Quotes of the Day:
“Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:
Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;
Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.”
- Marcus Tullius Cicero
“Don't just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents.”
- Epictetus, The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness
"There are but two powers in the world, the sword and the mind. In the long run the sword is always beaten by the mind."
- Bonaparte (as a Clausewitzian I will follow his lead and not use Napoleon)
1. Why Ukraine Matters
2. Opinion | Ukraine is at the precipice of war. This is Biden’s moment to lead the world against autocracy.
3. After Early Foreign Policy Missteps, Biden’s Ukraine Strategy Leans on Diplomacy
4. Artillery Exchanges in Eastern Ukraine May Presage Invasion, U.S. Warns
5. U.S. has 'no intention' to engage with China on Indo Pacific Economic Framework
6. The U.S. Must Prepare to Withstand a Cyberattack
7. Biden’s Weakness Puts Strong Iran Deal Out of Reach
8. Joe Biden’s new Indo-Pacific Strategy: A view from Southeast Asia
9. Previewing Biden’s FY23 defense budget request: 5 things to expect
10. UPDATED: Four Chiefs, Ensign Facing Charges Over Release of USS Carl Vinson F-35C Crash Video
11. Can Ukrainian Resistance Foil a Russian Victory?
12. Fabrication Operations in War (false flag)
13. What If Russia Wins?
14. We’re Entering the Control Phase of the Pandemic
15. Illia Ponomarenko: Even if Russia attacks, Ukraine’s fall is not predestined
16. Information warfare expert says the U.S. is finally countering Russia at its own game
17. Bots and Fake Accounts Push China’s Vision of Winter Olympic Wonderland
18. Russia to stage nuclear drills with Ukraine tensions high
19. If Russia Invades Ukraine, Sanction China
20. FDD | Bipartisan Support Builds for Re-Designation of Iranian-Backed Houthis as a Terrorist Organization
21. How the National Guard Can Help Counter Chinese Influence
22. Opinion | Why is the Biden administration uniting our adversaries?
23. The urge to “do something” and the need to be patient
1. Why Ukraine Matters
But just as Putin tries to justify his Ukraine strategy and actions to the Russian people, President Biden must justify US actions to the American people. Will this resonate with Americans?
Excerpts:
Even now, as Russia threatens to invade Ukraine, it is talked about as an abstraction—a passive victim of great-power politics. Perhaps this explains why many foreign-policy realists and much of the American public are so willing to readily sacrifice the country to Russian President Vladimir Putin. They see Ukraine as part of a sphere of influence, not a collection of human beings.
...
One of the most poignant expressions of this idealism is a speech that then–Vice President Joe Biden delivered to the Ukrainian Rada in April 2014, soon after the occupation of the Maidan. Perhaps not surprisingly, he dispensed with the prepared text and riffed in his high folksy style. With all the requisite self-effacing caveats about not wanting to impose American values, he pleaded with the Parliament to combat corruption, especially in the energy sector, and to embrace democratic practice. But what’s most striking about the speech is its familiar tone: “We stand with you. And it is not just a foreign-policy judgment, it is a personal—it’s an emotional commitment.”
In a way, that line helps capture the core rationale behind the Biden administration’s Ukraine policy. From their very arrival in office, Biden and his advisers hoped to avoid a confrontation with Putin, because they didn’t consider him an important strategic competitor. Every phone call and meeting with Putin was taken in the spirit of prevention. Biden hoped to make Putin feel big so that he wouldn’t act out and distract the president from focusing his attention on China, the overriding priority of the administration.
From a cold, realist perspective, there’s perhaps an argument for abandoning Ukraine. But the bond that the president and State Department have with Ukraine isn’t cold. The object of Putin’s desire isn’t an abstraction to them. At core, they understand that it’s Ukraine, not The Ukraine.
Why Ukraine Matters
The country is much more than a sphere of influence.
Not so long ago, most Americans didn’t know better. They spoke of a country called The Ukraine. By appending the article to the name, they were inadvertently insulting the nation, as if Ukraine were merely a region, an object of subjection. For most of Ukraine’s history, that’s how much of the outside world treated it: as a swath of black earth ripe for conquest, whose fertile fields could feed empires.
Even now, as Russia threatens to invade Ukraine, it is talked about as an abstraction—a passive victim of great-power politics. Perhaps this explains why many foreign-policy realists and much of the American public are so willing to readily sacrifice the country to Russian President Vladimir Putin. They see Ukraine as part of a sphere of influence, not a collection of human beings.
I can understand the impulse to write the Ukrainian people out of the calculus. In honesty, I first approached the nation with preconceptions that I now consider embarrassingly crude. Over time, however, I found myself swept up in the nation’s struggle to free itself of corruption, authoritarianism, and its dark past. I came to believe that Ukraine matters because its fate is, in some sense, our own.
My grandmother grew up in the bloodlands, the perpetually contested soil of western Ukraine. In her childhood, her hometown of Kolki kept changing hands—first Poland ruled it, then briefly the Soviet Union. In 1941, when my grandmother was a teengager, Nazi Einsatzgruppen invaded Kolki and torched the synagogue with her grandfather locked inside. That night she fled for her life, walking east until she reached Kazakhstan.
A few years later, when news arrived that the Russians had liberated Kolki, she determinedly made her way back. She was greeted as an unwelcome specter. One man informed my grandmother that her sisters and mother could be found in a mass grave in the forest. Another man told her that if she stayed longer than one more night, Ukrainian thugs would make sure that she joined them.
When I first visited Ukraine, in 2002, I couldn’t see past its Soviet-era dinge or shake off the admittedly overwrought—if historically informed—suspicion that every person I met might wish me dead. My reason for traveling to the country was, frankly, esoteric. I had come to report on the stalled careers of two Nigerian soccer players who found themselves playing for a midsize club in western Ukraine, where the home fans sometimes greeted them with monkey noises and accused them of stealing spots on the roster from hard-working local lads.
On the streets of Lviv, I passed fading Yiddish signs on the sides of buildings. I thought that my grandmother would probably have disapproved of my presence; she would have filtered my visit through her memories of the night her synagogue burned, and worried about my safety. Every dish seemed to include a submerged hunk of pork, as if testing my allegiance to dietary laws. As I pushed the traiyf around with my spoon, my translator told me that he didn’t know why people kept denying the fact that his nation’s brutal oppressor Joseph Stalin was a stealth Jew. In the market, I browsed wood-carved trinkets of Jewish men with hooked noses, as if re-created from illustrations in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
I didn’t think much more about Ukraine again until eight years later, when my mother asked me to visit the country with her. This was, in its way, another reportorial trip. We arrived in search of the family that hid my grandfather during World War II. Because the memories were so traumatic, they had barely been transmitted. My grandmother met my grandfather just after the war, as he emerged from hiding. He hardly spoke of his experience, how the Nazis murdered his first wife and 7-year-old daughter, and how he escaped by dint of a pure accident of timing. His nightmares led him to hang himself in the back of his store in 1954, despite having built a new life, with a new family, in a new country.
My mother and I drove to his village, if it even could be described as that: 20 or so houses lining a pockmarked road. We used our one piece of forensic evidence, a photograph, to identify the house of the man who’d taken in my grandfather after his family was killed.
A woman named Anna emerged from the neighboring property, her head wrapped in a scarf, her gnarled hand wrapped around a knotty cane, not a tooth in her mouth. She ran her fingers along the ridge of my brow and told me that it belonged to my grandfather. She pointed into the fields and said my grandfather had played in them with his daughter. We hadn’t even known her name, but Anna did. “We called her Asya,” she told us.
History, which I had considered dead and buried, suddenly reached out of the grave and wrapped its arm around me.
One Ukrainian had threatened to kill my grandmother; another had saved my grandfather in an act of heroism that never aspired to more than neighborly kindness. As we ate lunch, I realized that my existence owed itself, in a sense, to the big-heartedness of Ukrainians. History is as variegated as the woods where we went to recite a prayer at our family’s mass grave.
(My mother wrote a beautiful book about our trip, he says with filial pride.)
Then came the events of late 2013 and early 2014. For the second time in the 21st century, Ukrainians took to the center of Kyiv—a plaza known as the Maidan, or Independence Square—and demanded democracy. They wanted to break free from the oligarchic power structure, which kept them chained to Russia and bled the country of its resources. The protesters demanded that leaders finalize an association agreement that placed their country on a trajectory to join the European Union. The event came to be known as the Revolution of Dignity.
The revolution was ignited by a Facebook post written by a young journalist, Mustafa Nayyem, born in Kabul, Afghanistan. When I spent time with the Nigerian soccer players, I witnessed racism in its raw form. The Revolution of Dignity showed another side to the country: Here was a nationalist protest in the name of cosmopolitan dreams—and it threatened Russia profoundly.
Even if Russian nominally accepted the fact of Ukraine’s post-Soviet independence, the Kremlin treated it as a vassal state. Putin manipulated Ukrainian politics so that its corruption enriched his cronies and its leaders never deviated too far from his desired policies. The pipeline traversing Ukraine, which sends Russian gas to Western Europe, provided a massive pot of money that the Kremlin dispersed to serve its murky purposes. Meanwhile the Ukrainian state was deprived of cash that could have been spent on schools and roads.
Why did Putin cling to Ukraine? In 2014, his fear wasn’t Ukraine’s drift toward NATO. It was its drift toward the European Union, with its insistence on rule of law. To preserve his hold on Ukraine, Putin tried to instigate a counterrevolution in cities with large Russian-speaking populations. He invaded Crimea and the Donbas, threatening to carve the country into two. What he feared most was Ukrainian democracy, which would deprive him of influence over the colonial possession that he felt was his birthright.
Three months after the protesters in the Maidan expelled the kleptocratic pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, I returned to Kyiv. This time I was participating in a conference, organized by the historian Timothy Snyder, that brought in intellectuals from the U.S. and Western Europe for a display of solidarity with the new Ukraine. Bullets from snipers remained wedged in brick walls and lampposts. Barricades of tires still blocked the intersections of streets radiating from the Maidan.
I stayed up late getting to know a generation of young journalists who had boldly challenged the old order and championed the revolution. Having triumphed, they were preparing to embark on the hard work of entering politics and building a civil society.
At the conference, journalists shared rumors from the front lines of the Russian invasion. There was no defending Crimea or the Donbas, but Ukrainian resistance in the rest of the country felt almost miraculous. The Kremlin had tried to stoke the resentments of Russian-speaking Ukrainans. Language has long been a great fault line in the nation. But after Russia waged war, Ukranians began to see themselves as part of a common country, a common project. Putin’s imperial pretensions ignited a sense of Ukrainian nationhood that had long struggled to take hold.
And although Russian propaganda attempted to tar the revolution as the production of anti-Semitic hooligans, the nation had clearly begun moving beyond that ugly past. One poll showed that Ukrainians affirmatively wanted their daughters to marry Jewish men—and while that may sound like the punch line to a bad joke, it would have astounded my grandparents. More substantively, the country would eventually elect one of those Jewish men, Vlodomr Zelensky, to be its president. It didn’t just elect to Parliament the Afghan-born journalist whose Facebook post kicked off the revolution; voters also selected a wrestler of Rwandan descent. (At the Tokyo Olympics, he also became the first Black Ukrainian to win a gold medal.)
Lesya, the great-grandaughter of the man who saved my grandfather, joined me at the conference. She was a student in Kyiv and had protested at the Maidan. For all her education, Lesya admitted that she didn’t know much about the Holocaust—the catastrophe that bound us together. We went to Babi Yar, the ravine in the middle of the city where the Nazis massacred 34,000 Jews in two days. I’ll never forget the shocked look in her eyes as she read the monument’s placards and the magnitude of the event dawned on her.
At the conference, I spoke on a panel about history, memory, and the future of Ukraine. Lesya sat in the audience. As I recounted my grandfather’s story, I asked her to come onto the dais. It was an improvisation, and I worried that I might have imposed an awkward moment on her. But when she stood in front of the audience, she received an ovation. My lip began to quiver and suddenly I couldn’t hide my sobs. Standing on a stage in Kyiv, a few blocks from the Maidan, I felt overwhelmed by the contingencies of my own existence, by my feelings of gratitude for an event more than 70 years in the past, for the beauty of being in the presence of people seizing control of their own history.
So I guess it’s clear that I have my own emotional basis for dreading Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. But the United States also has intimate reasons for using every diplomatic and economic measure to defend Ukraine. Despite all the deserved criticism of American foreign policy in the 21st century, Ukraine is the place where the United States has best fostered democracy. The State Department has prodded the government in Kyiv to fight corruption. American NGOs have nurtured a robust civil society. Thanks to promises of American protection, Ukraine has had the confidence to step away from Russia’s authoritarian shadow.
One of the most poignant expressions of this idealism is a speech that then–Vice President Joe Biden delivered to the Ukrainian Rada in April 2014, soon after the occupation of the Maidan. Perhaps not surprisingly, he dispensed with the prepared text and riffed in his high folksy style. With all the requisite self-effacing caveats about not wanting to impose American values, he pleaded with the Parliament to combat corruption, especially in the energy sector, and to embrace democratic practice. But what’s most striking about the speech is its familiar tone: “We stand with you. And it is not just a foreign-policy judgment, it is a personal—it’s an emotional commitment.”
In a way, that line helps capture the core rationale behind the Biden administration’s Ukraine policy. From their very arrival in office, Biden and his advisers hoped to avoid a confrontation with Putin, because they didn’t consider him an important strategic competitor. Every phone call and meeting with Putin was taken in the spirit of prevention. Biden hoped to make Putin feel big so that he wouldn’t act out and distract the president from focusing his attention on China, the overriding priority of the administration.
From a cold, realist perspective, there’s perhaps an argument for abandoning Ukraine. But the bond that the president and State Department have with Ukraine isn’t cold. The object of Putin’s desire isn’t an abstraction to them. At core, they understand that it’s Ukraine, not The Ukraine.
2. Opinion | Ukraine is at the precipice of war. This is Biden’s moment to lead the world against autocracy.
Just as in the Cold War, we are facing an ideological war. Is it one the American people are willing to fight?
Excerpts:
Now is the time for Biden to explain exactly why we support democracies and why alliances are critical to our economic survival. He can drive a stake through the morally repugnant and geopolitically foolish notion of “spheres of influence,” end the claptrap about “retrenchment” and denounce the previous administration’s practice of playing footsie with dictators.
That will require bold action and inspiring rhetoric. This is Biden’s moment to turn his vision of an enduring alliance of democracies to stand against autocracy into a reality.
Opinion | Ukraine is at the precipice of war. This is Biden’s moment to lead the world against autocracy.
The Washington Post · by Jennifer RubinColumnist |AddFollowToday at 1:02 p.m. EST · February 17, 2022
President Biden has rallied the West to defend Ukraine’s territorial integrity and right to determine its foreign alliances. He has repeatedly warned that the United States and its allies are prepared to lower the hammer on Russia in the event of a further invasion of Ukraine, imposing crippling sanctions on its already anemic economy. And he has prebutted Russia’s false flag operations.
None of it, however, may be enough to stop Russian President Vladimir Putin from plunging Europe into a bloody conflict.
The Post reports, “In Moscow, the Russian government has expelled the U.S. Embassy’s second-ranking diplomat, Deputy Chief of Mission Bart Gorman, the State Department confirmed Thursday.” This follows public statements from the White House, Britain and NATO calling Putin’s promised withdrawal of troops from the Ukrainian border a lie. In fact, more than 7,000 new troops have been added, the Biden administration said.
We are, it seems, on the precipice of war. Departing for a trip to Ohio on Thursday, Biden warned, “My sense is this will happen in the next several days.”
While Putin has always been the sole decision-maker as to whether there will be war, the penalty Russia will pay and the consequences for the international order rest with Biden and the alliance he constructed. There are two equally important aspects to his response.
Follow Jennifer Rubin‘s opinionsFollow
First, Biden and Congress must move immediately to impose the raft of withering sanctions he has promised. So far, the signs are promising for bipartisan action. A coalition in the Senate introduced a resolution on Thursday that “reaffirms unwavering United States support for a secure, democratic, and independent Ukraine, free to choose its own leaders and future.” The measure condemns Russian aggression and encourages Biden that, “should any further invasion or other malign activity to undermine the sovereignty of Ukraine occur by Russia, the United States Government should exhaust all tools at its disposal to impose significant costs on the Russian Federation to restore peace in Europe.”
The resolution boasts remarkable bipartisan support, including from Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Europe and regional security cooperation; Rob Portman (R-Ohio), chair of the Senate Ukraine Caucus; Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; James E. Risch (R-Idaho), the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee; Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.); and Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-Tex.).
It is essential for Biden to make good on his vow to see that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline never goes online if Russia invades. Equally critical is to direct sanctions in ways that inflict economic pain on the oligarchs who keep Putin in power, including meaningful steps to go after their real estate holdings in Britain. Marketplace reports, “[British] Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said the government was committed to taking aim at some of these oligarch-owned properties in the U.K. Introducing tough new powers to freeze the U.K. assets of anyone with links to the Russian state, she said: ‘Those in and around the Kremlin will have nowhere to hide.’” That cannot be an empty promise.
Second, Biden should consider a prime-time address from the Oval Office, which would be the first of his presidency. If he wants to ensure unified support at home and international solidarity, he must treat this for what it is: a major war that threatens the freedom and stability of Europe. He should make clear that if Russia were to succeed, it would also be a victory for other global aggressors, who would declare open season on their neighbors. If Russia can grab Ukraine, China can snatch Taiwan. And other countries will think they can act with impunity, resulting in international chaos and economic turmoil.
Now is the time for Biden to explain exactly why we support democracies and why alliances are critical to our economic survival. He can drive a stake through the morally repugnant and geopolitically foolish notion of “spheres of influence,” end the claptrap about “retrenchment” and denounce the previous administration’s practice of playing footsie with dictators.
That will require bold action and inspiring rhetoric. This is Biden’s moment to turn his vision of an enduring alliance of democracies to stand against autocracy into a reality.
The Washington Post · by Jennifer RubinColumnist |AddFollowToday at 1:02 p.m. EST · February 17, 2022
3. After Early Foreign Policy Missteps, Biden’s Ukraine Strategy Leans on Diplomacy
The Biden administration: a learning organization?
Excerpt:
European officials have praised Mr. Biden’s approach, a change from last year, when they faulted the administration’s chaotic handling of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Mr. Biden also struck a submarine deal with Australia and the United Kingdom that infuriated France, causing a diplomatic rift that took months to repair.
After Early Foreign Policy Missteps, Biden’s Ukraine Strategy Leans on Diplomacy
Allies say Biden administration has changed its approach following the mishandled Australia submarine deal and withdrawal from Afghanistan
WSJ · by Ken Thomas and Gordon Lubold
Mr. Biden has deployed U.S. troops to strengthen America’s defense of NATO nations and stepped up intelligence-sharing about Russia’s activities near Ukraine to keep European allies on board with his strategy of threatening severe economic sanctions on Moscow in the event of an invasion. Russia has kept in place a force estimated to be as much as 150,000, and expelled the No. 2 U.S. diplomat from Moscow. Mr. Biden said Thursday that the threat of an invasion was “very high,” though he remained hopeful that a diplomatic pathway still existed.
European officials have praised Mr. Biden’s approach, a change from last year, when they faulted the administration’s chaotic handling of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Mr. Biden also struck a submarine deal with Australia and the United Kingdom that infuriated France, causing a diplomatic rift that took months to repair.
The administration has sought to keep Russian President Vladimir Putin off-balance, releasing information about potential Russian military tactics, troop movements and even suspected invasion plans. The administration has scrambled to bolster military aid to Ukraine, while taking pains to say that no U.S. troops would enter Ukraine, and while moving a handful of National Guardsmen out of the country.
Mr. Biden has said he would use economic sanctions against Russia to “put intense pressure on their largest and most significant financial institutions and key industries” if Mr. Putin proceeds with attacking Ukraine.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) and other Republicans have urged Mr. Biden to impose pre-emptive sanctions ahead of any invasion, saying the administration has the ability to act quickly. The administration says that wouldn’t serve as a deterrent.
“He was right to emphasize that the world will not shrug or stand idly by if Vladimir Putin tries to invade his neighbor,” Mr. McConnell said Wednesday in response to remarks Mr. Biden made a day earlier.
Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke Wednesday at a news conference in Russia.
Photo: Mikhail Klimentyev/Associated Press
After failing to reach an agreement on sanctions, senators passed a bipartisan resolution by voice vote Thursday, encouraging unity among North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies and stating support for imposing “significant costs” on Russia should an invasion occur.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said the resolution “sends a very strong message to Mr. Putin that the United States Senate, Democrats and Republicans of all different ideologies, are united in defending Ukraine in the ways that the administration sees fit.”
Mr. Biden arrived at the White House more than a year ago determined to reset relations with America’s allies following former President Donald Trump’s more strained relationship with allies like Germany and France.
Yet some allies, including the U.K., expressed dismay that Mr. Biden made a unilateral decision to leave Afghanistan last year, and the ensuing withdrawal left many angry at the U.S. Some officials have said the instinct by the Biden administration to share intelligence and information with them about Ukraine was in contrast to the period leading up to the decision to leave Afghanistan. European officials also say they appreciate that the Biden administration has reached out to European Union officials in Brussels, as well as to the national capitals.
U.S. soldiers prepared to board a plane for deployment to Europe this week.
Photo: allison joyce/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Late last week, as the Biden administration prepared to warn that an invasion could come within days and point to Feb. 16 as a potential target date, Mr. Biden stressed to members of his team the need to share that information with allies, according to two White House officials familiar with the discussions.
In recent days, Mr. Biden has held calls with French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who met Tuesday in Moscow with Mr. Putin. The president spoke with Mr. Putin last weekend, warning of “swift and severe costs” of an invasion.
Britain has used the tension with Russia to reaffirm its status as the U.S.’s closest ally in Europe. On Wednesday, the government said it was doubling the number of personnel in Estonia starting Wednesday—joining the U.S. in bolstering defenses in nearby NATO countries—and sending additional military equipment, including tanks and armored fighting vehicles.
Mr. Biden’s decision to declassify information about Russia’s potential use of fake Ukrainian provocations and disinformation to justify an attack, and the movement of Russian troops and potential attack plans, has been an important element of the administration’s attempt to prevent an invasion, White House officials said. National security adviser Jake Sullivan, who served as a top adviser to then-Vice President Biden in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea, has been a driver of the approach, the officials said. Administration officials have vowed to be better prepared than in 2014 and have noted that contingency planning began in November.
“Following the 2014 invasion and annexation of Crimea and the actions in the Donbas, and then following the 2016 interference in our election, I would argue we did not respond forcefully enough,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D., Del.), a longtime Biden friend and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
One point of tension at home and abroad has been the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which is intended to carry natural gas from Russia to Germany. Mr. Biden said unequivocally earlier this month at a press conference alongside the German chancellor that the pipeline would be suspended if Russia invades Ukraine. Mr. Scholz didn’t explicitly say the project would be halted but didn’t contradict Mr. Biden.
Republicans in Congress say Mr. Biden should have done more to halt the pipeline. “We should have seen stronger resolve coming from the president before now. And maybe we could have thwarted some of this,” said Sen. Joni Ernst (R., Iowa). “And so now we just have to keep encouraging Putin not to invade.”
The U.S. decision to evacuate and close its embassy in Ukraine has also drawn some critics. Ukrainian officials have complained the removal of diplomats is giving the impression that the capital is about to fall. French and German officials have warned that the U.S. may be overestimating the chance of a full-scale Russian invasion.
Mr. Biden said in his remarks Tuesday a Russian invasion of Ukraine wouldn’t be “painless” to Americans, noting the possible impact on energy prices. He wanted to make sure he emphasized how a Russian invasion might affect the American public, one administration official said.
The president has been focused on preparations for imposing sanctions in the event Russia invades Ukraine, quizzing advisers on individual components of sanction packages and how they would be sequenced in the event of an incursion, people familiar with the conversations said.
—Laurence Norman in Berlin, Max Colchester in London and Catherine Lucey, Lindsay Wise and Vivian Salama in Washington contributed to this article.
WSJ · by Ken Thomas and Gordon Lubold
4. Artillery Exchanges in Eastern Ukraine May Presage Invasion, U.S. Warns
Artillery Exchanges in Eastern Ukraine May Presage Invasion, U.S. Warns
As shelling intensified in the east, officials warned that Moscow might use false claims of “genocide” against Russians in the region as a pretext for an attack.
A tank exercise in eastern Ukraine was cancelled on Thursday amid jitters about an impending Russian attack.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
Feb. 17, 2022Updated 10:04 p.m. ET
STANYTSIA LUHANSKA, Ukraine — Residents near Ukraine’s front line rushed into basements for cover Thursday as exchanges of artillery fire with Russian-backed separatists reached their most intense level in months, an ominous development amid Western fears that Russia might use the fighting as a pretext to invade Ukraine.
As the United States and Russia traded conflicting accounts over whether Russian forces were really pulling back from the Ukrainian border, as Moscow has insisted, the separatists claimed they had come under fire from the Ukrainians. That is precisely the sort of incident Western officials have warned Russia might try to use to justify military action.
At the White House, President Biden said “every indication we have is they’re prepared to go into Ukraine, attack Ukraine.” He said the United States had “reason to believe” that Russia was “engaged in a false flag operation to have an excuse to go in.”
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken made an unscheduled trip to New York, where he told the United Nations Security Council that American intelligence “indicates clearly” that Russian forces surrounding the country from three sides “are preparing to launch an attack against Ukraine in the coming days.”
The escalation of tensions rippled throughout the markets, where stock prices plunged.
Russia continued to insist Thursday that it had no plans to invade, issuing new updates about troop withdrawals and dismissing the American invasion warnings as “information terrorism.”
The Russian government also published a lengthy response to American proposals made last month to ease tensions, maintaining the Kremlin’s push to regain a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and issuing a vague warning of new military deployments. If the United States does not accede to its demands, the document said, “Russia will be forced to respond, including through the implementation of measures of a military-technical character.”
Belarusian and Russian flags at a joint military exercise on Thursday in Belarus.Credit...Emile Ducke for The New York Times
In eastern Ukraine on Thursday, where a kindergarten was shelled, the spike in violence evoked the sort of scenario that Western leaders have been warning of amid the enormous Russian troop buildup surrounding Ukraine.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia this week repeated his false claim that Ukraine was carrying out a “genocide” against Russian speakers in the country’s east, while the Russian authorities announced an investigation into supposed “mass graves” of Russian-speaking victims of Ukrainian forces.
And on Thursday, the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, offered an ominous assessment. “The excessive concentration of Ukrainian forces near the contact line, together with possible provocations, can pose terrible danger,” he said.
Mr. Blinken told the Security Council that Moscow appeared to be setting the stage.
“Russia plans to manufacture a pretext for its attack,” he said, citing a “so-called terrorist bombing” or “a fake, even a real attack” with chemical weapons. “This could be a violent event that Russia will blame on Ukraine,” he said, “or an outrageous accusation that Russia will level against the Ukrainian government.”
If so, it would not be the first time.
When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, it did so after claiming that Russian speakers there were threatened by the pro-Western revolution in Kyiv, which the Kremlin described as a fascist coup. And in 2008, Russia invaded Georgia after the Georgian Army moved into a Russian-backed separatist enclave there.
The skirmishing in Eastern Europe between Ukrainian forces and Kremlin-backed separatists is longstanding, but Thursday’s violence was the worst since a cease-fire was reached two years ago.
The combatants exchanged not just shells but accusations. The Ukrainian military said three adult civilians had been wounded at the kindergarten, and on the other side, a Russian-backed separatist leader claimed Ukraine had launched mortar fire “barbarically and cynically.”
The artillery fire began in the early morning and did not let up with the advent of evening. The sharp crack of explosions echoed off buildings and flashes of light from incoming shells silhouetted trees.
Shelling in eastern Ukraine damaged a kindergarten, knocked out electricity and wounded at least four adult civilians and two soldiers, according to the Ukrainian military.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
The days of whiplash developments made unmistakable the volatility of a crisis that American officials fear could lead to an assault by one of the world’s most powerful militaries against Ukraine, Europe’s second-biggest country, a development younger Europeans never thought they would see.
Still, in Moscow, many analysts remained convinced that Mr. Putin’s troop buildup was a bluff — a means to pressure the West to rule out Ukrainian membership in NATO and to force the alliance to roll back its presence in Eastern Europe.
Whatever his true intentions, the diplomatic and military crisis has also become an intense battle of public messaging, with both Moscow and Washington deploying vivid imagery and rhetoric to discredit the other side.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said at a meeting of his NATO counterparts in Brussels that Russia continued to move troops closer to Ukraine’s borders. He said it was also adding combat aircraft and stocking up on blood supplies in anticipation of casualties on the battlefield.
“I know firsthand that you don’t do these sorts of things for no reason,” said Mr. Austin, a retired four-star Army general. “And you certainly don’t do them if you’re getting ready to pack up and go home.”
Early Friday morning, soon after arriving in Munich for an annual security conference, the State Department’s spokesman said Mr. Blinken had accepted a proposal to meet with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, late next week. The spokesman, Ned Price, did not provide a time or place for the meeting, the two diplomats’ second in two months, except to say it would not happen if Russia further invaded Ukraine. “If they do invade in the coming days, it will make clear they were never serious about diplomacy,” Mr. Price said in the statement.
Although there are some 150,000 Russian troops surrounding Ukraine, Russia has cast the deployments as little more than military drills. On Thursday, international reporters were invited to visit Belarus — a close Kremlin ally — to see for themselves. There, amid the roar of Russian and Belarusian firepower, they were treated to some mocking comments directed at Western intelligence agencies by Belarus’s strongman leader, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko.
“There will be no invasion tomorrow,” Mr. Lukashenko said as the military drills were staged at a desolate military training ground southeast of Minsk, the country’s capital. “Are you still entertaining this crazy idea?”
President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus during joint military exercises with Russia.Credit...Emile Ducke for The New York Times
Mr. Lukashenko was scheduled to meet with Mr. Putin in Moscow on Friday, and pledged that he was willing to keep Russian troops in his country for “as long as necessary.”
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.
Western officials say the Russian troops gathered in Belarus are part of what makes the current invasion threat so dire, allowing the Kremlin to attack from the north as well as from the Russian mainland to the east and from Crimea and the Black Sea to the south.
A key question now is whether Russia will continue its diplomatic engagement with the West. While Mr. Putin and Mr. Lavrov held a flurry of meetings and calls with their Western counterparts in recent weeks, there were no more such interactions on the calendar for the coming days.
Mr. Blinken said that the State Department was “evaluating” the Russian document delivered to Washington on Thursday and that he had proposed to Mr. Lavrov that the two meet in Europe next week. Russian officials did not confirm that the minister would accept the meeting.
“Blinken hasn’t even gotten around to reading Russia’s response, and he’s already calling Lavrov to a meeting,” a senior Russian Foreign Ministry official said. “What are they going to talk about?”
The document indicated there was only a narrow diplomatic way forward.
It said an American proposal to allow Russia to inspect U.S. missile defense bases in Poland and Romania that the Kremlin sees as a threat could “be further taken into consideration.” It also said that Russia saw “the potential for mutually acceptable agreements” on the subject of long-range bomber flights near national borders. And it said that Russia was “open in principle” to a discussion of replacing the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, a landmark 1987 nuclear arms-control pact that the Trump administration abandoned in 2019, after accusing Russia of violating it.
But Moscow insisted that those elements could be agreed upon only as part of a package that addressed Russia’s central demands.
“We welcome the readiness of the United States for appropriate consultations,” the document said. “However, this work cannot replace the settlement of the key problems posed by Russia.”
The joint Russian-Belarusian military exercises Thursday at a training site in Belarus. Credit...Emile Ducke for The New York Times
Among Russia’s demands was that NATO militaries halt all cooperation with Ukraine and remove all Western weaponry delivered to the country in recent years to help it defend against Russia and Russian-backed separatists. The document also repeated Russia’s central demands for “security guarantees” that Mr. Putin first described last November, including that NATO assure that Ukraine would never join the alliance and that it would pull back troops stationed in countries that joined the alliance after 1997.
“Our ‘red lines’ and fundamental security interests are being ignored, and Russia’s inalienable right to assure them is being rejected,” the document said.
Western leaders have rejected the demand to pull back troops or bar certain countries from NATO, but have hinted at the possibility of Ukraine itself swearing off membership in the alliance.
And while the letter reiterated recent denials by Russian officials of any plans to invade Ukraine, it also warned of an unspecified military response if those demands were not met, one that analysts have interpreted as the potential deployment of advanced missile systems in a new, more threatening posture.
“No ‘Russian invasion of Ukraine’, which the United States and its allies have officially been announcing since last fall, is happening, nor is one being planned,” the document said. But if the United States does not provide “firm, legally binding guarantees of our security,” it said, “Russia will be forced to respond, including through the implementation of measures of a military-technical character.”
Andrew E. Kramer reported from Stanytsia Luhanska, Ukraine, and Anton Troianovski from Moscow. Lara Jakes contributed reporting from Washington.
5. U.S. has 'no intention' to engage with China on Indo Pacific Economic Framework
Excerpts:
Speaking to reporters on a Thursday conference call, U.S Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink said early discussions were ongoing about the economic framework.
"I think it's safe to say that we are engaged in initial conversations with partners across the region, who share our vision for the kind of region that we want to live in again, a free and open region in which countries are free from coercion and are able to pursue their economic and security interests freely in an in an unhindered fashion," he said.
"And you are correct that there is currently no intention to engage the People's Republic of China on the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework."
Chinese President Xi Jinping has pushed what the country calls the Belt and Road programme, committing billions of dollars to build infrastructure around the world.
China has also backed the world's largest free trade bloc that excludes the United States, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
U.S. has 'no intention' to engage with China on Indo Pacific Economic Framework
TAIPEI, Feb 17 (Reuters) - The United States has "no intention" of engaging with China in its forthcoming Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, but is talking to its partners who share the same vision of a free and open region with no coercion, a senior U.S. diplomat said.
The United States vowed on last week to commit more diplomatic and security resources to the Indo-Pacific to push back against what its sees as China's bid to create a regional sphere of influence and become the world's most influential power. read more
In a 12-page strategy overview, the Biden administration said it would focus on every corner of the region from South Asia to the Pacific Islands to strengthen its long-term position and commitment.
The document reiterated U.S. plans to launch an Indo-Pacific Economic Framework in early 2022, an initiative the administration hopes will at least partially fill a big gap in engagement with the region since former President Donald Trump quit a multinational trade framework in 2017.
Speaking to reporters on a Thursday conference call, U.S Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink said early discussions were ongoing about the economic framework.
"I think it's safe to say that we are engaged in initial conversations with partners across the region, who share our vision for the kind of region that we want to live in again, a free and open region in which countries are free from coercion and are able to pursue their economic and security interests freely in an in an unhindered fashion," he said.
"And you are correct that there is currently no intention to engage the People's Republic of China on the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework."
Chinese President Xi Jinping has pushed what the country calls the Belt and Road programme, committing billions of dollars to build infrastructure around the world.
China has also backed the world's largest free trade bloc that excludes the United States, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
China and Russia declared a "no limits" strategic partnership earlier this month, their most detailed and assertive statement to work together - and against the United States - to build a new international order based on their own interpretations of human rights and democracy.
Kritenbrink said Washington could not "dismiss the challenge" posed by the vision put forward by China and Russia's joint statement.
"We stand for a world and a vision grounded in problem solving and innovation, not coercion and aggression," he said.
"That is our affirmative vision for the region. I think it stands in stark contrast to the vision of others, including that put forward by Presidents Putin and Xi."
Reporting by Ben Blanchard; additional reporting by Yew Lun Tian in Beijing
6. The U.S. Must Prepare to Withstand a Cyberattack
Conclusion:
The creation of a comprehensive COTE plan in the coming weeks and months is not realistic. In the short term, the administration must rely on existing state and local arrangements for responding to emergencies while leveraging CISA to assist the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In the longer term, however, there will be no excuses for an administration that allows the U.S. economy to come under cyberattack without a plan in place for its rapid recovery.
The U.S. Must Prepare to Withstand a Cyberattack
Congress gave the Biden administration two years to develop a strategy. One year in, there is little evidence that the work has started.
A ransomware attack shut down Colonial Pipeline and disrupted fuel supplies on the East Coast and southeastern U.S. last May.(Photo by LOGAN CYRUS/AFP/Getty Images.)
“Shields up,” the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) warned this week. The White House has threatened to impose punishing financial sanctions on Russian banks and restrict key technology exports to deter further Russian aggression against Ukraine, but if the seemingly inevitable happens—Moscow invades, Washington responds, and Moscow parries back—is America prepared to withstand the onslaught? There is no indication the Biden administration, or its predecessors, have ensured the answer is yes.
The Kremlin has ignored prior slaps on the wrist—after it seized Crimea in 2014 and after the Skripal poisoning in the United Kingdom in 2018—and so the new sanctions will need to be economically devastating. Back in 2018, then-Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev called sanctions “a declaration of economic war,” and pledged that Russia would “react to this war economically, politically, or, if needed, by other means.” With a limited ability to retaliate with its own financial sanctions, the Kremlin may turn to cyberattacks. In the U.S. government’s own words, “The Russian government understands that disabling or destroying critical infrastructure—including power and communications—can augment pressure on a country’s government, military and population and accelerate their acceding to Russian objectives.”
DHS warned U.S. companies last month to bolster their cybersecurity. While hardening corporate America’s cyber defenses is essential, robust planning requires having contingencies for when defenses fail. The U.S. government must be ready to help the American economy recover rapidly after a significant cyber event, which could simultaneously bring down the power, water, banking, and telecommunication sectors.
Congress had precisely this type of crisis in mind last year when it tasked the Biden administration with crafting a Continuity of the Economy (COTE) plan. Such a plan would identify the optimal steps toward recovery and prioritize the flow of goods, services, information, and resources to the most critical sectors of the economy while accounting for their overlapping requirements and interdependencies.
The Kremlin’s state-backed hackers have long shown a penchant for critical infrastructure attacks. The Kremlin has been laying the groundwork for attacks against U.S. critical infrastructure for years by installing malware into the U.S. power grid. A “digital blitzkrieg,” as Wired magazine described it, of more than 6,500 attacks between 2015 and 2017 repeatedly left hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians without electricity and halted Kyiv’s State Treasury systems for days. Russian gangs, meanwhile, triggered a regional state of emergency when a ransomware attack shut down Colonial Pipeline and disrupted fuel supplies on the East Coast and southeastern U.S. last May.
If Washington enacts harsh sanctions in response to an invasion of Ukraine, Russia will leverage its previous hacking campaigns to launch something new and destructive. In anticipation, Russian hacking units tied to the GRU have developed “more sophisticated means of critical infrastructure attack[s],” according to John Hultquist, a cyber intelligence analyst at Mandiant.
Even if Russia does not launch a direct cyberattack on the United States, American companies may be collateral damage from Russian cyberattacks targeting Ukraine or Eastern Europe. In 2017, a Russian cyberattack known as NotPetya, which initially targeted Ukraine, unintentionally spread through thousands of connected devices, taking down banks, pharmaceutical companies, and logistics operations throughout Europe. Causing an unprecedented $10 billion in damages around the world, the attack shut down the operations of major companies like the shipping giant Maersk, the pharmaceutical corporation Merck, the food company Mondelez, and FedEx’s European counterpart, TNT Express.
Maersk, which accounts for close to a fifth of the world’s shipping capacity, including 76 ports and more than 800 vessels containing tens of millions of tons of cargo, had to reinstall 4,000 servers, 45,000 PCs, and 2,500 applications over the course of 10 days. Merck ceased manufacturing, research, and order fulfillment for several weeks after the attack. One Merck researcher said she lost 15 years of work because of the NotPetya attack, and the company had to borrow doses of of its HPV vaccine from the Centers for Disease Control’s stockpile. FedEx was still recovering from NotPetya six months later. Today, in a world of increasing automation and digitalization, buffeted by a global pandemic and supply chain issues, the NotPetya could have even more dramatic consequences.
In the wake of NotPetya and other global attacks, Congress created the Cyberspace Solarium Commission to help Washington devise a better strategy in cyberspace. This commission recommended the development of COTE planning, and Congress gave the Biden administration two years to develop a strategy for generating a COTE plan. One year in, there is little evidence that the work has started. The crisis in Ukraine is once again demonstrating how vulnerable the highly networked U.S. economy is to catastrophic cyberattacks, and how much a COTE plan is needed to build resilience and speed up infrastructure recovery.
The creation of a comprehensive COTE plan in the coming weeks and months is not realistic. In the short term, the administration must rely on existing state and local arrangements for responding to emergencies while leveraging CISA to assist the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In the longer term, however, there will be no excuses for an administration that allows the U.S. economy to come under cyberattack without a plan in place for its rapid recovery.
Mark Montgomery is senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation (CCTI) at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Samantha F. Ravich is the chair of CCTI. They served as executive director and commissioner, respectively, on the congressionally mandated Cyberspace Solarium Commission. FDD is a Washington, D.C.-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
7. Biden’s Weakness Puts Strong Iran Deal Out of Reach
Conclusion:
It is better to have no deal than a bad deal. Biden sadly doesn’t seem to recognize a bad deal when he sees one. The next president (or the Israeli prime minister) may be forced to respond to Iran’s march to the bomb with military force because of Biden’s mistakes.
Biden’s Weakness Puts Strong Iran Deal Out of Reach
Talks on Iran’s nuclear program in Vienna are entering a pivotal stage. President Joe Biden, viewed increasingly by Americans as a weak leader, is eager for a policy win. Sensing Biden’s weakness, Tehran hopes to foist a bad deal on Washington that no strong occupant of the oval office would or should accept.
When Americans believe a president is weak, it can result in hand wringing or jubilation among the respective partisans focused on the next election. But when foreign adversaries believe the president of the United States is weak, the consequences can be dire. Unfortunately, that dynamic is on full display in the administration’s nuclear negotiations in Vienna. It takes strength to reject a bad deal or negotiate one worthy of bipartisan support. Sadly, Biden seems to lack the fortitude to do either.
The White House, of course, rejects any suggestion regarding Biden’s weakness. But polling numbers reveal the reality. A Gallup Poll released on January 25 found that only 37% of Americans viewed President Joe Biden as “a strong and decisive leader.” That number is only slightly worse than the 38 percent of respondents who said Biden can manage the government effectively.
And the Gallup Poll is hardly an anomaly. YouGovAmerica interviewed a nationally-representative sample of 1,500 U.S. adult citizens between January 29 - February 1 and found that only 30 percent of adult U.S. citizens view Biden as a strong leader.
In the context of domestic politics, it is easy to see why most Americans don’t view Biden as a strong and effective leader. Biden, for example, frequently boasts about his decades of experience in the U.S. Senate, his relationships in that body, and his congressional know-how. Yet he has been unable to even persuade two hesitant senators in his own party to support his top legislative priority.
Unfortunately, Biden’s difficulties have not stopped at the water’s edge.
The chaos of the August withdrawal put U.S. service members in horrible situations and featured heart-wrenching images of Afghans clinging to the bottom of departing American aircraft. As a direct result of Biden’s decision, the al-Qaeda-linked Taliban once again governs Afghanistan, enjoying a safe haven there as it did on September 11, 2001.
Biden's poor decision on Afghanistan, exacerbated by disastrous implementation, clearly made an impression in adversary capitals. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) top commander, Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami proclaimed a month after the Afghanistan withdrawal that, “The America of today is not the America of the past 10, 20, or 30 years.”
The Houthis widened the Yemeni civil war last month by launching ballistic missiles at a base in the United Arab Emirates that the Houthis knew houses U.S. service members. If defenses had not intercepted the incoming missiles, many Americans might have died, not to mention Emiratis.
This pattern of White House weakness may explain why the radical regime in Tehran sees an opportunity in Vienna.
A strong agreement worthy of bipartisan support in Washington would impose a permanent ban on Iran’s nuclear program and enforce that prohibition with an intrusive inspections regime that ensures compliance. Such an agreement would address the ballistic missiles Iran would likely use to deliver a nuclear weapon and would also not lift terrorism related sanctions until Tehran actually stops supporting terrorism.
In stark contrast, under Biden’s deeply flawed proposal, Tehran does not need to cheat to reach threshold nuclear-weapons capabilities. Merely by waiting for key constraints to expire, the regime can emerge over the next decade with an industrial-size enrichment program, a near-zero breakout time, an easier clandestine path to a nuclear warhead, long-range ballistic missiles, access to advanced conventional weaponry, greater regional dominance, and a more powerful economy, increasingly immunized against Western sanctions.
At that point, the clerical regime will be more dangerous than it is today. Accordingly, Biden's Iran deal would likely force a future U.S. President to resort to military force as the only option to stop Iran's development of nuclear weapons; the consequences of such a war against a more powerful enemy will be even more devastating.
So, where do we go from here?
Over 1,000 United States veterans and Gold Star families targeted by Iranian-supported terrorists wrote a letter to Biden on January 13, 2022, pleading with the president to not lift or suspend any sanctions “until all outstanding judgments and pending claims against Iran and the IRGC have been fully satisfied.” It’s unclear whether Biden will listen to those Americans who have suffered most due to Tehran’s terrorism.
The ultra-radical regime ruled by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Ebrahim Raisi hope they can bamboozle Biden into granting a multi-billion-dollar bonanza in return for concessions that can be quickly reversed. If past is prologue, Tehran would use that financial windfall to inch toward a nuclear weapon, increase support for terrorist groups, and build an intercontinental ballistic missile to eventually target the American homeland. Meanwhile, Tehran will use its new 25-year comprehensive strategic partnership with Beijing to build economic strength, making the regime less susceptible to future U.S.-led sanctions.
Perhaps that is why nearly 200 House Republicans sent a letter to President Biden on February 16 warning that any agreement with Iran not approved by Congress “will be temporary and non-binding and will meet the same fate as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).” Indeed, if a deal with Iran is worthy of support, the administration should be willing to submit it to the U.S. Senate for scrutiny and ratification as a treaty. A refusal by Biden to do so repeats the mistake of the Obama administration and tells Americans everything they need to know about the weakness of the potential agreement.
On April 14, 1984, then-Secretary of State George P. Shultz told an audience at Kansas State University that “Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table.” Unfortunately, in the nuclear talks in Vienna with the Islamic Republic of Iran, President Biden is casting the shadow of weakness over the bargaining table and the primary victim will be American national security.
It is better to have no deal than a bad deal. Biden sadly doesn’t seem to recognize a bad deal when he sees one. The next president (or the Israeli prime minister) may be forced to respond to Iran’s march to the bomb with military force because of Biden’s mistakes.
Mark Dubowitz is chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Bradley Bowman is senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power.
8. Joe Biden’s new Indo-Pacific Strategy: A view from Southeast Asia
As I originally noted there will be a lot to like and to criticize about the new strategy. Where you stand depends on where you sit. But actions will speak louder than words.
Excerpts;
Beyond the traditional economic and security cooperation, the strategy also highlights the importance of people-to-people interaction. In the years before Covid-19, almost 60,000 students from ASEAN member states studied in the United States. And through the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative (YSEALI) the United States has sought to promote closer ties with the next generation of regional leaders.
The strategy also illustrates the weight attached to US-ASEAN relations. The United States has reiterated its commitment to the East Asia Summit and ASEAN Regional Forum and “will also seek new ministerial-level engagements with ASEAN”, promising more than US$100 million in new joint initiatives.
The US Indo-Pacific Strategy promises much. The best way to increase US engagement with the region and Southeast Asia in particular will be to demonstrate the benefit to both sides.
Joe Biden’s new Indo-Pacific Strategy: A view from Southeast Asia
Rather than trying to push ASEAN to confront China, the
White House has made an important gesture for unity.
The United States has just released an Indo-Pacific Strategy document, reiterating the importance of the region under President Joe Biden. Even though the document states the United States “will focus on every corner of the region, from Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia, to South Asia and Oceania, including the Pacific Islands,” it’s obvious that Southeast Asia is very much in the heart of the US Indo-Pacific Strategy.
Many of the ten Association of Southeast Asian Nations member states are specifically mentioned, with the Philippines and Thailand as US treaty alliance partners in the region. Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore are considered leading regional partners.
Unlike the AUKUS announcements, where China loomed in the background largely unmentioned, the new strategy document is explicit that China’s “coercion and aggression spans the globe, but it is most acute in the Indo-Pacific”. Beijing is singled out for aggressive behaviour, threatening neighbours in the South and East China seas, leading Washington to declare it will assist allies and friends in the region.
The best way to increase US engagement with the region and Southeast Asia in particular will be to demonstrate the benefit to both sides.
Southeast Asia has become one of the most important arenas for this great power contestation. ASEAN has long emphasised its centrality and neutrality and to ensure this continues the organisation has adopted the ASEAN Outlook on Indo-Pacific. The new US Indo-Pacific Strategy does not explicitly mention or endorse the ASEAN Outlook, but it does “endorse ASEAN centrality and support ASEAN in its efforts to deliver sustainable solutions to the region’s most pressing challenges”.
This is an important gesture and, unlike the Trump administration which too often sought to provoke ASEAN to confront China, the new US Indo-Pacific Strategy recognises and respects the importance of ASEAN unity.
The document also offers a concrete plan to ASEAN to promote regional prosperity, with the United States pledging to increase its foreign direct investment in the region. The United States is already the leading investor in ASEAN countries, with the new strategy promising further measures that will “facilitate high-standards trade, govern the digital economy, catalyse investment in transparent, high-standards infrastructure, and build digital connectivity”. Such commitment is important to balance the influence of China in the region, which has significantly increased in the last decade via its Belt and Road Initiative. It also appears to go some way to addressing the shortfall from the US decision to withdraw from negotiations for regional free trade talks.
In the security arena, the new strategy reiterates that the United States has maintained “a strong and consistent defence presence necessary to support regional peace, security, stability, and prosperity”, pointing to the South China Sea and the East China Sea as a priority. However, it is interesting that while the document underscores the importance of freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific, not a single paragraph mentions the US Freedom of Navigation Operations Program (FONOPS) carried out by the US Navy, which has stirred controversy. Conversely, the strategy emphasises the importance of the Coast Guard to lead maritime security cooperation in the region, in “advising, training, deployment, and capacity-building … including to build maritime capacity and maritime-domain awareness”. Indeed, in 2021, the US Coast Guard announced a joint maritime training centre with the Indonesian Coast Guard in Batam.
The emphasis on coast guard cooperation can be seen as a positive gesture since it will be less provocative and sensitive compared to a military presence in the region. And more importantly, coast guard operations in Southeast Asia are very much required to tackle maritime security threats such as illegal fishing.
Beyond the traditional economic and security cooperation, the strategy also highlights the importance of people-to-people interaction. In the years before Covid-19, almost 60,000 students from ASEAN member states studied in the United States. And through the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative (YSEALI) the United States has sought to promote closer ties with the next generation of regional leaders.
The strategy also illustrates the weight attached to US-ASEAN relations. The United States has reiterated its commitment to the East Asia Summit and ASEAN Regional Forum and “will also seek new ministerial-level engagements with ASEAN”, promising more than US$100 million in new joint initiatives.
The US Indo-Pacific Strategy promises much. The best way to increase US engagement with the region and Southeast Asia in particular will be to demonstrate the benefit to both sides.
9. Previewing Biden’s FY23 defense budget request: 5 things to expect
From one of the best analysts on military spending.
Excerpts:
The defense budget will once again tout record levels of investment in Research and Development (R&D) as the priority approach to competition with China.
Expect a focus on funding almost-ready R&D efforts.
Try to divest to invest — again.
Steal first from readiness to cover unexpected budget holes.
The bowwave is still looming.
The problem is too big to come from somewhere, so instead, it’s going to have to come from everywhere — including nuclear modernization — with budgets that do not keep pace with inflation.
If the administration continues to underfund national defense by failing to engage with the very real ramifications of record inflation and overdue modernization efforts, it will inevitably force servicemembers to pay the price by stretching them steadily further. Like last year, the White House will pass the future of the US military to Congress. Lawmakers should dust off this year’s playbook and be prepared to force defense spending higher again.
Previewing Biden’s FY23 defense budget request: 5 things to expect - Breaking Defense
Will the Air Force try, once again, to say goodbye to the A-10? (DVIDS)
With the long saga of the fiscal year 2022 budget looking like it will be finalized in March, eyes now turn to the FY23 defense budget and what it might look like. Between Russian aggression, inflation and a Congress that appears supportive of increasing defense spending, it’s unclear how high the Pentagon’s budget will go. But as Mackenzie Eaglen of AEI notes, there are plenty of signs about what shape the budget might take.
While the White House lags on sending its next federal budget to Congress, there is a fair amount policymakers know already about the forthcoming fiscal year 2023 request. Reports suggest the White House’s passback guidance will set the FY23 national defense budget for the Department of Defense somewhere at or above $770 billion. That might sound high, but it fails to account for the military’s lost purchasing power as a result of record breaking inflation this year and likely next, along with nearly a half year under a spending freeze.
Thanks to public comments, we can also piece together five key points about budget trends under the topline—whenever it officially arrives.
The defense budget will once again tout record levels of investment in Research and Development (R&D) as the priority approach to competition with China. Heidi Shyu, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, told reporters in January that she believes the Pentagon’s FY23 research and development budget request would again be historically high. But that will simply trigger déjà vu for Congress and demonstrate a lack of imagination. A budget stuck on cruise control by continuing well-worn paths laid two administrations ago will not please Congress.
Expect a focus on funding almost-ready R&D efforts. Comments from top leaders signal the budget will favor R&D and science and tech programs ready to move into production and procurement as opposed to those further out. Army Secretary Christine Wormuth recently said key modernization programs are being scrutinized for cuts. Those that will survive are prototypes that are affordable and ready to scale. If they’re not primed for this, they are vulnerable in the 2023 budget request.
That was echoed when Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said recently that there is no shortage of innovation or technology at the Pentagon. The implication, of course, is that there is a shortage of fielded projects, products and weapons. Kendall noted how R&D projects are piling up without a clear path to getting them in the hands of warfighters. But this is a problem Congress has been pushing the Pentagon to address for years. 15 months ago, the House Future of Defense task force report said the Pentagon must identify innovative capabilities and “make substantial investments to procure them at the necessary scale.” Such programs “should then be fast-tracked” instead of failing “to become funded programs of record,” the report stated.
This is a necessary and long overdue effort to bridge the so-called acquisition valley of death; too many programs are languishing in the science experiment-equivalent phase and petering out before they have the chance to bear fruit, at scale. If there is not tangible and substantial progress in moving large numbers of programs into procurement in the FY23 defense budget request, it will have failed to meet the moment.
Try to divest to invest — again. The next Biden budget will also continue the trend, started during the Obama administration, of “divesting” old weapons to “invest” in new technologies of the future. While this sounds smart and novel, the problem is that this strategy lacks nuance.
Too often the approach has unilaterally cut capacity at a time the armed forces are as busy as ever around the globe. And because the process is bottom-line driven, it often sheds innovative legacy programs evolving toward new capabilities. And, let’s be frank: the results usually end up divesting without the money materializing for actually investing. Unfortunately, this trend will be hyper accelerated with raging inflation affecting every defense account and priority.
Further, Congress tends to approve divestment in smaller tranches than the services typically propose, or moves to protect parochial interests in such a way that the cuts become cost neutral. So while the service chiefs are making clear progress in convincing lawmakers to overcome at-times local interests to retire bombers, tankers and drones, the half-loaf approach results in what Kendall calls the “death by a thousand cuts” that has “failed to result in real savings.”
Steal first from readiness to cover unexpected budget holes. The cost of doing regular business is going up across the enterprise thanks to COVID-19, lingering supply chain disruptions, continued labor shortages, and now inflation. The result will be attempts to move money around to cover unplanned cost increases.
Similar to how the Pentagon responded to natural disasters at various bases in recent years, the first billpayer will inevitably be military readiness. That is because the operations and maintenance account has what are called execution-year dollars. These, as senior leaders have noted, are far “more valuable than future-year dollars” when you need to financially triage in a pinch.
But expect impacts across the board; no priority will be spared except military and civilian pay and compensation, although they too will feel poorer immediately, as the generous-looking 4.6% raise ahead in FY23, based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employment Cost Index, will still not be enough to keep up with inflation. Add to that the expired child tax credit going away and pocketbooks across the military will be worse for wear.
Red hot inflation will also keep a lid on any endstrength growth across the services, and likely cause a slight decline in active-duty numbers. With an overall topline that will very likely not keep up with overall inflation at or above seven percent, the Defense Department will struggle to even meet the 4.6% pay raise for 1.4 million uniformed personnel and roughly 800,000 civilian employees.
Marine Corps leaders are already previewing endstrength cuts to help fund modernization. Calling active duty cuts “the most logical lever to pull, based on the fact [the Corps] had grown so large to the point that [it] was unsustainable,” the rest of the services are about to come to the same difficult realization.
Unfortunately, the Commandant is likely to get fewer Marines but no additional dollars to funnel into technology as he hopes due to inflation. It will cost more money this year than last year to keep a smaller force paid.
Not only will troops’ paychecks take a hit, but their quality-of-life programs will also be squeezed. The Navy, for example, is already shrinking base operations services across the country “due to budgetary constraints.” This affects family priority programs, from gym and swimming pool hours to base libraries, auto hobby shops, landscaping and other custodial services.
Endstrength cuts in light of growing global demands will further add to readiness woes. That is because, as Navy Secretary Carlos del Toro said recently, “the threat doesn’t change much just because inflation is going up.”
The bowwave is still looming. Finally, the Pentagon will continue to grapple with the “Terrible 20’s” challenge of funding strategic and conventional modernization in the same decade without nearly enough funds to do so. Discussing the challenge of trying to fund tri-service modernization from within existing budgets—as opposed to getting additional new money—Air Force leaders have said plainly this approach will crowd out other equally-important investments.
Lt. Gen. Clint Hinote, Air Force Deputy for Strategy, Integration and Requirements, said conversations are ongoing with stakeholders about whether strategic and conventional modernization is “either/or” or “both/and.” He noted there is “no free money” and so “it has to come from somewhere.”
The problem is too big to come from somewhere, so instead, it’s going to have to come from everywhere — including nuclear modernization — with budgets that do not keep pace with inflation.
If the administration continues to underfund national defense by failing to engage with the very real ramifications of record inflation and overdue modernization efforts, it will inevitably force servicemembers to pay the price by stretching them steadily further. Like last year, the White House will pass the future of the US military to Congress. Lawmakers should dust off this year’s playbook and be prepared to force defense spending higher again.
10. UPDATED: Four Chiefs, Ensign Facing Charges Over Release of USS Carl Vinson F-35C Crash Video
What is up with these sailors? It is also interesting to note what actions brought charges and what did not. I doubt we have seen the end of videos of mishaps and other events. I fear our addiction to social media will always tempt personnel to take videos and post them.
UPDATED: Four Chiefs, Ensign Facing Charges Over Release of USS Carl Vinson F-35C Crash Video - USNI News
An F-35C Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter during a ramp strike aboard USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) on Jan. 24, 2022.
This post has been updated to include Article 92 charges against an Ensign in addition to the four senior enlisted sailors.
SAN DIEGO, Calif. – Four senior enlisted sailors and a junior officer are facing charges for their alleged role in releasing government video footage from aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) showing the ramp strike of an F-35C Lighting II Joint Strike Fighter last month, USNI News has learned.
Following the investigation into the leak of a cell phone video recording the crash from Vinson’s Pilot’s Landing Aid Television (PLAT), the Navy has charged one senior chief, three chiefs and an ensign with failure to obey a lawful order under Article 92 the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Cmdr. Zach Harrell a spokesperson for Naval Air Forces told USNI News.
Harrell would not identify the sailors when asked by USNI News.
The video from the PLAT – a tool to help pilots make the correct approach for a carrier landing – and a subsequent view of the landing area and angled deck of Vinson appeared on social media in early February. Filmed from a space aboard Vinson, the video shows the ramp strike of the F-35C assigned to the “Argonauts” of VFA-147 Strike Fighter Squadron, the 95 mile-an-hour slide of the fighter down the angled deck of the carrier, its slide into the ocean and the start of damage control on the flight deck.
In the audio, a landing signals officer at the rear of the aircraft carrier can be heard yelling for the pilot several times to “wave off” – the order to abort the landing. Following the crash, radio calls go out to recover from the water the pilot who ejected from the F-35C and to start damage control.
The Navy elected to charge the sailors with the PLAT video, but not the sailors who were behind a photo of the F-35C floating on top of the ocean or a video from the stern of the carrier that showed the ramp strike from below the flight deck. The rationale was that the PLAT video was a government document released without being properly cleared, rather than images or video footage from a personnel device, a spokesman told USNI News.
“The sailors being charged under Article 92 are either being charged on a general orders violation theory or as a dereliction – as in they negligently failed to execute a duty not to record and leak onboard footage,” Rob “Butch” Bracknell, a former Marine and military lawyer, told USNI News on Thursday.
“There are two reasons to charge this conduct: Leaking footage of a mishap might reveal platform or performance vulnerabilities to an adversary – maybe not in this case – but they want to deter the conduct in other cases and they want to deter sailors recording onboard systems with personal cell phones and broadcasting them.”
In 2016, Kristian Saucier pleaded guilty to federal charges for taking cellphone photos in 2009 of the reactor spaces of nuclear attack boat USS Alexandria (SSN-757). He was sentenced to a year in prison and later pardoned by former President Donald Trump.
“Saucier’s photos were of classified spaces, but I can see the Navy resetting the scale on taking photos of the insides of Navy platforms generally,” Bracknell said.
The Navy has wrestled with balancing the benefits of having cell phones aboard ships and aircraft for morale with the risk of leaks.
In 2020, former acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly stepped down from his position after the leaked audio of a speech he made to the crew of USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) surfaced. During the speech, Modly criticized former commander Capt. Brett Crozier over a letter to senior Navy leadership warning about the dangers of a COVID-19 outbreak aboard the carrier leaked to The San Francisco Chronicle.
Policies on personal devices for use on ships and aircraft are periodically under review, USNI News understands.
Related
11. Can Ukrainian Resistance Foil a Russian Victory?
Resistance, resilience, and unconventional deterrence.
Can Ukrainian Resistance Foil a Russian Victory? - War on the Rocks
The plans of a country facing invasion by a larger foe rest on a fragile hope: Once a nation’s conventional defenses are defeated, a pre-planned, citizen resistance will arise and contest the occupying invaders. Partisan warfare will impose costs on the occupiers, prevent the enemy from consolidating gains, and create the time and space required to receive external support for liberation. If Russia launches a fresh invasion, Ukraine will surely seek to fall back on such a strategy. Kyiv’s resistance plans — which have been carefully and loudly choreographed — are a key part of its hopes to deter Russia. Still, questions remain about Ukraine’s calculation for committing to a partisan-style guerrilla war. If Russia invades, will Ukraine’s partisans fight, survive, and change strategic outcomes? Would the threat of a citizen resistance, across the depth and breadth of Ukraine, meet its promise?
As a former U.S. Army special operations officer, I have spent some time building resistances or fighting them. On behalf of the Joint Special Operations University, I have more recently worked with countries to help craft resistance strategies as part of their total defense plans. In my experience, state-sponsored resistance movements defy easy categorization. Few stock templates exist because resistance plans are crafted to the political will, geographic constraints, alliance structures, and social dynamics of a given nation-state. It is also difficult to predict the behaviors of citizen resistors under the stress of invasion and occupation. Although I cannot predict what will happen, I can offer a framework to better understand the role of Ukraine’s citizen-resistance plans in resisting a Russian invasion.
Look Fearsome
A citizen-resistance must show enough of its capability to be feared. This truth comes in handy in the mountains nearby my home. When I see a bear while hiking, I calmly raise my arms and side-embrace anyone with me to look like a hyper-sized, multi-limbed threat. The bear experiences just enough doubt to pause and move on, seeking easier prey. Resistance, employed as a deterrent, has a similar effect. When a state threatens to fight a superior force with a motley collection of citizen-patriots, it must show enough width and breadth to make the invader pause. Ukraine has a credible threat in this regard. With its seven-year history of citizen-militias, quasi-official proxies, and official resistance formations, there is no question that invading forces will be met by gutsy irregulars. Ukraine has a Territorial Defense Force structure of over 150 battalions, geographically assigned to cover all of Ukrainian territory. These units are not uniformly functional, nor are they fully manned and equipped. However, they do provide a localized agency by which to organize infrastructure security and resistance. Ukraine is vocally advertising its resistance movement as one of many signals intended to deter invasion.
As I have previously discussed in Small Wars Journal, Ukrainian resistance units formed organically and spontaneously in 2014, often funded by private-sector oligarchs, rather than the state. Since then, Ukraine has regulated or incorporated many of these irregulars into the fabric of its defense plans. A recent poll indicated that 24 percent of Ukrainians plan to engage in armed resistance if attacked. The Ukrainian armed forces are currently outnumbered and face potential invading forces from the north (Belarus), east (Russia) and south (Crimea, Black Sea, Transnistria). If such an envelopment occurs, resistance forces will be required to fight when and where Ukrainian regulars cannot. Ukraine’s visible partisan warfare plan, when coupled with other deterrence measures, is aimed at deterring a new Russian offensive.
Switzerland employed such a strategy in 1940. When Nazi Germany conquered and occupied much of Europe in the spring and summer of 1940, tiny, neutral Switzerland was fully surrounded by Axis powers. Switzerland mobilized 400,000 citizen-soldiers, and planned to fight in the cities and destroy civil infrastructure before withdrawing to the Alps — favorable terrain for a guerrilla resistance. German staff estimates concluded that Switzerland could only be conquered with a massive commitment of Wehrmacht combat power. As such, Hitler decided against an attack. Other factors contributed, of course: Swiss industrial output, favorable neutrality and banking policies, and demands on German forces elsewhere. Still, Swiss preparedness to resist was a major factor. Spared in the summer of 1940, the Swiss successfully deterred in the moment and, as it turned out, for the rest of the war. Like the Swiss, the goal of Ukraine’s resistance build is to prevent an invasion instead of fighting one.
A Legal Framework
Ukraine passed an innovative law, “On the Foundations of National Resistance,” in July 2021. The law creates a legal framework by which to incorporate, organize, and guide a citizen resistance, as well as a specification of the role of irregulars, militias, and other citizen resistance actions. Since the Ukrainian government understands that not all resistance is productive resistance, the law sets legal boundaries by which the state can monitor, contain, or block counter-productive resistance.
The specter of all citizens taking up arms in a chaotic moment is as nightmarish to Ukraine as it is to Russia. Such chaos could advantage Russia, as it did in February 2014, when Russia snatched Crimea in a lightning strike of creative statecraft. The precipitating event for Russia’s Crimea takeover was a Ukrainian political crisis that led to widespread anti-government protests and civil unrest. In today’s unfolding crisis, Ukraine fears the unlawful spaces where Russian hybrid tactics thrive. Ukraine seeks to avoid wholesale societal breakdown, even if such chaos directly threatens invading Russians. The Ukrainian government has passed legal frameworks to prevent the emergence of chaos that advantages Russia.
Radical Inclusion
The power of resistance movements is their ability to bring opposition to scale, presenting multiple dilemmas to skilled, but task-saturated occupying forces. Resistance movements are, by definition, under-gunned and will lose in a conventional fight. Ukrainian planners are aware that Russian regular forces can and will take terrain, if ordered to do so. Furthermore, Russian tactical battle groups will not cede terrain to Ukrainian regulars, much less to the citizen-farmer defending his land with a hunting rifle. The widespread use of civil resistance, amplified by social media, presents a challenge to invading forces who will be intensely focused on winning kinetic battles.
In their 2011 book, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan provide evidence that non-violent movements that mobilize citizenry on a broad scale have increased rates of successful liberation. One advantage for non-violent resistance movements is that the barriers to entry are comparatively low. Whereas skilled special operators take years to select and train, civil resistance has a participation advantage in that there are zero qualifying requirements. For Ukraine, with its massive population, size matters. If Ukraine can provide resistance at scale, it will be difficult for Russia to contain, like jumping on an air-filled parachute.
Expect Ukraine to employ violent resistance and civil resistance in tandem. While it is nearly impossible to predict how civil resistance might look in the face of a Russian conventional invasion, it is likely that Ukrainian officials have some pre-planned ideas about its employment. As a tactic, civil resistance presents difficult choices to the security forces – in this case, Russians or pro-Russian groups – that have to suppress or stop non-violent actions. The overuse of violence to suppress civil resistance is a strategic blunder in waiting. Russian President Vladimir Putin proclaims Russians and Ukrainians are “one people.” Civil resistances, on a wide scale, will test Putin’s willingness to escalate against a population that he claims to respect and honor.
Hidden Lethality
The power of wide-scale, high-participation citizen-centric acts of resistance is best when paired with its opposite: the hidden, highly skilled few. Ukraine has properly selected, reasonably equipped, and well-prepared special operations-type forces. The devastating impact of the sniper is as real in 2022 as it was in 1922, when Ukraine fought for its independence against the Soviet Army. A single, well-placed saboteur can wreak havoc on the advance of a larger, superior, invading force. While snipers, saboteurs, hacktivists, urban guerrillas, and demolition experts are not decisive by themselves, they are cost-imposing nodes of a distributed network. Done right, these nodes introduce sludge and sand into the gears of an otherwise superior military machine.
Ukraine already has seven years of experience on a frustrating and static skirmish line. Over these years, they have invested in agile special operations-styled forces who are designed to avoid fixed lines and frontal assaults. Instead, they attack seams, gaps, and make enemy forces pay high costs. The United States and select NATO allies have assisted Ukrainian special operations in developing higher competencies in these difficult and dangerous tasks. Substantial weapons packages, such as shoulder-launched Javelin anti-tank missiles, add to this trained threat. Ukraine has a markedly better low-density, high-payoff capability than it did in 2014. If invaded, there will be strong political will to use it.
Manage Collaborators
Should Russia further invade, a small minority of Ukrainians could be expected to cooperate and collaborate with occupying forces. How should Ukraine manage such collaborators? Doing so, while adhering to the rule of law and the laws of armed conflict, will be a challenge. Collaborators evade detection by hiding in plain sight. How? Today’s law-abiding citizen is tomorrow’s collaborator. Active and passive collaboration remains one of the most difficult dynamics to detect, map, and defeat.
Part of the Russian playbook is to inspire, embolden, and support sympathizers inside targeted regions. For example, a recent United Kingdom intelligence report claims that Russia is angling to install a Moscow-aligned regime in Kyiv. Whether it is top-down or bottom-up meddling, Moscow routinely nurtures such options and waits for openings. We can look to past Russian military incursions into Chechnya (1999), Georgia (2008), and Ukraine (2014) to understand this ploy. The Kremlin prefers to own and operate a foreign government, not conquer and clutch it. Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov is one such proxy that was installed and supported by Moscow. Backing Kadyrov has been a relatively low-cost modality of control compared to the cost of maintaining military occupying forces. The commitment of military forces is expensive and politically costly, and fighting homegrown insurgents over an extended period is a bad outcome which Putin likely wants to avoid. Stoking local collaborators is a more attractive alternative to direct military intervention.
Although we do not know how Ukraine plans to deal with potential collaborators, history offers a guide. Counter-collaboration policies are usually carried out through formal state institutions, such as law enforcement and security forces. However, there are many past examples of citizen vigilantes taking matters into their own hands.
Such a citizen-led “equivalence of wrongs” warfare took place in the Balkans in the early 1990s. When Yugoslavia began breaking apart in 1991, civility ruptured rapidly at the village level. Local, brutal, and genocidal violence quickly scaled to a level that was hard to imagine for previously peaceable neighborhoods. As a Special Forces captain, I served two tours in the Balkans amidst the rubble of villages, unmarked minefields, and terminally displaced. Much of this violence was citizen-initiated murder, justified by a thin shoot-or-be-shot explanation. In Ukraine in 2014, similar local dynamics were susceptible to a lit spark. However, pro-Russian separatists were unable to topple the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv due to the state’s civil, military, and citizen responses. The behavior of pro-Russian factions inside Ukraine are hard to predict. Though not a fail-safe, it does matter that Ukraine has recent experience in stifling or containing “war amongst the people” where collaborators fester.
Last Refuge
The final line of the small-nation, total defense narrative imagines liberation from the occupier. Yet there are remarkably few historical cases of resistances that, by themselves, defeat the more powerful occupier. As a rule, it takes external support to tip the scales in favor of the resistance. For example, France had Britain and America in the early 1940s. North Korea had China in the 1950s, Iraqi militias had Iran in the 2000s, the Afghan mujahideen had the United States in the 1980s, and the Taliban had Pakistan in the 2000s. Ukraine, however, has no partner visibly committed to a post-occupation resistance. The rush of reassuring diplomacy, military equipment packages, and public-private sanctions are, without question, good external support. However, it is still unclear whether a Ukrainian citizen resistance would be supported when the “coalition of the willing” roll call comes.
Ukraine’s modern resistance strategy employs small-state thinking inside of big-state depth. This is a unique case with few contemporary parallels. If the Ukrainian total defense plan – bolstered by citizen-resistance – does its job well, it will succeed as a deterrence mechanism. Should this deterrence work, then citizen-soldiers will, gratefully, remain untested as a fighting force. The grand aim of the Ukrainian resistance right now is to prevent the need for a final liberation story.
Brian S. Petit is a is a retired U.S. Army colonel. He teaches and consults on strategy, planning, special operations, and resistance. He is an adjunct lecturer for the Joint Special Operations University where he focuses on resilience and resistance.
12. Fabrication Operations in War (false flag)
Excerpt:
Bottom Line: I don’t see any problem in principle with intelligence revelations so long as those doing the revealing are confident that they are true, so long as sources are not jeopardised, and the impact of the revelations, on friend and foe, has been properly anticipated. But I would counsel that friends may need some convincing that these revelations are usually such a great idea. Surprises are rarely welcomed.
Fabrication Operations in War
Nick Fishwick CMG retired in 2012 after nearly thirty years in the British Foreign Service. He did postings in Lagos, Istanbul and Kabul. His responsibilities in London included director of security and, after returning from Afghanistan in 2007, director for counter-terrorism. His final role was as director general for international operations. Nick Fishwick also spent three years on a secondment to UK Customs, specialising in international drug enforcement and tax evasion issues.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Thursday that an attack against a kindergarten in Ukraine is a “false flag operation designed to discredit the Ukrainians”, as reported by PA media. While there are conflicting reports about what happened, credible news agencies are reporting that they are unable to independently verify details.
Fabrication Operations (also referred to as ‘false flag operations) in war-like environments – meant to sway emotion one way or another – aren’t new, but revealing these operations by sharing intelligence is a new tactic that carries both benefit and risk.
As Western intelligence indicates that Russia is continuing to mobilize troops to Ukraine’s border, classified intelligence that once would have been closely held, is being strategically declassified and shared with reporters. The US and the UK have been uncharacteristically transparent with how they believe Russia is operating with some intelligence indicating how deployments may be operationalized in the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
It’s a proposition that could have a big payoff if it forces Russia to change its tactics, but it’s not without risk. The Cipher Brief tapped former Senior Member of the British Foreign Office Nick Fishwick for his take on the strategy.
EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — I can see value in raising awareness that the Russians may be preparing to fabricate incidents as justification of intervention. There is probably nothing to be lost in letting the Russians know that the west is wise to this kind of operation. It may even slightly unsettle them. But I can’t imagine that it will be enough itself to prevent intervention if the Russians have really made up their minds to act, or even to stop the Russians fabricating an incident.
First of all, most of the non-Russian world does not – in any case – believe the idea that the present crisis is the fault of NATO aggression, so they were never likely to believe that, say, Ukraine would do anything that might provoke Russian intervention. They do not need these plots to be exposed by the US or anyone else.
Secondly, the Russian public, who have been consistently fed the line that Russia is defending itself against western aggression, will be fed whatever line Putin likes in order to to justify his actions. They will not be told anything that leads them to believe that fabrication operations are taking place, so the US assurances will either not reach them or will be heavily discredited by the Russian commentariat.
If Russia really is determined to intervene in Ukraine, I doubt that it will be deterred by the lack of a pretext for doing so. That would be a nice to have rather than a need to have.
The sharing of intelligence assessments between allies has to be a good thing. I assume that the assessments will be high level enough for there not to be a potential risk to sources. It is important in terms of the trust and unity amongst allies, and also to help establish a common understanding of the position. That understanding should not however, be based purely on intelligence; most of it will come from careful analysis of non-clandestine sources, with the intelligence adding an important dimension in certain specialised areas.
Leaders may want to make public statements which broadly reflect intelligence-based understanding but no more than that. We do not want to go back to Iraq 2002-3 where sensitive intelligence became the subject of public discourse and the apparent policy determinant. Political leaders need to know and understand the intelligence. But their views and decisions have to be based on a full range of data – not just intelligence.
Can the intelligence revelations be represented as scaremongering? Sure. Indeed, the Russians are never going to represent them any other way. I suspect that one of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s core competencies is his ability – and he seems pretty good at it – to ridicule the west and to reshape reality to suit President Putin and his domestic constituency.
Bottom Line: I don’t see any problem in principle with intelligence revelations so long as those doing the revealing are confident that they are true, so long as sources are not jeopardised, and the impact of the revelations, on friend and foe, has been properly anticipated. But I would counsel that friends may need some convincing that these revelations are usually such a great idea. Surprises are rarely welcomed.
Read more expert-driven national security insights, expert perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief
13. What If Russia Wins?
I think we have to examine all the possibilities and possible outcomes. But if Russia does attack Ukraine can it "win?" If it attacks it will have to occupy it to try to pacify and control it. Will it be able to do so in the face of Ukrainian resistance? If it conducts a limited attack and withdraws won't that only harden Ukrainian resolve and make it request security guarantees from NATO? Either way, doesn't a Russian "won" have blowback that will not be in Russian interests?
This all goes back to the fundamental questions for strategy: What is the acceptable, durable political arrangement that can be achieved and that will meet national security interests? And this question should be asked by all participants on all sides.
Excerpts:
As the crisis in Ukraine unfolds, the West must not underestimate Russia. It must not bank on narratives inspired by wishful thinking. Russian victory in Ukraine is not science fiction.
But if there may be little that the West can do to prevent a Russian military conquest, it will be able to influence what happens afterward. Very often the seeds of trouble lie beneath the veneer of military victory. Russia can eviscerate Ukraine on the battlefield. It can make Ukraine a failed state. But it can do so only by prosecuting a criminal war and by devastating the life of a nation-state that has never invaded Russia. The United States and Europe and their allies and other parts of the world will draw conclusions and be critical of Russian actions. Through their alliances and in their support for the people of Ukraine, the United States and Europe can embody the alternative to wars of aggression and to a might-makes-right ethos. Russian efforts at sowing disorder can be contrasted to Western efforts at restoring order.
Much as the United States retained the diplomatic properties of the three Baltic states in Washington, D.C., after they had been annexed by the Soviet Union during World War II, the West can put itself on the side of decency and dignity in this conflict. Wars that are won are never won forever. All too often countries defeat themselves over time by launching and then winning the wrong wars.
What If Russia Wins?
A Kremlin-Controlled Ukraine Would Transform Europe
February 18, 2022
When Russia joined the ongoing civil war in Syria, in the summer of 2015, it shocked the United States and its partners. Out of frustration, then President Barack Obama claimed that Syria would become a “quagmire” for Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Syria would be Russia’s Vietnam or Putin’s Afghanistan, a grievous mistake that would eventually rebound against Russian interests.
Syria did not end up as a quagmire for Putin. Russia changed the course of the war, saving Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from impending defeat, and then translated military force into diplomatic leverage. It kept costs and casualties sustainable. Now Russia cannot be ignored in Syria. There has been no diplomatic settlement. Instead, Moscow has amassed greater regional clout, from Israel to Libya, and retained a loyal partner in Assad for Russia’s power projection. In Syria, what the Obama administration failed to anticipate was the possibility that Russia’s intervention would succeed.
In the surreal winter of 2021–22, the United States and Europe are once again contemplating a major Russian military intervention, this time in Europe itself. And once again, many analysts are warning of dire consequences for the aggressor. On February 11, British Minister of State for Europe James Cleverly predicted that a wider war in Ukraine “would be a quagmire” for Russia. In a rational cost-benefit analysis, the thinking goes, the price of a full-scale war in Ukraine would be punishingly high for the Kremlin and would entail significant bloodshed. The United States has estimated as many as 50,000 civilian casualties. Along with undermining Putin’s support among the Russian elite, who would suffer personally from the ensuing tensions with Europe, a war could endanger Russia’s economy and alienate the public. At the same time, it could bring NATO troops closer to Russia’s borders, leaving Russia to fight a Ukrainian resistance for years to come. According to this view, Russia would be trapped in a disaster of its own making.
Nevertheless, Putin’s cost-benefit analysis seems to favor upending the European status quo. The Russian leadership is taking on more risks, and above the fray of day-to-day politics, Putin is on a historic mission to solidify Russia’s leverage in Ukraine (as he has recently in Belarus and Kazakhstan). And as Moscow sees it, a victory in Ukraine might well be within reach. Of course, Russia might simply prolong the current crisis without invading or find some palatable way to disengage. But if the Kremlin’s calculus is right, as in the end it was in Syria, then the United States and Europe should also be prepared for an eventuality other than quagmire. What if Russia wins in Ukraine?
If Russia gains control of Ukraine or manages to destabilize it on a major scale, a new era for the United States and for Europe will begin. U.S. and European leaders would face the dual challenge of rethinking European security and of not being drawn into a larger war with Russia. All sides would have to consider the potential of nuclear-armed adversaries in direct confrontation. These two responsibilities—robustly defending European peace and prudently avoiding military escalation with Russia—will not necessarily be compatible. The United States and its allies could find themselves deeply unprepared for the task of having to create a new European security order as a result of Russia’s military actions in Ukraine.
Many Ways to Win
For Russia, victory in Ukraine could take various forms. As in Syria, victory does not have to result in a sustainable settlement. It could involve the installation of a compliant government in Kyiv or the partition of the country. Alternatively, the defeat of the Ukrainian military and the negotiation of a Ukrainian surrender could effectively transform Ukraine into a failed state. Russia could also employ devastating cyberattacks and disinformation tools, backed by the threat of force, to cripple the country and induce regime change. With any of these outcomes, Ukraine will have been effectively detached from the West.
If Russia achieves its political aims in Ukraine by military means, Europe will not be what it was before the war. Not only will U.S. primacy in Europe have been qualified; any sense that the European Union or NATO can ensure peace on the continent will be the artifact of a lost age. Instead, security in Europe will have to be reduced to defending the core members of the EU and NATO. Everyone outside the clubs will stand alone, with the exception of Finland and Sweden. This may not necessarily be a conscious decision to end enlargement or association policies; but it will be de facto policy. Under a perceived siege by Russia, the EU and NATO will no longer have the capacity for ambitious policies beyond their own borders.
The United States and Europe will also be in a state of permanent economic war with Russia. The West will seek to enforce sweeping sanctions, which Russia is likely to parry with cyber-measures and energy blackmailing, given the economic asymmetries. China might well stand on Russia’s side in this economic tit for tat. Meanwhile, domestic politics in European countries will resemble a twenty-first-century great game, in which Russia will be studying Europe for any breakdown in the commitment to NATO and to the transatlantic relationship. Through methods fair and foul, Russia will take whatever opportunity comes its way to influence public opinion and elections in European countries. Russia will be an anarchic presence—sometimes real, sometimes imagined—in every instance of European political instability.
Eastern member states would have NATO troops permanently on their soil.
Cold War analogies will not be helpful in a world with a Russianized Ukraine. The Cold War border in Europe had its flash points, but it was stabilized in a mutually acceptable fashion in the Helsinki Final Act of 1975. By contrast, Russian suzerainty over Ukraine would open a vast zone of destabilization and insecurity from Estonia to Poland to Romania to Turkey. For as long as it lasts, Russia’s presence in Ukraine will be perceived by Ukraine’s neighbors as provocative and unacceptable and, for some, as a threat to their own security. Amid this shifting dynamic, order in Europe will have to be conceived of in primarily military terms—which, since Russia has a stronger hand in the military than in the economic realm, will be in the Kremlin’s interest—sidelining nonmilitary institutions such as the European Union.
Russia has Europe’s largest conventional military, which it is more than ready to use. The EU’s defense policy—in contrast to NATO’s—is far from being able to provide security for its members. Thus will military reassurance, especially of the EU’s eastern members, be key. Responding to a revanchist Russia with sanctions and with the rhetorical proclamation of a rules-based international order will not be sufficient.
Imperiling Europe's East
In the event of a Russian victory in Ukraine, Germany‘s position in Europe will be severely challenged. Germany is a marginal military power that has based its postwar political identity on the rejection of war. The ring of friends it has surrounded itself with, especially in the east with Poland and the Baltic states, risks being destabilized by Russia. France and the United Kingdom will assume leading roles in European affairs by virtue of their comparatively strong militaries and long tradition of military interventions. The key factor in Europe, however, will remain the United States. NATO will depend on U.S. support as will the anxious and imperiled countries of Europe’s east, the frontline nations arrayed along a now very large, expanded, and uncertain line of contact with Russia, including Belarus and the Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine.
Eastern member states, including Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania, will likely have substantial numbers of NATO troops permanently stationed on their soil. A request from Finland and Sweden to gain an Article 5 commitment and to join NATO would be impossible to reject. In Ukraine, EU and NATO countries will never recognize a new Russian-backed regime created by Moscow. But they will face the same challenge they do with Belarus: wielding sanctions without punishing the population and supporting those in need without having access to them. Some NATO members will bolster a Ukrainian insurgency, to which Russia will respond by threatening NATO members.
Ukraine’s predicament will be very great. Refugees will flee in multiple directions, quite possibly in the millions. And those parts of the Ukrainian military that are not directly defeated will continue fighting, echoing the partisan warfare that tore apart this whole region of Europe during and after World War II.
The permanent state of escalation between Russia and Europe may stay cold from a military perspective. It is likely, though, to be economically hot. The sanctions put on Russia in 2014, which were connected to formal diplomacy (often referred to as the “Minsk” process, after the city in which the negotiations were held), were not draconian. They were reversible as well as conditional. Following a Russian invasion of Ukraine, new sanctions on banking and on technology transfer would be significant and permanent. They would come in the wake of failed diplomacy and would start at “the top of the ladder,” according to the U.S. administration. In response, Russia will retaliate, quite possibly in the cyber-domain as well as in the energy sector. Moscow will limit access to critical goods such as titanium, of which Russia has been the world’s second-largest exporter. This war of attrition will test both sides. Russia will be ruthless in trying to get one or several European states to back away from economic conflict by linking a relaxation in tension to these countries’ self-interest, thus undermining consensus in the EU and NATO.
Europe’s strong suit is its economic leverage. Russia’s asset will be any source of domestic division or disruption in Europe or in Europe’s transatlantic partners. Here Russia will be proactive and opportunistic. If a pro-Russian movement or candidate shows up, that candidate can be encouraged directly or indirectly. If an economic or political sore point diminishes the foreign policy efficacy of the United States and its allies, it will be a weapon for Russian propaganda efforts and for Russian espionage.
Much of this is already happening. But a war in Ukraine will up the ante. Russia will use more resources and be unchained in its choice of instruments. The massive refugee flows arriving in Europe will exacerbate the EU’s unresolved refugee policy and provide fertile ground for populists. The holy grail of these informational, political, and cyberbattles will be the 2024 presidential election in the United States. Europe’s future will depend on this election. The election of Donald Trump or of a Trumpian candidate might destroy the transatlantic relationship at Europe’s hour of maximum peril, putting into question NATO’s position and its security guarantees for Europe.
Turning NATO Inward
For the United States, a Russian victory would have profound effects on its grand strategy in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. First, Russian success in Ukraine would require Washington to pivot to Europe. No ambiguity about NATO’s Article 5 (of the kind experienced under Trump) will be permissible. Only a strong U.S. commitment to European security will prevent Russia from dividing European countries from one another. This will be difficult in light of competing priorities, especially those that confront the United States in a deteriorating relationship with China. But the interests at stake are fundamental. The United States has very large commercial equities in Europe. The European Union and the United States are each other’s largest trade and investment partners, with trade in goods and services totaling $1.1 trillion in 2019. A well-functioning, peaceful Europe augments American foreign policy—on climate change, on nonproliferation, on global public health, and on the management of tensions with China or Russia. If Europe is destabilized, then the United States will be much more alone in the world.
NATO is the logical means by which the United States can provide security reassurance to Europe and deter Russia. A war in Ukraine would revive NATO not as a democracy-building enterprise or as a tool for out-of-area expeditions like the war in Afghanistan but as the unsurpassed defensive military alliance that it was designed to be. Although Europeans will be demanding a greater military commitment to Europe from the United States, a broader Russian invasion of Ukraine should drive every NATO member to increase its defense spending. For Europeans, this would be the final call to improve Europe’s defensive capabilities—in tandem with the United States—in order to help the United States manage the Russian-Chinese dilemma.
The nuclear superpowers would have to keep their outrage in check.
For a Moscow now in permanent confrontation with the West, Beijing could serve as an economic backstop and a partner in opposing U.S. hegemony. In the worst case for U.S. grand strategy, China might be emboldened by Russia’s assertiveness and threaten confrontation over Taiwan. But there is no guarantee that an escalation in Ukraine will benefit the Sino-Russian relationship. China’s ambition to become the central node of the Eurasian economy will be damaged by war in Europe, because of the brutal uncertainties war brings. Chinese irritation with a Russia on the march will not enable a rapprochement between Washington and Beijing, but it may initiate new conversations.
The shock of a big military move by Russia will likewise raise questions in Ankara. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey has been enjoying the venerable Cold War game of playing off the superpowers. Yet Turkey has a substantial relationship with Ukraine. As a NATO member, it will not benefit from the militarization of the Black Sea and the eastern Mediterranean. Russian actions that destabilize the wider region could push Turkey back toward the United States, which could in turn drive a wedge between Ankara and Moscow. This would be good for NATO, and it would also open up greater possibilities for a U.S.-Turkish partnership in the Middle East. Rather than a nuisance, Turkey could turn into the ally it is supposed to be.
A bitter consequence of a wider war in Ukraine is that Russia and the United States would now encounter each other as enemies in Europe. Yet they will be enemies who cannot afford to take hostilities beyond a certain threshold. However far apart their worldviews, however ideologically opposed, the world’s two most significant nuclear powers will have to keep their outrage in check. This will amount to a fantastically tricky juggling act: a state of economic warfare and geopolitical struggle across the European continent, yet a state of affairs that does not allow escalation to tip into outright war. At the same time, U.S.-Russian confrontation can in the worst case extend to proxy wars in the Middle East or Africa if the United States decides to reestablish its presence after the catastrophic Afghanistan withdrawal.
Maintaining communication, especially on strategic stability and cybersecurity, will be crucial. It is notable that U.S.-Russian cooperation on malicious cyber-activities continues even during the current tensions. The necessity of maintaining rigorous arms control agreements will be even greater after a Ukraine war and the sanctions regime that follows it.
No Victory is Permanent
As the crisis in Ukraine unfolds, the West must not underestimate Russia. It must not bank on narratives inspired by wishful thinking. Russian victory in Ukraine is not science fiction.
But if there may be little that the West can do to prevent a Russian military conquest, it will be able to influence what happens afterward. Very often the seeds of trouble lie beneath the veneer of military victory. Russia can eviscerate Ukraine on the battlefield. It can make Ukraine a failed state. But it can do so only by prosecuting a criminal war and by devastating the life of a nation-state that has never invaded Russia. The United States and Europe and their allies and other parts of the world will draw conclusions and be critical of Russian actions. Through their alliances and in their support for the people of Ukraine, the United States and Europe can embody the alternative to wars of aggression and to a might-makes-right ethos. Russian efforts at sowing disorder can be contrasted to Western efforts at restoring order.
Much as the United States retained the diplomatic properties of the three Baltic states in Washington, D.C., after they had been annexed by the Soviet Union during World War II, the West can put itself on the side of decency and dignity in this conflict. Wars that are won are never won forever. All too often countries defeat themselves over time by launching and then winning the wrong wars.
14. We’re Entering the Control Phase of the Pandemic
Excerpts:
To even think of controlling COVID for the long term means knocking up against some of the limits of our knowledge. Our future will depend both on the virus’s continued evolution, impossible to predict right now, and on our response, which will hinge on the strength of our resources and our willingness to deploy them. Every disease that troubles us prompts some sort of reaction; for this one, the nation is still deciding how much to invest. Control, then, can’t mean putting the virus behind us—quite the opposite. It means keeping tabs on it, even when it’s not terribly abundant; it means building and maintaining an arsenal of weapons to fight it; it means having the resources and sociopolitical will to react rapidly when the threat returns. Monitor, then intervene, then monitor, then intervene.
Taking this challenge seriously—trying to properly contain a deadly, fast-moving, shape-shifting virus that has spent the past two years walloping us—could require a revamp of the standard American approach to quelling disease, on a scale the nation’s never managed before. We’ll have to write a brand-new public-health playbook, and figure out a way to execute it.
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SARS-CoV-2 is an entirely different pathogen, but our current response to it risks rehashing some of the failures of the early HIV response, shifting the burden of suffering to the vulnerable. The task of taming this new threat, El-Sadr told me, can and should bear hallmarks to the successful strategies we’ve leaned on before. There’s even opportunity to riff and expand on the templates that past pandemics have offered: to introduce paid sick leave and food assistance; to speed the development of safer housing options; to meet the needs of people who are chronically ill, immunocompromised, and disabled; to address the inequities that have concentrated suffering in marginalized populations, both domestically and abroad. Pandemics are an opportunity to respond in the present but also prepare for the future. And if SARS-CoV-2 sparks its own revolution, that won’t be the first time a virus has catalyzed lasting change. “When there’s no trust, it’s often because people feel they haven’t been listened to,” El-Sadr said. “In the HIV world, we always say, ‘Nothing about us without us’”—no decisions should be made about the fate of a particular group of people without their involvement. “I think that’s at the core of it.” It’s true that some of the best public-health interventions are ones we don’t notice. But others succeed precisely because they enlist people’s attention and use it.
We’re Entering the Control Phase of the Pandemic
The virus isn’t done with us. So we need a new approach to dealing with it.
We can debate ad nauseam whether these rollbacks are premature. What’s far clearer is this: We’ve been at similar junctures before—at the end of the very first surge, again in the pre-Delta downslope. Each time, the virus has come roaring back. It is not done with us. Which means that we cannot be done with it.
What’s up ahead is not COVID’s end, but the start of our control phase, in which we invest in measures to shrink the virus’s burden to a more manageable size. “This is the larger, longer game we’re having to think about,” Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told me.
To even think of controlling COVID for the long term means knocking up against some of the limits of our knowledge. Our future will depend both on the virus’s continued evolution, impossible to predict right now, and on our response, which will hinge on the strength of our resources and our willingness to deploy them. Every disease that troubles us prompts some sort of reaction; for this one, the nation is still deciding how much to invest. Control, then, can’t mean putting the virus behind us—quite the opposite. It means keeping tabs on it, even when it’s not terribly abundant; it means building and maintaining an arsenal of weapons to fight it; it means having the resources and sociopolitical will to react rapidly when the threat returns. Monitor, then intervene, then monitor, then intervene.
Taking this challenge seriously—trying to properly contain a deadly, fast-moving, shape-shifting virus that has spent the past two years walloping us—could require a revamp of the standard American approach to quelling disease, on a scale the nation’s never managed before. We’ll have to write a brand-new public-health playbook, and figure out a way to execute it.
Control is a simple word that, in the realm of infectious disease, doesn’t come with a sharp definition. It is possible, in some cases, to roughly anchor the concept to epidemiological goals—cutting cases of X disease by Y percentage by Z year, say; organizations such as the World Health Organization have set benchmarks like this for the control of measles, malaria, and tuberculosis. For COVID, too, we may eventually agree upon “milestones to measure where you’re at,” Wafaa El-Sadr, an epidemiologist at Columbia University, told me. But hard numbers are not necessary to define a control program, says David Heymann, an epidemiologist and global-health expert at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. What unites diseases that are under control is human effort—a sustained commitment to restrain a pathogen, and hack away at its harms.
Controlled diseases, then, might be better imagined as ones that “do not impact a lot of social functions, and do not drastically exacerbate inequities,” Saad Omer, an epidemiologist and global-health expert at Yale University, told me. Control manages a threat down into something that society can accept day after day after day—practically, less disease, less death, less suffering than might otherwise occur. It is “how we talk about diseases we’re doing something about,” says Ellie Murray, an epidemiologist at Boston University.
With COVID, one of the only things we can be sure about is that control will be difficult. The coronavirus spreads stealthily and speedily, and can hop among many animal species; it shape-shifts frequently, such that our immune systems have trouble keeping track. All of this will make it tougher to suppress. But with the tools we have—among them vaccines, treatments, tests, masks, and air filtration—a less chaotic reality than the one we’re living now also remains within reach. Exactly what degree of control is possible will depend on the precise (and still-evolving) potency of those tools—the durability of shot-induced protection, for instance—and how broadly and equitably we can distribute them. Control’s timeline can also stretch extraordinarily long. After millennia of coexistence with the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, which kills some 1.5 million people a year, humanity is still trying to diminish its staggering global burden.
We also know that COVID control won’t be static. At this point, we can expect disease to wax and wane. But bringing the virus to heel, and keeping it there, will require monitoring it even when it appears scarce. That starts with a commitment to surveillance—tracking where and in whom the virus is circulating, how quickly its levels are rising, and whether a new version poses an additional threat. The granular details that surveillance offers can help policy makers plan a response. Early blips of a variant that’s highly immune evasive, for instance, might demand a different response (consider updating the vaccines) than one that’s primarily pummeling the unvaccinated, elderly, and immunocompromised (boost the vulnerable, and shield them to squelch further spread). “The virus will dictate a lot of the terms,” Omer said.
That doesn’t mean counting every case. But it does mean improving our capacity for testing, and being more systematic about whom and what in the population we’re surveying—and not just in the midst of a surge. Flu can offer us a starter package, at least technologically: The globe is freckled with surveillance sites designed to track where flu viruses are percolating, and what mutations they’re accumulating; in the U.S., an intricate network of hospitals, laboratories, and state and local health departments regularly shuttle samples and symptom data from flu patients to the CDC for analysis. To build capacity for COVID, we’ll need better ways to zero in on infections, Nuzzo, of Johns Hopkins, told me—ones that aren’t biased by who’s seeking out tests or who has access to medical care. “We need a representative sampling scheme to know what we’re looking at, as it’s happening,” she said. The more sensitive these systems are, the faster they’ll be able to signal that a viral comeback is nigh.
Periods of relative calm, too, offer opportunities for institutions to prepare for the next difficult stretch. Medical infrastructure will need some suturing. Should COVID become a winter disease, it will slam us when many other pathogens do. “We need to make sure our health-care systems are able to meet demand,” Crystal Watson, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told me. There’s no single or easy solution for this, but we could start with building more flexibility into the systems we use to treat the sick. Staffing shortages could be patched with a supplemental workforce, while hospitals offer retention packages; mental-health resources could ease burnout in overtaxed personnel. Trained teams of community health workers could help bridge gaps in communication, and deliver care to where it’s often been lacking, says Camara Jones, an epidemiologist and a health-equity researcher at UC San Francisco. At the same time, the federal government could funnel funds into developing and maintaining stocks of high-quality masks, tests, and over-the-counter antiviral pills, with a particular focus on ferrying tools to high-risk settings—long-term-care facilities, prisons, and the like—so that they could be speedily distributed “right when surges start,” Anne Sosin, a rural-health expert at Dartmouth University, told me.
Proper ventilation in public spaces, as my colleague Sarah Zhang has written, could also be key to COVID control. Done well, systematically decontaminating our air can exemplify public-health intervention at its best—one so constant, invisible, and ubiquitous that people can be protected without even knowing it, “the difference between everyone boils their own water versus we have clean water everywhere,” Whitney Robinson, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told me. But society-wide overhauls of infrastructure tend to be slow going. Schools, for instance, have been billed as an especially important target for these upgrades, but the pandemic funds that might drive such changes have plenty of other pressing uses too. And specific indoor-air-quality standards could push lawmakers to update building codes, but these, too, have been sluggish to arrive.
Our country’s immunity will need shoring up as well. In the United States, too many people remain unvaccinated, among them 19 million kids under 5, who are still ineligible for their shots. Demand for boosters has been tepid, and people who are older or immunocompromised don’t always respond to their first dose. The situation abroad is even more dire; many nations still struggle to access the supply to deliver first doses, much less seconds or thirds. And the more susceptible hosts it finds, the more SARS-CoV-2 will split itself into new and dangerous forms. For Jones, the biggest near-term goal is to, as “expeditiously as possible, vaccinate the world,” she told me. Even after the foundations of protection are established, they will need updates, whether because our defenses against infection are dropping, because a surprise variant has arrived on the scene, or both. Going forward, vaccine mandates may have a heightened role to play, as certain businesses, schools, or entire jurisdictions try to buoy uptake, says Jason Schwartz, a vaccine-policy expert at Yale. The policy is controversial, but the United States already has centuries of precedent to guide it, and thanks to flu shots, has long harbored the infrastructure to roll vaccines out en masse, and at a regular clip. If that capacity is partnered with policies that help close equity gaps, population immunity could soar. Ensuring that everyone’s up to date on their shots, Schwartz told me, is how we generate a lasting “baseline of protection.”
Not all COVID interventions can simply come on and stay on. Some tools operate at the individual level, and these are the control-phase wild cards. Their success depends not only on capacity and planning but on public acceptance. Protections won’t work if no one is willing to adopt them.
If control is a moving target, then there’s little question that response must shift in lockstep with the threat. Several experts told me we could reasonably expect a future in which we abide by a tiered system of response, with the stringency of public-health measures titrated to how much virus is around. “The idea is that you can have gradations of every policy, rather than just taking everything on or off,” Abraar Karan, an infectious-disease physician and global-health expert at Stanford University, told me. Such a system might be roughly analogous to how we categorize and respond to hurricanes. Most of the time, life can proceed as usual, our tools on standby, our surveillance systems whirring. But as soon as danger begins to brew, protections may start to kick back into place.
The mechanics of bringing such a system online hinge on three big questions. The first is about thresholds—determining what viral conditions merit what protective responses, and when those measures get rolled out or pulled back. Options abound: new cases per 100,000 people? Test positivity? Hospital capacity? A sharp upswing in viral particles, picked up by wastewater monitoring? First we have to choose one metric, or a combination, then set careful benchmarks to distinguish fine from less fine from way less fine from actually, that’s quite bad. But each option has its flaws. Case counts depend on people showing up for limited available tests and aren’t representative of the larger population; hospitals fill too late to nip a blooming surge in the bud and don’t capture less severe cases; wastewater analysis is fast and reliable, but too coarse to show who’s getting infected and how bad their symptoms are. “No one has pulled out a magic formula for switching measures on and off,” Omer said. And different parts of the country will probably come to different conclusions.
Even if we manage to reach a consensus on cues, there’s not a lot of obvious intuition about the second big question: which precautions should take priority. With COVID, the manual’s still being written, but it could go something like this: Say there’s a surge next winter. An initial upswing in cases might prompt your company holiday party to, once again, require employees to test to attend; your local grocery store to, once again, ask that you mask. Local leaders might set up mask- and test-distribution centers throughout the community so residents can grab and go. These early pivots put the focus on the tools that are, in theory, lower-effort investments that don’t impede much mingling and help keep most businesses afloat. The leading edge of a wave is also an essential time to buttress blanket protections: If older or immunocompromised individuals have skipped boosters, they might be nudged to catch up; if hospitals are running low on personnel, reinforcements might be rallied and deployed. “We don’t waste the lead time we’re given,” Omer said. Should all go well at this stage, the outbreak could quickly be quashed.
But if cases continue to climb, if ICUs begin to fill, if a new variant starts to sidestep the protection that vaccines or previous infections left behind, those are signals to go stricter. New vaccine mandates or booster requirements could kick in. Government or business owners could put in place capacity limits in restaurants and entertainment venues, flip to work-from-home policies, or amend travel protocols, to ensure that the outbreak doesn’t spiral out of control. As a last resort, policy makers could consider shutting entire swaths of society down—closing schools and other essential institutions, Celine Gounder, an epidemiologist and a senior fellow at Kaiser Health News, told me. “Things would have to really get bad for that,” she said: “basically, if we get to the point where hospitals are not able to function.”
The trick is balancing public well-being with palatability. Which raises the third, and thorniest, issue: Who gets to make these decisions, and who bears the cost if plans go awry? “That’s what it ultimately comes down to: how much of what we’re doing is mandatory versus motivated by personal risk-based decisions,” Nuzzo told me. Certainly, if deaths are skyrocketing, if health-care systems are near the point of collapse, governments will need to step in. Where experts start to diverge, though, is on questions of who’s in charge at every other stage—whether governments or individual members of the public should conduct the brunt of risk assessment and management.
Mandates are the business of leadership. Their strength is that they “reach more people,” Julia Raifman, a health-policy expert at Boston University, told me. “And they reach them more equitably.” A coordinated response, helmed by leaders with money and a platform, can present a unified front against an incoming threat, and offer people clear-cut guidelines to follow. Denmark, which recently announced that it was lifting nearly all of its COVID restrictions, has embarked on a rather extreme version of this tactic, its government repeatedly removing and reimposing restrictions as circumstances shift. At its best, such a strategy can be especially well aligned with an infectious threat: Collective danger merits collective response.
But totally extracting personal choices from the equation of disease prevention is impossible. Adherence to mandates and long-term investments in protective behaviors are “tied to the levels of trust” we have in one another and in the people who lead us, Tom Bollyky, the director of the global-health program at the Council on Foreign Relations, told me. He and his colleagues have found that in outbreaks past and present, trust in government seems to buoy vaccination rates and the adoption of infection-prevention behaviors—such as hand-washing and physical distancing—thus curbing contagion. In the U.S., with its streak of individualism and eroded confidence in the government, the chances of following the Danish model appear essentially shot. Plus, policies that are constantly switching from on to off run the risk of losing public interest each time they flicker. In the United States, decisions about mandates have also been left up to states, even to local jurisdictions, seeding a patchwork of policies. Many Americans have had to wearily navigate the chaos of living in a masks required neighborhood and working in a masks not required one.
For these reasons and more, several other experts are wary of a mandate-forward approach. Nuzzo’s among them. “We have to be sparing with what we’re asking people to do,” Nuzzo said, both to keep people invested and to preserve their stamina for the next infectious crisis. Schwartz, of Yale, feels similarly. Most mandates are a lever to be pulled “in case of emergency” and, generally speaking, are far too great a sledgehammer to wield at other times.
When it comes to daily-use interventions, such as masks, Watson, of Johns Hopkins, thinks that Americans might feel better if they’re told it’s okay to strike out on their own; such an idea could even be actively empowering, if people feel that they’re able to make informed choices in times of crisis. Heymann, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, says a version of this has been in place in the United Kingdom for months. “The government shifted risk assessment and risk management to the individual,” he told me. Masks, tests, and vaccines are widely available to residents; people are advised to cover their faces in certain crowded settings, but there’s no outright requirement. Should Americans follow suit, Watson imagines they might benefit from a tool to help guide personal, day-to-day choices—something like “a weather forecast for infectious disease,” which might take the form of a computer- or smartphone-accessible feed of data on local viral conditions. The precursors for a system like that are already taking root at the CDC, and with information in hand, she thinks that “people will take their own actions to protect themselves.” In the same way that weather apps issue winter-storm advisories, or flag high local pollen counts, governments could flag that a ton of virus is in the vicinity, and recommend precautions.
Still, Watson and Schwartz admit that a system like this has no precedent—it would be a “large-scale reimagining of how we think about prevention,” Schwartz said. Americans have never had to be so keenly aware of how much of a respiratory virus is bopping around. And not everyone will be eager or able to opt-in. Many will simply lack the time or resources to check such a forecast, much less act on the intel, especially if access to masks, air filtration, and tests remains “a premium” in this country, Deshira Wallace, a health-equity researcher at UNC Chapel Hill, told me. And while the weather provides its own feedback—precipitation is visible and audible; temperature can be felt—viruses elude our senses, so their perils are harder to gauge. They’re much more insidious. One person’s ignoring a rainy forecast risks only that they get wet, but an individual’s negligence in responding to infectious disease can sicken both them and someone else.
This is the problem with wrangling viruses: They do not obey the boundaries of bodies, or of cities or states. When they spill between people and communities, they ratchet up everyone’s risk. In the face of collective risk, the better bet will be at least to choose some policy, with the understanding that we’ll have to tweak and finagle it, rather than select door No. 3—total inaction, an opportunity for the virus to run roughshod over us because we simply let it.
Disease control, when it’s done right, is as much a social undertaking as it is a scientific one. Weak social infrastructures can derail containment and push goals out of reach. But just as neglect can augment burdens, investment can diminish them. “Public health travels at the speed of trust,” Dartmouth’s Sosin told me.
Even when state or federal governments falter, trust can still be forged. Springfield, Missouri, vanished its masking requirements in May 2021, and “I don’t think we’ll ever go back,” Cora Scott, the city’s director of public information and civic engagement, told me. But she said she and her team feel that they’re still making inroads on mitigation by recruiting local messengers. For months, they’ve been pouring resources into getting the city’s still-low vaccination rates up—an initiative that’s included sending public-health personnel door-to-door.
Leveraging the strength of communities will be an essential strategy in the months and years to come. For a long time now, American confidence in government has been troublingly low. But people still place immense trust in their own health-care providers, for instance—the individuals who feel close to home. And the tactic has played a role in halting outbreaks before. Bollyky points out that partnerships between local and national leaders, bulwarked by community liaisons, helped turn the tide during the 2014 outbreak of Ebola in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Key to all of this is “paying attention to the specific needs of individual communities,” Andrea Milne, a medical historian at Case Western Reserve University, told me, and tailoring policies to suit them. What works to stamp out misinformation in Guinea won’t necessarily be what gets shots into arms in Springfield. Locals will understand those differences best, and know how to navigate through them.
HIV, too, offers an example of a virus that can be well managed via a community-centered approach, El-Sadr, of Columbia, said. In the past four decades, infections have become more bearable through the development of powerful and readily available antivirals and tests that can be taken at home, through routine surveillance for infections, and through public investment, education, and partnerships with the communities most severely affected by disease. Milne points to the San Francisco Model of AIDS care, which has centered a “multisystem, holistic approach” in beating the city’s epidemic back. Even in its early days, the program focused not just on clinical care but on “getting food to people, and making sure people could afford bus rides to the doctor,” she said. “Community members were doing the educating. People were treated not just as patients, but as agents in this health-care work.” In the years since the model’s debut, new HIV diagnoses in San Francisco have plummeted.
SARS-CoV-2 is an entirely different pathogen, but our current response to it risks rehashing some of the failures of the early HIV response, shifting the burden of suffering to the vulnerable. The task of taming this new threat, El-Sadr told me, can and should bear hallmarks to the successful strategies we’ve leaned on before. There’s even opportunity to riff and expand on the templates that past pandemics have offered: to introduce paid sick leave and food assistance; to speed the development of safer housing options; to meet the needs of people who are chronically ill, immunocompromised, and disabled; to address the inequities that have concentrated suffering in marginalized populations, both domestically and abroad. Pandemics are an opportunity to respond in the present but also prepare for the future. And if SARS-CoV-2 sparks its own revolution, that won’t be the first time a virus has catalyzed lasting change. “When there’s no trust, it’s often because people feel they haven’t been listened to,” El-Sadr said. “In the HIV world, we always say, ‘Nothing about us without us’”—no decisions should be made about the fate of a particular group of people without their involvement. “I think that’s at the core of it.” It’s true that some of the best public-health interventions are ones we don’t notice. But others succeed precisely because they enlist people’s attention and use it.
15. Illia Ponomarenko: Even if Russia attacks, Ukraine’s fall is not predestined
Resistance and resilience.
Excerpts:
The situation, for all of its complexity, leaves Ukraine with many stepping stones to use against Russia in any scenario.
In other words, even if Russia throws its armies at Ukraine, nothing is over. No defeat or catastrophe would be final.
Even if Putin kisses the last bits of common sense goodbye and gives the order for the military to attack Ukraine tomorrow — can we be sure that the Russian military, and especially the Kremlin’s inner circle of multibillionaires, would gladly jump to execute it?
General Valeriy Gerasimov, Russia’s chief of general staff, knows such an action would be a disaster. For Russia’s top billionaires behind the throne, with all of their kitsch mansions in London, their villas in the French Riviera, their luxury apartments in Miami, their kids in Oxford, and their billions in Swiss banks, it’s the last thing they want.
Are we sure they would not stage a silent palace coup to save what they have stolen from the Russian people if the Kremlin lunatic decides to make his worst mistake?
Nothing is predestined for Ukraine, even if the worst is to come.
Illia Ponomarenko: Even if Russia attacks, Ukraine’s fall is not predestined
A reservist with Ukraine’s 130th Territorial Battalion takes aim during drills in Kyiv on Feb. 12, 2022 (The Kyiv Independent)
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in the op-ed section are those of the authors.
It’s important not to lose the battle before it even begins.
Right now, the Russia-instigated security crisis in Ukraine is threatening to become an all-out war of occupation. Against all the voices of reason, Russia’s military force, over 130,000 strong, might be days or hours away from attacking Ukraine.
It is unbelievable this is happening in Europe in the year 2022. Those who cried “Why can’t we give Russia what it deserves” can thank Vladimir Putin in Moscow for this.
What may happen soon would go down in history as one of the most tragic pages of this century.
The occupation of most of Ukraine, the downfall of a young democracy, millions of refugees fleeing west, killings, a pro-Russian puppet ruler in Kyiv, the death of all hopes and dreams for the Ukrainian nation.
To many in the world, Ukraine seems to be doomed. But I refuse to accept that the situation is that simple. It’s not because I blindly deny the danger.
In this complex reality, our path towards complete downfall is not going to be as straight and inevitable as the media sometimes present it to be.
In other words, Ukraine’s fall is not predestined — at least, as long as the nation does not accept it without a fight.
We in Ukraine might be standing at the gate of hell, but Russia is facing a nightmare as well. Millions of things can go wrong, turning another one of the Kremlin’s “splendid little wars” into a nationwide catastrophe for Russia.
This is not 2014, when Russia took Ukraine by surprise. Ukraine is not easy prey anymore.
The maps published in the media showing giant arrows of Russia’s multi-pronged strikes towards Ukrainian cities look scary. But they shouldn’t be taken literally.
The problem is that, for instance, as part of their rush between Belarus across the Chornobyl Zone to Zhytomyr (as predicted by many media outlets), Russian troops would have to pass hundreds of kilometers of dense forests and swamps. Not a very good lane for a supposed blitzkrieg.
Also, near Zhytomyr, Russians would have to deal with the famous 95th Airborne Brigade, one of Ukraine’s best combat formations.
South of Kyiv, in Bila Terkva, there would be the 72nd Mechanized Infantry Brigade — one of Ukraine’s most battle-hardened and aggressive formations, with which I have spent some time in the trenches of Donbas.
In Dnipro, Russian forces can expect a hot welcome from the legendary 93rd Mechanized and the 25th Airborne brigades. In Mykolaiv, the 79th Airborne is on guard.
Scary invasion maps published in Western media somehow fail to mention all this.
A reservist with Ukraine’s 130th Territorial Battalion takes aim during drills in Kyiv on Feb. 12, 2022 (The Kyiv Independent)
And we’re only touched on several formations out of Ukraine’s nearly 250,000-strong military, plus nearly 50,000 National Guard troops, many of whom have real hard-won combat experience from 2014-2015. Add to that tens of thousands of combat-hardened veterans in civilian life, who also know what to do if the worst comes.
Back in 2014, when Russia took Crimea and started a war in Donbas, the nation was beheaded and disorganized and the military barely existed as an organized institution.
Even so, Ukrainian society produced dozens of self-organized volunteer battalions of former taxi drivers and programmers that fought fiercely, often dressed in sneakers and hunting fatigues.
Ukraine has proved once already that it can self-mobilize and fight. Just try and imagine what happens if Russia unleashes an all-out war. According to estimates, Ukraine might end up with nearly 500,000 armed men and women.
Don’t forget that Ukrainian combatants would be fighting on their land — unlike their Russian adversaries, many of whom would be taken from Russia’s Far East. I don’t recommend underestimating the rage of the doomed fighting for their families and their homes.
Thinking Russian tanks will make it to Kyiv in a couple of hours like a Ford Focus on a good highway is wrong.
It is true that Ukraine’s military is still full of flaws and problems. But morale is very high, the organization is strong, and the command team led by Lieutenant General Valeriy Zaluzhniy is the best it’s ever been since the war began.
Similarly, the chemistry between the military and the Defense Ministry led by Oleksiy Reznikov is strong like never before.
It is true that Russia would certainly enjoy full supremacy in the air and start its offensive with devastating missile attacks – Ukraine’s woeful air defense will have a hard time countering these.
But even here, there’s a possible antidote.
The most basic option is to use small groups tactics. To put it simply, the Ukrainian military and paramilitary could disperse into small squads, barely noticeable to enemy reconnaissance.
They would exhaust the Russians with surprise harassment, striking seemingly from nowhere. They would disrupt Russian supply chains, bogging them down in a long and extremely brutal war no one wants to be in.
It’s also time to mention the Western-provided advanced anti-tank and anti-aircraft weaponry. Behind every ruin, tree and blade of grass, there may be a Ukrainian squad with launchers, waiting, ready to turn Russian armored convoys into smoldering piles of scrap.
A smart plan of blitzkrieg, as it usually happens in history, would prove to be smart only on the military headquarter maps. And time would be on our side.
Western media sometimes wonder why Ukrainians are not freaking out or going panic shopping. The thing is that in the face of the grave threat, the general population remains calm and stable.
While Russia’s massive psychological operation is disturbing the international diplomatic and business communities in Ukraine, it’s not meeting its goal to demoralize and divide the Ukrainian population.
A reservist with Ukraine’s 130th Territorial Battalion takes aim during drills in Kyiv on Feb. 12, 2022 (The Kyiv Independent)
It’s just not 2014 anymore.
Notice how no one’s even mentioning the old concept of “Novorossiya” (“New Russia”) extending from Odesa to Kharkiv. After eight years of war in Donbas, pro-Russian sentiments in Ukraine are lower than ever before.
It goes without saying that an all-out war will force Russia to face an angry population of 40 million distributed through a country the size of France. According to a Feb. 15 poll, 58% of Ukrainians say they are ready to offer resistance to Russian occupation, 37% of them said they’d want to take up arms. Ukrainians’ decisiveness grows: in a December poll, these numbers were 50% and 33%, respectively.
According to estimates by Ukraine’s military and many defense specialists, the Russian military force of over 80 battalion tactical groups, or nearly 130,000 personnel, concentrated near Ukraine, in Belarus, and occupied areas of Ukraine is not even close to being enough to fully occupy the country.
And without occupation, any plans to install a pro-Russian puppet government in Kyiv are just not realistic. Without Russia’s constant, indefinite military presence, such a collaborationist leadership would have zero chance to survive even one day in Ukraine.
Should Putin make the decision to invade, the Russian nation faces a horrific perspective as well.
Tens of thousands of soldier coffins coming back to all parts of Russia, crushing economic sanctions directly affecting the lives of regular people, complete political isolation and status as rogue nation waging an openly aggressive war of conquest.
A Ukrainian soldier with the 10th Mountain Infantry Brigade takes guard at a combat post near the town of Shumy in Donbas on April 30, 2021.
This is not going to be the war in Donbas, where Russian paratroopers were killed in Debaltseve and buried secretly, with their families paid for their silence. And this is not going to be Syria, with the involvement of Wagner mercenaries no one cares about.
In addition, the Russian war on Ukraine would be the ground zero for a global economic crisis affecting many industries ranging from air transportation to gas and oil. It would cause food shortages around the globe, cutting people off from Ukraine’s bountiful harvests.
Considering just these very basic factors, a full-fledged Russian invasion is like an equation with so many unknown variables, its solution cannot be predicted.
The situation, for all of its complexity, leaves Ukraine with many stepping stones to use against Russia in any scenario.
In other words, even if Russia throws its armies at Ukraine, nothing is over. No defeat or catastrophe would be final.
Even if Putin kisses the last bits of common sense goodbye and gives the order for the military to attack Ukraine tomorrow — can we be sure that the Russian military, and especially the Kremlin’s inner circle of multibillionaires, would gladly jump to execute it?
General Valeriy Gerasimov, Russia’s chief of general staff, knows such an action would be a disaster. For Russia’s top billionaires behind the throne, with all of their kitsch mansions in London, their villas in the French Riviera, their luxury apartments in Miami, their kids in Oxford, and their billions in Swiss banks, it’s the last thing they want.
Are we sure they would not stage a silent palace coup to save what they have stolen from the Russian people if the Kremlin lunatic decides to make his worst mistake?
Nothing is predestined for Ukraine, even if the worst is to come.
Author: Illia PonomarenkoIllia Ponomarenko is the defense and security reporter at the Kyiv Independent. He has reported about the war in eastern Ukraine since the conflict’s earliest days. He covers national security issues, as well as military technologies, production, and defense reforms in Ukraine. Besides, he gets deployed to the war zone of Donbas with Ukrainian combat formations. He has also had deployments to Palestine and the Democratic Republic of the Congo as an embedded reporter with UN peacekeeping forces. Illia won the Alfred Friendly Press Partners fellowship and was selected to work as USA Today's guest reporter at the U.S. Department of Defense.
16. Information warfare expert says the U.S. is finally countering Russia at its own game
Detect it, understand it, expose it, attack it.
I think we are improving our information warfare operations. We can learn a lot from what is happening in Ukraine and our responses and muhc of these lessons have application against other threats.
Excerpts;
Calling out false information, learning how to interpret it and teaching the general public to do the same, are valuable ways to fight back against disinformation and propaganda, he said.
Deynychenko said America should be on guard for similar information warfare in other countries.
"We know that other players, they try to use the same technique. But, very often, the disinformation and these hybrid operations, they are not so open, and you cannot see them. It might be people chatting in the Telegram or WhatsApp groups, and they are not public, but someone can work with them, someone in these groups can persuade them to hate each other, to hate because of a different race, different language they use, different color of skin or different religion or whatever — and to persuade them to kill each other," he told CBS News.
"One day, you can wake up in the morning and look through a window and see how people with machine guns are killing each other."
My thoughts:
Failing to lead with influence leads to failure.
Fundamental principles of influence operations – the information instrument of national power:
1. What we say we stand for
2. What we say we are doing
3. What we are actually doing
4. Key Point- what we are really doing is the actual message.
(We should evaluate the actions of all our national instruments of power against this construct - State's Global Engagement Center should be evaluating this on a daily basis to ensure our actions provide the intended message).
Alternative way to think about strategy: Begin with the influence effect necessary to support national security and then evaluate how to apply the other instruments of national power in support of that effect(s).
It turns out that there is a counter to this – the “truth sandwich.”
How to use it?
1. Start with the truth. This is the frame.
2. Introduce the lie – clearly stating that it is a lie.
3. End with the truth.
Information warfare expert says the U.S. is finally countering Russia at its own game
Kyiv, Ukraine — The head of an organization that's battled Russian disinformation in Ukraine since President Vladimir Putin last sent troops into the country in 2014 tells CBS News the United States has finally learned to counter Russia's unique brand of hybrid warfare.
"I believe this is one of the first times when we saw an effective response from Washington and its European partners to this hybrid threat of Russia," Ruslan Deynychenko, executive director of the StopFake organization, told CBS News at his Kyiv office.
The U.S. and its European partners have aggressively countered Russia's narrative since it started massing forces along Ukraine's borders in recent months. Putin's government has insisted that Russia is merely hosting military exercises that pose no threat to Ukraine or any other nation.
Washington and its partners have countered that stance by pointing not only to Russia's recent history of invading Ukraine, but also its consistent use of covert tactics to try to subvert trust in Ukraine's central government and stoke tension in the country's east, where there is significant pro-Russian sentiment.
Deynychenko's media organization, which operates a website and runs a television program aired in Ukraine, has spent almost eight years debunking the Russian disinformation spread by its state-run and private media and its army of unofficial internet trolls via social media.
StopFake was founded during Russia's invasion of eastern Ukraine, which led to Putin unilaterally annexing the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. That landgrab, while portrayed by Russian officials and media as a defense of ethnic Russians in Ukraine's Donbas area, has never been recognized by the West. Kyiv and Washington still consider two breakaway regions in Donbas part of Ukraine, despite pro-Russian rebels' firm control of the ground.
A woman watches a live broadcast of Russian President Vladimir Putin's annual end-of-year news conference on a TV at a home appliances store in Crimea. Sergei Malgavko/TASS via Getty Images
StopFake is run by volunteers and journalism students at the Mohyla School of Journalism in Ukraine's capital.
"We wanted to show people, not just regular citizens, but governments, that Russian television, it's not about informing people. It's about using media as a powerful tool to influence people," Deynychenko told CBS News.
Calling out false information, learning how to interpret it and teaching the general public to do the same, are valuable ways to fight back against disinformation and propaganda, he said.
Deynychenko said America should be on guard for similar information warfare in other countries.
"We know that other players, they try to use the same technique. But, very often, the disinformation and these hybrid operations, they are not so open, and you cannot see them. It might be people chatting in the Telegram or WhatsApp groups, and they are not public, but someone can work with them, someone in these groups can persuade them to hate each other, to hate because of a different race, different language they use, different color of skin or different religion or whatever — and to persuade them to kill each other," he told CBS News.
"One day, you can wake up in the morning and look through a window and see how people with machine guns are killing each other."
He said it was important for individuals, countries and companies to invest in real journalism and media literacy to counter the threat of disinformation campaigns, and he urged people to be wary of falling into traps set online by those seeking to foment division.
"Remember that someone still pays for even for free content, and the free cheese might be only in the mousetrap," Deynychenko said.
Haley Ott is a digital reporter/producer for CBS News based in London.
17. Bots and Fake Accounts Push China’s Vision of Winter Olympic Wonderland
Chinese information warfare (three warfares - use of media or public opinion warfare)
My information warfare thoughts as applied to China:
Two key points:
China seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, and displace democratic institutions.
Chinese unification by force is untenable. Chinese peaceful unification is impossible. So, the only option is unification by coercion.
Failing to lead with influence leads to failure.
Fundamental principles of influence operations – the information instrument of national power:
1. What we say we stand for
2. What we say we are doing
3. What we are actually doing
4. Key Point- what we are really doing is the actual message.
(We should evaluate the actions of all our national instruments of power against this construct - State's Global Engagement Center should be evaluating this on a daily basis to ensure our actions provide the intended message).
Alternative way to think about strategy: Begin with the influence effect necessary to support national security and then evaluate how to apply the other instruments of national power in support of that effect(s).
It turns out that there is a counter to this – the “truth sandwich.”
How to use it?
1. Start with the truth. This is the frame.
2. Introduce the lie – clearly stating that it is a lie.
3. End with the truth.
Revisionist and Rogue Nation Views versus US
• What is the major difference in the views of conflict, strategy, and campaigning between China, Russia, Iran, nK, AQ, and ISIS and the US?
– The psychological takes precedence and may or may not be supported with the kinetic
– Politics is war by other means
– For the US kinetic is first and the psychological is second
• War is politics by other means
– Easier to get permission to put a hellfire on the forehead of terrorist than to put an idea between his ears
• Napoleon: In war, the moral is to the physical as three is to one
• In the 21st Century the psychological is to the kinetic as ten is to one
• The US has to learn to put the psychological first
– Can a federal democratic republic “do strategy” this way?
– Or is it only autocratic, totalitarian dictatorships that can “do strategy” this way?
Adversary concepts:
Chinese Three Warfares
• Psychological Warfare seeks to disrupt an opponent’s decision-making capacity; create doubts, foment anti-leadership sentiments, deceive and diminish the will to fight among opponents.
• Legal Warfare (“lawfare”) can involve enacting domestic law as the basis for making claims in international law and employing “bogus” maps to justify China’s actions.
• Media Warfare (or public opinion warfare) is the key to gaining dominance over the venue for implementing psychological and legal warfare.
• Most Important: 1999 Unrestricted Warfare
Bots and Fake Accounts Push China’s Vision of Winter Olympic Wonderland
The country’s propagandists have used a variety of tools online to promote a vision of the Games that is free of rancor or controversy.
Chinese fans at a women’s snowboard halfpipe event last week. The image being portrayed to the outside world is that these Winter Olympics have unfolded as an unalloyed success.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
Feb. 18, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET
This article is published with ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative newsroom.
BEIJING — Inside the Potemkin village of China’s propaganda, the Winter Olympics have unfolded as an unalloyed success, a celebration of sports and political harmony that has obscured — critics say whitewashed — the country’s flaws and rights abuses.
At Beijing 2022, the hills are snowy, not brown as usual this time of year. A Uyghur skier is the symbol of national unity, the tennis player Peng Shuai just a curious spectator. Athletes and foreign journalists praise the polite volunteers and marvel at the high-speed trains and the robots that boil dumplings and mix drinks.
While China’s control of what its domestic viewers and readers consume is well established, the country has spread its own version of the Games beyond its borders, with an arsenal of digital tools that are giving China’s narrative arguably greater reach and more subtlety than ever before.
With bots, fake accounts, genuine influencers and other tools, China has been able to selectively edit how the events have appeared, even outside the country, promoting everything that bolsters the official, feel-good story about the Winter Olympics and trying to smother whatever doesn’t.
Volunteers cleaned the ice during an Olympic hockey game on Wednesday. Athletes have praised the group of volunteers who work to make the Games possible.Credit...Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
“For the Chinese Communist Party, the Winter Olympics are inseparable from the broader political goal of building up the country’s national image,” said David Bandurski, director of the China Media Project, a monitoring organization. Referring to the country’s leader, he added: “This is what Xi Jinping has called ‘telling China’s story well.’”
On Twitter, which is banned in China, Chinese state media outlets and journalists, as well as diplomats, have tried to buff the image of the Games, raving about venues and cooing over the Olympic mascot.
China has also sought to influence online discussions in more concealed ways. The New York Times and ProPublica identified a network of more than 3,000 inauthentic-looking Twitter accounts that appeared to be coordinating to promote the Olympics by sharing state media posts with identical comments, for instance. Such accounts tended to be recently created with very few followers, tweeted mostly reposts and nothing of their own, and appeared to operate solely to amplify official Chinese voices.
Some of their efforts have centered on an account called Spicy Panda, which has been posting cartoons and videos to push back against calls for a boycott of the Olympics. In one cartoon, Spicy Panda accused the United States of wielding “its deceiving propaganda weapon to stain the Olympics.”
Many of the Olympic venues celebrate China, like the slopestyle course, which included references to the Great Wall. Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
The tweet was reposted 281 times, all by the fake-looking accounts, but received little other engagement, a strong indication that the network was mobilized to promote the message. Aside from the bursts of promotion, Spicy Panda’s posts about the Olympics received almost no attention.
Explore the Games
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Under Scrutiny: As Russian athletes score more wins, present and past doping scandals, as well as the situation in Ukraine, are casting a shadow over their triumphs.
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Caught in the Middle: American athletes of Chinese descent in Beijing have become targets of patriotic sentiment, both adoring and hostile, from both China and the U.S.
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An Ice-Suit Clad Panda: The search for souvenirs of the Olympic mascot, Bing Dwen Dwen, in Beijing involves long lines and eye-popping price tags.
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The Quest for Good Food: Hungry athletes, officials, volunteers and journalists have been trying, with effort and persistence, to find moments of delicious culinary diversion, however small.
An analysis of Spicy Panda’s supporters turned up 861 accounts — 90 percent of which were created after Dec. 1. The accounts’ first wave of coordinated posts pushed Beijing’s stance that Hong Kong’s legislative council elections were legitimate, though critics have called the vote a sham. Then the accounts turned their attention to the Olympics. (By Thursday, all but one of the accounts had been suspended, shortly after The Times and ProPublica asked Twitter about them.)
Spicy Panda appears to have a connection with iChongqing, a state media-linked multimedia platform based in Chongqing, a city in central China. The accounts that shared Spicy Panda’s posts often did the same with tweets by iChongqing’s account. IChongqing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Other botlike accounts promoted hashtags that seemed aimed at drowning out criticism of China, a hallmark of previous campaigns.
Bing Dwen Dwen, the official mascot of the 2022 Winter Olympics, is often mentioned by botlike accounts promoting China’s narrative about the Games.Credit...James Hill for The New York Times
They promoted content under hashtags like #Beijing2022 and #TogetherForASharedFuture, this year’s official Olympic motto. Some accounts repeatedly posted tweets with identical wording, such as: “China’s hosting of the #Beijing2022 as scheduled has boosted the world’s confidence in defeating the pandemic.”
Twitter said in an emailed statement that it had suspended hundreds of the accounts identified by The Times and ProPublica for violations of its platform manipulation and spam policies. It said it was continuing to investigate the accounts’ links to state-backed information operations.
Even the Games’ official mascot, Bing Dwen Dwen, a cuddly panda in a suit of ice, has been the subject of an organized campaign on Twitter, according to Albert Zhang, a researcher at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s International Cyber Policy Center.
Thousands of new or previously inactive accounts have helped the mascot go viral, he said — which China’s state media presented as evidence of the mascot’s popularity and, by extension, that of the Games.
“If you want to push out a lot of content on something like the Beijing Olympics, this is an easy way to do it,” Mr. Zhang said. He added that the campaign now underway was like others sponsored by the Chinese state to push Beijing’s narrative on topics such as Covid-19 and the crackdown on Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.
The U.S. men’s hockey team beat the Chinese team, 8-0. News reports in China mentioned the loss only glancingly.Credit...James Hill for The New York Times
The information space inside China is not unlike the elaborate measures that have created the “closed loop” that keeps athletes, journalists and other participants strictly segregated from the general public.
Inside the “closed loop” of official propaganda, the state carefully curates almost anything ordinary Chinese people see or read. The effect has been an Olympics free of scandal or criticism or bad news.
When the United States men’s hockey team played an overmatched Chinese team, the game was not shown on the main state television sports channel, CCTV 5, and the 8-0 defeat was mentioned only glancingly in news reports. A state media slide show devoted to the men’s figure skating competition conspicuously omitted the gold medalist, Nathan Chen of the United States.
In Chinese footage of the Games, the mountains where many competitions are being held have been deftly framed to exclude the dry, brown slopes in the background, until Day 8 when a snowstorm covered them in a frosting of white.
Dry, brown mountains have been edited out in Chinese footage of the Games.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
One of the biggest political stories of these Games has also unfolded outside China’s internet firewall: the appearance of Peng Shuai, the professional tennis player and three-time Olympian who created a furor when she accused a senior Communist Party leader of sexually assaulting her.
The president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, met her for dinner, as he promised he would when the global outcry over her fate threatened to overshadow the Games. Ms. Peng has appeared at curling and figure skating, among other events. None of that was shown inside China, where all references to her accusations have been erased, including later statements attributed to her, saying she had been misunderstood.
“It’s absolutely critical to understand that this is not just another narrative,” Mr. Bandurski of the China Media Project said of the Olympics. “It’s a narrative that implies widespread censorship and the manipulation of public opinion, which is actually policy.”
Jack Stubbs, vice president of intelligence at Graphika, a social media monitoring company, said his firm had observed another Chinese propaganda network using foreign social media platforms.
The tennis player Peng Shuai, right, watching the women’s freestyle skiing big air final with Thomas Bach, center, the president of the International Olympic Committee.Credit...Jae C. Hong/Associated Press
The network has spread videos emphasizing the Olympics as environmentally friendly and crooning about strengthening Chinese-Russian ties, punctuated by President Vladimir V. Putin’s attendance at the opening ceremony.
China has defended its use of Twitter and Facebook, platforms that it bans at home. A foreign ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, said last year that such sites were an “extra channel” to combat negative portrayals in the West.
One American company, Vippi Media, based in New Jersey, signed a $300,000 contract with the consulate general of China in New York to help promote the Games, according to the company’s filing with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
President Vladimir Putin of Russia attended the opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics on Feb. 4.Credit...Sue Ogrocki/Associated Press
Under the contract, first reported by the research group Open Secrets, the company has been promoting the Games by recruiting “social media stars” to post on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, the company’s founder, Vipinder Jaswal, said in a telephone interview.
“They were very clear and I was very clear that it’s about the Olympics and the Olympics only, nothing to do with politics,” he said.
Once the Games began, the drama of the sports themselves dominated attention. Protests over China’s human rights record have not materialized, as some activists hoped. On the contrary, many athletes have heaped praise.
The American snowboarder Jenise Spiteri became a minor celebrity in China after she bit into a steamed bun after her halfpipe run.Credit...Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times
Spicy Panda tweeted a state media report about another American competitor, the freestyle skier Aaron Blunck. In remarks posted by the official China Daily newspaper, Mr. Blunck praised China’s Covid protocols.
“#AaronBlunck revealed the real China that is totally different from what some American media have said!” Spicy Panda’s post read.
Steven Lee Myers reported from Beijing, Paul Mozur from Seoul, and Jeff Kao from New York. Claire Fu and John Liu contributed research.
18. Russia to stage nuclear drills with Ukraine tensions high
Is this a message? (of course it is)
What is the message and what effect do the Russians seek to achieve?
Russia to stage nuclear drills with Ukraine tensions high
AP · by VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV, YURAS KARMANAU and DARLENE SUPERVILLE · February 18, 2022
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia announced massive nuclear drills while Western leaders grasped Friday for ways to avert a new war in Europe amid soaring East-West tensions, after unusually dire U.S. warnings that Moscow could order an invasion of Ukraine any day.
Immediate worries focused on the volatile front lines of eastern Ukraine, where an upsurge of recent shelling tore through the walls of a kindergarten and basic communication was disrupted. Western officials, focused on an estimated 150,000 Russian troops posted around Ukraine’s borders, fear the long-simmering conflict could provide the spark for a broader war.
The drumbeat of warnings that a larger conflict could start at any moment continued Friday after U.S. President Joe Biden warned that Washington saw no signs of a promised Russian withdrawal — but instead saw more troops moving toward the border with Ukraine.
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Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the U.S. believes Russia could launch an attack “any time” and also said he still had seen no sign of the promised Russian pullback. He will hold a call Friday with Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
Even as Russia claimed to be pulling back troops from extensive military exercises that had sparked fears of invasion, the Kremlin sent a reminder to the world that it has one of the world’s biggest nuclear arsenals, by announcing drills of its nuclear forces for the weekend. The muscle-flexing overshadowed Russian offers this week of continued diplomacy to defuse the Ukraine crisis.
NATO allies are also flexing their might, beefing up military forces around eastern Europe, but insist the actions are purely defensive and to show unity in the face of Russian threats.
The U.S. announced the $6 billion sale of 250 tanks to Poland, a NATO member that has been occupied or attacked by Russia over past centuries. Announcing the deal, Austin said Russia’s military buildup had only reinvigorated NATO instead of cowing it, as Moscow had hoped.
Meanwhile, world leaders meeting at the Munich Security Conference warned that Europe’s security balance is under threat. Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said that the situation is “calling into question the basic principles of the European peace order.”
“Even steps, millimeters toward peace are better than a big step toward war,” she said.
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Moscow has denied any intention of attacking its neighbor, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov mocked the Western warning of an imminent invasion as “fakes” that “cause a smile” in remarks broadcast Friday.
Despite the Russian denials, Washington and its allies are concerned the longtime separatist conflict simmering in eastern Ukraine could provide an excuse for an invasion, though they have not provided details.
With tensions already at their highest level since the Cold War, the Russian military announced that President Vladimir Putin will monitor a sweeping exercise of the country’s nuclear forces Saturday that will involve multiple practice missile launches — a stark reminder of the country’s nuclear might amid the showdown with the West.
While the Kremlin insists it has no plans to invade, it has urged the West to keep Ukraine out of NATO and roll back alliance forces from Eastern Europe — demands roundly rejected by Western allies.
Biden planned to speak by phone Friday with trans-Atlantic leaders about the Russian military buildup and continued efforts at deterrence and diplomacy.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken revealed some conclusions of U.S. intelligence in Thursday’s speech at the U.N. Security Council, warning that Russia could create a false pretext for an invasion with a “so-called terrorist bombing” inside Russia, a staged drone strike, “a fake, even a real attack … using chemical weapons.” He charged that invasion would open with cyberattacks, along with missile strikes and bombs across Ukraine, describing the entry of Russian troops and their advance on Kyiv, a city of nearly 3 million, and other key targets.
Despite the stark U.S. warnings, Ukrainian officials sought to project calm, with Oleksii Danilov, head of the National Security and Defense Council, saying late Thursday that there were no signs a massive Russian invasion was imminent.
“We don’t undermine the threat in any case, but the possibility of escalation is considered to be relatively low regarding large-scale invasion of Ukraine,” Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told lawmakers Friday.
Nevertheless, U.S. and European officials were on high alert for any Russian attempts at a so-called false flag operation, according to a Western official familiar with intelligence findings. Ukrainian government officials shared intelligence with allies that suggested the Russians might try to shell the areas in the Luhansk region controlled by Moscow-backed separatists on Friday morning as part of an effort to create a false reason to take military action, according to the official who was not authorized to comment publicly.
The area saw a sharp spike in shelling Thursday, with monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe reporting more than 500 explosions before the tensions eased in the evening. Ukrainian authorities and separatists traded accusations of violations of a shaky truce in the nearly 8-year-old conflict in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, called Donbas. The conflict erupted shortly after Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian Crimean Peninsula and has killed 14,000.
The Ukrainian military command said shells hit a kindergarten in Stanytsia Luhanska, wounding three people, and cut power to half the town. The rebels said nearly 19 houses were damaged by Ukrainian fire.
Early Friday, separatist authorities in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions reported more shelling by Ukrainian forces along the tense line of contact and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the situation is “potentially very dangerous.”
Ukrainian officials charged that the rebels intensified the shelling in the hopes of provoking a retaliatory attack by government forces.
The Ukrainian military chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said that it’s “not planning any offensive operations or shelling of civilians,” adding that “our actions are purely defensive.”
But amid the fears a wider conflict could still come, a flurry of diplomacy is expected this week.
In addition to the call between the Russian and American defense chiefs, Blinken is expected to meet his Russian counterpart next week.
Meanwhile, Putin met Friday with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to discuss the ongoing joint drills in Belarus that borders Ukraine to the north. The massive exercise involving Russian forces moved from the Far East fueled Western fears that they could use it to cut a short way to the Ukrainian capital.
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Isachenkov reported from Moscow and Superville from Washington. Lorne Cook in Brussels, Matthew Lee and Karl Ritter in Munich, Angela Charlton in Paris, Jill Lawless in London, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations, Frank Jordans in Berlin, Aamer Madhani and Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington, and Vanessa Gera in Warsawcontributed to this report.
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AP · by VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV, YURAS KARMANAU and DARLENE SUPERVILLE · February 18, 2022
19. If Russia Invades Ukraine, Sanction China
Excerpts:
This puts the United States in a serious bind. If Washington expects to convey a credible deterrent against a Russian invasion of Ukraine using financial and economic sanctions, it will need to signal its resolve to impose secondary sanctions against China in the same breath. The problem is that the United Kingdom and the European Union, key U.S. allies, do not have the same legal or regulatory frameworks to impose secondary sanctions against Chinese banks or state-owned enterprises.
U.S. secondary sanctions, which target a third-party entity or country for conducting business with the primary subject of sanctions, rely on broad interpretations of jurisdiction. Most countries adopt some form of a territorial or nationality standard, meaning that its national borders define its jurisdictional reach. The United States, however, considers its citizens, companies, and property as falling under its jurisdiction even if located abroad.
Because the U.K. and EU lack this framework to apply secondary sanctions, it leaves Washington alone to flex its extraterritorial muscle against China. And though the United States is unlikely to suffer any significant domestic economic blowback from imposing broad financial and economic sanctions against Russia, it is a different story with China.
If Russia Invades Ukraine, Sanction China
Putin has found an economic lifeline in Beijing that only Washington can destroy.
Faced with the threat of further Western sanctions against Russia if it invades Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been seeking shelter in China. On Feb. 4, the opening day of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a new strategic partnership between their two countries. A joint statement described the Chinese-Russian relationship as a “friendship” with “no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.” Putin expressed support for China’s opposition to Taiwanese independence, and Xi seconded Russia’s demand that NATO end its eastward expansion.
They also unveiled plans for broader economic cooperation, particularly in the oil and gas sectors. The timing is no coincidence: At least in the short term, strengthened Chinese-Russian ties provide Putin an opportunity to lessen the blow from potential Western sanctions.
This puts the United States in a serious bind. If Washington expects to convey a credible deterrent against a Russian invasion of Ukraine using financial and economic sanctions, it will need to signal its resolve to impose secondary sanctions against China in the same breath. The problem is that the United Kingdom and the European Union, key U.S. allies, do not have the same legal or regulatory frameworks to impose secondary sanctions against Chinese banks or state-owned enterprises.
U.S. secondary sanctions, which target a third-party entity or country for conducting business with the primary subject of sanctions, rely on broad interpretations of jurisdiction. Most countries adopt some form of a territorial or nationality standard, meaning that its national borders define its jurisdictional reach. The United States, however, considers its citizens, companies, and property as falling under its jurisdiction even if located abroad.
Because the U.K. and EU lack this framework to apply secondary sanctions, it leaves Washington alone to flex its extraterritorial muscle against China. And though the United States is unlikely to suffer any significant domestic economic blowback from imposing broad financial and economic sanctions against Russia, it is a different story with China.
At a Feb. 7 press conference following his meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, U.S. President Joe Biden said the United States was coordinating “a strong package of sanctions that are going to clearly demonstrate international resolve and impose swift and severe consequences if Russia violates Ukraine’s sovereignty and its territorial integrity.” Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a key architect of the U.S. sanctions regime against Iran, is also working on a bipartisan bill that would apply what he described as the “mother of all sanctions” on Russia.
There are still significant disagreements in Washington on when to apply sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline linking Russia and Germany. The pipeline is owned by the Russian state-backed energy corporation Gazprom and has become a focal point among NATO allies because of its role in increasing Germany’s energy dependence on Russia. Democrats, including Menendez and Biden, prefer to wait for Russia to invade Ukraine before putting sanctions in place, while Republicans are in favor of imposing sanctions on the pipeline immediately. Nevertheless, Menendez’s proposed legislation is sweeping and includes options to target Russia’s energy and finance sectors as well as key Russian government officials and even to boot Russia from SWIFT, the global financial messaging system that connects banks around the world.
The pieces for a broader, multilateral approach to sanctions are finally coming together. This should scare Putin. Responding to criticism that Germany was not doing enough to bolster Ukraine’s defenses, Scholz provided reassurances during his visit to Washington that Berlin is committed to imposing costs on Russia if it invades Ukraine. It remains to be seen, however, whether that includes ditching Nord Stream 2. Although Scholz has been vague about the pipeline’s fate if push comes to shove, he did note that Germany was prepared to take “all necessary steps” in the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, noting the need for strategic ambiguity to head off an attempt by Russia to preemptively fortify itself against Western sanctions.
European leaders are fearful that an all-out barrage of sanctions against Russia could result in severe economic pain for their own economies. Unlike the United States, many large European banks have close ties to Russia. Europe’s energy sector is particularly at risk—relying on Russia for more than 40 percent of its imported natural gas.
The United States is trying to prevent a potential energy crisis in Europe should Putin weaponize Russia’s oil and gas exports. Amid already rising energy prices, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been working to assure European leaders that the Biden administration is committed to easing “any disruptions to Europe’s energy supply.” Specifically, he pointed to discussions with governments and major global suppliers of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to shore up supply. The United States has ramped up its LNG exports to Europe as an alternative to Russian gas. As of January, some 75 percent of U.S. LNG exports were bound for Europe. Last year, that figure stood at only 23 percent.
Meanwhile, this month, Putin unveiled his new oil and gas deal with China, worth more than $117 billion. The terms of the 30-year contract call for Russia to supply an additional 10 billion cubic meters of gas to China per year via a new pipeline.
The implication is that deepening economic cooperation with China would help Russia absorb some of the shock if the West did impose severe sanctions against its banking and energy sectors. Russia is one of China’s largest oil and gas suppliers.
But although these deepening economic ties might dampen the blow of U.S. sanctions, they are not completely out of reach of secondary U.S. sanctions.
To ensure its threats of sanctions remain credible, Washington needs to pressure Putin’s emerging economic lifelines by signaling that it is prepared to go beyond its standard sanctions package to impose secondary sanctions against Chinese banks and state-owned enterprises if Russia invades Ukraine.
There is precedent for such a move, but times have changed. China has become wise to the reach of U.S. extraterritorial sanctions and developed its own legal frameworks to push back.
In July 2012, the U.S. Treasury Department levied secondary sanctions against China’s Bank of Kunlun for knowingly facilitating transactions on behalf of designated Iranian banks. This designation caught many experts and industry insiders by surprise, as it was an unprecedented escalation in the use of extraterritorial sanctions against a third party. A Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson chided the United States for “invoking its domestic laws to impose sanctions against the Chinese financial institution” and urged the United States to reverse the sanctions. While the designation ruffled Beijing, the two countries avoided any substantial political or economic fallout, with China opting to isolate the small bank from broader financial markets.
Later, in 2017, the United States imposed a $1.19 billion fine against another Chinese entity for violating U.S. sanctions against Iran: China’s largest telecommunications company, ZTE. In addition to paying the fine, ZTE would also be required to develop internal policies to avoid future sanctions violations and undergo a corporate restructuring, according to a settlement reached with company. To force ZTE to comply with the settlement terms, the U.S. Commerce Department threatened to place the company on its Entity List—effectively shutting the company out of U.S. markets. When ZTE did violate the terms of its settlement, though, the Trump administration opted to issue a waiver despite objections from senior advisors, thereby tossing the company a lifeline and preventing it from going under. Although there are differing theories as to why then-President Donald Trump reversed the designation—whether for personal political gain or to entice China to remain engaged in trade negotiations—the cases show the reach of U.S. extraterritorial sanctions policy.
The U.S. dollar accounts for nearly 60 percent of global foreign currency reserves—and the Chinese renminbi does not.
China, however, has started to push back against foreign extraterritorial sanctions. Last year, the country established an anti-sanctions law—similar to the EU’s “blocking statute,” which attempts to curb the extraterritorial application of third-party sanctions by prohibiting compliance with extraterritorial laws. China’s law notes that the country explicitly opposes “hegemonism and power politics” and “opposes any country’s interference in China’s internal affairs under any pretext and by any means,” giving authorities broad powers to impose penalties against Chinese businesses that adhere to U.S. sanctions policies. These penalties could include fines and even confiscation of assets.
Many see the law as putting multinational banks in a quagmire: caught in a legal limbo between violating U.S. sanctions and being held liable for adhering to them. Large multinational banks comply with U.S. sanctions due to the hegemony of the U.S. dollar in the global financial system. In 2014, for example, U.S. authorities levied a record $9 billion fine against the French bank BNP Paribas for violating U.S. sanctions against Iran, among others. Although China has yet to use its new anti-sanctions laws against U.S. interests, the opportunity will undoubtedly arise if Washington aims secondary sanctions at China. In this case, banks may be forced to choose between U.S. fines for violating sanctions and Chinese fines for adhering to them.
So, if Washington is going to impose secondary sanctions against Chinese institutions, it must be prepared for retaliation. In addition to the potential for putting scores of multinational entities in legal limbo, perhaps even forcing them to choose sides, more than $615 billion worth of bilateral trade will also be put in jeopardy. (China accounts for nearly 19 percent of all U.S. imports.)
Thus far, there have been no indications that Washington is considering specific secondary sanctions against China, beyond mere posturing. U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price recently told reporters: “We have an array of tools that we can deploy if we see foreign companies, including those in China, doing their best to backfill U.S. export control actions, to evade them, to get around them.”
Deploying these tools against China will have repercussions for U.S. businesses and economic interests—a burden Washington has thus far not had to grapple with and has instead asked its European allies to bear.
Nonetheless, the United States must be prepared to cut off all avenues for Russia to escape Western sanctions. This includes preparing to wield secondary sanctions against Chinese institutions as well as working to limit blowback to U.S. interests. The simple truth is that the U.S. dollar accounts for nearly 60 percent of global foreign currency reserves—and the Chinese renminbi does not. That is a big stick to wield.
20. FDD | Bipartisan Support Builds for Re-Designation of Iranian-Backed Houthis as a Terrorist Organization
Excerpts:
The United Nations and humanitarian groups have claimed that re-designating the Houthis would further aggravate Yemen’s humanitarian plight by making it less likely that aid organizations will be able to reach those in need. But there are ample administrative and statutory mechanisms to manage those risks and encourage the flow of humanitarian assistance to Yemen. For example, the Treasury Department and State Department could issue exemptions allowing humanitarian assistance to continue unobstructed, and both departments could streamline interagency processes to handle requests from aid groups.
The rescission of Ansar Allah’s FTO and SDGT designations — based not on a change in the group’s conduct but on a misapplication of U.S. humanitarian policy — was a mistake. The Biden administration should correct that mistake. If it refuses to do so, Congress should force the issue through appropriate legislation mandating the application of sanctions on the Houthis while promoting the free flow of humanitarian aid.
FDD | Bipartisan Support Builds for Re-Designation of Iranian-Backed Houthis as a Terrorist Organization
fdd.org · by Matthew Zweig Senior Fellow · February 17, 2022
Seventeen members of Congress from both sides of the aisle sent a letter last week to President Joe Biden requesting that he re-designate Yemen’s Iranian-supported Houthis, formally known as Ansar Allah, as a terrorist organization. Renewed sanctions on the Houthis could have a significant effect on their operational capabilities if aggressively implemented and enforced by the Biden administration.
In January 2021, the outgoing Trump administration designated Ansar Allah as both a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT). Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated that if Ansar Allah “did not behave like a terrorist organization, we would not designate it as an FTO and SDGT.”
An FTO designation institutes a visa ban, requires U.S. banks to block the assets of the designated organization, and establishes a broad, extraterritorial application of criminal prohibitions on any U.S. person who provides the FTO with material support.
The SDGT authority enables the United States to target terrorist financiers who access the U.S. financial system. In 2019, the Trump administration strengthened and expanded the effect of an SDGT designation to include secondary sanctions on individuals or entities, including businesses, that allow an SDGT to use their services. Taken together, FTO and SDGT designations are two very potent tools of economic statecraft.
Upon taking office, Biden almost immediately reversed his predecessor’s decision to designate the Houthis, yet did not dispute that Ansar Allah’s conduct merited designation. Rather, Biden lifted the designations because of the putative risk that sanctions pose to the provision of humanitarian aid to Yemen. However, Ansar Allah has continued to engage in conduct that fits the respective statutory and administrative criteria for its re-designation as both an FTO and an SDGT.
In particular, Ansar Allah has repeatedly and deliberately targeted civilians, recently killing three in the United Arab Emirates. The group has threatened international shipping and attacked civil aviation facilities, including ones frequently utilized by U.S. citizens. Ansar Allah also continues to rely heavily on military and financial support from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and has reportedly used the international financial system to facilitate the group’s malign behavior. These activities would qualify the Houthis for designation as an SDGT and FTO.
Thus, in addition to last week’s congressional letter, other lawmakers, including Democrats such as House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Gregory Meeks and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez, have expressed concern about Ansar Allah’s actions. In the face of this feedback, the administration now appears to be debating internally whether to reverse its delisting of the Houthis.
The United Nations and humanitarian groups have claimed that re-designating the Houthis would further aggravate Yemen’s humanitarian plight by making it less likely that aid organizations will be able to reach those in need. But there are ample administrative and statutory mechanisms to manage those risks and encourage the flow of humanitarian assistance to Yemen. For example, the Treasury Department and State Department could issue exemptions allowing humanitarian assistance to continue unobstructed, and both departments could streamline interagency processes to handle requests from aid groups.
The rescission of Ansar Allah’s FTO and SDGT designations — based not on a change in the group’s conduct but on a misapplication of U.S. humanitarian policy — was a mistake. The Biden administration should correct that mistake. If it refuses to do so, Congress should force the issue through appropriate legislation mandating the application of sanctions on the Houthis while promoting the free flow of humanitarian aid.
Matthew Zweig is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he contributes to FDD’s Iran Program and Center on Economic and Financial Power (CEFP). For more analysis from Matthew, the Iran Program, and CEFP, please subscribe HERE. Follow Matthew on Twitter @MatthewZweig1. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_Iran and @FDD_CEFP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Matthew Zweig Senior Fellow · February 17, 2022
21. Biden's Indo-Pacific strategy: An unserious strategy for deadly serious times
I have a different view but I also use different criteria to judge the strategy.
Does the strategy provide sufficient guidance to develop and implement policies, theater campaign plans, and mission strategic plans of country teams to support achieving US national security objectives? If I were once again a military planner I could make use of this strategy to develop theater campaign plans. And the strategy will provide a sufficient framework for communicating the supporting objectives as well as evaluation criteria for the supporting plans.
As I have previously written there are those who will demand more detail and who will criticize the strategy because it does not support their agenda or areas of focus. Others will say it is too detailed and prescriptive. I think it is a "goldilocks strategy" - not too hot and not too cold - just about right. But your mileage may vary.
And as an aside, I think the new NDS will have more detailed concepts on integrated deterrence. We need to take a holistic view of all the strategies - from the interim strategic guidance of March 2021 to this new INDOPACIFC strategy to the forthcoming NDS. We will have to assess how well they all nest.
Biden's Indo-Pacific strategy: An unserious strategy for deadly serious times
The Hill · by Thomas Spoehr, Opinion Contributor · February 17, 2022
Released late last Friday, the Biden administration’s new Indo-Pacific strategy repeats many of the same themes articulated by Presidents Obama and Trump. Still, it was not without some surprises. The timing of its release was odd. Even more notable is what it lacks: a practical plan to increase military deterrence in this key region.
When official Washington wants to bury bad news or avoid media coverage of a problematic document, it typically releases them late on a Friday. In this case, the “Friday news dump” maneuver was accompanied by a newsworthy distraction: National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was briefing reporters on the deteriorating situation in Ukraine.
With Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces nearly encircling Ukraine, U.S. diplomats and citizens ordered to leave and U.S. forces flowing to nearby NATO countries, the administration could not have picked a time better calculated to undercut the strategy’s assertion that the “Indo-Pacific is the most dynamic region in the world,” — a statement that seems a bit incongruous when Russia is on the verge of a further invasion of Ukraine.
It’s unclear why the administration would wish to divert attention away from a key regional strategy, but the gambit was largely successful. Except for diligent defense outlets and the Asian press, the strategy’s release received little national attention.
Another timing oddity is that the administration opted to release a regional strategy before unveiling its overarching National Security Strategy. Law requires incoming presidents to produce a new National Security Strategy with a comprehensive accounting of U.S. interests, goals and objectives as well as the proposed uses of all elements of national power to achieve those goals. (We’ve been told Biden’s National Security Strategy will be released in the first quarter of 2022 and that its delay is a result of Putin’s inconvenient belligerence.) The National Security Strategy is the umbrella framework under which both regional strategies (e.g., Indo-Pacific strategy) and functional strategies (e.g., countering pandemics) operate and are understood. Releasing the Indo-Pacific strategy before the National Security Strategy robs it of the necessary context.
While the timing and manner of release is unfortunate, by far the most disappointing element of the strategy is the naivete it displays regarding what is necessary to deter Chinese aggression. Rather than describe how the U.S. will convince China it cannot be successful in its efforts to coerce its neighbors, the strategy merely sings a paean to the benefits of strong alliances and diplomacy.
To be sure, strong alliances with Japan, South Korea, Australia and other partners such as the Philippines offer the United States great military and diplomatic advantages. No effort should be spared to improve and enlarge these relationships.
But as many have noted, the U.S. has failed to keep pace with the growth in the Chinese military, especially its navy and air forces. Consequently, the U.S. can no longer take strategic success as a given in the competition with Beijing. The Chinese navy is now numerically the largest in the world. The Chinese outdo the U.S. in shipbuilding, missiles and air defenses.
When considering the task before the U.S., former Pentagon strategist Elbridge Colby in his recent book “The Strategy of Denial” recommends “America’s best military strategy is a denial defense, or a strategy that seeks to deny China’s ability to use military force to achieve its political objectives.”
But other than vague references to “integrated deterrence” as the “cornerstone” of the administration’s approach, the strategy is devoid of any suggestion that the U.S. will commit itself to building sufficient credible military power in the region. There is, for example, no mention of building a strong, capable navy or the strike capabilities sufficient to dissuade Chinese leadership from choosing the path of aggression. Indeed, the strategy provides no reason to believe that the U.S will be ultimately successful in preventing China from seizing Taiwan or its other neighbors.
Americans and allies searching for assurances that the U.S. will be regionally present with the necessary military forces to deter China will not find them in the new Indo-Pacific strategy. It’s a unserious strategy for deadly serious times.
Retired U.S. Army Lt. General Thomas Spoehr is director of The Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense.
The Hill · by Thomas Spoehr, Opinion Contributor · February 17, 2022
22. How the National Guard Can Help Counter Chinese Influence
An irregular warfare tool and the answer to the gray zone.
The problem I have with this is not the use of the National Guard but the emphasis on "programs." From the SPP to the JECT programs we think in terms of programs when we should be thinking in terms of strategy and campaign plans. Yes, theoretically the programs should support strategy and campaign plans and be tools and part of the ways and means of strategy and campaign plans we overemphasize the program and do not take a campaign plan approach to strategic problems. We must have a campaign mindset that allows us to lead with influence and achieve effects rather than an "accounting" mindset derived from an overemphasis on programs.
Program and SPP are used 32 times in this essay. Campaign is used zero times. Strategy is used once in reference to the 2018 NDS.
Excerpt:
Fortunately, there already exists a scalable and tailored program within the National Guard that can make an immediate impact in the competition arena: the State Partnership Program (SPP). The SPP is a tried-and-true program that can bolster US influence around the world through expanded military-to-military partnerships. While it is in need of rebranding from its post–Cold War roots, the SPP has the potential to act as an irregular warfare tool capable of countering China’s influence in the Caribbean and worldwide.
How the National Guard Can Help Counter Chinese Influence - Modern War Institute
In 2004, Hurricane Ivan inflicted widespread physical devastation across the Caribbean. In the storm’s aftermath, China quietly began to establish a foothold in the region, making offers that some countries could not refuse. These offers involved sums of money that may have been inconsequential for the Chinese government but were game changers for struggling Caribbean communities. More importantly, this practice began to tip the political scales in China’s favor, as Caribbean nations slowly began to make political concessions to Beijing.
Now that the US military is shifting away from two decades of conflict in the Middle East, US policymakers and military leaders are searching for ways to effectively compete with China in an era of renewed great power competition. To compete effectively, the United States needs a program to achieve strategic impact that is also nimble, flexible, and capable of global reach.
Fortunately, there already exists a scalable and tailored program within the National Guard that can make an immediate impact in the competition arena: the State Partnership Program (SPP). The SPP is a tried-and-true program that can bolster US influence around the world through expanded military-to-military partnerships. While it is in need of rebranding from its post–Cold War roots, the SPP has the potential to act as an irregular warfare tool capable of countering China’s influence in the Caribbean and worldwide.
The United States Needs Strategic Tools to Regain Influence Close to Home
China’s global influence manifests in many forms, but the most prevalent appears to be its economic influence. Through programs like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China has woven itself into the fabric of local infrastructure initiatives in small countries around the world. This is true in the Caribbean, as well, with significant investments by China in countries such as Jamaica, the Bahamas, and Guyana. And China is starting to see the strategic payoff, as countries such as Grenada are induced to sever political and economic ties with Taiwan.
This manifestation of Chinese influence has not gone unnoticed by US policymakers. The 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) identifies that China employs this form of predatory economics, while the NDS Irregular Warfare Annex provides a framework for understanding these tactics as part of China’s attempts to achieve legitimacy with and influence over local populations. As the NDS calls for a “rapidly innovating Joint Force” to counter Chinese efforts and restore a favorable balance of power, US policymakers must ask what current authorities can enable the changes necessary to successfully compete in a game of influence with America’s primary strategic competitor.
Enter the SPP. The SPP originally focused on assisting countries emerging from behind the Iron Curtain following the end of the Cold War. Although it started with former Soviet bloc countries, it subsequently expanded to ninety-three nations across the world. The program seeks to support the security cooperation objectives of the United States and the geographic combatant commands by developing enduring relationships with partner countries and carrying out activities to build capacity, improve interoperability, and enhance US access and influence while increasing the ability of both US and partner forces to address emerging challenges.
For example, under existing US authorities and approved partnerships, the Puerto Rico National Guard could be in the Dominican Republic tomorrow countering China’s presence there through security cooperation activities. Similarly, the District of Columbia National Guard could deploy to Jamaica to counter Chinese influence in that Caribbean nation, and there is the potential to do more in the region. That is because of the roughly fifteen independent countries in the Caribbean, only eight have individualized SPP agreements. An additional problem is that only six states and two territories cover the entire region—with Florida overtasked in covering eight different nations (in addition to Guyana, the Florida National Guard is responsible—along with that of the US Virgin Islands—for the relationship with the seven-nation, eastern Caribbean bloc known as the Regional Security System). To achieve the aims of the NDS, the United States must reinforce and scale up programs capable of identifying gaps in US presence and extending US influence. The SPP is a program designed to do just that.
The SPP encompasses cooperation activities authorized by federal law, supported by funds appropriated to the Department of Defense for such purposes, occurring between a US state or territory’s National Guard personnel and a partner nation. The governing federal law, 10 US Code § 341, allows state and territory National Guard units to partner with foreign security forces or governmental organizations whose primary functions include disaster or emergency response. Such partnerships can operate across a wide range of activities and with remarkable longevity, as illustrated by the ongoing partnership between the Louisiana National Guard and the Belize Defence Force. Louisiana’s current adjutant general, Brigadier General D. Keith Waddell, has cultivated this relationship, which he helped establish over two decades ago while building schools in Belize as a young engineer. Earlier this year, the District of Columbia National Guard hosted a visit by senior military leaders from Burkina Faso to increase collaboration on “mutual security goals.” And as a pandemic swept the globe, the Alabama National Guard received a delegation of civilian and military medical specialists and chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear personnel from Romania to discuss COVID-19 response best practices.
Once rebranded, the program could expand still further, helping to build personal relationships and increase US influence throughout the Caribbean—but policy roadblocks remain.
What are the Hurdles to Rebranding SPP for Speed and Effectiveness?
The Department of Defense policy governing the program, DoD Instruction 5111.20 (October 2016), assigns oversight authority to the under secretary of defense for policy, with administration by the National Guard Bureau, troop sourcing by state and territory National Guards, and execution by geographic combatant commands. This crowded field of stakeholders, along with a lack of a comprehensive oversight framework for key objectives and metrics, poses critical challenges to program effectiveness, as a US Government Accountability Office report found in 2012. Moreover, existing Defense Department guidance provides little latitude for states to exercise initiative—the only entities able to recommend new SPP partnerships are geographic combatant commands, which are required by federal policy to submit annual lists of any proposed new state partnerships from their respective areas of responsibility to the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
This policy structure is out of step with the rapid pace of strategic competition. Greater decentralization could unleash initiative by the states as they seek to strengthen existing partnerships and forge new ones. Thus, the key problem is that the current legal authorities and governing policies have the National Guard units hamstrung in showing initiative in the program. As an O-4 judge advocate in Alabama, there are several hurdles for me to even be involved in the traditional post–Cold War engagements with our Romanian partners—as I have seen with numerous requests to participate. Showing initiative by staffing a request for an individualized partnership with Barbados or requesting to work within an existing partnership with a country that is a BRI participant would be nearly impossible to achieve bureaucratically.
Enabling Initiative to Jump Start Influence in the Caribbean
Just as China exploited opportunities to increase its influence in the United States’ backyard in 2004, the National Guard must also seize the opportunities at hand by making better use of the SPP as a strategic tool in great power competition. Now is the time for US national security leadership to reexamine existing policy in the face of near-peer threats, and one useful step would involve expediting the SPP decision-making process. The National Guard has a unique opportunity to accelerate change in the irregular warfare competition arena and requires only relatively minor changes to SPP authorities to do so.
The under secretary of defense for policy should first reorganize command and control of the program, assigning greater authority to state National Guard leadership. This would allow SPP program recommendations to flow directly from state National Guard units in the field to the Joint Staff, in coordination with the geographic combatant commands, for more rapid approval. This revision will streamline the program’s current command-and-control structure, eliminating the stakeholder coordination issues highlighted by the Government Accountability Office. Delegating greater authority to state National Guard leadership would allow state Guard personnel to better match capabilities within their own units with new or existing partner nations.
While the SPP may not be widely known, its potential strategic impact is significant. The National Guard has the capacity, but not enough authority, to exercise initiative through the SPP. National Guard leaders should thus be given greater latitude to accomplish more with the program. The straightforward changes discussed above will enable the National Guard to wield a powerful strategic tool capable of reestablishing US influence in the Caribbean and worldwide.
Clay Fuller is an experienced federal, military, and local prosecutor in Appalachia. He was an active duty Air Force officer from 2010 to 2014, and currently serves in the Alabama Air National Guard. From 2018 to 2019 he was a White House Fellow assigned to the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: Spc. N.W. Huerta, US Army
22. Opinion | Why is the Biden administration uniting our adversaries?
An interesting critique from Fareed Zakaria.
Excerpts:
Europe’s greatest 19th-century statesman was Germany’s Otto von Bismarck, whose central strategy was always to have better relations with each of his adversaries than they had among one another. And ever since President Richard M. Nixon and Henry Kissinger drew China away from the Soviet Union in 1972, for decades, the United States was closer to Russia and China than they were to one another.
But not anymore. There was talk in Washington about attempting a “reverse Kissinger” — an effort to wean Moscow away from Beijing. And the Biden administration moved in that direction last year. But that was a naive misunderstanding of Putin, whose response has been to initiate the current crisis. Perhaps what was needed was not a reverse Kissinger but simply Kissinger, an effort to have a better working relationship with China. That, in any event, is what Henry Kissinger has advocated.
At the start of the Cold War, when ideology also dominated over strategy, Washington lumped all communist states together. It took the United States 25 years (and the Vietnam War) to learn that we should treat Moscow and Beijing differently. At the start of the war on terrorism, the George W. Bush administration announced that Iraq, Iran and North Korea formed an “axis of evil,” a mistake for which we are still paying the price. Let’s hope that this time we do not have to endure a long and costly misadventure before we finally recognize that we should not be helping to unite our foes.
Opinion | Why is the Biden administration uniting our adversaries?
The Washington Post · by Fareed ZakariaColumnist |AddFollowYesterday at 6:16 p.m. EST · February 17, 2022
The Biden administration has handled the Ukraine crisis intelligently and effectively, formulating a policy that could be described as “deterrence plus diplomacy.” It made credible threats about the costs of a Russian invasion and rallied its European allies in an impressive show of unity. And while (correctly) refusing to promise that Ukraine will be barred from NATO, it has offered to discuss almost everything else, from arms control to missile deployments.
This crisis, however, has highlighted a larger strategic failure, one that extends beyond this administration. One of the central rules of strategy is to divide your adversaries. But, increasingly, U.S. foreign policy is doing the opposite. Earlier this month, in a more-than-5,000-word document, Russia and China affirmed a “friendship” with “no limits.” The two powers appear to be closer to one another than at any time in 50 years.
For Russia — essentially a declining power — China’s support is a godsend. The most significant reason even tough sanctions against Russia might not work is that China, the world’s second-largest economy, could help. Russia recently announced new deals to sell more oil and gas to China, and Beijing could buy even more energy and other imports from the country. It could also let Moscow use various Chinese mechanisms and institutions to evade U.S. financial restrictions. “China is our strategic cushion,” Sergey Karaganov, a Kremlin adviser, told Nikkei. “We know that in any difficult situation, we can lean on it for military, political and economic support.”
To those who would argue that this is simply a case of two autocracies ganging up, it’s worth noting that it was not always thus. In 2014 (when both countries were also autocracies), China pointedly refused to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It has still not recognized the annexation of Crimea. Similarly, Beijing did not support Russia’s intervention in Georgia and has expressed its support for that country’s territorial integrity and independence.
China and Russia are both adversaries of the West, but they are very different from one another. Lumping them together is a sign that ideology has triumphed over strategy in Washington these days. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a geopolitical spoiler state. It has invaded two neighbors, Georgia and Ukraine, and occupied territory in those countries, something almost unprecedented in Europe since World War II. It has reportedly used cyberwarfare to attack and weaken more than a dozen democracies, including the United States. It has supported allies such as Syria’s Bashar al-Assad with brute force. It has murdered its opponents, even when they are living in countries such as Germany and England. And as a petrostate, it actually benefits from instability, which can raise oil and gas prices.
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China is different. It is a rising world power that seeks greater influence as it gains economic strength. It has been aggressive in its policies toward some nations, but as a big economic actor, it can credibly claim to want stability in the world. As Robert Manning noted in Foreign Policy in 2020, “Beijing is not trying to replace the IMF, World Bank, WTO, and other U.N. institutions; it is trying to play a more dominant role in them.”
In the past, Beijing has voted for and supported sanctions against rogue regimes such as Libya, Iran and North Korea, though that cooperative spirit has been waning, especially in recent months. It has used its veto on the U.N. Security Council far less frequently than Russia or the United States. China poses a critical challenge to America, but much of what we need to do to combat it is in the realm of domestic policy, enacting measures that would unleash U.S. innovation and competitiveness.
Europe’s greatest 19th-century statesman was Germany’s Otto von Bismarck, whose central strategy was always to have better relations with each of his adversaries than they had among one another. And ever since President Richard M. Nixon and Henry Kissinger drew China away from the Soviet Union in 1972, for decades, the United States was closer to Russia and China than they were to one another.
But not anymore. There was talk in Washington about attempting a “reverse Kissinger” — an effort to wean Moscow away from Beijing. And the Biden administration moved in that direction last year. But that was a naive misunderstanding of Putin, whose response has been to initiate the current crisis. Perhaps what was needed was not a reverse Kissinger but simply Kissinger, an effort to have a better working relationship with China. That, in any event, is what Henry Kissinger has advocated.
At the start of the Cold War, when ideology also dominated over strategy, Washington lumped all communist states together. It took the United States 25 years (and the Vietnam War) to learn that we should treat Moscow and Beijing differently. At the start of the war on terrorism, the George W. Bush administration announced that Iraq, Iran and North Korea formed an “axis of evil,” a mistake for which we are still paying the price. Let’s hope that this time we do not have to endure a long and costly misadventure before we finally recognize that we should not be helping to unite our foes.
The Washington Post · by Fareed ZakariaColumnist |AddFollowYesterday at 6:16 p.m. EST · February 17, 2022
23. The urge to “do something” and the need to be patient
Some words of wisdom to ponder. This is a new quote for my quote book:
There’s a great short-expression in Arabic – فَٱصْبِرْ صَبْرًا جَمِيلً – which translates to “be patient with beautiful patience.”
The urge to “do something” and the need to be patient
I’m forever catching up with my podcast queue.
A couple of things stood out.
The Air Force episode featured a discussion on the importance of measures of effectiveness. The crux of the argument was that it’s important to ensure we are measuring things to be certain that we are making progress, especially in messy little wars.
Nothing wrong with that. It makes sense.
But.
The conversation eventually meandered towards just how difficult that is to do. Often, there are no clean measures to determine if the needle is moving in the right direction. And this is often the case in small wars.
As such, smart young men and women contort themselves to put numbers on things where numbers don’t belong.
The military has become obsessed with measures of effectiveness, often shortened to “M-O-E.” Much of this is borrowed from business practices with a shady past and questionable conclusions.
But it is pervasive. A senior leader putting up his hand mid-brief and stating “Ok but how are we going to measure this?” while all of the other officers in the room turn to the briefer with a scowl is one of the reasons we have such a hard time doing anything anymore.
Asking “how are we going to measure it” sounds like a smart thing to ask. And it’s a great way to kill a good initiative.
Quantifying all of the great things that were achieved is also a great way to get a good evaluation.
As a result, we tend to do the things that are easily measured as opposed to the things that are actually effective.
Sometimes, we just know what will be effective. It’s a gut feeling that comes from education and experience.
The schoolyard bully doesn’t need to measure what to say to make the other kid cry; he just knows it. He knows the other kid’s psychic weak point.
He doesn’t need to measure it.
This is a subject I feel strongly about because this hyper-focus on MOE isn’t helping.
The second podcast, on counter-insurgency, featured a pointed short discussion on the limits of military power. What I loved most was Jacqueline Hazelton planting the flag on the source of many of our problems – leaders’ insistence that we “do something” in response to every emergency.
The immediacy of modern communications and the perceived political and social pressure that swells whenever something happens – especially if that something includes dramatic images – compels political and military leaders to “do something” in response.
“How are countering this?”
No one wants to “appear weak,” thus, we escalate, often doing the proximate thing we shouldn’t.
There’s a great short-expression in Arabic – فَٱصْبِرْ صَبْرًا جَمِيلً – which translates to “be patient with beautiful patience.”
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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.
