Quotes of the Day:
“The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood.”
- Voltaire
"A strong will, a settled purpose, an invincible determination can accomplish almost anything; and in this lies the distinction between great men and little men."
- Thomas Fuller
"I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know."
- Socrates
1. To advance democracy, defend Taiwan and Ukraine
2. Talk Of War: Frontline Ukrainian Soldiers Respond To Invasion Warnings
3. Opinion | The U.S. can’t wait to perfect its democracy at home before championing democracy abroad
4. House Approves $778 Billion Defense Bill
5. Pacific Deterrence Initiative gets $2.1 billion boost in final NDAA
6. Army General Wants More Missile Defense Within First Island Chain
7. Congress’ Spending Freeze Puts a Deep Chill On US Military Modernization
8. How to Absorb the Marine Corps into the Army and Navy
9. What can the world expect in 2022?
10. British whistleblower details ‘chaotic’ and ‘dysfunctional’ Afghanistan evacuation that ignored pleas of thousands
11. Chinese mining groups scour Afghanistan for opportunities
12. Austin Rejects ‘Red Lines’ for Taiwan, Ukraine
13. ‘Golden Hour’ needs to become the ‘Golden Day,' Army medical leaders say
14. Decoding Xi Jinping - How Will China’s Bureaucrats Interpret His Call for “Common Prosperity?”
15. Why Restraint in the Real World Encourages Digital Espionage
16. China Aims to ‘Revise the Global Rule Set,’ Top U.S. General Says
17. Australia joins U.S. in diplomatic boycott of Beijing Olympics
18. Risky Business: Why America Should Stay Out of the Regime Change Business
19. FDD | Washington Underwrites the Hezbollah State
20. FDD | Canada Must Support Justice And Closure For The Families Of PS752 Victims
21. Detect and Understand: Modernizing Intelligence for the Gray Zone
22. The Historian’s Approach to Understanding Terrorism
1. To advance democracy, defend Taiwan and Ukraine
Conclusion:
With strong warnings to China and Russia over the past week, the Biden administration has set a propitious tone for the Democracy Summit. If participants — especially Taiwan and Ukraine — can be assured there will be vigorous follow-up action to defend democracy if Beijing and Moscow do not come to their geopolitical senses, Biden will have put America back to its rightful place as leader of the Free World.
To advance democracy, defend Taiwan and Ukraine
The Hill · by Joseph Bosco, opinion contributor · December 7, 2021
President Biden this week is scheduled to host a virtual Summit for Democracy with 110 democratic or democratically leaning countries and two dozen nongovernmental organizations, human rights activists and political dissidents challenging authoritarian regimes.
The summit is intended to highlight an underlying theme of the administration’s foreign policy and national security approach — that the world is essentially divided between the forces of freedom, human rights and democracy on one side, and anti-democratic regimes, human rights abusers and violators of the rule of law on the other.
The Biden initiative builds on policies advanced by the Trump administration in national strategy documents and in speeches and actions by former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and others identifying China and Russia as preeminent threats to the international order and democratic governance.
Among the summit participants are Taiwan and Ukraine, which happen to be primary targets of coercion and aggression by China and Russia, respectively — and not just because of their geostrategic locations in the East and the West. The two young democracies are on the autocrats’ “enemies lists” precisely because they proudly stand on the front lines of the world’s existential moral struggle.
Neither the U.S. administration, nor any of its predecessors in either party, has been willing to declare that we will directly intervene to defend Taiwan and/or Ukraine from the aggression of their large and powerful neighbors. America has no mutual security treaty with either, having terminated the pact with Taiwan in 1979 and never having executed one with Ukraine, either bilaterally or as part of NATO.
But both the Trump and Biden administrations have expressed support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the two states as major U.S. foreign policy objectives. They have backed up those commitments with a range of tangible actions including expanded arms sales, diplomatic measures, and increasingly stern warnings to China on Taiwan and to Russia on Ukraine.
The guiding framework for U.S.-Taiwan relations is the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), which provides that any acts of aggression or coercion against Taiwan would be a matter “of grave concern” and commits the United States to “provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character.” Those provisions, by themselves, do not obligate Washington to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack.
But two other TRA provisions do lay the basis for a more proactive and confrontational U.S. posture. One requires that America “maintain the capacity to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion” endangering Taiwan. Mandating preparation for U.S. military intervention strongly implies anticipatory congressional authorization for such action. The Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act (TIPA) now languishing in Congress would make it explicit.
Other TRA language provides even more sweeping potential for a powerful but non-kinetic response to Chinese aggression against Taiwan: “The United States decision to establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China rests upon the expectation that the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means.” This is known in U.S. contract law as a “condition subsequent,” which, if not honored, can invalidate the original agreement.
Since at least 1995, China has conducted threatening military exercises by sea and air around Taiwan. In 2005, Beijing enacted the Anti-Secession Law, which explicitly calls for using “non-peaceful” means against Taiwan if it refuses to accede to China’s unification demands. Under a normal reading of U.S. contract law, those actions clearly abrogate stated U.S. expectations and would justify severing diplomatic relations with China.
Short of such drastic action, the Biden administration should put Beijing on public notice that any use of force against any part of Taiwan’s territory would precipitate not only a military response, but also immediate official recognition of the Taipei government as the sole legitimate authority over Taiwan, and that Washington would encourage other nations to do the same.
With regard to Ukraine, the situation has several parallels to that of Taiwan. The Ukraine Freedom Support Act, signed into law by President Obama after Russia invaded in 2014, pledges to “further assist the Government of Ukraine in restoring its sovereignty and territorial integrity to deter … Russia … from further destabilizing and invading Ukraine … in coordination with allies and partners … [through] economic sanctions, diplomacy, assistance for the people of Ukraine, and the provision of military capabilities.”
As Russia has escalated its rhetoric and preparations for an attack on Ukraine, Washington has increased the level of its concerns and the gravity of its warnings to Moscow.
Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cited “significant national security interests of the United States and of NATO member states” if Russia were to attack Ukraine.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned of “severe consequences,” saying, “We’ve made it clear to the Kremlin that we will respond resolutely, including with a range of high impact economic measures that we’ve refrained from using in the past.”
That same week, Blinken said Washington is “resolutely committed to Taiwan” and warned of “terrible consequences” for China if it “precipitated a crisis.”
Moscow has suggested it is using the invasion threat to extract a Western promise to keep Ukraine out of NATO. Manufacturing a crisis, then demanding unjustified concessions from a morally exhausted West, is a tried-and-true technique of communist regimes and other aggressive dictators.
Western officials indicate they are not falling for the ruse. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Moscow would not be able to veto a potential NATO decision to admit Ukraine. The White House agreed, saying, “NATO decides who joins NATO, not Russia,” and added that U.S. security assistance to Ukraine remains under consideration.
With strong warnings to China and Russia over the past week, the Biden administration has set a propitious tone for the Democracy Summit. If participants — especially Taiwan and Ukraine — can be assured there will be vigorous follow-up action to defend democracy if Beijing and Moscow do not come to their geopolitical senses, Biden will have put America back to its rightful place as leader of the Free World.
Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies and a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute. Follow him on Twitter @BoscoJosephA.
The Hill · by Joseph Bosco, opinion contributor · December 7, 2021
2. Talk Of War: Frontline Ukrainian Soldiers Respond To Invasion Warnings
Interesting perspectives from the frontlines.
Talk Of War: Frontline Ukrainian Soldiers Respond To Invasion Warnings
Amid concerns about a large Russian troop buildup on the Ukrainian border, frontline fighters in the Donbas downplay warnings from Kyiv and Western intelligence agencies that Moscow may be planning a major new offensive.
Timur, 28
"I personally don’t believe in the danger of some great invasion. I think it’s just game-playing. It was the same situation in April and May this year. There were all these rumors of a possible attack. That was just so Russia could ensure completion of its Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. This time, it’s probably just Putin trying to exert pressure again. From what I’ve heard, the Kremlin is trying to get a guarantee that NATO will not spread to Ukraine and other countries of the Eastern Partnership, like Georgia and Moldova.
A Soviet-era war memorial in a frontline town in the Luhansk region on December 7.
"The fighting here comes in waves. Last week was the heaviest shelling I’ve experienced in this position. The pro-Russian forces were using SPG-9 recoilless guns. Then, for several days, we had near silence. To be frank, I feel a little afraid when it’s quiet here because I start to think, 'Maybe they do have some kind of a plan.' Just a low level of shelling feels a bit more comfortable.
"The other side often uses tricky tactics. For example, the OSCE observers fly their drones nearly every day to check the military positions. They announce to both sides that they are sending up their drone to check the positions of each side so we know it's coming, but then the pro-Russian forces send up their drone immediately behind the OSCE one to make their own observations, and we aren't allowed to shoot in that direction."
Vlad, 22
"The Russian Army isn’t prepared for war. They haven’t got field hospitals or fuel tankers ready, and they don’t have many soldiers or vehicles prepared. They would need 300,000 to 400,000 troops to attack; now they have just 100,000 massed. I think that would be the number needed for Kyiv alone. We have many layers of defense.
A snowman at a military operating base near the front lines in the Luhansk region on December 6.
"If we don’t come here to the front now, we will die back in our houses later. There’s a Ukrainian saying: He who does not defend his family in peacetime will eat his children in times of trouble. It’s a reference to the Holodomor. If a Russian guy comes along and wants to drink some vodka and party, that’s fine. But if he comes to my home with weapons, I’ll kill him.
"Here the enemy is using sniper rifles and machine guns every day, and sometimes they use RPGs. Last week, they used 82mm mortars near here. This situation won’t change anytime soon. The Russian Federation isn’t ready for an attack, in my opinion. It’s just a message being sent because conflict is an extension of politics. Everything will be OK."
Iryna (no age given)
"I think if an invasion happened right now, a lot of people would die. More than in 2014. There would be a lot of blood. It would be terrible.
"But, of course, most soldiers don’t believe an invasion is coming. The front line doesn’t feel any different now than before. Another reason they don’t buy these rumors is because there are a lot of lies in our country. Everyone in powerful positions lies. Our president promised to end the war within a week of coming to power. Now, two years on, here we are.
A rack of weapons in an operating base near the front lines in the Luhansk region.
"I don’t think financial sanctions against Russia would change anything. It’s like these Minsk agreements. They don’t actually do much. People write something on paper, but in reality here at the front line the situation is the same. There are still heavy-caliber weapons being used. Maybe an invasion will come, but it will be some time from now."
Petro, 27
"All I know is that the people will stay and protect their land. The veterans who were on the front in 2014 when the war was starting have gone home, but if an invasion comes, they will return here to fight.
"In the early morning when you were sleeping in the house, two RPGs landed near here, but these things are normal. I can't say there has been any strange activity recently. Sometimes from here you can hear enemy tanks firing up their engines. Tank motors have a very specific sound. They do it more often in the colder weather.
A Ukrainian soldier running while in view of nearby Russia-backed separatist positions in the Luhansk region on December 7.
"I've had a lot of close calls. Once, I was sitting on top of an armored vehicle and I spotted an enemy tank. Then I watched its gun tracking our vehicle. I just put my lighter between my teeth, bit down, and I prayed to God. It didn't fire.
"I don't think sanctions will change anything. Russia is a rich country. The Ukrainian president and the deputies need to make serious decisions. One day I want to swim in a free Crimea."
Editor's Note: Several photos in this story were shot using a large-format FKD camera made in the Ukrainian S.S.R. in 1972. The camera gives the images an increased sense of depth and, in some cases, visual imperfections.
3. Opinion | The U.S. can’t wait to perfect its democracy at home before championing democracy abroad
Excerpts:
The best, backhanded compliment that the Summit for Democracy has received came in an article jointly authored by the Russian and Chinese ambassadors to Washington. Writing in the National Interest, they made a tortuous case that their dictatorships are actually democracies. China has “an extensive, whole-process socialist democracy,” they wrote, while “Russia is a democratic federative law-governed state with a republican form of government.”
This is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. With their doublespeak, these autocracies inadvertently acknowledge that the consent of the governed is the only true source of legitimacy in the 21st century. And despite their claims to reflect “the people’s will,” they know the reality is otherwise. That’s why they demand that other countries “stop using ‘value-based diplomacy’ to provoke division and confrontation.”
If these anti-American dictatorships don’t want the United States to practice “value-based diplomacy,” that is precisely what we should do. No one is arguing that we should use force to spread democracy, but we should definitely use every other instrument at our disposal, including public diplomacy and economic sanctions.
That is precisely what Biden is doing. He understands that there is a worldwide battle between democracy and dictatorship — and that democracy is losing. This week’s virtual summit will not by itself change the outcome of this struggle, but at least it will signal that the United States is once again on the side of the good guys.
Opinion | The U.S. can’t wait to perfect its democracy at home before championing democracy abroad
President Biden is convening a virtual Summit for Democracy on Thursday and Friday — and it’s none too soon. Democracy has had a rough few decades.
Freedom House reports that 2020 was the 15th consecutive year of freedom declining around the world. “Nearly 75 percent of the world’s population lived in a country that faced deterioration last year,” the organization found. This year — with Tunisia, Myanmar, Sudan and, of course, Afghanistan all becoming more tyrannical — is no better. And, with Russia threatening to invade Ukraine and China to invade Taiwan, the situation could soon get a whole lot worse. As Anne Applebaum recently wrote in the Atlantic, “The Bad Guys Are Winning.”
The most depressing development has been the steady erosion of freedom in once-democratic countries such as Hungary and Turkey (which weren’t invited to the summit) and Poland and India (which were). Even the United States has seen its freedom score from Freedom House decline by 11 points from 2010 to 2020.
America’s recent history has left many understandably uncertain whether we have the standing or ability to champion freedom in other countries. Democracy promotion has become unfairly equated with failed military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Meanwhile, democracy at home has been tarnished by President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the 2020 election and his incitement of a violent mob to storm the U.S. Capitol.
It’s not just that we are backsliding in our own democracy. It’s that we so often look inept these days — which makes democracy itself look dysfunctional. The United States has more covid-19 deaths than any other country in the world — nearly 800,000. Even though the disease originated in China, the country has reported fewer than 5,000 covid-19 deaths. (The real figure may be higher but still not nearly as high as ours.)
A year ago, I hoped that U.S. leadership in developing and deploying coronavirus vaccines could rehabilitate our international image. But we lag dozens of other countries in the percentage of our population that has been fully vaccinated. Seventy-nine percent of mainland Chinese are fully vaccinated compared with just 60 percent of Americans.
No wonder that, in a Pew Research Center poll this year, only 17 percent of the people in 16 democratic countries expressed confidence in the United States as a role model for democracy.
Given these dispiriting developments, it is understandable if many wonder why Biden is bothering to host the democracy summit in the first place. Shouldn’t we get our own house in order before telling others what to do? We should definitely work to strengthen our democracy — it’s imperative for Congress to pass voting rights legislation — but we cannot afford to abdicate international leadership until we perfectly practice all that we preach.
In the early years of the Cold War, after all, the United States defended freedom in Europe and Asia even while Southern states enforced segregation at home. The hypocrisy was jarring, but the proper response was to improve human rights at home rather than refuse to defend human rights abroad.
One of many failures of the Trump years — and one of the reasons that global democracy has eroded in recent years — was that the U.S. government lost interest in promoting freedom. Trump wanted to emulate dictators such as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and even China’s Xi Jinping rather than insist that their countries emulate our democratic example. It is hugely important to once again have a president who is taking the lead in calling out dictators (e.g., with the diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics), even if Biden will never go far enough — especially in dealing with problematic allies such as Saudi Arabia — to satisfy human rights advocates.
The best, backhanded compliment that the Summit for Democracy has received came in an article jointly authored by the Russian and Chinese ambassadors to Washington. Writing in the National Interest, they made a tortuous case that their dictatorships are actually democracies. China has “an extensive, whole-process socialist democracy,” they wrote, while “Russia is a democratic federative law-governed state with a republican form of government.”
This is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. With their doublespeak, these autocracies inadvertently acknowledge that the consent of the governed is the only true source of legitimacy in the 21st century. And despite their claims to reflect “the people’s will,” they know the reality is otherwise. That’s why they demand that other countries “stop using ‘value-based diplomacy’ to provoke division and confrontation.”
If these anti-American dictatorships don’t want the United States to practice “value-based diplomacy,” that is precisely what we should do. No one is arguing that we should use force to spread democracy, but we should definitely use every other instrument at our disposal, including public diplomacy and economic sanctions.
That is precisely what Biden is doing. He understands that there is a worldwide battle between democracy and dictatorship — and that democracy is losing. This week’s virtual summit will not by itself change the outcome of this struggle, but at least it will signal that the United States is once again on the side of the good guys.
4. House Approves $778 Billion Defense Bill
Excerpts:
The legislation would establish a 16-member, bipartisan commission to study U.S. involvement in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021. Commissioners would be required to report to Congress on their progress annually, and to submit a report containing detailed findings, recommendations and lessons learned no later than three years after the panel’s first meeting. Current and former members of Congress since Jan. 3, 2001, are barred from serving on the commission, as are former cabinet members, four-star flag officers and senior Defense and State Department officials who had direct involvement in U.S. actions in Afghanistan.
...
The bill also would authorize a National Global War on Terrorism Memorial on the National Mall.
The provision that would have required women to register for the draft for the first time in U.S. history didn’t make it into the compromise text, after senior Republican lawmakers nixed it in closed-door negotiations between the House and Senate, aides familiar with the talks said.
...
Another proposal in the bill would overhaul the military-justice system by creating an Office of the Special Trial Counsel within each service that reports directly to the secretary of that service.
...
“My takeaway is that this is still a massive reform in the military justice system. In my opinion, it’s the most significant reform in our nation’s history,” Mr. Christensen said. “But it was a missed opportunity to completely reform the process by taking the command influence out of the prosecution decision.”
...
“This bill represents a major setback on behalf of service members, women and survivors in particular,” Ms. Gillibrand said Tuesday. She said she would continue to press for a separate up-or-down vote on her proposal.
House Approves $778 Billion Defense Bill
NDAA legislation includes military justice overhaul, Afghanistan commission, but lawmakers drop proposal to have women register for selective service
This year lawmakers agreed to make major changes to the military-justice system, but scrapped plans to require women to register for the draft. The bill boosts military spending by about 5% over last year’s budget, exceeding Mr. Biden’s request of $752.9 billion for the Defense and Energy departments’ national-security programs.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said he expects the Senate to pass it without amendments, sending it to the president’s desk for his signature.
The legislation would establish a 16-member, bipartisan commission to study U.S. involvement in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021. Commissioners would be required to report to Congress on their progress annually, and to submit a report containing detailed findings, recommendations and lessons learned no later than three years after the panel’s first meeting. Current and former members of Congress since Jan. 3, 2001, are barred from serving on the commission, as are former cabinet members, four-star flag officers and senior Defense and State Department officials who had direct involvement in U.S. actions in Afghanistan.
The commission proposal is based on an amendment proposed by Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D., Ill.), an Iraq War veteran and double amputee, and Sen. Todd Young (R., Ind.). Rep. Liz Cheney (R., Wyo.) championed a similar amendment in the House.
“There were other proposals for Afghanistan War commissions that were designed to be cudgels against the Biden administration or cudgels against the Trump administration,” Ms. Duckworth said. “But I don’t want this to be used by either side as a cudgel.”
The bill also would authorize a National Global War on Terrorism Memorial on the National Mall.
The provision that would have required women to register for the draft for the first time in U.S. history didn’t make it into the compromise text, after senior Republican lawmakers nixed it in closed-door negotiations between the House and Senate, aides familiar with the talks said.
The draft ended nearly 50 years ago. Now the U.S. has an all-volunteer force, but when men turn 18 they are still required to register for Selective Service to be eligible for potential conscription in case of a national emergency.
Versions of the NDAA that passed the full House and the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this year included language that would have expanded registration for the Selective Service to include young women alongside young men.
Some Republicans opposed the registration requirement for women because they saw it as eroding traditional gender roles and family values. Other Republicans and Democrats supported it as a way to promote gender equity and reinforce national security.
“I’m proud to have successfully removed this provision from the final agreement, because plain and simple, we shouldn’t be forcing our daughters and granddaughters to register for the selective service,” said Sen. Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.), an Army veteran and top-ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, a Pennsylvania Democrat and Air Force veteran who had pushed for the registration provision to be included in the NDAA, pointed to the findings of the National Commission on Military, National and Public Service, which stated that making all U.S. citizens eligible for the selective-service system would help maintain it as a viable national-security institution.
“She shares the frustration of many of her colleagues, on both sides of the aisle, in the House and Senate, who have worked together in good faith to deliver this overdue change to strengthen our national security,” said a spokeswoman for Ms. Houlahan.
Another proposal in the bill would overhaul the military-justice system by creating an Office of the Special Trial Counsel within each service that reports directly to the secretary of that service.
As defined in the bill, offenses that the special trial counsel would have jurisdiction over include rape and sexual assault, domestic violence, murder, manslaughter and kidnapping. The special trial counsel would have decision-making power over whether to send such cases to court martial, aides said.
Victims’ advocates expressed concern that the bill would leave the commanders the authority to personally select the jury and decide whether accused servicemembers could separate from military service instead of facing court martials. The commanders also would retain the authority to grant immunity and approve expert witnesses at government expense, said Don Christensen, president of Protect Our Defenders, a retired Air Force colonel and judge advocate general.
“My takeaway is that this is still a massive reform in the military justice system. In my opinion, it’s the most significant reform in our nation’s history,” Mr. Christensen said. “But it was a missed opportunity to completely reform the process by taking the command influence out of the prosecution decision.”
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.) complained that the chairs of the House and Senate armed-services committees had succumbed to pressure from the Pentagon. Ms. Gillibrand has been advocating for much more sweeping changes that would have stripped commanders of their authority to decide whether to prosecute all felony-level crimes.
“This bill represents a major setback on behalf of service members, women and survivors in particular,” Ms. Gillibrand said Tuesday. She said she would continue to press for a separate up-or-down vote on her proposal.
5. Pacific Deterrence Initiative gets $2.1 billion boost in final NDAA
Excerpts:
The compromise fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, made public today, now includes a total of $7.1 billion for the PDI. A special Indo-Pacific focused fund created by last year’s NDAA, the PDI is targeted at improving the department’s posture in the region, both with direct investments in DoD capabilities and by strengthening partnerships to counter China.
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The bill also includes a $300 million for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which provides military assistance to Ukraine. That boost, a $50 million increase over the FY22 budget requests, comes as Russia sends troops to the Ukrainian border, and US intelligence officials reportedly warn that Russia may invade as soon as next year.
...
“We identified approximately $7.1 billion in investments that support and attempt to improve the current posture, capabilities, and activities of U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific region, as reflected in the budgetary display, that more accurately reflect a baseline from which to measure progress against the objectives of the PDI,” lawmakers wrote in explanatory language published with the proposed bill.
The bill includes new initiatives to improve the posture of the US and its allies in the Indo-Pacific region, including funding for flight hours and steaming days — days when ships are at sea — in order to “sustain a baseline steady state presence.” The explanatory language adds that members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees “intend” to add new capabilities and initiatives to improve posture in future years.
Pacific Deterrence Initiative gets $2.1 billion boost in final NDAA - Breaking Defense
Congress wants the commander of Indo-Pacific Command to assess the needs of the military in the Pacific. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Gerald R. Willis)
WASHINGTON: Congressional leaders are adding $2.1 billion over the Defense Department’s budget request for the Pentagon’s Pacific Deterrence Initiative (PDI) in its annual defense bill, with lawmakers hitting the Pentagon’s initial request as “improperly focused.”
Overall, the FY22 NDAA increases the Pentagon budget to $740 billion for fiscal 2022, far above the Pentagon’s budget request of $715 billion, as lawmakers continue to push for a budget that keeps pace with annual inflation.
The compromise bill, which is expected to receive a House vote Tuesday evening, contains few surprises given how many iterations of the NDAA have already been put forth. But the PDI increase, and the accompanying language, serves as a reminder that Congress is laser focused on the Pacific.
The Pentagon request, lawmakers wrote, was too focused on specific platforms, “as opposed to improving the joint posture and enabling capabilities necessary to enhance deterrence in the Indo-Pacific region.”
“We identified approximately $7.1 billion in investments that support and attempt to improve the current posture, capabilities, and activities of U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific region, as reflected in the budgetary display, that more accurately reflect a baseline from which to measure progress against the objectives of the PDI,” lawmakers wrote in explanatory language published with the proposed bill.
The bill includes new initiatives to improve the posture of the US and its allies in the Indo-Pacific region, including funding for flight hours and steaming days — days when ships are at sea — in order to “sustain a baseline steady state presence.” The explanatory language adds that members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees “intend” to add new capabilities and initiatives to improve posture in future years.
The NDAA directs the deputy secretary of defense to brief lawmakers on how the department budgeted for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, including how combatant commanders and military services were involved in the budgeting process. Congress in recent years has been skeptical that Washington-based Pentagon officials understand the needs of the region; the PDI itself came as a result of Congress directly tasking the head of US Indo-Pacific Command to give them his wish list.
The committees also included a provision that requires the INDOPACOM commander to provide an assessment of forces, resources and other capabilities required to implement the National Defense Strategy. That assessment must look at the required US bomber fleet, as well as the associated tankers and infrastructure to support an “adequate” bomber force.
Lawmakers want that assessment to include a review of the military usefulness of several islands in the region, including US territories in the region, as well as the Diego Garcia in the British Indian Ocean Territory.
The PDI boost comes shortly after the Pentagon announced the completion of its classified Global Posture Review, which included no major strategic shifts, minus a few operational changes in the Indo-Pacific. The department plans to send new bomber and fighters squadrons to Australia, as well as investment in military construction projects in the Indo-Pacific. In the NDAA’s explanatory language, lawmakers emphasize the importance of PDI for security in the region.
“We reiterate our strong support for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative (PDI) as means to prioritize Department of Defense efforts in support of enhancing U.S. deterrence and defense posture, reassuring allies and partners, and increasing readiness and capability in the Indo-Pacific region,” members wrote.
Other provisions
While the Pacific Deterrence Initiative is primarily concerned with China, America’s other major geopolitical rival, Russia, is hardly forgotten in the NDAA.
The US counterpart program across the Atlantic, the European Deterrence Initiative, will get a boost of about $570 million over the budget request, bringing its total funding to around $4 billion.
The bill also includes a $300 million for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which provides military assistance to Ukraine. That boost, a $50 million increase over the FY22 budget requests, comes as Russia sends troops to the Ukrainian border, and US intelligence officials reportedly warn that Russia may invade as soon as next year.
Elsewhere Congress tackled concerns about civil-military relations in the NDAA by upping the amount of years generals and admirals must be out of the ranks before they can serve as secretary of defense or secretary of a service. Servicemembers who retire an O-7 or higher must wait a decade before they can be defense secretary, up from seven years. Military officers must be retired for seven years to be a secretary of a service, up from five.
That provision comes after Congress has twice passed waivers to allow recently retired generals to serve as secretary of defense in the last five years, for Jim Mattis and Lloyd Austin.
In the aftermath of the chaotic exit from Afghanistan, the NDAA establishes an Afghanistan War Commission to examine the nearly 20-year war.
“The commission will review key strategic, diplomatic, and operational decisions across the entirety of the U.S. government and develop a series of reports with recommendations and lessons learned regarding the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan,” reads the language.
6. Army General Wants More Missile Defense Within First Island Chain
We will never have enough missile defense anywhere.
Army General Wants More Missile Defense Within First Island Chain
“I don't think we have enough right now,” Maj. Gen. Vowell said.
The top soldier in Japan believes the Indo-Pacific region needs more defenses against aircraft and missiles from China, Russia, and North Korea.
“I don't think we have enough right now. I think we need more. And so that would be, as the commander of U.S. Army Japan, I think that would be something that I would champion for, is more integrated air and missile defense protection in the first island chain, for certain,” Maj. Gen. Joel Vowell said Tuesday during Defense One’s Outlook 2022 event.
Air and missile defense is one of five “core tasks” the Army would undertake to support the joint force in the Indo-Pacific if conflict broke out, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said recently.
“We will be able to interdict fires across sea lines of communication, suppress enemy air defenses, and provide counter fires against mobile targets,” Wormuth said last week.
She noted that China has missiles that can reach Japan and Guam, such as the Dong Feng-26. North Korea continues to develop its nuclear program and has been testing its missiles for years, with some falling into or being fired into the Sea of Japan. Russia wants the United States out of the northern Indo-Pacific, he said, and is attempting to force the issue by producing more cruise missiles to threaten American and Japanese forces.
All this means the U.S. needs a variety of missile defense systems to intercept them all, Vowell said.
“We have to make sure we have enough to protect and intercept in case they're used. That's the nature of deterrence as well,” he said.
The United States has Patriot missile batteries in Japan that can detect and shoot down missiles coming from the Asian continent. The Japanese military has Patriots of its own, plus other missile defenses that are integrated with U.S. forces, he said.
In November, the Army tested Israel’s Iron Dome anti-rocket system to see whether it could protect U.S. territory from a Chinese missile. Aegis Ashore could also be used in the region to track missiles.
China’s recent test of a hypersonic missile revealed that China is more advanced in this area than the United States. The Chinese missile orbited the earth and then hit a target; the U.S. military is still working to develop its own hypersonic weapons.
Vowell said what concerned him about the test, based on media reporting, was that when the missile went into orbital flight, it became harder to detect in certain areas of the globe.
“As I understand it, I don't think it hit its mark exactly. But that doesn't matter. It's still a test. And what it tells me as a military officer is China's determined to get some leap ahead capability or technology that's very lethal and could hold forces, formations at risk in a way that we can't deter,” he said.
The Multi-Domain Task Force assigned to the Pacific region, and based out of Joint Base Lewis McChord in Washington State, is tasked with addressing hypersonics, as well as cyber, space, and electronic warfare, Vowell said.
7. Congress’ Spending Freeze Puts a Deep Chill On US Military Modernization
Excerpts:
Congress might figure out how to handle Build Back Better, the debt ceiling, regular appropriations, and the annual defense policy bill by the time the next continuing resolution expires—most likely around mid-February 2022. But the Defense Department should not be using such optimistic assumptions to inform contingency budget planning. They should especially not hope for the best when inflation is slowly choking the Pentagon’s spending plans for this year and next already.
Some in Washington are suggesting that a continuing resolution that locks in defense spending at Trump presidency-levels is acceptable. But that’s a strange way of defining victory when the Senate and House defense policy bills are poised to deliver a three percent real increase to the defense budget. A rain delay for a game is not the same thing as winning the game. It is time to sound the alarm about all the damage a yearlong spending freeze does to the U.S. military before it becomes reality.
Congress’ Spending Freeze Puts a Deep Chill On US Military Modernization
Spend a few minutes on Capitol Hill these days and it is clear inter-party relations are at a new low. Even congressional staffers are feeling the chill as relations worsen. This is one of many reasons, unfortunately, why the odds of a full-year government spending freeze are growing by the day. Yet Pentagon leaders are nowhere to be found in sounding the alarm. Given the hundreds of misaligned programs, millions in wasted dollars, training time that cannot be recovered, and further self-imposed technology delays vis-à-vis China, military leaders simply cannot afford to be silent now.
In the event of a CR, the Defense Department can submit anomaly requests that change the duration, amount, or purpose for which funds are used within certain appropriation accounts. However, it is the prerogative of Congress to approve such anomalies. They rarely do so. It is past time to send up flares.
Research from the RAND Corporation in 2019 indicated that only 3 percent of the 388 potential anomaly requests prepared by Pentagon staff to potentially send to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and then Congress between FY 2013 and FY 2017 ever appeared in legislation.
A Government Accountability Office report tracked how many anomalies the Pentagon requested of the White House, compared to how many were enacted by Congress. In FY 2017—one of the longest stints the military operated under a continuing resolution in the past decade—347 anomalies were requested but just five were allowed.
As the next continuing resolution expires in mid-February, the Air Force released a statement outlining how yet another lock on spending will keep new programs from kicking off, delay production increases, stymie military construction, and slow spending on facilities maintenance. The Navy is also belatedly weighing in on fiscal year disruptions—warning House and Senate appropriators against their proposed cuts to hypersonic weapons, F-35 fighter jet spending, and delaying aircraft carrier maintenance.
The White House fact sheet details how late appropriations “adversely impact hypersonic weapons development and delay over 114 new military construction project this fiscal year.” The administration emphasized that FY 2022 appropriations at the President’s proposed budget levels would invest $13 billion more in research and development over 2021 funding levels to compete with China—now ranked second in the world in R&D spending.
This is to say nothing of the money that would be left on the table above the president’s request that Congress has added for the military, to the tune of $25 billion.
The Pentagon should have planned for this months ago, but in lieu of inventing time travel, there are a couple of practical steps that leaders can take.
Start explaining the consequences of a long CR in detail and much more frequently. At a conference in 2017, then-Pentagon Comptroller and Chief Financial Officer David Norquist expounded that spending freezes have “administrative costs that are wasteful and readiness and operational costs that are unrecoverable.” The same year, then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis wrote in a letter to the leaders of the armed services committees that “longer term CRs impact the readiness of our forces and their equipment at a time when security threats are extraordinarily high. The longer the CR, the greater the consequences for our force.” Service chiefs and other acquisition leaders in the Defense Department need to explain how continuing resolutions are impacting their priorities and ability to compete with China in relevant public engagements, testimony, and behind the scenes in private discussions.
Submit a record-long anomaly list to the White House and share it with Congress. Pentagon program managers and leaders need to begin drafting their list of anomaly requests immediately as time and volume are of the essence. If only three percent of potential anomaly requests are likely to run the approval gauntlet between the Defense Department, OMB, and Congress, then the volume is key—there are plenty of efforts that merit attention, from new starts to military construction efforts to increase production plans.
Determine how to help essential contractors and manufacturers. The GAO report from earlier this year outlines various case studies for how the services may try to buy much of their planned programs as possible under a CR. For example, the Marine Corps bought 30 of 56 planned Amphibious Combat Vehicles at the start of FY 2020 under a CR, and then ordered the 26 remaining vehicles after the freeze was ended by enactment of regular appropriations. It’s time to start identifying those types of fixes and communicating to the defense industrial base partners where such solutions will not be possible.
Congress might figure out how to handle Build Back Better, the debt ceiling, regular appropriations, and the annual defense policy bill by the time the next continuing resolution expires—most likely around mid-February 2022. But the Defense Department should not be using such optimistic assumptions to inform contingency budget planning. They should especially not hope for the best when inflation is slowly choking the Pentagon’s spending plans for this year and next already.
Some in Washington are suggesting that a continuing resolution that locks in defense spending at Trump presidency-levels is acceptable. But that’s a strange way of defining victory when the Senate and House defense policy bills are poised to deliver a three percent real increase to the defense budget. A rain delay for a game is not the same thing as winning the game. It is time to sound the alarm about all the damage a yearlong spending freeze does to the U.S. military before it becomes reality.
Now a 1945 Contributing Editor, Mackenzie Eaglen is a resident fellow in the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. You can follow her on Twitter: @MEaglen.
More about Mackenzie Eaglen: While working at AEI, Ms. Eaglen served as a staff member on the National Defense Strategy Commission, a congressionally mandated bipartisan review group whose final report in November 2018, “Providing for the Common Defense,” included assessments and recommendations for the administration. Earlier, Ms. Eaglen served as a staff member on the 2014 congressionally mandated National Defense Panel, established to assess US defense interests and strategic objectives, and in 2010 on the congressionally mandated bipartisan Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel, which evaluated the Pentagon’s defense strategy. She is also one of the 12-member US Army War College Board of Visitors, which offers advice about program objectives and effectiveness.
8. How to Absorb the Marine Corps into the Army and Navy
Certainly a thought provoking piece. I have not seen this argument made recently and I doubt there is any serious consideration of this.
Excerpts:
Krulak was right in 1957, and what he said is even more true today. The Army, Navy, and Air Force are fully capable of performing the Marine Corps’ missions. The Army can assume the light infantry and amphibious assault responsibilities. The 1944 invasion at Normandy, the largest invasion in history, was solely an Army effort for the United States. As far as Marine Corps air, the Navy and Air Force are fully capable of close air support, while the Army can also execute the needed rotary and tilt wing missions. The nation wants the Marines. The question may be how to keep the aspects the nation wants, while eliminating the Marines as a separate branch and reaping the benefits of a simplified chain of command, smaller overall force, and another base realignment and closure (BRAC) evolution.
How to Absorb the Marine Corps into the Army and Navy
By Commander Norman R. Denny, U.S. Navy Reserve (Retired)
December 2021 Proceedings Vol. 147/12/1426
For decades, the U.S. Marine Corps has attempted to tweak its force structure to enhance performance within a constrained funding environment. Rather than continuing to make changes around the margins, we would be better off revisiting a debate started following World War II and prematurely truncated during the Korean War. Does the United States need a light infantry force specializing in amphibious operations as a separate service, or should the Marine Corps be resized to the small police force it was prior to World War I and the amphibious organization incorporated into the Army?
Krulak was right in 1957, and what he said is even more true today. The Army, Navy, and Air Force are fully capable of performing the Marine Corps’ missions. The Army can assume the light infantry and amphibious assault responsibilities. The 1944 invasion at Normandy, the largest invasion in history, was solely an Army effort for the United States. As far as Marine Corps air, the Navy and Air Force are fully capable of close air support, while the Army can also execute the needed rotary and tilt wing missions. The nation wants the Marines. The question may be how to keep the aspects the nation wants, while eliminating the Marines as a separate branch and reaping the benefits of a simplified chain of command, smaller overall force, and another base realignment and closure (BRAC) evolution.
Deconstructing the Marine Corps
So, what aspects does the nation want? If the Marine Corps answers that question, the answer will probably be what it currently has, but with better funding. The informal Marine Corps propaganda apparatus, which President Truman begrudgingly complimented as second in the world only to Joseph Stalin’s, will demand the status quo. For the first time in a generation, the lack of significant numbers of former service members in Congress—coupled with national fatigue after fighting an unsuccessful, two-decade-long war—may allow this topic to be discussed seriously.
Perhaps the easiest part of the current Marine Corps to remove is aviation. There is unlikely to be a huge support community with the nation for Marine aviation, especially the fixed-wing aspects. For most Americans, their knowledge of Marine aviation is likely limited to watching Flying Leathernecks (1951) and The Great Santini (1979). Likewise, the average citizen may see no difference between Marine rotary and tilt-wing aviation and its Army equivalents. The average citizen likely sees no difference because the differences that do exist—primarily the ability to fly from ships—are minor. The nation does not need a separate Marine Corps aviation force and few in the nation likely know enough about it to want it. Eliminating Marine aviation by incorporating it into the Army and Navy would halve the size of the service, which currently is around 184,000 active-duty members.
The U.S. public is far less likely to accept the complete disappearance of the Fleet Marine Forces, the ubiquitous “Mud Marine.” Stripped of aviation, the Marine Corps would resemble the Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps, both in size (approximately 88,000 troops) and capabilities—both are light infantry, both are air-mobile, and both are capable of airborne and amphibious operations. Both consider themselves to be “elite” forces with strong esprit de corps. Transition of the Fleet Marine Forces into the Army’s yet-to-be created XIX Marine Amphibious Corps would retain the needed amphibious expertise, simplify the chain of command, and could be done in a way that retains many of the unique elements that make a Marine a Marine.
Establishing the Army’s XIX Marine Amphibious Corps at Camp Pendleton on the west coast would give the nation a light infantry “center of excellence” on each coast. Reducing the Marine Corps Commandant to a three-star general, mirroring the XVIII Corps commander, would help reduce the gradual increase in rank structure seen over the past 50 years across the Department of Defense (DoD). Army traditions are likely flexible enough to retain many of the cherished Marine Corps’ accoutrement, like the dress blues and the eagle, globe and anchor emblem. The Army airborne troops currently have their maroon berets and cavalry units have their cowboy hats and spurs. Also, if the XVIII Corps can informally use the term “top” for the command first sergeant, the XIX Corps might well use “gunny” for E-7s. Likewise, young men and women could enlist to be Marines and continue to go through Parris Island for boot camp.
To say that Marines would resist incorporation into the Army and Navy is a gross understatement. However, there are concessions that might make it slightly less toxic for the Marines and less objectionable to the public and Congress. Allowing Marine fixed-wing pilots inducted into the Navy to finish out their career using Marine Corps ranks and uniforms would likely help and given the Navy’s history of mixed uniforms, would probably go unnoticed by the public. Similar concessions for the generation of current Marines incorporated into the Army could potentially ease their transition. But regardless of how successful these mitigation efforts are, the DoD would likely be looking at a decade of angst and occasional confusion. The key will be Congress, which will have to rewrite legislation, including U.S. Title 10. As mentioned previously, there are fewer Marines in Congress today than at any time since the early 1950s (there are 15 Marine Corps veterans in the 117th Congress). This, coupled with the inevitable savings from another round of base closures, might be enough to see the initiative championed by President Truman and advocated by Generals Eisenhower and Marshall completed.
General Krulak correctly stated the United States does not need but wants the Marine Corps. For the best interests of the nation, the DoD should at least learn if the U.S. public and Congress will accept a XIX Marine Amphibious Corps. If the answer is yes, then a myriad of questions will have to be answered: Does the nation need two separate light infantry corps? Which Marine Corps installations will be closed or reduced? How many Marine Corps military and civilian personnel, made redundant by the changes, will be discharged? And what, if anything, will remain as a Navy police force? If the topic is given a fair hearing, the answers may surprise us all.
9. What can the world expect in 2022?
There is nothing harder to predict than the future.
If Kim Jong-un sees this he may act out since he was not identified as a player in 2022.
What can the world expect in 2022?
The concept of collective defense is gaining momentum. The possibility of unilaterally responding to an adversary — particularly if that adversary is as advanced as Russia — appears to be out of the question for the West.
This year’s Outlook project, which focuses on national security expectations for the coming year, includes contributions from defense ministers, alliance leaders, government directors, military officers, industry executives and analysts.
Naturally, Russia and China are top of mind, and while perspectives from those nations are rare in American media, the director general of Russian firm Almaz-Antey — the 20th largest defense company in the world, according to this year’s Top 100 rankings — weighs in on conflicts in new domains.
All of the authors illustrate how they see the current geopolitical situation as well as what they expect to come. For the Western-aligned writers, that means a focus on multilateral cooperation, which is already critical among all domains – land, air, sea, space and cyberspace.
From a NATO perspective, Russia is either directly testing alliance members along the bloc’s eastern front, or it’s putting pressure on those countries by proxy (look no further than the Belarus-Poland border crisis).
In the Indo-Pacific region, China’s ever-growing influence and military presence has Australia playing catch-up. Defence Minister Melissa Price warns that her country’s “strategic environment is deteriorating more rapidly than anticipated.”
Circling back to Russia, the director general of Almaz-Antey points to the United States’ proliferation of unmanned and space-based technology as a sign that future conflicts will more often play out close to or above our atmosphere.
For its part, industry leaders want their government customers to know that if their militaries are to have the most advanced technology available, they need to remember that innovation doesn’t come free.
So what to expect in 2022?
It’s always impossible to know, and this year it’s partly due to the unpredictability of certain international actors. But from the tone of these essays and the threats presented, it’s easy to surmise industry will get the capital it’s seeking.
Chris Martin is the managing editor for Defense News. His interests include Sino-U.S. affairs, cybersecurity, foreign policy and his yorkie Willow.
10. British whistleblower details ‘chaotic’ and ‘dysfunctional’ Afghanistan evacuation that ignored pleas of thousands
This story is a long way from being finally written.
British whistleblower details ‘chaotic’ and ‘dysfunctional’ Afghanistan evacuation that ignored pleas of thousands
Yesterday at 8:31 a.m. EST|Updated yesterday at 2:05 p.m. EST
LONDON — Britain’s handling of the evacuation from Afghanistan in August was “arbitrary and dysfunctional,” according to a whistleblower who claimed that thousands of emails from Afghans potentially eligible for flights out went unread by the British Foreign Office and that animals were prioritized over people in an airlift.
Testimony provided Tuesday by whistleblower Raphael Marshall, who worked in the Foreign Office during the Taliban takeover, and other officials to a parliamentary committee suggests that the British evacuation effort was marked by disorganization similar to the United States’ chaotic departure from Afghanistan. The U.S. effort was criticized by some in Britain, a key U.S. ally in the war.
Marshall, a desk officer until September, was on the Afghan Special Cases team, which fielded requests from people such as Afghan soldiers, journalists, aid workers and judges, many of whom he said faced risks because of their ties to Britain or other Western countries.
In written testimony to Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee — which convened Tuesday as part of an inquiry into Britain’s withdrawal from Afghanistan — Marshall estimated that 75,000 to 150,000 people, including dependents, applied to the team for evacuation but that “fewer than 5% of these people have received any assistance.”
Thousands of “desperate and urgent” emails were not read, he said, describing decisions about whom to rescue as “arbitrary” in a “chaotic system” that put those left behind in danger. He wrote that on one afternoon in August, “I was the only person monitoring and processing emails,” and that “there were usually over 5000 unread emails in the inbox at any given moment.”
Emails sent to the Foreign Office received a response saying they had been logged, but Marshall said “this was usually false,” with thousands of emails unread, including hundreds from lawmakers.
His 39-page statement made several damning allegations, including “inadequate staffing” and “lack of expertise,” with staff members “asked to make hundreds of life and death decisions about which they knew nothing.”
None of the team’s members had “studied Afghanistan, worked on Afghanistan previously, or had a detailed knowledge of Afghanistan,” he wrote.
Marshall also claimed that the limited resources at Kabul’s airport were used to airlift the animals of Paul Farthing, a former British soldier known as “Pen” who ran the Nowzad animal charity in Afghanistan. During the evacuation, Farthing’s campaign to save his Afghan staffers and animals culminated in nearly 200 cats and dogs landing in London on a plane funded through donations.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson had sent a request “to use considerable capacity to transport Nowzad’s animals,” Marshall said, and although the charity supplied its own plane, there was a “limited number of soldiers available to bring eligible people into the airport and limited capacity within the airport.” The rescue may have come at the expense of “evacuating British nationals and [Afghan] evacuees, including Afghans who had served with British soldiers,” he wrote.
Johnson denied that he had intervened to prioritize pets over people, telling reporters on Tuesday that the allegation was “complete nonsense.”
When the Taliban swept into power in Afghanistan this past summer, U.S. troops, British forces and their allies airlifted more than 100,000 people in an evacuation marked by violence and harrowing images. They have acknowledged that many Afghans were left scrambling as the operation ended with the withdrawal of U.S. forces after 20 years of war.
Raab, who faced rebuke in August for vacationing on a Greek island when the Taliban marched into Kabul on Aug. 15, rejected the criticism Tuesday.
“Some of the criticism seems rather dislocated from the facts on the ground, the operational pressures,” he told the BBC. “That with the takeover of the Taliban, unexpected around the world, I do think that not enough recognition has been given to quite how difficult it was.”
More than 1,000 Foreign Office staffers worked “night and day” to get 15,000 people evacuated in just two weeks, Raab added. “I don’t think we have seen an operation on that scale in living memory,” he said.
He was not the only one whose summer holiday plans have come under scrutiny. Philip Barton, the head of the Foreign Office, told the parliamentary committee Tuesday that he regretted staying on vacation until Aug. 26, almost two weeks after Afghanistan fell to the Taliban. “If I had my time again, I would have come back from my leave earlier,” he said.
The latest allegations, however, painted a picture of a “lack of interest and bureaucracy over humanity,” said Tom Tugendhat, a senior Conservative lawmaker and chair of the committee conducting the inquiry.
“These failures betrayed our friends and allies,” he added.
11. Chinese mining groups scour Afghanistan for opportunities
Chinese mining groups scour Afghanistan for opportunities
Executives look to secure rights to minerals and metals as Beijing seizes on US exit
Chinese mining groups are scouting opportunities in Afghanistan to access the country’s lithium and copper deposits, as Beijing steps into the void left by the US and its allies just months after the Taliban seized power.
A group of mining industry representatives has visited Afghanistan in recent weeks, according to a senior official in Kabul and a representative from a Chinese industry association.
China’s efforts to secure mining rights comes as Afghanistan faces an acute financial and humanitarian crisis following the exit of US and coalition forces in August and after Beijing and Taliban leaders held talks before the American withdrawal.
“China has managed to maintain a direct line of communication with the Taliban since August 2021 and being among the first few countries to send aid definitely boosted its relations with the Taliban which are eager for finances to stabilise the Afghan economy,” said Claudia Chia, an analyst at the National University of Singapore’s Institute of South Asian Studies.
Leading economies are rushing to secure access to lithium and copper, crucial resources used to develop technologies such as electric vehicle batteries and smartphones. Some reports have said Afghanistan’s lithium deposits could rival those of the world’s biggest known reserves in Bolivia, according to Nomura.
Talks were held over recent weeks with the Taliban over access to Mes Aynak, south-east of Kabul, one of the world’s biggest copper deposits which Chinese groups previously had a licence to mine.
At least one Chinese private sector group also travelled to the eastern Nangarhar and Laghman provinces to research access to other minerals, according to people with knowledge of the trip.
But the talks were at an early stage and did not guarantee that Chinese miners would return to tap Afghanistan’s minerals, the people said.
The Chinese industry association said dozens more companies have made inquiries over the potential for exploring Afghanistan’s resources, including lithium.
Nomura analysts said in a report that as “tier-1 lithium players”, the companies would be “unlikely” to be involved in Afghanistan given concerns over environmental, social and governance problems.
Two Chinese miners mentioned in the report — Ganfeng Lithium, the world’s largest lithium producer, and Tianqi Lithium, one of China’s biggest listed lithium miners — both denied any involvement in the latest trip.
Mining projects in Afghanistan have long been riddled with immense logistical and security challenges. Laghman, for example, is the birthplace and final stronghold of Isis-K, an Isis-inspired militant group fighting a low-level insurgency against the Taliban.
China has been worried over the approach of the Taliban to Xinjiang, the western region which borders Afghanistan and where Beijing has detrained more than 1m Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities.
Any mining and production would hinge on the Taliban ensuring security guarantees for Chinese investments, analysts said.
“The Taliban may consider providing security personnel for Chinese projects, similar to what Pakistan did for CPEC projects,” Chia said, referring to Beijing-backed infrastructure projects under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
“Alternatively, Chinese private security companies, who already have a presence in Central Asia and Pakistan, could be hired to provide security . . . That being said, security on the ground would still be hard to manage,” she said.
China has called for the lifting of economic sanctions on Afghanistan and for the Taliban to be given access to billions of dollars in frozen foreign exchange reserves held by multilateral financial institutions, including the World Bank and the IMF.
Additional reporting by Maiqi Ding in Beijing
12. Austin Rejects ‘Red Lines’ for Taiwan, Ukraine
Are redlines even practical anymore? How have they really helped in recent years? Seems like the only ones harmed through red lines are the ones who set them.
Austin Rejects ‘Red Lines’ for Taiwan, Ukraine
As crises loom, defense secretary reveals a bit of his diplomacy-first thinking.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who served as a general during several Middle East wars, is used to the military charting the U.S. path in conflict zones. But that emphasis began to shift years ago, as the State Department took the lead during the Obama, Trump, and now Biden administrations.
This diplomat-led approach may meet its biggest test to date in Ukraine and Taiwan, two fronts where U.S. policy about direct military intervention is not clear, and where Russia and China are now testing the edges.
In an exclusive interview with Defense One, Austin revealed a bit of his thinking on both fronts.
“Our goal in both cases …is to lead with diplomacy, and address these issues in a way that we don't get into conflict,” Austin told Defense One during his Outlook 2022 interview.
Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin will speak on Tuesday about Ukraine, where the U.S. president is expected to warn of dire economic consequences if Russia launches a sequel to its 2014 invasion. Russia has deployed “battalion tactical groups around Ukraine in multiple different geographies around those borders to the south, the west, and to the northeast as well,” which is a concerning echo of Moscow’s buildup before it annexed Crimea, a senior U.S. official told reporters on Monday.
The official suggested that if an invasion occurs, more U.S. troops in Europe may follow to reassure allies.
“The need to reinforce the confidence and reassurance of our NATO allies and our eastern flank allies would be real, and the United States would be prepared to provide that kind of reassurance,” the official said.
This diplomatic-led approach is an early inkling of the Pentagon and White House policy of "integrated deterrence,” which Austin said will be a cornerstone of the upcoming National Defense Strategy. The strategy is expected to explicitly turn away from military-first pressure and in favor of diplomatic, economic and international pressure, backed by the military.
Ukraine and Taiwan may be early tests of that approach.
Ukraine is not a member of NATO and does not receive Article 5 protections from the alliance. But the country does receive regular rotations of U.S. troops and sales of weapons to bolster its self-defense. Taiwan is recognized by the Taiwan Relations Act, under which the U.S. provides weapons and training to Taiwan so it too can defend itself. But neither is guaranteed U.S. military protection in case of an attack.
Since 2014, U.S troops have regularly rotated into Ukraine to train and advise Ukrainian forces. Austin did not say whether those U.S. forces would fight alongside their Ukrainian partners in case of an attack, or what might spur a U.S. military response.
“I think in situations like this, I think conveying red lines only exacerbates the problem. I think we need to focus on finding ways to de-escalate and reduce tensions,” Austin said.
Pressed on whether there was any advantage to communicating a “red line” to avoid miscalculation by Russian forces, Austin said he would leave it to the Ukrainian government to call out Russia.
“I don't think it's helpful for us to draw a line in the sand at this point,” Austin said.
In Taiwan, Austin had a similar message: “We don't want to see change in the status quo, especially, certainly a unilateral change in the status quo. We think that all tensions in that area should be resolved diplomatically first.”
13. ‘Golden Hour’ needs to become the ‘Golden Day,' Army medical leaders say
Since Vietnam I think we have become used to incredible medical evacuation capabilities and battlefield and frontline care for our wounded. We are not likely to have such timely capabilities against some of the revisionist and rogue powers.
But I applaud our medical community for their innovation and doing everything possible to save the lives of our wounded.
‘Golden Hour’ needs to become the ‘Golden Day,' Army medical leaders say
ARLINGTON, Virginia – The Army is working on all kinds of ways to defeat, destroy and kill the enemy in what leaders believe will be the next fight — a large-scale ground combat operation with multi-domain implications.
But an even more vexing problem than defeating high-tech enemies is how to handle what most experts agree will be a number of casualties like the United States hasn’t seen since World War II.
At an Association of the U.S. Army forum held Tuesday, top leaders in the Army medical field laid out some of the challenges they’re facing.
“The future battlefield is one of isolation, without the ability to evacuate casualties or get resupply,” said Brig. Gen. Anthony McQueen, commanding general of the Army’s Medical Research and Development Command.
McQueen noted some key demands that need solutions, including more blood on the battlefield to treat higher numbers of wounded, more oxygen and perhaps more medically-trained soldiers to increase the “holding” capacity of keeping wounded in place as the force fights for safe evacuation options.
The goal is to use technologies and procedures to extend the “Golden Hour” — the vital time following injury to ensure survivability — to the “Golden Day,” McQueen said.
“Equipment must become smaller, lighter and more rugged,” he said. “And prolong life until the casualty can reach a higher level of care.”
RELATED
Researchers have launched a five-year project dubbed “Biostasis,” a program to work on slowing down biological processes after a serious injury and give troops a better chance to survive.
Maj. Gen. Joe Robinson, commanding general of 3rd Medical Command in the Army Reserve, detailed a “worst-case scenario.”
Imagine a mechanized combat infantry company 20 miles from their parent organization. They face a long-range precision fires attack. Out of the 120 soldiers on the ground, 25 are injured and deemed casualties.
The company has four combat medics and one senior medic overseeing immediate casualty response.
The senior medic notes that there have been five soldiers killed in action. Those are off the care list. He pulls in non-medics to assist with applying tourniquets. But in about 15 minutes, the medic’s aid bag is empty.
That medic had sent requests for more medical equipment two weeks ago, but unbeknownst to him, a cyber attack cut off communications and the command never saw it.
The medic drops a report to higher command, seeking more medics at the location.
But there’s been another attack already and no medics are available.
Maj. David Bowen, an emergency room nurse assigned to the 586th Field Hospital, prepares a simulated casualty for transport to the intensive care unit at Sierra Army Depot, California, during a training exercise, Oct. 29, 2019. (Spc. ShaTyra Reed/Army)
Does the senior medic stay on site to continue treating or move with the wounded to a higher level of care?
Back at the battalion aid station, a physician and physician assistant with a slim crew of medical soldiers are receiving dozens of critically wounded from that attack and others.
This is a situation not seen at this volume and speed in the lifetimes of nearly any soldier serving today.
This is just one example that Robinson and others speaking at the Tuesday forum noted will drive the Army medical community as it fights to keep its needs a part of the larger modernization push of the service.
There are promising signs.
Improvements in communications networks are allowing for telemedicine that would let a soldier with less training perform lifesaving procedures under the remote direction of a physician.
Some other militaries are using unmanned vehicles to transport wounded, as well. That’s something the Army is testing and experimenting with, too, according to McQueen.
But before the future fight commences, Robinson noted that recent events have helped leaders see how they’ll need to operate.
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, in spring 2020, Robinson called over to find out what the medical personnel attrition was in Italy, which was ravaged by the virus for months.
He found out it was 15-20% attrition each month.
“You can’t compare that, we haven’t had that kind of loss rate in battle for years,” Robinson said.
The command got the equipment and training to Army medical staff.
“I really thought we were sending these people into a type of war, not a shooting war, but they could get an infection,” Robinson said.
In the first wave of deployments, the two-star said, only one soldier tested positive for COVID.
Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.
14. Decoding Xi Jinping - How Will China’s Bureaucrats Interpret His Call for “Common Prosperity?”
Excerpts:
Decoding common prosperity requires taking all three of those additional sources into account. Inequality, corruption, risky asset bubbles, moral decadence, and other problems are interconnected crises that all stem from China’s crony capitalism. As I have written, these problems have created a Chinese version of the American Gilded Age. Common prosperity should be understood as a shorthand for Xi’s attempts to rescue China from its Gilded Age and deliver it into something akin to what the United States experienced during the Progressive era.
Of course, Xi cannot openly admit that his country faces problems similar to those that have shaped the United States, its capitalist rival. And framing his campaign as a fight against inequality allows Xi to avoid acknowledging the reality of a systemic breakdown facing the CCP. But unlike U.S. leaders, who relied on democratic measures to treat the excesses of capitalism, Xi is deploying a combo of commands from above, sloganeering, and adaptive policymaking. His approach reflects the CCP’s hope of experimenting and tweaking its way out of many simultaneous crises, in order to avoid a more fundamental transformation of the political system.
Decoding Xi Jinping
How Will China’s Bureaucrats Interpret His Call for “Common Prosperity?”
December 8, 2021
In the seven decades during which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been in power, its leaders have often articulated their visions and signature platforms using lofty rhetoric and vague slogans. In the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping spoke of pursuing “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” In the first decade of this century, Jiang Zemin sought to build a “socialist market economy.” Early in his tenure, Xi Jinping referred to his bid to restore China’s historical status as a global power as “the China Dream.”
These exercises in the elliptical art of Chinese Marxist phraseology have often left foreign observers scratching their heads. That has also been the case with the most recent slogan to emerge under Xi: “common prosperity.” The term gained prominence this past summer as Chinese authorities aimed a barrage of new regulations at private businesses, including a number of major tech companies, in the name of rectifying the excesses of capitalism and restoring the CCP’s original mission of serving the masses. The new rules effectively wiped out an estimated $1.5 trillion from those firms’ stock valuations. Ever since, investors and others have been scrambling to decipher common prosperity and grasp its implications for China’s future policies and economic prospects.
Perhaps the most important place to look for clues is in a manifesto that Xi delivered as a speech to officials at the CCP’s Central Financial Committee in August—a long excerpt of which was later published in Qiushi in October with the title “Resolutely Advance Common Prosperity.” Qiushi is no any ordinary regime mouthpiece; it is the theoretical journal of the CCP’s Central Committee, a body of roughly 350 top elites who make key political decisions. What is published there carries a great deal of weight, and Xi’s manifesto is no exception. Addressed chiefly to the bureaucracy, it is not propaganda for the public: rather, it should be understood as a set of instructions for government officials who are tasked with implementing Xi’s vision. His words will percolate down through the hierarchy and be refined, level by level.
“Common prosperity,” Xi declares, “means that all the people will prosper together, both materially and spiritually, not just a small minority.” It is not, he stresses, a call for “egalitarianism [with] everyone being the same.” Nor will the CCP fall into “a trap of welfarism” that rewards the lazy. Instead, he pledges, the party will continue to “encourage wealth creation through diligence and innovation.”
Xi wrestles with the tension between rewarding capitalists and restraining their wealth.
Throughout his instructions, however, Xi wrestles with the tension between rewarding capitalists and restraining their wealth. On the one hand, he vows to limit “unreasonable income” and reject “the chaotic expansion of capital” through regulations, breaking up the private sector’s corporate titans, and urging the rich to donate. But at the same time, China “must continue to activate and leverage entrepreneurial incentives.” Squaring this circle is tricky: if entrepreneurs’ rewards are capped or if they cannot confidently secure returns on their investments, they will invest and innovate less.
The manifesto inadvertently makes clear a fundamental reality about the CCP: despite its remarkable success in creating wealth and spurring growth, the party has no clear answers when it comes to resolving the conundrum of how to tame the excesses of capitalism without stifling its creative potential. Like governments all over the world, the CCP has not yet figured out how to have its cake and share it, too. Xi admits as much, writing: “On fixing poverty, we have plenty of experience; but on managing prosperity, we still have much to learn.”
Precisely because Xi has no road map to follow, he urges his comrades to adapt and experiment. The ultimate impact of common prosperity will depend on how officials at various levels of the hierarchy interpret and translate Xi’s aspiration into concrete policies.
Reading the Tea Leaves
In Western democracies, leaders deliver speeches plainly and persuasively in order to charm voters and win public support. Chinese leaders appear to do the opposite: their speeches are impenetrable and stultifying, laden with party-speak and convoluted allusions. But this does not mean that they contain no substance. To decode them, one must remember that owing in part to the absence of open political competition in China, such speeches are not public communication but rather policy communication. (The party does actively shape public opinion, but through other means, such as controlling media content.)
I have characterized the Chinese political system as relying on “directed improvisation,” in which the top leader gives overarching directions and then bureaucrats respond with particular policies, usually tailored to local conditions. The instructions come in three basic varieties, which one can think of as “red, black, and gray.” “Red” directions draw clear restrictions. “Black” ones clearly endorse a particular course of action. “Gray” instructions are deliberately ambiguous about what officials can and cannot do, which serves to encourage local experimentation and policy variations. Being cryptic or vague also allows leaders not to commit to a given policy until they are sure they want to stake their authority and reputations on it.
Xi’s text in Qiushi contains all three types of instructions. One “red” directive involves a frank admission on Xi’s part regarding the public backlash that followed the poverty eradication campaign the CCP launched in 2012. As part of that drive, local officials received orders to meet specific targets for reducing the number of low-income residents in their jurisdictions within a tight timeline. The pressure was so intense, one Chinese media outlet reported, that “bureaucrats frequently lost their voices and became insomniacs.” Many responded with extreme measures: they simply reduced the number of poor people in certain areas by relocating them from remote villages to larger towns, with little regard for their livelihoods. Millions of rural residents were uprooted in this fashion. Many of them were farmers who ended up with neither land nor jobs in urban areas and who could live thanks only to welfare payments.
The lesson, Xi underscores, is that in implementing common prosperity, officials “should not adopt the uniform targets used in the poverty eradication campaign,” and they should avoid “mass reversals to poverty or new forms of poverty.” In other words, he warns against setting unrealistic goals and resorting to forceful measures that can create problems down the road.
Xi's guidance recalls Deng Xiaoping's famous axiom to “cross the river by touching the stones.”
Xi also issues some “black” directives. Officials, he explains, must “strengthen socialist values as the guiding doctrine, and strengthen education on patriotism, collectivism, and socialism.” In other words, they must tighten ideological control. Second, they must “proactively leverage the important role of the state-owned economy in advancing common prosperity.”
And third, Xi notes, party support for wealthy private entrepreneurs will now come with strings attached. He echoes Deng’s axiom that the government “should let some get rich first” but adds that “at the same time, we must emphasize that those who got rich first should lift those who got rich later.” Hence Xi’s call for the well-off to voluntarily share their wealth. (The Chinese tech giants Alibaba and Tencent both responded immediately and enthusiastically, donating over $46 million to victims of flooding in Shanxi Province.)
Finally, Xi outlines a number of “gray” directives. “Common prosperity is a long-term goal,” he advises. “It requires a process and cannot be achieved in haste.” He points to Zhejiang Province in eastern China, where he served as provincial party secretary from 2002 to 2007, as a model for experimenting with policies on equitable development. Zhejiang is a natural choice not only because it is the fourth wealthiest province in terms of total GDP, but also because many of Xi’s loyal protégés—who make up his political base—hail from the province.
By encouraging officials throughout the country to learn from Zhejiang’s experience and “tailor your methods to local conditions,” Xi is practicing directed improvisation. His guidance recalls Deng’s famous axiom to “cross the river by touching the stones.” But whereas Deng chose Guangdong Province in the 1980s as the model for his vision of a freewheeling, market-based economy, Xi has chosen Zhejiang to represent common prosperity.
The Way Forward
Now that Xi has drawn the broad parameters, it will be up to lower-level officials to fill in the gaps. In July 2021, the provincial government of Zhejiang released a five-year plan for achieving common prosperity, including 52 measures. Many of the policies, such as upgrading industrial infrastructure, have long been in place, but the plan also added some new areas of emphasis in line with Xi’s priorities: for example, creating a system of philanthropic giving, curbing real estate speculation, and expanding the stock of affordable housing.
At the local level, even more concrete common prosperity policies have emerged. Take, for example, Jiaxing, one of Zhejiang’s richest municipalities—and one that also boasts of a high degree of economic equality among its residents. To narrow the divide between its rural and urban areas, authorities in Jiaxing have relaxed its household registration system so that all residents can enjoy the same level of access to public services. Jiaxing has also poured resources into high-tech tools for increasing agricultural output and is pushing ahead with innovative policies that allow village governments to sell unused portions of their “land quota”—government authorization to use rural land for urban development—to businesses in exchange for revenue or equity.
Zhejiang represents a promising path forward for common prosperity. Other parts of China, however, do not enjoy Zhejiang’s economic advantages, and one should expect policy implementation to be highly uneven even though all Chinese bureaucrats have received the same set of directions from Beijing.
Expanding the Sources of Chinese Conduct
Paying closer attention to the way Chinese leaders communicate with and direct the bureaucracy illuminates what the historian Odd Arne Westad called, in Foreign Affairs, “the sources of Chinese conduct”—a phrase that alludes to the American diplomat George Kennan’s famous essay on the sources of Soviet conduct. Westad argued that these sources include China’s spectacular economic growth, its ambition to dominate Asia, and Chinese nationalism.
Xi’s manifesto in Qiushi highlights three additional factors. First, China’s capitalist boom is the CCP’s proudest accomplishment but also the source of a host of fractures that threaten its stability today. Second, Chinese leaders are at once ambitious and fallible. Xi’s inability to resolve the tension between taming capitalism and keeping it vibrant is one manifestation of the limits of his aspirations. Third, the efficacy of all grand strategies in China, whether domestic or global, rests on their implementation by millions of bureaucrats and relevant actors. (Global confusion surrounding Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative illustrates the startling lack of planning and coordination in the CCP’s foreign policy.)
Decoding common prosperity requires taking all three of those additional sources into account. Inequality, corruption, risky asset bubbles, moral decadence, and other problems are interconnected crises that all stem from China’s crony capitalism. As I have written, these problems have created a Chinese version of the American Gilded Age. Common prosperity should be understood as a shorthand for Xi’s attempts to rescue China from its Gilded Age and deliver it into something akin to what the United States experienced during the Progressive era.
Of course, Xi cannot openly admit that his country faces problems similar to those that have shaped the United States, its capitalist rival. And framing his campaign as a fight against inequality allows Xi to avoid acknowledging the reality of a systemic breakdown facing the CCP. But unlike U.S. leaders, who relied on democratic measures to treat the excesses of capitalism, Xi is deploying a combo of commands from above, sloganeering, and adaptive policymaking. His approach reflects the CCP’s hope of experimenting and tweaking its way out of many simultaneous crises, in order to avoid a more fundamental transformation of the political system.
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15. Why Restraint in the Real World Encourages Digital Espionage
Excerpts:
Aggressive intelligence-gathering invites diplomatic risks because it suggests the need to operate on third-party networks without notice or consent. The irony is that cyberspace intelligence supports a grand strategy whose purpose is to restore diplomatic relations by reducing provocations. The Biden administration has worked hard to overcome international skepticism, making the case that its assertive posture is in everyone’s interest and that defending forward will help to promote an open, secure, and reliable internet. It put an exclamation point on these efforts last month when it signed onto the Paris Call, a set of principles for responsible behavior in cyberspace. But whether partners are convinced remains an open question.
In addition to other countries, aggressive cyberspace activity can cause tensions with the private sector. The current administration has prioritized improved relations with the private sector. Yet there is inherent tension between the demands of intelligence and the concerns about official encroachment on privately owned networks. Officials like to argue that this tension does not exist. From their perspective, proactive intelligence serves the collective good by helping to discover malicious activities in advance. Convincing firms of this idea will be considerably harder.
Though it may go against their initial impulses, advocates of a more restrained, less militaristic foreign policy should support the Biden administration in its efforts to convince skeptics at home and abroad. Secret intelligence has a checkered past, however, and critics may be skeptical of any approach that draws upon the dark arts. Nonetheless, an expansive intelligence posture complements a more modest grand strategy and might ultimately enable military retrenchment. Assertiveness in cyberspace goes hand-in-hand with restraint in the real world.
Why Restraint in the Real World Encourages Digital Espionage - War on the Rocks
President Joe Biden has committed to ending America’s forever wars and restoring diplomacy, longtime goals for advocates of a more restrained U.S. foreign policy. Yet he is reportedly pursuing an aggressive approach to cyberspace, despite concerns that this might lead to military escalation and diplomatic friction.
Although this looks like a contradiction, it is not. Restraint looks much different in cyberspace, where competition is primarily an intelligence contest. The implications are counterintuitive. Because a grand strategy of restraint trades knowledge for power, it leans heavily on intelligence. Intelligence agencies scan the horizon for looming threats, giving policymakers time to mobilize defenses. They help to prioritize scarce resources through better assessment. They provide non-military options for protecting U.S. interests abroad and maintain diplomatic channels to friends and rivals alike. Such diplomacy improves the quality of warning and enables joint operations against common threats. And in the event of a crisis, intelligence provides a release valve that reduces the risk of escalation and avoids the need for military action. All of this is less provocative abroad, and much less expensive.
Because cyber operations are a species of intelligence, a strategy of restraint benefits from audacity in the digital domain.
Attractions
Cyberspace intelligence is particularly important for restraint. First, it exploits durable U.S. advantages in technology and personnel. The United States educates computer scientists and engineers in world-class universities, and Silicon Valley firms give them a place to cultivate their skills. The intelligence community benefits from this extraordinary talent pool, though public-private relations are sometimes difficult. Government spending on cyberspace activities remains robust and politically popular on both sides of the aisle, suggesting room for continuing innovation and technical refinement.
Second, cyberspace operations are less provocative than military intervention. Experimental studies find that victims of cyber attacks are less likely to demand retaliation, even when the damage is the same as in a physical strike. Early evidence from real-world incidents supports this insight. States, firms, and individuals have proven surprisingly tolerant of cyberspace operations, and eager to get back online. Perhaps for the same reason, cyberspace operations do not seem to have much coercive value in war, although the empirical record is thin. If anything, they may serve as release valves for leaders who seek to act against their rivals but fear that events will spin out of control. All of this suggests that states can operate in cyberspace with great energy but without increasing the risk of escalation.
Third, cyberspace intelligence is probably less provocative than other forms of espionage. It reduces the risks that come with recruiting foreign assets, and it removes the need to maintain security details to protect them. Spy scandals lead to diplomatic breakdowns and exacerbate political crises: States exploit captured spies for propaganda value, parading them in front of cameras and using them as bargaining chips. It’s a lot harder to do the same in response to the discovery of cyberspace espionage, despite repeated efforts to use such revelations to isolate and embarrass international rivals. There is no way to put on a show trial for malware.
Fourth, cyberspace activities largely avoid sunk costs. Any military presence puts lives on the line, and casualties create psychological and political pressure for doubling down on force. Leaders do not want to tell families of fallen soldiers that their daughters and sons have died in vain, so they take further risks. This pattern is frustrating to advocates of restraint, who urge leaders to avoid getting stuck in open-ended conflicts. The sunk costs problem, however, is basically irrelevant in cyberspace.
Finally, cyberspace intelligence-gathering is less dependent on foreign partners. A grand strategy of restraint warns about foreign entanglements that skew perceptions of the national interest and draw the United States into foreign conflicts. Intelligence diplomacy is useful, but it sometimes comes at a cost. States with particular geographic advantages can exact a price for cooperation with the United States. Iran and Pakistan, for instance, gained leverage in the Cold War because they provided ideal locations for monitoring posts against the Soviet Union. This had long-term consequences for U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East and South Asia.
Cyberspace espionage benefits from liaison arrangements, but it does not depend on them. The United States has been enthusiastic about what it calls “Hunt Forward” missions, in which partner states request collaborative efforts on local networks. But from a technical perspective, it is not clear that the United States needs local partners to operate effectively abroad. The geography of cyberspace matters, of course, because physical control of cables, servers, and access points allows technicians to enjoy a fuller view of local networks. It matters a lot less than geography in the physical world, however, where there is often no substitute for being there. Perhaps the most important attribute of cyberspace, at least from an intelligence perspective, is the ability to exfiltrate data at rest from very long distances. This is appealing from the perspective of restraint because it requires few personnel deployed abroad and reduces the need for institutionalized alliances.
Exceptions
Although cyberspace espionage plays a special role in restraint, this does not mean that policymakers should be cavalier about all cyberspace operations, or that they should assume that secret collection campaigns are always worthwhile. The value of such campaigns depends in part on political circumstance.
The logic of restraint depends on intelligence, yet prominent advocates of restraint have warned against being seduced by secrets. Their argument is that serious threats to U.S. security will be plain to see. Rising great powers have no way of hiding their economic and military growth — elaborate intelligence efforts are not necessary. Worse, obsessing over secrets can also lead to threat inflation by encouraging policymakers to imagine the nightmare implications of hidden capabilities. The “worship of secret intelligence,” warned Barry Posen, can lead analysts to exaggerate dangers, even when the balance of forces is favorable. All of this suggests that the United States should focus less on secret collection and more on improving analysis of information from open sources.
When does the need for knowledge outweigh the risks of obsession? Secret intelligence is not required to spot large shifts in the balance of power, and no-one should obsess over secrets during periods of obvious and overwhelming strength. Washington does not need to poke around on private networks to verify economic and military disparities that are clear to anyone with a newspaper subscription. Wide power differentials were on display in the 1990s, for example, when the United States stood alone among the great powers, so detailed estimates of foreign great-power capabilities were not immediately relevant. Intelligence gains value as the gap shrinks. As rising powers catch up with status quo states, previously small questions take on new meaning. Precise knowledge of foreign capabilities matters more when adversaries stand a decent chance of winning. In these cases, the danger is not future threat inflation but faulty assessment of the current balance.
Aggressive collection campaigns are especially important when adversaries may be tempted to resolve political disputes through coercion or force. A lot depends on the value of the political object at stake. When adversaries are deeply committed to some goal, they may be willing to accept greater military risks. Secret intelligence is vital in these cases for determining if foreign leaders’ private goals are consistent with their public bluster.
So how does this play out in cyberspace? Technical collection efforts, including cyberspace espionage, are particularly valuable in moments of high tension because they are less provocative than human spying. Yet there are limits to this argument. When a prolonged period of tension transforms into a deep crisis, for instance, the United States should be cautious about certain targets. Some kinds of cyber operations may serve to de-escalate tension by providing a release valve. If both states are wary of using force, they may tacitly welcome tit-for-tat cyber attacks as a face-saving way out. But intrusions into particularly sensitive targets, especially nuclear command and control networks, may create an exceptionally dangerous security dilemma. The targets may be unable to distinguish spying from clandestine attempts to disable their deterrent force.
The logic of cyberspace espionage in peacetime grand strategy does not necessarily apply in a crisis or war. Moments of intense drama may cause rival leaders to overreact to news of espionage, and this might inhibit efforts to find a peaceful resolution. Leaders in crisis are likely to want granular information about the other side, but the desire to know more can increase the danger of inadvertent escalation. Intelligence efforts to learn more about a rival’s true intentions are important, but intelligence penetrations that look like preparations for a disarming strike are treacherous. Those seeking to maximize the benefits of cyberspace espionage should also seek to minimize the risk. Careful planning about which targets to surveil, and which to avoid, will help.
Similarly, the role of cyber operations is different in a shooting war. Cyberspace operations appeal to military planners because they hold out the possibility of blinding enemy forces. Yet this may prove difficult in practice, because thinking enemies take steps to make their communications secure and redundant. As I have previously argued, the tactical use of cyber operations creates new dilemmas for war termination. For these reasons, an aggressive approach toward cyberspace in peacetime might not make sense in a violent conflict.
Making the Case
So long as Biden remains a champion of military restraint, intelligence is likely to play a leading role in his foreign policy. Administration officials have already made it clear that the United States will remain quite active in cyberspace. National Cyber Director Chris Inglis has reportedly embraced the Department of Defense’s “Defend Forward” approach, which calls for continuous intelligence gathering and efforts to discover cyber threats as close as possible to their point of origin. Defending forward on cyberspace infrastructure is operationally and politically audacious given the peculiar characteristics of the domain. As Erica Borghard puts it, “this infrastructure is owned by some entity, whether by the U.S. government, private companies or individuals, allied and partner governments, or the adversary. In other words, unlike in other domains, there are no ‘high seas’ or ‘international waters’ in cyberspace.”
Aggressive intelligence-gathering invites diplomatic risks because it suggests the need to operate on third-party networks without notice or consent. The irony is that cyberspace intelligence supports a grand strategy whose purpose is to restore diplomatic relations by reducing provocations. The Biden administration has worked hard to overcome international skepticism, making the case that its assertive posture is in everyone’s interest and that defending forward will help to promote an open, secure, and reliable internet. It put an exclamation point on these efforts last month when it signed onto the Paris Call, a set of principles for responsible behavior in cyberspace. But whether partners are convinced remains an open question.
In addition to other countries, aggressive cyberspace activity can cause tensions with the private sector. The current administration has prioritized improved relations with the private sector. Yet there is inherent tension between the demands of intelligence and the concerns about official encroachment on privately owned networks. Officials like to argue that this tension does not exist. From their perspective, proactive intelligence serves the collective good by helping to discover malicious activities in advance. Convincing firms of this idea will be considerably harder.
Though it may go against their initial impulses, advocates of a more restrained, less militaristic foreign policy should support the Biden administration in its efforts to convince skeptics at home and abroad. Secret intelligence has a checkered past, however, and critics may be skeptical of any approach that draws upon the dark arts. Nonetheless, an expansive intelligence posture complements a more modest grand strategy and might ultimately enable military retrenchment. Assertiveness in cyberspace goes hand-in-hand with restraint in the real world.
Joshua Rovner is an associate professor in the School of International Service at American University.
16. China Aims to ‘Revise the Global Rule Set,’ Top U.S. General Says
Concur with the CJCS. My thought: China seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, and displace democratic institutions.
China Aims to ‘Revise the Global Rule Set,’ Top U.S. General Says
Gen. Milley, speaking at the WSJ CEO Council Summit, warned that China’s aims could lead to more instability
WSJ · by Nancy A. Youssef
WASHINGTON—China is expanding its military in a bid to “revise the global rule set” and undo the post-World War II national security framework, the highest ranking military officer said Tuesday.
Army Gen. Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said China’s investment in its navy, hypersonic missiles, cyber and other technologies are designed to ensure that it, along with Russia and the U.S., are world-leading nations. Such a rise would end a post-World War II era in which Russia and the U.S. were the only superpowers.
“We are going into a world that is more complex geo-strategically,” Gen. Milley said at The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit. “We are entering into a world in which technology is advancing at a rate and speed that has never been seen in human history. So it’s much more complex, potentially more unstable.”
Gen. Milley said that while the U.S. currently is ahead of China militarily, “the question is going forward.” He said the U.S. must modernize to stay ahead.
China was one of several national-security topics that Gen. Milley discussed during the forum.
Amid heightened tensions about the deployment of Russian troops near Ukraine, Gen. Milley described the movements as “quite serious,” adding they were “different in scale and scope than what we saw in April,” when Russia last moved troops near that border.
“In my view, there is a lot of space here for diplomatic off-ramps, de-escalation,” Gen. Milley said.
On Tuesday, President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke over a secure video line to address what the U.S. has described as “large and unusual” troop movement near Russia’s border with Ukraine in recent weeks. Fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine grew last week, with U.S. officials citing new intelligence reports about a troop buildup on the border. The general said he spoke with his NATO counterparts Monday about the Russian buildup and that there was resolve amongst the alliance.
Gen. Milley also addressed declining American confidence in the military, noted in a survey released earlier this month by Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute. He also addressed personal attacks he has faced during his tenure and growing public perceptions that the military has become politicized, according to the survey.
“Sometimes it’s disappointing when they become ad hominem attacks,” Gen. Milley said. “Where it becomes risky in my view is…when people start ripping apart the institutions of this country. That could potentially become dangerous. The institution of the military is critical to the defense of this republic.”
WSJ · by Nancy A. Youssef
17. Australia joins U.S. in diplomatic boycott of Beijing Olympics
Australia joins U.S. in diplomatic boycott of Beijing Olympics
“I’m doing it because it’s in Australia’s national interest,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said, citing human rights abuses. “It’s the right thing to do.”
NBC News · by The Associated Press · December 8, 2021
Dec. 7, 202101:30
Morrison said it should come as no surprise that Australian officials would boycott the event after the nation’s relationship with China had broken down in recent years.
“I’m doing it because it’s in Australia’s national interest,” Morrison said. “It’s the right thing to do.”
He said Australian athletes would still be able to compete.
As well as citing human rights abuses, Morrison said China had been very critical of Australia’s efforts to have a strong defense force in the region, “particularly in relation, most recently, to our decision to acquire nuclear-powered submarines.”
He said his government was very happy to talk to China about their differences.
“There’s been no obstacle to that occurring on our side, but the Chinese government has consistently not accepted those opportunities for us to meet,” Morrison said.
Rights groups have pushed for a full boycott of the games, accusing China of rights abuses against ethnic minorities. The U.S. and Australian decisions fall short of those calls but come at an exceptionally turbulent time for international relations and have been met with a barrage of criticism from China.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin denounced Morrison's announcement as “political posturing," but did not directly threaten the “resolute countermeasures" China vowed to exact on the U.S.
“China has not invited any Australian government officials to attend the Winter Olympics, and no one would care about whether they come or not," Wang said at a daily briefing. “The Australian politicians’ political posturing and hyping for their own political interest have no impact whatsoever on the successful Beijing Olympic Games."
Referring to the U.S., Wang said Australia was “blindly following certain countries in their steps to confuse right and wrong without a bottom line."
The Australian Olympic Committee said the arrangements for the 40 or so Australian athletes expected to compete at the games would not be affected by Morrison’s announcement.
“Getting the athletes to Beijing safely, competing safely and bringing them home safely remains our greatest challenge,” said Matt Carroll, the committee’s chief executive.
“Our Australian athletes have been training and competing with this Olympic dream for four years now and we are doing everything in our power to ensure we can help them succeed,” Carroll said in a statement.
NBC News · by The Associated Press · December 8, 2021
18. Risky Business: Why America Should Stay Out of the Regime Change Business
Perhaps we should not be changing regimes externally but instead supporting those who seek self determination within authoritarian regimes.
All of the examples provided by Mike below are ones we should not emulate. And his four sound principles do not prohibit support to those who wish to free themselves.
De Opresso Liber - "To free the oppressed" is better expressed as t"o help the oppressed free themselves."
Risky Business: Why America Should Stay Out of the Regime Change Business - Modern War Institute
As US competition with China intensifies, conflicts in developing nations may again constitute a battleground for influence. Some observers have argued that the United States and China are likely to engage in the sort of proxy warfare that was so common during the Cold War. Others foresee a brewing contest of covert operations. The United States should tread carefully. The benefits of covert interventions and proxy wars rarely outweigh their costs. And there is one Cold War pattern that the United States would do well to avoid entirely: efforts to discredit, undermine, and, in some cases, remove inconvenient national leaders or governments in developing countries.
Cold War Lessons
During the Cold War, the United States became obsessed with the perceived threat posed by Soviet-leaning regimes in the developing world. The result was a dismal parade of covert actions, proxy wars, economic aggression, and assassinations stretching from Central America to Africa through the Middle East and Asia. The most extensive catalogue of such schemes, by the scholar Lindsay O’Rourke, counts some sixty-four covert regime change operations.
In Guatemala, the United States undertook Operation PBSUCCESS in 1954 to overthrow the democratically elected Jacobo Árbenz and install a military dictatorship. In 1970, Washington saw newly elected Chilean leader Salvador Allende as a threat, imposed harsh economic sanctions, and helped bring about a coup that established a dictatorship that would last almost two decades. In Iran, the United States conspired to topple another anti-colonialist leader, Mohammad Mossadegh, in 1953. The scholar Ray Takeyh has asked important questions about how decisive the US role was—but there is no doubt that Washington decided that Mossadegh had to go and developed a plan for a coup to bring that about.
In Africa, the United States was directly or indirectly involved in efforts to remove Patrice Lumumba in Congo and Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana. It meddled in domestic politics and supported various sides in civil wars in Angola and Chad. It backed anticommunist efforts in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and dozens of other countries. In Asia, the United States sought to influence outcomes in countries from Cambodia to Indonesia.
Most of those efforts turned out to be counterproductive, associating the United States with the repression of national aspirations and independence movements, and often hitching the United States to dictatorial leaders whose cruelty gave rise to revolutionary groups that, in places, were ultimately far more hostile to American power than the leaders they tried to overthrow.
O’Rourke concludes that covert regime change failed in its basic purposes about sixty percent of the time—and even when efforts succeeded in the short term, such schemes “failed to remain covert, and many sparked blowback in unanticipated ways.” Other evidence shows that covert regime change efforts are associated with greater levels of civil war, human rights violations, and regional instability.
How Not to Compete with China
The main lesson of these Cold War experiences concerns the tricky balance between short-term urgency and long-term strategic logic. In many of these cases, US policymakers mistook leaders or movements critical of US power and some US goals as the leading edge of much more implacable opposition to American interests. Washington saw nationalist, socialist, or anti-colonialist movements as pro-Soviet when they in fact often had very different goals.
The Soviet Union, as it turned out, was never able to force its ideology down the throats of peoples around the world. Maintaining control of countries in the Soviet bloc was one thing—but even there, Moscow was forced into repeated interventions (in Hungary and Czechoslovakia), as well as massive expenditures to prop up friendly regimes. Further afield, Moscow’s claimed successes often involved movements that wrapped an essentially nationalist or anti-colonialist agenda in communist garb.
Even when Moscow could help push a somewhat friendly nationalist regime to power, many of these governments either provoked domestic resistance or shifted away from the Soviet orbit. The Soviet client regime in Afghanistan, for example, was besieged by an Islamic insurgency that provoked a Soviet intervention, the failure of which was one of the triggers for the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Far from endorsing the urgency of struggles for power in developing nations, then, the Cold War suggests that great powers will have immense difficulty imposing their ideological control on countries far from home. They may gain temporary adherents—movements that have some authentic sympathy for their ideology, or that merely want material support. But ultimately, national interests, identity, and the demand for sovereign independence and dignity almost always trump ideology. These movements had no interest in being controlled by the Soviet Union any more than by so-called Western imperialism.
The case of Yugoslavia represented one of the few times when the United States managed to accept and work with a communist regime rather than urgently trying to unseat it. Partly this was because Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito broke from the Soviet orbit relatively early, in 1948. And he certainly did not prove an unqualified ally of the west. Originally hoping to use his regime as the basis of a “wedge strategy” to fragment Soviet control in Eastern Europe, the United States eventually had to accept that Tito was too aloof to formally side with the West. Still, keeping Yugoslavia out of the Soviet bloc turned out to be sufficient to meet baseline US interests. That conclusion could be a guiding watchword for US policy today—a significant degree of tolerance for the ideological character or hedging strategies of developing nations, so long as they do not formally align themselves with a US rival.
So might the wider systemic context for the United States’ Cold War success. Washington managed to attract the sustained, deep ideological affinity and geopolitical alignment of many countries not because it brought about those outcomes through covert action, but because it sponsored an economic and political order with magnetic force. As the economic prospects of the democratic world and the communist bloc diverged, as institutions and networks of trade and investment matured around the United States, Europe, South Korea, and Japan, developing nations craved access to this emerging order. They needed its investment, its technology, its aid, but mostly its economic techniques and processes. This, not clandestine operations to overthrow suspect governments, was America’s chief competitive advantage in shaping outcomes in the developing world.
In the competition with China, it would serve the United States well to take the risks of covert regime change more seriously and use a light hand in trying to influence outcomes in developing countries. The United States should remain vigilant regarding Chinese efforts to bribe their way into the elite circles of key countries, but that is a relatively narrow intelligence challenge. Rather than gearing up for proxy wars and covert regime change, the United States should build a more sustainable long-term strategy for competing in the developing world. If the United States embraced this direction, four basic principles could guide such a strategy.
A first principle would be to recognize that the American appeal to many developing countries will be a function of the attractiveness of its economic, social, and political model. If the American system continues to be characterized by bitter polarization, economic stagnation, and an inability to make progress on major policy issues, the United States could lose the allegiance of many political movements around the world.
A second principle could recognize that shaping the international system to US advantage, rather than momentary covert actions, is a much better strategy to gain long-term competitive advantage. The rule-based international order of the postwar world is not a myth, nor is it an idealistic hope for world government. It is a very practical and real source of US competitive advantage. A core element of US strategy for competing in the developing world should be to nurture elements of this order—and provide as many opportunities for developing nations to have a voice within it as possible. This could involve, for example, renewed support for key international organizations such as UN agencies, gathering multilateral support for specific norms such as maritime law, and finding ways to offer leadership roles to allies and partners in these institutions.
Third, the United States could consider offering direct assistance to help developing countries achieve their goals. Washington could do this even with governments or reformist movements that do not share all its interests or values. This could entail providing economic aid, security assistance, foreign direct investment, inclusion in key scientific and technological networks, and many other forms of engagement that have historically established the United States and its partners as the preferable group with which to align.
Finally, the United States should keep a fourth principle firmly in mind: patience. A major lesson of the Cold War is that the United States often exaggerated both the stakes of a contest for allegiance in a developing country and the Soviet Union’s ability to gain lasting allegiance by supporting revolutionary movements. If the United States were to set the overall context properly—by revalidating its socioeconomic model, sustaining and opening up the postwar order, and offering direct support to developing countries—it could likely afford to be patient and let events play out in many cases. Overreacting to setbacks and demonizing reformist movements skeptical of US influence is a recipe for generating resentment and blowback.
As the competition with China in the developing world heats up, the United States need not repeat the sad legacy of the Cold War with a surge of new efforts at covert regime change and harassment. The right way to combat Chinese influence is to maximize the systemic advantages that the United States has long enjoyed, meet reformist leaders and movements in the developing world on their own terms, and trust to the long-term appeal of American norms and values.
Michael Mazarr is a senior political scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: Edmundo Perez via University of Miami Library
19. FDD | Washington Underwrites the Hezbollah State
Excerpts:
That the Biden administration is propping up the Hezbollah-run order in Beirut, and even providing relief for Iran’s Syrian ally, is a feature, not an anomaly, of their “Lebanon policy.” It’s not only that this posture is a logical corollary of its policy of realignment with Iran, which is built on recognizing Iranian spheres of influence in the region. It’s also that the nature of Lebanon inevitably leads to this endpoint. Structurally, the Lebanese system draws in foreign western powers to underwrite its Hezbollah-dominated political order in an accommodation with the regional power, Iran, which runs the order through its local representative. The bottom line is constant: perpetual investment.
Both France and the US have signed on to this accommodation with Iran, but they approach it differently. Whereas the French are open about the need for partnership with the Iranians in Lebanon, they are cynical enough to have others pay for it. Hence, they are content to see the US securing their Lebanese holdings. The Biden administration, meanwhile, prefers to dissimulate. It doubles down on a policy of underwriting a Hezbollah-dominated system while hiding behind the fiction of a distinct “Lebanese state.” And thus, the US is simply pouring its own citizens’ money into maintaining Iranian real estate under Hezbollah management.
FDD | Washington Underwrites the Hezbollah State
fdd.org · by Tony Badran Research Fellow · December 7, 2021
In October, a few weeks after Lebanon’s politicians had formed a new government, the Biden administration sent Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland to Lebanon to showcase U.S. support for the new Hezbollah-led government. In Beirut, Nuland announced $67 million in additional funds for the Lebanese Armed Forces, and briefed Lebanese leaders on other administration initiatives to bolster the Lebanese system.
That this was a government formed by Hezbollah and its allies was of little consequence to the administration’s decision. In fact, the United States, along with France, the two western countries most directly involved in Lebanese affairs, have made clear their policy rests on investing in and stabilizing the Hezbollah-controlled status quo.
The Lebanese government formation process began a year earlier, when, following the August 2020 Beirut port explosion, French president Emmanuel Macron presented his initiative to the Lebanese. Macron was straightforward about who he considered his principal interlocutor in Beirut. During his visit to Lebanon, Macron met with Hezbollah officials, and, according to a French press report, he offered to partner with them in Lebanon. “I want to work with you to change Lebanon,” he proposed to a Hezbollah member of parliament.
Macron wasn’t subtle about his aims. When he returned to Beirut in September 2020, he was accompanied by the chairman and chief executive officer of the French container shipping giant CMA CGM Group, which is vying, among other things, to operate the container terminal at the Beirut port. Earlier this year it acquired the license to operate the container terminal at the port of Tripoli. The ministry that overseas Lebanon’s ports, Public Works and Transportation, is held, not coincidentally, by Hezbollah. In November, the Hezbollah minister Ali Hamieh, who holds French citizenship — also arguably no coincidence — launched an international tender for the management, maintenance and operation of the Beirut port container terminal. France reportedly also has expressed interest in the electric sector and public transportation.
With an eye on European leadership, France has been making a power play in the eastern Mediterranean, deploying frigates and participating in naval exercises in support of Greece — with whom it signed a defense pact — and in opposition to Turkey. Lebanon is tangential to this play, but the country hosts relevant French holdings. In 2018, a consortium led by French energy giant Total signed an agreement with Lebanon to explore for oil and gas in two of its ten offshore blocks. While the exploration in one of the blocks turned up dry, drilling in the second block in the waters off of south Lebanon, near the border with Israel, is yet to begin. On this end, Paris is getting an assist from a parallel American initiative.
The Biden administration is pushing to revive stalled maritime border demarcation talks between Israel and Lebanon. The talks were set in motion in the final months of the Trump administration, with the misguided belief that Lebanon’s economic duress, and the promise of revenue from potential offshore gas, would quickly lead to a deal. Predictably, the talks came to a halt as the Lebanese expanded their demands by several hundred kilometers to lay claim to Israeli fields and territorial waters. The Biden administration’s point man for the initiative, Senior Advisor for Global Energy Security Amos Hochstein, who also visited Beirut in October, has made telling comments about the assumptions underpinning the policy.
As was the case with the State Department under the previous administration, the basic premise behind the US mediation effort continues to be entirely about finding ways to inject funds into the Lebanese system. In an interview, Hochstein pitched the Biden administration’s fantastical vision to the Lebanese: reach a speedy agreement and by 2025, Lebanon would be “joining the rest of the Eastern Mediterranean in selling gas into the global market, and you become a global exporter of a product.”
The fact that the Lebanese government, indeed the entire political order, is run by Hezbollah, does not temper the administration’s vision. At one point, Hochstein’s interviewer had to interject with a reminder that Hezbollah is under US sanctions. Seemingly caught off guard, Hochstein replied that he saw “Lebanon as a country,” and didn’t “think of Hezbollah as Lebanon.” That is, whereas the French have done away with all pretense, reaching out directly to Hezbollah to secure their interests, the US continues to pretend that Hezbollah and the Lebanese “state” are two different things.
Naturally, any potential future revenues from offshore gas, assuming whatever is found is commercially viable, would be available to Hezbollah. What’s more, Hochstein spoke openly of the fact that the initial investments “international European and American companies,” would make in Lebanon would be in “southern Lebanon.” That is, in Hezbollah’s heartland.
The Biden administration would like to see more than just energy companies invest in the Hezbollah-run order in Lebanon. The Biden team, in tandem with Macron, has been pressing Saudi Arabia to do just that. Even after the kingdom publicly declared it wanted nothing to do with Lebanon, Hochstein still reiterated the administration’s call for the Gulf states to give “political and financial support.”
In particular, the Biden administration wants the Saudis to fund the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and other security agencies. In that desperate effort’s most bizarre moment, the administration and the Macron government had the US and French ambassadors in Lebanon travel to Riyadh last July to plead with the kingdom to resume funding to Beirut.
The LAF represents the flip side of the administration’s fictional take on Lebanon. The false distinction between Hezbollah and so-called “state institutions” serves as cover for injecting funds to stabilize the Hezbollah-run order. The Saudis recognize this as an American fantasy and have brushed off these requests, in the recognition that they would only be propping up an Iranian satrapy.
The Biden administration, on the other hand, has doubled-down on finding what it has euphemistically dubbed “creative ways” to underwrite the Hezbollah-run order. Since rushing some $60 million in cash to the LAF command in June, the administration has been preoccupied with mining for more money, including reprogramming funds appropriated years earlier, in order to subsidize more LAF expenditures and underwrite the salaries of LAF personnel. It is looking to do the same with other security agencies — all on the US taxpayer’s dime.
Although the administration has justified this wholesale welfare program by saying the LAF is unable to pay for maintenance, fuel, food, or medicine, the US continues to send more expensive military equipment to the LAF. In November, the US ambassador to Lebanon chaperoned the LAF commander around Washington, DC, as he met with members of Congress and Defense and State Department officials, in order to secure more funding. One idea the administration is discussing involves the creation of a fund, totaling some $86 million a year, to directly supplement LAF salaries with a monthly stipend. The fund would be managed by the United Nations, thereby allowing the administration and other potential donors to bypass domestic laws that impede directly supplementing salaries of foreign troops.
In addition to managing Lebanon’s security sector, the administration decided to take on Lebanon’s chronically dysfunctional energy sector as well. The solution it settled on is to wheel Egyptian gas and Jordanian surplus electricity to Lebanon through Syria. In the process, the administration has circumvented sanctions on the Syrian regime, and has opened the door for Arab re-engagement with Bashar Assad. Moreover, when Hezbollah announced it would bring in Iranian shipments of fuel to Lebanon, the administration welcomed it.
That the Biden administration is propping up the Hezbollah-run order in Beirut, and even providing relief for Iran’s Syrian ally, is a feature, not an anomaly, of their “Lebanon policy.” It’s not only that this posture is a logical corollary of its policy of realignment with Iran, which is built on recognizing Iranian spheres of influence in the region. It’s also that the nature of Lebanon inevitably leads to this endpoint. Structurally, the Lebanese system draws in foreign western powers to underwrite its Hezbollah-dominated political order in an accommodation with the regional power, Iran, which runs the order through its local representative. The bottom line is constant: perpetual investment.
Both France and the US have signed on to this accommodation with Iran, but they approach it differently. Whereas the French are open about the need for partnership with the Iranians in Lebanon, they are cynical enough to have others pay for it. Hence, they are content to see the US securing their Lebanese holdings. The Biden administration, meanwhile, prefers to dissimulate. It doubles down on a policy of underwriting a Hezbollah-dominated system while hiding behind the fiction of a distinct “Lebanese state.” And thus, the US is simply pouring its own citizens’ money into maintaining Iranian real estate under Hezbollah management.
Tony Badran is Tablet magazine’s Levant analyst and a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He tweets @AcrossTheBay. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, non-partisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Tony Badran Research Fellow · December 7, 2021
20. FDD | Canada Must Support Justice And Closure For The Families Of PS752 Victims
Excerpts:
Instead, the Canadian government should adopt the policies recommended by the PS752 Association. Ottawa should designate the IRGC, which was responsible for the downing, as a terrorist organization. Canada should also work with the International Civil Association Organization to launch a global investigation into the regime’s conduct, including identifying senior officials responsible for the downing. Furthermore, Ottawa should impose Magnitsky human rights sanctions on senior Iranian officials responsible for the plane’s downing.
The victims’ families deserve justice, and the people of both Canada and Iran deserve the truth. In the words of Callamard, “the families of the victims and, indeed, Iranian society … are left without the answers they deserve. They are left churning over and over again in their minds: how could this have happened?” It is time for Canada to help Canadian-Iranians and victims of the PS752 shootdown find closure.
FDD | Canada Must Support Justice And Closure For The Families Of PS752 Victims
fdd.org · by Alireza Nader Senior Fellow · December 7, 2021
On January 8, 2020, the Islamic Republic of Iran shot down Ukrainian flight PS752, causing the death of 176 people, including 138 Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and others with close ties to Canada. While Tehran called the downing a mistake, a recent report from the Association of Families of Flight PS752 Victims identifies several key factors that point toward a conscious decision to shoot the plane out of the sky.
According to the Association’s report, “[t]he intentional act of keeping Iranian airspace open, the technical capabilities of the Tor-M1 surface-to-air missile system and Iran’s integrated air defence network in detecting hostile targets, the positioning of the Tor-M1 system near Tehran’s international airport, the systematic concealment of the root cause of the crash, the destruction of existing evidence, and Iran’s misleading reports, all indicate that the downing of Ukraine International Airlines flight 752 was deliberate.”
The report’s findings are further evidence that Canada’s policy of pure diplomatic engagement with Tehran, without employing any meaningful leverage, will continue to impede Ottawa’s objective of obtaining justice for the victims’ families. Rather, Ottawa needs to apply significant political and economic pressure against the regime to show Canada is serious about finding the whole truth and holding Tehran accountable. Such pressure would also facilitate Ottawa’s investigation of the clerical regime’s financial assets and its money laundering and political influence network in Canada.
Two other exhaustive reports on the downing of PS752 left the question of intentionality unanswered. Both reports, one by the Canadian government’s senior adviser Ralph Goodale and the other by UN Special Rapporteur Agnes Callamard, condemn the Islamic Republic for its obfuscation and failure to cooperate with the international community’s efforts to investigate the downing. Callamard also stated that the regime may have shot down the plane intentionally, although that theory, she believes, requires more investigation.
However, the PS752 Association’s report provides information that the plane’s downing was deliberate. For example, authorities in Tehran left Iranian airspace open during a time of tension between Iran and the United States, effectively using “civilian air travelers as human shield[s].” Washington’s targeted killing of General Qasem Soleimani on January 3, 2020, and Tehran’s retaliatory attack on the Al Asad US military base in Iraq created an atmosphere of conflict that made Iranian airspace inherently unsafe. Yet regime officials allowed Iranian airspace to remain open, since closing the air space may have tipped off US forces of imminent missile attacks.
In addition, the report counters the regime’s claim that a TOR-1 missile defence operator confused a large civilian aircraft for a US cruise missile, thereby downing the airline by “mistake.” The report states the “operator of the Tor-M1 system that shot down the aircraft had vast experience and expertise with short range missile systems including his service in Syria … Given the experience of the operator, it is difficult to imagine that the operator could not distinguish between an alleged cruise missile and PS752.”
The report also provides ample evidence that the highest levels of the Iranian government attempted to hide the intentional shootdown of PS752. These officials included former Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, a man often portrayed by Western media and pundits as a “moderate” member of the regime. Citing audio tapes of meetings between Zarif and other senior officials such as Secretary of the National Security Council Ali Shamkhani, which were obtained by the PS752 Association, the report demonstrates that Zarif knew that Tehran shot down the plane intentionally and participated with other senior officials in attempts to cover up the truth.
According to the report, Zarif even “actively contributed to the baseless justification for the delay in the handover of the black boxes” to Ukrainian officials. In one recording, Zarif claims that the world will never know the truth behind the PS752 shootdown due to the interests of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – the regime’s praetorians – in covering up the crime.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s belief that engaging Zarif and other Iranian officials would produce results has proven to be false. A warm meeting between Trudeau and Zarif weeks after the PS752 downing, with both men smiling as they publicly shook hands, caused concern and angst among the victims’ families and the Canadian-Iranian community. The PS752 report, however, should lay to rest the Trudeau government’s engagement strategy.
Instead, the Canadian government should adopt the policies recommended by the PS752 Association. Ottawa should designate the IRGC, which was responsible for the downing, as a terrorist organization. Canada should also work with the International Civil Association Organization to launch a global investigation into the regime’s conduct, including identifying senior officials responsible for the downing. Furthermore, Ottawa should impose Magnitsky human rights sanctions on senior Iranian officials responsible for the plane’s downing.
The victims’ families deserve justice, and the people of both Canada and Iran deserve the truth. In the words of Callamard, “the families of the victims and, indeed, Iranian society … are left without the answers they deserve. They are left churning over and over again in their minds: how could this have happened?” It is time for Canada to help Canadian-Iranians and victims of the PS752 shootdown find closure.
fdd.org · by Alireza Nader Senior Fellow · December 7, 2021
21. Detect and Understand: Modernizing Intelligence for the Gray Zone
Detect and Understand: Modernizing Intelligence for the Gray Zone
csis.org · by Intelligence Fellow, International Security Program · December 13, 2021
CSIS Briefs
December 7, 2021
All err the more dangerously, as they each follow a truth. Their fault is not in following a falsehood, but in not following another truth. – Blaise Pascal1
The Issue
In the gray zone—the contested space between routine statecraft and conventional warfare—uncertainty permeates decisionmaking. Seeking to avoid escalation, aggressors design gray zone activities to evade detection or to frustrate intelligence efforts to attribute blame, quantify risk, and inform decisive responses. In this security environment, intelligence success will require seamless and simultaneous feedback between efforts to identify malign gray zone activities and to contextualize them within a broader analysis of an actor’s intentions and strategy. This brief’s recommended intelligence reforms—focused on a series of technological, organizational, and cultural advancements—are ultimately intended to accelerate efforts to integrate and synchronize a real-time interaction between detection and understanding of gray zone threats.
Introduction
Discerning knowable truths amid obfuscation, misdirection, and outright lies is a fundamental mission of intelligence. Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Allen Dulles held this notion so deeply that he insisted that a biblical exhortation to pursue the truth be carved in stone in the CIA’s lobby. Unfortunately, the challenge—as Pascal mused 300 years prior to the construction of the CIA’s Original Headquarters Building—is that global politics are conducted in a world riven with multiple “truths.”2 This was a constant of the Cold War, when competing narratives informed an era of great power competition. And the same is true today, when interstate competition once again defines a security landscape muddled by ambiguity, confusion, and deception.
There is a rich body of literature describing how the modern era of competition will be dominated by actors advancing their interests via malign activities in the so-called “gray zone” between peace and war.3 These studies have analyzed the specific ways that actors such as China, Russia, Iran, and others operate below the threshold of conventional war and mix political, economic, information, and military tools to increase their global legitimacy and advance their interests at the expense of the United States and its allies.4 Since the height of the Cold War, the fields of coercion, bargaining, and deterrence have studied why actors pursue these strategies; namely it is to achieve limited goals without incurring the risk of escalation into a costly and potentially devastating war.5
This study extends the existing body of research on the gray zone further into the specific areas of intelligence collection and analysis. It offers a range of recommendations to improve the ability of U.S. intelligence services to confront the gray zone challenges of modern interstate security competition. In support of this effort, CSIS researchers undertook a six-month project that set out to answer the following three questions:
- How do gray zone threats challenge the ability of intelligence planners, collectors, and analysts to deliver timely and accurate analysis and warning?
- How can emerging technologies augment the detection and analysis of gray zone activity?
- What changes across the areas of collection, analysis, and organizational structure could improve the U.S. intelligence community’s (IC) ability to identify, assess, and warn of threats in the gray zone?
To answer these questions, CSIS interviewed dozens of government, academic, and technology experts in the United States and the United Kingdom, conducted a robust literature review, and convened an expert workshop in September 2021 to review preliminary recommendations and further explore the overarching research questions. The research team extends its most sincere thanks to the individuals who contributed to this work. This brief’s recommendations to advance intelligence in the gray zone are a testament to their expertise and insights.
The findings and recommendations generated during this project coalesced around the dynamic between two fundamental intelligence functions, which this brief refers to as “detect” and “understand.” Intelligence success in the gray zone requires seamless and simultaneous feedback between efforts to identify malign gray zone activities (detect) and to contextualize them within a broader analysis of an actor’s intentions and strategy (understand). This brief’s recommended intelligence reforms—focused on a series of technological, cultural, and organizational modernizations—are ultimately intended to accelerate efforts to integrate and synchronize a real-time interaction between detection and understanding of gray zone threats.
The first section of this brief articulates how these pillars of the intelligence mission, which will not change in the gray zone, are being uniquely stressed today. In response to these challenges, the second section then introduces a series of recommendations where the IC can leverage the promises of emerging technology to succeed in the gray zone. This includes building and adopting new platforms to maximize opportunities to exploit increasingly diverse data and expertise, particularly in the rapidly evolving area of open-source intelligence (OSINT). Technology, however, can only serve as an enabler amid broader efforts to modernize intelligence collection and analysis to contend with gray zone challenges. The second section of this brief therefore concludes with additional recommendations to better prepare intelligence officers to process complexity, manage uncertainty, and communicate insights to decisionmakers. While the recommendations included in this brief are directed toward the U.S. IC, the noted challenges and potential solutions are applicable to other intelligence services, particularly members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance.
Defining the Gray Zone
Informed by previous works, this brief defines the gray zone as the contested space that lies between routine statecraft and conventional warfare.6 Importantly, gray zone strategies have two interconnected characteristics: (1) they are intended to shift the balance of power in the aggressor’s favor, and (2) they are designed to pursue this goal by avoiding, blurring, or circumventing redlines and escalation to conventional warfare.
One of the most significant research challenges during this project was the problem of discerning between routine interstate security competition and the subset of competitive activities that comprise the low end of gray zone activity. Ultimately, this study found that, from an intelligence perspective, there is little utility in differentiating between the concepts of “strategic competition” and the “gray zone.” While the gray zone may carry continued importance in broader efforts to assess interstate behavior across the peace-war continuum, intelligence efforts to detect early signs of malign behavior will need to extend into the arena of routine statecraft, since diplomatic, economic, commercial, or other tools are often components of an actor’s broader gray zone strategy.
Intelligence Challenges in the Gray Zone
Seeking to avoid escalation, aggressors design gray zone activities to evade detection outright or to frustrate intelligence efforts to attribute blame, quantify risk, and inform decisive responses. Often, gray zone activities will partner age-old techniques, such as influence campaigns, with modern technologies that enable actors to carry out their activities in secret. Likewise, aggressors also pursue operations that exploit seams where intelligence agencies do not or cannot look.7 And even when detected, gray zone operations intentionally create ambiguity and confusion to limit the ability of intelligence services to attribute responsibility, aggregate behavior, and develop a coherent understanding of an aggressor’s strategy. This section examines the ways in which intelligence efforts to detect and understand threats are uniquely challenged in the gray zone. It also emphasizes how, in the gray zone, these two efforts cannot be organized as sequential activities but must be seamlessly and continuously integrated.
The Detection Challenge
Malign activities in the gray zone are often transmitted via “weak signals.”8 Weak signals challenge intelligence efforts because they can materialize under the guise of normal political, economic, or diplomatic behavior or because they simply do not register at all, lost in an oversaturated intelligence environment. Today, the weak signals challenge is compounded by the growth of global data. To put the information age in perspective, the past decade has witnessed global data generation increase more than 30 times over, and data generation is projected to double again by 2025.9 Simply put, the signal-to-noise ratio is overwhelming intelligence detection capabilities, a challenge only made greater by adversaries who use increasingly sophisticated methods to conceal signals and introduce more noise into the system. Moreover, as historic analyses of intelligence failure often illuminate, even effective collection of the right signals does not always mean they are quickly and accurately recognized within the noise.10
Compounding the signal detection challenge for the IC is the emergence of many gray zone activities in areas that have traditionally not been a priority for intelligence collection or analysis, which this brief refers to as “unfamiliar signals.” Unfamiliar signals are difficult to identify because intelligence officers may not know what they are looking for or, if they do, they may not know what types of data and collection capture such activity. In the twenty-first century, increasing attention has rightfully been directed toward commercial remote sensors, social media, public records, and cyber forensics as sources of intelligence information. In the future, the diversity of potentially valuable data will continue to grow, led by further development of smart cities, the Internet of Things (IoT), smartphones, and other edge devices. Likewise, growing stockpiles of data will increasingly contain valuable information in the form of digital exhaust—the data generated as an unintentional byproduct of physical and digital activities and processes.
Open-Source Intelligence and the Gray Zone
The research in support of this brief reaffirmed the prior work of CSIS and many others regarding the value of commercial intelligence and other publicly available information (PAI) to the IC.11 Notably, CSIS recommended in January 2021 that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) undertake a robust, cross-functional evaluation of the open-source mission.12 Effective and mature adoption of OSINT is essential in the gray zone, where it offers two primary benefits.
First, OSINT can be a force multiplier. Increasingly sophisticated commercial OSINT capabilities can deliver unique insights, either by augmenting government-owned traditional collection in certain areas—such as geospatial intelligence—or by generating new insights through access to public records, local broadcast media, or other commercial data. Recent developments suggest there is an increasing interest within the IC and in Congress to explore shared commercial-government collection models, starting in the area of remote sensing.13 Second, that OSINT insights are not derived from sensitive sources and methods increases the information’s utility in efforts to confront malign adversarial behavior in real time. Narratives are a weapon in the gray zone, and OSINT can deliver the most ready and useable ammunition.
Despite its promises, numerous policy and legal implications will need to be addressed to ensure that the IC embraces OSINT responsibly and in a manner that protects the civil liberties and privacy of U.S. persons.14 The introduction of comprehensive, actionable recommendations to this specific challenge is outside the scope of this brief, however, it is important to note that OSINT has long been an essential (if often overlooked) aspect of the IC mission.15 The most significant policy and legal challenges relate to how and when the IC can purchase and exploit bulk commercial data at scale in a way that does not impinge on U.S. constitutional rights or violate conventions such as the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). However, there are a myriad of lower-risk OSINT applications that could be prioritized as more comprehensive policy and legal guidance is developed to govern bulk commercial data. Responsibly embracing OSINT at scale is essential for intelligence success in gray zone, and its development will require close partnership and open dialogue between the executive branch, private sector, Congress, international allies, and the public.
In addition to introducing unprecedented volumes and new sources of data into the intelligence picture, emerging technologies also challenge the traditional role of intelligence services as the premier authority on threat detection. From commercial cloud computing to private satellites, increasingly affordable and accessible technologies are radically eroding nation-state monopolies on information collection in the space, air, sea, ground, and cyber domains. In this environment, intelligence agencies are increasingly challenged to partner with commercial entities that may have unique insights and access to valuable intelligence. At the same time, intelligence agencies must work with commercial partners who possess technologies that can be exploited by adversaries to advance gray zone strategies. In some cases, these two entities—commercial sources of intelligence and targets for gray zone activity—are one and the same. Nowhere is this clearer than on social media platforms, where adversaries both often reveal valuable intelligence and conduct operations to spread disinformation and sow discord16. Failure to properly partner with social media and other commercial technology firms will continue to create collection (and in turn detection) gaps as new technologies democratize the generation, collection, and analysis of information. In addition to these new technological partnerships, confronting the loss of the monopoly on information and threat detection will require cultural changes within intelligence agencies—a distinct challenge in and of itself.18
The ability of intelligence agencies to uncover gray zone threats is also challenged by misalignment between the transnational capabilities of modern technologies and long-standing legal delineations of the authorities of various IC components. Designed to protect the civil liberties of U.S. citizens, such legal gaps are today deliberately exploited by sophisticated gray zone operations to avoid detection by U.S. intelligence services. For example, the foreign cyberattacks that made headlines in late 2020 and early 2021 were actually each launched from computers leased in the United States, therefore limiting the legal authority of various IC agencies to monitor and detect the now “domestic” malign activity.18 Navigating the legal, policy, and civil liberties implications of this challenge and developing actionable solutions to address it is beyond the scope of this project, but it is an issue of continued concern for both intelligence officials and lawmakers.19
Failure to properly partner with social media and other commercial technology firms will continue to create collection (and in turn detection) gaps as new technologies democratize the generation, collection, and analysis of information.
Finally, perhaps the most fundamental challenge to detecting gray zone threats is a matter of terminology. As already considered, the term “gray zone” encompasses an exceptionally broad spectrum of activities, ranging from the outright brazen to the indistinguishable. A variety of interchangeable terms are frequently used to characterize these activities, including “irregular warfare,” “hybrid threats,” or simply “strategic competition.” Individual threat vectors within this broader landscape also suffer from diverse and often inconsistent terminology, most notably in efforts to describe and assess disinformation and covert influence campaigns. Without a clear and consistent vocabulary for describing both the gray zone and the activities conducted within it, efforts to develop collection requirements and comparatively assess activities will be severely limited. To prepare for a modern security environment characterized by blurred lines, clarity could be the ultimate intelligence asset.
The Understanding Challenge
Gray zone strategies are designed to frustrate efforts to clearly understand the true nature of threats. Even when a threat has been detected, attribution—both in identifying the responsible actor and articulating the degree of danger posed by the activity—is often accompanied by varying levels of uncertainty. Uncertainty becomes a particularly acute challenge on the low end of the gray zone spectrum, where attribution with any level of certainty may be difficult or even impossible. For example, during the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Russia employed actors in Nigeria and Ghana to sow political discord on social media.18 Such an approach illustrates the multifaceted challenge of attribution, as Russia leveraged multiple cut-outs and proxies to advance this one specific activity within a broader campaign of election interference. On the high end of the gray zone spectrum, attribution may be easier, but initial confusion and uncertainty can last long enough to undermine potential response options. When “little green men” led the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, confusion surrounding events on the ground provided enough cover for the Kremlin to achieve its goals fait accompli.19 Moreover, because gray zone activities are designed to obscure the actors involved, a known activity may only be understood as a threat when extra effort has been expended on attribution.
In addition to attribution, intelligence understanding in the gray zone requires proper aggregation of diverse, multidomain activities. This is particularly challenging in the hazy domains of economic influence, information operations, and other political, diplomatic, or commercial activities that defy easy categorization or clear connection to a known campaign of malign behavior. In some cases, the connection to malign behavior can only be understood in retrospect, when it becomes apparent that certain activities previously understood as routine were early steps in shaping later gray zone activity. If the gray zone is an arena for actors to employ “salami tactics” to gradually achieve their ends, efforts to understand them grow increasingly complex the thinner the salami is sliced.22
Aggregation is also necessary in situations where gray zone activity is knowingly malign. For example, Russian strategy is today a laboratory for gray zone techniques. From its annexation of Crimea in 2014 to its influence and cyber operations during the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections to its use of private military companies in Africa today, Russia expertly exploits the gray zone to maintain plausible deniability and successfully deter responses.23
To view these Russian activities in isolation is both a natural inclination for analysis and a deeply harmful one. This approach is supported by conventional metrics that suggest Russia should be a power on the decline. Russia accounts for less than 2 percent of global GDP, its population is both aging and shrinking rapidly, and despite its nuclear arms, Russia’s military is little match for the likes of the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).24 Nonetheless, successful territorial grabs, the degradation of the social and political fabric of its perceived adversaries, and new economic gains represent quite the opposite of a declining power. In this way, detecting and attributing malign activity is not enough. It is only when gray zone activities are considered in the aggregate that a more accurate understanding of the overall threat emerges.
If the gray zone is an arena for actors to employ “salami tactics” to gradually achieve their ends, efforts to understand them grow increasingly complex the thinner the salami is sliced.
Proper intelligence understanding in the gray zone is necessary for two purposes. For one, it grows the base of knowledge surrounding an adversary’s strategy and decisionmaking. This can facilitate the production of more complex forms of analysis, such as identifying where on the gray zone spectrum an adversary’s actions sit or determining longer-term predictions, risks, and opportunities. Second, an understanding of broader gray zone strategy can be translated into compelling and coherent narratives that can be used to call out and publicly counter an actor’s gray zone strategy.25 As a recent memo signed by nine combatant commanders noted, campaigning in the gray zone requires timely and publicly usable facts to cut through the ambiguity and confusion intentionally created by adversaries.26
Understanding the gray zone requires timely and accurate detection, but in order to detect, intelligence services must know what to look for and where to look. In this way, detection and understanding are not just cyclical, they must constantly and simultaneously inform one another. They must also remain balanced. Efforts that overemphasize observing indicators over time could lead to a warning failure. Even if detected, by the time a threat is fully understood, an adversary may have already successfully achieved their objective. Conversely, approaches that start with a poorly informed understanding of an adversary’s intentions have their own problems. As others have written, the planning and decisionmaking processes of hostile governments are often opaque.27 Without sufficient understanding of what an adversary wants to achieve and how they plan to achieve it, detection efforts can descend into an exercise in cherry-picking that does little to advance credible warning. Seamlessly integrating efforts to detect and understand gray zone behavior, and building an effective feedback loop between these lines of effort, is essential.
Recommendations
The following recommendations are intended to accelerate and integrate the intelligence functions of detection and understanding. They progress from tactical-level improvements that expand intelligence access to diverse data, tools, and analysis to broader structural and cultural improvements that rethink how intelligence agencies assess behavior, manage uncertainty, and communicate judgements in support of gray zone policy. Importantly, although technology is central to many of the following recommendations, its effective incorporation will depend on creating the right cultural and organizational conditions that enable the IC’s people to leverage technology as they develop thoughtful strategic analysis.
- ODNI should sponsor an IC-wide, collaborative OSINT data catalog.
- An important step in facilitating broader knowledge sharing and awareness of non-traditional collection opportunities should be the creation of an IC-wide, collaborative OSINT data catalog. Robust cataloging tools that organize and facilitate discovery of an organization’s data accesses and holdings are essential to any data-driven organization. Finding ways to widely distribute knowledge of new, emerging, and unique OSINT data sets could significantly advance efforts to contend with the challenges of weak and unfamiliar signals. ODNI should endorse and sponsor ongoing efforts to improve data curation, discovery, and interoperability and further extend these efforts into the OSINT arena.
- Such a catalog could serve as a centralized warehouse of open-source data sets at the functional, country, regional, and global levels. OSINT information, like all intelligence information, is subject to varying levels of quality, reliability, and timeliness. Historically, analysis of foreign broadcast media outlets—their ownership, structure, relationships with political parties, and other information about objectivity and reliability—has been crucial to the OSINT discipline.28 Expanding similar collaborative and qualitative analysis of data across public records, economic indicators, social media, remote sensors, and other available OSINT streams can deliver an essential source of knowledge in seeking out data sets that can be used to monitor for indicators of malign behavior.
- The collaborative aspect of this catalog is essential. In conducting this project, CSIS interviewed several experts in data management and analysis. These discussions underscored the importance of continuous reevaluation of data structure, timeliness, reliability, and security, which are each subject to change over time. To illustrate, the availability and utility of public records about business incorporations or economic indicators may vary substantially from one country to another. This is dependent on factors such as a country’s legal requirements, transparency regulations, and the frequency with which such data is made available. If an analyst is monitoring for certain economic indicators across multiple countries, it is essential to understand how such behavior could manifest differently depending on what data is available, where it is generated, how it is captured, and who has access to it. In sum, to be secure and useful, open-source data must be thoroughly and continuously contextualized. This data contextualization can emerge from multiple sources, including forward-deployed, in-country personnel familiar with the host government and culture as well as headquarters analysts responsible for conducting strategic-level analysis.
- Ultimately, implementation of this recommendation would help transform the OSINT mission into an IC-wide “team sport.” Unlike other intelligence disciplines or specific lines of collection, no single agency owns OSINT. The information is, by definition, generated and maintained outside of the direct ownership or oversight of any IC entity. Therefore, OSINT is a discipline uniquely suited to catalyze widespread interagency collaboration on how different data can contribute to broader collection and analysis across functional and geographical portfolios.
- All IC components should expand efforts to deploy low-code and no-code data analytic capabilities.
- Embracing the need to monitor ever increasing volumes and types of data in search of weak or unfamiliar signals will require advanced machine analytics. Effective adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) is already a priority for the IC, and comprehensive visions for success of this kind have been proposed by CSIS, the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI), and the Department of Defense (DOD).29 One of the most significant ongoing developments in this area is the emergence of low-code and no-code (LC/NC) analytic tools that enable non-technical personnel to create solutions to mission-specific bulk data challenges.
- A useful application for LC/NC tools in the gray zone is the development and training of various change detection models that rely on diverse geospatial or other remote sensing data, either monitoring for changes in a single geographic area or a pattern of behavior on a global scale.
- Autonomy over how these tools are trained to alert users to potential changes in a pattern can allow subject-matter experts more flexibility in determining thresholds and risk tolerances for their specific mission. For example, a model may need to cue when a specified number of sea vessels enter a geofenced area for an established period. Another may be deployed into a specific area of interest to act as a persistent sensor monitoring for certain open-source information, whether it is on broadcast media, social media, or in public records. In some use cases, the risk tolerance will be zero and low threshold alerts will need to be enabled so all responsive hits are carefully reviewed. In other cases, risk tolerances may be higher and alerts only generated when a model has a high degree of confidence. In either case, the real-time ability to adjust these thresholds based on environmental expertise delivers significant benefit and utility to the mission user, regardless of technical prowess.
- Importantly, access to these capabilities will reduce the demand on highly skilled but overcommitted computer and data scientists within the IC and simultaneously deliver flexibility to mission teams to develop tools finely tuned to their goals.
- ODNI should test and evaluate gray zone behavior-modeling capabilities.
- ODNI, working through the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA), should explore options to test and evaluate machine analytic capabilities that can conduct complex forms of pattern and behavior analysis. While traditional change-detection AI/ML models are capable of cuing analysts to changes according to known indicators, more complex behavior models may help discover new patterns of gray zone activity.
- Benefiting from deep learning techniques and human oversight, these models can be continuously optimized to survey available data globally for patterns of potentially similar behavior. These modeling approaches are common in the fields of cybersecurity and financial intelligence. For example, algorithms to detect financial fraud are trained to continuously monitor for suspicious financial transactions around the globe and adjust to known or suspected changes in the signatures and techniques of those engaged in illicit finance.30 Similarly, cybersecurity efforts to develop and train models to detect unknown, undefined zero-day exploits could be expanded into the broader domain of interstate security competition.
- ODNI should continue exploring methods to incorporate diverse perspectives into forecasting and warning.
- The IC should reinvigorate efforts to incorporate a broader range of perspectives into forecasting and warning efforts. The U.S. IC has evaluated various geopolitical prediction and forecasting platforms for more than 20 years, according to a recent study on the topic by the University of Pennsylvania.31 More recently, IARPA explored innovative approaches to forecasting and warning.32 However, the concept is most mature within the United Kingdom through its platform Cosmic Bazaar, which integrates forecasting predictions from a wide range of government and trusted non-government experts.33
- Despite mixed success in fielding these platforms over the past 20 years, their promise will only grow as the IC’s monopoly on information continues its decline. If there is consensus that OSINT will be a disruptor and an asset in adapting to this era of interstate security competition, the analysis and insights of experts from across and outside of the IC who are conducting unique and innovative exploitation of this data will be essential. As information is democratized, analysis of it must as well.
- ODNI should develop uniform gray zone terminology.
- One of the most significant conceptual challenges in the gray zone is a lack of standardized taxonomy of specific categories and types of behaviors. From this issue extend numerous collection, analysis, and warning problems, as inconsistent approaches to capturing and categorizing gray zone activities undermine efforts to identify, aggregate, and measure such activity against objective, consistent methodology. To strengthen the IC’s ability to detect and understand gray zone activities, ODNI—working through the deputy director of national intelligence for mission integration—should explore options to categorize types of gray zone behavior. Such an effort could align with existing ODNI processes governing the creation of collection and analysis priorities under the National Intelligence Priorities Framework, which could serve as a vehicle for integrating standardized gray zone terminology across all intelligence priorities and requirements.34
- A gray zone lingua franca will serve multiple purposes, including guiding what to collect in the gray zone and how to characterize and measure an activity’s threat level. Intelligence agencies then need to build upon this framework and evaluate new techniques to deliver effective intelligence information, judgments, and warning that can minimize the risks of intelligence failure. This proposal carries similarities to the successful development and broad acceptance of the MITRE ATT&CK framework as the standard lexicon for capturing and describing the exceptionally diverse—and continuously evolving—range of computer network intrusion techniques.35
- To develop coherent strategy, analytic consistency, and a common jargon between intelligence and policy stakeholders, ODNI should also partner with international allies to promote a common lexicon of gray zone activities across the various domains in which they can emerge. The ability to apply common terminology across actors, regions, and activities would assist technical efforts to develop models that can detect new or unexpected patterns of behavior globally.
- Finally, the gray zone is a complex system of systems, where opportunistic adversaries are exploiting vulnerabilities when they arise, learning from each other’s behavior, and constantly adapting techniques in response to detection. As such, efforts to define, categorize, or model gray zone behavior must balance the need to create structure against a constantly evolving field of activity.
The Imperative of Digital Transformation
Robust analysis of the technology, policy, and cultural challenges facing the IC is reflected in existing work by CSIS, the NSCAI, the U.S. IC, and the DOD.35 Core recommendations within these studies frequently include the need to develop policies and architecture to facilitate trusted data sharing, discovery, and interoperability. These are essential preconditions for realizing the promises of emerging technologies. Indeed, achieving intelligence success in the gray zone will be heavily dependent on a broader digital transformation effort across the U.S. national security community.
In early 2021, the DOD issued new guidance in the form of “data decrees” reflecting the principles upon which a more open, collaborative, and data-driven organization could be built.36 Success against any type of threat in the information age—including gray zone behavior—requires this transformation. Instead of restating in detail the myriad of thoughtful recommendations that have already been made on the topic of data management and data sharing, this study’s technical proposals build upon the baseline assumption of a need for digital transformation to extend into specific applications of this transformation for gray zone intelligence analysis.
- Pilot new constructs that promote intelligence-policy collaboration at lower levels of authority.
- Ultimately, it is the duty of intelligence to deliver timely and accurate insights to decisionmakers who translate that analysis into strategy and policy. Even though these are justifiably separate functions—and retaining distinctions between intelligence and policy remains essential—the process of turning warning into decision is a shared responsibility. As Roberta Wohlstetter observed when dissecting intelligence failures at Pearl Harbor in 1941 and Cuba in 1962, “The problem of warning is inseparable from the problem of decision.”38
- Balancing the challenges of managing uncertainty and warning in the gray zone requires new paradigms to facilitate interaction between intelligence officers and policymakers. An important element of this reimagination should be the development of ad hoc working groups comprised of mid-level intelligence officers and policymakers. These groups should be charged with working through specific and particularly tricky gray zone issues, with a focus on better facilitating that “inseparable” relationship between warning and decision. These working groups could serve as an essential element of broader efforts to understand difficult strategic challenges, enabling the cross-pollination of intelligence information with policy insights in an open, collaborative, and non-competitive environment.
- This approach is intended to overcome several of the structural and psychological failings that can occur within existing interagency processes. In particular—as described in exceptional detail by Morton Halperin, Priscilla Clapp, and Arnold Kanter—intelligence agencies have historically sought to avert warning failure, in many cases by predicting crises continually.39 This “hedging” has tended to erode trust between intelligence and policy over time, particularly because, as Joseph de Rivera wrote, “false leads swamp the information channels” at higher and higher levels of leadership.40 According to de Rivera, information “filters” in these cases may be at the wrong place in the system and “persons nearer the source of intelligence might be better judges of the accuracy and importance of information.”41
- Moving more filters into these working groups would enable intelligence officers and policymakers to work through various indications and warning issues below the senior official level. Such an approach could avoid the primary shortcomings that Halperin, Clapp, Kanter, and de Rivera highlighted, namely that opportunities to deliver key intelligence analysis in support of policymaker decisions can be infrequent or subject to bias, resulting in warning fatigue, intelligence failure, or politicization. By delegating discussions about intelligence and policy issues to lower levels, the process of evaluating timeliness and credibility—and setting thresholds for when higher-level warning or policy decisions need to be delivered—can be a shared and more informed decision between intelligence and policy stakeholders.
- While this function has significant overlap with the interagency process led by National Security Council (NSC), there is utility in retaining the proposed working groups as informal, potentially leaderless units outside of that traditional construct. In addition to serving as a platform for ad hoc, informal collaboration, these groups will need continuity. Convening them outside of the cyclical reconstitution of an institution such as the NSC can support efforts to continue aggregating and tracking gray zone behaviors over time. The establishment of groups that can sustain efforts across administrations could ameliorate the reality that, in the words of Michael Mazarr, the United States is “constitutionally challenged in its ability to sustain coherent long-term efforts.”42 Over time, if such approaches prove valuable, they should also be expanded to include close allies and partners.
- Finally, it is important to note that these groups should not become dedicated organizational components. Their greatest value is in convening experts from across government who maintain deep subject-matter knowledge and broad insights into how their home agency can contribute to broader efforts to understand and mitigate threats.
Conclusion
As in any case of institutional modernization, implementing the intelligence reforms proposed in this brief will require the right combination of incentives, training, and leadership to be successful. They are also heavily dependent on successful broader efforts to transform the IC’s technology and culture. This requires, as previous CSIS studies have advocated, the prioritization of continued and urgent efforts to empower and incentivize innovation.43 It also requires that leaders sustain efforts to recruit, train, and retain diverse, digitally literate intelligence officers who can inject new techniques, perspectives, and expertise into the IC.
Rededicating intelligence agencies to the pursuit of meaning in complexity will be difficult without also making fundamental changes in the ways that intelligence and policy stakeholders broadly interact. Maintaining relevance to policy is one of the age-old dilemmas for intelligence agencies, and current intelligence has long been the primary mechanism through which the IC communicates with policymakers. However, as a recent MITRE study noted, “Today’s current intelligence is neither current nor of sufficient quality to support its intended purpose.”44 Writing as far back as 2005, Gregory Treverton caricatured the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) as “CNN plus secrets” and lamented that biases toward current intelligence drove the IC toward an emphasis on “reporting” rather than “in-depth analysis.”45
The long-standing emphasis on current intelligence has normalized an expectation that indicators, tracked and collated over time, can be analyzed, packaged, and delivered as warning. However, as Cynthia Grabo wrote in her book Anticipating Surprise, “Warning does not emerge from a compilation of facts.”46 Capturing the nuance of gray zone threats in particular requires a shift in intelligence toward more complex, long-term, and strategic-level analysis. That is not to suggest policymakers should be deprived of current intelligence. On the contrary, as the IC assesses the numerous ways that emerging technologies and commercial intelligence can advance its mission, the area of current intelligence is one of the most promising. Machine learning capabilities powered by natural language processing carry the potential to conduct low-risk tasks, such as combing through open-source and classified information and compiling situation reports for executive readers to remain informed during crises. Indeed, intelligence officers less consumed by such efforts to compete with the news cycle can dedicate more time to the complex analysis policymakers need.
Approaching its 50th birthday, Grabo’s book remains prescient about the fundamentals of the intelligence discipline, but it was framed in the context of a world very different from today’s. Similar thinking needs to be dedicated to adapting the traditional “hard” intelligence disciplines for the digital age. In particular, the IC must be prepared to manage and effectively communicate the complexity of modern denial and deception. As the National Intelligence Council recently highlighted in its quadrennial Global Trends report, the IC will need to navigate a world where denial, deception, and disinformation is “fueled by AI, synthetic data, and deep fakes.”47
When recently asked to opine on the biggest threat in this era of gray zone conflict, British chief of defense staff General Sir Nick Carter was blunt: “Miscalculation.”48 In the modern gray zone, uncertainty permeates decisionmaking and the stakes can be incredibly high. The development and implementation of appropriate and effective strategies to confront malign behavior amid deep uncertainty and with constant risk of miscalculation and escalation will heavily depend on modernizing the ways that intelligence is collected, analyzed, and delivered to decisionmakers.
Jake Harrington is an intelligence fellow with the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Riley McCabe is a research assistant with the CSIS International Security Program.
This brief is made possible by support from Thomson Reuters Special Services.
CSIS Briefs are produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s).
© 2021 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. All rights reserved.
Please consult the PDF for references.
csis.org · by Intelligence Fellow, International Security Program · December 13, 2021
22. Detect and Understand: Modernizing Intelligence for the Gray Zone
Detect and Understand: Modernizing Intelligence for the Gray Zone
WRITTEN BY
Intelligence Fellow, International Security Program
Research Assistant, International Security Program
csis.org · by Intelligence Fellow, International Security Program · December 13, 2021
CSIS Briefs
December 7, 2021
All err the more dangerously, as they each follow a truth. Their fault is not in following a falsehood, but in not following another truth. – Blaise Pascal1
The Issue
In the gray zone—the contested space between routine statecraft and conventional warfare—uncertainty permeates decisionmaking. Seeking to avoid escalation, aggressors design gray zone activities to evade detection or to frustrate intelligence efforts to attribute blame, quantify risk, and inform decisive responses. In this security environment, intelligence success will require seamless and simultaneous feedback between efforts to identify malign gray zone activities and to contextualize them within a broader analysis of an actor’s intentions and strategy. This brief’s recommended intelligence reforms—focused on a series of technological, organizational, and cultural advancements—are ultimately intended to accelerate efforts to integrate and synchronize a real-time interaction between detection and understanding of gray zone threats.
Introduction
Discerning knowable truths amid obfuscation, misdirection, and outright lies is a fundamental mission of intelligence. Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Allen Dulles held this notion so deeply that he insisted that a biblical exhortation to pursue the truth be carved in stone in the CIA’s lobby. Unfortunately, the challenge—as Pascal mused 300 years prior to the construction of the CIA’s Original Headquarters Building—is that global politics are conducted in a world riven with multiple “truths.”2 This was a constant of the Cold War, when competing narratives informed an era of great power competition. And the same is true today, when interstate competition once again defines a security landscape muddled by ambiguity, confusion, and deception.
There is a rich body of literature describing how the modern era of competition will be dominated by actors advancing their interests via malign activities in the so-called “gray zone” between peace and war.3 These studies have analyzed the specific ways that actors such as China, Russia, Iran, and others operate below the threshold of conventional war and mix political, economic, information, and military tools to increase their global legitimacy and advance their interests at the expense of the United States and its allies.4 Since the height of the Cold War, the fields of coercion, bargaining, and deterrence have studied why actors pursue these strategies; namely it is to achieve limited goals without incurring the risk of escalation into a costly and potentially devastating war.5
This study extends the existing body of research on the gray zone further into the specific areas of intelligence collection and analysis. It offers a range of recommendations to improve the ability of U.S. intelligence services to confront the gray zone challenges of modern interstate security competition. In support of this effort, CSIS researchers undertook a six-month project that set out to answer the following three questions:
- How do gray zone threats challenge the ability of intelligence planners, collectors, and analysts to deliver timely and accurate analysis and warning?
- How can emerging technologies augment the detection and analysis of gray zone activity?
- What changes across the areas of collection, analysis, and organizational structure could improve the U.S. intelligence community’s (IC) ability to identify, assess, and warn of threats in the gray zone?
To answer these questions, CSIS interviewed dozens of government, academic, and technology experts in the United States and the United Kingdom, conducted a robust literature review, and convened an expert workshop in September 2021 to review preliminary recommendations and further explore the overarching research questions. The research team extends its most sincere thanks to the individuals who contributed to this work. This brief’s recommendations to advance intelligence in the gray zone are a testament to their expertise and insights.
The findings and recommendations generated during this project coalesced around the dynamic between two fundamental intelligence functions, which this brief refers to as “detect” and “understand.” Intelligence success in the gray zone requires seamless and simultaneous feedback between efforts to identify malign gray zone activities (detect) and to contextualize them within a broader analysis of an actor’s intentions and strategy (understand). This brief’s recommended intelligence reforms—focused on a series of technological, cultural, and organizational modernizations—are ultimately intended to accelerate efforts to integrate and synchronize a real-time interaction between detection and understanding of gray zone threats.
The first section of this brief articulates how these pillars of the intelligence mission, which will not change in the gray zone, are being uniquely stressed today. In response to these challenges, the second section then introduces a series of recommendations where the IC can leverage the promises of emerging technology to succeed in the gray zone. This includes building and adopting new platforms to maximize opportunities to exploit increasingly diverse data and expertise, particularly in the rapidly evolving area of open-source intelligence (OSINT). Technology, however, can only serve as an enabler amid broader efforts to modernize intelligence collection and analysis to contend with gray zone challenges. The second section of this brief therefore concludes with additional recommendations to better prepare intelligence officers to process complexity, manage uncertainty, and communicate insights to decisionmakers. While the recommendations included in this brief are directed toward the U.S. IC, the noted challenges and potential solutions are applicable to other intelligence services, particularly members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance.
Defining the Gray Zone
Informed by previous works, this brief defines the gray zone as the contested space that lies between routine statecraft and conventional warfare.6 Importantly, gray zone strategies have two interconnected characteristics: (1) they are intended to shift the balance of power in the aggressor’s favor, and (2) they are designed to pursue this goal by avoiding, blurring, or circumventing redlines and escalation to conventional warfare.
One of the most significant research challenges during this project was the problem of discerning between routine interstate security competition and the subset of competitive activities that comprise the low end of gray zone activity. Ultimately, this study found that, from an intelligence perspective, there is little utility in differentiating between the concepts of “strategic competition” and the “gray zone.” While the gray zone may carry continued importance in broader efforts to assess interstate behavior across the peace-war continuum, intelligence efforts to detect early signs of malign behavior will need to extend into the arena of routine statecraft, since diplomatic, economic, commercial, or other tools are often components of an actor’s broader gray zone strategy.
Intelligence Challenges in the Gray Zone
Seeking to avoid escalation, aggressors design gray zone activities to evade detection outright or to frustrate intelligence efforts to attribute blame, quantify risk, and inform decisive responses. Often, gray zone activities will partner age-old techniques, such as influence campaigns, with modern technologies that enable actors to carry out their activities in secret. Likewise, aggressors also pursue operations that exploit seams where intelligence agencies do not or cannot look.7 And even when detected, gray zone operations intentionally create ambiguity and confusion to limit the ability of intelligence services to attribute responsibility, aggregate behavior, and develop a coherent understanding of an aggressor’s strategy. This section examines the ways in which intelligence efforts to detect and understand threats are uniquely challenged in the gray zone. It also emphasizes how, in the gray zone, these two efforts cannot be organized as sequential activities but must be seamlessly and continuously integrated.
The Detection Challenge
Malign activities in the gray zone are often transmitted via “weak signals.”8 Weak signals challenge intelligence efforts because they can materialize under the guise of normal political, economic, or diplomatic behavior or because they simply do not register at all, lost in an oversaturated intelligence environment. Today, the weak signals challenge is compounded by the growth of global data. To put the information age in perspective, the past decade has witnessed global data generation increase more than 30 times over, and data generation is projected to double again by 2025.9 Simply put, the signal-to-noise ratio is overwhelming intelligence detection capabilities, a challenge only made greater by adversaries who use increasingly sophisticated methods to conceal signals and introduce more noise into the system. Moreover, as historic analyses of intelligence failure often illuminate, even effective collection of the right signals does not always mean they are quickly and accurately recognized within the noise.10
Compounding the signal detection challenge for the IC is the emergence of many gray zone activities in areas that have traditionally not been a priority for intelligence collection or analysis, which this brief refers to as “unfamiliar signals.” Unfamiliar signals are difficult to identify because intelligence officers may not know what they are looking for or, if they do, they may not know what types of data and collection capture such activity. In the twenty-first century, increasing attention has rightfully been directed toward commercial remote sensors, social media, public records, and cyber forensics as sources of intelligence information. In the future, the diversity of potentially valuable data will continue to grow, led by further development of smart cities, the Internet of Things (IoT), smartphones, and other edge devices. Likewise, growing stockpiles of data will increasingly contain valuable information in the form of digital exhaust—the data generated as an unintentional byproduct of physical and digital activities and processes.
Open-Source Intelligence and the Gray Zone
The research in support of this brief reaffirmed the prior work of CSIS and many others regarding the value of commercial intelligence and other publicly available information (PAI) to the IC.11 Notably, CSIS recommended in January 2021 that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) undertake a robust, cross-functional evaluation of the open-source mission.12 Effective and mature adoption of OSINT is essential in the gray zone, where it offers two primary benefits.
First, OSINT can be a force multiplier. Increasingly sophisticated commercial OSINT capabilities can deliver unique insights, either by augmenting government-owned traditional collection in certain areas—such as geospatial intelligence—or by generating new insights through access to public records, local broadcast media, or other commercial data. Recent developments suggest there is an increasing interest within the IC and in Congress to explore shared commercial-government collection models, starting in the area of remote sensing.13 Second, that OSINT insights are not derived from sensitive sources and methods increases the information’s utility in efforts to confront malign adversarial behavior in real time. Narratives are a weapon in the gray zone, and OSINT can deliver the most ready and useable ammunition.
Despite its promises, numerous policy and legal implications will need to be addressed to ensure that the IC embraces OSINT responsibly and in a manner that protects the civil liberties and privacy of U.S. persons.14 The introduction of comprehensive, actionable recommendations to this specific challenge is outside the scope of this brief, however, it is important to note that OSINT has long been an essential (if often overlooked) aspect of the IC mission.15 The most significant policy and legal challenges relate to how and when the IC can purchase and exploit bulk commercial data at scale in a way that does not impinge on U.S. constitutional rights or violate conventions such as the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). However, there are a myriad of lower-risk OSINT applications that could be prioritized as more comprehensive policy and legal guidance is developed to govern bulk commercial data. Responsibly embracing OSINT at scale is essential for intelligence success in gray zone, and its development will require close partnership and open dialogue between the executive branch, private sector, Congress, international allies, and the public.
In addition to introducing unprecedented volumes and new sources of data into the intelligence picture, emerging technologies also challenge the traditional role of intelligence services as the premier authority on threat detection. From commercial cloud computing to private satellites, increasingly affordable and accessible technologies are radically eroding nation-state monopolies on information collection in the space, air, sea, ground, and cyber domains. In this environment, intelligence agencies are increasingly challenged to partner with commercial entities that may have unique insights and access to valuable intelligence. At the same time, intelligence agencies must work with commercial partners who possess technologies that can be exploited by adversaries to advance gray zone strategies. In some cases, these two entities—commercial sources of intelligence and targets for gray zone activity—are one and the same. Nowhere is this clearer than on social media platforms, where adversaries both often reveal valuable intelligence and conduct operations to spread disinformation and sow discord16. Failure to properly partner with social media and other commercial technology firms will continue to create collection (and in turn detection) gaps as new technologies democratize the generation, collection, and analysis of information. In addition to these new technological partnerships, confronting the loss of the monopoly on information and threat detection will require cultural changes within intelligence agencies—a distinct challenge in and of itself.18
The ability of intelligence agencies to uncover gray zone threats is also challenged by misalignment between the transnational capabilities of modern technologies and long-standing legal delineations of the authorities of various IC components. Designed to protect the civil liberties of U.S. citizens, such legal gaps are today deliberately exploited by sophisticated gray zone operations to avoid detection by U.S. intelligence services. For example, the foreign cyberattacks that made headlines in late 2020 and early 2021 were actually each launched from computers leased in the United States, therefore limiting the legal authority of various IC agencies to monitor and detect the now “domestic” malign activity.18 Navigating the legal, policy, and civil liberties implications of this challenge and developing actionable solutions to address it is beyond the scope of this project, but it is an issue of continued concern for both intelligence officials and lawmakers.19
Failure to properly partner with social media and other commercial technology firms will continue to create collection (and in turn detection) gaps as new technologies democratize the generation, collection, and analysis of information.
Finally, perhaps the most fundamental challenge to detecting gray zone threats is a matter of terminology. As already considered, the term “gray zone” encompasses an exceptionally broad spectrum of activities, ranging from the outright brazen to the indistinguishable. A variety of interchangeable terms are frequently used to characterize these activities, including “irregular warfare,” “hybrid threats,” or simply “strategic competition.” Individual threat vectors within this broader landscape also suffer from diverse and often inconsistent terminology, most notably in efforts to describe and assess disinformation and covert influence campaigns. Without a clear and consistent vocabulary for describing both the gray zone and the activities conducted within it, efforts to develop collection requirements and comparatively assess activities will be severely limited. To prepare for a modern security environment characterized by blurred lines, clarity could be the ultimate intelligence asset.
The Understanding Challenge
Gray zone strategies are designed to frustrate efforts to clearly understand the true nature of threats. Even when a threat has been detected, attribution—both in identifying the responsible actor and articulating the degree of danger posed by the activity—is often accompanied by varying levels of uncertainty. Uncertainty becomes a particularly acute challenge on the low end of the gray zone spectrum, where attribution with any level of certainty may be difficult or even impossible. For example, during the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Russia employed actors in Nigeria and Ghana to sow political discord on social media.18 Such an approach illustrates the multifaceted challenge of attribution, as Russia leveraged multiple cut-outs and proxies to advance this one specific activity within a broader campaign of election interference. On the high end of the gray zone spectrum, attribution may be easier, but initial confusion and uncertainty can last long enough to undermine potential response options. When “little green men” led the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, confusion surrounding events on the ground provided enough cover for the Kremlin to achieve its goals fait accompli.19 Moreover, because gray zone activities are designed to obscure the actors involved, a known activity may only be understood as a threat when extra effort has been expended on attribution.
In addition to attribution, intelligence understanding in the gray zone requires proper aggregation of diverse, multidomain activities. This is particularly challenging in the hazy domains of economic influence, information operations, and other political, diplomatic, or commercial activities that defy easy categorization or clear connection to a known campaign of malign behavior. In some cases, the connection to malign behavior can only be understood in retrospect, when it becomes apparent that certain activities previously understood as routine were early steps in shaping later gray zone activity. If the gray zone is an arena for actors to employ “salami tactics” to gradually achieve their ends, efforts to understand them grow increasingly complex the thinner the salami is sliced.22
Aggregation is also necessary in situations where gray zone activity is knowingly malign. For example, Russian strategy is today a laboratory for gray zone techniques. From its annexation of Crimea in 2014 to its influence and cyber operations during the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections to its use of private military companies in Africa today, Russia expertly exploits the gray zone to maintain plausible deniability and successfully deter responses.23
To view these Russian activities in isolation is both a natural inclination for analysis and a deeply harmful one. This approach is supported by conventional metrics that suggest Russia should be a power on the decline. Russia accounts for less than 2 percent of global GDP, its population is both aging and shrinking rapidly, and despite its nuclear arms, Russia’s military is little match for the likes of the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).24 Nonetheless, successful territorial grabs, the degradation of the social and political fabric of its perceived adversaries, and new economic gains represent quite the opposite of a declining power. In this way, detecting and attributing malign activity is not enough. It is only when gray zone activities are considered in the aggregate that a more accurate understanding of the overall threat emerges.
If the gray zone is an arena for actors to employ “salami tactics” to gradually achieve their ends, efforts to understand them grow increasingly complex the thinner the salami is sliced.
Proper intelligence understanding in the gray zone is necessary for two purposes. For one, it grows the base of knowledge surrounding an adversary’s strategy and decisionmaking. This can facilitate the production of more complex forms of analysis, such as identifying where on the gray zone spectrum an adversary’s actions sit or determining longer-term predictions, risks, and opportunities. Second, an understanding of broader gray zone strategy can be translated into compelling and coherent narratives that can be used to call out and publicly counter an actor’s gray zone strategy.25 As a recent memo signed by nine combatant commanders noted, campaigning in the gray zone requires timely and publicly usable facts to cut through the ambiguity and confusion intentionally created by adversaries.26
Understanding the gray zone requires timely and accurate detection, but in order to detect, intelligence services must know what to look for and where to look. In this way, detection and understanding are not just cyclical, they must constantly and simultaneously inform one another. They must also remain balanced. Efforts that overemphasize observing indicators over time could lead to a warning failure. Even if detected, by the time a threat is fully understood, an adversary may have already successfully achieved their objective. Conversely, approaches that start with a poorly informed understanding of an adversary’s intentions have their own problems. As others have written, the planning and decisionmaking processes of hostile governments are often opaque.27 Without sufficient understanding of what an adversary wants to achieve and how they plan to achieve it, detection efforts can descend into an exercise in cherry-picking that does little to advance credible warning. Seamlessly integrating efforts to detect and understand gray zone behavior, and building an effective feedback loop between these lines of effort, is essential.
Recommendations
The following recommendations are intended to accelerate and integrate the intelligence functions of detection and understanding. They progress from tactical-level improvements that expand intelligence access to diverse data, tools, and analysis to broader structural and cultural improvements that rethink how intelligence agencies assess behavior, manage uncertainty, and communicate judgements in support of gray zone policy. Importantly, although technology is central to many of the following recommendations, its effective incorporation will depend on creating the right cultural and organizational conditions that enable the IC’s people to leverage technology as they develop thoughtful strategic analysis.
- ODNI should sponsor an IC-wide, collaborative OSINT data catalog.
- An important step in facilitating broader knowledge sharing and awareness of non-traditional collection opportunities should be the creation of an IC-wide, collaborative OSINT data catalog. Robust cataloging tools that organize and facilitate discovery of an organization’s data accesses and holdings are essential to any data-driven organization. Finding ways to widely distribute knowledge of new, emerging, and unique OSINT data sets could significantly advance efforts to contend with the challenges of weak and unfamiliar signals. ODNI should endorse and sponsor ongoing efforts to improve data curation, discovery, and interoperability and further extend these efforts into the OSINT arena.
- Such a catalog could serve as a centralized warehouse of open-source data sets at the functional, country, regional, and global levels. OSINT information, like all intelligence information, is subject to varying levels of quality, reliability, and timeliness. Historically, analysis of foreign broadcast media outlets—their ownership, structure, relationships with political parties, and other information about objectivity and reliability—has been crucial to the OSINT discipline.28 Expanding similar collaborative and qualitative analysis of data across public records, economic indicators, social media, remote sensors, and other available OSINT streams can deliver an essential source of knowledge in seeking out data sets that can be used to monitor for indicators of malign behavior.
- The collaborative aspect of this catalog is essential. In conducting this project, CSIS interviewed several experts in data management and analysis. These discussions underscored the importance of continuous reevaluation of data structure, timeliness, reliability, and security, which are each subject to change over time. To illustrate, the availability and utility of public records about business incorporations or economic indicators may vary substantially from one country to another. This is dependent on factors such as a country’s legal requirements, transparency regulations, and the frequency with which such data is made available. If an analyst is monitoring for certain economic indicators across multiple countries, it is essential to understand how such behavior could manifest differently depending on what data is available, where it is generated, how it is captured, and who has access to it. In sum, to be secure and useful, open-source data must be thoroughly and continuously contextualized. This data contextualization can emerge from multiple sources, including forward-deployed, in-country personnel familiar with the host government and culture as well as headquarters analysts responsible for conducting strategic-level analysis.
- Ultimately, implementation of this recommendation would help transform the OSINT mission into an IC-wide “team sport.” Unlike other intelligence disciplines or specific lines of collection, no single agency owns OSINT. The information is, by definition, generated and maintained outside of the direct ownership or oversight of any IC entity. Therefore, OSINT is a discipline uniquely suited to catalyze widespread interagency collaboration on how different data can contribute to broader collection and analysis across functional and geographical portfolios.
- All IC components should expand efforts to deploy low-code and no-code data analytic capabilities.
- Embracing the need to monitor ever increasing volumes and types of data in search of weak or unfamiliar signals will require advanced machine analytics. Effective adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) is already a priority for the IC, and comprehensive visions for success of this kind have been proposed by CSIS, the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI), and the Department of Defense (DOD).29 One of the most significant ongoing developments in this area is the emergence of low-code and no-code (LC/NC) analytic tools that enable non-technical personnel to create solutions to mission-specific bulk data challenges.
- A useful application for LC/NC tools in the gray zone is the development and training of various change detection models that rely on diverse geospatial or other remote sensing data, either monitoring for changes in a single geographic area or a pattern of behavior on a global scale.
- Autonomy over how these tools are trained to alert users to potential changes in a pattern can allow subject-matter experts more flexibility in determining thresholds and risk tolerances for their specific mission. For example, a model may need to cue when a specified number of sea vessels enter a geofenced area for an established period. Another may be deployed into a specific area of interest to act as a persistent sensor monitoring for certain open-source information, whether it is on broadcast media, social media, or in public records. In some use cases, the risk tolerance will be zero and low threshold alerts will need to be enabled so all responsive hits are carefully reviewed. In other cases, risk tolerances may be higher and alerts only generated when a model has a high degree of confidence. In either case, the real-time ability to adjust these thresholds based on environmental expertise delivers significant benefit and utility to the mission user, regardless of technical prowess.
- Importantly, access to these capabilities will reduce the demand on highly skilled but overcommitted computer and data scientists within the IC and simultaneously deliver flexibility to mission teams to develop tools finely tuned to their goals.
- ODNI should test and evaluate gray zone behavior-modeling capabilities.
- ODNI, working through the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA), should explore options to test and evaluate machine analytic capabilities that can conduct complex forms of pattern and behavior analysis. While traditional change-detection AI/ML models are capable of cuing analysts to changes according to known indicators, more complex behavior models may help discover new patterns of gray zone activity.
- Benefiting from deep learning techniques and human oversight, these models can be continuously optimized to survey available data globally for patterns of potentially similar behavior. These modeling approaches are common in the fields of cybersecurity and financial intelligence. For example, algorithms to detect financial fraud are trained to continuously monitor for suspicious financial transactions around the globe and adjust to known or suspected changes in the signatures and techniques of those engaged in illicit finance.30 Similarly, cybersecurity efforts to develop and train models to detect unknown, undefined zero-day exploits could be expanded into the broader domain of interstate security competition.
- ODNI should continue exploring methods to incorporate diverse perspectives into forecasting and warning.
- The IC should reinvigorate efforts to incorporate a broader range of perspectives into forecasting and warning efforts. The U.S. IC has evaluated various geopolitical prediction and forecasting platforms for more than 20 years, according to a recent study on the topic by the University of Pennsylvania.31 More recently, IARPA explored innovative approaches to forecasting and warning.32 However, the concept is most mature within the United Kingdom through its platform Cosmic Bazaar, which integrates forecasting predictions from a wide range of government and trusted non-government experts.33
- Despite mixed success in fielding these platforms over the past 20 years, their promise will only grow as the IC’s monopoly on information continues its decline. If there is consensus that OSINT will be a disruptor and an asset in adapting to this era of interstate security competition, the analysis and insights of experts from across and outside of the IC who are conducting unique and innovative exploitation of this data will be essential. As information is democratized, analysis of it must as well.
- ODNI should develop uniform gray zone terminology.
- One of the most significant conceptual challenges in the gray zone is a lack of standardized taxonomy of specific categories and types of behaviors. From this issue extend numerous collection, analysis, and warning problems, as inconsistent approaches to capturing and categorizing gray zone activities undermine efforts to identify, aggregate, and measure such activity against objective, consistent methodology. To strengthen the IC’s ability to detect and understand gray zone activities, ODNI—working through the deputy director of national intelligence for mission integration—should explore options to categorize types of gray zone behavior. Such an effort could align with existing ODNI processes governing the creation of collection and analysis priorities under the National Intelligence Priorities Framework, which could serve as a vehicle for integrating standardized gray zone terminology across all intelligence priorities and requirements.34
- A gray zone lingua franca will serve multiple purposes, including guiding what to collect in the gray zone and how to characterize and measure an activity’s threat level. Intelligence agencies then need to build upon this framework and evaluate new techniques to deliver effective intelligence information, judgments, and warning that can minimize the risks of intelligence failure. This proposal carries similarities to the successful development and broad acceptance of the MITRE ATT&CK framework as the standard lexicon for capturing and describing the exceptionally diverse—and continuously evolving—range of computer network intrusion techniques.35
- To develop coherent strategy, analytic consistency, and a common jargon between intelligence and policy stakeholders, ODNI should also partner with international allies to promote a common lexicon of gray zone activities across the various domains in which they can emerge. The ability to apply common terminology across actors, regions, and activities would assist technical efforts to develop models that can detect new or unexpected patterns of behavior globally.
- Finally, the gray zone is a complex system of systems, where opportunistic adversaries are exploiting vulnerabilities when they arise, learning from each other’s behavior, and constantly adapting techniques in response to detection. As such, efforts to define, categorize, or model gray zone behavior must balance the need to create structure against a constantly evolving field of activity.
The Imperative of Digital Transformation
Robust analysis of the technology, policy, and cultural challenges facing the IC is reflected in existing work by CSIS, the NSCAI, the U.S. IC, and the DOD.35 Core recommendations within these studies frequently include the need to develop policies and architecture to facilitate trusted data sharing, discovery, and interoperability. These are essential preconditions for realizing the promises of emerging technologies. Indeed, achieving intelligence success in the gray zone will be heavily dependent on a broader digital transformation effort across the U.S. national security community.
In early 2021, the DOD issued new guidance in the form of “data decrees” reflecting the principles upon which a more open, collaborative, and data-driven organization could be built.36 Success against any type of threat in the information age—including gray zone behavior—requires this transformation. Instead of restating in detail the myriad of thoughtful recommendations that have already been made on the topic of data management and data sharing, this study’s technical proposals build upon the baseline assumption of a need for digital transformation to extend into specific applications of this transformation for gray zone intelligence analysis.
- Pilot new constructs that promote intelligence-policy collaboration at lower levels of authority.
- Ultimately, it is the duty of intelligence to deliver timely and accurate insights to decisionmakers who translate that analysis into strategy and policy. Even though these are justifiably separate functions—and retaining distinctions between intelligence and policy remains essential—the process of turning warning into decision is a shared responsibility. As Roberta Wohlstetter observed when dissecting intelligence failures at Pearl Harbor in 1941 and Cuba in 1962, “The problem of warning is inseparable from the problem of decision.”38
- Balancing the challenges of managing uncertainty and warning in the gray zone requires new paradigms to facilitate interaction between intelligence officers and policymakers. An important element of this reimagination should be the development of ad hoc working groups comprised of mid-level intelligence officers and policymakers. These groups should be charged with working through specific and particularly tricky gray zone issues, with a focus on better facilitating that “inseparable” relationship between warning and decision. These working groups could serve as an essential element of broader efforts to understand difficult strategic challenges, enabling the cross-pollination of intelligence information with policy insights in an open, collaborative, and non-competitive environment.
- This approach is intended to overcome several of the structural and psychological failings that can occur within existing interagency processes. In particular—as described in exceptional detail by Morton Halperin, Priscilla Clapp, and Arnold Kanter—intelligence agencies have historically sought to avert warning failure, in many cases by predicting crises continually.39 This “hedging” has tended to erode trust between intelligence and policy over time, particularly because, as Joseph de Rivera wrote, “false leads swamp the information channels” at higher and higher levels of leadership.40 According to de Rivera, information “filters” in these cases may be at the wrong place in the system and “persons nearer the source of intelligence might be better judges of the accuracy and importance of information.”41
- Moving more filters into these working groups would enable intelligence officers and policymakers to work through various indications and warning issues below the senior official level. Such an approach could avoid the primary shortcomings that Halperin, Clapp, Kanter, and de Rivera highlighted, namely that opportunities to deliver key intelligence analysis in support of policymaker decisions can be infrequent or subject to bias, resulting in warning fatigue, intelligence failure, or politicization. By delegating discussions about intelligence and policy issues to lower levels, the process of evaluating timeliness and credibility—and setting thresholds for when higher-level warning or policy decisions need to be delivered—can be a shared and more informed decision between intelligence and policy stakeholders.
- While this function has significant overlap with the interagency process led by National Security Council (NSC), there is utility in retaining the proposed working groups as informal, potentially leaderless units outside of that traditional construct. In addition to serving as a platform for ad hoc, informal collaboration, these groups will need continuity. Convening them outside of the cyclical reconstitution of an institution such as the NSC can support efforts to continue aggregating and tracking gray zone behaviors over time. The establishment of groups that can sustain efforts across administrations could ameliorate the reality that, in the words of Michael Mazarr, the United States is “constitutionally challenged in its ability to sustain coherent long-term efforts.”42 Over time, if such approaches prove valuable, they should also be expanded to include close allies and partners.
- Finally, it is important to note that these groups should not become dedicated organizational components. Their greatest value is in convening experts from across government who maintain deep subject-matter knowledge and broad insights into how their home agency can contribute to broader efforts to understand and mitigate threats.
Conclusion
As in any case of institutional modernization, implementing the intelligence reforms proposed in this brief will require the right combination of incentives, training, and leadership to be successful. They are also heavily dependent on successful broader efforts to transform the IC’s technology and culture. This requires, as previous CSIS studies have advocated, the prioritization of continued and urgent efforts to empower and incentivize innovation.43 It also requires that leaders sustain efforts to recruit, train, and retain diverse, digitally literate intelligence officers who can inject new techniques, perspectives, and expertise into the IC.
Rededicating intelligence agencies to the pursuit of meaning in complexity will be difficult without also making fundamental changes in the ways that intelligence and policy stakeholders broadly interact. Maintaining relevance to policy is one of the age-old dilemmas for intelligence agencies, and current intelligence has long been the primary mechanism through which the IC communicates with policymakers. However, as a recent MITRE study noted, “Today’s current intelligence is neither current nor of sufficient quality to support its intended purpose.”44 Writing as far back as 2005, Gregory Treverton caricatured the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) as “CNN plus secrets” and lamented that biases toward current intelligence drove the IC toward an emphasis on “reporting” rather than “in-depth analysis.”45
The long-standing emphasis on current intelligence has normalized an expectation that indicators, tracked and collated over time, can be analyzed, packaged, and delivered as warning. However, as Cynthia Grabo wrote in her book Anticipating Surprise, “Warning does not emerge from a compilation of facts.”46 Capturing the nuance of gray zone threats in particular requires a shift in intelligence toward more complex, long-term, and strategic-level analysis. That is not to suggest policymakers should be deprived of current intelligence. On the contrary, as the IC assesses the numerous ways that emerging technologies and commercial intelligence can advance its mission, the area of current intelligence is one of the most promising. Machine learning capabilities powered by natural language processing carry the potential to conduct low-risk tasks, such as combing through open-source and classified information and compiling situation reports for executive readers to remain informed during crises. Indeed, intelligence officers less consumed by such efforts to compete with the news cycle can dedicate more time to the complex analysis policymakers need.
Approaching its 50th birthday, Grabo’s book remains prescient about the fundamentals of the intelligence discipline, but it was framed in the context of a world very different from today’s. Similar thinking needs to be dedicated to adapting the traditional “hard” intelligence disciplines for the digital age. In particular, the IC must be prepared to manage and effectively communicate the complexity of modern denial and deception. As the National Intelligence Council recently highlighted in its quadrennial Global Trends report, the IC will need to navigate a world where denial, deception, and disinformation is “fueled by AI, synthetic data, and deep fakes.”47
When recently asked to opine on the biggest threat in this era of gray zone conflict, British chief of defense staff General Sir Nick Carter was blunt: “Miscalculation.”48 In the modern gray zone, uncertainty permeates decisionmaking and the stakes can be incredibly high. The development and implementation of appropriate and effective strategies to confront malign behavior amid deep uncertainty and with constant risk of miscalculation and escalation will heavily depend on modernizing the ways that intelligence is collected, analyzed, and delivered to decisionmakers.
Jake Harrington is an intelligence fellow with the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Riley McCabe is a research assistant with the CSIS International Security Program.
This brief is made possible by support from Thomson Reuters Special Services.
CSIS Briefs are produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s).
© 2021 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. All rights reserved.
Please consult the PDF for references.
csis.org · by Intelligence Fellow, International Security Program · December 13, 2021
23. The Historian’s Approach to Understanding Terrorism
Excerpts:
Accordingly, if a historical approach points toward contingency, complex contextual uniqueness, long-termism and the difficulties of prediction, then it is perhaps unsurprising that historians’ voices have not been the most sought out when states face terrorist onslaught or threat. Arguably, however, historians need to become more engaged in the relevant policy-facing and public debates precisely because these are the advantages that they bring.
Historians’ contribution to debates on terrorism should make them more important to the relevant debates. In responding to terrorism effectively, it is important to possess agility in the face of unanticipated futures and a recognition of the extent to which small numbers of people and their contingent actions can turn the direction of events. These are strengths of historians’ approach.
It is not only through their books and articles, however, or through direct policy engagement, that historians can make a valuable contribution to how society responds to terrorism. As teachers, historians can encourage an informed and reflective approach to the particular, long-term complexities of the human past, in relation to terrorism-generating settings and other scenarios. As graduates, historians can and do affect the world of terrorism and counterterrorism. It is, therefore, perhaps no accident that McMaster is one of the shrewdest of practitioners and policy-influential commentators on terrorism. His best military work in counterterrorism drew explicitly on an awareness of the historical realities and complex inheritances of particular contexts, such as that of Iraq. McMaster exemplifies the advantages of the historian’s approach, whether in research or in practice.
The Historian’s Approach to Understanding Terrorism
Editor’s Note: Too often the United States and its allies find themselves in a counterterrorism policy version of the movie “Groundhog Day,” repeating their past mistakes without end. There are many reasons for these failures, but one is the reluctance of historians to weigh in on contemporary policy debates. Richard English, of Queen’s University, argues that this is a mistake and details the many roles that historians can, and should, play in the broader debates on counterterrorism policy.
Daniel Byman
***
H.R. McMaster’s 2020 book, “Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World,” argues very powerfully for the centrality of historical understanding for addressing the world’s greatest challenges. Reflecting on U.S. approaches past and present, McMaster—retired lieutenant general, former national security adviser and himself a historian by training—suggests that “[i]gnorance or misuse of history often led to the neglect of hard-won lessons or the use of simplistic analogies that masked flaws in policy or strategy. Understanding the history of how challenges developed would help us ask the right questions, avoid mistakes of the past, and anticipate how ‘the other’ might respond.” McMaster claims that in dealing with adversaries it is important to appreciate rival interpretations of the past: “in order to overcome strategic narcissism, we must strive to understand our competitors’ view of history as well as our own.”
These are important insights, and never more so than in relation to terrorism—one of the problems McMaster dealt with in his distinguished military career. In responding to terrorism in practice, however, states have often been much less informed by historical insights than would have been life-savingly valuable. In the study of terrorism more broadly, historians’ voices have likewise been quieter than they need to be.
It is true that individual historians have made helpful contributions to the study of particular terrorist groups. But—as pointed out recently in “The Cambridge History of Terrorism,” a new edited volume surveying the field—historical scholarship has been much less prominent in academic journals and on academic bookshelves than work drawn from political science, international relations, economics and psychology. Likewise, most academic centers focusing on terrorism are housed not in history but in other university departments.
Why is this? What has been lost as a result? And what should be done to change it? The answers to these questions are somewhat interlinked. Reflection on what a distinctively historical approach to terrorism offers illustrates why history has been a less salient discipline within approaches to terrorism, and also how it could better inform policy and public debates about the ongoing challenge terrorism poses for the United States and other countries.
The Advantages of the Historian’s Approach
So, what are the distinctive insights potentially brought by historians to an understanding of terrorism? First, historians consider the relationship between change and continuity with an eye to long pasts and, by implication, to long futures. This is a crucial aspect of properly understanding the long-rooted and long-term phenomena involved in the creation of terrorists and the outcomes of terrorist violence. The causes and consequences of 9/11 and the U.S.-led response can be properly appreciated only by analysis more historical than most that was applied at the crucial decision-making moments at the time. Historical scholarship on terrorism, for example, suggests that major terrorist adversaries endure for long periods and that, even after their strength has been weakened, they tend to continue in more limited form. President George W. Bush’s talk of finding, stopping and defeating every terrorist group of global reach was therefore ill-judged. Indeed, it misdirected energy toward the extirpation of a threat that should have been understood instead as eminently containable.
Second, historians stress the complex particularity and uniqueness of each context. This is not to deny that insights drawn from one case might be valuable in others. It is, however, to say that understanding terrorism and how best to respond to it requires deep contextual and historical knowledge. Regrettably, such knowledge has sometimes been lacking. It is telling to ask how many first-rate historians of Iraq, for example, thought plausible what was being promised by politicians in 2003 in relation to the U.S.-led endeavor there.
This complex particularity of terrorist context is—my third point—analyzed by historians through engagement with a vast range of mutually interrogatory sources, including many firsthand sources drawn directly from those people under scrutiny. At present, it remains unfortunate that so much research on terrorism is comparatively innocent of what terrorists themselves have said or left behind them. There is a credibility problem as a consequence, not least among the constituencies potentially sympathetic to terrorist groups. This was painfully evident in the complex journey from al-Qaeda, via Iraq, to the emergence of the Islamic State, as political statements by Western leaders stretched plausibility and clashed with contextual realities in major ways. British Prime Minister David Cameron’s 2015 declaration that the Islamic State posed an “existential threat” to the United Kingdom exaggerated the danger of the opponent, but he also underplayed the extent to which British and U.S. actions had helped make the extremist narrative he denounced seem plausible to many people at that time in Iraq and Syria. Historians’ research has made this all too clear, but such insights had far too little effect in key policy-making rooms at crucial moments.
Relatedly, a fourth instinct to which historians frequently tend is skepticism about an overreliance on abstract theorizing, Procrustean and mechanistic theories, or tidy models of explanation. This is not to dispute the value that such theoretical approaches can offer. It is, however, to suggest that those more prescriptive theories are best tested by consideration of the historian’s more jaggedly complex understanding of terrorism and responses to it. Assessments of the efficacy of terrorism, for example, are probably more persuasive if they recognize the many-layered complexity of terrorist aspiration and achievement rather than trying to fit messy human behavior into simplified equations to produce generalizable explanations and predictions.
Finally, historians tend to be skeptical about inevitability in human behavior, preferring instead to stress the role of contingency. The historian’s approach clashes with the teleological assumptions frequently evinced by non-state terrorists and their state opponents alike, it works against seeing the past as a vindicating journey toward a known present or a future hope, and it leads away from overconfidence in the possibility of prediction. This attention to the forking paths the future may take not only is a check against hubris but also can inform better policy. Overconfident declarations—presidential promises to eradicate radical Islamic terrorism from the planet, for example—give gifts to terrorist enemies by establishing goals that are unlikely to be secured.
Historians’ Role in Policy and Public Debate
These five methodological instincts embody something of a distinctive historical approach. Ironically, they both show what is missed when history is downplayed and also why that downplaying has persisted.
Debate about terrorism and counterterrorism policy is usually fueled by obsession with a current crisis or threat. At these moments, historians’ instinct toward long-termism can be seen by some people as a hindrance rather than an advantage. In the wake of 9/11, or the later emergence of the Islamic State, those analysts who focused on the contemporary perhaps seemed more alluring in their answers than those whose approach engaged more with long-term continuities, sources and experiences. But the latter offered deep insights about what would work best, and what would fare less well, in responding to the terrorist challenges that were faced. Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State were clearly different in key ways from each other, and from terrorists past. But there were things to which historical reflection still pointed that would have helped avoid some of the more egregious errors in the “war on terror.” The dangers of an overreliance on military methods, or of conveniently misdiagnosing terrorist origins, or of uncoordinated efforts within and between states, or of less-than-credible counterterrorist political rhetoric, or of the misuse of intelligence—a historically minded, long-termist analysis of terrorism emphasized these vital points and, had they been heeded, many lives could have been saved.
Another reason for historians perhaps being less prominent in policy-facing circles regarding terrorism is that their emphasis on the uniqueness of each context makes their predictions seem rather suspect. If historians also point to contingency in politics, then they might be seen as hostile to exactly those predicted policy outcomes, to those general laws, that governments most seek at times of terrorist crisis.
Many social scientists are more comfortable developing models that facilitate predictions relating to political violence than are historians. Some brilliant work has emerged as a result. Historians tend to be less happy with such patterns of prediction, being less convinced about the past having been governed by general laws.
Accordingly, if a historical approach points toward contingency, complex contextual uniqueness, long-termism and the difficulties of prediction, then it is perhaps unsurprising that historians’ voices have not been the most sought out when states face terrorist onslaught or threat. Arguably, however, historians need to become more engaged in the relevant policy-facing and public debates precisely because these are the advantages that they bring.
Historians’ contribution to debates on terrorism should make them more important to the relevant debates. In responding to terrorism effectively, it is important to possess agility in the face of unanticipated futures and a recognition of the extent to which small numbers of people and their contingent actions can turn the direction of events. These are strengths of historians’ approach.
It is not only through their books and articles, however, or through direct policy engagement, that historians can make a valuable contribution to how society responds to terrorism. As teachers, historians can encourage an informed and reflective approach to the particular, long-term complexities of the human past, in relation to terrorism-generating settings and other scenarios. As graduates, historians can and do affect the world of terrorism and counterterrorism. It is, therefore, perhaps no accident that McMaster is one of the shrewdest of practitioners and policy-influential commentators on terrorism. His best military work in counterterrorism drew explicitly on an awareness of the historical realities and complex inheritances of particular contexts, such as that of Iraq. McMaster exemplifies the advantages of the historian’s approach, whether in research or in practice.
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.
