good many Americans think about us. We are generous judges in our own cause.
Our Foreign Policy Elite Has Learned Nothing From Afghanistan
The War on Terror’s promoters and apologists are determined to blame Biden for finally bringing one bloody chapter to an end.
Members of the Taliban patrol in the back of a pickup truck with a Taliban flag along a street in Kabul. (Bulent Kilic / AFP via Getty Images)
Bush and Cheney sold the war, Obama normalized it, Trump disowned it, and Biden had the courage to end it.
Cecil Rhodes once said he would annex the planets if he could, and the United States, over the past four decades, has nursed an ambition quite as otherworldly. Everyone (we believed) would choose our way of life if only they had the chance. It followed that we should try to get them there through arts and manners and commerce and, if necessary, through wars. The wars would, of course, be fought against the enemies of freedom, even if the enemies were their neighbors and compatriots.
Tony Blair put the case memorably, just three weeks after September 11, 2001: “The kaleidoscope has been shaken, the pieces are in flux, soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us reorder this world around us.” What poetry! To look on the world as a toy! That, for me, was the initial impression of Blair’s words. More peculiar, as one looks back, was the emphasis on dispatch. The reordering would be done soon and speedily, with a brave unconcern for prudential caution.
A few days earlier, Dick Cheney had spoken about the necessity of working “the dark side.” The larger context of the vice president’s September 16 appearance on Meet the Press showed the consonance of his thinking with Blair’s. “Things have changed since last Tuesday,” Cheney said. “The world shifted in some respects.” But he spoke with a dour realism about the likely duration of the conflict: “There’s not going to be an end date that we say, ‘There, it’s all over with.’” George W. Bush, for his part, issued a promise of both lasting resolve and a lucky ending: “We will not waver, we will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail. Peace and freedom will prevail.”
The regrets now emanating from the North Atlantic policy elite suggest how little the fate of that project has changed their thinking. In an August 31 New Yorker piece deploring the US evacuation from Afghanistan, Robin Wright commented with punitive scorn: “America did tire. It did falter. And it did fail. Bold promises, over time, turned into mission abandonment. The hope of personal freedom has evaporated.” But whose hope and whose mission was she speaking for? Ellen Knickmeyer, in an August 17 Associated Press story, made a tally more matter-of-fact than Wright’s. Besides the 2,500 American dead, there were 66,000 killed among Afghan military and police, 51,000 among Taliban and other opposition fighters, 47,000 among Afghan civilians.
No metaphor of “evaporation” is needed to conclude that a large fraction of those 164,000 dead would not have died if the US had never occupied Afghanistan. For a proportionate sense of the numbers, imagine a civil war on American soil—fomented, funded, and protracted over 20 years by a foreign power—which ends up taking one and a half million American lives.
The dwindling Afghan support for the US mission was not a rejection of freedom but a last heave of disgust at the staggering burden of corruption this war spawned and nourished. As for the European criticism of our departure, it has been reported without the slightest irony regarding the relationship between defunct 19th-century empires and their successor. Britain and France showed an understandable embarrassment at having ceded to America so much authority for such a dismal result. Blair weighed in again, with a magnificent ferocity of reproach, and Bernard-Henri Lévy was grandiloquent: “The image of the liberal democracies, epitomized by the greatest among them, is tragically tarnished.” Lévy denounces only our exit. He does not say the liberal image was tarnished by anything the US did while it occupied Afghanistan and Iraq. Regrets in a lower key were uttered by Leon Panetta: “We can leave a battlefield, but we can’t leave the war on terrorism.” But Afghanistan was not only a battlefield but a proving ground for a system of bribery, bounty-hunting, and assassinations, as Cheney acknowledged early on:
A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion…. You need to have on the payroll some very unsavory characters if, in fact, you’re going to be able to learn all that needs to be learned in order to forestall these kinds of activities. It is a mean, nasty, dangerous, dirty business out there, and we have to operate in that arena.
Our interest in the dark side increased the supply of dark operators.
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were debt-financed at a cost of $2 trillion. The final bill of health care for veterans of the wars, encompassing disability, burial, and related expenses, will probably come to another $2 trillion, Knickmeyer reports. The Senate Finance Committee questioned these costs just once over the past 20 years; the Senate Appropriations Committee queried them five times. Should that level of oversight be taken to exemplify the freedom we were bringing to people 7,000 miles away?
We think more easily of the saved than the drowned: “We saved the women. What will the Taliban do to them now?” American intervention improved the lives of some Afghan women, and many of those who hoped to leave will not be able to. It is harder to say—harder, even, to remember—that we also killed many of the innocent and tortured brothers and husbands; or that the wedding parties we slaughtered in misjudged drone strikes also contained somebody’s children.
Some years ago a friend, a Cold War liberal, surprised me by saying out of nowhere, “Americans are better than other people—don’t you think?” It was clear from the context that this was not a chauvinist remark. The sense was rather that Americans, from a combination of national temperament and luck, were more generous than other people; and if on occasion we did real harm, it came from a reckless exuberance of goodwill. I didn’t agree at the time, and don’t agree now, but I believe this is the way a good many Americans think about us. We are generous judges in our own cause.
6. Is Ukraine Really Pivoting Towards China?
Is Ukraine Really Pivoting Towards China? | chinaobservers
Recent rapprochement between Ukraine and China has given rise to doubts about Kyiv’s geopolitical positioning, even as President Zelensky achieved his long-sought White House audience in early September.
However, Kyiv’s recent overtures to China should not be seen as a return to a multi-vector policy, a pivot to China, or even as using the ‘Chinese card’ as an attempt to attract Washington’s attention. Instead, these moves reflect Ukraine’s interest in pragmatic cooperation in select fields, while guarding riskier aspects away from Chinese engagement.
Ukrainian-Chinese “Rapprochement”
Observers of Ukrainian foreign policy would be remiss not to have noted the signs of improving ties between Kyiv and Beijing this year.
Perhaps most illustrative of the recent thaw was Kyiv’s retraction of its signature from a UN statement condemning China’s human rights violations in Xinjiang in June. Reports claimed that the about-face was a result of pressure from China, citing threats to cancel the previously planned delivery of 500,000 doses of the COVID-19 SinoVac vaccine. The Chinese MFA conversely welcomed Ukraine’s decision, stating it “reflects its spirit of independence and respect for facts.”
However, this was only one of the signals that made the Ukrainian media and expert community abuzz with discussions about the impending change in the country‘s China policy.
A few weeks later, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky held his first telephone conversation with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in which he congratulated his counterpart on the 10th anniversary of strategic partnership. Zelensky expressed interest in developing trade and implementing major infrastructure projects, including in the development of seaports, construction and modernization of roads, railways, urban infrastructure and municipal services. According to Zelensky, Ukraine might become a “bridge to Europe” for Chinese business.
Soon after, the Ukrainian Ministry of Infrastructure announced it had signed an agreement with China on deepening cooperation in construction of infrastructure. The terms of the agreement provide financing on preferential terms and the construction of roads, bridges and airports by the Chinese side.
Hinting that there might be more to the recent ‘coziness’ between Ukraine and China, the launch of a Ukrainian-language version of Xi Jinping’s The Governance of China in Kyiv was attended by a number of prominent Ukrainian politicians. At the event, David Arahamia, head of the ruling Servant of the People party, told Chinese media that Ukraine intends to learn from the CCP in terms of managing the economy and government. He noted that the guiding principles of the CCP and his party “coincide in many ways.”
Finally, the speaker of the Ukrainian delegation in the Trilateral Contact Group, Oleksiy Arestovich, said that Ukraine “will reorient its interests to the East” if the “practice of surrendering Ukrainian interests” continues in the EU and the US.
He was, of course, referring to the recent decision of the US and Germany to continue Russia’s construction of Nord Stream 2, which Kyiv sees as a great threat to its interests.
“If the West wants to make friends with Russia at the cost of surrendering Ukrainian interests or a significant part of them, then we will turn to the East and thus rebalance our position,” Arestovich warned.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry quickly rebutted Arestovich’s statement, declaring that Ukraine has no intentions to reconsider its geopolitical orientation, which is undergirded by the goals of gaining membership in the EU and NATO. At the same time, the MFA said, “Ukraine will not artificially restrain the development of relations with certain countries or regions. The number one priority is national interest, no matter where in the world.”
A Second Look
In Ukraine, this succession of public moves by the Ukrainian government generated heated discussion.
While few believe there was a real strategic turnaround, some did begin to think Kyiv was trying to manipulate, or even blackmail, Washington by threatening to turn to China.
In truth, neither seems to be the case. Instead, Ukraine’s moves should be interpreted as an attempt to pursue a more pragmatic policy.
First, any attempts by Ukraine to use its leverage against Washington will lead nowhere, since Ukraine simply lacks the tools to put pressure on the US. The only critical issue from the US perspective as regards Ukraine was the Chinese attempted acquisition of the Ukrainian engine manufacturer Motor Sich. In the event of the transfer of the enterprise, China would get sensitive technologies for the production of aircraft engines, which could significantly strengthen China’s military position in the Asia-Pacific region.
However, the purchase would also cause colossal damage directly to the Ukrainian defense industry and jeopardize the implementation of a number of promising projects. Using it as a bargaining chip would thus hardly be a winning strategy.
Second, the potential for growth of Sino-Ukrainian economic relations is significantly limited. In recent years, China has become the number one partner for Ukraine in trade (trade turnover in 2020 reached its maximum – $15.4 billion), in which the share of Ukrainian exports is $7.1 billion (14.5 percent of total exports). Ukrainian exports are almost entirely raw materials – (iron ore 35 percent, grain 25 percent, oil and fats 15 percent, ferrous metals 9 percent), while Chinese imports are predominantly high-tech.
Beyond that, however, economic relations leave much to be desired.
A number of pilot projects for the establishment of joint Ukrainian-Chinese industrial parks and enterprises, both in Ukraine and in China, have not brought any results. The forecasts that after the signing of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU, China would move production to Ukraine, bring new jobs and help Ukraine climb up the value ladder via more advanced manufacturing were not realized.
Meanwhile, the share of Chinese investment in Ukraine remains negligible. According to the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, direct investment in the Ukrainian economy from the PRC in 2015-2019 was only $127 million, bringing China’s share over this period to only 0.07 percent of all foreign investment in the country.
Based on the previous record, the likelihood of using China as a new engine for jumpstarting Ukraine’s economy is low. An increase in Ukrainian exports can be expected, but raw materials that are highly dependent on world prices will still dominate.
Thirdly, China’s limitations as a partner can be interpreted in the context of the recently adopted strategy for Ukraine’s foreign policy in which, despite the mention of China as a strategic partner, cooperation is focused only on the economic field and does not include any sensitive areas or security sphere. Interestingly, in the new National Security Strategy of Ukraine, adopted in 2020, China is not listed as a strategic partner, although it figured as one in bilateral documents in 2011 and 2013.
Thus, the Ukrainian leadership is trying to draw red lines in cooperation with China, and limit it to trade and investment issues, leaving strategic sectors of the economy, 5G networks, and critical infrastructure facilities closed to Chinese involvement. Foreign Minister Kuleba’s statements that “China is not an enemy, not a friend, but just a trading partner” confirm such a reading. Moreover, it is also reflected in Kyiv’s recent actions, including a bill on the screening of foreign investments and keeping Chinese companies away from strategic sectors in Ukraine.
Last, but not least, Ukraine has gradually begun to realize the risks associated with cooperation with China. Recently, criticism of Chinese foreign policy has increased significantly in the Ukrainian expert community and the media, largely due to the Motor Sich case. In addition, corruption practices of Chinese companies in the world, debt traps, vaccine diplomacy, and even Chinese disinformation about the alleged presence of US biolabs in Ukraine began to generate discussion in the country.
What China Wants
On the Chinese side, there has been a notable uptick in interest in Ukraine. In addition to the above actions, in June, Chinese Ambassador to Ukraine Fan Xianzhong announced China’s readiness to increase imports from Ukraine and participate in the construction of infrastructure within the framework of the ‘Big Construction’ project in Ukraine.
It is therefore eminently possible that China is changing its strategy towards Ukraine.
The Motor Sich case has become a good example for Beijing on how not to do it. In this case, China not only failed in its attempt to take over the enterprise, but also fomented a flurry of criticism from the Ukrainian side. Moreover, the acute political crisis in Belarus may force China to look for alternative land routes for the delivery of goods to the EU, and the growing strategic competition with the US makes Beijing look for new partners.
Ukraine could indeed be a valuable target for China, both from the point of view of expanding the market for Chinese goods, and with the aim of forming a loyal ally in the geopolitically crucial area. Here, it is likely that China’s traditional tools will be used – increasing trade links and financial and technological dependence. If China becomes a key trading partner, an uncontested supplier of equipment and technologies, or even vaccines, then Kyiv is less likely to criticize Beijing for its actions in the South China Sea, or human rights violations in Xinjiang.
However, ultimately, Ukraine is unlikely to change its strategic course and even form anything close to a multi-vector approach. The ability to achieve balance in its pragmatic policy will depend on Kyiv’s clear understanding of both the opportunities and risks of cooperation with China, as well as the willingness of Western partners to offer an acceptable alternative to Chinese “carrots”. So far, the Western offer has left quite a lot to be desired.
7. What we know about the retired Green Beret recently arrested over the Jan. 6 Capitol riot
Excerpts:
Another person who was charged with involvement in the Capitol riots told authorities that they came to Washington, D.C., with Brown, who “coordinated travel plans and rendezvous points,” according to court records. In a message on Signal, an encrypted messaging app, Brown allegedly told others in the chat that they could come to his home any time on Saturday, Jan. 2, before they left early on Sunday morning.
He referred to his RV as “GROUND FORCE ONE” in the chat, offering to pick people up as there were “[p]lenty of Gun Ports left to fill.”
Brown said he wanted to be in D.C. by Jan. 4th in order to take that day and the next to “set up, conduct route recons, CTR (Close Target Reconnaissance) and any link ups needed with DC elements,” according to a copy of the message in court records.
“I am willing to make adjustments all the way up until we pass your ass headed north,” Brown said. “But it is now time to shit or get on someone else’s pot. READY? GO!!!”
What we know about the retired Green Beret recently arrested over the Jan. 6 Capitol riot
A retired Special Forces soldier named Jeremy Brown was arrested last week for his alleged involvement in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol building that resulted in the injury of hundreds of police officers.
On Wednesday, Brown was charged with knowingly entering a restricted building or grounds without lawful authority and knowingly disrupting the orderly conduct of government business or official functions, according to the Justice Department. Court records say that he organized a trip to Washington, D.C., days before supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol building.
Brown is one of more than two dozen current and former military service members to have been charged over their alleged involvement in the Jan. 6 riots. While there are service members and veterans who were charged for taking part in the riot, others like Brian Sicknick, a veteran of the New Jersey Air National Guard, tried to prevent the situation from escalating further. Sicknick was serving as a Capitol Police officer and later died after sustaining injuries during the riot.
Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as people try to storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. Demonstrators breeched security and entered the Capitol as Congress debated the 2020 presidential election Electoral Vote Certification. (photo by Brent Stirton/Getty Images)
Brown joined the Army in October 1992, according to military service records, and retired as a master sergeant in October 2012. He served as an infantryman, a Special Forces communications sergeant, and a Special Forces senior sergeant during his career. Brown deployed to combat four times during his career, including stints in Iraq from October 2007 to May 2008 and from January to July 2009, and deployments to Afghanistan from January to March 2005 and May to August 2011.
Brown had also run as a Republican in a Florida district in 2020, but dropped out before the general election.
The FBI began investigating Brown after a witness who said they’d known him for “multiple years” made a complaint. The witness provided the FBI with publicly available photos of Brown wearing tactical gear on Jan. 5, but said they were unsure if Brown actually entered the Capitol on Jan. 6.
The FBI was able to match the photo provided of Brown to photos and videos taken on Jan. 6, eventually finding a photo which showed Brown “standing just before the steps of the East side steps of the Capitol” during the riots, according to prosecutors.
“Brown wore full military gear,” say court records, which include photos of Brown wearing tactical gear outside the Capitol with other protesters. “Including a helmet, radio, a tactical vest, and prominently displayed large surgical trauma shears tucking into a pack sitting on the vest.”
A photo of Jeremy Brown included in court records. (Justice Department)
Another person who was charged with involvement in the Capitol riots told authorities that they came to Washington, D.C., with Brown, who “coordinated travel plans and rendezvous points,” according to court records. In a message on Signal, an encrypted messaging app, Brown allegedly told others in the chat that they could come to his home any time on Saturday, Jan. 2, before they left early on Sunday morning.
He referred to his RV as “GROUND FORCE ONE” in the chat, offering to pick people up as there were “[p]lenty of Gun Ports left to fill.”
Brown said he wanted to be in D.C. by Jan. 4th in order to take that day and the next to “set up, conduct route recons, CTR (Close Target Reconnaissance) and any link ups needed with DC elements,” according to a copy of the message in court records.
“I am willing to make adjustments all the way up until we pass your ass headed north,” Brown said. “But it is now time to shit or get on someone else’s pot. READY? GO!!!”
By looking at body camera footage on Jan. 6, authorities found that Brown was allegedly well inside the barriers law enforcement had created to protect the building. Court records say that as authorities worked to push people back and secure the building that afternoon, Brown “only retreated when pushed with police baton sticks.”
A photo included in the court records, from a police officer’s body camera, appears to show Brown being pushed back by the officer.
(Justice Department)
Court records say law enforcement agents called Brown on Jan. 6 to ask about his whereabouts, but “could not hear him well due to apparent crowd noise.” The next day, Brown told agents he was in D.C. and was providing security for “VIPs at the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally,” court records say.
After the riots, Brown allegedly messaged on Signal: “Everything you are watching on the Media and House of Congress is a LIE! I was shot in the neck with pepper balls and beating [sic] in the forearm with a night stick trying to shield unprotected civilians from being hit in the head,” Brown said, according to court records. “This was an exercise in the unrestrained addiction to power.”
Brown was arrested in Tampa, Florida, on Sept. 30.
The retired master sergeant is not the first Special Forces veteran arrested for their role in the Jan. 6 riots. Jeffrey McKellop, also a former Special Forces communications sergeant, was charged with a series of crimes after allegedly throwing a flagpole at a police officer during the riot, the Washington Post reported in March.
McKellop served for 22 years and did two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Post.
In all, roughly 20% of people charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riots served in the military, according to NPR. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told CBS News’ “60 Minutes” he was “very disappointed” in how many veterans were involved.
“This is an issue that I think can erode the great respect that our American citizens have for our military,” he said.
Haley Britzky is the Army reporter for Task & Purpose, covering the daily happenings in the Army and how they impact soldiers and their families, as well as broader national security issues. Originally from Texas, Haley previously worked at Axios before joining Task & Purpose in January 2019. Contact the author here.
8. Taiwan and the Fight for Democracy
Excerpts:
A FORCE FOR GOOD
The threat posed by authoritarian regimes has served as an important wake-up call for democracies, spurring them to emerge from their complacency. Although extraordinary challenges remain, democracies around the world are now working to safeguard their values and renew their ossified institutions. Alliances are being rekindled to serve the interests of the international community.
Taiwan may be small in terms of territory, but it has proved that it can have a large global presence—and that this presence matters to the world. It has persevered in the face of existential threats and made itself an indispensable actor in the Indo-Pacific. And through it all, the Taiwanese commitment to democracy has never been stronger: the people of Taiwan know that democracy is the lasting path and the only game in town.
Over the past two years, our handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and our assistance to and collaboration with countries around the world, has offered one more example of the crucial role that Taiwan can play and of why Taiwan matters. Going forward, our high-tech industries, and especially our production of advanced semiconductors, will continue to fuel the global economy. And Taiwan’s ability to balance ties to various countries while defending its democratic way of life will continue to inspire others in the region.
We have never shied away from challenges. Although the world faces an arduous journey ahead, this presents Taiwan with opportunities not seen before. It should increasingly be regarded as part of the solution, particularly as democratic countries seek to find the right balance between the need to engage and trade with authoritarian countries and the need to defend the values and democratic ideals that define their societies. Long left out in the cold, Taiwan is ready to be a global force for good, with a role on the international stage that is commensurate with its abilities.
Taiwan and the Fight for Democracy
A Force for Good in the Changing International Order
The story of Taiwan is one of resilience—of a country upholding democratic, progressive values while facing a constant challenge to its existence. Our success is a testament to what a determined practitioner of democracy, characterized by good governance and transparency, can achieve.
Yet the story of Taiwan is not only about the maintenance of our own democratic way of life. It is also about the strength and sense of responsibility Taiwan brings to efforts to safeguard the stability of the region and the world. Through hard work and courage, the 23.5 million people of Taiwan have succeeded in making a place for themselves in the international community.
Emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, authoritarian regimes are more convinced than ever that their model of governance is better adapted than democracy to the requirements of the twenty-first century. This has fueled a contest of ideologies, and Taiwan lies at the intersection of contending systems. Vibrantly democratic and Western, yet influenced by a Chinese civilization and shaped by Asian traditions, Taiwan, by virtue of both its very existence and its continued prosperity, represents at once an affront to the narrative and an impediment to the regional ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party.
Taiwan’s refusal to give up, its persistent embrace of democracy, and its commitment to act as a responsible stakeholder (even when its exclusion from international institutions has made that difficult) are now spurring the rest of the world to reassess its value as a liberal democracy on the frontlines of a new clash of ideologies. As countries increasingly recognize the threat that the Chinese Communist Party poses, they should understand the value of working with Taiwan. And they should remember that if Taiwan were to fall, the consequences would be catastrophic for regional peace and the democratic alliance system. It would signal that in today’s global contest of values, authoritarianism has the upper hand over democracy.
INDO-PACIFIC FUTURES
The course of the Indo-Pacific, the world’s fastest-growing region, will in many ways shape the course of the twenty-first century. Its emergence offers myriad opportunities (in everything from trade and manufacturing to research and education) but also brings new tensions and systemic contradictions that, if not handled wisely, could have devastating effects on international security and the global economy. Chief among the drivers of these tensions is the rise of more assertive and self-assured authoritarianism, which is challenging the liberal democratic order that has defined international relations since the end of World War II.
Beijing has never abandoned its ambitions toward Taiwan. But after years of double-digit investment in the Chinese military, and expansionist behavior across the Taiwan Strait and in surrounding maritime areas, Beijing is replacing its commitment to a peaceful resolution with an increasingly aggressive posture. Since 2020, People’s Liberation Army aircraft and vessels have markedly increased their activity in the Taiwan Strait, with almost daily intrusions into Taiwan’s southern air defense identification zone, as well as occasional crossings of the tacit median line between the island and the Chinese mainland (which runs along the middle of the strait, from the northeast near Japan’s outlying islands to the southwest near Hong Kong).
Taiwan is on the frontlines of the global contest between liberal democracy and authoritarianism.
Despite these worrying developments, the people of Taiwan have made clear to the entire world that democracy is nonnegotiable. Amid almost daily intrusions by the People’s Liberation Army, our position on cross-strait relations remains constant: Taiwan will not bend to pressure, but nor will it turn adventurist, even when it accumulates support from the international community. In other words, the maintenance of regional security will remain a significant part of Taiwan’s overall government policy. Yet we will also continue to express our openness to dialogue with Beijing, as the current administration has repeatedly done since 2016, as long as this dialogue proceeds in a spirit of equality and without political preconditions. And we are investing significant resources to deepen our understanding of the administration in Beijing—which will reduce the risks of misinterpretation and misjudgment and facilitate more precise decision-making on our cross-strait policies. We look to maintain a clear-eyed understanding of the external environment, both threats and opportunities, in order to ensure that Taiwan is prepared to meet its challenges.
At the same time, Taiwan is fully committed to working with other regional actors to ensure stability. In March, for example, Taiwan and the United States signed a memorandum of understanding on the establishment of a coast guard working group. This working group will improve communication and information sharing between the U.S. and Taiwanese coast guards, while also facilitating greater collaboration on shared objectives, such as preserving maritime resources and reducing illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. Such an understanding should serve as a springboard for greater collaboration on nonmilitary matters with other partners in the Indo-Pacific.
Taiwan has also launched a series of initiatives to modernize and reorganize its military, in order to be better prepared for both present and future challenges. In addition to investments in traditional platforms such as combat aircraft, Taiwan has made hefty investments in asymmetric capabilities, including mobile land-based antiship cruise missiles. We will launch the All-Out Defense Mobilization Agency in 2022, a military reform intended to ensure that a well-trained and well-equipped military reserve force stands as a more reliable backup for the regular military forces. Such initiatives are meant to maximize Taiwan’s self-reliance and preparedness and to signal that we are willing to bear our share of the burden and don’t take our security partners’ support for granted.
At a Taiwanese military exercise in Pingtung, Taiwan, May 2019
Tyrone Siu / Reuters
Taiwan’s efforts to contribute to regional security do not end there. We are fully committed to collaborating with our neighbors to prevent armed conflict in the East China and South China Seas, as well as in the Taiwan Strait. Taiwan lies along the first island chain, which runs from northern Japan to Borneo; should this line be broken by force, the consequences would disrupt international trade and destabilize the entire western Pacific. In other words, a failure to defend Taiwan would not only be catastrophic for the Taiwanese; it would overturn a security architecture that has allowed for peace and extraordinary economic development in the region for seven decades.
Taiwan does not seek military confrontation. It hopes for peaceful, stable, predictable, and mutually beneficial coexistence with its neighbors. But if its democracy and way of life are threatened, Taiwan will do whatever it takes to defend itself.
THE TAIWAN MODEL
Taiwan’s history is filled with both hardship and accomplishments, and the authors of this history are the people of Taiwan. Over the past few decades, we have overcome adversity and international isolation to achieve one of modern political history’s most successful democratic transitions. The key ingredients of this achievement have been patience, resourcefulness, pragmatism, and a stubborn refusal to give up. Understanding both the delicate balance of power in the region and the need for support, the Taiwanese know that practical collaboration is often better than being loud or adventurous and that a willingness to lend a hand is better than trying to provoke or impose a system on others.
While the people of Taiwan have not always achieved consensus, over time, a collective identity has emerged. Through our interactions with the rest of the world, we have absorbed values that we have made our own, merging them with local traditions to create a liberal, progressive order and a new sense of what it means to be Taiwanese.
At the heart of this identity is our embrace of democracy, reflecting a choice that the Taiwanese made and fought for after decades of authoritarian rule. Once the Taiwanese had made that choice, there was no looking back. Imperfect though it may be, democracy has become a nonnegotiable part of who we are. This determination gives Taiwan the resilience to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century and provides a firewall against forces, both internal and external, seeking to undermine its hard-won democratic institutions.
Beijing has never abandoned its ambitions toward Taiwan.
A fundamental part of this embrace of democracy is a firm belief that the future of Taiwan is to be decided by the Taiwanese through democratic means. Although Taiwanese in some ways differ in their sense of what exactly this future should look like, we are united in our commitment to democracy and the values and institutions that allow us to fight back against external efforts to erode our identity and alter the way of life we cherish. The great majority of us regard democracy as the best form of government for Taiwan and are willing to do what is necessary to defend it. Those beliefs are tested every day, but there is no doubt that the people would rise up should the very existence of Taiwan be under threat.
Civil society has always played a major role in Taiwan. During the period of authoritarian rule under the Kuomintang, the Dangwai movement pushed to lift martial law and democratize Taiwan; even after being instrumental in ending martial law, it continued to offer an active and effective check on government power. Today, the extent of Taiwanese civil society’s role in governance is unmatched anywhere in the region—a reflection of the trust between elected officials and citizens, who as a result are able to influence policy both through and between elections.
Taiwan’s civil society has also proved integral to the island’s international standing. Taiwan’s exclusion from the United Nations and most other international institutions could have led to isolation, but Taiwan instead tapped into the tremendous creativity and capacity of its people, allowing us to establish global connections by other means—through small businesses, nongovernmental organizations, and various semi-official groupings. Rather than being an impediment, the refusal of many countries to officially recognize Taiwan compelled us to think asymmetrically, combating efforts to negate Taiwan’s existence by deepening our engagement with the world through nontraditional channels.
In short, despite decades of isolation, the people of Taiwan have succeeded in making a place for themselves within the international community—and transforming Taiwan itself into an economic powerhouse and one of the most vibrant democracies in the Indo-Pacific.
CHANGING THE RULES
Taiwan’s ability to survive and even thrive as a liberal democracy despite the extraordinary challenges to its existence has important implications for the prevailing rules of international relations. Our bid to play a more meaningful role in the international community is evolving in the context of changing regional politics, with more assertive challenges to the liberal international order, backed by the economic and political power to turn those ambitions into action. With increasing awareness of the potential impact of such authoritarian ambitions, more and more countries have been willing to reexamine their long-standing assumptions about, and self-imposed limitations on, engagement with Taiwan.
Through its evolution as an economic powerhouse and a participatory democracy, Taiwan seeks to be—and in many ways already is—part of the solution to emerging challenges with ramifications on a planetary scale, from climate change and new diseases, to proliferation and terrorism, to human trafficking and threats to supply chains. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that the world is now so interconnected that the outbreak of a disease in one corner of the planet can, within a matter of months, reach pandemic proportions. In many cases, the speed with which new emergencies arise and spread is beyond the ability of states and existing international institutions to respond. To prepare for future emergencies, the international community must move toward inclusiveness rather than rigidly adhering to current structures.
Getting vaccinated against COVID-19 in Taipei, Taiwan, September 2021
Ann Wang / Reuters
Even as it experienced a flare-up in COVID-19 cases last spring, Taiwan has demonstrated to the world that democratic systems can respond effectively to a pandemic, harnessing the powers of artificial intelligence, big data, and surveillance networks while ensuring that the information gathered is used responsibly. The pandemic has also given Taiwan an opportunity to share its experience with the world and to provide much-needed medical assistance to struggling countries. This is so despite its long exclusion from global institutions such as the World Health Organization, which has left Taiwan little choice but to develop its own methods of cooperating and communicating with international partners. Being left out of the United Nations and other multilateral institutions has encouraged resilience and spurred novel approaches to dealing with challenges and crises of all kinds.
Despite being kept out in the cold, Taiwan has strived to adhere to international protocols, such as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, amending its domestic laws and seeking its own formulas for meeting increasingly complex challenges. Taiwan is also working proactively with its partners on the development of its region. In 2016, we launched the New Southbound Policy, which facilitates regional prosperity through trade and investment partnerships, educational and people-to-people exchanges, and technological and medical cooperation with countries in South and Southeast Asia, as well as Australia and New Zealand. Taiwan is also making investments in these partners through its business community, simultaneously fostering secure supply chains and regional development.
If Taiwan were to fall, the consequences would be catastrophic for regional peace and the democratic alliance system.
Indeed, with its high-tech leadership and educated and globalized workforce, Taiwan is well positioned to help create secure global supply chains in sectors such as semiconductors, biotechnology, and renewable energy—all areas where international cooperation is needed now more than ever. Our semiconductor industry is especially significant: a “silicon shield” that allows Taiwan to protect itself and others from aggressive attempts by authoritarian regimes to disrupt global supply chains. We are working to further strengthen our role in securing global supply chains with a new regional high-end production hub initiative, which will solidify our position in the global supply chain. Besides making computer chips, Taiwan is active in high-precision manufacturing, artificial intelligence, 5G applications, renewable energy, biotechnology, and more, helping create more diverse and global supply chains that can withstand disruption, human or otherwise.
Taiwan derives additional soft power from expertise and capabilities in a variety of other fields, including education, public health, medicine, and natural-disaster prevention. And these are fields in which our experts and institutions are taking on a growing regional role. Our universities, for example, are prepared to work with other universities in the region to develop Chinese-language training. Our medical facilities are sharing expertise in medical technology and management with partners around Asia. And we are ready to work with major countries to provide infrastructure investment in developing countries, leveraging efficiency while promoting good governance, transparency, and environmental protection. Similar efforts are being made through an agreement with the United States to enhance cooperation on infrastructure financing, investment, and market development in Latin America and Southeast Asia. In short, Taiwan can be a crucial force in the peaceful development and prosperity of our region and the world.
DEMOCRATIC VALUES
Sitting on the frontlines of the global contest between the liberal democratic order and the authoritarian alternative, Taiwan also has an important part to play in strengthening global democracy. In 2003, we established the region’s first nongovernmental organization devoted to democracy assistance and advocacy, the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy. Following the models set by the United States’ National Endowment for Democracy and the United Kingdom’s Westminster Foundation for Democracy, the TFD provides funding for other nongovernmental organizations, international and domestic, that advocate democratic development and human rights. It also works to promote public participation in governance through mechanisms such as participatory budgeting and to encourage youth engagement through initiatives such as the annual Asia Young Leaders for Democracy program. In 2019, the TFD organized its inaugural regional forum on religious freedom, and my government appointed its first ambassador-at-large for religious freedom.
Taiwan’s strong record on democracy, gender equality, and press and religious freedom has also made it a home for a growing number of global nongovernmental organizations, which have faced an increasingly difficult environment in Asia. Organizations including Reporters Without Borders, the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute, the European Values Center for Security Policy, and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom have set up regional offices in Taiwan. From Taiwan, they are able to continue their important work in the region without the constant threats of surveillance, harassment, and interruptions by authorities. We have also made ourselves hospitable to international institutions interested in establishing a presence in the Indo-Pacific, helping turn Taiwan into a hub for advancing the interests of the democratic community.
Long left out in the cold, Taiwan is ready to be a global force for good.
Meanwhile, the Global Cooperation and Training Framework—a platform jointly administered by Taiwan, the United States, and other partners that allows us to share our expertise with countries around the world—has fostered creative cooperation on issues such as law enforcement, public health, and good governance. One recent round of GCTF activity, for example, focused on media literacy and how democracies can combat disinformation—an area in which Taiwan has an abundance of experience.
Over the past five years, more than 2,300 experts and officials from more than 87 countries have attended GCTF workshops in Taiwan, and the forum will continue to expand—offering a path to greater collaboration between Taiwan and countries around the world, including the United States. Indeed, Taiwan works closely with the United States on many issues, in the service of regional peace and stability. Our hope is to shoulder more responsibility by being a close political and economic partner of the United States and other like-minded countries.
A FORCE FOR GOOD
The threat posed by authoritarian regimes has served as an important wake-up call for democracies, spurring them to emerge from their complacency. Although extraordinary challenges remain, democracies around the world are now working to safeguard their values and renew their ossified institutions. Alliances are being rekindled to serve the interests of the international community.
Taiwan may be small in terms of territory, but it has proved that it can have a large global presence—and that this presence matters to the world. It has persevered in the face of existential threats and made itself an indispensable actor in the Indo-Pacific. And through it all, the Taiwanese commitment to democracy has never been stronger: the people of Taiwan know that democracy is the lasting path and the only game in town.
Over the past two years, our handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and our assistance to and collaboration with countries around the world, has offered one more example of the crucial role that Taiwan can play and of why Taiwan matters. Going forward, our high-tech industries, and especially our production of advanced semiconductors, will continue to fuel the global economy. And Taiwan’s ability to balance ties to various countries while defending its democratic way of life will continue to inspire others in the region.
We have never shied away from challenges. Although the world faces an arduous journey ahead, this presents Taiwan with opportunities not seen before. It should increasingly be regarded as part of the solution, particularly as democratic countries seek to find the right balance between the need to engage and trade with authoritarian countries and the need to defend the values and democratic ideals that define their societies. Long left out in the cold, Taiwan is ready to be a global force for good, with a role on the international stage that is commensurate with its abilities.
TSAI ING-WEN is President of Taiwan.
9. A debt limit default looms. Here’s why the Pentagon should be concerned.
Excerpts:
Both Biden and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., have promised the country will avoid default, but their lack of progress risks an economic meltdown. It also raises questions about how the Treasury Department would pay the military’s vendors as well as its uniformed and civilian workforce ― along with the rest of the federal government ― if it cannot continue borrowing.
Once a routine vote, the need to raise the nation’s debt limit has become increasingly partisan. It’s become a favorite political weapon of Republicans to either demand concessions or force Democrats into unpopular votes to enable more borrowing. McConnell has tied the vote to Biden’s multitrillion-dollar tax and economic agenda that awaits congressional approval.
“They need to stop playing Russian roulette with the U.S. economy,” Biden said. “Republicans just have to let us do our job. Just get out of the way. If you don’t want to help save the country, get out of the way so you don’t destroy it.”
Republicans are insisting that Democrats go it alone with the same legislative tool that is already being used to try and pass Biden’s plan to boost safety net, health and environmental programs. Democrats say that extending the debt limit has traditionally been a bipartisan effort and that the debt cap was built up under presidents from both parties.
“We have no list of demands,” McConnell said Monday in a letter to Biden. “For two and a half months, we have simply warned that since your party wishes to govern alone, it must handle the debt limit alone as well.”
A debt limit default looms. Here’s why the Pentagon should be concerned.
WASHINGTON ― The Pentagon, as of Monday, had not issued departmentwide guidance about the possibility of a debt limit default — an event experts say would be a chaotic foray into uncharted territory.
President Joe Biden accused Republican lawmakers on Monday of blocking efforts to increase the government’s borrowing authority, saying it poses a risk to Social Security benefits, troop salaries and veterans benefits.
“We’re going to have to raise the debt limit if we’re going to meet those obligations,” Biden said at the White House ahead of an Oct. 18 deadline to allow for more borrowing.
Both Biden and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., have promised the country will avoid default, but their lack of progress risks an economic meltdown. It also raises questions about how the Treasury Department would pay the military’s vendors as well as its uniformed and civilian workforce ― along with the rest of the federal government ― if it cannot continue borrowing.
Once a routine vote, the need to raise the nation’s debt limit has become increasingly partisan. It’s become a favorite political weapon of Republicans to either demand concessions or force Democrats into unpopular votes to enable more borrowing. McConnell has tied the vote to Biden’s multitrillion-dollar tax and economic agenda that awaits congressional approval.
“They need to stop playing Russian roulette with the U.S. economy,” Biden said. “Republicans just have to let us do our job. Just get out of the way. If you don’t want to help save the country, get out of the way so you don’t destroy it.”
Republicans are insisting that Democrats go it alone with the same legislative tool that is already being used to try and pass Biden’s plan to boost safety net, health and environmental programs. Democrats say that extending the debt limit has traditionally been a bipartisan effort and that the debt cap was built up under presidents from both parties.
“We have no list of demands,” McConnell said Monday in a letter to Biden. “For two and a half months, we have simply warned that since your party wishes to govern alone, it must handle the debt limit alone as well.”
Late payments and lawsuits
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said that on Oct. 18, the government will exhaust its cash reserves — an event she says would likely trigger a financial crisis and economic recession. She said that would likely send interest rates higher and swell the government’s interest payments on the national debt.
Former Pentagon Comptroller Bob Hale, a veteran of several debt limit showdowns, is confident lawmakers will wind up cutting an 11th hour deal because the consequences of failure are so grim. But if the country defaults, the Treasury might have to prioritize expenses, potentially harming military pay, veterans benefits and payments it owes to government contractors.
Alternatively, the Treasury could pay its bills on a rolling basis as revenues come in, but that might result in more severe delays over time.
“It’s hard to know how [that] would affect contractors,” Hale told Defense News. “Will they continue working? Probably for a while, for sure, even if they’re getting paid late. But if this went on, then I think there would be serious problems.”
If the government were to take the prioritization route, mandatory spending on social programs would almost certainly come ahead of discretionary defense spending, speculated Arnold Punaro, a former Senate Armed Services Committee staff director and the chairman of the board at the National Defense Industrial Association.
What that means for defense acquisition programs is unclear.
“You’ve invited more people to the cocktail party than you have places at the table when it comes to spending,” Punaro said. “I guarantee you they’re not going to pay for the F-35 [fighter jet] before people get their Social Security checks.”
Successive administrations have said convincingly that there is no mechanism for the government to prioritize payments, noted David Berteau, the chief executive of the Professional Services Council, which represents more than 400 businesses that provide services to federal agencies.
“I believe there is no secret plan by which we figure out how to spend what little money we have and avoid global economic calamity,” Berteau said. “I wish I could give you a rosier picture here. I’m trying desperately to figure out a way to have a positive thought at the end of this paragraph, but I can’t.”
If the government were to prioritize payments and, for example, decided to pay troops but not federal workers, such decisions could invite lawsuits against the government, said the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Rachel Snyderman.
“There are different camps on this issue as to whether or not this would even be something that operationally the Treasury Department could do, and legally,” she said. “Court battles and legal questions could arise from government officials picking and choosing which programs to pay out in full on time versus which programs would suffer delays.”
The rising interest rates Yellen warned of would not only hit military families among other households and businesses, but it would indirectly put a squeeze on the government’s future defense budgets.
“We’ve got a lot of debt these days, and [interest payments] would eat up more of the government’s resources, and indirectly, potentially mean there would be less for defense,” Hale said. “Generally, it’s such a bad idea, it’s hard to believe we’ll walk right into [a default], and I doubt we will.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Joe Gould is the Congress reporter for Defense News.
10. Congress moves toward requiring women to register for the draft
Excerpts:
Logistical challenges are not the only sticking point for some opponents of the change. For some Republicans, the inclusion of women in the Selective Service is a moral issue — one that may come up when the House and Senate conference the defense policy bill later this year.
At the Senate Armed Services markup over the summer, five Republicans voted against the amendment by the panel’s chairman, Democrat Jack Reed of Rhode Island, requiring women to register.
Cotton tweeted at the time that he would “work to remove it before the defense bill passes.”
In 2016, both the House and Senate Armed Services panels approved the change, but it did not make it into the final fiscal 2017 defense authorization bill.
In the House that year, the Republican majority effectively stripped the provision out of the NDAA on the floor without a vote when the Rules Committee adopted a so-called self-executing rule that turned the required registration into a mandate for a study of the issue.
But with Congress now entirely in Democratic hands, the likelihood that women will have to register has increased.
Congress moves toward requiring women to register for the draft - Roll Call
rollcall.com · by Mark SatterPosted October 5, 2021 at 5:01am · October 5, 2021
For over 100 years, young men have registered for the draft. Now, Congress is poised to make a historic change for gender equality by requiring women, for the first time in American history, to do the same.
But while support for the change is bipartisan, Congress is leaving the details for later.
That’s the easy thing to do, considering the military hasn’t drafted anyone since the Vietnam War and it’s possible it never will need to again. But if a crisis of monumental proportions were to emerge, the logistics of incorporating women into a much larger military could prove complicated.
Would drafted women be expected to serve in combat roles? And if not, what would their roles be? Would they be housed with men? It appears that neither Congress nor the Pentagon has thought that through.
Still, included in the House version of the fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, which that chamber passed last month, was an amendment by Pennsylvania Democrat Chrissy Houlahan and Florida Republican Michael Waltz that would require women to sign up with the Selective Service, a government agency that keeps records of Americans eligible for a potential draft.
And the Senate Armed Services Committee also included language that would require women to register when it marked up its version of the NDAA in July, although the full Senate has not yet taken it up.
Proponents of the change see the move as a victory for women’s rights.
“Equity is important,” Houlahan told CQ Roll Call in an interview, “and women have constantly had to fight for a level playing field — and this change is a step in the right direction.”
Waltz argues that were a crisis requiring a draft to emerge, the United States would need every available person.
The country would “need everybody … man, woman, gay, straight, any religion, Black, white, brown,” he said recently on the House floor.
According to Houlahan, she and Waltz paired up on the amendment out of a shared belief that Congress should change the current “outdated way of thinking about things.”
Waltz is a former Army Green Beret who served in Afghanistan. Houlahan spent 17 years in the Air Force and Air Force reserves, leaving as a captain.
Democrats seem united on making the change. Republicans are split, but a critical mass seems to now favor it. Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Jack Bergman of Michigan and Pat Fallon of Texas all voted in favor of the amendment when it came up at the Armed Services markup last month.
A momentous change
There has not been a draft in the United States since the Vietnam War, and the military is currently an all-volunteer force.
The United States has used some form of conscription since the Revolutionary War. A draft system was used during World War I, and the nation’s first-ever peacetime draft was held in 1940 prior to the American entry into World War II. Ten million men were drafted during World War II. From the end of WWII until 1973, men were drafted to fill vacancies in the military.
The Selective Service went into a “standby” period after 1973, but registration resumed in 1980. Since then, young men not yet old enough to legally drink have had to register with the agency within 30 days of their 18th birthday and are eligible for a draft until they turn 26.
The Houlahan amendment’s passage follows the release of a March 2020 report from the 11-member National Commission on Military, National and Public Service, a panel created by Congress in the fiscal 2017 NDAA that recommended women be included in the Selective Service.
The panel found that the inclusion of women was “in the national security interest of the United States.”
During a March 11 hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the panel’s chairman, Joseph Heck, an Army veteran and Republican who represented a Nevada district in the House for three terms, said including women would improve the military’s ability to maintain high personnel standards.
“It is the equal obligation of all Americans to defend the nation if called to do so. Registering women for Selective Service and, if necessary, including women in a draft acknowledges the value women bring to the U.S. armed forces and the talents, skills and abilities women would offer in defending the nation in a national emergency,” Heck said.
According to Houlahan, including women in the Selective Service is just part of a larger overhaul that the system needs. The Selective Service should not just be about combat roles but also be about calling upon Americans to fill other military positions, including cybersecurity and engineering roles, Houlahan said. Women have been eligible to serve in all the same military occupations, including combat roles, as men since December 2015.
Integration challenges
Currently, women make up 16 percent of the military’s total force, according to an analysis from the Brookings Institution.
But Houlahan demurred when asked about the logistical challenges of integrating women into the military in greater numbers, and she acknowledged that there would be “some complications” and that no work had yet been done to that end.
According to the Selective Service’s website, the agency is capable of registering and drafting women with its existing infrastructure “if given the mission and modest additional resources.” Some elements of the military, however, have already studied potential effects of integrating women into the services on a large scale and found reason for concern.
A 2015 study conducted by the Marine Corps found that all-male ground combat teams outperformed their mixed-gender counterparts in nearly every capacity during an infantry integration test.
In June, the Marine Corps paid the University of Pittsburgh $2 million to study the sociological and physical training effects of increased gender integration in recruit training. The results of that study are not yet available.
The Marine Corps was just 8.6 percent female in 2018, about half that of the other services, a 2020 GAO report found.
In March, the Marine Corps opened its training facilities at Camp Pendleton in San Diego to women for the first time — after Congress forced its hand. A provision in the fiscal 2020 defense authorization law ordered the service to fully integrate women into its training battalions at Parris Island, S.C., by 2025 and in San Diego by 2028.
GOP opponents
Logistical challenges are not the only sticking point for some opponents of the change. For some Republicans, the inclusion of women in the Selective Service is a moral issue — one that may come up when the House and Senate conference the defense policy bill later this year.
At the Senate Armed Services markup over the summer, five Republicans voted against the amendment by the panel’s chairman, Democrat Jack Reed of Rhode Island, requiring women to register.
Cotton tweeted at the time that he would “work to remove it before the defense bill passes.”
In 2016, both the House and Senate Armed Services panels approved the change, but it did not make it into the final fiscal 2017 defense authorization bill.
In the House that year, the Republican majority effectively stripped the provision out of the NDAA on the floor without a vote when the Rules Committee adopted a so-called self-executing rule that turned the required registration into a mandate for a study of the issue.
But with Congress now entirely in Democratic hands, the likelihood that women will have to register has increased.
John M. Donnelly contributed to this report.
rollcall.com · by Mark SatterPosted October 5, 2021 at 5:01am · October 5, 2021
11. Belt and Road Meets Build Back Better
Are we making this a priority? I certainly do not read about it very much in the media. Are we really working hard to implement this program?
Belt and Road Meets Build Back Better
Can the West’s newfangled development programs compete with China’s?
Last week marked senior Biden administration officials’ first visits to developing countries to scout potential investments in infrastructure projects. Under the rubric of “Build Back Better World,” it was the opening salvo in a battle to counteract China’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative.
The U.S. junket comes just a couple of weeks after the European Union formally unveiled, in embryonic form, its own answer to Beijing’s development challenge. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented the new “Global Gateway” initiative in mid-September, which promises amped-up European investment in building the sort of developing world infrastructure China has been happily, if haphazardly, meeting for almost a decade.
Both the U.S. plan—which ropes in G-7 members as well as countries like Australia, India, and Japan—and the EU program aim to hit the ground running in early 2022. Taken together, these disparate efforts to revitalize development aid and assistance represent the clearest answer yet to what has become the signature foreign-policy item of Chinese President Xi Jinping: the so-called Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which aims to invest hundreds of billions, perhaps trillions, of dollars in roads, rails, power plants, ports, and digital networks across Asia, Africa, and Europe.
Last week marked senior Biden administration officials’ first visits to developing countries to scout potential investments in infrastructure projects. Under the rubric of “Build Back Better World,” it was the opening salvo in a battle to counteract China’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative.
The U.S. junket comes just a couple of weeks after the European Union formally unveiled, in embryonic form, its own answer to Beijing’s development challenge. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented the new “Global Gateway” initiative in mid-September, which promises amped-up European investment in building the sort of developing world infrastructure China has been happily, if haphazardly, meeting for almost a decade.
Both the U.S. plan—which ropes in G-7 members as well as countries like Australia, India, and Japan—and the EU program aim to hit the ground running in early 2022. Taken together, these disparate efforts to revitalize development aid and assistance represent the clearest answer yet to what has become the signature foreign-policy item of Chinese President Xi Jinping: the so-called Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which aims to invest hundreds of billions, perhaps trillions, of dollars in roads, rails, power plants, ports, and digital networks across Asia, Africa, and Europe.
“All of these represent a recognition that we can’t just criticize what someone else is doing. We need to offer alternatives,” said Jonathan Hillman, an expert on the Belt and Road Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The big question isn’t whether the West has the financial firepower to match Beijing when it comes to infrastructure investment; taken together, the United States, Europe, Japan, and others have far outpaced China in recent years. The bigger question is whether newfangled development programs among Western allies will be coordinated and coherent or competing and whether they will end up as a true alternative to China’s new Silk Road or just a complement.
Since Xi announced with great fanfare what has variously been known as the “One Belt, One Road” or BRI in 2013, hundreds of billions of dollars, tens of thousands of Chinese workers, and scores of Chinese companies have descended on countries like Pakistan, Thailand, Myanmar, and Djibouti to build what these countries need: power plants, pipelines, ports, and connectivity. Europe and the United States have been doing much the same for ages, with less fanfare but more fireworks. France dug the Suez Canal both to bolster trade and its own influence in Egypt; Germany was building the Berlin-Baghdad railway to cement Ottoman obeisance when World War I intervened; the U.S. Marshall Plan literally rebuilt Western Europe to fend off the specter of communism.
But China saw in the developing world’s need for about $40 trillion in infrastructure investment a double opportunity. It was a way to ship abroad excess Chinese productive capacity at a time of domestic economic slowdown. And it was a way to turn China’s newfound financial firepower into a geopolitical advantage; countries on the receiving end of Chinese investments either tilted toward Beijing (as Greece did after major Chinese investments in the Port of Piraeus) or defaulted to the East, as Sri Lanka did when it handed over control of the Hambantota port complex to Beijing for the rest of the century after being saddled with unsustainable debt.
Initially, the Western response was either a quest for cooperation or chiding and consternation. That began to change a few years ago. In 2016, the European Union floated a multibillion euro infrastructure program to counter China, which only took shape this summer. In July, the European Union announced a new plan to coordinate its development finance activities—with higher standards and greater transparency than anything seen in BRI projects. “The Council considers that ensuring a geostrategic approach to connectivity has long-term implications for advancing the EU’s economic, foreign and development policy and security interests and promoting EU values globally,” the Council of the EU wrote.
The United States moved the month before, trotting out a new initiative with G-7 countries to promote infrastructure development that could provide an alternative to the Belt and Road Initiative. Surprisingly, it was former U.S. President Donald Trump who got the ball rolling. For all the “America First” rhetoric, it was the Trump administration that overhauled the way U.S. development finance works—it turned the straitjacketed Overseas Private Investment Corporation, which channels private investment into overseas ventures, into a beefed-up U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, doubling its war chest to $60 billion. It launched the “Blue Dot Network,” which aimed to establish blue-chip standards for infrastructure projects that would lure private investors into the fray and then get a lot more countries to join. It did much the same with the “Clean Network” initiative, meant to parry Chinese hegemony in advanced 5G mobile technology, which not only threatened to drive a wedge between the United States and the rest of the world but also presented a clear security risk.
Much like the EU’s latest blueprint, the Trump administration deliberately underscored the difference between development finance that comes from the West and what comes from the rest.
“The trust principles behind the Blue Dot Network and the Clean Network—transparency, accountability, sustainability, respect for rule of law, property, national sovereignty, human rights, the environment—the free world honors, and the [Chinese Communist Party (CCP)] does not honor,” said Keith Krach, former undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy, and the environment during the Trump administration. “They had been using those principles against us to their economic advantage. We took those principles and, in one big jiujitsu move, used them against the CCP and, in essence, weaponized those very principles that protect our freedoms.”
After nearly a decade of China being the loudest game in town, the Trump administration’s efforts presented a potential alternative for countries that needed investment but weren’t ready to sell their souls to Beijing.
“The Blue Dot Network and the Clean Network were, as one participating finance minister told me, a ‘unifying and equitable alternative to the one belt, one-way toll road to Beijing,’” Krach said.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has taken the baton and run with it. This summer, it announced the “Build Back Better World” initiative at the G-7 summit—a nod to Biden’s own domestic infrastructure push—that explicitly builds on the foundation it inherited. The idea is to turbocharge U.S. and Western development finance in an explicit counter to Beijing—but not frontally. The B3W, as it is known, focuses on a few core areas—climate change, health security, digital connectivity, and gender equity—that don’t exactly go toe-to-toe with China dredging harbors or hewing highways out of mountainsides. Europe, too, is focused more on things like digital connectivity than the kind of physical infrastructure projects China has prioritized.
With Washington and Brussels now fully mobilized to counter China’s overseas investments, the question becomes: Can the West—with dueling infrastructure programs having different rubrics and priorities—cooperate, or will there be an uncoordinated tag team facing China? U.S.-European tensions were high during the Trump years and haven’t abated much under Biden, especially after the Australian submarine deal, known as AUKUS.
“The problem is that relations with the United States are not very good,” said Philippe le Corre of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The Biden administration has really messed up the trans-Atlantic side of things—not just AUKUS, but basically, the Asia team has taken over the global strategy of the Biden administration, so countering BRI could be part of it, but they can’t do it alone.”
Even though there’s plenty of overlap in response to China’s challenge—the G-7, the European Union, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—that doesn’t mean the Biden administration can summon, as it hopes to later this year, a quorum of democracies to fight the main foe.
“The Biden people are not in a very good position to launch a unifying position on infrastructure—they will do their own thing and the EU their own thing,” le Corre said. “We should forget about a ‘democracy’ response to BRI.”
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Another question is whether higher standards in terms of the environment and sustainability or financial transparency will be a help or hindrance. Numerous countries actually favor the Chinese model, which allows for plenty of palm greasing, not to mention a quicker time to market. Tougher environmental standards and greater demands on transparency are great for upholding Western values—but are not necessarily what every country needs when it wants a bridge built. For decades, development finance was led by organizations like the World Bank and other regional development banks, but their central role has gradually been eclipsed by the advent of new development finance arms, especially in Asia.
“The World Bank and other development banks started in a world essentially without China, and they were able to proceed with high standards,” Hillman said. “When you are the only show in town, you can do that, but when someone comes in with a bunch of money and moves faster, you do need to find ways to be more nimble.”
At a time of competition for winning hearts, minds, and infrastructure contracts, the West’s insistence on higher standards, while laudable, could be a hindrance, said Frans-Paul van der Putten, an expert on China at the Clingendael Institute in the Netherlands.
“The dilemma for Europe is, when dealing with China, are you going to become more like China in order to compete and abandon your own standards and values? I think it’s inevitable for Europe to shift a little bit, which means coming closer to China,” he said.
One of the biggest outstanding questions is whether the overhaul of U.S. and European development assistance can fully mobilize private capital to multiply the relatively paltry amount of public money available to underwrite big projects. One of the big hurdles for Western countries and Western firms is that developing countries offer a higher risk profile for new investments, making private firms leery of jumping in. Trump administration reforms to the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation tackled some of those issues by, for instance, lowering the threshold for U.S. participation in any given project. But to really juice private sector participation and unlock big financing, the United States and Europe will have to play underwriter and assume part of the risk—as China has done with some of its over-the-skis projects around the world.
“If you want to compete at that level, individual banks and companies cannot match this. It can only be done if there is a government guarantee,” van der Putten said.
Ultimately, as B3W, Golden Gateway, and other ill-named initiatives build up steam, the fundamental question is whether the United States, Europe, or the G-7 countries can really play the same geoeconomic game authoritarian China has done for years. Washington and Brussels can tell companies what not to do but not what to do—that’s a huge difference with China. Beijing has, even if the pandemic has slowed its pace, the ability to turn state development banks into piggy banks for its geopolitical projects. China can, and has, run roughshod over rules, reviews, and regulations to make projects happen on a timeline that suits local leaders, something often beyond Western financiers.
Still, former officials think there’s plenty of ballgame left.
“Can we compete?” Krach asked. “You bet. It takes an integrated strategy where there’s unity between allies, leveraging our private sector, and using those trust principles to our advantage instead of letting China use it to our disadvantage.”
12. How Not to Build a State
Conclusion:
External state building may not be impossible. But the lesson of Afghanistan is that democracies find it extremely difficult. The experience of the last two decades should warn us of the dangers of American hubris and the limits of American military power to transform states and societies. The pivot from counterterrorism to liberal state building set the stage for failure, and subsequent decisions and a lack of preparation made the mission even harder than it had to be. Unfortunately, the challenges inherent in the mission, the problem of moral hazard, and the political exigencies responsible for short-termism are unlikely to change. If the richest, most militarily powerful country in the world was unable to succeed in remaking another country in its image, perhaps the most vital lesson of Afghanistan is that the United States should be much more circumspect about whether it should try at all.
How Not to Build a State - Modern War Institute
In the fall of 2001, just over a month after the first US troops arrived in the country, the United States and its allies seized control of Afghanistan, driving the Taliban from Kabul and out of power. Twenty years later saw the stunning reversal of the events of 2001: after a summer offensive that netted the Taliban territorial gains across the country, they captured Kabul on August 15, 2021. One minute before midnight on August 30, the last American troops departed Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport on a C-17 cargo plane. After two decades of fighting that killed 2,461 US troops and more than one hundred thousand Afghans, and that cost American taxpayers some $824 billion, the longest war in American history had formally ended.
How did it go so wrong? Contrary to some accounts, the US intervention in Afghanistan was not doomed to failure. Rather, the fundamental mistake was to allow the intervention to transform from a narrowly defined counterterrorism mission to an expansive, ill-defined liberal state-building mission.
Twenty years of failed state building and an unhelpful detour in Iraq make it easy to forget that the United States had limited goals in the fall of 2001: kill Osama bin Laden, destroy al-Qaeda, and punish the Taliban for permitting al-Qaeda to base itself on Afghan territory. Even after bin Laden eluded the US military and its allies, escaping across the border into Pakistan, the United States could have stuck to the mission. Instead, it pivoted to a much broader goal: it sought to make Afghanistan inhospitable to terrorism in the future.
Underlying this expansive goal was an explanation for how a terrorist organization came to thrive in Afghanistan and a theory for how to prevent other terrorist groups from doing the same. The problem, as the Bush administration saw it, was that Afghanistan’s weakness, corruption, and lack of freedom made it an attractive site for terrorists. If state weakness and a lack of democracy were the problems, then state strengthening and democratization were the solution.
To describe the turn from counterterrorism to state building and democratization as an egregious example of mission creep is to downplay the ambition and scale of what the United States and its allies hoped to achieve in Afghanistan. The Afghan state they envisioned would be secure, peaceful, effective, democratic, classically liberal in its market and political orientation, impartial, rule bound, and respectful of human rights (including those of women and minorities).
If that sounds like a lot, it is. In various forms, and to various degrees, this template has been part of the liberal international state-building model since the end of the Cold War. Its track record has been poor.
Why was remaking Afghanistan in the Western image so challenging? The answer is not a lack of resources: the US government alone spent more than $145 billion to rebuild Afghanistan. Nor is the answer the misperception that the Afghan people were not ready for effective government or democratic institutions. Civil society structures and organizations, often considered to be foundational for good governance, have long existed in Afghanistan. Moreover, customary forms of governance, such as collective decision-making bodies (shuras or jirgas) and community and religious leaders (maliks and mullahs, respectively), actually strengthen state governance in Afghanistan. They enhance perceptions of the state, improve support for democratic values, and even serve as a defense against regime abuses.
It’s the Politics, Stupid
The answer lies in the mission itself. Domestic state development involves two related processes: the management of violence and the construction and strengthening of state institutions. Historically, both processes have been highly coercive, corrupt, and exclusionary.
The first process, managing violence, refers to the criterion that many analysts and scholars consider to be a defining feature of the state: the monopoly of legitimate violence. I use the term managing violence because the monopoly is rarely complete or final. In effective, stable states, the government holds the monopoly of legitimate violence.
In Afghanistan, multiple actors not only wield violence but advance claims to the rightfulness and legitimacy of that use. These actors include the powerful individuals known colloquially as “warlords” or “strongmen,” such as Atta Muhammad Noor and Abdul Rashid Dostum, as well as the Taliban itself. Convincing armed actors to lay down their weapons and acknowledge the authority of the national government is not easy. President Hamid Karzai brought Atta and Dostum into his government, but he never disarmed them. In fact, Atta, Dostum, and other strongmen with independent sources of coercive power for years played a pivotal role in holding the Taliban at bay.
The second process, building and strengthening state institutions, sounds comparatively easy on its face. But building institutions does not mean simply establishing a new constitution or creating new ministries and commissions. Rather, it often requires altering the basic rules governing a society’s political order. Those rules determine who can access state power and how that power is to be organized and exercised. Put simply, they determine the most basic considerations in politics: who gets what, where, when, and how. These questions are deeply, even violently, contested. Formal institutions are irrelevant when powerful actors do not accept the same ground rules for playing the political game.
The major players in Afghanistan had profoundly different ideas about what those rules should be. The United States, its allies, and the internationalized elite in Afghanistan thought that political order should be participatory, open, and impartial, and they tried to structure state institutions in accordance with those principles. The Taliban espoused a radically conservative alternative, one that Westerners considered fundamentally antithetical to the liberal state-building project. The warlords who profited handsomely but illicitly from the government’s dependence on them were also opposed to institutional changes that would have jeopardized their privileged access to the rents of power.
The broader point is that the structure of state institutions and the exercise of state power are inherently political. Restructuring those institutions—changing the rules of the political game—is therefore also political. Moreover, that restructuring necessarily has distributional consequences—there are winners and losers. Those who lose their privileged access to the spoils of state power (or the selective nonenforcement of that power) will resist that restructuring, sometimes even violently. The international state-building mission in Afghanistan was never a technical or military challenge that could be solved with more money, more training, and more kinetic operations. It was—as state building always is—deeply political.
Hubris and Moral Hazard
This expansive state-building mission, with its twin components of controlling violence and restructuring the state along formally legal and liberal democratic lines, was already an overly ambitious and challenging endeavor. But the United States also made matters worse for itself along the way.
First, the United States insisted on unrealistic timelines. The Afghanistan intervention attempted to engineer in years what took today’s effective and consolidated states centuries to achieve. Britain, France, and the United States curbed the worst of their patrimonial tendencies, reformed their bureaucracies, stabilized and secured their territories, and liberalized and democratized, but in no case did they do so in twenty years. To think that outsiders could somehow achieve something similar in Afghanistan, from a less favorable starting point, and in the face of persistent short-termism on Washington’s part, is more than misguided. It is staggeringly arrogant.
Second, the United States entered Afghanistan without knowing how to engineer the outcomes it sought to achieve. There was no clear template or playbook. In fact, the United States has never succeeded in the wholesale transformation of a state and society. The two clearest postwar success stories are Germany and Japan, cases that differ profoundly from Afghanistan and from all other state-building interventions since then. Germany and Japan already had powerful, effective state structures. Afghanistan had no comparable foundation. In part because of this history of effective statehood, Germany and Japan were also culturally homogeneous with strong national identities. Afghan identity is pluralistic, and considerable societal fragmentation complicated the external attempt to build a legitimate centralized state. Furthermore, Germany and Japan were defeated countries. The United States drove the Taliban from power, but it did not defeat them.
Third, moral hazard— the bad incentives created when people believe they will be protected from the consequences of their decisions—exacerbated these problems. As long as the United States characterized Afghanistan as vital to its national security interests, the Afghan government knew that the United States was unlikely to walk away. Indeed, even after President Joe Biden announced that the United States would withdraw all troops from Afghanistan, some US politicians, military leaders, and academics immediately cited renewed difficulties in the fight against terrorism as a potential consequence of the American departure—leaving open the glimmer of hope that the United States might reverse itself.
Yet for twenty years, this unwillingness to leave fostered the Afghan government’s dependence on the United States and its military. As a result, the Afghan government was never incentivized to stand up an effective professional military, rein in excessive corruption, improve public service delivery, or improve life for ordinary Afghans. It knew the United States would come to the rescue. Until Biden’s announcement, this calculation was not wrong; the full consequences of that dependence only became clear on August 15 when Kabul fell to the Taliban.
External state building may not be impossible. But the lesson of Afghanistan is that democracies find it extremely difficult. The experience of the last two decades should warn us of the dangers of American hubris and the limits of American military power to transform states and societies. The pivot from counterterrorism to liberal state building set the stage for failure, and subsequent decisions and a lack of preparation made the mission even harder than it had to be. Unfortunately, the challenges inherent in the mission, the problem of moral hazard, and the political exigencies responsible for short-termism are unlikely to change. If the richest, most militarily powerful country in the world was unable to succeed in remaking another country in its image, perhaps the most vital lesson of Afghanistan is that the United States should be much more circumspect about whether it should try at all.
Melissa M. Lee is Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. She is the author of Crippling Leviathan: How Foreign Subversion Weakens the State (Cornell University Press, 2020).
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: Pfc. Micah E. Clare, US Army
13. History hasn’t ended
Quite a critique (an ad hominem attack) :
Probably much of this would have happened whether Fukuyama had written or not. But the hubris he induced in western policymakers and elites has left them acutely off-guard and unprepared. It has also encouraged in every field — immigration, the EU referendum campaign, foreign policy — the adoption of measures that were the opposite of what was required.
Fukuyama, in short, was a true quack: he couldn’t diagnose; prescribed false remedies, and even helped make the well sick.
History hasn’t ended | David Starkey | The Critic Magazine
Francis Fukuyama got it very wrong
‘‘The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”
J. M. Keynes’s celebrated words have been ringing through my head as, like everybody else, I’ve followed the astonishing events in Afghanistan. For our defeat is much more than a military failure. It also represents a complete failure of policy and, above all, the failure — likewise complete and absolute — of the body of ideas which have driven Western policy for the last 30 years.
The epitome of all of this is Tony Blair: he of the staring eyes and messianic self-belief. Which is why, post the fall of Kabul, he’s popping up everywhere to insist, like a political Edith Piaf, that he regrets nothing: not Iraq, not Afghanistan, not immigration, not anything, for he knew that he was “on the right side of History” and to think anything else is “imbecilic”.
Which brings us back to Keynes: “Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.” In Blair’s case, the “frenzy” is all his own; the “academic scribbler” is Francis Fukuyama; and the “few years back” the summer of 1989 when, in the wake of glasnost and the impending collapse of Soviet Communism, Fukuyama published his celebrated essay The End of History?
The phrase is taken from the German Idealist philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. For Hegel, history was a battle of ideas/ideals (as, rather more ironically, it was for Keynes). This meant, Hegel declared, that history had ended in the real battle at Jena in 1806, with the victory of Napoleon, “The World Spirit on Horseback”, the defeat of the Prussian absolute monarchy and the triumph of the French Revolutionary ideals of liberty and equality.
But Hegel, who was neither a liberal nor a democrat, wasn’t talking about political freedom but rather the realisation of the spiritual freedom first adumbrated by Christ in the phrase “whose service is perfect freedom”.
The man who brought all this down to earth, as it were, was Hegel’s disciple, the twentieth-century Franco-Russian intellectual, Alexandre Kojève.
Kojève offered a straightforward political reading of Hegel. The goal of history now became the realisation not of spiritual but political freedom. And it was this, Kojève claimed, which had been achieved by the American and French revolutions and cemented by the battle of Jena.
The result was what Kojève called the “universal homogenous state”. This, in Fukuyama’s summary, “is liberal insofar as it recognises and protects through a system of law man’s universal right to freedom, and democratic in so far as it exists only with the consent of the governed”. It also, since it is invariably associated with free-market capitalism, satisfies all human wants.
The result is everything — and nothing. Since every want is satisfied, there is nothing to fight about, either within states or between them. There is no history since it is finished and no philosophy either since everything is understood. The only activity is economic and that is handled by experts.
It sounds like a somewhat idealised picture of the EU (or Common Market, as it then was). Which indeed Kojève saw as the ultimate human community. Unlike most intellectuals, he practised what he preached, ceasing to teach and becoming a Brussels bureaucrat until his death in 1968.
Fukuyama’s only substantial addition to Kojève was to declare that history had ended (again) in 1989 with glasnost and the impending collapse of communism, the only serious ideological rival to the “universal homogenous state”, aka liberal democracy. This means of course that history has ended — err — twice.
Here it’s worth recalling the verdict of John Lingard, Hegel’s contemporary and the author of the first history of England to be written from original sources. Philosophers of history, Lingard declared, were neither philosophers nor historians. Instead they were mere “literary empirics”.
In other words, they were charlatans.
This is too severe. The best “philosophic” historians are thinkers of the calibre of Hume, Gibbon and Hegel himself. Their works are like good lectures. They make you think about history in new ways. But then of course, to be of any use, these new ideas need to be subjected to Lingard’s methods and tested against the evidence.
Fukuyama and Kojève, on the other hand, are mere epigones. They fail the “lecture” test because they close down ideas rather than open them up; they cannot survive the slightest contact with the evidence and, above all, they are wilfully unhistorical. The End of History? is history without history. And history — “the whirligig of time” — has had “its revenges”.
The hubris Fukuyama induced in Western policymakers and elites has left them acutely unprepared
These have come both from within liberal democracy and without. For the “universal homogenous state” has turned out to be much less universal than Fukuyama and Kojève predicted and far less homogenous too. Far from satisfying all human needs, it has proved only that Christ was right when he said “man shall not live by bread alone”. God may be dead but the religious reflex isn’t and Extinction Rebellion, with its proclamation that “The End of the World is Nigh”, is flagellant millenarianism in environmental fancy dress.
Even sillier, it transpires, was the claim that the liberal democratic state was uniquely stable and impervious to change since its “basic principles … could not be improved upon”.
On the contrary, liberalism is a revolutionary doctrine and, like all revolutions, consumes itself. The liberalism of the French Revolution ended in the Terror; the liberalism of the Sixties is ending in identity politics, the destruction of the western canon and the denial of objective reality. The last has been one of the pillars of the astonishing progress of the last five hundred years; the other was freedom of expression. This too is under grave threat from the New Puritanism of “cancellation”.
Externally we fare no better. Far from following the “universal” path of liberal democracy, post-communist Russia has reverted to the repression and military adventurism of its Tsarist past while, even more destructively for Fukuyama’s thesis, Xi’s China shows that it is possible to separate economic freedom, which it permits, from political freedom, which it denies. If it manages to show that innovation can be separated from political freedom as well, we are lost and history, or at least the history of the West, will end indeed.
Meanwhile, beyond the end of history, there is the EU. But, far from being Fukuyama’s culmination of history, it looks like a strange appendix. And, far from resolving the contradictions of European history, it looks as though — again like a diseased appendix — it will burst apart under their strain.
Probably much of this would have happened whether Fukuyama had written or not. But the hubris he induced in western policymakers and elites has left them acutely off-guard and unprepared. It has also encouraged in every field — immigration, the EU referendum campaign, foreign policy — the adoption of measures that were the opposite of what was required.
Fukuyama, in short, was a true quack: he couldn’t diagnose; prescribed false remedies, and even helped make the well sick.
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14. One of These Things is Not Like the Others: Increasing Diversity Through Recruiting
Excerpt:
Improving diversity requires changing the approach and recognizing areas of opportunity. Diversity of recruitment will lend itself to a more diverse service in terms of demographics but also in terms of experience. These diverse experiences open up new ways of seeing and solving problems. There is incredible value in a more representative force. Achieving this starts with creating new inroads to service for first-generation recruits and supporting them once they join the military.
One of These Things is Not Like the Others: Increasing Diversity Through Recruiting - War on the Rocks
There’s a Pixar short that features an adorable pink ball of yarn, Purl, arriving for her first day of work at a corporate job. All the employees look the same (and vastly different than Purl). To fit in, she arranges herself into a modest business suit and changes her personality. While cute, the short reflects a couple common themes across industries: the importance of diversity in the workplace and the failure to properly onboard a new employee, particularly one who doesn’t look like everyone else. These themes are no less relevant — or urgent — in the military.
A diverse force ensures the flexibility and creativity in thinking required to counter 21st-century threats. Representation of racial and ethnic minorities in the military has grown steadily in recent decades, and the demographics of the services now more closely mirror those of the country. But there is still work to be done. Improvement lies in directing recruitment to underrepresented parts of the country and dedicating outreach to first-generation military members.
Panelists at hearings for the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service (NCMNPS) — a temporary federal agency chartered by Congress to consider methods to increase participation in military, national, and public service — reached similar conclusions in 2019. In discussing current demographic trends, Dr. Lindsay P. Cohn, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, shared the specific recommendation to increase recruiter presence in “low-yield areas to increase visibility and improve overall force representativeness.”
A significant limiting factor on diversity is the reality that the military is becoming a family business. A significant percentage of new military recruits come from families where one or more members have served in uniform. For example, a 2013 Pentagon report of recruits shows that 82 percent of new sailors had a close relative (defined as a parent, grandparent, sibling, aunt, uncle, or cousin) who had served. Further, white recruits were most likely to have a family member who had served in the military. This naturally limits diverse representation, both in terms of demographics and experience.
Focusing on Lesser-Recruited Parts of the Country and First-Generation Service
Part of the reason for this family legacy of service is a concentration of recruitment from certain parts of the country. The majority of recruitment for the military has historically occurred in the South and near military bases in particular. This concentration threatens the ability to recruit diverse recruits. Reaching beyond the traditional geographic areas of recruitment, which disproportionately represent military families, can help to fix this.
To that end, Beth Asch’s 2019 RAND research looking at Army efforts reveals helpful insight into diversifying recruitment. The findings demonstrate that individual recruiter characteristics, including race, are linked with significant increases in recruiter productivity. Additionally, recruiters assigned to their home state are more effective. The natural recommendation is then that recruitment can be improved by ensuring recruiters better reflect differences in recruiting markets. Recruiters who are “similar to the population [where they’re trying to recruit] are more successful, perhaps because potential enlistees are more likely to identify with recruiters with similar characteristics.”
Simply put, more effective recruitment will occur when potential recruits feel they’re reflected in the force, whether that’s a recruiter having the same race as them or coming from where they are from. This research highlights the benefit of expanding outreach and recruiting in varied geographic areas.
Diversity lies in underrepresented parts of the country, and, relatedly, it begins with bringing in more first-generation servicemembers. Focusing recruitment toward first-generation young people will create new pipelines to service, perpetuating the importance of legacy with more diverse types of families. A family legacy of military service is an asset to the force, but diverse legacies are just as important.
Recruiting first-generation servicemembers should begin in areas without a significant military footprint. There is a misperception that a disproportionate number of military recruits come from urban areas. However, these urban areas are actually the most underrepresented parts of the country among new recruits. Recruitment focused on these big cities that have previously been overlooked in military recruiting would improve the demographic diversity of the services. But it would also improve the diversity in experience that recruits bring. Because these areas don’t have significant military representation, there is great potential to bring in first-time recruits without a military background. It should be noted that these areas are more likely to have an information deficit when it comes to what service entails because there aren’t significant numbers of veterans in the community. There is opportunity here, though.
In 2019, the U.S. Army conducted outreach targeted at these types of underrepresented urban areas. The efforts were successful, and the Army met its recruiting goal that year, with cities seeing an average of a 15 percent increase in enlistment numbers. The military overall can achieve the same by redoubling efforts in cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, for example. While the Army focused on these areas to boost the service’s overall recruitment numbers, the services can pursue this approach to improve the diversity of the force.
What This Recruitment Looks Like
Encouraging recruitment from underrepresented areas brings its own challenges. In big metropolitan areas in the Northeast, in the Midwest, and on the West Coast, where recruitment is traditionally less represented, young people are less likely to have a parent, teacher, or other respected adult who served in the military. This type of personal connection is often a major contributing factor when young people decide to join. As a result, recruiting first-generation recruits is, admittedly, more challenging than recruiting individuals who are familiar with the realities of military life. Recruiters may be working against a lack of information, at best, or misinformation, at worst. For this reason, successfully recruiting in non-traditional areas will look markedly different. These young people may have no association with the military beyond what they see on TV or in video games. That doesn’t mean that it’s not a worthwhile endeavor. Taking the extra work to inform, educate, and inspire these young people to join represents an important first step to increasing diversity.
The key to success in this type of outreach is closing the gap in information and countering stereotypes and misperceptions regarding what it means to serve. To aid in recruitment, the services should establish day-in-the-life features and profiles of first-generation servicemembers. It can’t be overstated how powerful it is to have someone who looks like you as a motivator to serve. This doesn’t just have to be someone of the same race or ethnicity. It can be just as powerful to have someone from your city or with your background of a non-military family show you that service is possible — and what it looks like.
These profiles and features should also highlight the wide variety of jobs the military has to offer. This would counter the misconception (particularly prominent in communities without knowledge of, or exposure to, service) that the military is limited to combat roles. By highlighting various professions, from human resources to law to medicine to logistics, this type of recruiting can show the diversity in work available across the armed forces and can overcome preconceived notions of service.
The outreach would highlight, of course, the positive results of serving, but, most importantly, they would be candid in the hurdles and challenges each servicemember overcame. Honestly capturing all aspects of what it means to serve is an impactful way to make service relatable. It also humanizes the experience, which is especially important in recruiting those who don’t have the personal connection of coming from a military family.
While recruiting first-generation individuals requires a targeted approach, it can be incorporated with existing efforts and campaigns. For example, the Navy’s Instagram account, @usnavy_atthehelm, is an ideal platform to highlight first-generation service. The account already features “takeovers,” where sailors take over the account for a few days to share their personal experiences in the fleet. Using this account to spotlight someone who doesn’t come from a military family, and having them share what that experience is like, what they overcame, and what Navy life is like for them would provide a powerful perspective and help introduce more diverse recruiting.
There is also promise in efforts the Department of Defense has already enacted to improve diversity in service. Secretary Lloyd Austin III has made it clear, in speech and in deed, that diversity in the military is a top priority.
In a newly created role, Bishop Garrison serves as the senior advisor to the secretary of defense for human capital and diversity, equity, and inclusion. In this capacity, he is the first aide to directly advise the defense secretary on issues of diversity in the military. While the Defense Department already has an office for diversity, equity, and inclusion, having a top official with direct access to the secretary handling these issues signals their special prominence in the Pentagon.
In terms of actions to promote diversity and inclusion, Austin has examined extremist activity and revoked a ban on diversity training for the military. Garrison leads the Countering Extremism Working Group and is charged with implementing recommendations that stem from the group. The department is actively embracing ideas like inclusion and adopting efforts to recruit and retain women and people of color. These efforts are noteworthy and are a promising start to the direction the department is taking and what new recruits can expect. However, targeted efforts at diversifying recruitment are an important and necessary complement.
Meeting Diversity Recruiting with Inclusion Efforts
As Cohn expressed in her 2019 testimony to the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service, “the growing diversity of the population … will require military culture to adapt, and military advertising to make a conscious effort to convince a wider variety of people that they can, indeed, belong in the armed forces.”
This statement represents a key element to not just increasing diversity and representation but maintaining it: the idea that one belongs. The work doesn’t stop with improving diversity. Inclusion is the complementary requirement that ensures that, as diversity is achieved, it is also valued, used, and appreciated. Part of that comes from ensuring diversity is represented at the highest ranks of leadership. This signals that the services value all contributions.
Dr. Kathleen H. Hicks — then-senior vice president, Henry A. Kissinger Chair, and director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies — pointed out in her testimony to the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service, the “lack of racial, ethnic, and gender diversity at the senior-most levels of the military all run counter to generational views on society and work.” She referenced a recent poll, in which Generation Z respondents cited equality as the top cause they wished to see their employers support:
Given that almost half of the Generation Z population will be racial minorities, currently underrepresented at the highest levels of the institution [the military] … a good deal of otherwise inclined talent may choose alternatives to a military life that seems out of step with their own values.
Notably, Hicks is currently serving as deputy secretary of defense, which brings the very recognition she cites to prominence in the Department of Defense.
Certain structural issues make representation at the highest ranks difficult. For example, the military’s preference for senior leaders with certain backgrounds, such as combat arms roles, combined with the reality that many people of color in the officer corps serve in combat service and service support specialties, such as logistics and transportation, leads to decreased promotion representation at the senior ranks.
The Defense Department recognizes the need for representation and, in a memorandum for senior Pentagon leadership on “Actions to Improve Racial and Ethnic Diversity and Inclusion in the U.S. Military,” has called for increased transparency of promotion selections and career opportunities in order to reinforce the Department of Defense’s focus on achieving equity across all grades. It charges military departments to “update relevant policies to establish procedures for the internal release … of aggregated demographic and other contextual data concerning promotion selection board results” by Dec. 15, 2021. Action begins with awareness, so this step is a promising one.
While the Department of Defense is actively implementing diverse recruiting efforts, what’s imperative is ensuring that individuals feel like they belong once they have been recruited. Inclusion is a key part of helping to ensure that diverse servicemembers stay in the military and continue to promote to senior ranks. Achieving this type of inclusion should start early and can be accomplished by mirroring what takes place on college campuses for first-generation college students. These students often have a network or community when they arrive on campus. There are student-run groups, for example, dedicated to ensuring the campuses are inclusive. They ensure that these diverse, unique perspectives first-generation students bring are valued and that their specific experiences are honored as they join a new community. The military services can recreate this approach in their mentoring. Mentoring sets up support so they can thrive in service, feel a part of the mission, and ultimately serve as new recruiting models for their communities.
Research of formal mentoring in the military has shown that women and minority respondents are mentored at rates equivalent to men and majority-group members. However, when mentoring occurs, it is often because a senior person initiates the relationship, likely due to the hierarchical nature of military culture. This reality should be considered particularly in mentoring of first-generation recruits, and special attention should be given to ensuring those mentoring have the requisite characteristics (i.e., an outgoing personality) to connect with mentees.
Establishing first-generation servicemembers as mentors who can share their experiences with new recruits is a powerful way to promote inclusion. Pairing up these individuals with experienced servicemembers who have been in their shoes will help create an inclusive environment. It wouldn’t need to be overly formal or structured, but simply a way to establish connections so these new, unique perspectives are recognized for the value they bring to the force.
An inclusive military is one that includes people from all walks of life but that also values them for the perspective their experiences provide. An inclusive service looks beyond demographic details as representing diversity and recognizes that where people come from and what they are exposed to shapes them and makes them unique.
Inclusion is the vital next step to ensure efforts to increase diversity aren’t done in vain. It also begets future recruitment of diversity. By showing itself to be culturally inclusive, the military can further attract the right mix of people to serve.
Dr. Jacquelyn Schneider of the Hoover Institution has described how relying on mission as a motivator for supporting recruitment is not enough: “Instead, defense leaders need to evaluate what cultural barriers may exist that keep top talent from joining the military.” By continuing the current approach of recruitment, the services will continue to draw the majority of recruits from the same parts of the country and overwhelmingly from military families — and, ultimately, with increasingly similar backgrounds.
Improving diversity requires changing the approach and recognizing areas of opportunity. Diversity of recruitment will lend itself to a more diverse service in terms of demographics but also in terms of experience. These diverse experiences open up new ways of seeing and solving problems. There is incredible value in a more representative force. Achieving this starts with creating new inroads to service for first-generation recruits and supporting them once they join the military.
Marissa Cruz Lemar is a writer, communications consultant, and Navy public affairs officer. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Insider, and Task & Purpose, among other outlets. The views presented here are hers alone and don’t represent those of the U.S. Naval Academy, U.S. Navy, or the Department of Defense. Follow Marissa on Twitter @mcruzmissile.
Image: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Spencer Fling
15. ‘Unease’: NATO faces uncertainty amid Afghanistan withdrawal, China’s rise
Excerpts:
“You’ve got this unease in Brussels and in NATO capitals that the U.S. is kind of unpredictable,” said Jim Townsend, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy during the Obama administration. “We’ve had four years of [former President Donald] Trump, which was a roller coaster. And Biden said, ‘We’re back.’ But some one-off things have happened that have tested theory. Is the U.S. on an arc where they’re really not so interested in Europe? They don’t know on the arc of history where America really stands.
“You say ‘America is back,” but it doesn’t feel that way,” he said.
Mr. Townsend said the Afghanistan withdrawal served as an eye-opener for NATO nations.
“They couldn’t stay there on their own two feet and in some capitals that concerned them,” he said.
U.S. leaders made clear that they expect NATO to revamp its approach. In readouts of conversations with Mr. Stoltenberg, the White House and State Department stressed the importance of the alliance’s Strategic Concept, a landmark document expected to be released next year.
“President Biden reaffirmed his strong support for NATO and the importance of bolstering deterrence and defense against strategic competitors and transnational threats,” the White House said. “President Biden also conveyed our full support for the NATO agenda agreed by leaders in June, including ensuring the alliance is fully equipped and resourced to address the modern threat environment and developing a new Strategic Concept.”
‘Unease’: NATO faces uncertainty amid Afghanistan withdrawal, China’s rise
Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg D.C. visit comes amid questions of future missions
The West’s inglorious exit from Afghanistan has sparked a long-awaited reckoning for NATO and has fueled major questions about the role the alliance is capable of playing in the 21st century — and to what degree it can rely so heavily on U.S. leadership and U.S. military assets.
With NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg making his first visit to Washington this week since the fall of Kabul in late August, alliance watchers see a deep sense of unease across Europe. High-stakes issues rose to the surface in a matter of months and threatened some of NATO‘s cohesiveness and core tenets.
President Biden’s decision to pull all American troops from Afghanistan immediately forced other NATO nations to do the same, confirming that the alliance cannot conduct major military and intelligence missions without Washington in the lead. The chaotic, deadly exit also shook Europe’s faith in America’s steadiness and reliability, potentially chipping away at the foundation of the trans-Atlantic partnership that has stood since the early days of the Cold War.
On the heels of the withdrawal, Australia’s decision to cancel a major submarine contract with France and forge a security partnership with the U.S. and Britain underscored a global shift in security priorities toward the Pacific and China. How a defense pact with “North Atlantic” in its name fits into the Asian power puzzle is an unanswered question.
Mr. Stoltenberg, a Norwegian whose term as secretary-general expires in September 2022, met Monday with Mr. Biden, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and other top administration officials. They discussed the alliance’s path ahead and its role in global economic and military competition with Beijing. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet with French officials Tuesday in an effort to mend fences after the submarine contract cancellation.
But specialists say the series of meetings Monday and Tuesday may not be enough to change the perception that the U.S. relationship with NATO is changing rapidly and that Mr. Stoltenberg and other alliance leaders haven’t figured out exactly how to adapt. Mr. Biden, Europeans say, says the right things, but the first 10 months of his administration have been unexpectedly rocky for trans-Atlantic ties.
“You’ve got this unease in Brussels and in NATO capitals that the U.S. is kind of unpredictable,” said Jim Townsend, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy during the Obama administration. “We’ve had four years of [former President Donald] Trump, which was a roller coaster. And Biden said, ‘We’re back.’ But some one-off things have happened that have tested theory. Is the U.S. on an arc where they’re really not so interested in Europe? They don’t know on the arc of history where America really stands.
“You say ‘America is back,” but it doesn’t feel that way,” he said.
Mr. Townsend said the Afghanistan withdrawal served as an eye-opener for NATO nations.
“They couldn’t stay there on their own two feet and in some capitals that concerned them,” he said.
U.S. leaders made clear that they expect NATO to revamp its approach. In readouts of conversations with Mr. Stoltenberg, the White House and State Department stressed the importance of the alliance’s Strategic Concept, a landmark document expected to be released next year.
“President Biden reaffirmed his strong support for NATO and the importance of bolstering deterrence and defense against strategic competitors and transnational threats,” the White House said. “President Biden also conveyed our full support for the NATO agenda agreed by leaders in June, including ensuring the alliance is fully equipped and resourced to address the modern threat environment and developing a new Strategic Concept.”
Questions across Europe
But the failure in Afghanistan and the U.S.-U.K.-Australian defense pact have some in Europe, led by French President Emmanuel Macron, dusting off plans for a European Union fighting force that would not need American support or approval to take on missions relating to European security.
In London, some officials have openly argued that it’s time for Britain and other European nations to bolster their own national security prowess to avoid scenarios in which U.S. decisions dictate NATO moves.
In Paris, leaders are trying to gauge the fallout from the lost submarine deal, which sparked a diplomatic standoff between the U.S. and France that Mr. Blinken will try to break this week. More broadly, French leaders say, the situation should serve as a wake-up call. A top adviser to Mr. Macron told Reuters that Mr. Macron will use a speech Tuesday to push the message that Europe can and must play a vital role on its own in confronting China.
“We could turn a blind eye and act as if nothing had happened. We think that would be a mistake for all Europeans,” the Macron adviser said. “There really is an opportunity here. … We don’t want to push Europeans into making a sort of binary choice between partnership with the U.S. or Europe turning inward.”
Perhaps nowhere are the questions more pressing than in Germany. The ambiguous outcome of the country’s recent parliamentary elections surely will impact the direction of NATO and overall European defense spending.
The coalition of German parties that will ultimately take control of the Bundestag is being negotiated, but no one disputes that the longtime reign of center-right Chancellor Angela Merkel, a proponent of NATO and of a robust role for Germany in the alliance, has come to an end in Berlin.
Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party came in second in the Sept. 26 election. Germany’s Social Democratic Party won the biggest share of seats in the Bund and is now seeking to form a ruling coalition with either the country’s Green Party or the pro-business Free Democratic Party.
This matters, analysts say, because neither the Greens nor the Free Democrats are keen to back a more robust NATO led by the United States.
“A CDU-led government would have largely guaranteed the continuation of the old-style U.S.-European relationship, centered around NATO and relying on German participation in collective defense and political arrangements,” said Ulrike Franke, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, where she focuses on German and European defense.
Ms. Franke did, however, assert that the coalition in Germany could end up as “good news” for a new trans-Atlantic alliance focused on the U.S. and Europe “countering China together.”
Ms. Merkel’s CDU coalition was dubious of the confrontational drift of the U.S.-Chinese rivalry, particularly given the importance of the Chinese market for German exporters. Germany was the primary driver of an EU-Chinese investment pact last year that was negotiated despite the clear disapproval of the incoming Biden administration.
Berlin’s attitude could shift significantly if Germans form a coalition without Ms. Merkel’s party, Ms. Franke said.
“The two smaller parties that will make or break any German coalition — the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) — are inclined toward a stronger stance against China,” she wrote.
16. Hypersonic Missiles: The Alarming Must-have In Military Tech
Excerpts:
Hypersonic missiles can be used to deliver conventional warheads, more rapidly and precisely than other missiles.
But their capacity to deliver nuclear weapons could add to a country's threat, increasing the danger of a nuclear conflict.
Russia, China, the United States and now North Korea have all test-launched hypersonic missiles.
France, Germany, Australia, India and Japan are working on hypersonics, and Iran, Israel and South Korea have conducted basic research on the technology, according to a recent report by the US Congressional Research Service (CRS).
Russia is the most advanced. Moscow announced Monday that it had fired two Zircon hypersonic missiles from the Severodvinsk nuclear submarine.
Hypersonic Missiles: The Alarming Must-have In Military Tech
Barron's · by AFP - Agence France Presse
A US unarmed prototype hypersonic missile launches from Pacific Missile Range Facility, Kauai, Hawaii
Oscar Sosa
Text size
North Korea's test of a hypersonic missile last week sparked new concerns about the race to acquire the alarming technology that is hard to defend against and could unsettle the global nuclear balance.
Russia, which said Monday it had test-launched a hypersonic missile from a submerged submarine for the first time, leads the race, followed by China and the United States, and at least five other countries are working on the technology.
Hypersonic missiles, like traditional ballistic missiles which can deliver nuclear weapons, can fly more than five times the speed of sound.
But ballistic missiles fly high into space in an arc to reach their target, while a hypersonic flies on a trajectory low in the atmosphere, potentially reaching a target more quickly.
Crucially, a hypersonic missile is maneuverable (like the much slower, often subsonic cruise missile), making it harder to track and defend against.
While countries like the United States have developed systems designed to defend against cruise and ballistic missiles, the ability to track and take down a hypersonic missile remains a question.
Hypersonic missiles can be used to deliver conventional warheads, more rapidly and precisely than other missiles.
But their capacity to deliver nuclear weapons could add to a country's threat, increasing the danger of a nuclear conflict.
Russia, China, the United States and now North Korea have all test-launched hypersonic missiles.
France, Germany, Australia, India and Japan are working on hypersonics, and Iran, Israel and South Korea have conducted basic research on the technology, according to a recent report by the US Congressional Research Service (CRS).
Russia is the most advanced. Moscow announced Monday that it had fired two Zircon hypersonic missiles from the Severodvinsk nuclear submarine.
The first, while the sub was on the surface, successfully struck a test target in the Barents Sea. The second was launched while the vessel was submerged 40 meters (131 feet) below the surface.
China is also aggressively developing the technology, seeing it as crucial to defend against US gains in hypersonic and other technologies, according to the CRS report.
Both China and Russia have "likely fielded an operational capability" with hypersonic glide vehicles, said the report.
The US Defense Department has an aggressive development program, planning up to 40 tests over the next five years, according to a government report.
The Pentagon tested a scramjet-powered hypersonic last week, calling it "a successful demonstration of the capabilities that will make hypersonic cruise missiles a highly effective tool for our warfighters."
North Korea's test announcement suggested they had much further to go, that the test focused on "maneuverability" and "flight characteristics."
"Based on an assessment of its characteristics such as speed, it is at an initial phase of development and will take a considerable time to be deployed," the South Korean and US militaries said in a statement.
Experts say hypersonics do not necessarily upend the global nuclear balance, but instead add a potent new delivery method to the traditional triad of bombers, ground-launched ICBMs, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
A central risk is not knowing whether an adversary's hypersonic missile has a conventional or nuclear warhead.
And, underscoring the attractiveness of hypersonics, the CRS report says that the US missile defense system is inadequate to detect, track and respond in time to hypersonics.
Cameron Tracy, an arms control expert at Stanford University, called hypersonics an "evolutionary" advance.
It's "definitely not a game-changer," he said. "It's an arms race ... In large part, it's to show that any weapon that anyone else can develop, you will have first."
The solution, according to Tracy, is to include hypersonics in nuclear arms control negotiations -- though currently North Korea and China are not part of any pacts.
"The development of these weapons, this hypersonic arms race, is probably not the most stable situation. So it would be good to act as quickly as possible," said Tracy.
Barron's · by AFP - Agence France Presse
17. Should America Fight A War with China over Taiwan? Hell No.
Another way to undermine strategic ambiguity and deterrence. In my mind deterrence is still the best way to prevent a war but unfortunately for people like Mr. Davis that means demonstrating the capability and the will to fight a war.
Should America Fight A War with China over Taiwan? Hell No.
Between Friday and Monday, China launched an unprecedented 155 warplanes into the skies near the Taiwanese coast. “Time to warn Taiwan” that the threat of war “is real,” blasted the headline on Monday from the Chinese Global Times.
Now, while there is still time for thoughtful debate, is the time to contemplate the pros and cons of fighting a war with China over Taiwan. If we wait until a crisis has been thrust upon us, we will be more likely to be propelled by an emotional response into a catastrophic mistake.
Since 1979, the United States has had an unbroken policy of “strategic ambiguity” regarding our willingness to intervene in a the event China invades Taiwan. China, in contrast, has been unambiguously clear that it would use force to take Taiwan if Beijing believed Taipei sought to declare independence.
There is a growing chorus in Washington, however, advocating a move from strategic ambiguity to strategic clarity, in which the U.S. government would make explicit security guarantees to Taipei and commit our military to fighting on their behalf if Beijing attacks them. Such a policy change would have profound implications for U.S. national security, almost all of them negative. Before any adjustments are made in a decades’ long policy that has successfully prevented war between the U.S. and China, American policymakers must answer three crucial questions.
First, what is the capacity of the U.S. Armed Forces to repulse a Chinese attack against Taiwan?
Second, what price should the U.S. be willing to pay to accomplish our policy preferences 6,000 miles from our shore?
Third, what is the capacity for Beijing to act in support of its policy preferences 100 miles off its shore?
Viewed through the lens of cold, hard reality, the questions are more easily answered than many expect. Let’s take the questions in reverse order. The autocratic Chinese leader Xi Jinping has staked his political legitimacy on unifying Taiwan with mainland China. In a speech this summer marking the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese leader did not mince words.
Xi forcefully declared that resolving “the Taiwan question and realizing China’s complete reunification is a historic mission and an unshakable commitment of the Communist Party of China,” warning that anyone who tries to stop them, “will find themselves on a collision course with a great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people.” The matter of Taiwan is a highly charged emotional and political issue for Xi and millions of Chinese citizens. There is likely little they would not sacrifice to achieve their objective of reunification.
While America does remain the only truly global superpower, we are not militarily omnipotent. Our Armed Forces are spread out on hundreds of bases in Asia, Europe, Africa, South America, and other locations—the U.S. troops stationed nearest Taiwan are in Okinawa, about 1,000 miles away. Virtually all of China’s maritime, air, and missile forces are concentrated on its east coast, 100 miles away from Taiwan. Even with the full commitment of all our Asian allies – no sure bet when it comes to actually fighting a war – China would have a tactical advantage over us. Thus, our ability to stop a determined Chinese assault of Taiwan is likely insufficient.
Lastly, while taking Taiwan is a desire of most Chinese mainlanders, militarily defending the island is at best a distant interest of many in the U.S. If war is truly a contest of wills – and it is – all evidence suggests the Chinese people are far more willing to make enormous sacrifices to capture Taiwan.
If we fight China, the very best outcome we can hope for is a U.S. military that is left severely damaged, thousands of service members killed and wounded, and a massive security and financial burden of defending Taiwan indefinitely – a bill we cannot afford to pay. But the worst outcome (and the more likely result) is that we lose a war, suffer egregious casualties, and – in an absolute worst-case scenario – get drawn into a nuclear exchange with China in which millions of American civilians could die—we shouldn’t sacrifice Los Angeles for Taipei.
There is absolutely nothing in Taiwan worth that risk to our country.
However much we desire to see Taiwan remain open and free, trying to prevent a Chinese attack with force of arms has virtually no chance of long-term success and a high probability of catastrophic failure for our own country. Before such a choice is thrust on the United States, our leaders in Washington must decide to take the only course of action that will ensure the security of our country, and that is to refuse to fight a war with China over Taiwan.
Now a 1945 Contributing Editor, Daniel L. Davis is a Senior Fellow for Defense Priorities and a former Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army who deployed into combat zones four times. He is the author of “The Eleventh Hour in 2020 America.” Follow him @DanielLDavis1.
18. Quad: A Mini-NATO In Disarray – OpEd
I think characterizing the Quad as a "mini-NATO" is not helpful.
Excerpt:
Ironically, with the launch of AUKUS, a military alliance aimed at building Australia’s naval sinews to checkmate China’s assertive postures, it is likely to cause ripples between America and its EU partners like France. It is quite intriguing that Australia’s cancellation of a multibillion-dollar nuclear submarine deal with France soon after the inauguration of AUKUS invited deep wrath in France’s corridors of power. As reported, the angry French foreign minister reacted sharply, saying “This brutal and unilateral decision resembles a lot of what Trump is doing.” It should be borne in mind that France has its legitimate strategic stakes in the Indo-Pacific region. This apart, the decision of America and Great Britain to develop a nuclear-powered submarine fleet for Australia, including transfer of US Tomahawk cruise missiles, might further accelerate the chances of opening a new theatre of warmongering between China and the US-led Quad. The more the provocative acts the US and its allies engage in against China, the more aggressive and revengeful it will become. Therefore, it warrants that great powers avoid the simmering confrontation with China through pro-active diplomacy in larger interests of the global and regional peace and security.
Quad: A Mini-NATO In Disarray – OpEd
Does the Quad not remind us of the classic Cold War between America and the Soviet Union in the 20th century? Both were determined to outdo one another in pursuit of their narrow geopolitical interests. The Cold War ended with a bizarre outcome with America’s emergence as a sole global superpower, bringing in its trail chaos, instability, and bloodshed through mindless military interventions— for instance in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and many other conflict–ridden zones across the globe. Apparently, the Quad is assuming the shape of a 21st century Cold War between America and China. The latter has replaced Russia in the power configuration. But there are two distinctively emerging security alliances. The one is led by America and joined by Japan, India, and Australia. And another is led by China, and likely to be joined by Russia and North Korea as its strategic partners if the US-led security alliance poses an existential threat to them. In principle, the Quad has laid down its goal of realizing a “free and open” Indo-Pacific region under the US captaincy. Its purported aim is to restrict China’s expanding geostrategic foothold in the region by projecting the latter’s “aggressive behavior.” It also aims to transform Quad into strong and stable security architecture in the Indo-Pacific region to defeat China’s aggressive geostrategic moves.
The fundamental question arises whether there is coherence of goals and interest among Quad members. A commonality is that there is a catalogue of complaints against China, shared by all the Quad members. For instance, the Biden administration has already defined the US foreign policy in terms of “competition” with China, which alone is capable of challenging America’s so-called hegemony. India is in the company of Quad mainly because of its persistent border clashes with China as well as the latter’s strategic encirclement of India in South Asia with Beijing’s expanding geostrategic foothold in the Indian Ocean. Therefore, India perceives its strategic partnership with America, Japan and Australia as an imperative to thwart China’s challenge. This is evident from their multilateral joint naval exercises being conducted beyond the shores of the Malabar Hill with a clear objective of defending India’s economic and strategic interests in the Indian Ocean.
As regards Australia, it is on a collision course with China on trade and security issues, including Canberra’s demand for holding Beijing responsible for the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. From the geopsychological point of view, Australia feels much threatened by China since it does not have naval and nuclear capabilities to resist China’s strategic onslaught. In other words, Australia’s serious security concerns have obliged it to join the Quad. So far Japan is concerned, Beijing has not forgotten its historic rivalry with Tokyo that dates back to the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). The war scars are still deeply etched in the Chinese geopsychology. President Xi Jinping demanded that Japan should tender unqualified public apology for its historical atrocities against China, though Tokyo refused to oblige Beijing.
If viewed from an array of divergent interests among Quad members, there is a lack of clarity and congruence among them on developing a sound and inclusive security architecture to deal with China—their common adversary. The Quad Summit held in Washington on September 24th discussed a plethora of issues, including the South China Sea, climate crisis and cyberspace, but it focused on the imperative of cooperative approach to promote a “free and open” Indo-Pacific with a view to countering China’s attempts to subvert the status quo in the region.
Ironically, with the launch of AUKUS, a military alliance aimed at building Australia’s naval sinews to checkmate China’s assertive postures, it is likely to cause ripples between America and its EU partners like France. It is quite intriguing that Australia’s cancellation of a multibillion-dollar nuclear submarine deal with France soon after the inauguration of AUKUS invited deep wrath in France’s corridors of power. As reported, the angry French foreign minister reacted sharply, saying “This brutal and unilateral decision resembles a lot of what Trump is doing.” It should be borne in mind that France has its legitimate strategic stakes in the Indo-Pacific region. This apart, the decision of America and Great Britain to develop a nuclear-powered submarine fleet for Australia, including transfer of US Tomahawk cruise missiles, might further accelerate the chances of opening a new theatre of warmongering between China and the US-led Quad. The more the provocative acts the US and its allies engage in against China, the more aggressive and revengeful it will become. Therefore, it warrants that great powers avoid the simmering confrontation with China through pro-active diplomacy in larger interests of the global and regional peace and security.
*B.M. Jain, Professor of Political Science and International Relations. Former visiting professor, CSU, Ohio, SUNY at Binghamton, NY, and UBC, Canada. Author of: “The Geopsychology Theory of International Relations in the 21st Century” (Lexington Books, Lanham,MD,2021) and “China’s Soft Power Diplomacy in South Asia” (Lexington Books, 2017).
19. Chinese war film about victory over US trounces Bond at box office
Chinese war film about victory over US trounces Bond at box office
Chinese movie about military victory over America – commissioned by Beijing - trounces new Bond film's $119m opening weekend by taking a massive $203m
- The Battle of Lake Changjin is China's most expensive film ever made at $200m
- It was commissioned by the government who had a hand in its production
- It aims to inspire love for China and the party and comes amid culture crackdown
PUBLISHED: 11:54 EDT, 4 October 2021 | UPDATED: 15:14 EDT, 4 October 2021
Daily Mail · by Jack Newman For Mailonline · October 4, 2021
The creators of the hit new James Bond film will have been left shaken and stirred by the news that they were trounced at the box office on their opening weekend by a Chinese war film commissioned by the Communist Party.
The Battle at Lake Changjin has raked in a whopping $203million, far eclipsing No Time To Die's $119million and Marvel's Venom: Let There Be Carnage which took receipts of $90.1million.
The three-hour epic revels in a rare Chinese victory over the US-led United Nations forces during the Korean War.
The Battle at Lake Changjin has raked in a whopping $203million, far eclipsing No Time To Die's $119million
No Time To Die is the first film since Covid to debut with more than $100million without the Chinese market since the Covid pandemic.
But it pales in comparison to the Chinese juggernaut which is the country's most expensive film ever made with a budget of $200million and was commissioned by the government's powerful central propaganda department.
Some claim the film's remarkable box office success could be due to the government organising cinema trips for its extensive workforce.
The Battle at Lake Changjin stars seasoned war film actor Wu Jing and popstar Jackson Yee.
The blockbuster depicts the killing of Americans and was timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Communist Party.
It tells the story of the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in 1950, which China claims as the most important victory of the Korean War and forced a US retreat.
Wu said it is a 'film that celebrates life — a story of how young warriors are willing to risk it all to protect our homes and defend our country'.
No Time To Die is the first film since Covid to debut with more than $100million without the Chinese market since the Covid pandemic
The mammoth project took five years in script development, with support from the government, who also supplied serving soldiers for the film's 70,000 extras.
It glorifies Chinese heroism and is in line with the cultural crackdown imposed by Beijing in recent months to promote traditional values and eschew celebrities, pornography and effeminacy, which the government deems to be Western vices.
Data from local provider Ent Group showed it was watched by an estimated 25.5million people between Friday and Saturday alone, and was screened 157,000 times a day.
The state-run People's Daily said the film has 'implications for today's China-US competition' and showed how Chinese 'soldiers held their ground amid fierce cold and the enemy's more advanced weapons during the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea (1950-53)'.
The newspaper quoted an anonymous viewer who said they were left with the 'feeling that Chinese people are not, and have never been, afraid of the US'.
The blockbuster depicts the killing of Americans and was timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Communist Party
The People's Liberation Army's official newspaper has condemned any criticism of the film, saying people who question China's victory 'are once again falling into the trap of fearing the US and worshipping the US'.
One film review site, Deep Focus, dared to criticise the special effects and characters in the film.
The online article has since been deleted and the reviewer's account on Chinese messaging app WeChat has been suspended.
Experts predict The Battle at Changjin will be one of China's biggest ever box office successes and could rival 2017's Wolf Warrior 2, also starring Wu Jing, which grossed a total of $785billion.
Beijing has ordered China's cinemas to spread propaganda through films to inspire love for the Communist Party on its 100th anniversary.
Films were ordered to focus on 'loving the Party, the country and socialism', the China Film Administration said.
The regulator said they want young people to 'grow their affections' for Communism and China.
Daily Mail · by Jack Newman For Mailonline · October 4, 2021
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.
