Quotes of the Day:
"If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.”
- George Washington, George Washington's Farewell Address
“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.”
- Benjamin Franklin
1. ‘A Daily Cloud of Suffering’: A Crackdown in China Is Felt Abroad
2. How the $1 Trillion Infrastructure Bill Aims to Affect Americans’ Lives
3. Climate Change Denial Is Morphing into a More Dangerous Form of Misinformation
4. Climate shuffles superpowers
5. US, China race walking towards a Taiwan war
6. The Pentagon’s 2021 China Military Power Report: My Summary
7. Biden’s foreign policy undercut by domestic weakness
8. Alleged Jan. 6 Rioter Tries to Sell Home on Zillow, Inadvertently Reveals Cache of Explosives: FBI
9. Special Operations Success Hinges on People, Partnerships
10. Op-Ed: Special forces roles ‘in doubt for the future’? – Guess again.
11. Clemency Request for Guantanamo Inmate 'Enlightening,' Hambali's Lawyer Says
12. China slams US curbs on visiting scholars from military-linked institutions
13. People Worldwide Name US as a Major Threat to World Peace. Here's Why.
14. US court convicts Chinese intelligence agent of spying
15. From Nicaraguan revolutionaries to US embassy informants: How Washington recruited ex-Sandinistas like Dora María Téllez and her MRS party
16. A Veterans Day letter to President Joe Biden
17. Will COP26 Solve Anything?
18. Reflection on Failure By Major Matthew Tweedy, USMC
1. ‘A Daily Cloud of Suffering’: A Crackdown in China Is Felt Abroad
The evil nature of the regime in China This is what happens when authoritarian regimes base their political power on racism, xenophobia, ethnic purity, and a need to prevent diversity that leads to political change and a threat to those in power.
Excerpts:
More than four years since the Chinese government intensified its crackdown in Xinjiang, Uyghurs in the diaspora are starting to grapple with their trauma. To help, a growing coalition of community leaders, professional counselors and volunteers has emerged to respond to what Louisa Greve, director of global advocacy for the Uyghur Human Rights Project in Washington, called a “slow-motion crisis.”
“It’s a daily cloud of suffering hanging over all Uyghurs around the world,” she said.
In the United States, the Uyghur Wellness Initiative has built a small network of therapists to work pro bono with the community. In Belgium, a Uyghur activist coordinates online training for women led by counselors who worked with survivors of the Bosnian genocide. In Germany, a group of mental health specialists works with community leaders to tailor government resources to Uyghur needs.
“Some people are emotionally numbing themselves, or pretending that nothing has happened,” said Nurgul Sawut, a social worker in Australia who has been organizing group therapy sessions for her fellow Uyghurs. “Rather than let the trauma bury us, we want to try to regenerate it, to turn it into something more meaningful.”
‘A Daily Cloud of Suffering’: A Crackdown in China Is Felt Abroad
As Uyghurs grapple with the emotional trauma of their families suffering back in Xinjiang, some are overcoming a cultural stigma to seek out counseling.
Mustafa Aksu reached out to a therapist to help him deal with the trauma he experienced over the deaths of his relatives in Xinjiang, China.Credit...Lexey Swall for The New York Times
Nov. 6, 2021
Mustafa Aksu was already sinking into depression when he learned of the successive deaths of his brother, uncle and two cousins back home.
Home was Xinjiang, the western region of China where the government has conducted a campaign of repression against largely Muslim ethnic minority groups, particularly Uyghurs like Mr. Mustafa’s family. The repression includes punishing those who had overseas ties, so Mr. Mustafa — then a graduate student in the United States — did not want to risk contacting his family to find out what had happened.
He struggled to focus at school. He battled insomnia. When he did sleep, he would often wake up screaming from nightmares — of the police chasing his family and banging on the door, of fear and hiding.
Encouraged by friends, Mr. Mustafa in 2018 did something that other Uyghurs have increasingly done, despite the cultural stigma: He reached out to a therapist.
“I was emotional and crying all the time,” said Mr. Mustafa, 35. “And I just realized I could not keep doing this.” His uncle had been sick, he said, but he still doesn’t know how his brother and cousins died.
Uyghur men outside the Wandana Mosque in a suburb of Adelaide, Australia. Many in the Uyghur diaspora have experienced trauma, depression or anxiety because of China’s intensified crackdown in Xinjiang.Credit...Jonathan van der Knaap for The New York Times
More than four years since the Chinese government intensified its crackdown in Xinjiang, Uyghurs in the diaspora are starting to grapple with their trauma. To help, a growing coalition of community leaders, professional counselors and volunteers has emerged to respond to what Louisa Greve, director of global advocacy for the Uyghur Human Rights Project in Washington, called a “slow-motion crisis.”
“It’s a daily cloud of suffering hanging over all Uyghurs around the world,” she said.
In the United States, the Uyghur Wellness Initiative has built a small network of therapists to work pro bono with the community. In Belgium, a Uyghur activist coordinates online training for women led by counselors who worked with survivors of the Bosnian genocide. In Germany, a group of mental health specialists works with community leaders to tailor government resources to Uyghur needs.
“Some people are emotionally numbing themselves, or pretending that nothing has happened,” said Nurgul Sawut, a social worker in Australia who has been organizing group therapy sessions for her fellow Uyghurs. “Rather than let the trauma bury us, we want to try to regenerate it, to turn it into something more meaningful.”
“Some people are emotionally numbing themselves, or pretending that nothing has happened,” said Nurgul Sawut, a social worker in Australia who has been organizing group therapy sessions for fellow Uyghurs.Credit...Faye Sakura for The New York Times
Informal surveys show that many overseas Uyghurs have experienced some form of trauma, depression or anxiety as a result. The coronavirus pandemic and its lockdowns have not helped.
Memet Imin, a New York-based Uyghur medical researcher, found that many of the respondents to his surveys, conducted in 2018 and 2019, reported insomnia, decreased productivity at work and increased agitation. About one in four had experienced suicidal thoughts.
“The situation was very obvious,” Dr. Imin said.
Survivor’s guilt has dampened what were once joyous moments, like dancing at a wedding or celebrating a birthday.
For Mr. Mustafa, the graduate student, the guilt came on strongest at restaurants or scenic destinations. Seeing a therapist helped, he said, not only with the guilt but also with the grief and the nightmares. He learned tips for how to take better care of himself, like taking more breaks. He said he had been diagnosed with depression.
“I really want more people to take this opportunity to just see a therapist,” said Mr. Mustafa, who now works for Uyghur Human Rights Project and is also involved with the Uyghur Wellness Initiative. “Because most of the people that I know are suffering a lot.”
A Uyghur restaurant in Adelaide, Australia. Many of the Uyghurs living outside China cannot freely communicate with relatives in Xinjang because of China’s stepped-up surveillance.Credit...Jonathan van der Knaap for The New York Times
Many of the one million or so Uyghurs estimated to be living outside of China cannot freely communicate with relatives back home. In recent years, the Chinese government has stepped up surveillance and targeted people with overseas connections for punishment. Even now, many diaspora Uyghurs do not know how their relatives are doing, whether they are in an internment camp or a prison or even if they are alive or dead.
Mirzat Taher was sent to an internment camp in 2017 for having briefly worked as a guide for Chinese tourists in Turkey, said his wife, Mehray Mezensof. She said she contemplated trying to raise awareness about her husband’s plight a “million times.”
But Ms. Mezensof, 27, an Australian citizen, had heard the stories of other overseas Uyghur activists whose relatives had been detained or imprisoned, sometimes for decades or longer. In some cases, Uyghurs who spoke out had reported receiving messages from relatives, or even the Chinese authorities directly, telling them to stop their activism or to return home.
So she stayed quiet — until one day, when she heard through a contact that her husband had been formally arrested and sentenced to 25 years in prison on charges of separatism. Since then, Ms. Mezensof has given multiple press interviews, met with Australian politicians and petitioned the Chinese government to release her husband.
“As much as it scared me, I thought I have to do this because if I don’t, there’s no one else left to speak up for my husband except for me,” Ms. Mezensof said in a telephone interview from Melbourne, where she now lives with her parents. She said her hair had started falling out from the stress and she’d lost interest in food. Additionally, the constant anxiety had made it impossible to continue her work as a nurse.
“I’m having a really difficult time processing everything and coping with all of the emotions and all of the uncertainty,” she said. “And on top of all that, obviously I’m missing my husband and wanting to be with him and live a normal life but then I think, ‘Will I ever even be able to have that again?’”
Mamutjan Abdurehim at his home in Adelaide last month. He has had only occasional glimpses of his children since 2017, the year that his wife was detained.Credit...Jonathan van der Knaap for The New York Times
Organizers of the mental health initiatives say they have so far seen a positive, if cautious, response from diaspora Uyghurs. One big challenge, they say, has been overcoming the cultural stigma of therapy, pervasive in Uyghur and many other cultures.
Linguistic barriers are also a problem; relatively few professionally trained mental health counselors speak Uyghur. Other challenges are more administrative, like the difficulty in the United States of finding mental health care that is covered by insurance.
Some who have made it past the barriers, like Mamutjan Abdurehim, say that therapy offered a much-needed source of structured communication during a period of profound isolation. Mr. Mamutjan, 43, had been living abroad but having nearly daily video chats with his family back in Xinjiang until 2017, when his wife was detained. She had returned home with the children to replace a lost passport. Mr. Mamutjan’s mother then advised him, for everyone’s safety, to stop calling.
Over the next few years, he has had only occasional glimpses of his two children through grainy photos sent by friends. At first, he tried to deal with the mounting anxiety on his own, before deciding he needed professional help.
“It was a useful tool for me to know how to communicate my inner feelings,” he said.
The reality is that counseling, of course, has its limits. Mamtimin Ala, a Uyghur activist in Brussels, said that since the crackdown began, he had often found himself turning to poetry, the lifeblood of Uyghur culture, for solace in his darkest moments.
He cited one verse in particular, from “Elegy” by Perhat Tursun, a prominent Uyghur writer who was reportedly detained by Chinese authorities in 2018.
I happily drank down poison, thinking it fine wine
When they search the streets and cannot find my vanished figure
Do you know that I am with you.
Poem translated by Joshua L. Freeman.
2. How the $1 Trillion Infrastructure Bill Aims to Affect Americans’ Lives
Probably the best summary for us lay people I have seen in the media. Thanks to the Wall Street Journal for providing this. We need more of this kind of analysis from the media.
I think one of the key areas of modern infrastructure is the internet. High speed broadband access is as important as roads and bridges today. Our economy can no longer function efficiently or effectively without it. It is unfortunate that it will take so long for the work to begin and the effects to be realized. There are some interesting aspects in the bill:
Excerpts:
The law also creates a $42.5 billion program to expand access to high-speed networks. While the government has spent billions of dollars on deploying broadband networks, the new program significantly expands the amount of funding for that purpose.
It also lets state officials take the lead in deciding how the funds are spent, with each state’s plan approved by the Commerce Department. That is a departure from previous programs run largely at the federal level.
Effectively, lawmakers are betting that local officials will have a better sense than Washington about which communities most need the funds. The law also opens the door for states to make grants to internet providers outside traditional cable and phone companies, such as nonprofits, cooperatives and municipalities. And it requires that new networks have a download speed of at least 100 megabits per second, a higher bar than in many previous federal programs.
Don’t expect the $42.5 billion to start flowing immediately. To decide which areas need service, lawmakers are asking the Federal Communications Commission to map where service is and isn’t available—a complex undertaking that the agency is already scrambling to complete.
States must also develop broadband spending plans and jump through several hoops to get the Biden administration’s endorsement. Funds might not start actually flowing until late 2023 at the earliest, say analysts at Capital Alpha Partners.
How the $1 Trillion Infrastructure Bill Aims to Affect Americans’ Lives
The legislation seeks to ensure fewer blackouts and cleaner water, but in some areas it might fall short of needed upgrades
WSJ · by Nov. 6, 2021 5:30 am ET
The legislation, spending billions in each of the next five years or more, falls short of the full ambitions of the Democratic Party, which is pursuing a separate, larger bill opposed by the Republicans. But the scope of the bill just passed makes the legislation significant in its own right.
Here is a look at how the infrastructure package will affect American consumers and businesses, and where it might fall short of expectations.
Table Of Contents
How We Commute
The infrastructure bill stands to improve commuting across the U.S., in cities big and small, whether people travel to work by car, public transit or bicycle.
“Every kind of commuter in every kind of place has a chance to see benefits directly from this,” said Adie Tomer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and head of its metropolitan infrastructure initiative.
An estimated $226 billion in new funding will go to transportation projects, he said, such as light-rail line extensions, redesigned intersections and protected bike lanes.
Among the early visible changes will be new buses to boost comfort, accessibility and reliability, said Paul Skoutelas, chief executive of the American Public Transportation Association. Agencies also could move quickly to launch station improvements that are designed and ready to go. All told, public transit is in line for about $39 billion in additional funding.
Many road projects won’t crank up for a year or more because of the lead time needed for planning and design. During construction, commuters might face added congestion because of temporary lane closures and traffic realignments. Commuting in many areas hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic levels, but many companies say they eventually want employees back in the office.
Even with the additional funding, one potential headwind is the nationwide labor shortage. That could slow everything from highway construction to bus manufacturing, although a road builders association says labor and material supplies should meet demand.
While the funding will be spread over five years, the money doesn’t have to be fully spent in that span. Some major projects the bill is expected to make possible aren’t forecast to be completed for a decade or longer.
—Scott Calvert
The bill includes $30 billion for Amtrak’s busy Northeast Corridor passenger-rail route.
Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images
How We Travel
The legislation puts a focus on travel-related infrastructure, including airports and roads. It dedicates $66 billion for railway expansion and upgrades, representing what the White House has described as the biggest federal investment in passenger rail since the creation of passenger-rail operator Amtrak in the early 1970s.
Much of that goes toward repairing and upgrading aging track, tunnels and railcars, including roughly $30 billion earmarked for the Northeast Corridor, where Amtrak estimates more than 2,200 trains travel each day—including through one leaky Baltimore tunnel built in the late 1800s.
Over time, travelers can expect faster trips as fragile stretches of track are replaced, along with new upholstery, carpets and bathrooms as Amtrak accelerates a continuing overhaul of its rolling stock, said Sean Jeans-Gail, vice president of policy and government affairs for the Rail Passengers Association, a Washington-based advocacy group.
“These things are not very glamorous, but they’re aimed at addressing decades and decades of underinvestment,” Mr. Jeans-Gail said.
Amtrak hopes to add new service in Southern and Western states, where passenger-rail routes right now are limited or nonexistent, Chief Executive Bill Flynn said in August. Eventually Amtrak aims to develop high-speed rail routes, with trains potentially traveling 180 miles an hour or faster in some corridors, Mr. Flynn has said.
Airports are set to receive $25 billion in the infrastructure bill to fund renovations, including $15 billion for airport infrastructure grants, $5 billion for airport terminal projects and $5 billion to upgrade air-traffic-control tower facilities. The White House has highlighted airports as one area where the U.S. is falling short, pointing to the U.S.’s failure to make the top 25 in global airport rankings.
The new funds will help U.S. airports chip away at a backlog of needed improvements without taking on as much debt, said Earl Heffintrayer, senior credit officer at Moody’s Investors Service—especially helpful for smaller airports with less access to capital markets.
The improvements will only go so far. Airports Council International, an airport trade association, has said it supports the infrastructure bill but has estimated that airports have a backlog of $115 billion of infrastructure projects in the next five years, far outstripping what the bill would provide.
—Alison Sider and Jacob Bunge
The bill seeks to expand access to fast-charging stations for electric vehicles.
Photo: Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call/Zuma Press
What Cars We Buy
The bipartisan infrastructure bill attempts to address one of the biggest barriers to electric-vehicle adoption: access to fast charging.
The bill proposes $7.5 billion for a nationwide charging infrastructure to fill gaps in the patchwork of electric-vehicle chargers across the U.S. Another $5 billion will be dedicated to replacing buses with zero-emission vehicles, including electric school buses.
The effort to build infrastructure for electric vehicles would help ensure long-lasting demand for battery-powered cars, even outside dense city centers, said Kristin Dziczek, senior vice president for research at the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Center for Automotive Research.
“Building out the charging network is really critical,” Ms. Dziczek said. “Once we build and maintain that infrastructure, it’s going to benefit future generations and future vehicles and really support this transition.”
The package won’t include an expansion of tax credits for electric-car purchases, which is included in the separate party-line effort of Democrats. That legislation is opposed not only by Republicans, but aspects of it are also opposed by moderate Democrats in the Senate. Its fate is unclear.
—Nora Naughton
Freight is transported in California. The bill’s funding for freight projects could help clear supply-chain bottlenecks.
Photo: patrick t. fallon/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
How We Transport Goods
Projects focused on freight, rather than consumer lines, will get more attention in the coming years when compared with past infrastructure efforts—something that could help clear bottlenecks in supply chains and delivery channels.
“One of the biggest changes we see coming out of this plan is the lens through which freight projects are evaluated,” said Elaine Nessle, executive director of the Coalition for America’s Gateways and Trade Corridors.
The $100 billion in competitive grant money over the next five years will give larger, more ambitious freight projects better access to federal funds than they may have under current programs based on formulas that typically favor smaller, ready-to-go plans for roads and bridges.
“Freight projects tend to be complex and cross borders and involve multiple modes,” said Ms. Nessle. “So far that reason, competitive grants are very important to them moving forward.”
As likely beneficiaries of the shift in how funds are doled out, the group points to projects such as the Southern California Multimodal Freight Network Project and the Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency Program, a yearslong effort to clear the clogs from mashed-together freight rail, commuter train and road routes in that city.
The sheer magnitude of the dollars is important, said Jeff Davis, a senior fellow at the Eno Center for Transportation, but a shift toward what he called “tangible deliverables” will have a long-term impact on freight movement.
“The bill is trying to move beyond having money as the sole metric,” he said. “It’s always been hard to focus on the impact of freight on the economy because other things like commuter congestion tend to motivate individual voters. This kind of attention could really take down a lot of the specific cargo bottlenecks in the country.”
—Paul Page
Workers install cable for broadband internet service in a rural area of Washington state. The bill boosts funding for expanding access to high-speed networks.
Photo: Ted S. Warren/Associated Press
How We Access the Internet
The infrastructure proposal aims to close the so-called digital divide between Americans who have access to high-speed internet, and those who lack it.
It attacks two long-running problems, both of which were laid bare during the Covid-19 pandemic: Some Americans don’t have access to high-speed internet, while others have access but can’t afford to subscribe.
On affordability, the legislation would make permanent a subsidy to help low-income households pay for high-speed internet service, setting it at $30 a month. That is lower than the $50 a month that millions of those households are currently receiving under an emergency pandemic program launched earlier this year, but analysts still expect it to help some American households keep their broadband plans—and to boost the bottom lines of internet-service providers.
The law also creates a $42.5 billion program to expand access to high-speed networks. While the government has spent billions of dollars on deploying broadband networks, the new program significantly expands the amount of funding for that purpose.
It also lets state officials take the lead in deciding how the funds are spent, with each state’s plan approved by the Commerce Department. That is a departure from previous programs run largely at the federal level.
Effectively, lawmakers are betting that local officials will have a better sense than Washington about which communities most need the funds. The law also opens the door for states to make grants to internet providers outside traditional cable and phone companies, such as nonprofits, cooperatives and municipalities. And it requires that new networks have a download speed of at least 100 megabits per second, a higher bar than in many previous federal programs.
Don’t expect the $42.5 billion to start flowing immediately. To decide which areas need service, lawmakers are asking the Federal Communications Commission to map where service is and isn’t available—a complex undertaking that the agency is already scrambling to complete.
States must also develop broadband spending plans and jump through several hoops to get the Biden administration’s endorsement. Funds might not start actually flowing until late 2023 at the earliest, say analysts at Capital Alpha Partners.
—Ryan Tracy
A water-treatment plant in Chicago. The bill funds efforts to replace lead pipes connecting public water mains to private homes.
Photo: Sebastian Hidalgo for The Wall Street Journal
How We Get Water to Our Homes
The infrastructure bill would funnel billions to states to reduce lead in drinking water by jump-starting the long-lagging effort to eliminate potentially dangerous lead pipes, which connect public water mains to private homes.
Lead, even at low levels, has been linked to nervous-system damage, learning disabilities and slowed growth in children, as well as complications for pregnant women, according to scientists and public-health officials. Over time, lead pipes can corrode, causing lead to mix with water as it enters the home.
Many Americans can’t afford to spend thousands of dollars to replace them. The infrastructure bill includes $15 billion for lead-pipe replacement. About half of the funding in the bill would be provided to states in the form of grants, the other half as loans.
The spending falls short of President Biden’s initial proposal for $45 billion in such spending. The White House says the funding in the infrastructure bill will nonetheless be enough to replace every lead pipe in the U.S. drinking-water system, a contention that advocacy groups and local officials dispute.
States could apply to use additional funding in the legislation designed for broader drinking-water projects to replace lead service lines, the White House said. Local officials and advocacy groups said states aren’t likely to use that broader pot of money to replace lead pipes because they have other, more pressing needs, some of which are legally mandated.
As they have sought to replace lead pipes in recent years, states and cities have grappled with a series of logistical hurdles, ranging from finding trained workers to convincing the public that lead is a health concern. Estimates of the number of lead pipes in the U.S., as well as the cost of replacing them, vary widely, making it difficult to gauge how much money is needed to complete the job.
—Andrew Restuccia
A mangrove estuary in Florida. Supporting mangrove forests to reduce storm surges is the type of project the bill could fund to help cope with climate change.
Photo: Douglas R. Clifford/Tampa Bay Times/Associated Press
How We Cope With Climate Change
Storm- and disaster-preparation projects to address worsening floods, droughts and wildfires will get billions in funding, the largest ever federal investment in climate resilience, said Mr. Tomer of the Brookings Institution.
“It should have far-reaching impacts into most U.S. industries for years, if not decades to come,” Mr. Tomer said. “We know through recent insurance records, business expenses and household grief that a changing climate impacts our economy in negative ways.”
Coping with climate change is the overarching theme of the bill, which includes $8 billion for wildfire management, $6 billion for drought management, $8.3 billion for water storage, desalination and recycling, as well as $12.5 billion for flood mitigation, Mr. Tomer said.
The kind of projects and programs that could receive funding include bayou improvements in Houston, or support for mangrove forests in Atlantic Coast states to reduce storm surges. The funding could also help build rain gardens in urban areas—small strips of green space between streets and sidewalks to help absorb storm-water runoff.
Projects will filter down to states and cities through agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Interior and the Army Corps of Engineers, Mr. Tomer said.
Daniel Kaniewski, managing director at Marsh McLennan and former deputy administrator for resilience at FEMA, said the bill would help close the “resilience gap” between being vulnerable and being protected from disasters.
The bill includes an additional $1 billion over five years for FEMA infrastructure grants to help fund projects such as strengthening flood walls, or buying out and relocating homeowners in areas that continually flood. FEMA can give priority to grants to communities with more-stringent building standards, which might encourage more communities to improve codes, Mr. Kaniewski said.
“Think about who benefits—anyone or anything behind that flood wall, homes and government property, public infrastructure, but also businesses that are going to be able to stay open instead of closing during a flood,” he said. “That’s a game changer.”
Still, businesses and communities will have to make their own investments, too, he said.
“If we expect the federal government to underwrite every single resilience project in the country,” he said, “we’re probably going to be waiting a long time.”
—Jennifer Hiller
Downed power lines in Louisiana in September, after Hurricane Ida.
Photo: Matt Slocum/Associated Press
How We Get Power
States, utilities and other developers will get billions of dollars to strengthen power lines against disasters that over the past year alone have paralyzed parts of the U.S. power grid: fires, heat waves, a hurricane and record cold.
The infrastructure package would put up about $28 billion for resiliency, according to a Senate summary. That includes grant programs to find new ways for avoiding blackouts in extreme conditions, and to strengthen lines against wildfires and other disasters, or to prevent power lines from starting such fires.
It puts up another $36 billion to develop technology for cleaner energy. That includes an emphasis on making fossil fuels less damaging to the environment by funding systems to capture the carbon-dioxide emissions from burning them, and the development of hydrogen fuel with no greenhouse-gas emissions.
The Energy Department would get $25 billion for demonstration programs funded through public-private partnerships to help commercialize projects, the department has said. That has drawn interest from Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates, who promised to commit $1.5 billion for joint projects with the U.S. government if the bill passed.
The White House has touted the package as a historic investment, but analysts and advocates say it is only a fraction of what is needed to solve the grid’s problems. These critics say funding for high-voltage, cross-state transmission lines is especially paltry.
A Princeton-led study found the country would need to build $360 billion of such lines through 2030 to move toward eliminating greenhouse-gas emissions from the U.S. power grid. The infrastructure bill devotes just $2.5 billion for such transmission—according to the Princeton team—through a revolving fund to help build new capacity. Other funding in the bill open to broader applications could lead to as much as $12 billion for transmission, said Rob Gramlich, executive director of Americans for a Clean Energy Grid, an advocacy group.
—Timothy Puko
WSJ · by Nov. 6, 2021 5:30 am ET
3. Climate Change Denial Is Morphing into a More Dangerous Form of Misinformation
Excerpts:
Climate misinformation presents a risk for companies looking to showcase their sustainability strategies and Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) credentials. Recent research initiatives, such as the development of an AI platform called “ClimateBert,” have exposed the ways in which companies selectively “cherry-pick” climate risk information in corporate climate financial disclosures, a practice which is dubbed as “greenwashing,” but which might be better defined as a form of climate change mis- or disinformation.
This, and other, new forms of climate change misinformation pose a risk to the viability of climate action: the more nuanced the climate change discussion becomes, the harder it is to distinguish real from false commitments.
In fact, a recent survey conducted by the trade association representing the PR industry in the UK, the PRCA, found that six in 10 PR professionals were concerned that their clients want to talk about the climate crisis rather than to act to address the problem, and 17 percent of PR professionals believe that their clients’ knowledge of climate change is “incorrect or misinformed.”
...
There are a range of different approaches for how policymakers, organizations, communicators, and individuals can help to identify and counter climate change misinformation. These include deploying online intelligence research to help identify false narratives, swift takedowns of climate change misinformation on social media, and running countermeasure campaigns focused on disseminating messaging about climate change. Specifically, pre-bunking communication strategies, which focus on preemptively warning people about attempts to spread misinformation, have proven to be effective at building resistance against climate change misinformation. Specialized training, focusing on fact checking and integrity, is also essential for the communications industry, which is vulnerable to complicity in greenwashing on behalf of clients eager to communicate about climate change.
It is also critical to consider some of the structural social issues underpinning the spread of misinformation, including inequality and poor education, which may increase the likelihood that false information will catch on. Investing in educational programs, such as media literacy, is one way we can help social media users to increase discernment, and better navigate the information ecosystem.
Research highlights the mercurial persistence of climate change information and how this should be understood within a broader information and communications context. Through effective interventions, and by focusing on educating our youth—and those communicating on climate change—we may still have a fighting chance to stop poisoning our planet.
Climate Change Denial Is Morphing into a More Dangerous Form of Misinformation
Whilst climate denial still exists, it arguably no longer poses the biggest threat to climate action. Recent research shows that the narratives polluting the information landscape around climate change have morphed into something more complex and mutable, which may be harder to counter.
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COP26 Glasgow, Scotland. Photo by Karwai Tang/ UK Government.
November 7, 2021
Whilst climate denial still exists, it arguably no longer poses the biggest threat to climate action. Recent research shows that the narratives polluting the information landscape around climate change have morphed into something more complex and mutable, which may be harder to counter.
We used to know where we stood with climate change misinformation. Deniers—people who were, and continue to be, literally in denial—simply claimed climate change isn’t happening. Many of the individuals and groups promoting denial also questioned the anthropogenic cause of climate change, claiming that these phenomena were not linked to human behaviors such as burning fossils fuels.
Much of the organized campaigning around climate denial was also funded by the fossil fuels lobby, which spent decades pushing disinformation campaigns about climate science, which are now the subject of multiple lawsuits and investigations in the US and internationally.
A shift away from denialism
The situation has since moved on. Whilst climate denial still exists, it arguably no longer poses the biggest threat to climate action. Recent research shows that the narratives polluting the information landscape around climate change have morphed into something more complex and mutable, which may be harder to counter than their simpler predecessors.
The most urgent question facing the international community after the COP26 is how we can make the energy transition a reality. Yet, this is happening at the same time as the information—or rather, misinformation—ecosystem around climate change is becoming more complex. To properly focus our efforts, we need to learn to recognize and counter false narratives where they exist, and promote messages focused on the climate actions that count.
A new kind of misinformation
A new report by Logically and APCO Worldwide titled “Climate change misinformation in the age of COVID-19,” has uncovered some of the ways in which climate misinformation is evolving away from denial into multiple, complex narratives. The research, which analyzed an extensive dataset of 6.67 million news media and social media posts across the open internet, found that denialist narratives were a negligible proportion of online conversations over the past few years. Instead, climate change misinformation now encompasses a broad set of narratives, including, among others, the belief in “doomerism”—the idea that the climate is changing but that it has advanced too far for human intervention to have an impact—as well as the idea that climate action is an expensive scam to siphon money off to the wealthy.
Interestingly, the COVID-19 pandemic appeared to have had a significant impact on climate misinformation, and since 2020, some of the most voluminous climate change misinformation showed up within pandemic conspiracy narratives, including The Great Reset and anti-vaccine propaganda.
Climate misinformation presents a risk for companies looking to showcase their sustainability strategies and Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) credentials. Recent research initiatives, such as the development of an AI platform called “ClimateBert,” have exposed the ways in which companies selectively “cherry-pick” climate risk information in corporate climate financial disclosures, a practice which is dubbed as “greenwashing,” but which might be better defined as a form of climate change mis- or disinformation.
This, and other, new forms of climate change misinformation pose a risk to the viability of climate action: the more nuanced the climate change discussion becomes, the harder it is to distinguish real from false commitments.
In fact, a recent survey conducted by the trade association representing the PR industry in the UK, the PRCA, found that six in 10 PR professionals were concerned that their clients want to talk about the climate crisis rather than to act to address the problem, and 17 percent of PR professionals believe that their clients’ knowledge of climate change is “incorrect or misinformed.”
Countering climate change misinformation
There are a range of different approaches for how policymakers, organizations, communicators, and individuals can help to identify and counter climate change misinformation. These include deploying online intelligence research to help identify false narratives, swift takedowns of climate change misinformation on social media, and running countermeasure campaigns focused on disseminating messaging about climate change. Specifically, pre-bunking communication strategies, which focus on preemptively warning people about attempts to spread misinformation, have proven to be effective at building resistance against climate change misinformation. Specialized training, focusing on fact checking and integrity, is also essential for the communications industry, which is vulnerable to complicity in greenwashing on behalf of clients eager to communicate about climate change.
It is also critical to consider some of the structural social issues underpinning the spread of misinformation, including inequality and poor education, which may increase the likelihood that false information will catch on. Investing in educational programs, such as media literacy, is one way we can help social media users to increase discernment, and better navigate the information ecosystem.
Research highlights the mercurial persistence of climate change information and how this should be understood within a broader information and communications context. Through effective interventions, and by focusing on educating our youth—and those communicating on climate change—we may still have a fighting chance to stop poisoning our planet.
About
:
Daniella Lebor is a director at APCO Worldwide.
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
4. Climate shuffles superpowers
Go to the link to view the global map of hazards.
Climate shuffles superpowers
Drought, rising sea levels and melting ice caps are transforming the geopolitical map at the same time China's rise and revanchist Russia are testing the limits of American power.
Driving the news: These dynamics, outlined in the first-ever National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on climate change, released last month, played out this past week at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. President Biden rebuked China's Xi Jinping for failing to show up or present new commitments.
Why it matters: U.S. intelligence assessments show climate change is threatening military assets and opening new fronts in the great-power competition defining the 21st century.
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Biden has sought to place the "existential threat" of climate change squarely at the center of his national security policy, while at the same time casting China as the "biggest geopolitical challenge" facing the U.S.
- Those two priorities are inextricably linked: China is the world's largest source of carbon emissions, and its cooperation is critical to preventing some of the worst effects of global warming.
Details: The NIE, which was mandated in Biden's first week in office, lays out three main risks to U.S. national security interests through 2040.
1. Geopolitical tensions will intensify as countries debate who bears responsibility to act — and who is not doing enough to combat climate change.
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Chinese officials have refused to agree to U.S. requests on climate until the Biden administration drops its rhetoric on Beijing's human rights abuses and aggression toward Taiwan.
- Some Chinese officials also point to the fact that industrialized countries have far higher cumulative emissions, and have accused the U.S. of politicizing the climate agenda to depress China's economic growth.
2. The global map itself is physically changing, establishing new frontiers for competition and exacerbating cross-border flashpoints.
- Melting sea ice in the Arctic will create new shipping routes, free up oil and mineral resources, and pave the way for greater economic competition.
- The risk of military confrontation or miscalculation will also grow, as the U.S. and China seek to bolster their presence in a region dominated by Russia.
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In the Indo-Pacific, which the Biden administration has identified as the new global center of strategic rivalry, sea-level rise and more frequent extreme events will put key military assets at risk, the Pentagon said in a new climate risk analysis.
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Growing water and resource scarcity could turn China's simmering tensions with India — another burgeoning global power and a key partner to the U.S. — into an outright conflict.
3. The effects of the climate crisis will be felt most acutely in developing countries, which will depend on humanitarian assistance and foreign investment to bolster their resilience.
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China already has a strong foothold in many sub-Saharan African and Asian countries, and continues to grow its influence through the Belt and Road infrastructure initiative.
The bottom line: Addressing climate change while staying competitive with strategic rivals is not a zero-sum game, says John Conger, a former senior Pentagon official who oversaw energy installations and the environment during the Obama administration.
- He equated it to a chess match in which players sitting across from each other must navigate a changing board.
- "If you start losing or gaining squares, that is part of the whole picture," Conger told Axios. "And they're not immune from any of this."
5. US, China race walking towards a Taiwan war
What about the mainland becoming West Taiwan? China must hate all these memes about West taiwan.
Excerpts:
In China, the drumbeat of war, increasingly driven by extreme nationalist elements online, has reached a fever pitch, triggering panic-buying across the country by anxious citizens.
“Taking Taiwan might only take half a day to one day, maximum three to five days,” a Chinese resident told VICE World News. “But if foreign hostile forces place a blockade against our country, the goods would not be able to enter China, and prices would go up,” he added, reflecting generalized fears of an extended and internationalized conflict if China takes kinetic action against the island.
A recent viral article has even discussed potential investment opportunities in Taiwan once the island becomes China’s “Taiwan province.”
US, China race walking towards a Taiwan war
China's plan to quadruple its nuclear arsenal by 2030 aims to limit America's options in any future conflict over Taiwan
The historian Barbara Tuchman described Europe, in the run-up to World War I, as “a heap of swords piled as delicately as jackstraws; one could not be pulled out without moving the others.”
Nowadays, Taiwan finds itself at the center of a similarly delicate dynamic, as China and the United States tussle over the fate of the self-governing island Beijing considers a renegade province that must be “reunited” with the mainland.
For almost half a century, the three parties carefully maintained a fragile status quo rooted in so-called “strategic ambiguity.” The US backed Taiwan politically, but no longer recognized its formal sovereignty after adopting a “One China” policy.
But cracks have begun to appear in the frozen conflict in recent years, months and weeks, as Beijing rapidly builds up its offensive military capabilities, the Taiwanese electorate progressively drifts away from mainland China and the US comes under intense pressure to assist the beleaguered democratic island.
Faced with Beijing’s growing threat, the Tsai Ing-wen administration has doubled down on its international diplomacy, as sympathetic democratic powers from neighboring Japan to the US and European Union step up their support.
One big area of concern is the rapidly shifting balance of military power in cross-strait relations, which may tempt China to seek a moment of reckoning sooner than later.
In its newly-released annual report on China’s military advancements, the Pentagon has warned of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) growing capability to “conduct joint, long-range precision strikes across domains; increasingly sophisticated space, counterspace and cyber capabilities; as well as the accelerating expansion of the PLA’s nuclear forces.”
By all indications, China is enhancing both its conventional and asymmetric capabilities to deter and defeat any potential US military intervention in the South China Sea region, particularly over Taiwan.
Experts believe that China’s recent hypersonic missile test demonstrates the Asian powerhouse’s growing ability to potentially paralyze US communications systems should a war over Taiwan erupt.
Reports this week that China plans to quadruple its nuclear stockpile by 2030 also point to an offensive shift in China’s nuclear policy that moves away from its long-held “minimum deterrence” and seeks instead to challenging US nuclear primacy.
The Pentagon’s latest China military power report, released on November 3, said Beijing was “expanding the number of land, sea, and air-based nuclear delivery platforms and constructing the infrastructure necessary to support this major expansion of its nuclear forces.”
A bigger nuclear stockpile, some military planners believe, aims at limiting American options in the case of conflict, while the Pentagon suggests it would “provide Beijing with more credible military options in a Taiwan contingency.” The Pentagon has spoken of a Chinese “nascent nuclear triad” with air, land and sea launch capabilities.
China’s nuclear stockpile has been growing rapidly. Image: Pacific Forum / iStock
“The PLA’s evolving capabilities and concepts continue to strengthen its ability to fight and win wars, to use their own phrase, against what the PRC refers to as a ‘strong enemy’ — again, another phrase that appears in their publications. “And a ‘strong enemy,’ of course, is very likely a euphemism for the United States,” a Pentagon official warned, emphasizing China’s growing boldness to take on the US in the near future.
Taiwan is at the center of America’s island chain military strategy for the Asia-Pacific, a strategic maritime containment plan conceived during the Cold War and still relevant today to restrict China’s sea access in a conflict scenario.
Occupation of the island nation would also be critical to China’s domination of the nearby South China Sea, an artery of global trade and home to untold amounts of hydrocarbon and fisheries resources.
As China builds up its offensive capabilities, the Biden administration has thus come under growing pressure to make security guarantees to Taiwan. In a rare bipartisan act, a group of top US legislators, led by Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) recently expressed support in a letter to the Taiwanese leadership.
“For decades, Congress has been one of Taiwan’s strongest allies in upholding America’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act and the Six Assurances. You can count on our continued support in ensuring Taiwan remains one of our most important partners in the Indo-Pacific region,” they wrote.
A growing number of Western powers have also been more openly supporting Taiwan, including through the deployment of naval assets through the Taiwan Straits and joint drills near the self-governing island.
Most recently, 17 warships from the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and the Netherlands conducted joint naval maneuvers off the Japanese island of Okinawa, which is close to the northeastern shores of Taiwan.
Last month, growing tensions over Taiwan were also at the heart of a phone conversation between US President Biden and Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping and, weeks later, during an in-person meeting between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
But there are still no indications of any diplomatic breakthrough on the issue, as each superpower tries to appeal to hardline and nationalistic constituencies at home.
While the White House had had to repeatedly walk back Biden’s statements, it has nevertheless expressed “rock solid” commitment to Taiwan’s security and raised its concerns over “China’s provocative military activity near Taiwan, which is destabilizing, risks miscalculations and undermines regional peace and stability.”
A Taiwanese Special Forces soldier during a drill. Photo: Agencies
Both de facto allies also recently admitted that US special forces have been training their Taiwanese counterparts in recent years – a potential red line for Beijing despite major US arms sales including fighter jets to the island over the years. While there are hopes that a major conflict can be prevented in the short-term, the medium- and long-term prospects are looking increasingly dire.
During a recent speech before the Taiwanese parliament, National Security Bureau Director-General Chen Ming-tong claimed that Beijing has been holding intense internal discussions over a potential invasion of Taiwan’s Pratas islands in the near future, a potential prelude to a broader invasion of Taiwan’s main island.
The strategically-located islands in the northeastern reaches of the South China Sea, which are also claimed by Beijing, are particularly vulnerable since they are located more than 250 miles from Taipei.
“Attacking and capturing the Pratas Islands – this scenario where war is being used to force (Taiwan into) talks – our assessment is that this will not happen during President Tsai’s tenure,” Chen told a parliamentary meeting after being questioned on the possibility of an invasion before the end of Tsai administration’s second term in 2024.
“Frankly speaking, they have internally debated this before…We obviously have some understanding,” he added, without providing further detail on his intelligence sources. “In the next one, two, three years, within President Tsai’s tenure, it won’t happen,” he added.
Taiwan’s Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng made a similar assessment earlier, while at the same time warning that a “full scale” invasion could be a matter of years rather than decades.
“With regards to staging an attack on Taiwan, they currently have the ability. But [China] has to pay the price,” he added, underscoring that cross-straits tensions have reached “the most serious” level in more than 40 years of his service.
Meanwhile, Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi warned of a potential “Crimea-style” invasion, whereby similar to Russian operations during the invasion of Ukraine, Chinese forces could largely rely on asymmetric warfare, cyber-attacks, economic sabotage and embedded special forces along with sympathetic militias to take over the island nation.
In China, the drumbeat of war, increasingly driven by extreme nationalist elements online, has reached a fever pitch, triggering panic-buying across the country by anxious citizens.
“Taking Taiwan might only take half a day to one day, maximum three to five days,” a Chinese resident told VICE World News. “But if foreign hostile forces place a blockade against our country, the goods would not be able to enter China, and prices would go up,” he added, reflecting generalized fears of an extended and internationalized conflict if China takes kinetic action against the island.
A recent viral article has even discussed potential investment opportunities in Taiwan once the island becomes China’s “Taiwan province.”
Recognizing the risk of a nationwide panic, the Chinese government has begun to crackdown on “wolf warrior” websites and extreme nationalist netizens who are baying for a war and forced occupation of the self-governing island.
Taiwanese flags fly during a rally by Taiwanese expats in Hong Kong. Photo: Facebook
The magnitude of the crisis was fully on display during a historic visit to Taipei by a European parliamentary delegation this week.
“We came here with a very simple, very clear message: You are not alone. Europe is standing with you,” Raphael Glucksmann, who headed the visiting delegation, told Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen.
“Our visit should be considered as an important first step,” he added, emphasizing that “we need a very concrete agenda of high-level meetings and high-level concrete steps together to build a much stronger EU-Taiwan partnership.”
The unprecedented visit came on the heels of Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu’s rare visit to Europe last month, where he called for the creation of a “democratic supply chain” for the post-pandemic era, especially given Taiwan’s centrality in global production of microchips and semiconductors.
During his speech in Slovakia, the US-trained diplomat reminded his European counterparts of the “alarming increase of military exercises, hybrid and cognitive warfare operations” launched by China against Taiwan, which he said “put our democracy under acute threat.”
China has been vocally displeased by growing international support for and high-level official visits by foreign dignitaries to Taiwan. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin immediately condemned the first-ever visit by the EU delegation to Taipei.
“We urge the European side to correct its mistakes and not send any wrong signals to Taiwan separatist forces, otherwise it will harm China-EU relations,” the Chinese diplomat said, underscoring how Beijing and the West are sleepwalking towards a conflict over Taiwan.
6. The Pentagon’s 2021 China Military Power Report: My Summary
What we have been waiting for: "Cliff Notes."
Seriously, this is a useful summary.
Key point for me:
Clearly, the recent focus by Admiral Davidson and other U.S. officials on PLA threats to Taiwan peaking by around 2027 is not based solely on close-hold information—although that undoubtedly factors in. As the CMPR underscores, reviewing the PRC’s own public documents reveals a similar timeline. As usual, Beijing is often transparent about its broad intentions, and is typically more transparent in Chinese.
Conclusion:
The future is now: the United States and its allies and partners must prepare immediately to Weather the Window of Vulnerability through this Decade of Greatest Danger that we have already clearly entered. Both military and information preparations are needed urgently. As I recently told ANI News: “Only well-prepared and well-explained US government answers will stem a riptide of stunned defeatism and prevent Xi from ‘winning without fighting.’ ‘Holding the line’ is likely to require frequent and sustained proactive enforcement actions to disincentivize full-frontal PRC assaults on the rules-based order in Asia-Pacific. PRC probing behavior and provocations must be met with a range of symmetric and asymmetric responses that impose real costs.”
The Pentagon’s new China report must inform key decision-makers as well as the general public to marshal the necessary efforts to safeguard peace and security amid Beijing’s mounting challenges to both. The bottom line: Washington and its allies and partners must Hold the Line through 2035. Starting now! There is no time left to waste.
The Pentagon’s 2021 China Military Power Report: My Summary
Worth Waiting For—Now No Time to Waste!
Andrew S. Erickson
Since the first edition in 2000, the annual CMPR issued by the Department of Defense (DoD) has offered government-verified data on China’s meteoric military rise simply unfindable or unconfirmable anywhere else. While the 2020 edition was particularly impressive, the new report has a claim to being the best one yet. Today’s top takeaways arguably fall into the categories of triad, timing, and trends.
Triad
The 2021 CMPR’s most explosive revelations are clearly in the nuclear realm, where China has finally established a triad and is rapidly expanding its land-based nuclear missile force. In a shocking increase from its own 2020 estimates, DoD forecasts that China may have up to 700 deliverable nuclear warheads by 2027, and at least 1,000 warheads by 2030. As part of this buildup, by around 2027, “the number of warheads on the PRC’s land-based ICBMs capable of threatening the United States is expected to grow to roughly 200….”
The CMPR cites the State Department’s April 2020 Executive Summary of Findings on Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments to spotlight potential PRC nuclear weapons-related activity amid opacity, underscoring concern across time and administration: “China’s possible preparation to operate its Lop Nur test site year-round, its use of explosive containment chambers, extensive excavation activities at Lop Nur, and lack of transparency on its nuclear testing activities – which has included frequently blocking the flow of data from its International Monitoring System (IMS) stations to the International Data Center operated by the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization – raise concerns regarding its adherence to the ‘zero yield’ standard adhered to by the United States, United Kingdom, and France in their respective nuclear weapons testing moratoria.” On a potentially-related note, the CMPR states: “PRC strategists have highlighted the need for lower-yield nuclear weapons in order to increase the deterrence value of the PRC’s nuclear force…. A 2017 defense industry publication indicated a lower-yield weapon had been developed for use against campaign and tactical targets that would reduce collateral damage. … The DF-26 is the PRC’s first nuclear-capable missile system that can conduct precision strikes, and therefore, is the most likely weapon system to field a lower-yield warhead in the near-term.” Finally, the CMPR explains that PRC is pursuing a launch-on warning posture—mulled previously in the 1970s and 1980s when necessary early warning systems proved unreliable; while increasing plutonium production and separation capacity through such infrastructure as fast breeder reactors and reprocessing facilities.
After years of ambiguous wording as to whether China’s ballistic-missile nuclear submarines (SSBNs) were finally operational, and what that actually meant in practice, the 2021 CMPR is the first edition to confirm that China’s nuclear triad now has a “viable sea-based nuclear deterrent.” This sea leg consists of six operational Jin-class Type 094 SSBNs—with two entering service despite Covid, amid an overall record of steady naval outfitting during the pandemic. Each SSBN carries up to 12 CSS-N-14 (JL-2) SLBMs. With a range of 7,200 km, JL-2s would require SSBNs to “operate in areas north and east of Hawaii if the PRC seeks to target the east coast of the United States,” but a JL-3 follow-on may well allow coverage of the entire continental U.S. from protected bastions in the Bo Hai or South China Sea. China has prioritized ballistic missile development since the 1950s, and now produces world-class missiles according to the CMPR—so I would bet on rapid PRC progress in this area.
Finally, its 70th anniversary parade in October 2019, the PRC “signaled the return of the airborne leg of its nuclear triad after the PLAAF publicly revealed the H-6N as its first nuclear-capable air-to-air refuelable bomber.” This year, the report projects, “the H-6N-equipped unit very likely will be developing tactics and procedures to conduct the PLAAF nuclear mission.” China has clearly arrived as a top-tier nuclear weapons state across the board. Its deterrence relations with the United States will reach new levels of difficulty and complexity in coming years.
Timing
The CMPR showcases a concerning convergence of PRC capabilities, particularly around the key milestone goal year of 2027, the 100th anniversary of the PLA’s founding. Outgoing U.S. Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Phil Davidson warned cogently in March that PLA capabilities and likely intentions to threaten Taiwan are surging towards an unprecedented, dangerous level by around 2027. Testimony from his successor, Admiral Aquilino; as well as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, suggest a similar timescale of converging cross-Strait threats.
Now DoD’s 2021 report contextualizes and reinforces these assertions powerfully, including with the aforementioned projection that China may have up to 700 deliverable nuclear warheads six years hence. The CMPR offers a bottom line up front: “In 2020, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced a new milestone for PLA modernization in 2027 broadly understood as the modernization of the PLA’s capabilities to be networked into a system of systems for ‘intelligentized’ warfare. If realized, the PLA’s 2027 modernization goals could provide Beijing with more credible military options in a Taiwan contingency.”
Citing the 2019 defense white paper, and updated 2020 communiqué following the 5th Plenum of the 19th Central Committee in October 2020, the CMPR states that by 2027 China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aims to: “Accelerate the integrated development of mechanization, informatization, and intelligentization, while boosting the speed of modernization in military theories, organizations, personnel and weapons and equipment.” The 2020 communique “added a new milestone for PLA modernization in 2027. While the new 2027 goals did not clearly shift forward any of the PLA’s declared modernization for 2035 and 2049 objectives, it did likely shift the PLA’s development of certain capabilities within the categories of the integrated development of mechanization, informatization, and intelligentization.” The CMPR explains: “PLA spokespeople have stressed that the 2027 goal means that the Chinese military should “comprehensively push forward the modernization of military theories, military organizational form, military personnel, and weapons and equipment.” It elaborates: “PRC media, citing a military source, connected the PLA’s 2027 goals to developing the capabilities to counter the U.S. military in the Indo-Pacific region, and compel Taiwan’s leadership to the negotiation table on Beijing’s terms.”
Clearly, the recent focus by Admiral Davidson and other U.S. officials on PLA threats to Taiwan peaking by around 2027 is not based solely on close-hold information—although that undoubtedly factors in. As the CMPR underscores, reviewing the PRC’s own public documents reveals a similar timeline. As usual, Beijing is often transparent about its broad intentions, and is typically more transparent in Chinese.
Trends
This is the first CMPR to state explicitly that China’s Navy and Coast Guard each have the world’s largest number of ships. Moreover, this year’s report traces a staggering naval buildup. The numbers cited appear significantly higher than the U.S. Navy has previously projected in the past, as disclosed to veteran Congressional Research Service analyst Ronald O’Rourke. China’s navy has “a battle force of approximately 355 platforms, including major surface combatants, submarines, aircraft carriers, ocean-going amphibious ships, mine warfare ships, and fleet auxiliaries. This figure does not include 85 patrol combatants and craft that carry anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs). The PLAN’s overall battle force is expected to grow to 420 ships by 2025 and 460 ships by 2030. Much of this growth will be in major surface combatants.” This significantly exceeds the most recent public U.S. Navy projection—estimates of 400 by 2025 and 425 by 2030, as provided to O’Rourke and republished by him as recently as 7 October 2021 (in Table 2, p. 10, for those following closely). A PLAN ship estimate increase of 20 by 2025 and 25 by 2030 calls for explanation and elaboration by relevant U.S. officials. For reference, the U.S. Navy currently has approximately 300 battle force ships.
Regarding amphibious vessels, the CMPR mirrors the China Maritime Studies Institute conference’s conclusion that China is currently building landing platform docks (LPDs) and LHAs suited for expeditionary operations rather than the LSTs and LSMs optimized for beach assault. But the CMPR points out that “The PLA may also have confidence in the PRC’s shipbuilding industry’s massive capacity to produce the necessary ship-to-shore connectors relatively quickly.”
For its part, the PLA Air Force (PLAAF) is “rapidly catching up to Western air forces” and “gradually eroding longstanding and significant U.S. military technical advantages….” Shugart summarizes the CMPR’s findings in this area incisively, in comparison to the 2020 edition: “the PLAAF & PLANAF now have 2,800 total aircraft (+300) of which 2,250 (+250) are combat aircraft. Based on totals elsewhere, this looks to be mostly an increase in the number of fighters (+300) but not in 4th-gen ones (constant at 800).” As I observed in person at four of the last five Zhuhai Airshows, China is also developing and deploying a panoply of UAVs, and is now the world’s #2 exporter.
China continues a similarly significant buildup and testing of ballistic and cruise missiles. In Shugart’s words, “there are some pretty eye-watering updates to the PLA Rocket Force. Where last year’s report had a huge increase to “200” IRBM [intermediate-range ballistic missile] launchers and “200+” missiles, this year’s pegs the IRBM missile total at 300.” Shugart continues: “But the really eye-popping jump in this year’s report is the number of MRBMs [medium-range ballistic missiles], from last year’s 150 launchers to 250, and from “150+” missiles to 600! Given that the report earlier classed the DF-17 as an MRBM HGV [hypersonic glide vehicle], I’d guess that might be much of this increase. Not good…” Shugart adds: “Another new nugget in the ICBM section is a statement that the PRC ‘already appears to be doubling the numbers of launchers in some ICBM units.’ It’s unclear if this is referring to silos, or a doubling of mobile launchers in ICBM units.”
Ballistic missiles include the nuclear-conventional/ASBM DF-26; the DF-17 (which may have a nuclear warhead option), China’s first operational hypersonic weapons system, which it began deploying in 2020; and the obscure, virtually un-Googleable “DF-27,” which “could be a new IRBM of ICBM” depending on its actual range.
In 2020, the PLA Rocket Force “launched more than 250 ballistic missiles for testing and training… more than the rest of the world combined.” And the previous year included historic ASBM tests: “On August 26, the PLARF test-fired four medium-range ballistic missiles into the South China Sea, marking the second consecutive year that the PLA has conducted such a test. In July 2019, the PLARF conducted its first-ever confirmed live-fire launch into the South China Sea, firing six DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missiles into the waters north of the Spratly Islands.”
PLA missiles and other “counterintervention” weapons are part of a comprehensive pattern: we can see Beijing preparing to attempt to deter or defeat American defense of Taiwan in coming years by claiming a potent weapons-based capability for every possible scenario contingency and escalation.
Other Revelations
Dedicated CMPR sections illuminate authoritatively two new and important forces: the PLA Strategic Support Force (SSF) and Joint Logistic Support Force’s (JLSF). Periodic updates include the latest People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia (PAFMM) patrols; operations in Natuna Sea waters claimed by Indonesia—a concrete confirmation of Ryan Martinson’s pioneering research concerning PAFMM units from Beihai City, Guangxi; and PAFMM harassment of South China Sea neighbors’ oil and gas exploration.
The report takes pains to address the important intangibles of weapons targeting capability, training sophistication, and readiness; and generally finds concerted PLA focus and progress across the board. Any setbacks and restrictions from COVID are already well into the rearview mirror. With respect to targeting, the 2021 CMPR credits China with “more than 200” reconnaissance and remote sensing satellites, and increase of 80 from last year’s estimate. This year’s report elaborates, “the PLA owns and operates approximately half of these systems, most of which could support situational awareness of regional rivals and potential flashpoints, while monitoring, tracking, and targeting an adversary’s forces.”
As China increasingly seeks to project power to safeguard its growing overseas interests, it prioritizes locations that can help it secure sea lanes to and from the Strait of Hormuz, Africa, and the Pacific Islands. Regarding the PLA’s first overseas facility in Djibouti, the CMPR documents clearly and disturbingly: “PLA personnel at the facility have interfered with U.S. flights by lasing pilots and flying drones, and the PRC has sought to restrict Djiboutian sovereign airspace over the base.”
Additionally, the CMPR states that Beijing “has likely considered” the following candidate countries to host (1) PLA bases with stationed forces, or (2) exclusive PLA logistics facilities with prepositioned supplies (as opposed to the more prevalent access to commercial infrastructure abroad): Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates, Kenya, Seychelles, Tanzania, Angola, and Tajikistan. Additionally, the report states, “The PRC has probably already made overtures to Namibia.” Together with Pakistan and Argentina—as the CMPR relates—Namibia is one of only three countries from which China operates tracking, telemetry, and command stations. The sparsely populated but strategic-resource-rich sub-Saharan nation will be interesting to watch indeed.
What the report lacks space to explore is that Namibia is the world’s fourth-largest producer of uranium oxide. In one of China’s single largest investments in Africa, a subsidiary of China General Nuclear Power Company owns the Husab open-pit uranium mine, the world’s third-largest uranium mine (6% of global production). The Rossing Uranium mine, majority owned by China National Uranium, boasts the world’s largest igneous-rock-associated uranium deposit, is the world’s fifth-largest uranium oxide supplier, producing 4% of uranium worldwide in 2019.
Meanwhile, as part of its border standoff with India, “Sometime in 2020, the PRC built a large 100-home civilian village inside disputed territory between the PRC’s Tibet Autonomous Region and India’s Arunachal Pradesh state in the eastern sector of the LAC.” This is a typical PRC technique, recently documented in detail regarding Bhutanese borderland areas by Robert Barnett and colleagues in a pathbreaking Foreign Policy series.
Additionally, the CMPR raises some worrisome questions, even as it does not offer full answers. Citing the offensive biological weapons program that the U.S. government assesses China to have had from the 1950s to the late 1980s at least, it alleges both continued opacity and “biological activities with potential dual-use applications, which raise concerns regarding [China’s] compliance with the Biological and Toxins Weapons Convention (BWC) and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).” Specifically, it cites “Studies conducted at PRC military medical institutions discussed identifying, testing, and characterizing diverse families of potent toxins with dual-use applications.” The CMPR’s extensive wording and citation of State Department documents concerning dual use toxin testing suggests that there may be more to this story beyond the public eye—apparently among the inherent limitations of an unclassified report.
Takeaways
Particularly well-written, this year’s CMPR prose is fresh, sharp, and avoids the just-slightly-updated feel of some early editions. While the CMPR’s greatest value has always been the specific and technical information it uniquely provides, this one offers a tremendous amount of useful background and context regarding more abstract history, strategy, and policy issues. Such information may be found elsewhere piecemeal, but here it is conveniently integrated in one place for one-stop reading and keyword searching. Those pressed for time may skip background content (e.g., mind-numbing details of Military-Civil Fusion) in the 173-page tome, but its careful interweaving bespeaks comprehensive, contextualized analysis.
Reactions to the 2021 CMPR will depend in part on what it is and is not, and who understands this. Per Congressional directive through the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), its core contents are PLA developments during the 2020 calendar year—a repeated reality that may have thwarted reference to China’s apparent test of a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System in August 2021, even though some other 2021 events have indeed been included. There are always issues that invite nitpicking—including the CMPR’s unfortunate reference to “China’s ‘Near Seas’”—in fact, the Yellow, East, and South China Sea do not belong to Beijing, which is precisely the point!
Moreover, informing the public about PRC military developments should ride exclusively on the CMPR. Other key stakeholder agencies should continue to complement and supplement the CMPR by releasing their own reports. For example, the Office of Naval Intelligence published an excellent report on the PLAN, together with accompanying multimedia, in 2015—but it is crying for an update, particularly with the stunning growth of China’s sea forces over the last six years. Time for Suitland to contribute its latest insights to the public discussion!
In the final analysis, how should we read this latest CMPR? Most fundamentally: as a clarion call to meet China’s challenge before regional security, U.S. alliances, and the rules-based international order suffer grave, irreversible damage. As Gabriel Collins and I wrote in our recent Foreign Policy article on the peaking PRC threat to Taiwan, U.S. vital interests, and the rules-based international order: “U.S. military leaders’ assessments are informed by some of the world’s most extensive and sophisticated internal information. But what’s striking is open-source information available to everyone suggests similar things.” I discussed this issue further in a Midrats podcast last Sunday. Now, with its extensive data and analysis free for the world to read, the CMPR brings it all together.
The future is now: the United States and its allies and partners must prepare immediately to Weather the Window of Vulnerability through this Decade of Greatest Danger that we have already clearly entered. Both military and information preparations are needed urgently. As I recently told ANI News: “Only well-prepared and well-explained US government answers will stem a riptide of stunned defeatism and prevent Xi from ‘winning without fighting.’ ‘Holding the line’ is likely to require frequent and sustained proactive enforcement actions to disincentivize full-frontal PRC assaults on the rules-based order in Asia-Pacific. PRC probing behavior and provocations must be met with a range of symmetric and asymmetric responses that impose real costs.”
The Pentagon’s new China report must inform key decision-makers as well as the general public to marshal the necessary efforts to safeguard peace and security amid Beijing’s mounting challenges to both. The bottom line: Washington and its allies and partners must Hold the Line through 2035. Starting now! There is no time left to waste.
7. Biden’s foreign policy undercut by domestic weakness
A depressing analysis. Regardless of our political ideology we should not want this happening to any of our presidents. The political opposition should not be jumping with joy that our foriegn policy is being undercut even if it is of his making (e.g. Afghan withdrawal).
Excerpts:
In the Washington Post, a conservative Biden critic traced the beginnings of the president’s electoral problems in the US to the botched Afghan withdrawal. “After his Afghanistan debacle, the floor fell out from under the president,” the critic opined.
On the other side of the globe, it’s unclear whether China worries about Biden’s image problems at home. China is convinced the US is inexorably hostile, no matter who is president; US military leaders have labeled China a “pacing threat,” Pentagon language meaning it is on the military rise.
Bipartisan American criticism of China’s human rights record, US naval cruises through the contested South China Sea, which China considers its own, and support for democratic Taiwan’s separate status from China all convince Beijing the US won’t change course whoever might be elected in 2024.
A weakened US administration will likely embolden China to maintain, or even increase, pressure on Taiwan to negotiate about uniting with the mainland– though it appears Beijing hardly needs much encouragement.
China has held numerous military maneuvers around the self-governing island and staged jet bomber flights over its airspace, both as practice for a possible invasion and as psychological intimidation, regardless of Biden’s floundering at home or abroad.
To counter this, Biden hopes to renew dormant alliances in the Far East and add India to the mix. But potential partners will likely think twice about joining an anti-China coalition with a perpetually wavering and increasingly weak American administration.
Biden’s foreign policy undercut by domestic weakness
US leader's credibility is sagging at home and abroad as speculation swirls about a possible Trump return in 2024
So far no American ally has felt a need to react to the election debacles President Joe Biden suffered this week, notably in the state of Virginia, which his party controlled but then lost, and also in lesser votes elsewhere across the country.
Usually, there is no reason for, say, a German leader, to comment on a vote in a middle-sized American state. But in this case, cables sent out from foreign allies’ embassies in Washington will likely need to grapple with this question:
Is Biden already so wounded that, in just over three years, he’ll be replaced in 2024 elections and have his foreign policy initiatives overturned by a nationalistic populist in the image of Donald Trump or even by Trump himself?
His ratings in political surveys are as bad as Trump’s at their worst. Voters have begun to wonder if, with the spectacle of Biden’s occasional incoherent babbling, he is up to the job of the presidency.
Part of allied nations’ worry centers on the growing habit of US presidents to hang foreign initiatives on their own signature instead of gaining wider political consensus. In America’s volatile political landscape, this trend throws the staying power of US policy into doubt.
If a president believes he can’t get consent for a treaty from two-thirds of the US Senate, as constitutionally required, he forges ahead anyway and calls it something else.
For example, the Paris climate accord signed with dozens of other countries in 2015, was not labeled a treaty but an “executive agreement, binding only President Barack Obama’s administration,” wrote Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former diplomat who runs New America, a Washington think tank.
The same was true of Obama’s complex deal with Iran to curb its nuclear weapons program, known as the JCPOA. He called it a “non-binding agreement” that committed the US to lift sanctions on Iran if Tehran complied with a series on non-proliferation measures. “They can call it a banana, but it’s a treaty,” the late Senator John McCain complained at the time.
US President Joe Biden (C) and G7 leaders arrive for a family photograph during a reception at The Eden Project in southwest England on June 11, 2021. Photo: AFP / Jack Hill / Pool
The weakness of each maneuver was evident when Trump took power after Obama. Because neither the Paris agreement nor the Iran deal was ratified in the Senate, Trump simply overturned each with the stroke of a pen.
This year, Biden has quickly reinstated Paris and wants to return to the Iran agreement. But what will happen after 2024?
America’s whiplash foreign policy presents uncertainty among US allies. “Pervasive gridlock, polarization and distrust that characterize our national politics will…give foreign leaders some pause before entering into long-term, costly agreements with us,” predicted William Howell, a University of Chicago political scientist.
“I think there is a real sort of underlying concern that America’s return may be temporary,” Max Bergmann, a fellow at the leftist Center for American Progress and specialist in relations with Europe. “Europeans are a little bit wary of following the lead of the United States.”
Biden insisted his election last year represented a clear return to US leadership in world affairs. At G-7 and NATO summits last summer, he announced—boasted, really– that “America is back.” Allies understood that he meant that the mercuric Trump and his “America First” attitudes had been pushed offstage. They publicly welcomed Biden with satisfaction.
But Western joy was tempered by an underlying fear that some version of Trump’s nationalistic populism, an ideology with a two-century history in the US, might in fact live on, analysts said.
“After Biden, it may be Trump again,” commented Gerard Araud, a former French ambassador to the United States. “We Europeans, we have to learn to be grown up, we have to learn to defend or to handle our interests by ourselves.”
Virginia’s election did not turn on foreign affairs but nonetheless showed American populism is alive and well.
The defeat of the state’s governor, deputy governor and attorney general were largely built on dissatisfaction among parents with school bureaucrats’ disdain for complaints about frameworks for teaching racial history and on efforts to give transgender students access to traditionally girl or boy bathrooms.
Nonetheless, by equating political control at home with an ability to lead the Free World, Biden set himself up for embarrassment.
Since taking office, he insisted the US must show the world democracy can work. On the eve of his trip to Europe last week, for a G20 summit and COP26 climate conference, Biden cajoled his own Democratic Party legislators in Congress to approve US$550 billion worth of programs to fight climate change. “The rest of the world wonders whether we can function,” he warned.
Donald Trump has indicated his intention to run for president again in 2024. Photo: AFP / Brendan Smialowski
His chief Congressional ally, House leader Nancy Pelosi, said legislators must pass the spending measure so Biden wouldn’t be embarrassed when he got off his plane in Europe. But the legislators failed to endorse the package and Biden left Washington empty-handed.
US allies abroad had already been flummoxed by a series of Biden foreign policy missteps that made them wonder about his competence. NATO partners criticized Biden for the chaotic and incomplete evacuation of Americans, other foreigners and Afghan collaborators as Kabul fell to the Taliban.
He enraged France, America’s oldest ally, by quietly arranging a new anti-Chinese alliance with Britain and Australia, which denied Paris of a $100 billion submarine deal with Canberra. The secretive partnership also seemed a snub at continental Europe’s importance as a strategic partner.
“This brutal, unilateral and unpredictable decision reminds me a lot of what Mr Trump used to do. I am angry and bitter. This isn’t done between allies,” Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said.
In the name of controlling climate change, Biden began to curb US fossil fuel production but, in order to keep American fuel prices low, he begged Russia and Saudi Arabia to produce more oil. Both refused.
Since January, tens of thousands of illegal immigrants have crossed the US southern border unhindered. Biden appointed Vice President Kamala Harris to solve the problem.
She traveled to Central America for talks about the flow, returned to declare the trip was a success “in terms of a pathway that is about progress” and didn’t take up the issue again. The migrants keep coming to the majority dismay of Americans.
In the Washington Post, a conservative Biden critic traced the beginnings of the president’s electoral problems in the US to the botched Afghan withdrawal. “After his Afghanistan debacle, the floor fell out from under the president,” the critic opined.
On the other side of the globe, it’s unclear whether China worries about Biden’s image problems at home. China is convinced the US is inexorably hostile, no matter who is president; US military leaders have labeled China a “pacing threat,” Pentagon language meaning it is on the military rise.
Joe Biden with Xi Jingping during a meeting of governors in Los Angeles in 2012 in California. Photo: AFP/Frederic J Brown
Bipartisan American criticism of China’s human rights record, US naval cruises through the contested South China Sea, which China considers its own, and support for democratic Taiwan’s separate status from China all convince Beijing the US won’t change course whoever might be elected in 2024.
A weakened US administration will likely embolden China to maintain, or even increase, pressure on Taiwan to negotiate about uniting with the mainland– though it appears Beijing hardly needs much encouragement.
China has held numerous military maneuvers around the self-governing island and staged jet bomber flights over its airspace, both as practice for a possible invasion and as psychological intimidation, regardless of Biden’s floundering at home or abroad.
To counter this, Biden hopes to renew dormant alliances in the Far East and add India to the mix. But potential partners will likely think twice about joining an anti-China coalition with a perpetually wavering and increasingly weak American administration.
8. Alleged Jan. 6 Rioter Tries to Sell Home on Zillow, Inadvertently Reveals Cache of Explosives: FBI
Cache of explosives? Flash bangs. All you can do is chuckle over this.
Excerpt: "But it was a picture included in a sales listing for his house on Zillow that led to his latest troubles."
Alleged Jan. 6 Rioter Tries to Sell Home on Zillow, Inadvertently Reveals Cache of Explosives: FBI
A former Green Beret and one-time congressional candidate arrested last month for his alleged participation in the Capitol riot was illegally stockpiling explosives prior to being jailed on charges related to the Jan. 6 pro-Trump siege, according to an FBI search warrant filed Friday in Washington, D.C. federal court. When federal agents searched 47-year-old Jeremy Brown’s Florida home in October, they reported finding a short-barrel rifle, a sawed-off shotgun, more than 8,000 rounds of ammunition, and two hand grenades. But it was a picture included in a sales listing for his house on Zillow that led to his latest troubles. In a photo from “what appears to be Brown’s office,” FBI agents spotted a whiteboard with columns labeled “Food,” “Clothing,” “Shelter,” “Currency,” “Communicate,” “Move,” and “Shoot,” the warrant states. In the “shoot” column, it continues, “there are numerous firearms listed and explosive devices such as ‘flash bangs.’” The entry on the whiteboard indicated that Brown had the flash bangs “on hand,” the filing says, adding that Brown “is not registered to possess explosive devices.”
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
Agents are now seeking to search a trailer located on Brown’s property, which the FBI believes he bought about a month ago: “[I]t is unlikely that an individual would market a home available for public inspection with guns and explosives inside of the home, [thus] it is probable ammunition, and explosives, which constitute potential evidence in the investigation, have been moved to the RV or trailer,” the warrant states. Brown remains jailed after a judge in October ruled he was a danger to the community.
9. Special Operations Success Hinges on People, Partnerships
Special Operations Success Hinges on People, Partnerships
Talented, well trained and motivated people are key to a highly effective and capable special operations force. The other key to its success is partnerships across industry, academia and with allies and partners, said the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command.
As a result of the experiences and lessons learned during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last two decades, special operations forces are "battle tested and probably one of the most credible, integrated, capable forces that we've ever had," Army Gen. Richard D. Clarke said yesterday at the 2021 Aspen Security Forum in Washington, D.C.
Although the focus has shifted to Great Power competition, particularly with China, the lessons learned from counterinsurgency operations need to be retained because the threat to the homeland will not dissipate, he said.
"The counterterrorism mission is going to remain. There's still going to be folks that want to come into our country, especially folks that would, if they had the opportunity, take a shot at the United States. I'm not saying the next 9/11 is around the corner, but I do think that we always have to be vigilant and be prepared," he said, adding that the Defense Department did a great job adding the "irregular warfare annex" to the National Defense Strategy.
Undermining the confidence of potential adversaries is a particularly useful role of special operations forces, Clarke said. Information operations play a part in that, along with building resistance networks.
Special Forces
Soldiers assigned to the 1st Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne), jump out of a C-130 Hercules aircraft over a drop zone in Germany, March 17, 2015.
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Photo By: Army Spc. Jason Johnston
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"Building resistance networks means that we want an adversary to think that behind every rock is an IED [improvised explosive device] and up in every tree is a sniper, that if you were willing to attack this country, you're going to be fighting all the way through," he said, mentioning the Baltic nations as one of many examples employing this strategy.
Although special operations forces make up just 2% of the Joint Force and 3% of the department budget, it's a pretty good return on investment, he said, noting the participation of special operations forces in the Afghanistan evacuation and its concurrent mission in Haiti for humanitarian disaster assistance.
Since special operations personnel are globally deployed, working with allies and partners is a valuable skill that they bring, Clarke said. They're culturally astute and skilled in languages and customs of the country and region in which they're located.
Flotation Check
A special operations sailor jumps into Coronado Bay for a floatation check in San Diego, Calif., March 5, 2009.
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Not only do they train with the special operations units of other nations, but they also train with conventional forces, as they've been doing recently in Norway, Ukraine, Thailand and the Philippines, Clarke said. On each training mission, U.S. teams learn new tactics, techniques and procedures, and partner nations learn from their U.S. counterparts. "Deployments are probably the best training they get," he said.
Besides training with allies and partners, special operations forces benefit from training as part of the larger joint force in some of their higher end exercises, he said.
Training Jump
Soldiers with the 1st Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group, conduct a training jump from a C-130 Hercules aircraft at the Grafenwoehr Training Area in Grafenwoehr, Germany, Aug. 7, 2013.
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"Working with and integrating with the joint force is absolutely critical because we want them to see us as an enabler and a capable force that helps them, whether that's through joint forced entry, or because we may be the only ones in that country that can provide them access," he said.
Special operations forces are resilient and creative, Clarke said, and their leaders listen to their ideas and respond appropriately.
10. Op-Ed: Special forces roles ‘in doubt for the future’? – Guess again.
A view from Australia.
Author: Paul Wallis, Editor-at-Large based in Sydney, Australia.
Perhaps the reason why there is no mention of unconventional warfare and resistance.
Op-Ed: Special forces roles ‘in doubt for the future’? – Guess again. - Digital Journal
An armed US-made F16 fighter jet takes off on September 15, 2021 from Pingtung in southern Taiwan during annual drills in the island claimed by Beijing - Copyright AFP GREG BAKER
If you ever want to be bored to death, ponderous military navel-gazing is a reliable option. In this case, the issue of future roles for special forces is under discussion. It’s almost, if not quite, a rhetorical question.
The current news is that after Afghanistan, in which special forces from many countries performed well and very effectively, US special forces are in an existential crisis. At least, that’s the implied issue. The theory, which is OK as far as it goes, is that the world has changed, the global military context has changed, and it’s unclear what special forces will have to do in future.
Well… No. Special forces were originally formed to carry out exceptional jobs for strategic and tactical purposes. They evolved into anti-terrorist fighters. Now, with the political environment they will probably have to go back to their original roles.
Special forces include:
- Active tactical assault and deep penetration teams (Commandos, Marine Raiders, Army Rangers, Air Force Special Ops, SAS, etc.)
- Specialist forces (US Navy SEALS)
- Reconnaissance (critical ground intelligence)
- Sabotage operations
- Counter terrorist forces
- Hit teams for important targets
- Complex warfare expert teams
- Hostage and rescue
- Various naval special ops teams and units
- Direct interfaces with communications and other intelligence
A simple formula for special operations units is “anything the regular forces can’t, don’t or shouldn’t do”. That formula isn’t going anywhere. It’s utterly unrealistic to expect grunts or other services to take on highly specialized work in “whatever” scenarios.
The absolute basics, oversimplified
(Professionals please excuse this very basic stuff. This is supposed to be an article, not a book.)
Generally special forces are the first on the ground in any type of warfare. They’re trained and expected to deliver very high military values in a very wide range of possible operations. These guys do NOT grow on trees. They’re usually and actually the best of the best in their militaries.
The world’s militaries include a lot of special ops forces in various forms. Russia and China, in particular, have multiple special forces units, and they’re effective, a significant threat. Russia’s SPETSNAZ, for example, aren’t famous for their ornamental uses. The People’s Liberation Army has an estimated up to 14,000 operators, also probably not for purely cosmetic purposes.
Special forces are a real inherent and extremely dangerous threat in any war scenario. You have to be able to counter them, and predict the risks they pose to your side. They operate quickly and almost invisibly. They can deliver almost literally any kind of attack on any kind of target.
Generally speaking, local security probably won’t have anything like the capacity to deal with them. So you need anti-special forces, aka other special forces.
To give a slightly banal example:
-
Suppose China did launch an invasion of Taiwan. The first stage of the attack probably won’t include the editor of the Global Times waving his vocabulary. (What a pity.)
- The first PLA troops involved will be special forces. The PLA troops will probably work with pre-existing local saboteurs, hackers, and similar forces.
- This type of attack could target absolutely anything at all and do a lot of damage very fast indeed. At baseline level, they could trash the entire island. Power, water, communications, command and control, you name it; by definition, those are pretty soft targets. If successful, they could cause absolute chaos.
By the way – If that sounds like “complex warfare” to you, you ain’t kidding. It’s a bit more complex when the local enemy forces have about 30 to 60,000 of their little friends about to drop in, too.
Obviously, you’re not going to send very sincere underequipped Boy Scouts to try to manage this extremely serious immediate security risk. You need special forces in the mix to even evaluate the risks, let alone do anything about them.
Take those basics to a global scale, and you have the future of special forces. Right now, US special forces are currently training local Taiwanese forces. They need to be there. That’s just one very straightforward role for special forces which will be pretty common in future.
Future roles may include:
Technological roles: Not as Hollywood-glitzy, maybe. Tech roles are likely to be critical for managing the next generations of military mayhem, particularly the everything-by-wire scenarios.
Expertise: Special forces aren’t called “special” for no reason. There are almost any number of areas of specialization, from astronomy to zoology which might figure in future special ops.
Hybrid intelligence operations: Military intelligence isn’t really a contradiction in terms. It’s just sometimes rather hard to prove. Particularly to military commanders. A mix of special ops and intelligence is the norm, now. In future, it will be hardwired into special ops because it must be there. What’s always going to be new is the sheer number of different types of intelligence, sourcing, and information handling.
Cost-effective: Special forces are the incarnate form of cheap kill in an almost absurd number of ways. They can do incredible damage at comparatively very low risk and with low or preferably no casualties. That point isn’t even arguable.
Tactical: Special forces can be horror stories for anyone trying to defend against them. They eat up security resources, time, and in some cases, sanity. This follows through from the cost-effective factors.
Strategic: From hybrid intelligence in particular, but also from all the other operational values, special forces have a strategic role. Target evaluation, for example, is a special forces basic skill. At higher levels, this skill set is truly invaluable. What’s the thing to hit which will do the most damage? You know who to ask, and hopefully after 900 words or so, why.
Any military force without these skill sets will be basically ineffectual against them. Special forces are integral to any future military, any service, and any war scenarios. The future for special forces is looking good, but with a lot of hard work attached.
11. Clemency Request for Guantanamo Inmate 'Enlightening,' Hambali's Lawyer Says
Clemency Request for Guantanamo Inmate 'Enlightening,' Hambali's Lawyer Says
A Guantanamo Bay inmate’s testimony before a U.S. military tribunal last week about being tortured at a secret CIA site and the jury’s clemency recommendation tied to that account may have implications for the trial of three Southeast Asian terror suspects incarcerated at the notorious prison, lawyers and activists say.
Majid Khan, who acknowledged having served as a money courier leading up to the 2003 bombing of the Marriott hotel in Jakarta, was sentenced to 26 years in prison last week. Before his sentencing, he testified in graphic detail about torture he experienced at an overseas “black site” run by the Central Intelligence Agency after his arrest that year until he was transferred to the U.S. military prison in Cuba in 2006.
“I thought I was going to die,” Khan, a Pakistani national, said while reading from a 39-page statement during his sentencing hearing at Guantanamo on Oct. 28, according to the Associated Press. “The more I cooperated and told them, the more I was tortured.”
In a stunning turn of events, seven of the eight senior military officers on the jury delivered a handwritten clemency recommendation for Khan based partly on his account of the torture, which they noted was “of no practical value in terms of intelligence, or any other tangible benefit to U.S. interests.”
“Instead, it is a stain on the moral fiber of America; the treatment of Mr. Khan in the hands of U.S. personnel should be a source of shame for the U.S. government,” according to a copy of the letter obtained and published by The New York Times.
Attorney Jim Hodes, who represents Encep Nurjaman, declined to comment about whether his client would give similar testimony in his upcoming trial on terror charges linked to the Marriott bombing and the Bali Bombings in October 2002. Twelve people were killed in the hotel bombing and 202 were killed in the twin bombings in Bali – Indonesia’s deadliest terrorist attack to date that was blamed on Jemaah Islamiyah, the Southeast Asian affiliate of al-Qaeda.
Nurjaman, an Indonesian citizen more commonly known as Hambali, is to be tried with Malaysians Mohammed Nazir bin Lep and Mohammed Farik bin Amin on terror charges after they were arraigned at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay on Aug. 30 and 31. All three have been locked up in the prison there since 2006 after spending time at CIA black sites following their arrests in 2003.
Hodes called the letter “incredibly enlightening.”
“That letter is a powerful rebuke of what our government did in the past and what it is doing now, in my opinion,” he told BenarNews.
Lawyers for bin Lep and bin Amin could not be reached immediately for comment.
The letter on behalf of Khan, who had lived in Baltimore, Maryland, but was not an American citizen, noted that he had been held for nearly two decades without due process.
“Although designated an ‘alien unprivileged enemy belligerent,’ and not technically afforded the rights of U.S. citizens, the complete disregard for the foundational concepts upon which the Constitution was founded is an affront to American values and concepts of justice,” the jurors wrote.
Khan is the first high-value detainee who went through the CIA program of worldwide detentions of terror suspects, who were rounded up and interrogated at secret black sites around the globe after the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States, to be convicted and sentenced at Guantanamo’s Camp Justice.
He could be freed as soon as February 2022 because of a plea deal reached in 2012, AP reported, adding that the jurors were not told about the deal.
‘Most unusual’ letter
Joshua Kastenberg, a former Air Force prosecutor and judge, said he had never seen anything like the jury’s letter.
“This particular letter is most unusual because instead of the comment – ‘there were mitigating circumstances to the offense,’ or that the defendant/accused was ‘a good guy’ – this clemency request included a statement on constitutional law and the due process rights of human beings,” Kastenberg, who teaches law at the University of New Mexico, told BenarNews.
"[T]he letter may sway the authorities responsible for prosecuting the cases to take a more holistic approach and offer up plea agreements,” he said.
Usman Hamid, chairman of Amnesty International Indonesia, discussed the importance of the jury’s action.
“What should be pointed out is not that clemency, but the torture that Majid Khan has been subjected to – this is a violation of the convention against torture which was ratified by the United States in 1994. That the jury acknowledged there was torture should be the basis for an investigation,” he told BenarNews.
“Similar clemency should be granted to Hambali because he was subjected to torture too.”
A Human Rights Watch official, meanwhile, questioned why Khan, Hambali and others have had to wait years for their day in court.
“Majid Khan’s graphic testimony about his torture at the hands of the CIA is further evidence of the harms of the so-called U.S. ‘global war on terror,’” Letta Tayler, an associate director in HRW’s crisis and conflict division, told BenarNews.
“But given the agonizingly slow pace at which these Guantanamo cases are proceeding and the systemic flaws in the military commission system created to try terrorism suspects there, it could be years before a jury delivers a verdict on the Hambali case – if ever. It took 18 years for the U.S. to even indict him.”
Tria Dianti in Jakarta contributed to this report.
12. China slams US curbs on visiting scholars from military-linked institutions
Excerpts:
U.S.-based commentator Wu Zuolai said the CCP has long required its overseas students to help satisfy their country's thirst for new technology.
"They organize them and send them out with specific tasks and missions," Wu told RFA. "These people will go on to do military industrial or national defense research after returning from the U.S."
"Some of these [visiting students and fellows] are not there in good faith, and not just as academics," he said. "Their aim is to get hold of technological secrets fast and hand them over to the Chinese government, or to state-owned companies and military-industrial firms."
"That's why ... a lot of PLA-linked universities have been blacklisted ... and why students and scholars with a particular background are being subjected to severe scrutiny, and are being refused entry," he said.
Some 370,000 Chinese students are currently estimated to be in the U.S., around 40 percent of whom are in science and engineering.
China slams US curbs on visiting scholars from military-linked institutions
China's foreign ministry has hit out at Washington after U.S. officials refused entry to dozens of its overseas students and visiting fellows with valid visas.
Foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said nearly 30 students and visiting scholars were repatriated following interrogation in August 2021, despite holding visas to enter the U.S.
"In August 2021 alone, nearly 30 Chinese students and visiting fellows to the U.S. suffered similar unjust treatment, with many more reporting rough handling during harassment, interrogation, and searches," Wang told a regular news briefing in Beijing on Nov. 3.
He said officials asked the students whether they or their parents were members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and whether they had been assigned any task by the Chinese government before leaving.
Wang said officials had taken cellphone snapshots of routine military training in colleges and universities as evidence of connections to China's People's Liberation Army (PLA).
"Such practices ... undermine mutual trust and cooperation [and] jeopardize the steady and healthy development of bilateral relations," Wang said.
President Trump issued an executive order on May 29, 2020, accusing Beijing of engaged in "a wide-ranging and heavily resourced campaign to acquire sensitive United States technologies and intellectual property, in part to bolster the modernization and capability of its military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)."
"The [Chinese] authorities use some Chinese students, mostly post-graduate students and post-doctorate researchers, to operate as non-traditional collectors of intellectual property," the order said.
"Students or researchers from [China] studying or researching beyond the undergraduate level who are or have been associated with the PLA ... provide particular cause for concern," it said.
According to a number of media reports, many of those affected are from seven universities believed to have close ties with the PLA: Beihang University; the Beijing Institute of Technology; the Harbin Institute of Technology; Northwestern Polytechnical University; Harbin Engineering University; Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics; and Nanjing University of Science and Technology.
'Specific tasks and missions'
U.S.-based commentator Wu Zuolai said the CCP has long required its overseas students to help satisfy their country's thirst for new technology.
"They organize them and send them out with specific tasks and missions," Wu told RFA. "These people will go on to do military industrial or national defense research after returning from the U.S."
"Some of these [visiting students and fellows] are not there in good faith, and not just as academics," he said. "Their aim is to get hold of technological secrets fast and hand them over to the Chinese government, or to state-owned companies and military-industrial firms."
"That's why ... a lot of PLA-linked universities have been blacklisted ... and why students and scholars with a particular background are being subjected to severe scrutiny, and are being refused entry," he said.
Some 370,000 Chinese students are currently estimated to be in the U.S., around 40 percent of whom are in science and engineering.
Australia-based researcher Song Wendi said the U.S., as a more open society, could afford to show more tolerance.
"The U.S. needs to show a more open and tolerant attitude, out of self-confidence, because it's a democracy rather than an authoritarian regime," Song said. "Only then can it demonstrate the superiority of its system."
"It can only attract talent from other countries if it remains open to those countries," she said. "That way, overseas students from China or anywhere will likely ... choose not to return ... and the U.S. will have even more talent when it comes to competition with China."
Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
13. People Worldwide Name US as a Major Threat to World Peace. Here's Why.
From one of the most anti-American websites: Truthout.
This is a real call to action (or arms?):
Unfortunately, empires do not simply die. This means that we — around the world, and especially those of us located in the United States — are called upon to resist, undermine and disrupt empire. We need to, across borders, envision a radically different world, and fight for it.
People Worldwide Name US as a Major Threat to World Peace. Here's Why.
Having leveled two Japanese cities with atomic bombs and established itself as the world’s top superpower following the collapse of the international order in the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. quickly became intoxicated by its newfound military superiority.
The U.S. soon went on to introduce a doctrine that positioned itself as the world’s police, drop more bombs in the Korean and Vietnamese wars than there had been dropped in the whole course of World War II, and orchestrate military coups against democratically elected governments throughout Latin America. It ended up in turn supporting brutal dictatorships and establishing more foreign military bases than any other nation or empire in history all over the globe.
All this occurred within the first 30 or so years after the end of World War II. By the time the 21st century came around, the U.S. was the only military and economic superpower in the world. Yet, that did not put an end to U.S. imperial ambitions. A “global war on terrorism” was initiated in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, with the U.S. ending up by 2013 being seen by people around the world as “the greatest threat to world peace.”
What are the roots of U.S. imperialism? What has been the impact of imperial expansion and wars on democracy at home? Is the U.S. empire in retreat? In this interview, scholar and activist Khury Petersen-Smith, who is Michael Ratner Middle East Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, discusses how U.S. imperialism has undermined democracy, both home and abroad, with the wars abroad even being tied to police brutality at home.
C.J. Polychroniou: The U.S. has a long history of war-on-terror campaigns going all the way back to the spread of anarchism in late 19th century. During the Cold War era, communists were routinely labelled as “terrorists,” and the first systematic war on terror unfolded during the Reagan administration. Following the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration renewed the war on terror by implementing a series of far-reaching policy initiatives, many of which, incidentally, went unnoticed by the public but also continued during the Obama and Trump administrations, respectively, which subverted democracy and the rule of law. Can you elaborate about the impact of war-on-terror policies in the dismantling of U.S. democracy?
Khury Petersen-Smith: It’s true: The tactics and beliefs that the U.S. has deployed in the war on terror have deep roots that stretch well before our current time. I would argue that the U.S. has never been a democracy, and that a key reason is its basically permanent state of war, which began with its founding. New England settlers, for example, waged a war of counterinsurgency against Indigenous peoples here who resisted colonization in King Philip’s War. The settlers besieged Indigenous nations, considering communities of adults and children to be “enemies” and punishing them with incredible violence. This was in the 1670s.
I would argue that the U.S. has never been a democracy, and that a key reason is its basically permanent state of war, which began with its founding.
In a different U.S. counterinsurgency, in the Philippines in the early 20th century, American soldiers used “the water cure,” a torture tactic comparable to the “waterboarding” that the U.S. has used in the war on terror. This was one feature of a horrific war of scorched earth that the U.S. waged as Filipino revolutionaries fought for an independent country after Spanish colonization. The U.S. killed tens of thousands of Filipino fighters, and hundreds of thousands — up to a million — civilians. There was also a staggering amount of death due to secondary violence, such as starvation and cholera outbreaks, and due to the U.S. declaration that civilians were fair game to target (as seen in the infamous Balangiga Massacre). It was during that episode in 1901 on the island of Samar, when an American general ordered troops to kill everyone over the age of 10. The designation of whole populations as the “enemy” — and therefore targets for violence — has echoes that reverberate in Somalia, Yemen, Iraq and other places where the U.S. has fought the war on terror.
This is to say that there are different chapters in the history of U.S. empire, but there is a throughline of justifying military violence and the denial of human rights in defense of U.S. power and “the American way of life.” This history of wars informs those of the present.
In the 20th century, labeling various activities “terrorism” was one way of rationalizing the use of force. The U.S. did this especially with its allies in response to anti-colonial liberation movements. So the South African apartheid regime called anti-apartheid resistance “terrorism,” and the Israeli state did (and continues to do) the same to Palestinian resistance, however nonviolent. The U.S. has armed and defended these states, embracing and promoting the rhetoric of war against “terrorism.”
The flip side of “terrorism” — the blanket enemy against which all violence is justified — is “democracy” — the all-encompassing thing that the U.S. claims to defend in its foreign policy. But again, the 20th century saw the U.S. embrace, arm and wage war with and on behalf of anti-democratic, dictatorial forces on every continent. The decades of violence that the U.S. carried out and supported throughout Latin America in the latter part of the 20th century, in response to waves of popular resistance for social and economic justice, serve as a brutal chapter of examples.
All of these things helped constitute the foundation upon which the Bush administration launched the war on terror.
To answer your question more directly, military violence always requires dehumanization and the denial of rights — and this inevitably corrupts any notions of democracy. War, in fact, always involves an attack on democratic rights at large. When the U.S. launched the war on terror in 2001, the federal government simultaneously waged military campaigns abroad and passed legislation like the USA PATRIOT Act, issued legal guidelines and other practices that introduced new levels of surveillance, denial of due process, rationalization of torture and other attacks on civil liberties. These efforts especially targeted Muslims and people of South Asian, Central Asian, Southwest Asian and North African origin — all of whom were subject to being cast as “terrorists” or “suspected terrorists.”
It is worth noting that while Bush drew upon the deep roots of U.S. violence to launch the war on terror, there has been incredible continuity, escalation and expansion throughout it. Bush launched the drone war, for example, and President Barack Obama then wildly expanded and escalated it. President Donald Trump then escalated it further.
Have the war-on-terror policies also affected struggles for racial and migrant justice?
The war on terror has been devastating for racial and migrant justice. The Islamophobic domestic programs that the U.S. has carried out are racist. And once they were piloted against parts of the population, they could be expanded to others. This is how U.S. state violence works. Indeed, the mass policing, mass incarceration regime built up in the 1990s — which was supposedly directed at “fighting crime,” and the “war on drugs” — targeted Black people and Latinos in particular, building an infrastructure that was then deployed against Muslims and others in the war on terror. With policing vastly expanded in the name of the war on terror, its force came back to Black and Indigenous communities — as it always does in the United States.
With policing vastly expanded in the name of the war on terror, its force came back to Black and Indigenous communities — as it always does in the United States.
It is important to acknowledge the new level of credibility and power that the police attained after 9/11 and in the war on terror. There was actually a powerful wave of anti-racist protest against the police in the 1990s — especially strong in cities like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles. In New York, thousands mobilized to demand justice for Amadou Diallo, Abner Louima, Patrick Dorismond, and others brutalized and killed by the New York City Police Department. The police were on the defensive. They seized upon the post-9/11 moment and the beginning of the war on terror to rehabilitate their image and attain new powers.
With this in mind, I wonder if the current moment of “racial reckoning” unfolding in the U.S. over these two years — brilliant and important as it is — could have actually happened 20 years ago. I think that anti-racist movements were on track to do it, and the war on terror set us back two decades. Consider all of the Black lives lost in that time.
And yes, the war on terror has been catastrophic for migrant justice. One of the early measures was the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, which forced the registration of non-citizens from South and Central Asian, Middle Eastern, and North and East African countries. It was largely unopposed, setting the stage for more racist, targeted policies, like the Muslim ban. Before the war on terror, there was no Department of Homeland Security, no Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The U.S. government seized the opportunity of the war on terror to build on the long history of white supremacy in controlling migration and open a new chapter of border militarization, policing and surveillance of migrants, and deportation.
The United Nations condemned this past summer, for the 29th year in a row, the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba. Indeed, the U.S. is notorious around the world for violations of international law and has been widely perceived as the greatest threat to world peace. However, the influence of the U.S. in world affairs is sharply in decline and its so-called “soft’ power has all but evaporated. Are we living through the death of an empire?
I’m afraid that U.S. empire is far from death, or even dying.
From the perspective of humanity and the planet, the war on terror has been catastrophic in its levels of destruction and death. But from the perspective of the proponents of U.S. empire, those at its helm, it was a gamble. Bush administration officials were clear from the start that the invasion of Afghanistan was the opening of what they conceived of as a series of invasions and other military operations to demonstrate U.S. hegemony, and punish the minority of states located in the most strategic regions of the world that were not solidly in the American orbit. After invading Afghanistan, Bush declared the “Axis of Evil,” targeting Iraq, Iran and North Korea. The U.S. then invaded Iraq, implying that Iran and North Korea could be next. The idea was to project U.S. power and to disrupt and prevent the rise of potential rivals to it.
The U.S. lost the gamble. Not only did untold millions of people around the world suffer from the wars, but the U.S. also failed in its strategic objectives. The regional and world powers whose ascension the U.S. sought to curtail — especially Iran, Russia and China — emerged more powerful, while U.S. power was set back.
But the U.S. remains, far and away, the most powerful country in the world. And it will not surrender that status quietly. On the contrary, even as it continues and supports military operations as part of the war on terror, it is very openly preparing for confrontation with China. It is pursuing a belligerent path that is driving rivalry and militarization — a path toward conflict.
The story of the path the U.S. is pursuing regarding hostility toward China is another that reveals the subterranean, forward motion of empire that continues across presidential administrations. President George W. Bush’s 2002 National Security Strategy first signaled that, “We are attentive to the possible renewal of old patterns of great power competition,” and identified China as one potential competitor. In 2006, the Bush administration gestured further toward identifying China as posing a problem for U.S. empire, saying, “Our strategy seeks to encourage China to make the right strategic choices for its people, while we hedge against other possibilities.”
When President Obama took office, the U.S. foreign policy establishment had clearly united behind the notion that China was an enemy to be isolated and whose rise was to be curtailed. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared “America’s Pacific Century” and argued for a winding down of American attention to Iraq and Afghanistan, and a new strategic focus on Asia and the Pacific. Obama launched the “Pivot to Asia,” which involved shifting military weapons and personnel to the region and building more facilities there, all aimed at addressing China’s ascension. President Trump, of course, brought anti-China hostility to a fever pitch, blaming China for the COVID-19 pandemic, openly using crude, racist language directed at China (but impacting Chinese American people and many other Asian Americans), and opening the door for Fox News personalities and officials like Sen. Tom Cotton to talk directly about the supposed “threat” that China poses and call for military action against it. That brings us to today, where there is near consensus between both parties that the U.S. should be gearing up in armed competition with China.
Unfortunately, empires do not simply die. This means that we — around the world, and especially those of us located in the United States — are called upon to resist, undermine and disrupt empire. We need to, across borders, envision a radically different world, and fight for it.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
C.J. Polychroniou is a political scientist/political economist, author, and journalist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. Currently, his main research interests are in U.S. politics and the political economy of the United States, European economic integration, globalization, climate change and environmental economics, and the deconstruction of neoliberalism’s politico-economic project. He is a regular contributor to Truthout as well as a member of Truthout’s Public Intellectual Project. He has published scores of books and over 1,000 articles which have appeared in a variety of journals, magazines, newspapers and popular news websites. Many of his publications have been translated into a multitude of different languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish. His latest books are Optimism Over Despair: Noam Chomsky On Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change (2017); Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet (with Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin as primary authors, 2020); The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic, and the Urgent Need for Radical Change (an anthology of interviews with Noam Chomsky, 2021); and Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (2021).
14. US court convicts Chinese intelligence agent of spying
US court convicts Chinese intelligence agent of spying
Xu Yanjun was found guilty on two counts of conspiring and attempting to commit economic espionage, and three counts relating to trade secret theft.
Xu was one of 11 Chinese nationals, including two intelligence officers, named in October 2018 indictments for involvement in a five-year scheme to steal technology from the US-based GE Aviation [File: Kacper Pempel/Reuters]
Published On 6 Nov 2021
A Chinese intelligence officer has been convicted in US federal court of economic espionage in an alleged state-backed effort to steal technology from US and French aerospace firms, the Justice Department said.
Xu Yanjun, an official in the Jiangsu province foreign intelligence office of the Ministry of State Security, was found guilty on Friday in the Cincinnati court on two counts of conspiring and attempting to commit economic espionage, and three counts relating to trade secret theft.
The economic espionage charges carry a maximum of 15 years in prison each and a fine of up to $5m, while the other charges bring up to 10 years in prison each.
Xu was one of 11 Chinese nationals, including two intelligence officers, named in October 2018 indictments for involvement in a five-year scheme to steal technology from Cincinnati-based GE Aviation, one of the world’s leading aircraft engine manufacturers, and France’s Safran Group, which was working with GE on engine development.
“Xu attempted to steal technology related to GE Aviation’s exclusive composite aircraft engine fan, which no other company in the world has been able to duplicate, to benefit the Chinese state,” the Justice Department said in a statement.
Xu, using various aliases, “identified experts who worked for the companies and recruited them to travel to China,” the statement added.
He was arrested in April 2018 in Belgium, where he had apparently been lured in a counter-intelligence operation – he had planned to secretly meet a GE employee on the trip.
He was extradited to the United States in October 2018 to face trial.
The 2018 indictments named 10 other accomplices in the operation, including the two Jiangsu security officials – who appear to have worked under Xu – six hackers, and two employees of the French company.
None of the 10 has been arrested.
The indictments spelt out the details on efforts to use malware and phishing techniques to hack into specific computers and remove data on the engines and parts.
The Justice Department said at the time that a Chinese state-owned aerospace company had been trying to develop an engine like GE’s for use in Chinese-made aircraft.
After Xu’s arrest, China said the US was “making something out of thin air”.
15. From Nicaraguan revolutionaries to US embassy informants: How Washington recruited ex-Sandinistas like Dora María Téllez and her MRS party
A very long read.
Excerpts:
When she was just 22-years-old, Dora María Téllez fought as a guerrilla in Nicaragua’s Sandinista Revolution, alongside current President Daniel Ortega. But she broke with Sandinismo over two decades ago, and has steadily drifted toward the US-backed right wing.
Téllez is a key figure in a group of former revolutionaries, many from elite, upper-class backgrounds, who cohered as a right-wing split out of the socialist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in the 1990s. Together, they formed a centrist political party called the Sandinista Renovation Movement (Movimiento Renovador Sandinista, or MRS), trading on their revolutionary histories to advance a neoliberal counter-revolution.
Under the leadership of Téllez and her colleagues, the MRS developed a close relationship with Nicaragua’s rightist oligarchy. It also collaborated extensively with the United States government, working with neoconservative members of Congress and Miami’s regime-change lobby, all while raking in funding from US interventionist organizations.
In regular meetings with US officials, Téllez, Sergio Ramírez, Hugo Torres Jiménez, Victor Hugo Tinoco, and other top MRS figures provided the United States with intelligence about the FSLN and internal Nicaraguan politics, in an attempt to prevent the Sandinistas from returning to power. They then helped Washington try to destabilize the government of President Daniel Ortega after he won the 2006 election.
From Nicaraguan revolutionaries to US embassy informants: How Washington recruited ex-Sandinistas like Dora María Téllez and her MRS party - The Grayzone
The story of how Nicaragua’s former guerrilla Dora María Téllez and her anti-Sandinista MRS party allied with the right wing and became coup-supporting informants for the US embassy.
One of the most high-profile opponents of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government points to her revolutionary youth to justify her position. And while the international media constantly sings her praise, what it does not mention is that she abandoned revolutionary politics long ago, and has become a key asset in the US government’s campaign of unconventional warfare against Nicaragua.
When she was just 22-years-old, Dora María Téllez fought as a guerrilla in Nicaragua’s Sandinista Revolution, alongside current President Daniel Ortega. But she broke with Sandinismo over two decades ago, and has steadily drifted toward the US-backed right wing.
Téllez is a key figure in a group of former revolutionaries, many from elite, upper-class backgrounds, who cohered as a right-wing split out of the socialist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in the 1990s. Together, they formed a centrist political party called the Sandinista Renovation Movement (Movimiento Renovador Sandinista, or MRS), trading on their revolutionary histories to advance a neoliberal counter-revolution.
Under the leadership of Téllez and her colleagues, the MRS developed a close relationship with Nicaragua’s rightist oligarchy. It also collaborated extensively with the United States government, working with neoconservative members of Congress and Miami’s regime-change lobby, all while raking in funding from US interventionist organizations.
In regular meetings with US officials, Téllez, Sergio Ramírez, Hugo Torres Jiménez, Victor Hugo Tinoco, and other top MRS figures provided the United States with intelligence about the FSLN and internal Nicaraguan politics, in an attempt to prevent the Sandinistas from returning to power. They then helped Washington try to destabilize the government of President Daniel Ortega after he won the 2006 election.
The embassy added approvingly, “if the MRS can shift votes from the FSLN and garner some of the undecided vote, it is still a viable option — and could be the key to preventing an Ortega win.”
Today, Téllez and her MRS are openly allied with the right wing – even as she and her followers cynically exploit her former revolutionary bona fides to divide left-wing support for the Sandinistas and confuse progressive observers outside of the country.
The MRS played a key role in a violent coup attempt in Nicaragua in 2018, in which extremist forces backed by the United States paralyzed the nation by erecting barricades, called tranques, while they hunted down, tortured, and murdered Sandinista activists.
One of scores of violent barricades, or tranques, created around Nicaragua in the 2018 coup attempt
In terms of pan-Latin American politics, Dora María Téllez and the MRS likewise became a reliable ally of the region’s right wing.
When Washington and Christian fundamentalist oligarchs sponsored a far-right military coup in Bolivia in 2019, Ortega’s Sandinista government staunchly opposed and condemned the plot, standing firmly with elected Bolivian President Evo Morales. Téllez, on the other hand, cheered on the putsch, smearing Morales as a wannabe dictator and claiming Bolivia was “better” with him overthrown.
“After Evo’s renunciation there is enormous desperation” in Nicaragua, she gloated. “They are in a very important situation of nervousness and desperation.”
Téllez expressed hope that the coup in Bolivia would send a message to the leaders of the Nicaraguan military to launch a putsch of their own, claiming “there is a very important part of the officer corps that” is not as loyal to Sandinismo.
Téllez and her MRS have taken an even more hardline position toward Venezuela. While the administration of President Ortega has steadfastly supported Venezuela’s leftist Chavista government against numerous US coup attempts, Téllez has relentlessly demonized the elected government of President Nicolás Maduro as a “dictatorship,” calling for it to be toppled too.
Pendientes y solidarios con el pueblo venezolano que avanza a la libertad. Caminamos juntos. https://t.co/HeqLvDLIfI
By 2020, Téllez and her MRS party had moved so far to the right that they decided to drop any pretense of fidelity to Sandinismo, removing all references to the Sandinista movement from their platform and changing the name of the Sandinista Renovation Movement to the Unión Democrática Renovadora (Democratic Renovation Union), or UNAMOS.
All the while, Téllez and her UNAMOS colleagues have publicly lobbied the US government and European Union for more aggressive sanctions on their own country, which have already damaged the nation’s economy.
Former MRS President Ana Margarita Vigil, the life partner of Dora María Téllez (center-right, in the glasses and sweater), meets with neoconservative Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen as part of a regime-change lobbying campaign in 2016
In 2021, the Nicaraguan government arrested a series of MRS leaders, including Téllez, Hugo Torres Jiménez, and Victor Hugo Tinoco. An investigation by The Grayzone shows that each of these figures has been a US embassy informant for at least 15 years, according to State Department cables.
Nicaragua also ordered the arrest of founding MRS president Sergio Ramírez, who has for decades served as a US government informant, a fact confirmed by the classified documents. (Ramírez lives in Costa Rica, so he was not apprehended.)
The detainees were charged with “inciting foreign interference in internal affairs, requesting military interventions, plotting with the funding of foreign powers to carry out acts of terrorism and destabilization,” and “demanding, praising, and applauding the imposition of sanctions on the State of Nicaragua and its citizens.”
These opposition figures were arrested under Nicaragua’s law 1055, which was approved by the country’s democratically elected National Assembly in December 2020. Titled “Defense of the Rights of the People to Independence, Sovereignty, and Self-Determination for Peace,” many of the world’s governments have legislation similar to this Nicaraguan law, forbidding citizens from coup-plotting, treason, and conspiring with foreign nations to attack their nation.
The detention of Téllez and the MRS leaders led to a wave of denunciations from Western governments, corporate media outlets, and even some left-wing activists and intellectuals who had supported the Sandinista Revolution in the 1980s but later turned against it.
Critics exploited the arrests to craft a warped narrative, accusing the Sandinista government of President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo of having abandoned their leftist roots by arresting historic revolutionaries.
But the reality is the complete opposite: participants in the failed coup attempt such as Téllez and her MRS party broke with Sandinismo decades ago and became loyal allies of the right wing, and the United States, ever since.
Washington responded to Nicaragua’s arrest of two dozen US government-sponsored, coup-plotting opposition leaders by imposing a new round sanctions on the Central American nation, and by attacking the legitimacy of its November 7 elections. The administration of President Joseph Biden made it clear it would refuse to recognize the results of the vote.
At a special October session of the Organization of American States (OAS), convened for the sole purpose of condemning Nicaragua, the Sandinista government defended itself against these accusations by stating, “In our country there is not a single detained candidate, not one; not a single innocent is prosecuted, not one. Those who are being subjected to legal processes are foreign agents, plainly identified within the payrolls of foreign governments, who, using the structures of private organizations, received millions of dollars to destroy, kill, bankrupt the economy, and subvert the constitutional order.”
While Western governments and corporate media outlets have condemned statements like these as propaganda, what Nicaragua said is factually correct. It is a matter of public record that those detained received millions of dollars in funding from the United States and European states, and subsequently used that money to organize a coup attempt, violating numerous laws on foreign agents, money laundering, and treason.
Moreover, the accusations made by the Nicaraguan judicial system, which maintains that the MRS leaders it arrested had conspired with a foreign power in a bid to overthrow their government, are confirmed by numerous classified US State Department cables released by WikiLeaks.
State Department cables expose Dora María Téllez and fellow MRS leaders as US government informants
The Movimiento Renovador Sandinista party that Dora María Téllez helped found has enjoyed support from the US government for at least 15 years.
In the lead-up to Nicaragua’s 2006 national elections, when Téllez served as president of the MRS, the party chose the former mayor of the capital Managua, Herty Lewites, to serve as its presidential candidate. Lewites showed little commitment to any coherent political ideology, but he was charismatic and had a base of support.
That February, Lewites met with the US ambassador for breakfast. The former Sandinista wanted to reassure Washington that, if his party won the upcoming November elections, it would maintain close relations with the United States – the very country that had supported far-right Contra death squads and waged a brutal terror war against Nicaragua.
Lewites was once part of the Sandinista movement, but when the FSLN lost power in 1990, he initiated a series of alliances with the right wing and became a businessman. He went on to create an aquatic park, and, never one for modesty, named it after himself: Hertylandia.
By the time 2006 rolled around, Lewites was a bitter rival of the Sandinista Front, and explicitly preferred the right winning over Daniel Ortega return to power.
MRS presidential candidate Herty Lewites (right) with oligarch Carlos Fernando Chamorro (left) on the US government-funded media propaganda Esta Semana
“Lewites was effusive in his desire to maintain cordial, constructive, and cooperative relations with the United States,” the embassy wrote contently. It added that, “if he is elected, he will request a high-level U.S. delegation to attend his inauguration to demonstrate that the two governments will be strong allies.”
Lewites told Washington he approved of its attacks on Ortega, and insisted that “the Ambassador and other officials [should] continue to strike hard against Ortega.”
The MRS candidate not only sought close ties to the country that had repeatedly invaded and militarily occupied Nicaragua; he also supported neoliberal economic policies. The cable happily noted that “Lewites was unequivocal in his support for CAFTA,” the Central America Free Trade Agreement imposed on the region by the George W. Bush administration.
Lewites reassured the ambassador that his ideal vision for an MRS-led government in Nicaragua would be textbook neoliberal, run by “young technocrats,” with “cuts in government fat” and pro-corporate policies to attract “foreign investment.” He promised that his “consensus government” would be a centrist “balance” between the left wing and right wing.
The embassy cable revealed that almost all of the funding for Lewites’ presidential campaign came from outside Nicaragua, mostly from wealthy oligarchs and corporations in Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
It also noted that Lewites had been meeting with fellow presidential candidate Eduardo Montealegre, a fanatically right-wing and notoriously corrupt, Harvard-educated multi-millionaire banker. Lewites and Montealegre hoped to come together in an anti-Sandinista alliance to prevent Ortega from becoming president again.
Lewites had in fact publicly called for this cooperation with the right in a 2005 interview on the US government-funded media program Esta Semana. The MRS candidate admitted he had repeatedly asked Montealegre to make a “public agreement” with him so they could push through constitutional reforms that would make it almost impossible for the Sandinistas to return to power.
Right-wing multimillionaire banker Eduardo Montealegre (right, in white) clasping hands with MRS presidential candidate Edmundo Jarquín (center, in pink) and Liberal politician Enrique Quiñónez (left, in red), with campaign materials for Herty Lewites in the background
“Remarking that he will not be upset if Montealegre wins the election because he knows Montealegre will also lead the nation forward, Lewites argued that the two need one another,” the US embassy wrote after its February 2006 meeting. “He believes that between the two of them they can gain the 56 National Assembly seats required for much-needed constitutional reforms. Lewites hopes to sign some sort of pre-election commitment with Montealegre agreeing to work together if either of them wins the presidency.”
Lewites’ call for a pact with Montealegre was highly hypocritical, because the MRS had endlessly criticized, and capitalized on, a short-term agreement that Ortega’s Sandinista Front had made with Liberal former President Arnoldo Aléman, known as the “pacto,” in order to rewrite electoral law to allow presidential candidates to win in the first round if they had more than 35% of the vote.
But this was just the first instance in a long record of the MRS party openly allying with and supporting Montealegre, one of the most infamous right-wing oligarchs in Nicaragua.
Lewites unexpectedly died of a heart attack in July 2006. His vice-presidential pick, Edmundo Jarquín, became the MRS’ new presidential candidate in the November elections, and ultimately got just 6% of the vote.
From then on, the MRS continued to lurch further and further to the right. And the party’s leaders collaborated more and more closely with the United States.
A September 2006 State Department cable, titled “MRS: ‘We want to bring Ortega down,’” is one of the clearest examples of the US government supporting the Sandinista Renovation Movement party.
The document reveals that after the death of Herty Lewites, his nephew Israel Lewites, the spokesman of the MRS party, met with the embassy’s polcouns (political counselor) and doubled down on his request for Washington’s support.
“The MRS is the only viable option for the 2006 election,” Israel Lewites insisted. Desperate to maintain US backing, “Lewites emphasized that the MRS would never return to an FSLN controlled by Ortega.”
In turn, the embassy’s “Polcouns reiterated the USG [US government] position that the MRS is a viable and constructive option, with whom the United States would maintain good relations.”
Israel Lewites “made a point of mentioning to poloffs [the political officer] that he had studied in the United States (at the University of Texas in Arlington) and believes in ‘the American dream’ and supports responsible capitalism — since it so clearly benefited him,” the embassy wrote happily.
The MRS spokesperson did however acknowledge that the party’s presidential candidate, Jarquín, was having trouble gaining traction. (The cable noted, for instance, that “Jarquin expressed his support for legalizing elective abortions, a procedure opposed by a large majority of Nicaraguans.”)
But Washington still clearly saw the MRS as useful in its crusade against Ortega: “Though current polls show Jarquin in third place, if the MRS can shift votes from the FSLN and garner some of the undecided vote, it is still a viable option — and could be the key to preventing an Ortega win,” the embassy hoped.
The document also revealed that the US government’s International Republican Institute (IRI), a sibling of CIA cutout the National Endowment for Democracy, had trained roughly 30% of MRS party poll watchers for the 2006 elections. (IRI has been used to fund coups and regime-change operations across Latin America and the world, targeting elected left-wing leaders like Haiti’s President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.)
The State Department evidently considered this cable on the MRS to be very valuable, because it forwarded it to the CIA, DIA, National Security Council, secretary of state, and US embassy in Venezuela.
But this is just one of a dozen cables showing how the United States has worked with leaders of Nicaragua’s MRS party to destabilize the Sandinista government of President Ortega.
In November 2006, Dora María Téllez met with US diplomats as well. It was the eve of the elections, and she was worried that the Sandinista Front might return to power.
At the time, Téllez was president of the Movimiento Renovador Sandinista, and a candidate to be a deputy in the National Assembly.
In her rendezvous with the US embassy’s “Polcouns and Poloff” – political counselor and political officer, respectively – Téllez was joined by Israel Lewites, the MRS spokesman.
“Tellez has often been critical of U.S. policies, but showed an apparent openness to discuss issues with emboffs and to pursue future meetings,” the State Department wrote after the engagement, using an abbreviation for “embassy officers.”
It added that Téllez “told emboffs that she would be interested in encouraging dialogue between MRS members and the United States.”
“Tellez, who says she has a cousin in the United States and a nephew fighting in Iraq, stated that she does not have an issue with the United States, but believes that Nicaraguans often manipulate Americans to do ‘their dirty work,'” the cable noted.
In the meeting, Téllez provided the US embassy with intelligence about the inner workings of Nicaraguan political parties, and accused the Sandinista Front of planning to win the election through supposed “fraud.”
This State Department cable was classified by the George W. Bush administration’s ambassador to Nicaragua, Paul A. Trivelli, who helped lead a full-scale meddling operation in a failed bid to tilt the 2006 election against Daniel Ortega.
Trivelli threatened that Washington would destabilize Nicaragua if Ortega won. The US embassy used hundreds of millions in USAID dollars as leverage to essentially bribe people to vote against the FSLN, while heavily pressuring anti-Sandinista parties to unite against Ortega.
Despite the US intervention campaign, Ortega and the Sandinista Front won the 2006 election, while the presidential candidate from Téllez’s MRS, Edmundo Jarquín, barely eked out 6 percent of the vote. (In subsequent elections, the MRS’ support base shrunk even further.)
Following Ortega’s victory, files published by WikiLeaks show how Téllez continued her role as an informant for Washington, providing it with sensitive information in an attempt to destabilize the new Sandinista government.
Another State Department cable classified by Ambassador Trivelli in January 2007 shows that Téllez and MRS leaders met with the embassy for a “cocktail” meeting that was “relaxed and cordial.”
It is noteworthy that the US embassy chose to meet with these MRS leaders at a cocktail event, highlighting their shared elite backgrounds.
Carrion is the son of a wealthy banker from a powerful family, and Saenz has long been in the foreign NGO sector, working for the European Union and United Nations.
Jarquin is married to the ultra-rich oligarch Claudia Chamorro Barrios (a daughter of the US-backed right-wing President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro). He worked for more than a decade at the neoliberal Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in Washington, DC after the Sandinistas lost power in 1990.
The elite background of these MRS leaders clearly reflected the base of the party, which back then and still today has been with upper-middle and upper-class Nicaraguans, highly educated, fluent in English, with opportunities to travel, and lucrative jobs (paid in dollars) in the non-profit industrial complex, academia, and media.
The Sandinista Front, on the other hand, has always remained firmly associated with poor and working-class Nicaraguans, with its base in impoverished barrios where residents didn’t even have paved roads in the 1990-2007 neoliberal era, and in rural areas where people did not have electricity or potable water.
In fact, the anti-Sandinista opposition is notorious for mocking FSLN supporters with classist tropes, claiming Sandinista Youth militants are uneducated and demeaning them for not being able to correctly pronounce English words.
In their friendly 2007 cocktail meeting with the US embassy, MRS leaders provided the foreign diplomats with sensitive information about the inner workings of Nicaraguan politics.
The WikiLeaks document shows that Téllez fed Washington intelligence about the country’s police commissioner and police chief.
Yet these two meetings were by no means the only times representatives from Nicaragua’s MRS party met and conspired with the US government. The cozy relationship continued well beyond.
A US government cable from April 2007, titled “MRS focused on legislative agenda, municipal elections,” reveals that the party’s National Assembly deputies Enrique Saenz and Hugo Torres, along with Torres’ alternate Victor Hugo Tinoco, had met that March with the embassy’s political officer, as well as analysts from the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), the intelligence agency of the US State Department.
The MRS leaders gave the foreign diplomats information about the newly elected Sandinista government and the MRS’ plans to undermine it, which they deemed an “authoritarian project.”
Torres fed the US government officials intelligence about the Nicaraguan military, which he hoped could be used to undermine the elected president.
“Torres commented that he holds hope for the future of the military,” the embassy wrote. “Omar Halleslevens, Chief of the Nicaraguan Army, and Torres were schoolmates and Torres respects him. He believes that Halleslevens will be able to stand up to Ortega.”
Saenz, the other MRS lawmaker, reassured the embassy “that Nicaraguans recognize the importance of the relationship with the United States.”
Torres’ collaboration with the US government continued for years. Another State Department cable from July 2008 shows Torres providing Washington with detailed analysis of the inner workings of the Sandinista government.
In June 2021, Torres and Tinoco were arrested on charges of conspiring with and taking funding from foreign powers to destabilize the government, in violation of the sovereignty law 1055.
While Washington claimed the charges were baseless and politically motivated, its own classified State Department cables, published by WikiLeaks, tell a totally different story.
MRS leader Sergio Ramírez speaking at the US government-backed Centro Cultural Nicaragüense Norteamericano (CCNN) in 2016
Founding MRS leader Sergio Ramírez has served as US embassy informant for decades
Washington’s collaboration with MRS leaders goes all the way up to the founding president of the party, Sergio Ramírez Mercado, who has in fact served as a US government informant for decades.
Ramírez had been an elite member of Nicaragua’s intelligentsia under the US-backed dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza. Although he played no role in the armed struggle, he supported the Sandinista Revolution, and as a conciliatory symbol was selected as Ortega’s vice president from 1985 until the Sandinistas lost power in 1990.
Like many other wealthy Nicaraguans who had joined the Sandinista Front out of opportunism, Ramírez took a turn to the right in the 1990s. He and Dora María Téllez, among others, created the MRS as a right-wing factional split out of the FSLN in 1995.
Ramírez led the party until Téllez took over from 1998 to 2007. He ran as the MRS’ first presidential candidate, in the 1996 election, earning just about 1% of the vote.
Although he served as the leader of the MRS for a mere three years, the party was so closely associated with Ramírez – and his self-importance was so notorious – that Nicaraguans joke that he named it after himself: MRS is the inversion of his initials, SRM.
Hardly any average working-class Nicaraguans supported Ramírez and his MRS. However, he had the ear of the US government – and internal documents published by WikiLeaks show that he has served as a US government informant since at least 1978.
In January 2007, mere days after President Ortega returned to power, Ramírez met with the US ambassador, Trivelli, for a friendly tete-a-tete.
“Ramirez lauded the USG’s [US government’s] approach towards President Ortega,” the document stated contently.
The MRS leader’s rendezvous with the ambassador was also apparently aimed at generating more financial pressure on Managua from Washington. The report recounted that “Ramirez noted the important role of international donors, who must hold Ortega accountable.” He stressed the influence that European Union economic aid to Nicaragua had gained over the neoliberal period, and said “the EU and a number of member countries should tie their assistance to” political demands.
In the meeting, Ramírez flaunted his right-wing stripes, attacking the democratically elected government of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez and claiming he was a secret puppet master who “calls the shots” in Nicaragua.
In the same vein, Ramírez demonized China, Iran, and Cuba – making it clear beyond a doubt that he was firmly on the side of the United States.
The embassy cable delightedly added that, before the 2006 election, Ramírez had publicly called on Nicaraguans to vote for neoliberal candidate Eduardo Montealegre, the corrupt right-wing multi-millionaire banker. It was just one episode in the long relationship between the MRS and Montealegre.
In May 2007, the US ambassador in Nicaragua hosted a dinner aimed at unifying the opposition, seeking to defeat the Sandinista Front in the 2008 municipal elections. Trivelli invited the banker Montealegre, former MRS presidential candidate Edmundo Jarquín, and Sergio Ramírez, among others.
Ramírez was one of those five influential pundits. He dined alongside the US embassy’s PolCouns (political counselor) and deputy chief of mission (DCM), as well as figures from Nicaragua’s conservative and liberal movements.
Together, the anti-Sandinista opposition leaders blatantly conspired with the US government, plotting ways to weaken and ultimately overthrow the democratically elected administration of President Ortega.
In the dinner, MRS veteran Jarquin complained to the US diplomats that Ortega has a “visceral loathing of free market economies, and [an] ingrained dislike for the United States.”
Another WikiLeaks document from 2008 recalls a trip that the US State Department’s office director for Central American affairs, John Feeley, took to Nicaragua that March. Feeley met with Ramírez, who said he “supported the USG’s [US government’s] general engagement policy in Nicaragua.” (The cable also laments that “USAID’s democracy partners warned that a divided and weakened civil society is incapable of mounting organized opposition to Ortega.”)
These meetings in 2007 and 2008 were far from the first time Sergio Ramírez had served as a US government informant. Back in October 1978, on the eve of the Sandinista Revolution, he was already feeding inside information to Washington.
A State Department cable from that year shows that Ramírez had met with the US embassy and given it intelligence on the anti-Somoza opposition.
Ramírez was “open and friendly,” the embassy recalled. It emphasized that he was more than willing to compromise with “more moderate elements.”
“We plan to continue our direct contact with Ramirez,” the cable stated.
Ramírez’s role as a US government informant indeed continued from there. In August 1979, just a month after the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution, Ramírez reunited with the US ambassador, Lawrence Pezzullo, and provided him with intelligence on Nicaragua’s new revolutionary government, with an emphasis on its internal foreign policy debates and education strategy.
That November, the supposed revolutionary met with embassy staff and Florida Congressman Dante Fascell. Ramírez reassured Washington that the Sandinista government would not threaten the private sector, and called for boosting exports to the US.
Ramírez was also more than happy to throw Fidel Castro’s movement under the bus, insisting that “Nicaragua has no intention of becoming a new Cuba, and is, indeed, a little irradiated at this false accusation,” the embassy recalled.
These documents clearly show that Ramírez – the founding president of the MRS party – was never truly committed to the Sandinista Front’s socialist and anti-imperialist ideology. Instead, he opportunistically joined the Sandinista movement when it was ascendant; and when it lost power, he quickly abandoned it.
In September 2021, Nicaragua ordered the arrest of Ramírez, accusing him of conspiring with foreign governments to destabilize the country. The US government, grateful for the intelligence he had fed it for so long, immediately showed support for Ramírez, as did Spain, the former colonizer of Nicaragua.
Ramírez faced no consequences for his decades of collaboration with the US embassy, given that he lives in Costa Rica, a major US asset in the hybrid war on Nicaragua. But the wealthy Nicaraguan author did take advantage of the charges against him to become a regular fixture in the Western corporate media, frequently appearing on outlets from CNN to the BBC to demonize Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.
MRS leaders lobby neocons in Washington for more US meddling in Nicaragua
While the Movimiento Renovador Sandinista has never been able to get more than a few percent of the vote in national elections, it has significant influence in the non-profit sector, academia, and media, both inside and outside of Nicaragua.
This is largely because MRS leaders overwhelmingly come from wealthy, privileged backgrounds, and while they cannot connect with poor and working-class Nicaraguans, they are most comfortable rubbing elbows with politicians, think tanks policy-makers, and media pundits in the Global North.
A case study of these MRS leaders who are cultivated by elite Western institutions and turned into loyal neoliberal foot soldiers is Ana Margarita Vijil Gurdian, who served as president of the MRS from 2012 to 2017.
Vijil, who is Dora María Téllez’s longtime romantic partner, has enjoyed a jet-setting life of luxury, while the vast majority of Nicaraguans make very little money and could never afford to fly outside the country.
Vijil was then awarded a Fulbright Scholarship from the US State Department, which she used to secure a master’s degree in political science in Arizona.
After completing her US government-funded studies in the United States, Vijil returned to Nicaragua to try to enter politics as a hardcore anti-Sandinista activist. She soon climbed the ranks to become president of the MRS – the position once held by her mentor and life partner Téllez.
In her capacity as MRS president, in 2016, Vigil returned to the United States to lobby for Washington’s support for regime change in Nicaragua. There, Vigil met with neoconservative Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the former representative of hardcore right-wing anti-Cuba and anti-Venezuela elements in Miami.
Former MRS President Ana Margarita Vigil, the life partner of Dora María Téllez, meets with neoconservative Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen as part of a regime-change lobbying campaign in 2016
Joining Vigil in the meeting with Ros-Lehtinen (standing to her right in the photo) was right-wing Nicaraguan activist Violeta Granera, an inveterate conservative and former World Bank official who comes from a powerful family that strongly supported the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza.
In June 2021, the Nicaraguan government detained Téllez, Vigil, and Granera, all on charges of conspiring with foreign governments to destabilize the country.
While the arrests of MRS leaders and other prominent coup-plotters were vociferously condemned by Western governments and the foreign corporate media, many Nicaraguans who survived the bloody 2018 putsch attempt that these opposition leaders orchestrated were in fact relieved.
Family members and friends of victims of the coup, whose loved ones were targeted, tortured, or even killed by the US-backed tranquistas, held the detainees responsible.
A security guard for the mayor’s office in the city of Masaya, named Reynaldo Urbina Cuadra, was kidnapped and brutally tortured by anti-Sandinista extremists during the US-sponsored 2018 coup attempt. He was so badly wounded that he nearly died, and lost his left arm.
Mora was detained by the Nicaraguan government in June 2021, in a move widely denounced by Western capitals.
Reynaldo Urbina Cuadra, a security guard for the Masaya mayor’s office who was tortured by extremists during the US-backed 2018 coup attempt, causing him to lose his left arm
In an interview with The Grayzone, Urbina praised the Nicaraguan government for arresting Mora. “This is the beginning of justice,” he said. “But nothing can bring back what those terrorists took from me.”
Urbina’s comments about the Sandinista government’s arrest of roughly two dozen opposition leaders in 2021, all of whom were deeply involved in the violent coup attempt, are often heard repeated in working-class communities in Nicaragua.
While Global North governments and legacy media exploited the arrests to portray President Ortega as authoritarian, the detentions were quite popular in poor, humble barrios, where Nicaraguans who survived the terror of the tranques consider the opposition leaders to be coup-plotting criminals who should have been behind bars long before 2021.
MRS’ origins in the class contradictions of the Sandinista Revolution
The key role of the MRS in the bloody 2018 coup attempt in Nicaragua made the party’s blatant alliance with the Nicaraguan right-wing completely undeniable.
But although the MRS had previously portrayed itself as a center-left social-democratic party, its historical roots were always in the political right.
Self-declared “leftist” critics of the Sandinista Front and President Ortega – many of whom live outside Nicaragua and have not closely followed its internal politics since the neoliberal era began in 1990 – often point to the revolutionary past of some older MRS leaders to try to depict the party as the real torchbearer of Sandinismo.
But this revolutionary past has been directly contradicted by decades of overt right-wing activities.
On the surface, the story of Dora María Téllez in particular seems compelling. In August 1978, when she was just 22 years old, Téllez served as the third-in-command of a major operation in which the Sandinista Front took over the National Palace in the capital Managua, earning her the nom de guerre “Comandante Dos” (Commander Two).
But how Téllez transformed from this young revolutionary to becoming a US embassy informant allied with the coup-plotting right-wing is a process that reflects the political contradictions present in the Sandinista Revolution since its inception.
In July 1979, after years of struggle, Sandinista revolutionaries overthrew the US-backed dictatorship of General Anastasio Somoza, whose family dynasty had ruled the country for decades.
But in some ways, overthrowing Somoza was easier than governing. When he ruled the country with an iron fist, it was easy to unite opposition forces against Somoza, from across a wide range of class interests.
The Sandinista Revolution had broad support from several classes, not just poor and working-class Nicaraguans. Significant sections of the middle class and even part of the upper class had lost faith in the Somoza dictatorship.
Somoza had pursued backwards economic policies that served the class interests of the wealthy elites, but his regime became increasingly decadent, corrupt, and incompetent, and thought the solution to all problems was more violence and repression. It was only a matter of time until there was a social explosion.
Most of the founders and leaders of the MRS were from the comfortable upper-middle class of Nicaraguans who opposed Somoza and initially supported the revolution.
Many were also quite young. Téllez was a medical student when she joined the Sandinista Front as an activist, and at the time of the victory of the revolution, she was just 23 years old.
Téllez worked with the Sandinista Front for just 15 years, before later becoming one of its staunchest opponents, spending the last 27 years organizing against it. So her time as a Sandinista militant is greatly outnumbered by her time as a US embassy informant and ally of the Nicaraguan right wing.
Dora María Téllez (wearing the black beret) in Leon, Nicaragua in 1979
Toppling an unpopular dictator is not as difficult as governing a country under attack by the world’s hegemon. And internal political contradictions quickly emerged in the 1980s.
Right-wing oligarch Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, who represented the upper-class elements that had opposed Somoza, turned swiftly against the Sandinista Revolution in early 1980.
The US government then launched a terrorist war on Nicaragua, with the CIA pouring millions of dollars into arming and training far-right death squads, known as the Contras, who massacred civilians; assassinated Sandinista leaders, judges, police, and state officials; and burned down hospitals, schools, and government buildings.
Washington also imposed a devastating – and internationally illegal – blockade, which crippled the impoverished Central American nation’s economy. The US goal was to terrorize the Nicaraguan population into submission, overthrow the Sandinistas, and install a compliant neoliberal regime.
Faced with such a relentless onslaught waged by the most powerful empire on Earth, Nicaragua’s Sandinista government lost the support of the middle class that had once supported the uprising against Somoza.
Washington recruited the Nicaraguan wealthy elites and disenchanted middle class, and eventually succeeded in breaking the Sandinistas. The FSLN did win a 1984 election in a landslide, but by the end of the decade, many Nicaraguans had been sapped by the US-led war and economic depression.
In 1990, the Sandinistas lost the vote to Violeta Chamorro, the right-wing oligarch from one of the most powerful families in Nicaragua, whose presidential campaign had been created, advised, and funded with millions of dollars by the US government.
This meant that the Sandinista Front went from being the governing party to the political opposition. And cracks soon began to emerge.
MRS founders lead right-wing split out of Sandinista Front
In the 1990s, revolutionaries watched as leftist movements around the world were overthrown, with coups in the former Soviet Union and subsequent US-backed neoliberal “color revolutions” in its former republics.
Given both the national and international context of counterrevolution, the Sandinista Front was gripped by a series of serious internal debates.
Two main factions emerged in the FSLN: On one side was the left-wing faction loyal to the revolution, called the principistas, which consisted more of working-class activists who were close to the labor unions, sought a confrontational approach against the neoliberal US-backed government of President Chamorro, and remained committed to socialism and anti-imperialism, despite the end of the Cold War. The principistas were led by Daniel Ortega.
On other side was the right-wing faction, the renovadores. They sought dialogue with the other neoliberal political parties and a more conciliatory strategy with Chamorro, and wanted to turn the Sandinista Front into a moderate social-democratic party, modeled after the European center-left.
The renovadores were led by Sergio Ramírez, with other prominent members such as Dora María Téllez and Luis Carrión Cruz. They demonized the revolutionary principistas led by Ortega as “archaic,” “obsolete,” Marxist-Leninists.
In an “Extraordinary Congress” meeting in 1994, the FSLN held an internal vote, and the renovadores were defeated. So some of their top followers left the party in protest, including poet Ernesto Cardenal and writer Gioconda Belli.
This letter would essentially become the founding document of the MRS, and was signed by all of the major figures in what would soon be the new party, representing a Who’s Who of anti-Sandinista opposition leaders:
- Dora María Téllez
- Sergio Ramírez Mercado, a wealthy author
- Luis Carrión Cruz, a rich activist from an oligarchic banker family
-
Carlos Fernando Chamorro, a media mogul from Nicaragua’s most powerful dynasty, who runs major anti-Sandinista media outlets with US government funding
- Xavier Chamorro Cardenal, another media oligarch who ran the anti-Sandinista newspaper El Nuevo Diario
- Claudia Chamorro Barrios, yet another member of the Chamorro dynasty
- Carlos Mejía Godoy, a prominent musician
- Ernesto Cardenal, a Catholic priest and renowned poet
- Gioconda Belli, a novelist from a rich Nicaraguan family who previously worked as a Pepsi-Cola executive
-
Oscar René Vargas, an academic who called for a US military invasion and bloody coup in Nicaragua
- Sofía Montenegro, a liberal feminist who runs NGOs funded by the US government
It was noteworthy that almost all of these figures came from wealthy families, and many were educated in the United States and spoke English.
They represented the upper-class, upper-middle-class, and bourgeois factions who had supported Sandinismo in the 1980s, many of whom had enjoyed comfortable government positions as ministers or advisers, but who turned against the movement when it lost power in the 1990s.
These Nicaraguan elites had happily worked in the government when they had an opportunity to taste power, but when the FSLN entered the opposition and they had to do the hard work of organizing with working-class people, most left the country for the Global North, and they quickly drifted to the right.
In 1995, more figures from the renovadores faction resigned from the FSLN, and they officially formed a separate party: the Sandinista Renovation Movement (Movimiento Renovador Sandinista, or MRS).
At the time, it was obvious that the MRS was a right-wing split out of the front. This is clearly reflected in the party’s founding document, “For a Sandinismo that Returns to the Majorities.”
In the open letter, the MRS leaders intentionally left out any reference to socialism or anti-imperialism. Neither word is mentioned. Instead, the document only expresses opposition to “neoliberalism.”
Moreover, the MRS founding letter made it clear that the new party’s leaders wanted to reconcile with US imperialism, stating explicitly, “Our relations with the United States should be mutual respect.”
To understand the ideological divisions and history that eventually led to the split, The Grayzone interviewed prominent FSLN leader Carlos Fonseca Terán, a son of the founder of the front and leading member of the revolutionary left wing of the party.
Fonseca Terán explained that the many debates going on inside the Sandinista Front when it entered the opposition in the 1990s boiled down to four fundamental issues:
1. Socialism
– the renovadores, who became the MRS, wanted to drop socialism from the FSLN’s mission
– the principistas, led by Ortega, were committed to socialism
2. Popular struggle
– the renovadores were against any and all forms of violence by the working class, including peasants trying to defend their lands from violent takeovers by landowners and companies or workers engaging in militant struggle against corporations
– the principistas did not want to return to the armed struggle, but did support the right of Nicaraguan workers to defend themselves
3. Anti-imperialism
– the renovadores wanted to abandon anti-imperialism and seek good relations with the United States
– the principistas were firmly committed to anti-imperialism above all
4. Vanguard character
– the renovadores considered the vanguard model to be outdated and wanted to emulate European social-democratic parties
– the principistas continued seeing the FSLN as the vanguard party that would lead the working class in its struggle against capitalism and imperialism
“As time passes, the MRS’ rightwing character became more obvious. It couldn’t be denied,” Fonseca Terán reflected. “But from the beginning they were right wing.”
“They were always reformists,” he added. “And they never cared about anti-imperialism.”
Fonseca Terán said the MRS’ critiques of the Sandinista government’s economic policies is especially hypocritical, given the party has repeatedly shown support for neoliberal reforms over many years.
“The only way for our economic program to be more left-wing would be to start expropriating properties,” Fonseca argued, referring to the current FSLN-led government.
MRS party president Dora María Téllez (left, in orange) with right-wing multi-millionaire banker Eduardo Montealegre (center, in white) and MRS presidential candidate Edmundo Jarquín (right, in pink)
MRS forms alliances with Nicaragua’s right-wing elites
The creation of the MRS as a right-wing, social-democratic break with the Sandinista Front mirrored similar splits that happened inside revolutionary socialist parties around the world at the time.
Given their elite class positions and knowledge of English, MRS leaders quickly burrowed into the media, NGOs, and academia, taking control of these sectors and turning them into anti-Sandinista outposts. They also used their friends abroad to try to turn the international left against the FSLN.
Yet after it split of the FSLN, the MRS struggled to find popular support at home. In the 1996 presidential election, the party’s candidate Sergio Ramírez got just 1% of the vote (compared to 38% for the FSLN’s Ortega).
Having been thoroughly defeated and embarrassed, the MRS did its first and only second-guess, deciding to form a brief alliance with the Sandinista Front for the 2001 election. But when they lost that vote, the MRS turned against the FSLN once and for all, and embarked upon its long journey to the right.
In 2006, MRS presidential candidate Edmundo Jarquín earned a mere 6%, against Ortega who won the election with 38%.
This year saw the beginning of the MRS’ alliance with notorious Nicaraguan oligarch Eduardo Montealegre, of the right-wing Independent Liberal Party (PLI).
A multi-millionaire banker, Montealegre is infamous in Nicaragua for his corruption, closely linked to a massive debt bonds scandal.
“The term conservative doesn’t work anymore in Nicaragua. Anyone who uses the word loses support. So all the right-wing call themselves liberals,” Fonseca Terán explained in his interview with The Grayzone. “But Montealegre is not even a liberal; he is a conservative, an ally of big capital.”
MRS party president Dora María Téllez (left) with right-wing multimillionaire banker Eduardo Montealegre (right)
The 2006 State Department cable recounting the US embassy meeting with Dora María Téllez noted that then MRS presidential candidate Edmundo Jarquin had been secretly meeting with Montealegre behind the scenes and “renewed their prior agreement not to attack one another.” The US embassy noted that “MRS ads criticizing Montealegre have disappeared.”
For his part, Montealegre was also a US embassy informant. A 2007 State Department cable published by WikiLeaks reveals that he met with Washington’s Ambassador Trivelli in January of that year to provide sensitive information.
When the MRS and Montealegre’s PLI lost the 2006 election and the Sandinistas returned to power, the MRS began to openly collaborate with the plutocratic banker.
Téllez herself endorsed Montealegre, while in characteristic fashion bending herself into an ideological pretzel claiming that she and her party did not support him.
“The MRS is calling to vote for Eduardo Montealegre, although we are not supporting him under the table,” Téllez insisted.
To justify their undeniable alliance with the right wing, fellow MRS leader Edmundo Jarquín argued, “This is not a conflict between the right and left; it is between dictatorship and democracy.”
Dora María Téllez and MRS leaders supporting right-wing politician Eduardo Montealegre
The rightward drift became a lurch from there, and by the 2010s, the MRS had totally abandoned its alleged commitment to the left and become a right-wing party.
When the Nicaraguan government approved plans for a Chinese company to build an interoceanic canal that could challenge the monopoly held by the US-dominated Panama Canal, the MRS helped organize opposition against the project. Téllez and other MRS leaders exploited liberal environmentalist talking points in order to push the geopolitical agenda of Washington, which desperately, yet successfully, sought to halt the construction.
A blatant example of the MRS’ right-wing character came in 2016, when the party posted a meme on its Facebook page (where it scarcely has any followers) cheering on the recent death of Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, as well as the 2013 demise of Venezuela’s socialist President Hugo Chávez.
“The hour arrives for all pigs, the next is Daniel Ortega,” the MRS wrote. “In Hell he will pay everything that he owes the people.”
MRS president Ana Margarita Vijil, Téllez’s partner, wrote an op-ed in 2017, titled “The MRS and private enterprise,” that demonstrated the party’s complete descent into neoliberalism.
Published in the US government-funded right-wing newspaper La Prensa, which is owned by the oligarchical Chamorro dynasty, Vigil’s rhetoric in the article sounded totally indistinguishable from that of a World Bank official.
“We believe in permanent dialogue and the alliance between the public and private sector,” Vijil wrote.
Welcoming “big business” to Nicaragua, while giving lip service to supporting “small businesses” as well, Vigil declared, “We welcome foreign investment,” in order to “inject capital flow into the country.”
When the violent US-backed coup attempt kicked off in 2018, the MRS played a crucial role. The MRS took a lead in running the Unidad Nacional Azul y Blanco (Blue and White National Unity), a neoliberal opposition alliance that strongly supported the putsch, with backing from Washington.
But when the coup failed, the MRS faced a crisis, and decided to rebrand.
MRS rebrands and drops any reference to Sandinismo
The MRS once absurdly claimed to be the true representative of Sandinismo, but it abandoned that cynical marketing strategy in 2020.
That year, the MRS held an internal vote and decided to renamed itself the Unión Democrática Renovadora (Democratic Renovation Union), or UNAMOS for short.
By rebranding, the MRS cast off its mask of Sandinismo once and for all. In an interview with Nicaragua Investiga, a right-wing media outlet funded by the US government, Dora María Téllez admitted that MRS/UNAMOS, the party she helped found, was a big-tent party with no real coherent ideology.
“We have people who come from liberalism, from Sandinismo, from conservatism, people who have not been in any political party,” Téllez said.
While MRS supporters outside of Nicaragua had spent decades depicting the group as a supposed “leftist” alternative to the Sandinista Front, Téllez and her allies admitted that they had no real loyalty to Sandinismo, and no longer even pretended to be a left-wing party.
The MRS had long used socially liberal issues like LGBT rights and support for abortion to appeal to leftists outside of Nicaragua, but there is nothing socialist about the party.
In fact, for the MRS’ foreign sponsors, the group’s decades-long rightward drift was entirely predictable. The centrist renovador reformists who split from the FSLN in 1995 and formed the MRS were never very ideologically dedicated in the first place.
The document also reveals that US journalist Tad Szulc, who was a reporter for the New York Times and Washington Post, had been a State Department informant.
On the eve of the revolution, Szulc met with top leadership of the Sandinista Front – co-founder Tómas Borge, Edén Pastora (Comandante Cero), Hugo Torres (Comandante Uno), and Dora Maria Téllez (Comandante Dos) – for a lengthy interview. Szulc then recounted his meeting in close detail to the US government, so that it could use the intelligence to undermine the FSLN.
Szulc told the US embassy that Borge was “a militant ideological Marxist” and was the most ideologically committed of all of the leaders. He noted that “Borge seemed to have a clearer idea of where he was going and how to get there than either [Comandantes] Zero [Pastora] or Uno [Torres].”
“There was a distinct split between the rescuers (led by Zero [Pastora] and Uno [Torres] and the rescued (led by Borge),” Szulc explained to the US embassy. “The Borge group is allegedly intransigent in its determination to seize power in Nicaragua without bourgeois help, whereas Zero and Uno are more inclined to flexibility in tactics.”
That is to say, Torres was part of the less ideologically socialist, more opportunist right-leaning faction from even before the revolution triumphed, and he was always willing to make a deal with Nicaragua’s capitalist oligarchs.
On the other hand Borge, one of the original leaders the FSLN, who remained loyal to the party and to President Ortega right up until his death in 2012, had always been the most ideologically committed.
When Torres was arrested in June 2021, his detention was cited by putative “left-wing” critics as a sign that Ortega had supposedly betrayed the revolution. But the reality is Torres and his MRS allies had always been willing to compromise with the United States and form alliances with Nicaragua’s conservative oligarchic elites.
The reality is there is a long history of self-identified “leftists” in Nicaragua allying with the right wing and US imperialism against the revolutionary Sandinista Front.
In the 1990 election which dynastic oligarch Violeta Chamorro won thanks to a campaign run and funded by the US government, the CIA helped her set up a National Opposition Union (Unión Nacional Opositora, or UNO) that was made up of more than a dozen small political parties.
Two of the members of this US-created, anti-Sandinista UNO alliance, working alongside hard-line right-wing parties, were the Communist Party of Nicaragua and Nicaraguan Socialist Party.
Both groups were tiny and basically irrelevant, run by obscure academics and little-known intellectuals. But it was an early example of the so-called “left opposition” to the Sandinistas forming alliances with Washington and the most rabidly conservative and neoliberal forces in the country.
Nicaragua’s history is replete with examples of self-described “leftists” undercutting the Sandinistas and joining hands with the US government and right-wing oligarchy. The MRS/UNAMOS, and leaders like Dora María Téllez, Sergio Ramírez Mercado, Hugo Torres Jiménez, and Victor Hugo Tinoco are perhaps the most high-profile case studies, but they are far from alone.
16. A Veterans Day letter to President Joe Biden
A Veterans Day letter to President Joe Biden
Mr. President,
I need your help.
My dear friend John is on a phone call and can’t hang up.
After serving 22 years in the military during the longest war in American history, I’ve faced just about every leadership challenge imaginable. I’ve held fellow warriors in their final moments, escorted my fallen brothers home, and held their loved ones as they wept. But, on this Veterans Day, with the collapse of Afghanistan, I have a leadership challenge I’ve never faced before.
John needs help to put the phone down. And I’m not sure how to help him do that.
He served five tours in Afghanistan missing more birthdays and anniversaries with his family than he can count. As a Green Beret, he worked closely with Afghan Partner Forces for over a decade — recruiting, training, and leading them in combat. They risked their lives for him, and he for them. They became brothers in the truest sense of the word.
John lost many brothers in the war, both American and Afghan, and he blamed himself. When he retired, he worked hard to put the pain behind him. He moved far away from the Army and began working in a shipping company.
But apparently, he didn’t move far enough.
“Sir,” began a desperate Afghan commando, “the Taliban are all around me. Our generals ran away, took bribes, and left the country.”
The phone rang again. “Sir, there are too many of them. Should I put my weapon down?”
And again. “Sir, I don’t want my family to be killed. I’ll keep fighting, but can you help my family? Please?”
It broke him. Bit by bit.
John asked himself, “Where is the Army I served in? Why aren’t the generals handling this situation?”
But there was no one.
Then, he reassured himself, “Sometimes the military moves slowly. So, I’ll just work this for a few days until they take over.”
At first, John was able to help hundreds make it through to freedom, but thousands weren’t so lucky. It wasn’t from lack of trying. John knew who they were and he knew where they were. And he knew that they all trusted him to get them to the airport despite their family having to endure beatings at Taliban checkpoints. They trusted him to use his relationships which would enable nervous U.S. guards to pull them from a sea of tens of thousands to enter the airfield and on to a new life.
John stayed on the phone, spending endless days leveraging their discipline and loyalty to get their families to airfield gates where they waited for 18 hours with no food or water. But the gates never opened.
John then organized the commandos and their families onto busses, engines running, just outside the airport boundaries. He coordinated directly with senior military leaders inside the airport so they could simply drive through. Once again, the gates never opened.
Mr. President, these Afghan warriors who fought until the last possible moment as others fled, watched our last C-17 fly away while they sat on those busses.
Then the nightmare really began.
The commandos were hunted. Using pay records the U.S. government left behind, the Taliban went door-to-door searching for them. The Afghan commandos and their families hastily stuffed belongings into plastic bags and fled their homes. Every day John received photos of children being beaten or videos of Afghan special operators being bludgeoned to death in front of their families.
These images are difficult for the most hardened warrior in a combat zone to see, but for my friend John, already racked with years of survivor’s guilt and post-traumatic stress, it was far worse. He watched these terrifying images from the sanctity of his own home — a place that was once his only refuge from the war he tried to leave behind. He witnessed this suffering at the breakfast table, with his wife and children watching the despair spread across his gaunt face. The familiar tension returned. They thought it had all been left behind when John retired, but they were wrong.
Relief never came. The military never came. There was no second shift. John is now a dispatcher on an 80-day 911 call being told “We’re not sending anyone to that address. Do what you can to keep their morale up.”
This was unacceptable. We never leave a fallen comrade. John has too many years in the fight to break that promise.
In the beginning, John called in sick at work. But no help came. As the days turned into weeks, he quit his job. No help came. All the pain he’d tried to escape came flooding back. Nightmares returned. Mood swings upended his family every time he watched a news broadcast. Thoughts of suicide crept in amongst the never-ending Afghan pleas for help.
Leave no one behind. This is John’s core ethos.
And now, he can’t hang up the phone for fear of letting them down.
Mr. President,
We are on the cusp of a moral injury that could decimate our veteran population.
Moral injuries are the worst of all, for they are injuries of the soul.
You can help. You have the power to do this.
He won’t let go until you take this burden from him.
John should not be doing this mission, and especially not alone.
If the Department of Defense or the Department of State stepped in and handled this, he’d hang up the phone.
I know he would.
But he won’t let this go until he’s properly relieved.
He can’t let go.
And he is not alone.
There are hundreds — maybe thousands — of veterans trying to honor the promise to our Afghan partners. If you continue to let them carry this burden, with no assistance, what will happen when the bullets and screams echo on the other side before the line goes dead?
What happens when John’s Afghan family simply doesn’t call back one day?
How does he go back to his life?
How does he overcome that guilt?
Do you understand what I’m saying to you, sir?
Do you understand what has been done?
Our political and military leaders on both sides of the aisle have allowed our veterans to bear the cost of their institutional responsibility.
This Veterans Day, we urge you and the politicians from both party come together, across your differences, as our veterans did in this crisis to step up and assume the responsibility for helping our Afghan partners find safe passage. We will work with you every step of the way. Only then can we find a sense of peace.
Only then can John hang up the phone.
Scott Mann is a former Green Beret and the co-founder of Task Force Pineapple, a citizens liaison network committed to honoring the promise to our Afghan partners, with a focus an Afghan special operators and their families. Scott is also a playwright and performs in a recently released film he wrote and produced called “Last Out — Elegy of a Green Beret” that tells the story the Afghan war through the voice of the warriors and military family members who lived it. The film is available, for free, starting on Veterans Day 2021 at lastoutfilm.com. All proceeds donated to the film go to help overcome veteran trauma caused by the Afghan collapse.
Editor’s note: This is an Op-Ed and as such, the opinions expressed are those of the author. If you would like to respond, or have an editorial of your own you would like to submit, please contact Military Times managing editor Howard Altman, haltman@militarytimes.com.
17. Will COP26 Solve Anything?
Will COP26 Solve Anything?
Climate apocalypse still looms while world leaders haggle over haggis in Glasgow.
By Emma Ashford, a senior fellow in the New American Engagement Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, and Matthew Kroenig, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.
Emma Ashford: Hey, Matt! It’s a busy week. Are you glued to the news coming out of Glasgow? The world’s leaders are in Scotland debating what to do about climate change—after flying there on their private jets, of course.
Matthew Kroenig: Yes. I am watching. The meetings have been so exciting that some world leaders even managed to stay awake for the duration of the proceedings.
Many climate change experts are describing the summit as a disappointment. How do you see it?
EA: Well, at least U.S. President Joe Biden showed up, even if he didn’t manage to stay awake. (Perhaps he was just sleeping off a late night at the pub?) And his Chinese and Russian counterparts didn’t even do that. But I’ve been hearing some more optimism about the summit than I had anticipated. I had assumed—going into the summit—that it would be largely meaningless, resulting in another Paris-style accord where countries simply agreed to do the things they were going to do anyway.
But apparently there has been some progress on a couple of big-ticket items, most notably the discussions over setting up a global carbon trading system.
MK: I agree there are some promising signs, but can I start with the bad news?
China is the world’s biggest polluter, producing 28 percent of global carbon emissions, and President Xi Jinping didn’t even bother to show up. It makes a mockery of the argument that cooperation with China is the key to solving climate change and raises bigger questions about whether there is space for engagement with Beijing on a broader range of global challenges.
China is the world’s biggest polluter, producing 28 percent of global carbon emissions, and President Xi Jinping didn’t even bother to show up.
EA: Yeah, it’s notable that the one area of progress—the carbon trading talks—is an issue on which China has been relatively forthcoming. At least at the moment, the biggest problem there appears to be Brazil!
More broadly, China definitely remains the biggest climate change problem to resolve. Keep in mind that in the run-up to Glasgow, Beijing made no new climate commitments and instead just reiterated existing policies, such as limiting global warming to under 2 degrees Celsius and shifting to a better mix of renewables and nuclear power rather than the country’s current coal-heavy energy mix.
That said, China’s emissions are about half of the United States’ when you look at it on a per capita basis. China is the biggest polluter because it’s an extremely populous, industrial country. That’s not easy to fix even if it were a priority for the Chinese leadership.
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MK: The real problem with China is its reliance on dirty sources of energy, but I agree that it is not easy to bring down emissions anywhere; populations worldwide like an improved standard of living, running a modern economy requires energy, and renewables have not yet risen to the challenge. It is incongruous that as leaders do their “blah blah blah” in Glasgow, as activist Greta Thunberg calls it, Biden is asking OPEC to pump more oil, Europe is preparing for a winter fuel shortage, and China is starting up more coal-fired plants.
As our fellow political scientists might describe it, climate policy is a global collective action problem, layered on top of the world’s worst two-level games.
EA: And in the United States, we have Sen. Joe Manchin trying to save the coal industry in the reconciliation bill talks. The domestic politics are difficult for many countries, requiring seriously tough changes that most governments are not willing to actually push through. As our fellow political scientists might describe it, climate policy is a global collective action problem, layered on top of the world’s worst two-level games.
That’s why I’m so skeptical that we’ll see progress on climate at the political level, and I’m thrilled to see a focus on areas such as carbon trading, which are less politically costly—and therefore more likely to work.
I’m also skeptical of the fact that they’re promoting environmentally friendly “vegetarian haggis” at COP26. I’m sure it’s more environmentally friendly, but it’s also an abomination and an insult to good taste.
MK: Since haggis is inedible either way, that is a climate change measure I could support.
EA: Those are fighting words, Matt. Still, it’s nice to see my hometown in the news and to see world leaders have to endure the same conditions I did to attend my first Boyzone concert back at the dawn of time.
MK: If I don’t have to eat haggis, I won’t make you eat the delicacies from my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, such as deep-fried ravioli. Mmmm.
But let me turn to the good news at Glasgow. I also think there is promise in a global carbon market—so long as China also plays by the rules. Washington will not be eager to limit its own energy consumption and economic growth if it means unilaterally constraining itself in relation to its major competitor.
I also think Biden’s Build Back Better World (B3W) plan has potential. It adds a green hue to initiatives started in the Trump administration to unleash private sector investment for infrastructure in the developing world and to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
EA: I’m not sure about B3W. For one thing, while I admire the White House’s message discipline, perhaps we could vary the branding a little at some point? It’s getting monotonous.
More importantly, however, I’m not sure that this infrastructure spending will be particularly useful in pushing out Chinese funding or undermining the BRI. I think it’s more likely that developing countries will just take both sets of funding. Not to mention that U.S. financing with strings—in this case, so-called green development—will always be less attractive than Chinese financing with no strings.
For several years, China was the only game in town when it came to infrastructure investment. I think the free world needs to offer an alternative.
MK: For several years and in many countries, China was the only game in town when it came to infrastructure investment. I think the free world needs to offer an alternative. As we’ve seen in Sri Lanka and elsewhere, China’s infrastructure investment also comes with its own, I would argue more insidious, strings attached.
Well, since we’ve now solved climate change and global economic development, are there any other easy issues we should polish off this week?
EA: Well, in the United States, there have been a couple of conferences that I thought were interesting. First, I was lucky enough to be involved in a big conference on the future of realism and restraint in U.S. foreign policy here in Washington. Second, we had the National Conservatism Conference. It was held in Orlando, Florida, though not physically within the Magic Kingdom, as you might expect if you’ve been watching U.S. politics in recent years.
I mention these because I think both conferences highlighted a growing diversity in views on U.S. foreign policy—the old post-Cold War Washington foreign-policy consensus is shattering.
I was particularly interested to see that Sen. Ted Cruz’s speech at the NatCon Conference was panned, in part, because of his embrace of an aggressive and forward-leaning foreign policy. It’s a reminder that there’s a growing core of Republican voters who are far more restrained on foreign policy than in recent decades.
MK: I think Republicans are grasping toward a new foreign-policy platform. You are right that Reaganism, as practiced since the 1980s, is dead, but Trumpism doesn’t quite work either. I think the party needs a Reagan-Trump synthesis. The military and security pillar would include “peace through strength” and border security as part of national security. In economic policy, there would be a shift from free trade to fair trade—especially with regard to China’s unfair trade practices. And, despite some of Donald Trump’s rhetoric, I think the Reaganesque focus on American values and exceptionalism still resonates.
Does this mesh at all with your discussions on realism and restraint as the guidelines for a future U.S. foreign policy?
EA: I think there’s some definite common ground on the right for restrainers on the question of U.S. military commitments overseas, particularly in a shift away from the endless wars of the 2000s and 2010s. But as a free trader, I’m also somewhat concerned about the Republican shift toward protectionism. I’d like to see less military intervention and more diplomatic and economic interaction. I worry the national conservatives are instead pushing less military intervention and less global economic interaction.
Either way, it’s a sign of how far we’ve come in the last few years: The United States has withdrawn from Afghanistan, the Biden administration has opened talks with Russia, and groups on both the left and right are talking about how to change U.S. foreign policy for the better. It’s a moment of openness that we haven’t seen since the 1990s.
MK: I think it is reflective of the current historical inflection point. We are entering a new era, and both sides are genuinely searching for answers that work in this new world.
EA: Of course, we may just plunge straight into a problematic new foreign-policy consensus. You’ve been very patient letting me talk about climate and foreign policy, so why don’t you go ahead and tell us all about the new U.S. Defense Department report on China’s military buildup?
MK: I’m happy to begin. The headline news was that China could increase its nuclear warheads from the low 200s to 1,000 by 2030. In recent months, the Defense Department had said China could double—or even triple or quadruple—its arsenal within the decade. Some dismissed these predictions as alarmist, but the new report essentially says China’s arsenal will now quintuple in this time period. It goes to show that China’s nuclear buildup is proceeding even more aggressively than the Pentagon expected just a few months ago.
EA: There are two big pieces to this report. The first, which is getting all the headlines, is the capabilities piece, which has focused primarily on the nuclear issue. You’re right that the buildup is faster than expected and is something we should undoubtedly watch closely, though I’m not sure there’s a qualitative difference in China having 500 nuclear weapons or 700 or even 1,000. Once we’re locked into mutual deterrence, numbers matter less than posture and specific capabilities. That was the central insight that allowed the United States and Soviet Union to mutually lower their arsenals in the late Cold War period.
But the second part of the report was on intentions, and I thought that was more interesting. The report asserts that China is trying to displace the United States from Asia and sees U.S. alliances as incompatible with its own preferred regional order. The rationale seems to be that China sees the United States as trying to constrain or contain its rise. I find that to be more concerning than the capabilities piece, to be honest, as it suggests a strong potential for misunderstandings and miscommunications that could lead to conflict.
MK: The problem is not misunderstanding—Washington and Beijing understand each other quite well. China wants to dominate the region, and the United States and its allies and partners don’t want to be dominated.
The question then becomes one of strength. Can Washington and its allies build a military strategy and capabilities that will deter Chinese aggression? My timing was impeccable, and it just so happens that the same day the Pentagon report was released, I published a new Atlantic Council report, “Deterring Chinese Strategic Attack,” in which I outline a strategy and the capabilities needed to keep China at bay.
Beijing thinks the United States is trying to contain it because modernization and assertiveness are perceived as threatening. That’s a classic security spiral and security spirals are a leading cause of war.
EA: Congrats on the report! But I think you’re wrong about misunderstandings. If the Defense Department report is right, then China is modernizing and becoming more assertive because Beijing thinks the United States is trying to contain it—and that Washington is trying to contain it because its modernization and assertiveness are perceived as threatening. That’s a classic security spiral: the idea that a U.S. military buildup might make China nervous, so it starts a military buildup that makes the United States even more nervous, so it adds some more military assets, etc. Security spirals are a leading cause of war.
I’m not sure that taking the steps you outline in your report—from ending the United States’ strategic autonomy approach to Taiwan (i.e., making a concrete commitment to defend the island) to improving U.S. capabilities in East Asia—will do anything to unwind the spiral.
MK: What does it mean to “contain” China? If you mean that Washington wants to deter Beijing from taking armed aggression against its neighbors, then you are darn right that the United States should want to contain it.
If China has no intention of projecting military force against its neighbors, then it has nothing to worry about.
EA: Except, historically, that’s not how most great powers have interpreted similar moves. The best-known example of a security spiral was the British and German naval buildups that helped precipitate World War I.
MK: This goes to show that many U.S. foreign-policy debates revolve around whether analysts think the “deterrence model” or the “spiral model” better explains the world. As you’ll recall, according to theory, the difference depends on whether one thinks the adversary is a security-seeking or revisionist power. I think China is a revisionist power, and Xi apparently agrees with me every time he talks about taking back Taiwan, with force if necessary. If that is right, then the deterrence model holds, and a U.S. and allied buildup leads to peace.
EA: If you’re wrong, we’ll all die in a nuclear fireball.
MK: If you’re wrong, we’ll all die in a nuclear fireball! Harrumph. Well, at least we agree the stakes couldn’t be higher.
18. Reflection on Failure By Major Matthew Tweedy, USMC
Some thoughts on strategy and strategic thinking for a Sunday read.
Conclusion:
If you wear a military uniform, you have a losing record. That alone must motivate you to action. I am reminded of the wooden sign mounted in Mitchell Hall, the home of the Marine Corps’ Infantry Officer Course. Engraved in the wood is a quote from Thucydides: “He is best who is trained in the severest school.” Some members of the post-Vietnam strategic class endured the severest school and chose, by their wisdom, to confront failure for the good. They did not reach for distraction nor avoid the lessons of losing and their efforts yielded reform and meaningful contributions to the profession of arms. We must do the same with Afghanistan and Iraq. Until we do, I am not optimistic about the future. I am confident of my own skepticism. That is the least I can do.
Reflection on Failure By Major Matthew Tweedy, USMC
Plato and Aristotle in Raphael's "The School of the Athens"
Whatever remains of my military service is under a cloud of institutional failure. My 19 years in uniform amount to an 0-2 record. There are few silver linings and no respite in tactical victories. Any deeper meaning fails to assuage this reality. Honesty, though, is a salve. The Global War on Terror (GWOT) is the punchline for future generations, an admonition of the limits of power and the reward of bad strategy. By the year 2100, when the wars are discussed, I suspect any good we did will be buried in the footnotes of books about strategic failure and hubris.
The measure of effective strategy is often revealed in the consequences of its absence. It is easier to diagnose strategic thinking in hindsight than it is to face an uncertain future. One can make forecasts with intimate knowledge of the past, but given the incomplete nature of historical knowledge, being a bibliophile is not enough. We lack wisdom and I’m skeptical we know how to claim it.
I am not a strategist, nor am I wise. I’ve never been in a room where grand decisions are made. I’m not sure I would do better than the men and women who were in the room these past 20 years. It is satisfying to cast stones; blame comes naturally but is ultimately empty. When I consider the would-be great men and women who presided over failure, I recognize myself in all of them.
I’m reminded of the Sword of Damocles - of the weight of responsibility dangling over the heads of executives, independent of whatever motivations and incentives authority manifests. I’ve felt small swords over my head at times and know that what looks easy never is. In war and diplomacy, favorable outcomes generate unintended consequences. No plan is obviously good; it is often the best of bad options and necessarily changes when confronted with reality. The world as it is often stands in opposition to the world we want.
If it were simple to produce strategic thinkers, the world would be full of them. Certainly, the wealthiest and most stable nation states could develop systems of education, coupled with practical experience, to serve the greater good. Except this is not the case. Indeed, it is a safe assumption that few institutions in human history have unvarnished track records of making strategic thinkers. Why?
What I Think I Think about Strategic Thinkers
In a research paper commissioned by the U.S. Army Research Institute, Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper, USMC (Ret), defined strategic thinking this way: “Strategic thinking employs a leader’s wisdom--gained through experience and education—to: assist in selecting the ways and means needed to support the achievement of national policy goals (ends); select the military strategy to accomplish the goals (ends) of national security strategy; and plan for an execute campaigns and operations that advance that strategy…” (Van Riper 2013). The vital element of this definition is the introductory qualifier - “a leader’s wisdom”. I will argue that understanding our failure in the GWOT requires us to admit that we have spent too much energy on the wrong word in the phrase “a leader’s wisdom”.
Before I attempt to articulate a reason why it is difficult to produce strategic thinkers, I need to outline a few factors I’ve come to believe about strategists.
1. Many strategic thinkers are unknown and are unlikely to gain recognition because they contribute within a system administered by non-strategists. As such, we cannot know how many there are or if they are good or bad. All we know is we don’t know who they are. This poses a problem when assessing strategy because an organization’s senior leader becomes the face of something he or she did not author.
2. The absence of failure is not evidence of a successful strategy. This suggests that uncontrollable factors (such as Clausewitzian battlefield dynamics) play an outsized role in determining outcomes. Just as a great thinker may be undone by events, an inferior thinker may benefit from them.
Charisma vs. Character
To learn from strategic failure, we must assess our leaders, because whether they authored the strategy or not, they own it. Senior leaders need strategic thinking skills, but we make assumptions about their capacity to think strategically or discount the importance of it. Instead, we are often drawn to other attributes. For instance, leaders must display charisma to inspire, possess traits to win over a room, and earn the trust of subordinates and seniors alike. Possessing these leadership and martial virtues does not guarantee strategic thinking, however, but it does increase popular acclaim.
Charisma and notoriety, either in popular culture or within academic circles, appear inextricably linked to the credibility of a strategic thinker. Fame matters. Even within academia, it is Bezos, Jobs, and Musk who show up in Harvard Case Studies rather than Alfred Kelly (Visa), Peter Pistners (MD Anderson), and Rich Lesser (Boston Consulting Group). General Stanley McChrystal was fired by the Obama Administration with little evidence of strategic success yet rewarded with book deals, high-priced consultancies, and a ceaseless well of cultural credibility. I suspect his post-retirement success has something to do with apocryphal accounts of 3 hours of sleep, one meal a day, and 10-mile morning runs. General James Mattis benefits from similar hagiography. We gravitate towards distinctiveness to anchor memory and explain success. Discipline may be misinterpreted as eccentricities or, perhaps, admired thinkers–like great artists–are unlike the common man. Except the consequences of bad art are not as significant as the consequences of bad strategy.
A leader may be charismatic and possess intact character--I am not suggesting that being revered within popular culture or across the ranks is evidence of poor character. The deficit is within the audience, the aspirants grasping towards greatness with their eyes only. When charisma is valued more than character, deep thinking is vulnerable to pathos and venality. This is not to say character is not valued, merely a recognition that charisma captures our attention and creates shortcuts in reasoning and human development. We study founders and strategic leaders and obsess over what they did and why they did it. We measure the curriculum vitae without considering all the quiet moments that make a man or woman. Oh, this guy graduated from Wharton? I guess I need to graduate from a top MBA program. Steve Jobs studied calligraphy? I need to study calligraphy. This general officer graduated from SAW or NPS? That must be the anointed path. Since even the best biographies cannot tell us what someone was thinking or how well they thought, we place outsized value on what can be observed and measured. This focus on action creates a cult of imitation; the worship of eccentricity creates mimics. All unoriginal.
Goals vs Effects
We live in another era where the “best and brightest” failed to think strategically. Our credentialed elites–all products of the best educational institutions–did not meet expectations. We should cringe when considering the collective hours of critical thinking classes and books the top military and civilian leaders theoretically absorbed over the past 20 years. It did not produce wisdom at the highest levels. The essential question is not how or who thinks critically. But rather: Why can some do it in the first place?
In the utilitarian telling, education exists to maximize human flourishing by hitting various benchmarks within the educational system. The goal is material – stuff and things and status, what I term “effects.” Across the board, we see the effects of graduating high school are better than dropping out. The effects of attaining a master’s degree include faster and better promotions and a higher salary. Institutions that measure effects (credentials) can claim goals are met empirically (which is very reminiscent of body counts in Vietnam).
One need only read a recent message from Sergeant Major Troy Black, Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, to see this confusion firsthand. He wrote about the role of the United States Naval Community College, noting how it will help sailors and Marines “...form a foundation for lifelong learning and developing critical thinking skills...” This noble sentiment means little when pursuing education. The Sergeant Major is measuring success by effect only. Terms like “lifelong learning” and “critical thinking” are ubiquitous and buzzy, but even if he is serious, Sergeant Major Black is still talking about the effects of education.
Critical thinking is an effect, not a goal. It is a description of a common human act. Thinking is the action while critical thinking is the skill. We all think, and some are better at it than others. If we spend time worrying about the skill without interrogating the act itself, we will know little of either (Hitz). This is of particular importance when considering professional military education, the source of our strategists. Recalling LtGen Van Riper’s definition, the successful strategic thinker, beyond any alternative adjective, must be wise. This raises critical questions: Where are our wise men and women and what must we do to discover and nurture them? Answering these questions begins with recognizing the proper goal of education.
The goal of education is the right ordering of human life. This classical view posits that the development of virtue and excellence manifests as character and from character comes wisdom. Put another way, education exists to help us pursue our full capacity to know and to be. This stems from an understanding that humans are inclined to ponder fundamental questions about existence, justice, and the right way to live.
This is not to say that all strategic thinkers across time and space possess exemplary character. Rather, character provides a means by which an individual cultivates wisdom. Perhaps divorced from classical philosophy, or rather any school of philosophy, a common trait of strategic thinkers is that they go beyond a desire to know for knowledge’s sake. Instead, they are driven by the urge to wrestle with questions common to all humanity, the deep questions beyond our grasp.
It was easier for me to accept the necessity of struggle to grow in understanding after reading Mortimer Adler’s “Invitation to the Pain of Learning.” Published in 1941, Adler critiqued the education provided by his era’s school systems as “frothy and vapid.” Rather than cultivate the character and virtue of students, Adler believed schools prioritized skill attainment and entertainment. The thrust of his argument is that the ends of education were not aligned with the desired effects of school, a much better way of saying schools valued charisma over character, mistakenly measuring effects.
Our era is not unique, and reform is possible. At the risk of overusing this example, the Prussian Military Reform offers a useful parallel to our present paucity of strategic thinking. My preferred interpretation of the German word bildung is the “perfectibility of character through education.” Gerhard von Scharnhorst made bildung the central tenet of his academies. His most famous student, Carl von Clausewitz, referred to him as “the father of my spirit” (White). The mere insinuation that education is deeper than a mental pursuit, once obvious to our classical forebears, indicates we are missing something. Scharnhorst and Clausewitz were products of the philosophical energy of Enlightenment thinkers like Kant, Voltaire, and Rousseau. Intellectual life, even applied to the profession of arms, was intertwined with the deeper questions of theology, metaphysics, ethics, science, and mathematics. It is upon grappling and struggling with deeper things that humans can ascertain the limits of their own understanding. To do this, and do it earnestly, leads to wisdom. Properly understood, the goal of successful education is wisdom. Everything else is an effect of this pursuit, a by-product.
Our age is not devoid of wise men and women. One needs only to hear a few apocryphal accounts of Boyd wrestling with Clausewitz to recognize he was consumed by fundamental questions. Boyd used philosophy, history, mathematics, and science to make sense of war–just like Clausewitz before him. It is easy for me to imagine Boyd, manic and ravaged by insomnia, pouring over On War until he arrived at the interdisciplinary emergence that resulted in “Patterns of Conflict” and the OODA Loop.
To summarize: We struggle to produce strategic thinkers. This deficiency relates to a confusion between effects and the goal of education. The goal of education is the right ordering of human life. A successful education produces an individual with well-formed character. An individual with well-formed character can achieve wisdom. Wisdom manifests in those who grapple with the deepest questions of life. Individuals pursue these fundamental questions through theology, metaphysics, ethics, mathematics, and science. To ask questions in one domain necessitates consideration of some or all domains, which inculcates the required skills for interdisciplinary emergence (Hitz).
Wisdom cannot be taught; it must be pursued. The professor, leader, mentor, and parent do not impart wisdom. They model a path to wisdom and serve as a creative spark for those seeking it. There are exceptional people with innate advantages and natural curiosity who emerge with little guidance or structure, but we often embrace their charisma and mimic their attributes without asking the deeper questions that address why they succeed where others fail. We lifehack Andrew Marshall by embracing open office floor plans; we take calligraphy classes thinking it is a cheat code to be like Steve Jobs. We confuse a well-produced TED talk with the agony and ecstasy of reading The Brothers Karamazov.
A Radical Suggestion for Reform
Mark Twain said that “the man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.” Does that mean all reading is equal? Of course not. In the absence of experience, we learn vicariously. Books are the best option we have, but there are chasms of quality across published works. To improve the character of our thinkers and enable them to achieve wisdom, we must read The Great Books. We should embrace Adler’s suffering and pursue the fundamental questions by reading the answers of masters.
Here’s my radical suggestion for reform: If the Marine Corps deployed 15 officers to a lakeside retreat for three months and took away their phones and issued them kettlebells; a journal; a trunk containing works from Aristotle, Aquinas, Euclid, Voltaire, Kant, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Homer, and Shakespeare; and asked them to do nothing but read and reflect--perhaps with a journal or in discussion with peers, I think their collective wisdom would grow faster than participating in any existing program of record.
My suggestion is unlikely to happen, though I think I could convince many Marines of its merits. I used to joke as a young enlisted man that you could tell just by looking what Marines had killed a man in combat. It was a lighthearted way of processing experience and sharing it within a community. Years later, I still think there is an air of truth to it. Killing changes; there is something in the eyes. For some, the change manifests as wisdom–old eyes in a young body. It is not the type of wisdom you want or wish on someone, but the change occurs, nonetheless. For others, the transformation debilitates; the eyes become animalistic. Trauma consumes. Killing in war goes beyond the simple knowledge of experience. It is deeper and ancestral–a link to the dawn of human existence. I use this anecdote to suggest that transformation is the inevitable outcome of collective strategic failure. To understand failure requires grappling with deeper questions to illuminate wisdom. If we memory-hole the traumatic experience of failure, the transformation will still occur. We just abdicate our claim on the course it takes. It’s not that we become closed off from wisdom, but that we open ourselves up to folly. The trauma of the strategic failure consumes.
I see trauma in the weeks following our withdrawal from Afghanistan. Our strategic class is shaken and lurching towards distraction. Some are tempted to forget, to move on to bigger things like China and the emerging bi-polar world. Others seem intent on avoiding accountability, even if only symbolically. This folly dooms us to repeat mistakes. We need to question everything. We need to seek insights from the past, not cope with promises of the future. Chapter 4 of Charles White’s The Enlightened Soldier, titled “The Aristocracy of Education,” describes Scharnhorst’s academy. We need to enlighten the aristocrats–the officers–by rejecting the effects of education and embracing the goal of it. Wisdom requires grappling with the deeper questions of failure, not distracting ourselves with new programs or policies.
Which brings me to a different strategic class from the recent past, one that included people like Colonel John Boyd, General Al Gray, General Tony Zinni, and Secretary Colin Powell. These were men who did not forget, who refused to stop looking at the failure of Vietnam. They were skeptics first and reformers second. Their skepticism was not masochism. It was their pathway to grapple with fundamental questions beyond a uniform and equipment set. Maneuver warfare and mission command are nothing without metaphysics and ethics. Time and space, tempo, friction, and uncertainty are concerned with the nature of things–with knowing and being. Trust requires an ethical framework; commander’s intent is diminished without intact character. Alas, the thinkers of the 1980s left an incomplete project and some of their successors fell to mimicry. Perhaps it was always impossible to complete. Perhaps any future American strategic victory will be material because Americans are materialists and mission command and maneuver warfare work best for underdogs with hustle borne from the lack of material power. We should question maneuver warfare, too.
If you wear a military uniform, you have a losing record. That alone must motivate you to action. I am reminded of the wooden sign mounted in Mitchell Hall, the home of the Marine Corps’ Infantry Officer Course. Engraved in the wood is a quote from Thucydides: “He is best who is trained in the severest school.” Some members of the post-Vietnam strategic class endured the severest school and chose, by their wisdom, to confront failure for the good. They did not reach for distraction nor avoid the lessons of losing and their efforts yielded reform and meaningful contributions to the profession of arms. We must do the same with Afghanistan and Iraq. Until we do, I am not optimistic about the future. I am confident of my own skepticism. That is the least I can do.
Sources
Charles Edward White, The Enlightened Soldier: Scharnhorst and the Militärische Gesellschaft in Berlin, 1801-1805 (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1989)
Wolters, H. M., Grome, A. P., & Hinds, R. M. (2013). Exploring strategic thinking: Insights to assess, develop, and retain strategic thinkers. Applied Research Associates Inc., Fairborn, Oh.
*See Chapter 1: The Identification and Education of U.S. Army Strategic Thinkers, Paul K. Van Riper
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.
