Quotes of the Day:
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederic Bastiat
"You may ask what motivates me to share my ideas and thoughts with others? My answer is, ‘When I die, if a few people will say, “He helped me,” I will feel well rewarded.’ If you do not sow, you do not reap; no investment, no dividend. It’s as simple as that."
- Alfred A. Montapert
"Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured."
- Mark Twain
1. EXCLUSIVE Biden to seek more than $770 billion in 2023 defense budget, sources say
2. The US is not Ready for a Peer to Peer Fight in Europe
3. U.S. Arms Sent to Ukraine Would Blunt but Not Stop a Russian Invasion
4. Barksdale B-52s deploy to Indo-Pacific for Bomber Task Force
5. Russia added 7k troops near Ukraine border, says US official
6. Specialized US Army unit helps Russia’s neighbors train against large-scale attacks
7. Russian jets endanger US surveillance planes in close call over the Mediterranean, Navy says
8. U.S. Warns Americans Abroad Not to Count on a Rescue
9. US, NATO consider bolstering troop presence in eastern Europe
10. Senate confirms Wallander to Pentagon international affairs role
11. Putin Cannot Erase Ukraine
12. Ukraine's History Is Filled with War, Blood and Death
13. Russia Has Big Plans for Africa
14. Taiwan 194 - Emulating the Palestinians to Advocate Internationally for Taiwan and to Counter China
15. Battle Force 2025- A Plan to Defend Taiwan Within the Decade
16. Investors Should Demand Transparency From ESG Research Firms
17. FDD | The Houthi crisis is creating an Emirati-Israeli opportunity
18. Who Cares About Human Rights?
19. What’s Taking So Long? Rename Those Confederate Bases
20. After mix-up, Army says 12 programs may be hit by year-long CR
21. Russia Has Been Building Up its Conventional Forces All Along
22. Unmanned Resupply Gliders Will Take Part In Largest Special Operations Exercise (Updated)
23. Putin’s New Age of Conquest
24. Balance Piston exercise to boost PH, US troops interoperability
1. EXCLUSIVE Biden to seek more than $770 billion in 2023 defense budget, sources say
Excerpts:
Two of the sources said that about $773 billion was going to be available for the Department of Defense and other needs would go on top of that, potentially pushing a total above $800 billion.
EXCLUSIVE Biden to seek more than $770 billion in 2023 defense budget, sources say
WASHINGTON, Feb 16 (Reuters) - President Joe Biden is expected to ask Congress for a U.S. defense budget exceeding $770 billion for the next fiscal year as the Pentagon seeks to modernize the military, according to three sources familiar with the negotiations, eclipsing the record budget requests by former President Donald Trump.
Ongoing budget talks between Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) have coalesced around a proposed defense request of higher than $770 billion for the 2023 fiscal year starting Oct. 1, the sources said. Negotiations are ongoing within the administration and the final amount could change before the budget request is made in the coming months, the sources added.
Two of the sources said that about $773 billion was going to be available for the Department of Defense and other needs would go on top of that, potentially pushing a total above $800 billion.
The Pentagon referred queries to the OMB, which declined to comment.
The national defense "top line" budget includes the Pentagon's budget for spending on salaries, tanks and stealthy F-35 jets made by Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) as well as funds for the Department of Energy's nuclear weapons programs and defense-related activities at other agencies.
The White House last week responded to the Pentagon's proposed budget request with a figure that was more or less on par with Austin's request, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Among the top priorities for this budget are shipbuilding, developing capabilities in space, missile warning and modernizing the nuclear "triad" of ballistic missile submarines, bombers and land-based missiles, one of the sources said.
The budget would benefit the biggest U.S. defense contractors including Lockheed, Northrop Grumman Corp (NOC.N) and General Dynamics Corp .
Another of the sources said that the nuclear modernization effort is seen as "must pay" in addition to Pentagon plans to continue to invest in research and development of weaponry to fight any potential future wars against China and Russia.
The Pentagon also plans to trim costs by retiring older weaponry like Littoral Combat Ships that are expensive to operate and older planes like the A-10, which the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year has made less essential because they are vulnerable to more sophisticated enemies.
The national defense budget request crafted during Trump's final year in office was for $752.9 billion. Congress then increased that number by $25 billion, ultimately landing at $778 billion for fiscal 2022.
One of the sources said it is anticipated that Congress would once again increase the president's national defense budget request, but the 2023 budget cycle is only beginning. Biden's State of the Union address to Congress, scheduled for March 1, is viewed as the kickoff.
Reporting by Mike Stone in Washington; Editing by Chris Sanders, Will Dunham and Rosalba O'Brien
2. The US is not Ready for a Peer to Peer Fight in Europe
The US is not Ready for a Peer to Peer Fight in Europe | Small Wars Journal
The US is not Ready for a Peer to Peer Fight in Europe
By Keith Nightingale
As we all have, I have been watching the impressive Russian ground forces arrayed to invade Ukraine from three sides. Some comments after consultation with a good friend in the Marines:
Upon due consideration, it might have been unthoughtfully wise to not place our military in harm's way simply because it would have its clock handed to it. Our military, particularly the Army, is tailored for the 20-year war in the Sandboxes-not a Peer conflict.
Of equal import is that all the doctrine, tactics and professional skills are on the Sandbox model. None of our uniforms have had any experience in fighting Peer-Peer. We went into Korea and Vietnam with a goodly amount of leaders in both officer and NCO ranks who had such experience and could both adapt and train to the threat level required. That no longer exists.
We are also grossly dependent upon sophisticated comms and satellite systems that probably would not exist after the first round. (Sidebar: Find a Lieutenant that can read a map and land navigate with only a compass and paper map.)
Our land units-small units (squad-company/team), the cutting edge and only true maneuver elements, are not trained to operate in isolation from higher. The trained ability to make crucial decisions absent guidance and control does not exist. NTC and JRTC routinely proves that.
Unfortunately, we are not even close to being a peer force compared to the Russians less nuclear weapons. Consider the following as today's state of military capabilities:
TACTICAL/BATTLEFIELD GROUND FORCE EQUIVALENCIES / COMPARISONS:
We removed our relatively competent heavy forces in Germany and cannot replace them in less than six months if that and that is with the acquiescence of German which is problematical-The EU has to ask in its heart of hearts: Do we want a US-Russia conflict on our land?
Our ready to go 82d, Ranger Regiment and JSOC forces are completely inappropriate for use against Russia except under the most select of circumstances with minimal to no capability to be a game changer. And casualties are virtually irreplaceable in a timely manner. (Sidebar: The 173d is required to deploy only with NATO approval. If it deploys on an independent operation, the Italians have threatened to bar its return.)
Tough to get a carrier into the Black Sea and it would be a new reef very quickly. Concurrently, POMCUS/heavy force lift ships in sufficient quantity to lift a brigade do not exist other than in converting commercial RO/RO's.
A robust F35 structure does not exist in Theatre nor are there sufficient heavy lift aircraft to make a dent in reinforcement requirements.
LONG RANGE (NON-NUCLEAR) BALLISTIC MISSILES AND ROCKETS:
The US has NONE in the US Army, and the other Services have NONE OTHER THAN sea-launched and air-launched conventional, low flight level, subsonic cruise missiles. NO long range, land-based, conventional ballistic missiles in the US Armed Forces. How did this happen?
The US National Military Strategy is as much a defense industry-driven wish list of combat systems they want to build, as opposed to a threat-defeating strategy based on US Ground Forces out-matching our peer military adversary. Russia, for example, has many hundreds (if not thousands) of state-of-the-art missile launchers, tens of thousands of missiles (plus the Zircon that flies at Mach 6-9 - hypersonic speeds), as well as a full suite of tailored, target appropriate warheads, at multiple throw weights that can be selected based on the target to be attacked. We - the US - have ZERO such weapons.
BATTLEFIELD ROCKETS AND MISSILES:
The US has a few hundred (aged) MLRS and HIMARS multiple rocket launchers in the entire US Army and a couple of dozen in the Marines. BUT, their ranges in distance, numbers of launchers, and throw weights are a minuscule fraction of the hundreds of launchers and thousands of rounds in Russian battle groups. The US never converted the US Army's Pershing family of battlefield missile systems to conventional warheads from their IMF-directed destruction of the nuclear warheads on the Pershing One and Pershing Two missile bodies. While the Russians and Chinese advanced their development and procurement of advanced surface-to-surface (200 to (+/-) 1,000-mile range), non-nuclear missile systems, the U.S. disestablished the Army's long range missile commands and stopped development and procurement of peer defeating systems. This month, the US Army had a Eureka Moment announcing the establishment of a long-range fires command; BUT – hold your applause - -that's only the establishment of the HQ, not standing-up any systems of long-range launchers, or missiles or control systems, as the US Army doesn't have any. Note: the US's MLRS and HIMARS Systems top out at about 120-mile range for the very few, extended-range variants. The vast majority are in the roughly 29 to 48-mile range.
GROUND BASED AIR DEFENSE (AD) SYSTEMS:
From having peer threat-capable and numerous ground units and AD systems in the US Army's inventories during the Cold War, that capability has since been dramatically reduced in the US Army to largely shoulder-fired systems, plus three Stryker or Humvee-mobile AD battalions equipped with, at a ready state, 4-AD missiles and 1-25 mm Chain Gun, per vehicle. The Marines have no AD battalions; they removed the ones that they had in the Marine Air Wings in the 1990's. Shoulder-fired AD Systems are the Marines only ground-based AD. Why are the US Armed Forces so ill equipped? They spent twenty years focused on counter insurgency operations against enemies that lacked offensive aviation assets that would call for US AD units employed in opposition to them. At the opposite side of this scale, the Russians ground forces have huge numbers of modern, armor protected mobile AD systems, as well as shoulder-fired AD capabilities, in units at and above battalion levels.
CONCLUSIONS:
a. These are just three areas of gross US national defense neglect. There are a dozen more. Just consider the paucity of US Army ground force Electronic Warfare, Cyber, Deception, Cavalry, Mechanized Division-Level units with lethal, mobile, armor protected manned weapon systems with their own, integrated supply and logistics support.
· Other than the US Army's 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, and three Stryker brigade combat teams, there are none.
· The US Marines, our fire brigade along with the 82d, are less capable of combined arms engagement today than at any time since the 2003-14 Iraq War, as to the Marine Corps:
It has no tank units (that's not a misprint: USMC = ZERO Tanks)
No self-propelled, armor protected artillery or self-propelled, armor protected air defense (AD) systems.
The most lethal, armor protected mobility systems are the Marines 40-year-old, light armored vehicle-equipped, reconnaissance battalions (LARB's). But even these lack tank-killing, direct-fire weapons or threat-defeating protective armor. The LARB's have no air defense, NBC and EW variants (these were mothballed from Marine FMF units 20-30-years ago).
b. On the other side of the threat comparisons, and in apparently "combat ready" status in Europe, the Russian ground forces have trained and equipped combined arms forces at numbered Corps and even titled Army levels with their own tanks, infantry fighting vehicle (IFV's), self-propelled armor protected artillery, rocket/missile battalions, EW, logistics, chemical and biological warfare units, as well as attack and transport fixed wing and helicopter units with linked/secure communications systems (to and from) aircraft to company level ground combat systems to titled army levels (2nd Guards Army, 3rd Shock Army, etc.). On the bright side, there appears to be no evidence of the Russians deploying Operational Maneuver Groups (OMG) near Ukraine, but such units could be task-organized from Corps or Army assets under an OMG command group.
c. The G. W. Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden Administrations, the US Department of Defense, and our Congress have been derelict in their duties to provide America with ready and peer defeating ground combat unit capabilities. Rather - we have a ground combat armed force so woefully ill-equipped to fight and win against our peer level threats, such as Russia, that the National Strategy/Policy question is: What they have been focusing on, if not such a vital national military capability? A safe bet would be that one or all of these are their exclusive focus (es): Domestic politics? Their re-election? Increasing their personal celebrity and wealth? Not their concerns or interest?
d. Apparently, current and past US Administrations, the US Department of Defense, nor our Congress have Defense Capability and Continuity Offices with the job of ensuring that the US Armed Forces retain a peer threat defeating advantage in ground combat systems and units. Or if they have, they are so far down in the basement as to never see daylight.
e. The Russians will employ this impressive force to invade across Ukraine's borders. Our DOD and Armed Forces Lessons Learned offices are about to see how far our ground combat forces are from being fully capable of defeating a Peer, such as the Russians will use imminently.
f. Biden did DOD and the Nation a great favor, albeit inadvertently, by avoiding any armed conflict with Russia. We now have time to fix what's broken but will we actually get to it?
Keith Nightingale
COL Nightingale is a retired Army Colonel who served two tours in Vietnam with Airborne and Ranger (American and Vietnamese) units. He commanded airborne battalions in both the 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment and the 82nd Airborne Division. He later commanded both the 1/75th Rangers and the 1st Ranger Training Brigade.
3. U.S. Arms Sent to Ukraine Would Blunt but Not Stop a Russian Invasion
Note the emphasis on resistance and resilience (and unconventional deterrence).
Excerpts:
But military experts say that with 150,000 troops on three sides of Ukraine, the Russian Army could quickly overwhelm the Ukrainian military, even one that is backed by the United States and its European allies. Ukrainian forces stretched thin by defending multiple borders would have to prioritize which units received advanced weaponry and extra ammunition.
Ukrainian troops — trained in recent years by U.S. Army Green Berets and other NATO special forces, and better equipped than in Russia’s last invasion in 2014 — would likely bloody advancing Russian troops. But a long-term Ukrainian strategy, American officials said, would be to mount a guerrilla insurgency supported by the West that could bog down the Russian military for years.
“We have supplied the Ukrainian military with equipment to help them defend themselves,” Mr. Biden said on Tuesday. “We provided training and advice and intelligence for the same purpose.”
Sending weapons to Ukraine is important, said James G. Stavridis, a retired four-star Navy admiral who was the supreme allied commander at NATO, but even more pivotal may be less visible countermeasures: American intelligence to help pinpoint Russian forces and new tools to defend against crippling cyberassaults and to counterattack Russian military communications.
...
Ukraine is tapping other sources for advanced weaponry. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey agreed earlier this month to supply one of the Ukrainian Army’s most sophisticated weapons — a long-range, Turkish-made armed drone whose use in combat for the first time in Ukraine last fall infuriated Russian officials.
When governments covertly supply arms to another country or to a fighting group, they may grind serial numbers off firearms or paint over the markings on munitions crates that identify the weapons and their country of origin.
That, however, has not been the Defense Department’s recent approach to Ukraine.
In many of the military’s tweets, the accompanying photos showed coded markings painted on crates or shipping tubes that were clear enough to discern not only their contents but even the month and year they were made and the factory they came from, such as one showing a stack of Javelin missile tubes made in October 2003 at Lockheed Martin’s nearly 4,000-acre manufacturing facility in Troy, Ala.
U.S. Arms Sent to Ukraine Would Blunt but Not Stop a Russian Invasion
By Eric Schmitt and John Ismay
The effectiveness of the weapons against the better-equipped Russian Army depends on what Moscow orders its troops to do.
A $200 million United States package of security assistance to Ukraine in December included Javelin anti-tank missiles.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times
Feb. 15, 2022
WASHINGTON — President Biden has ruled out sending U.S. troops to fight in Ukraine, but American-made weapons are already there in force and more will be on the way. How effective they would be in turning back a Russian invasion is another question.
Since 2014, the United States has committed more than $2.7 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, according to the Pentagon, including a $200 million package in December comprising equipment like Javelin and other anti-armor systems, grenade launchers, large quantities of artillery, mortars and small-arms ammunition.
But military experts say that with 150,000 troops on three sides of Ukraine, the Russian Army could quickly overwhelm the Ukrainian military, even one that is backed by the United States and its European allies. Ukrainian forces stretched thin by defending multiple borders would have to prioritize which units received advanced weaponry and extra ammunition.
Ukrainian troops — trained in recent years by U.S. Army Green Berets and other NATO special forces, and better equipped than in Russia’s last invasion in 2014 — would likely bloody advancing Russian troops. But a long-term Ukrainian strategy, American officials said, would be to mount a guerrilla insurgency supported by the West that could bog down the Russian military for years.
“We have supplied the Ukrainian military with equipment to help them defend themselves,” Mr. Biden said on Tuesday. “We provided training and advice and intelligence for the same purpose.”
Sending weapons to Ukraine is important, said James G. Stavridis, a retired four-star Navy admiral who was the supreme allied commander at NATO, but even more pivotal may be less visible countermeasures: American intelligence to help pinpoint Russian forces and new tools to defend against crippling cyberassaults and to counterattack Russian military communications.
The effectiveness of the American military aid will largely hinge on what President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia orders his forces to do, military analysts said.
If Russia launches mostly air and missiles strikes, the equipment does not help that much, said Rob Lee, a former U.S. Marine officer and Russian military specialist at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. Absent in the influx of American military aid are advanced air defenses, like Patriot antiaircraft missile systems.
If Russian forces invade but do not intend to occupy the country, the weaponry also might not be that significant, Mr. Lee said. But if Russian forces seek to occupy the country or go into major urban areas, the weapons — and any future supplies from the United States — could help sustain an insurgency.
To underscore the potential consequences for Russia, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, delivered a stark message to his Russian counterpart when they spoke in late December: Yes, General Milley said, the Ukrainian military stands little chance of repelling the larger, better armed Russian force.
But a swift victory would be followed, General Milley told Gen. Valery Gerasimov, by a bloody insurgency, similar to the one that led the Soviet Union to leave Afghanistan in 1989, according to officials familiar with the discussion.
General Milley did not detail to General Gerasimov the planning underway in Washington to support an insurgency, a so-called “porcupine strategy” to make invading Ukraine hard for the Russians to swallow. That includes the advance positioning of arms for Ukrainian insurgents, including Stinger antiaircraft missiles, that could be used against Russian forces.
The United States began using social media to highlight the transfers of weapons to the government in Kyiv shortly after it first became clear that Mr. Putin was amassing a potential invasion force along his country’s border with Ukraine. The messaging from the United States has not been subtle, with the government releasing photographs of planeloads of weapons and equipment.
Additional aid could be on the way. On Capitol Hill, senators in both parties have coalesced behind legislation that would authorize Mr. Biden to use the Lend-Lease Act of 1941, last used in World War II, to lend military equipment to Ukraine.
The bill, led by Senators John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, and Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, is part of a package of bipartisan sanctions targeting Moscow that lawmakers are negotiating, though a spokesman for Mr. Cornyn said that senators were also exploring other avenues for passing the bill given its broad support in the Senate.
“The circumstances today are not those of March 1941,” Mr. Cornyn said. “There is no mistake about that.” But he added that the historical parallels were “chilling” and that “the lessons of the past must inform the present.”
Senator John Cornyn’s bill would authorize Mr. Biden to use the Lend-Lease Act of 1941, last used in World War II, to lend military equipment to Ukraine.Credit...Elizabeth Frantz for The New York Times
Since becoming an independent nation, Ukraine has largely stuck with the family of weapons designed by the Soviet Union. That can be seen in the Ukrainian Army’s use of Kalashnikov-type assault rifles instead of the M16s and M4 carbines used by the United States and many other Western militaries.
That began to change after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, with the United States providing hundreds of antitank missiles and other weapons to Ukraine. “The number of Javelins given to Ukraine numbered in the many hundred before these recent shipments were made,” said Alexander Vindman, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who oversaw European affairs on the National Security Council from 2018 to 2020. “And now that number has increased by hundreds and up to several thousand when including advanced anti-armor capability provided by NATO allies,” he added.
Understand the Escalating Tensions Over Ukraine
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The Kremlin’s position. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has increasingly portrayed NATO’s eastward expansion as an existential threat to his country, said that Moscow’s growing military presence on the Ukrainian border was a response to Ukraine’s deepening partnership with the alliance.
“Alone, they won’t drive Russia’s decisions for military offensive, but will affect the calculus around the costs and benefits of military action,” Colonel Vindman said. “Javelins would be highly effective in ambushes and Russia would have to account for them in certain ways, including forcing Russia to employ air power against soldiers using them.”
Although the Pentagon has not specifically said it was sending NATO-standard firearms like machine guns to Ukraine, it has shared photos of ammunition it has shipped to Kyiv. On Feb. 3, the Pentagon tweeted photos of an arms shipment to Ukraine that included dozens of crates, each containing 800 rounds of belted 7.62-mm ammunition chambered for NATO machine guns like the Belgian-designed M240 commonly carried by Western infantry troops and mounted in vehicle turrets.
Another important weapon is the Javelin, a relatively lightweight guided missile developed specifically to destroy Soviet armored personnel carriers and tanks. But unlike previous generations of American portable antitank weapons like the TOW missiles supplied to Syrian rebels, which require the operator to stay in place after firing and optically guide the missile to its target, the Javelin locks onto its targets so that soldiers using it can move as soon as the missile is fired — limiting their exposure to any return fire.
The Javelin has two other features that make it attractive to militaries: a single missile contains two explosive warheads — one behind the other — that can defeat modern types of advanced armor typically found on the front and sides of Russian tanks. It can also be set to fly upward and then descend nearly straight down on the top of a vehicle, where its armor is thinnest. Soldiers require little formal training to use the Javelin launcher effectively.
American-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles arrive from Lithuania in Boryspil International Airport in Kyiv.Credit...Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters
Other American-made weapons are flowing in from NATO allies. In a series of Twitter messages last weekend, the State Department posted photos of American-made Stinger antiaircraft missiles coming from Lithuania to Kyiv. In the 1980s, the C.I.A. covertly supplied less-advanced versions of these Stingers to mujahedeen fighters in Afghanistan that were used to shoot down low-flying Russian helicopters and airplanes.
To be sure the message was not lost on its intended audience, the State Department tweeted the Stinger photos with accompanying messages in Russian as well as in Ukrainian and English.
Ukraine is tapping other sources for advanced weaponry. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey agreed earlier this month to supply one of the Ukrainian Army’s most sophisticated weapons — a long-range, Turkish-made armed drone whose use in combat for the first time in Ukraine last fall infuriated Russian officials.
When governments covertly supply arms to another country or to a fighting group, they may grind serial numbers off firearms or paint over the markings on munitions crates that identify the weapons and their country of origin.
That, however, has not been the Defense Department’s recent approach to Ukraine.
In many of the military’s tweets, the accompanying photos showed coded markings painted on crates or shipping tubes that were clear enough to discern not only their contents but even the month and year they were made and the factory they came from, such as one showing a stack of Javelin missile tubes made in October 2003 at Lockheed Martin’s nearly 4,000-acre manufacturing facility in Troy, Ala.
Catie Edmondson contributed reporting.
4. Barksdale B-52s deploy to Indo-Pacific for Bomber Task Force
Good news. We need sustained deployments of strategic assets to the region.
But I am scratching my head thinking about B-52s in a humanitarian assistance role and disaster relief role. Perhaps it is through the use of what Col John Warden told a CGSC class in 1994 - Somlia could have been executed with no boots onthe ground and instead the Air Force could have dropped "food bombs.")
Excerpts:
The BTF also helps Airmen focus on the full spectrum of military operations, whether it’s combat missions or humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.
“This deployment has everything to do with developing the integral elements of agile combat employment,” said Maj James Bell, 96th EBS Project Officer. “Whether that’s working with new entities to provide our capabilities and discuss requirements needed to complete tasks or simply changing how we complete our missions to become more agile.”
Barksdale B-52s deploy to Indo-Pacific for Bomber Task Force
- Published
- By 1st Lt. Kaitlin Cashin
- Pacific Air Forces Public Affairs
ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam --
More than 220 Airmen and four B-52’s assigned to the 96th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron, Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, arrived at Andersen AFB, Guam, to conduct Bomber Task Force missions in support of Pacific Air Forces’ training efforts with allies, partners and joint forces, February, 2022.
U.S. Strategic Command routinely conducts BTF operations across the globe as a demonstration of U.S. commitment to collective defense and to integrate with Geographic Combatant Command operations. In this case, the BTF will support USINDOPACOM tasking while giving aircrews the opportunity to familiarize themselves with operating in a joint and coalition environment.
“Every bomber task force mission demonstrates the credibility of our forces to address a global security environment that is more diverse and uncertain than at any other time in our history,” said Lt Col. Christopher Coleman, 96th EBS Commander. “Put simply, we are here to support a stable, secure, and free Indo-Pacific region.”
Col. Matthew McDaniel, the 2nd Bomb Wing Operations Group Commander, joined the expeditionary B-52 crew in their transit across the Pacific Ocean.
"Dynamic force employment is all about operating with a smaller footprint, on a shorter timeframe, and being strategically predictable, but operationally unpredictable," said McDaniel, "The 2nd Bomb Wing is always ready and Lt Col Coleman's team is here to demonstrate that fact."
The arrival of the B-52H Stratofortress to Andersen AFB links U.S. Air Force personnel with their partners in the Indo-Pacific, enables collaborative training, and demonstrates U.S. commitment to the region.
“Training alongside our allies is important because it improves our combined military capabilities and the likelihood of success to accomplish military objectives,” Coleman said. “Reinforcing our connectivity and building personal relationships with our allies is critical to seamlessly executing combined objectives in the future.”
The BTF also helps Airmen focus on the full spectrum of military operations, whether it’s combat missions or humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.
“This deployment has everything to do with developing the integral elements of agile combat employment,” said Maj James Bell, 96th EBS Project Officer. “Whether that’s working with new entities to provide our capabilities and discuss requirements needed to complete tasks or simply changing how we complete our missions to become more agile.”
5. Russia added 7k troops near Ukraine border, says US official
One step backward (say they. are withdrawing troops) and two steps forward (deploy more troops).
Russia added 7k troops near Ukraine border, says US official
Russia actually added another 7,000 troops to the region, according to White House officials on Wednesday as satellite images captured in the last 48 hours seem to bolster skepticism the United States and its NATO allies have about the Russian assertions that it is withdrawing forces surrounding Ukraine.
The White House statements to Associated Press reporters about the new Russian troop buildup follows reports from the State Department that Russia has not withdrawn troops. During a televised address on Tuesday, President Joe Biden said that there were more than 150,000 Russian troops arrayed around Ukraine, and that, despite protestations otherwise, they were poised to attack.
A day later, administration officials said the Russians continued to add forces to the border areas.
“More Russian forces, not fewer, are at the border,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said to reporters Wednesday, adding, “and they are moving, concerningly, into fighting positions. This is cause for profound concern.”
Price reiterated what U.S. officials have been saying for weeks: an attack on Ukraine could happen at any time.
“We’re not going to get into precise timeframes, but the fact remains — and we’ve communicated this very clearly to our partners, to our allies across Europe and beyond — that the Russian Federation has in place now what it would need to undertake an attack against Ukraine.”
Maxar Technologies has been monitoring military movement around Ukraine over the last several months. According to a representative, images released Wednesday indicate heightened military activity in Belarus, Crimea, and western Russia, including a floating bridge placed over the Pripyat River in Belarus, less than five miles from the Ukraine border.
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Pripyat River, Belarus Overview of road construction and new pontoon bridge at Pripyat River, Belarus, Feb. 15, 2022 (Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies)
In a release, Maxar Technologies described Russian troop movements in the region.
Belarus:
- A new military pontoon bridge has been established over the Pripyat River, less than six kilometers from the Belarus-Ukraine border.
- Troops and armored equipment remain deployed in the Brestsky training area near Brest. Self-propelled artillery units continue to conduct training in the area; additionally, troops and equipment are positioned at the nearby Brest railyard.
- Troops and equipment remain deployed in the Osipovichi training area. A new, large field hospital is present and local training activity is in progress.
- Most of the equipment and troop housing area that had been present near Rechitsa has departed. A military convoy was seen moving west on today’s imagery.
- A new attack helicopter unit (consisting of nearly 20 helicopters) has arrived at Zyabrovka airfield. The significant troop and ground forces units that had been recently deployed to this airfield have departed and are unaccounted for.
Crimea:
- Troops and equipment remain deployed in the Opuk training area along the Black Sea coast. Artillery units continue to train in the area and several groups of equipment has been positioned in convoy formation.
- Troops and equipment remain deployed along Lake Donuzlav and the Novoozernoye area. Artillery units remain deployed in the fields near the garrison and troop tents also remain nearby. Several large sets of armored equipment were positioned in convoy nearby.
- Armored vehicles are seen positioned at the Yevpatoria railyard and may be preparing to depart. Additional military vehicles are seen in convoy at the nearby airfield/garrison.
Western Russia:
- Troops and equipment remain deployed throughout the Postoyalye Dvory training area east of Kursk. Battle groups and sets of military equipment are positioned in convoy formation in several locations.
The Pentagon deferred to Biden’s comments Tuesday. Biden said Russian claims that its military units were returning to home bases were not verified and that the U.S. “will defend every inch of NATO territory with the full force of American power.”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called Russia’s military buildup “the biggest concentration of forces in Europe since the Cold War,” saying while he welcomes diplomatic efforts, there are no signs of de-escalation, and no withdrawal of troops.
“This may of course change. However, what we see today is that Russia maintains a massive invasion force ready to attack,” Stoltenberg said.
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“Our military commanders will now work on the details and report back within weeks,” alliance Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in Brussels.
His comments came at a meeting this week in Brussels, where NATO defense ministers began planning options to strengthen defense in eastern, and southeastern Europe. One potential choice could be new battlegroups in the region, but Stoltenberg said military commanders will work on details in the coming weeks.
“Things are trending negatively,” Michael Kofman, Director, Russia Studies at CNA and Senior Adjunct Fellow, Center for New American Studies, told Military Times.
“I think you will find more forces forward deployed in coming days,” said Kofman, adding that he “hypothesizes a large multi axis attack into Ukraine from 4-5 directions.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied allegations Russia intends to invade Ukraine, and made requests that NATO not extend membership to Ukraine or other former Soviet Union nations. NATO’s founding treaty promises membership is open to countries that want to join.
“Moscow has made it clear that it is prepared to contest the fundamental principles that have underpinned our security for decades, and to do so by using force,” Stoltenberg said. “I regret to say that this is the new normal in Europe.”
The U.S. already deployed troops to support NATO nations Germany, Poland, and Romania, with the promise that American troops will not enter Ukraine if there is a Russian invasion.
Ukraine is not a NATO member, but the U.S. has provided military aid.
The State Department recently closed the U.S. embassy in Kyiv, moving diplomats out of the country and advising all Americans who are there to leave.
Military Times senior managing editor Ho
6. Specialized US Army unit helps Russia’s neighbors train against large-scale attacks
Specialized US Army unit helps Russia’s neighbors train against large-scale attacks
U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Matthew Hugelmann, an adviser assigned to the 4th Security Forces Assistance Brigade, works with Latvian soldiers during exercise Allied Spirit in Hohenfels, Germany, on Jan. 28, 2022. (Nathaniel Gayle/U.S. Army)
HOHENFELS, Germany — If tiny Latvia’s single active army brigade ever came under attack by Russian forces, its task would be keeping them on their heels while staying alive long enough for allies to send reinforcements, the brigade commander said.
“It’s not like 1945, when we were on our own,” said Col. Sandris Gaugers, referring to a time when his country was under Soviet occupation and lacked the protection that comes with its NATO member status.
Now, a new U.S. Army mission in Europe is helping the militaries of Latvia and other countries anxious about Russian aggression prepare for their own worst-case scenarios.
The 4th Security Force Assistance Brigade, which was set up to support a broader Army shift in how the service partners with other militaries around the world, dispatched its first advisers to Europe in October.
“The relevance of this organization in the current security climate in Europe is self-evident,” said Col. Robert Born, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th SFAB.
U.S. Soldiers assigned to 4th Security Forces Assistance Brigade advise Latvian soldiers with operations, planning and execution during exercise Allied Spirit 22 at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels, Germany, Jan. 31, 2022. S (Nathaniel Gayle/U.S. Army)
A buildup of an estimated 130,000 Russian soldiers and advanced weaponry near Ukraine’s northern, eastern and southern borders is stoking fears of another war on the Continent.
In Latvia, Georgia, North Macedonia, Poland and Romania, the specially trained U.S. soldiers are the first of what is to be a continuous series of six-month rotations.
The aim is to have the U.S advisers develop a deeper connection with foreign militaries than they would form through conventional training methods, which tend to be more episodic. The SFAB contingent is working with the Latvians in their own country.
“It’s all about having (American soldiers) literally embedded. It speeds up the process,” Gaugers said in an interview earlier this month in Hohenfels, where his troops played a main role in the U.S. Army’s recent Allied Spirit exercise.
Gaugers said the 22 SFAB troops embedded with his unit are helping in two key areas: improving artillery firing tactics and collaborating on a strategy for ensuring that forces can stay supplied in the event of a large-scale attack.
“How do you protect (the supply lines)? That’s where we need to learn more,” Gaugers said.
The first rotation of U.S. soldiers from the 4th Security Force Assistance Brigade in Europe comes as tensions continue to escalate between Russia and the West over Moscow’s military buildup around Ukraine.
The Army’s first SFAB unit was formed in 2018 to assist in Afghanistan, and more have been set up in the years since that are aligned with other parts of the world. However, SFAB soldiers in Europe are partnered with more advanced militaries, given a shared NATO connection.
That means more attention to the kind of high-end combat skills needed against an adversary like Russia, which has the ability to attack by land, sea and air and also in the cyber realm.
U.S. Army Sgt. First Class Shawn Childers, a fires advisor assigned to 4th Security Forces Assistance Brigade, briefs Scheme of Fires during the Allied Spirit 22 Brigade operations order brief at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels, Germany, Jan. 20, 2022. (Nathaniel Gayle/U.S. Army)
Latvia, a small Baltic country, is outgunned by a wide margin when compared with neighboring Russia. Many security analysts have long viewed the region as NATO’s most vulnerable, given Russia’s geographic and military advantage.
For Latvian forces, countering a potential Russian attack would hinge on their ability to disperse their forces, fire on the move and ensure that ammunition and other supplies can reach troops without detection.
Any larger defense of Latvia also would hinge on support from the rest of NATO, which is obligated under the alliance’s Article 5 to come to the defense of a member under attack.
Gaugers said he has confidence in NATO defense plans for his country and believes that Latvia wouldn’t be left on its own. One of his U.S. counterparts affirmed his belief.
“We always fight as a coalition,” said Maj. Edward Gibbons, a 4th SFAB team leader embedded with the Latvians.
Sometimes the advising can go both ways, soldiers said. For example, Latvian forces have built a communication architecture that they think would withstand Russian attack, enabling troops to maintain contact during battle.
“They’re way out in front in how to operate in an electronic warfare environment,” said Gibbons. “Our Army has not gotten to that level of detail.”
One difference between the Latvian brigade and a typical American one, Gibbons said, is a visceral sense of what’s potentially at stake in Europe by virtue of the country’s bad history with Russia.
“They understand the threat to the east. It’s very real to them,” Gibbons said. “It comes with more weight than what a U.S. brigade carries.”
First Sgt. Matthew Horton, a 4th SFAB adviser, said the collaboration with the Latvians is about rehearsing the most effective ways to resist any incursion onto NATO turf.
“(The Russians) aren’t going to get (Latvia) for free. There will be stiff resistance,” he said.
In each of the countries where SFAB troops are operating, areas of training focus are crafted to the individual needs of the local units, soldiers said.
Of the five countries aligned with 4th SFAB troops, only Georgia is not a NATO member. Still, U.S. forces have long been partnered with Georgia’s military, which was a major troop contributor in Afghanistan.
Maj. Nick Salimbene, a 4th SFAB adviser, said living side by side with the Georgians at their base in Tbilisi has resulted in a level of trust that makes communication with local troops easier.
Salimbene said a key focus is getting Georgian officers to rely more on the enlisted ranks. A common difference between allied militaries and those with a Soviet legacy is a tendency to centralize decision-making rather than push authority down the chain.
Col. Giorgi Dumbadze, head of military education for the Georgian defense forces, said that for the first time, U.S. forces are now training at the brigade level, with a focus on integrating larger fighting formations.
“We never had the training involved above battalion and never had the training with combined arms,” he said. “This is a very important point for us.”
Dumbadze said his country’s military is in better shape today than it was when it was overwhelmed by Russian forces during a brief war in 2008. He said the hope is that SFAB troops will take Georgian ground forces to the next level.
“We are not looking for a conflict, but in case of conflict, we are more ready,” he said.
7. Russian jets endanger US surveillance planes in close call over the Mediterranean, Navy says
Russian jets endanger US surveillance planes in close call over the Mediterranean, Navy says
“We can confirm that over the course of last weekend, three U.S. Navy P-8A aircraft experienced unprofessional intercepts by Russian aircraft,” said Navy Capt. Mike Kafka, director of Defense Press Operations, in a statement Wednesday. “The U.S. flight crews were flying in international airspace over the Mediterranean Sea at the time of these intercepts. We have made our concerns known to Russian officials through diplomatic channels.
“While no one was hurt, interactions such as these could result in miscalculations and mistakes that lead to more dangerous outcomes,” Kafka said. “The US will continue to operate safely, professionally and consistent with international law in international waters and airspace. We expect Russia to do the same.”
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The Navy said a Russian SU-35 intercepted the P-8 Poseidon twice over the course of 100 minutes as the aircraft was flying in international airspace.
CNN was the first to report on the encounters, which its sources said were “extremely close.” It also reported that officials suggested there is video footage of at least one of the intercepts.
The Navy did not disclose how close the Russian aircraft got to the U.S. aircraft. There have been a number of similar incidents in recent years.
In April 2020, for example, the Navy reported two incidents in which Russian Su-35s intercepted a U.S. Navy P-8A over the Mediterranean Sea, conducting high-speed inverted maneuvers and coming within 25 feet of the U.S. surveillance aircraft. According to U.S. 6th Fleet, the maneuvers were unsafe and jeopardized the safety of the pilots and crew.
Two Russian Su-35 aircraft unsafely intercept a P-8A Poseidon patrol aircraft over the Mediterranean Sea in April 2020. (Navy)
A month later, 6th Fleet announced that two Russian Su-35 aircraft intercepted another Navy P-8A over the Med. The encounter lasted 65 minutes and 6th Fleet said it was “unsafe and unprofessional due to the Russian pilots taking close station on each wing of the P-8A simultaneously.”
8. U.S. Warns Americans Abroad Not to Count on a Rescue
I understand the logic and the facts but this is still a terrible message. A better message might be we will always do everything we can to help American citizens but after conflict breaks out it will be dangerous and difficult to evacuate citizens. Therefore you should evacuate now.
But this is a really troubling statement from the Press Secretary. Why do we plan for Noncombatant Evacuation Order (NEO) operations? (think Korea)
Excerpt:
“The United States does not typically do mass evacuations,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters last week. Lest anyone recall last summer’s events in Kabul, she pointed out that “the situation in Afghanistan was unique for many reasons.”
U.S. Warns Americans Abroad Not to Count on a Rescue
In Ukraine and Ethiopia, Biden officials have made clear that the 2021 Kabul airlift was a “unique” operation that won’t be repeated.
The city center of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital. U.S. officials have stressed that, in the event of a Russian invasion, America would not rescue its citizens who remain in the country.Credit...Sasha Maslov for The New York Times
By
Feb. 16, 2022
WASHINGTON — As U.S. officials grew convinced this month that Russia might invade Ukraine, they implored American citizens to leave the country immediately — and added a grim addendum.
No rescuers would be coming for those who stayed behind, they said.
It was a point President Biden drove home last week by insisting he would not use the military to extract anyone trapped by a Russian attack.
“All Americans should leave Ukraine,” he told NBC News, adding that he could not risk a clash with Russian troops that might trigger World War III.
The fallout from last summer’s chaotic evacuation of Americans from Afghanistan appears to have shaped Mr. Biden’s approach to the Ukraine crisis in multiple ways, from more explicit coordination with European allies, who in some cases felt sidelined from Afghanistan planning, to greater transparency about the most dire intelligence assessments.
But in Ukraine and beyond, U.S. officials have also focused on a more specific worry: that Americans living in foreign danger zones would wrongly assume that an Air Force C-17 cargo plane — like those that transported thousands out of Afghanistan during the final days of the U.S. withdrawal — would be their escape option of last resort.
In warnings to Americans abroad over the past few months, first in a teetering Ethiopia and now in Ukraine, Biden officials have made clear that the Afghanistan rescue operation was a one-off.
“The United States does not typically do mass evacuations,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters last week. Lest anyone recall last summer’s events in Kabul, she pointed out that “the situation in Afghanistan was unique for many reasons.”
Ms. Psaki was referring to the 16-day military evacuation of American diplomats, contractors, aid workers and others from the Kabul airport just before and after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. More than 100,000 Afghans who assisted the United States during its 20-year war in the country, along with their family members, were also flown out.
The Biden administration proclaimed that operation a success, even as it endured withering criticism for failing to anticipate the swift collapse of Afghanistan’s government and not beginning evacuations earlier. Some U.S. officials noted with frustration that their repeated public calls for Americans to leave the country in the months before the Taliban’s takeover had been largely ignored.
Since then, the president has appeared determined to avoid anything resembling a repeat of that operation, which was tragically punctuated by a suicide bomb explosion on Aug. 26 that killed as many as 170 civilians and 13 U.S. Marines manning a gate outside the Kabul airport.
“An invasion remains distinctly possible,” Mr. Biden said Tuesday in a national address. “That’s why I’ve asked several times that all Americans in Ukraine leave now before it’s too late to leave safely.” The president added that it was why he also ordered the temporary relocation of the U.S. embassy from Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, to Lviv in western Ukraine, near its border with Poland.
Biden officials delivered a similar, if less widely noticed, message a few months ago, as rebel forces advanced on the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. With analysts warning of bloody urban combat and a potential government collapse, the State Department began issuing near-daily statements urging Americans to depart.
As is the case now in Ukraine, State Department officials specifically warned that the Kabul airlift should not be seen as a precedent.
“I think there may be a misperception that what we saw in Afghanistan is something that the U.S. government can undertake anywhere and everywhere in the world,” Ned Price, the State Department spokesman, said at a news briefing on Nov. 15. He added that no one “should expect that we may be in a position to undertake something similar to what we saw in Afghanistan.”
In recent days, the United States has also warned Americans against traveling to Belarus and Transnistria, a breakaway region of Moldova, both of which border Ukraine.
The State Department estimated in October that about 6,600 American citizens resided in Ukraine, many of them dual nationals, along with an unknown number of tourists and travelers.
Ronald E. Neumann, a former U.S. ambassador to three nations, including Afghanistan, said it could be difficult to convince Americans that they were on their own.
“They don’t get out, and then they think the military’s going to come and get them,” said Mr. Neumann, who is now the president of the American Academy of Diplomacy.
But it is one thing to talk in the abstract about leaving Americans behind, and another to do it, he acknowledged. “Some congressman’s going to be screaming that you’ve got to find Mary Jo,” he said. “And you’ve got to do it, because that’s what you’re supposed to do.”
Without casting judgment on the decision to relocate the Kyiv embassy, Mr. Neumann noted that U.S. diplomats had incurred great risk in the past to help Americans escape danger. During World War II, he said, embassy officials in France and Poland assisted Americans even after German offensives had begun. “Diplomats were going out in the middle of air raids to find Americans and bring them into embassies,” he said.
The U.S. Embassy in Moscow also kept a skeleton crew there after the Nazis invaded Russia in 1941. (The diplomats stored water by freezing it in garbage cans and, when they weren’t preparing for the siege, attended the ballet “Swan Lake” approximately 50 times, according to an official State Department history.)
Understand the Conflict in Ethiopia
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Rebels turned the tide. Despite Mr. Abiy’s promise of a swift campaign, the Ethiopian military suffered a major defeat in June when it was forced to withdraw from Tigray. The fighting subsequently moved south.
Tigrayan forces close in. In late October, Tigrayan rebels captured two towns near Addis Ababa, the nation’s capital. The government declared a state of emergency and called on citizens to arm themselves.
U.S. officials said that even American diplomats at the embassy in Kyiv, who were protected by a Marine contingent, were in too much danger to remain there. And former ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, a veteran of war zones like Afghanistan and Iraq, said he did not fault the decision.
“I think it was the right call. The last thing the administration wanted was embassy casualties or hostages, and they came close in Afghanistan,” he said. A U.S. Army investigative report obtained by The Washington Post included complaints that the State Department was dangerously reluctant to evacuate its embassy in Kabul.
Mr. Crocker noted that he believed Moscow was implicated in the unsolved 1979 kidnapping and death of the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Adolph “Spike” Dubs, just before the Soviet invasion.
Even so, some American diplomats said that relocating U.S. embassy operations before the start of potential hostilities was an overreaction rooted in memory of the Kabul airlift and perhaps the 2012 terrorist attack on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead.
Russian state media has ridiculed the United States for running from what it called a phantom threat, according to a translation of Russian broadcasts distributed within the State Department this week.
“While the American [diplomats] are fleeing Kyiv, U.S. TV crews are still there, scouring the city in search of sensations. However, they have to report from the streets where nothing is happening,” Moscow’s Rossiya 1 network reported.
Many current and former U.S. officials believe that American diplomats have grown too risk-averse in general, especially since the disaster in Benghazi, which became a long-running political flashpoint, with Republicans alleging unproven cover-ups and conspiracies by the Obama administration.
“A world of zero risk is not a world in which American diplomacy can deliver,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said in an October speech at the Foreign Service Institute in Arlington, Va., where the U.S. diplomatic corps is trained. “We have to accept risk and manage it smartly.”
But in the case of Ukraine, Mr. Blinken is erring on the side of safety.
In an interview with a Ukrainian television station on Tuesday, he said the decision had been made “out of an abundance of precaution.”
“It’s the prudent thing to do,” Mr. Blinken added, “because, again, my personal responsibility is to the safety and security of our people.”
9. US, NATO consider bolstering troop presence in eastern Europe
This will be costly on multiple levels.
US, NATO consider bolstering troop presence in eastern Europe
Over two days at NATO headquarters in Brussels, defense ministers were to discuss how and when to rapidly dispatch troops and equipment to countries closest to Russia and the Black Sea region should Moscow order an invasion of Ukraine.
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“Our military commanders will now work on the details and report back within weeks,” alliance Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in Brussels.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his counterparts also plan to weigh the possibility of stationing troops longer-term in southeast Europe, possibly starting later this year. The troops would mirror the presence of some 5,000 service members that have been stationed in allies Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland on a rotating basis in recent years.
Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon deferred questions about discussions taking place during the ongoing NATO Defense Ministerial to the Alliance, and declined to comment on possible future troop movements.
U.S. Secretary for Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, left, is welcomed by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg prior to a meeting of NATO defense ministers at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2022. NATO defense ministers are meeting to discuss Russia's military buildup around Ukraine as it fuels one of Europe's biggest security crises in decades. (Stephanie Lecocq, Pool Photo via AP)
The U.S. has started to deploy 5,000 troops to Poland and Romania. Britain is sending hundreds of soldiers to Poland and offering more warships and planes. Germany, the Netherlands and Norway are sending additional troops to Lithuania. Denmark and Spain are providing jets for air policing.
“The fact that we have deployed more NATO troops on the ground, more naval assets, more aircraft, all of that sends a very clear message,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said. “I think there is no room for any miscalculation in Moscow about our commitment to defending allies.”
The deployment has come in response to a formidable challenge.
Russian President Vladimir Putin wants NATO, the world’s biggest security organization, to stop expanding. He demands that the U.S.-led alliance pull its troops and equipment out of countries that joined after 1997 – almost half of NATO’s 30-strong ranks.
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“The likelihood of more substantive escalation on the Ukrainian boarders as for today is viewed as low,” according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.
NATO cannot accept his terms. It’s founding treaty commits to an “Open Door” policy for European countries that want to join, and a mutual defense clause guarantees that all members will come to the defense of an ally under threat.
Ukraine, though, is not a member and NATO, as an organization, is not willing to come to its defense.
“We have to understand that Ukraine is a partner. We support Ukraine. But for all NATO allies, we provide 100% security guarantees,” Stoltenberg told reporters ahead of Wednesday’s meeting.
That said, some member countries are helping Ukraine more directly, such as the U.S., Britain and Canada.
“We will be providing both lethal and non-lethal aid to Ukraine. This is a very significant issue for us all,” Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand said.
But the “massive costs” promised to Putin should he order an invasion would be economic and political, mostly in the form of sanctions, which are not part of NATO’s remit. The alliance has offered Russia a series of security talks, including on arms control.
Over the last two days, Russia has said that it was returning some troops and weapons to bases, but Stoltenberg said the allies saw no concrete sign of a drawdown and concern that that Russia might invade Ukraine persists.
“They have always moved forces back and forth, so just that we see movement of forces, that doesn’t confirm a real withdrawal,” Stoltenberg said. “The trend of the last weeks and months has been a steady increase in the Russian capabilities close to Ukraine’s borders.”
He said the ministers agreed for military commanders to come up with new options for strengthening NATO’s defenses in southeast Europe near Romania.
“Moscow has made it clear that it is prepared to contest the fundamental principles that have underpinned our security for decades, and to do so by using force. I regret to say that this is the new normal in Europe,” Stoltenberg said.
France is set to lead one contingent in Romania, but the battlegroup is unlikely to be in place for several months, officials said.
Russia poses no direct security threat to any NATO country, but the alliance is concerned about the fallout from any conflict in Ukraine, like a surge of people fleeing fighting across European borders, or possible cyber and disinformation attacks.
10. Senate confirms Wallander to Pentagon international affairs role
Senate confirms Wallander to Pentagon international affairs role
WASHINGTON ― The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Russia expert Celeste Wallander to be the Pentagon’s assistant defense secretary for international security affairs.
The Senate voted 83 to 13 to confirm Wallander, who served as chief executive of the U.S.-Russia Foundation and as a Russia expert on the National Security Council during the Obama administration.
Wallander, in the far-reaching Pentagon policy role, will advise Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on policies relating to the Middle East, Europe (including NATO), Russia, Eurasia, Africa and the Western Hemisphere. She’ll also oversee U.S. military security cooperation and foreign military sales.
At her confirmation hearing last month, Wallander made headlines when she criticized the Obama administration’s response to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea as “too slow and too incremental.” She had been on the NSC at the time.
The Senate Armed Services Committee advanced Wallander’s nomination on Feb. 1. From there, it was among nominations delayed by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., whose objection necessitated a motion to end debate, an added procedural step on Wednesday.
The Senate also confirmed David Honey, nominated to serve as deputy undersecretary for research and engineering. Honey, a retired Air Force officer and former director of science and technology in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, has been special assistant to the director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The vote was 94 to 1.
Joe Gould is senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry.
11. Putin Cannot Erase Ukraine
Excerpts:
Russia is not doomed to be a wannabe imperialist power, seeking to dominate its neighbors. It is a mistake to equate Putin’s views on Ukraine and Russia’s relations with the West with the stable preferences of Russian society. To be sure, for now, Putin’s authoritarian rule has destroyed parliamentary opposition and pushed civil society opposition into exile or prison, giving Putin leeway to act unilaterally. Even in this highly repressive climate, however, thousands of Russians, including former military officials, have called on Putin not to attack Ukraine. The Russian president should listen to them: paradoxically, the best way to bring Ukraine closer to Russia would be to let Ukraine go.
The Ukrainian leadership, meanwhile, should be careful to distinguish between guarding its independence from an imminent military threat and foreclosing any possibility of forging a cooperative future relationship with Russia. The democratic rights of Ukrainian citizens who prefer a closer relationship with Russia should be scrupulously guaranteed. Ukraine’s strength lies in being a pluralist alternative to Russian authoritarianism. By strengthening and deepening democracy, Ukraine would deny Putin his objective to turn the former Soviet state into a “little Russia.”
As diplomatic efforts to defuse tensions proceed, Ukraine and its allies should be trying to shift the focus away from debates over NATO expansion. Instead, diplomacy should focus on helping Russia understand that its long-term interests are better served by forging a cooperative relationship with a Europe-oriented, independent Ukraine. Hopefully, it will not require a war for the Kremlin to learn that although it can influence Ukraine, it cannot control it or reverse time through force.
Putin Cannot Erase Ukraine
No Russian Invasion Can Undo Ukrainian Nationhood
February 17, 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin has made no secret of how he regards Ukraine, the nation he is threatening to invade. At the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, Putin told U.S. President George W. Bush that the former Soviet state “is not even a country.” The Russian president believes the Ukrainians and the Russians are one people. It follows that Ukrainians cannot reject being part of Russia and any “anti-Russian” sentiment in Ukraine must be the result of Western meddling rather than a reflection of the preferences of Ukrainians. Putin has used this argument to characterize peaceful political mobilization in Ukraine as foreign-orchestrated coups. He also dismisses polls showing that Ukrainians now favor European Union and NATO accession over membership in Russian-led political and economic organizations.
Putin’s refusal to see Ukraine as an independent country undermines rather than advances his professed foreign policy objectives. Had he taken Ukrainian domestic politics seriously, the current crisis could have been avoided. Even after pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was driven out by a popular uprising in 2014, Putin could have maintained Russia’s influence and steered Ukraine away from NATO—if only he had allowed the democratic process in his western neighbor to play out without interference. After 30 years of independence, the genie of Ukrainian national identity and statehood cannot be put back into the bottle, no matter how hard Putin tries.
But the Kremlin is not alone in paying too little attention to the realities of Ukraine’s domestic politics. If Washington and its European allies hope to unwind the current standoff and avoid a similar one in the future, they will also need a better grasp of what ordinary Ukrainians want.
A Problem of Putin’s Making
After 1991, when Ukraine declared its independence from the Soviet Union, regional divisions generated a pro-Russian electorate in the eastern and southern parts of the country. Since then, pro-Russian and pro-Western politicians have alternated in power. In 2010, the pro-Russian candidate, Yanukovych, defeated the pro-Western candidate in a fair election, after losing to the same candidate five years prior.
Three years later, under pressure from Russia, Yanukovych refused to a sign a trade agreement with the EU, prodding Ukrainians who favored stronger European ties to take to the streets. After clashes between government forces and protesters left dozens dead in Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) in February 2014, the parliament booted Yanukovych from office and pro-European politicians took over. Pro-Russian Ukrainian elites, however, quickly began bargaining with the new government: they were well positioned to maintain influence over national policies because the Russia-friendly electorates in the south and east meant their priorities could not be ignored. As in 2010, another pro-Russian political competitor would have stood a good chance of returning to power in the next electoral cycle.
But Putin didn’t wait for the democratic process to play out. Instead, he annexed Crimea and began sponsoring an insurgency in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Rather than fueling Ukraine’s divisions, Russian aggression increased support not just for Ukraine’s continued independence but also for a pro-European orientation. The Russian invasion fundamentally altered Ukraine’s electoral geography by cutting off some 12 percent of the mostly pro-Russian voters in Crimea and occupied Donbas from voting in Ukraine’s elections. Russian military involvement undermined Russia’s standing in Ukraine: before 2014, less than 25 percent of the Ukrainian population favored NATO membership; in December 2021, 58 percent were in favor.
Washington and its European allies need a better grasp of what ordinary Ukrainians want.
Putin’s aggressive policies also reduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s willingness to compromise with Russia, despite the fact that he was considered the more pro-Russian centrist candidate in the 2019 elections. He sought to diminish Russia’s influence over Ukraine when he removed oligarch-owned pro-Russian TV channels from the airwaves, something that his more nationalist predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, had stopped short of doing. Russia’s determination to curtail Ukraine’s sovereignty also pushed Zelensky to harden his position in the negotiations intended to end the war in the Donbas: Russia insists on constitutionally-guaranteed “special status” for these regions within Ukraine, which would give Russian proxy leadership a de facto veto over Ukraine’s domestic and foreign policies. During the presidential campaign, Zelensky had said he hoped to reach an agreement with Putin. But once Zelensky was in office, Putin’s intransigence pushed him to become, in the words of Russia’s top negotiator over Donbas, “no different” from the previous “nationalist” president, Petro Poroshenko.Russia’s reluctance to recognize Ukrainian national identity has fueled fears in the former Soviet state of being absorbed into Russia’s orbit. Ukrainian citizens know that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s split from Moscow—which began in 2018 and provoked the Kremlin’s ire—could be undone. Language policy could shift dramatically toward de-emphasizing Ukrainian and strengthening Russian. Russia could pressure Ukraine to change how it teaches schoolchildren about the Holodomor, the manmade famine engineered by the Soviet government of Joseph Stalin that cost millions of Ukrainians their lives. Russian overlords could stymie the Ukrainian president’s efforts to expose oligarchic networks. Putin could also try to curb efforts, aided by European allies, to create an independent judiciary in Ukraine, given his concerns that the establishment of rule of law in Russia’s neighbor might resonate in Russia.
Further Russian attempts to squeeze Ukraine will generate more anti-Russian sentiment in the country. But instead of wrestling with its own miscalculations and misperceptions about Ukraine, Russia continues to either blame the West or write off attitudes in Ukraine. If Russia invades, it will face widespread and sustained resistance not only from the Ukrainian army, outgunned though it may be against Russian military might, but from ordinary people in all regions of the country. In a recent poll, 50 percent of Ukrainians said they were willing to resist Russian aggression; 33 percent said they would do so with arms and another 22 percent by nonmilitary means.
As long as the West condemns and sanctions Russian aggression and rejects Russia’s claims over Ukraine, the current leadership in Kyiv stands to gain support as people rally around the government in the face of Moscow’s saber-rattling. And if the Zelensky government were to crumble in the face of protests following military defeat, its replacement in all likelihood would be even more adamant about safeguarding Ukrainian independence. A Russian puppet government, on the other hand, would lack any modicum of legitimacy and could rule only with the full force of Russian guns behind it, requiring Russia’s complete and sustained occupation of Ukraine.
Putin Doesn’t Speak for All Russians
Russia is not doomed to be a wannabe imperialist power, seeking to dominate its neighbors. It is a mistake to equate Putin’s views on Ukraine and Russia’s relations with the West with the stable preferences of Russian society. To be sure, for now, Putin’s authoritarian rule has destroyed parliamentary opposition and pushed civil society opposition into exile or prison, giving Putin leeway to act unilaterally. Even in this highly repressive climate, however, thousands of Russians, including former military officials, have called on Putin not to attack Ukraine. The Russian president should listen to them: paradoxically, the best way to bring Ukraine closer to Russia would be to let Ukraine go.
The Ukrainian leadership, meanwhile, should be careful to distinguish between guarding its independence from an imminent military threat and foreclosing any possibility of forging a cooperative future relationship with Russia. The democratic rights of Ukrainian citizens who prefer a closer relationship with Russia should be scrupulously guaranteed. Ukraine’s strength lies in being a pluralist alternative to Russian authoritarianism. By strengthening and deepening democracy, Ukraine would deny Putin his objective to turn the former Soviet state into a “little Russia.”
As diplomatic efforts to defuse tensions proceed, Ukraine and its allies should be trying to shift the focus away from debates over NATO expansion. Instead, diplomacy should focus on helping Russia understand that its long-term interests are better served by forging a cooperative relationship with a Europe-oriented, independent Ukraine. Hopefully, it will not require a war for the Kremlin to learn that although it can influence Ukraine, it cannot control it or reverse time through force.
12. Ukraine's History Is Filled with War, Blood and Death
Conclusion:
It is tempting to conclude that some geographic spaces are prone to witness great battles, but in fact, politics and technology set the terms by which geography matters. The corridor between New Jersey and central Virginia saw bitter combat over the course of nearly 250 years from 1620 until 1870 but has remained almost completely at peace since 1865. The Rhine, which witnessed catastrophic if periodic warfare for centuries, has been at peace since 1945. There is real hope, thus, that Ukraine’s future may be less violent than Ukraine’s past, notwithstanding the massive foreign army sitting upon its borders.
Ukraine's History Is Filled with War, Blood and Death
If Russia launches a war against Ukraine, it will be far from the first time even in recent memory that the country has known violence. Many parts of the world suffered horribly from war in the 20th century, but Ukraine has surely witnessed more than its fair share of warfare over the last 110 years.
In World War I, Ukraine was the site of several major battles, most notably the Battle of Galicia in 1914, the Brusilov Offensive of 1916, and the Kerensky Offensive of 1917. At Galicia (fought in what is now western Ukraine) Russian forces tore the heart out of the armies of Austria-Hungary, restoring the line after the disastrous defeat at Tanneberg. The Brusilov Offensive cut deep into German and Austrian lines, displaying in full for the first time the fire and movement tactics that have come to characterize modern warfare for the last century. The failed Kerensky Offensive represented the last gasp of Russia’s provisional government, paving the way for the Bolshevik Revolution. Overall, counting only the major battles the armies of the combatants suffered nearly three million casualties in Ukraine.
The end of World War I did not end the fighting. As discussed in an earlier column, German, Ukrainian, Polish, and Russian forces of armies of both the White and Red varieties swept over Ukraine in the two years after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk formally ended fighting in the east. The Soviet-Polish War inflicted some half a million casualties on all sides, with much of the fighting taking place within modern Ukrainian borders. At the same time, a complex war between the Bolsheviks, Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel’s White Russians, and Ukrainian anarchists burned in the southern half of the country, culminating in the escape by sea of a reside of Wrangel’s forces from Crimea.
These battles would only be exceeded by the horrors of the Second World War. German troops focused mostly on western parts of Poland during their invasion of September 1939, leaving the east (areas which would eventually become part of Ukraine) to the Soviets. The Red Army crossed the border on September 17 and rapidly rolled up the country, although not without violence. Far more violent were the events of late June 1941, when the Wehrmacht and its allies launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union, including Ukraine.
Several of the most important early battles of Operation Barbarossa took place in Ukraine. The first week saw a massive tank battle at Brody, in which the Germans destroyed some 800 Soviet tanks at the loss of 200 of their own. In July the Wehrmacht annihilated two Soviet armies at the Battle of Uman, resulting in 20,000 German casualties against more than 200,000 Red Army. This opened the door to Kyiv, which was besieged in mid-September. Some 600,000 Soviet troops were killed or captured when the pocket surrendered in late September. In October another Soviet army including over 100,000 troops was surrounded and captured near the Sea of Azov. Kharkiv and the Donbas fell in October. Most of the prisoners taken by the Germans would die of starvation in forced labor camps.
The grim course of the war on the Eastern Front meant that every place the Germans had taken would need to be retaken by the Soviets. Kharkiv changed hands several times, with the Soviets finally gaining permanent control in August 1943. A massive offensive along the Dnieper in late 1943 reclaimed much of the rest of Ukraine, including Kyiv. The final German evacuation of Ukraine came on October 28, 1944.
All of these wars had a dreadful impact on civilians. German occupation practices were horrific, with outright massacres of the Jewish population accompanied by general policies of starvation. Estimates of the total number of dead exceed 7 million, more than those killed in Germany itself. Although the devastation of World War I was less deliberate, the use of Ukraine as a breadbasket by both Russia and the Central Powers had a devastating effect on the local population. This is of course to say nothing of the Holodomor, the famine that gripped Ukraine in 1932-3 and that killed several million.
And of course, Ukraine’s travails did not end with World War II. From 1945 until 1990 Ukraine knew the uncertain peace of Soviet rule. Independence was accomplished with minimal violence until 2014 when a revolution in Kyiv inspired a Russian invasion of Ukraine’s east and south. That war, which continues in some form until this very day, has by most estimates killed nearly 15000 people.
Russian T-90 Tank. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Russian President Putin with Russian Military Forces. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
It is tempting to conclude that some geographic spaces are prone to witness great battles, but in fact, politics and technology set the terms by which geography matters. The corridor between New Jersey and central Virginia saw bitter combat over the course of nearly 250 years from 1620 until 1870 but has remained almost completely at peace since 1865. The Rhine, which witnessed catastrophic if periodic warfare for centuries, has been at peace since 1945. There is real hope, thus, that Ukraine’s future may be less violent than Ukraine’s past, notwithstanding the massive foreign army sitting upon its borders.
13. Russia Has Big Plans for Africa
Conclusion:
Russia’s influence in Africa today may pale in comparison to the power it wielded during the Cold War, but the campaign is far from over. This fall, the second Russia-Africa Summit is scheduled to take place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. At a time when the United States and Europe seem consumed with other problems, the meeting will provide the Kremlin an opportunity to capitalize on Western distraction and make the case for even greater Russian influence on the continent. Western countries need to present a united front and replace their single-minded focus on great-power competition with a comprehensive strategy that blends hard and soft power. If they can up their game in Africa, Western forces will not just help diminish Russian influence but better the lives of millions of people on a continent that is too often an afterthought in international affairs.
Russia Has Big Plans for Africa
America Must Push Back—Without Getting Dragged In
February 17, 2022
The day after the military staged a coup in Burkina Faso in January, supporters of the new regime took to the streets waving Russian flags. The scene may sound like a throwback to the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union competed for influence in Africa, but the demonstrators were taken with more recent examples of the Kremlin’s actions on the continent. They spoke approvingly about Russia’s deployment of mercenaries in Libya, Mali, and the Central African Republic (CAR) to fight off Islamist insurgents. “The Russians got good results in other African countries,” a supporter of the coup told The New York Times. “We hope they can do the same here.” According to the Daily Beast, the lieutenant colonel who led the coup, Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, had tried and failed to get the incumbent president to invite in Russian military contractors to counter threats to the government—and now that he is in charge, he may well ask Moscow for military help.
Russia is not expanding its influence in Africa just through the use of military contractors; it has also made a hardcore diplomatic push across the continent. In 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi co-chaired the first Russia-Africa Summit, which assembled 43 African heads of state in Sochi. Although the COVID-19 pandemic stalled progress toward actualizing the $12.5 billion in deals that Russia signed with African countries, Moscow used the conference to forge new diplomatic partnerships.
Russia has figured out how to capitalize on popular frustrations with U.S. and French counterterrorism policies in Africa, as well as anxieties about neocolonial influence. The rise of Russian influence has grown with U.S. disengagement across the continent. The Russians see Africa as a place where it can expand its global reach and simultaneously extract valuable natural resources for its state-owned enterprises.
None of this is good news for Africa. Russia’s indiscriminate arms sales fuel conflict, its shadowy commercial deals empower kleptocracy, and its autocratic bent undermines democracy. Nor is the flurry of activity good news for the United States and its allies, which are seeing their soft power in Africa dissipate. To counter the Kremlin’s influence, then, the West needs to turn its attention to the continent once more—without turning Africa into an arena for great-power competition.
Currying Favor
Russia’s reemergence as a great power in Africa began in the late 1990s, as Moscow reversed the drawdown that began with its divestment from Ethiopia and Angola earlier that decade. Russia sought to rebuild Soviet influence in Africa by providing military-technical assistance and development aid, while ending the Soviet Union’s focus on ideological proselytization. Under the stewardship of Yevgeny Primakov, who served as foreign minister from 1996 to 1998 and prime minister from 1998 to 1999, Russia expanded its partnerships in the region. It found common cause with South Africa, sharing opposition to NATO’s military intervention in Kosovo and support for a multipolar order. It forgave debt in Angola and Mozambique, winning favor with the governments of those countries. It sold arms to Sudan and Ethiopia, which created the foundation for lasting security partnerships.
When Putin came to power in Russia, he expanded on Primakov’s playbook for power projection in Africa. Russia used debt forgiveness to reset its partnerships with Algeria and Libya, which stagnated because of disputes over Soviet-era loans and Moscow’s support for UN sanctions against the regime of the Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi. It publicly supported “African solutions to African problems” and provided arms to anti-Western regimes such as Omar al-Bashir’s Sudan and Isaias Afwerki’s Eritrea. In 2009, Dmitry Medvedev, then filling in for Putin as Russian president, reaffirmed Moscow’s great-power ambitions in Africa by touring the continent, visiting Angola, Egypt, Namibia, and Nigeria. The diplomatic push resulted in pledges to cooperate on counterterrorism, nuclear energy, and gas pipeline construction. NATO’s 2011 military intervention in Libya, which deeply polarized Africans, gave Russia an opening to frame itself as a foil to Western policy and a guardian of state sovereignty. This image appealed to U.S. partners who were disgruntled about pressure from Washington on human rights, such as Egypt and Nigeria, as well as to authoritarian regimes.
Russia views Africa as both a provenance for resources for its state-owned companies and a potential market for Russian goods. In 2020, Russia’s state arms vendor Rosoboronexport signed $1.5 billion in contracts with ten African countries, and the next year, it secured an additional $1.7 billion in new deals at a summit in Côte d’Ivoire. Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy giant Rosatom views Africa as a promising venue to sell reactors: chronic electricity shortages and concerns about climate change are prodding governments to look to carbon-free energy sources. The company has just one full-fledged project in Africa—the El Dabaa nuclear reactor in Egypt—but it is trying to peddle reactors in Ghana, Nigeria, and Rwanda, as well. Russian mining and energy companies, including Lukoil and Gazprom, now boast a continent-wide commercial presence.
Russia has made a hard-core diplomatic push across Africa.
Russia also sees Africa as offering a chance to enhance the country’s global stature and showcase a distinct model of security. In capital after capital, Moscow has marketed what it calls the “Syrian model” of counterinsurgency, which prioritizes authoritarian stability, as the most effective antidote to extremism. As part of such efforts, Russia has dispatched private contractors to fragile states such as the Central African Republic, Libya, Mali, and Mozambique and to authoritarian partners such as Guinea and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While Western deliveries of COVID-19 vaccines to African countries have been slow, Russia has aggressively promoted its homegrown shot, Sputnik V, on the continent and has announced that it will distribute the vaccine for free to combat the Omicron variant. Russia has also partially revived its Soviet-era educational diplomacy programs and sent wheat shipments to alleviate food insecurity in Africa. Notwithstanding its destabilizing conduct in Africa and on the world stage, Russia is leveraging these humanitarian and soft-power initiatives to promote itself as a constructive player in global affairs.Filling the Void
Moscow’s growing interest in Africa has been particularly notable in the Central African Republic. In 2016, France ended Operation Sangaris, a three-year military intervention in the CAR that unsuccessfully sought to disarm militia groups, allow inflows of humanitarian aid, and facilitate a democratic transition. Russia quickly seized on the opening. Through a combination of economic investment and counterinsurgency assistance, the Russians acquired valuable assets, including preferential stakes in the country’s gold and diamond reserves. To guard these mining assets and create a security situation that would be amenable for large-scale mineral extraction, a group of private military contractors arrived in 2018. They worked for the Wagner Group, an ostensibly private security company with close ties to Russia’s military intelligence service.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, one of Putin’s close associates, oversees the Wagner Group’s mining assets via subsidiary companies such as Lobaye Invest and M-Invest. Roughly 1,200 to 2,000 private military contractors aided the CAR’s authoritarian president, Faustin-Archange Touadéra, and battled Islamic rebels on the outskirts of the capital, Bangui. In 2020, Russia deployed military instructors ambiguously described by the Kremlin as “not the army nor the special forces.” In the months since France suspended security cooperation with the CAR last June, the government’s reliance on Moscow for security has only grown.
Russia’s economic and military interventions in the CAR are profitable ventures for Prigozhin, but they also augment Russia’s prestige in Africa. Russian diplomacy facilitated the 2018 Khartoum declaration, which created a CAR opposition alliance and temporarily eased tensions between the two main rebel factions. Russia advertised the Syrian model to Sahel countries facing insurgencies, and it appears to have found a taker in Mali, whose government has received Wagner Group fighters. The Central African Republic has also served as a testing ground for Russia’s projection of soft power in Africa. The Russians have hosted beauty pageants and ballet shows in Bangui, and the Russian language is now part of the country’s school curriculum. In April 2021, Russia also announced plans to invest $11 billion in the CAR’s postconflict reconstruction.
Russia’s involvement in the CAR, however, has not been an unmitigated success. Although Moscow has framed its intervention as a means of countering French neocolonialism and protecting state sovereignty, its heavy-handed approach has provoked a polarized response. Many CAR residents were appalled when Touadéra appointed Valery Zakharov, a former Russian intelligence agent, as national security adviser in 2018: it was widely perceived as an encroachment on national sovereignty. As a recent UN report documented, the Wagner Group fighters also have been implicated in committing human rights violations, further sullying the contractors’ reputation in the CAR. Russia’s influence in the country is shallower than it appears.
Russia’s interest in the Sahel is linked to U.S. disengagement and French missteps.
After the CAR, the Sahel is the part of Africa where Russia’s presence can be seen most clearly. Although its footprint in the Sahel is lighter, Russia’s interest in the subregion is also inextricably linked to U.S. disengagement and French missteps. Russian media outlets have stoked neocolonial discontent in Mali toward France and portrayed French counterterrorism policy as driven by resource extraction rather than security imperatives. With France’s military operations in the Sahel failing to curb extremism, Russia has doubled down on its security presence there. In 2014, after the United States refused on human rights grounds to sell fighter jets and advanced helicopters to Nigeria, Russia marketed its own jets to the Nigerian military. From 2016 to 2019, Russia signed a military cooperation agreement with Nigeria, as well as Chad, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Niger, and Sierra Leone. When Guinean President Alpha Condé attracted international condemnation when he announced he would seek a third term in 2020, Russia’s aluminum giant Rusal strengthened its presence in Guinea’s bauxite mines, and the Wagner Group deployed private military contractors to guard mines in the country.In August 2020, Mali’s pro-French president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, was overthrown in a coup d’état, giving Russia even more latitude in that country, which is now the center of its Sahel strategy. Days later, Malian demonstrators, discontented with French counterterrorism policy, took to the streets waving Russian and Chinese flags. A subsequent coup in Mali in May 2021 paved the way for France’s military drawdown from the country and strengthened Moscow’s hand. Later that year, Russia dispatched helicopters, weapons, and ammunition to Mali after the new prime minister accused France of “abandoning” the country. The Wagner Group, for its part, sent 500 private military contractors.
Yet for all of Russia’s recent wins in the Sahel, long-term success is far from guaranteed. Countervailing pressure from the United States and the European Union—including proposed economic sanctions on Mali—could ultimately deter the government from relying on Russian private military contractors. In Guinea, moreover, a September 2021 coup toppled Russia’s most reliable regional partner, Alpha Condé. And in Nigeria, Russia has struggled to convert its arms deals into a diversified partnership. What all this suggests is that Russia will remain a spoiler of French interests in Africa—and not a great power with far-reaching influence.
A Way Forward
American and European leaders have taken notice of Russia’s resurgence in Africa. In 2018, John Bolton, then U.S. national security adviser, lambasted Russia’s “predatory” practices on the continent. France has repeatedly sounded the alarm about them, too, and British and EU officials have condemned the Wagner Group’s activities in Mali. Aside from a smattering of statements, however, Western powers have struggled to develop a coherent response to Russia’s efforts in Africa.
To stymie Moscow’s plans, Western powers need to resist the temptation to view Africa through a great-power competition prism. Instead of treating Russia and China as a monolithic anti-Western bloc in Africa, the United States and Europe should capitalize on fissures between Moscow and Beijing. The two powers in fact disagree over the central question of stability in Africa: China’s Belt and Road Initiative requires a calm Africa, whereas Russia has a fondness for disruption. Given these disagreements, Western powers could find common ground with Beijing on issues such as preserving stability in Sudan.
Western policymakers should also deploy soft power to further their goals. U.S. President Joe Biden’s appointment of special envoys to the Horn of Africa and Libya are good first steps, as are the EU’s efforts to multilaterally supplant France’s declining military presence in the Sahel. More consistent engagement by Western powers with regional institutions—the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, and the Southern African Development Community—could help counter Russian influence. Western countries should also actively encourage African countries’ conflict resolution initiatives, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s mediation in the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam dispute between Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan. These measures would counter Russia’s often fatuous rhetorical support for “African solutions to African problems” and stem Moscow’s ability to play off perceptions of Western neocolonialism. Coordination on vaccine diplomacy and educational diplomacy through intergovernmental initiatives between Western nations would also help combat Russia’s nefarious conduct in Africa.
Russia’s influence in Africa today may pale in comparison to the power it wielded during the Cold War, but the campaign is far from over. This fall, the second Russia-Africa Summit is scheduled to take place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. At a time when the United States and Europe seem consumed with other problems, the meeting will provide the Kremlin an opportunity to capitalize on Western distraction and make the case for even greater Russian influence on the continent. Western countries need to present a united front and replace their single-minded focus on great-power competition with a comprehensive strategy that blends hard and soft power. If they can up their game in Africa, Western forces will not just help diminish Russian influence but better the lives of millions of people on a continent that is too often an afterthought in international affairs.
14. Taiwan 194 - Emulating the Palestinians to Advocate Internationally for Taiwan and to Counter China
I would say this is some out of the box thinking.
Conclusion:
The Palestinians wrote the playbook for entities seeking to elevate their international status or even to gain full recognition. The United States can learn from their victories and defeats to help Taiwan. In so doing, Washington can pursue another avenue to advocate for a longtime ally and compete in a soft-power diplomatic contest that China often dominates.
February 17, 2022 | Memo
Taiwan 194
Emulating the Palestinians to Advocate Internationally for Taiwan and to Counter China
Jonathan Schanzer
Richard Goldberg
RADM (Ret) Mark Montgomery
fdd.org · by Jonathan Schanzer Senior Vice President for Research · February 17, 2022
Introduction
From the South China Sea and Hong Kong to Xinjiang and India, China’s aggression is on the rise. The United States has vowed to counter Beijing in these and other jurisdictions. A great power competition is escalating.
Right now, the balance of military power between the United States and China in the Western Pacific and East Asia is shifting toward Beijing. The Pentagon is working overtime to reverse this trend. It will take time, however. China may already have an edge in terms of soft power, particularly in international organizations. Decades of efforts to increase its influence within the United Nations and other multilateral organizations has strengthened Beijing’s ability to thwart American initiatives in the very system the West created to promote transparency, rule of law, and freedom of access.
To begin to level the playing field in terms of soft power, Washington can launch an asymmetric and multilateral diplomatic campaign to advance the cause of Taiwan — a key U.S. economic and security partner that China seeks to absorb. Such a campaign would be very much in the American interest. As the 2018 National Defense Strategy Commission noted, “allowing Taiwan to be absorbed by the mainland would represent a crushing blow to America’s credibility and regional position.” The reason, as then-Assistant Secretary of State David Stilwell noted, is that “Taiwan is a highly advanced $600 billion economy with 23 million free people. It is a vision of how much the Chinese people can achieve.” A diplomatic campaign to enhance Taiwan’s international standing (but not necessarily promote its independence) can advance that vision. Such a campaign might also weaken Beijing’s stranglehold on multilateral institutions and boost Washington’s leverage in increasingly tense disagreements over Chinese efforts to “reclaim” other territories.
To devise and implement such a strategy, Washington can take a page from the Palestinian playbook. From 2009 through 2018, the Palestinians actively pursued a campaign called “Palestine 194,” seeking recognition at the United Nations and its member agencies. While the initiative failed to gain official statehood status for the Palestinians (it was never entirely clear if that was the true objective), the campaign increased recognition of the Palestinian national project at the United Nations. The campaign exploited the fact that while great powers such as the United States and China enjoy veto power at the UN Security Council, the vast majority of international agencies operate based on majority rule. This dynamic relegates even great powers to just one vote among many (without discounting their ability to wield pressure and manipulate votes).
China has mounted a lengthy and extensive diplomatic effort to exclude Taiwan from international organizations. After its first decade of such efforts, Beijing scored a significant success in 1971, when the United States agreed to grant China the Taiwanese seat at the United Nations (and on the Security Council) via UN General Assembly Resolution 2758. That decision was tied to the Nixon administration’s efforts to restore relations with the People’s Republic of China, culminating in Nixon’s historic 1972 visit. In 1979, the Carter administration went one step further, formally switching diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China and closing the U.S. Embassy in Taipei. That decision spurred a 40-year contest between China and Taiwan to garner diplomatic recognition. Since 1991, Taipei has pursued a “pragmatic policy” whereby countries can have relations with both China and Taiwan, but Beijing has coerced, cajoled, and bribed countries to choose China alone. Today, Taiwan has full diplomatic relations with only 13 small UN member states (out of 194) and the Holy See (a UN observer state).
Because of Resolution 2758, Taiwan was removed from most UN bodies. In bodies where statistics or other data from Taiwan were still desired or required, the territory was identified as the “Taiwan Province of China.” Beijing has worked assiduously to exclude or remove Taiwan from non-UN intergovernmental bodies as well. Specifically, China has successfully worked to remove or exclude Taiwan from many of the most significant organizations, such as the World Health Organization, the International Telecommunications Union, the International Civil Aviation Organization, Interpol, the International Standards Organization, the International Electrotechnical Commission, the International Monetary Fund, and the International Maritime Organization. Through creative workarounds, Taiwan has been able to maintain some status in numerous sporting, business, and professional organizations. Indeed, Taiwan competes in the Olympics under a unique International Olympic Committee/Chinese Taipei flag, similar to athletes from countries that are banned from competition (such as Russia).
U.S.-Taiwan Ties
The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) provided the legal basis for the United States to maintain cultural, commercial, and other unofficial relations with Taiwan. It also contains provisions for Taiwan’s defense. Indeed, the TRA states that it is U.S. policy to “provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character” and “to maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan.”
The United States has upheld its end of this agreement through robust trade, people-to-people connections, visa waivers, and other indications of warm ties. Importantly, Washington has further upheld its TRA commitment to support Taiwanese defensive capabilities through much-needed arms sales, and the U.S. military has conducted planning and exercises that indicate U.S. willingness to take action to prevent coercive activity against Taiwan.
What is missing, particularly as the great power competition between Beijing and Washington heats up, is U.S. support in the “gray zone.” Diplomatic warfare should be a key component of this fight. Fortunately, we are not starting from zero. As the State Department notes:
The United States supports Taiwan’s membership in international organizations that do not require statehood as a condition of membership and encourages Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations where its membership is not possible. Taiwan and the United States belong to a number of the same international organizations, including the World Trade Organization, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, and the Asian Development Bank. In June 2015, [the American Institute in Taiwan] and [the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office] established the Global Cooperation and Training Framework, a platform for expanding U.S.-Taiwan cooperation on global and regional issues such as public health, economic development, energy, women’s rights, and disaster relief.
But these efforts alone are insufficient. With China now embracing a dangerous and expansionist foreign policy, it is increasingly apparent that Beijing has prioritized “reunification” with the island. Washington and Taipei must ramp up their efforts to achieve recognition of Taiwan in the international arena. The Palestinians have demonstrated that such a campaign can notch significant successes.
The Palestinian Campaign
The Palestinian initiative to gain recognition at the United Nations began in 2005. That year, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas traveled to Brazil for a summit of South American and Arab states. He met with Brazil’s leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who vowed that at the end of his second term (expiring January 1, 2011), he would rally Latin American support for Palestinian recognition at the United Nations.
Latin America, with its left-wing governments, proved fertile ground for the Palestinian campaign. In early February 2008, Costa Rica officially recognized a Palestinian state. Abbas toured the region the following year, visiting Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Venezuela, the latter of which inaugurated a Palestinian embassy in Caracas.
In March 2010, da Silva visited Israel and the Palestinian territories, expressing support for the Palestinians and criticizing settlements in the West Bank. The following December, just before his term in office expired, da Silva announced that Brazil recognized an independent Palestinian state. With that, the Latin American floodgates opened. Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Uruguay soon expressed support for a Palestinian state. On New Year’s Eve, 2010, Abbas attended a ceremony in Brasília to lay the cornerstone for a new Palestinian embassy.
Latin America was not the only region to back the Palestinian initiative. In June 2010, France announced it would upgrade the Palestinian delegation in Paris. Spain, Portugal, and Norway followed suit later that year.
Meanwhile, Abbas continued enlisting foreign leaders to recognize a Palestinian state. After Abbas visited then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, Turkey announced it would recognize a Palestinian state (within the 1967 borders) at an unspecified time. Erdogan reportedly also promised to promote the initiative with other heads of state.
On December 13, 2010, a group of foreign ministers from EU countries announced that their governments would recognize a Palestinian state “when appropriate.” By the end of 2010, almost 100 countries had indicated support for an independent Palestine.
In early 2011, Cyprus, Greece, and Ireland upgraded their diplomatic delegations to the Palestinian territories. The United Kingdom and Denmark did the same that March. By the spring of 2011, Iceland, Slovenia, and Spain had indicated their intention to recognize a Palestinian state. This was followed by signals of support from the Dominican Republic and Peru. In July 2011, Bulgaria, Belgium, and Norway announced their support.
Europe was a particularly interesting battleground. The Palestinian initiative exposed fault lines among EU member states. German Chancellor Angela Merkel cautioned, “[I]t is not certain that unilateral recognition will contribute to promoting peace.” Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini echoed her concerns. “Peace is made through negotiation, not through imposition,” he said.
By contrast, French President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged: “If the peace process is still dead in September, France will face up to its responsibilities on the central question of the recognition of a Palestinian state.” Spain’s foreign minister similarly opined that “now is the time to do something, to give the Palestinians the hope that a state could become reality.”
U.S. lawmakers, for their part, registered their disapproval and threatened to withhold funding for the United Nations if it granted the Palestinians membership. The Palestinian maneuver, after all, was a rejection of the Oslo Accords, the legal framework for U.S.-Palestinian ties. It was also a rejection of Washington’s role as the primary broker for Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy.
The U.S. threat was compounded by the Israelis, who warned they could withhold the roughly $100 million in value-added taxes (VAT) they collected on behalf of the Palestinians each month. At the time, U.S. aid and Israeli-collected VAT amounted to more than $1.5 billion per year — roughly three-quarters of the PA’s annual budget.
On September 23, 2011, Abbas announced that he had submitted “an application for the admission of Palestine on the basis of the 4 June 1967 borders, with [Jerusalem] as its capital, as a full member of the United Nations.” The Palestinian leader urged “the distinguished members of the Security Council to vote in favor of our full membership,” and he “call[ed] upon the States that did not recognized [sic] the State of Palestine as yet to do so.”
The Palestinians called the initiative “Palestine 194,” reflecting their aim to be the 194th UN member state.
Abbas was celebrated at home. As Al Jazeera reported, a “welcome party was planned at the Muqataa, the presidential headquarters.” The Palestinian workers’ union called on its members to join the celebration. The teachers’ union announced that schools would close early to allow students and teachers to attend. Official news agencies called on the public to rally at the Muqataa. West Bankers received text messages advertising “the official mass reception.”
Expectedly, Abbas’ reception was considerably cooler in Washington. Some legislators prepared to reduce U.S. aid to the PA. Others wanted to slash it entirely. The White House, for its part, wanted to keep aid flowing to retain leverage to bring the Palestinians back to the negotiating table. In the end, the compromise was to withhold $200 million, or roughly one-third of total annual U.S. aid to the PA, as a warning to the Palestinians not to continue their efforts at the United Nations.
Undeterred, Abbas made a play for membership in the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). As was the case with the Palestinians’ broader UN maneuver, the United States, Israel, Canada, and a handful of other countries were opposed. Among the more vocal supporters was France.
UNESCO’s willingness to accept the Palestinians came at great risk. According to an American law passed during the Clinton administration in the 1990s, the United States may not fund any part of the UN system that grants the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) the same standing as UN member states. So, as the Palestinians pushed for membership, UNESCO’s annual budget stood to lose $70 million (America’s 22 percent).
The Quai d’Orsay began to have second thoughts. Despite having previously backed the Palestinian campaign, French diplomats suddenly asserted that it was “not the right time, nor the right place” to wrestle with the question of Palestine. These statements came only a few months after Sarkozy had pledged support for the broader initiative.
Nevertheless, in autumn 2011, UNESCO’s Executive Board approved a draft resolution for Palestinian membership, sponsored by several Arab states, by a 40-to-four vote. The four countries opposed were the United States, Germany, Latvia, and Romania. Among the 14 countries abstaining was France. Around that time, UNESCO officials traveled to Washington to meet with administration officials, legislators, and other influential Beltway figures, trying to convince them of UNESCO’s value and thwart a cut in U.S. funding.
UNESCO’s General Conference voted later that month, with 107 of 173 countries voting in favor, 14 opposing, and 52 abstaining. As expected, U.S. funding was slashed. The victory for the Palestinians was pyrrhic. Their victory came at a significant cost to their supporters, undermining international appetite for future initiatives on their behalf.
In January 2012, several states opposed to the Palestinian bid rotated off the Security Council, making way for countries more disposed to the move, such as Guatemala, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Morocco, and Togo. Signaling a return to Turtle Bay, senior PLO official Nabil Sha’ath declared that 2012 marked “the start of an unprecedented diplomatic campaign.” He promised “a year of pressure on Israel that will put it under a real international siege.”
In February, Abbas told the Arab League that he was prepared to continue his campaign at the United Nations. He received the Arab League’s full support. The PLO continued to consult with a number of Arab states throughout the spring. In May, Abbas again threatened to “extract a seat for Palestine as a non-member state.”
Meanwhile, Israeli media suggested that the Palestinians were planning a campaign, along the lines of the UNESCO bid, to gain recognition as an “observer state” at Rio+20, the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Brazil. Days before the conference, Palestinian Ambassador to Brazil Ibrahim Alzeben said, “We expect full-status participation because we already have it in UNESCO and we have ties with Brazil … and with more than 130 countries.”
On July 19, PLO representative to Washington Maen Rashid Areikat denied reports that the United States was threatening to cease aid or close the PLO mission in response to the Palestinians’ UN bid. But it was clear that U.S. pressure was taking a toll. Reports circulated that Abbas might postpone the initiative until after the U.S. elections in early November. But not every Palestinian official agreed with this approach. According to PLO official Hanan Ashrawi, “There are some who might want to wait until after November because of American pressure, but the Americans have done nothing but put pressure on the Palestinians… What we need is to move fast.”
Around that time, media reports revealed that Israel was “offering incentives to the PA to drop the unilateral statehood gambit.” Maariv reported an offer “to release 50 prisoners detained before the Oslo Accords if the Palestinian Authority cancels its proposed UN bid.” Abbas, however, stated he would continue “even if [that bid] conflicts with other parties’ interests.”
As the debate continued, November 29, 2012, emerged as the date the Palestinians would return to Turtle Bay. It was that date, in 1947, when the United Nations first accepted an Arab and a Jewish state in the British Mandate of Palestine. The United Nations has since named that date the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
But the Palestinians continued to waver for fear of angering Washington and putting relations with Israel on a collision course. The Associated Press reported in August that “the Palestinians are putting their quest for international recognition at the U.N. on hold for now.” The report also said that Abbas would “not … apply at the General Assembly session next month, although he will informally appeal for recognition in a speech.”
However, on September 5, in an about-face, Abbas announced the Palestinian leadership would proceed with the statehood bid. “I am going this month to the UN General Assembly in light of the latest decision in Doha, the Islamic summit and the Non-Aligned Movement summit,” Abbas said.
The driving force behind the bid was the Fatah Central Committee. This powerful group “reiterated its support for President Mahmoud Abbas to seek upgraded status for Palestine at the United Nations this month,” Ma’an News Agency reported in September 2012.
On September 20, The New York Times reported that the Palestinians planned a “subdued campaign” for non-member state status. According to the report, the Palestinian “delegation heading to New York this weekend is half the size of last year’s. And there are no concerts or street parties planned this time around.” Nevertheless, PLO official Saeb Erekat said the Palestinians were expecting to garner between 150 and 170 votes for their resolution.
In his September 27 speech to the UN General Assembly, Abbas said the Palestinians had “begun intensive consultations with various regional organizations and Member States aimed at having the General Assembly adopt a resolution considering the State of Palestine as a non-Member State of the United Nations during this session.”
In the weeks that followed, the Palestinian issue was given relatively short shrift thanks to the U.S. election cycle and the civil war in Syria. But November 29 remained the target date.
On October 15, then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice warned that the Palestinian bid would “jeopardize the peace process and complicate efforts to return the parties to direct negotiations.” The following day, Abbas sent a letter to President Barack Obama vowing to return to negotiations “after obtaining international recognition.” Days later, Abbas told reporters that the Palestinian UN bid “is not a substitute for negotiations. We are in need of negotiations to solve the final status of issues.”
On October 30, Reuters reported that the Palestinians had “launched a diplomatic blitz aimed at garnering a strong majority for a vote granting them non-member statehood at the United Nations slated for next month.” A PLO official said the Palestinians expected “a minimum of 12 votes” from the European Union “and maybe up to 15, as some [EU member states] are not yet decided.” On October 31, Palestinian official Mohammad Shtayyeh left for Denmark, Sweden, and Finland to lobby for the upcoming bid. Palestinian envoys also went to Germany, Austria, and the United Kingdom, according to the Associated Press. Writing in The Telegraph, PLO official Nabil Shaath urged the United Kingdom to endorse the Palestinian UN bid.
On November 1, Egypt’s foreign minister called on Spain and France to support the Palestinian initiative. In addition, Abbas met with Kuwait’s ambassador to Jordan to discuss the maneuver. Around the same time, Norway was reportedly helping draft the resolution for the Palestinians. Russia also reportedly helped plan the Palestinian bid.
With the U.S. elections over on November 7, Abbas congratulated Obama on winning a second term and urged him to “stand by the Palestinian decision to gain a non-member state status in the United Nations.” Agence France-Presse quoted PLO official Saeb Erekat as saying, “We did [Obama] a favor [by delaying the UN bid until after the U.S. elections] and we hope he will remember that.”
On November 8, the Palestinians began circulating a draft resolution to upgrade their status. An Arab League official revealed that 51 states were still undecided on the matter. The numbers fluctuated over the following weeks, but it was clear the Palestinians had a numerical advantage.
On November 29, 2012, 65 years after the United Nations called for a partition plan (which the Palestinians rejected) in favor a State of Palestine and a State of Israel, the United Nations voted again. This time, 138 countries voted in favor of a Palestinian state. Only nine voted against. The only real surprises were abstentions by Germany and the United Kingdom.
The vote had no real impact. The Security Council was (and still is) the only UN entity empowered to confer official recognition of statehood. Still, the vote was a clear sign that the Palestinians had taken the initiative.
Seeking to regain the upper hand, the Obama administration launched a new peace process in the spring of 2013. Led by Secretary of State John Kerry and diplomat Martin Indyk, the administration pressured Israel to make concessions on borders, Jerusalem, and settlements. The major demand to the Palestinians was to halt their UN bid.
The Palestinians acquiesced to talks but vowed to continue to study steps to join UN treaties and bodies as leverage. In November 2013, the Palestinian Monetary Authority announced it had obtained membership in the International Association of Deposit Insurers. PLO official Nabil Shaath also warned that the Palestinians could use the “weapon” of claims against Israel in the International Criminal Court (ICC) — a move that gained support from several prominent non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and continues to have their endorsement today.
Abbas himself threatened that if the Palestinians do not “obtain our rights through negotiations, we have the right to go to international institutions.” PLO official Hanan Ashrawi warned in April 2014 that the Palestinians were ready to join 16 international agencies. “Everything is in place and will be set in motion,” she claimed. In December, PLO official Saeb Erekat told Ma’an News Agency that there were 63 multilateral entities the PLO sought to join.
Israeli officials flagged the organizations that worried them: the ICC, the International Telecommunications Union, the International Civil Aviation Organization, the International Maritime Organization, the World Trade Organization, and Interpol. The concern was two-fold: that the Palestinians would join as a state outside of the bilateral Israeli-Palestinian framework, and that they would try to isolate Israel from organizations crucial to its commerce, security, or diplomacy.
The Palestinians, meanwhile, continued to initiate the process of gaining membership in small bodies, such as the International Olive Council (where the PLO ultimately gained membership in 2017). In the case of the FIFA international soccer association, where the Palestinians were already members, the PLO sought to disqualify Israel from the organization.
Finally, amidst stalled peace talks, Abbas signed letters of accession to 15 treaties and conventions. According to the PLO, the list included the four Geneva conventions of August 12, 1949, and the first Additional Protocol; the Vienna Convention of Consular Relations; the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Optional Protocol to the Convention of the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict; the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women; the Hague Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its annex; the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; the Vienna Convention of the Law of Treaties; the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; the United Nations Convention against Corruption; the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide; the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
The Palestinians continued the Palestine 194 campaign, with mixed results. They signed 18 treaties at the end of 2014 and then scored more in 2018 in response to President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The campaign has since paused amid a Palestinian shift toward direct engagement with the Biden administration. But it could easily resume again. And if it does, there is little that opponents could do to stop it.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Given the bureaucratic and nonviolent nature of the Palestine 194 campaign, there was little opponents — even a superpower such as the United States — could do to stop it. This is because the Palestinians had generated support from many other UN member states, which have an equal voice in the General Assembly and in certain UN agencies.
In hindsight, what was remarkable about the campaign was that the Palestinians achieved some significant successes even though they objectively failed to meet the traditional legal standards for statehood set forth in the 1933 Montevideo Convention. The Palestinians’ failure to fully meet these standards was raised as recently as 2020 in submissions to the ICC by Austria, Australia, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Uganda, and others. But this concern did not derail their efforts.
Taiwan more clearly meets the criteria for statehood. This need not be the end goal of a U.S.-led campaign, but meeting that criteria should theoretically make a “Taiwan 194” campaign easier to execute. Of course, China will wield every possible tool and relationship it has cultivated to stymie such a campaign. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. If Beijing is forced to put out diplomatic fires related to Taiwan, it might have less energy to devote to other aggressive policies. Beijing will also find itself on the defensive and might even be forced to explain why Taiwan should not be included in these relatively innocuous organizations and treaties.
The following are recommendations for the United States to consider as it weighs the costs and benefits of a Taiwan 194 diplomatic campaign.
- Build on current efforts and make clear who leads them. On October 21, 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken called upon “all UN Member States to join us in supporting Taiwan’s robust, meaningful participation throughout the UN system and in the international community, consistent with our ‘one China’ policy, which is guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the three Joint Communiques, and the Six Assurances.” Two days later, the State Department announced that it had participated in “a virtual forum on expanding Taiwan’s participation at the United Nations and in other international fora.” The participants included the U.S. acting principal deputy assistant secretary for international organizations; the deputy assistant secretary for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia; and two deputy assistant secretaries for international organizations. These are important statements and efforts. However, it is still unclear who “owns” this portfolio. Identifying the official responsible for this effort will be crucial for its success.
- Begin outreach to the 50 countries that already recognize Taiwan or maintain non-diplomatic relations to encourage them to expand their support. The countries that actually maintain full relations are just too few and have no diplomatic heft. Belize, Eswatini, and Haiti are not exactly diplomatic powerhouses. But nearly half of Europe, Asia, and the Americas have already risked Chinese ire by maintaining ties with Taiwan. Members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum and Association of Southeast Asian Nations engage with Taiwan on one level or another. At the UN General Assembly, each of these potential votes counts the same as that of a superpower. From there, the United States, in concert with these key allies, must identify additional countries in Europe, Asia, the Americas, and eventually even in Africa that might support such an effort.
- Enlist varying levels of support. Countries will, of course, express concern about provoking mainland China and drawing Beijing’s ire. But supporting Taiwan’s membership or observer status in UN bodies would not cross Beijing’s red line of recognizing Taiwanese independence. Washington should stress that voting for Taiwanese membership in smaller UN organizations is not the same as recognizing Taiwanese independent statehood. There are gradations of support to consider.
- Identify individual organizations and treaties with the fewest hurdles for application and admission. The Palestinians understood that different treaties and international organizations have varying criteria, mechanisms, and decision makers governing how an applicant may join. For example, Switzerland is the depositary for the four Geneva Conventions; the Netherlands is the depositary for the Hague Convention on the Laws and Customs of War; and the UN secretary-general is the depositary for various other treaties. The United States and Taiwan should pay careful attention to these criteria, mechanisms, and decision makers, prioritizing those with the fewest hurdles.
- Focus on organizations where Taiwan is a recognized world leader in the field. Taiwan demonstrated significant healthcare expertise in its response to COVID-19 and was a net supplier of healthcare support to less prepared nations. While Taiwan enjoyed non-voting observer status at the World Health Organization (WHO) from 2009 to 2016, a period of relatively warm ties between China and Taiwan, Beijing has since leveraged its multilateral might to exclude Taiwan from WHO-related meetings. Similarly, Taiwan’s technical expertise in telecommunications and in manufacturing microchips and other electronics make it a natural fit for roles in the International Telecommunications Union, the International Electrotechnical Commission, and the International Standards Organization, the three most important international standards-setting organizations. Responsible nations would find it most difficult to oppose Taiwan’s representation in these agencies, even under Chinese pressure. A natural first target might be securing Taiwanese participation during the WHO’s next annual agenda-setting meeting in May 2022. Washington should also engage Taipei to determine which other international organizations Taiwan seeks to join, based on its own assessment of the value it brings to the table.
- For Taiwan, simply joining treaties can yield important wins. When the Palestinians announced their application to 15 international instruments in April 2014, the ones they selected were all treaties, not organizations. The Palestinians understood that joining certain UN agencies could trigger U.S. defunding provisions that would engender more opposition than would their joining a treaty with little or no budget. China would likely find it harder to stop Taiwanese applications to join treaties that do not have associated organizations and budgets. The United States should encourage this approach.
- Recognize the value in incremental progress. The Palestinians knew that Israeli concern about their joining international organizations and treaties varied based on the organization or treaty in question. After learning hard lessons from the UNESCO debacle, the Palestinians began by applying to organizations where their membership would prompt less alarm in Jerusalem. This afforded them a level of success. The United States and Taiwan should consider a similar strategy. Admittedly, China wields significant influence at the United Nations; Beijing may be able to stymie efforts in this arena. Thus, the focus should not be on lesser organizations but rather on organizations where Taiwan’s value to the group would provide tangible benefits.
- Try to negotiate or extract concessions from China. The Palestinians engaged in their campaign not just to gain UN membership but also to extract concessions from Israel along the way. Israel, for example, released Palestinian prisoners in exchange for a pause in the Palestinian UN campaign. The United States, in coordination with Taiwan, should look for similar leverage vis-a-vis Beijing. In the likely event that China refuses to negotiate, Washington should highlight that intransigence to isolate Beijing and to cast it as the aggressor.
- Find outside NGO support. The Palestinians found support from a number of international NGOs. For example, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International endorsed the Palestinian ICC application. There are almost certainly a number of NGOs willing to support Taiwanese application to certain agencies and treaties. To offer just one example, organizations concerned about flight safety might support a Taiwanese application to join the International Civil Aviation Organization. There are certainly others to consider.
The Palestinians wrote the playbook for entities seeking to elevate their international status or even to gain full recognition. The United States can learn from their victories and defeats to help Taiwan. In so doing, Washington can pursue another avenue to advocate for a longtime ally and compete in a soft-power diplomatic contest that China often dominates.
fdd.org · by Jonathan Schanzer Senior Vice President for Research · February 17, 2022
15. Battle Force 2025- A Plan to Defend Taiwan Within the Decade
I am disappointed. This is another missed opportunity to describe integrated deterrence and include unconventional deterrence and the development of resistance capabilities among the population in Taiwan
February 17, 2022 | Memo
Battle Force 2025
A Plan to Defend Taiwan Within the Decade
Rep. Mike Gallagher
fdd.org · by Rep. Mike Gallagher · February 17, 2022
In early 2021, the former head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Phil Davidson, warned Congress that China could act against Taiwan within the next six years. The chief of naval operations, Admiral Michael Gilday, and the commandant of the Marine Corps, General David Berger, agreed. Taiwanese Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng added to the sense of urgency when he stated that China will be capable of a “full-scale invasion” by 2025. Professor Oriana Mastro, an expert on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), warned, “Beijing is reconsidering its peaceful approach and contemplating armed unification.” Key to China’s changed calculus is General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Xi Jinping, who views cross-strait unification as the capstone of his legacy as a paramount Party leader on par with Mao.
Despite these warnings, the Department of Defense (DoD) is not urgently preparing for a conflict over Taiwan. For a time, the Pentagon was starting to get it right, especially in its 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS), which called for transforming American deterrence from a strategy of punishment to one of denial. Whereas a punishment strategy centers on responding to aggression through cost imposition after the fact, denial seeks to block aggression in real time, rendering the attacker’s military strategy inoperable.
This approach is important because it counters what NDS author Elbridge A. Colby describes in a recent book as “Beijing’s best strategy” — an attempted fait accompli against Taiwan. As Colby noted, in a fait accompli, “the attacker uses brute force to seize part or all of its victim’s territory but tailors its use of force to convince the victim and the victim’s allies and partners that trying to reverse its gains would be some combination of unavailing, too costly and risky, and unnecessary.” With Taiwan, Beijing may calculate that if it seizes the island before the United States can effectively respond, any American president would begrudgingly accept the new reality rather than sacrifice hundreds of thousands of American lives to liberate Taiwan or use nuclear weapons.
Yet the Pentagon has not fully implemented the 2018 NDS and the balance of power continues to grow less favorable for America in the Indo-Pacific by the day. Consider the U.S. Navy, the priority service in DoD’s priority theater. While Pentagon leaders have argued for years about the perfect plan for building a 355 ship Navy, the Chinese went out and built one. Or consider the Trump administration’s final plan for naval modernization: Battle Force 2045. As the title indicates, the plan is based on the assumption that the Navy can afford to reach its optimal force structure in the mid-2040s, which does not make sense in light of Admiral Davidson’s warning.
Compounding the problem, President Biden’s first shipbuilding plan began to step away from the Navy’s long-held goal of 355 ships. Early indications suggest that next year’s budget will further shrink the size of the fleet. The Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan required the Navy to send the USS Ronald Reagan, its only forward-deployed carrier in Asia, from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East. Subsequent “over the horizon” counterterrorism operations may require more Navy assets in that region. At a broader level, the Pentagon is shifting away from the 2018 NDS’ call for deterrence by denial toward a new strategy of “integrated deterrence,” which posits that allies, unproven technology, and soft power will somehow substitute for hard power.
Barring urgent change, the United States will lose a war over Taiwan, either by sitting the conflict out or through defeat in combat. Yet it is not too late to change course. America can implement a strategy of deterrence by denial not by 2045 but by 2025. Rather than betting on Xi’s restraint, a massive influx of new money from Congress, or technology that will not be ready for more than a decade, creativity and a sense of urgency can build a battle force that can deter, and if necessary win, a war over Taiwan that may come within the decade.
Why Defend Taiwan?
Many Americans may question why it is worth risking war with a nuclear-armed adversary to defend a small and distant nation. Political leaders in both parties need a good answer to this question. Otherwise, they will not enjoy public support for the investments necessary. The answer has at least three parts.
First, if it successfully takes Taiwan, the CCP will take all Americans economically hostage. Taiwan is the lynchpin of global semiconductor production. Semiconductors serve as the foundation of the digital economy, powering consumer devices, vehicles, and high-end military systems. Over the past three decades, as American semiconductor companies have shed capital-intensive production facilities known as fabs. Taiwanese companies such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) have filled the void, particularly with leading-edge designs. These fabs are incredibly expensive and difficult to replicate. With more than 51 percent of the world’s annual 300 mm foundry capacity, Taiwan represents a single point of failure for advanced U.S. technology. Even worse, because China itself accounts for roughly 28 percent of 300 mm foundry capacity, if it were to conquer Taiwan, it would come to control nearly 80 percent of global semiconductor production. This would give the CCP extraordinary coercive power to withhold critical components to any company, military, or nation that dares criticize its ongoing genocide, its predatory economic practices, or its destruction of the environment.
Second, Las Vegas rules do not apply: Taiwan’s geography is such that what happens there will not stay there. Taiwan lies at the fulcrum of the first island chain, which runs southward from the Kuril Islands to the Japanese archipelago and through the Ryukyus, the Philippines, and Indonesia. This geography forms a critical defense perimeter that, in a time of war, could help prevent Chinese forces from breaking out and threatening Guam, Australia, and Hawaii. The first island chain is also home to two U.S. treaty allies. If Taiwan were to fall, America’s defense obligations to Japan and the Philippines would continue but their execution would become far more difficult. As one handbook for mid-career PLA officers argues, “As soon as Taiwan is reunified with mainland Chain, Japan’s maritime lines of communication will fall completely within the striking ranges of China’s fighters and bombers… Japan’s economic activity and war-making potential will basically be destroyed.” Failing to defend Taiwan puts America’s allies and even the American homeland in danger.
Finally, if America does not stand with its democratic friends when they are threatened by an authoritarian adversary, then America stands for nothing. Failing to defend an existing democracy from the world’s foremost authoritarian power would end America’s superpower status and suggest to other allies and partners that America will not be there when it is needed. That will result in a dramatic erosion in America’s alliances and security, emboldening both Beijing and Moscow. The worldwide gains in prosperity, freedom, and human rights enabled by U.S. leadership and strength would deteriorate. The CCP is pursuing a global strategy to replace the U.S.-led liberal order with one that favors CCP clients and authoritarian values. If the United States abandons Taiwan, a prosperous democracy of 24 million, the CCP would seize upon this failure to further undermine democracy worldwide while promoting the “inevitability” of its own model. Neighboring states would likely “Finlandize” toward China to avoid sharing Taiwan’s fate.
A Plan of Action
Taiwan’s defeat is not inevitable, but it is where America’s current complacency leads. The following pages provide a plan for avoiding that fate. It offers a way to deter and if necessary defeat an invasion of Taiwan in the near-term without disrupting America’s long-term defense investments, and without depending on technological or budgetary miracles. Armed with a sense of urgency, America can defend Taiwan and in the process save the free world. Here are 10 steps to build Battle Force 2025.
1. Garrison U.S. Pacific Territories and Possessions
The Pacific is home to Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, the U.S. territories of Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa, along with eight U.S. possessions: Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Atoll, Palmyra Atoll, and Wake Island. Many of these islands contributed to America’s defense during World War II, and they can do so again. The Pentagon should immediately review how best to use this dry ground, and should undertake the required environmental remediation and military construction to restore an American military presence in these islands.
If an operationally useful piece of land in the Pacific is under the American flag, the Pentagon should invest now in the infrastructure needed to host expeditionary airfields; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) assets; logistics nodes; and/or small teams of Marines equipped with ground-based missiles. As available missile technology improves, some of these islands may play a role in providing firepower that stretches to the first island chain. Even before then, these islands would make critical contributions targeting Chinese forces that venture east into the Central Pacific.
A war that starts in the territorial waters around Taiwan may not stay there. Restoring an American military presence across the Pacific is critical to creating a defense in depth, with numerous islands hosting American forces and missiles covering a wide radius. This enhanced posture would allow American forces to dominate east of the first island chain, keep critical routes open, and ensure the defense of American citizens in Guam and Hawaii.
2. Build Survivability into Existing Pacific Bases
For years, Indo-Pacific Command’s top request to Congress has been to fund a 360-degree, persistent air and missile defense capability on Guam, known as the Guam Defense System. As Admiral Davidson warned in his outgoing written testimony to Congress, Guam is “not only a location we must fight-from, but one we must also fight-for.” Defending Guam is imperative. It has a deep-water port, munition and fuel stores, and a critical airfield, and is home to 170,000 U.S. citizens. Hardening Guam against missile strikes should include expanded runway repair and air control capabilities, reinforced critical facilities like ammunition storage sites and command and control nodes, and security systems to prevent infiltration.
The Pentagon should also expand defenses on joint bases with allies. This includes enhancing the military infrastructure on Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian Ocean. While Diego Garcia has played a key role in supporting counterterrorism operations, its strategic location makes it uniquely suited for supporting allied operations in the Indo-Pacific and preventing PLA forces, particularly submarines, from harassing commercial shipping or disrupting sea lines of communication in the region. The Pentagon should work with the UK to jointly invest in the defense of Diego Garcia, including base hardening, runway repair, and integrated air and missile defense capabilities that would better support its use as an operational hub in the event of war. It should do the same with the Royal Australian Air Force at Base Darwin and Base Tindal, with the additional task of stockpiling munitions in Darwin to service American ships in the region.
The United States must also expand air defense capabilities in Japan. As retired naval officer Thomas Shugart has chronicled, the current missile defense architecture in Japan is largely designed to defend Japanese cities against modest numbers of North Korean missiles — not Japanese bases and ports that host U.S. forces from Chinese salvos. In light of recent statements by Japanese leaders that Japan would join the defense of Taiwan from Chinese aggression, America should prioritize expanded air defense capabilities in Japan. One way to start would be to perform combat system upgrades on the USS Shiloh, the USS Vella Gulf, and the USS Monterey — all ballistic missile defense-capable cruisers scheduled for retirement in fiscal year 2022. Given the costs of full modernization, a more economical option might be limited upgrades that allow the ships to perform their air defense mission while remaining in port.
3. Disperse Long-Range Missiles
The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty created an opportunity to counter the PLA Rocket Force’s growing anti-access, area-denial capabilities. Conventional ground-launched missiles allow American forces to target their Chinese counterparts more economically than expensive naval or air platforms. More missiles mean increased targeting capacity for the United States while complicating targeting for the PLA. One promising concept is what defense expert Thomas Karako has called “containerized launchers,” which camouflage missiles in cargo containers for easy dispersion, concealment, and decoy purposes. The United States and its allies should develop this capability to disperse both loaded and decoy launchers throughout the Indo-Pacific. Before or during a conflict, these containers can be moved to create operational unpredictability and exacerbate the associated challenges for PLA planners.
In addition to its Pacific territories and possessions, the United States should immediately negotiate with the Compacts of Free Association states (the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau) to host U.S. forces and missiles. In the face of attempted CCP coercion, President Surangel Whipps of Palau has called for the establishment of a U.S. base and expressed an openness to hosting ground-based missiles. Deployment of U.S. forces and missiles in and around Palau would deny the PLA Navy (PLAN) uncontested maneuver southeast of Taiwan. Coupled with deployments to remote Japanese islands east of Taiwan, including Iwo Jima (which hosts a major airfield), the United States and its allies can project power closer to Taiwan while boxing in the PLAN.
The Holy Grail for dispersed, hard-to-target ground-based projectiles in the Indo-Pacific is the Philippines. With more than 7,000 islands and dense jungles, the Philippines is a perfect location to conceal and disperse long-range missiles within range of contested waters around Taiwan. The administration of President Rodrigo Duterte seems unlikely to embrace the idea of American long-range missiles on Philippine territory, but the Pentagon was recently able to extend America’s Visiting Forces Agreement with Duterte. Expanding access agreements, including at Subic Bay, with Duterte’s successor should top the DoD and State Department Indo-Pacific priority list. The United States is treaty-bound to defend the sovereignty of the Philippines, and therefore can make a persuasive case that ground-based missiles give the Philippines the most defense at the least cost.
To augment U.S. missiles based in the Philippines, Washington could look to sell new U.S. ground-based missiles to the armed forces of the Philippines, accompanying the sale with a robust foreign military sale training package. The result could help mitigate any political sensitivities associated with hosting American missiles.
4. Make the Most of Existing Systems
If war erupts within the decade, America will fight with the military it has today, not the one defense planners and technologists plan to field in the future. Victory and defeat will hinge on fielded capabilities. There are two clear implications of this reality. First, the United States cannot afford to retire or cut critical conventional assets in favor of promised and unproven future assets. This year, the Navy proposed cutting 15 ships, including seven cruisers, while buying only eight. The cruisers alone contain more striking power (measured in aggregate number of missile tubes) than all the surface combatants of the U.K. Royal Navy combined. Many of the cruisers can still contribute to the fight as carrier strike group air defense assets. With reasonable investments, the most modernized Baseline 9 cruisers could also serve as stationary air defense assets in Japan or Guam. The United States can augment these ships with Mark 41 vertical launch system cells, which it can position independently ashore or on moored platforms to add air defense capacity.
Second, the Pentagon should expand existing programs of record that would be critical in a fight with China. In particular, this means expanding shipbuilding programs such as the new Constellation-class frigate, Flight 3 Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, and Virginia-class submarine with Virginia Payload Module. Even if ships bought today may not come online before a Taiwan war begins, expanded production will either replace battlefield losses after the war is over or, in the event of a protracted conflict, provide desperately needed reinforcements.
Near-term procurement should focus on existing platforms, or modifications to existing platforms, that contribute to long-range fires, sensor, or ISR capabilities. If a platform flies or floats, it should fight. A good example is the P-8 Poseidon anti-submarine aircraft, which the Navy plans to stop buying well short of its warfighting requirement of 138 planes. With modest adjustments, the P-8 could serve as an affordable airframe to deliver a wide array of anti-surface ordnance, including anti-ship missiles such as LRASM. While its relatively large radar cross-section makes it less survivable in high-threat areas, it can fight from afar with standoff missiles while patrolling the periphery of the theater. The Air Force’s “Rapid Dragon” program, focused on enabling C-17s and EC-130s to employ long-range cruise missiles, could also provide additional strike capacity.
To expand America’s constellation of sensing and ISR assets in the Indo-Pacific, DoD can place existing deployable, bottom-mounted passive sonar systems like the Transformational Reliable Acoustic Path System along critical passageways such as the Luzon Strait. The Navy should also purchase “bolt-on” Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System (SURTASS) kits to place on leased commercial vessels that the Navy could deploy to the South China Sea. Another way to add sensing capacity would be to buy anti-submarine warfare equipped MQ-9Bs, which could deploy and monitor sonobuoy fields while freeing up flight time for P-8s to focus on weapons deployment. The United States can also complicate PLA anti-submarine warfare efforts by overtly deploying unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV)-based submarine decoys, including the Navy’s Expendable Mobile Anti-Submarine Warfare Training Target drone or emitters installed in larger, longer endurance UUVs. Furthermore, UUVs can sweep and clear PLA sensors from contested waters to facilitate allied submarine operations.
To defeat Chinese aggression in the Pacific, the U.S. joint force must also possess cutting-edge airborne early warning and control capabilities. That means the Air Force should prioritize the rapid fielding of the E-7A Wedgetail to replace the rapidly aging and outdated E-3 Sentry. The United States could also use the Navy’s E-2D Advanced Hawkeye, a similarly high-end air battle management system, to mitigate any dangerous capability gaps in the Pacific during the transition.
5. Master Contested Logistics
In any Taiwan scenario, it will be difficult for DoD to keep forward forces maneuverable, supplied, and connected while under fire. Here, the Marine Corps is making the most progress. Under its Expeditionary Advanced Basing Operations (EABO) concept, newly formed Marine Littoral Regiments (MLRs) operating within the first and second island chains would support naval maneuver and disrupt PLAN operations with an agile, dispersed, and amphibious force armed with ground-based anti-ship missiles. Getting Marines to these locations and keeping them supplied is difficult, but the Marine Corps is currently developing a Light Amphibious Warship (LAW) designed to facilitate this concept of operations.
The current LAW procurement schedule, however, does not support the Corps’ mid-2020s MLR deployment schedule. Without the ground-based fires that MLRs can bring to the fight, it is hard to imagine how the United States can win a war over Taiwan. The Corps must find alternatives to facilitate EABO until the LAW is ready, including looking at the U.S. Army Transportation Command’s LCU-2000 Runnymede-class, the General Frank S. Besson-class logistic support vessels, maritime prepositioning force vessels, Coast Guard vessels, airborne insertion, and available commercial options.
The United States also needs to ensure that forward forces can see, target, and shoot while the PLA is attempting to block access to communications and satellite links. If forces in the first island chain cannot see, communicate with, or receive resupply from the rest of the Joint Force, they will be unable to fight. Cyber and electronic warfare hardening should be built into all units — especially those operating forward. The United States should train these units to operate without GPS support. America needs resilient networks and a simple plan for communicating, maneuvering, and targeting when networks go down, or when Chinese forces target spaced-based assets.
6. Build Munition Surge Capacity
During the 2011 NATO campaign in Libya, European militaries ran low on precision-guided munitions (PGMs) due to a combination of high rates of fire and inadequate PGM stockpiles. This should serve as a warning for American military planners. The Congressional Research Service raised exactly this point, noting that sufficient quantities of PGMs are necessary “for meeting increased demands for such weapons during an extended-duration, high-intensity conflict.”
The United States will need to plan ahead to avoid bottlenecks in munitions production. On any given missile system, roughly 30 percent of the material requires extended lead times beyond a year. Defense Production Act authorities may help DoD shorten this timeline. But a simple approach to surging the availability of munitions material is to place advanced orders on long-lead items and put them into storage. DoD could start by purchasing two extra sets of long-lead components for every set of missiles it orders. This would yield DoD two years’ worth of inventory of long-lead material within one year of deciding to access its surge stockpile. The Navy and Air Force should prioritize the ship-killing LRASM for this treatment.
Even with more materials, persistently small orders have made the munitions supply chain brittle. DoD should require industry to model maximum production rates to see where supply chain failures may occur. Similarly, DoD should use Defense Production Act funds to help industry build surge capacity. These additional assembly lines may sit dormant during peacetime but could make a difference in a protracted war. Congress should also draft emergency authorities that allow industry to bypass processes that could delay fielding munitions needed for a conflict over Taiwan.
7. Prepare Taiwan for a Protracted Siege
The only short war for Taiwan would be a quick Chinese victory. Consequently, American defense planners must prepare both Taiwanese and American forces for a long war. For close to two decades, American national security leaders have been advising their Taiwanese counterparts to focus on acquiring low-cost “asymmetric” capabilities rather than prestigious but costly platforms such as submarines, tanks, and fighter jets. Given Taiwan’s limited defense budget, it needs large numbers of affordable capabilities such as anti-ship cruise missiles and mines that maximize its natural defensive advantage in a cross-strait conflict.
Even with smarter purchases, though, Taiwan’s overall defense budget does not reflect the danger it faces. While a recent defense supplemental would add nearly $9 billion over the next five years, at only $15 billion in 2022, Taiwan’s defense budget is still inadequate. The United States can help by providing Taiwan with security assistance modeled on the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, offering up to $3 billion a year to bolster Taiwan’s acquisition of U.S.-made asymmetric capabilities. However, Washington should extend this offer only so long as Taiwan demonstrates that it is carrying its share of the defense burden by increasing its spending to at least 2.5 percent of its GDP on defense.
With more resources, there is plenty Taiwan can do. This starts with enhancing the capabilities of its military in general, and its dilapidated reserve forces in particular. It includes focusing on medium- and long-range anti-ship and anti-air missile platforms and munitions. Recent arms sales have trended in this direction, but Taiwan needs to buy more, and Washington should look for ways to expedite delivery of weapons already in the pipeline. Mine warfare, often overlooked, should be at the top of Taiwan’s defense strategy. Given signs that the PLAN could employ mines to blockade the island, Taiwan needs to be able to counter this prospective effort by employing an array of smart mines to slow and attrit the PLA amphibious invasion force.
Additionally, Taiwan must integrate its forces and systems with its allies. The United States can help by expanding National Guard partnerships with Taiwan and rotating battalion or brigade-sized units to the islands to train, integrate, and enhance defenses, as the National Guard does with other partner nations. Critically, this partnership needs to extend beyond the military domain, including through the development of a plan to ensure the people of Taiwan have the food and water they will need in the event of a protracted blockade.
8. Establish Unity of Purpose Across the Interagency
Despite the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia, the Obama administration in 2014 had no plan in place to respond financially to Russian aggression. Consequently, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the U.S. government was forced to improvise a sanctions regime against Russia over the course of 48 hours. Had the administration worked with Congress to prepare sanctions prior to the invasion, the United States not only could have activated them in real time, but also could have used them to deter aggression in the first place.
Learning from the Ukrainian example, the president should prompt the interagency to formulate an economic warfare strategy designed to cripple the Chinese economy in the event of war over Taiwan. This starts with bringing the Treasury Department, the Commerce Department, the U.S. Trade Representative, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation into DoD’s Taiwan wargames and contingency planning, so that these non-military entities understand the role they should be prepared to play. The Pentagon has been asking for greater contingency planning from non-military federal departments and agencies for almost a decade. No administration has taken this request seriously. This must change.
The United States must also coordinate with allies and partners, particularly in Europe, to ensure that they would join economic actions against the People’s Republic of China should it invade Taiwan. In short, effective sanctions require extensive legwork, and Washington should not wait for a crisis in the Taiwan Strait to begin that work.
The U.S. government has no shortage of economic tools it can leverage. Pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the president could impose secondary financial sanctions on Chinese state-owned financial institutions and the Chinese energy sector. In the event of war, the United States should force the SWIFT international payment system and the European Union’s Target2 euro-clearing system to disconnect Chinese banks. Congress too can mandate secondary sanctions during a Taiwan scenario. Since the U.S. dollar makes up 75-85 percent of all global foreign exchange transactions, these sanctions would inhibit PRC companies from purchasing components and raw materials from overseas markets. The sanctions would also prevent the companies from accepting payment for sales made overseas.
9. Harden Targets in the United States
The key PLA missiles, aircraft, air defenses, and amphibious forces (to include China’s growing fleet of civilian “RO-RO” ferries that Beijing modified to launch amphibious assault craft) that would be involved in a Taiwan scenario are based along the Chinese coast. Thus, an American defense of Taiwan would require strikes on Chinese territory. Consequently, America must prepare for Chinese retaliation against the homeland below the nuclear threshold. While much of the analysis of the recent Chinese hypersonic missile test has focused on potential nuclear use, a more likely scenario may be a conventional precision strike weapon against critical military and industrial targets in the continental United States.
For example, if the Chinese were able to destroy munitions plants (some of which are single points of failure for entire production lines) or other key defense industrial sites, the United States may find itself incapable of sustaining a protracted conventional war and forcing an unwinnable choice between nuclear escalation or surrender. In a long war of attrition, the United States must be prepared for a whole-of-society conflict, including the potential hostile use of biological weapons, and information warfare that targets domestic politics and command and control. The White House must ensure that emergency and security services have the capacity to respond to these unconventional forms of attack.
Perhaps the most vulnerable domestic target would be critical infrastructure. While the possibility of physical sabotage — such as targeting undersea cables that allow Indo-Pacific command to communicate — is a threat, the most likely form of attack is from the cyber domain. The CCP can employ cyber effects to paralyze critical sectors such as power and water in an attempt to weaken America’s will to fight. The United States should build on the Cyberspace Solarium Commission’s work to enhance domestic cyber resilience, including by codifying the concept of Systemically Important Critical Infrastructure so that entities responsible for the nation’s critical systems both benefit from federal assistance and shoulder additional security and information-sharing requirements.
The United States should also build on steps Congress took to codify sector risk management agencies to identify, assess, and manage risk across critical infrastructure sectors by codifying a national risk management cycle. Finally, the United States should take a page out of Cold War Continuity of Government planning by implementing a Continuity of the Economy plan to restore critical functions across American society in the event of a catastrophic disruption.
10. End Strategic Ambiguity
When asked in October 2021 if America would defend Taiwan, President Biden appeared to resolve decades of “strategic ambiguity” by replying bluntly, “Yes, we have a commitment.” Administration officials subsequently walked back this statement, but the president’s comments reflect the fact that strategic ambiguity no longer serves American interests. In the past, American policy makers could delude themselves that strategic ambiguity played a role in dissuading Taiwan from taking unilateral action to disrupt to the status quo. Today, there is only one side that is poised to take unilateral action in the Taiwan Strait, and that is China.
Strategic silence only creates room for uncertainty regarding the strength of U.S. commitments. While an unambiguous American commitment to defend Taiwan may prove insufficient to deter a PLA invasion, it would at least minimize the possibility of war through miscalculation. Congress can take the lead on this front by passing the Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act not only to end strategic ambiguity but also to issue a standing Authorization for the Use of Force to defend Taiwan in the event of an invasion.
An explicit American defense commitment to Taiwan opens the door to greater military cooperation. The Pentagon should build on recent reported efforts by Special Operations Forces and Marines to train Taiwanese forces. U.S. restrictions on training Taiwanese forces are entirely self-imposed and are an outdated relic of past decades in which China’s military was less capable and aggressive. The Pentagon should regularly send senior military leaders to Taiwan to assess relevant wartime terrain with their own eyes.
Most importantly, the Pentagon should build the operational planning structures it will need ahead of time. This includes re-establishing Joint Task Force 519 under Indo-Pacific Command to run contingency planning in the region. At the same time, the Pentagon should also re-establish the U.S.-Taiwan Defense Command, which integrated wartime planning from the mid-1950s through U.S. recognition of the People’s Republic of China in 1979. A re-established JTF 519 and joint defense command, with invitations to allies like Japan and Australia to join both, would greatly expand military interoperability and coordination while allowing coalition forces to fight far more effectively side by side.
Conclusion
While the United States has suffered ignominious defeats in Vietnam and now Afghanistan, the American military has historically won when the stakes have been highest. But past performance in great power conflict is a poor predictor of future success. If the United States can lose small wars, it can lose big wars, too. Unless U.S. policy changes, America is on track to lose World War III, either through a failure to compete or through defeat on the battlefield. The United States may hope the day never comes, but the more it fails to prepare, the more it will be prepared to fail.
America has the capacity to choose, resource, and implement a strategy of deterrence by denial vis-à-vis a PLA fait accompli against Taiwan. America can do it by building Battle Force 2025, which draws upon its inherent strengths. It has the territory and the allies to support a dispersed posture. It has the weapons and warriors to deny the adversary’s attempted conquest. It has the economic power to impose costs and counter CCP coercion. What America needs now is a sense of urgency, prioritization, and purpose.
fdd.org · by Rep. Mike Gallagher · February 17, 2022
16. Investors Should Demand Transparency From ESG Research Firms
Conclusion:
Corporate transparency is supposed to be a core value of the ESG movement, yet investors are making decisions today based on non-transparent research from firms such as Morningstar. The ongoing Illinois investigation into Morningstar’s practices may provide an opportunity for the ESG community to re-evaluate the sources and methods used to rate companies across key indicators, including human rights. Investors will ultimately be on the hook for the reputational, legal, and financial harm caused by using flawed or biased ESG ratings. Chief investment officers should implement appropriate safeguards accordingly.
February 16, 2022 | Insight
Investors Should Demand Transparency From ESG Research Firms
Richard Goldberg
David May
fdd.org · by Richard Goldberg Senior Advisor · February 16, 2022
End-of-year data show that in 2021, investment surged in stocks rated positively by financial research firms on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) criteria, which include an ever-growing list of issues ranging from corporate ethics and climate change to data privacy and human rights. However, ESG ratings are only as reliable as the sources of their data, which are not always clear, due to ESG firms’ opacity. If firms use information from the United Nations or biased non-governmental organizations to inform ESG ratings, the research they provide to investors may downplay abuses by autocracies such as China while magnifying false accusations levied against democracies such as Israel. If so, ESG firms would not only be undermining investors’ ESG objectives, but may also be violating U.S. state laws that prohibit boycotts of Israel, for which these firms could face federal penalties in the future.
The Power and Non-Transparency of ESG-Rated Funds
According to data from the Chicago-based finance firm Morningstar, ESG-rated funds received a record inflow of $508 billion in the first three quarters of last year. The New York-based finance company MSCI’s World ESG Leaders Index, which features companies with the best ESG ratings in their sector, has solidly outperformed the MSCI World Index, a benchmark representing a broad cross-section of global markets. According to a 2021 HSBC study, nearly 60 percent of investment firms have policies on responsible investing.
Investors relying on ESG research from firms such as Morningstar and MSCI operate under the assumption that the ESG data they receive are based on reliable, objective, and apolitical sources. That assumption could be mistaken — with possible reputational, legal, and financial consequences.
ESG research firms vary in the extent to which they provide information about their sources and methods. MSCI, for example, publishes an explanation of its methodology, but the list of its sources, which include more than 100 specialized databases and more than 3,000 news sources, is not available for analysis. Morningstar provides even less transparency into its ESG risk calculations. However, independent organizations have acquired research materials produced for clients by a Morningstar subsidiary. These materials have prompted intense scrutiny of the company’s ESG research practices — scrutiny that other companies deserve as well in the name of transparency.
Morningstar rates companies for “unmanaged ESG risk” on a scale from “negligible” to “severe,” basing its assessments on “a firm’s involvement in negative incidents.” Morningstar does not disclose if or how it assesses whether such incidents are factual or potentially distorted by corrupt or politically biased actors. This lack of clarity in an industry built on demanding corporate transparency should alarm investors.
Morningstar did announce last year that its “analysts leverage the United Nations’ Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights as our assessment framework,” but the company provided no details on what that means in practice. UN data, particularly on human rights, come with well-documented flaws and biases that would call into question the integrity of Morningstar’s ESG research.
UN Data on China
Based on Morningstar’s references to the United Nations, and absent greater transparency in its methodology, the 47-member UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) may be the source driving the human rights component of the company’s ESG ratings. Despite its name, the council is a club for the world’s most abusive regimes, including China, Cuba, Pakistan, Russia, and Venezuela. In its most recent annual report assessing political rights and civil liberties in countries around the world, Freedom House ranked more than two-thirds of the UNHRC’s current members as “not free” or “partly free.”
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has exerted a particularly malign influence on the council. Chinese economic and political influence spurred the UNHRC to refrain from condemning the CCP’s crackdown on pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong, which began in June 2019. In fact, 13 of the council’s members expressed support for China’s repressive moves.
According to UN whistleblower Emma Reilly, who worked for the UNHRC for nine years, the council has repeatedly provided China with the names of Chinese dissidents who submitted human rights complaints. In 2018, China’s country report for its UNHRC review questioned the universality of human rights, effectively challenging the United Nations’ own Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Nevertheless, more than half of the council’s recommendations for China advised Beijing to “continue” improving its human rights record. Moreover, China’s threats of economic retaliation against foreign governments have served as an effective deterrent against criticism of its abhorrent abuses against Uighurs, Tibetans, and other populations under CCP dominion.
Thus, if research firms are relying on UN data — such as blacklists of companies or reports published by the UN high commissioner for human rights — to inform ESG human rights ratings, they may be relying on incomplete, biased, or manipulated information. Some of China’s biggest companies, such as Alibaba and Tencent, are included in MSCI’s China ESG Leaders Index and the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, the latter of which captures large- and mid-cap stocks in 25 countries. Yet WeChat, owned by Tencent, censors and surveils its users on behalf of the Chinese state. Alongside the Chinese state-owned enterprise Hikvision, Alibaba has helped construct China’s surveillance state, including by producing facial recognition software that specifically targets Uighurs. In a June 2021 interview, Alibaba co-founder and Executive Vice Chairman Joe Tsai openly endorsed China’s crackdown in Hong Kong, including its so-called national security law, which criminalized dissent and stripped Hong Kongers of basic political and press freedoms. Tsai said, “Overall, since they instituted the national security law, everything is now stabilized.”
Also included in the MSCI China ESG Leaders Index: state-owned China Construction Bank, which contributes to China’s “debt diplomacy” and has exploited developing nations under the umbrella of the Belt and Road Initiative. The debt incurred through loans granted by the bank has helped China gain leverage over poorer countries.
UN Data on Israel
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield have both criticized the UNHRC for its bias against Israel. The council maintains an agenda item that requires scrutiny of Israel’s human rights record at every meeting — holding the Jewish state (a democracy rated “free” by Freedom House) to a different standard than every other country in the world. The council has passed nearly as many resolutions condemning Israel as the rest of the world combined. The UNHRC also maintains a special rapporteur with an open-ended mandate solely to investigate Israel.
In March 2016, the UNHRC called on the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to compile a database of companies operating in “Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan.” The high commissioner released the database in February 2020, and it now serves as a resource for anti-Israel boycott activists. Yet the database fails to provide evidence that listed companies have done anything illegal. Nevertheless, the UNHRC’s Israel-focused special rapporteur has advocated divestment from companies on the blacklist.
Anti-Israel bias also pervades the rest of the UN system. The United Nations maintains numerous bodies devoted exclusively to presenting the Palestinian narrative and delegitimizing Israel. These include the Division for Palestinian Rights and the related Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP). Conferences held under the auspices of the CEIRPP openly advocate for the boycott of Israel.
The United Nations also maintains a Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices, whose mandate is slanted against Israel. The committee’s reports include unsubstantiated allegations, such as claims that Israel requisitions Palestinian homes by planting ancient artifacts in them to claim Jewish heritage, or that Israeli excavations undermine the structural foundations of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
UN casualty figures in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict also demonstrate the untrustworthiness of UN data. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ branch in the “Occupied Palestinian Territories” publishes casualty figures that rely on the Gaza Ministry of Health, which is run by the Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas.
State and Federal Legal Implications of Boycotting Israel
ESG research firms and investors that rely on biased or politicized information to formulate quantitative ratings that drive disinvestment from Israel do so at considerable risk. A 2015 Illinois law preventing state investment in companies boycotting Israel — the model for legislation in more than 30 other states — defines boycotting Israel as “engaging in actions that are politically motivated and are intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on, or otherwise limit commercial relations with the State of Israel or companies based in the State of Israel or in territories controlled by the State of Israel.”
If they use biased sources to discourage investment in companies targeted by the global Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, firms may be engaged in a boycott of the Jewish state as defined by the Illinois statute. Furthermore, if an ESG research firm proactively contacts other companies to inform them that they will receive a negative ESG rating from the firm unless they terminate Israel-connected business (as Morningstar’s Engagement Services allegedly does), such activities might also constitute a violation of the law as an act of penalization or infliction of economic harm. Illinois reportedly opened an investigation into Morningstar last year based on these concerns.
In addition to being at risk of legal action in Illinois and more than 30 other states with similar anti-boycott legislation, Morningstar may one day need to reconcile its ESG ranking system with federal law. Congress has considered legislation in recent years to amend part of a 1979 federal anti-boycott law — originally enacted to threaten penalties against U.S. companies that complied with the Arab League boycott of Israel — to apply to boycotts sponsored by international governmental organizations. The legislation’s intent is to apply existing fines and export restrictions to any U.S. company that complies with a UN-sponsored boycott of Israel. Should this legislation become law, Morningstar’s potential reliance upon the UN blacklist of Israeli firms as a basis for its ratings could become an even greater liability.
These state and federal legal risks, of course, could also extend to customers who use Morningstar data to guide investment and divestment decisions. The risk would be most acute if states determine that customers directed Morningstar’s Engagement Services to pressure Israel-connected firms or knowingly used Morningstar data to inflict economic harm on Israel.
A Wake-Up Call for the ESG Community
Corporate transparency is supposed to be a core value of the ESG movement, yet investors are making decisions today based on non-transparent research from firms such as Morningstar. The ongoing Illinois investigation into Morningstar’s practices may provide an opportunity for the ESG community to re-evaluate the sources and methods used to rate companies across key indicators, including human rights. Investors will ultimately be on the hook for the reputational, legal, and financial harm caused by using flawed or biased ESG ratings. Chief investment officers should implement appropriate safeguards accordingly.
fdd.org · by Richard Goldberg Senior Advisor · February 16, 2022
17. FDD | The Houthi crisis is creating an Emirati-Israeli opportunity
Excerpts:
Thanks to the Houthi attacks, the UAE seems to be taking its partnership with Israel to a new level, where the two governments actively cooperate in countering pro-Iran militias throughout the region.
Every crisis presents an opportunity. Both the UAE and Israel have found themselves the targets of Iranian-sponsored drone and rocket attacks. Israel’s expressions of solidarity and offers of aid in the wake of Houthi attacks on the UAE will further cement the budding Israeli-Emirati alliance. The bonds enhanced during this crisis may lead to mutual recognition in the UAE and Israel that the two countries do not just face shared threats but may have a shared destiny.
FDD | The Houthi crisis is creating an Emirati-Israeli opportunity
Hussain Abdul-Hussain
Research Fellow
David May
Senior Research Analyst
fdd.org · by Hussain Abdul-Hussain Research Fellow · February 16, 2022
Houthi attacks on the United Arab Emirates proved what many have known for a long time, that Arab solidarity is an imaginary concept. In Beirut, Hezbollah cheered on the strikes. In Gaza, Hamas politburo member Mahmoud al-Zahar said the attacks were as blessed as “liberating Palestine from the Israeli occupation.” And in Baghdad, the pro-Iran group Alwiyat al-Waad al-Haq gave the Houthis a hand by launching explosive drones at Abu Dhabi.
When it came to the attacks on the UAE, the strongest regional displays of support came from Israel. Israeli gestures of solidarity helped solidify Emirati-Israeli ties, which have been growing since the declaration of peace between them in the Abraham Accords of 2020.
The Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen launched a drone attack on an Emirati port on January 17 that killed three people and blew up several fuel tankers. One week later, Emirati and US forces intercepted two Houthi missiles launched at the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi. The Houthis attacked the UAE again on January 31.
Following the initial attack this past month, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett sent a letter to Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed, offering “heartfelt condolences.” Bennett further stated, “Israel is committed to working closely with you in the ongoing battle against extremist forces in the region, and we will continue to partner with you to defeat our common enemies.” Bennett also spoke with the Crown Prince and tweeted, “Israel stands with the UAE. I stand with Mohammed bin Zayed. The world should stand against terror.”
Alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid, President Isaac Herzog, Israeli Ambassador to the UAE Amir Hayek, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), and several members of Knesset echoed Bennett’s condemnations of the Houthi attacks and condolences for the Emiratis. Lapid also called for Israel to designate the Houthis as a terrorist organization, while Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Israel “will be happy to cooperate” with the UAE to bolster its defenses. Meanwhile, Israeli-Druze MFA digital diplomacy officer Lorena Khateeb shared her support in English and Arabic.
Beyond government declarations, individual Israelis deplored the Houthi attacks and affirmed their support for the UAE.
Despite security warnings, Herzog traveled to the UAE in late January, becoming the first Israeli president to visit the country. Israeli defense officials reportedly visited the UAE to discuss defense and intelligence assistance in the wake of the Houthi attacks. And Israel’s Channel 13 reported that Israel is planning to advance the sale of missile defense systems, possibly including Israel’s famed Iron Dome, to the UAE. For his part, Prime Minister Bennett “ordered the Israeli security establishment to provide their counterparts in the UAE with any assistance” to prevent future attacks.
Further solidifying Israeli-Emirati ties, Israeli police commissioner Kobi Shabtai traveled to the Emirates on February 6 to promote security cooperation between the two countries. Around the same time, Israel hosted a delegation from the UAE’s Federal National Council. Ram Ben Barak, head of the Knesset’s foreign and defense committee, met with the visiting delegation and called them “neighbors and brothers.” Beyond the defense portfolio, the UAE and Israel signed cooperation agreements in healthcare and tourism on February 8.
The UAE reciprocated Israel’s torrent of well-wishing. After meeting Herzog late last month, Mohamed bin Zayed said they discussed their “common view of the threats to regional stability and peace, particularly those posed by militias and terrorist forces,” and the UAE and Israel’s “shared understanding of the importance of taking a firm stance against them.”
Thanks to the Houthi attacks, the UAE seems to be taking its partnership with Israel to a new level, where the two governments actively cooperate in countering pro-Iran militias throughout the region.
Every crisis presents an opportunity. Both the UAE and Israel have found themselves the targets of Iranian-sponsored drone and rocket attacks. Israel’s expressions of solidarity and offers of aid in the wake of Houthi attacks on the UAE will further cement the budding Israeli-Emirati alliance. The bonds enhanced during this crisis may lead to mutual recognition in the UAE and Israel that the two countries do not just face shared threats but may have a shared destiny.
Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where David May is a senior research analyst. Follow them on Twitter @hahussain and @DavidSamuelMay. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Hussain Abdul-Hussain Research Fellow · February 16, 2022
18. Who Cares About Human Rights?
Who Cares About Human Rights?
WE ARE ALL REALISTS NOW
The NBA has Enes Kanter Freedom where it wants him—out of sight, out of mind, like the Uyghurs themselves.
By George Packer
“Nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs,” Chamath Palihapitiya, a billionaire part owner of the Golden State Warriors, said last month on a podcast. “I’m telling you a very hard, ugly truth, okay. Of all the things I care about, yes, it is below my line.” Supply chains are above this venture capitalist’s line, but any concern for human rights abroad is a “luxury belief.” In a statement, the Warriors tried to disown Palihapitiya, who then tried to disown himself, with the transparently false self-criticism that public figures issue when their views get them in trouble. “In re-listening to this week’s podcast, I recognize that I come across as lacking empathy,” he said, betraying that his main concern was for his own image. “To be clear, my belief is that human rights matter, whether in China, the United States, or elsewhere. Full stop.”
Of course, Palihapitiya was telling the truth the first time. He doesn’t care about the Uyghurs. Nor does Golden State, which didn’t mention them in the team’s statement. Nor does the NBA, which avoids and even suppresses criticism of China because of the billions of dollars that the league makes from Chinese contracts. Nor do most NBA players, whose silence is bought by lucrative endorsement deals with companies doing business in China, including ones whose sportswear is made with cotton produced by Uyghur slave labor. Tucker Carlson likes to attack NBA stars such as LeBron James for speaking out about racial injustice in America while avoiding any mention of mass rape and torture in Xinjiang province. But Carlson doesn’t care about human rights, either, or he would stop mouthing Russian propaganda while the country’s dictator, Vladimir Putin, prepares to invade its democratic neighbor, Ukraine.
Ted Cruz and Mike Pompeo hammer China for its mistreatment of Uyghurs, but they also supported Trump-administration policies that kept desperate Muslim refugees out of this country; they champion democracy in Hong Kong, but they degrade it in the U.S. by challenging the results of the 2020 election. President Joe Biden and his aides often talk about putting human rights at the center of American foreign policy, but when this approach encountered its first real test last summer in Afghanistan, it failed. Other than banning the import of Chinese products made with forced Uyghur labor, and refusing to send an official delegation to the Beijing Olympics, the administration has done little to punish China for its brutal suppression of human rights in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong. The whole world has sent its athletes to celebrate a festival of youth and peace in the global capital of totalitarianism. And although these games must be the grimmest since 1972, if not 1936—ubiquitous surveillance, depopulated arenas, muzzled athletes, a hostage-video interview with a disappeared Chinese tennis player, that industrial backdrop of concrete cooling towers behind the freestyle-ski events—I’m still watching.
The field of human rights is littered with hypocrisy. No individual or organization possesses a scale of judgment that carefully matches the condemnation to the crime and then applies it consistently across a globe of oppression; personal and political biases always skew the calculation. Governments never separate human rights from national interests and domestic politics. Jimmy Carter, who first made human rights an explicit part of American foreign policy, criticized the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos but had very little to say about the genocidal Khmer Rouge. Ronald Reagan preached freedom to people behind the Iron Curtain but cozied up to brutal military leaders in this hemisphere. Even if double standards weren’t routine, there’s the question of how much good external pressure ever does. For every success (South African apartheid fell in part because of foreign sanctions and international isolation), there have been many more disappointments (China after Tiananmen Square). Nonetheless, the idea that oppression abroad matters to Americans was a prominent feature of U.S. foreign policy through the last years of the Cold War and during the post–Cold War period, used or misused by every president from Carter and Reagan to Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
But in the past decade or so, human rights have pretty much disappeared from our politics. Throughout the 9/11 wars, the grotesque contradiction between the rhetoric of freedom and the reality of tortured prisoners, civilian casualties, and grinding conflict corrupted the cause beyond remedy. After Iraq and Afghanistan, no president can send young men and women to war by invoking human rights. When Barack Obama refrained from punishing Bashar al-Assad of Syria for murdering thousands of innocent people with poison gas, there was no outcry from the general public. Privately, Obama told his aide Ben Rhodes that not even the 1994 Rwandan genocide merited a strong U.S. response. Without announcing a new era of foreign-policy “realism,” Obama brought it into being. Donald Trump made a point of showing utter indifference to the suffering of Syrians, Afghans, Chinese, or anyone else, and his callousness never cost him a thing.
With the eclipse of U.S. prestige and power, the decay of liberal democracy, and the rising appeal of authoritarian regimes, there’s no longer any mechanism—neither military force nor threat of sanctions and isolation, nor global pressure campaigns by civil-society groups—to make the world’s dictators hesitate before they throw people into concentration camps. What’s striking is how the demise of these mechanisms has soured Americans on the idea of human rights itself. Because we no longer think we can change the behavior of the world’s oppressors—because the cost of trying will be too high—we no longer think much about human rights at all. When they come up as a policy issue, we look for ways to justify doing nothing. We are all realists now.
It’s almost a given today that the welfare of unknown peoples like the Uyghurs in far-off places like Xinjiang province is none of our business. As a result, the mind stops seeking and absorbing news of them, and so, in a sense, they cease to exist. Their nonexistence stems from and reinforces the profound self-absorption into which Americans have sunk in the past decade. The recent Joe Rogan–Neil Young–Spotify outrage ginned up far more passion and interest than the fact that Russia is poised to extinguish the independent state of Ukraine. When Chamath Palihapitiya said that Americans should “take care of our own backyard” before pointing fingers at other countries, he was voicing a widespread belief.
LeBron James expressed it in 2019, when he rebuked the Houston Rockets’ general manager, Daryl Morey, for tweeting in support of prodemocracy demonstrators in Hong Kong. James argued that people in the NBA should keep quiet about China, that he and others didn’t know enough about Hong Kong to have an opinion on the Chinese government’s assault on the demonstrators. He said he’d speak out about “something that hits home for me,” about places and causes he knows; that is, American ones. If James had wanted to learn how the Chinese government snuffed out the remaining flickers of democracy in Hong Kong, he could have. But no one suffers reputational damage for saying, in effect, that oppressed people in China matter less than those in this country. Saying so can even be a kind of virtue signaling—the human-rights version of the old anti-foreign-aid line “Charity begins at home.”
The idea that solidarity with the oppressed here should naturally extend to the oppressed everywhere—an internationalist idea that long ago defined the left—has died, along with the global system in which the U.S. played an intermittent, usually two-faced, often incompetent, occasionally effective role as the self-proclaimed upholder of human rights as a universal value.
But instincts have a way of outlasting ideas. Within most Americans lies a buried feeling that they should care about the torment of the Uyghurs. If by some accident an account of torture in a Chinese reeducation camp forces itself on our attention, we’re troubled, as if we should be doing something about it; and if a public figure says that nobody cares, we denounce him—out of shame, because his indifference recalls our own. There’s no institutional mechanism for addressing human rights, no public discussion, no living idea—just an atavistic feeling that can sometimes be awakened.
Into this empty space Enes Kanter Freedom comes barging with his big, aggressive strides. Born Enes Kanter and raised in Turkey, he was the NBA’s third draft choice in 2011 and has spent a decade bouncing around the league as a journeyman center. He told me the story of his awakening to human rights as a series of revelations. After he arrived in the U.S. in 2009 as a high-school basketball recruit, he heard a teammate criticize Obama. “Dude, what are you doing?” Kanter rebuked him. “They might put you in jail.” The teammate laughed: “This is America.” The first revelation was freedom of speech, and Kanter used it to criticize the repressive government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The regime pursued Kanter’s family, took their passports, imprisoned his father, and forced his parents to renounce their son; he hasn’t spoken to them in years. The Turkish government also went after Kanter himself—stripped his citizenship, put out an Interpol warrant for his arrest, and just missed snatching him in Indonesia. Kanter became more and more outspoken against the Erdoğan regime. As long as Turkey was his target, the NBA left him alone.
Last summer came the second revelation. Kanter recently told me that he was shooting hoops with Brooklyn kids and posing for pictures at one of the basketball camps he hosts around the country when a parent accosted him: “How can you call yourself a human-rights activist when your Muslim brothers and sisters are getting tortured and raped in Chinese concentration camps?” Kanter knew little about China’s mass oppression of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang province. He had focused his activism on the country he knew best. “I promise I’m going to get back to you,” he told the parent.
Kanter canceled the rest of the day’s events. He went back to his hotel, closed the curtains, lay down on his bed, took out his phone, and Googled Uyghurs. He stayed up most of the night reading. He woke up puffy-eyed and ashamed.
“Find me a concentration-camp survivor,” Kanter said to his manager. A Uyghur woman in Washington told him her story of gang rape and torture. She wept for half an hour. When Kanter asked what he could do to help her, she told him, “I am safe. There are millions of people suffering in those camps. Forget about me. Put your awareness on them.”
On October 20, just before the season opener of Kanter’s Boston Celtics against the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden, he released a video on social media. He stood against a blank white wall wearing a black T-shirt with an image of the Dalai Lama in prayer. (He wanted to speak about Tibet before Xinjiang so that people wouldn’t think he was just supporting fellow Muslims.) “Brutal dictator of China, Xi Jinping, I have a message for you and your henchmen,” he said, jabbing a finger at the camera. “Free Tibet. Free Tibet. Free Tibet.”
This is Kanter’s style of activism—it’s personal. He gets in a dictator’s face, nose to nose, chest to chest, as if Xi Jinping is a bully throwing cheap shots and committing flagrant fouls and everyone else is afraid to call him out. “Someone had to do it,” Kanter told me.
Twenty minutes before the Knicks game, in the visitors’ locker room, Kanter put on his wildly colorful new shoes, designed by a dissident Chinese artist, with the yellow, blue, and red of the Tibetan flag; a roaring lion; a man in flames; and the words FREE TIBET. His teammates were intrigued and confused—“What kind of shoes are those?”—but he had no time to explain. After warm-ups, Kanter was sitting on the bench when, he told me, two league officials—friends of his—approached. “Listen, man, your shoes have been getting lots of attention,” one of them said. “You have to take them off.”
Amid COVID and the social-justice protests of 2020, the league had encouraged self-expression, and NBA players had written various messages on their shoes in Sharpie: Black Lives Matter, Say Their Names, Wash Your Hands. Kanter, who spoke at a Black Lives Matter rally in Boston, was thrilled with the players’ new social awareness. But now two officials were pleading with him to change his shoes. Kanter was preparing for his U.S. citizenship test, and he reminded them of his First Amendment rights. “I don’t care if I’m fined,” he said.
“Not fined,” one of them said. “Banned.”
Kanter refused. “Go tell your boss I’m not taking my shoes off.” Their boss was the NBA’s commissioner, Adam Silver.
Kanter sat on the bench the entire first half. In the locker room at halftime, he checked his phone: It was swarming with messages. One of them, from his manager, informed him that Chinese media had stopped streaming the game. The Chinese ban on the Celtics would continue all year.
A senior official with the National Basketball Players Association, Kanter’s own union, kept calling and asking him not to wear anti-China shoes. “I talked about Turkey 10 years, not one phone call,” Kanter told me. “I talked about China one day, I’m getting phone calls every hour.” He told the union rep not to call again. When Kanter reached Adam Silver, they spoke for half an hour. Silver told him that he was free to say whatever he wanted with his shoes; nonetheless, at the end of the conversation, according to Kanter, Silver remarked, “Everyone knows it’s business.” Kanter took this to mean: You’re free to talk about China, but you, your team, and the NBA might face consequences.
On October 22, for the Celtics home opener against Toronto, Kanter wore red, black, and blue Free Uyghur shoes that also said, Stop Genocide Torture Rape Slave Labor. He turned the 2021–22 season into a running face-off with the world’s leading dictators and their enablers. One pair of shoes targeted Venezuela’s dictatorship; another featured a lineup of tyrants’ faces, including Kim Jong Un, Bashar al-Assad, and Mohammed bin Salman. Kanter even searched for an image to protest the Taliban’s abuse of women. He didn’t hesitate to use tactics that were provocative to the point of rudeness. Against the Lakers, he wore shoes that mocked LeBron James for kneeling to the gold of Xi Jinping (James, questioned by reporters, refused to be drawn). When the Celtics played the Charlotte Hornets, owned by Michael Jordan, Kanter wore red-spattered Nike Air Jordan 11s that declared, Made with Slave Labor. (Nike’s factories in China have been accused of using Uyghur forced labor.) On November 29, Kanter became an American citizen. He took the oath with a new name: Enes Kanter Freedom.
Freedom’s playing time dwindled to the lowest of his career; in some games, he didn’t even see action during “garbage time,” the last minutes of a blowout. He accused the Celtics of benching him for his anti-China activism; the Celtics pointed to his difficulties defending the pick-and-roll. Friends around the league advised him to enjoy the season because it was going to be his last. Freedom claims that he hasn’t been shunned by teammates, that he gets quiet support. Once, he told me, as he was getting ready to shoot a free throw, a Lakers player murmured: “Listen, man, what you’re doing is so brave, keep speaking up—but I can’t talk about it. These teams got us.” But some players asked him to unfollow them on social media, and not one has spoken out on his behalf. “Maybe they don’t know enough about it,” he told me. “But I feel like the fear of losing money, the fear of losing business, the fear of losing endorsement deals …” He didn’t complete the obvious thought. “And also, sometimes they do not care enough about what’s going on outside America.”
This indifference, and not the pervasive influence of Chinese contracts and sneaker endorsements, is the most interesting thing about the league’s unfriendly response to Freedom’s campaign for global human rights. Of course young players want to win lucrative deals while they can, but most people in the league don’t even experience a conflict between money and principle. The latter has disappeared. It’s as if Freedom is putting all that money in jeopardy for a self-indulgent whim—as if he’s taken a tactless interest in matters that don’t concern him.
His shoes match his views—both are unsubtle and unsparing. And the shoes can be more eloquent than the man. Freedom told me that he believes “pure human rights” have nothing to do with politics. “It should be separated,” he said. “I don’t even like politics.” This is naive: There’s a short, straight line connecting the behavior of American companies in China to U.S. foreign-policy decisions and how they’re exploited in domestic politics. Freedom is well within his rights to charge LeBron James with hypocrisy, but his illusion that human rights can be kept separate from politics has made him a mark for right-wing commentators such as Tucker Carlson, who baited him into telling his fellow NBA players, mostly Black Americans, to “stop criticizing the greatest nation in the world.”
Freedom plans to speak to the Conservative Political Action Committee later this month. He might intend to go as an advocate for “pure human rights,” but at CPAC he’ll identify himself with a political camp whose interest in human rights is utterly opportunistic. He’s entangled himself with Turkish politics as well, as a close associate of the exiled religious leader Fethullah Gülen, who has an extensive network of supporters inside Turkey. (Freedom was at Gülen’s heavily guarded compound in rural Pennsylvania on the night of the 2016 failed coup attempt in Turkey, which Erdoğan blamed on Gülen, and for which Gülen denied responsibility.)
A symbol as rough and blunt and improvised as a painted pair of sneakers, worn by an athlete in the brief interlude of his fame, is just what we should expect in a time when nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs. With no high-level debate to enter in this country, no established institution to join, nothing in which to fit his lonely campaign, Freedom has to figure it out by himself, one game at a time.
We spoke last week when he was in Brooklyn to play the Nets. The NBA’s trade deadline was just a few days off, and I asked if he thought the Celtics would try to unload him. “I don’t think they will,” Freedom said. “They will get a lot of backlash; they will be in a very uncomfortable situation. They’re hoping Let’s finish the year like this and see what happens.”
Freedom was having a busy week. During NBC’s prime-time Olympic broadcast (which he refused to watch), he appeared in an ad for free speech by FIRE—the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. A member of the Norwegian parliament put his name up for the Nobel Peace Prize. Last Thursday, 30 Nobel laureates released a letter calling on the Celtics to stand with Freedom “on the right side of history” and not “to drop him as a player.”
Thursday was the trade deadline. In the late afternoon, the Celtics sent Freedom to the Houston Rockets—the team that had forced its general manager to retract his tweet in support of Hong Kong’s prodemocracy protesters in 2019. Within minutes the Rockets waived Freedom, and no other team picked him up. Now the NBA has him where it wants him—out of sight, out of mind, like the Uyghurs themselves. If Freedom, who’s already sacrificed his family and his career, is in it for the long haul, he’ll have to find some other way to make Americans care than by wearing painted sneakers.
19. What’s Taking So Long? Rename Those Confederate Bases
Excerpts:
On Confederate base names, the fait is already accompli’ed.
At this point, the administration is unnecessarily partaking in the performance art of political theater. If this commission was just a rubber stamp designed to create sheens of bipartisanship and scholarship, just get on with it. If it’s a serious panel, as we believe it is, then great, but get on with it. The country has had to live with these monuments and memorials to long-dead racists and traitors long enough.
One more consideration: defense secretaries eventually leave office, and this may be Lloyd Austin’s last year in the post. He likely won’t be the last Black American to hold that position, but he may will be the last one for a long time. And on the Joint Chiefs side, there are few high-ranking Black officers in the pipeline available for the chairmanship.
What’s Taking So Long? Rename Those Confederate Bases
It shouldn’t be this hard or require this political theater to do what’s right, right now.
For this second Black History Month of Joe Biden’s presidency, the commander in chief should do something he promised his voters long ago: right a wrong by renaming U.S. military bases named for Confederate soldiers.
What’s the holdup? It’s been one year since Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin named his panelists to the Congressionally-mandated commission on base renaming. It’s been nearly six months since the commission asked the public for new base name ideas. After receiving thousands of base name suggestions, a source close to the decision tells me this week that the commission is likely still months from making its recommendations.
Meanwhile, the moment is passing the Pentagon by. Across the country, statues built to honor white men who enslaved their fellow humans for profit have come down by force or decree, their names removed from buildings, streets, and schools built in a time when white Americans tried hard to create a fake history to serve their own purposes.
Angry Americans who want to show their children the famed statue of Robert E. Lee that guarded the heart of Richmond, Virginia, for decades will still be able to do so–in the city’s Black History Museum. They can then visit the horrible statue in Tennessee of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a slave trader, Confederate general, and Ku Klux Klan leader, now removed from the state’s capitol and sent to its museum.
What’s taking the Pentagon so long?
One reason is the ridiculously convoluted righteousness-by-committee process set up by the Biden administration and Congressional Democrats. The 2021 defense authorization bill gave Biden three years to make up his mind. But one hopes that Biden’s team is not foot-dragging or holding because of the blatantly partisan and racist political hype-machine about the fake controversy of “critical race theory,” or the right-wing’s complaints about teaching racism in the ranks.
This week, Senate Armed Service Committee’s top Republican, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, complained about all the hours being spent “promoting its leftist social agenda in the military.” Inhofe’s office blasted out a release saying that the Pentagon under Biden had spent 5,889,082 man-hours, or 672 years, on “woke training” in total, about things like extremism and climate change. That’s a nice job of spin—because in fact, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley’s office had replied in its letter to Inhofe that the 5,359,311 hours spent only on extremism “averages to just over 2 hours per Service member in a total force of 2.46 million members and is comparable to other Joint Force periodic training requirements.”
The Republican’s open attacks on the military for teaching about racism and extremism have been jarring, but they’ve proven toothless. Red-in-the-face Fox hosts and far-right tweeters have pulled out an old playbook in trying to blame leftists for forcing the military to evolve. But the fact is there is no real controversy over Confederate base names anymore. It’s just a matter of time.
The latest renaming request is a pretty straightforward example. Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., has proposed to change the name of Fort Benning, in Georgia, to honor Sgt. 1st Class Alwyn Cashe. Biden posthumously awarded Cashe the Medal of Honor in December. Benning was a Confederate brigadier general who fought to kill U.S. soldiers in hopes of preserving slavery in the South. Cashe saved his teammates from a burning Bradley Fighting Vehicle in Iraq, his own uniform aflame, suffering burns that killed him three weeks later.
Murphy sent her appeal to the official commission on renaming, empaneled after Biden came to office. Former President Donald Trump was opposed to base renaming, of course. It was a sensitive issue that surged to the fore during the year of Black Lives Matter protests, and so Democrats waited and under Biden formed a commission, stacking the panel with like-minded scholars, including respected conservative policy names. It was a move akin to how the Obama administration first commissioned a Pentagon study revealing that hardly anybody in the military feared repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy against gay U.S. troops. That study, and the time it took, helped cool heads, build a consensus, and create a fait accompli.
On Confederate base names, the fait is already accompli’ed.
At this point, the administration is unnecessarily partaking in the performance art of political theater. If this commission was just a rubber stamp designed to create sheens of bipartisanship and scholarship, just get on with it. If it’s a serious panel, as we believe it is, then great, but get on with it. The country has had to live with these monuments and memorials to long-dead racists and traitors long enough.
One more consideration: defense secretaries eventually leave office, and this may be Lloyd Austin’s last year in the post. He likely won’t be the last Black American to hold that position, but he may will be the last one for a long time. And on the Joint Chiefs side, there are few high-ranking Black officers in the pipeline available for the chairmanship.
The military’s independent newspaper Stars and Stripes reported this month what’s to be done. “The Army installations in question, all in former Confederate states, were named in the 1910s and 1940s during the South’s Jim Crow era. They are Fort Polk in Louisiana, Fort Benning and Fort Gordon in Georgia, Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Fort A.P. Hill, Fort Lee and Fort Pickett in Virginia, Fort Rucker in Alabama, and Fort Hood in Texas.”
For Black History Month 2022, Biden should honor America’s actual history by erasing the revisionist, racist one put in place long ago. Change the names on U.S. military bases to honor men and women who represent what the military stands for: We the People.
20. After mix-up, Army says 12 programs may be hit by year-long CR
We might be somewhat heartened by reports of an increased budget next year, but a lot of damage is going to occur this year under the continuing resolutions and an insufficient budget.
After mix-up, Army says 12 programs may be hit by year-long CR - Breaking Defense
Soldiers don the Integrated Visual Augmentation System Capability Set 3 hardware while mounted in a Stryker in Joint Base Lewis-McCord, WA. (Courtney Bacon/US Army)
WASHINGTON: The US Army is revising the number of modernization programs impacted by a potential year-long continuing resolution, from 19 programs down to 12, according to a spokesperson, after a mix-up that led to erroneous congressional testimony.
Since last year, the service has boasted that 24 of its 35 signature modernization programs would be in the hands of soldiers, either in prototyping or fielded, by fiscal 2023. Last month Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Joseph Martin told the House Appropriations Committee that a potential year-long continuing resolution would impact 19 of those 24 programs, as well as delay 71 new start programs.
But after the Army provided the list of 19 signature modernization programs potentially impacted, Breaking Defense discovered an inconsistency: several of the systems listed weren’t on the list of 24 programs previously published by Breaking Defense last year. Upon a request for clarification, the Army investigated and eventually revised the number to 12, finding that some programs that had been listed as signature systems were actually support programs for the larger initiatives.
“A potential yearlong CR would impact 12 of the 24 signature efforts to put equipment in the hands of Soldiers by FY23, not 19 of 24 as previously stated,” Lt. Col. Brandon Kelley said in statement. “We originally counted signature and supporting efforts, for a total of 19 efforts. After reevaluation, we determined 12 are signature efforts and 7 are supporting efforts.”
The 12 potentially impacted programs that were scheduled to be in the hands of soldiers, in some form, are:
- Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon
- Mid-Range Capability
- Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle
- Robotic Combat Vehicle
- Mobile Protected Firepower
- Unified Network
- Common Operating Environment: CPCE/MCE
- Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense (AMD) Sensor
- IAMD Battle Command System
- Next Generation Squad Weapon
- Squad Immersive Virtual Trainer
- One World Terrain
The remaining seven supporting efforts, erroneously dubbed signature systems, include several programs that exist under the Unified Network and Common Operating Environment efforts, such as the Joint Battle Command System, Mounted Mission Command-Software, signal modernization, and Handheld, Manpack, and Small Form Fit (HMS) radios. The original list also included Armored Vehicle Modernization, which supports the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle Cross-Functional Team. The other two programs are Indirect Fires Protection Capability (IFPC) High Energy Laser and IFPC High Power Microwave, parts of the broader IFPC program.
Altogether the Army’s signature modernization portfolio is made up 31 programs managed by Army Futures Command and four programs run by the Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office.
The revision is unlikely to set the Army any more at ease about a potential year-long continuing resolution, which must be averted by lawmakers before a Friday deadline. (A stopgap measure is reportedly in the works.)
“All the progress we’ve made over time for the past two years, will be slowed at best [and could] be potentially stopped,” Martin told the subcommittee in January. “Our adversaries are not having the same problem with consistent, predictable, timely funding for these various programs.”
The service’s list of 71 new starts, which can’t begin under a continuing resolution, includes procurement funding for programs such as Mobile Protected Firepower, Next Generation Squad Weapons and Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense (AMD) Sensor. It also includes $19.5 million in RDT&E funds for an Army electronic warfare program called the Terrestrial Layer System-Echelon Above Brigade, as well as four counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems programs that total more than $50 million. New R&D efforts with universities, and several applied research programs are listed.
21. Russia Has Been Building Up its Conventional Forces All Along
Russia Has Been Building Up its Conventional Forces All Along | Small Wars Journal
Russia Has Been Building Up its Conventional Forces All Along
By Jennifer Walters, PhD
When examining the conventional balance of power between NATO and Russian forces, the numbers alone are not sufficient. To better understand this balance power, it is necessary to inspect not just the sheer number of conventional forces (ground troops, tanks, and aircraft), but where these forces are located, the damage they can inflict, and the capability to reconstitute quickly in the opening salvo of a conflict. Despite a precipitous drop in total conventional force since the end of the Cold War, with these factors in mind, the balance of power tips to Russia.
At the outset, the opposite might seem true when comparing the defense budget spending of NATO versus Russia. In 2015, NATO dedicated $895 billion to defense spending while Russia committed just over five percent of that amount — $52 billion (Boston, 2018). Similarly, although not to the same extent, NATO’s ground personnel exceed that of Russia.
However, when we focus on the likely fronts of potential conflict the aperture narrows to specific geographic areas (Schlapak, 2016). More specifically, Russia possesses significant strategic advantages across its conventional spectrum of capabilities in the Western Military District (WMD). The WMD borders the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, all of which have very small conventional forces. These states can field a limited number of light armored vehicles, but they do not have main battle tanks. And unlike the Cold War, NATO does not have the conventional capabilities pre-positioned in that area to mount a contiguous line defense. With scant conventional offensive and defensive capabilities, this front along the WMD is a soft underbelly vulnerable to a large-scale mechanized assault.
Russia’s ability to launch that assault and inflict serious damage continues to grow from experience and intentional decisions about the type of conflict for which they are preparing. The Russian military, which is also enjoying an increase in volunteer forces and relying less on conscription, has learned valuable lessons in simulated and real environments. Through ambitious large-scale exercises and experiential trial-and-error in Ukraine and Syria, Russia is molding its forces for the conventional battles it assesses it will face (as opposed to cultivating readiness for a wider range of potential conflict scenarios that go beyond the conventional realm).
New equipment, advancement in heavy armor, upgraded tanks, and enhancement in training for large packages of troops differentiate the Russian conventional forces from that of NATO, which has favored the more diffuse brigade-centric model fitted to years of counter-insurgency operations. In many ways, Russia is readying itself to be able to mount something similar to Germany’s World War II-era blitzkrieg as it amasses substantial conventional forces along select, narrow fronts. Today’s worsening situation along the Ukrainian border aligns exactly with this technique.
Buttressing their outsized conventional capabilities, Russia has established a rich network of reinforcement lines that would enable them to achieve strategic objectives with little initial resistance. In the scenario where Russia marshals additional troops to the WMD front, they could concentrate nearly 50 percent more troops than it currently has stationed in the area within mere weeks. Simultaneously, direct U.S. support to NATO would take much more time — in the range of 1-2 months (Boston, 2018). Key NATO partners France, Germany, and Britain would require similar amounts of time to mobilize. Furthermore, if Russia establishes a fighting front along the WMD, they would exercise uncontested control of their resupply lines that are safely embedded within their own territory.
Finally, although Russia is at a significant disadvantage in fifth-generation fighter and stealth aircraft, NATO’s probable delay to respond conventionally en masse will place Russia in a position to degrade NATO air power. Russia has sophisticated integrated air defense systems they will use to both defend their conventional fighting front and attack encroaching NATO aircraft. The timeline to achieving air superiority could be substantially protracted if Russia has uncontested control of the ground. While U.S. air assets are highly skilled in achieving air superiority and would reasonably achieve this goal in time, the loss of human life could be catastrophically high as we engage in air-to-air and air-to-ground kinetic exchanges.
Ultimately, the conventional balance of power requires that we pay attention to both quantity and quality of weaponry and designs on how to implement that weaponry. Through strategic placement and implementation of its increasingly sophisticated conventional forces, Russia is more than making do. Russia, in fact, is ready to outperform NATO pound for pound in a conventional war because it can impose immense first-strike costs. NATO’s ability to launch a timely conventional counter-attack is dubious at best; already wounded, they will have to fight and win in a style of conflict they have not practiced in two continuous decades. However, the longer tensions simmer, NATO will have time to prepare, posture, and undercut the first-strike injury Russia can inflict.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not
necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any agency of the U.S. government. Assumptions made within the analysis are not reflective of the position of any U.S. government entity.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.
References
Boston, Scott, Michael Johnson, Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, and Yvonne K. Crane, Assessing the Conventional Force Imbalance in Europe: Implications for Countering Russian Local Superiority. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2018. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2402.html.
Shlapak, David A. and Michael Johnson, Reinforcing Deterrence on NATO's Eastern Flank: Wargaming the Defense of the Baltics. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2016. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1253.html.
About the Author(s)
Jennifer Walters is an Air Force officer. A KC-10A instructor pilot, Major Walters led aircrew on air refueling, humanitarian, and contingency operations across the globe. She deployed four times in support of Operations ENDURING FREEDOM, FREEDOM’S SENTINEL, INHERENT RESOLVE, and RESOLUTE SUPPORT, completing over 100 combat sorties. She is a distinguished graduate of the United States Air Force Academy and holds a Master of Philosophy and PhD in policy analysis from the Pardee RAND Graduate School.
22. Unmanned Resupply Gliders Will Take Part In Largest Special Operations Exercise (Updated)
Unmanned Resupply Gliders Will Take Part In Largest Special Operations Exercise (Updated)
Autonomous cargo gliders could get new capabilities, including water landings and radar signature reductions, under a new Pentagon contract.
BY BRETT TINGLEY FEBRUARY 14, 2022
Silent Arrow
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Silent Arrow has been awarded a 12-month contract by the Department of Defense to execute a series of operational demonstrations and develop concepts of operation (CONOPs) for the company’s GD-2000 autonomous resupply gliders. The demonstrations will expand on the glider's capabilities and see it take part in a large-scale Special Operations Command exercise later this year.
According to a Silent Arrow press release, the $2.2 million in funding for these further demonstrations comes from the Warfighting Lab Incentive Fund (WILF), housed within the Pentagon’s J7 Directorate for Joint Force Development, in conjunction with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) and Special Operations Command (SOCOM). The demonstrations will see the gliders tested aboard “special purpose aircraft, standard cargo aircraft, and helicopters, both overland and in maritime environments.”
Silent Arrow
The Silent Arrow GD-2000 cargo glider is described as a disposable “standoff delivery platform” capable of delivering up to 1,631 pounds of cargo while navigating and landing autonomously. The coffin-shaped drone consists of a 2-foot by 2-foot by 8-foot rectangular fuselage with pop-out tandem wings that open after launch when lock pins are pulled out by static lines attached to their host aircraft. You can read all about these ramp-deployable gliders and their capabilities in our prior coverage here.
Silent Arrow
An unmarked GD-2000 being rigged for C-130 deployment over an unspecified military test range.
The glider has a range of 40 miles when dropped from a fixed-wing aircraft at a maximum altitude of 25,000 feet, or 15 miles when dropped when from a helicopter. The company says the GD-2000 can land within 100 meters of its intended target with “zero vertical impact” and make deliveries at less than half the cost of the existing Joint Precision Airdrop System, or JPADS. Silent Arrow plans for each glider to be able to supply “1 rifle squad for 1 day of direct-action combat” with standard equipment such as water, MREs, medicine, ammunition, batteries, and fuel.
Silent Arrow
A GD-2000 seen with its wings extended.
The demonstrations funded by this new contract will task two GD-2000 cargo gliders with making deliveries at Hurlburt Field during Exercise Emerald Warrior, the largest joint special operations exercise that involves U.S. Special Operations Command. Two additional units will be sent to an undisclosed location for further demonstration, while another will be delivered for “non-flying purposes” such as training.
The contract supports additional radar signature testing and management assessments to determine how the GD-2000 can be integrated with different aircraft platforms, and further development with the Android Tactical Assault Kit, a software programming suite that enables the gliders to interface with a wide variety of military or consumer mobile devices.
The demonstrations will also include “water landing and resupply at sea logistics.” We have reached out to Silent Arrow for more information about this capability.
Silent Arrow's Founder and CEO Chip Yates said that the company is "looking forward to leaning in with our mission partners and delivering these disruptive capabilities to the warfighter to create a logistical advantage while reducing physical threats to those operating in harm's way." SOCOM previously signed a development contract with Silent Arrow in 2019, and the Air Force Research Laboratory is experimenting with miniaturizing the gliders even further.
This latest contract comes on the heels of successful deliveries the gliders made while being operated by an undisclosed “U.S.-allied government in the Middle East” in which two GD-2000 cargo drones were released by a C-130 before landing autonomously. The exact location of those deliveries has not been made public, but the images that accompanied Silent Arrow's most recent press release show an aircraft featuring paint and enhancements that would suggest they took place aboard an Israeli C-130.
Silent Arrow
An unmarked GD-2000 being loaded onto a C-130 at an unspecified military test range.
These gliders can offer unique advantages over many existing resupply concepts. With standoff ranges up to 40 miles, the GD-2000 can be launched from outside of contested or denied airspace, keeping aircrews farther from danger than they would be able to when performing parachute airdrops.
The GD-2000 also has far smaller infrared and acoustic signatures than powered drones due to the fact that it has no engine of its own. These features could potentially allow the glider to deliver supplies to units operating in forward-deployed areas without making their positions known. Similar concepts have been tested by the U.S. Marine Corps in recent years.
Silent Arrow
Roughly similar capabilities have also previously existed in different forms. For instance, SOCOM has previously used the CQ-10 Snowgoose GPS-guided paramotor that featured a 200-mile range, although the system is relatively complicated and expensive to employ when compared to a disposable glider. It also can only carry less than half the weight as the Silent Arrow design.
The U.S. Navy is also testing a variety of autonomous aerial supply drone concepts, although these are designed with ship-to-ship deliveries in mind rather than the forward-deployed resupply operations at which the GD-2000 is aimed.
The GD-2000 or other similar aerial resupply glider concepts could help fill short-term supply gaps at these locations, or offer a less expensive, safer way to deliver supplies in contested areas during rapidly evolving operations or unexpected contingencies. The wars of the future are more likely to be fought in contested environments where standoff capabilities will be more important than before, making it critical to be able to deliver supplies from longer, safer distances without putting pilots at risk.
Given the support the gliders are receiving from the Pentagon, it’s likely we could see the technology develop further and potentially be used in operational deployments in the near future.
Update 4:50 PM EST:
Silent Arrow founder and CEO Chip Yates tells The War Zone that when it comes to water landings, "there is interest in being able to flare into the sea, close to shore as well as offshore, so that a team can rendezvous with a floating Silent Arrow and retrieve various payloads and supplies."
Contact the author: Brett@TheDrive.com
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23. Putin’s New Age of Conquest
Can the rules based international order be defended?
Conclusion:
International norms have power only to the degree that states honor them. Russia is currently working to hollow out the norms against conquest and territorial expansion while paying lip service to those same norms. If Putin is successful — and it’s not at all clear that the U.S. or other countries will be able to deter him — other leaders will no doubt take note.
Putin’s New Age of Conquest
In today’s world, borders are almost never redrawn at the point of a gun. Could the Ukraine crisis change that?
Joshua Keating
Global Security Reporter
Describing U.S. goals in the ongoing conflict with Russia over Ukraine in a televised address from the White House on Feb. 15, President Joe Biden cited “the principle that a country can’t change its neighbor’s borders by force.” The principle that Biden was referring to is codified in international law. It prohibits the “threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state,” as the U.N.’s founding charter puts it.
Many principles of the postwar international order are honored more in the breach than in the observance, but there is something to the idea that in the modern era, countries don’t simply gobble each other up anymore.
“If we go back to the 19th century, and even the early 20th century, it wasn’t that uncommon for entire countries to be swallowed up by their neighbors,” Tanisha Fazal, an associate professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, told Grid. “After 1945, we did see a major shift in how countries exerted control over their neighbors.”
The redrawing of borders by conquest had come to end — for the most part. This is why recent Russian actions in what it calls its “near abroad” have seemed so anachronistic. When Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine in 2014, then-Secretary of State John Kerry put it bluntly: “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th-century fashion by invading another country on a completely trumped up pretext.”
But what Russian President Vladimir Putin is threatening may be less a reversion to the old style of conquest than the creation of a new one. If it really does come to war in Ukraine, Russia will most likely attempt to conquer its neighbor while paying lip service to international laws that prevent such a conquest. And Putin will almost certainly use Western governments’ own rhetoric to justify it.
The end of conquest?
Conquests of entire countries — or even attempted conquests — have been rare since World War II. In a 2020 paper, “The Evolution of Conquest,” political scientist Daniel Altman found just four examples: North Korea’s unsuccessful attempt to conquer South Korea in 1950; North Vietnam’s successful conquest of South Vietnam in 1975; Indonesia’s annexation of Timor-Leste in 1975; and Iraq’s short-lived annexation of Kuwait in 1990. The last example prompted a U.S.-led international military intervention, which we now know as the first Gulf War, and which is often held up as the textbook example of the international community rallying to prevent the forceful redrawing of an international border. Kuwait was liberated after six weeks of war.
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U.S. Marines from Fort Bragg disembark from a transport plane at Dhahran air base in Saudi Arabia on August 21, 1990. (Gerard Fouet/AFP via Getty Images)
More common have been attempts by countries to take over parts of other countries. Altman’s paper looks at nine such attempts in the period between 1976 and 2006. The best-known examples include the Iran-Iraq war, which began with Iraq’s attempt to annex Iran’s oil-rich Khuzestan region in 1980; the Falklands War, in which Argentina moved to seize British-controlled islands off its coast in 1982; and the Kargil War, when Pakistan moved troops into the disputed Kargil region of Kashmir in 1999. All three attempts failed, as did Altman’s other six examples. Conquering new territory — and then holding onto it — isn’t easy in the modern world, which makes what Russia pulled off in Crimea in 2014, almost without firing a shot, all the more remarkable.
The Putin approach
Monica Duffy Toft, a professor at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and author of several studies of territorial conflict, told Grid that while there are many “that have accepted that territorial aggrandizement is no longer acceptable,” Russia is not among them. “The Soviet Union collapsed, and the Russian Federation is still trying to figure out exactly where its borders begin and end.”
Putin doesn’t flout the norm against territorial conquest as much as he violates its spirit while maintaining just enough plausible deniability to get away with it. An example: Technically speaking, Russia hasn’t occupied parts of Georgia, the neighbor with which it fought a short war in 2008; it simply recognized the independence of two breakaway regions — Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In geopolitical terms, there’s not much distinction between this and outright annexation. When I crossed the Georgian-Abkhaz border in 2016, officers from the Russian state security services checked my passport.
When it comes to Ukraine, Russia’s government has consistently denied that it sent troops into the country in 2014 — Russian troops may have traveled to eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, the Kremlin’s account goes, but they were “volunteers” going to help Russian-speaking separatists fighting to win their independence from Kyiv.
Crimea was different: In 2014, Russia formally annexed the peninsula in what was the largest seizure of European territory since World War II. According to Moscow’s narrative, this righted a wrong done when the largely Russian-speaking peninsula was “gifted” by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954. Since both Russia and Ukraine were part of the Soviet Union at the time, the true significance of this “gift” only became apparent when the Soviet Union ceased to exist and new borders were drawn in 1991. It was a moment, in Putin’s words, when “millions of people went to bed in one country and awoke in different ones, overnight becoming ethnic minorities in former Union republics.”
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Cossack men install a Russian flag and a Crimean flag on the roof of the City Hall building in Bakhchysarai, Ukraine, on March 17, 2014. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
But even in Crimea, the Russian government was careful to maintain the narrative that it was not a conqueror. In the chaotic days following the overthrow of the Ukrainian government in February 2014, armed militants wearing what appeared to be Russian military uniforms seized government buildings in Crimea during pro-Russian demonstrations. These became known in the international media as the “little green men.” But Putin denied that Russia’s military was involved at all. Several weeks later, a hastily organized referendum was held to legitimize the takeover. (The referendum did not include an option to keep the status quo.) The following year, Putin more or less admitted in a Russian television documentary that the whole thing had been planned in Moscow, but by then the deed was done: It was clear that whether or not the West recognized Crimea’s new status, Ukraine wasn’t getting it back any time soon.
Learning from the West
These storylines aren’t exactly convincing to the rest of the world. Today only four countries other than Russia recognize Georgia’s breakaway regions as independent. Only a handful of Russian allies back its claims in Crimea. But in all these cases Putin has managed to solidify a narrative for the Russian public and the country’s allies: Russia doesn’t invade other countries. That’s what the U.S. does.
In Putin’s narrative, as he laid out in a blistering 2015 speech to the U.N. General Assembly, the United States’ “aggressive foreign interference” in Iraq, Libya, and Syria has promised “democracy and progress” but delivered only “violence, poverty and social disaster.” “Color Revolutions” that ousted pro-Russian leaders in Ukraine and Georgia were also U.S. regime-change operations, according to the Kremlin’s propaganda. America’s support for the principle of territorial integrity” was shown to be false when it intervened in the Balkans and then supported the independence of Kosovo from Serbia, a Russian ally, over Moscow’s objections. It is the height of hypocrisy, in Putin’s telling, for U.S. leaders to criticize Russia’s own interventions much closer to home.
Some U.S. leaders have tried to answer the charge. President Barack Obama, in a 2014 speech in Brussels, argued that while he had strongly and famously opposed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, it was a different enterprise than the annexation of Crimea. “We did not claim or annex Iraq’s territory,” Obama said. “We did not grab its resources for our own gain.”
This is the generally held U.S. position — in this century, anyway: Yes, sometimes we’ll go to war, but we don’t take over the countries where we fight. (Best to leave aside, for the time being, Obama’s successor, who not only agreed with Putin’s position on Crimea but suggested on multiple occasions that the U.S. should “keep the oil” in Iraq and Syria.) America doesn’t go to war for conquest; it does so to prevent conquest in places like South Korea, South Vietnam and Kuwait. Or we go to war in the name of controlling some threat to global security, or to prevent a humanitarian disaster.
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But Putin, a self-styled student of Western hypocrisy, can play that game as well. He has said that Ukraine’s treatment of Russian speakers in the country’s east “looks like genocide.” His foreign minister has accused the Ukrainian government of “state terrorism.” The talk at the negotiating tables in Geneva may be all about NATO enlargement and missile deployments in Eastern Europe, but if Russia does actually move into Ukraine, it may well be precipitated by some event in Ukraine itself: either a real overreaction by Ukraine’s military against the separatists or a fabricated one. The Russian government is also considering recognizing the two breakaway regions of Eastern Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian separatists — Donetsk and Luhansk — following the playbook from Georgia, perhaps in hopes of goading Ukraine into an overreaction that could provide a pretext for war.
A member of the Ukrainian Border Guard patrols the border fence at the Three Sisters border crossing between Ukraine, Russia and Belarus on Feb. 14 in Senkivka, Ukraine. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
A Russian military operation may be justified as some combination of humanitarian intervention or counterterrorist strike. If it’s true, as some western government assessments warn, that Russia plans to force Ukraine’s government to step down in favor of a more pliant one, it will likely say that it removed a corrupt illegitimate government rife with neo-Nazis in accordance with the true wishes of the Ukrainian people.
And then, when the U.S. accuses Moscow of a violent violation of international law, the response will be: We’re just doing what you’ve done.
The future of territory
One of the oldest axioms of international relations — “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must” — still applies. The country with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal and fifth-largest military — that would be Russia — can get away with things that others can’t. Unlike Korea in 1950 or Iraq in 1990, international troops aren’t going to be sent in to push the Russians back if they invade. But it’s still telling that Russia seems to be trying to thread the needle between its geopolitical ambitions and prevailing international norms.
“What Putin’s Russia has been doing is kind of between the way things used to be before 1945, and how they have come to be since 1945,” Fazal told me. She said that rather than directly challenging the no-conquest norm as Saddam Hussein did, Putin is chipping away at its edges. The Russian leader is no doubt aware that, as Fazal put it, “direct challenges usually generate direct responses.” The damage done by gradual chipping away is more likely to go unaddressed.
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In terms of how attitudes toward territory evolve, the other country to watch is China, whose diplomats frequently affirm the importance of sovereignty and territorial integrity in international law, while the nation pursues territorial ambitions beyond its mainland. The most prominent case involves Taiwan, where fears of a Chinese invasion have been mounting. But China is also asserting maritime claims against its neighbors in the South China Sea — and building artificial islands to bolster those claims — as well as feuding with India over disputed territories in the Himalayas, a fight that has turned violent on several recent occasions.
International norms have power only to the degree that states honor them. Russia is currently working to hollow out the norms against conquest and territorial expansion while paying lip service to those same norms. If Putin is successful — and it’s not at all clear that the U.S. or other countries will be able to deter him — other leaders will no doubt take note.
24. Balance Piston exercise to boost PH, US troops interoperability
JCET.
Balance Piston exercise to boost PH, US troops interoperability
BALANCE PISTON. Officials of the Philippine Army's Special Force Regiment "Airborne" and the US Army Special Forces lead the opening of the Balance Piston 22-1 exercise in Fort Ramon Magsaysay, Nueva Ecija on Feb. 14, 2022. The Philippine Army on Wednesday (Feb. 16, 2022) said the Balance Piston 22-1 aims to test and validate plans, procedures, and concepts to enhance collaboration and interoperability between Filipino and US Special Forces. (Photo courtesy of Philippine Army)
MANILA – The Philippine Army’s (PA) Special Force Regiment "Airborne" (SFRA) and the US Army Special Forces formally opened the three-week Balance Piston 22-1 exercise that would improve interoperability between the two services, at Fort Ramon Magsaysay, Nueva Ecija on February 14.
PA spokesperson Col. Xerxes Trinidad, in a statement Wednesday, said the Balance Piston 22-1 aims to test and validate plans, procedures, and concepts to enhance collaboration and interoperability between Filipino and US Special Forces.
"(The) Joint/Combined Exchange Training Balance Piston 22-1 is an annual bilateral exercise that provides an avenue to Filipino and US Special Forces to learn and exchange tactics, techniques, procedures, and best practices," he said.
The exercise, which ends on March 7, will focus on Human Rights and Law of Armed Conflict; Combat Management of Marksmanship Skills; Small Unmanned Aerial Systems Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures; Command and Control Structure; Mission Planning; Unconventional Warfare Subject Matter Experts Exchange; Crisis Action Planning, Fundamentals of Reconnaissance; Find, Fix, Finish, Exploit, Analyze, Disseminate; Urban Reconnaissance; Tactical Combat Casualty Care; and a Culmination Exercise.
Meanwhile, SFRA acting commander, Col. Eliglen F. Villaflor, who served as the event's keynote speaker, said the exercise would help the unit identify operational capabilities and competency gaps.
“Observe and learn from our US Special Forces partners,” he said.
Trinidad added that the annual exercise reinforces the thrust of Army Chief, Lt. Gen. Romeo S. Brawner Jr., in enhancing the skills of soldiers and competencies of Army units to further empower them in mission accomplishment. (PNA)
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
