Quotes of the Day:

"Geniuses are like thunderstorms: they go against the wind, terrify people, clear the air."

- Soren Kierkegaard

"The voice of the majority is no proof of justice."

-Friedrich Schiller

"Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.”

~Theodore Isaac Rubin

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 13, 2023

2. Eric Schmidt Is Building the Perfect AI War-Fighting Machine

3. Rumors swirl about balloons, UFOs as officials stay mum

4. Claims of U.S. Involvement in Nord Stream Attack Draw Scrutiny

5. Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

6. Opinion | The all-volunteer force turns 50 — and faces its worst crisis yet

7. Biden to award Medal of Honor to Black Vietnam War vet who’s waited decades

8. NATO allies weigh more arms for Ukraine as Russian forces close in on Bakhmut

9. US-led Security Assistance to Ukraine is Working

10. The Case for Japanese Land Power in the First Island Chain

11. China’s Belt and Road to Nowhere

12. Ukraine and the Contingency of Global Order

13. What China Has Learned From the Ukraine War

14. Good Riddance to the War on Terror

15. Chinese attack on Taiwan not ‘imminent’ and predicting it unhelpful to Pentagon readiness: US general

16. GOP committee chair eyeing ‘creative wargaming’ to evaluate possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan

17. Chinese Balloon and Mystery Objects Raise Question of Who Controls ‘Near Space’

18. U.S.’s Asia Allies See New Threat From Balloons Amid China Spying Row

19. China’s Top Airship Scientist Said He Sent One Over North America in 2019

20. Russia Has Already Lost in the Long Run

21. Geostrategic competition and overseas basing in East Asia and the First Island Chain

22. A ‘Modern National Security Strategy’: Q&A with Rep. Ro Khanna

23. U.S. warns Ukraine it faces a pivotal moment in war

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 13, 2023

Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-13-2023

Key Takeaways

• Moscow continues to leverage its relationship with Iran to provide military support for the war in Ukraine.
• The Wagner Group’s continued dissemination of deliberately brutal extrajudicial execution videos and generally graphic content is normalizing an increasing level of brutality and thuggishness within the domestic Russian information space.
• Russian military command is facing challenges integrating irregular armed formations with conventional forces.
• Russian authorities are increasingly undertaking measures to promote self-censorship in Russia under the guise of countering increased information threats resulting from the invasion of Ukraine.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to publicly stand by the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) as his naval infantry continues to suffer catastrophic casualties around Vuhledar, Donetsk Oblast.
• Russian forces continued to conduct ground attacks northwest of Svatove and near Kreminna.
• Russian forces made marginal territorial gains near Bakhmut and continued to conduct ground attacks across the Donetsk Oblast front line.
• Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked Ukrainian positions in western Zaporizhia Oblast while continuing to fortify their positions in the region.
• Russian officials and regime-linked actors continue to exploit assets from captured Ukrainian cities for economic and military benefit.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 13, 2023

Feb 13, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

understandingwar.org

Karolina Hird, Kateryna Stepanenko, Grace Mappes, Nicole Wolkov, Layne Philipson, and Frederick Kagan

February 13, 10:30 pm ET

Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Moscow continues to leverage its relationship with Iran to provide military support for the war in Ukraine. The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) intercepted audio on February 10 reportedly of two Shahed drone operators coordinating targets in what the GUR claimed was a "Kurdish dialect interspersed with Farsi words."[1] ISW cannot identify the dialect in the audio intercept with high confidence, but the fact that the individuals in the audio clip are Shahed operators indicates that they may be operators from Iranian Kurdistan who are likely affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It is far less likely that Russia has been able to identify or import individual Kurdish militants with experience operating drones to conduct Shahed strikes on Ukraine. ISW has previously reported that IRGC-affiliated elements are likely supporting Russia’s use Shahed drones by acting as operators and trainers, and the operators in the GUR intercept are likely part of the same line of effort.[2] UK outlet The Guardian relatedly reported on February 13 that Iran has smuggled at least 18 long-range drones to Russia using boats and Iranian state-owned aircraft.[3] The Guardian found that these shipments include six Mohajer-6 drones and 12 Shahed-121 and 129 drones, which have air-to-ground strike capabilities and are designed to deliver a payload to the target and return to base, unlike the Shahed-131 and 136 loitering munition-type drones that Russian forces have widely used in Ukraine thus far.[4] Russian milbloggers noted on February 13 that IRGC-affiliated Il-76 cargo aircraft routinely fly to Russia, suggesting that Tehran consistently provides Moscow with a variety of material using IRGC-affiliated planes.[5] These data points, taken in tandem, suggest that Russia continues to rely on Iran for military and technological support in Ukraine and that some Iranian personnel are likely in Ukraine directly supporting Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, as ISW has previously reported.[6]

The Wagner Group’s continued dissemination of deliberately brutal extrajudicial execution videos and generally graphic content is normalizing an increasing level of brutality and thuggishness within the domestic Russian information space. A Wagner Group-affiliated Telegram channel posted a video on February 12 showing the brutal execution of former Wagner fighter Dmitry Yakushchenko with a sledgehammer.[7] Yakushchenko reportedly was convicted of robbery and murder in Crimea and was serving a 19-year sentence when he joined Wagner.[8] The Wagner-affiliated Telegram channel accused Yakushchenko of defecting to Ukraine and posted a video reportedly of Yakushchenko expressing pro-Ukrainian sentiments while in Ukrainian captivity.[9] Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin later posted a video that appears to be of Yakushchenko alive and uninjured and thanking Wagner for forgiveness.[10] Whether the videos of Yakushchenko’s execution or alleged proof-of-life are real—or in what sequence they might have been recorded—are less important than the wider issue highlighted by the creation and dissemination of such videos. Several prominent milbloggers responded positively to the execution video, claiming that such vicious and inhumane killing is an appropriate way for Wagner to deal with betrayal in its ranks.[11] The Wagner-affiliated channel that originally circulated the video claimed that being accused of brutality during a war is like getting fined for speeding during a car race, which is the same remark made by the channel following the summary execution of ex-Wagner fighter Yevgeny Nuzhin in November 2022.[12] The continued justification and glorification of such brutal tactics is symptomatic of the wider pathology that Wagner has come to represent—one where excessive and performative violence is taken as a necessary tactic of military practice. Many military justice systems, including America's, include death penalties for various crimes, particularly in combat. Militaries fighting for healthy societies that are themselves professional and well-disciplined do not, however, conduct executions with sledgehammers nor do they glory in the vicious brutality of the capital punishments they execute. The Kremlin will likely need to balance its continued desire to use Wagner as a stop-gap measure in pursuing operations in Ukraine with the damage that the increasingly evident chaotic brutality that Wagner has come to institutionalize is inflicting on Russian society.

Russian authorities are increasingly undertaking measures to promote self-censorship in Russia under the guise of countering increased information threats resulting from the invasion of Ukraine. A representative of Russia’s Main Radio Frequency Center (GRChTs), a subsidiary of Russian state media censor Roskomnazdor, announced the launch of the "Okulus" automatic search system that automates scanning text, images, and video footage to detect state-censored content, extremist themes, calls for mass illegal activity, suicide, and pro-drug and pro-LGBTQ content (which Moscow apparently views as posing a national security threat). The GRChTs will reportedly fully develop Okulus by 2025.[13] The Russian Okulus has no connection to any technology offerings of Western companies that have similar names. The GRChTs claimed that an unprecedented amount of fake information disseminated at high speed has flooded the Russian information space following the start of the invasion of Ukraine and that Okulus can analyze 200,000 images per day (an increase from the manual processing of 106 images and 101 videos per day) to address this increase in information.[14] A Belarusian hacker group that supposedly hacked into Okulus claimed that GRChTs programmed Okulus to find personal insults directed at Russian President Vladimir Putin, including comparisons to unflattering figures.[15] Okulus, alongside other recent Kremlin efforts to digitize Russian society while simultaneously expanding control of digital Russia, are likely efforts to scare Russians into further self-censorship. It is also unclear to what extent the Kremlin will shield critical milbloggers from such systems.

Independent Russian language opposition outlet Meduza reported that Roskomnazdor may soon ban YouTube and that Russian state-affiliated social media outlet VK is expanding its social media monopoly to recruit famous Russian-language content creators on YouTube to its video service. VK is also attempting to expand its music streaming service, likely in an effort to eliminate Russians’ interactions with unwanted content.[16] Russian authorities also seek to expand the scope of rhetoric eligible for censorship. A United Russia State Duma Deputy announced on February 12 that he is planning to propose legislation to introduce criminal liability for insulting Russian military figures with the titles "Hero of Russia" and "Hero of the USSR."[17] The Kremlin’s collective skin appears to be thinning as the war protracts at a rate that can be measured by the number of phrases and words Russians are forbidden to say.

Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to publicly stand by the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) as Russian forces continue to suffer catastrophic casualties around Vuhledar, Donetsk Oblast. Putin commented on a Russian state TV show recorded on February 9 and broadcast on February 12 that Russian "naval infantry is working as it should right now" and that the Pacific and Northern fleets are "heroically fighting."[18] Putin likely deliberately praised his Pacific and Northern fleets against the backdrop of highly published and substantial losses to mechanized elements of the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade of the Pacific Fleet in their assault on Vuhledar.[19] The Russian MoD had been silent regarding Russian losses in Vuhledar, and Putin’s comment follows Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu’s statement on February 7 that Russian forces are successfully developing an offensive in Vuhledar.[20] Putin is likely deliberately doubling down on the Russian MoD’s extremely overly optimistic description of the Vuhledar frontline to sustain the narrative of an imminent and sweeping major Russian offensive in Donetsk Oblast. Putin is also likely refraining from siding with critical milbloggers who had been increasingly accusing the Russian MoD and military command of failing to learn from their previous mistakes when conducting mechanized drives.[21]

Putin’s comment, however, may also signal an intent to reinforce the assault on Vuhledar with more mobilized forces or by recommitting remaining Northern Fleet elements to the area.[22] ISW recently observed Ukrainian forces destroying Russian surface-to-air missile systems—reportedly belonging to the 80th Separate Arctic Motorized Rifle Brigade of the Northern Fleet—in occupied Kherson Oblast.[23] Ukrainian officials have also previously reported that the Russian military had been accumulating some forces in Mariupol, just 75km southeast of Vuhledar.[24] These indicators suggest that Russian forces, including elements of the Northern Fleet, may be preparing for commitment to Vuhledar. Putin may have been signaling his continued support for Russian forces there to offset news of significant defeats to conventional Russian units on critical sectors of the front.

The Russian military’s use of mobilized personnel as replacements in battle-damaged units is unlikely to generate sufficient offensive capabilities for a large-scale and rapid mechanized advance. Representative of the Ukrainian Tavriisk operational direction, Oleksiy Dmytrashkivskyi, stated that the Russian military will need to restaff the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade for the third time due to its losses in Vuhledar and previous military failures around Kyiv Oblast and Pavlivka, Donetsk Oblast.[25] Dmytrashkivskyi noted that the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade had 5,000 servicemen prior to its defeat in Vuhledar. A Russian serviceman from the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade who participated in an assault on Vuhledar told a Russian opposition outlet that the brigade was 80% to 90% staffed with mobilized men because the Russian military command consistently reinforces Russian units with mobilized servicemen.[26] Russia’s continued reliance on mobilized men who were unable to perform military tasks such as identifying and detecting minefields or knowing what to do having blundered into them during the assault indicates that these mobilized elements do not have the necessary combat experience necessary to stage a successful mechanized offensive. These mobilized men have likely received limited individual training and lack the unit cohesion and professional training or experience necessary for large-scale mechanized offensives. Russia may deploy additional mobilized elements that may be able to conduct sound defensive operations or attrition-based offensive operations to the Vuhledar frontline, but these mobilized soldiers are unlikely to become effective mechanized elements capable of mounting successful offensive operations in any short period of months.

Key Takeaways

• Moscow continues to leverage its relationship with Iran to provide military support for the war in Ukraine.
• The Wagner Group’s continued dissemination of deliberately brutal extrajudicial execution videos and generally graphic content is normalizing an increasing level of brutality and thuggishness within the domestic Russian information space.
• Russian military command is facing challenges integrating irregular armed formations with conventional forces.
• Russian authorities are increasingly undertaking measures to promote self-censorship in Russia under the guise of countering increased information threats resulting from the invasion of Ukraine.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to publicly stand by the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) as his naval infantry continues to suffer catastrophic casualties around Vuhledar, Donetsk Oblast.
• Russian forces continued to conduct ground attacks northwest of Svatove and near Kreminna.
• Russian forces made marginal territorial gains near Bakhmut and continued to conduct ground attacks across the Donetsk Oblast front line.
• Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked Ukrainian positions in western Zaporizhia Oblast while continuing to fortify their positions in the region.
• Russian officials and regime-linked actors continue to exploit assets from captured Ukrainian cities for economic and military benefit.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because those activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

• Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1—Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2—Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Supporting Effort—Southern Axis
• Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Activities in Russian-occupied Areas

Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1- Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and continue offensive operations into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

ISW continues to assess the current Russian most likely course of action (MLCOA) is an imminent offensive effort in Luhansk Oblast and has therefore adjusted the structure of the daily campaign assessments. We will no longer include the Eastern Kharkiv and Western Luhansk Oblast area as part of Ukrainian counteroffensives and will assess this area as a subordinate part of the Russian main effort in Eastern Ukraine. The assessment of Luhansk Oblast as part of the Russian main effort does not preclude the possibility of continued Ukrainian counteroffensive actions here or anywhere else in theater in the future. ISW will report on Ukrainian counteroffensive efforts as they occur.

Russian forces continued to conduct ground attacks northwest of Svatove on February 12 and 13. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled a Russian ground attack near Hryanikivka (55km northwest of Svatove) on February 13.[27] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced up to five kilometers in unspecified areas in the Kupyansk direction (about 50km northwest of Svatove) and made marginal territorial gains near Hryanykivka, Dvorichne, Synkivka, and Lyman Pershyi, all within 16km northeast of Kupyansk.[28] A Russian milblogger claimed on February 12 that Russian and Ukrainian forces clashed near Kotlyarivka and Kyslivka, 26km northwest of Svatove.[29] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted reconnaissance-in-force in the Dvorichna and Novomlynsk areas, within 20km northeast of Kupyansk.[30]

Russian forces continued ground attacks in the Kreminna area on February 12 and 13. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian ground assaults near Kreminna itself; 10km south of Kreminna near Bilohorivka and the Hryhorivka forest area in Luhansk Oblast; and 13km west of Kreminna near Torske, Donetsk Oblast, on February 12 and 13.[31] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Serhii Cherevaty stated on February 12 that Russian forces are concentrating their efforts in the Lyman direction west of Kreminna and increasing their use of artillery in Luhansk Oblast.[32] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces pushed back Ukrainian forces 1km in an unspecified forest area near Kreminna.[33] A Russian milblogger claimed on February 12 that Russian forces attacked Bilohorivka and attempted to advance on Zarichne from positions in Dibrova, both just southwest of Kreminna.[34] Another Russian milblogger posted footage in which Russian personnel claim that Russian Spetsnaz forces are correcting Russian fire against Ukrainian positions in the Torske area west of Kreminna and that professional forces and mobilized personnel work together efficiently, suggesting that Russian sources want to create a narrative that Russian forces are dedicating effective personnel to offensive operations near Kreminna.[35]

Russian milbloggers are increasingly claiming that Ukrainian forces are preparing for a Russian offensive along the entire Luhansk Oblast frontline. Milbloggers claimed on February 12 and 13 that Ukrainian forces expect Russian forces to make massive territorial gains and are increasing fortifications and transporting reserves to areas near the Luhansk Oblast frontline.[36] Some milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces are withdrawing from certain active areas in the front line.[37]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2—Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Russian forces continued making tactical gains and conducted ground attacks around Bakhmut on February 12 and 13. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian troops repelled Russian attacks on Bakhmut itself; northeast of Bakhmut near Fedorivka (15km northeast) and Vyimka (22km northeast); north of Bakhmut near Vasyukivka (12km north); southwest of Bakhmut near Klishchiivka (7km southwest); and west of Bakhmut near Ivanivske (5km west) and Chasiv Yar (10km west) on February 12 and 13.[38] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces spokesperson Colonel Serhii Cherevaty stated on February 12 that Russian and Ukrainian forces engaged in 19 combat clashes over the course of the day and that fighting occurred near Fedorivka, Chasiv Yar, and Ivanivske.[39] Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed that Wagner Group forces captured Krasna Hora (4km north of Bakhmut) on February 12, which is confirmed by footage and imagery of Wagner Group fighters in Krasna Hora.[40] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) confirmed the capture of Krasna Hora on February 13 and stated that "volunteers of assault detachments" took the settlement, continuing the Russian MoD’s campaign to undermine Wagner’s role in operations around Bakhmut.[41] Russian milbloggers claimed that Wagner Group forces are now fighting for Paraskoviivka (just north of Krasna Hora and about 5km north of Bakhmut) but that Ukrainian forces maintain control of the settlement.[42] Russian sources additionally claimed on February 12 and 13 that fighting continued along the T0504 Kostyantynivka-Chasiv Yar-Bakhmut highway and near the E40 Bakhmut-Slovyansk highway.[43] Russian sources reiterated that Russian forces have not yet completed the operational encirclement of Bakhmut as of February 13.[44]

Russian forces conducted ground attacks along the western outskirts of Donetsk City on February 12. The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Ukrainian troops repelled Russian attacks on the northwestern outskirts of Donetsk City near Pervomaiske and on the southwestern outskirts near Pobieda and Marinka on February 12 and did not confirm any ground attacks in this area on February 13.[45] A Russian milblogger claimed on February 12 that Russian troops continued attacking towards Nevelske (on the northwestern outskirts of Donetsk City) and fought in Marinka.[46] A Russian milblogger posted footage on February 13 of the 132nd Motor Rifle Division of the 1st Army Corps (forces of the Donetsk People’s Republic) striking Ukrainian trenches north of Avdiivka, and notably characterized the 1st Army Corps as part of the Russian Southern Military District (SMD), which is consistent with the official February 3 integration of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republic (DNR and LNR) militias into the SMD.[47] Other milbloggers posted footage of assault groups of the 150th Motor Rifle Division (8th Combined Arms Army, SMD) operating in Marinka.[48] DNR troops that have been subsumed into the SMD are likely experiencing logistical issues associated with the integration of irregular formations into conventional units. ISW is continuing to monitor for reports of additional SMD (or other) regular units moving into the Donetsk City area as a possible indicator that the Russians will launch a significant offensive on this axis. The lack of a major new Russian offensive on the Donetsk City axis prevents Russian operations around Vuhledar and Bakhmut from being mutually supporting. ISW has not yet observed any such indicators.

Russian forces conducted a limited ground attack in western Donetsk Oblast on February 12. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian troops repelled a Russian attack near Vuhledar (30km southwest of Donetsk City) on February 12 and did not confirm any ground attacks in this area on February 13.[49] Geolocated footage posted on February 12 shows Russian tanks hitting mines east of Vuhledar, indicating that Russian troops previously made minor advances in this area.[50] Commander of the DNR "Vostok" battalion Alexander Khodakovsky claimed on February 13 that a Ukrainian HIMARS strike on Vostok headquarters killed the headquarters commander but that Russian command and control in the Vuhledar area will not be impacted by the strike because of duplicated communication channels.[51] A Russian milblogger claimed that elements of the 29th Combined Arms Army (SMD), 155th Naval Infantry Brigade, DNR formations, and 3rd Army Corps have occupied new ground near Vuhledar and are escalating offensive operations in this area.[52]

Supporting Effort—Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked Ukrainian positions in western Zaporizhia Oblast on February 13 while continuing to fortify their positions in the region. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled a Russian assault on Zaliznychne (about 78km southeast of Zaporizhzhia City).[53] The UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) stated that open-source imagery shows that as of February 7, Russian forces have further bolstered defensive fortifications in central Zaporizhia Oblast - particularly in Tarasivka (about 26km southwest of Zaliznychne).[54] The UK MoD added that Russian forces also extended a stretch of fortifications on the Orikhiv-Vasylivka line south of Zaporizhzhia City. The UK MoD assessed that Russian forces are expanding the construction of defensive lines and deploying personnel to Zaporizhia and Luhansk oblasts out of concern for Ukrainian counteroffensives, despite maintaining an operational focus on offensives in Donbas. A prominent Kremlin-affiliated milblogger also expressed concerns over the possibility of a Ukrainian counteroffensive in southern Ukraine via western Zaporizhia Oblast in late spring to early summer.[55] ISW makes no effort to forecast Ukrainian activity, however.

Russian forces did not conduct offensive operations in Kherson or Mykolaiv oblasts between February 12 and February 13. Spokesperson for the Ukrainian Southern Defense Forces, Nataliya Humenyuk stated on February 12 that Russian forces are not deploying military equipment or personnel to Kherson Oblast that would threaten Ukrainian positions on the west (right) bank of the Dnipro River.[56] Humenyuk added that Russian forces have recently conducted a troop rotation on the Kinburn Spit, Mykolaiv Oblast, and noted that Russian forces are concentrated at the base of the spit to avoid Ukrainian artillery fire on narrower areas.[57] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russia deployed 200 Rosgvardia servicemen to Lazurne (approximately 65km southwest of Kherson City) to strengthen counter-subversive measures in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast.[58] Russian forces continued to shell Kherson City and settlements in its vicinity and reportedly damaged a major railway track near the city.[59] Russian sources reported that Ukrainian forces continued to target Russian positions on the east (left) bank of the Dnipro River, and geolocated footage reportedly showed a Ukrainian loitering munition destroying a Russian autonomous observation post on the Nova Kakhovka Dam.[60]

A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger denied Western reports about Russia’s deliberate efforts to lower the water levels in the Kakhovka Reservoir in an effort to create an ecological disaster that would shut down the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant’s (ZNPP) cooling system.[61] The milblogger downplayed the reasons for lowered levels in the reservoir as preparations for snow melting and spring floods.[62]

Russian sources claimed that Russian forces shot down a Ukrainian drone over the Sea of Azov and 12 drones in the vicinity of Dzhankoy, Crimea, between February 11 and February 12.[63] Geolocated footage published on February 12 showed the activation of Russian air defenses in Kirovske Air Base, Crimea.[64]

Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)

Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) representative Vadym Skibitsky stated on February 12 that Russia will postpone a second wave of mobilization as Russia is still experiencing difficulties with the first wave of mobilization.[65] Russian authorities however continue to carry out crypto-mobilization efforts in order to mitigate the negative consequences of an announced second wave of mobilization, as ISW has previously assessed.[66] Putin previously tasked the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) with resolving systematic failures within the mobilization systems on a short deadline and may be using the lack of improvements as a premise to delay the unpopular but likely necessary second mobilization wave.[67] Geolocated satellite imagery captured in late January and early February also showed Russians constructing a new field camp in the vicinity of Pogonovo Training Ground in Voronezh Oblast, which may support future mobilization efforts.[68]

Wagner Group mercenaries are continuing to suffer high casualties as a result of costly operations in eastern Ukraine. Two Wagner fighters and ex-convicts told CNN that their units sustained serious losses in "first wave" style assaults.[69] One soldier claimed that 60 of 90 personnel in his unit died in an assault near Bilohorivka, Luhansk Oblast, and observed that Wagner command would commit another unit to sustain the attack despite heavy casualties.[70] Another Wagner soldier also claimed that Wagner commanders threatened to kill retreating soldiers and would not evacuate wounded personnel from the battlefield.[71] These claims are consistent with previous ISW reporting on Wagner’s treatment of inexperienced convicts as cannon fodder.[72]

The Russian military command is facing challenges integrating irregular armed formations into conventional force structures. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on February 13 that Russian mobilized personnel integrated into the units of the former Donetsk People’s Republic’s (DNR) 1st Army Corps (now part of the Russian Southern Military District) are increasingly refusing to participate in the offensive.[73] DNR commanders and servicemen are likely trying to throw inexperienced Russian mobilized men onto the frontlines due to frustrations with the lack of rotations of their own men or as retribution for unequal treatment of proxy forces in the past. Igor Girkin, a prominent milblogger and former Russian officer who commanded militants in Donbas in 2014, complained that Russian officials have removed several mobilized Russian units from the frontlines following their appeals to local governors but did not offer the same treatment to units from illegally annexed territories.[74] A Russian milblogger also claimed that members of the Russian 51st Guards Airborne Regiment (of the 106th Guards Airborne Division) are purposefully injuring themselves in order to not fight alongside Wagner units. The post also claims Wagner forces threatened to shoot members of members of the 51st Airborne Regiment if they did not save wounded Wagner fighters.[75]

Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of and annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian civilians into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Russian officials and regime-linked actors continue to exploit assets from captured Ukrainian cities for economic and military benefit. BBC Russia reported on February 13 that Chechen businessman and close friend of Chechen Head Ramzan Kadyrov, Valid Korchagin, became a co-owner of the Mariupol metallurgical combine (Ilyich Iron and Steel Works in Mariupol) and a Russian chain of restaurants and cafes in Mariupol.[76] BBC Russia reported that Korchagin is likely related to Chechen Senator Suleyman Geremeyev and Deputy Head of the Chechen Ministry of Construction Vakhit Geremeyev, both of whom are reportedly related to close Kadyrov ally and State Duma parliamentarian Adam Delimhanov.[77] The head of Transparency International—Russia, Ilya Shumanov, suggested that the Kremlin is rewarding members of the Geremeyev family who have fought in Ukraine.[78] Russian officials will likely continue to exploit economic assets in occupied areas to build out corrupt patronage networks for personal gain.

Occupation Mariupol Mayor Oleg Morgun similarly claimed on February 12 that Russian forces may establish a Black Sea Fleet base at the Azov shipyard in occupied Mariupol, further indicating that Russian forces intend to transform Mariupol into a large military base rather than rebuilding the city for its inhabitants.[79] The Mariupol occupation administration could seek to exploit Mariupol’s port resources and continue to militarize occupied areas, but it is unclear how it can construct the infrastructure necessary for a major naval base in any reasonable period of time.

Russian occupation authorities are continuing to import personnel from Russia to compensate for shortages of willing collaborators with whom to staff occupation administrations. Ukrainian Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov stated on February 13 that Russian occupation authorities imported deputies from Chelyabinsk and Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, to occupied Zaporizhia Oblast as Ukrainian civilians are continuing to refuse to cooperate with the Russian occupation administration.[80] Fedorov also stated on February 12 that Russian occupation authorities imported 800 police officers to occupied Zaporizhia Oblast from Russia to fortify occupation law enforcement and further suppress anti-Ukraine sentiment in occupied territories.[81]

Significant activity in Belarus (ISW assesses that a Russian or Belarusian attack into northern Ukraine in early 2023 is extraordinarily unlikely and has thus restructured this section of the update. It will no longer include counter-indicators for such an offensive.

ISW will continue to report daily observed Russian and Belarusian military activity in Belarus, but these are not indicators that Russian and Belarusian forces are preparing for an imminent attack on Ukraine from Belarus. ISW will revise this text and its assessment if it observes any unambiguous indicators that Russia or Belarus is preparing to attack northern Ukraine.)

Nothing significant to report.

Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.

[1] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/dlia-orhanizatsii-ataky-droniv-po-terytorii-ukrainy-okupanty-imovirno-zaluchyly-inozemnykh-naimantsiv.html

[7] ****GRAPHIC*** https://t.me/grey_zone/17170

[8] ***GRAPHIC*** https://t.me/grey_zone/17170

[9] **GRAPHIC*** https://t.me/grey_zone/17170

[13] https://www.vedomosti dot ru/technology/articles/2023/02/13/962682-roskomnadzor-zapustil-sistemu-poiska-okulus

[14] https://www.vedomosti dot ru/technology/articles/2023/02/13/962682-roskomnadzor-zapustil-sistemu-poiska-okulus

[15] https://meduza dot io/episodes/2023/02/13/vkontakte-sosredotochilsya-na-svoem-videonapravlenii-vyglyadit-tak-budto-rossiya-gotovitsya-k-blokirovke-yutyuba-ochen-mozhet-byt

[16] https://meduza dot io/episodes/2023/02/13/vkontakte-sosredotochilsya-na-svoem-videonapravlenii-vyglyadit-tak-budto-rossiya-gotovitsya-k-blokirovke-yutyuba-ochen-mozhet-byt

[17] https://t.me/sultanhamzaev/3782; https://ria dot ru/20230212/deputat-1851474888.html

[32] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2023/02/12/golovnym-napryamkom-udariv-voroga-zalyshayetsya-bahmutskyj-vidtynok-frontu-sergij-cherevatyj/

[39] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2023/02/12/golovnym-napryamkom-udariv-voroga-zalyshayetsya-bahmutskyj-vidtynok-frontu-sergij-cherevatyj/

[56] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2023/02/12/na-pivdni-ukrayiny-rosiyany-bilshe-z

[57] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2023/02/12/rotacziya-voroga-na-kinburnskij-kosi-nasampered-povyazana-z-jogo-nyzkym-moralno-psyhologichnym-stanom-nataliya-gumenyuk/

[63] https://t.me/readovkanews/52591; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/77981 ; ht... news/vsu-pytalis-atakovat-voennye-obekty-u-dzhankoya-s-pomoshhyu-12-bpla-71536/

[65] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/podalsha-mobilizatsiia-shche-bilshe

[79] https://ria dot ru/20230212/mariupol-1851481715.html

understandingwar.org

2. Eric Schmidt Is Building the Perfect AI War-Fighting Machine

Excerpts:

Schmidt has come to believe that while the tech industry must help the Pentagon, the government must also help Silicon Valley. In 2019, he became chair of the US National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, created by Congress to examine the technology’s impact on US security and competitiveness. The NSCAI’s final report, released in 2021, focuses on AI rivalry between the US and China, warning that the technology could spread authoritarian values. To keep the wellspring of US AI healthy, it calls on the US government to work more with the private sector, and provide funding, data, and computing power to both public and private AI projects.

At an event last fall, Schmidt credited the NSCAI with changing his life by making him more aware of China’s threat to the US. “We’re facing a very significant challenge from a very, very focused competitor that knows what they’re doing,” he said. The commission has since disbanded, although Schmidt now serves on a similar body examining the implications of advances in biotechnology. And he funded a new, independent think tank called the Special Competitive Studies Project to see the NSCAI’s recommendations through. The project is looking at technologies beyond just AI and is modeled on an anti-Russia cold war initiative created by Nelson Rockefeller and led by Henry Kissinger.

The SCSP released a series of reports last year, calling for the government to fund areas critical to US growth and competitiveness, including nuclear fusion, quantum computing and communications, and gene editing. They came amidst a wave of political support for more government intervention in technology. The CHIPS act passed last year, with bipartisan support, and motivated by concerns over China, will provide $280 billion for research and manufacturing of semiconductor devices in the US.

Eric Schmidt Is Building the Perfect AI War-Fighting Machine

The former Google CEO is on a mission to rewire the US military with cutting-edge artificial intelligence to take on China. Will it make the world safer?

https://www.wired.com/story/eric-schmidt-is-building-the-perfect-ai-war-fighting-machine/

​BY ​WILL KNIGHT

Wired · · February 13, 2023

Expensive military hardware like a new tank undergoes rigorous testing before heading to the battlefield. A startup called Istari, backed by Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google and chair of Alphabet, reckons some of that work can be done more effectively in the metaverse.

Ishtari uses machine learning to virtually assemble and test war machines from computer models of individual components, such as the chassis and engines, that are usually marooned on separate digital drawing boards. It may sound dull, but Schmidt says it can bring a dose of tech industry innovation to US military engineering. “The Istari team is bringing internet-type usability to models and simulations,” he says. “This unlocks the possibility of software-like agility for future physical systems—it is very exciting.”

The company reflects Schmidt’s unique position as a link between the tech industry and the Pentagon. Virtual replicas known as digital twins are common in manufacturing and could help the Pentagon develop hardware more quickly. And Istari is a building block in a wider project in which Schmidt is attempting to bring Silicon Valley technology and thinking to the US military.

That quest has roots in the shock Schmidt experienced in 2016 when he first glimpsed the state of Pentagon technology up close. He was still chair of Alphabet but accepted an invitation from President Obama’s defense secretary Ashton Carter to chair a new Defense Innovation Board trying to modernize the DOD. Schmidt’s new post began with an eye-opening tour of US labs and bases.

"Imagine we’re going to build a better war-fighting system,” Schmidt says. “We would just create a tech company.”

“I got to run around with Eric and look at how the department was engaging on commercial technology,” says Will Roper, who was then an assistant secretary of the Air Force focused on technology and is the founder and CEO of Istari. “It was evident that the entire Department of Defense was developing software the same way it was done in the 1970s and ’80s,” Roper says. He was one of many Pentagon leaders who were impressed by Schmidt‘s diagnosis of the department’s problems and willingness to try to solve them.

Schmidt became CEO of Google in 2001, when the search engine had a few hundred employees and was barely making money. He stepped away from Alphabet in 2017 after building a sprawling, highly profitable company with a stacked portfolio of projects, including cutting-edge artificial intelligence, self-driving cars, and quantum computers.

Schmidt now sees another opportunity for technological reinvention to lead to domination, this time for the US government in competition with other world powers. He may be uniquely well positioned to understand what the Pentagon needs to reach its technological goals and to help the agency obtain it. But his ties to industry raise questions about how the US should aim to align the government and the private sector. And while US military power has long depended on advances in technology, some fear that military AI can create new risks.

Good People, Bad System

Speaking over Zoom from his office in New York, Schmidt lays out a grand vision for a more advanced DOD that can nimbly harness technology from companies like Istari. In a cheery orange sweater that looks like it’s made of exquisite wool, he casually imagines a wholesale reboot of the US armed forces.

“Let's imagine we’re going to build a better war-fighting system,” Schmidt says, outlining what would amount to an enormous overhaul of the most powerful military operation on earth. “We would just create a tech company.” He goes on to sketch out a vision of the internet of things with a deadly twist. “It would build a large number of inexpensive devices that were highly mobile, that were attritable, and those devices—or drones—would have sensors or weapons, and they would be networked together.”

The problem with today’s Pentagon is hardly money, talent, or determination, in Schmidt’s opinion. He describes the US military as “great human beings inside a bad system”—one that evolved to serve a previous era dominated by large, slow, expensive projects like aircraft carriers and a bureaucratic system that prevents people from moving too quickly. Independent studies and congressional hearings have found that it can take years for the DOD to select and buy software, which may be outdated by the time it is installed. Schmidt says this is a huge problem for the US, because computerization, software, and networking are poised to revolutionize warfare.

Ukraine’s response to Russia’s invasion, Schmidt believes, offers pointers for how the Pentagon might improve. The Ukrainian military has managed to resist a much larger power in part by moving quickly and adapting technology from the private sector—hacking commercial drones into weapons, repurposing defunct battlefield connectivity systems, 3D printing spare parts, and developing useful new software for tasks like military payroll management in months, not years.

Schmidt offers another thought experiment to illustrate the bind he’s trying to get the US military out of. “Imagine you and I decide to solve the Ukrainian problem, and the DOD gives us $100 million, and we have a six-month contest,” he says. “And after six months somebody actually comes up with some new device or new tool or new method that lets the Ukrainians win.” Problem solved? Not so fast. “Everything I just said is illegal,” Schmidt says, because of procurement rules that forbid the Pentagon from handing out money without going through careful but overly lengthy review processes.

A New Weapon

The Pentagon’s tech problem is most pressing, Schmidt says, when it comes to AI. “Every once in a while, a new weapon, a new technology comes along that changes things,” he says. “Einstein wrote a letter to Roosevelt in the 1930s saying that there is this new technology—nuclear weapons—that could change war, which it clearly did. I would argue that [AI-powered] autonomy and decentralized, distributed systems are that powerful.”

With Schmidt’s help, a similar view has taken root inside the DOD over the past decade, where leaders believe AI will revolutionize military hardware, intelligence gathering, and backend software. In the early 2010s the Pentagon began assessing technology that could help it maintain an edge over an ascendant Chinese military. The Defense Science Board, the agency’s top technical advisory body, concluded that AI-powered autonomy would shape the future of military competition and conflict.

But AI technology is mostly being invented in the private sector. The best tools that could prove critical to the military, such as algorithms capable of identifying enemy hardware or specific individuals in video, or that can learn superhuman strategies, are built at companies like Google, Amazon, and Apple or inside startups.

“The big challenge that the US military faces going forward is how to rapidly adapt commercial technologies for military use faster than competitors,” says Paul Scharre, a vice president at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank, and the author of Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, a forthcoming book about AI and geopolitics. Scharre notes in his book that the Pentagon’s share of global R&D spending has declined from 36 percent in 1960 to 4 percent today.

“We're trying to build a 21st century military with 20th century bureaucracy.”

Paul Scharre, Center for a New American Security

The US DOD primarily works with the private sector through large defense contractors specialized in building expensive hardware over years, not nimble software development. Pentagon contracts with large tech companies, including Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft, have become more common but have sometimes been controversial. Google’s work analyzing drone footage using AI under an initiative called Project Maven caused staff to protest, and the company let the contract lapse. Google has since increased its defense work, under rules that place certain projects—such as weapons systems—off limits.

Scharre says it is valuable to have people like Schmidt, with serious private sector clout, looking to bridge the gap. Big tech companies threatened by technological change have sometimes successfully reinvented themselves. And tech ambassadors can help the Pentagon understand how to slash bureaucracy to become a more attractive partner to startups, a crucial source of new ideas. “We're still trying to build a 21st century military with a 20th century bureaucracy,” he says.

Pivot to China

Schmidt has come to believe that while the tech industry must help the Pentagon, the government must also help Silicon Valley. In 2019, he became chair of the US National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, created by Congress to examine the technology’s impact on US security and competitiveness. The NSCAI’s final report, released in 2021, focuses on AI rivalry between the US and China, warning that the technology could spread authoritarian values. To keep the wellspring of US AI healthy, it calls on the US government to work more with the private sector, and provide funding, data, and computing power to both public and private AI projects.

At an event last fall, Schmidt credited the NSCAI with changing his life by making him more aware of China’s threat to the US. “We’re facing a very significant challenge from a very, very focused competitor that knows what they’re doing,” he said. The commission has since disbanded, although Schmidt now serves on a similar body examining the implications of advances in biotechnology. And he funded a new, independent think tank called the Special Competitive Studies Project to see the NSCAI’s recommendations through. The project is looking at technologies beyond just AI and is modeled on an anti-Russia cold war initiative created by Nelson Rockefeller and led by Henry Kissinger.

The SCSP released a series of reports last year, calling for the government to fund areas critical to US growth and competitiveness, including nuclear fusion, quantum computing and communications, and gene editing. They came amidst a wave of political support for more government intervention in technology. The CHIPS act passed last year, with bipartisan support, and motivated by concerns over China, will provide $280 billion for research and manufacturing of semiconductor devices in the US.

Closer collaboration between government and industry is hardly straightforward, however. In 2017, while Schmidt was serving on the Defense Innovation Board, an official raised concerns, which were later dropped, over potential conflicts of interest involving him and other board members who were also Silicon Valley executives. Schmidt still owns about $5 billion of Alphabet stock, is an investor in startup military contractor Rebellion Defense, and has ties, through different investment firms, to other companies that work with the government.

“It’s difficult to point to any other CEO with the same level of influence in the national security tech sector,” says Jack Poulson, who tracks relationships between individuals, corporations, nonprofits, and governments through Tech Inquiry, a nonprofit. He says that Schmidt is involved in several companies developing technologies in areas that organizations like the SCSP say should receive more government funding.

Schmidt’s work perhaps shows not only the value of government and private collaboration but the need for greater transparency and new accountability as that collaboration grows. Melissa Stavenhagen, a spokesperson for Schmidt, says he has always made any disclosures necessary in full. “Having served across multiple Democratic and Republican administrations, he recognizes how critical these issues are,” Stavenhagen says.

Discussing his work over Zoom, Schmidt often seems frustrated by the dysfunction he sees in the US government’s approach to technology. When he entered the Pentagon back in 2016, he didn’t expect to find a new calling. “I figured I would do it for like a year to help out,” he says. Instead it has become a second career. Whatever progress the Pentagon makes toward its AI dreams—and the effect of that on the world—Schmidt will likely be at the heart of it.

Wired · by Condé Nast · February 13, 2023

3. Rumors swirl about balloons, UFOs as officials stay mum

Excerpts:

High-profile news stories and events often precede a spike in false and misleading claims as people turn to the internet for explanations. Conspiracy theories about Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin spread quickly after his dramatic on-field collapse in January. Something similar happened last year when the Nord Stream pipelines in the North Sea were damaged.

In that instance, Russia spread conspiracy theories blaming the U.S. for the sabotage. The baseless theories were quickly amplified by far-right users in the U.S. It’s not the first time America’s authoritarian adversaries have seized on global events to portray the U.S. as belligerent.

China has claimed the balloon shot down Feb. 4 was engaged in meteorological research. On Monday, China’s foreign ministry said 10 U.S. balloons had entered Chinese airspace without permission in the past year.

Beijing’s response to this latest diplomatic row seeks to portray China as the responsible actor, while sidestepping surveillance allegations made by the U.S., according to Kenton Thibault, a China expert at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, a Washington-based nonprofit that tracks foreign disinformation and propaganda.

“It’s about projecting an image of responsibility and rationality, of being the adult in the room,” Thibault said of China’s response. “It’s a clear signal to nations in the developing world that the U.S. is selfish, untrustworthy and hypocritical.”

On Monday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre did refute one viral claim to have emerged from the balloon saga.

“I know there have been questions and concerns about this, but there is no — again no indication — of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns,” Jean-Pierre told reporters. “I wanted to make sure that the American people knew that, all of you knew that and it was important for us to say that from here because we’ve been hearing a lot about it.”

Rumors swirl about balloons, UFOs as officials stay mum

AP · by DAVID KLEPPER · February 14, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — Maybe they came from China. Maybe from somewhere farther away. A lot farther away.

The downing of four aerial devices by U.S. warplanes has touched off rampant misinformation about the objects, their origin and their purpose, showing how complicated world events and a lack of information can quickly create the perfect conditions for unchecked conjecture and misinformation.

The presence of mysterious objects high in the sky doesn’t help.

“There will be an investigation and we will learn more, but until then this story has created a playground for people interested in speculating or stirring the pot for their own reasons,” said Jim Ludes, a former national defense analyst who now leads the Pell Center for International Relations at Salve Regina University.

“In part,” Ludes added, “because it feeds into so many narratives about government secrecy.”

President Joe Biden and other top Washington officials have said little about the repeated shootdowns, which began with a suspected Chinese spy balloon earlier this month. Three more unidentified devices have been shot down, with the latest Sunday over Lake Huron. Pentagon officials said they posed no security threats but have not disclosed their origins or purpose.

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On Monday, many social media sites in the U.S. lit up with theories that Biden had deployed the aerial devices as a way to distract Americans from other, more pressing issues. Those concerns included immigration, inflation, the war in Ukraine and Republican investigations into Hunter Biden, the president’s son.

While the concentration of claims was highest on fringe sites popular with far-right Americans, the unfounded rumors and conspiracy theories popped up on bigger platforms like Twitter and Facebook, too.

One of the most popular theories suggested the White House and Pentagon are using the airborne devices to divert attention from a chemical spill earlier this month in Ohio.

That incident, caused by a train derailment, occurred several days before the most recent devices were shot down, and was covered extensively. Nonetheless, it remained the top subject searched on Google on Monday, showing continued public interest in the story.

Some commenters said Biden’s decision to wait until the balloon had reached the East Coast before shooting it down showed he was in league with China. Others, meanwhile, chastised Biden for shooting down foreign aircraft that they imagined could be carrying bioweapons or nuclear weapons.

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Misleading claims about the airborne devices have also prompted violent threats, according to an analysis by the SITE Intelligence Group, a firm that tracks extremist rhetoric online. After the White House said earlier surveillance flights went undetected during Donald Trump’s presidency, an article circulated on far-right sites urging the execution of any Trump administration officials who may have withheld the information.

Trump administration officials have said they knew of no such surveillance craft.

Alongside the political conspiracy theories were suggestions that the aerial objects were extraterrestrial in origin. Photos of alleged UFOs were shared online and web searches for the term “UFO” soared around the world Sunday, according to information from Google Trends.

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“Don’t worry, just some of my friends of mine stopping by,” Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, Tesla and SpaceX, joked in a tweet Sunday.

Humor aside, while the details of the different claims vary, they have two things in common: a lack of evidence and a strong distrust of America’s elected leaders.

“Maybe Joe built the balloon & had Hunter launch it to scare we the people!” wrote one Facebook user. “How do WE know??? We don’t!”

The federal government must balance the public’s desire to know the details with the need for secrecy regarding national security and defense, Ludes said. That’s not likely to satisfy Biden’s critics, Ludes said, or prevent misleading explanations from going viral.

High-profile news stories and events often precede a spike in false and misleading claims as people turn to the internet for explanations. Conspiracy theories about Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin spread quickly after his dramatic on-field collapse in January. Something similar happened last year when the Nord Stream pipelines in the North Sea were damaged.

In that instance, Russia spread conspiracy theories blaming the U.S. for the sabotage. The baseless theories were quickly amplified by far-right users in the U.S. It’s not the first time America’s authoritarian adversaries have seized on global events to portray the U.S. as belligerent.

China has claimed the balloon shot down Feb. 4 was engaged in meteorological research. On Monday, China’s foreign ministry said 10 U.S. balloons had entered Chinese airspace without permission in the past year.

Beijing’s response to this latest diplomatic row seeks to portray China as the responsible actor, while sidestepping surveillance allegations made by the U.S., according to Kenton Thibault, a China expert at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, a Washington-based nonprofit that tracks foreign disinformation and propaganda.

“It’s about projecting an image of responsibility and rationality, of being the adult in the room,” Thibault said of China’s response. “It’s a clear signal to nations in the developing world that the U.S. is selfish, untrustworthy and hypocritical.”

On Monday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre did refute one viral claim to have emerged from the balloon saga.

“I know there have been questions and concerns about this, but there is no — again no indication — of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns,” Jean-Pierre told reporters. “I wanted to make sure that the American people knew that, all of you knew that and it was important for us to say that from here because we’ve been hearing a lot about it.”

AP · by DAVID KLEPPER · February 14, 2023

4. Claims of U.S. Involvement in Nord Stream Attack Draw Scrutiny

Why did not credible media organizations publish Seymour Hersh's report? Is it because it could not be fact checked and the accusations could not be sufficiently verified?

Claims of U.S. Involvement in Nord Stream Attack Draw Scrutiny

maritime-executive.com · by The Maritime Executive

A U.S. Navy EOD diver participates in the Baltops 2022 exercise, June 2022. Seymour Hersh's new report alleges that a U.S. covert operation used the exercise as cover (U.S. Navy file image)

Published Feb 9, 2023 10:10 PM by The Maritime Executive

Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist Seymour Hersh has self-published a bombshell report suggesting that the Nord Stream pipeline attacks were carried out by the U.S. government, using a NATO minehunting exercise as cover. Russia and China have embraced the allegations and called for a closer investigation, while the Biden administration and U.S. security services have denied involvement.

Hersh has spent most of his multi-decade career studying sensitive national security secrets. He won a Pulitzer for breaking the story of the My Lai massacre in 1969, published extensive details on Israel's covert nuclear weapons program in 1991, and exposed the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in 2004, with many highlights in between. He has been lauded as a "quintessential investigative reporter" for his work, but in recent years he has also attracted criticism for his sourcing - in particular, a heavy reliance on a single anonymous source.

His latest report, released on his personal Substack page, suggests that the high-profile attack on the Nord Stream pipeline system was orchestrated by the Biden administration. Drawing primarily on information from a single anonymous source in the intelligence community, Hersh asserts that Biden's White House and the CIA planned a covert, time-delayed attack on the pipeline complex, executed months before the actual explosions.

According to Hersh's source, an elite U.S. Navy dive team placed the explosives on all four Nord Stream pipes during the NATO BALTOPS 22 exercise in June 2022, with cooperative assistance from the Norwegian Navy. The source claimed that the detonators were fitted with hydroacoustic receivers, and on September 26, a Norwegian aircraft flew over and dropped a sonobuoy to trigger the blasts. Three out of four pipelines were destroyed, but the fourth remains intact; Danish and Swedish investigators have not released any conclusions as to the identity of the culprit, but have confirmed that the attack was sabotage.

Few leading American news publications have covered Hersh's independently-published report, and the reception has not been positive in Washington. The White House dismissed Hersh's allegations as "utterly false" on Wednesday, and the Pentagon told reporters that “the United States was not involved in the Nord Stream explosion." Hersh also quoted a CIA spokesperson as responding that his report was "completely and utterly false."

The report received a somewhat warmer reception in Russia. On Wednesday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told state-owned RIA Novosti that the report generally aligns with Russia's perspective, and said that there would be "consequences" for the pipeline attack. "By and large, [Hersh's] publication confirmed a conclusion we made for ourselves—the official representative of the foreign ministry said yesterday that we never had any doubts that the United States, possibly other NATO countries, were involved in this outrageous sabotage," Ryabkov said.

In Beijing, the story made the top page of state-owned China Daily. The Global Times, an English-language division of the People's Daily, made an in-depth review of Hersh's report its top story on Thursday. "Given previous US behaviors, Chinese experts believe that the Hersh report is highly credible and Washington's denial cannot hinder Russia's determination to dig out more evidence," Global Times assessed.

The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.

maritime-executive.com · by The Maritime Executive​

5. Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

Detailed analysis. Graphics and photos at the link: https://oalexanderdk.substack.com/p/blowing-holes-in-seymour-hershs-pipe?utm_source=pocket_saves

Excerpts:

Due to the exceptionally high level of secrecy for this operation, one could also ask why the US chose to involve the Norwegian Navy it at all. As the dives were supposedly performed using EC-UBA gear, any ship could have been used and a civilian vessel would have be much more covert and not needed the cover of BALTOPS22. The same question can be asked about the Norwegian Air Force. According to Hersh, they were used to drop a sonobouy from the P-8 Poseidon to detonate the explosives. Why even use an aircraft for this? A sonobouy could be also be deployed by a ship which again is much more covert.

Seymour Hersh’s story would have been a lot harder to pull apart, had he decided to be more sparing with the details instead of going into depth with meaningless details that make little sense. A simpler story could have been believable, but this piece of Tom Clancy fan fiction is subpar.

Finally, through this entire detailed account there is one key thing Seymour Hersh neglects to mention or provide reasoning for. If Biden launched this operation with the express purpose of destroying Russia’s ability to supply Germany with natural gas, why only blow up three of the four Nord Stream pipelines? Why leave one of the two Nord Stream 2 pipelines intact, when they were the ones that Russia was able to open up at a moments notice.

Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

On the surface Seymour Hersh's story looks passable, but as you dig deeper it has more holes than the Nord Stream pipeline.

https://oalexanderdk.substack.com/p/blowing-holes-in-seymour-hershs-pipe?utm_source=pocket_saves

Oliver Alexander

Feb 1​0​

I would like to preface this post by stating that I will not be making any conclusions on who is responsible for the Nord Stream pipeline explosions in this piece. While I have my suspects, all publicly available information regarding the explosions is circumstantial and there is none that conclusively points to a specific culprit. The purpose of this post is to debunk the claims made in Seymour Hersh’s Substack post titled “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline” using publicly available information.

In regards to Seymour Hersh’s past, both his time as a Pulitzer Price winning journalist in the 1970s and his recent factually incorrect takes on the Syria gas attacks and Skripal poisoning, I will let people like Eliot Higgins who worked on these cases give their opinion. This post will solely focus on the claims made in the recent Substack post.

OSINT & Analysis by Oliver Alexander is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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Seymour Hersh’s recent Substack post claims to provide a highly detailed account of a covert US operation to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines in order to ensure that Russia would be unable to supply Germany with natural gas through them. All the information in Hersh’s post reportedly comes from a single unnamed source, who appears to have had direct access to every step of the planning and execution of this highly secretive operation.

When first reading through Hersh’s account of the events, the level of detail he provides could add credence to his story. Unfortunately for Hersh’s story, the high level of detail is also where the entire story begins to unravel and fall apart. It is often stated that people who lie have a tendency to add too much superfluous detail to their accounts. This attempt to “cover all bases” is in many cases what trips these people up. Extra details add extra points of reference that can be crosschecked and examined. In Hersh’s case, this is exactly what appears to have happened. On the surface level, the level of detail checks out to laymen or people without more niche knowledge of the subject matter mentioned. When you look closer though, the entire story begins to show massive glaring holes and specific details can be debunked.

Early in Hersh’s article, he states that the secrecy of mission to destroy the pipelines was the top priority of the Biden Administration. This he states is the reason why diver graduates from the United States Navy Experimental Diving Unit were chosen instead of SEALs or other SOCOM units. Doing this Hersh states would bypass reporting of the operation to members of Congress or the “Gang of Eight”. In Hersh’s initial story, it appears that every precaution is being taken to avoid any leaks or bringing any unnecessary actors in on the mission.

Already in the accounts of the early top-secret planning meetings between high level US military, CIA and Biden Administration officials, some of the proposals seemed more akin to Tom Clancy fan fiction than plausible suggestions. The US Air Force officials reportedly proposed “dropping bombs with delayed fuses that could be set off remotely”. One could write an entire post on the reasons why sounds entirely made up by someone with no real grasp of what that suggestion would actually technically entail.

During the supposed initial planning of this operation, from the way it is described by Hersh and his source, it appears that the CIA and entire interagency group were unaware of the fact that the Nord Stream pipelines were in fact pipelines.

Still, the interagency group was initially skeptical of the CIA’s enthusiasm for a covert deep-sea attack. There were too many unanswered questions. The waters of the Baltic Sea were heavily patrolled by the Russian navy, and there were no oil rigs that could be used as cover for a diving operation. Would the divers have to go to Estonia, right across the border from Russia’s natural gas loading docks, to train for the mission? “It would be a goat fuck,” the Agency was told.

I am unsure as to why all the intelligence officials in the initial planning meetings for the mission felt that the only possible way to sabotage the pipeline would be at the short section directly bordering Russia, instead of the large section in more favorable waters.

Source: Samuel Bailey

As the operation commences, Hersh states that Norway was chosen as the obvious partner. This entails bringing the Norwegian Navy and Secret Service in on the details of the mission, as they will play a key part in carrying out the operation. This is the same mission where Biden still holds secrecy as the top priority and does not want the “Gang of Eight” or members of Congress to catch wind of the plan for fear of leaks.

During his introduction of Norway, Hersh makes a very strange remark about NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg implying that he has worked directly with the US intelligence community since the Vietnam War. Jens Stoltenberg was born March 16th 1959. The US involvement in the Vietnam War ended April 30th 1975, meaning Jens had just turned 16 when Saigon fell to the PAVN troops. I doubt Jens Stoltenberg was a US intelligence asset in his early teens.

He was a hardliner on all things Putin and Russia who had cooperated with the American intelligence community since the Vietnam War. He has been trusted completely since. “He is the glove that fits the American hand,” the source said.

As Hersh’s article begins to move into the detailed account of the supposed operation, this is where the factually incorrect statements that can be crosschecked begin to appear.

Hersh claims that the Norwegian navy had the idea of using the annual BALTOPS exercise as the cover for the operation to plant the explosive charges on the pipelines. He then claims that the Americans had “convinced the Sixth Fleet planners to add a research and development exercise to the program” where the “at-sea event would be held off the coast of Bornholm Island and involve NATO teams of divers planting mines, with competing teams using the latest underwater technology to find and destroy them.”

There are multiple problems with this statement. Firstly, mine clearing has long been a staple of the BALTOPS exercises. Implying that this is something that was added as cover for this operation is honestly laughable. Secondly, the people behind this highly secret operation that could not afford leaks had now somehow convinced the BALTOPS planners to change the parameters of their exercise which would have been planned far in advance of the exercise taking place. All of this either without informing them of why or by adding more people to the loop that could leak the plans.

”Nord Stream 1 and 2, each with two sets of pipelines, were separated much of the way by little more than a mile as they made their run to the port of Greifswald in the far northeast of Germany.

The Norwegian navy was quick to find the right spot, in the shallow waters of the Baltic sea a few miles off Denmark’s Bornholm Island. The pipelines ran more than a mile apart along a seafloor that was only 260 feet deep.”

The next major question mark comes after this description by Hersh of how the Norwegian navy found the “right spot” to sabotage the pipeline. It makes it sound like the explosions all took place in close vicinity of each other. There was in fact 6.17km between the site of the two blasts that caused the two leaks in the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. The third blast which caused the leak in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was 80km away from Nord Stream 1 blasts.

Immediately after this Hersh begins to mention some of the details of the diving aspect of the operation. He starts of by mentioning that the divers would deploy off a “a Norwegian Alta class mine hunter”. No Alta-class minesweepers took part in BALTOPS22. One Oksøy-Class mine hunter, the Hinnøy, did take part in the exercises though. The two classes of ship are very similar, though not identical.

Jonathan Lundkvist

@JonathanRL

Hinnøy; a Oksøy-class mine hunter from the Norwegian Navy; @Sjoforsvaret.

#baltops #baltops22

3:56 PM ∙ Jun 5, 2022

While this ship took part in the exercise, its positioning during the time period does not match what would be expected of a ship supporting deep sea divers.

Joe Galvin used open source AIS data to track the Hinnøy during BALTOPS22 and as we can see from the map in his tweet, the movements of the Hinnøy are not consistent with three lengthy dives at the locations of the three seperate blasts.

Joe Galvin

@Joey_Galvin

...one Oksay-class minesweeper, the M343 Hinnoy (MMSI: 259019000), did track near the sites of the blasts (as reported by @DMA_SFS) in June, but its track does not match up to what you'd expect (holding position over the sites for a period of time so the divers could deploy)...

11:12 PM ∙ Feb 8, 2023

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Here I have marked the locations of the Nord Stream leaks on top of the map of the Hinnøy’s movement during BALTOPS22 that Joe Gavin posted. Note the even at its closest, the Hinnøy is several km from the leak locations. At the location of the two leaks in Nord Stream 1, the Hinnøy never even slows down significantly.

From the available information I can find, I have found no evidence that the Oksøy-Class can support surface-supplied mixed gas diving. This means that the divers would have been required to use electronically controlled closed-circuit underwater breathing apparatus (EC-UBA) for their dives. In his article Hersh states that the divers would “dive with a mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and helium streaming from their tanks”. In the US Navy Diving Manual dives to the depths required for the sabotage of the pipelines are to be done using a HeO2 (Heliox) mix. The manual also features table showing the decompression times for divers during the assent for dives to this depth.

For a dive of 260 FSW, assuming that the work to place the charges took somewhere between 15 and 30 mins, the total assent time for the divers would be between 53 and 195 minutes. So for each dive we are looking at a dive time of between an hour and a half to four hours to complete the planting of the charges on the pipeline. Additionally as the three explosive locations were all miles apart, they would require at least 3 separate dives to accomplish the mission.

According to Hersh’s source, at some point the Americans and Norwegians decided to brief senior officials in Denmark and Sweden “in general terms about possible diving activity in the area”. This I do not in anyway understand. Either the same insulated highly secretive operation that must not have any leaks is now bringing further outside actors into the fold or this means that they were just briefed that dives would be taking place. If it was the latter, then why brief them on diving activity when they had supposedly already orchestrated the entire mine clearing part of BALTOPS22 as an excuse for the diving activity.

Then Hersh goes on to speak absolute nonsense about the US having to “camouflage” the explosives from the Russians by adapting their salinity to that of the water. This is complete and utter drivel that makes no sense at all. Russia is not conducting minesweeping operations in the Danish and Swedish EEZ. Even if they were, they are not going to detect what Hersh himself described as a shaped charge placed on the pipeline. The salinity aspect is just random buzzwords.

The Russian navy was known to possess surveillance technology capable of spotting, and triggering, underwater mines. The American explosive devices needed to be camouflaged in a way that would make them appear to the Russian system as part of the natural background—something that required adapting to the specific salinity of the water. The Norwegians had a fix.

Hersh later states that the charges would be detonated by a “sonar bouy” (sonobouy) dropped as a “Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane made a seemingly routine flight”. Many problems with this, firstly the Norwegian P-8s are operated by the Norwegian Air Force. Secondly, while they have been delivered per the link he used as a source earlier, this link forgets to mention that they won’t enter into active service until later this year. Here I assume that Hersh thought they were in service as they had been delivered and then proceeded to add this detail to his story, without knowing that they were not yet in service. There would be nothing “seemingly routine” about a Norwegian P-8 dropping sonobouys just off the coast of Bornholm.

Open Source ADS-B Exchange information also does not show any Norwegian P-8 activity on September 26th. While it is possible for aircraft to operate without showing up on ADS-B Exchange, it would make little sense in this case as Hersh states it was meant to look like a “seemingly routine flight”. The timeline for this also does not match up, as Hersh states after the P-8 dropped the sonobouy, “A few hours later, the high-powered C4 explosives were triggered and three of the four pipelines were put out of commission.” The first explosion was recorded at 02:03 local time, meaning that there was no way for the flight to be on the 26th as he stated while there also being a few hour delay on the explosives.

There was one P-8 Poseidon aircraft in the vicinity of the Bornholm around the time of the explosions. This was a US Navy P-8, not Norwegian Air Force P-8. Again though the timeline does not match what Hersh described. The P-8 passed over the area of the Nord Stream 2 leak almost exactly one hour after explosion took place. The explosion happened at 02:03 CEST, while the P-8 flew over at 03:10 CEST. It would later return an circle the area several hours after the explosions took place.

ADS-B Exchange

Hersh then goes onto a long rant about how they had to be careful that a random underwater noise did not trigger the explosives, which again makes little sense. This isn’t the 1960’s with phone phreaks getting free long distance calls using cereal box whistles. I highly doubt they would make a trigger mechanism that could be detonated by the “complex mix of ocean background noises”.

Due to the exceptionally high level of secrecy for this operation, one could also ask why the US chose to involve the Norwegian Navy it at all. As the dives were supposedly performed using EC-UBA gear, any ship could have been used and a civilian vessel would have be much more covert and not needed the cover of BALTOPS22. The same question can be asked about the Norwegian Air Force. According to Hersh, they were used to drop a sonobouy from the P-8 Poseidon to detonate the explosives. Why even use an aircraft for this? A sonobouy could be also be deployed by a ship which again is much more covert.

Seymour Hersh’s story would have been a lot harder to pull apart, had he decided to be more sparing with the details instead of going into depth with meaningless details that make little sense. A simpler story could have been believable, but this piece of Tom Clancy fan fiction is subpar.

Finally, through this entire detailed account there is one key thing Seymour Hersh neglects to mention or provide reasoning for. If Biden launched this operation with the express purpose of destroying Russia’s ability to supply Germany with natural gas, why only blow up three of the four Nord Stream pipelines? Why leave one of the two Nord Stream 2 pipelines intact, when they were the ones that Russia was able to open up at a moments notice.

6.Opinion | The all-volunteer force turns 50 — and faces its worst crisis yet

Opinion | The all-volunteer force turns 50 — and faces its worst crisis yet

The Washington Post · by Max Boot · February 13, 2023

Fifty years ago, in early 1973, with U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War coming to a close, the Nixon administration announced the end of draft call-ups. The armed forces, which had been dependent on conscripts since 1940, had to become an all-volunteer force (AVF) overnight.

America gained — and lost — a great deal in that wrenching transition: We gained a more effective military but opened up a new divide between service personnel and civilians.

Admittedly, it was hard to predict either consequence when the draft ended. By 1973, conscription had caused enormous discontent in U.S. society because so many of the well-off had been able to escape the Vietnam War with occupational or student deferments or bogus medical excuses.

Military leaders feared that few high-quality recruits would join voluntarily — and initially they were right. As recounted by James Kitfield in his book “Prodigal Soldiers: How the Generation of Officers Born of Vietnam Revolutionized the American Style of War,” “On standard military aptitude tests between 1977 and 1980, close to half of all the Army’s male recruits scored in the lowest mental category the service allowed. Thirty-eight percent were high school dropouts.” Drug abuse and racial tensions were rife. The all-volunteer force, combined with defense budget cuts, was producing a “hollow Army,” the Army chief of staff warned in 1980.

That changed in the 1980s when patriotism surged and popular culture began to depict the military in a more positive light — we went from “The Deer Hunter” (1978) to “Top Gun” (1986). Congress raised pay and benefits, and the services figured out how to attract recruits with slogans such as “Be All You Can Be.” By 1990, 97 percent of Army recruits were high school graduates and, thanks to mandatory drug testing, the number using illicit drugs plummeted.

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The AVF went on to win the 1991 Gulf War and perform capably in a long series of conflicts that followed. The United States often did not achieve its political objectives (as in Afghanistan), but it wasn’t the fault of those doing the fighting. They turned the military into the most admired institution in U.S. society.

Now, however, one retired general told me, “The AVF is facing its most serious crisis since Nixon created it.” All of the services are struggling with recruiting. The crisis has been especially acute in the Army. Last year, it missed its recruiting goals by 15,000 soldiers — an entire division’s worth. That is a particularly ominous development given the growing threats from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

Military analysts point to numerous factors to account for the recruiting shortfall, the biggest being that the unemployment rate is at its lowest level since 1969. There is also widespread obesity and drug use among young people. Only 23 percent of Americans are eligible to serve, and even fewer are interested in serving. More than two decades after Sept. 11, 2001, and nearly two years after the U.S. defeat in Afghanistan, war weariness has set in.

Perceived politicization is another issue: While many right-wingers view the armed forces as too “woke,” many progressive Gen Zers view them as too conservative. The Ronald Reagan Institute found that the number of people expressing a great deal of trust and confidence in the military declined from 70 percent in 2017 to 48 percent in 2022.

Those poll numbers reflect a concern among many in the military that the AVF has created a dangerous chasm between the few who serve and the vast majority who don’t. The number of veterans in the population declined from 18 percent in 1980 to about 7 percent in 2018 — and it keeps falling, as the older generation of draftees dies off.

“The AVF has led us to become the best trained, equipped and organized fighting force in global history,” retired Adm. James Stavridis, a former NATO commander, told me. “But we have drifted away from the citizen-soldier model that was such a part of our nation’s history. The AVF has helped to create an essentially professional cadre of warriors. We need to work to ensure that our military remains fully connected to the civilian world, and to educate civilians about the military.”

The easiest way to bridge the civil-military divide would be to reinstate the draft, but there is no support for such a radical step in either the military or the country at large. David S.C. Chu, a former undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, points out that relying on draftees “creates morale and discipline problems” and is “increasingly inconsistent with a highly technological approach to warfare.” In most countries, conscripts serve only a year or two at most — barely long enough to master complex weapons systems. That’s why most nations, including Russia and China, have been relying more on professional soldiers like the United States does.

Yet, while we gained a more capable military with the advent of the AVF, we have to recognize that we also lost something important when the draft ended. Mass mobilization during World War II broke down religious, regional and ethnic barriers and paved the way for postwar progress on civil rights and an expansion of the federal government to address problems such as poverty. In the post-draft era, America has become increasingly polarized between “red” and “blue” communities.

That has led to renewed interest in expanding national service programs such as AmeriCorps; President Biden, for example, recently proposed creating a new Civilian Climate Corps. Congress should support such initiatives, but we shouldn’t have extravagant expectations for what they can accomplish. The young people who sign up for voluntary service are so civic-minded already that they are the ones in least need of what these programs teach.

To make a real difference, national service would have to be obligatory. Retired Gen. Charles C. Krulak, a former Marine commandant, told me he favors requiring every high school graduate to put in two years of community service out of state while living on current or former military bases.

He is undoubtedly right that such a program would produce young adults “better prepared to become useful citizens.” But there is no national emergency that would justify such a mobilization and no agreement on how we could usefully employ 12 million people (the number of Americans aged 18 to 20). Public employee unions would be sure to object, the cost would be prohibitive, and many would try to evade the service requirement. Obligatory national service is no more likely, in today’s climate, than a renewal of military conscription.

The likelihood is that the AVF can overcome its current problems with some tweaks such as a new Army program for pre-basic training to condition out-of-shape recruits. Presumably, once the unemployment rate rises, the military’s recruitment woes will ease. Bridging the fissures that divide our society will be much harder to achieve. I wish a national-service mandate were practical and possible, but it’s not. We will have to look elsewhere — for example, to expanded civics education — for solutions.

The Washington Post · by Max Boot · February 13, 2023

7. Biden to award Medal of Honor to Black Vietnam War vet who’s waited decades

Righting another wrong of another great American hero. If Billy Waugh submitted the award then COL Davis certainly deserves it..

Excerpts:

Davis was age 26 when, on June 18, 1965, he twice disobeyed an order to abandon his team and the battlefield during a burst of enemy fire. An injured Davis, as several news organizations have reported over the years, refused to leave behind his fellow soldiers. He ultimately rescued each member of his team, according to the Army Times.

His valor earned him a nomination for the Medal of Honor — a nomination that the Army inexplicably lost.

According to CBS News, Billy Waugh, one of the American soldiers rescued by Davis that day, personally nominated him for the Medal of Honor immediately after his actions. But decades passed, and Davis was not honored.

According to the New York Times, Davis’s commander resubmitted the nomination, but it somehow disappeared again.

Biden to award Medal of Honor to Black Vietnam War vet who’s waited decades

The Washington Post · by Mariana Alfaro · February 13, 2023

President Biden will award the Medal of Honor to a Black Vietnam War veteran who’s been waiting to receive the military’s highest honor since he was first nominated for it in 1965.

The White House said Biden called retired U.S. Army Col. Paris Davis on Monday to inform him that his “remarkable heroism during the Vietnam War” will finally be celebrated, decades after the military lost paperwork documenting his nomination.

The White House did not specify when the ceremony will occur but said Davis — one of the first Black officers to join the Army’s Special Forces — will receive the medal following recommendations by Army Secretary Christine Wormuth and Defense Secretary Lloyd T. Austin III.

“The president told Col. Davis that he looks forward to hosting him at the White House soon for a medal presentation,” the White House said.

Davis was age 26 when, on June 18, 1965, he twice disobeyed an order to abandon his team and the battlefield during a burst of enemy fire. An injured Davis, as several news organizations have reported over the years, refused to leave behind his fellow soldiers. He ultimately rescued each member of his team, according to the Army Times.

His valor earned him a nomination for the Medal of Honor — a nomination that the Army inexplicably lost.

According to CBS News, Billy Waugh, one of the American soldiers rescued by Davis that day, personally nominated him for the Medal of Honor immediately after his actions. But decades passed, and Davis was not honored.

According to the New York Times, Davis’s commander resubmitted the nomination, but it somehow disappeared again.

“I know race was a factor” in the stalling, Davis told CBS News in 2021.

“What other assumption can you make,” Ron Deis — one of the youngest soldiers in Davis’s 1965 team who’s spent years lobbying for Davis’s medal — told the Times in 2021. “We all knew he deserved it then. … He sure as hell deserves it now.”

Asked by the news network what it would mean to be recognized for his service, Davis said: “It would mean all the things that I haven’t been able to dream about.”

The Washington Post · by Mariana Alfaro · February 13, 2023

8. NATO allies weigh more arms for Ukraine as Russian forces close in on Bakhmut

Excerpts:

"We see no signs that President Putin is preparing for peace. What we see is the opposite, he is preparing for more war, for new offensives and new attacks," he told reporters.

Ukraine's military said on Tuesday its forces had repelled attacks in five settlements in Luhansk and six in Donetsk, including in Bakhmut, over the past 24 hours.

They had also beaten back an attack on a town in Kharkiv region, which borders Russia in northeast Ukraine.

"The situation is difficult as a whole, but controlled," Kyrylenko said. "The enemy has not been able to achieve a tactical or strategic success there."

The Russian assault on Bakhmut has been spearheaded by mercenaries of the Wagner group. Britain said on Tuesday the mercenaries had made small gains in the northern outskirts in the past three days but an advance to the south of Bakhmut had probably made little progress.

NATO allies weigh more arms for Ukraine as Russian forces close in on Bakhmut

Reuters · by Pavel Polityuk

• Summary
• Companies
• Russia pounds frontlines in south and east
• City of Bakhmut prepares for assault
• NATO ministers meet to discuss arms supplies

KYIV, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Russian forces bombarded Ukrainian troops and towns along the frontlines in eastern Donetsk region on Tuesday in what appeared to be early salvoes of a new offensive as Western allies met in Brussels to plan stepped-up supplies to the Kyiv government.

The Donetsk city of Bakhmut, a principle target for Russian President Vladimir Putin's invading army, was in a precarious position.

"There is not a single square metre in Bakhmut that is safe or that is not in range of enemy fire or drones," regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko told Ukraine's national broadcaster.

He said Russian artillery was hitting targets all along the frontlines in Donetsk, which along with Luhansk region makes up the Donbas, Ukraine's industrial heartland and a main objective for the Russians.

With the first anniversary of the invasion approaching, the Kremlin has intensified operations across a broad area of southern and eastern Ukraine and a big new offensive has been widely anticipated.

Before a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Brussels, the alliance's Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Western countries needed to boost ammunition supplies to Kyiv.

"We see no signs that President Putin is preparing for peace. What we see is the opposite, he is preparing for more war, for new offensives and new attacks," he told reporters.

Ukraine's military said on Tuesday its forces had repelled attacks in five settlements in Luhansk and six in Donetsk, including in Bakhmut, over the past 24 hours.

They had also beaten back an attack on a town in Kharkiv region, which borders Russia in northeast Ukraine.

"The situation is difficult as a whole, but controlled," Kyrylenko said. "The enemy has not been able to achieve a tactical or strategic success there."

The Russian assault on Bakhmut has been spearheaded by mercenaries of the Wagner group. Britain said on Tuesday the mercenaries had made small gains in the northern outskirts in the past three days but an advance to the south of Bakhmut had probably made little progress.

The capture of Bakhmut would provide a stepping stone for Russia to advance on two bigger cities in Donetsk - Kramatorsk and Sloviansk - and give Russia new momentum after months of setbacks following its invasion last Feb. 24.

Russia now controls swathes of the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, including its nuclear plant, nearly all of Luhansk and over half of Donetsk, including the regional capital. Despite not fully controlling any of the four regions, Moscow claims to have annexed them all.

[1/13] NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks at a NATO defence ministers meeting at the Alliance's headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, February 14, 2023. REUTERS/Johanna Geron

CITY IN RUINS

Bakhmut, a regional road and rail transport and logistics hub, has endured months of shelling and many districts are in ruins. Only about 5,000 civilians are left there out of a pre-war population of about 70,000, Kyrylenko said. Troops have fortified positions in anticipation of street fighting.

Authorities hoped to reduce the number of people there to a minimum and would try to evacuate the wounded, he said.

"Thank you to every one of our soldiers who are preventing the occupiers from encircling Bakhmut," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an evening address.

Ukrainian officials also said the Russians had suffered big losses around Vuhledar, a town about 150 km southwest of Bakhmut, including tanks and armoured vehicles as well as personnel.

Reuters was not able to independently verify battlefield reports.

With Ukraine desperate for more weapons, including fighter jets and long-range missiles, ministers from several NATO countries and other allies of Ukraine in the so-called Ramstein group were meeting in Brussels to discuss more military aid.

Later in the day, NATO defence ministers were to talk.

Stoltenberg said that beyond discussions on new weapons for Kyiv, already-delivered arms needed to be kept working. He said he expected the issue of aircraft to be discussed but that Ukraine needed support on the ground now.

Ukraine is using shells faster than the West can make them.

Germany announced it has signed contracts with arms maker Rheinmetall (RHMG.DE) to restart ammunition production for Gepard anti-aircraft guns it has delivered to Kyiv.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin reaffirmed that Washington and NATO were with Ukraine for the long haul.

"That shared resolve will sustain Ukraine's momentum in the weeks ahead," Austin said in Brussels. "The Kremlin is still betting that it can wait us out."

Reporting by Sabine Siebold, Pavel Polityuk, Ron Popeski, Lydia Kelly and Aleksandar Vasovic; Writing by Angus MacSwan, Editing by Robert Birsel and Andrew Cawthorne

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Reuters · by Pavel Polityuk

9. US-led Security Assistance to Ukraine is Working

Excerpts:

The US and the West face a paradox: how successful can the Ukrainians be with donated arms and supplies, short of dragging the US and its partners into a direct conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia? Such concerns have led Washington to impose numerous restrictions on Kyiv in how it utilises Western intelligence and weapons systems in conducting counteroffensives and interdicting Russian supply lines. Similarly, continued lofty expectations of Ukrainian battlefield performance might hinder realistic objectives and outcomes in the current conflict. This presents a future problem in terms of narratives on how the war is going, negotiating a settlement, and how much longer Western citizens will permit their elected leaders to continue the open-ended support to Ukraine.

The US and its partners should keep battlefield conditions in context with measured security assistance, while taking steps to streamline equipment transfers and optimise command relationships. Our interactions with Ukrainian soldiers and their commanders indicate that assistance can be directed in ways that leverage the Ukrainian armed forces’ organisational and cultural strengths on the battlefield. A nuanced approach of this sort can help Ukrainian soldiers to use hardware (and software) to exploit Russian military asymmetries. Such efficiencies mean achieving quality over quantity with the Ukrainians, purposefully avoiding security assistance mistakes made in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and South Vietnam. This is no easy task, but the alternative is even worse.

US-led Security Assistance to Ukraine is Working

https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/us-led-security-assistance-ukraine-working

Jahara Matisek, Will Reno and Sam Rosenberg8 February 2023

9 Minute Read

rusi.org

While some have criticised the pace of Western military assistance to Ukraine, there can be no doubt that it has made a real and tangible difference on the battlefield.

‘Our way of war is not Western or Russian – it is Cossack. We just happen to be fighting with a lot of donated American and NATO equipment’. This statement by a Ukrainian soldier we met being trained at a US Army base in Germany reflects not only the trend of Ukraine receiving a mix of weapons and ammunition, but also a high level of Ukrainian adaptability.

With memories of the Afghan military collapse still fresh, many US Army advisors are keenly aware of the pitfalls associated with building partner forces in the US’s image. Learning from the failures of past security assistance efforts is just one of several factors contributing to the support for Ukrainian success in resisting the Russian invasion.

As the Russian invasion approaches the one-year mark, Ukrainian forces and international volunteer fighters have defied many Western analysts’ predictions. ‘Kiev should be told it cannot win’, wrote one analyst in the Financial Times. Others viewed Ukraine’s government as too weak and divided to mount an effective resistance to a Russian invasion. In short, many experts thought assistance to Ukraine would be more in the mould of assistance to Iraq and Afghanistan – recipients that lack the political will and capacity to use military aid to good effect.

Some of the success in defying these expectations can be credited to US, Canadian and European bilateral efforts to train, assist and equip Ukrainian forces since Russia’s 2014 invasion, not to mention the massive injection of over $50 billion in economic and security aid since the 2022 invasion. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark A Milley suggested that Russia may have suffered up to 100,000 casualties in less than 10 months of fighting, decimating morale and forcing Putin to tap a new overall military commander.

Over the last year, our US Department of Defense Minerva team has interviewed dozens of NATO, US and Ukrainian military personnel across Europe. Our aim is to understand the ways in which this effort to train and equip the Ukrainians is working. Observing training and assistance first-hand, our view is that Ukrainian military success is a function of low-level ingenuity and creativity, as well as high motivation and morale.

Military Assistance Works When Tailored Accordingly

Ukrainian creativity and initiative are on full display. Training on US artillery, Ukrainians supplement instruction and then battlefield deployment with a smartphone app that assists with calculating targeting information. The app, created by a Ukrainian civilian working with the military, helps artillery units quickly compute firing information by inputting information such as environmental conditions, distances and charges – a game-changer in artillery duels with Russian forces. This is one of many examples that demonstrate a military organisation capable of incorporating human capital in ways that tap ingenuity and knowledge of the details of combat challenges while preserving chains of command – a stark contrast to Russian military culture and practice.

US trainers have displayed innovative approaches to helping Ukrainian soldiers bolster their fighting skills. Although not originally planned, US trainers have provided supplemental classes – like medical instruction – during downtime between primary training classes on Western artillery.

Many experts thought assistance to Ukraine would be more in the mould of assistance to Iraq and Afghanistan – recipients that lack the political will and capacity to use military aid to good effect

Task Force Orion, the National Guard unit tasked with facilitating Ukrainian training, has come up with other novel ideas too. A junior officer we spoke to who manages Ukrainian linguists developed a specialised training programme for interpreters. These interpreter-focused classes give linguists instruction on the weapons platforms transferred to Ukraine, enabling better translations once the primary training gets underway.

Unlike interpreters in Iraq and Afghanistan who mostly translated basic conversations, Ukrainian linguists must interpret instructions and tactics for advanced weaponry that often have no analogous words in their native language. Ukrainian interpreters are also working hard to translate training manuals and the user interfaces on more complicated artillery pieces, as these items still only appear in English. Another example of US and Ukrainian creativity is the use of ‘tele-maintenance’ lines between the battlefield and support locations in Eastern Europe, like a call-in service centre with operators who actually answer calls! Officers underscore the importance of this connection due to high maintenance requirements for Western-supplied equipment.

Ukrainian success, however, is not a story of flawless execution. Ukraine’s armed forces struggle to absorb and maintain vast quantities of Western war matériel. This has led one observer to joke, ‘Ukraine has become the Svalbard Global Seed Vault of modern weaponry. At least one type of every military platform in existence, and every calibre of shell, will soon exist there’, and another to remark on the need for an ‘International Maintenance Legion’ to take care of all the different weapons systems in Ukraine. One Ukrainian soldier commented to our team that his unit struggles to procure manuals for Spanish weapons and tables of fire for shooting German-made artillery shells from Norwegian artillery pieces.

The US command structures put in place to implement assistance complicate efforts to help the Ukrainians. With elements from at least five different US military command structures – in conjunction with the newly established Security Assistance Group-Ukraine (SAG-U) and other European countries (as well as Australia and New Zealand) – working to build up Ukrainian capabilities, the US risks dividing authority, unity of effort, and responsibility for Kyiv’s effectiveness. Having taken over for the 18th Airborne Corps in November 2022, the SAG-U is still working to find its bearings after Lieutenant General Antonio A Aguto Jr took command in December. Pulling personnel from US Army Europe and Africa and elsewhere in the region, the organisation does not have experience in security assistance and is currently staffed by fewer personnel than the 18th Airborne Corps had on the same mission earlier in the year.

Escalation management remains a major challenge in the context of providing new weapons to Ukraine. Many Ukrainian troops we interacted with asked repeatedly why it takes so long for the US to make decisions on providing advanced weapons and training. In December, the camp was only half occupied because US policymakers were still deliberating whether to provide unit-level manoeuvre training to the Ukrainians. A decision was made in December to step up training in January, as only about 3,100 Ukrainians had been trained by Task Force Orion in 2022.

Western Reluctance to Further Arm?

Ukrainian frustrations with the pace and limitations of assistance are real. However, Russia is a nuclear-armed power, and the US must play by a different set of escalation management rules in this indirect conflict. Had Ukraine been invaded by a non-nuclear power, the US likely would have intervened more directly, perhaps with airstrikes and boots on the ground. Instead, Moscow and Washington trade rhetoric about ‘red lines’ and what is and is not acceptable in terms of weapons, aid and training.

The back-and-forth communication about ‘red lines’ is like a game of chicken that reflects deep strategic thinking about deterrence and risks and a desire to manage escalation. This is why it took so long for the Biden administration to give the Ukrainians long-range HIMARS (with numerous restrictions). In 2023, the US is giving Patriot air defence systems and 50 Bradley Fighting Vehicles to Ukraine, further ratcheting up the sophistication of weapons systems in use. Other European countries coordinate within this slow escalation ladder approach, with Germany pledging a Patriot battery system and armoured vehicles to Ukraine. Coordination is not absolute. With Poland and Finland (and others) pledging German-made Leopard main battle tanks, Berlin conceded to allowing tank transfers only if the US was in lockstep with European pledges. Even with London first promising Challenger main battle tanks to Ukraine, this suggests that there are varying levels of perceived risk in providing modernised tanks to Ukraine. With Ukrainian forces losing ground in Soledar and Bakhmut, pleas for Western tanks might appear to be working, as the Biden administration is finally set to provide Abrams main battle tanks.

The slow and deliberate approach to security assistance, although frustrating at times, is the right method considering Russia’s potent nuclear capabilities

Timelines for Western tanks arriving in Ukraine are unknown. However, Ukrainian forces need these tanks and training immediately, as one Ukrainian on the front messaged us this past week, ‘Right now where we fight we haven’t seen more than two our tanks simultaneously [sic]’.

Rather than too little too late, this more deliberate process is best understood as smart incrementalism in the face of a nuclear-armed adversary. Not only does this approach limit the risk of escalation, but it also affords Ukraine and its Western partners the opportunity to take a trial-and-error approach, testing tactics and equipment against the Russians before getting too far down the road with unproven, costly assistance.

Managing Escalation and Expectations in Training and Equipping Ukraine

The war in Ukraine is far from over. But one thing is for certain: US-led security assistance efforts have made a real and tangible difference on the battlefield. If the US and its Western partners can streamline equipment transfers and command relationships, Ukraine will be better positioned to defeat Russia’s full-scale invasion. There will, of course, be diplomatic roadblocks, such as Switzerland preventing Germany from exporting Swiss-made ammunition to Ukraine.

Two main challenges persist: escalation management and Western expectations for success.

The slow and deliberate approach to security assistance, although frustrating at times, is the right method considering Russia’s potent nuclear capabilities. It is understandable that many in the West are calling for even more assistance than NATO countries have already provided. But those advocates should remember that each time the US and other European countries provide a new type of advanced weaponry, such increases in assistance may prove provocative, triggering an even more brutal response from Russia. Such logic will constrain the next level of escalation, such as the provision of F-16s – and similar NATO-produced fourth generation fighters – until lockstep agreement is reached between the US and European allies on how this will increase tensions with Russia.

The US and the West face a paradox: how successful can the Ukrainians be with donated arms and supplies, short of dragging the US and its partners into a direct conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia? Such concerns have led Washington to impose numerous restrictions on Kyiv in how it utilises Western intelligence and weapons systems in conducting counteroffensives and interdicting Russian supply lines. Similarly, continued lofty expectations of Ukrainian battlefield performance might hinder realistic objectives and outcomes in the current conflict. This presents a future problem in terms of narratives on how the war is going, negotiating a settlement, and how much longer Western citizens will permit their elected leaders to continue the open-ended support to Ukraine.

The US and its partners should keep battlefield conditions in context with measured security assistance, while taking steps to streamline equipment transfers and optimise command relationships. Our interactions with Ukrainian soldiers and their commanders indicate that assistance can be directed in ways that leverage the Ukrainian armed forces’ organisational and cultural strengths on the battlefield. A nuanced approach of this sort can help Ukrainian soldiers to use hardware (and software) to exploit Russian military asymmetries. Such efficiencies mean achieving quality over quantity with the Ukrainians, purposefully avoiding security assistance mistakes made in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and South Vietnam. This is no easy task, but the alternative is even worse.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the US Naval War College, Department of the Army, Department of the Air Force, Department of Defense, or US Government. This article was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under award number FA9550-20-1-0277.

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10. The Case for Japanese Land Power in the First Island Chain

Conclusion:

In mid-January, Japan and the United States held talks between foreign and defense chiefs and confirmed that their respective strategies are closely aligned, share visions, priorities, and goal. The alliance between the two countries has never been stronger, with Japan being the pacing ally for the United States. This unprecedented alignment, however, is just a testament to the severity and enormity of the challenge the allies face. With storm clouds gathering, there is no time for complacency. At this juncture, Japan’s new strategies envision a refashioned Ground Self-Defense Force which will be more cross-domain, lethal, mobile, and survivable. As such, it will better support joint and bilateral operations with the U.S. military along the first island chain. Given its evolving roles and missions, the Ground Self-Defense Force has the opportunity to take the lead in the endeavor to modernize the alliance.

The Case for Japanese Land Power in the First Island Chain - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Yusuke Kawachi · February 14, 2023

Vladimir Lenin reputedly said, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” The year of 2022 was exactly this kind of period, when years of developments were compressed: Lenin’s descendants ironically launched an unprovoked and unlawful war against Ukraine; the Taiwan Strait witnessed a once-in-a-decade crisis after U.S. House Speaker Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan; and North Korea set a record for conducting more than 70 rounds of missile tests in just one year.

It is no wonder that Japan’s three strategic documents, released at the end of 2022, are marked by an uncharacteristically anxious tone. These documents are Japan’s response to the deteriorating regional and global security situations. Two of those documents — Japan’s National Defense Strategy and the Defense Buildup Program — set targets for future capabilities and posture of the Japan Self-Defense Forces to address the emerging security outlook. Scrutinizing the two documents reveals that the Japan Self-Defense Forces’ land component, the Ground Self-Defense Force, is the service which will undergo the most significant transformation in the coming decade compared to the rest of the Japanese military.

In light of the operational problems the Japan Self-Defense Forces and the U.S. military need to address, a new Ground Self-Defense Force could play a key role in enabling not only Japan’s own joint operations but also bilateral operations with the U.S. military along the first island chain. While maritime and air forces are susceptible to the threat of long-range strikes, ground forces can keep operating in areas within range of adversaries longer-range missiles and take advantage of land-based infrastructure to protect the Japanese littoral and, potentially, to work with the United States. The role of Japan’s ground forces is critical for the future of the country and the Japan-U.S. alliance but is often overlooked in favor of the country’s air and maritime forces. This re-discovered significance of Japanese ground forces presents a set of challenges for the Japanese and U.S. militaries to tackle together to respond to contingencies. One of such challenges is to fully integrate both militaries in order to synchronize their situational awareness and amplify the lethal and non-lethal effects they bring to bear.

Japanese Understanding of the Strategic Environment

The Japanese people regard Russia’s aggression against Ukraine as an egregious example of an authoritarian state invading another sovereign state. In terms of international norms, if left unchecked, Russia would demonstrate to other revisionist states the ease of changing the status quo by force, encouraging them to do the same. On a global scale, the war in Ukraine is the most violent manifestation of accelerating confrontation between the free world and the authoritarian states. Japan has also witnessed closer alignment between the Russian and Chinese militaries around the Japanese islands, including joint aerial patrols and maritime exercises. Therefore, the war in Ukraine is not simply a local conflict far away from home for Japan but rather a fateful occurrence that evokes a sense of crisis among ordinary Japanese citizens.

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The fault line between the free world and the authoritarian one runs through the west of the first island chain — the Japanese archipelago that interlocks with Taiwan and then down to the Philippines. Japan finds itself on the frontline of free nations at the very moment of heightened confrontation between the United States and China, especially over the fate of Taiwan. Because of its unique geopolitical position, Japan is now a pacing ally for the United States while China has emerged as its pacing challenge. The perimeter Japan holds is critical not only for itself but also to like-minded countries in the Indo-Pacific.

In response to this new geopolitical environment, Japan’s new security strategies clearly acknowledge China as the “unprecedented and greatest challenge” to its security. This is a first in the country’s post-World War II history. Beijing has never renounced the option of using violent force to annex Taiwan and has grown more aggressive in both maritime and air domains along the first island chain. The fact that China fired missiles into Japan’s exclusive economic zone after Speaker Pelosi’s recent visit to Taiwan inadvertently demonstrated that Japan and Taiwan geographically belong to the same sub-theater — the distance between Taiwan’s east coast and Japan’s westernmost island of Yonaguni is only 111 km. North Korea, too, continues to threaten Japan with its hundreds of ballistic missiles. Surviving saturation attacks of their ballistic and cruise missiles would be a daunting challenge for Japan.

Japan’s Future Land Power

While Japan’s new National Security Strategy sets principles for a whole-of-government effort to meet regional and global security challenges, the National Defense Strategy, of which previous versions were called the National Defense Program Guidelines, specifically discusses how Japan’s military instruments will be employed to achieve security objectives. It simultaneously explains the future capabilities and posture the Japan Self-Defense Forces will develop over the next 10 years. Public attention has focused on the announcement to double defense spending in five years and the decision to introduce so-called counterstrike capabilities.

As important as these announcements are, the issues are only part of a larger whole: a strategy of denial. The government believes that the Japan Self-Defense Forces should possess sufficient capabilities and capacity to deny any potential adversaries from invading Japan. The level of capabilities and capacity to do this needs to be based on the capabilities of potential adversaries and also take into account recent developments about the characteristics of warfare. For example, the war in Ukraine has witnessed large-scale attacks by ballistic and cruise missiles; information operations integrated in hybrid warfare; asymmetric attacks in the space, cyber, and the electronic domains; and wide use of unmanned platforms.

As the land component of the Japanese joint force, the Ground Self-Defense Force is expected to understand the new reality and then optimize its architecture to best support joint and bilateral operations with the United States. Based on gaps identified in its current capabilities and capacity, the Ground Staff Office has established four lines of efforts for its transformational modernization. First, the ground service will continue to strengthen cross-domain operation capabilities across the land, sea, air, space, cyber, and electromagnetic domains. It will increase its cyber-electromagnetic activities capabilities and create new electronic warfare units especially along the Ryukyu Islands. The cognitive domain is also defined as critical, where artificial intelligence will be introduced to achieve dominance in decision-making. This effort will include investing more in land-based air defense systems as a part of the Japanese integrated air and missile defense network and increase the number of anti-air artillery from the current seven groups to eight.

Second, Japan’s stand-off missile arsenal will be dramatically scaled up. The Ground Self-Defense Force will expand its surface-to-ship missile artillery from five regiments to seven, equipping them with an updated version of the Type-12 anti-ship missile with extended range. It will also create two new battalions that will field high-velocity gliding projectiles as well as two other units armed with hypersonic cruise missiles.

The Ground Self-Defense Force will also field a fleet of new drones in order to strengthen its own kill chain with Japanese intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting functions. All these would mean significantly expanding and deepening Japan’s ability to strike targets along the first island chain, which will make the area “contested environment” for potential adversaries.

Third, the Ground Self-Defense Force will be quicker and faster to deploy and move along critical terrain on the East China Sea. The ground service will enhance its mobility by supporting the creation of a new joint watercraft unit equipped with logistics support vessels and landing craft utilities, which will be launched by the end of 2024 as the Maritime Transportation Group to transport ground troops. The transportation requirement will also be reduced by creating a new depot in Okinawa to increase prepositioned supplies together with the joint or shared use of the U.S. military’s Kadena Ammunition Storage Area. In addition, the 15th Brigade — the only tactical formation in Okinawa — will be upgraded into a division as the pre-deployed unit in the area.

Finally, this transformation will make the Ground Self-Defense Force more sustainable and resilient. All divisions and brigades, with the exception of the 15th Brigade, will be restructured to become more deployable with smaller, self-sufficient packaged regiments. These units will soon have their own intelligence, fires, air defense, and logistics dispersed in wide areas to survive, fighting independently under the threat of the enemy’s long-range precision strikes.

The Case for Japanese Land Power in the First Island Chain

The region’s geography shows the criticality of ground forces. From an operational perspective, Japan is a key maritime terrain in the western Pacific. The force that controls this littoral has the ability to significantly influence events seaward. Potential adversaries are acutely aware of its value, viewing Japan as a fortified barrier obstructing access to the ocean. Ceding any part of this terrain to adversaries would jeopardize the Japanese military’s entire operations while also forfeiting the most precious advantage for allied forces along the first island chain as well. Americans did not have to worry about the control of this archipelagic terrain in the past. During the Korean War in the 1950s, Japan served as a secure rear base for U.N. forces operating on the Korean Peninsula. At the time, neither China nor North Korea had the means to strike these areas. This is not the case anymore, as the entirety of Japanese territory falls within range of all of the regional adversaries’ long-range strike capabilities.

The role of the Ground Self-Defense Force is to seize and retain key terrain. Maritime and air forces are employed in a more dynamic way, sometimes maneuvering forward to deliver strikes, sometimes disengaging rearward to minimize risks to platforms. Potential adversaries have reportedly targeted Japanese air bases and naval bases and are regularly rehearsing strike operations. Being vulnerable to initial volleys of missile strikes, maritime and air forces have every reason to save their combat power for decisive engagements in the later phases of combat. In contrast, the complex archipelagic terrain itself provides ground forces with specific means for cover and concealment and sufficient maneuver space to disperse and survive. While this holds true for any ground forces operating on the first island chain, the Ground Self-Defense Force has certain advantages because of its unhindered access to existing garrisons, depots, logistic facilities, and other infrastructure spread across the nation. Over the past decade, it has created new garrisons on the Ryukyu Islands, just north of Taiwan, with the last one on Ishigaki Island scheduled to be launched in March 2023. All of these could support joint and bilateral operations in an East China Sea contingency.

Japanese Ground Forces Contribution to Joint and Bilateral Operations

Holding maritime terrain will not be an easy task. Having learned painful lessons in the closing days of the Pacific War, the Japanese military is acutely aware of the difficulty — and costs — of defending islands when faced with enemy superiority in the air and on the sea. Today, all domains — not only maritime and air domains — are contested due to technological advances in sensing, ranges, and lethality. Japanese ground forces will need to fight just to stay in the conflict. By doing so, however, the Ground Self-Defense Force can be key enablers for joint operations, especially for those bilaterally conducted with the U.S. joint force.

The “tyranny of distance” in the Indo-Pacific has become a military cliché but remains a reality. The problem will be more acute with relative growth in potential adversaries’ capabilities. Gaps in time and distance are fundamental challenges for the U.S. military projecting power in the western Pacific. The U.S. joint force will have to fight first to get to the fight, whereas the Ground Self-Defense Force will need to fight to stay in the fight. Adversaries will employ every means to widen and exploit such gaps to keep the U.S. joint force at arm’s length. They will likely seek to influence the minds of American decision-makers with perceived costs in order to deter them from intervening. The worst scenario for America’s allies — and the most desirable one for their adversaries — is that the adversaries establish a fait accompli along the first island chain long before the U.S. military can mount any armed response.

With these challenges in mind, Ground Self-Defense Force units are tasked to operate in situations below the threshold of conflict and in kinetic operations. During competition below the threshold of violence, the forces are designed to maintain a presence on the Ryukyu Islands. The presence of their long-range strike capabilities would especially complicate adversaries’ calculus and planning, providing a shield for interagency partners directly confronting adversaries on the sea. The Japanese military should learn from the playbooks of adversaries who deploy land-based missiles to support coercive behaviors of their maritime law enforcement organs. Ground Self-Defense Force units constantly monitor and track adversaries’ activities in the theater, dynamically deploy and rotate troops along the first island chain, and send signals through training and exercises, all aimed at deterring potential adversaries from changing the status quo. Those activities could be conducted as a part of joint, bilateral, and even multilateral operations. They will serve the purpose of preparing for conflict — to include persistent target development — as well as that of deterring adversaries. This would help bridge the temporal gap so critical to the U.S. joint force.

If deterrence fails and hostilities commence, Ground Self-Defense Force units in the area operate as stand-in forces, well within range of enemy missiles. They can persist in position even without the immediate presence of sister-service forces. Reinforced by additional ground forces deployed from elsewhere, Japanese stand-in forces firmly retain key maritime terrain, maintaining the forward edge of the contact line. Such forces gain and maintain custody of the enemy targets with their own sensors, supporting joint surveillance and reconnaissance to assist the Japanese joint force delivering strikes. If directed, they can conduct sea- and air-denial operations with their long-range strike and air defense capabilities together with other joint assets available then. The Ground Self-Defense Force simultaneously protects land-based foundational capabilities across the nation, not only for itself but also for sister services and U.S. forces stationed in Japan. It is by gaining friendly situational awareness, maintaining positional advantage, denying the enemy freedom of movement, degrading the enemy combat power, and opening corridors for friendly maneuver that such Japanese stand-in forces would set conditions for introducing the Japanese and U.S. joint forces to areas of their decisive engagements. Drawing from an analogy of land operations, Japanese ground forces in the forward edge would operate as a covering force for the main body of bilateral joint forces: They would allow the main body of the stand-off forces to maximize their destruction potentials as well as minimizing risks to their platforms. With their posture established in a steady state, Ground Self-Defense Force units would raise prospective costs for adversaries to launch military actions while significantly reducing those for the U.S. joint force to intervene along the first island chain. This would compel adversaries to give up their malign intentions in the western Pacific from the start.

Challenges Ahead

Opportunities offered by a refashioned Ground Self-Defense Force will inevitably entail a range of challenges for Japan and the United States. First and foremost, the roles of ground forces on the first island chain should be incorporated into the Japan-U.S. dialogue on the roles, missions, and capabilities at the policy level. Then, a couple of issues need to be addressed at the joint level: If Japanese stand-in forces shape conditions for the introduction of bilateral joint forces along the first island chain, both the Japan Self-Defense Forces and the U.S. military must first clearly articulate a shared purpose of the entire bilateral campaign — to include the defense of Japan itself and other contingencies — based on a clear theory of victory. Such a shared purpose should be informed by policies on both ends — not only because political objectives drive purposes of military campaigns, but also because such planning efforts may require optimizing the capabilities and posture of both Japanese and U.S. forces in the theater, which could be politically sensitive. A shared purpose would enable unity of bilateral efforts: The Japan Self-Defense Forces and U.S. military could integrate their operations across phases and warfighting functions through detailed planning and day-to-day coordination.

Among a range of functions, especially keen is the need to integrate command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Looking back to examples in military history, lack or disruption of communication between a covering force and the main body is a recipe for disaster — especially that of being destroyed in detail. This is not simply the same old story of sharing more information and becoming more interoperable. Rather, Japanese and U.S. forces should fully integrate their situational awareness, sharing data itself. They should design an architecture to allow for such integration which would be compatible with their respective policies and regulations, supported by robust information security measures.

Furthermore, the Japan Self-Defense Forces and the U.S. military should be prepared to build “bilateral kill webs,” supported by AI-enabled networks, into which all the sensors and shooters of both forces could be plugged in together, matching them automatically at the speed of light. Given the relative combat power in the area weighing against the Japanese and U.S. militaries, and with no prospect of achieving dominance again over their adversaries, they must not spare any effort to forcibly create windows of opportunity. Both militaries should see the value, for example, of Ground Self-Defense Force Type-12 anti-ship missiles sinking enemy vessels spotted by a U.S. Marine Corps F-35B or U.S. Army hypersonic missiles striking targets identified by Ground Self-Defense Force electronic warfare sensors.

At the service level, the Ground Self-Defense Force must synchronize its institutional efforts with those of its U.S. counterparts — in particular, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. The U.S. Army recently formulated multi-domain operations as its doctrine. Accordingly, the Army’s multi-domain task force might be employed as a key component to the contact layer along the first island chain. The U.S. Marine Corps, for its part, has tested concepts for expeditionary advanced base operations and stand-in forces, while transforming its architecture based on Force Design 2030. Already, the 12th Marine Regiment in Okinawa is being transformed into a Marine littoral regiment specially designed to conduct expeditionary advanced base operations. Both the U.S. Army and Marine Corps have struggled to adapt to the current operational environment. If all those units conduct similar missions with Ground Self-Defense Force units along the first island chain, their concepts and doctrines need to be logically aligned. Synchronizing ideas should involve more than occasionally doing targeting together in episodic training and exercises: It should go deeper into the philosophical level, leading to synchronization of theories of victory. This would then inform the best solutions regarding how to share responsibilities and support each other in various situations. For example, Ground Self-Defense Force command nodes and (forward) elements of U.S. ground forces may better integrate their targeting cycles, to include their persistent target development activities in a steady state. The intellectual undertaking should also lead, and be supported by, combined efforts to develop materiel that would allow for more integration. In particular, this should enable Japanese and U.S. systems to generate, manage, share, and use data in this era of data centricity.

Conclusion

In mid-January, Japan and the United States held talks between foreign and defense chiefs and confirmed that their respective strategies are closely aligned, share visions, priorities, and goal. The alliance between the two countries has never been stronger, with Japan being the pacing ally for the United States. This unprecedented alignment, however, is just a testament to the severity and enormity of the challenge the allies face. With storm clouds gathering, there is no time for complacency. At this juncture, Japan’s new strategies envision a refashioned Ground Self-Defense Force which will be more cross-domain, lethal, mobile, and survivable. As such, it will better support joint and bilateral operations with the U.S. military along the first island chain. Given its evolving roles and missions, the Ground Self-Defense Force has the opportunity to take the lead in the endeavor to modernize the alliance.

Become a Member

Col. Yusuke Kawachi is an artillery officer in the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force with command experience of a surface-to-ship missile battery. He currently serves as the military attaché at the Embassy of Japan in Washington, D.C. He received his undergraduate education at the University of Tokyo and holds master’s degrees from the University of Tokyo, the United States Marine Corps University, and the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies. The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, the Japan Ministry of Defense, or the government of Japan.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Yusuke Kawachi · February 14, 2023

​11. China’s Belt and Road to Nowhere

Excerpts:

Beijing now appears to be recalibrating its approach, softening its rhetoric around the BRI’s capabilities, focusing on smaller projects, and shifting course to offering debt-ridden countries emergency loans. In 2021, Xi also announced a Global Development Initiative (GDI), a small and vaguely defined program that emphasizes China’s position as one of the world’s developing countries, while focusing on education, clean energy, and poverty—all in conjunction with the United Nations. To further the GDI, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has urged cooperation with the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. The GDI reflects a more multilateral approach to development—potentially signaling Beijing’s effort to diversify its strategy in the long run, said Sun of the Stimson Center.

Parks said that the GDI could simply be an effort to rebrand the BRI amid mounting criticism. “I think it’s mostly smoke and mirrors,” he said.

But for all of its problems, don’t expect Beijing to abandon the BRI—or its underlying goals—given how deeply intertwined it is with Xi himself. In 2017, the initiative was even enshrined in the party constitution.

“Officially, you would never hear the Chinese government admitting that the Belt and Road was a mistake, or the way we approached Belt and Road was a mistake,” Zhang said. “That would not happen because Belt and Road is so closely tied to Xi Jinping’s personal political legacy.”

Xi Jinping’s signature foreign policy is a “shadow of its former self.”

By Christina Lu, a reporter at Foreign Policy.

Foreign Policy · by Christina Lu · February 13, 2023

Nearly a decade after its inception, momentum behind China’s sweeping Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) appears to be slowing as lending slumps and projects stall—forcing Chinese President Xi Jinping to again rethink a floundering initiative that he once hailed as his “project of the century.”

After doling out hundreds of billions of dollars, experts say China’s lending for BRI projects has plummeted, largely a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic and the country’s own economic slowdown. Support has also waned as partner countries drown in debt and fractures emerge—literally—in projects, fueling uncertainty about the future of the sprawling initiative. In 2022, 60 percent of China’s overseas lending went to borrowers in financial distress, compared to just 5 percent in 2010, said Bradley Parks, the executive director of the AidData research group at the College of William and Mary.

“At its peak, it was really looked at as the centerpiece of China’s economic engagement with the rest of the world,” said Scott Kennedy, an expert in Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Now, he said, it is a “shadow of its former self.”

Nearly a decade after its inception, momentum behind China’s sweeping Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) appears to be slowing as lending slumps and projects stall—forcing Chinese President Xi Jinping to again rethink a floundering initiative that he once hailed as his “project of the century.”

After doling out hundreds of billions of dollars, experts say China’s lending for BRI projects has plummeted, largely a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic and the country’s own economic slowdown. Support has also waned as partner countries drown in debt and fractures emerge—literally—in projects, fueling uncertainty about the future of the sprawling initiative. In 2022, 60 percent of China’s overseas lending went to borrowers in financial distress, compared to just 5 percent in 2010, said Bradley Parks, the executive director of the AidData research group at the College of William and Mary.

“At its peak, it was really looked at as the centerpiece of China’s economic engagement with the rest of the world,” said Scott Kennedy, an expert in Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Now, he said, it is a “shadow of its former self.”

Xi launched the BRI in 2013 as an ambitious infrastructure development campaign that would span more than 140 countries and export China’s industrial overcapacity, boosting China’s diplomatic clout and enhancing its global influence. Given its sheer scale and scope, many referred to it as China’s version of the Marshall Plan—only bigger and bolder. But Beijing’s vision has also been murky, intensifying scrutiny and controversy over the initiative and the contracts involved.

“No one really knows for sure what Beijing is trying to get out of it,” said Michael Kugelman, the deputy director of the Asia program at the Wilson Center and the writer of Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief. “That sort of has lent this mystique to it that has led to a significant amount of suspicion, particularly from those governments that worry about China’s rise.”

Instead of a sleek geopolitical campaign, researchers describe the BRI as a decentralized jumble of deals and projects that all loosely fall under the same banner of infrastructure development. Hong Zhang, who researches Chinese public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, said that the BRI should be seen as a slogan, not a single program. “A lot of things were happening in the name of Belt and Road,” she said, adding: “Beijing has little control over things going on on the ground.”

China’s lending had already slipped before COVID-19 hit, a trend that was accelerated by the pandemic’s fallout and then China’s own economic slowdown. For many countries, taking on Chinese loans also quickly became unsustainable—particularly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drove up prices in the global marketplace—stoking backlash against Beijing’s lending habits.

One of the most glaring examples is Sri Lanka, which defaulted on a mountain of debt last year as it grappled with a spiraling economic crisis. But cracks emerged far earlier: After struggling to cough up enough money to Beijing in 2017, it signed over the rights to a strategic port, fueling alarm of the dangers of China’s lending practices. In Pakistan, which owes nearly one-third of its foreign debt to China, protests have erupted around a major port project. And in recent weeks, debt-laden Zambia has been tensely wrangling a restructuring plan with China, its biggest bilateral creditor.

The BRI has “fallen on hard times,” Kugelman said. “I think that many, many countries have realized that they simply don’t have the luxury of an economic structure that can withstand the type of loans that have been coming in from China for so long.”

Some of that can be attributed to the haphazard way in which the BRI was executed. To advance the initiative, many Chinese firms were so focused on administering projects that issues of economic feasibility and risk were not prioritized, said Yun Sun, the director of the China program at the Stimson Center.

“The Chinese did not think through the economic viability of a lot of these loan projects because their priority was [to] glorify BRI, to implement projects to ensure that BRI materializes and is happening all over the world,” she said.

As Sri Lanka buckled under its debt, China officially gave it a two-year debt moratorium in early February—and it’s just one of dozens of countries that have now been offered at least a partial reprieve. In 2020, China delayed debt repayments for 77 nations. But that has also left Chinese lenders swimming in risk, Parks said, leaving Beijing in a precarious economic position.

“They’re in a kind of firefighting mode,” Parks said. “They are frankly ill-equipped for the challenge that they’re up against right now because they don’t have a long history of being an overseas lender in times of crisis.”

Still, for many countries with few other options, Beijing has a lot to offer. Bangladesh, for instance, has been on a Chinese-funded infrastructure investment spree that has been quite popular, Kugelman said. In Latin America in particular, China has made new inroads and ramped up investments, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In an effort to contest China’s expanding influence through the BRI, many Western nations have been scrambling to offer up their own alternative development initiatives—with little success. By 2027, the United States and G-7 aim to funnel some $600 billion into their Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment—a revamp of the Build Back Better World campaign that they unveiled in 2021. Despite being launched more than a year ago, the European Union’s 300-billion-euro answer to BRI, called the Global Gateway, has failed to make much of a splash on the global stage.

“To be quite candid, I don’t think any country, whether the U.S. or any other nation, can hold a candle to what China has been able to do with its infrastructure investments,” Kugelman said. “It has such a deep footprint in so many parts of the world.”

Beijing now appears to be recalibrating its approach, softening its rhetoric around the BRI’s capabilities, focusing on smaller projects, and shifting course to offering debt-ridden countries emergency loans. In 2021, Xi also announced a Global Development Initiative (GDI), a small and vaguely defined program that emphasizes China’s position as one of the world’s developing countries, while focusing on education, clean energy, and poverty—all in conjunction with the United Nations. To further the GDI, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has urged cooperation with the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. The GDI reflects a more multilateral approach to development—potentially signaling Beijing’s effort to diversify its strategy in the long run, said Sun of the Stimson Center.

Parks said that the GDI could simply be an effort to rebrand the BRI amid mounting criticism. “I think it’s mostly smoke and mirrors,” he said.

But for all of its problems, don’t expect Beijing to abandon the BRI—or its underlying goals—given how deeply intertwined it is with Xi himself. In 2017, the initiative was even enshrined in the party constitution.

“Officially, you would never hear the Chinese government admitting that the Belt and Road was a mistake, or the way we approached Belt and Road was a mistake,” Zhang said. “That would not happen because Belt and Road is so closely tied to Xi Jinping’s personal political legacy.”

Foreign Policy · by Christina Lu · February 13, 2023

12. Ukraine and the Contingency of Global Order

Excerpts:

Just because Ukraine hasn’t lost the war doesn’t mean that it has won. A range of futures are still possible, if not equally likely, from an outright Ukrainian victory resulting in the liberation of all occupied territory to a scenario in which Russia hangs on to substantial parts of Ukraine for the foreseeable future to an escalation into direct confrontation between Russia and NATO.

There is also a warning for Washington in this analysis: the heaviest burdens may still lie ahead. Ukraine has survived so far because the United States and its allies have dramatically reduced the power disparity between Kyiv and Moscow and ensured that Putin can’t simply escalate or batter his way out of the conflict. Yet as Russia mobilizes more manpower and economic resources—while also importing drones, artillery, and other capabilities from Iran and North Korea—the cost of helping Kyiv stay ahead in this contest will increase. Witness the recent decision by several NATO countries to provide Ukraine with battle tanks, an episode that may simply presage the need for other advanced capabilities, whether longer-range missiles or fourth-generation fighter aircraft, in the months ahead.

Finally, if the outcome of the war is not set in stone, neither are the contours of the world that the war will make. The conflict’s result will shape the perceived efficacy of autocracy and democracy, the degree of security that NATO enjoys on its eastern front, and the level of Russian influence over its neighbors. On these and other issues, the implications of a war that results in a resounding Russian defeat will be different than those of a war that ends with Russian troops occupying significant parts of Ukraine, with Moscow possessing the ability to renew hostilities when it wishes. The latter outcome might not look like such a triumph for the free world, after all. There are still other scenarios, such as a Chinese decision to aid Moscow more directly, that could change the global landscape dramatically. The war in Ukraine offers a variety of lessons, but perhaps the most crucial one is this: global order is neither inherently robust nor inherently fragile. It has exactly as much strength as those who value it can muster—and sustain—when it is tested.

​

Ukraine and the Contingency of Global Order

What If the War Had Gone Differently—or Takes a Sudden Turn?

By Hal Brands

February 14, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Hal Brands · February 14, 2023

The moral arc of the universe is long, the saying goes, but it bends toward justice. That is a pleasing way to see the first year of Russia’s war in Ukraine. True, Ukraine hasn’t seen much justice in a conflict that has ravaged its territory, economy, and people. But the war has at least smashed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military and confounded his imperial aspirations. It has seen Ukraine wildly outperform nearly all initial expectations. It has unified and invigorated the West. The good guys are winning, it seems. The bad guys are getting the cosmic comeuppance reserved for those on the wrong side of history.

It is tempting to think that this outcome was inevitable. Putin’s regime and armed forces were so rotten, territorial conquest in the modern era had become so difficult, and the power of a democratic community united in support of Ukraine was so overwhelming that Moscow never had a chance. The war simply revealed the resilience of the liberal world—and the weaknesses of its enemies.

It is a nice story, but it is mostly not true. The war, particularly in its early months, was a very close-run thing. Ukraine’s success—its survival, even—was never guaranteed. Different choices in Kyiv, Moscow, and Washington could have produced radically different outcomes, for Ukraine and for the rest of the world. Had Putin defeated Ukraine, Western policymakers might be grappling with pervasive insecurity in eastern Europe, an empowered axis of autocracies, and cascading global instability. Ukraine has come to be seen, perhaps prematurely, as the war that strengthened the liberal order; it could easily have weakened it, instead.

Understanding what could have been in Ukraine is essential as the conflict enters its second year. Just because the war has gone relatively well for Ukraine and the Western world doesn’t mean that things will keep going their way. War is one of humanity’s most contingent undertakings, and the outcome of this struggle will hinge as much on future decisions as on decisions taken so far. Events in Ukraine also remind us that world order is not a product of natural law or moral inevitability. It is the result of policies pursued under the excruciating pressures of crisis. Great global dramas can turn on small things; the arc of the universe is exactly what we make of it.

MAKE YOUR OWN DESTINY

By any reasonable historical standard, today’s world is remarkably peaceful, prosperous, and democratic. That world is the result of global clashes that ended in victories for the supporters of a liberal order—but didn’t have to.

If a battle or two in northern France had gone differently in August and September of 1914, Germany might have quickly triumphed in World War I. Even after the war turned into a slugfest, Germany still might have prevailed. Had the German monarchy heeded the counsel of civilian advisers who urged against resuming unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917, the United States would not have entered the war, and Germany’s enemies—a near-revolutionary Russia, an exhausted France, an almost insolvent United Kingdom—might well have folded.

Had World War I gone differently, the rest of the twentieth century might have, too. A victorious Germany would have ruled a vast Mitteleuropa from Belgium to the Middle East. Autocratic forms of government would have been ascendant; illiberalism and instability might have radiated outward from a German-dominated Eurasia.

The stakes of World War II were even higher. In hindsight, the victory of the Grand Alliance—so superior to the Axis in money, manpower, and machines—seems inevitable, but it didn’t look that way at the time. Bold strategies and good timing allowed Germany and Japan to overrun Europe and much of the Asia-Pacific. In early 1942, the Axis might have severed the Allies’ global supply lines with coordinated operations in the Middle East and the Indian Ocean. The Axis missed the opportunity; Germany and Japan were eventually crushed. Yet contingency and chance still mattered: the difference between victory and defeat in key clashes such as the Battle of Midway could have been as small as how accurately a few pilots dropped a few bombs at a pivotal moment.

The outcome of the next great conflict, the Cold War, ushered in an age of globalization and democratic dominance. But although the capitalist bloc outperformed the communist bloc over the long run, it easily could have faltered at the outset. Had Washington not undertaken the Marshall Plan and the North Atlantic Treaty—two then radical departures from the U.S. diplomatic tradition—in the late 1940s, western Europe might have collapsed and taken the global balance of power with it.

Counterfactual history isn’t just a game of what-if. Thinking about how major events might plausibly have gone differently underscores that today’s reality isn’t the only reality that was ever possible. War is a complex and unpredictable phenomenon, so the world that great wars shape is contingent, too.

BEATING THE ODDS

A year ago, many analysts didn’t expect an independent Ukraine to exist right now. When Putin invaded in February 2022, he envisioned a quick smash-and-grab operation that would seize the capital and other major cities, decapitate Ukraine’s government, and destroy the country’s ability to resist. The expectation, in the Kremlin and also in Washington, was that Kyiv would fall within days and that conventional resistance would cease shortly thereafter. Moscow would then control most of the country, leading to a Ukrainian insurgency with uncertain prospects. Some Western analysts were already looking beyond the war to the ramifications of a Ukrainian defeat.

Within Ukraine, those consequences would have been awful—show trials, summary executions, and all the mayhem visited upon the areas that Russia did manage to occupy. The global consequences also would have been ominous. Putin might have parlayed victory into his long-sought post-Soviet imperium. A puppet Ukraine might have been dragooned into a union state with Russia and Belarus; Moldova would have come under pressure once Moscow created a land bridge to Transnistria, a separatist region that already hosts a contingent of Russian troops. And following Russia’s successful intervention in Kazakhstan in January 2022, the de facto occupation of Belarus preceding the war, and a brutal beatdown of Ukraine, which former Soviet republics would have defied Moscow’s commands?

Perhaps the Baltic states, thanks to their alliance with Washington. But NATO would have faced insecurity up and down its eastern front. Through Belarus and Ukraine, Russia could have sought to intimidate Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. The costs and difficulties of defending U.S. allies would have multiplied along with the potential avenues for a Russian attack, as a Moscow-led union state would have a much longer border with NATO. Finland and Sweden probably still would have sought NATO membership, but the debate within the alliance over whether to admit them—and antagonize an emboldened Putin—might have been much more contentious.

The future of the authoritarian axis, by contrast, would have been bright. A Russian victory would have given the Moscow-Beijing partnership significant geopolitical momentum. An overstretched United States would have faced militarily ascendant rivals in both Europe and Asia. Successful aggression might still have triggered military spending hikes by scared democracies in Europe and Asia, but it also would have fostered an atmosphere of global disarray that favored predators and left democracies fighting back from a weaker position than they occupy today.

As for ideological consequences, Putin would have been strengthened at home; his popularity would have skyrocketed, as it did after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Admirers of autocracy around the world would have lauded Putin’s ruthlessness and cunning. The United States, fresh off its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, would have faced still more claims that democracies were in retreat.

When Putin invaded Ukraine, he envisioned a quick smash-and-grab operation.

To be sure, victory in Ukraine wouldn’t have made Moscow bulletproof. A grinding insurgency, perhaps supported by NATO countries, might have sapped Russian power. The United States and many allies would have slammed Russia with sanctions. But an aggressive sanctions campaign might not have outlasted a conventional war that ended quickly, since in this scenario some European countries might have favored returning to business as usual. Enthusiasm for backing an insurgency might also have waned for similar reasons.

Fortunately for Ukraine and the West, almost none of this happened. Russia’s post-Soviet empire is crumbling: the Central Asian states are restless and not even Belarus will join Putin’s war. NATO’s situation has changed for the better. The alliance has rallied around Ukraine, enhanced its eastern defenses, and is in the process of welcoming Finland and Sweden. The global community of advanced democracies looks robust and resilient, as Russia hemorrhages influence and power. Sino-Russian relations have suffered, in part because Putin has asked for aid that China is reluctant to give. No one seems wowed by the achievements of autocracy today. On the battlefield and around the world, the gap between what Putin sought and what he got is enormous. But it is not clear that Russia was always destined for disaster.

True, the war revealed that many Western observers had simply overestimated Russia’s military power, which was undermined by a range of factors, including pervasive corruption and a force structure that disproportionately favored armor over infantry. Many Western analysts, perhaps influenced by the rapid collapse of Afghanistan in 2021, had equally underestimated Ukraine’s will and capability to fight.

Even so, it was far from certain that Ukraine would withstand Russia’s initial onslaught. After all, flawed regimes and militaries can still deliver on the battlefield. Just before the Red Army— weakened by Stalin’s purges—was initially humiliated by Finland in 1939–40, it had crushed a stronger power, Japan, in Manchuria. And the reason so few analysts accurately predicted the course of the current war in Ukraine is that it was shaped by developments that were difficult to anticipate: Russia failed catastrophically to exploit its advantages, Ukraine demonstrated unexpected strengths and overcame its deficient preparation for war, and the outside world, especially the United States, boosted Kyiv with unprecedented support.

None of this was inevitable. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky looked more like Ashraf Ghani than Winston Churchill in January 2022, when he seemed almost indifferent to a looming disaster. The United States and its European allies had given Ukraine only modest and hesitant backing after previous Russian invasions, in 2014 and 2015. Change any of the aforementioned factors that shaped the war and its course might have looked very different.

WOULDA, SHOULDA, COULDA

Consider the chaotic early days, when Ukraine’s predicament was dire. The country’s military was ill prepared and badly outnumbered on key fronts, facing as much as a 12 to 1 disadvantage around Kyiv. Russian forces swept across the south of Ukraine, taking Kherson and establishing a land bridge to Crimea. In the north and east, major cities—including Kyiv and Kharkiv—were besieged. Russian saboteurs and assassins were in Kyiv, seeking to kill Zelensky and decapitate the government.

Within days, the situation seemed so grim that the United States asked Zelensky if he planned to flee (and possibly offered to evacuate him), a course of action that some of his own advisers recommended. Had Zelensky gone, or had Kyiv fallen, Ukrainian elites might have wavered or defected—as Afghan elites did once a Taliban takeover seemed inevitable, and as some Ukrainian officials did in the south during the Russian advance. The government might indeed have fragmented. Yet Putin’s gambit failed because Zelensky stayed—thereby beginning his transformation into a symbol of national cohesion and resistance—and because of several interrelated factors.

Not least were Russian mistakes. Putin’s plan of attack was deeply flawed. Not expecting a serious fight, Russia spread its troops over several lines of advance, reducing their ability to overcome strenuous opposition on any of them. Obsessed with secrecy, the regime communicated that plan to key commanders, ministers, and units just days before the war. This approach didn’t stop U.S. intelligence from sniffing out the attack. But it did leave Russian forces woefully unprepared for a sharp, nasty conflict. And combined with Putin’s failure to appoint a single theater commander, it left Russian services and even individual units fighting their own separate wars—for instance, Russian airborne forces attempted high-risk airfield seizures without proper suppression of enemy air defenses or support from heavier ground forces—instead of working as a team.

Some of these problems were related to the personalized nature of Putin’s regime. But Russian planning didn’t have to be as bad as it was, and even modest improvements might have paid major dividends. Had Russia concentrated on fewer fronts—whether reinforcing the drive on Kyiv or prioritizing the effort to cut off Ukrainian forces in the east—it might have overwhelmed Ukraine’s outnumbered and outgunned defenders. Had the Russian leadership given key units more advance warning, those units might have prepared better tactical plans and logistical support operations. In the end, the Russian offensive was just shambolic enough to let Ukrainian forces fight a successful delaying action, holding the capital and sucking Putin’s military into a long, bloody slog.

Russian mistakes were exacerbated by an unexpectedly tenacious, if somewhat haphazard, Ukrainian defense. The Ukrainian state was not ready for the war that unfolded, since most officials expected at most a major operation in the east. Putin was denied an open road to the capital mainly by the heroic commitment and sacrifice of understrength units that initially held key points, such as the bridge between the cities of Bucha and Irpin, against daunting odds. That effort was aided by large numbers of civilians and reservists who augmented regular units, reported the location of Russian forces, and otherwise contributed to an all-of-society resistance.

That the U.S. government was so ready for the war offset the fact that the Ukrainian government was not.

The Ukrainian military also performed impressively in key respects. It used terrain adeptly, conducting hit-and-run attacks against Russian columns moving through wooded areas and flooding the banks of the Irpin River to slow the enemy’s advance. It exploited simple technologies, such as cheap drones that could target Russian tanks. At key moments, Ukrainian commanders deployed scarce resources where they had an outsize impact—for instance, using limited artillery capabilities to prevent, or at least impede, Russia from easily taking Hostomel Airport outside Kyiv and from thereby creating an air bridge that would have enabled Moscow to deliver crucial reinforcements to the capital’s doorstep.

Ukraine’s previously underwhelming political leadership also began to overperform. Zelensky in particular summoned all of his skills to rally the population, maintain governmental cohesion, and win international solidarity. Ukraine pulled through the first phase of the war because it did just well enough, in just enough areas, to thwart a less than competent attack—and because an astonishingly broad and brave response to the invasion helped compensate for a nearly fatal dearth of preparation for it.

This defense, in turn, was strengthened by foreign support. Although the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden was pessimistic about Ukraine’s prospects, it was determined to make conquest harder for Putin. Having learned from its own contingency planning failures during the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Washington prepared extensively for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Before the invasion, a relentless drumbeat of U.S. warnings helped deny Putin the cloud of ambiguity in which he sought to start the war. Those warnings also encouraged some Ukrainian commanders to disperse air and artillery assets that might otherwise have been destroyed. Critically, the United States alerted Ukraine to key elements of the Russian invasion plan, such as the seizure of Hostomel Airport, which may have accelerated Kyiv’s response. Washington probably aided Ukraine in other essential ways—by helping blunt the much-feared Kremlin cyberoffensive, for instance—but few details are publicly available. In any event, that the U.S. government was so ready for the war offset the fact that the Ukrainian government was not.

Most important was the near-complete reversal of previous policies regarding the arming of Ukraine, a change that began under the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump and accelerated dramatically under Biden. A Ukraine without Western military support never would have survived the opening months, or even weeks, of fighting against a better-armed Russia. But even before the invasion, the United States and several NATO allies began to rush antitank and antiaircraft weapons, ammunition, and other supplies to Ukraine. And according to Politico Europe, when Ukraine ran desperately short of ammunition after weeks of fighting, Bulgaria—with U.S. and British assistance—approved the emergency provision of Soviet-standard munitions to fill the gap. From that point onward, Western assistance—strategic and tactical intelligence, economic aid, and military support—consistently provided the margin between success and failure for Ukraine. Meanwhile, the United States also performed an essential “holding the ring” function—and ensured that the balance of outside intervention decisively favored Kyiv—by threatening China with sanctions and other consequences if it provided the military and economic aid Putin sought.

BY THE SKIN OF THEIR TEETH

In short, a combination of Russian blunders, Ukrainian commitment and creativity, and foreign support helped Kyiv manage a narrow escape. Yet even after Putin’s initial assault failed and the badly bloodied Russian military pulled back from Kyiv, the conflict’s trajectory remained uncertain.

In the spring and summer of 2022, Russia retained crucial advantages, such as deeper artillery and ammunition reserves. Putin still had decent options. Had he mobilized 300,000 additional troops in the spring instead of waiting to do so in the fall, he could have paired a manpower advantage with an artillery advantage when Russian forces refocused on assaulting Ukrainian positions in the Donbas. Russia also could have begun systematically attacking Ukrainian infrastructure in the spring of 2022, before it had depleted its stockpiles of precision-guided munitions. Timing is everything in war, and Ukraine has succeeded in part because Putin has consistently lagged in adapting to changed conditions.

Despite these failures, by June 2022, Russia’s assault in the Donbas was putting Ukraine under pressure. Ukrainian forces were at a tremendous artillery deficit; they absorbed heavy losses and were nearly enveloped near Severodonetsk. Western intervention again helped tip the balance. The provision of U.S.-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and M-270 multiple-launch rocket systems, as well as British-made M777 howitzers, offset Ukraine’s artillery disadvantage and—combined with highly accurate intelligence from Washington and other supporters—allowed Kyiv to launch devastating strikes against Russian ammunition dumps, command hubs, and logistics nodes. When the Russian offensive ground to a halt, Putin’s forces were so weak that they folded in the face of twin offensives that Ukraine later launched in Kharkiv and Kherson.

NOTHING SET IN STONE

Counterfactual history can help illuminate the future as well as the past. In this case, it underscores the degree to which Ukrainian success has turned on factors that are not guaranteed to persist. For one thing, Ukraine has enjoyed a remarkable degree of social and political cohesion since the war’s early days. But that cohesion could be tested in the coming year, as the war drags on and Ukraine’s elite looks ahead to presidential elections in March 2024. And as Ukraine’s politics grow more fractious, sound decision-making—on issues as fundamental as where and when to launch future offensives—could become more difficult.

Similarly, Ukraine has benefitted tremendously from Russia’s poor planning, difficulty adjusting to battlefield setbacks, and political leadership that has struggled to grasp the extent of the challenges it confronts. If Moscow’s performance improves even modestly, Kyiv could face a whole new war.

No one should rule this out. Militaries in even the most repressive societies can learn, and Russia may be fighting a smarter, if still quite savage, war than it was last year. Having first minimized the invasion and promised Russians that it would not affect their lives, Putin has finally acknowledged that a long, consuming war lies ahead. His military is preparing layered defenses in occupied areas while building up newly mobilized forces and carrying out vicious infrastructure attacks meant to grind down Ukraine’s economy and exhaust its air defenses. Its winter offensive around Bakhmut has resulted in egregious Russian losses, but, as the military analyst Michael Kofman has noted, it has also deprived Kyiv of the initiative and traded expendable Russian forces—especially convicts—for higher-value Ukrainian personnel.

Just because Ukraine hasn’t lost the war doesn’t mean that it has won. A range of futures are still possible, if not equally likely, from an outright Ukrainian victory resulting in the liberation of all occupied territory to a scenario in which Russia hangs on to substantial parts of Ukraine for the foreseeable future to an escalation into direct confrontation between Russia and NATO.

There is also a warning for Washington in this analysis: the heaviest burdens may still lie ahead. Ukraine has survived so far because the United States and its allies have dramatically reduced the power disparity between Kyiv and Moscow and ensured that Putin can’t simply escalate or batter his way out of the conflict. Yet as Russia mobilizes more manpower and economic resources—while also importing drones, artillery, and other capabilities from Iran and North Korea—the cost of helping Kyiv stay ahead in this contest will increase. Witness the recent decision by several NATO countries to provide Ukraine with battle tanks, an episode that may simply presage the need for other advanced capabilities, whether longer-range missiles or fourth-generation fighter aircraft, in the months ahead.

Finally, if the outcome of the war is not set in stone, neither are the contours of the world that the war will make. The conflict’s result will shape the perceived efficacy of autocracy and democracy, the degree of security that NATO enjoys on its eastern front, and the level of Russian influence over its neighbors. On these and other issues, the implications of a war that results in a resounding Russian defeat will be different than those of a war that ends with Russian troops occupying significant parts of Ukraine, with Moscow possessing the ability to renew hostilities when it wishes. The latter outcome might not look like such a triumph for the free world, after all. There are still other scenarios, such as a Chinese decision to aid Moscow more directly, that could change the global landscape dramatically. The war in Ukraine offers a variety of lessons, but perhaps the most crucial one is this: global order is neither inherently robust nor inherently fragile. It has exactly as much strength as those who value it can muster—and sustain—when it is tested.

• HAL BRANDS is Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a co-author of Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict With China.

Foreign Affairs · by Hal Brands · February 14, 2023

13. What China Has Learned From the Ukraine War

Excerpts:

Probably the most important sanctions lesson from the current conflict is the vital importance of coalitions. Washington has tremendous clout when it takes advantage of U.S. technology, financial markets, and the dollar. The sanctions on Russia, however, would have had a fraction of the bite (and Russia would have had numerous workarounds) had this not been a joint effort with Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the EU.

China can wield frightening influence over its individual trading partners, but it does not have a corresponding coalition to muster. This is a liability on offense and defense. The limitations of China’s offensive economic weapons have already been seen in recent years. When Beijing targeted Australia and Lithuania with harsh measures, both countries withstood them thanks to economic and political support from a number of friends and partners. And China remains vulnerable to broad, concerted sanctions from the advanced economies of the world. The threshold for such an economic attack would undoubtedly be quite high, but another kind of deterrence is the fact that Beijing cannot know exactly how high.

For Beijing, the lesson is less about economics and more about diplomacy and relationships. As it reopens its economy after three years of lockdowns, China is working to rebuild relationships, host foreign leaders from Asia and Europe, make business deals, and complicate any putative American effort to forge a counter-China coalition. For Washington, the takeaway is the same—in any potential confrontation with China, the most valuable weapon in America’s economic arsenal will be the strength of its international partnerships.

What China Has Learned From the Ukraine War

Even Great Powers Aren’t Safe From Economic Warfare—If the U.S.-Led Order Sticks Together

By Evan A. Feigenbaum and Adam Szubin

February 14, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Evan A. Feigenbaum and Adam Szubin · February 14, 2023

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, China’s leaders attempted to balance two fundamentally irreconcilable interests. First, they aimed to bolster China’s entente with Russia to counterbalance American power and alleviate growing strategic pressure from the West. Second, although they backed Moscow, they sought to avoid unilateral and coordinated sanctions aimed at China’s government, companies, and financial institutions.

For a year, China has been performing the “Beijing straddle,” tacking uncomfortably between these competing objectives under the white-hot light of international scrutiny. China has generally refused to sell arms to Russia and to circumvent sanctions on Moscow’s behalf because preserving global market access is more important to Beijing than any economic link to Russia. Simply put, China has no interest in being Russia’s proxy. But Beijing has also tried to have its cake and eat it, too, by endorsing Russia’s rationales for the conflict, coordinating with Moscow diplomatically while it cautiously abstains in United Nations votes, taking full advantage of discounted Russian oil, and enhancing economic linkages to Russia that do not violate Western sanctions. Indeed, China-Russia trade rose by a staggering 34.3 percent in 2022 to a record $190 billion.

Beijing has also learned important lessons even as it struggles to maintain this balance. Specifically, it has closely studied the Western-led sanctions campaign. And it knows that, if tensions with the West continue to intensify, these same economic weapons may well be turned against China. Over the last 20 years, China’s leaders have watched as Washington honed and more frequently deployed economic weaponry, including sanctions, export controls, investment restrictions, and tariffs. But the major Western sanctions campaigns have generally not applied to China because they targeted second-tier economies, such as Iran and Iraq, or more often, marginal economies such as Cuba, North Korea, and Sudan. The current Ukraine conflict has, at long last, given Beijing an opportunity to study the strategy, tactics, and capabilities of a Western sanctions coalition as it works to cripple one of the world’s largest economies.

Of course, in some ways, it is too soon for Beijing to draw the full range of lessons from the Western sanctions effort against Russia. The sanctions include both measures that have instant effect, such as asset freezes, and those that are designed to bite ever more deeply in the years to come. Among the latter are export controls on computer chips and advanced technologies and restrictions on helping Russia develop the deep-water, Arctic, and shale resources on which its future energy revenues depend. But China has already absorbed certain key lessons, some of which are sobering. Perhaps the most important has nothing to do with payment systems or oil tankers but is rather about the power of international partnerships.

DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO

The lessons China is drawing from the current conflict reflect, in part, the profound shift that has occurred in its own approach to economic warfare in recent years. Historically, China has criticized sanctions launched unilaterally by countries—most notably, the United States—as an illegitimate incursion on the targeted country’s sovereignty. In Beijing’s view, only the UN Security Council, where China can and has wielded its veto, sometimes in coordination with Russia, has the legitimacy to impose sanctions on a fellow UN member state. In the last two decades, China condemned U.S. sanctions on Cuba, Iran, Myanmar, and other countries that exceeded the prohibitions of the Council, arguing that they “gravely undermined the sovereignty and security of other countries . . . and constitute a gross violation of international law and basic norms of international relations.”

But China wielded its economic might unilaterally against its own adversaries throughout this period. It just did so quietly, or often by justifying action on “public health” or environmental grounds, to punish a company from a country with which Beijing was locked in a diplomatic dispute. China would not generally acknowledge its punitive measures to be “sanctions” and publicly denied that these steps had anything to do with geopolitics. For example, when Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, Norway’s salmon exports to China not-so-mysteriously collapsed. In 2016, when the Dalai Lama visited Mongolia, hundreds of truck drivers for the mining conglomerate Rio Tinto, which owns 66 percent of the country’s leading copper and gold deposits, found themselves stuck in a massive traffic jam caused by a “temporary” Chinese border closure. The Philippines’ assertion of maritime claims in the South China Sea in 2014 led to a sudden Chinese declaration that tons of Philippine bananas were contaminated with pesticides; the Philippines temporarily lost the most important market for one of its largest exports. Similarly, South Korea’s deployment of a U.S. missile defense system provided by the South Korean conglomerate Lotte led China to shutter 90 Lotte supermarkets in China in 2017 for “fire safety.” China also quietly instructed its tourism sector to cut the number of Chinese group tours to South Korea. It is estimated that South Korea lost $5.1 billion in revenues as a result.

In these cases, Beijing clearly wanted the targeted countries—and the world—to understand that these were geopolitically motivated measures; it aimed to punish certain policies by these countries and discourage future choices and behaviors that would disadvantage China. But the informal nature of these actions allowed China to dial them up or down without any explanation and permitted Beijing to cling to its public claim that unilateral coercive economic measures have no place in the international system.

Beijing’s economic arsenal is now complete.

In the last three years, however, China has shifted course. It has embraced unilateral economic measures with vigor, establishing its own copies of all the main weapons in the U.S. economic and financial arsenal. In 2020, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs began to levy targeted asset freezes and visa bans against officials from Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union who criticized Beijing’s actions in Xinjiang and Hong Kong—a page taken from the U.S. Treasury and State Department sanctions on Chinese officials and groups. That same year, China’s Ministry of Commerce established the Unreliable Entities List to restrict designated companies from accessing Chinese goods and investment, mirroring the U.S. Department of Commerce’s own longstanding Entity List. In its 2020 Hong Kong national security law, Beijing also added sanctions for those interfering with China’s sovereignty over Hong Kong, even asserting extraterritorial reach—something Chinese officials have criticized especially harshly in the past—threatening sanctions against individuals and companies for activities conducted outside China.

Perhaps Beijing’s most sweeping response came in its anti–foreign sanctions law, passed in June 2021. This law allows the Chinese government to apply countermeasures to companies and individuals for a broad range of vaguely defined actions. Article 15 empowers Chinese officials to impose sanctions on any foreign individuals or companies that “implement, assist, or support actions” that “may be deemed to endanger China’s sovereignty, security or development interests.” The law also borrows from Canadian and EU blocking laws, making it a crime to implement foreign (typically, Western) sanctions on Chinese soil.

This Chinese legal architecture is still fairly new, and Beijing has moved cautiously in implementing it, lest aggressive enforcement scare away Western businesses and capital flows into China. But Beijing’s economic arsenal is now complete and boasts a full complement of the unilateral sanctions and controls it still claims are unlawful.

TOO BIG TO SANCTION?

That is the context for the fresh lessons Beijing has learned since February 2022. When Moscow’s tanks raced into Ukraine, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the EU scrambled to come up with a punitive response. In the 2014–15 Ukraine crisis, the West crafted careful sanctions over many months to impose costs on Russia, alter Moscow’s behavior, and obtain leverage for negotiations. In 2022, when it became clear that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought not merely more territory in Ukraine but a full takeover of the country, the scope of the sanctions response shifted to an immediate all-out economic war. Within days of the invasion, allied governments announced asset freezes on all of Russia’s foreign reserves across Australia, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the EU; sanctioned Russia’s biggest financial institutions; and severed their access to SWIFT, the secure messaging platform connecting banks worldwide.

No economy close to Russia’s size had been subjected to measures like these since World War II. At the start of the 2022 invasion, Russia had the world’s tenth largest economy by GDP. Its daily oil production was near 11 million barrels per day, almost three times larger than the Islamic Republic of Iran’s oil production at its peak in 2005. Russia was the largest natural gas exporter in the world and the leading supplier of key global goods and inputs, from fertilizer and grain to titanium.

From a geopolitical perspective, Russia, like China, is a nuclear weapons state and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Also like China, Russia has been a member of a wide variety of global institutions. It is true that China’s economy is still ten times larger than Russia’s, and China’s footprint in the global economy—in terms of trade, investment, and capital flows—dwarfs Russia’s, particularly in its ties with the United States. But if Chinese decision-makers once believed that a first-tier economy was too big to sanction, this past year has been disconcerting.

Beijing has been surprised by the ferocity of the Western response to Russia’s aggression.

No longer can Beijing simply assume that the West will never risk economic shocks over, say, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Beijing has just witnessed the United States and its European allies take on considerable national and global risks for Ukraine, an exponentially smaller and less global economy than Taiwan’s, which has the seventh largest economy in industrial Asia and provides a pivotal link in global supply chains. And Washington has greater historical, legal, and emotional ties with Taiwan than it does with Ukraine. China can no longer presume that the West will impose major sanctions only on marginal countries and marginal sanctions only on major countries.

Beijing has been surprised, too, by the ferocity of the Western response to Russia’s aggression. In the wake of the 2014 Donbas invasion, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping walked away with the lesson that the West—and especially risk-averse U.S. allies, of which there are many in both Europe and Asia—would not support costly sanctions on behalf of a third party. This time, that lesson does not apply. When Moscow’s tanks charged toward Kyiv, the gloves came off. An escalation ladder that had taken 18 months in the sanctions campaign against Iran was collapsed into a weekend. Even Russia’s oil and gas exports, which had been seen as too important to touch in 2014, were sanctioned. The West has moved more quickly than many thought possible to wean itself off Russian oil, and the G-7 recently rolled out a price cap system aimed at depressing the price Russia receives for its crude oil and petroleum products elsewhere in the world, at the same time ensuring that energy markets are still well supplied.

These steps required sacrifices. And the West has borne real costs in the form of inflation, higher energy bills, and gas shortages. But so far, with help from a mild winter, the coalition has held. The lesson for policymakers in Beijing is unmistakable: a major threat to international order can incur a very painful economic response indeed, even if it comes with costs for the countries imposing the sanctions.

FORTRESS CHINA

Countries make strategic decisions, including for war, because leaders weigh costs and benefits and then judge that aggression is worth the risk. China will not, therefore, eschew the use of force against Taiwan merely because it fears sanctions. China will, however, try to absorb lessons from Russia’s Ukraine experience about how to plug vulnerabilities, assure resilience, and create more options.

Since Putin’s difficult experience with sanctions in 2014–15, Moscow has boasted of a series of maneuvers to “sanctions proof” its economy; it proudly nicknamed itself “Fortress Russia.” Moscow built up its foreign currency reserves to $631 billion and largely shifted its reserves out of the U.S. dollar. By 2021, Russia had reduced its dollar holdings to 16 percent of total currency holdings, with Russia’s central bank purchasing $90 billion in gold and expanding its renminbi and other nondollar holdings. Russia introduced its own Mir national credit card system and an alternative to the Belgium-based SWIFT interbank messaging system.

If Russia had become “sanctions resistant,” however, it was not at all “sanctions proof.” As a matter of necessity, many of Russia’s repositioned dollar reserves had been moved to the highly liquid currencies of Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Europe. When those jurisdictions moved in lockstep with the United States to freeze Russia’s reserves, nearly half of Russia’s foreign holdings—some $300 billion—were no longer accessible. Russia even saw a portion of its gold holdings immobilized because it had been storing them in jurisdictions that joined the sanctions effort.

Russia’s other defensive measures proved even less successful. After seven years of work, the Mir credit card network had secured a few medium-sized bank partners in Asia. But when the U.S. Treasury announced in September 2022 that banks working with Mir would be viewed as circumventing Western sanctions, those banks in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam severed ties with Russia’s card system. Russia fared even worse with its System for Transfer of Financial Messages, its purported alternative to SWIFT. Unsurprisingly, there was not widespread demand for a Russia-based financial messaging system that had limited reach and was more cumbersome and less secure than SWIFT.

Beijing is bumping up against economic and geopolitical realities that will not allow it to subvert the global financial system.

In today’s interconnected world, true sanctions-proofing is impossible. China has had more success than Russia in this respect, but it has also encountered some cold realities. For one, China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange claims that China has reduced the portion of its foreign reserves held in U.S. dollars from 79 percent in 1995 to 59 percent in 2016. (China stopped providing a breakdown that year.) But the increasing role of China’s state-owned banks in foreign exchange purchases—purchases that are not reported—means that China’s true U.S. dollar holdings are unknown and may not have decreased by the reported amount. And China’s alternatives are limited. Unlike Russia, it cannot move any of its foreign reserves into renminbi – to protect against risk and manage monetary policy, reserves must be held in a different currency than one’s own. And the economies that have the depth to absorb a meaningful part of China’s foreign reserves are all part of the coalition that has stood up against Russia’s violation of international law. It is not clear where China can go.

China has also rolled out its own renminbi payment system, the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System and has set up mechanisms in its central bank to clear bilateral trade with countries such as Russia, skirting the use of the dollar and the euro. At the end of March 2022, CIPS had 1,304 participating institutions, a significant number, but about one-tenth of SWIFT’s participating institutions. China’s defensive steps have made more headway than Russia’s—China’s weight as the largest trading partner for the majority of the world gives it substantial clout in bilateral negotiations. But it will be difficult, perhaps even impossible, for China to convince the world’s advanced economies to entrust global financial flows to a Chinese-run platform.

So China has more leverage than any other nation to develop workarounds and alternatives to Western platforms, protocols, and institutions, and it is working overtime to do so after 2022. But Beijing is bumping up against economic and geopolitical realities that will not allow it to subvert the global financial system or to arrange for the renminbi to supplant the dollar and the euro as the dominant international currency.

BEIJING’S MISSING COALITION

Probably the most important sanctions lesson from the current conflict is the vital importance of coalitions. Washington has tremendous clout when it takes advantage of U.S. technology, financial markets, and the dollar. The sanctions on Russia, however, would have had a fraction of the bite (and Russia would have had numerous workarounds) had this not been a joint effort with Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the EU.

China can wield frightening influence over its individual trading partners, but it does not have a corresponding coalition to muster. This is a liability on offense and defense. The limitations of China’s offensive economic weapons have already been seen in recent years. When Beijing targeted Australia and Lithuania with harsh measures, both countries withstood them thanks to economic and political support from a number of friends and partners. And China remains vulnerable to broad, concerted sanctions from the advanced economies of the world. The threshold for such an economic attack would undoubtedly be quite high, but another kind of deterrence is the fact that Beijing cannot know exactly how high.

For Beijing, the lesson is less about economics and more about diplomacy and relationships. As it reopens its economy after three years of lockdowns, China is working to rebuild relationships, host foreign leaders from Asia and Europe, make business deals, and complicate any putative American effort to forge a counter-China coalition. For Washington, the takeaway is the same—in any potential confrontation with China, the most valuable weapon in America’s economic arsenal will be the strength of its international partnerships.

• EVAN A. FEIGENBAUM is Vice President for Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. From 2006 to 2007 and again from 2007 to 2009, he served as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State.
• ADAM SZUBIN is a Distinguished Practitioner in Residence at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. From 2015 to 2017, he served as Acting Undersecretary of the Treasury and from 2006 to 2015 as Director of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

Foreign Affairs · by Evan A. Feigenbaum and Adam Szubin · February 14, 2023

14. Good Riddance to the War on Terror

Excerpts:

Notions associated with the GWOT continue to impair strategic thinking about national security in other ways as well. One is a tendency to disconnect terrorism from other forms of political violence that can be at least as destructive as terrorism properly defined and can raise some of the same strategic and moral questions. Related to that is a frequent failure to relate terrorism and other forms of political violence to the political context in which they occur. The attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and subsequent party politics related to that event, have blurred boundaries between violent extremism and what passes for a political mainstream in much of present-day America. The GWOT framework is not built to understand that blurring or to appreciate the danger it represents.

Finally, the tendency to think of a GWOT as defining an era that ran from the end of the first post-Cold War decade to a current era of great-power competition impedes grand strategy by encouraging the notion that policymakers think, and should think, about only one type of security problem at a time. Great power competition was a big part of the strategic reality that the United States faced during the period of the GWOT, and terrorist threats continue to be part of the reality that the country faces today. Policymakers always have had to walk and chew gum at the same time, and they still do.

Good Riddance to the War on Terror

December 31 marked the end of what came to be called the “war on terrorism.” Now is as good a time as any to reflect on the mistakes that were central to this “war.”

The National Interest · by Paul R. Pillar · February 13, 2023

The occasion did not get much attention, but December 31 marked the end of what came to be called the “war on terrorism” (or alternatively, the “war on terror,” the “global war on terrorism,” or the GWOT). To be more precise, that is the date that overseers of military decorations in the Department of Defense declared to be the final day of eligibility to receive the National Defense Service Medal, which is awarded to all service members on active duty during a time of war. The medal had previously been awarded during the wars in Korea and Vietnam and the first Persian Gulf war. Then there was a period of eligibility lasting more than two decades for the “war on terrorism,” from September 11, 2001, until last New Year’s Eve.

This administrative detail about medals is the closest thing we are likely to get to an official announcement about the end of this latest “war.” American political leaders would understandably be reluctant to declare an end to this endeavor, only to have their opponents replay their words after the next terrorist attack that takes American lives. But now is as good a time as any to reflect on the mistakes that were central to this “war.”

The very concept of a war on terrorism—that is, warfare against a tactic, which many different people have used for many different purposes through the centuries—is fundamentally flawed. As former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski observed, speaking of a war on terrorism is like calling World War II a war on blitzkrieg. The administration of George W. Bush was most responsible for putting the GWOT concept into heavy use, but countless commentators accepted and used the concept as if it made perfect sense.

One of the additional faults of the war metaphor is that it implied the counterterrorist effort had a definite beginning and end—as World War II for the United States could be said to have begun with the attack on Pearl Harbor and ended on VJ Day. But just as terrorism has been used for centuries and lacks an identifiable beginning and ending, counterterrorism has no clear starting and stopping points. Many Americans regard September 11, 2001, as a starting point, but the United States was very much engaged in counterterrorism, with good reason, well before that. (During much of the 1990s I worked in the Counterterrorist Center at the CIA, as chief of analysis and then as deputy chief of the center.)

Although the administrators of military decorations had to come up with some ending date for a “war” that had gone on for two decades, neither terrorism nor the need for counterterrorism has ended. But some of the policies adopted in waging the GWOT implicitly assumed that there would be an end—a counterterrorist equivalent to VJ Day. Some of those policies concerned the detention of captured combatants. In a real war, such issues generally get resolved when the war ends, as prisoners of war are paroled or repatriated. But with the GWOT, thirty-four prisoners remain at Guantanamo, with no indication that this detention facility that is a stain on America’s international reputation will close in the foreseeable future.

Another fault of the war metaphor is to overemphasize the use of military force. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, there were even silly pseudo-syllogisms that said the country faced a grave security problem, that to treat the problem seriously we must declare war, and if it’s war then that means we fight it with military force. Military force is only one of several policy tools that can be used in counterterrorism. Like the other tools, it has distinctive advantages but also its own limitations and disadvantages. The chief limitation is that terrorism often does not present good military targets, especially when preparations for a terrorist attack are made in the very country that will be the target of attack. The chief disadvantage is that the spilling of blood from the use of military force can enrage people enough to resort to using terrorism themselves, or to support and sympathize with those who do. This counterproductive aspect of use of the military in the name of counterterrorism can arise even from merely deploying armed forces in a foreign land.

The most damaging and costly use of armed force associated with the GWOT was the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Critical to the Bush administration’s ability to muster support for this major act of aggression—against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11—was the notion that the invasion was nonetheless part of a “war on terrorism.”

Wars in the American tradition are seen not only as having a definite end but also as ending in victory—again, just like World War II. With counterterrorism, living in this tradition leads to a kind of mission creep that seeks a victorious ending that is never likely to come. The prime case in point is Afghanistan, where the military intervention aimed at Al Qaeda and its Taliban hosts was a justifiable response to 9/11 but morphed into a twenty-year nation-building effort that was bound to fail.

The GWOT’s damage to legal systems and constraints has been substantial, and the war metaphor is largely to blame. In a real war, some normal legal procedures and standards are curtailed or circumvented with the general understanding that a national emergency sometimes requires emergency procedures that will end when the emergency ends. But again, counterterrorism does not end.

The very choice of Guantanamo as the location for a detention facility represented a departure from the rule of law, given that the choice was an attempt to put the facility beyond the reach of U.S., Cuban, or any other law. A military tribunal system that was installed there, in foolish disregard of the substantial and successful record of regular civilian courts in handling terrorism cases—especially in the Southern District of New York, the jurisdiction in which the World Trade Center was attacked—reprised an emergency system that had been used during World War II to prosecute German saboteurs captured in the United States. Whatever was right or wrong about that usage, it was over and done with when World War II ended. Today, the military tribunals at Guantanamo trundle on in a seemingly endless mess of delays and procedural quandaries. Justice still has not been administered to the 9/11 suspects, twenty-one years after their actions.

Perhaps because, as Brzezinski observed, wars do not really get fought against tactics rather than a named enemy, thinking about the GWOT came to postulate a named enemy. That enemy, following naturally from 9/11, was sometimes defined as Al Qaeda and sometimes more generally as foreign radical Islamists. The narrower definition led to widespread misunderstanding about how Islamist terrorism supposedly was the work of a single, centrally controlled group, which it never really was. Even the broader definition was not broad enough to reflect how terrorism, including terrorism that strikes U.S. interests, is by no means solely the work of radical Islamists.

United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres recently warned that the “biggest threat of terrorism” today comes from right-wing and white supremacist groups in the West. Other expert observers have reached a similar conclusion about terrorist threats within the United States. Perceptions of terrorism that developed within a conceptual framework built around a “war” supposedly starting with 9/11 have ill-prepared the American public to understand the terrorist threats the country faces today.

Notions associated with the GWOT continue to impair strategic thinking about national security in other ways as well. One is a tendency to disconnect terrorism from other forms of political violence that can be at least as destructive as terrorism properly defined and can raise some of the same strategic and moral questions. Related to that is a frequent failure to relate terrorism and other forms of political violence to the political context in which they occur. The attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and subsequent party politics related to that event, have blurred boundaries between violent extremism and what passes for a political mainstream in much of present-day America. The GWOT framework is not built to understand that blurring or to appreciate the danger it represents.

Finally, the tendency to think of a GWOT as defining an era that ran from the end of the first post-Cold War decade to a current era of great-power competition impedes grand strategy by encouraging the notion that policymakers think, and should think, about only one type of security problem at a time. Great power competition was a big part of the strategic reality that the United States faced during the period of the GWOT, and terrorist threats continue to be part of the reality that the country faces today. Policymakers always have had to walk and chew gum at the same time, and they still do.

Paul Pillar retired in 2005 from a twenty-eight-year career in the U.S. intelligence community, in which his last position was National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia. Earlier he served in a variety of analytical and managerial positions, including as chief of analytic units at the CIA covering portions of the Near East, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia. Professor Pillar also served in the National Intelligence Council as one of the original members of its Analytic Group. He is also a Contributing Editor for this publication.

15. Chinese attack on Taiwan not ‘imminent’ and predicting it unhelpful to Pentagon readiness: US general

Excerpts;

Asked whether he agreed with recent predictions of a military flare-up in the Taiwan Strait, General Charles Brown, the Air Force’s chief of staff, replied: “I don’t see that conflict is imminent or inevitable.”

“The goal is to avoid it, and so not knowing when things might occur, my goal is to be ready today, tomorrow, next week, next year, next decade,” Brown said at a discussion hosted by the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

Speculation about when military conflict in the Taiwan Strait might break out “is not necessarily helpful”, he added.

“I’ve been disappointed by some of the comments that have been made [about conflict time frames] because it takes away from what we’re really trying to do, which is to make sure we’re going to be ready.”

Chinese attack on Taiwan not ‘imminent’ and predicting it unhelpful to Pentagon readiness: US general

• Cross-strait conflict is not ‘inevitable’ and American goal is to avoid military flare-up, says Air Force’s chief of staff
• Concern about Beijing’s plans for self-ruled island has intensified amid Chinese military’s modernisation

Robert Delaney in Washington

+ myNEWS

Published: 3:30am, 14 Feb, 2023

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3210099/chinese-attack-taiwan-not-imminent-and-predicting-it-unhelpful-pentagon-readiness-us-general

A senior US Air Force official on Monday said a military attack on Taiwan by mainland China was not “imminent” and that predictions about such a scenario playing out were a distraction to the Pentagon’s efforts to be prepared for conflict in the region.

Asked whether he agreed with recent predictions of a military flare-up in the Taiwan Strait, General Charles Brown, the Air Force’s chief of staff, replied: “I don’t see that conflict is imminent or inevitable.”

“The goal is to avoid it, and so not knowing when things might occur, my goal is to be ready today, tomorrow, next week, next year, next decade,” Brown said at a discussion hosted by the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

Speculation about when military conflict in the Taiwan Strait might break out “is not necessarily helpful”, he added.

“I’ve been disappointed by some of the comments that have been made [about conflict time frames] because it takes away from what we’re really trying to do, which is to make sure we’re going to be ready.”

Concern about Beijing’s plans for Taiwan, which it regards as a wayward province that must be reunited with the mainland, has intensified along with the People’s Liberation Army’s modernisation and larger presence in the East and South China seas in recent years.

Against this backdrop, Philip Davidson, then-head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, said in 2021 that Beijing’s military might try to unify Taiwan with mainland China “within the next six years” – an assessment now often referred to as “the Davidson time frame”.

More predictions have come out since US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi travelled to Taipei in August, a visit that prompted Beijing to start unprecedented military exercises that all but surrounded the island and sever some ongoing US-China dialogues.

The latest warning came from General Mike Minihan, the head of the US Air Mobility Command, who said in an internal memorandum that first emerged on social media last month that war over Taiwan might happen as soon as 2025.

‘This is the fate of Taiwan’: island stays on guard as superpowers square up

9 Feb 2023

That followed a warning in October by Admiral Michael Gilday, chief of US naval operations, that a mainland Chinese invasion of Taiwan could transpire within a year, based partly on comments made by Chinese President Xi Jinping at a major political conference in Beijing.

Asked how the US Navy should respond to Xi’s warning at the 20th party congress about Taiwan separatism, Gilday said at the time: “It’s not just what President Xi says, but it’s how the Chinese behave and what they do.”

“What we’ve seen over the past 20 years is that they have delivered on every promise they’ve made earlier than they said they were going to deliver on it,” the admiral said in a discussion hosted by the Atlantic Council.

Beijing views Taiwan as a breakaway province to be united with the mainland, by force if necessary. As is the case with many Western countries, the US does not recognise the island as an independent state. But Washington is committed by law to support Taiwan’s military defence capability – a stance Beijing strongly opposes.

CONVERSATIONS (39)

Robert Delaney

+ myNEWS

Robert Delaney is the Post’s North America bureau chief. He spent 11 years in China as a language student and correspondent for Dow Jones Newswires and Bloomberg, and continued covering the country as a correspondent and an academic after leaving. His debut novel, The Wounded Muse, draws on actual events that played out in Beijing while he lived there.

16. GOP committee chair eyeing ‘creative wargaming’ to evaluate possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan

Rep Gallagher exposes the congressional hearing system:

Excerpts:

“We’re exploring options where we could do creative wargaming that integrates financial and economic warfare into purely kinetic warfare to tease out the importance of Taiwan,” Gallagher said in a statement provided by his office.

Semafor first reported the news in an email newsletter.

Gallagher told the publication he believed the U.S. can “turn all this happy talk about arming Taiwan to the teeth to reality” and that he wanted to make congressional hearings more interesting.

“Most members don’t show up for them, most members just read from a script, so we don’t want to fall into that trap,” Gallagher told Semafor. “Even when we’re doing formal hearings we’re going to try and make them more interesting.”

GOP committee chair eyeing ‘creative wargaming’ to evaluate possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan

BY BRAD DRESS - 02/13/23 1:04 PM ET

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/3855902-gop-committee-chair-eyeing-creative-wargaming-to-evaluate-possible-chinese-invasion-of-taiwan/?utm_campaign=dfn-ebb&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sailthru&SToverlay=2002c2d9-c344-4bbb-8610-e5794efcfa7d

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) is exploring an idea to hold a House hearing that would involve lawmakers participating in a “wargaming” scenario of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

Gallagher, the chairman of the newly created House Select Committee on China, said it would help showcase the importance of the self-governing island nation of Taiwan.

“We’re exploring options where we could do creative wargaming that integrates financial and economic warfare into purely kinetic warfare to tease out the importance of Taiwan,” Gallagher said in a statement provided by his office.

Semafor first reported the news in an email newsletter.

Gallagher told the publication he believed the U.S. can “turn all this happy talk about arming Taiwan to the teeth to reality” and that he wanted to make congressional hearings more interesting.

“Most members don’t show up for them, most members just read from a script, so we don’t want to fall into that trap,” Gallagher told Semafor. “Even when we’re doing formal hearings we’re going to try and make them more interesting.”

Tensions are high between the U.S. and China over Taiwan, which the ruling Chinese Communist Party sees as historically part of the mainland.

The U.S. maintains informal ties with Taiwan but does not officially recognize it as an independent nation. Last year, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) traveled to the island in a show of support.

Beijing has lately increased escalatory rhetoric around the island nation, even as the U.S. builds up its presence in the Indo-Pacific. Last month, the Pentagon announced it would build out four additional military bases in the Philippines, potentially at strategic locations across from Taiwan.

A Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) war game scenario last month found the U.S. would defeat China if it chose to defend Taiwan in most scenarios.

But all sides would face heavy losses, and the U.S. would have to rely on assistance from allies such as Japan in the region, according to the CSIS analysis.

U.S.-China relations also deteriorated this month after a Chinese spy balloon was shot down off the South Carolina coast.

The balloon, which was equipped with antennas capable of collecting communications intelligence, captured the attention of the public as it drifted across the continental U.S. for several days.

The Chinese surveillance device, which China called a weather balloon, canceled a trip that Secretary of State Antony Blinken had planned for Beijing.

17. Chinese Balloon and Mystery Objects Raise Question of Who Controls ‘Near Space’

Chinese Balloon and Mystery Objects Raise Question of Who Controls ‘Near Space’

Nations govern airspace up to 60,000 feet, but above that no international agreement exists​

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-balloon-and-mystery-objects-raise-question-of-who-controls-near-space-8645b9aa?mod=hp_lead_pos7

By Doug CameronFollow

Feb. 14, 2023 5:30 am ET

​

The U.S. says the suspected Chinese spy balloon shot down Feb. 4 violated sovereign U.S. airspace. But when it crossed the U.S. at altitudes as high as 65,000 feet, the balloon floated into the murky zone aloft where no international consensus exists about which, if any, nation wields control.

U.S. allegations that China has operated a fleet of suspected spy balloons over 40 countries have renewed a debate over the governance of airspace above the altitudes traversed by commercial aircraft. And the balloon and other objects of unknown or undisclosed nature and purpose shot down from lower heights have focused attention on a nation’s right to eliminate perceived threats at any height. 

Legal experts have long been concerned about the safety threats posed by the growing number of aircraft and other airborne objects at high altitudes.

Countries with advanced space programs, including the U.S. and China, have blocked efforts to extend nations’ sovereignty to the edge of space, according to meeting minutes of the United Nations body examining the issue. They have opted for the freedom to operate their own craft without restriction. 

Video: U.S. Shoots Down Suspected Chinese Spy Balloon

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Video: U.S. Shoots Down Suspected Chinese Spy Balloon

Play video: Video: U.S. Shoots Down Suspected Chinese Spy Balloon

U.S. jet fighters downed a balloon off the coast of South Carolina in early February, U.S. officials said. Biden administration officials on Monday defended their decisions to shoot down unidentified flying objects over North America this weekend. Photo: Randall Hill/Reuters

The issue is back on the agenda for next month’s meeting of the U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, which is helping create regulatory frameworks.

Beijing and Washington have sought to reduce tensions in recent months, with an aim of setting relations between the two nuclear-armed superpowers on a more even keel. However, China on Monday alleged the U.S. had flown balloons over its airspace, a charge denied by Washington. 

In the U.S., the Federal Aviation Administration monitors and controls airspace up to 60,000 feet for commercial and military traffic, a level recognized under international agreement and employed by other countries. The three objects downed over the weekend over the U.S. and Canada all fell within that airspace, which also extends to each nation’s internationally recognized maritime boundary 12 miles offshore.

“That’s clearly part of U.S. sovereignty,” said Steven Freeland, an emeritus professor of international law at Western Sydney University and Bond University in Australia. 

International treaties hold that nations have no sovereignty in the reaches of outer space where satellites orbit, typically understood to begin about 330,000 feet. While a handful of countries have laid claim to the heights between 60,000 feet and that boundary, an expanse often cited as “near space,” those claims aren’t recognized by international law.

Regulation of the region is “a matter of licensing and a matter of safety,” Stephan Hobe, director of the Institute of Air Law, Space Law and Cyber Law at the University of Cologne, said at a 2020 seminar in Montreal.

The U.N. and other international bodies such as the European Union have examined a variety of proposed legal and governance structures for this high airspace, driven by the rising number of space launches passing through as well as new-technology balloons and drones. 

“More and more countries are now looking at high altitude,” said Prof. Freeland, who has helped write space legislation for countries including New Zealand and Australia.

In 2017, New Zealand became the first country to include oversight of such high altitudes in its space law, requiring users to secure licenses to operate above its territory. New Zealand didn’t define high altitude. A few other countries have followed suit, including the United Arab Emirates, which set a limit of roughly 262,000 feet for its oversight of high altitudes. But in those cases, other countries haven’t accepted the UAE’s claim.

“States can say whatever they want,” said Prof. Freeland. “But it doesn’t mean it’s the law.”

Write to Doug Cameron at Doug.Cameron@wsj.com

18. U.S.’s Asia Allies See New Threat From Balloons Amid China Spying Row

U.S.’s Asia Allies See New Threat From Balloons Amid China Spying Row

Washington’s charge that Beijing is using balloons for global espionage program likely ends region’s tolerance for the high-altitude visitors

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-s-asia-allies-see-new-threat-from-balloons-amid-china-spying-row-73a4b214

By Alastair GaleFollow

 and Joyu WangFollow

Feb. 14, 2023 7:17 am ET

America’s allies in Asia are raising their vigilance against high-altitude balloons after Washington accused Beijing of using them in a global spying program, ending years in which unannounced incursions by balloons have largely been tolerated in the region.

Balloons of undeclared origin are seen each year around the Asia-Pacific region. One military officer in Taiwan with access to daily intelligence reports said suspected Chinese balloons are spotted by Taipei roughly once every quarter, mostly over Taiwan’s outlying islands near the Chinese coast.

Japan has confirmed foreign balloon sightings in each of the past three years.

The balloons are usually viewed by governments in the region as less of a security threat than satellite reconnaissance or incursions by Chinese military aircraft and armed ships, but government officials say they are raising their level of concern.

“We’ll make every effort to gather and analyze data [about balloons] with our allies,” Japanese government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno said Tuesday.

Australian officials said they were unaware of any balloons over Australia but were monitoring the issue closely.

After Washington accused Beijing of sending a spy balloon over the continental U.S., it shared its findings with other countries and said Chinese balloons had made similar intelligence gathering missions over the territory of 40 nations.

Beijing says the balloon shot down by the U.S. over the Atlantic Ocean was a civilian device used for meteorological research that was blown off course.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin on Tuesday called the shooting down a “preposterous and costly political showcase,” and reiterated Beijing’s allegation that the U.S. had flown balloons over China’s airspace several times since last year.

“The U.S. side should examine this and provide China with an explanation,” Mr. Wang said. On Monday, U.S. officials denied flying balloons over China.

Asked about potential Chinese balloons over Japan, Mr. Wang said Tokyo should be objective and fair and “not follow the hyping up by the U.S. side.”

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John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, told reporters on Friday that President Biden ordered the military to down another object flying over U.S. airspace. Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News

Some foreign balloons seen in the Asia-Pacific region are quickly identified as weather balloons. Such balloons usually drift no more than around 125 miles from the point of launch, according to the U.S. National Weather Service.

On Feb. 5, South Korea tracked a North Korean balloon that drifted into South Korean airspace but determined that it didn’t pose a threat. The balloon blew back over the border after a few hours. South Korean media identified it as a weather balloon.

Most of the balloons that Taiwan sees that appear to have come from China are for monitoring the weather, Maj. Gen. Huang Wen-chi, a Taiwan military intelligence official, said at a press conference on Tuesday.

He declined to give further details about how many and how often Chinese balloons have flown near Taiwan, but said Taipei hasn’t yet detected any similar to the one shot down off the coast of South Carolina last week.

In some cases, there is uncertainty about how to respond to mysterious suspected balloons. When a high-altitude balloon was seen over northern Japan in 2020, the object was treated as a risk to air traffic safety and tracked by a police helicopter. Japan’s defense minister said the balloon wasn’t a national security concern.

Video footage showed equipment slung below the balloon in a similar design to that under the suspected Chinese spy balloon shot down by the U.S.

After the U.S. accusation against China last week of balloon-based spying, a former Japanese defense minister, Taro Kono, wrote on his blog that foreign balloons would now be treated as a violation of Japan’s airspace.

Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada confirmed Tuesday that Japan could deploy its military to shoot down foreign balloons if necessary.

Shen Ming-shih, a director at the military-backed Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taipei, said balloons haven’t been a priority for Taiwan because it has had to deal with Beijing sending military aircraft near the island and firing missiles over Taiwan last summer following the visit by then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Mr. Shen also said there was a risk that aggressive action against balloons could trigger a military escalation. China considers self-ruled Taiwan a part of its territory and hasn’t ruled out trying to seize the island by force.

Maj. Gen. Huang said Taiwan’s military would only take action to deal with balloons that it thinks are posing a clear national security threat. He also said the military was looking into a move by the U.S. military to increase the sensitivity of its radar to better identify balloons.

“If these U.S. practices can be used as our references, of course we will consider them,” he said.

Gen. Kunio Orita, a retired former Japanese fighter pilot, said Japan was well equipped to identify balloons because of the high density of its radar coverage.

“Japan can detect almost all the balloons which come into its territory,” he said.

Brian Spegele, Chieko Tsuneoka and Jiyoung Sohn contributed to this article.

Write to Alastair Gale at alastair.gale@wsj.com and Joyu Wang at joyu.wang@wsj.com

19. China’s Top Airship Scientist Said He Sent One Over North America in 2019

China’s Top Airship Scientist Said He Sent One Over North America in 2019

The New York Times · by Chris Buckley · February 13, 2023

Corporate records and media reports reveal an airship scientist at the center of China’s high-altitude balloon program. Companies he has founded were among those targeted by Washington.

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A high-altitude balloon floating over Billings, Mont., earlier this month. It was later shot down off the coast of South Carolina.Credit...Larry Mayer/The Billings Gazette, via Associated Press

By

Feb. 13, 2023, 5:11 a.m. ET

In 2019, years before a hulking high-altitude Chinese balloon floated across the United States and caused widespread alarm, one of China’s top aeronautics scientists made a proud announcement that received little attention back then: his team had launched an airship more than 60,000 feet into the air and sent it sailing around most of the globe, including across North America.

The scientist, Wu Zhe, told a state-run news outlet at the time that the “Cloud Chaser” airship was a milestone in his vision of populating the upper reaches of the earth’s atmosphere with steerable balloons that could be used to provide early warnings of natural disasters, monitor pollution or carry out airborne surveillance.

“Look, there’s America,” Professor Wu said in an accompanying video, pointing on a computer screen to a red line that appeared to trace the airship’s path across Asia, northern Africa, and near the southern edge of the United States. By the time of the report, it was over the Pacific Ocean.

Professor Wu’s announcement is part of a body of evidence revealing in new detail the scope of the Chinese government’s ambitions to use high-altitude airships to track earthbound activities, with an eye on both domestic and military needs. Chinese media reports, academic studies and officials’ speeches suggest that Professor Wu has been central to China’s balloon development efforts.

A senior academic at Beihang University, a Beijing-based institution at the forefront of China’s aviation and space research, Professor Wu has also worked in airship development for nearly two decades. Now several of his companies have been caught up in the Biden administration’s efforts to counter those plans. Professor Wu has been a founder or major stakeholder in at least three of the six Chinese entities that Washington punished last week for their involvement in what the Biden administration calls Beijing’s surveillance balloon program.

Washington did not say whether any of blacklisted entities was specifically linked to the Chinese balloon that was discovered and shot down over the United States this month. Nor has it singled out Professor Wu by name. Emails and calls to Professor Wu’s office went unanswered on Monday.

China has maintained that the Chinese balloon was a civilian airship that was conducting mostly meteorological research when it was blown off course. On Monday, Beijing pointed its finger at Washington, saying that the United States has flown high-altitude balloons over Chinese airspace more than 10 times since last year.

More on China

• Food Production: High-rise hog farms have sprung up across the country as part of Beijing’s drive to enhance its agricultural competitiveness and reduce its dependence on imports.
• Spy Balloon Showdown: The dispute with the United States has raised concerns about how Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s government wields its power in a climate where one wrong move could set off a conflict.
• ‘Hong Kong 47’ Trial: In 2021, Beijing used a national security law to quash dissent. Now, another warning is being sent, with the mass trial of 47 pro-democracy figures in Hong Kong.
• A Receding Tsunami: Two months after China abandoned its Covid rules, the worst seems to have passed, and the government is eager to shift attention to economic recovery.

Professor Wu, who turns 66 this month, has emerged as a central figure in China’s ambitions in “near space,” the band of the atmosphere between 12 and 62 miles above earth that is too high for most planes to stay aloft for long and too low for space satellites.

He has helped design jet fighters, developed expertise in stealth materials, won prizes for his work from the Chinese military and was a vice president of Beihang University before deciding to return to research and teaching. He also sat on an advisory committee to the now-disbanded General Armaments Department of the People’s Liberation Army, according to his biography on the Beihang University website.

Beihang University in Beijing. The university is at the forefront of China’s aviation and space research.Credit...Damir Sagolj/Reuters

Chinese strategists see near space as an arena of deepening great-power rivalry, where China must master the new materials and technologies needed to establish a firm presence, or risk being edged out. That anxiety has deepened as relations with the United States have soured under Xi Jinping, China’s resolutely nationalist leader. Near space, Chinese analysts argue, offers a potentially useful alternative to satellites and surveillance planes, which may become vulnerable to detection, blocking or attacks.

Near space “is a major sphere of competition between the 21st century military powers,” Shi Hong, a Chinese military commentator wrote in a current affairs journal last year. “Whoever gains the edge in near space vehicles will be able to win more of the initiative in future wars.”

Until recently, China’s long-distance high-altitude balloon flights drew little attention, perhaps partly a testament to their success in staying off the radars of foreign governments.

The Biden administration now says that China has sent them over more than 40 countries and that the United States was only able to detect the flights by reviewing stored data. Now, the U.S. military is adjusting its radars to try to spot more incursions. Over the weekend, U.S. fighter jets shot down three unidentified flying objects over Alaska, Canada and Michigan.

High-altitude balloons are made of special materials that can cope with the harsh extremes of temperatures and carry loads in thin air. For the balloons to be useful, operators on earth must be able to stay in touch with them across vast distances. Professor Wu’s open academic publications and other reports indicate that he and his scientific collaborators have long studied these challenges.

The balloon that was launched in July 2019, Professor Wu said then, was a “big guy,” nearly 330 feet in length and weighing several tons, which appears to be bigger than the balloon that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina by an American fighter jet this month. “This is the first time that an aerodynamically controlled airship has flown around the world in the stratosphere at 20,000 meters,” or about 65,000 feet high, Professor Wu told an outlet of the Southern Daily newspaper of Guangdong Province.

The 2019 flight was not a one-off for Professor Wu and his team. The Eagles Men Aviation Science and Technology Group, or EMAST, a Beijing-based company that Professor Wu co-founded in 2004, has claimed a series of other successes for them.

Advances in high-altitude balloons held out the potential for “high resolution, long-lasting, stable communications, reconnaissance, navigation and other services,” EMAST said on its official WeChat social media account in 2017.

In 2019, Professor Wu and his team “acquired a signal from between earth and near space” for the first time, EMAST said. The company did not explain what kind of signals were involved, nor whether the step was linked to the “Cloud Catcher” flight of that year or another airship. The company’s website has been offline recently, but cached records of its web pages can still be found online.

In 2020, a Chinese balloon made a full circumnavigation of the globe and was safely retrieved, a pioneering feat, EMAST said. In the following year, the team operated two of the balloons in the skies simultaneously, a first for the project.

In 2022, the cached EMAST web pages say, Professor Wu and his team either launched or planned to launch — the Chinese wording on the timing is unclear — three high-altitude balloons in the air at the same time to form an “airborne network.” The ultimate goal, the company said, was to create an airborne signals network in China using stationary balloons floating at least 80,000 feet high.

It likened the planned network to Starlink, the system of small, low-orbiting satellites operated by SpaceX. Starlink has provided communications support to Ukrainian forces fighting Russian invaders. By 2028, EMAST said, it hoped to “complete a global near-space information network,” but did not elaborate on what that meant.

There has been no public corroboration of Professor Wu’s claimed successes with high-altitude balloons. His available scientific papers do not describe any of those feats. Nonetheless, Professor Wu is a highly awarded scientist whose views carry official weight.

In 2015, the Communist Party’s newspaper, People’s Daily, hailed the work of Professor Wu and his team after they launched a balloon in northern China that stayed aloft at more than 65,000 feet. That was a breakthrough for China in developing the materials and knowledge for long-endurance near-space voyages, the reports said.

Scientists inflating a weather balloon on the Tibetan side of Mount Everest, in May. The balloon China was flying over the United States was larger and more sophisticated, and it flew higher.

The team had “pioneered a new path for developing near-space flying craft,” Zhang Jun, the Communist Party secretary of Beihang University, said in a meeting in 2015. Mr. Zhang urged them to go further, “focusing on national strategic needs.”

Professor Wu appeared eager to expand his footprint in the commercial realm. That same year, he began preparations to found a campus of Beihang University in Dongguan, a manufacturing and technology city over 1,000 miles south of Beijing. He was also involved in several companies looking to turn his and his research partners’ work into commercial applications, corporate records indicate.

In partnership with a Shanghai property company, he helped to found Beijing Nanjiang Aerospace Technology, a company that described itself as being focused on “near space” technology. That company, as well as Eagles Men Aviation and another company he created, Shanxi Eagles Men Aviation Science and Technology Group, were among the six entities the Department of Commerce imposed sanctions upon last week. Calls to his companies went unanswered on Monday.

Until perhaps recently, Professor Wu appeared to show no misgivings about revealing his corporate links. In 2021, he and his partners announced that they were applying to list shares of Eagles Men Aviation on a new stock exchange in Beijing. The announcement noted the military demand for the company’s concealment products, including camouflage and stealth materials to help aircraft evade detection.

Amy Chang Chien and Ana Swanson contributed reporting.

The New York Times · by Chris Buckley · February 13, 2023

20. Russia Has Already Lost in the Long Run

Excerpts:

Nowhere, however, has Russia’s invasion backfired more than in Ukraine. Contrary to Putin’s historical revisionism, Ukraine has long had a national identity distinct from Russia’s. But it’s also long been fractured along linguistic lines, with many of its elites intent on maintaining close relations with the Kremlin and even the public unsure about greater alignment with the West.

No longer. Ninety-one percent of Ukrainians now favor joining NATO, a figure unthinkable just a decade ago. Eighty-five percent of Ukrainians consider themselves Ukrainian above all else, a marker of civic identity that has grown by double digits since Russia’s invasion. Far from protecting the Russian language in Ukraine, Putin appears to have hastened its demise as native Russian speakers (Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky included) switch to Ukrainian en masse. Putin launched his invasion to bring Ukraine back into Moscow’s orbit. He has instead anchored its future in the West.

Of course, one can argue that, however much the war has cost Russia, it has cost Ukraine exponentially more. This is true. Ukraine’s economy shrank by more than 30 percent last year, while Russia’s economy contracted by just about 3 percent. And this says nothing of the human toll Ukraine has suffered. But, like Brexit, Western sanctions on Russia will play out as a slow burn, not an immediate collapse. And while Russia enters a protracted period of economic and demographic decline, once peace comes, Ukraine will have the combined industrial capacity of the EU, United States, and United Kingdom to support it as the West’s newest institutional member—precisely the outcome Putin hoped to avoid. Russia may yet make new territorial gains in the Donbas. But in the long run, such gains are immaterial—Russia has already lost.

Russia Has Already Lost in the Long Run

Even if Moscow holds onto territory, the war has wrecked its future.

By Brent Peabody, a current graduate student at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he studies energy and trans-Atlantic policy.

Foreign Policy · by Brent Peabody · February 13, 2023

As Russia ramps up its second offensive, a debate has erupted over whether Moscow or Kyiv will have the upper hand in 2023. While important, such discourse also misses a larger point related to the conflict’s longer-term consequences. In the long run, the true loser of the war is already clear; Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine will be remembered as a historic folly that left Russia economically, demographically, and geopolitically worse off.

Start with the lynchpin of Russia’s economy: energy. In contrast to Europe’s (very real) dependence on Russia for fossil fuels, Russia’s economic dependence on Europe has largely gone unremarked upon. As late as 2021, for example, Russia exported 32 percent of its coal, 49 percent of its oil, and a staggering 74 percent of its gas to OECD Europe alone. Add in Japan, South Korea, and non-OECD European countries that have joined Western sanctions against Russia, and the figure is even higher. A trickle of Russian energy continues to flow into Europe, but as the European Union makes good on its commitment to phase out Russian oil and gas, Moscow may soon find itself shut out of its most lucrative export market.

In a petrostate like Russia that derives 45 percent of its federal budget from fossil fuels, the impact of this market isolation is hard to overstate. Oil and coal exports are fungible, and Moscow has indeed been able to redirect them to countries such as India and China (albeit at discounted rates, higher costs, and lower profits). Gas, however, is much harder to reroute because of the infrastructure needed to transport it. With its $400 billion gas pipeline to China, Russia has managed some progress on this front, but it will take years to match current capacity to the EU. In any case, China’s leverage as a single buyer makes it a poor substitute for Europe, where Russia can bid countries against one another.

As Russia ramps up its second offensive, a debate has erupted over whether Moscow or Kyiv will have the upper hand in 2023. While important, such discourse also misses a larger point related to the conflict’s longer-term consequences. In the long run, the true loser of the war is already clear; Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine will be remembered as a historic folly that left Russia economically, demographically, and geopolitically worse off.

Start with the lynchpin of Russia’s economy: energy. In contrast to Europe’s (very real) dependence on Russia for fossil fuels, Russia’s economic dependence on Europe has largely gone unremarked upon. As late as 2021, for example, Russia exported 32 percent of its coal, 49 percent of its oil, and a staggering 74 percent of its gas to OECD Europe alone. Add in Japan, South Korea, and non-OECD European countries that have joined Western sanctions against Russia, and the figure is even higher. A trickle of Russian energy continues to flow into Europe, but as the European Union makes good on its commitment to phase out Russian oil and gas, Moscow may soon find itself shut out of its most lucrative export market.

In a petrostate like Russia that derives 45 percent of its federal budget from fossil fuels, the impact of this market isolation is hard to overstate. Oil and coal exports are fungible, and Moscow has indeed been able to redirect them to countries such as India and China (albeit at discounted rates, higher costs, and lower profits). Gas, however, is much harder to reroute because of the infrastructure needed to transport it. With its $400 billion gas pipeline to China, Russia has managed some progress on this front, but it will take years to match current capacity to the EU. In any case, China’s leverage as a single buyer makes it a poor substitute for Europe, where Russia can bid countries against one another.

This market isolation, however, would be survivable were it not for the gravest unintended consequence of Russia’s war—an accelerated transition toward decarbonization. It took a gross violation of international law, but Putin managed to convince Western leaders to finally treat independence from fossil fuels as a national security issue and not just an environmental one.

This is best seen in Europe’s turbocharged transition toward renewable energy, where permitting processes that used to take years are being pushed up. A few months after the invasion, for example, Germany jump-started construction on what will soon be Europe’s largest solar plant. Around the same time, Britain accelerated progress on Hornsea 3, slated to become the world’s largest offshore wind farm upon completion. The results already speak for themselves; for the first time ever last year, wind and solar combined for a higher share of electrical generation in Europe than oil and gas. And this says nothing of other decarbonization efforts such as subsidies for heat pumps in the EU, incentives for clean energy in the United States, and higher electric vehicle uptake everywhere.

The cumulative effect for Russia could not be worse. Sooner or later, lower demand for fossil fuels will dramatically and permanently lower the price for oil and gas—an existential threat to Russia’s economy. When increased U.S. shale production depressed oil prices in 2014, for example, Russia experienced a financial crisis. Lower global demand for fossil fuels will play out over a longer timeline, but the result for Russia will be much graver. With its invasion, Russia hastened the arrival of an energy transition that promises to unravel its economy.

Beyond a smaller and less efficient economy, Putin’s war in Ukraine will also leave Russia with a smaller and less dynamic population. Russia’s demographic problems are well-documented, and Putin had intended to start reversing the country’s long-running population decline in 2022. In a morbid twist, the year is likelier to mark the start of its irrevocable fall. The confluence of COVID and an inverted demographic pyramid already made Russia’s demographic outlook dire. The addition of war has made it catastrophic.

To understand why, it’s important to understand the demographic scar left by the 1990s. In the chaos that followed the Soviet Union’s dissolution, Russia’s birthrate plunged to 1.2 children per woman, far below the 2.1 needed for a population to remain stable. The effects can still be seen today; while there are 12 million Russians aged 30-34 (born just before the breakup of the Soviet Union), there are just 7 million aged 20-24 (born during the chaos that followed it). That deficit meant Russia’s population was already poised to fall, simply because a smaller number of people would be able to have children in the first place.

Russia’s invasion has made this bad demographic hand cataclysmic. At least 120,000 Russian soldiers have died so far—many in their 20s and from the same small generation Russia can scarcely afford to lose. Many more have emigrated, if they can, or simply fled to other countries to try to wait out the war; exact numbers are hard to calculate, but the 32,000 Russians who have immigrated to Israel alone suggest the total number approaches a million.

Disastrously, the planning horizons of Russian families have been upended; it is projected that fewer than 1.2 million Russian babies may be born next year, , which would leave Russia with its lowest birthrate since 2000. A spike in violent crime, a rise in alcohol consumption, and other factors that collude against a family’s decision to have children may depress the birthrate further still. Ironically, over the last decade Putin managed to slow (if not reverse) Russia’s population decline through lavish payoffs for new mothers. Increased military spending and the debt needed to finance it will make such generous natalist policies harder.

The invasion has left Russia even worse off geopolitically. Unlike hard numbers and demographic data, such lost influence is hard to measure. But it can be seen everywhere, from public opinion polls across the West to United Nations votes that the Kremlin has lost by margins as high as 141 to 5. It can also be seen in Russia’s own backyard; while an emboldened NATO could soon include Sweden and Finland, Russia’s own Collective Security Treaty Organization is tearing at the seams as traditional allies such as Kazakhstan and Armenia realize the Kremlin’s impotence and look to China for security.

Perhaps most important of all, Russia has reinvigorated the cause of liberal democracy. In the year after its invasion, French President Emmanuel Macron won a rare second term in France, the far-right AfD lost ground in three successive elections in Germany, and “Make America Great Again” Republicans paid an electoral penalty in the U.S. midterms. (The far right did sweep into power in both Sweden and Italy, but such wins have so far failed to dent Western unity and appear more motivated by immigration.) And this says nothing of the wave of democratic consolidation playing out across Eastern Europe, where voters have thrown out illiberal populists in Slovenia and Czechia in the last year alone. It is impossible to attribute any of these outcomes to just one factor (U.S. Democrats also got a boost from the overturn of Roe v. Wade and election denialism, for example), but Russia’s invasion—and the clear choice between liberalism and autocracy it presented—no doubt helped.

Nowhere, however, has Russia’s invasion backfired more than in Ukraine. Contrary to Putin’s historical revisionism, Ukraine has long had a national identity distinct from Russia’s. But it’s also long been fractured along linguistic lines, with many of its elites intent on maintaining close relations with the Kremlin and even the public unsure about greater alignment with the West.

No longer. Ninety-one percent of Ukrainians now favor joining NATO, a figure unthinkable just a decade ago. Eighty-five percent of Ukrainians consider themselves Ukrainian above all else, a marker of civic identity that has grown by double digits since Russia’s invasion. Far from protecting the Russian language in Ukraine, Putin appears to have hastened its demise as native Russian speakers (Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky included) switch to Ukrainian en masse. Putin launched his invasion to bring Ukraine back into Moscow’s orbit. He has instead anchored its future in the West.

Of course, one can argue that, however much the war has cost Russia, it has cost Ukraine exponentially more. This is true. Ukraine’s economy shrank by more than 30 percent last year, while Russia’s economy contracted by just about 3 percent. And this says nothing of the human toll Ukraine has suffered. But, like Brexit, Western sanctions on Russia will play out as a slow burn, not an immediate collapse. And while Russia enters a protracted period of economic and demographic decline, once peace comes, Ukraine will have the combined industrial capacity of the EU, United States, and United Kingdom to support it as the West’s newest institutional member—precisely the outcome Putin hoped to avoid. Russia may yet make new territorial gains in the Donbas. But in the long run, such gains are immaterial—Russia has already lost.

Foreign Policy · by Brent Peabody · February 13, 2023

​21. Geostrategic competition and overseas basing in East Asia and the First Island Chain

By using the "First Island Chain" are we subtly ceding this territory to China? Isn't it China that calls it the first island chain? Should we be using the same terminology or should we be using something that sends the message that we do not think China has claims over the first island chain? Or is that pole-vaulting over mouse turds?

Basing in East Asia is a major strategic issue for us and our allies.

​The 8 page PDF can be downloaded here: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/FP_20230207_east_asia_basing_ohanlon_yeo.pdf​

Geostrategic competition and overseas basing in East Asia and the First Island Chain

The Brookings Institution · by Michael E. O'Hanlon and Andrew Yeo · February 8, 2023

Michael E. O’Hanlon

Director of Research - Foreign Policy Director - Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology Co-Director - Africa Security Initiative Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology Philip H. Knight Chair in Defense and Strategy

MichaelEOHanlon

Andrew Yeo

Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Center for East Asia Policy Studies SK-Korea Foundation Chair in Korea Studies

AndrewIYeo

Executive summary

Under the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy, the Department of Defense (DOD) now enfolds East Asia within the broader regional framework of the Indo-Pacific. However, significant U.S. forward presence and the U.S. obligation to defend allied territory in Northeast Asia with ground forces means that the needs and dynamics of great power basing in that region will differ from the maritime theaters of the South Pacific and Indian Oceans. Although the DOD has been simultaneously criticized for being too ambitious or doing too little to address U.S. force posture, geostrategic competition with China dictates prudence in making any major changes to overseas basing in East Asia. Yet Chinese ambitions to strengthen its claims over Taiwan and the South China Sea may require some adjustments to U.S. force posture to surmount evolving challenges within China’s so-called first island chain.1 For long-term geostrategic competition with China, U.S. force posture in East Asia may be sized correctly but wrongly composed and dispersed. That is, the numbers and strategic concentrations of U.S. forces today in East Asia may be largely right, but their specific capabilities may not always be sufficient — they should continue to evolve, not according to a single grand plan but according to ongoing strategic developments.

The Brookings Institution · by Michael E. O'Hanlon and Andrew Yeo · February 8, 2023

22. A ‘Modern National Security Strategy’: Q&A with Rep. Ro Khanna

A ‘Modern National Security Strategy’: Q&A with Rep. Ro Khanna

The ranking member of a HASC tech subcommittee has thoughts on China, chips, and how the Pentagon should integrate its approach to both.

defenseone.com · by Jennifer Hlad

The United States has an “incredible advantage” in terms of traditional military forces and weapons, but must make sure it has the same advantage in new tech, and needs a “modern national security strategy” to make that happen, the ranking member of the House Armed Services subcommittee on cyber, information technology, and innovation told Defense One.

“I think we have work to do to ensure the lead in AI, in quantum, in small drones, in hypersonics, in having the most advanced semiconductors. We have superiority when it comes to our Navy, when it comes to our Air Force, when it comes to our Army,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat whose California district includes Silicon Valley. “But we need to give them the modern tools and not handicap them by falling behind in one of these technology areas.”

Khanna, who is also a member of the House China Select Committee and co-chair of the India caucus, said in an interview that he sees those three roles as intersecting “to create an overarching mission to have a modern national security strategy” as well as an economic strategy he calls “a new economic patriotism.” The following Q & A has been edited for length and clarity.

Defense One: Let’s talk about the U.S.-China economic relationship. Where do you feel that relationship is now, and how would you like to see that change?

Rep. Khanna: The most immediate need is to make sure we're secure, and that there's no military invasion of Taiwan. And that requires clarity now that if there are ever future balloons or things coming into our airspace, they're shot down before they get close to us.…It requires clarity that China shouldn't be crossing the median line, or there are going to be consequences, in the Taiwan Strait, that they can't be conducting these missile tests over Taiwan, in Taiwanese air space. So we have to prioritize basic security, especially in light of the recent balloon incident. Americans are understandably on edge about what happened.

But beyond the security, we have to look at the loss of our industry to China. We lost our steel, our aluminum, our textiles, our drug manufacturing, our battery manufacturing all to China. And it was a colossal mistake. When Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken goes to China, when the President goes to China, top three priorities, one of them has to be economic rebalancing. Open up your markets to U.S. goods, stop artificially depressing your currency. Make sure that you're not dumping products into the United States. Have an explicit goal that we're going to reduce the trade deficit by 10, 15% every year.

D1: What should we be doing to deter an invasion of Taiwan? What consequences should there be if China crosses the median line of the Taiwan Strait?

Khanna: Well, the administration's current move to have bases in the Philippines, temporary bases where we can have our troop presence, is important, and a deterrent. And we need to look at what we can do in Japan, what we can do in Australia, what Japan, Australia, India can commit to, to deter any possible military invasion of Taiwan. A strengthening presence in that region will provide a deterrent effect.

There have to be some consequences to China crossing the median line. I don't think that should result in an escalation of military force, because we don't want to have a war over a crossing of a median line. But there have to be other options that we look at, whether those are economic sanctions, whether they are a political consequence, and that's something the committee should explore with the administration. What are the consequences for China engaging in crossing the median line? What are the consequences for testing over Taiwanese airspace? What is the consequence for launching balloons again at the United States?

D1: What is your opinion on the tech competition between the U.S. and China? Where does the United States need to improve? Adm. Harry Harris said [in a recent House Armed Services Committee hearing] that the United States is behind on hypersonics, as one example.

Khanna: The biggest place where we need to do better is the adoption of technology. We lead in semiconductor design, but are our most advanced chips getting into the military? How do we compare, not on who's leading in semiconductors, but [who is] leading in using advanced semiconductor chips in the military?] And that's something we have to explore. How are we getting the most advanced AI, quantum, into the military? How are we getting commercial technology into the military? China doesn't have that challenge, because everything is the government's in China, they’re an authoritarian government. There is no such thing as a truly private company. We have private companies, and it's a challenge to get that adoption, and that's going to be a big focus of mine. And, I think of [Rep.] Mike Gallagher’s [chair of the CITI subcommittee and also chair of the China select committee].

And so the main thing is that there have to be DOD budgets for the adoption of technology, not just, ‘OK, here's some startup and we're supporting that startup.’ Who's going to buy at scale those products, and how are they going to be adopted? And how do we give the people who are responsible for bringing new technology into the DoD more authority, or budgetary authority, more discretion? Those are things that CITI needs to explore.

D1: How do you feel the Defense Innovation Unit has been performing?

Khanna: I think it’s good. There are a number of examples, but one, I would like to see the Department of Defense consider funding directly, like some of the agencies have. I think the challenge is the adoption. So you have this innovative technology, and in certain cases it gets purchased, but it's hard to get it purchased at scale….The DOD needs budgets and authority to actually implement some of the technology. There has to be some maybe expedited way for advanced technology to make it in.

D1: What do you think are the most pressing innovation gaps for DOD?

Khanna: I think the adoption is the gap, because a lot of the innovation is happening in the commercial sector, and the adoption of that into the DOD is where the challenge lies. We could debate how else we can stay ahead on AI and quantum, and part of that was the CHIPS and Science Act. Maybe we fund DARPA more, though they're at capacity. So what we really need to do is how do we adopt that and think about the use cases for that.

D1: How would you like to see the U.S. relationship with India change?

Khanna: We need a much stronger partnership, continue to build a strong partnership. But if there ever was a time for India to realize that a dependence on the Russian military is problematic, it's now. One, because the equipment didn't work that well. Two, Russia is basically becoming a client state of China. And China is on India's border, in Arunachal Pradesh. If you look at Indian public sentiment, they see China as even a bigger threat than Pakistan. That's a shocking statistic for anyone who's studied, or knows India. And so the dependence on Russia is very problematic, and Russia is dependent on China. And so this is the moment where the United States can really come in and help expedite the transition away from India's dependence on Russia. The two things that we're going to have to figure out how to compete on price, and we're going to have to figure out how to allow some domestic production. Those are the two ways that Russia sort of has gotten India’s business.

defenseone.com · by Jennifer Hlad

​23. U.S. warns Ukraine it faces a pivotal moment in war

Excerpts:

The critical nature of the next few months has already been conveyed to Kyiv in blunt terms by top Biden officials — including deputy national security adviser Jon Finer, deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman and undersecretary of defense Colin Kahl, all of whom visited Ukraine last month.

CIA Director William J. Burns traveled to the country one week ahead of those officials, where he briefed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on his expectations for what Russia is planning militarily in the coming months and emphasized the urgency of the moment.

At the same time, Biden and his aides are eager to avoid any sign of defection or weakening resolve by Western allies ahead of the Feb. 24 anniversary, hoping to signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin that support for Ukraine is not waning.

But some analysts warned that neither Russia nor Ukraine is likely to seize a decisive military advantage in the foreseeable future.

“It feels like we are playing for a long war,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. “I think it’s at odds with what so many people would hope for, that we’re actually trying to help Ukraine win militarily.”

She added, “It feels like a moment of really high uncertainty.”

U.S. warns Ukraine it faces a pivotal moment in war

The Washington Post · by Yasmeen Abutaleb · February 14, 2023

As the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nears, U.S. officials are telling Ukrainian leaders they face a critical moment to change the trajectory of the war, raising the pressure on Kyiv to make significant gains on the battlefield while weapons and aid from the United States and its allies are surging.

Despite promises to back Ukraine “as long as it takes,” Biden officials say recent aid packages from Congress and America’s allies represent Kyiv’s best chance to decisively change the course of the war. Many conservatives in the Republican-led House have vowed to pull back support, and Europe’s long-term appetite for funding the war effort remains unclear.

Several officials noted the strong bipartisan support that has accompanied every Ukraine package, adding that Congress gave the White House more than it asked for, but they acknowledged that was under a Democrat-led House and Senate.

“We will continue to try to impress upon them that we can’t do anything and everything forever,” said one senior administration official, referring to Ukraine’s leaders. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters, added that it was the administration’s “very strong view” that it will be hard to keep getting the same level of security and economic assistance from Congress.

“'As long as it takes’ pertains to the amount of conflict,” the official added. “It doesn’t pertain to the amount of assistance.”

The war in recent months has become a slow grind in eastern Ukraine, with neither side gaining the upper hand. Biden officials believe the critical juncture will come this spring, when Russia is expected to launch an offensive and Ukraine mounts a counteroffensive in an effort to reclaim lost territory.

Underlining the importance of the moment for the administration, Vice President Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas are heading to a major security summit in Germany this week and President Biden is traveling to Poland next week for a speech and meetings on the first anniversary.

The Biden administration is also working with Congress to approve another $10 billion in direct budget assistance to Kyiv and is expected to announce another large military assistance package in the next week and the imposition of more sanctions on the Kremlin around the same time.

The critical nature of the next few months has already been conveyed to Kyiv in blunt terms by top Biden officials — including deputy national security adviser Jon Finer, deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman and undersecretary of defense Colin Kahl, all of whom visited Ukraine last month.

CIA Director William J. Burns traveled to the country one week ahead of those officials, where he briefed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on his expectations for what Russia is planning militarily in the coming months and emphasized the urgency of the moment.

At the same time, Biden and his aides are eager to avoid any sign of defection or weakening resolve by Western allies ahead of the Feb. 24 anniversary, hoping to signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin that support for Ukraine is not waning.

But some analysts warned that neither Russia nor Ukraine is likely to seize a decisive military advantage in the foreseeable future.

“It feels like we are playing for a long war,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. “I think it’s at odds with what so many people would hope for, that we’re actually trying to help Ukraine win militarily.”

She added, “It feels like a moment of really high uncertainty.”

Biden and his top aides say they are determined to back Ukraine as long and as fully as possible. But they warn that the political path will get tougher once Ukraine has exhausted the current congressional package, which could happen as early as this summer.

Some Western leaders have harbored reservations about sending certain types of heavy weaponry to Ukraine, worried about a direct confrontation with Russia, especially after Putin signaled a willingness to use nuclear weapons.

But loud public lobbying by Zelensky, followed by quiet behind-the-scenes dealmaking by U.S. officials, has changed the dynamic. Biden and Blinken spent much of December and January working to convince allies to help provide Ukraine with the tanks and missiles that his administration had resisted sending for months.

Biden aides encouraged the Netherlands, for example, to help the United States provide critical air defense systems. On Dec. 20, officials at the National Security Council met with senior Dutch officials and stressed the importance the United States was placing on air defense, according to a senior administration official familiar with the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal details of private discussions.

What the officials did not know was that the United States was working to bring Zelensky to Washington the next day, where Biden would announce that he was approving a Patriot Missile battery, Zelensky’s top request to help defend against Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure.

The battery needed a launcher — ideally one already in Europe — so Dutch officials worked through the holidays to see how they could assist the United States, the official said. In January, Biden invited the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, to visit the White House, and the Dutch came up with a solution. When Rutte visited on Jan. 17, he said the Netherlands would provide two Patriot Missile launchers and missiles to Ukraine.

But Biden faced challenges on other fronts as well. While Britain had announced it would supply tanks to Ukraine, Germany refused to send its own Leopard 2 tanks or to authorize other countries to transfer their own Leopards — unless the United States agreed to send its prized M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine.

For much of January, Pentagon and White House officials insisted the M1 Abrams tanks were not well-suited for Ukrainian troops because they are so complicated to operate and maintain. But Biden wanted to avoid the appearance of a fissure in the Western alliance.

In late January, Biden’s Cabinet came up with a plan for the United States to announce the provision of M1 Abrams tanks, which would placate Germany even though the U.S. tanks would not arrive for several months at the earliest. The following the day, Biden gave the go-ahead.

Now, as the United States prepares to send 31 of the premier tanks in the medium term, Europe is quickly assembling two Leopard tank battalions in the near term — the equivalent of at least 70 tanks — in a move that could significantly shift the balance of power on the battlefield.

Yet the public show of unity belies underlying tensions over how Ukraine should focus its resources in the coming months.

The frank discussions in Kyiv last month reflected an effort by the Biden administration to bring Ukraine’s goals in line with what the West can sustain as the war approaches its one-year mark. Getting Ukraine on the same page has not always been easy, according to people familiar with the discussions, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks.

For months, Ukraine has expended significant resources and troops defending Bakhmut in the eastern Donbas region. American military analysts and planners have argued that it is unrealistic to simultaneously defend Bakhmut and launch a spring counteroffensive to retake what the United States views as more critical territory.

Zelensky, however, attaches symbolic importance to Bakhmut, two senior administration officials said, and believes it would be a blow to Ukrainian morale to lose the city. On Friday, Zelensky said his country’s forces would “fight as long as we can” to hold the embattled city that Russia is on the brink of capturing.

While U.S. officials said they respect that Zelensky knows how best to rally his country, they have expressed concerns that if Ukraine keeps fighting everywhere Russia sends troops, it will work to Moscow’s advantage. Instead, they have urged Ukraine to prioritize the timing and execution of the spring counteroffensive, particularly as the United States and Europe train Ukrainian fighters on some of the more complex weaponry making its way to the battlefield.

“Generally, our view is they should take enough time that they can benefit from what we’ve provided in material and training,” a senior administration official said. If Russia takes Bakhmut, the official said, it “will not result in any significant strategic shift in the battlefield. Russians will try to claim it as such, [but] it’s a dot on the map for which they have expended an extraordinary amount of blood and treasure.”

Beyond Bakhmut, Zelensky has repeatedly rallied his country behind a military campaign to retake all of Russian-occupied Ukraine, including Crimea, the peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014.

Last month, Zelensky’s top aide, Andriy Yermak, reiterated that victory against Russia means restoring Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders, “including Donbas and Crimea.” Anything less is “absolutely unacceptable,” he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

U.S. intelligence officials have concluded, however, that retaking the heavily fortified peninsula is beyond the capability of Ukraine’s army right now, according to officials familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues. That sobering assessment has been reiterated to multiple committees on Capitol Hill over the last several weeks.

That discrepancy between aims and capabilities has raised concerns in Europe that the Ukraine conflict will persist indefinitely, overburdening the West as it grapples with other challenges including stubbornly high inflation and unstable energy prices.

Against that backdrop, Biden’s aides say they are pursuing the best course of action: empowering Ukraine to retake as much territory as possible in coming months before sitting down with Putin at the negotiating table.

That effort will benefit from an influx of Patriot missiles, HIMARS launchers and an array of armored vehicles. Optimists see a path for Ukraine to stave off further Russian incursions in the east, retake territory in the south and force Russia to negotiate an end to the war by year’s end.

But skeptics worry that time is not on Ukraine’s side as Russia throws hundreds of thousands of new troops onto the battlefield, including convicts, in advance of the expected spring offensive.

Western and Ukrainian intelligence officials estimate that Russia currently has over 300,000 forces in Ukraine, up from 150,000 initially, with plans to add hundreds of thousands more. The Russian campaign in the spring could see forces pouring over the Belarusian border and cutting off supply lines in western Ukraine that Kyiv has used to bolster its military.

Even seasoned military experts see a wide range of possible outcomes in coming months, underscoring how tenuous the situation is.

“It’s not clear how this ends. Will it end with a negotiated settlement? Will it just be protracted and we’ll see some version of the frozen conflicts we see elsewhere?” said Seth Jones, director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“You have sufficient support now and the Ukrainians are willing to fight, so there’s strong logic to getting Ukraine as much as you can,” Jones said. “How long you can continue to do that for is an open question.”

The Washington Post · by Yasmeen Abutaleb · February 14, 2023

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com