Quotes of the Day:
"The concept that the Bill of Rights and other constitutional protections against arbitrary government are inoperative when they become inconvenient or when expediency dictates otherwise is a very dangerous doctrine and if allowed to flourish would destroy the benefit of a written Constitution and undermine the basis of our government."
- Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black
"Practice becoming."
"Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow."
- Kurt Vonnegut
“Some people insist that 'mediocre' is better than 'best.' They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can't fly. They despise brains because they have none.”
- Robert A. Heinlein, Have Space Suit—Will Travel
1. After extraordinary sacrifice — and years of delay — Alwyn Cashe gets his Medal of Honor
2. Afghanistan Is About To Collapse. Here’s What the U.S. Must Do About It.
3. A Refugee Crisis Runs Into a Housing Crisis
4. Military Aid for Ukraine: Deterring Russia Promptly
5. Opinion | To deter a Russian attack, Ukraine needs to prepare for guerrilla warfare
6. How Beijing Influences the Influencers
7. Joint Statement on 8th United States – New Zealand Defense Policy Dialogue
8. Typhoon Rai intensifies to Cat 5 storm as it slams Philippines
9. Russia’s Putin, China’s Xi hail ties amid tensions with West
10. In the Next War, America’s Homeland Will Be a Target
11. China, Russia and Iran: The empires strike back
12. The U.S. military men spreading Trump’s baseless fraud claims
13. Pacific Deterrence Initiative: A look at funding in the new defense bill, and what must happen now
14. Kyiv keeping calm and carrying on even as Kremlin boosts pressure on Ukraine
15. Why US Special Forces Commandos and AC-130 Gunships Are Training for War
16. Trollfare: How to Recognize and Fight Off Online Psyops
17. In Absence Of Soft Warfare, National Security Policy Will Continue To Fail Against Global Threats – Analysis
18. Putin and Xi cement partnership in face of Western pressure
19. The New Era Of Great Power Competition And The Biden Administration: Emerging Patterns And Principles – Analysis
20. Combat Misinformation by Getting Back to Security Basics
21. Washington Is Preparing for the Wrong War With China
22. Why the Stalemate in Eastern Ukraine Will Likely Hold
23. What Does the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan Have to Offer?
24. Putin, Xi running circles around Biden’s hybrid war
25. FDD | Macron Looks to Revive Saudi Financing for French Military Contracts in Lebanon
26. FDD | Bottom-Up Hope: Local Governments Bolster Religious Pluralism in Turkey
27. FDD | Germany must stop cozying up to Iran
28. FDD | Hamas’ Efforts to Release Marwan Barghouti Come at Fatah’s Expense
29. Biden picks Caroline Kennedy and Michelle Kwan to be ambassadors
30. The Threat of a China-Centric New World Order
1. After extraordinary sacrifice — and years of delay — Alwyn Cashe gets his Medal of Honor
I understand the presentation is scheduled for 1:30pm today.
I also watched the media engagement with SFC Cashe's sister, the widow of Christopher Celiz, and MSG Earl Plumlee. I commend this video and the remarks of SFS Cashe's sister about the Army and specifically the 3d Infantry Division as well as those of SFC Celiz' widow. And of course MSG Plumlee's humble remarks were inspiring as well.
After extraordinary sacrifice — and years of delay — Alwyn Cashe gets his Medal of Honor
The Washington Post · by Dan LamotheYesterday at 5:00 a.m. EST|Updated yesterday at 5:06 p.m. EST · December 15, 2021
Staff Sgt. Douglas Dodge was dazed and sick to his stomach, still in shock after a roadside bomb blast slammed him and other soldiers against the ceiling of their 27-ton armored vehicle. He had regained consciousness and forced his way to safety, but his friends were still inside — screaming and on fire.
Sgt. 1st Class Alwyn Cashe, who had been riding in the front of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, appeared out of the darkness. He was wearing a helmet, body armor and boots, but little else. His camouflage uniform, sopped in fuel, had begun to melt away.
“Dodge!” Cashe yelled. “Where are the boys?”
The desperate moments that followed became the subject of a years-long Army investigation — mired by internal conflict — to determine whether Cashe, who reached into the burning vehicle at least six times to rescue those trapped, merited the military’s preeminent distinction for his courage and selflessness in Iraq on Oct. 17, 2005.
On Thursday, more than 16 years after he died in a Texas burn center at age 35, his widow, Tamara, will accept the Medal of Honor from President Biden at a ceremony celebrating Cashe and two fellow soldiers heralded for their valorous acts in separate battles.
Joining Cashe’s family will be Master Sgt. Earl Plumlee, 41, who faced down suicide bombers at close range during a Taliban assault in Afghanistan in 2013, and the family of Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Celiz, 32, who will posthumously receive the award, for protecting a medical evacuation helicopter there in 2018 until he was cut down by gunfire. All three cases have met congressionally mandated standards, including a risk to one’s life that is “above and beyond the call of duty.”
But Cashe’s actions, especially, have captured the imagination of a generation of U.S. troops, while raising an often-repeated question about his award: What took so long?
“This is probably the clearest-cut case of a Medal of Honor action that I’ve ever seen,” said Douglas Sterner, a Vietnam veteran and historian who has studied military awards for decades.
Notably, Cashe will become the first Black service member to be recognized with the military’s top combat award for actions since 9/11. Other Black troops who served in Iraq or Afghanistan have received high-ranking valor awards, but never the Medal of Honor.
How Cashe’s case came to drag on so long is a story both of bureaucracy and perseverance. The plan had been for President Donald Trump to award the medal before leaving office in January, but that was scuttled due to safety concerns after a pro-Trump mob attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, according to three people familiar with the situation. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations between the White House and Pentagon.
Kasinal Cashe White, Cashe’s older sister, said in an interview that she is immensely proud of her brother and grateful to the Army officers who refused to stop advocating on Cashe’s behalf, even after the Army declined to follow their recommendation more than a decade ago that he receive the award. She said she does not believe that race was a factor in the initial decision, and noted that some of her brother’s fiercest advocates within the Army are White.
“He earned this,” White said. “And, okay, he’s Black. Yes, he is. He’s just as dark as my daddy. But he just happened to be a Black soldier who did what he did. He did what he did out of love for his men, and respect for his men.”
‘It looked like a movie’
Cashe grew up poor, the youngest of 10 children in a blended family in Oviedo, Fla., an Orlando suburb. Their father died during a surgery when Cashe was 5, and they lived in a three-bedroom apartment overseen by the housing authority in Seminole County for the first years of Cashe’s life before moving into a rental house that has since burned down.
Cashe was “rambunctious” as a child and a daredevil, his sister said. It surprised his siblings when he joined the Army, but it was evident that he loved the lifestyle.
“He found his niche when he went into the service,” White said. “It allowed him to be as adventurous as he wanted to be, and he loved it.”
In January 2005, Cashe and his unit — 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division — deployed to a decrepit airfield north of the Tigris River that U.S. forces called Forward Operating Base Mackenzie. Their patrols through the nearby town of Duluiyah frequently encountered al-Qaeda fighters, said Col. Jimmy Hathaway, who became Cashe’s company commander that April.
“It was always a powder keg,” Hathaway said. “There was always a fight going on someplace.”
On Oct. 17, the soldiers from Mackenzie were assigned a reconnaissance mission to ensure a vital supply route from nearby Balad air base remained safe. A sandstorm prevented U.S. aircraft from observing potential threats along the road, but unit leaders, including Cashe, decided they needed to launch the patrol anyway.
The mission called for at least three Bradley Fighting Vehicles — armored infantry transports that are on tracks and outfitted with heavy weapons — to provide security near Duluiyah. One of the Bradleys stayed behind with a mechanical problem, prompting Cashe, the platoon sergeant, to put his vehicle in the front as they rumbled through the night.
The convoy, carrying 17 soldiers and their interpreter, was barely a couple of miles from the base when the explosion occurred. Sgt. Gary Mills, in the back of Cashe’s Bradley, felt the vehicle veer right just before the blast. An instant later, he saw the interpreter, Baka, engulfed in flames beside him.
Dodge, seated in the same compartment, reached for the door handle, burning his hand. He grabbed a breaching tool, he said, forced open the hatch, fell to the ground and vomited.
Moments later, Cashe leaned into the flames.
From the second Bradley, 1st Lt. Leon Matthias witnessed the explosion — and then saw Cashe under gunfire. His crew opened fire on a nearby tree line as Cashe pulled the wounded from the wreckage and others raced to smother the flames.
“I swear,” said Matthias, now a lieutenant colonel, “it looked like a movie to me.”
Matthias radioed to the base, requesting immediate aid. By the time Cashe had pulled out the last man, it appeared as if he was wearing no clothes.
“His uniform was so burned off,” Matthias said. “His pants looked completely shredded, like someone took scissors to it and just cut it up.”
A convoy arrived from Mackenzie to pick up the wounded. Helicopters were prepared to evacuate them when they returned to the base, but Cashe insisted that other soldiers leave first and refused to be put on a stretcher despite his extensive burns, Matthias said.
“It was the last time I saw him,” he added. “Him walking to the helicopter in a shredded uniform.”
‘Tell them to fight!’
The Army sent the burned soldiers, including Cashe, for treatment at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. They were split into two groups, with the least injured among them — Dodge, Mills and Spec. Raymond Salerno III — in one contingent and the rest in the other. Even then, Mills, who had burns over 17 percent of his body, was placed in a medical coma for four days, he said.
Cashe had suffered burns over 72 percent of his body, but he continued to share optimism. He and Mills made plans to go hunting despite the long recovery ahead.
“I was standing there and talking to him, and I was like, ‘How are you not in this bad mood?’ Mills said.
But the injuries took their toll. Baka, the interpreter, was declared dead the night of the explosion. Staff Sgt. George Alexander, 34, who was engulfed in flames as Cashe pulled him from the Bradley, died five days later. Sgt. Michael Robertson, 28, died three days after that, followed by the vehicle’s driver, Spec. Darren Howe, 21, about a week later.
Cashe, still in severe pain, was anguished about the deaths, his sister said.
“It was sad because when Al would gain consciousness, I would have to tell him,” White said. “He was like, ‘Tell them to fight! Tell them, ‘Come on, man!’ I pulled them out!’”
Cashe died Nov. 8, about three weeks after the attack. Infections had taken his legs, Dodge said. The following July, Salerno died.
Soldiers who witnessed Cashe’s actions were certain they saw something extraordinary. Lt. Col. Gary Brito, their battalion commander, quickly nominated Cashe for the Silver Star, the Army’s third-highest award for valor in combat. Cashe was presented the award along with the Purple Heart, which is reserved for those wounded in battle, before he died.
But for years, Brito, Hathaway and others thought it was likely that Cashe deserved more. Brito submitted a nomination to upgrade the Silver Star to a Medal of Honor, writing in a 2009 sworn statement that the lasting impact of Cashe’s actions seemed “even more amazing” over time.
The nomination came as the U.S. military faced criticism from rank-and-file troops and veterans for having awarded just a handful of Medals of Honor for combat exploits early on in the Iraq War, despite the extreme violence troops encountered there. Sterner, the historian, attributed the pattern to senior commanders at the outset of America’s post-9/11 campaigns not recognizing what heroic actions in combat deserved.
It was not clear who may have held up the nomination. Brito, in a 2011 memo arguing again for an upgrade, said that he “was not able to secure an endorsement” for the Medal of Honor from Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, who had approved Cashe’s Silver Star. Vines, who is retired, could not be reached for comment. In other cases, Army officials have declined to upgrade awards while citing insufficient evidence, conflicting witness statements or a belief that experienced soldiers should be held to a higher standard.
Hathaway called Brito, now a three-star general at the Pentagon, “the one who fought and fought and fought through the bureaucracy” to make sure the nomination didn’t die.
In an interview Wednesday, Brito said the review process is rigorous, “and it’s necessary that it is,” because there is “no room for gray area” in awarding a Medal of Honor.
In re-examining Cashe’s case, officials gathered additional witness statements from soldiers who had been split up across the globe, he said. Some were struggling with post-traumatic stress. Brito encouraged Cashe’s supporters to be patient, but resilient, as the review stretched on.
“It’s having confidence in the procedures and full trust in those who needed to advance this award,” he said.
In fall 2020, the case finally seemed to be on the brink of White House approval. Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper, an Army veteran, wrote in a letter to lawmakers that Cashe’s actions merited the Medal of Honor and asked for them to waive a limit that says the award must be presented within five years of a service member’s actions. Congress passed legislation to do so, and Trump signed it into law last December.
Dodge and Mills, the two survivors who were in the back of Cashe’s Bradley, each said they have struggled with what happened. Dodge said he sought 30 days of inpatient treatment for post-traumatic stress last year, and he tells others about it to encourage candor about mental health.
“I now know that the more I revisit an event, the less painful it becomes,” said Dodge, who retired from the Army as a sergeant first class.
Hathaway said Wednesday that reliving that night has been emotional for everyone, but that Thursday’s ceremony will bring closure.
“He loved those kids with his heart and soul,” Hathaway said. “Tomorrow is about getting it right.”
The Washington Post · by Dan LamotheYesterday at 5:00 a.m. EST|Updated yesterday at 5:06 p.m. EST · December 15, 2021
2. Afghanistan Is About To Collapse. Here’s What the U.S. Must Do About It.
Afghanistan Is About To Collapse. Here’s What the U.S. Must Do About It.
By John F. Campbell, Ryan Crocker, James Cunningham, James Dobbins, Hugo Llorens, P. Michael McKinley, John Nicholson, Ronald E. Neumann, Richard Olson, David Petraeus & Earl Anthony Wayne
The alarm bells are sounding.
The United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the donor community have all been warning of the humanitarian catastrophe emerging with the imminent collapse of the Afghan economy. The withdrawal of U.S. and allied forces from the country, which led to the disintegration of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the Taliban takeover, has been followed by the cutoff of most external assistance and the freezing of most of Afghanistan’s monetary reserves, thereby eliminating 40 percent of the country’s gross domestic product and 75 percent of the government’s budget. The banking system is on the verge of collapse as well, and the currency (the afghani) is losing value rapidly. Add to this a prolonged drought, a raging COVID-19 pandemic, and the disintegration of government services. The United Nations Development Program has warned that “Afghanistan teeters on the brink of universal poverty,” with as much as 97 percent of the population in danger of falling below the poverty line by mid-2022. The World Food Program estimates that only 5 percent of Afghan households have sufficient food to eat each day and predicts that Afghanistan is poised to become the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. The UN’s humanitarian chief laments that Afghanistan’s economy is unraveling “before our eyes.”
The international community is gearing up to provide increased humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, and the World Bank is releasing some funds to support this effort. But more help is needed to stave off disaster. In addition to food and medicine, Afghanistan needs a stable medium of exchange and a functioning banking system to avoid experiencing widespread economic and governance failure. Health professionals, teachers, and other essential workers need to be paid if the most basic functions of the state are to be maintained. Ordinary Afghans deserve access to their own funds, now frozen in banks wary of U.S. and international sanctions and the potential collapse of the Afghan financial system. Afghans abroad need the financial mechanisms to send remittances to their relatives, some of whom are being left behind by cumbersome U.S. rules on who qualifies for refugee and immigrant status.
The Biden administration, like other donors to Afghanistan, is rightly reluctant to do anything that helps the Taliban impose its repressive rule on the country, underscored by recent reports of extrajudicial killings and disappearances. Nevertheless, discussions are underway in Washington and elsewhere to explore various means of stabilizing the Afghan currency and averting the collapse of the banking system without providing the Taliban with discretionary resources that could be used for nefarious purposes. Good ideas for how to do so are available, including proposals by former U.S. ambassadors, USAID directors, and World Bank officials, among others. Because any scheme along these lines will be very controversial, and no system of controls will be perfect, what is needed is the courage to act. The longer decisions are postponed, the more difficult it will become to prevent the looming humanitarian catastrophe in the country and the deaths of many Afghans.
During the past twenty years, all of us have led American diplomatic and military efforts to support the emergence of a more modern, prosperous, and democratic Afghanistan. We are much more than dissatisfied with the results, and many of us disagreed with the U.S. decision to withdraw from the country. We believe the United States and its allies can and should be working in a more concerted manner both behind the scenes and publicly to send clear messages to Taliban leaders relating to core issues like counterterrorism cooperation, broadening non-Taliban representation within the government, and upholding the basic rights of women, people of all ethnic groups, notably minorities, and Afghans closely associated with the United States and other partners. Our personal experience has also left us with indelible respect and affection for the millions of Afghans who joined in this enterprise—fighting, teaching, voting, ministering to the sick, sending their children to school, running for office, founding new businesses, and building the freest and most vibrant media environment in Central Asia.
We believe the United States has a reputational interest and a moral obligation in vigorously joining efforts to help the Afghan people preserve at least some of the social and economic gains made over the last twenty years. We believe that ways to do so can be found, while erecting barriers to assistance being diverted to purposes other than those for which it is intended. Afghan civil society continues to exist, and it is important that the United States and other international donors continue to work with it.
We therefore recommend that the Biden administration expedite its consideration of these issues and, working in close coordination with key allies, come forward with tangible proposals to help stabilize the Afghan economy for discussion with other donors and ultimately presentation to the Taliban. Delay will only fuel more death and suffering.
General John F. Campbell (U.S. Army, retired) is the former commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force and of U.S. Forces Afghanistan.
Ambassador Ryan Crocker was the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan (2011-2012). He was also the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait, and Lebanon.
Ambassador James Cunningham was the U.S. ambassador and deputy representative to the United Nations (1999-2004), U.S. ambassador to Israel (2008-11), and U.S. deputy ambassador and ambassador to Afghanistan (2011-2014).
Ambassador James Dobbins was the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan (2001-2002) and special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan (2013-2014), as well as the assistant secretary of state for Europe and ambassador to the European Community.
Ambassador Hugo Llorens was the U.S. assistant chief of mission in Afghanistan (2012-2013) and special charge d’affaires (2016-2017), as well as the U.S. ambassador to Honduras.
Ambassador P. Michael McKinley was the U.S. deputy ambassador and ambassador to Afghanistan (2013-2016), as well as the U.S. ambassador to Peru, Colombia, and Brazil.
General John Nicholson (U.S. Army, retired) is the former commander of the NATO Resolute Support Mission and of U.S. Forces Afghanistan.
Ambassador Ronald E. Neumann was the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan (2005-2007) as well as the U.S. ambassador to Algeria and Bahrain.
Ambassador Richard Olson was the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan (2015-2016), the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan (2012-2015), and the coordinating director for development in Kabul (2011-2012). He previously served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates.
General David Petraeus (U.S. Army, retired) is the former commander of U.S. Central Command, the former commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, and the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Ambassador Earl Anthony Wayne was the U.S. deputy ambassador and coordinating director for development in Kabul (2009-2011) and worked on Afghan reconstruction as the assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs. He was also the U.S. ambassador to Mexico and Argentina.
3. A Refugee Crisis Runs Into a Housing Crisis
A Refugee Crisis Runs Into a Housing Crisis
Thousands of Afghan refugees are being released from military bases to U.S. cities to rebuild their lives. Settling them into homes amid a rental shortage is proving to be a challenge.
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Many Afghan families are temporarily living at the Comfort Suites in Owensboro, Ky.Credit...Luke Sharrett for The New York Times
By
Dec. 15, 2021
OWENSBORO, Ky. — After a harrowing escape from Afghanistan and three months on a military base in New Jersey, Mohammad bin Rahimi and his family of nine felt fortunate that they would finally have a new home, in Owensboro, a small Kentucky city on the Ohio River.
But they didn’t expect to find themselves on the edge of a farm in a cramped, 1850s-era log cabin reminiscent of Daniel Boone and other American pioneers.
“We are very happy to be in Kentucky,” said Mr. Rahimi, 48, a former U.S. Embassy security guard in Kabul. He expressed deep gratitude for the warm reception in Owensboro but said his family was afraid to venture outdoors at night, so remote was their new lodging. “We look forward to moving into a real house,” he said.
As Afghan refugees are released from bases by the thousands each week to start rebuilding their lives in the United States, they are bumping up against an unexpected obstacle: the housing crisis.
Mohammad bin Rahimi, an Afghan refugee who was a guard at the U.S. embassy in Kabul, and his family are staying in an 1850s-era log cabin in Owensboro until they can find a home to rent.Credit...Luke Sharrett for The New York Times
Resettlement agencies have been scrambling to find rentals in cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix and St. Louis as well as in towns like Owensboro and Reno, Nev., where lease properties are in short supply, expensive or both. The coronavirus pandemic, complaints of discrimination and the sheer number of newly arriving Afghans have also posed challenges.
As of Monday, more than 40,000 Afghans had completed their processing and departed for new homes; some 30,000 others remained on seven military bases that the government hopes to empty as soon as possible.
In Reno, a hot real estate market where the average apartment rents for $1,600, Afghans are being placed in motels, mother-in-law units, people’s basements and Airbnbs, said Carina Black, executive director at Northern Nevada International Center, which has absorbed more refugees in one month than in the past two years combined.
“We’re so overwhelmed,” Ms. Black said. “These folks were under the impression they were going into permanent housing when they left the bases. Instead, we are in a broad search for temporary housing.”
Owensboro, a city of about 60,000, was considered an ideal location to resettle Afghan refugees: The cost of living is low, jobs are plentiful, and schools are solid.
Afghanistan Under Taliban Rule
With the departure of the U.S. military on Aug. 30, Afghanistan quickly fell back under control of the Taliban. Across the country, there is widespread anxiety about the future.
But rentals are scarce.
Two Afghan families are living in a 147-year-old convent 15 miles from town. Some are staying in youth centers at churches. And dozens are holed up in a motel.
“We are very bored here. My wife cries every day. She is thinking all the time about her family in Afghanistan,” Zakirullah Ahmadzai, 32, said as his wife, Noorsabah Quroishi, 24, was wiping her tears with the fringes of her hijab in the dining room of a Comfort Suites.
Afghans in the dining room of the Comfort Suites in Owensboro, Ky. Local businesses and private donors have been paying for lunches delivered daily.Credit...Luke Sharrett for The New York Times
“We had good life over there. We had good houses. Now we are zero,” said Mr. Ahmadzai, who was a businessman in Afghanistan.
When would they have homes? Would they come with kitchens? Hot running water?
Those were some of the questions that 18 Afghan men in the lobby of the Comfort Suites lobbed at Khaibar Shafaq, an English-speaking evacuee who worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross and has assumed the role of interlocutor between his fellow Afghans and the International Center, the local resettlement agency.
“We are really happy here. But since we are with the family, it would have been much better to move to our houses,” said Haji Mohammad Yarmal, a father of four.
Landlords and property managers, who can afford to be picky in a tight market, have been reluctant to take a chance on foreigners who still lack jobs and permanent residency status, and who often have large families. Many have demanded credit history, background checks and co-signers, all of which aren’t typically required of newly arrived refugees.
“They don’t say ‘no,’” said Diana Ford, a community leader who is leading an extensive volunteer effort to assist the newcomers. “They say, ‘We don’t have anything available.’”
Unlike refugees moving to cities like Sacramento and Houston, with established Afghan communities, evacuees arriving in smaller towns have no relatives to take them in.
Ms. Ford has tapped business and faith leaders and local foundations to help find Afghans housing, cover their motel rooms and feed them — to spare the refugees from having to dip into their one-time cash stipends from the U.S. government, usually about $1,200 per family member, that are intended for rent.
Diana Ford does arts and crafts with children at a pop-up clinic at the Comfort Suites, while their parents were being screened by medical staff.Credit...Luke Sharrett for The New York Times
In big cities, refugees are finding that rentals are plentiful but the cost prohibitively high. In small towns like Owensboro, prices are lower, but inventory is extremely limited.
“Already we had a shortage of rental properties, and now we have Afghan families desperately needing a place to live,’’ said Jaclyn Graves, chief executive of the Greater Owensboro Realtor Association.
The market has long catered to home buyers attracted to that town, which is between Louisville and Nashville, where “you can get a lot of bang for the buck,” Ms. Graves said.
But the Afghans are unlikely to be able to afford to buy a home until they have jobs and steady income.
The log cabin idea originated when Bruce Kunze, a retired school counselor, got a call last month from Ms. Ford, an old friend, asking if he knew where a newly arrived family of nine could temporarily live.
“I told her, we have this cabin, it’s empty and we’d be happy for them to stay,” Mr. Kunze recalled.
Because Mr. Kunze was out of town, Ms. Ford’s husband had to climb through the roof to get inside and unlock it. Soon the Rahimis were moving in.
The pace of arrivals in town ramped up rapidly, with 30 people arriving on some days.
By late November, the Comfort Suites had become a bustling Afghan hub. A team led by Mr. Shafaq created spreadsheets with details about the people in each room, including ages, clothing sizes, languages spoken and professions.
Ms. Ford raised money to supply lunches daily from Panera, Red Lobster and other eateries. A former cook for the U.S. military began preparing dinner each night at First Christian Church, with donated ingredients and halal meat supplied by a mosque in nearby Evansville, Ind.
A former cook at a U.S. military base prepared dinner with fellow Afghans in the kitchen of First Christian Church in Ownesboro, Ky.Credit...Luke Sharrett for The New York Times
A sense of community has blossomed among the 160 Afghans at the motel, who have different ethnic, educational and socioeconomic backgrounds.
On a balmy autumn afternoon, children in the parking lot sped around on a luggage cart. Others played volleyball with soccer balls, as adults tapped away on their cellphones. Volunteers unloaded hygiene products, prayer rugs and other items from cars, and ferried people to dental and medical appointments.
Over a dinner of Afghan chicken, cabbage stew and salad, several adolescent girls who had become fast friends said they relished being in America, where bombs did not jolt them awake at night and the Taliban could not stifle their dreams. Mursal Nazari, 15, who aspires to become a doctor, highlighted the greenery, the calm and the kind people she had met in Owensboro.
But life in the motel is monotonous. Outings are limited to the occasional trip to Walmart, a park or the mosque for Friday prayers. Although the refugees are grateful to be in the United States, frustration is rising.
“People were told they would go directly to houses when they left the bases,” Mr. Shafaq said. “What has been told to them is not actually happening. They are losing trust in the process.”
Tom Watson, the mayor of Owensboro, said that with so many refugees landing at once, it was important to conduct reviews of the arrivals before settling them in permanent housing. “We don’t know who we got,” he said, noting that he had requested a “file” on every Afghan. “I need to know just from the public safety standpoint.”
Afghan children playing in the parking lot of the Comfort Suites.Credit...Luke Sharrett for The New York Times
Susan Montalvo-Gesser, a local lawyer who is on the board of the International Center, drafted a letter to Owensboro landlords and property managers to ease any concerns.
Afghan refugees, she wrote, “have had more extensive background checks” than local rental applicants, whose records are verified only against state criminal and eviction records. The letter also said that the resettlement agency was willing to co-sign leases.
A few days later, there was a breakthrough.
“We got 12 to 13 more houses today,” said Anna Allen, director of the International Center. “Another landlord said that not only does he have an apartment, but he’s going to have 12 more units available next month.”
“I’m feeling on top of the world,” she said. “I can breathe.”
Ten miles outside of town, the two-room log cabin where the Rahimis remain is invitingly cozy. Its honey-hued interior features an antique spinning wheel, wooden high chair and stone chimney.
But the Rahimis are still not accustomed to their rustic, if temporary, abode. After the noise and bustle of Kabul, they said that the quiet, and creatures, of the countryside unnerved them. Worried about wasps that sometimes lurk upstairs, all nine are camping out in the downstairs room.
“We grew up in the city,” said Mirnesa Rahimi, who has tried to reassure her seven children that, in the enveloping silence of the rolling farmlands that stretch in every direction, there is nothing to fear.
Credit...Luke Sharrett for The New York Times
4. Military Aid for Ukraine: Deterring Russia Promptly
Lead with contractors or putting contractors in harm's way on the potential frontlines. Add Flying Tigers to the volunteer analogies.
Excerpts:
All assets with remaining life that would provide a short term stopgap capability to deter Russia and provide the Ukrainians with a transition path over the next few years to future new build U.S. platforms.
Short term provision of air and ground crews could be done using former U.S. service personnel under contract, precedents being volunteer pilots serving in Britain during the 1940s or in Israel in its early years, while experienced Ukrainian personnel are transitioned. Again, there are many precedents, and Ukraine itself has made extensive use of volunteer troops from former Soviet republics, and the West, since 2014.
Military Aid for Ukraine: Deterring Russia Promptly
The ongoing debate over the provision of military aid to Ukraine has been frequently contaminated by naïve misunderstandings of Ukrainian military and technological capabilities. Partly this is a result of Western media uncritically regurgitating Russian and pro-Russian propaganda. But frequently, it also reflects a failure by media and so called analysts to read what is already widely available on the public record.
The absurdity of some commentaries, where Ukraine is compared to Iraq or Afghanistan, ignores the reality that Ukraine long ago proved able to design, engineer and manufacture space launch vehicles, terminally guided ballistic missiles, airborne, naval and land-based radars, including solid state AESA radars, guidance systems for and complete air-air and air-surface missiles, guided artillery rockets, anti-ship and land-attack cruise missiles, anti-tank guided missiles, tanks, armored vehicles, and a wide range of other military and aerospace systems.
While Ukraine retains these capabilities, its industry has struggled with problems ranging from a Russian embargo on spare parts and components, Germany’s de facto embargo on substitute components from NATO nations, dysfunctional bureaucracies, and chronic undercapitalization. The latter has seen many defense industry plants using their capacity to generate export revenue rather than equip the Ukrainian military, as the export revenue is used to pay personnel salaries on government projects.
In the almost eight years the Ukrainians have been at war with Russia, the Ukrainians have managed to refurbish and upgrade significant portions of their considerable inventory of Soviet era equipment, and despite active sabotage by some Western nations like Germany, replace a wide range of Russian components in equipment with Western replacements. But as noted in an earlier comment, this still leaves Russia with a number of asymmetric capability advantages that would be leveraged to best effect during any invasion or large-scale land grab operation by the Putin regime.
A key problem Ukraine confronts is that their dense and otherwise capable air defense system, equipped with dozens of batteries of the S-300PT/PS (SA-10 Grumble), S-300V1 (SA-12 Gladiator), and Buk M1 (SA-11 Gadfly), lacks effective capability against ballistic missiles, and is short of systems that can effectively deal with saturation attacks by low flying Russian cruise missiles. Ukraine’s air force has several brigades of late Cold War era Su-27 Flanker and MiG-29 Fulcrum fighters, equivalent to early model F-15 and F-16 fighters. Still, serviceability remains a challenge, avionic upgrades have been basic, and war stocks of missiles and PGMs have not been built up to levels required for a full-scale defensive air campaign.
In many respects, Ukraine's predicament resembles that of Britain in 1940 – an aging or obsolete force structure and an industrial base capable of building credible weapons, but not in the quantities needed quickly enough to deter or defeat a stronger opponent.
Suggestions that a few hundred Stinger MANPADS or Javelin ATGWs would be adequate misunderstand Ukraine’s situation.
Naysayers have frequently argued that it would take the Ukrainians years to learn how to operate and maintain sophisticated weapons like U.S. made F-15s, F-16s and Patriot SAMs, an argument that fails to consider the sophistication of the equipment the Ukrainians already design, manufacture and operate. While it might take 100 hours of flying time to teach a novice fighter pilot to fly an F-15 or F-16, an experienced Su-27 or MiG-29 pilot can be converted in much less time. A much better analogy is to compare the Ukrainians to the Israelis some decades ago – smart, motivated, but under-resourced, fighting for survival, and let down by their European “allies.”
The U.S. saved Israel from probable defeat in 1973 by ferry flying and airlifting an unprecedented volume of military materiel during Operation Nickel Grass, and this could be a template for deterring Russia in Ukraine.
The NDAA is expected to see almost one hundred F-15C/D and F-16C/D fighters sent in coming months to the AMARG boneyard to be mothballed, yet these fighters are in capability and quantity exactly the kind of equipment the Ukrainians need. No differently, some of the 18 KC-135R and 14 KC-10A aerial tankers headed for storage would fit.
Other assets in storage or destined for storage suitable for Ukraine include A-10C Warthogs, Navy E-2C Hawkeyes being replaced by new E-2Ds, Harpoon capable F/A-18s, just retired by the USMC, former Navy SH-60 Seahawk, Army UH-60 Blackhawk and AH-64D Apache helicopters.
All assets with remaining life that would provide a short term stopgap capability to deter Russia and provide the Ukrainians with a transition path over the next few years to future new build U.S. platforms.
Short term provision of air and ground crews could be done using former U.S. service personnel under contract, precedents being volunteer pilots serving in Britain during the 1940s or in Israel in its early years, while experienced Ukrainian personnel are transitioned. Again, there are many precedents, and Ukraine itself has made extensive use of volunteer troops from former Soviet republics, and the West, since 2014.
Stephen J. Blank, Ph.D., is Senior Fellow at FPRI’s Eurasia Program. He has published over 1500 articles and monographs on Soviet/Russian, U.S., Asian, and European military and foreign policies, testified frequently before Congress on Russia, China, and Central Asia, consulted for the Central Intelligence Agency, major think tanks and foundations, chaired major international conferences in the U.S. and in Florence; Prague; and London, and has been a commentator on foreign affairs in the media in the U.S. and abroad. He has also advised major corporations on investing in Russia and is a consultant for the Gerson Lehrmann Group. He has published or edited 15 books, most recently Russo-Chinese Energy Relations: Politics in Command (London: Global Markets Briefing, 2006). He has also published Natural Allies? Regional Security in Asia and Prospects for Indo-American Strategic Cooperation (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2005). He is currently completing a book entitled Light From the East: Russia’s Quest for Great Power Status in Asia to be published in 2014 by Ashgate. Dr. Blank is also the author of The Sorcerer as Apprentice: Stalin’s Commissariat of Nationalities (Greenwood, 1994); and the co-editor of The Soviet Military and the Future (Greenwood, 1992).
5. Opinion | To deter a Russian attack, Ukraine needs to prepare for guerrilla warfare
There is great resistance potential in Ukraine (as well as other countries threatened by Russia)
As I understand it Ukraine has a long history of guerrilla warfare. We also have the resistance Operating Concept from SOCEUR (https://jsou.libguides.com/ld.php?content_id=54216464) and Ukraine is the right environment for implementation (and it probably already has been doing this).
This would be a form of Bob Jones' "unconventional deterrence:"
Opinion | To deter a Russian attack, Ukraine needs to prepare for guerrilla warfare
With Russia mobilizing 175,000 troops along Ukraine’s borders, Europe is facing the prospect of its biggest war since 1945. Western leaders are warning Russian President Vladimir Putin of “massive consequences” should he decide to invade.
The West could target the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would carry Russian natural gas to Germany; go after the ill-gotten gains that Putin and his cronies have stashed in the West; and even kick Russia out of the SWIFT system of interbank transfers. But Putin has endured economic sanctions since his initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014, and he is still as menacing as ever.
Preventing Russia from attacking will require a more credible military deterrent. President Biden has ruled out unilaterally sending U.S. combat troops to Ukraine, which would be the strongest deterrent. But he can still do more to help the Ukrainians defend themselves.
The United States has already delivered more than $2.5 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since 2014, with $450 million of that coming this year. There are also roughly 150 U.S. troops in Ukraine training its armed forces.
But Ukraine is asking for more military aid, and we should deliver it. NBC News reports that “Ukraine has asked for air defense systems, antiship missiles, more Javelin antitank missiles, electronic jamming gear, radar systems, ammunition, upgraded artillery munitions and medical supplies.” The Defense Department could begin airlifting these defensive systems and supplies to Kyiv tomorrow. The administration has held off for fear of provoking Putin, but we should not give an aggressor a veto over aid to his victims.
Ultimately, of course, if Russia chooses to unleash its full military might, the Ukrainian armed forces will be defeated in short order despite all of the improvements they have made since 2014. But even then all is not lost. Ukrainian patriots could fight as guerrillas against Russian occupiers.
They have done it before. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) was formed in 1942 to fight for that country’s independence. Initially, it cooperated with Nazi invaders but later fought against them. When the Red Army marched back into Ukraine in 1943, the UPA resisted. The guerrillas carried out thousands of attacks and inflicted thousands of casualties on Soviet forces while also massacring and ethnically cleansing the Polish population in western Ukraine. The UPA continued fighting until the 1950s, forcing Moscow to mobilize tens of thousands of troops and secret policemen to restore control.
Eventually, the Soviet empire prevailed. The guerrillas were too weak and the Soviet forces too strong. But the UPA never received any outside support, usually the key determinant of the success or failure of an insurgency. It was a different story with the Afghan mujahideen during the 1980s. Because they received copious aid from the United States, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other countries, they were able to drive out the Red Army with heavy casualties.
Putin, who was a young KGB officer in those days, has no desire to blunder into another Afghanistan-style war. Having Russian troops come home in body bags would sap popular support for his regime. In fact, this makes me doubt that he would actually try to occupy all of Ukraine, a country of 44 million people. (The population of Afghanistan in the 1980s was only 13 million.) He is more likely to mount a limited operation to enlarge the Russian sphere of control in eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainians are already talking about waging guerrilla warfare if the Russians invade. Gen. Oleksandr Pavlyuk told the New York Times that Ukraine has 500,000 people with military experience, and if necessary “we’ll start a partisan war.” A senior Ukrainian military official “said that if all else failed, the military would simply open its weapons depots and allow the Ukrainian people to take whatever they need to defend themselves and their families.”
Those are potent threats. But why wait for a Russian invasion to make these preparations? The Ukrainian government needs to start distributing weapons now and, with the help of U.S. and other Western military advisers, training personnel to carry out guerrilla warfare. Volodymyr Zelensky’s government should even prepare supply depots, tunnels, and bunkers in wooded areas and in particular in the Carpathian Mountains, a UPA stronghold in the 1940s.
The United States and its NATO allies should let the Kremlin know that, in the event of a Russian occupation, they will keep supplying Ukrainian freedom fighters with potent weapons, including Javelin antitank missiles and Stinger antiaircraft missiles. U.S. officials should point out to their Russian counterparts that Ukraine shares a lengthy border — nearly 900 miles in total — with NATO members Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland. Good luck controlling that frontier.
The threat of guerrilla warfare is the most potent deterrent to a Russian invasion of Ukraine, and it is one that Ukraine and its supporters in the West need to play up to make Putin think twice before he launches another war of aggression.
6. How Beijing Influences the Influencers
Useful idiots or complicit in furthering Chinese propaganda?
The Barretts are part of a crop of new social media personalities who paint cheery portraits of life as foreigners in China — and also hit back at criticisms of Beijing’s authoritarian governance, its policies toward ethnic minorities and its handling of the coronavirus.
How Beijing Influences the Influencers
Millions have watched Lee and Oli Barrett’s YouTube dispatches from China. The father and son duo visit hotels in exotic locales, tour out-of-the-way villages, sample delicacies in bustling markets and undergo traditional ear cleanings.
The Barretts are part of a crop of new social media personalities who paint cheery portraits of life as foreigners in China — and also hit back at criticisms of Beijing’s authoritarian governance, its policies toward ethnic minorities and its handling of the coronavirus.
The videos have a casual, homespun feel. But on the other side of the camera often stands a large apparatus of government organizers, state-controlled news media and other official amplifiers — all part of the Chinese government’s widening attempts to spread pro-Beijing messages around the planet.
State-run news outlets and local governments have organized and funded pro-Beijing influencers’ travel, according to government documents and the creators themselves. They have paid or offered to pay the creators. They have generated lucrative traffic for the influencers by sharing videos with millions of followers on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
A photo shared by the creator Matt Galat during a livestreamed discussion shows Chinese media employees documenting a trip that a state broadcaster organized for foreign YouTubers.
Most of the YouTubers have lived in China for years and say their aim is to counter the West’s increasingly negative perceptions of the country. They decide what goes into their videos, they say, not the Communist Party.
But even if the creators do not see themselves as propaganda tools, Beijing is using them that way. Chinese diplomats and representatives have shown their videos at news conferences and promoted their creations on social media. Together, six of the most popular of these influencers have garnered more than 130 million views on YouTube and more than 1.1 million subscribers.
In effect, Beijing is using platforms like Twitter and YouTube, which the government blocks inside China to prevent the uncontrolled spread of information, as propaganda megaphones for the wider world.
“China is the new super-abuser that has arrived in global social media,” said Eric Liu, a former content moderator for Chinese social media. “The goal is not to win, but to cause chaos and suspicion until there is no real truth.”
The State Behind the Camera
Raz Gal-Or started making funny videos when he was a college student in Beijing. Now, the young Israeli brings his millions of subscribers along as he interviews both ordinary people and fellow expatriates about their lives in China.
In a video this spring, Mr. Gal-Or visits cotton fields in Xinjiang to counter allegations of forced labor in the region.
“It’s totally normal here,” he declares after enjoying kebabs with some workers. “People are nice, doing their job, living their life.”
His videos do not mention the internal government documents, firsthand testimonials and visits by journalists that indicate that the Chinese authorities have held hundreds of thousands of Xinjiang’s Muslims in re-education camps.
They also do not mention his and his family’s business ties to the Chinese state.
The chairman of Mr. Gal-Or’s video company, YChina, is his father, Amir, an investor whose fund is backed by the government-run China Development Bank, according to the fund’s website.
YChina has had two state-owned news outlets as clients, according to the website of Innonation, a company founded by Amir Gal-Or. Innonation manages shared-office spaces and hosts YChina’s office in Beijing.
In emails with The New York Times, Raz Gal-Or said that YChina had no “business contracts” with state news agencies and that Innonation’s website was “inaccurate.” He said no official entities paid or guided him in Xinjiang.
He said his Xinjiang video series was about “people’s lives, well-beings and dreams.”
“Those who perceive it as political I am sure have their own agenda,” he added.
‘Doing a Job’
Other creators acknowledge that they have accepted financial support from state entities, though they say this does not make them mouthpieces for Beijing.
Kirk Apesland, a Canadian living in China, calls his channel Gweilo 60. (“Gweilo” is Cantonese slang for foreigner.) He rejects news of repression in Xinjiang and cites his own happy experiences to contest the idea that China’s people are oppressed.
After The Times contacted Mr. Apesland, he posted a video titled “New York Times vs Gweilo 60.” In it, he acknowledges that he accepts free hotels and payment from city and provincial authorities. He compares it to being a pitchman for local tourism.
“Are there fees for what I do? Of course,” he says. “I’m doing a job. I’m putting the videos out to hundreds of thousands of people.”
Lee Barrett makes a similar acknowledgment in one of his videos. “They pay for travel, they pay for accommodation, they pay for food,” he says. “However, they don’t tell us what we have to say by any means.”
Oli Barrett did not respond to a request for comment.
According to a document featured in a new report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, China’s internet regulator paid about $30,000 to a media company as part of a campaign called “A Date With China,” which used “foreign internet celebrities” to promote the government’s success in alleviating poverty.
The research institute, which is called ASPI and is funded by the Australian and American governments and companies including military contractors, has published several reports on China’s coercive policies in Xinjiang.
When the YouTubers travel on the state dime, official organizers shape what they see and do. Not long ago, Lee Barrett, an influencer named Matt Galat and two creators from Mexico held a livestreamed discussion about a trip they took to Xi’an with the state broadcaster China Radio International.
The organizers asked Mr. Galat to deliver a speech praising a place he had yet to see, he said during the discussion. He refused.
During another part of the trip, Mr. Galat was frustrated that a visit to a sacred mountain was cut from the schedule.
“They had to fit in more propaganda visits,” he said.
Mr. Galat later removed the stream of the discussion from his channel. He declined to say why.
How to Win Likes and Influence People
It is unclear how much income the creators may be generating from this work. But apart from money, Chinese government entities have also provided something that can be just as valuable for a social media personality: digital traffic.
YouTube uses advertising revenue to pay influencers based on how many people are watching. Those eyeballs can also help influencers land sponsorship deals with big brands, as several of the pro-China YouTubers have done.
Mr. Gal-Or posted his video about Xinjiang’s cotton farms on YouTube on April 8, shortly after Nike, H&M and other brands came under fire in China for expressing concern about reports of forced labor.
What I saw in Xinjiang working as a Cotton Farmer
8 months ago
In the weeks that followed, the video, along with other clips of Mr. Gal-Or in Xinjiang, were shared on Facebook and Twitter by at least 35 accounts run by Chinese embassies and official news outlets, according to data collected by ASPI and verified by the Times. In total, the accounts have roughly 400 million followers.
Ĉina Radio Internacia
April 10
Israela blogisto Raz Galor lastatempe vizitis gubernio Shaya, regiono Aksu, Xinjiang kaj persone spertis maŝinan kultivadon de loka kotono. Li diris, ke post tiu ĉi vizito, li profunde sentis belecon de la regiono, solidarecon de ĉiuj etnoj, feliĉon de la popolo kaj progreson de la ekonomio.
Çin Büyükelçiliği Ankara/Chinese Embassy in Turkey
April 9
Pamuk yetiştiriciliğini deneyimlemek için Xinjiang’a giden bir yabancı:
Yabancı medya gerçek #Xinjiang’ı görmek istemiyor.
Xinjiang’da pamuk ekimi cep telefonu aracılığıyla gerçekleştirilebilir.
Ambassade de Chine en France
April 9
Quand un étranger apprend la culture du coton au Xinjiang
Ambassade de Chine au Sénégal @ChineAmbassade · Apr 30
L'avril, c'est la bonne saison pour l'ensemencement du coton. En #Chine, un jeune garçon britannique a filmé son expérience en tant que paysan de coton au #Xinjiang. Découvrons avec lui la scène vivante de récolte de #cotton du Xinjiang.
China Embassy in Malaysia
April 14
What’s the daily live of the local people in Xinjiang? Let’s follow youtuber Ychina to visit #Aksu Prefecture in #Xinjiang and check out the stories of the locals. Enjoy the video.
Ambassade de Chine en France @AmbassadeChine · Apr 9
RT @Yo_fr1: @hari_yass @AmbassadeChine
中華人民共和国駐日本国大使館 @ChnEmbassy_jp · Apr 9
新疆での綿花収穫作業に密着しよう。地元の綿花農家によると、収穫時一日の報酬は150元から200元で、自動走行できる大型農機の運用で、作業が以前よりだいぶ楽になった。What I saw in Xinjiang working as a Cotton Farmer
中国驻斯洛伐克使馆 Čínske veľvyslanectvo na Slovensku
June 22
Curious about Xinjiang cotton farmers' working condition and salary? Let's pay a visit to them with a foreign vlogger. #ChinaStory #Xinjiang
Chinese Embassy in Prague （Velvyslanectví Čínské lidové republiky）
April 15
Raz vyzpovídal deset náhodně vybraných obyvatel Sin-ťiangu a získal tak jedinečnou možnost nahlédnout do každodenního života místních obyvatel.
Embajada China en CR
April 14
QUÉ OPINAN LOS EXTRANJEROS SOBRE CHINA | Ep6 Raz Galor: ¡Mire lo que he visto trabajando como un agricultor de algodón en Xinjiang! (Vlog completo)
Basado en su propia experiencia en Xinjiang, el bloguero Raz Galor comentó que estaba muy impresionado por la tecnología avanzada de la industria del algodón de Xinjiang y señaló que el pueblo local disfruta de un salario alto, nada que ver con las infundadas acusasiones de "trabajo forzoso".
¡Vean el vídeo y la verdad en el siguiente enlace y no se olviden de suscribirse a su canal en Youtube!
CRI German
April 17
Der israelische Video-Influencer Raz Galor interviewte drei verschiedene Familien in Xinjiang. Sie haben ihre eigenen Lebensweisen und erzählen die Änderungen in #Xinjiang aus ihren Erfahrungen. (via bilibili)
中国驻斯洛伐克使馆 Čínske veľvyslanectvo na Slovensku @ChinaEmbSVK · Jun 22
RT @XichengBeijing: 歪果仁研究协会 Ychina
Ambasciata della Repubblica Popolare Cinese in Italia
April 9
NOTIZIE DELL' ULTIM'ORA!
Abbiamo scoperto che il lavoro forzato nei campi di cotone nello Xinjiang esiste davvero!
I contadini stanno costringendo i trattori e i droni a lavorare da soli！
Non perdere il video di Ychina!
Chinese Embassy in Kenya @ChineseEmbKenya · Apr 13
Raz Galor from Israel visited Xinjiang days ago. Let’s check his Vlog to see what he found in Xinjiang. Episode I : What I saw in Xinjiang working as a Cotton Farmer
Romanian Service, China Radio International
April 19
Xinjiang: Experiența unui străin de a planta bumbac cu uigurii
În videoclipul realizat de YChina și vloggerul israelian, Raza Galor se arată experiența unui străin de 28 de ani, absolvent al Universității Peking, care a plantat bumbac împreună uigurii din prefectura Aksu din Xinjiang. Din ianuarie 2017, YChina a început să publice vloguri și documentare despre China pe diferite aplicații video, câștigând sprijinul urmăritorilor chinezi.
CRI HAUSA
April 9
Kwanan nan ne na kalli wani shirin bidiyo da wani dan kasar Isra’ila mai suna Raz Galor, ko kuma Gao Yousi a yaren Sin ya dauka, game da ziyarar gani da ido da ya yi a birnin Aksu na jihar Xinjiang. Dalilin zuwansa Xinjiang shi ne, amsa tambayar da abokanansa dake kasashen waje suka yi masa, dangane da ainihin halin da ake ciki a Xinjiang. Kamar shin da gaske ne ana tilastawa ‘yan kwadago su yi aikin noman auduga a wajen? Shin da gaske ne ana muzgunawa ma’aikata ‘yan kananan kabilun wajen? Ga sharhin da Murtala Zhang ya rubuta
Chinese Embassy in Ireland @ChinaEmbIreland · Apr 14
Israeli blogger Raz Galor working as a cotton farmer in Xinjiang.
YouTube’s and Google’s algorithms favor videos that are shared widely on social media.
“Dictatorial countries can centralize their understanding of the algorithm and use it to boost all their channels,” said Guillaume Chaslot, a former Google engineer who helped develop YouTube’s recommendation engine.
On Twitter, Mr. Gal-Or’s video was shared by many accounts with suspiciously bare digital personas, according to Darren Linvill, who studies social media disinformation at Clemson University. This, he said, is a characteristic sign of a coordinated operation.
Of the 534 accounts that tweeted the video from April through the end of June, two-fifths had 10 or fewer followers, Professor Linvill found. One in nine had zero followers. For nine accounts, Mr. Gal-Or’s video was their first tweet.
Such activity has added to Mr. Gal-Or’s and other creators’ digital footprints.
Joshua Lam and Libby Lange, graduate student researchers at Yale University, analyzed a sample of nearly 290,000 tweets that mentioned Xinjiang in the first half of 2021. They found that six of the 10 most commonly shared YouTube videos in the tweets were from the pro-China influencers.
Transparency for Influencers
YouTube told The Times that it hadn’t found evidence that these creators were “linked to coordinated influence operations.” The site, which is part of Google, regularly takes down channels that it finds to be promoting messages in a repetitive or coordinated way.
But YouTube also requires channels to disclose sponsorships or other commercial relationships so viewers can be made aware. After The Times asked about the payments and free travel from Chinese state media, YouTube said it would remind the creators of their obligations.
YouTube also tries to promote transparency by labeling channels run by government-funded news organizations. But the platform does not label the personal channels of their employees, it said.
This allows some YouTubers to obscure the fact that they work for Chinese state media.
Stuart Wiggin’s channel, The China Traveler, does not indicate that he works for People’s Daily. Yet that was how Mr. Wiggin, who is British, was identified by another state newspaper, China Daily, in its coverage of the “Date With China” campaign.
In his videos from Xinjiang, Mr. Wiggin raves about the cuisine and interviews locals about how their lives have improved. Topics like re-education camps do not come up.
Ms. Li and Mr. Wiggin did not respond to requests for comment.
No Regrets
Mr. Galat was among the most popular pro-Beijing YouTubers by the time he left China this year to bring his channel to new places. He is now documenting his travels across the United States.
In an interview, Mr. Galat said he had no regrets about his videos from China.
Before the pandemic, Mr. Galat, a Detroit native living in Ningbo, had built a YouTube following with his happy-go-lucky travel videos.
As China emerged from the worst of the outbreak, he began receiving travel invitations from local governments and state news outlets.
At the time, China was trying to deflect Western criticism of its pandemic response. Mr. Galat said he was bothered by those criticisms, too.
His YouTube videos started getting political. He mused about whether the virus might have come from the United States. He hosted a discussion about the Western campaign against Huawei, the Chinese tech giant.
“People like to have dramatic and aggressive feelings toward things, and a lot of that content was more popular than, say, my normal travel videos,” he said.
By this year, Mr. Galat’s channel had more than 100,000 subscribers. He acknowledged that the Chinese state media’s support helped his channel grow. As his trips with state media grew longer, the outlets paid him for his time, he said. He declined to say how much.
This summer, he went to Xinjiang on a trip planned by CGTN, the state broadcaster.
“Just a thought for those that want to compare China to Nazi Germany,” he says in one video at a museum on the culture of the Uyghurs, one of Xinjiang’s minority groups. “Do you think that there was maybe museums in Germany before the war that were embracing Jewish culture?”
The views on Mr. Galat’s YouTube videos have fallen since he left China. That doesn’t bother him, he said. In the future, his channel probably won’t be so political.
“I am not completely comfortable,” he said, “being a political talking post for big issues.”
7. Joint Statement on 8th United States – New Zealand Defense Policy Dialogue
Note the point about north Korean sanctions enforcement. In almost all relevant alliance discussions, north Korea gets an honorable (or dishonorable) mention. note thererence to New Zealand support to north Korean sanctions enforcement operations.
Joint Statement on 8th United States – New Zealand Defense Policy Dialogue
Release
Immediate Release
Dec. 15, 2021
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, Dr. Ely Ratner, and Deputy Secretary for Defence Policy and Planning, Michael Swain, met virtually to conduct the 8th annual United States – New Zealand Defense Policy Dialogue, December 15 (Washington) and December 16 (Wellington).
The talks reaffirmed the two countries’ commitment to strengthening bilateral defense cooperation to advance shared priorities and common objectives, and noted challenges to a peaceful, stable, and prosperous Indo-Pacific.
Officials reflected on a range of recent positive engagements between New Zealand and United States forces, including the USS Howard’s visit to Wellington, operations in the Western Pacific and South China Sea, and New Zealand’s deployment of a P-3K2 aircraft to support implementation of United Nations sanctions enforcement against North Korea.
They exchanged perspectives on the global and regional strategic environment, shared updates on each countries respective defense strategies, and agreed to pursue tangible and concrete initiatives to support resilience and security in the Pacific region, with a specific emphasis on collaboratively enhancing defence cooperation with Pacific Islands partners.
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8. Typhoon Rai intensifies to Cat 5 storm as it slams Philippines
Our thoughts to all our friends in the Philippines.
Typhoon Rai intensifies to Cat 5 storm as it slams Philippines
- Summary
- Typhoon Rai makes afternoon landfall on holiday island
- Rescuers wade through chest-deep floods as evacuations continue
- Rai is Philippines' second-strongest tropical storm this year
MANILA, Dec 16 (Reuters) - Typhoon Rai rapidly intensified to a Category 5 storm before making landfall in the southern Philippines on Thursday, forcing mass evacuations and flight cancellations as floodwaters reached chest-high in low-lying communities.
Rai, the 15th typhoon to enter Philippine territory this year, hit the holiday island of Siargao in the southern province of Surigao del Norte, packing maximum sustained winds of up to 195 km (121 miles) per hour, the Philippine weather bureau said.
Close to 100,000 people have fled their homes as the second-most powerful typhoon to strike the nation this year dumped heavy rains on southern islands on its way towards the central part of the archipelago.
The nation's disaster agency said it had received reports of power outages and flooding in some areas, but there were no casualties so far.
1/4
A Philippine Coast Guard personnel assists a resident in their evacuation due to flooding caused by Typhoon Rai in Cagayan De Oro City, Philippines, December 16, 2021. Philippine Coast Guard/ Handout via REUTERS
Footage shared by the Philippine Coast Guard showed rescuers wading through chest-deep waters in the city of Cagayan de Oro on the northern coast of Mindanao, while ferrying residents in rubber boats.
"Filipinos are tough but this Super Typhoon is a bitter blow for millions of people who are still recovering from devastating storms, floods and COVID-19 in the past year," Philippine Red Cross Chairman Richard Gordon said in a statement.
Airlines cancelled dozens of flights, while transport authorities banned sea and land travel in central and southern Philippines, leaving thousands stranded at ports.
The Southeast Asian nation postponed the start of a mass vaccination drive in most of the country because of the storm.
Around 20 tropical storms a year strike the Philippines, a nation of more than 7,600 islands, causing floods and landslides.
Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales and Karen Lema; Editing by Ed Davies and Tom Hogue
9. Russia’s Putin, China’s Xi hail ties amid tensions with West
Russia’s Putin, China’s Xi hail ties amid tensions with West
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, have held a video meeting, as friction persists in both countries’ relations with the West.
In their opening remarks at the virtual summit on Wednesday, Putin and Xi hailed relations between Russia and China, with the Russian leader declaring them “a proper example of interstate cooperation in the 21st century”.
“A new model of cooperation has been formed between our countries, based among other things on such principles as not interfering in internal affairs [of each other], respect for each other’s interests, determination to turn the shared border into a belt of eternal peace and good neighbourliness,” Putin said.
Xi said that the Russian president “strongly supported China’s efforts to protect key national interests and firmly opposed attempts to drive a wedge between our countries.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin holds talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping via a video link at his residence outside Moscow, Russia [Reuters]
“I appreciate it very much,” the Chinese leader said.
Putin also said that he plans to meet with Xi in person in Beijing in February and attend the 2022 Olympics. “As agreed, we will hold talks and then take part in the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games,” Putin said.
Tensions between Russia and Western countries have escalated in recent months over a Russian military build-up near the border with Ukraine. The Ukrainian government has accused Moscow of massing tens of thousands of troops in preparation for a possible large-scale military offensive. The Kremlin denies it plans to invade and says the West is gripped by Russophobia.
Earlier on Wednesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the two leaders would discuss tensions in Europe and “aggressive” rhetoric from the United States and NATO.
“The situation in international affairs, especially on the European continent, is very, very tense right now and requires discussion between allies,” Peskov said, referring to Moscow and Beijing.
“We see very, very aggressive rhetoric on the NATO and US side, and this requires discussion between us and the Chinese.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said the meeting was expected to “further enhance the high-level mutual trust between the two sides”.
Al Jazeera’s Katrina Yu, reporting from Beijing, said the summit would enhance the already high level of trust between the two countries.
“The strength of this bilateral relationship seems to be based on two things … It’s extremely practical,” Yu said, referring to the mutual investments and trade ties.
They also value each other “enormously when it comes to the diplomatic side of things,” she said, noting the “common criticism” that they have received from the US and Europe.
Russia has cultivated closer ties with China as its relations with the West have worsened, and Putin has used the partnership as a way of balancing US influence while striking lucrative deals, especially on energy. He and Xi this year agreed to extend a 20-year friendship and cooperation treaty.
The summit comes years after Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula led to a serious rift with its Western partners and a subsequent turn towards its neighbour to the east.
According to Yu, many in the West perceive this relationship as a “potentially growing threat to Western interests”.
Wide-ranging ties
Russia and China do not only cooperate militarily but have also strengthened ties on the diplomatic and economic fronts.
Peskov earlier said the two leaders were expected to hold a long conversation with a broad agenda including energy, trade and investment. China’s Xi has previously described Putin as his “best friend“.
Their discussion took place eight days after a Russia-US video call in which US President Joe Biden warned Putin against invading Ukraine and Putin told him Russia needed legally binding security guarantees from the West.
Biden warned Putin that Russia would face painful sanctions that would cause resounding economic harm if it invaded Ukraine again.
The meeting also comes as Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and US Assistant Secretary of State Karen Donfried met in Moscow to discuss Moscow’s demand for security guarantees.
“A thorough discussion took place on the issue of security guarantees [for Russia] in the light of persistent attempts by the United States and NATO to change the military and political situation in Europe in their favour,” the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement, with no further details.
Russia and China have faced sanctions over their internal policies in the past – China over abuses against minorities, especially Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, and for its crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.
Beijing and Washington also remain at odds over trade and technology, among other issues.
10. In the Next War, America’s Homeland Will Be a Target
The Pacific and Atlantic Oceans are becoming smaller obstacles in our geographic defensive lines.
In the Next War, America’s Homeland Will Be a Target
The U.S. has become accustomed to fighting “over there.” The next enemy may bring the conflict over here.
December 15, 2021, 10:00 AM EST
For Americans, war is typically something that happens “over there” — in foreign countries far from their shores. They ought to start thinking about it as something that may well be experienced “over here.”
In future conflicts, American territory will not be a sanctuary. The U.S. is entering an era of homeland vulnerability, one in which technological advances are making it possible for geopolitical adversaries — not just terrorist groups — to bring the war to America itself.
Yes, the U.S. has been attacked before. The British burned Washington during the War of 1812. The Japanese struck Hawaii, then a U.S. territory, in 1941. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks brought carnage to New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
But those episodes are so memorable because they are exceptions. For the most part, a combination of power and geography has given the U.S. greater homeland security than nearly any other major country. Since the Cold War, it has contended with terrorist attacks, but the states that it pummeled — notably Iraq and Serbia — lacked any ability to respond in kind.
That’s changing, in several ways.
For one thing, the number of rivals that can threaten the U.S. with nuclear weapons in a conflict is increasing. China, which traditionally had a small and vulnerable nuclear arsenal, is rapidly expanding it; Beijing wants to ensure it has could strike the U.S. in a conflict over Taiwan or any other hotspot. North Korea is on the verge of having, or may already have, nuclear-tipped missiles that can hit targets in the U.S.
America’s rivals would still have strong incentives not to conduct such nuclear attacks — not least of which would be the threat of devastating U.S. nuclear retaliation. But today, unlike during the Cold War, they could also strike the U.S. homeland in ways that are less apocalyptic, and therefore more feasible.
Both Russia and China have, or are developing, the ability to hit U.S. targets with conventional warheads mounted on long-range missiles — whether cruise missiles, hypersonic glide vehicles or perhaps intercontinental ballistic missiles. There is growing concern that China could use swarms of small drones, launched from container ships, to hit targets on the U.S. West Coast or Hawaii.
These attacks probably wouldn’t cause catastrophic destruction. But they could disrupt U.S. logistics, communications and mobilization during a conflict — or simply give Moscow or Beijing a way of deterring, or retaliating for, American strikes against Chinese or Russian territory.
The most likely form of homeland attack wouldn’t involve overt violence at all. Cyberattacks against critical infrstructure or financial systems could snarl everyday life and hinder any response to aggression on the other side of the world. The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, which caused gas shortages across the East Coast last spring, offered a chilling preview. Imagine a repeat performance, but on a far larger scale in the middle of a major international crisis over Taiwan, Ukraine or the Baltic states.
Such attacks would be appealing for Russian and Chinese planners. They can be clouded in ambiguity in a way that direct military strikes cannot. They can sow domestic disruption without directly causing huge numbers of civilian deaths. They can slow down the U.S. at the outset of a conflict, when Beijing or Moscow would be racing to achieve their military objectives in Eastern Europe or the western Pacific. And they can pose harsh questions for U.S. policymakers: Will Washington be willing to use force to halt aggression in faraway places, if doing so could expose painful vulnerabilities at home?
There is no perfect solution to this dilemma. Missile defenses, for instance, can help protect key targets, but they are too expensive and unreliable to afford any comprehensive protection. The best the U.S. can do is mitigate homeland security weaknesses through a mix of defense, offense and resilience.
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This will require larger and more systematic investments in what was once called “civil defense” —hardening critical infrastructure, logistical facilities and communications networks against digital disruption. Washington will need to better advertise, in peacetime, its ability and willingness to exact retribution for state-sponsored cyberattacks. This will make adversaries wonder how the U.S. might respond to larger attacks — whether physical or digital — during wartime.
Yet there’s no avoiding the fact that absolute protection is an illusion. Accepting a higher likelihood of homeland attacks, and developing the economic and societal resilience necessary to absorb them, may be the price of global influence in a world where geography doesn’t provide immunity.
That will be a hard message for Americans to hear. It may provoke sharp debates about the costs and benefits of America’s global presence. But better for that debate to begin now than for Americans to recognize their new vulnerability only after a conflict starts.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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11. China, Russia and Iran: The empires strike back
Sigh....
I guess the Choson dynasty (the last and longest-lived imperial dynasty (1392–1910) of Korea), and the Koguryo dynasties 9which extended far into Manchuria) do not make the cut for contemporary comparison. Surely the Kim family regime has imperialist tendencies when it comes to dominating the Korean peninsula.
China, Russia and Iran: The empires strike back
America is threatened by neo-imperialists
China, Russia and Iran: The empires strike back - Washington Times
Illustration on Neo-imperialism China, Russia and Iran by Linas Garsys/The Washington Times more >
OPINION:
Let’s play Jeopardy! The answer: “All were great empires in the past, and all now have rulers determined to establish great empires in the future.” And the question is: “What are China, Russia and Iran?”
China is ruled by a Communist, Russia by a hyper-nationalist, and Iran by an Islamist. All three seek to restore what they consider their rightful realms, and all see the U.S. as their biggest obstacle. It’s on this basis that they now have a flourishing alliance. No surprise that American diplomats speaking softly and carrying carrots instead of sticks fail to achieve progress with any of them.
Those who proclaim themselves jihadis of various stripes also intend to establish an empire, along with a caliphate, in the image of those that dominated much of the world for more than a thousand years.
By the way, though not an adversary, Turkey, the heartland of the former Ottoman Empire, has become America’s least reliable and most problematic ally since Recep Tayyip Erdogan became its neo-sultan.
Is America an empire? That depends on how you define the term. The U.S. has long led a rules-based, liberal, international order. We hoped and even expected that post-Soviet Russia and post-Maoist China would become stakeholders in this arrangement, preferring compromise to confrontation and tacitly acknowledging that American predominance is the worst form of global organization — except for all the others that have been tried.
Over recent years, however, Moscow and Beijing have made abundantly clear that they intend to replace Washington as leader and chief rule-maker of an increasingly illiberal international order.
Former President Barack Obama believed he could entice Iran’s rulers to join the club in return for dollars, respect and a chance to “share the neighborhood” — the Middle East, that is — with Saudi Arabia. President Biden continues to make them offers they can refuse.
All these once-great empires are now striking back to avenge what they perceive as humiliations and striking out to extend their influence.
Start with Beijing, whose current imperial possessions include Xinjian, a Turkic and Muslim land, and Tibet, which also is religiously, linguistically and culturally distinct from China.
China’s rulers have stripped Hong Kong of autonomy and freedom, despite having signed a treaty pledging not to do that.
Free, democratic and prosperous Taiwan has never been under Chinese Communist rule, but Beijing calls it a “rogue province” that must be brought to heel sooner or later. Escalating military threats have raised fears that it could be sooner.
The Belt and Road Initiative is a neo-imperialist project with a global reach. China’s Communist rulers reportedly intend to establish their first permanent naval presence on the Atlantic Ocean in Equatorial Guinea. They also have a military base in Djibouti overlooking the Bab el-Mandeb, a strategic chokepoint for ships transiting the Suez Canal via the Red Sea.
Let’s move on to Tehran’s empire. It includes Lebanon, a country dominated by Hezbollah, the proxy of Iran’s rulers. Those rulers also deploy the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to Syria, instruct Shia militias in Iraq, and support the Houthi rebels in Yemen, which sits on the eastern shores of the Bab el-Mandeb, across from the Chinese military base in Djibouti. Tehran’s interventions in Latin America have included terrorist bombings in Argentina and currently include weapons shipments to Venezuela and Nicaragua.
Iran’s rulers want to bestride the Middle East like a colossus, driving out infidel Americans and their “satanic” influences and toppling Muslim leaders friendly to the U.S., e.g., the Saudi, Bahraini and Emirati royals. The weaker Washington appears, the more we will see Arab pragmatists hedging their bets by attempting to placate what they fear will soon be a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic.
Regarding Israel, Iran’s rulers harbor genocidal intentions. “We will not back off from the annihilation of Israel, even one millimeter,” Brigadier-General Abolfazl Shekarchi, spokesman for Iran’s armed forces, said in a recent interview. “We want to destroy Zionism in the world.”
Turn now to Russia, where I’ve long been convinced, President Vladimir Putin sees himself as a 21st-century czar, committed to rebuilding the Russian empire, which became the Soviet empire even as Soviet leaders declared themselves anti-imperialists.
Belarus, under Alexander Lukashenko, is already a vassal state. Mr. Putin has used military power to gain a foothold in the Middle East, including a Syrian port on the Mediterranean.
Since 2008, he’s occupied 20% of neighboring Georgia. He threatens the Baltic states and foments instability in the Balkan states. He took Crimea away from Ukraine in 2014 and backs separatists in eastern Ukraine. He now has tens of thousands of troops pressing on Ukraine’s borders.
Conventional wisdom holds that Mr. Putin “fears” that Ukraine will join NATO. I disagree. Mr. Putin knows quite well that current NATO members are not prepared “by unanimous agreement” to invite Ukraine to join in the foreseeable future.
More to the point, based not least on a 5,000-word article he published in July — Mr. Putin believes Russians and Ukrainians are “one people — a single whole” that should never have been separated. He places much of the blame on Vladimir Lenin, who, in 1922, established the Soviet Union as a federation of “equal republics,” a move that “planted in our statehood the most dangerous time bomb.”
Before I let you go, one more round of Jeopardy! The answer: “Unquestionable military superiority, a powerful, fast-growing economy and an insurmountable lead in advanced technologies.”
The question: “What must be the highest priority of the American president if he is to deter neo-imperialist adversaries of the U.S. and the West?”
Until and unless the occupant of the White House gets this one right, America’s national security will remain in serious … well, jeopardy.
• Clifford D. May is the founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a columnist for The Washington Times.
12. The U.S. military men spreading Trump’s baseless fraud claims
So I guess that because I am a retired military officer I can be considered an expert in election fraud. Unfortunately my entire education and training in election fraud consists of the Stalin adage:'It is not the vote that counts. It is who counts the votes," or this variation: "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."
These seem an appropriate adage for some of the strategic aims of people like these former military officers. The irony is some of the techniques being employed can be found in Alinsky's Rules for Radicals.
But partisan politics aside, these former military officers are probably contributing to the falling confidence the American people have in the military.
The U.S. military men spreading Trump’s baseless fraud claims
During the Afghan and Iraq wars, the careers of two military officers often intersected. Army General Michael Flynn and an Army Reserve colonel named Phil Waldron worked together on secret projects in both countries, Waldron said. When Flynn was appointed to run the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency in 2012, Waldron said he worked at the DIA’s clandestine service.
Flynn was an intel expert. Waldron’s specialty was psychological operations, or PSYOPs – targeting foreign adversaries, as an Army field manual describes, “to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately, the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.”
Now the two military veterans, along with at least two other retired and reserve officers, are engaged in a new mission, this time with a domestic target: They are central to the far-right effort to persuade Americans that the 2020 election was stolen from then-President Donald Trump.
For the past year, Flynn, Waldron and other intelligence veterans have helped propagate some of the outlandish theories undercutting Americans’ faith in democracy. They pitched false accusations to lawmakers and the public about how the election had been compromised, pushed spurious lawsuits to challenge its outcome, and bankrolled efforts to conduct partisan audits of the results. They provided briefings to members of Congress on methods for overturning the election, and worked aside some of the leading actors in Trump’s “Stop the Steal” movement.
“I think we’re doing a huge service,” Waldron told Reuters in an interview.
In these efforts, Flynn, Waldron and their colleagues publicly touted their military-intelligence training, arguing that their expertise on the battlefield provided them special insight into alleged election fraud at home in America.
“When retired members of the military, especially senior officers, broadcast wild conspiracies, America’s trust in its military is somewhat eroded.”
Roger Herbert, recently retired ethics professor at the U.S. Naval Academy
The military men’s false assertions are dangerous, said Roger Herbert, a former Navy SEAL captain and recently retired ethics professor at the U.S. Naval Academy.
“When retired members of the military, especially senior officers, broadcast wild conspiracies, America’s trust in its military is somewhat eroded,” said Herbert. “But when those conspiracies contend that the current government of the United States is illegitimate, those primal fears of a standing army ready to turn its guns inward and topple our government are justifiably awakened. In short, these people are doing great harm to the legitimacy and efficacy of our military.”
Flynn did not respond to requests for comment for this article. A Trump spokeswoman did not respond to an interview request about the role military figures have played in his quest to overturn the election.
MISSION: Retired General Michael Flynn has led efforts to sow doubts about the 2020 election. REUTERS/Gary Cameron/File photo
One Army Reserve officer working with Flynn, Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Raiklin, is now facing an internal Army Reserve investigation over whether he violated Reserve rules against partisan political activity, a military official told Reuters. In an election forum last month in New Hampshire, Raiklin touted his military experience – Special Forces commander, deployments battling the Taliban and the MS-13 gang – to say he has the intelligence wherewithal to find fraud. “So I have a little bit of experience looking at threats, right?” he said.
Raiklin declined to be interviewed.
Waldron says he and the Flynn circle are not using military techniques on Americans. He maintains the actions they are undertaking for Trump don’t undercut American democracy because he’s convinced they are ferreting out voter fraud.
The veterans’ false claims shifted over time. They have pinned Trump’s loss on actions by the Chinese government and voting technology companies, alleged misconduct by U.S. state and local election officials and said hackers had used the internet to change votes after they were cast. They have blamed old-school ballot stuffing, perhaps involving dead voters or Venezuelan interests.
Though bogus, their claims and similar ones propagated by others have had major impact, inspiring Trump followers who participated in the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol and providing rhetorical fuel for continued efforts to discredit Joe Biden’s victory. Despite no evidence to support the claims, nearly 6 in 10 Republicans believe the election was stolen, a Reuters/Ipsos poll in October found.
The military-intelligence officers’ battle is part of a larger Republican movement that has led disgruntled Trump voters to endorse threats of violence as a means to regaining power. As Reuters has documented, Trump supporters are waging a campaign of intimidation against election workers around the country. In a review of more than 800 emails, calls and online posts made by backers of the ex-president, Reuters found that some of the military veterans’ theories have been referenced in hostile messages to local election officials and featured in public campaigns attacking the vote’s integrity.
A false claim pushed by Flynn and his cohorts that voting machines were hacked to steal votes from Trump is a common theme in many angry messages. The machines “are rigged to elect only those who care nothing for the people,” said an email accusing election officials in Yavapai County, Arizona, of complicity. Invoking General Flynn by name, the writer added, “every lie will be revealed, every traitor will be punished.”
Efforts by Flynn to help Trump overturn Biden’s victory have been the subject of extensive reporting by a number of U.S. media outlets. The Reuters examination of Flynn and his colleagues provides new details about the origins of the former intelligence officials’ collaboration and the extent to which they worked together in a bid to undo the 2020 election.
The reporting, based on interviews with participants, military ethicists and others, plus an examination of Reuters’ database of threats against election officials, reveals how Flynn drafted Waldron and others to actively contest the 2020 vote. Flynn and his small circle were distinctive because their military credentials provided a patina of respectability to even the most far-fetched claims.
Among the military veterans to play a role in “Stop the Steal” were:
Flynn, Trump’s first National Security Advisor in 2017, who was involved in pushing the most dramatic of conspiracy claims. He urged the president to deploy the military to overturn the election in December 2020, then went on a public speaking campaign sowing doubts about the vote and urging states to conduct their own reviews.
Waldron, who insists Trump won. He gained attention last week when the House of Representatives committee investigating the January 6 riot revealed it was in possession of a PowerPoint presentation he’d shown to U.S. lawmakers outlining methods for overturning the election. Earlier, he lobbied state officials and spoke on rightwing media about his stolen-election theories. Waldron said Flynn drafted him to go public, saying, “No one else can do it. It needs to be done, so go ahead and do it!”
Raiklin, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve who has known Flynn since 2014, when he said they both worked on military intelligence matters. Raiklin is an attorney and a leading promoter of the “Pence card” theory – in which Vice President Mike Pence purportedly could have blocked the January 6 certification by Congress of Biden’s victory.
Seth Keshel, a former Army captain who worked in intelligence and who claimed to have developed statistical models that prove the 2020 election results were fraudulent. After the election, Keshel told Reuters he contacted Flynn on LinkedIn and they began collaborating. Keshel in August released an analysis which he claimed showed Trump won seven states that went to Biden. Trump embraced the claim, saying the report came from a “highly respected Army intelligence captain.”
Keshel told Reuters he stands by that assessment but never called for violence. “Personally, I believe the election was compromised,” he said, adding, “I can’t control anybody else.”
Though they haven’t worked together on every particular, the four have intersected in their efforts, with Flynn the common denominator. Raiklin has said he worked with Flynn. Keshel said he reached out to the general to share his concerns, and the two worked together in the weeks after the election. Waldron said Flynn pushed him to go public with his research.
‘CORRUPTION CURTAIN:’ Seth Keshel, a former U.S. Army captain who has spread unfounded conspiracy claims about the election, speaks at a recent pro-Trump New Hampshire event. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Keshel’s work helped fuel calls by Trump followers in many states for audits of the election results. His analysis, which provided no documented evidence of fraud, was discredited by political scientists, statistical experts and Republican and Democratic election officials. In a post on Telegram, Keshel himself described his study as “lenient.”
His work nonetheless spurred a torrent of emails to election officials in areas where his analysis suggested fraud. In Pasco County, Florida, a Republican county Trump won, officials were deluged with emails demanding an audit after Keshel’s report. Keshel’s analysis “is literally devoid of statistical validity,” said Brian Corley, the Republican county supervisor of elections. “People just took it as fact.”
The Department of Defense did not respond to a request for comment on the Flynn circle’s activities.
Pauline Shanks Kaurin, a professor of military ethics at the U.S. Naval War College, said a key issue is whether Flynn’s associates are publicly citing their military training to lend legitimacy to a partisan political cause.
“If you’re talking to an audience that cares what General Flynn thinks, and you tell the audience, ‘I did this in this military,’ then they’re more likely to be impressed,” said Shanks Kaurin. She said she was speaking in her personal capacity, not on behalf of her government employer.
Waldron disputes such criticism. “I took an oath to protect the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and I believe that our republic is under attack from foreign and domestic enemies,” he said. “They want to undermine the republic through the election process.”
Earlier this month, a Reuters reporter met with Waldron at One Shot Distillery and Brewing, which he runs on Texas Hill Country’s “Whiskey Trail.” Silver-labeled bottles of rum, vodka and whiskey were on display as Waldron descended the stairs wearing a gray One Shot Distillery t-shirt, with a Glock-19 in a holster fastened to his belt.
BELIEVER: Phil Waldron is among military veterans aggressively pushing election fraud claims. Aram Roston/REUTERS
Waldron, with an affable bearing and a beard dappled with gray, retired as an Army Reserve colonel in 2016. He said he’s fighting powerful forces in a quest for the truth.
“You talk about PSYOPS,” he said. “The election (voting machine) companies and the media have done the biggest PSYOP on the American people.”
In a series of interviews this year, Waldron vowed he was on the cusp of breakthrough proof the election was stolen. “We are decrypting the satellite packets right now,” he said in January. In October, he cited a “37 terabyte” tranche of data he believed could unmask fraud.
A new mission
Four days after the election, as ballot counts continued in a handful of swing states, the U.S. media projected Biden had won, establishing an insurmountable lead.
Trump refused to concede. That day, November 7, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, then Trump’s lawyer, held a press conference in Philadelphia in which he claimed the result had been swayed by suspect mail-in ballots and votes cast in the names of dead people.
BATTLEGROUND: Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who represented Trump in court, worked closely with military figures in seeking to dispute the election. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
The next day, Waldron said he was on the phone with Representative Louie Gohmert, a Republican from Texas. Waldron, who ran a cyber security company after leaving the military, said he had been researching vote hacking since August; Biden’s victory accelerated his efforts. Waldron said he told Gohmert he had tracked internet traffic routed through a server in Frankfurt, Germany. Votes could be rerouted, too, he told Gohmert. Election officials say this assertion is false, and no evidence for it exists.
Gohmert immediately called Trump, Waldron said. A spokesman for Gohmert declined to comment.
Two days later, Waldron said, he was on a plane to Washington. “It started getting sporty about then,” he said, with his theories gaining traction.
First he met with Sidney Powell, the lawyer for his old commander, Flynn. Waldron said he met Powell in a hotel conference room that functioned as her headquarters, briefing her in the early morning hours. A lawyer who worked with Powell, Howard Kleinhendler, confirms Waldron was part of the group. Powell declined to comment.
Then Waldron huddled with Giuliani. “We were supposed to have a 10 minute briefing but it went 45 minutes,” Waldron said. When Giuliani said he wanted to discuss voter fraud, Waldron said he pressed upon the former mayor that the fraud was on a larger, and global, scale. “We kept going over it and going over it. He finally came aboard,” he said.
Giuliani did not respond to interview requests. He confirmed in a legal deposition that Waldron shared fraud allegations with him.
“Colonel in the military, great war record,” Giuliani testified. “I’ve had substantial dealings with him and he’s very, very thorough and very experienced in this kind of work.”
By the second week of November, Waldron said he began working closely with Flynn.
After a stellar military career, Flynn was appointed chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency by President Barack Obama, but was fired in 2014, in part because the two clashed over the general’s hardline views on countering Islamic extremism. Flynn became a key 2016 Trump campaign advisor and was installed by the new president as national security advisor. He resigned weeks later after it was disclosed that he had held secret talks with Russia’s ambassador about U.S. sanctions before Trump took office. Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about those talks. Trump would eventually pardon him.
In the days after Biden won the 2020 election, Flynn had set up camp at the sprawling South Carolina estate of lawyer L. Lin Wood, another supporter of Trump’s effort to overturn the election.
Wood told Reuters that Flynn and Powell arrived shortly after the election. So did Keshel, then working as a technology salesman. Flynn and Keshel stayed through Thanksgiving, where Flynn carved the turkey.
The group, operating from a sitting room on Wood’s estate, created something of a clearinghouse for election fraud claims. “They all appeared to be working together,” Wood said.
LOSSES: Sidney Powell filed lawsuits that collapsed in multiple states for lack of evidence; key military figures helped her develop the cases. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage
THANKSGIVING: Mike Flynn last year at lawyer L. Lin Wood’s home. REUTERS/Courtesy L. Lin Wood
In an interview, Keshel said he spent his time “scanning the numbers and helping write affidavits” for lawsuits Powell was preparing. “There wasn’t a lot of sleep going on there,” Keshel said.
Powell’s lawsuits helped fuel some of the hostility encountered by local officials. Georgia’s Republican governor and secretary of state debunked Powell’s allegations of election fraud, citing audits and recounts affirming the state’s tallies. In response, one angry emailer accused them of resisting further investigation “because of the Sidney Powell lawsuits and vengeance and no other reason. … We know China interfered with this election by remote and shipped mail in ballots.”
A clandestine operative goes public
Three weeks after the election, Giuliani and his associates pushed a new strategy: attempting to persuade conservative state legislatures to simply disregard the election results and declare Trump the winner of their states’ Electoral College votes. The Constitution, Trump’s team argued, granted this power.
With Pennsylvania a focus, Flynn dispatched Waldron to a state Senate hearing held by Republican lawmakers there.
For decades, Waldron had operated behind the scenes. So, he told Reuters, in November 2020 he initially resisted going public with his findings. But he said Flynn and Giuliani pressed him to testify about stolen votes. “Rudy’s team had asked me three times.”
On November 25, wearing a blue jacket, blue shirt, striped tie and blue COVID mask, Waldron appeared in person at the Pennsylvania Senate hearing to air his fraud claims. He cited his military credentials. “I’m a retired Army colonel, 30 years,” he said. Then he claimed all the voting machine technology in the United States could be hacked.
“I took an oath to protect the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and I believe that our republic is under attack.”
Phil Waldron, 30-year military veteran
“Our experts and other academics,” Waldron continued, “believe that up to 1.2 million Pennsylvania votes could have been altered or fraudulent.” Only a “detailed forensic analysis of the actual machines and software will truly show how many Pennsylvania citizens have had their civil rights violated.”
At the end of the hearing, President Trump joined in on the speaker phone. “I’ve been watching the hearing on OAN,” the far-right television news channel, Trump said. “I’m in the Oval Office right now, and it’s very interesting to see what’s going on.”
Waldron said he visited the White House later that day with Giuliani and others. “That was great!” he said Trump told them.
The White House focus turned to pushing Republican-led legislatures in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia to replace Biden electors with those for Trump. “That whole strategy started from that Pennsylvania hearing,” Waldron said.
That same day, Trump pardoned Flynn in the Russia inquiry case.
In the end, no state legislatures swapped out their electors. Now Flynn helped pitch a new plan to Trump.
Election by military might
MILITARY INTEL: Click to hear audio of Army Reserve Lt. Col. Ivan Raiklin introducing himself by citing his military intelligence and legal background to a crowd gathered in Manchester, New Hampshire, last month to hear his claims that the 2020 election result should be reversed.
On December 17, Flynn told the rightwing cable network Newsmax that the president could use the armed forces to conduct a do-over election in several swing states he lost. Trump, he said, “could take military capabilities and place them in those states and basically re-run an election in those states.”
A day later, Flynn, Powell and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne met with Trump at the White House. They urged the president to deploy the U.S. government to make digital copies of the hard drives in some voting equipment to investigate the machines and conduct recounts in at least six counties, Byrne told Reuters. Trump was receptive to the idea, said Kleinhendler, the lawyer working with Powell, but the government never took those steps. It is unclear why.
At the same time, Army reserve officer Raiklin, a Flynn ally and former Green Beret, was pushing election fraud theories on social media and on rightwing websites. Raiklin describes himself as a constitutional lawyer, but he doesn’t appear to practice that area of law. A Reuters review found he has not argued such a case or written scholarly articles on the topic.
SCREEN TIME: Ivan Raiklin, at right, sharing his vote fraud conspiracies last month.
On a December 7 podcast and in tweets, Raiklin laid out a plan to reverse the vote, alleging conspiracies involving Pence, intelligence agencies, big tech, China and the postal service. He urged Trump to “activate the emergency broadcast system” and used the hashtag #FightLikeAFlynn. “We the people are going to force this plan on them,” he said.
Raiklin’s efforts drew attention on Twitter. On December 22, Raiklin tweeted a copy of a two-page open memo to Trump, detailing “Operation Pence Card.” The pitch: Pence, acting as “the Representative of the Federal Seat of Government,” would reject votes from states where Trump alleged fraud, flipping the election. The memo was retweeted 23,700 times.
“We the people are going to force this plan on them.”
Army reserve officer Ivan Raiklin
Raiklin’s conduct is now under government scrutiny. The Army Reserve’s chief spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Simon Flake, said Raiklin’s superiors are “aware of the situation and investigating,” but that privacy rules restrict him from providing details.
Flake added: “The U.S. Army Reserve follows the Department of Defense’s long standing policy in regards to forbidding service member involvement in partisan political campaigns to avoid the perception of DOD sponsorship, approval, or endorsement of any partisan political candidate, campaign, or cause.” Raiklin did not answer questions from Reuters about the inquiry.
On New Year’s Day, Keshel gave an interview carried on YouTube in which he said the election’s results were “definitely irregular” because they disrupted what he said were historical trends in U.S. elections. “I served one tour in Afghanistan … with a primary focus on understanding enemy activity,” he said. Now, he said, his focus is on unearthing the election’s “data irregularities.”
PODCASTS, TWEETS, FORUMS: Ivan Raiklin lays out his case in New Hampshire. Raiklin, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, has worked with former General Michael Flynn to challenge the 2020 election. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Conspiracy PowerPoint
In early January, Waldron said he flew to Washington bearing a 36-page PowerPoint presentation he said he helped prepare. Its goal was to convince Congress and the White House the election was stolen and Pence should stop the certification of Biden’s win. This month, the House committee investigating the Capitol riot said Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, produced a copy of that PowerPoint in response to a subpoena.
Waldron’s presentation was called “Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN.” He said he briefed legislators on Capitol Hill on January 5, explaining a document whose recommendations included, “Declare National Security Emergency” and “Declare electronic voting in all states invalid.”
Waldron’s pitch mirrored arguments being made by Trump, who at the time was publicly urging Pence to refuse to certify Democratic electoral votes from a handful of swing states and either declare Trump the winner or not declare a winner at all. Waldron proposed going further, such as deploying U.S. marshals and the military to seize ballots nationwide. “A Trusted Lead Counter will be appointed with authority from the POTUS” to recount all the votes, the PowerPoint said.
HOW TO UNRAVEL AN ELECTION: Pages from a PowerPoint Phil Waldron presented in D.C. this year. The House committee investigating the January 6 riot has obtained a copy. REUTERS/Courtesy Phil Waldron
“US Marshals will immediately secure all ballots and provide a protective perimeter around the locations in all 50 states,” the PowerPoint said. “The federalized National Guard in each state will be supplied detailed processes and be responsible for counting each legitimate paper ballot.”
On January 5, Flynn told a pro-Trump crowd at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., “We will not stand for a lie!” The House committee investigating the January 6 riot has subpoenaed Flynn to testify about his efforts to overturn the election.
A week after the attack, Waldron told Reuters he blamed Pence for the chaos. Pence’s offense, he said, was to refuse to go along with the plans to block Biden’s certification. That was the riot’s primary cause, he said. “You could logically argue that he had more to do with inciting the riot than anyone else on that stage,” he said.
The Secret Service had to evacuate the vice president from the Capitol complex during the riot. Videos show some of the rioters who stormed the Capitol chanting, “hang Mike Pence.”
A spokesman for Pence declined to comment.
Congress’ votes in the early morning hours of January 7 to ratify Biden’s victory brought an end to nearly all of the Trump camp’s efforts in the courts to keep him in power.
“After that, it was pencils down,” said Powell colleague Kleinhendler. “There was just nothing else to do.”
The Flynn circle wasn’t ready to let go.
Arizona audit
Everett Stern, a Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Pennsylvania who runs a private intelligence firm, said he was approached in April by two Republican political operatives who urged him to gather information on elected officials to help prompt a state audit of the 2020 vote. They also helped connect him with Raiklin, said Stern, who said the operatives told him they were acting at Flynn’s direction. Stern said he declined to take part because he viewed the approach as an “extortion” attempt and alerted the FBI, which said it had no comment.
In Arizona, Republicans in the state Senate pushed for a “forensic audit” of the vote in the state’s largest county.
Arizona’s Senate president, Karen Fann, turned to Florida cybersecurity contractor Doug Logan to do the job. Logan’s firm, Cyber Ninjas, had no experience running audits or elections, though Logan said he had done previous work reviewing 2020 election disputes. Logan told Reuters he wasn’t sure how his company was picked for the task; he said he didn’t submit a proposal until Fann contacted him.
Logan did have connections, though. He confirmed to Reuters he was among those who huddled with Flynn at Wood’s estate after the election. And he received an endorsement from Waldron, who called him “very reputable” in a text message to Sen. Fann before she selected him to run the audit, records released in a public records lawsuit show.
“If you’re talking to an audience that cares what General Flynn thinks, and you tell the audience, ‘I did this in this military,’ then they’re more likely to be impressed.”
Pauline Shanks Kaurin, a professor of military ethics at the U.S. Naval War College
“We did things the right way,” Logan said. Through a spokesman, Fann declined to comment.
The Arizona Senate audit cost $5.7 million. It was largely financed by Flynn’s team.
Nearly $1 million came from a nonprofit called America’s Future, which until then had been largely dormant, Internal Revenue Service filings show. Flynn now chairs its board. His brother Joe Flynn was a director. And his sister, Mary O’Neill, was executive director.
Joe Flynn declined to comment. O’Neill did not respond to a request for comment.
Michael and Joe Flynn also briefly served as directors of Powell’s nonprofit Defending The Republic, which kicked in $550,000 for the Arizona audit.
Another $3.5 million came from The America Project, whose website features a video from Flynn declaring, “Our great nation was under a new type of attack.” Joe Flynn is one of the nonprofit’s three board members, and Flynn its senior strategic advisor.
The America Project’s chief executive, former Overstock CEO Byrne, told Reuters Flynn “asked me to come down and set this up.” Flynn “is a driving force” to continue fighting the results of the 2020 election, said the group’s operations officer, Carl Johnson. The America Project told Florida regulators it expected to raise $50 million this year, records show. Byrne said the group raised closer to $10 million, mostly from him.
The resulting Arizona audit featured reviewers with little training who scrutinized ballots using procedures that were widely criticized by election experts; Logan defended the auditing work. The review confirmed Biden won.
This November 19, retired captain Keshel and current reserve lieutenant colonel Raiklin were featured speakers at an “election integrity” rally in Manchester, New Hampshire. Citing polls saying a growing number of rightwing Americans believe the election was rigged, Raiklin and Keshel told a crowd of about 75 that their movement is succeeding.
Noting his legal and military intelligence background, Raiklin laid out what he called a “deep state” conspiracy theory of a stolen election. “I connected these dots,” Raiklin told the crowd.
Keshel, now a paid consultant for The America Project, said Trump supporters faced a “two-front war” – auditing the 2020 election and preparing for 2024.
“It sounds a little crazy,” Keshel said. “But I do believe wholeheartedly … that the future will reflect the truth of the 2020 election, that Joe Biden was illegitimately elected.”
Both men received standing ovations.
FIGHTING WORDS: Supporters of President Donald Trump have used virulent language in spreading false fraud claims. Here, a Trump backer at an “Election Security Seminar.” REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Additional reporting by Chris Kahn and Brian Snyder
The Election Foxhole
By Aram Roston, Brad Heath, John Shiffman and Peter Eisler
Photography: Brian Snyder
Photo editing: Corinne Perkins
Art direction: John Emerson
Edited by Ronnie Greene
- Follow Reuters Investigates
13. Pacific Deterrence Initiative: A look at funding in the new defense bill, and what must happen now
Excerpts:
As lawmakers expressed in the NDAA conference report, this year’s PDI identified investments “that more accurately reflect a baseline from which to measure progress against the objectives” of the initiative. Going forward, Congress’ explicit intent is to “identify increases to these baseline activities … to form the basis for PDI authorizations and evaluate year-over-year trends.”
In other words, fiscal 2022 is just the beginning. Congress expects PDI to grow in future years above the baseline established in the NDAA.
The fiscal 2023 budget request will be a major test of whether the Pentagon can get with the program and make the necessary changes to carry out the congressional intent behind PDI. For its part, Congress must remain vigilant and prepared to step into the breach once more.
Pacific Deterrence Initiative: A look at funding in the new defense bill, and what must happen now
The Pentagon’s first draft of the Pacific Deterrence Initiative has been dead on arrival since its submission to Congress in May. But with the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2022 headed to the president’s desk, Congress has rewritten the PDI and established a new baseline against which future Pentagon efforts to deter China will be measured.
Congress established the PDI last year for two basic reasons: to better understand what the Pentagon was spending in the Indo-Pacific region, and to change the composition of that spending.
Even the mind-numbing details of the Pentagon’s budget justification books provide minimal information about how its spending aligns to specific theaters, threats or missions. By pulling that information together in a consolidated budget display, PDI was meant to increase transparency, identify key Indo-Pacific investments, and enable Congress to track, assess and adjust those efforts over time.
Congress also expressed concern about a platform-centric approach to deterring China, one that overemphasized high-profile procurement as well as research and development programs while neglecting critical joint and enabling capabilities, especially distributed and resilient theater-based force posture and logistics. PDI was designed to be used — by Pentagon leaders as well as Congress — to change bureaucratic incentives and focus more resources on these fundamental capabilities.
But in its first attempt to craft PDI, the Pentagon floundered — doubling down on platform investments at the expense of joint and enabling capabilities. Funding for one destroyer, one fleet oiler and F-35 upgrades accounted for nearly three quarters of the initiative. Meanwhile, paltry sums were left for other key lines of effort, such as a pitiful $500,000 for “strengthening alliances and partnerships.” The request also puzzlingly omitted Indo-Pacific investments that would have better aligned to PDI’s objectives.
Congressional criticism was swift and bipartisan. Top Republicans on the House and Senate Armed Services committees said the Pentagon had “entirely missed the point” of the PDI. Sen. Jack Reed, D.-R.I., the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, expressed concern with a “heavily platform-centric approach” to the PDI. In congressional testimony, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin acknowledged “perceived misalignments” and pledged to work with Congress to better conform with its intent.
Congress jettisoned platform-centric investments and replaced them with other funds from the budget request more consistent with the PDI’s objectives. For example, posture-related elements jumped from less than 1% of the initiative in the Pentagon’s request to over 25% in the NDAA. Congress also added approximately $500 million to address unfunded requirements in the Indo-Pacific. It’s critical that an eventual appropriations bill matches that increase.
Congress’ rewritten version of the PDI represents a major improvement. It removed spending that does not belong in the PDI. It refocused funding on joint and enabling capabilities primarily west of the international dateline. Congress also effectively targeted new spending on high-priority needs such as the Guam Defense System, the Pacific Multi-Domain Training and Experimentation Capability, and “planning and design” activities that will be used to develop shovel-ready military construction projects to advance a distributed and resilient theater force posture.
But funding is not necessarily the most important aspect of this year’s PDI. After all, while the PDI top line is $2 billion higher than the request, just one quarter of that increase is due to new spending. Moreover, some elements of the PDI reflect present realities more than future opportunities. For example, PDI infrastructure improvements remain focused on large, centralized bases on which the U.S. is dangerously reliant. The PDI’s “modernize and strengthen presence” line of effort mainly captures the cost of steady state presence.
However, as the saying goes, you can’t really know where you are going until you know where you have been. This is the critical contribution of PDI for fiscal 2022.
As lawmakers expressed in the NDAA conference report, this year’s PDI identified investments “that more accurately reflect a baseline from which to measure progress against the objectives” of the initiative. Going forward, Congress’ explicit intent is to “identify increases to these baseline activities … to form the basis for PDI authorizations and evaluate year-over-year trends.”
In other words, fiscal 2022 is just the beginning. Congress expects PDI to grow in future years above the baseline established in the NDAA.
The fiscal 2023 budget request will be a major test of whether the Pentagon can get with the program and make the necessary changes to carry out the congressional intent behind PDI. For its part, Congress must remain vigilant and prepared to step into the breach once more.
Dustin Walker is a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He was a professional staff member on the Senate Armed Services Committee from 2015 to 2020, during which he served as the lead adviser to Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., on the development of the Pacific Deterrence Initiative. The opinions reflected in this commentary are those of the author.
14. Kyiv keeping calm and carrying on even as Kremlin boosts pressure on Ukraine
Kyiv keeping calm and carrying on even as Kremlin boosts pressure on Ukraine
The Washington Post · by Isabelle Khurshudyan and David L. Stern Today at 4:00 a.m. EST · December 16, 2021
KYIV, Ukraine — To understand how many people in Ukraine’s capital are dealing with Russian threats, a visit to Kyrylo Kislyakov’s basement bar offers some good lessons.
The vibe is chill. The drinks are flowing. And the whole place is designed to turn into a bunker if war suddenly sweeps into Kyiv.
U.S. and Ukrainian officials for the past month have raised alarm over Russia massing significant forces — and perhaps preparing for a fresh offensive — along its border with Ukraine. Russia dismisses the worries as Western fearmongering, but has strongly warned that it would never accept a major region realignment such as Ukraine becoming a NATO member.
Meanwhile, the mood in Kyiv, a city of about 3 million people that is roughly 500 miles away from the Russian buildup, is mostly a shrug. There’s a life-goes-on normalcy after years of Russian pressure on Ukraine, including its backing of pro-Moscow separatists in a nearly eight-year conflict in eastern Ukraine and the 2014 annexation of Crimea.
But some in Kyiv worry that this time might really be different. They say they have an emergency suitcase packed if case they need to urgently flee the city. Others know the locations of bunkers and bomb shelters, which date back to Soviet times, but are still skeptical they will be needed.
And then there’s Kislyakov, who has been quietly preparing since Russia’s invasion of the Crimean Peninsula. He started designing his bar, Barman Dictat, as the conflict in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas was in its bloodiest period in 2014 and 2015. So it wasn’t a coincidence that he insisted on heavy metal doors and metal reinforcements along the walls.
His love of that aesthetic aside, Kislyakov wanted the bar to double as a sturdy bunker if a war with Russia ever reached Kyiv and he suddenly needed shelter. The ashtrays in Barman Dictat are made with bullet shells — sent to Kislyakov from Ukrainian soldiers on the eastern front.
“Even in a bar, you always have to have something that reminds you that the war has not gone anywhere,” he said.
Preparations for a possible Russian attack are always part of life in Kyiv.
Kyiv authorities say there are about 5,000 underground structures that the city administration has designated as places of refuge in an emergency — up from roughly 1,500 in 2014. These include metro stations, parking garages and an archipelago of cellars, tucked away in the capital’s courtyards and back streets.
However, not all of these would be able to provide a place of safety from an aerial assault.
Roman Tkachuk, head of Kyiv’s department of municipal security, said roughly 19 percent of the locations are unusable, often because of neglect. Authorities are currently reviewing each site and making necessary improvements.
Other locations are now occupied by businesses. Kyiv bunkers listed on Google Maps included a dance studio, an improv theater and an assortment of cafes and salons. Those establishments aren’t required to provide shelter, even if the location used to be one.
But some businesses are already willing.
At the Black Pig — a cellar restaurant in Kyiv’s historical center — the restaurant’s designation as a potential shelter first caused confusion. After staff members spoke among themselves, the restaurant’s accountant informed others that this was indeed the case.
“We’re ready,” said Neli Kalyuzhna, the Black Pig’s director.
Some civilians have volunteered to take up arms. In 2014, shortly after the beginning of the conflict in eastern Ukraine, officials created territorial defense forces throughout the country, which would provide an additional line of defense in case of a full-scale onslaught.
Now, each district in Kyiv will have its own battalion, with “no fewer than 5,000” fighters in the city, said Andriy Kryshchenko, deputy head of Kyiv’s city administration. Under a law passed over the summer, these forces will be under contract with the Ukrainian military.
“The most important thing is getting them training,” Kryshchenko said.
Where these reservists will obtain their weapons is another question. Up until now, many of the territorial defense forces have provided their own guns and equipment, sometimes at considerable personal cost. Officials promise that, as contractual members of the country’s armed forces, the reservists should eventually receive all their equipment from official military stocks.
Kislyakov, the gray-bearded bar owner, said his circle of friends have been stocking up on guns and ammo since 2014. He has three rifles of his own, though he doesn’t consider himself a militaristic person.
“I think any attempt to enter the city will be quite bloody,” Kislyakov said.
“What’s the use in worrying?” he added. “This aggression from Russia happens repeatedly. And every time we have to worry? I just have these simple anti-anxiety drugs: I go to the store and buy three new boxes of bullets. And I feel that I’ve prepared myself.”
On a Friday night at another popular Kyiv bar, Kosatka, three 30-something friends debated the prospect of war — how Ukraine’s forces might stack up against Russia and what the reasoning would be for the Kremlin to launch an attack.
Anna Bogdanova, 36, said she has often wondered if she should move her mother, who lives in Kherson, a city in southern Ukraine near the Crimean Peninsula, to Kyiv.
“I never know when Russia is going to take Kherson as well,” she said.
Her friend, 34-year-old Tata Verbetska, said she recently took a large sum of cash out of the bank — just in case she needs to move quickly.
“You’re the most thoughtful of all of us,” Lidiya Babyak said in response.
But even Verbetska doubted that fresh conflict could be coming.
“I think Russia is doing this to try to prove its strength to the whole world, not just to Ukraine,” she said. “But maybe because we live here, we’ve just gotten used to this.”
Serhiy Morgunov contributed to this report.
Read more:
The Washington Post · by Isabelle Khurshudyan and David L. Stern Today at 4:00 a.m. EST · December 16, 2021
15. Why US Special Forces Commandos and AC-130 Gunships Are Training for War
My flippant response: What do we expect them to train for?
Why US Special Forces Commandos and AC-130 Gunships Are Training for War
During Bold Quest 21-2, American and partner and allied special operations troops got to improve their interoperability, targeting, and airstrike procedures while working with some of the most lethal airframes in the world.
Commandos and AC-130 Gunships
Bold Quest brought together Joint Terminal Attack Controllers (JTACs) and aircraft and allowed them to work on close air support concepts and procedures. During the past 20 years, close air support became very common, and the importance of JTACs grew significantly to the point of being almost mandatory in every tactical conventional and special operations unit.
AC-130J Ghostrider gunships from the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command’s (AFSOC) 73rd Special Operations Squadron provided much of the air muscle for the participating JTACs to train with.
Through several live-fire scenarios, JTACs and AC-130 gunships, and other close air support platforms worked together to find new and more efficient ways to communicate when calling airstrikes.
“My job is to be a point of contact for the units and countries that are here. I’m here to meet face-to-face and shake hands, to build relationships and have dialogue between someone that knows the weapon system and the people who are going to be using it. I handle a lot of scheduling conflicts, and I have to be the one to put my hand up and let everyone know what the aircraft capabilities are and what it can’t do,” Air Force 1st Lieutenant Will Bachmann, a pilot assigned to the 73rd Special Operations Squadron, said in a press release.
As a recurring exercise, Bold Quest brings together allied and partner nations every few months. As a result, ideas and tactics, techniques, and procedures circulate, making the participants better in their craft and more effective on the battlefield. In addition, joint training events are the best way to build interoperability short of war.
Moreover, as an international training event, Bold Quest 21 had special operations participants from other countries. For example, Norway’s elite counterterrorism special operations units, the Forsvarets Spesialkommando (FSK), sent operators to the U.S. to participate in the exercise.
“We are here to demonstrate our capabilities to utilize digitally aided close air support. The DACAS system allows us to generate good data on the target and send them in quick bursts rather than having a lot of voice communication with the aircraft. NORSOF [Norwegian Special Operations Forces] and the gunship community have a long and good relationship. We just want to show the coalition that Norway is looking ahead in support of the DACAS mission,” Jay, a Norwegian JTAC instructor, and evaluator from FSK, said.
DACAS: Better and Safer Close Air Support
In addition to the standard training events that usually take place during Bold Quest, the participants of this iteration got to focus a lot on the Digitally Aided Close Air Support (DACAS) concept, which aims to modernize close air support.
DACAS is focused on the quick and efficient exchange of information between the ground element and supporting aircraft, aiming for less time spent communicating on the radio, thereby decreasing the chance for miscommunication between the JTAC and the pilot that could have fatal consequences.
“If you imagine Call of Duty, where you have a mini-map that has blue and red dots, our DACAS systems allow us to see that in real-time. The JTACs can use the system to ping potential threats and we can do the same allowing us to share the data faster and make decisions on how to engage,” Bachmann added.
Stavros Atlamazoglou is a defense journalist and military expert specializing in special operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins University graduate.
16. Trollfare: How to Recognize and Fight Off Online Psyops
PSYOP (not Psyops, yes I am a doctrinal purist on some issues).
Seriously, a short essay with some substantive recommendations.
Conclusion:
Local and regional experts should be enlisted to help scan for psyops. With a greater understanding of the history, culture, and politics in the area, they may be able to anticipate and detect an increase in disinformation production.
Once the West understands that a psyop campaign is underway, it must push back domestically and abroad. Part of this is public diplomacy campaigns to encourage and promote reputable Western-based news sources in Eastern European region, such as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, BBC, or Deutsche Welle. Another part of it is working with digital media companies and researchers to shut down psyop campaigns and the users and accounts that spread them in real time. Still another part is studying these campaigns in depth—and using the understanding to develop resilience strategies, build more advanced detection classifiers, and assess the causal effects of psyops.
Trollfare: How to Recognize and Fight Off Online Psyops
It starts by understanding common tactics: distort, distract, dismiss, deny, and dismay.
EU President Ursula von der Leyen and others have correctly diagnosed Belarus’ use of migrants as part of a “hybrid attack” against Europe’s democracies. But most have missed a key component of this and other such attacks: the psychological operations deployed online. The West must get better at detecting and countering them.
This starts by understanding common tactics, including the 5D toolkit: distort, distract, dismiss, deny, and dismay. We have seen these tactics at work during the post-Euromaidan conflict in Donbass, when Russia used fake-news sites to distort public knowledge, used stand-alone casualty figures to distract from events, dismissed concerns about its military presence in the region, and denied involvement in the MH17 Boeing crash.
We have also seen the 5D kit at work in the recent escalation on the EU-Belarusian border. The migrant flows are distracting the world from Russia’s growing military presence in Belarus and on the Ukrainian border. Putin denies helping to bring illegal immigrants to Belarus, lying in the faces of European journalists’ reportage. Russian media distorts the facts, claiming that it is the United States preparing to launch a campaign in Donbass. They even enlist Western media in creating dismay by saying that conflict in the region could escalate into nuclear war. (And these tactics are not just aimed at Western governments. The manufactured crisis has distracted ordinary Belarusians from COVID-19, Stalin-era repressions, and an upcoming constitutional referendum.) All this has escalated xenophobia in Belarus, fueled anti-Western sentiments in Russia, and exacerbated tensions between all countries in the region.
Russia uses the web and social media to amplift the effects of 5D tactics. News-impersonating sites blur the distinction between fact and fiction. Social-media bots and sockpuppets help Russia build armies of followers who spread divisive messages. It can be difficult to tell a psyop from the normal flow of online discourse. But there has been promising research on using network analyses or text classification to reveal the patterns left in social-media by the mass production and amplification of propaganda and disinformation: the coordinated posting of links, the use of @mentions to garner attention, or the strategic sharing and retweeting of messages.
The West should also track propaganda news machines. For example, U.S.-based social media platforms have worked to ban accounts run by Russia’s Internet Research Agency. But the organization continues to do its work through, for example, the news group Patriot, which includes several websites (e.g., riafan.ru, nevnov.ru) that encourage readers to share links. It is therefore necessary for the United States and its allies to track disinformation across social media platforms, including social media, blogs on hosts such as LiveJournal, messenger apps like Viber and Telegram, and fraudulent websites that masquerade as legitimate media outlets.
Local and regional experts should be enlisted to help scan for psyops. With a greater understanding of the history, culture, and politics in the area, they may be able to anticipate and detect an increase in disinformation production.
Once the West understands that a psyop campaign is underway, it must push back domestically and abroad. Part of this is public diplomacy campaigns to encourage and promote reputable Western-based news sources in Eastern European region, such as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, BBC, or Deutsche Welle. Another part of it is working with digital media companies and researchers to shut down psyop campaigns and the users and accounts that spread them in real time. Still another part is studying these campaigns in depth—and using the understanding to develop resilience strategies, build more advanced detection classifiers, and assess the causal effects of psyops.
17. In Absence Of Soft Warfare, National Security Policy Will Continue To Fail Against Global Threats – Analysis
"Soft warfare?" A new term for me. So I guess I should "get with the program."
Conclusion:
There is no reason Western powers led by the US can’t match – and even surpass – the efforts emanating from Tehran and elsewhere. The unwillingness to do so may stem in part from the perceived illegitimacy of said operations. It is past time democracies got with the programme. The moral high ground has proven shaky terrain, more quicksand than solid ground; we must combat those regimes and rogue states that seek to do us harm on their own terms, and better them.
In Absence Of Soft Warfare, National Security Policy Will Continue To Fail Against Global Threats – Analysis
As talk – and animosity – swirls over the recently announced AUSUK alliance and the associated nuclear submarine deal and force projection in the Pacific, one can fairly ask major Western leaders whether they might not be missing the woods for the trees. True, said deal may well redefine military partnerships for the next half century. Yet, as important as such developments are in reshaping the global security environment, it is past time that leaders of the so-called ‘great powers’ pay greater attention to less abstract – and, frankly, less likely – threats, and instead begin to address those that pose a more immediate threat to national security through other means.
In terms of the age-old measurement of bang for one’s buck, allied nations would be better advised to focus on what one might term ‘soft warfare’ – a far cheaper, and certainly more effective, form of combat against the powers and groups that seek to do us harm. Soft power capabilities – the grey zone between diplomacy and kinetic force – offer a realm of solutions that are grossly under-appreciated – and under-deployed – by governments. The toolkit of influence campaigns, civil resistance and non-violent conflict methods, digital governance, and even private military corporations offer the full range of solutions to the most dangerous national security threats of today: tyrannical regimes from Pyongyang to Tehran; disinformation campaigns against democracies by rogue states; and failed states from Lebanon to Afghanistan.
Such methods, in combination with, rather than in place of, traditional ‘hard power’ capabilities, would equip the US and allied nations with a far more relevant and modern toolkit. Gone, largely at least, are the days of territorial annexation and traditional warfare, particularly in Europe; the 21st century involves warfare through a multitude of other means. Ironically, nobody better captured the essence of this argument better than Iran’s former intelligence minister, Heidar Moslehi, when he said in 2011 that, “We do not have a physical war with the enemy, but we are engaged in heavy information warfare with the enemy”. While our nemeses have adopted technologically advanced and hybrid methods, we are largely stuck with mid-20th century methods. It is past time we got up to speed.
Take, for instance, the now defunct £27bn France-Australia submarine deal, torn up as a result of the new alliance. Australia will now get its submarines from Britain and the US, in the process becoming just the seventh nation to operate nuclear-powered submarines. Yet, operating such vessels is, at best, posturing; after all nations will likely never use them. Australia – and its allies – would be wise to instead focus on addressing more immediate threats through ‘soft warfare’, which would not only be more effective but also considerably cheaper.
Soft warfare does not, by any means, have to come at the expense of its ‘hard’ cousin, but instead would better position allied powers to address substantial challenges in the decades to come. If they cannot definitively defeat smaller threats, they will have neither the credibility nor the resolve to confront larger future threats. Not only that, it will also deter those who wish to do us harm: a stronger, united, and ultimately more savvy grouping of democracies is no doubt a more fearful prospect than the current loose group of allies. For years now, anti-liberalism has been ascendant – in Latin America, China, Russia, and even closer to home in a number of EU states. That is little wonder: liberal democracies have, to put it bluntly, become somewhat of a laughing stock, divided by the very values that should be uniting them. The global reputations of Britain and the US, especially, have taken severe – and at some points seemingly fatal – hits. The ability of democracies to respond has been hampered by an unwillingness to deploy strategic communication methods, even at home, never mind with a foreign audience in mind.
As we stand on the eve of a nuclear Iran, the ever-belligerent North Korea, humiliation in Afghanistan, and many other threats besides, the emergencies of today should be occupying our attention more than the potential great power conflict of the more distant future. Successfully combating such threats requires not just economic and military might, but cuter methods, too, including such measures as non-violent conflict methods and civil resistance, dis-/mis-information, and influence campaigns.
For instance, during the Cold War, Western powers frequently deployed airborne leaflet propaganda to bolster their side of the ideological debate. Similar methods persist today, as in 2015 when the US, as part of psychological operations, dropped leaflets over Raqqa in Syria to deter potential ISIS recruits. On the digital front, excellent examples of ‘soft warfare’ during the Cold War were the establishment of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, which broadcast to communist states, by arms of the U.S. government. The two stations, which merged in 1976, received CIA funding until 1972. As well as its broadcasts, RFE engaged in leaflet-dropping in Europe: in the early-mid 1950s, more than 350,000 balloons carried more than 300 million leaflets and other subversive material. It was only when East German citizens, who suffered at the hands of the Stasi, a particularly pernicious secret police force, were able to access information on what life was really like in ‘the West’ that they began to realise just how bad their lot was.
In societies that still have low levels of digital connectivity, such methods are a low cost, high-return on investment method to combat tyrannical regimes on a visceral, rather than military, level. These methods are cheap and don’t do much for the defense lobby, but they have proven effective time and again in empowering free peoples everywhere to overthrow tyrannical dictators. In combination with the unrivaled military and – especially – economic pressure at our deployment, such methods will prove supremely effective in combating urgent national security threats. They can undermine the very basis of said regimes, not just destroy assets and buildings. Dictators can, after all, rebuild their palaces and white elephants; rebuilding the foundations of their rule is a far more daunting task. Yet today, we are allowing the exact opposite to happen: hideous dictators, through a variety of means, are successfully undermining the historic success of the ‘Western’ model.
No doubt in part due to the practice they have in deceiving their own citizens, autocracies and rogue states have been especially successful in information operations, particularly on social media. A 2019 report by the Oxford Internet Institute underlined the extent of such measures. It found evidence of 24 authoritarian countries deploying computational propaganda as a tool of information control and seven countries attributed by Facebook and Twitter as having engaged in foreign influence operations. Unsurprisingly, that list of seven included such sworn enemies of the West as Venezuela, China, Iran, and Russia.
Russia and Iran, for instance, have engaged in disinformation and influence campaigns, the former with a focus on elections and the latter more so on ‘traditional’ propaganda dressing up its regional importance and denigrating its enemies. Even if the extent of the impact of such measures cannot, by design, be proved, the fact that questions are asked and doubt is sowed is a success for our nemeses in and of itself. To date, most recommendations on combating such campaigns have focused on defensive measures – including identifying and publicising information about foreign influence campaigns, including an urge by France’s President Macron to create a new agency to protect European democracies and elections from foreign interference. At present, we are doing the jobs of our enemies for them; and, if we were to implement such recommendations, would continue to do so.
Rather than staying on the back foot and allowing them to sow division as they intend, we should take the initiative to the enemy. Those enemies have employed an array of techniques, including cyberattacks, disinformation, and support for alternative political groups in Western democracies. Taking a leaf from their books, one finds the outline of a toolkit that Western powers should be willing to utilise in response to similar efforts by our enemies. Such a toolkit might be applied, in the case of Iran, for instance, to exploiting the frequent protest movements there and the ever-present disgust with the regime through covert on-the-ground and digital support.
There is no reason Western powers led by the US can’t match – and even surpass – the efforts emanating from Tehran and elsewhere. The unwillingness to do so may stem in part from the perceived illegitimacy of said operations. It is past time democracies got with the programme. The moral high ground has proven shaky terrain, more quicksand than solid ground; we must combat those regimes and rogue states that seek to do us harm on their own terms, and better them.
*Joel Zamel is the founder of Wikistrat, the world’s first crowdsourced intelligence platform helping governments and multinational corporations around the world navigate complex issues. Joel also advises governments on applying information operations to counter-extremism programs and the promotion of human rights. Joel is an active investor in crypto, and a believer in the power of decentralized technologies to liberate populations seeking freedom.
18. Putin and Xi cement partnership in face of Western pressure
Excerpts:
Putin has used Russia's partnership with China as a way of balancing U.S. influence while striking lucrative deals, especially on energy. He and Xi this year agreed to extend a 20-year friendship and cooperation treaty.
The Russian leader said bilateral trade was up 31% in the first 11 months of this year to $123 billion, and the two countries aimed to exceed $200 billion in the near future.
He said China was becoming an international centre for production of Russia's Sputnik and Sputnik Light vaccines against COVID-19, with contracts signed with six manufacturers to make more than 150 million doses.
Putin and Xi cement partnership in face of Western pressure
- Summary
- Xi accuses West of meddling in Chinese affairs
- Kremlin says Xi backs Putin push for security guarantees
- Putin, Xi expected to meet at Beijing Winter Olympics in Feb
- Trade between Russia and China rising sharply - Putin
MOSCOW, Dec 15 (Reuters) - Russia and China should stand firm in rejecting Western interference and defending each other's security interests, presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping agreed in a video call on Wednesday.
Their conversation, eight days after Putin spoke to U.S. President Joe Biden in a similar format, underscored how shared hostility to the West is bringing Moscow and Beijing closer together.
"At present, certain international forces under the guise of 'democracy' and 'human rights' are interfering in the internal affairs of China and Russia, and brutally trampling on international law and recognized norms of international relations," China's state-run Xinhua news agency quoted Xi as saying.
"China and Russia should increase their joint efforts to more effectively safeguard the security interests of both parties."
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters that Xi had offered support to Putin for his push to obtain binding security guarantees for Russia from the West, saying he understood Moscow's concerns.
He said the pair also expressed their "negative view" of the creation of new military alliances such as the AUKUS partnership between Australia, Britain and the United States and the Indo-Pacific "Quad" of Australia, India, Japan and the United States.
PRESSURE
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Russian President Vladimir Putin holds talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping via a video link at his residence outside Moscow, Russia December 15, 2021. Sputnik/Mikhail Metzel/Pool via REUTERS
The call highlighted the ways in which Russia and China are drawing on each other for mutual support at a time of high tension in their relations with the West. China is under pressure over human rights and Russia is accused of threatening behaviour towards Ukraine.
The Kremlin said Putin briefed Xi on his conversation with Biden, in which the U.S. president warned Russia against invading Ukraine - which Moscow denies it is planning - and Putin set out his demand for security pledges.
"A new model of cooperation has been formed between our countries, based, among other things, on such principles as non-interference in internal affairs and respect for each other's interests," Putin told Xi.
He said he looked forward to meeting Xi at the Winter Olympics in Beijing in February - an event that the White House last week said U.S. government officials would boycott because of China's human rights "atrocities" against Muslims in its western region of Xinjiang.
"I would like to note that we invariably support each other on issues of international sports cooperation, including rejection of any attempts to politicize sports and the Olympic movement," Putin said.
Putin has used Russia's partnership with China as a way of balancing U.S. influence while striking lucrative deals, especially on energy. He and Xi this year agreed to extend a 20-year friendship and cooperation treaty.
The Russian leader said bilateral trade was up 31% in the first 11 months of this year to $123 billion, and the two countries aimed to exceed $200 billion in the near future.
He said China was becoming an international centre for production of Russia's Sputnik and Sputnik Light vaccines against COVID-19, with contracts signed with six manufacturers to make more than 150 million doses.
Additional reporting by Ryan Woo and Ella Cao in Beijing; Writing by Mark Trevelyan Editing by Gareth Jones
19. The New Era Of Great Power Competition And The Biden Administration: Emerging Patterns And Principles – Analysis
Excerpts:
Four Competitive Principles for the Biden Administration:
Firmness with Flexibility
Partnerships, Alliances, and Alternative Geometries.
Leaders vs. Peoples and the Poison of Mass Denigration
Play for Time.
The Way Forward
Knowing the historic imperatives of Great Power competition and four major principles informing what the United States should do to succeed in a new era of GPC is not the same as knowing how to move forward properly. The Biden administration faces a historic challenge of galvanizing American resolve to compete with other international Great Powers after decades of competitive atrophy.
In today’s new era of multipolar Great Power competition among the United States, China, and Russia, the Sino-American dyad is the rivalry of greatest significance. This contest features an ongoing power transition—always a dangerous dynamic of international politics in modern history. China is clearly growing in relative economic power, but the United States is a dominant state with clear comparative advantages—“high cards” in its hand—that it can build on to advantage.80 Alliance maintenance and cultivation is the most critical card. Firm and flexible confrontation when necessary and collaboration with China where possible is the second. Avoiding a regressive game of reciprocal societal invective is the third. And playing the long game—playing for time—is the fourth.
The December 2017 NSS properly recognized the Russian and Chinese challenges for what they were and formalized what had been a de facto new era of Great Power competition for several prior years. In its first months in office, the Biden administration has accepted the Trump geostrategic diagnosis but offered an altered suite of U.S. foreign policy and national initiatives to meet the challenges of GPC. There is goodness in this overdue bipartisan American recognition of a competitive geostrategic environment. Yet the way forward to successful competitive policies still could go wrong if America devolves into confrontational hysteria and overreaction against Beijing. Overreaction in Washington could lead to high cards played badly. China’s recent behavior is galvanizing opposition among countries that do not want to be vassal states.81 A rejuvenating United States, with reframed domestic priorities and renewed focus on well-established and well-treated allies and partners, will have a clear advantage in what is likely to be a drawn-out era of multipolar Great Power competition featuring a rivalrous dyad with China.
The New Era Of Great Power Competition And The Biden Administration: Emerging Patterns And Principles – Analysis
By Thomas F. Lynch III*
The administration of President Joseph Biden began in early 2021 amid daunting domestic challenges and an evolving era of Great Power competition (GPC). This era—emerging since 2008, evident since 2014, and on full display since 2017—features a three-state GPC where the United States, China, and Russia joust for international status and power, and where the trajectory of relative power from a long-dominant America to either rival remains incomplete and far from certain.1 Russia and China now compete openly with the United States and often one another. In the case of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, its contemporary power capabilities are mainly reimagined, repurposed military and reenabled propaganda implements from the days of the Soviet Union rather than anything new.2 In the case of China, truly historic economic growth is catalyzing new wealth and imagination, generating an array of power capabilities that enable broad competition with the United States and growing influence with other states.3
Several recent articles in Joint Force Quarterly have explored the war planning, operational, and tactical implications of GPC for elements of the U.S. military.4 Moreover, a Secretary of Defense National Security Essay award winner published in JFQ 99 (4th Quarter 2020) sketches four strategic objectives for the budding competition with China.5 These articles took the fact of GPC as a jumping-off point for analysis—a worthy approach. An alternative starting point considers the critical dynamics of contemporary Great Power competition framed against historical GPC patterns, principles, and implications.
This article proceeds from that starting point. It offers a collection of observations about the evolving new era of Great Power competition that extend and expand on the insights about past and contemporary GPC found in Strategic Assessment 2020: Into a New Era of Great Power Competition (NDU Press, 2020).6 These extended observations include an assessment of the Biden administration’s emerging approach to geostrategic competition among the three contemporary Great Powers, and particularly with China. The article frequently provides readers with note references from Strategic Assessment 2020 that provide richer detail about the analysis and conclusions found throughout that edited volume.
The article situates major contemporary GPC dynamics in the context of past periods of multilateral Great Power rivalry. It addresses the question of whether ongoing Great Power transition must result in direct military clash and analyzes the prospects for GPC to allow for patterns of collaboration and cooperation to develop.
The article then evaluates the trajectory of American strategic thinking about Great Power competition from the Trump into the Biden administrations. It concludes that the latter’s early 2021 plans retain the former’s national security strategy diagnosis that the geostrategic environment is now one of GPC, but with a different policy approach for American success therein. The final section summarizes and applies four historic GPC principles critical to Biden administration success in the competitive Great Power dyad with China:
- firmness with flexibility
- partnerships, alliances, and alternative geometries
- leaders vs. peoples and the poison of mass denigration
- playing for time.
The article concludes with a view that emerging Biden administration policy plans for Great Power competition generally align—and especially in its focus on the Sino-American competitive dyad—with the historical best practices for a multipolar GPC era, noting that the challenge now lies in the execution of the new administration’s strategic approach.
Essential Outlines
Contemporary GPC is unique, but not unprecedented. Multipolar Great Power competitions have occurred throughout modern history, and frequently during the past 500 years.7 Each of these past eras contributes important insights about the dynamics of contemporary GPC. At the same time, contemporary dynamics exert their own pull on the choices and risks faced by the modern Great Powers: the United States, China, and Russia.8 These factors include but are not limited to the impact of modern economic advancements, the importance of new technologies as means of competition, and the influence of warfighting risks on contemporary societies.9 Finally, modern Great Power competition already is changing the major patterns of geostrategic interaction.
Essential Elements. The presence of three contemporary Great Powers makes today’s international system a multipolar one. The United States stands atop the triumvirate, with China a rising competitor and Russia vying for top-level prestige while facing clear signs of decline. In the aggregate, the evolving strategic aims of China and Russia are incompatible with those established by American power in the post–World War II era; this has produced the return of a historically dominant pattern of Great Power competition. China is the Great Power best poised to displace America from its long-dominant power position.10 As Secretary of State Antony Blinken put it in his early March 2021 foreign policy speech:
The challenge posed by China is different. China is the only country with the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to seriously challenge the stable and open international system—all the rules, values, and relationships that make the world work the way we want it to, because it ultimately serves the interests and reflects the values of the American people.11
Although China does not have a roadmap for global dominance as some Western analysts have wrongly asserted, Beijing has a proactive perspective on what a new global order might look like, one loosely captured in its concept of a “community of common destiny.”12 While a net power comparison between the United States and China indicates that its power transition timeline is longer than some now fear, the Sino-American competitive dyad is likely to be the dominant Great Power rivalry into the future.13
Map. First and Second Island Chains Source: Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2012).
Russia is an urgent, but transient, security risk for the United States and China with the potential to do enormous military damage to the world if miscalculation leads to military clash.14 Putin’s Russia practices a reactive, disruptive strategy aimed to pacify its immediate borders (a loosely formed “Eurasia focus”) and to question contemporary international institutions and processes that it perceives as a threat to the power of President Putin and his kleptocrat-dominated illiberal democracy.15 Unlike its predecessor, the Soviet Union, with its positivist strategic aim of promulgating global communism, contemporary Russia is a Great Power competitor without a viable vision for a truly global world order or the necessary power to generate one.16 China and Russia may engage in tactical entente to erode American power, frustrate U.S. actions and preferred institutions, and question norms and rules they deem threatening. However, their long-term interests diverge too much for a durable partnership and Washington must not misunderstand their tactical cooperation against the United States on specific issues as some form of deeper, durable anti-American strategic alliance.17
Geostrategic Interactions. Russia and China present distinct competitive threats to the United States around the globe. In many regions, Russia often poses the more immediate challenge, whereas the repercussions from Chinese economic investments manifest themselves subtly and will likely undermine U.S. strategic interests more gradually.
The United States and China have primary interests in the Indo-Pacific region that conflict. The importance of those interests to both countries makes the region a central venue for Great Power competition. The U.S. Free and Open Indo-Pacific vision is not compatible with China’s aspirations for increasing control within its First Island Chain and wider Chinese regional aims sometimes espoused as a community of common destiny.18 Here, the Sino-American competition could turn toward confrontation or a military clash if careful diplomacy is not exercised.19
China has economic dominance in markets and investment across most of the Indo-Pacific region. It also has eroded the U.S. military advantage in potential locations of military confrontation near its shores and inside the First Island Chain.20 The United States retains an overall advantage in military technology and power projection across the wider Indo-Pacific, commercial financial dominance, and a resonant ideology and ability to communicate it, along with a regional political and military alliance structure unmatched by China.21
Russia has a primary interest in Europe, with special sensitivity to sovereignty at its near abroad, including the former Soviet Union provinces. American and European diplomacy will remain challenged to stanch Russian misadventures without generating overt confrontation or clash.22 While Europeans mistrust Russia generally, their perception of Russia as a security threat varies greatly. Europe alone cannot defend member states from Russia. Should the United States move to depart the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Europe may intensify accommodation with Russia, and even with China.23
Two nontraditional competitive venues, space and cyberspace, are those where all three Great Powers have primary strategic interests engaged and growing.24 There is high risk that intensifying competition in space could lead to greater confrontation there. Agreement on some viable rules and norms for collaborative use and cooperative actions in space could reduce the growing risks of confrontation and miscalculation leading to clash. Likewise, the absence of cooperative rules and norms in cyberspace has contributed to a darkening turn toward a confrontational dynamic.
Relevant History and Contemporary Dynamics. The contemporary era is a multipolar one characterized by heightened competition between more than two Great Powers. This makes it like most eras of GPC over the past 500 years, but distinct from the most recent period of Great Power competition: a bipolar Great Power rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union that played out over a 45-year Cold War. In past multipolar Great Power competitions, rivalrous dyads ebbed and flowed. These dyads normally involved a rising power and a dominant one, raising the strategic question about the inevitability of relative power decline by the dominant state and a power transition between them. Great Power transition challenges rising states with the dilemma of how to assert their relative power gains without provoking outright clash with the dominant state. Transition also confronts the dominant, but relatively declining, state with the vexing question of whether its rising challenger can be accommodated in a manner that avoids destructive military clash and an unacceptable change in the status quo. These transitions play out over decades and centuries, not years.25
Although three-quarters of Great Power transitions since 1500 have featured a destructive period of war between the contestants, this outcome is not foreordained.26 Great Power competitors joined in a relative power transition can culminate their interactions with accommodation or acquiescence short of war. But the deck is stacked against such a benign endstate. Peaceful Great Power transition outcomes require hard work and astute leadership. When one or both sides in a relative power transition dyad recognize a shift in the relative alignment of economic and military power moving decisively against it, it is much more inclined to risk a preemptive conflict than when it perceives a stable power status quo. For the most part, the United States and Soviet Union perceived a relatively stable power balance during the Cold War, and that intense bipolar era of Great Power competition ended peacefully. The evolving Sino-American competitive dyad features an obvious power transition with worries, jealousies, and recriminations between the two reminiscent of past Great Power transition rivalries that culminated in Great Power war.
Too often, Great Power leaders misperceive relative power, eschewing detailed, empirical assessments of power to inform decisionmaking and strategic planning. Even when accurate assessments of relative decline or vulnerability are made, domestic or bureaucratic interests may retard the agile adaptation necessary to mitigate risks of Great Power war.27 Thus, success in Great Power competition requires extraordinary political leadership in both international statecraft and generating domestic renewal and adaptation.
The Sino-American competitive dyad is likely to be a dominant Great Power rivalry well into the future.28 It is the modern competitive dyad most fraught with the dangerous dynamics of Great Power transition, although any misstep leading to accidental war with Russia would be enormously destructive and consequential, especially if Russia escalated to a nuclear weapons threat or use in order to end a conventional conflict. While some Western pundits stoke fears of an imminent and disastrous power shift in favor of China on the horizon, a net power comparison between the United States and China indicates that the power transition timeline is longer than some now fear.29 Properly understood, this elongated timeline affords China and the United States time to better appreciate the risks of unbridled rivalry and seek a path of modulated competition with elements of confrontation and collaboration underpinning the search for mutually acceptable strategic outcomes.
The Biden Administration
The Trump administration was the first in Washington to fully acknowledge the end of America’s “unipolar moment” after the Cold War and that the world had entered a new era of Great Power competition.30 Its December 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) jettisoned the legacy American foreign policy premise of engagement, enlargement, and cooperation with all states of the world—an approach that had dominated American thinking since the 1991 end of the Cold War and over a two-and-a-half decade period of unrivaled U.S. military and economic power.31 In many ways, the Trump national security team fully acknowledged what had been increasingly obvious in the period from 2008 to 2015: there was a de facto competition ongoing between the United States, China, and Russia whether Washington admitted it or not. The Trump administration’s 2017 NSS—followed by the Department of Defense National Defense Strategy of 2018—moved American strategic thinking about interstate relations and international systems into one of fully acknowledged Great Power competition.32
Taking the stage in January 2021, the Biden administration did not have to agree with its predecessor’s geostrategic diagnosis or approach. The Trump administration’s new national security framework had been accompanied by a lot of public criticism of previous American foreign policy and security thinking, especially the Barack Obama administration’s approach toward China while Joe Biden had been the Vice President with a large foreign policy profile.33 Some analysts thought it possible that the new administration might choose to steer away from both the Trump administration description of the international security environment and its policies for securing American interests in that environment.34 But key members of candidate Biden’s foreign policy team—including those who were prominent administration officials under President Obama such as Jake Sullivan and Kurt Campbell—signaled that the Biden administration largely agreed with the Trump administration’s diagnosis of the new international environment, although not with the manner in which the Trump team pursued policies for it. In late 2019, Sullivan and Campbell wrote of the Sino-American relationship in terms that mirrored the Trump administration’s diagnosis: “Historically, the [United States] has sought to cooperate first and compete second with China. Beijing, meanwhile, has become quite comfortable competing first and cooperating second . . . this must reverse.”35
At the same time, they also wrote that Sino-American competition could be firm and competitive but with less impetus toward conflict and confrontation with Beijing than during the Trump years: “Despite the many divides between the two countries, each will need to be prepared to live with the other as a major power . . . competition [cannot] force [China’s] capitulation or even collapse . . . instead competition must seek coexistence on terms favorable to U.S. interests and values.”36
In late 2020, the President-elect named Jake Sullivan as the new administration’s National Security Advisor and Kurt Campbell to become the National Security Council Senior Advisor for the Indo-Pacific region. Biden also named former Obama administration Deputy Secretary of State and longtime close Biden foreign policy advisor Antony Blinken as his nominee for Secretary of State. Together, these three men led the rapid promulgation of a Biden foreign policy approach and interim national security strategy. They rolled out both on March 3, 2021. In a speech titled “A Foreign Policy for the American People,” Secretary Blinken stipulated eight Biden administration priorities for American foreign policy and diplomacy in support of U.S. national security in a new era. Blinken began by acknowledging the change in strategic environment since the Obama administration, stating:
Yes, many of us serving in the Biden administration also proudly served President Obama—including President Biden. And we did a great deal of good work to restore America’s leadership in the world. . . . Our foreign policy fit the moment, as any good strategy should.
But this is a different time, so our strategy and approach are different. We’re not simply picking up where we left off, as if the past four years didn’t happen. We’re looking at the world with fresh eyes.37
The Secretary of State then highlighted three of the eight foreign policy priorities as vital for American success in the evolving era of Great Power competition: revitalize ties with American allies and partners, secure U.S. leadership in technology, and manage the challenging relationship with China.38 Blinken wove these three priorities together in a way that affirmed Biden administration agreement with the Trump 2017 NSS diagnosis of a world enmeshed in Great Power competition but with a different set of policy priorities for competition than those pursued during the Trump administration:
China is the only country with the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to seriously challenge the stable and open international system—all the rules, values, and relationships that make the world work the way we want it to, because it ultimately serves the interests and reflects the values of the American people.
That requires working with allies and partners, not denigrating them, because our combined weight is much harder for China to ignore. It requires engaging in diplomacy and in international organizations, because where we have pulled back, China has filled in. It requires standing up for our values when human rights are abused in Xinjiang or when democracy is trampled in Hong Kong, because if we don’t, China will act with even greater impunity. And it means investing in American workers, companies, and technologies, and insisting on a level playing field, because when we do, we can out-compete anyone.39
Later, on the afternoon of March 3, 2021, the Biden National Security Council released online its Interim National Security Strategic Guidance (INSSG), which reflected the eight priorities announced by Secretary Blinken that morning. It also affirmed a Biden administration strategic approach anchored in acceptance that changing relative power and interests among the United States, China, and Russia placed Washington in an era of Great Power competition with two strategic rivals:
We must also contend with the reality that the distribution of power across the world is changing, creating new threats. China, in particular, has rapidly become more assertive. It is the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system. Russia remains determined to enhance its global influence and play a disruptive role on the world stage. Both Beijing and Moscow have invested heavily in efforts meant to check U.S. strengths and prevent us from defending our interests and allies around the world.40
The INSSG went on to promise American strategic focus on collective action with fellow democratic states to assure a favorable international power distribution that defends U.S. strengths and safeguards American friends and partners, sustains the liberal and open international order while addressing its flaws, and secures American leadership in the ongoing technological revolutions.41
The cross-threaded themes found in “A Foreign Policy for the American People” and the INSSG established a U.S. view that the fundamentally changed nature of the international system—one of GPC—would remain for the coming 4 years. The Biden administration would not go back on the Trump diagnosis of a new era of Great Power competition. However, the Biden administration would end the Trump administration’s “America first” policies for GPC that had often resulted in “America alone,” instead pursuing a vigorous program of competition with China and Russia, working closely with allies and partners, and with specific attention to reinvigorating American competitiveness and the attractiveness of American partnership.
With continuity in geostrategic diagnosis but an altered framework for policy approaches, the Biden administration affirmed that the United States is engaged in an evolving geostrategic era of multipolar Great Power competition. The Biden administration also appears to understand the unique imperatives associated with the timelines and the multifaceted nature of Sino-American GPC. As stated by Secretary Blinken in March 2021, “Our relationship with China will be competitive when it should be, collaborative when it can be, and adversarial when it must be. The common denominator is the need to engage China from a position of strength.”42
The U.S.-China Competitive Dyad and the Important Role of Alliances and Partnerships
An America that competes smartly with China in an era of multipolar Great Power competition must understand both the value of time and where it can leverage its major advantages. The United States retains a commanding advantage in military power, although not to the degree it had 20 years ago.43 But its global military advantages can be offset if China (or Russia) is able to pick favorable physical and political ground for a short, decisive military conflict.44 The Biden administration must acknowledge this and compensate for it. America’s ideology resonates well globally and especially in the Indo-Pacific.45 Similarly, its ability to promulgate information and sustain support remains superior to China’s, despite Beijing’s serious efforts to articulate and reinforce a clear global message—a message often undercut by the fact that it features Chinese Communist Party (CCP) talking points inconsistent with Chinese actions at home and abroad.46 China is upping its efforts to use political and diplomatic tools to undercut U.S. alliances and partnerships internationally and especially in the Indo-Pacific region, but Washington retains strong ties and bonds established over decades that are not easily destroyed.47 At the same time, China has significant economic advantages over the United States, especially in the Indo-Pacific region. Beijing can mobilize direct trade and investment resources and provide countries with valued opportunities for growth that the United States cannot alone match.48
America’s relative advantages in ideas, information dissemination, political and military alliances, and conventional military power when applied away from regions of local Chinese advantage inform where the United States can build on strength. Yet American weaknesses in relative economic strength compared to China or the conventional military capabilities to defend allies and partners near China informs America about how it must proceed for competitive success. The United States will succeed in competition with China over time by working with friends and partners and avoiding the strategic error of posing stark, binary choices to would-be partners and friends.
Four Competitive Principles for the Biden Administration
A study of historic Great Power dyadic rivals offers several principles that can enable effective American competition with China while minimizing the prospect of Great Power transition collapsing into Great Power war.49 Four of these historical principles stand out: firmness with flexibility; partnerships, alliances, and alternative geometries; leaders vs. peoples and the poison of mass denigration; and playing for time.
Firmness with Flexibility. First, to be successful the dominant Great Power must demonstrate firmness with flexibility. It must clearly signal the strategic aims it will defend at all costs and then offer the prospect of dialogue on those it may be willing to negotiate. While firm on its nonnegotiable aims, it should be flexible in finding issues and venues where win-win outcomes are possible. For example, at the turn of the 19th century, the United Kingdom (UK) accepted American primacy in the western Atlantic as a better path to sustaining high seas primacy on vital routes for its Middle Eastern and Asian colonies—and preferable to naval confrontation in recognition of growing American power. At the same time, the rising United States came to accept the once-abhorrent British monarchy in recognition of growing political enfranchisement for a great number of UK citizens.50 Is there such trade room today for the United States and China to agree on rules for collaboration in space and cyberspace while at the same time negotiating over reduced CCP domestic economic and human rights constraints?
Flexibility must be paired with firm resolve. Strong security arrangements, backed by formidable U.S. military power, might harden feelings of antagonisms and suspicion, but they are indispensable to preserving the peace with China.51 If the CCP expects resistance from the United States and several midsized U.S. security partners, it is unlikely to instigate a fight for regional hegemony in the near term.52 There is a discernible degree of caution in China’s behavior that is wary of demonstrated strength and exploits perceived weakness.53 The Biden administration and its Indo-Pacific partners must stand firm in resistance to China’s illegal maritime claims by demonstrating the will to operate in international waters and airspace with Freedom of Navigation Operations and other joint activities. They also must stand firm with Japan on disputed islands. At the same time, the United States must demonstrate flexibility and adaptability in defense activities within the First Island Chain. It should proceed with a mobile and unpredictable basing posture for American forces. Washington also should work with Taiwan on development of weapons and tactics for self-defense that emphasize the advantages of smaller, smarter, and cheaper.54 This kind of flexibility is not the same as ceding de facto spheres of influence to China with the First Island Chain or elsewhere in the Pacific.55 Instead, it is an acknowledgment that basic premises about sticking with allies and partners can remain firm even as tactics and techniques adapt.
The United States also can firmly support democratic institutions, individual liberties, and human rights in its alliances and in its interactions with China while demonstrating flexibility in pursuing aspirations for Chinese political reform. After first defending allies and partners from encroachment of Chinese authoritarian tendencies, America can demonstrate flexibility and patience in modeling patterns of individual liberty, freedom of information, and political participation to the people of China. During the Cold War, U.S. efforts to strengthen noncommunist elements within the Soviet bloc often met frustration in the near term. Western radio transmissions were blocked and censored, humanitarian assistance was refused, greater transit and tourism opportunities were blunted, and people-to-people programs declined. But over the long term—and especially after the Helsinki Accords of 1975—these activities gave hope to those laboring for a freer future behind Moscow’s Iron Curtain. American support for democracy and liberty in regions around the world during the 1970s and 1980s made the global ideological climate steadily less friendly to the Soviet Union’s repressive regime.56 This kind of a Cold War competitive mindset is applicable for competition with China today and must be melded with modern, collective approaches that portray Chinese political and ideological representations as inappropriate. Now, as then, a large amount of America’s appeal is the power of an uncensored world.57
Partnerships, Alliances, and Alternative Geometries. History demonstrates that the dominant Great Power must look to build and maintain durable, reciprocal interstate alliances that provide would-be partners with alternatives to the either-or choices posed by a hard-charging rival.58 Great Britain was right to seek strategic partnerships and allies in its rivalry with Napoleonic France, parlaying these alliances into first containment of the threat and later its defeat. Napoleon took a less collaborative and ultimately failed approach of largely relying on territorial conquest and installation of family members in positions of political power to expand French national power and aspects of the French Revolution.59
Today, the United States has a far greater base for building economic and military partnerships than any Great Power in modern history. It also confronts a rising Great Power in China with little experience or inclination in this area. The United States has invested in critical global alliances and partnerships over the years for precisely this kind of moment.
The Biden administration has an enormous opportunity to reframe longstanding American alliances and to construct alternative economic, diplomatic, and political “geometries” with an array of partners to give them alternatives to Chinese enticements and blandishments. The principles laid out in the administration’s “A Foreign Policy for the American People” and the INSSG indicate that the Biden team understands this.60 But the administration has its work cut out. Many of America’s eager partners are today apprehensive about the recent unpredictability of U.S. foreign policy conduct. They want and value American partnership but have been in a state of deep worry for much of the past 5 years. They want a United States that views commitment to rules-based international order and institutions to be less like self-imposed shackles and more like a truly competitive advantage.61 To be fully competitive with China, American policy must overcome such partner apprehension and practice a competitive foreign policy that views alliances as assets to be invested in rather than costs to be cut.62
Leaders vs. Peoples and the Poison of Mass Denigration. Third, successful Great Power competition, short of direct military clash, is extremely unlikely if the rivals descend into a poisonous, open, and reciprocal denigration of each other’s people. The choice to criticize the government of a rival state while distinguishing it from the people is not as risky—although a tightrope must be walked to maintain the difference. Once the British and Imperial German press went after the character of the other’s societies, the march toward World War I accelerated.63 So, too, World War II in the Pacific loomed ominously once the United States and Tojo’s Japan devolved to mutual societal recrimination played out in newspapers and journal articles.64 But the American government’s conscious Cold War effort to distinguish the Soviet Union’s communist party from the Russian people, reserving greatest criticism toward the party and offering outreach to its people, generated a far different result. American leaders are likely to compete best with China while clearly distinguishing between its pointed criticism of CCP leaders and its feelings for the Chinese people.
The Biden administration can and must do better at this than its predecessor. To reduce the risk—and to channel political and ideological competition appropriately—the United States should focus legitimate criticism on the CCP leadership and its policies in a manner that counters Chinese narratives feeding nationalist xenophobia. The line between criticizing the CCP and Chinese society is a fine one to walk—and will require calibration. But it can be done in a thoughtful way. For example, U.S. and partner scientists’ questioning CCP transparency in practices and statements about research laboratory safety in China as they investigate the origins of COVID-19 as a matter of global health is legitimate and targeted inquiry and criticism.65 Publicly labeling COVID-19 as the “Chinese Virus” or the “Kung Flu,” while insinuating that the CCP is hiding something about lab safety, is not.66
A responsible American program of communication should concentrate on countering CCP-driven disinformation.67 It also should speak and act publicly in a manner that counters the self-motivated CCP domestic narrative that only the CCP stands between China and chaos.68 At the same time, the United States should try to maximize positive interactions and experiences with the Chinese people. The United States and its free-and-open partner states should consider issuing more visas and providing paths to citizenship for more Chinese, with proper security safeguards in place. Chinese who engage with citizens of free countries are the ones who are most likely to question their government’s policies either from abroad or when they return home. In this approach the United States would do what it did with expatriate Russian communities during the Cold War: view Chinese expatriate communities as valuable citizens while discriminating between Ministry of State security agents for expulsion.69
Play for Time. Finally, some argue that time works in favor of the rising Great Power in a competitive dyad, putting the dominant Great Power at dire risk if it does not take swift confrontational action while its relative power is high. But this thesis rests on at least two dubious assumptions: that the rising power’s ascent is likely to be rapid and that the rising power will continue to ascend in a mainly linear fashion and not confront problems or challenges on the way. In the present moment, the critical factors confronting China at home and abroad make time work in favor of the United States.70
First, America has its own domestic inconsistencies and challenges, many of which were on prominent display during a very turbulent 2020, but these pale in comparison to those certain to play out within China over the coming couple of decades. The CCP faces multifaceted challenges to safeguard both its political position and an unending Chinese economic rise that seems critical to CCP legitimacy. These multifaceted challenges include rampant environmental degradation, rising income inequalities, a rapidly aging and less productive population, chronic worry about abuses of political power, widespread corruption, restive domestic regions including Tibet, Xingxang, and Mongolia, and a poor record on human rights.71 As China’s economy shifts toward more reliance on domestic economic consumption, its economic growth decelerates, and its national debt continues to grow, these many domestic challenges are moving to the fore.72
Second, China faces serious unresolved challenges along its own borders, rendering its ability to dominate the Indo-Pacific region questionable in the near term and pushing off into the future any serious move by Beijing to reorder international norms and institutions along China’s model. China’s neighbors include formidable economic and military powers, such as Japan, South Korea, Australia, and India. Each of them is increasingly apprehensive about China’s strategic ambitions, and they are deepening security ties with each other and the United States in ventures such as the “Quad” in response.73 Beijing’s ham-handed efforts to crush democratic resistance in Hong Kong and nationalism in Taiwan have stiffened regional headwinds for Chinese messaging.74
It is unwise for the United States to assume that China will succumb to these challenges, for that could enable complacency and distract vital attention to a serious Great Power rival. At the same time, a U.S. conclusion that China is destined for global dominance—especially in the near term—is both unsupported by the facts and likely to generate strategic overreaction.75 China’s economic rise will make it a long-term challenge for the United States to manage rather than one to be conquered or converted.76 The United States and China are destined for a lengthy, uneasy coexistence, not decoupling or appeasement.77 Thus, as American resilience and regeneration to confront a great challenge emerges anew, a U.S. strategy—one featuring a competitive mindset—that plays for time as China’s contradictions grow seems best suited for successful contemporary Great Power competition.78 The Biden administration’s March 2021 INSSG demonstrates an understanding of these geopolitical realities of contemporary GPC and has presented a new array of policies to meet them:
The most effective way for America to out-compete a more assertive and authoritarian China over the long-term is to invest in our people, our economy, and our democracy. By restoring U.S. credibility and reasserting forward-looking global leadership, we will ensure that America, not China, sets the international agenda, working alongside others to shape new global norms and agreements that advance our interests and reflect our values. By bolstering and defending our unparalleled network of allies and partners, and making smart defense investments, we will also deter Chinese aggression and counter threats to our collective security, prosperity, and democratic way of life.79
It remains to be seen how well the Biden administration can put these principles into practice in the face of domestic political headwinds and distracting international challenges.
The Way Forward
Knowing the historic imperatives of Great Power competition and four major principles informing what the United States should do to succeed in a new era of GPC is not the same as knowing how to move forward properly. The Biden administration faces a historic challenge of galvanizing American resolve to compete with other international Great Powers after decades of competitive atrophy.
In today’s new era of multipolar Great Power competition among the United States, China, and Russia, the Sino-American dyad is the rivalry of greatest significance. This contest features an ongoing power transition—always a dangerous dynamic of international politics in modern history. China is clearly growing in relative economic power, but the United States is a dominant state with clear comparative advantages—“high cards” in its hand—that it can build on to advantage.80 Alliance maintenance and cultivation is the most critical card. Firm and flexible confrontation when necessary and collaboration with China where possible is the second. Avoiding a regressive game of reciprocal societal invective is the third. And playing the long game—playing for time—is the fourth.
The December 2017 NSS properly recognized the Russian and Chinese challenges for what they were and formalized what had been a de facto new era of Great Power competition for several prior years. In its first months in office, the Biden administration has accepted the Trump geostrategic diagnosis but offered an altered suite of U.S. foreign policy and national initiatives to meet the challenges of GPC. There is goodness in this overdue bipartisan American recognition of a competitive geostrategic environment. Yet the way forward to successful competitive policies still could go wrong if America devolves into confrontational hysteria and overreaction against Beijing. Overreaction in Washington could lead to high cards played badly. China’s recent behavior is galvanizing opposition among countries that do not want to be vassal states.81 A rejuvenating United States, with reframed domestic priorities and renewed focus on well-established and well-treated allies and partners, will have a clear advantage in what is likely to be a drawn-out era of multipolar Great Power competition featuring a rivalrous dyad with China.
*About the author: Dr. Thomas F. Lynch III is a Distinguished Research Fellow in the Center for Strategic Research, Institute for National Strategic Studies, at the National Defense University.
Notes
1 For an operational definition of a Great Power and the criteria met by China, Russia, and the United States today that make them the three modern Great Powers, see Thomas F. Lynch III, “Introduction,” in Thomas F. Lynch III, ed., Strategic Assessment 2020: Into a New Era of Great Power Competition (Washington, DC: NDU Press, 2020), 1–15, available at <https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Article/2404286/1-introduction/>.
3 For a review of contemporary China’s strategic focus and its tools for engaging in GPC, see Lynch and Saunders, “Contemporary Great Power Geostrategic Dynamics: Relations and Strategies,” and Lynch and Saunders, “Contemporary Great Power Geostrategic Dynamics: Competitive Elements and Tool Sets,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, 53–57, 59–67, 84–92, 96–100.
4 Lauren A. Courchaine, Alexus G. Grynkewich, and Brian D. Courchaine, “Structuring for Competition: Rethinking the Area of Responsibility Concept for Great Power Competition,” Joint Force Quarterly 98 (3rd Quarter 2020), 4–9; Lloyd Edwards, “Balancing Competition with Cooperation: A Strategy to Prepare for the Chinese Dream,” Joint Force Quarterly 98 (3rd Quarter 2020), 80–87; Brandon J. Archuleta and Jonathan I. Gerson, “Fight Tonight: Reenergizing the Pentagon for Great Power Competition,” Joint Force Quarterly 100 (1st Quarter 2021), 81–87.
5 Kaleb Redden, “Competition Is What States Make of It: A U.S. Strategy Toward China,” Joint Force Quarterly 99 (4th Quarter 2020), 40–56.
8 See Lynch, “Introduction,” Strategic Assessment 2020, for an operational definition of Great Power and the criteria met by China, Russia, and the United States today making them the three modern Great Powers.
9 This article has insufficient space to effectively address the importance of technological advances emanating mainly from the fourth industrial revolution on modern economic progress and warfighting risks in GPC. For a detailed review of these, consider T.X. Hammes and Diane DiEuliis, “Contemporary Great Power Technological Competitive Factors in the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, 105–117, available at <https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Article/2404319/4-contemporary-great-power-technological-competitive-factors-in-the-fourth-indu/>; T.X. Hammes, “Key Technologies and the Revolution of Small, Smart, and Cheap in the Future of Warfare,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, 121–137, available at <https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Article/2404322/5-key-technologies-and-the-revolution-of-small-smart-and-cheap-in-the-future-of/>; Thomas F. Lynch III, “Conclusion: Realities, Imperatives, and Principles in a New Era of Great Power Competition,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, 319–324, available at <https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Article/2405118/15-conclusion-realities-imperatives-and-principles-in-a-new-era-of-great-power/>.
10 Lynch and Saunders, “Contemporary Great Power Geostrategic Dynamics: Relations and Strategies,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020.
12 For a conspicuous example of uncorroborated and suspect claims that China has a master plan for global dominance, see Michael Pillsbury, The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015). For a more nuanced view of China’s strategic narrative and the range of aspirations inherent in China’s “community of common destiny,” see Lynch and Saunders, “Contemporary Great Power Geostrategic Dynamics: Relations and Strategies,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, 53–57. Also see Phillip C. Saunders, “Implications: China in the International System,” in The Chinese People’s Liberation Army in 2025, ed. Roy Kamphausen and David Lai (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, July 2015); “China’s Concept of the World Order: Theory and Practice,” Strategic Survey 2019: The Annual Assessment of Geopolitics (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, October 2019), 27, 390–398; Nadège Rolland, “A Concise Guide to the Belt and Road Initiative,” National Bureau of Asian Research, April 11, 2019, available at <https://www.nbr.org/publication/a-guide-to-the-belt-and-road-initiative/>; Alastair Iain Johnston, “China in a World of Orders: Rethinking Compliance and Challenge in Beijing’s International Relations,” International Security 44, no. 2 (Fall 2019), 9–60.
13 See Aaron L. Friedberg, “Competing with China,” Survival 60, no. 3 (2018), 7–64.
14 This conclusion is based on detailed analysis affirming that Russia clearly is a contemporary Great Power (contrary to those who argue otherwise) because its limited economic and ideological power attributes and potent but declining military, diplomatic, and communications tools make Moscow most capable of achieving foreign policy outcomes in its near-abroad. It also has a nontrivial ability to project power for influence in the Middle East, the Arctic, and cyberspace. But Moscow’s unambiguous relative economic decline along with ideological and political challenges make its Great Power status far from certain in the mid to long term. Find details in Lynch and Saunders, “Contemporary Great Power Geostrategic Dynamics: Competitive Elements and Tool Sets,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, especially 92–96, 99.
15 Lynch and Saunders, “Contemporary Great Power Geostrategic Dynamics: Relations and Strategies,” Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, 65–67.
17 See “Major Findings on Contemporary Great Power Competition,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, xvii; Robert Sutter, China-Russia Relations: Strategic Implications and U.S. Policy Options, NBR Special Report #73 (Washington, DC: National Bureau of Asian Research, September 2018), available at <https://www.nbr.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/publications/special_report_73_china-russia_cooperation_sep2018.pdf>; Vasily Kashin, “Tacit Alliance: Russia and China take Military Partnership to a New Level,” Carnegie Moscow Center, October 22, 2019, available at <https://carnegie.ru/commentary/80136>; Robert Kaplan, The Return of Marco Polo’s World: War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Random House, 2018), 215–218.
18 For an overview of the key elements of the U.S. Free and Open Indo-Pacific vision from an American perspective, see A Free and Open Indo-Pacific: Advancing a Shared Vision (Washington, DC: Department of State, November 4, 2019), available at <https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Free-and-Open-Indo-Pacific-4Nov2019.pdf>. Some Western analysts believe that community of common destiny expresses Beijing’s long-term vision for transforming the international environment to make it compatible with China’s governance model and emergence as a global leader. Others view it as much less deterministic or threatening, assessing China’s main motive as one of sustaining a favorable external environment for China’s economic development in the first two to three decades of the 21st century or a “period of strategic opportunities.” For a comparative evaluation of China’s ambiguous call for a community of common destiny, see Liza Tobin, “Xi’s Vision for Transforming Global Governance: A Strategic Challenge for Washington and Its Allies,” Texas National Security Review 2, no. 1 (November 2018), available at <https://tnsr.org/2018/11/xis-vision-for-transforming-global-governance-a-strategic-challenge-for-washington-and-its-allies/>; Denghua Zhang, “The Concept of ‘Community of Common Destiny’ in China’s Diplomacy: Meaning, Motives and Implications,” Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies 5, no. 2 (March 2018), available at <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/app5.231>.
19 Lynch and Saunders, “Contemporary Great Power Geostrategic Dynamics: Relations and Strategies,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, 59–65; Thomas F. Lynch III, James Przystup, and Phillip C. Saunders, “The Indo-Pacific Competitive Space: China’s Vision and the Post–World War II American Order,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, 211–213, available at <https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Article/2404551/9-the-indo-pacific-competitive-space-chinas-vision-and-the-postworld-war-ii-ame/>.
20 Lynch, Przystup, and Saunders, “The Indo-Pacific Competitive Space,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, 204–207.
21 Ibid., 197–211.
22 Lynch and Saunders, “Contemporary Great Power Geostrategic Dynamics: Relations and Strategies,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, 50–52, 58–59.
24 Lynch and Saunders, “Contemporary Great Power Geostrategic Dynamics: Relations and Strategies,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, 64–67.
25 Lynch and Hoffman, “Past Eras of Great Power Competition,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, 18–20.
26 Ibid., 22–25.
27 Aaron Friedberg, The Weary Titan: Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline, 1895–1905 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 14–17, 286; Lynch and Hoffman, “Past Eras of Great Power Competition,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, 36–39.
28 China does not possess and is unlikely to attain sufficient power assets in the coming decade to enable a strategy of remaking the international order in its favor before domestic risk factors collapse Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule—even if that was its actual strategy. See Lynch and Saunders, “Contemporary Great Power Geostrategic Dynamics: Competitive Elements and Tool Sets,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, 97–99. For an opposite view that asserts China possesses a global grand strategy aspiring for leadership of a new tributary system soon to be resourced through a massive effort organized under three overlapping policies, carrying the names “Made in China 2025,” “Belt and Road Initiative,” and “Military-Civil Fusion,” see H.R. McMaster, “How China Sees the World: And How We Should See China,” The Atlantic, May 2020, available at <https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/05/mcmaster-china-strategy/609088/>.
29 Michael Beckley, “The Power of Nations: Measuring What Matters,” International Security 43, no. 2 (Fall 2018), 22–25; Lynch and Saunders, “Contemporary Great Power Geostrategic Dynamics: Competitive Elements and Tool Sets,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, 96–97.
30 For a discussion of the unipolar moment and its impact on American post–Cold War strategic thinking, see Charles Krauthammer, “The Unipolar Moment,” Foreign Affairs 70, no. 1 (1990), 23–33.
33 For examples and analysis of such criticisms, see Eliot A. Cohen, “A Reckoning for Obama’s Foreign-Policy Legacy,” The Atlantic, May 15, 2018, available at <https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/05/lessons-obama-era-foreign-policy-officials-should-learn-from-trump/560387/>; Aaron David Miller and Richard Sokolosky, “Trump Isn’t Just Reversing Obama’s Foreign Policies. He’s Making it Impossible for His Successor to Go Back to Them,” Politico, April 23, 2019, available at <https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/04/23/trump-obama-foreign-policy-226708/>; Michael Warren, “Trump’s Obama Obsession Drives His Foreign Policy,” CNN, January 8, 2020, available at <https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/07/politics/trump-obama-obsession-foreign-policy/index.html>.
34 See John Haltiwanger and Sonam Sheth, “Biden’s Foreign Policy Will Be ‘Day and Night’ from Trump’s But He Faces Massive Challenges, Veteran Diplomats Warn,” Business Insider, November 24, 2020, available at <https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-foreign-policy-will-mitigate-trump-damage-but-have-challenges-2020-11>; Kylie Atwood and Nicole Gauoette, “How Biden Plans to Undo Trump’s ‘America First’ Foreign Policy and Return U.S. to World Stage,” CNN, October 30, 2020, available at <https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/31/politics/biden-foreign-policy-plans/index.html>.
36 Ibid.
37 Blinken, “A Foreign Policy for the American People.”
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
41 Ibid., 7–22.
42 Blinken, “A Foreign Policy for the American People.”
43 Lynch and Saunders, “Contemporary Great Power Geostrategic Dynamics: Competitive Elements and Tool Sets,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, 80–81, 86–88, 93–94, 97–99.
44 Ibid., 98.
45 Lynch and Saunders, “Contemporary Great Power Geostrategic Dynamics: Relations and Strategies,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, 82, 84; Lynch, Przystup, and Saunders, “The Indo-Pacific Competitive Space,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, 200–202.
46 Lynch, Przystup, and Saunders, “The Indo-Pacific Competitive Space,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, 202–204.
47 Lynch and Saunders, “Contemporary Great Power Geostrategic Dynamics: Relations and Strategies,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, 89–91.
48 Ibid., 84–86; Lynch, Przystup, and Saunders, “The Indo-Pacific Competitive Space,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, 207–211.
49 For an overview of these main principles based upon comparative historical case studies, see Lynch and Hoffman, “Past Eras of Great Power Competition,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, 36–38.
50 Ibid.
52 Many Chinese leaders cannot believe that the Obama administration did not react more strongly to the 2010 seizure of Scarborough Shoal and 2014 arming of it despite Chairman Xi Jinping’s promise to Obama that year that China had no intention of doing so. These Chinese officials indicate that a firm U.S. and allied response can moderate intemperate Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific region. See Evan Osnos, “The Future of America’s Contest with China,” The New Yorker, January 6, 2020, available at <https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/01/13/the-future-of-americas-contest-with-china>.
53 Denny Roy, “China Won’t Achieve Regional Hegemony,” The Washington Quarterly 43, no. 1 (Spring 2020), 105–106.
54 See Lynch, Przystup, and Saunders, “The Indo-Pacific Competitive Space,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, 204–207. For a broader modern frame of reference for U.S. strategy in the western Pacific, see T.X. Hammes, An Affordable Defense of Asia (Washington, DC: The Atlantic Council, June 2020), available at <https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/An-Affordable-Defense-of-Asia-Report.pdf>.
55 For variations on this unhelpfully defeatist notion of de facto spheres of influence, see Graham Allison, “The New Spheres of Influence: Sharing the Globe with Other Great Powers,” Foreign Affairs 99, no. 2 (March/April 2020), 30–40; Fareed Zakaria, “The New China Scare: Why America Shouldn’t Panic About Its Latest Challenger,” Foreign Affairs 99, no. 1 (January/February 2020), 52–69.
56 Edel and Brands, “The Real Origins of the U.S.-China Cold War.”
57 Osnos, “The Future of America’s Contest with China.”
59 Michael Broers, “Pride and Prejudice: The Napoleonic Empire Through the Eyes of Its Rulers,” in Napoleon’s Empire: European Politics in Global Perspective, ed. Ute Planert (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 307–317; Michael V. Leggiere, “Enduring Strategic Rivalries: Great Britain vs. France During the French Wars (1792–1815),” in Great Strategic Rivalries: From the Classical World to the Cold War, ed. James Lacey (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 289–390.
60 See Blinken, “A Foreign Policy for the American People”; Interim National Security Strategic Guidance.
62 Campbell and Sullivan, “Competition Without Catastrophe,” 110.
63 Lynch and Hoffman, “Past Eras of Great Power Competition,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, 29.
64 Ibid., 34, 37.
65 See the ongoing zoological debate about theories of accidental release of COVID-19 from a laboratory in China and the continuing frustration by scientists and investigators that important information is being shrouded by the Chinese government, in Jesse D. Blum et al., “Investigate the Origins of COVID-19,” Science 372, no. 6543 (May 14, 2021), available at <https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1>.
67 For details on the organizations involved in international propaganda and influence activities, see appendix 1 in Larry Diamond and Orville Schell, eds., China’s Influence & American Interests: Promoting Constructive Vigilance (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2019), 133–141. Some former policymakers specifically focus on the Chinese Ministry of State Security, the United Front Work Department, and the Chinese Students and Scholars Association as ones for attention to counter CCP-driven propaganda. See H.R. McMaster, “How China Sees the World.”
68 Osnos, “The Future of America’s Contest with China.”
69 Proper “safeguards” for Chinese student, teacher, and research visas should include tight limitations on Confucius Institutes in the United States to eliminate their revealed role in espionage, monitoring, and thought-policing on behalf of the CCP. The ideas for an American strategy valuing the Chinese people, while holding the CCP to account, include those found in McMaster, “How China Sees the World.”
70 Strategic patience during the Cold War also was an American competitive mindset virtue. See Walt, “Yesterday’s Cold War Shows How to Beat China Today.”
71 See Minxin Pei, “China’s Coming Upheaval,” Foreign Affairs (May/June 2020); “Revised Demographic Forecasts for China: Key Takeaways,” Economist, July 2, 2019; William H. Overholt, China’s Crisis of Success (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
73 See Derek Grossman, “The Quad Is Poised to Become Openly Anti-China Soon,” RAND blog, July 28, 2020, available at <https://www.rand.org/blog/2020/07/the-quad-is-poised-to-become-openly-anti-china-soon.html>; James Holmes, “Can the Quad Transform Into an Alliance to Contain China?” The National Interest, March 21, 2021, available at <https://nationalinterest.org/feature/can-quad-transform-alliance-contain-china-180786?page=0%2C1>; “Why India Must Exercise the Quad Option,” The Times of India (Mumbai), October 15, 2020, available at <http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/78676596.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst>.
74 Ali Wyne, “How to Think About Potentially Decoupling from China,” The Washington Quarterly 43, no. 1 (2020), 41–64.
75 For similar conclusions, see Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Power and Interdependence with China,” The Washington Quarterly 43, no. 1 (2020), 13; Wyne, “How to Think About Potentially Decoupling from China,” 50–52.
76 Osnos, “The Future of America’s Contest with China”; Martin Wolf, “The Looking 100-Year U.S.-China Conflict,” Financial Times, June 4, 2019.
77 Osnos, “The Future of America’s Contest with China.”
78 For a detailed assessment of options for a U.S. strategic mindset for competition with China, see Frank G. Hoffman, “U.S. Strategies for Competing Against China,” in Lynch, Strategic Assessment 2020, 289–308, available at <https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Article/2404635/14-us-strategies-for-competing-against-china/>. For an overview of some of the Biden administration planned initiatives to renew and improve American productivity and poise it for vigorous, successful technological and strategic competition with China into the future, see Fact Sheet: The American Jobs Plan (Washington, DC: The White House, March 31, 2021), available at <https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/03/31/fact-sheet-the-american-jobs-plan/>.
79 Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, 20.
80 See Nye, “Power and Interdependence with China,” 16.
81 McMaster, “How China Sees the World.”
20. Combat Misinformation by Getting Back to Security Basics
Conclusion:
Though human moderators alone could not prevent the recent proliferation of fake news from spreading across the Internet, AI solutions built with data analytics will grow over the next decade. These AI solutions will transition from helpful tools to primary combatants in the war over truth. Ultimately, trustworthy data science will be the foundation that helps companies reverse the trends of mass misinformation and restore objective facts to their rightful, dominant role in keeping the public informed.
Combat Misinformation by Getting Back to Security Basics
One volley of fake news may land, but properly trained AI can shut down similar attempts at their sources.
For generations, technology has generally been viewed as an enabler of positive social change, rarely creating more problems than it solves. But in recent years, there's an emerging realization that technology has a darker side: Connecting everyone through the Internet has enabled widespread and instantaneous distribution of fake news, weaponizing misinformation as an existential threat to democratic society. During the last 18 months, distortions regarding the COVID-19 virus, the pandemic, and vaccines have spread like wildfire, polarizing citizens and unnecessarily multiplying death tolls across the world.
While misinformation is not a new problem, technologies such as social media and artificial intelligence (AI)-generated content have elevated it to new levels. Malicious actors are leveraging technology to strategically spread disinformation to online groups of like-minded people, empowering large masses to unknowingly spread misinformation globally. This vicious cycle reinforces biases and tears communities apart. Human fact checkers working by themselves simply cannot keep pace with the quantity of false content and links that are now being shared every day.
Thankfully, recent advancements in data analytics and AI have emerged as effective solutions to combat problematic content at scale. Unlike human moderators, who cannot hope to block every link or post, data science technologies present tremendous opportunities for curbing fake news before it goes viral, detecting not only inaccurate information but also the accounts and patterns behind misinformation campaigns. Basic versions of the technology are already leveraged to stop spam calls and emails. Going forward, one volley of fake news may land, but properly trained AI will shut down similar attempts at their sources.
Given the variability in data and models, as well as human conformation or anchoring biases, these beneficial data science tools are not without challenges: Misinformation-squashing systems will only be trustworthy if the integrity of the data, sources, and analysis is guaranteed with full transparency. This means core fundamentals of data science and data management will be essential in driving solutions that help consumers separate fact from fiction.
To ensure the integrity of information and ultimate protection for consumers in the digital age, companies must start by making upfront investments in foundational resources, namely the standards and seamless structures that support modern data governance, integration, and architectures. With that foundation in place, we can develop solutions that intentionally circumvent human bias using scientific methods: validating claim sources, weighing the validity of source data, scrutinizing supporting data journey and custody, and using a diverse group for critical peer review.
While CIOs and internal data scientists may know that their systems' foundations and structures are sound, they won't succeed without the public's trust. For that reason, they must build open source scoring systems, including traceable lineage of source data and weighting, so that the methods and data used by AI fact checkers is human readable and understandable. This is the only way to guarantee objective credibility when scoring the accuracy and validity of claims made in any article, op-ed, comment, speech, or legal decision — credibility that may prevent unintentional spreaders of misinformation from echoing whatever they see.
The benefits of addressing and mitigating misinformation are not limited to individuals, given the influence and purchasing power of large, mobilized groups. With effective data foundations in place, and a focus on building community trust, modern firms can create or participate in open solutions that encourage consumer confidence, effectively decreasing brand or reputation risk while also minimizing the spread of misinformation. While individual companies will undoubtedly seek to create closed systems, today's leaders should embrace open platforms — both for corroboration and consumption.
From a corroboration perspective, we expect that firms will provide validation capabilities, as well as raw data sets, to combat the spread global misinformation — for both altruistic and monetary reasons. These validation capabilities will likely follow an open model for programmatically answering “questions” around claims tied to the company, effectively operating as a digital spokesperson for the firm. Additionally, firms likely will offer standard integration capabilities to and from their existing platforms, including streaming models, publish/subscribe models, and even batch data loading, in order to provide authenticated data that enables third-party amalgamated fact-checking systems to provide consumers with trusted answers.
On the consumption side, we expect firms will integrate their existing decisioning systems with external curated data sources to make educated decisions based on global data. We have seen early examples through shifts in supply chain strategies, innovation investments, inventory management, and even travel and vaccine mandate decisions. Firms that leverage and disclose this curated mix of local and global data used in decision-making will build further trust with their employees, partners, and communities.
Though human moderators alone could not prevent the recent proliferation of fake news from spreading across the Internet, AI solutions built with data analytics will grow over the next decade. These AI solutions will transition from helpful tools to primary combatants in the war over truth. Ultimately, trustworthy data science will be the foundation that helps companies reverse the trends of mass misinformation and restore objective facts to their rightful, dominant role in keeping the public informed.
21. Washington Is Preparing for the Wrong War With China
Is China giving us the appearance of the threat that they believe the Military Industrial Congressional Complex wants to prepare for and spend resources on, when it would rather achieve its objectives through subversion?
Excerpts:
Breaking a Chinese campaign of coercion also requires threatening Beijing with painful retaliation. A third objective, therefore, is to own the escalation ladder. By preparing to blockade Chinese commerce and cut Beijing off from markets and technology in wartime, the United States and its allies can threaten to turn an extended conflict into an economic catastrophe for China. By preparing to sink Chinese naval vessels anywhere in the western Pacific and destroy Chinese military infrastructure in other regions, Washington can threaten a generation’s worth of Chinese military modernization. And by developing the means to hit Chinese ports, airfields, and armadas with tactical nuclear weapons, the United States can deter China from initiating limited nuclear attacks. Washington should confront Beijing with a basic proposition: the longer a war lasts, the more devastation China will suffer.
Because controlling escalation will be essential, the United States also needs options that allow it to dial up the punishment without necessarily dialing up the violence. By subtly demonstrating that it has the cyber-capabilities to cripple China’s critical infrastructure and domestic security system, for example, the United States can threaten to bring the war home to Beijing. Similarly, by improving its ability to suppress Chinese air defenses near Taiwan with cyberattacks, electronic warfare, and directed-energy weapons, the United States can increase its freedom of action while limiting the amount of physical destruction it wreaks on the mainland.
Any escalatory moves risk ratcheting up the intensity of a conflict. So the final preparation Washington must make is to define victory down. A war between nuclear-armed great powers would not end with regime change or one side occupying the other’s capital. It would end with a negotiated compromise. The simplest settlement would be a return to the status quo: China stops attacking Taiwan in exchange for a pledge that the island will not seek formal independence and that the United States will not endorse it. To sweeten the deal, Washington could offer to keep its forces off Taiwan and out of the Taiwan Strait. Xi would be able to tell the Chinese people that he taught his enemies a lesson. The United States would have saved a strategically positioned democracy. That may not be a satisfying end to a hard-fought conflict. But in a long war between great powers, protecting vital U.S. interests while avoiding Armageddon is good enough.
Washington Is Preparing for the Wrong War With China
A Conflict Would Be Long and Messy
The United States is getting serious about the threat of war with China. The U.S. Department of Defense has labeled China its primary adversary, civilian leaders have directed the military to develop credible plans to defend Taiwan, and President Joe Biden has strongly implied that the United States would not allow that island democracy to be conquered.
Yet Washington may be preparing for the wrong kind of war. Defense planners appear to believe that they can win a short conflict in the Taiwan Strait merely by blunting a Chinese invasion. Chinese leaders, for their part, seem to envision rapid, paralyzing strikes that break Taiwanese resistance and present the United States with a fait accompli. Both sides would prefer a splendid little war in the western Pacific, but that is not the sort of war they would get.
A war over Taiwan is likely to be long rather than short, regional rather than local, and much easier to start than to end. It would expand and escalate, as both countries look for paths to victory in a conflict neither side can afford to lose. It would also present severe dilemmas for peacemaking and high risks of going nuclear. If Washington doesn’t start preparing to wage, and then end, a protracted conflict now, it could face catastrophe once the shooting starts.
IMPENDING SLUGFEST
A U.S.-Chinese war over Taiwan would begin with a bang. China’s military doctrine emphasizes coordinated operations to “paralyze the enemy in one stroke.” In the most worrying scenario, Beijing would launch a surprise missile attack, hammering not only Taiwan’s defenses but also the naval and air forces that the United States has concentrated at a few large bases in the western Pacific. Simultaneous Chinese cyberattacks and antisatellite operations would sow chaos and hinder any effective U.S. or Taiwanese response. And the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would race through the window of opportunity, staging amphibious and airborne assaults that would overwhelm Taiwanese resistance. By the time the United States was ready to fight, the war would effectively be over.
The Pentagon’s planning increasingly revolves around preventing this scenario, by hardening and dispersing the U.S. military presence in Asia, encouraging Taiwan to field asymmetric capabilities that can inflict a severe toll on Chinese attackers, and developing the ability to blunt the PLA’s offensive capabilities and sink an invasion fleet. This planning is predicated on the critical assumption that the early weeks, if not days, of fighting would determine whether a free Taiwan survives.
Yet whatever happens at the outset, a conflict almost certainly wouldn’t end quickly. Most great-power wars since the Industrial Revolution have lasted longer than expected, because modern states have the resources to fight on even when they suffer heavy losses. Moreover, in hegemonic wars—clashes for dominance between the world’s strongest states—the stakes are high, and the price of defeat may seem prohibitive. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, wars between leading powers—the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, the world wars—were protracted slugfests. A U.S.-Chinese war would likely follow this pattern.
If Washington doesn’t prepare for conflict now, it could face catastrophe once the shooting starts.
If the United States managed to beat back a Chinese assault against Taiwan, Beijing wouldn’t simply give up. Starting a war over Taiwan would be an existential gamble: admitting defeat would jeopardize the regime’s legitimacy and President Xi Jinping’s hold on power. It would also leave China more vulnerable to its enemies and destroy its dreams of regional primacy. Continuing a hard fight against the United States would be a nasty prospect, but quitting while China was behind would seem even worse.
Washington would also be inclined to fight on if the war were not going well. Like Beijing, it would view a war over Taiwan as a fight for regional dominance. The fact that such a war would probably begin with a Pearl Harbor–style missile attack on U.S. bases would make it even harder for an outraged American populace and its leaders to accept defeat. Even if the United States failed to prevent Chinese forces from seizing Taiwan, it couldn’t easily bow out of the war. Quitting without first severely damaging Chinese air and naval power in Asia would badly weaken Washington’s reputation, as well as its ability to defend remaining allies in the region.
Both sides would have the capacity to keep fighting, moreover. The United States could summon ships, planes, and submarines from other theaters and use its command of the Pacific beyond the first island chain—which runs from Japan in the north through Taiwan and the Philippines to the south—to conduct sustained attacks on Chinese forces. For its part, China could dispatch its surviving air, naval, and missile forces for a second and third assault on Taiwan and press its maritime militia of coast guard and fishing vessels into service. Both the United States and China would emerge from these initial clashes bloodied but not exhausted, increasing the likelihood of a long, ugly war.
BIGGER, LONGER, MESSIER
When great-power wars drag on, they get bigger, messier, and more intractable. Any conflict between the United States and China is likely to force both countries to mobilize their economies for war. After the initial salvos, both sides would hurry to replace munitions, ships, submarines, and aircraft lost in the early days of fighting. This race would strain both countries’ industrial bases, require the reorientation of their economies, and invite nationalist appeals—or government compulsion—to mobilize the populace to support a long fight.
Long wars also escalate as the combatants look for new sources of leverage. Belligerents open new fronts and rope additional allies into the fight. They expand their range of targets and worry less about civilian casualties. Sometimes they explicitly target civilians, whether by bombing cities or torpedoing civilian ships. And they use naval blockades, sanctions, and embargoes to starve the enemy into submission. As China and the United States unloaded on each other with nearly every tool at their disposal, a local war could turn into a whole-of-society brawl that spans multiple regions.
Bigger wars demand more grandiose aims. The greater the sacrifices required to win, the better the ultimate peace deal must be to justify those sacrifices. What began as a U.S. campaign to defend Taiwan could easily turn into an effort to render China incapable of new aggression by completely destroying its offensive military power. Conversely, as the United States inflicted more damage on China, Beijing’s war aims could grow from conquering Taiwan to pushing Washington out of the western Pacific altogether.
All of this would make forging peace more difficult. The expansion of war aims narrows the diplomatic space for a settlement and produces severe bloodshed that fuels intense hatred and mistrust. Even if U.S. and Chinese leaders grew weary of fighting, they might still struggle to find a mutually acceptable peace.
GOING NUCLEAR
A war between China and the United States would differ from previous hegemonic wars in one fundamental respect: both sides have nuclear weapons. This would create disincentives to all-out escalation, but it could also, paradoxically, compound the dangers inherent in a long war.
For starters, both sides might feel free to shoot off their conventional arsenals under the assumption that their nuclear arsenals would shield them from crippling retaliation. Scholars call this the “stability-instability paradox,” whereby blind faith in nuclear deterrence risks unleashing a massive conventional war. Chinese military writings often suggest that the PLA could wipe out U.S. bases and aircraft carriers in East Asia while China’s nuclear arsenal deterred U.S. attacks on the Chinese mainland. On the flip side, some American strategists have called for pounding Chinese mainland bases at the outset of a conflict in the belief that U.S. nuclear superiority would deter China from responding in kind. Far from preventing a major war, nuclear weapons could catalyze one.
Once that war is underway, it could plausibly go nuclear in three distinct ways. Whichever side is losing might use tactical nuclear weapons—low-yield warheads that could destroy specific military targets without obliterating the other side’s homeland—to turn the tide. That was how the Pentagon planned to halt a Soviet invasion of central Europe during the Cold War, and it is what North Korea, Pakistan, and Russia have suggested they would do if they were losing a war today. If China crippled U.S. conventional forces in East Asia, the United States would have to decide whether to save Taiwan by using tactical nuclear weapons against Chinese ports, airfields, or invasion fleets. This is no fantasy: the U.S. military is already developing nuclear-tipped, submarine-launched cruise missiles that could be used for such purposes.
A local war could turn into a whole-of-society brawl that spans multiple regions.
China might also use nuclear weapons to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. The PLA has embarked on an unprecedented expansion of its nuclear arsenal, and PLA officers have written that China could use nuclear weapons if a conventional war threatened the survival of its government or nuclear arsenal—which would almost surely be the case if Beijing was losing a war over Taiwan. Perhaps these unofficial claims are bluffs. Yet it is not difficult to imagine that if China faced the prospect of humiliating defeat, it might fire off a nuclear weapon (perhaps at or near the huge U.S. military base on Guam) to regain a tactical advantage or shock Washington into a cease-fire.
As the conflict drags on, either side could also use the ultimate weapon to end a grinding war of attrition. During the Korean War, American leaders repeatedly contemplated dropping nuclear bombs on China to force it to accept a cease-fire. Today, both countries would have the option of using limited nuclear strikes to compel a stubborn opponent to concede. The incentives to do so could be strong, given that whichever side pulls the nuclear trigger first might gain a major advantage.
A final route to nuclear war is inadvertent escalation. Each side, knowing that escalation is a risk, may try to limit the other’s nuclear options. The United States could, for instance, try to sink China’s ballistic missile submarines before they hide in the deep waters beyond the first island chain. Yet such an attack could put China in a “use it or lose it” situation with regard to its nuclear forces, especially if the United States also struck China’s land-based missiles and communication systems, which intermingle conventional and nuclear forces. In this scenario, China’s leaders might use their nuclear weapons rather than risk losing that option altogether.
AVOIDING ARMAGEDDON
There is no easy way to prepare for a long war whose course and dynamics are inherently unpredictable. Yet the United States and its allies can do four things to get ready for whatever comes—and, hopefully, prevent the worst from happening. First, Washington can win the race to reload. China will be much less likely to go to war if it knows it will be outgunned as the conflict drags on. Washington and Taipei should therefore aggressively stockpile ammunition and supplies. For the United States, the critical assets are missiles capable of sinking China’s most valuable ships and aircraft from afar. For Taiwan, the key weapons are short-range missiles, mortars, mines, and rocket launchers that can decimate invasion fleets. Both nations also need to be ready to churn out new weapons in wartime. Taiwanese factories will be obvious targets for Chinese missiles, so the United States should enlist the industrial might of other allies. Japan’s shipbuilding capacity, for example, could be retooled to produce simple missile barges rapidly and on a massive scale.
Second, the United States and Taiwan can demonstrate their ability to hang tough. In a long war, China could try to strangle Taiwan with a blockade, bombard it into submission, or take down U.S. and Taiwanese electrical grids and telecommunications networks with cyberattacks. It could use conventionally armed, hypersonic missiles to attack targets in the U.S. homeland and flood the United States with disinformation. Countering such measures will require defensive preparations, such as securing critical networks; expanding Taiwan’s system of civilian shelters; and enlarging the island’s stockpiles of fuel, food, and medical supplies.
China might use nuclear weapons to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
Breaking a Chinese campaign of coercion also requires threatening Beijing with painful retaliation. A third objective, therefore, is to own the escalation ladder. By preparing to blockade Chinese commerce and cut Beijing off from markets and technology in wartime, the United States and its allies can threaten to turn an extended conflict into an economic catastrophe for China. By preparing to sink Chinese naval vessels anywhere in the western Pacific and destroy Chinese military infrastructure in other regions, Washington can threaten a generation’s worth of Chinese military modernization. And by developing the means to hit Chinese ports, airfields, and armadas with tactical nuclear weapons, the United States can deter China from initiating limited nuclear attacks. Washington should confront Beijing with a basic proposition: the longer a war lasts, the more devastation China will suffer.
Because controlling escalation will be essential, the United States also needs options that allow it to dial up the punishment without necessarily dialing up the violence. By subtly demonstrating that it has the cyber-capabilities to cripple China’s critical infrastructure and domestic security system, for example, the United States can threaten to bring the war home to Beijing. Similarly, by improving its ability to suppress Chinese air defenses near Taiwan with cyberattacks, electronic warfare, and directed-energy weapons, the United States can increase its freedom of action while limiting the amount of physical destruction it wreaks on the mainland.
Any escalatory moves risk ratcheting up the intensity of a conflict. So the final preparation Washington must make is to define victory down. A war between nuclear-armed great powers would not end with regime change or one side occupying the other’s capital. It would end with a negotiated compromise. The simplest settlement would be a return to the status quo: China stops attacking Taiwan in exchange for a pledge that the island will not seek formal independence and that the United States will not endorse it. To sweeten the deal, Washington could offer to keep its forces off Taiwan and out of the Taiwan Strait. Xi would be able to tell the Chinese people that he taught his enemies a lesson. The United States would have saved a strategically positioned democracy. That may not be a satisfying end to a hard-fought conflict. But in a long war between great powers, protecting vital U.S. interests while avoiding Armageddon is good enough.
22. Why the Stalemate in Eastern Ukraine Will Likely Hold
Excerpts:
No War, No Peace
Russia’s latest military buildup seems to have been aimed, at least in part, at perceived Western slights and provocations, such as the presence of U.S. ships in the Black Sea and various delays to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that is supposed to supply Russian gas to Europe without crossing Ukraine. By showing Russia’s readiness for an invasion, Putin’s primary goal may have been to force Biden into a dialogue and deter a NATO expansion. This does not mean one should ignore the risk of an accidental escalation or an impulsive move by Putin to force all of Ukraine back into Russia’s orbit. It does mean, however, that the greater worry may be that the current low-level conflict could grind on indefinitely, with occasional scares like the present one simply becoming part of the pattern of the stalemate.
For now, many residents in the region think that the current situation is unlikely to change: more than seven years of grim uncertainty have robbed them of any hope that things might get better and any interest in contemplating the possibility of things getting worse. “They say this every year,” one resident of Donetsk city remarked the other day, when asked about talk of a new escalation. “Everyone thinks this will just drag on,” said another.
One cold gray morning in November, I encountered a man smoking at the foot of a barbed-wire fence dividing Ukraine from Russia. In the past, he said, “this wasn’t even here,” gesturing to the fence. The Russians had put it up in 2018, dividing the village in half down the center of the main street. “Nobody asked us,” he said. He lived across the frontlines in separatist-held territory, earning a tenth of what he did before the war. He saw no end to the conflict as long as Putin was in power, but he was also worried about Ukraine reasserting control. “I think this is forever,” he said.
Why the Stalemate in Eastern Ukraine Will Likely Hold
In the days leading up to and following last week’s video summit between U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin, there has been intense speculation that Moscow is on the verge of a new military incursion into Ukraine. The United States has estimated that Russia has already deployed close to 70,000 soldiers—media reports have claimed significantly higher numbers—to several locations along Ukraine’s eastern border and in Crimea. Apparently, the Russian government is impatient with the unfinished business of the Donbas war in eastern Ukraine, which is now in its eighth year. And Putin seems to think he can prevent Ukraine’s entry into NATO by threatening a new war in the center of Europe.
Observers have been right to worry. According to The Washington Post, a U.S. intelligence report concluded that Russia may ultimately move as many as 175,000 troops to the border, forces that could be ready for a large-scale invasion as early as this winter. And as many analysts have pointed out, both countries’ armed forces are considerably stronger than they were in 2014–15, although Ukraine’s would still be thoroughly outgunned by the Russians. All this means that a new military escalation would likely be even more destructive than the last one.
Seen from the Donbas itself, however, Russia’s alarming moves take on a different cast. Given the recent turn of events in the disputed region, there are reasons to doubt Moscow’s interest in an actual invasion. This is not to say that such a dramatic step could not occur, but it would be surprising. The 250-mile frontline has hardly changed since 2015, with some 35,000 Russian-backed separatists—and likely considerably more Ukrainian troops—dug in to their positions. Having long since stopped fighting for territory, the two sides are now trading bullets and small numbers of casualties, largely to avoid the compromises that any formal peace arrangement would require. Notably, few in the breakaway areas of Luhansk and Donetsk seem to think a new invasion is likely.
In fact, over the past year and a half, Kyiv and Moscow have grown increasingly comfortable with a stalemate that brings benefits to them both. Donbas is slowly but surely separating from Ukraine and being swallowed by Russia. This trajectory is at odds with both countries’ official commitment to the region’s peaceful reintegration into the Ukrainian state. Yet the trend serves powerful interests in both Kyiv and Moscow and therefore seems likely to continue. For Kyiv, prolonging the war means that it does not have to implement a peace that would be politically and economically costly. For Moscow, the unresolved conflict means that it can continue to keep Kyiv off balance, undermining what it sees as an anti-Russian political project.
Seen from the Donbas, Russia’s alarming moves take on a different cast.
What vexes Moscow, then, is not the failure of the Minsk agreements to end the Donbas war on Russia’s terms. Rather, it fears Kyiv’s ever-closer ties to the West and NATO. In menacing an invasion, Russia is hoping to limit Ukraine’s westward slide, ensuring that its new, chilly modus vivendi with Kyiv at least remains predictable and reinforcing a situation that has given it wide control over the breakaway region.
A Failed Peace
The current framework for ending the war in the Donbas—the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015—has been ill fated from the start. When the conflict began in 2014, Ukrainian government forces appeared to be nearing victory over a chaotic assortment of Russian-armed separatists, until the Kremlin sent in thousands of regular troops to overwhelm the government forces. The resulting Minsk II protocols were effectively dictated to Kyiv, with Russia asserting broad autonomy over the areas it had helped wrest away from Ukrainian control.
For Moscow, Minsk II was a blueprint for creating Russian-backed semiautonomous states whose staunch opposition to NATO and EU expansion could be used to prevent Ukraine from joining those bodies. The agreement also had its Ukrainian defenders, including, for a time, then President Petro Poroshenko, who maintained that it gave Ukraine significant sovereignty over the region. But the Minsk approach faced strident opposition on both sides. Ukrainian nationalists saw it as a betrayal, endangering their push for a unitary and thoroughly de-Russified state; Russia’s own nationalists viewed the agreement as failing to formally unite the Donbas with Russia.
In the six years since, the anti-Minsk camps have held the upper hand. In Ukraine, nationalists pushed Poroshenko to refashion himself as an anti-Russian militarist. Then, in 2019, Poroshenko was easily unseated by Volodymyr Zelensky, who blamed him for failing to end the war. Zelensky did not promise to implement Minsk, but he did vow to wind down the military conflict. He faced vocal opposition from the Movement to Resist Capitulation, a loose coalition of hard-liners supported by Poroshenko, some of whose associates have taken credit for stopping Zelensky’s early efforts to disengage Ukrainian forces on the frontline.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin has reliably rebuffed efforts by Kyiv to find a path to peace. Since 2015, Kyiv has made numerous proposals for how an international force or a transitional administration could oversee the Donbas’s reintegration as part of Ukraine. Moscow shut down each proposal. Then, when Zelensky came to office promising to renew ties with the separatist-controlled areas, Moscow almost immediately weakened his hand by making their populations eligible for Russian citizenship. This left the new Ukrainian leader in the awkward position of trying to win back citizens who, his opponents argued, were basically already gone.
A Convenient Impasse
Although both Kyiv and Moscow are often at odds with their own nationalist factions, both governments have in their own ways reinforced the stalemate. In Ukraine, for example, both Zelensky and the hard-line opposition that disdains him seem to believe, although for different reasons, that reintegrating the Donbas is for the moment undesirable: for the government, allowing the conflict to continue means avoiding the political minefields of reunification while benefiting from a steady supply of Western aid and sympathy. For its part, the Kremlin has backed away from its own efforts to implement Minsk, having found it more practical to pursue de facto annexation while the formal status of the of the Donetsk and Luhansk statelets remains unresolved.
Meanwhile, the two sides have not held in-person talks since April 2020, meeting instead by videoconference. Eyewitnesses to those meetings say the Russians increasingly behave as if their presence is an act of generosity, insisting that Kyiv negotiate directly with the separatists. Occasionally, there have been small breakthroughs: in July 2020, the sides managed to agree on a new cease-fire that included strict bans on return fire. But the agreement has since collapsed, in part due to Kyiv’s refusal to implement a provision calling for joint monitoring by Ukrainian and Russian-backed troops.
The ongoing fighting itself has offered perverse incentives to both sides. The steady trickle of casualties means each side can regularly provide fresh evidence of the other’s villainy. Even for the separatist leaders, whose populations have borne the brunt of civilian casualties, continued hostilities have provided a useful distraction from their own misgovernance and corruption. In Ukraine, reports of Ukrainian soldiers dying in combat provide a regular reminder of Russia’s campaign to undermine the country’s democracy. Rarely does anyone in Kyiv acknowledge that the vast majority of enemy casualties are also Ukrainians.
Annexation by Other Means
For the several million residents of the Donbas, the strategic calculations of Kyiv and Moscow mean little. In conversation, they often refer to themselves as Russian and Ukrainian interchangeably. Many are lukewarm if not hostile toward Putin, but they don’t trust Kyiv either. They are not eager for Western military assistance, because they worry that whatever the West sends could lead either side to escalate. Their dream is not to fight off the Russians or, alternately, to defeat the decadent West. What they want is for the frontline running through their home area to go away and to know what country they’re living in. Increasingly, though, the lack of resolution to the conflict has provided its own answer.
During earlier phases of the conflict, Moscow kept its financial support for the Donetsk and Luhansk statelets to a bare minimum on the grounds that they were integral parts of Ukraine. But since the spring of 2020, bilateral COVID-related restrictions have left residents of the separatist-held areas increasingly isolated from Ukraine. Before the pandemic, the five civilian checkpoints along the frontline recorded about one million crossings per month, mostly elderly people traveling to government-controlled Ukraine to collect their state pensions. In the time since, however, separatist leaders have never fully reopened the checkpoints, despite what appear to be serious efforts by Ukrainian negotiators. Crossings have shrunk to a trickle, amounting to just five percent of their previous levels. Residents who still wish to travel to Ukraine now have to undertake expensive, days-long trips through Russian territory.
With this hardening border, Russia has quickly moved to strengthen ties with the civilian populations of Donetsk and Luhansk. Russian officials say they have given Russian passports to more than 650,000 residents under the new expedited procedure introduced after Zelensky’s victory. As one resident of a separatist-held city put it, neighbors were taking advantage of the offer since “the gates are only open for us in one direction.”
Donbas residents want to know what country they’re living in.
Meanwhile, Moscow is for the first time beginning to pour substantial investments into the region. In October, Ukrainian journalists obtained a copy of a Russian government document outlining plans for “the expedited economic development” of “territory 1” and “territory 2”—code for the two statelets. The plan called for spending $12 billion on the region over the next three years, including raising the salaries of public-sector workers to match those in Russia’s neighboring Rostov Oblast. This would amount to a doubling of Moscow’s current annual spending on the breakaways and would exceed its monetary transfers to almost every region of the Russian Federation.
The Kremlin has also moved to facilitate Russian commerce in the statelets. Previously, Russian businesses had been unable to conduct legal trade there, because of the statelets’ unrecognized status. But in mid-November, Putin ordered his government to start recognizing origin certificates for goods produced in Luhansk and Donetsk, allowing them to be traded in Russia. Moreover, these goods are to enjoy priority status when it comes to state and municipal purchases. Although the long-term effects of these measures are unclear, they suggest an evolving Russian approach that is untethered to any formal status negotiations.
Until now, Kyiv has shown little interest in trying to stop Moscow’s growing hold over the Donbas. This is not necessarily because the Ukrainian government supports these efforts but because it has very limited capacity to stop them. The slide toward full separation, however, may also be a perverse win for Ukraine’s nationalists. For some years now, the hard-liners have been concerned by the continued prevalence of Russian and Russian-language media in parts of Ukraine and by the fact that many Ukrainians themselves still feel a strong cultural unity with Russia. For those seeking to cleanse the country of Russian influences—and for a handful of Western officials who support them—getting rid of the heavily Russian-speaking separatist regions that Kyiv’s own minister for reintegration has described as “mentally ill” would make life easier. Without them, they suggest, it would be possible to draw a clear, bright line between a free and democratic Ukraine, which is oriented toward the West, and an authoritarian Russia, which is not. This stance, of course, fits neatly into one of the Kremlin’s agendas: it suggests to Russians that although their government may habitually lie to them and arbitrarily imprison them, there will never be a place for people like them in a Western-style democracy.
No War, No Peace
Russia’s latest military buildup seems to have been aimed, at least in part, at perceived Western slights and provocations, such as the presence of U.S. ships in the Black Sea and various delays to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that is supposed to supply Russian gas to Europe without crossing Ukraine. By showing Russia’s readiness for an invasion, Putin’s primary goal may have been to force Biden into a dialogue and deter a NATO expansion. This does not mean one should ignore the risk of an accidental escalation or an impulsive move by Putin to force all of Ukraine back into Russia’s orbit. It does mean, however, that the greater worry may be that the current low-level conflict could grind on indefinitely, with occasional scares like the present one simply becoming part of the pattern of the stalemate.
For now, many residents in the region think that the current situation is unlikely to change: more than seven years of grim uncertainty have robbed them of any hope that things might get better and any interest in contemplating the possibility of things getting worse. “They say this every year,” one resident of Donetsk city remarked the other day, when asked about talk of a new escalation. “Everyone thinks this will just drag on,” said another.
One cold gray morning in November, I encountered a man smoking at the foot of a barbed-wire fence dividing Ukraine from Russia. In the past, he said, “this wasn’t even here,” gesturing to the fence. The Russians had put it up in 2018, dividing the village in half down the center of the main street. “Nobody asked us,” he said. He lived across the frontlines in separatist-held territory, earning a tenth of what he did before the war. He saw no end to the conflict as long as Putin was in power, but he was also worried about Ukraine reasserting control. “I think this is forever,” he said.
23. What Does the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan Have to Offer?
Excerpts:
A Message to the World
With Afghanistan’s rapidly worsening humanitarian and economic crisis, the NRF predicts that there are only two paths for the future. Either Afghanistan is saved, and democracy is reestablished, or the current situation continues, and international terrorism increases its presence and threatens Afghanistan’s existence.
Afghanistan is at a very critical juncture in its history, much worse than anything the people have experienced before. Despite this, Nazary believes the international community can reverse many of these changes.
“There is still time to make a new trajectory that could bring lasting peace and freedom, but without a proactive policy or role from the international community, it is very difficult for only the NRF to save the whole nation. We are going to do our best and continue our struggle until we free every single inch of Afghanistan but to be successful in this endeavor, we will need the support of the international community and ignoring this problem will not help anyone.”
What Does the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan Have to Offer?
The NRF says it is pushing for a new trajectory in Afghanistan.
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Since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in August, one group has remained strident in its resistance, with plans of expanding on both a national and global level.
The National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF), a grassroots resistance movement that emerged from the rugged terrain of the Panjshir Valley, has vowed to keep its momentum strong against Taliban aggression, despite the group’s rise to power with its taking of Kabul four months ago.
Historically, the Panjshir Valley served as a pocket of resistance in the past against the Soviet invasion and subsequently the Taliban’s rise in the 1990s. A little north of Kabul, its mountainous landscape provides a defensive advantage that has played a strong role in making it the epicenter of guerrilla warfare, withstanding all types of foreign interlopers that have knocked on its doors.
Today, the NRF finds itself trapped in a deja-vu moment as it grapples with the challenges of ridding Afghanistan of the Taliban once again, and this time alone.
Who Are the NRF?
The NRF is led by Ahmad Massoud, son of Ahmad Shah Massoud or the “Lion of Panjshir,” a key figure that led multiple offensives against the Taliban in the 1990s.
Ahmad Shah Masoud played a critical role in forming an anti-Taliban resistance after the group’s first rise to power in 1996. The powerful commander was known for his larger-than-life personality and keen leadership. He was assassinated by al-Qaida just two days before the 9/11 attacks.
For his now 32-year-old son, Massoud junior, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Ahmad Massoud is closely following in his late father’s footsteps through the formation of his own resistance movement.
“Ahmad Massoud is young, clean, and educated, he is not associated with the corruption of the past 20 years,” says NRF foreign relations head Ali Nazary.
“We resist for freedom, justice, independence and for the welfare of every single citizen inside the country. The NRF was formed by people, not political parties and its platform is not for a specific region or a specific ethnic group. We are fighting for everyone in the country. The only resistance group that has a legitimate presence inside Afghanistan at the moment is the NRF,” says Nazary.
For many people joining the resistance movement, the NRF is more than just an idea.
Dadgar, a commander with the uprising who goes by his last name, says he joined the resistance because of his shared values with the movement. “We have respect for the law, human rights, women’s rights, children’s rights and freedom. Those who control Afghanistan today do not value these things and they challenge anyone who is against them. This situation inspired me to join the resistance and stand up against the Taliban. We are not in favor of war or the continuation of war. Our resistance is not for war but for peace. We want a government that respects and values these basic rights.”
The demographics of those involved in the resistance vary, and these days and weeks, recruiting for the NRF has become simpler due to Taliban aggression.
“In Panjshir we have around 17 bases and it’s well protected with ground and aerial forces. Same with Parwan, Kapisa, Badakhshan, Balkh and Takhar. People are also reaching out to us from the east and the south but it’s going to take time for them to announce their forces, it’s because you have the Taliban oppressing many Pashtuns, the Achakzai tribe is a good example,” says Nazary.
He also mentions that the Taliban’s ethnocentric policies throughout the country, especially in the north, have convinced people that they should join the resistance, making it easier for the NRF.
“We haven’t been making much of an effort. The people themselves willingly come and reach our bases. We have been getting many youth join our ranks, middle-aged men, remnants of ANDSF and former professionals; it’s been a drastic increase compared to September and our pockets of resistance are in many provinces not just Panjshir or Andarab.”
The Taliban contests the NRF’s claims, with spokesman Muhammad Suhail Shaheen recently telling Russian media that the Taliban is not militarily engaged with the group. According to TASS, Shaheen said, “What they call National Resistance exists only on paper, there’s no place you can see them on the ground. They don’t really care about the people of Afghanistan, they care about some former rulers, they have no grassroot support. They depend on social media and spread fake news; this is it.”
Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program and senior associate for South Asia at the Wilson Center, weighs in on the NRF’s ground potential by stating that they are a modest movement with limited military capacity but still a very determined group of fighters, nonetheless. He believes that the resistance is finding it difficult to operate inside the country as the Taliban control the majority of Afghan territory, but this notion could change depending on how the coming months unfold.
“If the Taliban are unable to consolidate power and gain legitimacy domestically then that could allow the resistance to strengthen and that could benefit the current resistance. But right now, we are looking at an anti-Taliban force that is quite modest and doesn’t really have the military capacity to do much at this point,” says Kugelman.
Kugelman argues that the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the Afghan people will be largely dependent on how the Taliban deal with their handicaps such as their internal divisions or whether they can address incredibly challenging policy conundrums such as the unfolding catastrophic humanitarian crisis. This will either push Afghans toward or away from the resistance; only time will tell.
Out With the Old, In With the New
Moving forward, the NRF believes in revamping Afghanistan’s outdated social and political systems in order to bring forth something that will serve the people first. From the movement’s perspective, Afghanistan has experienced a vicious cycle of conflict and to end this perpetual conflict, they have proposed certain systematic and political changes that can undo the divisions of the past few decades thus creating a new social contract.
“The only way of ending this conflict which has always been over power is to distribute power from Kabul to elsewhere, so everyone sees themselves being part of the power structure, which has never happened in this country. We believe the best political system is a decentralized system which can devolve power from the center to the peripheries,” says Nazary.
For a multiethnic and multicultural country like Afghanistan where no particular group enjoys dominance, a political system that embraces diversity and could guarantee political and social pluralism is what the NRF find most fitting.
“We believe, to have social justice, freedom, for everyone to enjoy their rights and be equal under the law — you need a new political system, a new Afghanistan. And the best political system in our view is a federal system, which many multinational/multicultural states have embraced and have been successful in bringing stability and lasting peace in their country,” says Nazary.
Leaders of the NRF have noted the importance of learning from other countries’ experiences and adapting them to fit Afghanistan’s unique mold.
“This is why we have been emphasizing a new formula that is compatible with our traditions, and our realities, and could be acceptable to every citizen in the country. Unfortunately, the models of governance that have been used in the past few decades and generally in the past few centuries have never been based on these realities,” says Nazary.
However, experts like Kugelman view a completely new form of governance as unrealistic and untimely. “I think it’s much too ambitious of a goal to impose a new form of governance at this time. That would require another war, which I don’t think there is much stomach for.”
“Mobilize, Organize, and Influence”
In the four months since the Taliban takeover, the NRF has experienced heavy clashes, late night ambushes, and skirmishes with the Taliban. Fighting continues despite the coming cold months ahead.
Commander Dadgar says, “The weather has gotten cold, but we are continuing our efforts, we are constantly changing our locations for our safety, and we are in touch with all resistance members in every active province, there is no stopping.”
In terms of formal plans, Nazary says, “We have both political efforts and military efforts. We are preparing ourselves militarily and we have a military strategy that we are pursuing.”
Politically, the NRF are lobbying against the possible international recognition of the Taliban’s government as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.
“We believe we need representations throughout the world. Our first representation is here in the United States, we have the rights to operate and be able to lobby and advocate here. We are working on opening more offices to bring such awareness throughout the world,” says Nazary.
In late October, the NRF registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act in the United States in order to engage in political lobbying. Registration is not tied to any sort of political recognition on the part of the U.S. government.
With these activities, the NRF positions itself as very different from the Taliban and hopes to take advantage of those differences.
“We are different from the Taliban, they are a sanctioned group, considered a terrorist group, with limited movement. However, we can travel and have any type of activity based on the laws of the countries we are operating from. We have the support of the diaspora communities which could make a big difference. We are also present on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Clubhouse, Twitter Spaces etc. We are using every possible approach and means there is to organize, mobilize, spread awareness, and influence opinion. This is our greatest strength,” Nazary says.
Kugelman sees the NRF’s efforts to spread awareness as justifiable, but argues that the group must jump through many hoops in order to make any noticeable change.
“The NRF have to get the word out, they are trying to emphasize the urgency of their fight, which is the right thing to do, but it’s tough in a context where so many key players and key countries want to move on and unfortunately forget about the war. The U.S., for example, has no compelling motivation to get involved with internal players of the resistance. If anything we have heard the Biden administration saying that they perceive bigger priorities elsewhere.”
In terms of the use of social media as a tool, Kugelman mentions the heavy risks it has posed ever since the Taliban takeover.
“There has been so much misinformation about Afghanistan that has flooded social media, both relating to the Taliban and to the NRF. In that sense it’s important for the NRF to correct their record. More and more analysts like me have become increasingly mistrustful of content that’s posted on social media, especially [from accounts] that are not verified.”
A Message to the World
With Afghanistan’s rapidly worsening humanitarian and economic crisis, the NRF predicts that there are only two paths for the future. Either Afghanistan is saved, and democracy is reestablished, or the current situation continues, and international terrorism increases its presence and threatens Afghanistan’s existence.
Afghanistan is at a very critical juncture in its history, much worse than anything the people have experienced before. Despite this, Nazary believes the international community can reverse many of these changes.
“There is still time to make a new trajectory that could bring lasting peace and freedom, but without a proactive policy or role from the international community, it is very difficult for only the NRF to save the whole nation. We are going to do our best and continue our struggle until we free every single inch of Afghanistan but to be successful in this endeavor, we will need the support of the international community and ignoring this problem will not help anyone.”
24. Putin, Xi running circles around Biden’s hybrid war
Excerpts:
No wonder the leadership in Moscow-Beijing can’t take anyone in Brussels seriously – be it assorted NATO chihuahuas or the spectacularly incompetent Ursula von der Leyen at the European Commission.
A faint ray of light is that Paris and Berlin, unlike the Russophobic Poland and the Baltic fringe, at least prefer having some sort of negotiation with Moscow over Ukraine as opposed to slapping on extra sanctions.
Now imagine Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov explaining the ABCs of foreign policy to a clueless Annalena “Grune” Baerbock, now posing as German foreign minister while displaying a fresh mix of incompetence and aggressiveness. She actually placed the phone call.
Lavrov had to meticulously explain the consequences of NATO expansion; the Minsk agreement; and how Berlin should exercise its right to pressure Kiev to respect Minsk.
No leaks about it should be expected from Ushakov. But it’s fair to imagine that with “partners” like the US, NATO and the EU, Xi and Putin should conclude that China and Russia don’t even need enemies.
Putin, Xi running circles around Biden’s hybrid war
Washington hawks float expelling Russia from SWIFT but Moscow’s budding geo-economic alliance with Beijing will keep the money flowing
Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin spent an hour and 14 minutes in a video conversation on Wednesday. Geopolitically, paving the way for 2022, this is the one that really matters – much more than Putin-Biden a week ago.
Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov, who generally carefully measures his words, had previously hinted that this exchange would be “extremely important.”
It was obvious the two leaders would not only exchange information about the natural gas pipeline Power of Siberia 2. But Peskov was referring to prime time geopolitics: how Russia-China would be coordinating their countercoups against the hybrid war/Cold War 2.0 combo deployed by the US and its allies.
While no substantial leaks were expected from the 37th meeting between Xi and Putin since 2013 (they will meet again in person in February 2022, at the start of the Beijing Winter Olympics), Assistant to the President for Foreign Policy Yuri Ushakov did manage to succinctly deliver at least two serious bits of information.
These are the highlights of the call:
- Moscow will inform Beijing about the progress, or lack thereof, in negotiations with the US/NATO on security guarantees for Russia.
- Beijing supports Moscow’s demands on US/NATO for these security guarantees.
- Putin and Xi agreed to create an “independent financial structure for trade operations that could not be influenced by other countries.” Diplomatic sources, off the record, say the structure may be announced by a joint summit in late 2022.
- They discussed the Biden-hosted “Summit for Democracy,” concluding it was counterproductive and imposed new dividing lines.
Of all of the above, the third point is the real game-changer – already in the works for a few years now, and gaining definitive momentum after Washington hawks of the Victoria “F**k the EU” Nuland kind recently floated the idea of expelling Russia from SWIFT – the vast messaging network used by banks and other financial institutions to make money transfer instructions – as the ultimate sanctions package for the non-invasion of Ukraine.
Putin and Xi once again discussed one of their key themes in bilaterals and BRICS meetings: the need to keep increasing the share of the yuan and ruble in mutual settlements – bypassing the US dollar – and opening new stock market avenues for Russian and Chinese investors.
A 100 yuan bill and Russian 10 ruble coins. Photo: AFP / Demyanchuk /Sputnik
Bypassing a SWIFT mechanism “influenced by third counties” then becomes a must. Ushakov diplomatically put it as “the need to intensify efforts to form an independent financial infrastructure to service trade operations between Russia and China.”
Russian energy businesses, from Gazprom to Rosneft, know all there is to know not only about US threats but also about the negative effects of the tsunami of US dollars flooding the global economy via the Fed’s quantitative easing.
This Russia-China drive is yet another dimension of geoeconomic, geostrategic and demographic power rapidly shifting towards Eurasia and possibly foreshadowing the advent of a new world system related to other matters Putin-Xi certainly discussed: the interconnection of Belt and Road with the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), the expanded reach of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the coming Chinese presidency of BRICS in 2022.
The US – with US$30 trillion in debt, 236% of its militarized GDP – is virtually bankrupt. Russia-China have already experimented with their alternative payment systems, which will inevitably integrate.
The most important banks in both countries will adopt the system – as well as banks across Eurasia doing business with them, and then vast swaths of the Global South. SWIFT, in the long run, will be used only in exceptional cases if China and Russia have their way.
Maidan redux
Now to the heart of the geopolitical puzzle.
Predictably, under orders of the powers that be, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg already rejected it.
Both Xi and Putin clearly identify how Team Biden is deploying a strategic polarization gambit under good old divide-and-rule. The wishful thinking at play is to build a pro-American bloc – with participants ranging from the UK and Australia to Israel and Saudi Arabia – to “isolate” Russia-China.
That’s what’s behind the narrative thunderously splashed non-stop all across the West – to which Biden’s Summit for Democracy was also tied. Taiwan is being manipulated against Beijing while Ukraine is being literally weaponized against Russia. “China aggression” meets “Russian aggression.”
Russian and Chinese soldiers take aim in a 2018 joint military exercise. Image: Twitter
Beijing has not fallen into the trap but has asserted at different levels that Taiwan will eventually be integrated into the mainland motherland, without any ludicrous “invasion.” And the wishful thinking that massive American pressure will lead to cracks inside the Chinese Communist Party is also likely generating zero traction.
Ukraine is a much more volatile proposition: a dysfunctional nightmare of systemic instability, widespread corruption, shady oligarchic entanglements and poverty.
Washington still follows the Zbigniew Brzezinski-concocted Maidan plan laid out for cookie distributor Nuland in 2014. Yet seven years later, no American “strategist” managed to understand why Russia would fail to invade Ukraine, which has been part of Russia for centuries.
For these “strategists”, it’s imperative that Russia faces a second Vietnam, after Afghanistan in the 1980s. Well, it’s not going to happen because Moscow has no interest whatsoever in “invading” Ukraine.
It does get more complicated. The ultimate fear dictating all US foreign policy since the early 20th century is the possibility of Germany clinching a new version of Bismarck’s 1887 Reinsurance Treaty with Russia.
Add China to the combination and these three actors are able to control just about the entire Eurasian landmass. Updating Mackinder, the US would then be turned into a geopolitically irrelevant island.
Putin-Xi may have examined not only how the imperial hybrid war tactics against them are floundering against them, as well as how the tactics are dragging Europe further into the abyss of irrelevance.
No wonder the leadership in Moscow-Beijing can’t take anyone in Brussels seriously – be it assorted NATO chihuahuas or the spectacularly incompetent Ursula von der Leyen at the European Commission.
A faint ray of light is that Paris and Berlin, unlike the Russophobic Poland and the Baltic fringe, at least prefer having some sort of negotiation with Moscow over Ukraine as opposed to slapping on extra sanctions.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (left) meets Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing on March 23, 2021. Photo: AFP / Russian Foreign Ministry / Handout / Anadolu Agency
Now imagine Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov explaining the ABCs of foreign policy to a clueless Annalena “Grune” Baerbock, now posing as German foreign minister while displaying a fresh mix of incompetence and aggressiveness. She actually placed the phone call.
Lavrov had to meticulously explain the consequences of NATO expansion; the Minsk agreement; and how Berlin should exercise its right to pressure Kiev to respect Minsk.
No leaks about it should be expected from Ushakov. But it’s fair to imagine that with “partners” like the US, NATO and the EU, Xi and Putin should conclude that China and Russia don’t even need enemies.
25. FDD | Macron Looks to Revive Saudi Financing for French Military Contracts in Lebanon
FDD | Macron Looks to Revive Saudi Financing for French Military Contracts in Lebanon
fdd.org · by Tony Badran Research Fellow · December 15, 2021
After meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman in Jeddah on December 4, French President Emmanuel Macron announced the Saudis would re-engage in Lebanese affairs “to help the people of Lebanon and do everything so that an economic and commercial opening can happen.” This vague assertion leaves unclear whether the Saudis agreed to finance the Lebanese Armed Forces’ (LAF’s) procurement of French weapons and military equipment, which was Macron’s actual priority.
The French president’s visit to Saudi Arabia wrapped up a tour of the Gulf Arab states that saw stops in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. In Dubai, Macron signed a major contract to sell French Rafale fighter jets worth $19 billion to the Emiratis. Since losing a $66 billion diesel-electric submarine contract with Australia in September, Macron has looked to secure alternative deals to make up for the loss, such as a $3.5 billion deal to sell warships to Greece.
Macron wanted Saudi Arabia to be next. What Macron meant by a “commercial opening” to Lebanon is for Riyadh to revive a $3 billion grant from 2014 to finance LAF purchases of French weapons, including short-range air defense systems, artillery systems, combat and transport vehicles, Cougar attack helicopters, fast-attack patrol vessels, and surveillance and communications equipment. After the delivery of 48 Milan anti-tank missiles in April 2015, the Kingdom canceled the program in February 2016, as Riyadh underwent what an unnamed Saudi official described at the time as “a total evaluation of its relations with the Lebanese republic.” In other words, the Saudis concluded that their grant would merely prop up a Hezbollah-dominated political system.
Reviving this grant — and an additional pledge of $1 billion for Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces (ISF) — has been a priority for both France and the Biden administration. In July, the U.S. and French ambassadors to Lebanon even made an unusual joint visit to the Kingdom to plead with the Saudis to fund the LAF and ISF, to no avail.
Unlike France, the Biden administration has taken it upon itself to underwrite the LAF directly, in addition to soliciting Saudi support. The administration has been dead set on mining for funds in what it euphemistically calls “creative ways,” which include bypassing U.S. law to supplement LAF salaries through a UN-managed fund. The Biden administration also transferred three offshore patrol vessels to the Lebanese Navy. France, by contrast, extended the bankrupt Lebanese government a €400 million line of credit to purchase four French patrol vessels. In practice, Washington’s subsidization of the LAF budget may enable Beirut to pay down its debt to Paris.
France also has other investments in Lebanon and is looking to secure additional projects, including a contract to rehabilitate and operate the Beirut port, which a giant blast leveled in August 2020. Following the blast, Macron met in Beirut with Hezbollah officials, where he reportedly told them, “I want to work with you to change Lebanon.”
In this context, renewed Saudi financing of LAF procurement would serve mainly to stabilize the Hezbollah-led order in which Paris has invested. Nonetheless, the French framed Macron’s visit to Riyadh as a favor to the Saudis. A French official opined that Saudi Arabia’s re-engagement with Lebanon was a quid pro quo for Macron’s high-profile visit, as Western leaders have avoided meeting with the crown prince over his alleged role in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi political operative-turned-Washington Post contributor.
For now, despite Macron’s claim of clinching a commitment, the Saudis do not appear to have agreed to re-open their checkbooks to finance French contracts with the LAF. Riyadh did, however, offer Macron a joint venture to build a factory in the Kingdom to make aerostructure components.
That deal is not the $3 billion Macron had hoped for, but judging by recent statements from senior Biden administration officials, the French president can rely on continued U.S. calls for the Saudis to finance French interests in the land of Hezbollah.
Tony Badran is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he also contributes to FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP). For more analysis from Tony and CMPP, please subscribe HERE. Follow Tony on Twitter @AcrossTheBay. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_CMPP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Tony Badran Research Fellow · December 15, 2021
26. FDD | Bottom-Up Hope: Local Governments Bolster Religious Pluralism in Turkey
FDD | Bottom-Up Hope: Local Governments Bolster Religious Pluralism in Turkey
Aykan Erdemir
Turkey Program Senior Director
Tuğba Tanyeri-Erdemir
Anti-Defamation League
fdd.org · by Aykan Erdemir Turkey Program Senior Director · December 15, 2021
When powerful states and their proxies intensify religious persecution worldwide and democratic governments under a neo-isolationist spell look the other way, where can vulnerable religious minorities find hope? The developments in Turkey show that even when an authoritarian regime doubles down on its scapegoating of religious minorities with all its might, local governments and their visionary leaders can mitigate those challenges and provide vulnerable communities with much-needed hope to carry on.
The year 2021 has been a dark one for freedom of religion or belief in Turkey, particularly for the country’s dwindling religious minorities. In April, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) singled Turkey out in its annual religious freedom report as the only country among NATO’s 30 members as deserving a “Special Watch List” designation for engaging in or tolerating severe violations of religious freedom. Earlier this month, USCIRF released a country update on Turkey, warning that the Turkish government “has continued to carry out actions, deliberate inactions, and rhetoric to fuel a political environment that is hostile to religious minorities.”
When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan converted Hagia Sophia into a mosque last year, he relegated Turkey’s Christians and Jews from citizens to conquered subjects by deploying supremacist rhetoric that praised the conversion as a gratification of the spirit of conquest of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II. Elpidophoros, the archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and a native of Istanbul, warned that “a mentality of the conqueror, and claiming conqueror’s rights… changes the relationship of the state to its citizens.” He added, “I am a Turkish citizen myself, and I don’t want the state to have the mindset of the conqueror, because I am not a conquered minority. I want to feel in my own country as an equal citizen.”
To make matters worse, the Erdogan government has embraced a crueler strategy to stymie freedom of religion or belief. Although Turkey’s religious minorities have endured decades of systematic discrimination long before Erdogan’s rule, they now also feel regime pressure to serve as props in Ankara’s spectacles of tolerance, ceremonies aimed to rebut accusations of government-sponsored abuse. As captive communities, they face demands to partake in whitewashing attempts and become active agents in their own subjugation.
For example, when Erdogan elicited worldwide criticism for converting Hagia Sophia into a mosque last year, the Turkish government rushed to finish the restoration project at the Sumela Monastery in northeast Turkey to hold mass after a four-year hiatus, a development publicized by Turkey’s semi-official news agency Anadolu. Although the Turkish government expected Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of some 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide, to lead the ceremony only a month after Hagia Sophia’s conversion and at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, he turned the offer down, citing health concerns.
While religious minorities go back and forth between being scapegoats and props, Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu has demonstrated that municipalities can play a key role in making their religious minority residents feel welcome as equal citizens and valued stakeholders. A member of the opposition Republican People’s Party, Imamoglu hinted at his inclusive policies when he named all of Istanbul’s ethnic and religious minorities one by one in his June 2019 victory speech, in stark contrast to the Erdogan government’s smear campaign that attacked Imamoglu as a crypto Greek and his supporters as Greeks “disguised as Muslims.”
A deputy chair of Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party went as far as stating that there are “many questions marks” surrounding Imamoglu’s ethno-religious identity, demanding that Imamoglu prove that his “spirit, heart and mind is with the Turkish nation.” In response, Imamoglu told The Times, “If I were of Greek origin, I wouldn’t mind to say so. Same if I were of Armenian or Assyrian origin. Or any other national origin. It doesn’t make a difference.” He added, “I find it shameful if politics is realised in terms of ethnicity or beliefs. I also condemn people who think they are degrading someone by calling them Greek.”
Once in office, Imamoglu put his pluralist and inclusive vision into action. Six months into his term, Imamoglu announced the employment of 50 religious officials from different faiths to deliver funeral services in Istanbul. “From now on,” he said, “followers of all faiths and religions living in this age-old city will receive equal services.”
Imamoglu also demonstrated his pluralist vision by embracing Istanbul’s at-risk religious minority heritage. In June, the Istanbul municipality announced its work toward restoring the Prinkipo Greek Orphanage, Europe’s largest wooden building, which the Turkish state had shuttered, seized, and left to rot for over 50 years. The municipality’s reference to the site as “the heritage of our common memory” was a rare official embrace of Turkey’s non-Muslim past as a national heritage.
Municipal officials also presented a digital survey of the derelict building to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, an important gesture toward making amends. Imamoglu also announced plans to restore the Sophronius Palace of the Patriarch of Alexandria (Taş Mektep), another one of Istanbul’s Orthodox Christian heritage sites at risk of destruction. The Istanbul municipality’s use of such inclusive language and gestures shows how local governments can build pluralism from the ground up.
Mayor Imamoglu has also made it a habit to reach out to Istanbul’s Christians and Jews during their religious holidays. During the Orthodox Easter, he provided Pascha Tsoureki—a sweet bread whose three-strand braid represents the Holy Trinity—to Istanbul’s Orthodox residents alongside a personally signed message celebrating their Easter. During Passover, he tweeted, “I wish a happy #Passover to the Jewish community of #Istanbul. May it bring hope and morale for the better days to come. Hag Pesach Sameach!” At a time when the Erdogan government’s antisemitic hate speech has led to a spike in hate crimes, Imamoglu’s Passover tweet in Turkish received over 100,000 likes.
It is true that in a hyper-centralized regime like Turkey, the government can reverse overnight Imamoglu’s tireless efforts to promote pluralism. The Istanbul mayor is not only under Ankara’s immense political and financial pressure, but also harassed by spurious investigations and lawsuits. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to underestimate the impact of Imamoglu’s work in providing Istanbul’s Christians and Jews with the feeling that this city is where their communities and their faiths belong. Such a warm embrace can provide the hope that these vulnerable communities need to survive as their members continue their exodus from a country ruled by an increasingly oppressive government. The case of bottom-up hope from Istanbul should be a reminder that hope can flourish even against great odds, and all it takes is a person with moral courage and integrity.
Aykan Erdemir is a former member of the Turkish parliament and senior director of the Turkey Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). He is a member of the Anti-Defamation League’s Task Force on Middle East Minorities and a steering committee member of the International Panel of Parliamentarians for Freedom of Religion or Belief (IPPFoRB). Follow him on Twitter @aykan_erdemir. Tugba Tanyeri-Erdemir is a nonresident scholar at the Middle East Institute and a research associate at the University of Pittsburgh’s Anthropology Department. She is the coordinator of the Anti-Defamation League’s Task Force on Middle East Minorities and the co-chair of the Middle East Working Group of the International Religious Freedom Roundtable. Follow her on Twitter @TurkishFacade. FDD is a Washington, D.C.-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Aykan Erdemir Turkey Program Senior Director · December 15, 2021
27. FDD | Germany must stop cozying up to Iran
FDD | Germany must stop cozying up to Iran
fdd.org · by Benjamin Weinthal Research Fellow · December 15, 2021
Last Tuesday, the US government placed sanctions on the prison in the central Iranian city of Isfahan for human rights violations. This is the same Iranian metropolis that has a twin-city partnership with the German city of Freiburg.
The US Treasury Department said authorities in Isfahan executed Mostafa Salehi in 2020 “after taking part in street protests in December 2017 and January 2018,” and that his execution was a “flagrant denial of the right to life and liberty of Salehi for seeking to exercise his right to freedom of expression and his right of peaceful assembly.”
Isfahan’s execution sprees over the years have done nothing to faze either Freiburg’s Mayor Martin Horn, Winfried Kretschmann, the Green party governor of Baden-Württemberg (the state where Freiburg is located), and the civil servant tasked with fighting antisemitism in the state, Michael Blume.
The clerical regime in Isfahan holds an annual al-Quds Day event calling for the elimination of the Jewish state. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, antisemitism has proliferated in Isfahan, resulting in the exodus of most of its Jews, the brutal murder in 2012 of a 57-year-old Jewish woman and the apparently deliberate neglect of a historic Jewish school.
The Iranian-American journalist Karmel Melamed reported recently that authorities in Isfahan refused to even investigate Toobah Nehdaran’s 2012 murder. Disturbingly, Blume has showed no appetite to confront the city partnership that helps to mainstream Iran’s theocratic regime — the world’s worst state-sponsor of terrorism, antisemitism and Holocaust denial.
In January 2020, supporters of the Islamic Republic used the centre to mourn the death of the US- and EU-designated terrorist Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force.
Germany’s new Green party-Social Democratic coalition government opposes the closure of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s base in Hamburg. Germany’s new Social Democratic chancellor, Olaf Scholz, then mayor of Hamburg, signed a facilities contract with the Islamic Center and other Islamic groups in 2012.
If Germany is serious about its oft-stated declaration that there is “no place for antisemitism” in the Federal Republic, the political establishments in Freiburg and Hamburg must immediately pull the plug on their relationships with the virulently antisemitic Iranian regime.
Benjamin Weinthal is a fellow for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow Benjamin on Twitter @BenWeinthal. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, non-partisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Benjamin Weinthal Research Fellow · December 15, 2021
28. FDD | Hamas’ Efforts to Release Marwan Barghouti Come at Fatah’s Expense
FDD | Hamas’ Efforts to Release Marwan Barghouti Come at Fatah’s Expense
By championing Barghouti’s release, Hamas hopes to increase fissures within Fatah, apply pressure to an already stressed Palestinian Authority, and bolster Hamas’ standing within Palestinian society—all with minimal risk of unleashing a potential opponent.
David May
Senior Research Analyst
Abdel Abdelrahman
Intern
fdd.org · by David May Senior Research Analyst · December 15, 2021
The Hamas-Fatah feud has dominated Palestinian politics since Hamas violently expelled Fatah from Gaza in 2007. In November 2021, Hamas conducted a provocative funeral procession in the West Bank, which the Fatah-dominated PA controls, for a fallen Hamas member. The public demonstration teemed with Hamas flags and gunmen, challenging Fatah primacy in that territory. In response, PA police cracked down on Hamas members, arresting several and preventing similar outbreaks. And on December 12, at a funeral for a Hamas member in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, a Hamas-Fatah clash left four dead.
Hamas’ advocacy for Barghouti’s release makes future unrest more likely.
Barghouti is a national icon. He has been active within Fatah since the early 1970s and rose to prominence as a field leader during the late 1980s in the First Intifada. Barghouti led the Tanzim, Fatah’s armed wing, when the Palestinians launched the Second Intifada in 2000. During this period, Barghouti arguably became more popular than former Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
Israel arrested Barghouti in 2002 for orchestrating terrorist attacks and held him directly responsible for the deaths of at least fourteen Israelis. Jerusalem subsequently sentenced Barghouti to five consecutive life terms plus forty years. Yet Barghouti’s appeal and influence have only increased during his incarceration.
Seeking to capitalize on Barghouti’s popularity, current Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh has prioritized his release. Since the Hamas-Israel war in May 2021, Egypt has attempted to secure a long-term truce that would include a prisoner exchange. In late June, Haniyeh promised Fadwa Barghouti that her husband would be included in any future prisoner swap with Israel.
Hamas’ demands may seem unrealistic in light of Barghouti’s exclusion from previous prisoner exchanges and his prison sentences. Yet the 2011 prisoner exchange for Gilad Shalit that freed 1,027 Palestinians, which included many with blood on their hands, seemed far-fetched at the time.
However, Palestinian polls have Barghouti beating Haniyeh, calling into question Haniyeh’s judgment in campaigning for the release of a possible rival. Hamas is taking this risk for several reasons. First, Hamas would get credit as the main Palestinian leadership even if Barghouti is not released. Second, Barghouti could be a potential ally to Hamas given its shared vision of annihilating Israel. And third, Barghouti’s isolation in Israeli prison and lack of a political infrastructure to help actualize his political goals minimize the threat he poses to Hamas.
Barghouti could also be a major headache for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and would likely defeat Abbas in an election, according to Palestinian polls. Fearing competition, Abbas and his loyalists have reportedly pressured Israeli and Egyptian negotiators not to release Barghouti. Adding to Barghouti’s isolation, in March 2021, Abbas expelled Barghouti’s most notable supporter, Nasser al-Kidwa, from Fatah when al-Kidwa announced he would run on his own slate during the Palestinian elections that were scheduled to take place in May.
Abbas is already facing unprecedented criticism from Palestinians over corruption, the Palestinian security service’s killing of social justice activist Nizar Banat, and the PA’s overall political ineptitude. And Abbas’ disapproval rate stood at 71 percent in October. Though the same poll gave Fatah a five-point lead over Hamas, this outcome was a significant decrease from Fatah’s 11-point margin in June. Barghouti’s release would thus strain an increasingly unpopular Fatah party.
Barghouti’s release would also bolster a Fatah breakaway camp, increasing the divide within Abbas’ party. Before the aborted Palestinian elections in May, three slates were set to divide Fatah’s base—Al-Kidwa and Fadwa Barghouti led one of them. Sensing defeat, Abbas canceled the elections three weeks before their scheduled occurrence. Fatah appears doomed to repeat its catastrophic electoral performance in the 2006 legislative elections, in which Fatah submitted multiple candidates for slots, dividing its support and handing Hamas an overwhelming victory.
When Abbas denied Hamas the opportunity to cement its position through ballots, Hamas opted for bullets—or rockets, to be more precise—against Israel to portray itself as the leader of the Palestinian resistance. In May, Hamas seized on tension in the contested Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah and the ever-simmering restiveness at the Al Aqsa Mosque to claim its role as the leader of the Palestinian project. Hamas dubbed its campaign against Israel “Saif al-Quds” (Sword of Jerusalem) to portray itself as the protector of the holy city.
Hamas’ barrages of rocket fire provoked a war with Israel that improved the terrorist group’s prestige. A poll conducted in the West Bank and Gaza shortly after the conflict found that 72 percent of Palestinians believed that Hamas’ aim was to defend Jerusalem and the al-Aqsa Mosque. Similarly, Hamas’ posturing on releasing Barghouti aims to improve the group’s status as a liberator of imprisoned Palestinians.
Thus, while Hamas’ ploy to release Barghouti may prove unsuccessful, the terrorist group sees it as more of a risk-free coin toss: tails Hamas wins, heads Fatah loses.
David May (@DavidSamuelMay) is a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Abdel Abdelrahman is an intern. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD. FDD is a Washington, D.C.-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by David May Senior Research Analyst · December 15, 2021
29. Biden picks Caroline Kennedy and Michelle Kwan to be ambassadors
Still no ambassador for Korea.
Biden picks Caroline Kennedy and Michelle Kwan to be ambassadors
CNBC · by Christina Wilkie · December 15, 2021
Caroline Kennedy
Getty Images
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden announced two high-profile diplomatic nominations on Wednesday, tapping Caroline Kennedy, a former U.S. ambassador to Japan, to be his envoy to Australia and Michelle Kwan, the world-famous figure skater, to be ambassador to Belize.
The announcements were the latest chapter in the Biden administration's ongoing effort to install American ambassadors overseas, an effort that has been effectively halted in the Senate by two ambitious Republicans, Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri.
The rules of the Senate permit any individual senator to place an unofficial hold on any executive branch nominee. Senators have blocked judicial appointments, ambassadors and Cabinet nominees over the years as a way to exert leverage in order to win concessions from leaders.
In Cruz's case, he has blocked more than 50 Biden diplomatic appointments since February in the hopes of forcing the White House to sanction key players in the Russian/German gas pipeline deal known as Nord Stream 2, which will deliver gas from Russia to Western Europe.
Hawley's demands are less defined than those of Cruz, but he reportedly wants high-ranking members of the Biden administration to lose their jobs over the chaotic way the U.S. war in Afghanistan ended last summer. Hawley has placed holds on several Pentagon and State Department nominees this fall, but he hasn't explained exactly what it would take for him to lift them.
Both Hawley and Cruz are leading Republican presidential hopefuls in 2024, should former President Donald Trump decide against running for a second term.
Kennedy and Kwan are both superstars in Democratic political circles.
Kennedy is the daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963. A best-selling author and public speaker, Kennedy has spent much of her life working to improve New York City Schools. Former President Barack Obama tapped Kennedy to be his ambassador to Japan, a post she served in from 2014 to 2017.
Kwan is one of the most celebrated American figure skaters of her generation, having won five world championships and two Olympic medals, the last one in 2006. But in the years since then, Kwan has built a career as a well-respected nonprofit executive and a State Department advisor on global women's issues.
Michelle Kwan, speaking in Washington, in 2013.
Jeffrey MacMillan | The Washington Post | Getty Images
From 2018-20, Kwan served as the director of surrogates for the Biden campaign, helping to strategize and execute high-profile appearances by Biden's many celebrity supporters.
Now, in the signal-heavy world of international diplomacy, Biden's decision to nominate Kennedy and Kwan are a sign of how highly the United States values its alliances with Australia and Belize.
Australia is a one of America's closest and most trusted allies, and the country plays a key role in Biden's long-term strategic plan to counter China's rising influence in the Pacific.
Belize is also a longtime U.S. ally and a key geographic partner in a region plagued by political instability, narcotics trafficking and mass migration.
But there is also a China-related twist here: Belize is part of a shrinking group countries around the world that maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which has long exercised independence from Beijing.
A recent announcement by Nicaragua's government that it would sever diplomatic relations with Taiwan was seen by the West as a capitulation to pressure from Beijing.
By shoring up U.S. relations with countries like Belize, including by appointing a high-profile ambassador like Kwan, the Biden administration is making clear that it values Belize as a strategic geopolitical ally in the region.
Once they are formally nominated, Kennedy and Kwan will join 54 other stalled diplomatic nominees awaiting their Senate confirmation votes.
CNBC · by Christina Wilkie · December 15, 2021
30. The Threat of a China-Centric New World Order
The Threat of a China-Centric New World Order
The Threat of a China-Centric New World Order
To understand what’s at stake, let’s talk geopolitics.
by
December 14, 2021, 11:58 PM
Chinese President Xi Jinping at press conference in Berlin, July 5, 2017 (360b/Shutterstock.com)
Writing in the January/February 2022 issue of Foreign Affairs, the Hoover Institution’s Elizabeth Economy explores Chinese President Xi Jinping’s efforts to shape the international order by “fundamentally transforming the global system” to reflect Beijing’s interests and values. The leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), she explains, seeks nothing less than to replace the U.S.-led post–World War II global order with a “China-centric order with its own norms and values.” To understand what is at stake here, let’s talk geopolitics.
Since the end of the 19th century, the world has been what the great British geopolitical thinker Sir Halford Mackinder called a “closed political system.” The end of the age of discovery ushered in a post-Columbian world where, in Mackinder’s words, “Every explosion of social forces, instead of being dissipated in a surrounding circuit of unknown space and barbaric chaos, will be sharply re-echoed from the far side of the globe, and weak elements in the political and economic organism of the world will be shattered in consequence.” The events of the 20th century confirmed Mackinder’s observation — through two world wars and one cold war, the center of the world’s geopolitical landscape shifted away from Europe to North America and Asia. At the end of this “long war,” which lasted from 1914 to 1989, the formerly Euro-centric international system was at first temporarily replaced by America’s “unipolar moment,” which gradually receded with the emergence of today’s bipolar geopolitical contest between the United States and China.
The Asia-Pacific can serve as the base — the geopolitical heartland — from which China can make a bid for global dominance.
Economy notes in her article that the Sino-U.S. competition involves two very different visions of the global order. The U.S. vision, she explains, includes the rule of law, free markets, and a limited state role in people’s lives. “Xi,” she writes, “seeks to flip a switch and replace those values with the primacy of the state.” The CCP’s vision is of “a world in which the state controls the flow of information and capital both within its own borders and across international boundaries, and there is no independent check on its power.”
In the end, which vision triumphs will depend on who wins the geopolitical struggle. Economy notes that President Xi seeks to control the South China Sea, annex Taiwan, extend its economic and political influence throughout Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and “supersede the United States as the dominant force in the Asia-Pacific.” The BRI, Economy notes, “has positioned China at the center of the international system, with its physical, financial, cultural, technological, and political influence flowing to the rest of the world,” while also evoking “historical memories of the Silk Road and of Chinese centrality during imperial times.”
The Asia-Pacific can serve as the base — the geopolitical heartland — from which China can make a bid for global dominance. Mackinder and like-minded geopolitical thinkers such as Alfred Thayer Mahan and Nicholas Spykman long ago warned about the rise of a great power on the Eurasian landmass that could use the vast human and natural resources of “the great continent” to forge a global imperium.
In his geopolitical masterwork Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919), Mackinder called the joint landmass of Eurasia-Africa the “World-Island” and cautioned that “Who rules the World-Island commands the world.” Economy notes that China’s former vice minister of foreign affairs He Yafei has asserted, “The end of Pax Americana, or the American Century, is in sight.” China has engaged in a multi-decade military buildup that includes an ever-expanding navy and a growing strategic nuclear force.
Economy notes that some observers continue to believe that Xi’s geopolitical goals are more limited and “overwhelmingly defensive” in nature. “That view,” she writes, “misses the scope of Xi’s vision,” which “connotes a radically transformed international order” in which a “resurgent China would be on par with or would surpass the United States” on the international stage. Xi, she concludes, is seeking a “shift in the geostrategic landscape” and a “profound transformation” of the global order.
What is to be done? Economy points out that China’s increasingly aggressive actions and bold proclamations have pushed its Asian neighbors toward the United States as a geopolitical counterweight to Chinese power, while the BRI is meeting with some resistance among some Asian and African nations. Moreover, China’s cultural offensive and other “soft power” initiatives have also suffered some setbacks. And its so-called “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy, which includes using economic coercion to further its political interests, is increasingly resented by other countries. (READ MORE: Our Munich Moment: Collective Defense for Taiwan)
But the United States cannot afford to hope and wait for China’s geopolitical offensive to fail. “Whether Xi is able to realize his ambition,” Economy concludes, “will depend on the interplay of many factors, such as the continued vitality of the Chinese economy and military and the support of other senior leaders and the Chinese people, on the one hand, and the ability of the world to continue to resist Chinese coercion and the capacity of the world’s democracies and others to articulate and pursue their own compelling vision of the world’s future, on the other.”
As Economy notes, the United States and its allies have a “compelling vision of the world’s future,” but that is not sufficient. It must be backed by effective military power, competent diplomacy, and a demonstration of the will to wage and ultimately prevail in the geopolitical struggle. Keep your eyes on Taiwan.
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.
