Quotes of the Day:
"Patience strengthens the spirit, sweetens the temper, stifles anger, extinguishes envy, subdues pride, bridles the tongue."
- George Horne
"It is time for us to realize that we’re too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We’re not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline. I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing. So, with all the creative energy at our command, let us begin an era of national renewal. Let us renew our determination, our courage, and our strength. And let us renew our faith and our hope. We have every right to dream heroic dreams. Those who say that we’re in a time when there are no heroes, they just don’t know where to look."
- Ronald Reagan, 1981
"Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist."
- Edmund Burke
1. Training Civilians, Ukraine Nurtures a Resistance in Waiting
2. Where Russia Once Triumphed, Ukrainians Prepare to Resist Putin
3. Taiwan would be better off alone
4. This Is The Company Profiting Most From War
5. 20 Companies Profiting the Most from War
6. 5 Desperate Days: Escaping Kabul
7. Grindle: Evidence mounts of Afghanistan withdrawal’s massive failure
8. Reports of Russia's decline are greatly exaggerated
9. Second Opinion: Does the Biden administration deserve a passing grade in foreign policy?
10. Opinion | Ukraine stood with the West in 2014. Today we must stand with Ukraine.
11. U.S. signing of Xinjiang-related act 'wrong, unpopular, dangerous': spokesperson
12. As the Taliban swept Kabul, one friend escaped. The other was trapped. They shared their anguish on WhatsApp
13. Opinion | National conservatives and racial identitarians have a common enemy: Individualism by George F. Will
14. Sunday Q&A: Top Republican on Foreign Affairs, McCaul sees Russian invasion as likely
15. ‘Radically optimistic’: the thinktank chief who believes the US can ‘self-correct’
16. Should US Get Tougher on China Over Hong Kong or Use Other Approach?
17. Russian Mercenaries are Officially in Mali—and the West is Furious
1. Training Civilians, Ukraine Nurtures a Resistance in Waiting
I have written about and forward many references to unconventional deterrence and the resistance operating concept and now this article describes some of the actions Ukraine and its people are taking.
I would also offer these comments from a close friend who has Special Forces experience around the world and who is very close to what is happening in Ukraine. These comments are in response to an article I forwarded yesterday but they are very applicable to this article in which my comments had the follow questions:
The fundamental questions I would ask the authors are these: Do we understand the indigenous way of war and do our concepts adapt to it? Both the Russian and Ukrainian way of war? Or are we using US TTPS, concepts. and equipment? We must not forget this rule of irregular warfare: Do not force the US way of war upon indigenous forces if it is counter to their history, customs, traditions, and abilities.
Ukraine is quite capable of establishing résistance nets throughout its sovereign (and occupied) lands unilaterally (or better: with US “PhD level” quiet assistance – with Ukraine in lead and taking what would work within the Ukrainian present social, agrarian, urban, and long résistance historical environment and journey). Few Westerners understand that the entire Ukrainian people struggled as a national résistance against the occupier for 300 continuous years until independence in 1991 (and many assert, continuing thru 2014 with at least one eye open).
Ukraine’s résistance TTPs, survival, organized fighters, and underground leadership and operations - in its highest unified developed form: organized freedom fighters UPA, and the OYN underground leadership and political were influential to and modeled by the founders of many of the modern post-WW2 anti-colonial and national liberation movements, to include the Viet Minh.
Even in the 1980s, I found in El Salvador that the FPL (fighters) / FMLN (underground / leadership / political) organization and TTPs mirrors of UPA and OYN (also English acronym OUN is often used).
Just two last brief comments: to understand Ukraine, one must get out of Kyiv. For a month at a time. Nearly everywhere one will be a small speck in awe, standing alone, surrounded 360 degrees by black earth fields that stretch as far as one can see, beyond the human visual terrestrial horizon. Dotted with small villages and humble farmers’ abodes – subsumed by the rich black earth vastness.
To understand Kyiv, one must stay in Moscow for a week (as when you supported my trips there) - a vast grey concrete urban sameness only broken by the Kremlin. Then as we did, travel on the overnight train to Kyiv. One departs the grey concrete Moscow urban living monolith at sunset, arriving in the wondrous urban downtown pastel colours of Kyiv in mid-morning. All different pastel colours dancing in the sunlight and as night falls, in the moon beams. Much like the Ukrainian people’s inner spirit and soul that sustained them thru 300 terrible years of brutal occupation.
One immediately recognizes that the Russian and Ukrainian are two totally different peoples. Neither better or worse – but each different and their own peoples; each of two different sovereign nations. That Ukraine is unique – and will always fight for its freedom from occupier, aggressors, and anti-democratic tyrants. And is worth helping.
V/r
Training Civilians, Ukraine Nurtures a Resistance in Waiting
By Andrew E. Kramer
Dec. 26, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
Eastern European nations have drawn a lesson from America’s wars of the last decades: Insurgency works. Ukraine’s training of volunteers has become a factor in the standoff with Russia.
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Civilian trainees practicing first aid during a mock military exercise near Kyiv, Ukraine, in December.Credit...Oksana Parafeniuk for The New York Times
By
Dec. 26, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
KYIV, Ukraine — In a pine forest not far from Ukraine’s capital, a mock battle raged. Commanders barked orders. Figures in camouflage huddled behind trees. A soldier fell to the ground, yelling for help.
His cries provided the cue for Anastasia Biloshitska, 25, to run into the line of fire, kneel in the mud and open her medical kit.
“People who are prepared won’t panic,” Ms. Biloshitska said.
Ms. Biloshitska is one of thousands of Ukrainian civilians who have signed up to learn combat skills in training programs created and run by the government and private paramilitary groups. The programs are part of the country’s strategic defense plan in the event of a potential invasion by Russia — to foster a civilian resistance that can carry on the fight if the Ukrainian military is overwhelmed.
There is no indication that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has made up his mind whether to launch an attack. But if one should come, even Ukraine’s own generals say their regular military stands little chance in a full-fledged invasion.
Anastasia Bilotshitska, left, in the training exercise for civilian volunteers in December near Kyiv.Credit...Oksana Parafeniuk for The New York Times
So Ukraine has drawn a lesson from the United States’ wars in Iraq and Afghanistan of the past two decades, when guerrillas provided enduring resistance in the face of vastly superior American firepower.
“We have a strong army, but not strong enough to defend against Russia,” said Marta Yuzkiv, a doctor working in clinical research, who signed up for training this month. “If we are occupied, and I hope that doesn’t happen, we will become the national resistance.”
Government-sponsored training for civilians has underpinned Nordic and Swiss military strategies for decades, and is gaining traction as a military doctrine in Eastern Europe.
Spurred on by Russian threats, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania all have programs encouraging rifle ownership for some civilians and formal training to fight as partisans after an occupation.
Nearly every weekend in Estonia, for example, the Defense League, a self-defense organization, holds exercises in the forests for volunteers, right down to making improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, the weapon that plagued the United States military in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Civilian defense is not unfamiliar in Ukraine; volunteer brigades formed the backbone of the country’s force in the east in 2014, the first year of the war against Russian separatists, when the Ukrainian military was in shambles.
This effort is now being formalized into units of the newly formed Territorial Defense Forces, a part of the military. Last year, the Ukrainian Army began weekend training for civilian volunteers in these units.
Reservists with the Ukrainian Army inspecting weapons at a meeting to welcome new volunteers in Kyiv in December. Credit...Oksana Parafeniuk for The New York Times
The government runs, and pays for, some of the training sessions through the Territorial Defense Forces. Private paramilitary groups like the Ukrainian Legion run other sessions, for which their members pay all the costs. The legion conducted the program in the forest outside Kyiv this month.
The goal is not to achieve victory against the weight of the Russian military, which would be virtually impossible for Ukraine anyway. Rather it is to create the threat of disruption and resistance to an occupying force that would serve as a deterrent to an invasion.
Gen. Anatoliy Barhylevych, deputy commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, has said that the country aims to turn out about 100,000 volunteers in the event of conflict. But a spokesman for the Ukrainian Defense Forces said he could not disclose how many people had formally enlisted in the training programs.
Opinion surveys suggest some support for the effort. A poll this fall, for example, showed 24 percent of Ukrainians saying they would resist “with a weapon in hand” if Russia invaded. Among men, 39 percent said they would resist with weapons. Ukrainians have taken to posting selfies on social media holding rifles.
Ukrainian commanders say that half a million Ukrainians have military experience, and that they hope many would join a fight, including those belonging to private groups like the Ukrainian Legion.
Mykhailo Hiraldo-Ramires displaying the parts of a model anti-tank mine at the training session near Kyiv in December.Credit...Oksana Parafeniuk for The New York Times
But skeptics say that this is partly bluster, and that the Ukrainian command could hardly count on a flood of veterans becoming insurgents.
In the forest, shrouded in a bitter-cold morning mist, schoolteachers, accountants, waitresses and programmers spilled out of Toyotas and Fords and made their way to the training sessions.
At one picnic area, the lesson of the day was topical, if nerve-rattling: how to screw a fuse into the slab of high explosives of an anti-tank mine.
“We don’t have many Javelins and the Russians have a lot of tanks,” said Mykhailo Hiraldo-Ramires, the instructor. The Javelin is a type of American anti-tank missile that the United States has provided to the Ukrainian Army in limited numbers. “We will get them with these so-called pancakes instead.”
Training grounds used by the Ukrainian Legion, a private paramilitary group, near Kyiv in December. Credit...Oksana Parafeniuk for The New York Times
Mr. Hiraldo-Ramires demonstrated how to install and arm the detonator, using a model of a mine. This requires removing a metal safety ribbon and pushing a button that when depressed makes a startling snapping noise, indicating the mine is armed. After you do that, he said, you should “move back to a safe distance.”
Ihor Gribenoshko, 56, an advertising executive at a pharmaceutical company, took notes. “The more coffins we send back, the more the Russian people will start thinking twice,” he said.
Understand the Escalating Tensions Over Ukraine
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Ominous warnings. Russia called the strike a destabilizing act that violated the cease-fire agreement, raising fears of a new intervention in Ukraine that could draw the United States and Europe into a new phase of the conflict.
The Kremlin’s position. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has increasingly portrayed NATO’s eastward expansion as an existential threat to his country, said that Moscow’s military buildup was a response to Ukraine’s deepening partnership with the alliance.
The Ukrainian Legion does not distribute weapons, and instead encourages members to train with their own rifles. It also does not explain how the explosives would wind up in civilian hands. But members said they keep rucksacks in their homes packed with walkie-talkies, medical kits, sleeping bags and warm clothes — ready at a moment’s notice.
Ihor Gribenoshko, 56, an advertising executive.Credit...Oksana Parafeniuk for The New York Times
Marta Yuzkiv, 51, a doctor in clinical research.Credit...Oksana Parafeniuk for The New York Times
Critics point to perils in the plan for civilian defense. One concern is that domestic political divisions could spark violence from armed militias. Some scenarios envision Moscow seizing on this vulnerability, turning nationalist militias into a destabilizing threat to the government.
In an invasion, these groups could “quickly turn into a decentralized insurgency in many parts of the country” a study of scenarios for war between Ukraine and Russia by the Institute for the Study of War in Washington noted.
Others worry that the effort encourages private gun ownership, which carries risks in crime, suicide and domestic violence. Ukrainian law requires a psychological examination to obtain a gun license. In a country of about 40 million, 1.3 million Ukrainians own licensed civilian firearms, according to the Interior Ministry.
A volunteer with the Wild Field Sniper School, at a range outside Kyiv in December. Credit...Oksana Parafeniuk for The New York Times
The civilian training include lectures as well as hands-on sessions. This month, the day before the program in the forest, about 100 people filed into a concert hall in an outlying district of Kyiv, griping about the limited on-street parking and lining up at a vending machine for coffee.
They came for a nearly two-hour lecture sponsored by the Territorial Defense Forces on likely plans of attack on Kyiv — including armored columns rolling in on highways or paratroopers seizing the airport — by Lt. Yuri Matviyenko, a former Ukrainian military attaché to Israel.
“Expect a fast storming,” he said. “We won’t have much time.”
He described how the volunteers might resist based on the tactics of Islamist militias in Aleppo, Syria. The volunteers should use their knowledge of their own neighborhoods to move close to the Russian soldiers, leaving too little separation to call in airstrikes or artillery, he said.
A new member of the Territorial Defense Forces taking the oath during an annual gathering held at the Ukrainian Defense Assistance Society in December.Credit...Oksana Parafeniuk for The New York Times
The next day, out in the pine forest, Ms. Biloshitska — who studied to be a teacher but is now working as a waitress — examined the man playing the role of a casualty as she trained to provide first aid. It did not look good. Small strips of red duct tape indicated multiple wounds. Pressure was applied. Gauze came out. A mock radio call took place.
“Artillery! One! Two! Three!” an instructor yelled. Ms. Biloshitska tumbled to the ground, taking cover, than sprang back up to stanch the bleeding.
On a typical weekend, Ms. Biloshitska said, she might read a book, do laundry or meet a friend at a coffee shop. Learning to dress battle wounds was a new experience.
Ms. Biloshitska treated an area marked as an exit wound on the man’s back. Finally, panting, sweating and surrounded by discarded bandages and medical gloves, she was finished. “How do you feel?” she asked the man.
“Terrible,” he said. “I was shot in the chest.”
Volunteers at a lecture on insurgent tactics in December in Kyiv.Credit...Oksana Parafeniuk for The New York Times
2. Where Russia Once Triumphed, Ukrainians Prepare to Resist Putin
Two articles from mainstream media on Ukrainian resistance potential. It is good to see the media focus on irregular warfare, unconventional deterrence, and resistance.
How many of us know what happened in Ukraine 300 years ago? (I did not know until I read the comments from my close friend today).
Excerpts:
“The information war started 300 years ago,” she said, citing the production of paintings, engravings and statues glorifying the Russian victory.
The battle was a defeat for Ukraine, she said, but later generations continued the fight to this today.
The museum last year opened an exhibit detailing what it calls Russian myths about the battle.
“For Putin, the mythology of the Battle of Poltava is the foundation of the idea that we are one nation,” said Oleh Pustovgar, a Poltava historian. “It is important for Russia not to let Poltava out of the brotherly embrace.”
After Swedish Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist last month said his country could send troops on a training mission to Ukraine, Russia’s embassy recalled the battle.
Where Russia Once Triumphed, Ukrainians Prepare to Resist Putin
Poltava is among the areas that Putin says were wrongly cleaved from Moscow’s control
WSJ · by James Marson | Photographs by Anastasiia Vlasova for The Wall Street Journal
Mr. Khanko is a veteran of the war that Russia whipped up in Ukraine’s east in 2014 to hinder its neighbor from integrating with the West. While the U.S. and its allies have been fretting that Mr. Putin will order a forceful military thrust to rein in Ukraine again, Mr. Khanko has been laying plans to send his wife and small child westward so he can wage a partisan war from the woods around Poltava.
“Even if they get to Poltava, they won’t be here for long,” said Mr. Khanko, who sports a buzzcut and long black beard.
Anatoliy Khanko is a veteran of the war that Russia whipped up in Ukraine’s east in 2014.
Mr. Putin has described Ukraine as an artificial country glued together by Soviet leaders and named Poltava, some 100 miles from the modern border, among historical Russian lands that he says were wrongly cleaved from Moscow’s control. The city lies on the main highway westward from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, to Kyiv, the capital.
But there are thousands of veterans in this region alone, and while the powerful Russian army would likely overrun Ukrainian forces, holding the territory would come at a huge cost, Mr. Khanko said. A recent national survey by a Kyiv pollster showed that one-third of Ukrainians are willing to take up arms if Russia launches an all-out war.
“I know what I am fighting for, but how will Putin sell it to Russians when tens of thousands of graves appear across the country?” Mr. Khanko said. “For what?”
A statue of the 18th-century Russian Gen. Alexander Suvorov, which was moved to the Poltava aviation museum from outside a Kyiv military school in 2019.
Souvenirs and battlefield images for sale near the Poltava Battle Museum.
Western and Ukrainian officials say there is little clarity whether Mr. Putin is planning a major military offensive to secure Ukraine in his sphere of influence or seeking to use the threat of war to pry concessions from the West.
Russia has denied it has any plans to invade, but it wants the U.S. and its allies to abandon its support for Ukraine’s military and withdraw a pledge to make Ukraine a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. On Thursday, in his annual end-of-year media session, Mr. Putin said Russia wanted to avoid conflict but it required immediate security guarantees from the U.S. and its allies.
One thing Mr. Putin has been clear about is his broad ambitions for Ukraine, a former Soviet republic that declared independence in 1991. Ukrainians and Russians, he has said repeatedly, are one people torn apart by the Soviet collapse.
In a recent 7,000-word essay on Ukrainian history, Mr. Putin wrote about the Battle of Poltava in 1709, saying that most locals sided with Moscow against Swedish forces and Cossacks under a Ukrainian leader named Ivan Mazepa.
Yevheniya Shcherbyna, a 33-year-old tour guide at the museum of the battle, sees things differently.
The Holy Dormition cathedral in Poltava housed food and clothing to be sent to Ukraine’s army at the start of the conflict with Russia in 2014.
A children's choir singing carols at the cathedral during this month’s St. Nicholas Day celebrations.
“The information war started 300 years ago,” she said, citing the production of paintings, engravings and statues glorifying the Russian victory.
The battle was a defeat for Ukraine, she said, but later generations continued the fight to this today.
The museum last year opened an exhibit detailing what it calls Russian myths about the battle.
“For Putin, the mythology of the Battle of Poltava is the foundation of the idea that we are one nation,” said Oleh Pustovgar, a Poltava historian. “It is important for Russia not to let Poltava out of the brotherly embrace.”
After Swedish Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist last month said his country could send troops on a training mission to Ukraine, Russia’s embassy recalled the battle.
“We would like to remind Mr. Hultqvist that he is not the first military leader in Sweden who is trying to intimidate Russia with the power of his heroic army by planning to send his military to Ukraine,” the embassy wrote on Facebook.
Poltava, a quiet provincial capital of around 280,000 inhabitants, saw a surge of patriotic activism after 2014 that was sparked by a revolution that toppled a pro-Russian president and the subsequent war.
Mr. Khanko led a unit of protesters from this town during the revolution in Kyiv that ended in dozens of deaths, including one from his group.
Protesters took to the streets here as well, using a crane to pull down the city’s statue of Lenin.
Russia fomented separatist protests in cities across Ukraine’s south and east in 2014, but patriotic groups here quickly quashed efforts of instigators they said weren’t locals.
Ivan Petrenko is a retired army colonel who served in the Soviet army in Afghanistan.
As supplies of fighters, commanders and weapons from Russia transformed demonstrations in the east into an armed conflict, Poltava residents sent aid to Ukraine’s threadbare army. Food and clothes piled up in an Orthodox cathedral here, soon filling an office, spilling down a staircase and taking up around one-third of the building, recalls Archbishop Fedir, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine’s leader in the region.
“Ukraine has weak state institutions, but we can organize ourselves quickly,” he said.
Others like Mr. Khanko, the archaeologist, went to fight, many as part of volunteer units.
“I used to know how to dig up,” he said. “But I learned how to dig in.”
Activists raised Ukrainian and nationalist flags atop a monument to the Russian victory in the center of town. A statue to Mr. Mazepa, the defeated Cossack leader, was erected after years of delays. At the aviation museum, new displays were added to commemorate locals killed in the current war alongside exhibits to Soviet heroes.
There is some support here for ties with Russia, mainly among older residents with ties to the ex-Soviet air force base.
The city’s mayor, Oleksandr Mamai, who draws support mainly from elderly voters, caused a storm when he echoed the Kremlin’s narrative in a recent television interview, saying the U.S. was fighting Russia in Ukraine, setting “brother against brother.” Political opponents want him removed.
Oleksandr Koba has organized pop-up street museums and performances to showcase Ukraine’s history.
Photo: Anastasiia Vlasova for The Wall Street Journal
Oleksandr Koba, who helped topple the Lenin statue, said elderly ladies cursed him in the days afterward. “You pulled down our Lenin,” he recalls them saying. Mr. Koba has organized pop-up street museums and performances to showcase Ukraine’s history and Soviet villainy, including the Holodomor, a forced famine that killed millions in the 1930s.
The conflict has brought some economic pain. Exports to Russia collapsed, a process that began even before the war when Moscow banned milk imports from the region.
At the souvenir shop near the museum, a seller complained that some of the craftspeople who make trinkets and traditional embroidered shirts have left to look for work in European Union countries.
Russia has justified its interventions in Ukraine by claiming, with scant evidence, that Russian speakers face repression there.
Ihor Petrichenko, a deputy of Mr. Mamai’s from an opposition party, said many in the town switched from speaking Russian to Ukrainian after 2014, but he largely stuck with Russian to make a point.
“I don’t need Putin to protect me,” he said.
After returning from the front, Mr. Khanko and other veterans launched camps to teach teenagers basic military tactics and survival skills, as well as patriotic history.
He acknowledges the West wouldn’t send troops to help if Russia invades, but hopes for weapons deliveries.
Ivan Petrenko, who helped set up a motorized infantry battalion from scratch in 2014, said Mr. Putin had underestimated Ukrainians then. A retired colonel who served in the Soviet army in Afghanistan, he said Russia has been buoyed by the U.S.’s recent flight from Kabul—but that Ukrainians would stand firm.
“We won’t be a second Afghanistan,” said Mr. Petrenko. “This is our land, and we’ll fight for it.”
President Vladimir Putin has described Ukraine as an artificial country glued together by Soviet leaders.
—Natalie Gryvnyak in Kyiv contributed to this article.
WSJ · by James Marson | Photographs by Anastasiia Vlasova for The Wall Street Journal
3. Taiwan would be better off alone
A very interesting and provocative article that will be panned by those who do not read it closely and reflect upon it.
This is a counterintuitive political warfare plan.
Taiwan would be better off alone
Cutting all diplomatic ties would free Taipei from a competition it cannot win
Derek Grossman
December 23, 2021 17:00 JST
Derek Grossman is a senior defense analyst at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corp. He formerly served as an intelligence adviser at the Pentagon.
And then there were 14. That was the new tally of Taiwan's official diplomatic partners following Nicaragua's decision earlier this month to swap ties with Taipei for Beijing. The Solomon Islands and Kiribati did the same in 2019. But a curious fact has been overshadowed in the coverage of Taiwan's losses: Taipei has at times preemptively severed ties with partners "to uphold national dignity."
These are smart decisions. Beijing's successful poaching of Taiwan's allies is harming the island's morale and tarnishing its image as a sovereign nation. As counterintuitive as it may seem, Taiwan should further consider unilaterally shedding all remaining partners to strengthen its hand long-term against China.
The uncomfortable truth about Taiwan's remaining allies except for the Vatican, its only partner left in Europe, is that they are with small and impoverished nations like Palau or St. Lucia that are of little geostrategic value. And while Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has disavowed dollar diplomacy, that is exactly what continues to happen when Taipei competes with Beijing to keep countries in its camp.
Chinese leaders despise Tsai because she has refused to endorse the 1992 consensus, which Beijing interprets as Taiwan being a part of "One China." Upon her election in 2016, Beijing terminated a tacit diplomatic truce not to steal any more of Taiwan's allies. Since then, the Tsai administration has lost partners, including Burkina Faso, El Salvador, Gambia, Kiribati, Nicaragua, Panama, Sao Tome and Principe and the Solomon Islands.
Although I have previously argued that Taiwan could regain allies, that is not likely in the years to come, especially if the next president in 2024 also comes from Tsai's Taiwan-centric Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). There are already reports that Honduras might be next, and concerns in recent years have revolved around Haiti, Tuvalu and the Vatican. By unilaterally turning down all official diplomatic relationships, Taiwan would shore up precious time and resources to further its diversification of economic relationships away from China to reduce Beijing's influence over the island.
It could build upon the momentum achieved by Tsai's New Southbound Policy, which prioritizes unofficial partnerships with Australia, India, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines, Vietnam and others. Taiwan would also avoid embarrassments that are sure to arrive as Beijing continues to leverage its massive Belt and Road Initiative to entice Taipei's allies. Unfortunately, the BRI is particularly well-suited to the needs of developing nations.
Furthermore, relinquishing diplomatic partners could allow Taiwan to convert its Ministry of Foreign Affairs into a center for Track 1.5 or Track 2.0 diplomacy to focus on cooperation with powers of major consequence. These would include the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Australia, India, Canada and many Western European powers, including the U.K., France and Germany, that sympathize with Taiwan's plight. For example, this year the Group of Seven summit issued a statement of unprecedented support for Taiwan.
Taiwan could also reinvigorate its diplomacy in unofficial settings to improve other nations' understanding of its problems, as it did by participating in President Joe Biden's Summit for Democracy. In years to come, Taiwan could convince major powers to lobby more aggressively on its behalf at venues in which it is already barred because of China, including the World Health Assembly and the International Civil Aviation Organization.
An obvious problem with this suggested approach is that Beijing will appear to have won the diplomatic competition. But I would argue that this is not what actually matters.
Taiwan needs to strengthen its hand against China, in terms of reducing its economic dependence on the mainland and strengthening deterrence against it, and Taiwanese diplomats in Guatemala, Eswatini, the Marshall Islands, or elsewhere could more usefully be focused on these weightier outcomes. Taiwan seeks to maintain its regional and international space, and yet only major and medium-size powers can help it accomplish these goals. So why not prioritize relationships with them?
Of course, neither Tsai's DPP nor the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) would want to be responsible for downgrading Taiwan's presence. However, criticism of the current diplomatic approach has recently surfaced. The KMT nominee in Taiwan's January 2020 presidential election, Han Kuo-yu, called for a foreign policy geared toward economic growth that is "practical and realistic, rather than ideological."
Han recommended reassigning foreign service officers to promote Taiwan's economy abroad rather than attempting to compete for allies. In early 2019, for example, Taiwan considered a $100 million bailout loan to Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who had cut ties with Taiwan in the past, only to reverse course, and then cut ties in the end. While Taiwan apparently did not provide the loan, how much longer should it field such requests from allies who provide little benefit in return?
Daniel Ortega speaks during his inauguration ceremony, next to his wife Vice President Rosario Murillo, center, and Tsai Ing-wen in Managua, Nicaragua in January 2017: Nicaragua cut ties wtih Taiwan in the end. © AP
Another concern is whether letting diplomatic partners slip away undermines Taiwan's sovereignty. A complex concept, sovereignty essentially means that a government administers services to a population and/or controls territory.
The Taiwanese government might still meet that basic threshold, but from the perspective of international law, sovereignty typically requires recognition by another sovereign state. Still, it is hard to imagine the island's predicament would worsen, given that it is already locked out of nearly every significant government-to-government interaction.
I do not raise the proposal to unilaterally have Taiwan shed diplomatic partners lightly. Yes, Beijing would applaud such a move, and doing so would contradict American and Taiwanese policy goals to maintain international breathing room in the face of a more assertive China.
But the upside is very significant. It would free Taipei from an unwinnable competition and refocus attention on what really matters: reducing China's coercive power by strengthening relationships with powers that can truly help.
4. This Is The Company Profiting Most From War
Very interesting.
This Is The Company Profiting Most From War – 24/7 Wall St.
Aerospace & Defense
This Is The Company Profiting Most From War
Many of the military conflicts around the world exist in nations that do not have the capacity to make sophisticated weapons. Most of these are in Africa and the Middle East. These include conflicts in Nigeria and Ethiopia. Largest conflicts involving regime change. This includes Iraq. In the case of Iraq, American forces left behind weapons that can still be used.
And, there are countries that believe they need protection against possible conflict, many of which spend hundreds of millions of dollars on weapons. Saudi Arabia and Turkey are good examples. Several nations provide most of these weapons. The U.S. is at the top of this list by far. But, it includes several European nations, and Russia.
In some of these “weapon providing” nations, companies and not the government design and build these weapons. Several have become among the largest corporations in the world, and several are public and have shares that trade on major stock markets.
To determine the company profiting the most from war, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Top 100 Arms-Producing Military Services Companies, 2020. Companies were ranked based on SIPRI’s estimates of arms and military services sales in 2020. Some Chinese companies were not considered due to a lack of sufficient data. Arms and military services sales figures came from SIPRI. Revenue figures for the latest fiscal year came from financial reports and corporate press releases.
Even as the COVID-19 pandemic shook the global economy, arms sales continued to increase. The 100 largest military contractors sold $531 billion in arms and military services, a 1.3% increase compared to 2019, according to SIPRI.
Though many of these companies we considered primarily work to develop new technologies for the military, these projects often end up having civilian applications. Many everyday items and technologies like microwaves, GPS, and even the internet were initially conceived of either by or for the U.S. military.
The company profiting the most from war is Lockheed Martin Corp. Here are the details:
> Sales for most recent fiscal year: $65.4 billion
> Arms and military services sales in 2020: $58.2 billion
> Arms sales as pct. of total sales in 2020: 89%
> 1-year change in arms sales: +7.7%
Lockheed Martin Corp. retained its place at the top of the list of the companies profiting the most from war — a position it has occupied every year since 2009. The American military contractor sold $58.2 billion worth of arms and military services in 2020, accounting for almost 90% of the company’s total sales. Lockheed Martin’s arms sales increased by 7.7% from 2019 to 2020.
The company suffered a high-profile flop in 2021, when the Air Force admitted that the stealth fighter jets Lockheed Martin had spent over two decades working on were a failure. The U.S. military wanted to replace the aging F-16s, but Lockheed’s attempts at designing new aircraft were consistently delayed, and once they were finally produced, they did not meet the capability rating benchmark the military wanted.
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5. 20 Companies Profiting the Most from War
20 Companies Profiting the Most from War – 24/7 Wall St.
Special Report
20 Companies Profiting the Most from War
Though the U.S. has ended the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, military spending will likely continue increasing. The House overwhelmingly passed a defense spending bill for $768 billion in December 2021. The bill would increase the Pentagon’s budget by $24 billion more than President Joe Biden requested and is expected to pass easily in the Senate.
Some of the main beneficiaries from this spending increase will likely be American military contractors. These companies are tasked with research and development of new arms and defense systems as well as with providing arms, munitions, vehicles, navigational systems, and more to the U.S. military. Worldwide, there are dozens of companies that sell billions of dollars each year in armaments and military services.
Even as the COVID-19 pandemic shook the global economy, arms sales continued to increase. The 100 largest military contractors sold $531 billion in arms and military services, a 1.3% increase compared to 2019, according to SIPRI.
Though many of these companies primarily work to develop new technologies for the military, these projects often end up having civilian applications. Many everyday items and technologies like microwaves, GPS, and even the internet were initially conceived of either by or for the U.S. military. These are 19 commercial products invented by the military.
20. CSGC
> Sales for most recent fiscal year: $33.9 billion
> Arms and military services sales in 2020: $5.4 billion
> Arms sales as pct. of total sales in 2020: 16%
> 1-year change in arms sales: +13.0%
CSGC, short for China South Industries Group Corporation, is one of the 20 companies profiting the most from war, selling nearly $5.4 billion in arms and military services in 2020. It is one of five Chinese companies to rank on this list.
The state-owned military and defense technology enterprise, CSGC is headquartered in Beijing. It designs and manufactures weapons, ammunition, rockets, vehicles, and more for use by military and police in more than 170 countries and regions, according to China’s state media.
Source: Courtesy of Booz Allen Hamilton via Facebook
19. Booz Allen Hamilton
> Sales for most recent fiscal year: $7.9 billion
> Arms and military services sales in 2020: $5.5 billion
> Arms sales as pct. of total sales in 2020: 70%
> 1-year change in arms sales: +5.4%
Ten of the 20 companies profiting the most from war are American, including Booz Allen Hamilton. Of the company’s $7.9 billion in sales in 2020, 70% came from arms and military services sales.
Booz Allen Hamilton’s arms sales increased by 5.4% from 2019 to 2020. The company said it plans to acquire other companies to pad its health care technology and cybersecurity capabilities.
Source: Sundry Photography / iStock Editorial via Getty Images
18. Honeywell International
> Sales for most recent fiscal year: $32.6 billion
> Arms and military services sales in 2020: $5.8 billion
> Arms sales as pct. of total sales in 2020: 18%
> 1-year change in arms sales: +7.7%
American defense contractor Honeywell International sold $5.8 billion-worth of arms and military services in 2020. The company manufactures and sells ground vehicles, planes, and helicopters as well as weapons systems and other technology.
Though Honewyell’s $5.8 billion in arms sales was among the world’s 20 highest totals in 2020, it accounted for just 18% of the company’s total annual sales. The company is also involved in health care, chemical and industrial manufacturing, and retail goods.
Source: GEORGE FREY / AFP via Getty Images
17. Almaz-Antey
> Sales for most recent fiscal year: $6.6 billion
> Arms and military services sales in 2020: $6.0 billion
> Arms sales as pct. of total sales in 2020: 92%
> 1-year change in arms sales: -31.0%
Though the COVID-19 pandemic threw much of the world economy into disarray in 2020, arms sales by the world’s largest defense contractors remained relatively flat, only increasing or decreasing by a few percentage points. This was not the case with Yet Russian defense contractor Almaz-Antey. The company’s arms sales declined by a 31% decline in arms sales, according to SIPRI.
As the Russian economy was severely impacted by the steep drop in oil prices worldwide, the country’s Finance Ministry proposed a multi-billion dollar cut in its military appropriations plan, which hit Almaz-Antey particularly hard. As much as 92% of the company’s total sales in 2020 were in arms and military services.
Source: Courtesy of Leidos via Facebook
16. Leidos
> Sales for most recent fiscal year: $12.3 billion
> Arms and military services sales in 2020: $7.3 billion
> Arms sales as pct. of total sales in 2020: 60%
> 1-year change in arms sales: +15.0%
Leidos is a science and engineering company headquartered in Reston, Virginia. Though it also operates in the civil and health sectors, most of its business comes from its defense and intelligence divisions. Out of its $12.3 billion total sales, $7.3 billion were in arms and military services.
In May 2021, Leidos completed its acquisition of ship design company Gibbs & Cox, Inc. to enhance its maritime and naval operations and capabilities.
15. Huntington Ingalls Industries
> Sales for most recent fiscal year: $9.4 billion
> Arms and military services sales in 2020: $8.2 billion
> Arms sales as pct. of total sales in 2020: 88%
> 1-year change in arms sales: +4.9%
Huntington Ingalls Industries bills itself as “America’s largest military shipbuilding company,” having made more than 70% of the Navy’s warship fleet.
From 2019 to 2020, the company’s arms sales increased by nearly 5%, from less than $7.9 billion to more than $8.2 billion, according to SIPRI. Just 12% of Huntington Ingalls Industries’ 2020 sales came from sources other than the military.
Source: HJBC / iStock Editorial via Getty Images
14. Thales
> Sales for most recent fiscal year: $19.4 billion
> Arms and military services sales in 2020: $9.1 billion
> Arms sales as pct. of total sales in 2020: 47%
> 1-year change in arms sales: -5.8%
Thales is the only French company to rank among the 20 companies with the highest arms sales in 2020. The company’s $9.1 billion in arms sales in 2020 were 5.8% lower from its 2019 sales, a drop that the company attributed to COVID-19 interrupting its operations. Thales announced in 2021 the French military had selected the company to expand the satellite communications capabilities of several military branches.
Arms and military services sales accounted for nearly half of Thales’ sales in 2020. The company also operates in the digital security, aerospace, transit, and other technology industries, posting more than $10 billion through these business segments in 2020.
Source: guvendemir / Getty Images
13. Leonardo
> Sales for most recent fiscal year: $15.3 billion
> Arms and military services sales in 2020: $11.2 billion
> Arms sales as pct. of total sales in 2020: 73%
> 1-year change in arms sales: -1.5%
Leonardo is by far Italy’s largest arms maker, generating $11.2 billion in arms and military services sales in 2020. Headquartered in Rome, Leonardo also has offices in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and several other countries.
Leonardo sells products to multiple branches of defense, including land and naval electronics, information systems, helicopters, jet aircraft, and unmanned aerial vehicles. The company also manufactures weapons systems, torpedoes, and ammunition for naval and land artillery.
12. CASIC
> Sales for most recent fiscal year: $37.7 billion
> Arms and military services sales in 2020: $11.9 billion
> Arms sales as pct. of total sales in 2020: 32%
> 1-year change in arms sales: -2.8%
China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation, or CASIC, is one of the world’s largest military services providers. The company is controlled by China’s central government and is the nation’s largest missile manufacturer. It sold an estimated $12 billion-worth of arms and military services in 2020. SIPRI notes that this figure is an estimate with “a high degree of uncertainty,” due to the secrecy with which companies in China operate.
In June 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order barring Americans from investing in dozens of Chinese companies, including CASIC. Biden’s order expanded on President Donald Trump’s order, which also listed companies operating in the U.S. with ties to China’s military.
Source: Andy_Oxley / iStock Editorial via Getty Images
11. Airbus
> Sales for most recent fiscal year: $56.9 billion
> Arms and military services sales in 2020: $12.0 billion
> Arms sales as pct. of total sales in 2020: 21%
> 1-year change in arms sales: +5.7%
With $12 billion in arms sales and military service, aeronautics company Airbus ranks as one of the companies profiting the most from war. The company moved up to the 11th largest arms and military services provider in 2020 after coming in 13th the year before, as its arms and services sales increased by 5.7%, a larger increase than most.
Airbus primarily provides planes and aeronautics equipment to private businesses, including airlines like Delta, American, easyJet, JetBlue. Just 21% of the company’s $56.9 billion in sales came from arms and military services.
10. L3Harris Technologies
> Sales for most recent fiscal year: $18.2 billion
> Arms and military services sales in 2020: $14.2 billion
> Arms sales as pct. of total sales in 2020: 78%
> 1-year change in arms sales: +0.4%
For the second consecutive year, L3Harris Technologies ranks as the 10th largest arms and military services provider in the world. This follows the merger between Harris Corporation and L3 Technologies in June 2019.
L3Harris Technologies is a defense contractor that makes electronics, sensors, and networks for military applications for sea, air, land, and space. In November 2021, the company secured a $125 million contract from the U.S. Space Force to upgrade its Counter Communications System, which jam communications from satellites.
9. CETC
> Sales for most recent fiscal year: $34.3 billion
> Arms and military services sales in 2020: $14.6 billion
> Arms sales as pct. of total sales in 2020: 43%
> 1-year change in arms sales: -6.0%
China Electronics Technology Group Corporation, or CETC, is a state-run company that works to modernize and upgrade China’s military. The company is an amalgamation of a number of longstanding research institutes that have been combined under the CETC umbrella. The company’s researches, develops, and sells products in many areas, including electronics, software, semiconductors, radar, and much more.
CETC’s arms and military sales figures are an estimate, as sales and military contracts in China are less transparent than they are in the U.S. or European countries. SIPRI estimates that the company had $34.3 billion in sales in 2020, $14.6 billion of which arms and military services sales.
8. AVIC
> Sales for most recent fiscal year: $67.9 billion
> Arms and military services sales in 2020: $17.0 billion
> Arms sales as pct. of total sales in 2020: 25%
> 1-year change in arms sales: -1.4%
Aviation Industry Corporation of China, also known as AVIC, sold $17.0 billion worth of arms and military services in 2020 — just a quarter of its $67.9 billion total sales for the fiscal year. Like every other Chinese military contractor on this list, AVIC is state owned.
A relatively new endeavor, AVIC was created in 2008 by a merger between two other aviation companies. The company and its subsidiaries create planes like bombers and fighter jets as well as helicopters, commercial airliners, and more.
Source: Public Domain / Wikimedia Commons
7. NORINCO
> Sales for most recent fiscal year: $71.0 billion
> Arms and military services sales in 2020: $17.9 billion
> Arms sales as pct. of total sales in 2020: 25%
> 1-year change in arms sales: +12.0%
China North Industries Group Corporation Limited, also known as NORINCO, is one of the largest arms dealers in the world. The Chinese company provides weapons and technical support to China’s military and police forces.
Though NORINCO has the seventh-highest sales total for arms and military services, it has the highest total sales figure of any company on this list, at $71 billion. Arms and military services account for a quarter of the company’s sales. NORINCO is also involved in China’s chemical, equipment, and IT industries.
Source: Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images
6. BAE Systems
> Sales for most recent fiscal year: $24.7 billion
> Arms and military services sales in 2020: $24.0 billion
> Arms sales as pct. of total sales in 2020: 97%
> 1-year change in arms sales: +6.6%
BAE Systems is a London-based defense contractor that manufactures aircraft, combat vehicles, ammunition, missiles, artillery, cybersecurity, IT, electronics, surface ships, and more for military applications.
Nearly all of BAE Systems’ sales come from arms and military services — 97% of the company’s $24.7 billion in sales in 2020. The arms maker is the largest military services provider headquartered outside of the United States.
5. General Dynamics Corp.
> Sales for most recent fiscal year: $37.9 billion
> Arms and military services sales in 2020: $25.8 billion
> Arms sales as pct. of total sales in 2020: 68%
> 1-year change in arms sales: +3.9%
General Dynamics Corp. is one of the five largest arms and military services providers in the world for 2020. The Reston, Virginia-headquartered defense contractor sold $25.8 billion in arms and military services in 2020, accounting for more than two-thirds of its $37.9 billion in total sales.
In December 2021, General Dynamics was awarded a contract from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to support its networks, security, and cloud computing. The contract could run for a decade and be worth up to $4.5 billion.
Source: Public Domain / Wikimedia Commons
4. Northrop Grumman Corp.
> Sales for most recent fiscal year: $36.8 billion
> Arms and military services sales in 2020: $30.4 billion
> Arms sales as pct. of total sales in 2020: 83%
> 1-year change in arms sales: +2.5%
Northrop Grumman Corp. is one of just four companies that sold more than $30 billion in arms and military services in 2020. Arms sales accounted for 83% of the company’s total sales that year and represented a 2.5% increase from the year before.
The defense contractor creates vehicles, navigational systems, technology, weapons, and more for applications on sea, air, land, and space as well as cybersecurity and communications.
Source: nycshooter / Getty Images
3. Boeing
> Sales for most recent fiscal year: $58.2 billion
> Arms and military services sales in 2020: $32.1 billion
> Arms sales as pct. of total sales in 2020: 55%
> 1-year change in arms sales: -5.8%
Aerospace giant Boeing is among the top three companies that profited the most from war in 2020. More than half of the company’s $58.2 billion in sales came from arms and military services, amounting to $32.1 billion. Though the company’s arms sales declined by 5.8% from the year before, Boeing remained the third largest military contractor in the world.
Boeing struggled overall in 2020, with total sales dipping by $19.6 billion compared to 2019, largely due to the decline in commercial aviation stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, just 44% of the company’s total sales came from arms and military services. In 2020, that increased to 55%, the largest percentage-point jump of any major military contractor in the world.
Source: krblokhin / iStock Editorial via Getty Images
2. Raytheon Technologies
> Sales for most recent fiscal year: $56.6 billion
> Arms and military services sales in 2020: $36.8 billion
> Arms sales as pct. of total sales in 2020: 65%
> 1-year change in arms sales: -5.7%
Raytheon Technologies was recently formed via a merger between Raytheon Company
and United Technologies Corporation in 2020. It sold $36.8 billion in arms and military services in 2020, down by 5.7% from the combined arms sales of Raytheon and UTC from 2019.
Raytheon produces missiles, radars, sonars, weapons, and targeting systems, as well as maritime navigational systems. Raytheon is one of several companies the Pentagon recently selected to develop a missile system that could protect the U.S. from a hypersonic attack.
Source: JHVEPhoto / iStock Editorial via Getty Images
1. Lockheed Martin Corp.
> Sales for most recent fiscal year: $65.4 billion
> Arms and military services sales in 2020: $58.2 billion
> Arms sales as pct. of total sales in 2020: 89%
> 1-year change in arms sales: +7.7%
Lockheed Martin Corp. retained its place at the top of the list of the companies profiting the most from war — a position it has occupied every year since 2009. The American military contractor sold $58.2 billion-worth of arms and military services in 2020, accounting for almost 90% of the company’s total sales. Lockheed Martin’s arms sales increased by 7.7% from 2019 to 2020.
The company suffered a high-profile flop in 2021, when the Air Force admitted that the stealth fighter jets Lockheed Martin had spent over two decades working on were a failure. The U.S. military wanted to replace the aging F-16s, but Lockheed’s attempts at designing new aircraft were consistently delayed, and once they were finally produced, they did not meet the capability rating benchmark the military wanted.
Read more:
6. 5 Desperate Days: Escaping Kabul
A long read and a fascinating story. I expect TM Gibbons-Neff will be writing about the end of the US war in Afghanistan fro some time. I hope he will write a book that will be the first draft of the history from his long time front row perch in country.
5 Desperate Days: Escaping Kabul
Baggage lost, bodies battered, more than 120 Times employees and family members barely made it to a plane out of Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover. It required an unsettling collaboration.
Baggage lost, bodies battered, more than 120 Times employees and family members barely made it to a plane out of Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover. It required an unsettling collaboration.
KABUL, Afghanistan — This was as far as they would go, a dozen Marines inside the gutted Kabul airport, fanned out beside a blue gate by a fountain bearing a landmark sign — “I Kabul.’’
One of us, Thomas “T.M.” Gibbons-Neff, a correspondent from the Kabul bureau of The New York Times, had moved with the troops to the gate in the hours before dawn. The other, Mujib Mashal, a Times correspondent who grew up in Kabul, carefully approached T.M. in the darkness. The Marines would not move toward him onto de facto Taliban turf.
“We cannot go any further, Mujib. We cannot,” T.M., a former Marine who had served two tours in Afghanistan, said into his phone.
Moments later, the Americans saw Mujib step into the eerie half-light under a flickering street lamp, along with his escort: three Taliban fighters who clutched their rifles nervously.
Behind them, in the murky distance beyond, was a group of more than 120 people: current and former Times employees and their family members.
It was the early morning of Aug. 19, after days of chaos and terror; days when Afghanistan fell to the Taliban; days of tens of thousands of people rushing the airport to escape; days of trying, and failing, again and again, to evacuate the Times families.
When the Taliban went on their blitz through Afghanistan’s cities in August, many of The Times’s Afghan employees and their family members did not yet have passports, let alone visas to anywhere. Some of them were just days away from receiving their documents when the Taliban walked into Kabul uncontested on Aug. 15, and senior Afghan officials fled the country.
In the days that followed, a chartered plane had closed its cabin door in our Afghan colleagues’ faces, its crew panicking and taking off with empty seats. The Times group, including dozens of children, had huddled under the open sky all night and all through the next day near the runway as food and water ran out. They had been charged and beaten by Taliban fighters trying to clear the crowds.
But now the Taliban were helping our group navigate the chaos of desperate crowds at the airport. After days of deal-making and rushed coordination, it had all come down to this: forging an unsettling collaboration between Marines and the insurgent fighters, and bridging the yards between a former American Marine and an Afghan native who had become friends and colleagues, to usher the Times group to an evacuation flight and new lives in another country.
First, T.M. and Mujib had to make sure that no potentially fatal misunderstandings happened in this impromptu meeting that during the decades of bitter war would surely have led to blood.
Mujib coaxed his Taliban escorts — led by a senior field commander who had directed insurgent units and suicide bombers — toward the Marines.
“There are three of us walking over, OK? Straight down the road, we are walking straight down the road,” Mujib said in a voice message to T.M. “Three of us, OK, to the domestic terminal — three of us and one guy behind us.”
“Three Taliban, one you?” T.M. said.
“Yes. One Talib is behind me, three of us on the same length,” Mujib said.
“Keep walking straight to the domestic terminal,” T.M. advised.
The groups came together in a surreal scene: men wearing the uniform T.M. once wore, waiting to greet disheveled insurgents they had battled for years. One of the fighters was clutching an American M4 carbine.
Suddenly, the war between them was over. And in the strange light of our cooperation, it almost felt for a minute as if it had never happened.
“This is my friend, my colleague,” Mujib said in Pashto, introducing T.M. to the Taliban, and then greeting the Marines in English. Marines and Taliban reached across the gate, and shook hands.
“My commander, General Sullivan, has authorized you to come through this gate,” the Marine unit’s leader said to Mujib, who interpreted for the Taliban.
“We will move them then,” one of the Taliban guards said. He went back to get the rest of the Times group.
With the sunrise approaching, we were finally moving ahead.
Thomas ‘T.M.’ Gibbons-Neff I was 13 when the United States went to war in Afghanistan — I remember hearing it on the AM news station 1010 WINS while my friends and I were bouncing home in the back of a minivan from a friend’s birthday party. Those were the emotional days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when American flags were flying from highway overpasses and people from my neighborhood in suburban Connecticut were still talking about how they had watched the towers burn from the town beach.
I was already steeped in war, and what I thought it meant. My father had served in Vietnam, and I grew up reading war histories and playing paintball whenever I could. I enlisted in the Marines five years later, at the end of my senior year of high school. My mom was distraught and my dad was quiet, in a way I would only recognize later.
I was small for my age, and it’s hard to separate any sense of patriotism from my desire to prove myself. I guess that’s the case for many 18-year-olds who signed up in the middle years of the 20-year war.
I deployed to southern Afghanistan in 2008 and again in 2009. I was taught little about the country’s culture or its people. Most of our training was focused on defeating or at least surviving roadside bombs, and killing the Taliban on our terms. Anything else was reserved for the laminated pamphlets our bosses gave us, buried in the bottom of our bags.
They were tough deployments. We killed and we died — almost always it seemed like the wrong people were suffering — and passed chunks of our lives in Afghanistan’s extreme climate. I remember the cold, the heat and the anguish of moral and practical confusion.
Even when we were told that we were part of a broader strategy to turn the tide or win the war, it felt nothing like that. We knew even then that we were losing, because no matter what we did, the Taliban kept shadowing us, and now and then managed to kill another of my friends. When my four years were up, I turned in my uniform and returned to civilian life.
When I came back to Afghanistan as a journalist in 2015, after the war had changed yet again and the Afghan military was supposedly leading combat operations, evidence of failure was everywhere.
More than 100,000 American troops at the war’s height had briefly subdued some places, those little shaded areas around outposts on the map. But as the United States pulled out, each remote patch reverted to Taliban control, sometimes within hours.
As the last U.S. military support dwindled this past year, Afghanistan’s government dissolved under a Taliban offensive: district after district, provincial capital after provincial capital, until Kabul itself was the Taliban’s prize, and I was standing next to Marines from the very unit that I had first deployed with in 2008.
They were helming the final American defensive position of the war: Kabul’s international airport, the best hope for thousands of Afghans and foreigners scrambling to escape the Taliban’s victorious grip.
Mujib Mashal The hopes of much of my generation of urban Afghans took shape between two sudden and bewildering collapses.
I grew up in Kabul, living through the Taliban’s first turn in power, and that first collapse when I was 13 was the moment their grip was broken. After nights of heavy American bombing that lit up the sky, we woke up on Nov. 13, 2001, to find that the Taliban had abandoned Kabul, the capital city they had ruled as part of an oppressive police state for six years.
Mullahs had run everything, from civil aviation to athletic federations. Some of our teachers — I was in middle school then — used to come to class with their guns strapped into side holsters.
The vice principal, a mullah who wore his striped brown turban with swagger, threw me to the classroom floor one afternoon and lashed the soles of my feet with tree branches until his arms got tired. I was made an example of for a tiny act of dissent: I had gone to him, on behalf of our class, complaining that the geography teacher he had assigned us couldn’t even read the numbers on the map.
And then the Taliban were suddenly gone — for good, we thought.
On the streets, there was the chaos and uncertainty of collapse. But there was also music and color, making a sudden return to lives that had seemed to crawl along in black and white. Barbershops began trimming beards that had been uncuttable under Taliban law. Cassette sellers brought their collections out into the open — music cannot be silenced entirely, really, but the Taliban had relegated it to an underground crime.
The next 20 years, shaped by the American troop presence, was an era of opportunity for many. Millions of girls returned to school, including my sister, who had been forced to stay home for five years. Roads and new commercial air routes connected the country. Independent media blossomed.
There were opportunities abroad, too — scholarships to the United States, or India, or Japan. With only broken English, I got a scholarship to go to Deerfield Academy, a high school in Massachusetts, and then to Columbia University. In the summers, I returned to my family in Kabul to see new buildings going up everywhere. Universities were a favorite, and sprawling wedding halls, too.
Like a lot of Afghans educated abroad in those years, I chose to come home to make my living after getting my degree. It was a violent and complicated place, but it still allowed me the space to live the way I wanted, building a life as a writer, or as any other thing I chose. Belonging felt effortless — we could have roots in our own home, and yet be part of the world.
That is what we just lost, why we feel adrift now.
That the loss would come seemed increasingly inevitable as I traveled the country as a journalist in recent years. I saw firsthand the extent of the inequality and corruption in a Western-manufactured democracy that kept falling so short.
For everyone like me, whose world opened up to bigger possibilities, there were more young Afghans in large stretches of the country for whom there was little improvement, only the disruption and indignity of constant war.
My job required reporting on the daily carnage, on the promising lives cut down en masse, many of them belonging to people like me. Putting the final touches on a story late at night would allow me to let the tears come, to finally weep and unburden my chest a little before falling asleep. The next day required strength to do it all over again.
I became increasingly sure that I was documenting the disintegration of a system built on corruption and false promises. The Taliban certainly believed it — even as they began talking peace, every Talib leader, negotiator or fighter I spoke to seemed increasingly sure that the American-backed government was fragile and unsustainable, and would soon crumble.
The government, impotent and run by leaders who had kept their families abroad all these years, collapsed before the Americans were even gone. The Taliban were at Kabul’s doorstep as suddenly as they had left in 2001.
I was there, visiting my family, when the Taliban walked in on Aug. 15 this year — the second collapse that will forever mark my generation, and my country.
The Families of The Times
Mohammad Akram Wafa, a bureau assistant, with his wife, Khadija, and children, Mohammad, far left, and Bilal.
Zamir Ahmad Amiri, the Kabul bureau’s gardener.
Bibi Khalida, the wife of Zamir Ahmad Amiri.
Bilal became engaged a year ago, but he had to leave his fiancee behind. “I gave her a hug before leaving the house. That’s the last thing I did. Every day, I dream of traveling back by myself and bring her out with me.”
— Bilal Ahmadi
Clockwise from top right, Jawid Ahmadi, a Times cook, and his family: Omar, Huma, Shabir, Yalda and Bilal.
Seenajan, the wife of Farid Rahimi, a Times driver, and their son, Ahmad Yonus.
Farid Rahimi, a Times driver.
“While I watched the Taliban beat up Sattar and Omran, I was clutching my daughter, who kept screaming: ‘Don’t beat my dad! Don’t beat my dad!’ I don’t remember feeling anything then, but when I got home, the bruises on my abdomen showed that I’d been hit several times, too.”
— Sweeta Sarwari
Abdul Sattar Sarwari, a Times driver, and his family, clockwise from left, Omran, Osman, Sadaf and Sweeta.
Somaiya, the sister of Sharif Hassan, a Times reporter, and Sharif’s daughter, Hamta.
Sharif Hassan, a Times reporter. He and his family are still in Mexico City.
Khoja Kabir Sediqi, a Times driver.
Sediqa, the wife of Khoja Kabir Sediqi, a Times driver.
Khoja Kabir Sediqi’s children, clockwise from top: Khoja Baes, Fardin, Moqadas, Khoja Qayoum, Khoja Ferdaws and Forozan.
Aug. 15 — The Fall of Kabul
We woke up on Sunday morning with the conviction that we no longer had a few days to prepare to leave — we barely had a few hours.
Just the morning before, we had gathered all our staff members — the team of reporters, drivers, house staff and security advisers that works every day with our correspondents and photographers — together at the Kabul bureau, a house near the U.S. Embassy and military command, to tell them that The Times was looking for ways to evacuate them. Another major provincial capital had fallen, and people broke down in tears when one of our staff members said he most feared that his children would have to watch him get shot in front of them.
Early Sunday, our reporting dug up more bad news: The Taliban had taken the larger towns near Kabul. All summer we had been plotting the captured cities and districts on a map in the bureau newsroom. On that day, we completed the picture of an almost complete encirclement. Only Kabul was left.
The call went out on the security advisers’ channel: Foreign groups were told to get to the American Embassy for evacuation.
On the street, terror was setting in. Panicking elites, their privilege no longer a surefire protection, rushed around, the screeching wheels of their armored vehicles stirring alarm along the street. Some of them already knew what we would discover only later: President Ashraf Ghani and some other senior officials had quietly flown out of Afghanistan.
Afghan policemen and soldiers began stripping off their uniforms, leaving them in roads and in parking lots, desperate to disappear.
As rumors circled that the Taliban were coming, the street took on a fevered air. Crowds of people scurried around, blank-faced, clutching whatever documents they had, rushing to make one more bank withdrawal or clambering for a place in line for a passport or visa that would never come.
MujibThat morning, I left my parents’ home to take a last bus ride around the city in the hours before the Taliban entered. I had woken up with a feeling that the window on Kabul as my generation knew it was closing, and I wanted to see my city — my life until that moment — the way it had been, one more time. These scenes played out all around me as I traveled and talked with people frantic to prepare for the unstoppable.
As our Western staff members moved to the American fortification in the Green Zone, we made the call to our Afghan staff and families to gather at the airport parking lot. The hope was that our Western and Afghan staff members could meet at the airport and wait together for a plane out.
Among the dozens of people we were trying to evacuate were our current and former Afghan reporters — the faces of the Times operation in Afghanistan, and the people most vulnerable to any potential vengeance from the Taliban, who had attacked and killed journalists all through the war.
Some feared they had been marked by their years of service to a Western news organization, doubting the Taliban’s promise that no one would be targeted. And everyone faced the sickening realization that this, suddenly, was the end of hope for the kind of lives they wanted for their children.
Through the years of the American military presence, the sprawling Kabul airport was partitioned. There was a small civilian side, and next to it a vast military one run by the American-led military coalition. In our calculation, the Americans were likely to secure and protect a wide radius for their withdrawal — and we hoped that the civilian side of the airport, where our families were gathering, would fall into that.
Our Western staff members were quickly being whisked to the military side of the airport by helicopter. Mujib stepped in to start coordinating our Afghan staff’s movement to the airport. He had come back to Kabul a few days before, taking a brief leave from his post at The Times’s New Delhi bureau to visit his family. As the staff began moving, he stayed at his parents’ home so he would have Wi-Fi to help with communications.
Even with that, it took hours for the families to even reach the airport parking lot. Traffic was frozen at every roundabout, and at one nearby a gun battle sent people scattering to find a different route.
On another side of the city, the Taliban were already arriving. While our staff was in transit, a caravan of insurgent fighters, packed into pickups and seized American Humvees, began entering Kabul. The photographer Jim Huylebroek was there as the Taliban drove in, and he called to alert us. “People are cheering them in the streets,” he said. Taliban convoys moved quickly to the heart of the capital.
Our editors, legal advisers and colleagues, working across time zones and communicating in bursts of text and voice messages in WhatsApp groups, were busy knocking on other governments’ doors with requests for transit and temporary visas for our staff members. They called airlines and charter companies for any seats they could find, and suddenly, something clicked: A charter flight to Ukraine would be available in a few hours, carrying the promise that around 40 of our Afghan group could get out.
But by dusk, it was not clear who controlled airport security, and whether our people without visas or tickets — and some even without passports — would be let in. The paper’s leaders in New York quickly drafted letters on Times letterhead for each family requesting that they be allowed to enter the airport, and then sent PDF versions to each family’s phones.
Inside the once-heavily fortified airport, it was as if the Afghan government’s whole top echelon, left behind by the helicopters that had whisked President Ghani out of the country, had descended on the terminal and tarmac.
Ministers, directors, lawmakers, generals — an elite cohort accustomed to V.I.P. treatment — now elbowed their way for seats on the last of the planes. They competed with young men who had rushed in from the streets without passports or privilege. For once, they were all equals.
There were no security guards, no ticket agents, no gate attendants, no clear protocol or order. The planes were so overcrowded that they couldn’t take off. Then young men started climbing their wings, and onto fuselages.
Fahim Abed, a Times reporter, ushered a group of 37 colleagues and family members from the parking area into the airport terminal, on their way to the Ukrainian jet. Fahim was communicating directly with the Ukrainian flight attendant onboard who had the manifest, keeping her updated as our group left the terminal and boarded buses to get to the plane.
Sharif Hassan, a reporter who had joined the Times Kabul bureau just two weeks before, and his sister and daughter had boarded a bus with the flight crew and were already on the plane.
Then, the unthinkable: As Fahim and our families approached the plane, the crew pushed the steps away and began moving for takeoff without them.
“I yelled to the pilot that we are supposed to be on this flight, but she said ‘No, no, no!’ and they closed all the doors,” Fahim, out of breath, said in voice notes to our WhatsApp group.
FAHIM ABED, TIMES REPORTERThe bus drivers wanted hundreds of dollars just to take us from the terminal to the plane. You could feel that everybody was nervous. They started moving the steps away as we drove up, and I ran toward the plane, trying to get some explanation. The pilot stuck her head out the window and shouted that there was an emergency. They had to go. Everyone was confused, furious. “Why aren’t we leaving? Why aren’t the Americans coming to get us?”
At the airport, any hopes that we could get our Afghan families to meet up with our Western staff to evacuate together were quickly dashed. The civilian runway was being overtaken by crowds, and military forces were using force to keep people away.
Over on the military side of the airport, our Western staff and correspondents were quickly put on a flight to Qatar by the U.S. military, but getting any more planes to land on the civilian side was impossible.
Our Afghan group reassembled at a parking lot near the tarmac and waited together in the chaos of the airport all night, their food and water gone.
Aug. 16 — Chaos on the Tarmac
In a city made frantic with fear of what the conquerors might do, it seemed like everyone was willing to take their chances at the airport, not even caring where they might land.
At first light the next morning, Mujib nervously left the home of his parents, who had decided to stay in Kabul, to join the rest of the team at the airport. He took with him the only food he could find — 40 loaves of bread from the one bakery in the neighborhood that had opened.
As crowds began streaming into the airport, Mujib slipped in among them. Some carried a change of clothes folded into shawls, others carried backpacks. One little girl simply carried a pair of shoes.
Mujib found the Times families, but the group had grown. That morning, our group was joined by more than 100 others from other Western news outlets, looking for help and direction.
All morning, Mujib and his colleagues tried to negotiate with the Marines to let the group cross to the military side of the airport, where planes were still able to land and take off. But in the growing chaos our unwieldy band managed only to move from the airport parking lot, which was no longer safe, to the base of a tower guarded by the Marines on the edge of the runway. There, our group waited in the scorching sun.
Times officials in New York were on the phone with top officials in Washington, who said they would help get our group to the military side of the airport. And T.M., from a run-down room in a bunkhouse in Qatar, was in contact with the Army and Marines at the Kabul airport, who assured him they would do what they could.
But their assurances could not change the reality at the gate — even putting senior military leaders from U.S. Central Command on the line with the Marines at the airport wasn’t helping. The only people the Marines would wave through to the military side were people with Western passports.
One young Afghan woman, in tears, begged the Marines to let her cross.
“What passport do you have?” a Marine asked. She opened her passport to show a visa to the United States.
“I was supposed to fly for my studies, but now there are no flights,” she said.
“But your passport says The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan,” the Marine said, smacking the document’s cover.
Crouched on the ground near the tower where the Marines kept guard, the children in our group were fading from dehydration, and panic was etched in the faces of their parents.
The Marines would not let us in, but some tried to help. One exhausted Marine dragged himself to the control tower’s slim shade. When asked for water, he walked back to talk to one of his commanders, but the man just threw up his arms. The young Marine kept walking, and 10 minutes later quietly reappeared with eight bottles of water.
“Pretend this didn’t come from me,” he said, and walked away.
For almost the entire afternoon, the runway was flooded with waves of people hoping to reach the military side of the airport. Helicopters thundered overhead, and occasional gunfire rang out from the ground as American Marines and Turkish soldiers tried to control the crowd. But as the hours passed, the crowds stopped fearing the bullets, knowing that the soldiers would not shoot directly at them.
When the crowd saw that there were no flights, people started going wild, seizing any piece of the airport they could grab — mattresses, buckets, even empty water bottles.
Our group tried to hold on to a corner of the airfield, building a makeshift boundary around us from rolls of barbed wire, even as we worked to be moved to the secure side of the airport. We knew spending a second night at the airport would be dangerous, not just because we lacked water and food, but also because the mob had run out of things to loot. A few men lingered, eyeing our group as we tried to keep together.
The main avenue of communication was a WhatsApp group, with Mujib exchanging quick voice or text messages with U.S. military and civilian officials at the airport, with Times leaders across the world, and with T.M. in Qatar.
Mujib became increasingly certain that if we couldn’t make it to the military side by 5 p.m., everyone would have to disperse to find food, water and protection at home. The children were getting too weak. The Marines suggested that we try to cut through the crowd and walk to their side in a single file, which was impossible — we would be rushed by thousands.
As we waited for some operation that might clear part of the crowd, the Taliban made our choice easier, in a way: They came to clear everyone away, including us. This was the first time many of our people had come face to face with the Taliban. It was chaos and crying as the fighters fired into the air and started beating people to get them moving.
“We are moving toward the Marines,” Mujib wrote, warning the Marines and Times leaders on the joint WhatsApp group as the gunfire continued and the Taliban kept throwing everything they had at the crowd. “We have no other choice.”
We reached the edge of the crowd, trying to keep our group together — and trying our best to keep others away. We were about 400 yards away from the column of Marines who could usher us to the military side. But we were engulfed by people who would rush right along with us if we moved.
So we devised another plan: We all sat in a circle, and moved two little girls who were dressed in bright red to the front of our group. They were the only visual way to quickly distinguish our group from thousands of others. The Marines said they would begin an operation to push back the crowd on each side of us, and we would move forward through the opening.
Helicopters dipped low over the runway, but the crowd didn’t even budge. When the Marines moved toward the mass of people, the crowd did the opposite of what could have helped us: Instead of backing up, they pushed toward the Marines.
And then, just as we were trying to figure out whether to try to push our way through, the Taliban cut right into the middle of our line.
The fighters started pushing, swinging clubs and rifle butts into us. Automatic weapon fire hammered out right beside us as the Taliban began firing into the air. The crowd erupted into random motion.
Our colleagues fell to the ground, family members and children were trampled, screaming in terror and pain. One of our longtime bureau drivers, Farid Rahimi, went down with a broken arm as he tried to help keep the stampede away. Even some of the children bore deep bruises.
“It’s a mass stampede — we are leaving, we are leaving,” Mujib told the WhatsApp group in an audio message, his voice hoarse with thirst and exhaustion. “We got beaten by the Taliban — they came in the middle and they started beating everyone.”
FATIMA FAIZI, TIMES REPORTERThe Taliban just came out of nowhere, it felt like. My mom had bruises on her back, and my sister was beat up. And the fighters were just shooting everywhere. In that moment, I could see it so clearly, what it would look like when they shot me, shot my family.
Our escape from the airport was almost as hazardous as being there: As thousands of people were being driven out, thousands of others were packed outside at the roundabout trying to push their way in.
In the chaos of the two crowds pushing against each other, almost all of our suitcases were lost — bags packed with critical belongings for people who were fleeing their homes and country.
As family members began finding each other and trying to make it home, a cry of alarm went out over the group chat: Abdul Salim and Hafiza Samadi’s teenage sons were still missing.
“Please! Please!” Abdul Salim, a longtime staff member, said in a voice note. “I don’t know what to do. Can anyone help?”
Frantic calls to Taliban checkpoint guards yielded nothing — the crowds were too big, and lights were out in the neighborhoods around the airport. Hours passed, and Hafiza, the boys’ mother, became convinced they had been shot.
But they had not been. Separated from their family and each other, each boy found a way to straggle home on his own. The oldest, Seyar, 17, made it to a school where the watchman knew his father. A cousin was eventually able to bring him home. Sohail, 14, had a harder time. After being chased away by the Taliban, he searched for a long time before finding a white-bearded taxi driver who was willing to take him home without paying up front.
For a few hours, we also feared that one of our reporters, Najim Rahim, had been detained by the Taliban in the airport chaos, but in fact he had fought them off and been taken by the Marines to the secure side of the airport.
We had made it out of the airport alive. But the airport had become close to impossible to get into directly.
The next morning, T.M. boarded a U.S. military transport plane in Qatar and flew back to the Kabul airport. We needed someone there on the military side dealing directly with American forces. Another Times correspondent, Christina Goldbaum, stayed behind in Qatar to help in coordinating with officials there and making temporary housing arrangements for the Afghan families.
T.M.I had to get back. We had left too soon, and left our people and Mujib behind to face the crowds and the Taliban on the tarmac on Monday. We couldn’t do it that way again, and I came back to the military side of the airport as a liaison, trying to find help for our families from machinery that was already running at 130 percent in an effort to get thousands of foreigners, diplomats and service members out of the country in a hurry.
“I started keeping a diary in fifth grade, writing almost every day, all the way through the decades of building my career and starting a family. I had all these boxes of diaries, a lifetime, and as we were getting ready to go, I wanted to leave them with my extended family. But my uncle said I should burn them — it would be too hard to explain, too suspicious if anyone ever found them. So I did it. I poured diesel on the diaries and burned them all. It took me hours. I kept trying to read as much as I could, remember as much as I could.”
— Fahim Abed, Times reporter
Clockwise from top left, Najim Rahim’s sisters, Malalai, Mursal and Marwa, and his mother, Gulalai.
Najim Rahim, a Times reporter.
“I wake up now and it takes me awhile to figure out where I am. It’s hard, having to start from scratch when you’re already burned out and overwhelmed. It’s difficult to put into words. It feels really bad when people have to bring you charity. I was privileged, and then I came here and people have to bring me things. People are really nice, but you want to be able to take care of your own stuff.”
— Fatima Faizi, Times reporter
Rohullah Osmani, a Times office manager, with his wife, Bibi Amena, and children, from left, Asma, Yaser Mansor, Mahsa, Asra and Bibi Aseya.
Wais Rustami, a bureau assistant, and his wife, Samira.
Abdul Salim Samadi, a Times driver.
Hafiza, the wife of Abdul Salim Samadi, and her daughter Maryam.
Sohail, the son of Abdul Salim Samadi.
Seyar, the son of Abdul Salim Samadi.
“When I was kissing my mother goodbye, she took out her gold ring and gave it to me. I returned it to her, thinking that she may need to sell it one day, for food and essentials if things get really bad. I regret it, I wish I had a piece of her with me now.”
— Hafiza Samadi
Rahmatullah Malang Zada, a bureau employee, with his wife, Fawzai, and children, from far left, Farzana, Tawheed, Sohrab and Ferdaws.
Mohammad Sardar Omar, a Times cook, with his wife, Sabira, seated, and children, clockwise from left, Musawir, Mobashir, Sahel, Mudasir and Husna.
Aug. 18 — Return to the Airport
We had to find a way to get to the airport, and to a plane, while protecting the families. And that meant we had to work with the city’s new rulers.
To calm the panic of our staffers now stuck at home, we began talking with Taliban leaders. They promised that they had instructed their fighters not to pursue anyone, let alone journalists, and that if anyone in their ranks harassed us, we had specific numbers to call for help.
Qatari officials had agreed to take our people on a military transport flight to Doha. From there, we planned to take a charter flight to Mexico, which had agreed to admit even those without passports while they waited to be processed into the United States.
But gathering at the airport was too unsafe. On a daily basis, there were reports of as many as a dozen deaths there. We needed an alternative.
T.M. had spent the morning finalizing details in discussions inside the American command center at the airport. As the crowds grew, bombers and drones flew overhead, while rifle fire at the airport’s North Gate — often the Taliban firing into the air to break up crowds — had everyone on alert.
Even with several thousand troops at the airport, the situation was dire. The airport itself was practically indefensible, with entryways all under pressure from throngs of people.
Americans and their international allies tried to navigate the difficult task of screening evacuees and moving them through whatever gates were deemed secure enough. Rumors ran wild on social media about which entrance might be passable at that particular moment, sending crowds of people surging down the nearby streets.
We asked all our families — back down to our core group of 128 — to gather at the Serena Hotel, about five miles from the airport. It had become a hub of diplomatic meetings, and Taliban fighters guarded its outer ring. Qatari state security was in charge within.
The plan was to start moving our group from the Serena to the airport in two buses around midnight Wednesday, Aug. 18.
But for many of our group, just getting to the hotel was a fearful prospect.
It was also the first time many of our group had ventured out since the Taliban had beaten us at the airport. Now we would potentially be navigating Taliban checkpoints on the streets, and gathering at a hotel where the fighters guarded the gates.
To help ease minds, the Qataris had arranged a code phrase with the Taliban that our colleagues could whisper at street checkpoints in case we were stopped: “Qatar One.” But as we prepared, many of our group expressed this worry: Yes, we can reach the Serena, but who will let us in?
Our group began trickling to the hotel compound, where Mujib was standing with the Taliban guards to help wave them in and assure them. As each family came in, they took a place sitting against the hotel’s wall. Taliban guards stood above them as the Qataris rigorously checked every name and identification.
The Taliban fighters were at first disgusted. Perhaps reading fearful body language from our group, they practically oozed contempt — in their eyes, we were losers, clinging to the coattails of a defeated force. They kept asking where we were going, why we were leaving our own country. Mujib told them we were journalists who no longer felt safe, headed for a refugee camp in Qatar.
“But who is going to do the journalism here, me?” asked a middle-aged fighter, Hajji Suhbat Khan.
Mujib kept chatting with the guards, trying to draw them out with small talk, jokes, requests for little, human favors. Over the hours we spent with them, the Taliban’s reaction turned more sympathetic. One offered tea from a thermos, and helped keep track of a colleague’s child who needed to find a bathroom.
Another fighter related that he enjoyed looking at pictures of beautiful landscapes. He shared his WhatsApp number with Mujib, saying he hoped to receive scenes from abroad.
MujibI could only think of the fear gripping my colleagues and their families. Over the years, I was exposed to the Taliban, embedding with their fighters, spending time with their leaders. For many of my colleagues and their children, being beaten at the airport was their first time face to face with the Taliban, so at the hotel, I was trying to break a little of the fear that was building up.
After several hours, we gathered around banquet tables in the hotel’s ballroom, where the Qataris had arranged for a simple rice dish for dinner, and Qatari guards manned the ballroom door. As the wait dragged on, the children fell asleep — on the tables, or curled on the floor.
Around 11 p.m., the Qatari ambassador introduced Mujib to our Taliban escort. The ambassador, Saeed Mubarak al-Khayarin al-Hajri, was the most in-demand diplomat in Kabul. When not personally escorting delegations to the airport, he was using the Serena as a venue to help mediate between the Taliban and many governments.
At a corner table at the hotel, the ambassador had prepared a feast for our Taliban escorts and welcomed them with boxes of dates from home.
Mujib told him that the plan was to make it to the airport’s Abbey Gate, near the main entrance. Ambassador al-Khayarin warned that a diplomatic convoy was still stuck there in the crowd. But the Marines, through T.M., insisted that it was the best option.
“Let me know when you’re leaving,” T.M. messaged Mujib, at 11:14 p.m. “We’re ready to jam.”
But things were already going wrong. The perimeter at Abbey Gate was overrun by crowds, pushing British paratroopers and U.S. Marines back to a second control barrier. As that happened, a surveillance camera captured images of a group of 40 or so people breaking through a gap in the northern side of the airport, forcing the Marines to send a quick reaction force to plug the breach.
Helicopter gunships circled overhead, and soldiers at the nearby guard towers occasionally flipped on their rifle-mounted flashlights, spotlighting people below as they yelled at them to get back. On the ground, Afghans held up signs and paperwork, pleading to be let in.
Our group began boarding buses at the hotel in Kabul. And in Britain, a senior Times operations adviser, Charlie O’Malley, began playing a crucial role by helping to coordinate plans with Mujib, and with anxious Times leaders around the world who were monitoring the developments on WhatsApp channels.
Each bus had a Taliban guard in the front seat, in case it was stopped on the way — but that, too, was a source of tension. The Taliban commander began openly complaining to us about how painfully slow the whole process was, as we methodically checked the details of each person as they boarded.
Our convoy set off at midnight into the darkened city.
FATIMAI was sitting in front of the bus, and I was thinking to myself, why did we survive? You know, why did I survive so many suicide attacks only to have the Taliban take over Kabul? We were just driving here and there, and the Taliban guy was just sitting there in the bus and he looked like a baby. He was nice. But I have had friends killed directly by the Taliban. I felt that by getting help from the Taliban and being escorted by them, I was betraying my own friends.
Before he arrived in Kabul as a conqueror and went straight into the presidential palace, the leader of our Taliban escort — a senior commander at just 29 years old — had never been to the Afghan capital. So when he got orders to move his forces from southern Afghanistan to the capital city, he recruited an uncle who knew the route to drive him there, he told Mujib.
Now, in the same pickup truck, he led the way for our group as we left the hotel — uncle and nephew in the front, Mujib, another Times colleague and a young Taliban fighter in the back. The fighter said he was exhausted after a 20-hour shift, but was dragged along because he at least knew where the Abbey Gate was.
Behind them were two buses of our colleagues and their family members.
The Taliban commander shook his head repeatedly at the absurdity of it all, of helping strangers flee a triumph he had fought for more than a decade to achieve.
Aug. 19 — Crossing the Gate
As our buses approached Abbey Gate just after midnight, we were stopped by a churning wall of people.
At first, from the window of his pickup, the Taliban commander tried to order any Taliban foot soldier he could see to help clear the crowd. The fighters, who appeared exhausted, looked shocked by the naïveté of the order.
The commander began scratching his head, out of immediate ideas. His uncle tried to order, and even bully, the fighters. Clear the people, even if it is a thousand people, he barked at one soldier.
“It’s not a thousand people, it’s, like, 20,000 people,” the fighter told him, frustrated with the lack of understanding.
The buses reversed, and began turning around.
T.M.I told the Marines, “The Taliban aren’t going to do it — too many people.” I felt those pangs of failure again. I was afraid that night would turn into something like Monday, when I was stuck in a room in Doha and unable to help while my friends were being beaten on the tarmac.
On the way back to the city, our buses crossed the roundabout that led to the main entrance of the now gutted civilian airport. It was sealed by the Taliban, armored Humvees parked at the entrance and guards scattered around. What if the escort could negotiate with them to let us in? By now, we were desperate for anything.
The Taliban commander got out of the car to negotiate, as the buses idled behind us at the roundabout.
At the airport, T.M. spoke with Col. Eric Cloutier, the commander of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, a group of 2,000 or so Marines at the airport — and the same unit he had deployed with to southern Afghanistan in March 2008. The colonel said he would try to find a Marine unit to link up with our group at the domestic terminal.
T.M. sped off in an armored Toyota to meet with 30 or so Marines near the post-apocalyptic remains of the domestic terminal — barbed wire, abandoned planes, heaps of lost luggage. The Marines spread out and waited for our group. An uneasy truce had held up for days between the Taliban and Marines, but this was unexplored territory.
The Taliban commander’s negotiation with the airport guards took about 20 minutes, during which a crowd built around our buses — dozens at first, then hundreds.
There were two issues: The Talib in charge of security was trying to sleep and kept declining calls, and they couldn’t figure out how to move the Humvee blocking the main entryway. The second entryway appeared too small for the buses to fit. Someone suggested looking for a measuring tape, even going on foot.
As the crowd swelled, gunshots filled the air as the Taliban tried to break it up. The Taliban commander said he had given his word to make this happen, even if it meant at the cost of a few people. Mujib urged him to drive away before people were killed.
The buses drove off. Failed again.
FAHIMOut the windows, we could see these huge crowds around the airport, how difficult it would be. It was like, this is not working. I could see it on everybody’s faces: If this doesn’t work, then it’s going to be very, very bad.
“Can the Americans suggest another gate, from a different direction?” Mujib asked T.M. by voice message as the buses drove off. What about the side gate that was once used by the Afghan Air Force? As the buses inched closer to it, we saw that it was controlled by a ruthless Afghan militia unit reporting to the C.I.A. — the Taliban escort warned that we needed to speed away before there was trouble, not wanting to break the truce.
As T.M. looked at a map and discussed options with the Marines, the Taliban escort realized that the sleeping fighter who led security at the airport actually happened to be his subordinate. He had him woken up.
“It will be done! It will be done!” he exclaimed after speaking to him on the phone.
The buses needed to get through to the domestic terminal in order to meet the Marine unit waiting there. In the WhatsApp group that some of our colleagues and families on the buses were using, Mujib shared occasional voice updates — just to reassure them that we were still trying to find a way in. We had to kill some time for the roundabout to be cleared, so the buses drove into the city’s darkness, our people aboard chatting, waiting, hoping.
Our Taliban escorts were thirsty. The first roadside stall we stopped at to get a drink was open, but the owner couldn’t be found. The commander called several times, no one came. At the second stall, as the commander bought energy drinks, a small crowd surrounded the escort vehicle and asked the Taliban commander if he could help get into the airport a baby who had been left behind. The baby’s parents had already made it out, they said.
Our escort scratched his head. He was skilled in overrunning outposts and conquering territory, not reuniting lost babies with parents. All he wanted to do now was lose the crowd. He denied that we were going to the airport.
“We are going to the Qatari Embassy,” our escort told the gathered men, not thinking about what two busloads of people would be doing at an embassy at 2:30 in the morning. “If you want to go to the Qatari Embassy with us, be my guest.”
Mujib tugged at the escort’s sleeve and whispered that maybe it wasn’t such a smart cover — what if they say yes?
The fighter’s uncle stepped in again, with what he clearly thought was a solid ploy.
“Which way is the road to Jalalabad?” he asked, voice raised to carry. Someone responded with instructions. “OK, that way and then forward? OK! We are going to a wedding in Jalalabad!” the uncle said, his chest puffed out, and the convoy began driving toward the airport roundabout.
When our convoy finally made it back to the airport entrance, the crowd had been pushed back by a ring of armed Taliban. The escort vehicle and the buses easily drove right to the entrance where the buses could fit, but the Humvee still hadn’t been removed — it appeared the Taliban couldn’t start it up. So we tried the second entry, but it was too narrow for the buses to fit, and the vehicles got stuck.
The crowd started pushing. The Taliban guards pushed back, shooting into the air. The window on our most promising opportunity was closing, and Mujib feared the Taliban would start shooting into the crowd.
It was time for quick action: Mujib asked everyone to disembark from the buses and make a run for it through the gates while there was still an opening. As gunfire intensified, our group crossed the barrier one by one, hurrying to the protected stretch of the airport. About 20 others from the crowd sneaked in with us.
Then the gates shut again.
The Taliban at this stretch of airport started barking at us, ordering everyone to the ground and pointing their weapons. Our escort rushed in — balancing himself on the concrete blast barrier like a gymnast — to reach the airport guards. Once he established his seniority, things got easier. The Taliban checked the names against the list, and it was time for our group to go to the American side.
But the Taliban would not move to where the Marines and T.M. were waiting for the group. Ask the Americans to come get you, one of the Taliban guards told Mujib. “They have said ‘we will shoot anyone who comes toward us,’” the Talib said.
The compromise: Mujib would walk over with a few Taliban to talk to the Marines and T.M.
Meeting of Former Foes
Mujib and the Taliban walked the final stretch toward the Marines, calling in the details to T.M. to head off any potentially fatal misunderstandings.
T.M.I almost couldn’t believe it. There, finally, was Mujib, my friend, walking to me. Through those days in August I was afraid I wouldn’t see him again.
Mujib called out to the Marines: “They are asking do you guys have a translator, or should I do it?” The Marines didn’t have one.
Then, in an unforgettable moment that looked to us like the end of one era and the beginning of another, Marines and Taliban reached across the barrier to shake hands.
“Now that the problem is solved, may God have mercy on all humans, let alone Afghans and Muslims,” one Talib said.
“I wish the best for the Afghan people,” said the Marine who shook his hand.
“I will visit the U.S. one day!” the fighter said.
“I hope so,” the Marine said. “I hope so.”
MUJIBAs one of the Taliban fighters went to fetch our people, there was a brief and complete silence. T.M. and I looked at each other without saying much — what do you say after all that? But there was relief. It was the first time I thought we were finally going to get our people through.
Still, there was another hurdle: the Afghan militia unit working with the C.I.A. stopped everyone, asking for papers. We obliged, too exhausted and emotional to complain about the absurdity of a force now without a government asking to see documents. Mujib and T.M. were the last to get their papers checked. As they walked toward the terminal with the Marines, one of the militia fighters called out to Mujib.
“Hey, translator,” he said, “ask the Americans — when is our flight coming?”
Days of tumult were yet to come: scenes of panic and desperation at the airport as the U.S. evacuation began shutting down; scenes of carnage as hundreds of people were killed at the Abbey Gate by an Islamic State suicide bomber — including several members of the broader Marine unit that helped our families.
But that morning, as we moved into the military side of the airport, we could finally feel some relief.
There was still heaviness, though. The families walked slowly, toward floodlights that cast long shadows from the parked planes ahead of us. They had shed their belongings, while bearing the unshakable weight of leaving their homes and all they had known. And the path ahead was still painfully unclear.
No one comes through a passage like that unchanged — not people, not countries.
7. Grindle: Evidence mounts of Afghanistan withdrawal’s massive failure
Grindle: Evidence mounts of Afghanistan withdrawal’s massive failure
An Afghan money changer counts money at Khorasan market in Herat, Afghanistan, Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2021. The value of Afghanistan's currency is tumbling, exacerbating an already severe economic crisis and deepening poverty in a country where more than half the population already doesn't have enough to eat. (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov)
Four months after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, there are no longer any illusions about what a failure the policy has been. The effort to retrieve people was shoddy enough, with people left stranded and unable to access the airport, despite the high number of evacuees. But the strategic failure and damage to America is even worse.
The undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Colin Kahl, told U.S. senators in October that terrorists could have the capability to attack the U.S. homeland from Afghanistan within six months, and perhaps sooner. He was referring to the Afghan branch of the Islamic State. He also said al-Qaeda could attack from Afghanistan within “a year or two.” The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, estimated the same thing happening in two to three years. Let’s recall that al-Qaeda, a close ally of the Taliban, is present in over half the provinces of Afghanistan, according to the U.N.
Our withdrawal has raised the threat to America, since the previous Afghan government prevented unfettered access by jihadists.
This was not unforeseen. Milley and the head of Central Command, Gen. Frank McKenzie, have both testified to Congress that they thought 2,500 troops should have been kept in Afghanistan, the same level as in January 2021. McKenzie predicted a withdrawal would lead to a quick collapse, which duly happened, though in days not months. President Biden has denied to ABC News that he received this advice.
Biden has said that he needed to withdraw to avoid having to commit thousands of fresh U.S. troops into the war zone. He is almost alone in this claim because the U.S. and Afghan army was in a stalemate with the Taliban, and no new troops were needed. What the Afghan needed to survive was continued U.S. support, not reinforcements.
Beyond the strategic blunder, the Afghan themselves have suffered immeasurably. Roughly half the population of just under 40 million are estimated to have too little to eat. One million children could die of malnutrition by the end of the year.
In part this is because the U.S. froze Afghanistan’s $10 billion in cash in U.S. banks. This seized up the Afghan banking system, which meant businesses could not get cash to operate, and threw probably hundreds of thousands into unemployment.
Taxes have also plummeted as government offices are starved of employees whom the Taliban hate for their expertise. The value of the local currency has plummeted.
Another reason: The Taliban are deliberately starving ethnic rivals like the Hazara, refusing to allow them to trade in bazaars in their home province of Bamiyan.
But these are only pieces of the story. Afghanistan is a rural country, and the economic paralysis in all areas is probably also caused by fear and uncertainty over Taliban intentions. Markets are frozen because people are afraid to step out of line, and investment of any kind is impossible in a climate of fear.
Human Rights Watch reported that the Taliban are going house to house and arresting and killing former members of the security forces. HRW has documented over 100 examples, but the number is surely much higher.
Girls in most areas of the country are not allowed into secondary school, a practice that harks back to the 1990s Taliban rule. Female university students and teachers have protested at the shut-out, and been beaten for their trouble. Female government employees have mostly been told to stay home. The Taliban says these problems will be solved in time, but because the Taliban have no money to build segregated facilities their assurances are worthless.
The hard fact is that we lost 2,461 U.S. lives in Afghanistan for nothing because President Biden grew sick of the war. He was quoted by Bob Woodward as saying in 2009 that a Taliban takeover would be no bad thing for America.
The U.S. should have kept the 2,500 troops there as the military said, for minimal cost, for as long as it took. Just as American did in Korea and Germany to ensure success. Until the Taliban realized winning was not an option and negotiated with real conviction to salvage a piece of the pie.
Now, having made its mistake, America will have to step up and push massive amounts of aid to Afghanistan through the U.N. and other international agencies, to address a crisis we created. It’s no use arguing about eventually releasing frozen funds, massive aid is required now.
Former CIA Director Bob Gates famously wrote that Joe Biden had been wrong on every major foreign policy issue of the past 40 years. This episode is no different.
Douglas Grindle is a former reporter who spent six years covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and four years in southern Afghanistan as a U.S. government field researcher and development officer. He is the author of “How We Won and Lost the War in Afghanistan.”
8. Reports of Russia's decline are greatly exaggerated
Reports of Russia's decline are greatly exaggerated
The Hill · by Andrew Latham, Opinion Contributor · December 26, 2021
Tales of Russia’s demise have circulated with remarkable consistency since the fall of the Soviet Union on Dec. 25 exactly three decades ago. Having fallen from its superpower pedestal, the Soviet Union’s successor state was routinely characterized as a “declining power,” a “has-been power” and a “downshift power.”
In recent years, the more dire prophesies of Russian collapse that circulated in the 1990s having gone unfulfilled, such characterizations have given way to a recognition that Russia is in fact a “persistent power.” Fundamentally, though, nothing has changed. Whether rebranded as a mere “nuisance power” or as a perpetually “disruptive” power, Russia is viewed now as it has been since it emerged out of the wreckage of the Soviet Union in December 1991 — as a broken, if sometimes petulant, vestige of a once-mighty superpower.
But as the crisis in Ukraine has once again demonstrated, such characterizations are grossly misleading. Indeed, they couldn’t be more wrong. Russia is not the geopolitical basket-case it was in the immediate post-Soviet era. Nor is it the bit player on the world stage it is often portrayed as in the Western press. In fact, quite the opposite: Viewed dispassionately and in the cold light of Realpolitik, Russia is unambiguously a “great power” — a country possessing both substantial instruments of national power and the will to use these instruments to influence political outcomes around the world. And any American grand strategy worthy of the name will have to take that undeniable fact into account.
When it comes to possessing a substantial and varied instrument of power, there can be little doubt that Russia meets the “great power” standard. To be sure, economic woes and demographic challenges continue to plague the country. But the myth of Russian decline is precisely that — a myth.
The Russian military today is not the poorly trained and ill-equipped conscript rabble that fared so poorly in Chechnya in the mid-1990s. Spurred in large part by that experience, Moscow undertook a radical modernization and upgrading of the country’s nuclear and conventional forces, with staggeringly impressive results. While some asymmetries remain between Russia on the one hand and the United States and China on the other, resurrected Russia’s “hard power” capabilities now place it in the same league as those two recognized great powers — and in a different league altogether than almost every other country on the planet.
Similarly, there can be little doubt that Moscow is able to field the “soft” and “sharp” power capabilities of a great power. Regarding the former – which in Russia’s case refers to the country’s ability to “wage friendship” – Russia has developed a formidable arsenal of tools for generating good will and attracting political support. These include Russian media (including the RT and Sputnik networks), Russian cultural centers, the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian universities and research centers. Moscow also exercises soft power through the provision of humanitarian aid and debt relief and security through Russian-centered international organizations such as the Collective Security Treaty Organization.
Finally, Russia exercises soft power by actively promoting the idea that there are viable alternatives to “degenerate” Western liberal democracy — an idea with soft power appeal to a host of non- and anti-democratic regimes around the world.
And then there’s “sharp power,” defined as the ability to manipulate information to sow discord and confusion in a target country. In this realm, Russia has few peers. Moscow’s ability to disrupt political life abroad through the manipulation of social media and traditional news sources like RT and Sputnik to propagate disinformation is perhaps unparalleled. Add to this an advanced capability to conduct denial-of-service operations, compromise private accounts through phishing attacks and carry out other offensive cyber operations, and the extraordinary scale of Russian sharp power begins to come into focus.
Finally – and this is crucially important – one of the key ingredients of great power status has always been self-perception. If a country has certain hard, soft and sharp power capabilities and its acts as if it is a great power, then it is a great power. And there can be little doubt that Russia perceives itself in this way.
Russia today is heir to an old and enduring identity – forged during the time of Peter the Great and persisting through the Soviet era – as a major player on the international stage. The country’s ruling class feels this in its bones and acts accordingly. And this identity – shared by rulers and ruled alike – compels Russia to act like a great power, projecting power around the world even in the absence of direct economic imperatives or security concerns. It is easy enough to explain Russia’s assertive role in its near-abroad in terms of its material interests or even imperial nostalgia. But how else to explain its extensive and sustained efforts to influence political outcomes in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia? From the perspective of Russia’s leaders, the answer is obvious: Great powers have global reach, Russia is a great power, therefore Russia must have global reach. It’s that simple.
There seems little doubt, then, that Russia is a great power. It has all the ingredients and passes all the tests. But what does this mean for the United States?
Simply put, acknowledging Russia’s great power status is to recognize that the factory settings of international relations have kicked in once again. We have been blinded to the fact that multipolarity is the default configuration of power in the international order by three-quarters of a century, first of bipolarity during the Cold War, then of unipolarity in the post-Cold War era and now of the illusion of a second Cold War with China. But, as an honest appraisal of Russian power clearly indicates, this is neither a bipolar nor a unipolar moment. It is an era of multipolar great power competition. To delude ourselves that it is something else – Cold War II or some similar mis-analogy in which the U.S. is the “sole remaining superpower” – is to fundamentally misunderstand the geopolitical environment we find ourselves in today. Conversely, grasping the realities of Russian power and Russia’s place in the international order is a step on the road to strategic clarity.
Given the stakes involved, we would be well advised to take that step.
Andrew Latham is a professor of international relations at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn.
The Hill · by Andrew Latham, Opinion Contributor · December 26, 2021
9. Second Opinion: Does the Biden administration deserve a passing grade in foreign policy?
Excerpt:
But slogans are not strategy, and on the Biden administration’s first-year report card, its approach toward China earns it an “incomplete” in foreign policy.
Second Opinion: Does the Biden administration deserve a passing grade in foreign policy?
by Gregory F. Treverton
Senior officials in charge of foreign policy in the Biden administration have spent 2021 seeking to return America to activism in multilateral institutions and to restore its global reputation as a leader and its image as both competent and reliable after the hapless chest-thumping of the previous administration.
Unhappily, the first year has not been kind to their efforts or their president. I say this as someone who was a colleague of many of these officials when I chaired the National Intelligence Council during the Obama administration — and who admires them.
They had bad luck with Afghanistan, not least inheriting the Trump agreement with the Taliban in 2020 promising a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops; it was little more than a fig leaf covering surrender.
But the U.S. also had bad execution. The administration was pressured by the Afghan government to avoid taking action that would bespeak departure, yet the U.S. still should have done much more than it did to prepare for the withdrawal by the end of August, especially to get out the Afghans who had worked with us. The military usually excels at quickly moving people, but in this case it did not.
If we were given a do-over, we might have kept the Bagram air base open in Afghanistan even if it meant temporarily deploying more troops to defend it.
I was also surprised — after we saw the Iraqi army evaporate in the fall of Mosul in 2014 — that my former colleagues in intelligence didn’t at least warn of the strong possibility that the endgame in Afghanistan might play out in days or weeks, not months or years. My years in intelligence have left me skeptical of assessments that are too convenient, such as the one suggesting the Afghan regime could hold on for months.
The Biden team is experienced and able, and that is a welcome relief. Yet they are also card-carrying members of the foreign policy establishment, what Ben Rhodes, who was a deputy national security advisor to President Obama, calls the “blob” (and which probably also includes me). I sometimes have the impression they think this is still 1992, when the U.S. was having a unipolar moment as the global superpower.
Nor can U.S. leadership be assumed; it has to be earned, issue by issue, and decision by decision. On that score, conniving with London to sell Australia British nuclear submarines, rather than the French models they had ordered, and to do so with no prior warning to France, was a gaffe which neither a President Biden apology nor a visit to Paris in early November by Vice President Kamala Harris could erase.
Traditional allies are bound to hedge their bets: Having witnessed the “America First” Trumpism once, they know our politics well enough to know it could happen again.
There is more foreign policy continuity between Biden and former President Trump than I expected. Biden reversed two of three Trump withdrawals, taking the country back into the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization.
But what is more arresting is that he did not rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership. That should have been a natural, for it is the perfect vehicle for doing what the Trump administration sought but failed to do: Make progress in curbing the various ways China appropriates intellectual property, which includes requiring foreign businesses to share their technology in exchange for market access — and many reports of outright theft.
The first rounds of Trump tariffs may have gotten China’s attention, but the follow-up was negative: Rather than rallying countries in Europe and elsewhere that share the same grievance against China, the Trump administration levied tariffs on those would-be partners as well, apparently for reasons unconnected to China. Yet the fact that the Biden administration has made nary a peep about rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership underscores the constraints now that trade agreements have become dirty words across the political spectrum.
Russia’s massing of troops on Ukraine’s border, which began in November, will test the administration. It stands in testimony to the fact that a declining power can still be locally preeminent militarily — and to the risk that the Biden administration could simultaneously face crises in Europe and Asia. Never mind that if the foreign policy establishmentarians seem to think it’s still 1992, Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to think it’s still 900.
By harking back to Kievan Rus — a medieval state that some say was the precursor to the modern states of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus — Putin is asserting that Russians and Ukrainians are one people. It may be an acceptable historical reference but it is an unwise strategy, for it only offends Ukrainians and drives them further toward the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
China plainly is the center of American foreign policy, and on that score, too, there seems more continuity than strategy. The Biden administration did not move to rescind the Trump tariffs but applied punitive measures of its own, such as delisting Chinese companies from U.S. stock exchanges and not sending officials to the Olympics in China.
While the administration obviously understands that if humanity is to survive, we must cooperate with China in addressing the climate crisis, otherwise the “new Cold War” mentality that appears to grip Washington seems to include the administration as well. That is a very unhelpful frame — more 1962 than 2022 — for not only does it narrow the scope for cooperation with China, it also downplays the economic importance of the two countries to each other.
Political calculations may suggest hyping the “China threat” to sell measures for renewal at home that we should do even if China didn’t exist, such as spending more on basic research and development on critical technologies, just as President Eisenhower used the Cold War in the 1950s to justify the National Highway Defense Act, which built the U.S. interstate system so that in the event of a nuclear attack people could easily evacuate cities.
But slogans are not strategy, and on the Biden administration’s first-year report card, its approach toward China earns it an “incomplete” in foreign policy.
Gregory F. Treverton, chairman of the U.S. National Intelligence Council from 2014 to 2017, is a professor of international relations at USC and chairman of the Global TechnoPolitics Forum.
10. Opinion | Ukraine stood with the West in 2014. Today we must stand with Ukraine.
Opinion | Ukraine stood with the West in 2014. Today we must stand with Ukraine.
The Washington Post · by Rob Portman and Jeanne Shaheen Today at 8:00 a.m. EST · December 24, 2021
Rob Portman, a Republican, represents Ohio in the U.S. Senate. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, represents New Hampshire in the U.S. Senate.
Seven years ago, in what Ukrainians call the Revolution of Dignity, the people of Ukraine stood up to their Russian-backed leaders and made a conscious decision to turn to the West.
Ukrainians chose a free, democratic and independent future. Today, that yearning for freedom is even more pronounced. Recent surveys show strong support among Ukrainians — especially youths — for joining the European Union and NATO.
This is despite unrelenting attempts by Russia to undermine Ukrainian democracy through disinformation and military intimidation, including the illegal annexation of Crimea.
Moscow would have the world believe that Russia is merely trying to shore up its border against a threat from Ukraine and NATO. This argument has no merit. Ukraine’s military posture has always been purely defensive in nature. Unlike Russia, Ukraine has upheld its commitments under the Minsk agreements between Russia, Ukraine and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which were designed to ensure a cease-fire in Donbas.
Russia has shown its intent to violate its international commitments by demanding NATO cease expanding to sovereign countries that wish to join, and calling for Ukraine to grant more of its sovereign territory to Russia.
The Biden administration has placed diplomacy at the forefront of its efforts to deter Russia. However, these efforts must be combined with the necessary economic and military measures that would strengthen a diplomatic approach and give it greater credibility.
First, the United States must increase the military weaponry it sends to Ukraine to enhance the country’s defensive capabilities and tailor that weaponry to the threat Ukrainians will face. Since 2014, the United States has provided more than $2.5 billion in security assistance, and since 2017, we have provided lethal assistance such as antitank missiles and heavy machine guns. This aid was designed to prepare Ukraine for an active conflict in the Donbas — not a full-scale Russian invasion. In Congress, we have advocated to increase security aid: The United States must speed up the pace of assistance and provide antiaircraft, antitank and anti-ship systems, along with electronic warfare capabilities.
Second, the Biden administration should not support any attempts to force Ukraine to cede control in Donbas outside the Minsk agreements. The Russians are using the same playbook there as they have in Crimea and the occupied Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia — seeking to normalize their illegal occupation by backing separatist forces, encouraging the creation of local, pro-Russian governments and issuing Russian passports to local residents. President Biden should not urge Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to grant any concessions outside of the Minsk agreements process, and he must require Russia to withdraw troops from the border before further negotiations begin.
Third, Biden should seriously reconsider the imposition of sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. It is clear that Vladimir Putin is willing to flout international norms to advance what the State Department has described as an emotional agenda to reunite the Soviet Union. Russia has recently used its outsize energy resources as a weapon by exacting geopolitical concessions from the government of Moldova and by refusing to increase outflows to Europe during the recent supply crunch. The administration should work closely with the new German government to keep the pipeline from becoming operational; it is in Europe’s best interests to deny Putin another arm of influence over our allies.
Finally, the United States must continue to build an international coalition of partners in Europe and elsewhere who see this threat with clear eyes. There is bipartisan support for such an approach in Congress because our colleagues understand that transatlantic unity is critical in responding to the threat posed by Russia.
Ukraine, Georgia, the Baltic states and other former “republics” of the Soviet Union chose to seek a free and democratic future — they chose to look to the West, not to Russia. Failure to support these nations acquiesces to Russia’s desire to once again rob independent Eastern European people of their identity and destiny.
How the West responds now will define the trajectory of our relations with Russia and Putin for the next decade. Standing with our allies alongside Ukraine will help ensure a free and stable Europe, which is in the best interest of the people of democracies and American allies around the globe.
The Washington Post · by Rob Portman and Jeanne Shaheen Today at 8:00 a.m. EST · December 24, 2021
11. U.S. signing of Xinjiang-related act 'wrong, unpopular, dangerous': spokesperson
It must be right and good if the Chinese propaganda machine is attacking it.
U.S. signing of Xinjiang-related act 'wrong, unpopular, dangerous': spokesperson- China.org.cn
A cotton picker works in the fields of Erken Reyimu in Yuli County, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Oct. 24, 2021. (Xinhua/Zhao Ge)
The United States' signing of the so-called "Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act" into law is a manifestation of its bullying mindset, an extention of gangster logic, and a revival of the Cold War mentality, said a spokesperson with the people's government of China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on Saturday.
Such a move blatantly interferes in China's internal affairs, and is totally wrong, unpopular and dangerous, said Xu Guixiang at a press conference in Beijing held by the Xinjiang regional government.
The so-called "Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act" seriously distorts the actual labor situation in Xinjiang, violates international law and basic norms governing international relations, and tramples on the common values of human society, said Xu.
Legitimate rights and interests of people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang are fully protected, and the region's employment policies and practices are in line with international labor and human rights standards, Xu noted.
"The so-called 'Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act' will in no way affect Xinjiang's development and progress," said Xu. "On the contrary, it has exposed the United States' fake human rights, real hegemony, and the intention to sabotage in the name of concern."
The United States itself has, in fact, faced a series of domestic labor issues such as forced labor in private prisons, child labor abuse, and gender discrimination in employment, said Xu.
"It is the United States that should actually look into its own forced labor issues and sign into law a 'Native Americans Forced Labor Prevention Act'," the spokesperson added.
12. As the Taliban swept Kabul, one friend escaped. The other was trapped. They shared their anguish on WhatsApp
As a broad comment, one of the connecting threads among all these stories is how important social media and messaging apps are to those who are trapped and trying to escape.
As the Taliban swept Kabul, one friend escaped. The other was trapped. They shared their anguish on WhatsApp
CNN · by Eliza Mackintosh and Nilly Kohzad, CNN Illustration by Alberto Mier, CNN
This story is part of As Equals, CNN's ongoing series on gender inequality. For information about how the series is funded and more, check out our FAQs.
In the four months since the Taliban took over Afghanistan, Nilofar, a 20-year-old university student, has rarely left her small apartment in Kabul, where she lives with her older sister, brother and father.
Her days, which were once punctuated by exam preparation, fitness classes at the gym, meeting friends for coffee at cafes and shopping for new clothes, are now painfully empty.
She was planning to start an economics degree at Kabul University this fall. Instead, she's stayed at home, too terrified to venture further than the neighborhood grocery store. Confined to four walls, she tries to keep herself busy. She rearranges her furniture frequently, studies English textbooks, posts poetry on Instagram and practices new makeup tricks she finds on YouTube.
"We still try to stay alive and occupy ourselves so that we don't feel the pain and hurt," Nilofar told CNN in a recent phone call. "We don't even know what's going on outside. We simply watch the sun rise and set outside the window."
Young Afghan women like Nilofar, who grew up in the shadow of the US invasion that toppled the Taliban in 2001, have lived in an increasingly open society -- one defined by cellphones, social media, reality television, pop music and the right to express themselves freely. They've endured war, persistent poverty and the threat of suicide bombings. But they came of age with an increasing sense they could break free of the patriarchal society of the past and decide their own future.
"I had many dreams, I wanted to continue my education, to do big things, to work alongside my friends, but all my friends left the country. I don't know if Afghanistan can return to its previous state," Nilofar said, adding that she has received a UN scholarship to attend university in Kazakhstan, but is still waiting on her visa to be approved. She says she is determined to follow friends who fled in a frenzy of evacuation flights during the withdrawal of US and NATO troops, and as Taliban militants swept into the capital on August 15.
Nilofar's best friend, Florance, was among them. The 23-year-old Kabul University graduate is now living in temporary housing in a Paris suburb, where she is trying to learn French and planning to apply for her master's degree in business. She says that she was heartbroken to leave Afghanistan, but felt there was no future for her there.
"I left my motherland, my home, my mother, my sister, my brothers, my beloved little nephews, my memories, my friends, with tears," she said. The last time she saw Nilofar was two weeks before the Taliban takeover, during an English language course that they'd taken together for four years with the hope of traveling abroad.
"We were just like sisters. We did everything together," Florance said. "We had lots of fun, but now I miss all of those things."
WhatsApp messages between Nilofar and Florance — who asked that their last names not be published for their safety — provide a view into the anguish of a generation of Afghan girls that have seen their freedoms disappear overnight. Now facing a deteriorating economic crisis, many are desperate to leave.
Florance
Hey, I'm sorry I could not answer all your calls. I'm at the airport and it's very busy, I've entered from a different door this time by the Taliban checkpoint. I'm just sitting here. I'm sorry I couldn't let you know; my family is with me. We are here, it's very busy. I don't know if we will make it.
Nilofar
Okay, have a safe trip. Did you make it?
Florance
Yes, we made it
Nilofar
Okay, thank god you all arrived. Are you staying at a camp?
Florance
No, we are at the airport on the way to our hotel. We have to quarantine for 10 days then they will take us somewhere else.
Nilofar
I hope you enjoy it
Florance
Yea. You too
Nilofar
Everyone left and now it's just me here. You left, Shabo [another friend] left, I'm all alone
Florance
You will come one day too, with me
Nilofar
Aww yes. I'm glad you made it though
Some 124,000 people escaped from Afghanistan in the massive, chaotic airlift carried out in the final days of the US occupation. But many more were left behind, and hundreds of thousands have since sought refuge in neighboring Iran and Pakistan.
For the women who remain in Afghanistan, life has been stuck in a perpetual state of limbo.
Despite the Taliban's promises that women and girls would continue to have access to education, many across the country haven't been allowed to return to secondary schools. Those that have resumed university classes are separated by a curtain from their male peers. Restrictive rules like a stay-at-home order, which was touted as being temporary, have dragged on. Most women still can't go back to work, having been barred from an array of jobs, including in government and entertainment television.
Young women interviewed by CNN described a sense of being adrift in a waking nightmare, colored in by their mothers' stories of the Taliban's cruelty in the 1990s — when the group imposed a harsh interpretation of Islamic law, shut away women and meted out public punishments for those who violated the group's so-called morality code.
"My parents would tell us many stories about the Taliban ... so we have this strong nightmare within us," Nilofar said. "I can't believe we are living under their flag now; life has become so difficult for us ... Besides sitting at home, we cannot do anything. Our stress levels are very high."
Taliban leaders in Kabul and other cities have been at pains to present a more moderate face of the group, suggesting that women can participate fully in society "within the bounds of Islamic law." But it is still unclear what that means in reality, or how a recent decree on women's rights might be enforced — though the Taliban's move to abolish the Ministry of Women's Affairs and replace it with a body aimed at promoting virtue and preventing vice may offer some clues.
Rights advocates say the Taliban has done little to show their views have changed materially; their return has swiftly stifled women's lives and stirred a deep sense of grief. "For all of the terrible difficulties of the last 20 years, it felt like there was this new space that young women could create for themselves," Heather Barr, the associate director of women's rights at Human Rights Watch, told CNN. "This whole new world of opportunities was opening up for young women ... What happened for them on August 15, is that just slammed shut."
The Taliban's rule in 2021 is developing differently across the diverse nation, especially in the countryside, where some of its strict rules never really receded and patriarchal traditions reign. But in Afghan cities, where daily life for women has changed radically in recent years, the Taliban's return feels like a death sentence.
"Life in Afghan cities for the last 20 years was like all the cities around the world, but now people feel like they're in a prison," Lima Ahmad, a P.h.D. candidate at Tufts University researching Afghan youth under 25, who account for nearly two-thirds of the total population, told CNN in a phone call. "This is alien for Gen Z. They've heard from us about it [life under the Taliban] — no TV, no music, no going to cafe, school, hanging out. For how long they can accept this reality?"
"This generation, their eyes are open — they've seen the world even if they've not traveled, they've seen it through social media," Ahmad added.
As their physical world has narrowed, young Afghan women have turned increasingly to social media as an outlet to share their anxieties over private voice notes, Instagram DMs and posts with friends.
"Nowadays, we're only connected by WhatsApp, and we talk about memories, but mostly we talk about the situation in Afghanistan. My friends who are still in Afghanistan, they're really depressed," Florance said. She is trying to support Nilofar and other friends, who are seeking legal routes out of the country, but is often unsure how to advise them.
Nilofar
Great so when you are done with quarantine go and enjoy the city. Go sightseeing
Florance
Haha okay
Nilofar
Good job
Nilofar
Did you see the Eiffel Tower?
Florance
Yes
Nilofar
How did you feel?
Florance
Haha
Nilofar
The first time you saw it
Nilofar
You are so lucky you left. I'm glad you did
Florance
You will come too one day
Nilofar
I have no hope. I have no hope for life. That's a whole other thing...
Florance
It will happen. I'm sure.
"It's very hard to ask, 'How are they? What are they doing?' Because I know that now they don't do anything and they're not feeling good, or they get depression or anxieties and when I talk with most of them they are hopeless," said Hossnia Mohsini, 30. Before she fled to France, she worked as a youth adviser with a non-governmental organization in Afghanistan, promoting leadership and nonviolent communication skills.
In an essay for Rukhshana Media — an Afghan women's news agency named after a girl who was stoned to death by the Taliban in 2015 — Mohsini wrote that some of the girls she had worked with were so distressed that they were starting to contemplate suicide.
She recently held a virtual empathy circle over Zoom for some of the NGO's former youth consultants, who are mostly in their 20s, and still living in Afghanistan. Mohsini said she started with an open question: "What's alive in you right now?" She said the responses were heart-wrenching, especially from the young women, who said they were trying to keep up with their studies, but were unable to concentrate on anything and felt trapped at home.
It is that sort of despair that laces the WhatsApp conversations between Nilofar and Florance, which have waned in recent weeks and months. Between the time difference and settling into their new routines, it's become more difficult to talk. Both say they hope to see each other soon, but are unsure when that might be.
"We aren't talking as much as we used to. I know she is busy, she has just started taking French courses and she must become independent. That's why I don't try and bother her so much," Nilofar said. "But we stay connected, and I want to continue our friendship."
Nilofar
I miss you
Florance
Really
Nilofar
The other day I passed by your house
Florance
Okay
Nilofar
I said to myself, when I come here, I used to call flo, but now she's not here either
Florance
Then I will come back and deport myself
Nilofar
I see the photos everyday
Florance
Until there is some light in the situation
Nilofar
It's okay, don't worry about me. You will get sad. Haaaaa....
Florance
Haaaa... crazy
Nilofar
Florance
Everything is uncertain for me
Nilofar
Still thank god you left
The WhatsApp conversations included in this story have been translated from voice notes and written messages. They were lightly edited for clarity and length.
Eliza Mackintosh wrote and reported from London. Nilly Kohzad reported from Istanbul. Development by Marco Chacon.
CNN · by Eliza Mackintosh and Nilly Kohzad, CNN Illustration by Alberto Mier, CNN
13. Opinion | National conservatives and racial identitarians have a common enemy: Individualism by George F. Will
Opinion | National conservatives and racial identitarians have a common enemy: Individualism
Prophesy is optional folly but an irresistible end-of-year temptation. So, at the risk of allowing a wish to be the father of a thought, a plausible prediction is that in 2022 the current fever of racial thinking will break, for two reasons.
One is that such thinking has become something fatal in politics: boring. It is now a recycling of predictable boilerplate about “systemic” and “structural” this, and “unconscious” and “intersectional” that. The impulse, presented as a moral imperative, to view the nation’s past and present exclusively through the narrow lens of race became in 2021 so pervasive and fierce that it resembled something perishable: a fad. Albeit one that has spawned a multibillion-dollar industry whereby corporations hire “diversity” consultants to teach them how to regret their “privilege” without shedding any.
A more intriguing reason climate change is coming to the nation’s intellectual climate was given in an essay published exactly 60 years ago by an eminent British political philosopher. Michael Oakeshott’s “The Masses in Representative Democracy” is uncannily pertinent to the United States’ distemper in 2021 because it explains how today’s supposedly avant-garde ideas are pre-modern.
Modernity’s greatest achievement, which was the prerequisite for its subsequent achievements, was the invention of the individual. Oakeshott argued that, in the 14th and 15th centuries, conditions emerged that were “favorable to a very high degree of human individuality,” meaning “persons accustomed to making choices for themselves.”
Hitherto, this process was “narrowly circumscribed.” Persons knew themselves only as members of a family, a group, a church, a village or as the occupant of a tenancy: “What differentiated one man from another was insignificant when compared with what was enjoyed in common as members of a group of some sort.”
This began to change in Italy with “the break-up of medieval communal life.” As the historian Jacob Burckhardt would write, “Italy began to swarm with individuality; the ban laid upon human personality was dissolved.” Individuals detached themselves from derivative group identities, becoming eligible for individual rights grounded in the foundational right to an existence independent of any group membership.
The invention of the individual, Oakeshott wrote, entailed the idea of the private — a zone of personal sovereignty independent of communal arrangements. Hence the American Revolution: Government exists to protect the individual’s right to the pursuit of happiness as the individual defines it, not the pursuit of the good life as government defines it. Government must be powerful enough to protect (in Oakeshott’s formulation) “the order without which the aspirations of individuality could not be realized” — security of person and property — but not powerful enough to threaten individuality.
Oakeshott understood in 1961 that modernity’s emancipation of the individual from the “warmth of communal pressures” did not exhilarate everyone. Indeed, in 2021, U.S. “national conservatives,” who are collectivists on the right, recoil against modernity in the name of communitarian values, strongly tinged with a nativist nationalism and with a trace of the European blood-and-soil right.
These “national conservatives” have an unacknowledged kinship with their collectivist cousins on the left, the race identitarians. Their critical race theory subsumes individualism, dissolving it in a group membership — racial solidarity, which supposedly has been forged in the furnace of racist oppression.
Today’s progressives, who fancy themselves the vanguard of modernity, are actually modernity’s enemies. In progressivism’s jargon, History is a proper noun designating something autonomous. People “on the right side of history” propel History toward a knowable destination. It is known by theorists whose special insight makes them society’s rightful rulers.
Their supposed insight is that all of life is a power struggle between History’s helpers and History’s hinderers. In the previous two centuries, progressives expected that the proletariat, purged of false consciousness and infused with revolutionary consciousness by instruction in true theories, would wage the class struggle. This would be History’s propellant. Individual identity would mean nothing; class membership would mean everything.
But the incorrigibly non-revolutionary proletariat has disappointed History-worshipers’ expectations of a climactic class struggle. So, the oppressed-versus-oppressor dynamic of History has been Americanized through critical race theory. The working class has been replaced as History’s fuel — replaced by non-Whites seeking emancipation from “systemic” oppression by Whites.
Oakeshott’s insight about the nature of modernity illuminates the anti-modern aspects of today’s racial progressivism, which is a tactical revision of economic-materialist progressivism. So, today’s advanced thinking is not fundamentally unlike yesterday’s — the 19th century’s — advanced thinking. As a wit has said, everything changes except the avant-garde.
14. Sunday Q&A: Top Republican on Foreign Affairs, McCaul sees Russian invasion as likely
Sunday Q&A: Top Republican on Foreign Affairs, McCaul sees Russian invasion as likely
A: We’ve lost eyes and ears on Russia, China and Iran. So we’ve gone dark in that region, and (our withdrawal) also projected weakness. And when you do that, you invite aggression, as you’ll see throughout history, going back to Chamberlain and Hitler (prior to World War II).
So I think this withdrawal has made (President Vladimir) Putin more provocative. And now you’ve got 100,000 Russian troops on the Ukrainian border, with many more being dispatched from Moscow. … The threat is there and if we don’t provide deterrence here, just like when Russia went in Crimea, he’s going to go in. They are going to go into Ukraine.
Ukraine has always been regarded as the breadbasket of Russia. It’s the prize. Putin acts like he wants to restore the old Soviet empire. So that threatens the Baltic states as well. This will be the largest invasion of a country since World War II, if it happens, and I worry, just given the briefings I’ve had, that it is going to happen.
I know the administration’s talking about sanctions, and I welcome that. But I think NATO has to have a presence, you know, on the ground, so that Putin knows that you can’t do this without NATO and our allies responding to it.
Q: There are other ways to strengthen (or lose) influence in the world. You’ve been talking up news that Samsung plans to invest $17 billion in Taylor, outside of Austin, where it plans to build a giant plant to manufacture semiconductors. You drafted legislation authorizing billions in federal subsidies for just such plants, a bill that has passed but not yet been funded. Why is this so important?
A: So it’s actually an interesting story. During the prior administration, the national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, who I am pretty good friends with, and I were having this discussion about supply chain problems and the problems with advanced semiconductor chips in Taiwan and South Korea were getting compromised by China. These are advanced chips that are in our most advanced weapon systems, and well, they are in your phones, too. And so they are really like the brains behind everything we use, and so it’s really a critical asset.
I had further discussions with (former) Secretary (of State Mike) Pompeo, and then Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Where we ended up in our thinking was to pull this critical supply chain, either into the United States or into one of our allied countries in a region that’s not vulnerable to being compromised by Communist China.
So the idea is to create manufacturing jobs in the United States and protect our national security at the same time. So this has been very well received. We got the language authorizing the new grant program into the National Defense Authorization bill. Sen. (John) Cornyn introduced the companion in the Senate, and now we’re looking at (legislation to create) the tax incentives. The grant program is important to help incentivize these companies to either expand or locate in the United States.
Everybody feels very strongly that the tax incentives will pass this year, and you’re already seeing great investment here in the United States, like Samsung. That’s just north of Austin for $17 billion. And that’s just the start — investments are going to grow exponentially over time.
It’s very cost intensive to build one of these things. That’s why, because it is a national security concern, we believe we really have to incentivize them to do this, either here, or with some of our allies.
I know there’s a lot of acrimony up here in Washington. But this is one of those kind of rare moments where you see both sides of the aisle coming together. We had a meeting in the Oval Office, with eight members of Congress, with the president, with the vice president all in agreement.
I like to get things done, not just go on YouTube and get attention by saying crazy stuff. That’s just not my style.
Q: Tell me more about your concerns on China.
A:
Taiwan has always been in their sights. But now they’re getting very provocative … and establishing artificial islands in the South China Sea. If we don’t provide the deterrence now, they will definitely, in my judgment, just like with Hong Kong, move on them. That would have devastating consequences.
Q: Several things you mentioned, like the artificial islands and territorial claims by China, those have been building for several years. So is there something in particular in the months since the Afghanistan withdrawal that you’re pointing to that shows a significant change in China’s behavior — not just in their rhetoric?
A: The flights over Taiwan airspace have increased dramatically since August. … Then there’s the firing of the hypersonic weapon, which is very significant, and the ability to have their missile orbit the Earth, and then land with precision. … This missile is really built on the backbone of American technology, that either we’ve given it to them, or they’ve stolen it, or we’ve sold it to them. That’s something we’re gonna have to take a look at. We have got to stop selling them the technology that they’re going to put into advanced weapon systems like the hypersonic. We don’t have a hypersonic weapon that can deliver a nuclear payload. I got a very high-level classified briefing on this, and it’s very worrisome because they can hit the homeland with this. Our missile defense system cannot stop it because it flies five times the speed of sound and zigzags. It’s very hard to detect. So think about that with Taiwan now. If they see us wanting to get involved, they almost have a checkmate on us to say, you know, we got this hypersonic, we can hit your homeland and you can’t stop it. So they have leverage over us.
Q: You’ve spoken about this threat as one more reason to create a new supply chain away from China’s influence.
A: We’re looking at rare earth minerals. Through their Belt and Road initiative, they take rare earth minerals out of Latin America and Africa and bring them to China in the Xinjiang province, where they commit genocide and have slave labor with the Uighur Muslims.
I think it’d be really smart for an Elon Musk — and I plan to sit down with him — to work with Africa and particularly Latin America to get these rare earth minerals. That would help with the migration issue. Let’s set up a manufacturing plant in the Western Hemisphere, in Latin America.
There’s a moral issue here, and just logistically, it’s closer to the United States in this hemisphere.
Q: That could help build incentives for people in Guatemala or Honduras to stay home rather than migrate north?
A: I spoke to the Guatemalan ambassador and he said, “I don’t want aid, I want trade.” But they really need foreign investment
Q: If China were to invade Taiwan, would the U.S. be obligated to go to war?
A: No, we have made promises to Taiwan, but we are not bound by a treaty to go to war. We have a security defense agreement with Australia that we would be bound by. Australia is very nervous right now about what’s happening. That’s why we did (a deal) with respect to nuclear submarines, to build those in Australia. That’s gonna take time. But we are bound by that security agreement we have with Australia. So if Australia responded and asked us to join them, we would be obligated by that.
Q: Biden got hammered in some corners for offending France by supporting the submarine deal with Australia. Did he make the right decision?
A: Yeah, I got a call from the National Security Council and they told me about the plan. I was very supportive, because this is exactly what we need. You know, the French submarine is not as advanced as the one that we’re talking about. I will say that I did meet with our French counterparts. And they were mad not so much that we made this decision. It was the way it was made. They are our oldest ally, and they felt they were completely blown off.
Q: We’re about out of time. Let me ask you about Iran. You’ve raised the concern that it is running out of the clock as it continues its nuclear program. But how much should we expect them to trust the negotiations when President (Donald) Trump pulled the U.S. out of the nuclear accord?
A: At the end of day, Iran is going to have to make a decision: Is their economy more important than being a nuclear power? We are willing to lift the sanctions, but they need to give up their nuclear program or make it more civilian-based, energy program. If they would stop enriching uranium, we will lift all the sanctions tomorrow. They have a decision make.
15. ‘Radically optimistic’: the thinktank chief who believes the US can ‘self-correct’
Another think tank story but from a different perspective: the progressive view on the domestic situation versus yesterday's on Kori Schake and AEI's view of conservative foreign policy.
‘Radically optimistic’: the thinktank chief who believes the US can ‘self-correct’
David Smith in Washington
Patrick Gaspard discusses his Haitian dissident parents, meeting Mandela and protecting democracy
Barack Obama could be forgiven for considering himself a big shot. But Patrick Gaspard used to keep his ego in check.
“You’re of course an extraordinary historic figure but I’m sorry, this doesn’t compare,” Gaspard would joke, “meeting Nelson Mandela will always be the top of Mount Kilimanjaro for me.”
The 53-year-old has a unique perspective on the men who became the US’s and South Africa’s first Black presidents. As a trade unionist and community activist, he first met Mandela a few months after his release from prison. Later he became close to Obama, serving in his White House and as his diplomat in South Africa.
Now Gaspard is the new president and chief executive of the Center for American Progress (CAP), described by the Politico website as “the most influential think tank of the Biden era”. He succeeds Neera Tanden, who left to become a senior adviser to the president.
In a wide-ranging interview in his corner office, Gaspard offered lessons learned from Mandela and Obama, his verdict on Biden’s first year in office and what his global perspective tells him about the survival of American democracy.
He was born near Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (then Zaire), to Haitian parents. The family moved to New York when he was four. “All of my interest in politics comes from the origin story of my family,” he says.
His father was a qualified lawyer in Haiti who belonged to a generation of young activists pushing for free and fair elections and open society. But this was the start of the dictatorship of François ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier, who waged political violence to crush dissent.
“My father had a shotgun put to his head and [was] told in no uncertain terms he had to cease and desist from that kind of rhetoric,” Gaspard says. “He had the opportunity to leave Haiti as hundreds of thousands of Haitian intellectuals did in that moment, and he became an educator in the Congo. Unfortunately, many of his classmates couldn’t leave and they were jailed or killed in Haiti.”
Congo was experiencing its own exodus of Belgian and French educators. A UN programme encouraged French-speaking educators and intellectuals from the African diaspora to come to the country and train the next generation of leaders. Gaspard’s father was among them and, when he moved to the US, he remained connected to a new pan-African community.
Gaspard grew up in this milieu, mingling with South African exiles and Black trade unionists who organised national demonstrations against the apartheid regime. He joined Jesse Jackson and others protesting outside the South African embassy. When he was 19, Congress overrode President Ronald Reagan’s veto of sanctions against the white minority government.
“That sent me on a path that this work was important, collective action was impactful and this was a government here in America that could self-correct,” recalls the Columbia University graduate. “That’s the thing that most inspired me about politics in America.”
In February 1990 Mandela walked to freedom after 27 years in prison. A few months later he visited the US, where Gaspard was a lead organiser of New York’s rapturous welcome. He met Mandela a second time in 1991 when David Dinkins, the mayor of New York, led a delegation to South Africa.
“I was quite moved by the combination of conviction and humility that I had never experienced before,” he said.
After leadership roles at the Service Employees International Union, one of the biggest unions in the US, Gaspard served as national political director of Obama’s 2008 presidential election campaign, which culminated in the once unthinkable fall of a racial barrier.
“It is an extraordinary thing for someone who comes from a minority community in a country to be elected to the highest office in that country,” Gaspard says. “That moment says something about America, but it also says something about the world that we exist in and the possibilities here.
“There is an unmistakeable history of brutality towards Black people in this country that was legal, systemic and tied to profit systems in America and that legacy continues to be manifesting in so many ways. It’s undeniable but what’s also undeniable is the fact that America has made a journey at every level of society to push through that, overcome that, recognise it and in this strange twist of history, even use some of that to its extraordinary strength in the world.
“When I had the privilege of serving in South Africa, I was asked constantly about how America could be lecturing the world about human rights when it had this condition inside of its own country, the historic treatment of Black people. I would say it was actually because of that history that we had a perspective that was unique, that gave us a sense of what we could contribute to the broader conversation of rights in the world and what it means to promote and then protect the interests of the most vulnerable in society.”
He adds: “So the night that Barack Obama was elected, and I was standing in Grant Park [in Chicago] with tears streaming down my face, it was a moment of reflection on a long arc of the American journey, but also a sense that I had as an immigrant, as an Africanist, of how that would be reflected in the rest of the world and the opening and the opportunity that it would create for America to be a more consequential standard bearer of the principle.”
From 2009 until 2011, Gaspard was director of the White House office of political affairs before switching to executive director of the Democratic National Committee. He was ambassador of South Africa from 2013 to 2016, witnessing the nationwide eruption of grief and gratitude that met Mandela’s death at the age of 95.
South Africa has made rare headlines in the US in recent weeks because it was the first country to identify the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. Subsequent evidence suggests that this was may have more to do with the country’s world class scientists rather than it being the variant’s ground zero. Yet South Africa was a victim of its own success, punished by a US flight ban even as Omicron raged elsewhere.
What do Americans get wrong about South Africa, and Africa generally? “Everything,” Gaspard says. “In general, Americans writ large know very little about the continent and what they know falls into a space of negative information and, until that changes, I think they will continue to get bad policy and I think we’ll continue to have our lunch eaten by China, for instance, in those spaces. The flight ban against South Africa is a perfect example of how very little we understand about the continent.”
It must have been strange for Gaspard, whose neighbourhood included Zimbabwe and other embattled democracies, to watch the rise of Donald Trump rise from afar. Just as in South Africa, there was no understanding it without understanding race.
“So here’s the funny thing. I’m sitting in South Africa in the run-up to the 2016 election and all of my white progressive friends in politics in America – I’m emailing with them, I’m calling with them, constant conversations – they’re all telling me, ‘No way is Donald Trump going to become the nominee of the Republican party’.
“All of my Black friends in America, ‘Oh no, he gonna be the nominee. They are definitely nominating that guy.’ All my Black friends to a person, the ones in politics and the ones who have nothing to do with politics are like, ‘Yeah, he’ll be the nominee and he’ll win’. I was like, ‘What?’
“There’s dismay, fear, but no surprise because when you have suffered the blows of history, you’re always anticipating the next blow and African Americans understand that in America there is a very clear story that can be told about elections.”
Trump infamously referred to Haiti, El Salvador and parts of Africa as “shithole countries” and never travelled to Africa. He eventually filled the diplomatic vacancy created by Gaspard’s departure from Pretoria with Lana Marks, a luxury handbag designer from Palm Beach, Florida.
Gaspard, meanwhile, returned to the US and became president of the Open Society Foundations, founded by George Soros and one of the biggest private philanthropies in the world. He oversaw a $1.4bn budget and staff of 1,600, grappling with the Covid-19 pandemic and rise of authoritarian regimes around the world.
Then came the CAP which, founded in 2003 by John Podesta, former White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, is accustomed to having the ear of Democratic presidents. Gaspard says he is in regular contact with the Biden administration, key agencies and “the progressive ecosystem that’s helping to stand up the agenda”.
The CAP can also be a critical friend. “During the spike in Haitian asylum seekers at the Texas border, when the world saw those reprehensible images of how those asylum seekers were being treated, I didn’t hesitate as the president of CAP to speak out against the policies and to personally go to the border to bear witness to what was occurring and to call for and demand different practises in how we adjudicate those matters.”
There has been “tremendous progress” at the border since then, he says. But Biden’s approval rating remains stubbornly low and there is a sense of gloom in the air. As the president nears his first anniversary in office, what is Gaspard’s verdict so far? “My god, can we step back for a second and have some perspective?
“If someone had told me or anyone on January 5th that 11 months later Joe Biden would have managed to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill, successfully advanced a historic stimulus bill that’s led to the fastest 11 month job growth in America that we’ve ever had … and was also on the precipice of passing a piece of legislation that will expand access to Medicare benefits, lift up low wage workers who are the frontlines of the care economy, make the most progress on investments in climate change in two generations, I would have taken all of that if you’d offered it to me.”
In his inaugural address, Biden vowed to address the interlocking crises of climate, coronavirus, economy and racial justice. On the last of these, police reform and voting rights have stalled in Congress, raising fears that last year’s Black Lives Matter protests after the police murder of George Floyd could prove a moment, not a movement, after all.
Gaspard, however, believes the momentum is sustainable. “Of course there was the white knuckle moment of George Floyd and the explosion of pent-up advocacy and rage but now there’s a lot of good, thoughtful work. You’re going to have your setbacks but there’s also been extraordinary progress in a number of states – Missouri, Ohio, California – where you can quantify what’s changed. That will continue. Civil rights just does not move in a linear way.”
Less than a year after the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol, however, the existential threats to democracy itself persist in a deeply divided nation. Gaspard describes himself as “radically optimistic” but not “Pollyannish” about the gathering storm.
“This is a thing I hesitate to say out loud but I really do believe that we should have the understanding that in 2024, when we are conducting elections across the country, there is the potential for us to experience January 6 on steroids, for us to see it in state after state in state capitols.”
“There’s the potential for that kind of civil disruption if we are not on our side intentional about pushing back now and about making as persuasive an argument for democracy as we can and an argument that’s manifest in actual legislation and executive orders.”
Reagan famously referred to America as a “shining city on a hill”; Biden has said the country can be defined in one word: “possibilities”. It was such promises that enticed Gaspard’s parents here half a century ago. But the turmoil of recent years has tarnished its image. Does he think his mother and father would have made the same choice today?
“We have seen that America, as an aspirational brand, has taken a hit the last several years. There’s a direct relationship between that and the previous president of the United States and how he postured on the world stage and projected us as a closed, hyper sovereign space that did not cooperate in a multilateral way and that led with military might and ‘America first’ as opposed to partnership and cooperation.
“There is a fear that I hear among immigrants that are in our community: they worry that the face of America has changed. When they see things like ‘the great replacement’ conspiracy that’s driving all kinds of not just rhetoric but actual policy on the ground for conservatives, they worry about what kind of violence it can visit on their children. All that anxiety is real.”
But again he sees the glass as half full. “I can tell you I’m pretty confident that if my parents were faced with that choice today that America is still the place they would see as this shining beacon of hope and opportunity, irrespective of its challenges which are real and more nakedly exposed than they have been in some time.
16. Should US Get Tougher on China Over Hong Kong or Use Other Approach?
Should US Get Tougher on China Over Hong Kong or Use Other Approach?
December 24, 2021 4:17 AM
WASHINGTON —
U.S.-based Hong Kong observers contacted by VOA have disagreed about whether a tougher Biden administration response to Hong Kong's first legislative election under Beijing-imposed conditions would help to curb the erosion of democracy in the city.
Sunday's election almost completely eliminated pro-democracy voices from the former British colony's Legislative Council.
Pro-Beijing and establishment lawmakers won 89 of the 90 seats in the chamber. The remaining seat went to a candidate who identified with Hong Kong’s pro-democracy opposition camp, which had been a significant minority presence in all previous assemblies.
It was the first Legco election since China changed Hong Kong’s electoral system in March, expanding the assembly from 70 to 90 seats but reducing the proportion of directly elected seats from 40 to 20. The other 70 seats under the new system were reserved for candidates picked by influential members of industry groups and by a committee of Beijing loyalists. In another change from the previous 2016 election, all Legco candidates had to be vetted for “patriotism” toward Beijing.
With most of Hong Kong’s prominent opposition politicians boycotting the new election system as undemocratic and some having fled into exile or been imprisoned under a June 2020 national security law imposed by Beijing, the ballot drew a record low turnout of 30.2%.
The Biden administration responded to the election Monday by joining with allies in two statements, one as part of the Group of Seven industrialized nations, and the other as part of a bloc of five major English-speaking nations.
Both statements expressed “grave concern over the erosion of democratic elements of [Hong Kong’s] electoral system.”
They also urged China to “act in accordance” with international obligations including the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, in which Britain agreed to return Hong Kong to China in 1997. Under that treaty, Beijing promised to let the city enjoy a high degree of autonomy as a special administrative region of China, and maintain its civil liberties for 50 years.
In another Monday announcement, the Biden administration said it would impose secondary sanctions on foreign financial institutions doing business with five Hong Kong-based Chinese officials whom it initially sanctioned in July for undermining the city’s freedoms.
Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian rejected the Western powers’ statements, accusing them of “hypocrisy and malicious intent” to disrupt life in Hong Kong and contain China's development.
Zhao also blasted the sanctions as “preposterous and despicable,” and said Bejing will take unspecified measures to safeguard its national interests.
China analyst Nathan Picarsic of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies told VOA that he believes the U.S. diplomatic denunciations of Beijing will not be enough to deter what he called its anti-democratic Hong Kong moves.
One step that Picarsic said the U.S. should take is to work with Britain to seek international legal recourse for China’s actions by virtue of London’s status as a party to the Sino-British Joint Declaration.
“I think the U.K. should be a centerpiece in our response,” he said.
New York-based and Hong Kong-born law professor Sharon Hom, who serves as executive director of advocacy group Human Rights in China, said Western powers would put Beijing in an uncomfortable position if they signaled a start to international legal action.
“The Chinese authorities would have to start researching how to argue against giving an international court jurisdiction in such a case so that Western powers won’t drag them in,” Hom said.
“If China loses a jurisdiction battle and has to defend itself in court, one thing it cannot say is that a legally binding treaty registered with the U.N. is just a ‘historical document.’ That is not an allowable defense,” she added.
Asked by VOA whether London would consider filing an international legal case against China, a British government spokesperson reiterated previous pledges to “hold China to its international obligations.” The U.S. State Department did not respond to an emailed VOA question asking whether Washington would join London in such an action.
Hong Kong activist Anna Cheung, a New York-based microbiologist and convener of the NY4HK pro-democracy group, said another step the U.S. should take is to warn U.S. companies about the risks of continuing to operate in the territory.
“There are still a lot of U.S. businesses in Hong Kong. They might think the Legco election will not affect them, but that’s not the case, because the government has all the votes it needs to create any rules that it wants,” she told VOA.
Picarsic said the Biden administration should require U.S. businesses in Hong Kong to mitigate two main types of risk.
“One is a loss of their data to China’s communist rulers by virtue of the national security law imposed on Hong Kong, and another is that U.S. capital flows through Hong Kong financial markets enable Beijing to fund military and surveillance teams committing rights abuses against ethnic minority Uyghurs in Xinjiang,” he said.
Picarsic said such requirements should be imposed even if there is an economic cost to U.S. companies.
“Democratic values should be more important than the bottom line of Goldman Sachs or other U.S. corporations trading into Hong Kong,” he said.
However, the notion that the U.S. could pressure China into changing course on Hong Kong by talking or acting tougher is misguided, according to Robert Daly, director of the Washington-based Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United States.
“I love Hong Kong and consider it one of my favorite cities in the world, but it’s game over. It is fully part of China, which holds all the cards. The West holds none,” he said.
Daly said the United States should adopt what he considers to be a realistic approach with two main elements. One would be to tell the world that Hong Kong no longer has a special status.
“China’s rulers have destroyed Hong Kong’s democracy,” Daly said. “They’ve long had control over its chief executive. They've now taken over the legislature. And they're moving on its judiciary and culture and changing school curricula at a great rate. So let's treat Hong Kong in every respect as we treat the rest of China. And American businesses that thrive in Beijing and Shanghai will be able to thrive in a Hong Kong run entirely by the Communist Party,” he said.
Daly said the second message the U.S. should send is that China’s poor human rights record in its self-described autonomous regions of Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong is an indicator of the Chinese Communist Party’s global agenda.
“They want to legitimize illiberal Chinese practices everywhere. We don't want to live in a world that is more amenable to the Communist Party, so we need to remind the world continually to be extremely skeptical of China's claim that its rising power is peaceful,” he said.
17. Russian Mercenaries are Officially in Mali—and the West is Furious
Russian Mercenaries are Officially in Mali—and the West is Furious
France condemned the Malian government’s decision to work with the Russians, noting that the money used for Wagner Group mercenaries could have been put towards developing and professionalizing the Malian military.
The “Wagner Group,” a Russian mercenary firm, has been deployed to Mali to help the country’s army contain a growing Islamist insurgency in its northern region.
The move has drawn harsh reactions from the United States and Western Europe, which have already deployed troops in Mali to help contain the Islamist rebels and strongly oppose the presence of the Wagner Group, which they have tied to human-rights abuses in the developing world.
France, which has begun to wind down its military mission in the country, condemned the Malian government’s decision, noting that the money used for Wagner Group mercenaries could have been put towards developing and professionalizing the Malian military.
“We deeply regret the choice of the Malian transitional authorities to use already scarce public funds to pay foreign mercenaries instead of supporting the Malian Armed Forces,” a statement released by the French Foreign Ministry said. It also requested that Russia, which is widely suspected of funding the mercenary unit, “revert to a responsible and constructive behavior” within Mali.
Mali’s Islamist insurgency has continued since 2012 when Islamists allied with secessionist Tuareg rebels drove the Malian armed forces out of the country’s sparsely populated north and established a proto-state called Azawad, aided in part by weapons stolen from Libyan armories in the chaos following that country’s 2011 uprising.
The French military intervention, which began in 2013, drove the Islamists from northern cities, but they regrouped in the desert and continued to wage a low-level insurgency. The Islamist threat spread to other countries, too, leading to a region-wide counterinsurgency effort led by France and the United States.
The Malian government is currently led by Col. Assimi Goita, who seized control of the country in a coup in May. Relations between Mali and France sharply declined in the aftermath of the coup, which was condemned by most of the Western world. Goita has indicated plans to hold elections in February 2022, although he has suggested that they might be delayed if the country’s security situation deteriorates.
The United States also condemned the deployment of the Wagner Group. “We are alarmed by a potential deployment of Russia-backed Wagner Group forces in Mali,” read a statement issued by State Department spokesman Ned Price.
“We understand that the reported deal—costing $10 million per month—diverts money that could be used to support the Malian Armed Forces and public services to pay for the deployment of Yevgeniy Prigozhin’s Wagner Group forces to Mali. Wagner forces—which are known for their destabilizing activities and human rights abuses—will not bring peace to Mali, but rather will destabilize the country further,” the statement continued.
“We urge the transitional government in Mali not to divert scarce budgetary resources away from the Malian Armed Forces’ fight against terrorism,” according to the statement.
Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for the National Interest.
Image: Reuters
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.
