Quotes of the Day:
“The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate the truth.”
- Garry Kasparov
“The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.”
- Aldus Huxley
“You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.”
- Robert A. Heinlein, Revolt in 2100/Methuselah's Children
1. Putin orders Russian "peacekeeping operations" in eastern Ukraine
2. Russia-Ukraine Warning Update: Russian Military Operations in Southeastern Ukraine Imminent
3. UKRAINE CONFLICT UPDATE 4
4. Extended Russian deployment part of invasion ‘playbook,’ US says
5. Are we ready for war in the infosphere?
6. Paramilitary Forces in Ukraine: Matches to a Powder Keg
7. Putin seeks to rewrite history
8. U.S. engagement with China a 'strategic blunder': Mearsheimer (Q&A)
9. Germany's Scholz halts Nord Stream 2 as Ukraine crisis deepens
10. China concerned about 'worsening' Ukraine situation, warns nationals there
11. Forget a Whole-of-Government Cybersecurity Strategy—It’s Time for a Whole-of-Nation Approach
12. The Non-Kill Chain
13. How Russian Propaganda Spins a Dark, Fake Tale
14. Putin Chooses a Forever War
15. Biden Can Reset the UN’s Discriminatory Approach to Israel
16. FDD | West is on verge of signing 'surrender pact' with Iran
17. A New, Weaker Iran Deal Would Pave a Path to the Nuclear Threshold
18. Australia urges 'full investigation' into China naval laser incident, Beijing defends actions
19. Moscow Musings on Brinksmanship from Stalin to Putin
20. Inside America's only military base in Africa, as it tries to prevent the rise of a new bin Laden, or "someone worse"
21. UK says ‘serious doubts’ exist within Russian military about invading Ukraine
22. Washington and Aristotle Can Restore the Military’s Professional Ethos
1. Putin orders Russian "peacekeeping operations" in eastern Ukraine
Peacekeeping. I guess no one saw that one coming. (note sarcasm)
Putin orders Russian "peacekeeping operations" in eastern Ukraine
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in a combative, hourlong address on Monday that he will recognize two breakaway "republics" in eastern Ukraine as independent.
The latest: In a decree recognizing the independence of the Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) and the Luhansk People's Republic (LNR), Putin ordered the Russian military to conduct "peacekeeping operations" in the occupied Ukrainian territories.
The big picture: The separatists don't hold all of the territory they claim so recognition could swiftly evolve into war unless Russia limits its operations to the separatist-held areas.
- Analysts have also warned that Moscow could also use any attacks on its troops in eastern Ukraine — real or fabricated — as pretext for a broader war.
- The separatists declared independence in 2014 and have waged a low-scale war against Ukrainian forces since then, with military backing from Moscow.
- The fighting has escalated since Thursday, with Kyiv accusing the separatists of persistent shelling across the line of contact.
What they're saying: Western leaders swiftly denounced Putin's move as a violation of international law and Ukrainian sovereignty.
- White House press secretary Jen Paski said in a statement that the U.S. would prohibit investment in the separatist republics and that further sanctions would be coming that were separate from the "massive" package promised if Russia invades.
-
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel said in a statement that "[t]his step is a blatant violation of international law as well as of the Minsk agreements. The Union will react with sanctions against those involved in this illegal act."
- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called Putin's move "a very ill omen, a very dark sign. ... It's certainly yet another indication that things are moving in the wrong direction in Ukraine."
- Putin used his speech not only to announce recognition of the separatist republics but to make a broader argument that Ukraine is not truly a separate country from Russia, that the West is responsible for this standoff, and that Ukraine will bear responsibility for any "future bloodletting."
Between the lines: It's unclear whether the Russian "peacekeepers" will seek to secure only the territory the separatists currently hold or the entirety of the areas they claim (see map).
- At a time when the White House continues to warn of an imminent, large-scale invasion, Putin's latest moves could be interpreted as a sign that his immediate military focus is on the eastern Donbas region and not on the capital, Kyiv.
-
But Michael Kofman, an expert on Russia's military capabilities at CNA, contends it's more likely the first step in a broader military operation that won't be limited to the Donbas.
Data: Mapbox/OSCE as of Feb. 14, 2022; Map: Will Chase/Axios
The backstory: Russia's state Duma voted last week to ask Putin to recognize the DNR and LNR as independent.
- The separatist leaders echoed that request earlier on Monday, before Russia's most senior officials took turns making the case for recognition in an extraordinary televised Security Council meeting.
- The Kremlin claims Ukraine is preparing for a major military offensive in the east, which U.S. and Ukrainian officials have dismissed as absurd. More than 150,000 Russian troops are massed on the borders.
-
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba denied the allegations and called on Russia to "stop your fake-producing factory now."
Worth noting: The justifications Russia appears to be building for war closely track with the playbook the Biden administration predicted Putin would follow.
- They also appear to be choreographed in advance. Independent Russian network TV Rain noted that Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu's watch showed a time five hours earlier than the purportedly "live" Security Council meeting was aired.
-
Previously, separatist leaders had released videos announcing an emergency civilian evacuation which turned out to have been recorded two days before they were released.
Editor's note: This story has been updated with additional details from Putin's televised address, Western leaders' reactions and information on the Russian president's decree.
2. Russia-Ukraine Warning Update: Russian Military Operations in Southeastern Ukraine Imminent
Russia-Ukraine Warning Update: Russian Military Operations in Southeastern Ukraine Imminent
February 21, 2022, 3:30pm
By Frederick W. Kagan and Mason Clark
with George Barros and Kateryna Stepanenko
Russia recognized the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR) and signed treaties of “friendship, cooperation, and mutual assistance” with them on February 21, 2022.[1] Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his decision in a lengthy speech on the same day. The text of these agreements has not been publicized as of this writing.[2] The Russian Duma will likely vote to authorize the use of Russian military force to occupy the republics, and Russian conventional forces will likely move to do so within the next 24-36 hours. Russian formal recognition of the republics will likely include recognizing all their territorial claims, which extend to the portions of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts still under Ukrainian control.
Putin issued a further ultimatum to Ukraine to cease all fighting against the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. Ukraine has not been fighting and has refrained from responding to increasing Russian and separatist aggression, but Russia has repeatedly falsely attributed its proxies’ attacks to Ukraine and blamed Ukraine for false flag operations the proxies have conducted against themselves. Putin has therefore created an open-ended justification for future military action against Ukraine. The Kremlin can use the justification of any claimed Ukrainian attack on the newly recognized DNR/LNR to support a range of further military operations up to a full invasion of unoccupied Ukraine in the coming days. He might also claim that Ukrainian resistance to Russian moves to seize the unoccupied portions of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts justifies further Russian military action.
Russian armed forces will likely attack Ukrainian forces at the line of contact to secure the portions of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts not currently under DNR/LNR control. An extensive Russian air/missile campaign throughout Ukraine will likely accompany that attack, ostensibly to facilitate it. These attacks may begin on February 22 or may follow in succeeding days.
ISW had previously described this possible course of action in its January 27, 2022, report, which added the possibility that Russian forces will also push north from Crimea.
The Russian air/missile campaign that could begin ostensibly to support the seizure of unoccupied Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts following Russian recognition of the proxy republics’ independence would likely also set conditions for a full-scale Russian invasion and occupation of all or almost all of Ukraine, including Kyiv.
We assess that Russia will likely take a phased approach rather than beginning with the full-scale invasion immediately, however. The Russian military is continuing to set conditions for the full-scale attack but has reportedly not yet completed its preparations. The New York Times reported on February 20 that US intelligence confirmed the Russian military has prepared to execute an attack plan, and 40-50 percent of units have shifted into "combat formations.”[3] CNN separately reported the United States still has not seen several “larger actions,” such as electronic jamming and cyberattacks, beyond the currently observed tactical indicators to indicate preparations for larger-scale kinetic activity.[4]
Putin’s speech of February 21, 2022, laid out an extensive list of grievances against the current Ukrainian government, NATO, and the United States. It rejected the legitimacy of any independent Ukrainian state and implicitly questioned the legitimacy of any of the post-Soviet states. Putin reiterated his false claims that NATO was planning to deploy offensive weapons into Ukraine that would threaten Russia as well as his complaints that NATO had not acceded to his formal demands regarding NATO expansion, the disposition of NATO military infrastructure, and the deployment of specific weapons systems near Russian territory. This speech could serve as the basis for a justification for an invasion and occupation of all of Ukraine, but Putin has not yet gone that far.
The initiation of a Russian attack in eastern Ukraine would offer Putin many opportunities to expand his narratives to support a full-scale invasion. In the absence of the emergence of a clear narrative justifying the invasion-to-conquer course of action, therefore, we forecast that hostilities will begin in the east and with air and missile attacks throughout Ukraine’s depth, likely with some pause before Putin launches further invasions of unoccupied Ukraine.
Putin could also pause after securing all of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts and engage in negotiations for a ceasefire under new conditions and terms. However, the recognition of the LNR/DNR will not achieve the maximalist objectives Putin laid out in his speech. Even if he offered or accepted some temporary cease-fire agreement after initial attacks, however, he will continue to demand that Ukraine surrender its sovereignty to Russia. If Kyiv continues to refuse that demand, as it likely will, Putin will likely attack to secure it.
3. UKRAINE CONFLICT UPDATE 4
UKRAINE CONFLICT UPDATE 4
Institute for the Study of War, Russia Team
Russia recognized the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR) and is deploying troops to Donetsk and Luhansk the night of February 21, 2022. ISW published its assessment of Russia’s likely immediate course of action at 3:30pm Eastern Time. Russian armed forces will likely attack Ukrainian forces at the line of contact to secure the portions of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts not currently under DNR/LNR control, likely accompanied by an air/missile campaign against unoccupied Ukraine in the coming days. We assess that Russia will likely take a phased approach rather than immediately beginning with the full-scale invasion.
Key Takeaways February 21
- Russian troops began overtly deploying to occupied Donbas following Putin’s recognition of the independence of Russia’s proxy Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics.
- Putin gave a maximalist speech denying Ukrainian sovereignty and its right to exist as an independent state, justifying further Russian offensive action and indicating the Kremlin is unlikely to stop in Donbas.
- The White House and Western states did not recognize Russia’s overt deployment of troops into Ukraine as an “invasion” but condemned Putin’s recognition of the DNR and LNR and announced limited sanctions.
- The Russian government falsely accused Ukrainian forces of attacking Russian territory for the first time in the current crisis, setting conditions for Russia to legitimize further military action against Ukraine.
- The United States warned the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights of a Russian “kill list” of politicians and likely future dissidents for Russia to target during a Russian occupation of Ukraine.
Key Events February 20, 2pm EST – February 21, 5pm EST
Military Events
Russia began deploying troops to Donbas, likely from the 8th Combined Arms Army, following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR) on February 21. Independent Russian news wire Interfax reported that DNR residents observed two unidentified armored-vehicle columns moving in DNR during the early morning of February 22.[1] Social media users in the DNR claimed they observed Russian forces entering Donetsk during the evening of February 21-22.[2] Online traffic monitoring data showed that traffic slowed in Ivanovo-Yasinovka, Rostov Oblast, (approximately 10 kilometers from the Russian-Ukrainian border) in the evening on February 21.[3] Russian forces deploying into Donbas may have created this additional traffic.
Unspecified elements of Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces (nuclear weapons) continued conducting readiness training and exercises on February 20.[4] Servicemen trained on mobile ground missile systems and practiced operating communication systems at the Kapustin Yar Training Ground and two other training centers in Pereslavl-Zalessky, Yaroslavl Oblast, and Ostrov, Peskov Oblast. Additional unspecified elements of the Strategic Rocket Forces conducted unspecified combat training with simulators.
Russian forces near Ukraine, including the 4th Tank Division, continued to deploy to staging grounds on the Ukrainian border on February 20 and 21.[5]Satellite imagery observed Russian forces at the Soloti storage camp in Belgorod redeploy south to the Ukrainian border on February 20.[6] Russian social media users observed a likely battalion tactical group of the 4th Tank Division equipped with T-80U tanks redeploying to an unknown location from Belgorod, Russia.[7]Satellite images observed a new Russian mobile field hospital in Shebekino, Belgorod Oblast, Russia, (approximately 5 kilometers from the Russian-Ukrainian border) on February 20.[8] Satellite imagery also observed Russian helicopters in Belgorod for the first time on February 21.[9] Russian social media users observed a prefabricated modular bridge that could support Russian river crossings in Ukraine in transit through Crimea on February 21.[10] Unspecified Russian Southern Military District elements conducted river crossing exercises at the Prudboy Training Ground in Volgograd on February 20.[11]
Chechen Rosgvardia (Russian National Guard) forces deployed to southern Belarus, 30km from the Ukrainian border, on February 21.[12] Belarusian social media users observed Russian National Guard elements from Chechnya in Yelsk, Belarus, for the first time on February 21. The Kremlin may intend to use Rosgvardia forces as an occupation force in Ukraine.
Russian Activity
Russian President Vladimir Putin formally recognized the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR) and signed mutual cooperation treaties stipulating the deployment of Russian forces to Donbas following speeches attempting to justify Russian aggression against Ukraine on February 21.[13] The Kremlin decreed that Russian troops will deploy to carry out "peacekeeping functions" in the DNR and LNR and that Russia will formally establish diplomatic relations and implement treaties of "friendship, cooperation and mutual Assistance" with the DNR and LNR.[14] The Kremlin’s decision to recognize the DNR and LNR is a major strategic shift in the Kremlin’s approach to the war in Donbas and marks the Kremlin’s official departure from supporting the Minsk II Agreements—the legal basis of all ceasefires since 2015 and the basis that preserved Ukraine’s territorial integrity in Donbas. The Kremlin will overtly deploy military forces to Donbas and conduct overt military operations against Ukraine as ISW forecasted.[15]
Kremlin media aired a prerecorded Russian Security Council meeting the morning of February 21 to justify recognizing the DNR and LNR. Each member of the Security Council stated justifications for recognizing the DNR and LNR. Putin, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and Kremlin Representative on Ukraine Dmitry Kozak all stated Ukraine never intended to implement and has abandoned the Minsk II Accords, with Lavrov adding the West will not force Ukraine to comply with the Minsk II Accords. Putin and Lavrov reiterated that NATO has refused to respond favorably to the Kremlin's security demands on limiting NATO expansion. Kozak stated neither Ukraine nor the West “need” the Russian-occupied territory in Donbas and that Kyiv has a political interest in keeping the war in Donbas a frozen conflict. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu claimed intensifying Ukrainian attacks against the DNR and LNR created a humanitarian catastrophe, claiming that 90 percent of Donetsk residents have no water. Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev argued the Kremlin should recognize the DNR and LNR despite the cost of Western sanctions, citing the Kremlin’s recognition of its proxies in Georgia in 2008. Putin attempted to frame the preplanned speeches as an unplanned meeting, likely to generate the perception of Kremlin buy-in to the recognition of the DNR and LNR, forcing key figures in the Russian government to publicly support his pre-planned action.
Putin gave a speech prior to signing the decrees attacking the concept of Ukraine as a sovereign state, setting conditions for further Russian offensive action. Putin claimed Ukraine is an “integral part of [Russia’s] own history, culture, spiritual space” and was only created following the 1917 Russian Revolution. Putin claimed nationalists and oligarchic clans rule modern Ukraine and that the 2014 Euromaidan Revolution was a Western-backed coup. Putin claimed NATO can directly control Ukrainian forces to attack Russia and that NATO “cheated” its 1991 “promises” to not expand eastward. Putin claimed “Russia has done everything to preserve the territorial integrity of Ukraine” through the Minsk II Accords since 2015. Putin stated his decision to “immediately recognize the independence and sovereignty” of the DNR and LNR is “long overdue” and asked the Russian Federal Assembly to ratify the treaties “in the very near future,” which the Federal Assembly will likely do on February 22. Putin demanded that Ukraine immediately cease nonexistent hostilities against Donbas.
The Russian government falsely accused Ukrainian forces of attacking Russian territory in Rostov with artillery and ground forces on February 21 to legitimize further military action against Ukraine.[16] Russia’s Southern Military District claimed it destroyed two Ukrainian infantry fighting vehicles and killed five Ukrainian militants that crossed the border into Russian territory in Mityakinskaya, Rostov Oblast, on February 21.[17] The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) also claimed that Ukrainian artillery destroyed a Russian border checkpoint near Shcherbakovo, Rostov Oblast.[18] FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov said that Russian forces captured one Ukrainian prisoner who participated in the attacks during the Russian Security Council meeting on February 21.[19] Ukrainian government officials denied these falsely alleged attacks on February 21.[20] The Kremlin will likely use these falsely claimed attacks to justify Russian military operations against Ukraine.
The Kremlin amplified claims that Ukrainian aggression led to mass evacuations in the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR) on February 21.[21] Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov accused the Ukrainian Armed Forces of initiating provocations, endangering civilian lives, and intensifying shelling.[22] Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova accused the West of encouraging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to denounce the Minsk II Accords and destroy Ukraine.[23] Zakharova added that US Embassy in Moscow launched a “real information terrorist attack” aimed at frightening Russians about terrorist attacks in public places along the Ukrainian border and in large Russian cities. Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations and Russian Security Service (FSB) claimed 61,000 evacuees have entered Russia as of February 21.[24] The Ministry announced that 43 regions can host up to 42,000 DNR and LNR evacuees. The Ministry claimed it has established about 400 temporary accommodation points and is developing an additional 149 points to accommodate up to 54,000 people. Russia’s Cabinet of Ministers allocated five billion rubles in payments to DNR and LNR evacuees on February 21.[25] Russian Federation Council First Deputy Chairman Sergey Ryabukhin reiterated that financial aid to DNR and LNR residents will not negatively impact Russians residing within the Russian territory and will prevent the greater costs of a “humanitarian catastrophe.”[26]
Proxy Activity
The Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR) claimed that Ukraine intensified its aggression through increased shelling and bombings targeting infrastructure and government buildings on February 20-21.[27] The DNR and LNR most likely intensified their claims of Ukrainian aggression on February 20-21 to justify Russia’s formal recognition of the LNR and DNR as independent states and subsequent Russian military movements into DNR and LNR-held territory on February 21. The LNR and DNR repeatedly claimed that Ukrainian special forces saboteurs attempted to bomb critical infrastructure, most notably the LNR Joint Center for Control and Coordination (JCCC) and DNR artillery rocket and artillery depots, coal mines, water stations, electricity suppliers, and schools.[28] The DNR also claimed that one Ukrainian soldier died while attempting to set up an explosive device at a Donetsk train station on February 21.[29] The DNR and LNR claimed that Ukrainian shelling killed two LNR civilians, one DNR soldier, and one DNR civilian.[30]
Ukrainian Culture and Information Policy Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko said that Ukraine uncovered 10 fake reports of Ukraine-initiated aggression against the DNR and LNR on February 19-20 and reiterated that the Kremlin, DNR, and LNR are conducting a disinformation campaign to portray Ukraine as the aggressor in Donbas.[31] CNN reported on February 21 that US forensic analysts said the metadata of the video portraying the February 11 alleged Ukrainian provocation in Donetsk shows the video was made three days before the claimed date of the event.[32] DNR and LNR claims of Ukrainian aggression and provocations in Donbas are likely all coordinated and staged to falsely portray Ukraine as the aggressor in the rising conflict in Donbas.
Belarusian Activity
Belarusian Chief of the General Staff Viktor Gulevich reiterated that Russian forces deployed in Belarus will only leave Belarus and return to their bases in Russia “when there is an objective need” and demanded the United States and NATO states withdraw troops from near Belarusian borders on February 21.[33] Gulevich also demanded that NATO let Belarus control NATO’s withdrawal through unspecified “verification measures.” Gulevich said that NATO’s eastern expansion is “aggressive and unjustified” and only increases the likelihood of armed conflict in Eastern Europe. Gulevich reiterated that Western military pressure against the Union State and “aggravation of the situation in Donbas” influenced the decision for Russian forces to remain in Belarus indefinitely.
Ukrainian Activity
N/A
US Activity
US officials condemned Russia’s recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR) on February 21 but stated Russia’s overt deployment of forces to Donbas is not a new step, declining to state what the White House would consider a Russian “invasion” of Ukraine. US President Joe Biden signed an executive order to impose sanctions against investments, imports, and exports to the DNR and LNR.[34] The White House emphasized that these sanctions—which are largely symbolic, as the United States has little to no trade with Russia‘s proxies—are separate from sanctions it is prepared to impose in response to a further Russian invasion of Ukraine. US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan stated on February 21 that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could begin “in the coming hours or days” and would be “extremely violent.”[35] US Ambassador to the OSCE Michael Carpenter condemned the Kremlin’s decision to recognize Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR) and criticized the ”forced mobilization” of military-age male citizens in those regions.[36] Several reporters quoted anonymous senior administration officials stating the White House does not view Russian forces operating overtly in Donbas as a new step triggering a US response.[37] Putin will likely phase further offensive operations against Ukraine in part to diffuse Western responses to his operations.
The New York Times reported on February 20 that the United States intercepted Kremlin orders for Russian military units to “proceed with an invasion of Ukraine” the week before US President Joe Biden’s speech on February 18, while CNN separately reported the United States has not yet seen several indicators of a large-scale invasion.[38] The New York Times additionally reported that US intelligence confirmed the Russian military has prepared to execute an unspecified attack plan and that 40-50 percent of units have shifted into combat formations. US intelligence officials separately told CNN that the United States still has not seen several “larger actions,” such as electronic jamming and cyberattacks, beyond previously seen tactical indicators.[39] The Kremlin will likely pursue a phased operation and continue its military buildup throughout the week, rather than launching an immediate full-scale invasion of unoccupied Ukraine.
US Representative to the UN Bathsheba Nell Crocker warned the UN of a Russian “kill list” of Ukrainians to target following a potential invasion on February 20.[40] Crocker claimed Russia has compiled a list of Ukrainians to kill or send to internment camps after invading Ukraine in a letter to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet. Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov denied the existence of the list on February 21. Crocker also warned that Russia will likely use lethal force to disperse potential Ukrainian protests or peaceful resistance to an occupation. Foreign Policy first reported on the US intelligence of a Russian ”kill list” on February 18.[41]
US President Joe Biden agreed “in principle” on February 21 to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin unless Russia invades Ukraine, though it is unclear as of publication if the White House considers Putin’s recognition of the DNR and LNR an invasion.[42] French President Emmanuel Macron proposed Putin meet with Biden in a phone call with Putin on February 20. The Kremlin did not commit to the meeting. Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitri Peskov stated that Russia cannot make concrete summit plans while “tensions rise.” Peskov suggested that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken discuss plans for a summit during their planned February 24 meeting. The White House announced that any presidential meeting is contingent on Russia reducing its forces along the Ukrainian border. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba welcomed diplomatic talks with Russia but requested that the other permanent United Nations Security Council members, Ukraine, Germany, and Turkey be included in a meeting.[43]
The US Embassy in Moscow warned of possible Russian false flag attacks on public centers around Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the Ukrainian border on February 21.[44] The US Embassy in Moscow warned individuals to avoid shopping centers, railway, and metro stations, and other public gathering locations. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated in an interview that Russia had not seen proof to support the US claim.
NATO and EU Activity
Several European leaders condemned the Kremlin’s decision to recognize the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR) as independent states and promised sanctions on Russia.[45] Western leaders including Macron, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, European Council President Charles Michel, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen condemned Putin’s decision to recognize the DNR and LNR as flagrantly violating the Minsk II Agreement on February 21.[46] Michel and Leyen called the recognition ”illegal” and promised that the EU would impose sanctions against “those involved” in a joint statement. Putin informed Macron and Scholz separately over the phone that he planned to recognize the DNR and LNR prior to his public announcement, according to the Kremlin.[47]
Putin likely seeks to drive a wedge between Western leaders and Ukraine by gradually increasing his aggression against Ukraine to introduce doubt into Western plans to impose sanctions in response to an “invasion.” Ukraine may perceive a lack of Western support if sanctions are not immediately imposed following the deployment of Russian “peacekeeping” forces into the DNR and LNR. No Western state has agreed to impose a planned package of “post-invasion” sanctions as of February 21. Leyen previously promised on February 20 that the EU would cut Russia off from international financial markets if it invades Ukraine.[48] EU Foreign Affairs Chief Josep Borell said on February 21 that the EU has a sanctions package—including export limitations in key industries, freezing assets of Kremlin-friendly individuals, and an import ban on Russian oil and gas—that the EU can implement gradually "depending on the level of [Russia’s] aggression.”[49] The EU also adopted a $1.36 billion “emergency support package” to Ukraine to mitigate the crisis's detrimental effects on financial and economic stability during a meeting on February 21.[50] During the meeting, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba urged the EU to grant Ukraine a pathway to EU membership to send Russia a political message.[51]
Other International Organization Activity
N/A
Individual Western Allies’ Activity
N/A
Other International Activity
N/A
[19] https://censor dot net/ru/news/3317694/rossiyane_zayavili_o_zahvate_v_plen_ukrainskogo_voennoslujaschego
[51] https://mfa.gov dot ua/news/dmitro-kuleba-najkrashchim-strategichnim-rishennyam-yes-zaraz-bulo-bi-nadannya-ukrayini-yevropejskoyi-perspektivi
4. Extended Russian deployment part of invasion ‘playbook,’ US says
I am reminded of Patton and Rommel (Patton: I read your book). We should be able to say we read Gerasimov's "playbook" on non-linear and new generation warfare.
Extended Russian deployment part of invasion ‘playbook,’ US says
By Lori Hinnant, The Associated Press and Jim Heintz, The Associated Press
KYIV, Ukraine — Russia on Sunday rescinded earlier pledges to pull tens of thousands of its troops back from Ukraine’s northern border, in a move that U.S. leaders warned put Russia another step closer to launching an invasion of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin was silent on Ukraine’s appeal for a cease-fire.
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By Jessica Edwards
U.S. President Joe Biden convened the National Security Council at the White House on Russia’s military buildup around Ukraine. White House officials released no immediate details of their two-hour discussion.
Western leaders intensified warnings that Russia was poised to attack its neighbor, which is surrounded on three sides by at least 150,000 Russian soldiers, warplanes and equipment.
Russia held nuclear drills Saturday as well as the conventional exercises in Belarus, and has ongoing naval drills off the coast in the Black Sea.
The United States and many European countries have charged for months that Russia is trying to create pretexts to invade. They have threatened massive, immediate sanctions if it does.
A top European Union official, Charles Michel, said: “The big question remains: Does the Kremlin want dialogue?”
“We cannot forever offer an olive branch while Russia conducts missile tests and continues to amass troops,” said Michel, the president of the European Council.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called Saturday on Russian President Vladimir Putin to choose a place where the two leaders could meet to try to resolve the crisis and on Sunday appealed for a cease-fire on Twitter. Russia has denied plans to invade, but the Kremlin did not respond to Zelenskyy’s offer to meet. It was Belarus — not Russia — that announced the extension of the drills.
NATO has estimated there are 30,000 Russian troops in Belarus.
RELATED
The war games follow U.S. President Joe Biden’s warning on Thursday that Russia could invade Ukraine within days.
After a call with French President Emmanuel Macron, Putin blamed Ukraine for the escalation at the contact line and NATO for “pumping modern weapons and ammunition” into Ukraine. The Kremlin statement mentioned a cease-fire only in passing and made no mention of Zelenskyy’s call for a meeting.
In Kyiv, life continued seemingly as usual on a mild winter Sunday, with brunches and church services. Katerina Spanchak, who fled the separatist-occupied Lugansk region years ago, said she prayed for peace.
“We all love life, and we are all united by our love of life. We should appreciate it every day. That’s why I think everything will be fine,” Spanchak said outside services at St. Michael’s monastery.
A Ukrainian service member listens to artillery shots standing in a trench on a position at the line of separation between Ukraine-held territory and rebel-held territory near Zolote, Ukraine, late Saturday, Feb. 19, 2022. (Evgeniy Maloletka/AP)
But in Lugansk, the area of eastern Ukraine where her parents still live, and neighboring Donetsk, separatist leaders ordered a full military mobilization and sent more civilians to Russia, which has issued about 700,000 passports to residents of the rebel-held territories. Claims that Russian citizens are being endangered might be used as justification for military action.
Officials in the separatist territories claimed Ukrainian forces launched several artillery attacks over the past day and that two civilians were killed during an unsuccessful assault on a village near the Russian border. Ukraine’s military said two soldiers died in firing from the separatist side on Saturday.
Ukraine’s leader criticized the U.S. and other Western nations for holding back on new sanctions for Russia. Zelenskyy, in comments before the conference, also questioned the West’s refusal to allow Ukraine to join NATO immediately. Putin has demanded that NATO reject Ukraine as a member.
A U.S. military official said an estimated 40% to 50% of the ground forces surrounding Ukraine had moved into attack positions closer to the border. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal U.S. assessments, said the change had been underway for about a week and did not necessarily mean Putin was committed to an invasion.
Lines of communication between Moscow and the West remain open: Macron spoke with Putin on Sunday for nearly two hours before a 30-minute call with the Ukrainian president. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov agreed to meet next week.
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The second wave of 82nd Airborne soldiers brings the total mobilized so far to 6,000.
Blinken said Sunday the U.S. was still working every lever possible to try to dissuade Putin from invading Ukraine but said recent events, including the extension of the troops in Belarus and the increase in shelling along the contact line, showed Putin well underway in laying the pretexts and groundwork for invasion, in line with findings of U.S. intelligence and previous Russian territorial grabs. “So all of this, along with the false flag operations we’ve seen unfold over the weekend, tells us the playbook...is moving forward,” the U.S. secretary of state told CNN.
“Up to the last minute, there is still an option for him to pull back,” Blinken told NBC’s Meet the Press. He said his offer to meet Lavrov in Europe in the coming days was conditioned on Russia not rolling into Ukraine beforehand.
Macron’s office said both the Ukrainian and Russian leaders had agreed to work toward a diplomatic solution “in coming days and coming weeks.”
Immediate worries focused on eastern Ukraine, where Ukrainian forces have been fighting the pro-Russia rebels since 2014 in a conflict that has killed some 14,000 people.
Ukraine and the separatist leaders traded accusations of escalation. Russia on Saturday said at least two shells fired from a government-held part of eastern Ukraine landed across the border, but Ukraine’s foreign minister dismissed that as “a fake statement.”
“When tension is escalated to the maximum, as it is now, for example, on the line of contact, then any spark, any unplanned incident or any minor planned provocation can lead to irreparable consequences,” Putin’ spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview that aired Sunday on Russian state television.
On the front lines, Ukrainian soldiers said they were under orders not to return fire. Zahar Leshushun, peering into the distance with a periscope, had followed the news all day from a trench where he is posted near the town of Zolote.
“Right now, we don’t respond to their fire because ...” the soldier said before being interrupted by the sound of an incoming shell. “Oh! They are shooting at us now. They are aiming at the command post.”
Sporadic violence has broken out for years along the line separating Ukrainian forces from the Russia-backed separatists, but the spike in recent days is orders of magnitude higher than anything recently recorded by international monitors: nearly 1,500 explosions in 24 hours.
Denis Pushilin, the head of the pro-Russia separatist government in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, cited an “immediate threat of aggression” from Ukrainian forces in his announcement of a call to arms. Ukrainian officials vehemently denied having plans to take rebel-controlled areas by force.
A similar statement followed from his counterpart in the Luhansk region. On Friday, the rebels began evacuating civilians to Russia with an announcement that appeared to be part of efforts to paint Ukraine as the aggressor.
Heintz reported from Moscow. Mstyslav Chernov in Zolote, Ukraine, Geir Moulson in Berlin, Aamer Madhani in Munich, Ellen Knickmeyer, Robert Burns and Darlene Superville in Washington, Liudas Dapkus in Vilnius, Lithuania, and Yuras Karmanau in Kyiv contributed to this story.
5. Are we ready for war in the infosphere?
An excellent and important synthesis of a lot of recent writing on influence operations combined with Maj Gen Dunlap's and commentary.
Are we ready for war in the infosphere?
How can the U.S. and rule-of-law democracies counter increasingly sophisticated and weaponized disinformation? How should they wage “information warfare” during period of putative peace? What are some of the rewards – and risks – of “democratization” of intelligence that commercial satellites and advanced communications capabilities permit? Can rule-of-law democracies compete successfully against those hyperempowered by technology? In short, are we ready for war in the infosphere?
These are big questions that I suspect we will revisit with some frequency in future posts but let’s get the conversation underway.
Context
Here’s some context: as things continue to heat up in the Ukraine, and the specter of war seems to be growing, Russia and its proxies are working feverishly to fabricate a pretext for military action. The latest shenanigan seems to be artillery exchanges between the separatists who control part of eastern Ukraine, and Ukrainian forces. The plan apparently is to goad Ukrainian forces into a response that harms civilians.
The New York Times reports: “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.” U.S Secretary of State Antony Blinken put it bluntly:
“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.”
The information/disinformation conundrum
What we are seeing on display is a means of coercion in which the Russians have proven to have real expertise: information/disinformation warfare. It is a serious mistake to underestimate their capabilities and how they have used technology to amplify them. A 2016 RAND report pointed out that “Russia has taken advantage of technology and available media in ways that would have been inconceivable during the Cold War.” Importantly, RAND finds that Russia’s “tools and channels now include the Internet, social media, and the evolving landscape of professional and amateur journalism and media outlets.” It adds:
We characterize the contemporary Russian model for propaganda as “the firehose of falsehood” because of two of its distinctive features: high numbers of channels and messages and a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions. In the words of one observer, “[N]ew Russian propaganda entertains, confuses and overwhelms the audience.”
We are certainly seeing much of that in the current crisis, so what can we do about it? A little more than a week ago a reporter asked me about Russian information/disinformation war. His questions included: was this a new form of warfare? Or is this just something that has gone on forever? Can the US succeed at information warfare or are there too many constraints?
Here’s a lightly edited and somewhat expanded version of what I said then:
The challenge
It is very difficult for any rule-of-law democracy to compete with an authoritarian regime bent upon weaponzing disinformation. This is especially so with the Russians, who have long considered deception and disinformation to be a key stratagems, and who now have become super-empowered with the advent of cyber technology, to include advanced techniques like deep fakes, and more.
For principled reasons, countries like the U.S. are loathe to use deception and disinformation, particularly during periods of putative peace, but this means they can often be disadvantaged. I believe these days it is challenging to get approval for an aggressive counter-disinformation campaign, even if it relies upon accurate data. The Russians are not constrained that way, and it gives them the opportunity to get inside the decision and response loops of the U.S. and NATO countries.
It can be easier for a military commander to get approval to use deadly defensive force than it is to get the OK to respond with an aggressive, albeit non-kinetic, information strike. The bureaucracy may insist upon multiple approvals that simply cannot be obtained in a timely manner. Consequently, a Russian narrative laced with disinformation can stay ahead of any effort to counter it.
One way to counter the bureaucratic lag would be to assess likely Russian information offensives and to pre-position approved responses. In the 21st century, information warfare can take place at hyper speed, and any slower response could be doomed as too little too late. Whole societies may rapidly form adversary-inclined opinions that may be difficult or impossible to dislodge in the necessary timeframe.
“Grey zone” war and exploiting the unsettled nature of international law
The Russians are waging what is called “grey zone” war which is the use of coercive means that fall below the threshold that traditional legal analysis that permits defensive responses. It is a period of not quite peace, but also not quite “war” – at least as that term has historically been understood.
For example, a “gray zone” technique would be to exploit the unsettled nature of international law as to what can or cannot be done in cyberspace without legally constituting an “attack.” Additionally, it is unsettled as to exactly what kind of response is permissible when the disinformation campaign is not only broadcasting falsities, but also benefits from affirmatively going into U.S. and allied databases and changing data to hostile advantage.
Historically, for example, propaganda—however false it may be—has not been considered to meet the threshold that legally triggers a right to “self-defense” as that term is understood under the U.N. and NATO charters.
But the U.S. and other democracies may need to reconsider these interpretive norms given the unprecedented potential of cyber and high-tech communications to distribute highly-volatile disinformation to billions in a matter of hours. Such disinformation/propaganda can instigate an armed conflict or other tragic event, so there is a need to know what responses and counters are internationally acceptable norms. The answer may not appropriately be a kinetic response, but may rely on other means to, for example, stifle its distribution and effectiveness.
Regardless, highly sophisticated and possibly politically decisive disinformation operation could have a strategic impact that threatens vital American interests, and set off reactions that pose a serious threat to peace.
Propaganda and disinformation during armed conflict
Yes, rights to expression do need to be protected, but so do innocents. And, yes, there can be appropriate limits. For example, there is no First Amendment right for an enemy to communicate during an armed conflict, and this is especially true with respect to propaganda and disinformation. However, in a globalized media environment where the propaganda and/or disinformation may be reported by third party or even American news organizations, complications result.
Consequently, the challenge is to figure out how to stop such operations while respecting free speech as well as the public’s right to know during peace, war, and – yes – “grey zone’ periods. Another complication would be an adversary’s use of proxies, including unwitting ones in friendly countries, to spread false information which could potentially have catastrophic strategic effects.
Red lines for the “grey zone”?
The U.S. and its allies need to decide exactly where it considers the international law lines to be, understanding that establishing any legal “red line” would also limit what they could do to an adversary. Given the U.S. is reportedly the world’s premier cyber power, some may argue that the current legal ambiguity serves American interests. I believe deterrence is better served by being clear about what the U.S. and its allies deem as legally acceptable or not.
Frankly, it is not unthinkable to imagine conflicts decided entirely in the infosphere. Clausewitz, the great military theorist, said that war is “an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will,” but in the future, it might be possible to substitute “act of information” into that axiom. Once a society is made to believe it cannot win, or it becomes so internally disrupted it cannot organize to fight effectively, the “war” may be over without a shot being fired.
Let’s not forget that Sun Tzu, another great theorist observed: “To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”
Some good news…
I do think the U.S. and its NATO allies have done a good job, for example, in exposing a Russian plan to fabricate a “video showing an attack by Ukrainians on Russian territory or Russian speakers in eastern” as a “pretext for invasion.” The Wall Street Journal observed:
Releasing information to damage or deter an enemy is an ancient tactic. What is new here is the scale of it, said Jonathan Eyal, an associate director at the Royal United Services Institute, a British defense think tank. By flagging operations early, it stops Russia’s President Vladimir Putin “resorting to the same old techniques” that Moscow used to justify incursions into Crimea in 2014 and Georgia in 2008, he said.
This is the kind of thing that the US, and its allies need to do more frequently, even if there are risks. The Journal points out:
The moves aren’t without risk for U.S. and U.K. intelligence agencies. They potentially expose sources in Russia. Furthermore, if war doesn’t materialize, the U.S. and U.K. governments, which have provided little evidence for their claims, could be accused of scaremongering. It could also have no effect at all.
Of course, the calculation as to whether secret intelligence ought to be used to counter disinformation is very fact-specific as it may put at risk costly sources and methods. The New York Times reported that today that U.S. intelligence “learned last week that the Kremlin had given the order for Russian military units to proceed with an invasion of Ukraine.” The paper also said that ‘[o]fficials declined to describe the intelligence in any detail, anxious to keep secret their method of collecting the information.”
That concern is understandable but the disclosure was the right thing to do in this instance, even if there was price in terms intelligence sources and methods. Operating in the infosphere is not, and will not be, a cost free endeavor, but the disclosure option must be “on the table” in situations where major war is possible.
The emerging opportunities and challenges of “open source intelligence”
However, not all the data used to expose Russian disinformation comes from Western intelligence agencies. Increasingly, commercial satellites and social media users are the source. Writing in The Conversation professor Craig Nazareth says that “open source intelligence” (OSINT) has “democratized” access to data once the sole province of the specialized government intelligence-gathering systems.
Nazareth believes such as technologies as “[s]ocial media, big data, smartphones and low-cost satellites have taken center stage, and scraping Twitter has become as important as anything else in the intelligence analyst toolkit.” Nazareth adds:
There are at least two issues raised by this development, one of which was mentioned by the author: “sifting through terabytes of publicly available data for relevant information is difficult” particularly since “much of the data could be intentionally manipulated to deceive complicates the task.”
A new article in The Economist expands upon the cautions. It notes that OSINT is “not a panacea” and observes that “overhead pictures, while very useful, never show everything.” It also says that satellite images can be “beguilingly concrete in a way that can mislead the inexperienced.”
Modern armed forces appreciate the role that open sources have begun to play in crises, and can use this to their advantage. An army might, for instance, deliberately show a convoy of tanks headed in the opposite direction to their intended destination, in the knowledge that the ensuing TikTok footage will be dissected by researchers. The location signals broadcast by ships can be spoofed, placing them miles from their true locations.
The second issue involves the use of “open source intelligence” during wartime specifically. Russians (or, really, any military) may seek, for example, to block the acquisition and/or dissemination of “geographically precise images” of their forces, which could quite obviously be used for targeting. They may consider the and the means the Russians (or others) use to attack them could have significant adverse collateral effects on a world much dependent upon satellite sourced-data.
Additionally, people who may think of themselves as civilians uninvolved in the conflict may find the Russians consider their activities as sufficient to make them targets. Even the International Committee of the Red Cross concedes that “transmitting tactical targeting intelligence for a specific attack” is sufficient “direct involvement in hostilities” to make a civilian lawfully targetable under the law of war.
Russia, as wll as other countries, may have a broader interpretation of what constitutes “direct involvement in hostilities” (e.g., transmitting information enabling targeting beyond specific tactical attacks or otherwise intended to expose military operations to an advasary) as this is an area of the law that is unsettled and developing as more technologies become available that have valuable intelligence capabilities.
One more thought: it won’t always be friendly countries who exploit open source intelligence. Open societies like the U.S. are bonanzas for open source intelligence gatherers. We have to think through what this means for our military operations: do you fight they same way when an adversary, even a relatively low-tech one, can use OSINT to track your every move?
The future of war in the infosphere
In a fascinating article in POLITICO (), journalist Kenneth R. Rosen reports:
The Russians have for nearly a decade used Ukraine as a proving ground for a new and highly advanced type of hybrid warfare — a digital-meets-traditional kind of fighting defined by a reliance on software, digital hardware and cognitive control that is highly effective, difficult to counter and can reach far beyond the front lines deep into Ukrainian society. It is a type of high-tech conflict that many military experts predict will define the future of war. It has also turned Ukraine, especially its eastern provinces, but also the capital, into a bewildering zone of instability, disinformation and anxiety.
This echoes a phenomena raised in the 2018 book, War in 140 Characters, where the author discussed a young Palestinian woman named Farah who “armed with only a smart phone” produced tweets espousing a view of the conflict that were so effective they could defeat a militarily more powerful opponent on the “narrative battlefield.” In the information realm this gave her power “akin to the most élite special forces unit” that could resulting nations losing wars. He explained:
This is because when war becomes “armed politics” and the Claueswitzian paradigm becomes less relevant, one side can win militarily but lose politically. This idea lies at the center of Farah’s power. She cannot shoot, but she can tweet, and the latter is now arguably more important in an asymmetric conflict that Palestinians cannot hope to win militarily. It is this newfound ability to spread narratives via tweets and posts that allows hyperempowered, networked individuals such as Farah to affect the battlefield.
As I said above, it is not unthinkable to imagine conflicts decided entirely in the infosphere. Clausewitz, the great military theorist, said that war is “an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will,” but in the future, it might be possible to substitute “act of information” into that axiom.
Questions to ponder: are the U.S. and other rule-of-law democracies sufficiently prepared to fight in the infosphere? Do we have the right legal norms and policies in place to compete effectively in 21st century conflicts where a small number of individuals super-empowered by technology can potentially dominate the narrative battlespace? Are we ready to win in the infosphere?
Remember what we like to say on Lawfire®: gather the facts, examine the law, evaluate the arguments – and then decide for yourself!
Again, be sure not to miss LENS 27th Annual conference (livestream/no registration required)! Agenda and links to attend virtually are found here .
6. Paramilitary Forces in Ukraine: Matches to a Powder Keg
Paramilitary Forces in Ukraine: Matches to a Powder Keg | Small Wars Journal
Paramilitary Forces in Ukraine: Matches to a Powder Keg
By Mitch Ruhl
Introduction
On November 21, 2013, protestors gathered in Kyiv's Maidan NezalezhnostiIn in favor of European integration. Just a few months later, the government was overthrown, and Putin’s “little green men” began their military operation in Crimea and the Donbas, agitating and supporting pro-Russian separatists sparking an eight-year civil war. At the start of the conflict, the Ukrainian Army was weak, slow to mobilize, and depended on citizen fighters to supplement its capabilities. Dozens of paramilitary forces sprang up on both sides. Since then, Ukrainian militias have largely disbanded or been integrated into the National Guard in contrast to the separatist militias which still maintain a large degree of autonomy while being a part of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics’ (DPR and LPR) armed forces.
In many ways, the militias of this conflict share similarities with the freikorps of Weimar Germany. Many possess a deeply-entrenched partisan nature—whether ideological or megalomaniacal, questionable loyalty to their government, and draw from a disillusioned veteran-base. The current situation in Ukraine is a powder keg. Kyiv is attempting to maintain stability to avoid providing Russia with a casus belli; however, paramilitary forces on both sides represent a match and a persistent long-term threat to regional stability. As such, it is critical to understand who these forces are and the risk they represent.
Pro-Ukraine
Attempts by the Kyivan government to gain control of its militia groups has seen overall success. Most militias were disbanded and either sent into the reserves or recruited into the National Guard. A few larger and more resistant militias were nationalized granting them a semi-autonomous state in a Faustian bargain. These pro-Kyivan militias have largely coalesced around three major groups: Azov Battalion, Right Sector’s Ukrainian Volunteer Corps (DUK), and Aidar Battalion. While Azov and Aidar are no longer officially paramilitary forces, their continued partisan activity distinguishes them from other Ukrainian units.
More militia forces have arisen since Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky approved the raising and expansion of civilian militias to supplement the national army, increasing troop totals by 100,000 over three years. Unlike the grassroots forces of 2014, the new Territorial Defence Brigades are locally-organized volunteer units drawing from reservists and civilians and are state controlled. However, as Ukraine prepares for civilian resistance in the event of an invasion in which its conventional forces would be overwhelmed, its paramilitary forces stand to gain in a manner that could prove destabilizing to Kyiv, whether it keeps looking West or is replaced by a more East-looking one.
Azov Battalion
The Azov Battalion is a far-right, neo-Nazi militia founded in 2014 in Berdiansk and is currently headquartered in Urzuf, Donetsk Oblast as a special police unit in the National Guard. Born from the pre-existing Patriots of Ukraine and Social-National Assembly neo-Nazi groups, the battalion has deep ideological roots and was openly opposed to both the separatists and Kyiv at its onset. One of the group’s major patrons is Arsen Avakov, the Minister of Internal Affairs from 2014 to 2021 who enabled the expansion and later integration of paramilitary forces into the National Guard. Avakov actively supported the parliamentary candidacy of its members, including its neo-Nazi commander Andriy Biletsky in 2016, and has defended them in the media. The shift in leadership to participate in democratic processes caused the Battalion shed some of its open opposition, nationalize, and form two partner organizations: the National Corps Party and the Azov Civil Corps.
Because of this connectivity, it was the first group to be nationalized. There were attempts made after this to vet out foreigners and anti-Kyiv extremists to limited success. Those vetted out were often sent to the Civil Corps, but Nazi influence remains entrenched. The continued close entanglement of Nazism, politics, and the Battalion are demonstrated by the deep ties between the commanders and the party. For example, former longtime commander and current leader in the National Corps, Maxim Zhorin, is facilitating volunteer training and recruitment for the Battalion. He has gone on pilgrimages to sites where Hitler spoke in the past. Additionally, current commander Denys Prokopenko has been with the unit since day one and maintains its partisan and Nazi culture.
In 2018, the National Corps rolled out a new Azov-affiliate known as National Druzhyna, a street gang of around 600 members. This group was responsible for multiple violent attacks on Roma, Jews, and other minority groups as well as political opponents, including academics. The larger organization is currently using the crisis to bolster its profile, recruitment, and political prospects and has been prolific on social media over the years in recruitment and radicalization.
Given the Azov movement’s extremist nature, previously open revolutionary positions, and active radicalization and recruitment tactics, there is concern for the loyalty of the unit to Kyiv.
Right Sector
Founded in 2013 as a paramilitary confederation, it quickly expanded to include a political party and youth movement. The group deeply holds anti-democratic, neo-Nazi, and neo-fascist revolutionary ideology and is a political ally of the National Corps. Its paramilitary wing, DUK, consists of two sotnya (a Cossack unit of 100-150 persons) fighting in the Donbass. A noted ideological premise is the commitment to the destruction of the Russian state and the creation of a pan-Slavic Russia-Ukraine state.
The group initially resisted integration into national forces; however, the group took a page from the Hitler playbook after 1923 and began to participate in democracy with the intent to undermine it. Its commander Dmytro Yarosh became a member of parliament and three battalions nationalized and were eventually split apart, though members in their new units maintain esprit de corps with their former comrades and the non-combatant medical battalion remains intact.
However, five sotyna of the DUK remain active and independent of the national forces, continue to resist government attempts at integration, and are actively supported by the Right Sector party in Kyiv, and is reflected on the party website. The organization also has 25 sotnya in reserve for each territory. The DUK is currently commanded by Andriy Stempitsky "Flyer." Two sotnya are active combat units in the Donbass and are tolerated by the government. In December 2021, Zelensky awarded a Right Sector commander the Hero of Ukraine award, the country’s highest national honor. These units are the last true paramilitary units in Ukraine.
While enjoying very limited national support, the organization, like Azov, is using the crisis to bolster its profile and power. Its independent nature, extreme anti-Russian ideology, and presence on the front lines represent a significant risk for escalation. As Russian and separatist forces ramp up escalation in hopes of justifying an invasion, an unaccountable extremist group that is tacitly endorsed by Kyiv could prove the fodder that Putin desires.
Aidar
The Aidar Battalion was founded in 2014 and is subordinate to the 53rd Separate Mechanized Brigade and is stationed in Sievierodonetsk.
Following its initial resistance to withdrawal in 2015 and nationalization and a brief confrontation with the Ukrainian regular army, most of the battalion acquiesced. Holdouts jumped from one independent militia to another, many of whom ended up in Right Sector. Aidar was the last militia to be incorporated. It is currently known officially as the 24th Assault Battalion of Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
The force has some history of going rogue after integration. In 2017, it and the now-dissolved Donbas Battalion blockaded the DPR and LPR and created an energy crisis in Ukraine. This blockade was soon forcefully broken up by Ukrainian forces but later made official due to the political power of the Maidan veteran constituency.
It has faced significant international criticism for its role in human rights abuses and war crimes. While it does not have its own political arm, former members such as Sergei Melnichuk served as members of parliament until 2019. Despite its history, this group has the smallest profile and no real ideological bend. It poses less of a risk to the government than the other units in the event of an invasion. Russian coverage focusing on the movements of the 53rd frame it as preparing for an offensive as of February 11, 2022. This coincides with U.S. intelligence indicating the potential use of a false flag as a casus belli for invasion. In this context, a rogue element within Aidar could present a significant risk for escalation.
Pro-Russia
Pro-Russian/separatist forces are much more anomalous and extensive than their pro-Kyiv counterparts. This is in part because Russia never fully put its weight behind establishing the breakaway states. The LPR and DPR suffer from political instability as a result, seeing factional conflicts between various internal groups. The Kremlin took steps to reign in or eliminate more troublesome elements over the years; however, these efforts are largely limited to anti-Kremlin elements opposed to Russiky Mir or Putin. The governments of the breakaway states are quite moderate in and of themselves, being controlled by bureaucrats with connections to deposed Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, the armed forces were, however, inundated with rival warlords. However, given the lack of high-profile assassinations since late 2018, the more extreme elements of separatist leadership can be considered to be eliminated.
Unfortunately, publicly available information on these groups is often dated and interspersed, and sometimes contradictory.
Donetsk People's Republic Armed Forces
These are the official forces of the quasi-state of the DPR. It is comprised of over a dozen contingent units, including the Oplot, Vostok, Russian Orthodox Army, and Republican Guard. While officially, the volunteer militias are a part of the official DPR and LPR forces, they are quite autonomous in reality. News articles indicate a fair amount of political infighting between commanders of various groups and DPR political elite. For example, the original head of Oplot and the DPR, Aleksandr Zakharchenko, was assassinated in August 2018. While the responsible party was never identified, it is just one of many rebel political elites eliminated violently over the years either after falling out of the Kremlin’s grace or in an internal power struggle. Similarly, Mikhail Tolstykh, former leader of the Somali paramilitary force, was assassinated in February 2017 under similar circumstances.
Other elements are in a more uncertain state, some still have active social media, but it is unclear as to their organizational status. The Vostok Brigade, for example, was alleged to be a GRU creation as it contains veterans of the GRU’s Vostok and Zapad Battalions that participated in the war in Georgia and in Chechnya. While sources indicated the brigade disbanded and its members either joined other units or returned to Russia, its commander, Alexander Khodakovsky, put out a call to arms on February 17, 2022, to all veterans of the militia via Telegram.
Other paramilitary elements include the Russian Orthodox Army is a religious extremist group with a record of terrorist and thuggish activity against non-Orthodox groups and is also active in the LPR. Its original commander was Igor Strelkov, a former FSB colonel and since become a leader in the neo-imperialist Russian National Movement opposed to Putin. Another unit of notoriety is the Varyag Battalion, which is a neo-Nazi unit finding its origins in being far-right paid provocateurs during the Orange Revolution. It has companies parsed throughout a few DPR units, such as the Republican Guard. These units, while primarily focused on the defense of the Donbass, may either participate in or see sister units spring up to support counter-insurgency efforts by a Kremlin-appointed government in Kyiv.
The DPR has seen regular skirmishes with Ukrainian forces over the years, and increasingly in recent months. The official line holds that Ukraine is the aggressor, however, the reality is likely culpability of both forces with Russian instigation to justify its invasion. Additionally, the political instability is an unintended boon for Russian plausible deniability, as it can simply dismiss accusations against the pro-Russian side as rogue elements of young independent government.
Luhansk People's Republic Armed Forces
LPR forces operate similarly to the DPR with official units supplemented by semi-autonomous volunteer and international brigades.
Similar to the Russian Orthodox Army, the Cossack Guard are an ethno-Orthodox religious extremist organization with a record of human rights abuses on religious grounds. They believe they are in a holy war for Russia and enjoy tacit support from the Moscow Patriarchate given the institution’s embrace of Russiky Mir. They primarily operate in the LPR and have members spread throughout LPR forces.
The Prizrak Brigade had close ideological ties to the Vostok brigade, through their initial leader Aleksey Mozgovoy’s ties with Vostok’s Igor Strelkov. Once Strelkov was forced to leave the Donbass, Mozgovoy and the unit, which has a socialist political arm, became increasingly antagonistic to the Kremlin. It is suspected that the Kremlin orchestrated his and Cossack Regiment commander Pavel Dremov’s 2015 assassinations.
While the various component elements of the LPR’s military and paramilitary forces do not seem particularly concerning in their own right, the deeply-entrenched political rivalries—marked by assassinations, attempted coups, and inter-faction standoffs—are of significant concern. While leaving the LPR’s cohesion and combat effectiveness significantly lacking, units or leaders seeking to shore up power at the expense of its rivals may inadvertently risk escalation with Ukraine. The 2015-2017 assassination wave was often blamed on Ukrainian subversive elements by Russian state media. The potential expansion of their role to assist in counter-insurgency efforts after an invasion remains a strong possibility as well.
Conclusion
The most immediate concern lies in the escalation risk factor of these forces. As cease-fire violations skyrocket, it should be recognized in its precedence. Over the past eight years, both sides have been guilty of violations largely out of a desire to coax the opposing side to violate even more in a race to the bottom. Given recent intelligence reports indicating a Russian moving towards a false flag, it stands to reason that the Kremlin is pushing separatist forces to provoke violations by the Ukrainian armed forces. While NATO and Zelensky have little control over how the separatists behave, they can move to pull the most troublesome units, including Right Sector, away from the front to minimize the risk of escalation. The volatility of the situation in the Donbass demands disciplined troops there. Provoking aggression from Ukrainian forces would eliminate the diplomatic risk factor of a false flag operation, but it appears that Russia is ready to go either way.
Despite the political influence of Ukraine’s veteran constituency, popular support for Ukraine’s far-right paramilitary forces is negligible. Biletsky and other members of far-right parties lost their seat in Ukraine’s Parliament—the Verkhovna Rada—in 2019. However, fascist paramilitary organizations could expand significantly in the wake of a Russian invasion. Ongoing civilian resistance training grant these organizations the opportunity to create widespread recruitment pools in the general populace. Further to that, a defeated democratic Ukraine would face a legitimacy crisis that extremist organizations like Azov and Right Sector could exploit to establish themselves politically, not unlike the Yugoslav Partisans in the Second World War. In this event, while NATO should refuse to recognize any Kremlin-appointed regime, it should likewise refuse to recognize any rebel Nazi government. Even if a strong opposition government led by Nazis may be enticing for the purpose of undermining a puppet regime, it would be a catastrophic mistake that would further destabilize the region and provide legitimacy to other far-right movements globally, particularly in the US.
Mitch Ruhl is a national security specialist based in Washington, DC. A masters graduate of modern history at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England, he is passionate about 20th and 21st century military history, foreign & defense policy, and the transatlantic relationships."
7. Putin seeks to rewrite history
So is the rules based international order worth defending? And as an aside, of cos can we explain that to the American people?
Excerpts:
It is important to see these comments in light of Putin’s “no limits” declaration this month alongside China’s Xi Jinping about the “transformation of the global governance architecture and world order”. That joint statement prompted a collective eye-roll in the West for its evident cynicism, having invoked the “rights of peoples of different countries to self-determination” and the ideals of “justice, democracy and freedom”.
But Putin doesn’t want to just rob Ukraine of sovereignty. He is seeking to co-opt the preferred language used by the West about rules and global order. It will only make arguments that much more difficult when they are constantly bogged down by definitions and all the while real-world consequences are unfolding.
Putin seeks to rewrite history
The Russian leader wants to turn the preferred language
of sovereignty and governance back on the West.
Published 22 Feb 2022 16:00 Follow @danielflitton
Vladimir Putin has confirmed the grim news that Russian troops are readying to roll across the border into eastern Ukraine.
But the sight of massive military convoys and changing facts on the ground in the days ahead should not overshadow the magnitude of the words Putin has used to justify his action.
“Ukraine is not just a neighbouring country for us,” Putin declared in a televised speech from the Kremlin.
“It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space. These are our comrades, those dearest to us – not only colleagues, friends and people who once served together, but also relatives, people bound by blood, by family ties.
That last phrase, “people bound by blood, by family ties”, soaked in ethno-nationalist connotations and confirmed by the official translation, is a remarkable throwback to the drivers of 20th century authoritarianism.
It’s easy to be jaded about the habit of modern politicians to invoke the struggles of history as a means of trying to whip up support. By the danger of this type of rhetoric should be plain.
Denying that Ukraine deserves the legal and normative recognition of sovereignty makes it easier, in his mind at least, to seize control.
Indeed, Putin continued with a potted history of policies by Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev “separating, severing what is historically Russian land” … “territories were transferred along with the population of what was historically Russia” … “Ukraine never had a tradition of genuine statehood”.
Denying that Ukraine deserves the legal and normative recognition of sovereignty makes it easier, in his mind at least, to seize control.
Putin reached for history too in complaining about the prospect of NATO expansion to include Ukraine. “Ukraine will serve as a forward springboard for the strike. If our ancestors had heard about it, they probably would simply not have believed it. And today we don’t want to believe it, but it’s true.”
And Putin parroted language that will be familiar to leaders in just about any country pledging their resolve: “we will never compromise our sovereignty, national interests and our values”.
It is important to see these comments in light of Putin’s “no limits” declaration this month alongside China’s Xi Jinping about the “transformation of the global governance architecture and world order”. That joint statement prompted a collective eye-roll in the West for its evident cynicism, having invoked the “rights of peoples of different countries to self-determination” and the ideals of “justice, democracy and freedom”.
But Putin doesn’t want to just rob Ukraine of sovereignty. He is seeking to co-opt the preferred language used by the West about rules and global order. It will only make arguments that much more difficult when they are constantly bogged down by definitions and all the while real-world consequences are unfolding.
8. U.S. engagement with China a 'strategic blunder': Mearsheimer (Q&A)
Excerpts:
Q: Looking at Asia, some countries like North Korea continue to engage in nuclear arms brinkmanship. Will the world become a much more unstable, multipolar world? What is the way forward?
A: North Korean nuclear weapons are a significant problem, for Japan, for South Korea, and even for the U.S. As long as the U.S. maintains close alliances with Japan and South Korea, North Korea will not use its nuclear weapons. The American nuclear umbrella protects both Japan and South Korea from a strike with nuclear weapons from the North.
China is content to allow North Korea to keep its nuclear weapons. China has concluded that North Korean nuclear weapons are a force for stability on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia more generally.
However, the Chinese worry about Kim Jong Un engaging in nuclear brinkmanship, and the Chinese have told him in no uncertain terms that that is unacceptable. As a result he has curbed his behavior.
If Kim Jong Un goes back down that road, the Chinese will tell him, 'no more' because they don't want a nuclear crisis.
Q: The Biden administration hosted a summit of democracies last year. Do you think this approach is effective in curbing the rise of authoritarian countries?
A: No. This is a geopolitical competition, and we should think of it as a geopolitical competition and not an ideological competition.
The fact that Japan and the U.S. are democracies is very nice, but the truth is that they should be allied against China because China is a threat to both countries, regardless of ideology.
If you take the ideological argument too far, then you get to a point where you say Russia cannot be in the balancing coalition against China, because Russia is not a liberal democracy. I believe that would be foolish. What you ought to do is form an alliance with any powerful country you can find that will help you contain China. China is a formidable adversary.
U.S. engagement with China a 'strategic blunder': Mearsheimer
Nixon's visit 50 years ago made sense but later American policy did not, scholar says
MASAHIRO OKOSHI, Nikkei staff writer
February 21, 2022 02:19 JST
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. "foolishly" pursued a policy of engagement with Beijing after the end of the Cold War, University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer told Nikkei, arguing this policy misstep has contributed to China's economic and military rise.
Known as a realist in international relations theory, Mearsheimer asserted in his 2001 book, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, that the engagement approach taken by the U.S. would fail as an economically stronger China sought regional hegemony.
In his view, the U.S.'s belief that China would become a democracy as it grew in stature was a gross miscalculation. Not only the U.S., but Taiwan, Japan and South Korea all helped China become an economic giant, thus creating a geopolitical threat to themselves.
Mearsheimer differentiates this post-Cold War policy blunder from President Richard Nixon's engagement of Beijing, symbolized by his historic trip 50 years ago. Pursuing a quasi-alliance with China as a deterrent against the Soviet Union, he said, made strategic sense back then.
Edited excerpts of the interview follow.
Q: Looking back at the 50-year history between China and the U.S., do you think then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and President Nixon made the wrong decision?
A: No. I think you have to distinguish between American policy toward China during the Cold War -- the period of the late 1970s and the 1980s -- from the post-Cold War period from roughly 1990 up until 2017.
During the Cold War and under the policy of President Nixon, the U.S. decided to engage China and form a quasi-alliance with China against the Soviet Union.
That made eminently good sense. And Nixon was correct to help the Chinese economy grow, for the more powerful China became, the more effective it was as a deterrent partner against the Soviet Union. However, once the Cold War ended in 1989 and the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the U.S. no longer needed China to help contain the Soviet Union.
What we foolishly did was pursue a policy of engagement, which was explicitly designed to help China grow more powerful economically. Of course, as China grew economically, it translated that economic might into military might, and the U.S., as a consequence of this foolish policy of engagement, helped to create a peer competitor.
My bottom line is that the Nixon-Kissinger policy, from the early 1970s up until the late 1980s, made eminently good sense. But, after that, engagement was a colossal strategic blunder.
Q: After the Cold War ended, did the U.S. underestimate China's potential power to emerge as a great power?
A: I don't think that's correct. I think the U.S. thought China would become economically powerful, and indeed the U.S. wanted to help China become more prosperous.
The U.S. worked hard to integrate China into the world economy and into international institutions like the World Trade Organization.
The U.S. was not only expecting China to grow more powerful -- it was purposely helping China to grow more powerful. It was doing this based on the assumption that China would become a democracy over time and therefore would become a responsible stakeholder in an American-led international order.
Of course, that didn't happen. China did not become a democracy. And China, in effect, has set out to establish hegemony in Asia and challenge the U.S. around the planet. We now have a new Cold War.
Q: Why at that time did the U.S. think China would eventually become a democracy?
A: The U.S. felt that communism and fascism were no longer viable forms of government and that all states would eventually become liberal democracies, just like the U.S., just like Japan, and all we in the West had to do was speed up the process and help them become liberal democracies.
In the story that the Western elites told after the Cold War ended, both China and Russia were destined to become liberal democracies. This is all, I believe, clearly reflected in Francis Fukuyama's very famous article, "The End of History?" published in 1989.
The Fukuyama argument had enormous impact. His basic claim was that the world was becoming increasingly democratic, and as that happened, the world would become increasingly peaceful. When American elites helped China grow economically, they really did not think there was any chance China would become a peer competitor and a geopolitical threat to Japan or the U.S.
By the way, this was not a view that was limited to the U.S. If you went to Western Europe, if you went to Japan, if you went to Taiwan, this view was widespread.
Not only did the U.S. help China to grow economically, but Taiwan, of all countries, foolishly helped China to grow, as did Japan, as did South Korea, as did all the European countries. All of them were pursuing a remarkably foolish policy.
Q: It has been about 30 years since the end of the Cold War. Do you think a policy of containment policy could still work in handling China? Is it still effective today?
A: Well, it's very clear that, from roughly 1990 up until President Donald Trump entered the White House, that the U.S. pursued a policy of engagement which, as you know, was designed to make China wealthier.
Trump came into the White House and he basically abandoned engagement and said, "We're going to pursue a fundamentally different policy of containment."
President Biden has followed in Trump's footsteps. Like Trump, Biden is pursuing a containment policy. There's no question that the U.S. and Japan are bent on containing China. As to the question, 'can they contain China?' I think the answer is yes.
Q: How? A strategy of deliberately slowing China's economic growth is difficult to implement.
A: Containment has two dimensions, and we should first focus on the military dimension and then talk about the economic dimension.
In terms of the military dimension, it's quite clear that China is determined to upset the status quo in East Asia. China believes that it effectively "owns" the South China Sea. That's number one.
Number two is that China is determined to take Taiwan back and make it part of mainland China.
Number three, it's determined to control the East China Sea and take back what it calls the Diaoyu Islands, which the Japanese call the Senkaku Islands.
There's no question that China is a revisionist power, and the U.S. and its allies including Japan are determined to prevent it from taking over the South China Sea, from taking back Taiwan and from altering the status quo in the East China Sea.
Then there's the economic dimension of containment. There's no way at this point in time that the U.S. can roll back Chinese economic growth in any meaningful way. What the U.S. will try to do is limit that growth as much as possible and at the same time accelerate economic growth in the West.
When you look carefully at what the competition will look like, it will focus mainly on leading-edge technologies, like quantum computing, artificial intelligence, semiconductors, 5G and so on. That's where the real competition is going to take place.
Q: In the economic dimension, how can the U.S. and its allies slow China's growth without hurting themselves?
A: The question in these instances always becomes, "Who gets hurt more?" If you could do serious damage to the Chinese economy and only minimal damage to the American economy or the Japanese economy, you would pay that price.
Q: Is there a growing likelihood of the U.S. and China engaging in armed conflict?
A: For the foreseeable future, there's definitely going to be an intense security competition between China and the U.S. that looks a lot like the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Whether that turns into a hot war is another issue.
But I believe it is more likely to turn into a hot war than was the case with the first Cold War between Moscow and Washington.
The reason I worry more about war now is largely because of geography. The first Cold War was centered on Europe. The central front was the principal point of conflict between the U.S. and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies.
Deterrence in central Europe was very robust, and that was because the likelihood of war was remarkably low, because the cost would have been enormously high.
If you look at the present situation in East Asia, involving the U.S. and its allies against China, you can imagine limited wars over the South China Sea, over Taiwan, and over the East China Sea. The mere fact you can imagine a limited war, which is very different from the kind of war we imagined on the central front during the first Cold War, means that today or tomorrow, you could have a war between the U.S. and China.
The fact that a U.S.-China war would be a limited war -- unlike the war on the central front -- makes it more likely.
Q: What then is the likelihood of a limited war leading to a nuclear war? And is that more likely to happen now than it was during the Cold War?
A: Yes. Because of the geography, you could imagine the Chinese, if they were losing a fight over Taiwan, using a few nuclear weapons in the water. Or if the U.S. were losing a war with China over Taiwan, you could imagine it using a few nuclear weapons to rescue the situation.
I want to be clear here. I'm not saying that a nuclear war is likely, but I'm just saying it's much easier. I'm choosing my words carefully here. It's much easier to imagine nuclear weapons being used between the U.S. and China in a fight over the South China Sea, than it is in a fight over the central front, between the U.S. and its NATO allies, and the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies.
Q: Would the U.S. really be willing to fight China over an emergency in the Taiwan Strait?
A: I believe the U.S. is going to defend Taiwan if China attacks it. Period. I believe the American foreign policy elites who must make the decision will not care about public opinion. They will decide whether it makes good strategic sense for the U.S. to defend Taiwan.
We're not going to take a vote on whether or not to defend Taiwan if Taiwan is under threat. The leaders in the White House, State Department, and Pentagon will make that decision, and we will defend Taiwan for two reasons.
One is that it is enormously strategic. It's an important piece of real estate for the purposes of bottling up the Chinese naval and air forces inside the first island chain. It is imperative, as every Japanese strategist knows, that we control Taiwan and that we not allow Taiwan to fall into Beijing's hands. That's the first strategic reason we will fight and die for Taiwan.
The second reason is that if we, the U.S., were to abandon Taiwan, this would send a terrible message to every one of our allies in the region. Japan, for example, would no longer be able to rely on the American security umbrella, especially the nuclear umbrella.
Q: Chinese officials often say of the Taiwan situation that time is on their side.
A: They may be right. If China continues its impressive economic growth for the next 30 years and it grows at a more rapid pace than the U.S., it would be more powerful in 30 years than it is today.
From China's point of view, if you're thinking about conquering Taiwan, you're better off waiting till you grow much stronger, or until you grow much stronger relative to the U.S. than you are today.
The problem that the Chinese face is that it's very hard to know exactly what will happen with the Chinese economy over the next 30 years. And indeed, it's hard to know what will happen with the Japanese economy and the American economy.
Q: Back in 1993, you wrote that President Clinton was wrong in pressing Ukraine to become a non-nuclear state. Did you foresee the current problem Ukraine faces today?
A: Yes.
Q: Now Russia and China are cultivating a friendly relationship premised on the U.S. as their common enemy. Do you think Russia and China will be compatible in their stances toward Asia?
A: The U.S. has foolishly driven the Russians into the arms of the Chinese. I think Russia is the natural ally of the U.S. against China.
In 1969, the Soviet Union and China almost fought a war in Siberia. The Soviet Union and China -- and now we're talking about Russia and China -- have a history of bad relations, in large part because they share a border and each occupies big chunks of real estate in Asia. Russia should be an ally of the U.S. against China, and the U.S. needs all the allies it can get to contain China.
But what we have done by expanding NATO eastward is we have precipitated a huge crisis with Russia that prevents us from fully pivoting to Asia. We can't fully pivot to Asia because we're so concerned about events in Eastern Europe. That's the first consequence. The second is that we have driven the Russians into the arms of the Chinese. This makes no sense at all.
Q: The current tensions along the Ukraine border raise the question of whether the U.S. is capable of dealing with European and Asian issues simultaneously.
A: Let me chose my words carefully. The U.S. has the capability to deal with a conflict in Europe and a conflict in Asia at the same time.
However, it does not have the capability to perform well in both campaigns at the same time. By getting involved in a conflict in Eastern Europe, we, the U.S., are detracting from our ability to contain China and to fight a war against China, should one break out.
Q: Looking at Asia, some countries like North Korea continue to engage in nuclear arms brinkmanship. Will the world become a much more unstable, multipolar world? What is the way forward?
A: North Korean nuclear weapons are a significant problem, for Japan, for South Korea, and even for the U.S. As long as the U.S. maintains close alliances with Japan and South Korea, North Korea will not use its nuclear weapons. The American nuclear umbrella protects both Japan and South Korea from a strike with nuclear weapons from the North.
China is content to allow North Korea to keep its nuclear weapons. China has concluded that North Korean nuclear weapons are a force for stability on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia more generally.
However, the Chinese worry about Kim Jong Un engaging in nuclear brinkmanship, and the Chinese have told him in no uncertain terms that that is unacceptable. As a result he has curbed his behavior.
If Kim Jong Un goes back down that road, the Chinese will tell him, 'no more' because they don't want a nuclear crisis.
Q: The Biden administration hosted a summit of democracies last year. Do you think this approach is effective in curbing the rise of authoritarian countries?
A: No. This is a geopolitical competition, and we should think of it as a geopolitical competition and not an ideological competition.
The fact that Japan and the U.S. are democracies is very nice, but the truth is that they should be allied against China because China is a threat to both countries, regardless of ideology.
If you take the ideological argument too far, then you get to a point where you say Russia cannot be in the balancing coalition against China, because Russia is not a liberal democracy. I believe that would be foolish. What you ought to do is form an alliance with any powerful country you can find that will help you contain China. China is a formidable adversary.
Q: What can Japan and other countries that are not great powers do to protect stability in the region or the world?
A: Japan should become a key player in the balancing coalition against China and it should go to great lengths to think smartly about how to deal with China as well as influence the U.S. in positive ways.
The Japanese should go to great lengths to explain to the Americans why getting into a fight with the Russians in Eastern Europe does not make good sense, and why the U.S. should be focused, laserlike, on East Asia, and not pay much attention at all to Eastern Europe.
9. Germany's Scholz halts Nord Stream 2 as Ukraine crisis deepens
For all the Russia experts out there: If the pressure gets too high for oligarchs, would they (could they?) move against Putin?
Germany's Scholz halts Nord Stream 2 as Ukraine crisis deepens
BERLIN, Feb 22 (Reuters) - German Chancellor Olaf Scholz halted the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project designed to bring more Russian gas to Germany on Tuesday after Russia formally recognised two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine.
Europe's most divisive energy project was finished in September, but has remained idle since then pending certification by Germany and the European Union.
The project is designed to double the amount of gas flowing from Russia straight to Germany under the Baltic Sea, bypassing traditional transit nation Ukraine.
Germany obtains half its gas from Russia and had argued that Nord Stream 2 was primarily a commercial project to diversify energy supplies for Europe.
But it faced opposition within the European Union and from the United States on the grounds that it would increase Europe's energy dependence on Russia, as well as denying Ukraine transit fees and making it more vulnerable to Russian invasion.
"This a huge change for German foreign policy with massive implications for energy security and Berlin's broader position towards Moscow," said Marcel Dirsus, non-resident fellow at Kiel University's Institute for Security Policy.
"It suggests that Germany is actually serious about imposing tough costs on Russia."
Scholz said he had asked the economy ministry to take steps to ensure that certification could not take place at the moment.
"There can be no certification of the pipeline and without this certification, Nord Stream 2 cannot begin operating," he told a news conference with his Irish counterpart.
"The appropriate departments of the economy ministry will make a new assessment of the security of our supply in light of what has changed in last few days."
Economy Minister Robert Habeck said Germany's gas supply was secured even without additional delivery via Nord Stream 2.
But he told journalists in Duesseldorf that gas prices were another matter, and likely to rise further in the short term.
Germany's Federal Network Agency - which regulates the electricity, gas, telecommunications, post and railway sectors - in November suspended the process to certify the pipeline, saying the operator must register a legal entity in Germany.
Energy analysts had expected it to pick up the procedure in mid-year after the operator followed through on those instructions.
Asked in recent weeks if possible sanctions in the event of a Russian attack would include the project, Scholz had said all options were on the table but avoided mentioning Nord Stream 2.
"This is a morally, politically and practically correct step in the current circumstances," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted. "True leadership means tough decisions in difficult times. Germany's move proves just that."
Ukraine's ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk, also welcomed Scholz's move but told Reuters: "The question is whether the message comes too late, because action should have been taken much earlier."
Reporting by Sarah Marsh and Madeline Chambers; Additional Reporting by Joseph Nasr; Editing by Kevin Liffey
10. China concerned about 'worsening' Ukraine situation, warns nationals there
China concerned about 'worsening' Ukraine situation, warns nationals there
BEIJING, Feb 22 (Reuters) - China is concerned about the "worsening" situation in Ukraine, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Tuesday, repeating his call for all parties to show restraint and resolve differences through dialogue.
Accelerating a crisis the West fears could spark a war, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered on Monday the deployment of troops to two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine after recognising them as independent. read more
Russia denies any plan to attack Ukraine, but has threatened unspecified "military-technical" action unless it receives sweeping security guarantees, including a promise that its neighbour will never join NATO.
The legitimate security concerns of any country should be respected, Wang, who is also a Chinese state councillor, told U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a telephone call, the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement.
"The situation in Ukraine is worsening," Wang told Blinken. "China once again calls on all parties to exercise restraint."
On the call, Blinken underscored the need to preserve Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity amid Russia's
"aggression", said Ned Price, a U.S. State Department spokesperson.
Earlier on Tuesday, China's embassy in Ukraine warned its nationals there not to venture into unstable areas, but stopped short of telling them to leave, as many other nations have advised their own citizens. L1N2UX0EH
"The Chinese embassy in Ukraine has issued a reminder to Chinese citizens and enterprises to strengthen security precautions," said Wang Wenbin, a foreign ministry spokesman.
The embassy will ensure that dietary needs of Chinese citizens in Ukraine are met in a timely way, Wang said at a regular media briefing in response to a query about when China would pull out its citizens.
China is closely following the evolving situation in Ukraine, Wang told the briefing, which drew more reporters than usual.
TAIWAN, NORTH KOREA
The United States should not include Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, in America's Indo-Pacific strategy, Wang told Blinken.
This month, the United States said it would commit more diplomatic and security resources to the Indo-Pacific, and vowed to work with partners both in and outside the region to maintain peace and stability in the strait dividing Taiwan from China. read more
The attempt to include Taiwan in the strategy to contain China is sending all the "wrong signals", Wang told Blinken on the telephone call, the foreign ministry said in its statement.
Still, China is willing to manage its differences with the United States and stabilise two-way ties, Wang added.
On Monday, China said it had placed Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) and Raytheon Technologies Corp (RTX.N) under sanctions over arms sales to Taiwan, in at least the third time it has announced punishments for the U.S. firms. read more
Taiwan's foreign ministry said it would continue to urge the United States to keep selling the island weapons "in the face of China's military threats and intimidation".
"The U.S. provision to us of defensive weapons helps defend Taiwan's democracy and freedom, as well as ensures national security and peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region," spokesperson Joanne Ou told reporters on Tuesday.
Blinken and Wang also spoke on developments in North Korea.
China calls for direct dialogue between the United States and North Korea, and will, as always, seek to play a constructive role in promoting resolution of the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula, Wang said.
Reporting by Ryan Woo and Martin Quin Pollard in Beijing; Additional reporting by and Ben Blanchard in Taipei; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Clarence Fernandez
11. Forget a Whole-of-Government Cybersecurity Strategy—It’s Time for a Whole-of-Nation Approach
We all have a role in cybersecurity.
Excerpts:
Other nations will continue to see cyberattacks on both government and private sector targets as a cheap and effective way to counter the United States. The current whole-of-government response is full of noble intent, but it is not a winning strategy. It fails to take advantage of the resources and expertise in the private sector that a whole-of-nation response can. The United States’ free economy, and the incentives it brings, gives it a competitive advantage over its adversaries, but only if it actively engages with private sector actors and convinces them that a whole-of-nation response is in their best interest.
Forget a Whole-of-Government Cybersecurity Strategy—It’s Time for a Whole-of-Nation Approach - Modern War Institute
This article is part of the National War College’s contribution to the series “Compete and Win: Envisioning a Competitive Strategy for the Twenty-First Century.” The series endeavors to present expert commentary on diverse issues surrounding US competitive strategy and irregular warfare with peer and near-peer competitors in the physical, cyber, and information spaces. The series is part of the Competition in Cyberspace Project (C2P), a joint initiative by the Army Cyber Institute and the Modern War Institute. Read all articles in the series here.
Special thanks to series editors Capt. Maggie Smith, PhD, C2P director, and Dr. Barnett S. Koven.
Recently, a single individual retaliated against North Korea for hacking his computer system. This lone wolf hacker, an American identified by his handle P4x, says he identified North Korea sources behind the hacking and in return took advantages of vulnerabilities in North Korean systems to successfully wreak havoc on their infrastructure.
P4x is not alone among cyber victims who feel the need to take matters into their own hands. Several years ago, while working at the National Security Council, I received a question from a friend at a cybersecurity company. The firm had identified someone trying to hack into their systems and traced the source back to its origin. The company was poised and ready to strike back but was hesitant. Their question was, could they? In response, I was forced to explain that it is illegal for private entities to hack back. They would have to depend on the government.
These are not isolated incidents. Both the public and private sectors in the United States are under a constant barrage of cyberattacks, which cost the US economy hundreds of billions of dollars, threaten personal information, and undermine confidence in the government. Major cyber events are becoming part of the daily lexicon. Cyberattacks like the 2014 Sony, 2020 SolarWinds, and 2021 Colonial Pipeline attacks are familiar to even the most technologically illiterate. The proliferation of cyberattacks and the damage they cause has many asking the questions of how and who best to protect the United States from these malicious actors.
Whole-of-Nation Strategy
Sound strategy involves identifying advantages over your competitors. This is part of the theory of success, or why the strategy would succeed. Conventional wisdom dictates that authoritarian regimes and centrally managed economies are less efficient and less innovative than free markets and societies. It is the incentives and energy in the private sector that are the drivers behind advancement and growth, which in turn gives the United States a competitive advantage over its competitors. But it is only an advantage if used. Americans learned during World War II that the private sector’s contribution was necessary to win the war. It was the rallying of private industry around the war effort that ensured victory. It is also industry that grows the economy and, concomitantly, the defense industrial base during peace and that helps serve as a deterrent.
Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and other adversaries have embraced those working outside the normal government stovepipes and are capitalizing on their cyber expertise to attack the United States. We have many patriotic and committed cyber experts in our federal departments and agencies, but the United States’ advantage lies in the private sector. The government recognizes this—hence the many programs to attract cyber experts into government service. Yet, the nature of bureaucracy disincentivizes risk taking and innovation. Conversely, the private sector rewards it. Therefore, the concept of a whole-of-nation strategy must include these private sector experts to ensure sound cyberspace strategy.
Social Contract Theory and Government Response
Increased familiarity with cyberattacks is accompanied by an understanding of the threat they pose to all aspects of daily life. It also comes with a growing frustration of what many feel is an ineffective government response to punish those responsible, and to thereby deter others.
The United States was founded on the ideals of seventeenth-century social contract theory, the intellectual progeny of philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. They argued that citizens and governments form a contract; the people give up certain freedoms in exchange for government guarantees of law and order. It is this contract that allows for societies to peacefully exist. For example, if Jill is wronged by Jack, Jill does not take the response into her own hands, but trusts the government to represent her interests. The alternative to the social contract is a state of anarchy where might makes right, and thus a failure of civil society.
One of the most understood freedoms given up to the government under social contract theory is security. The government is responsible for defending society against security threats. As, the early twentieth-century theorist Max Weber noted, a monopoly on violence is a central attribute of modern states. Concomitantly, it should not be surprising that the US government has vigorously sought to defend its population against physical violence perpetrated both by state actors, as well as by a diverse panoply of violent nonstate actors (e.g., terrorist groups and violent extremists, drug trafficking organizations). However, in broadening the aperture beyond physical security threats to also include those emanating from the cyber domain, the results become far more mixed. While the US government almost certainly desires to be responsive to its citizens cybersecurity needs, it lacks a firm understanding as to how to effectively do so.
Response
Companies are pressuring government officials for a solution, or at least more freedom to act themselves. The government is not ignoring the problem, but countering cyberattacks requires not only the technical capability to hack back; it also involves understanding a complex web of attribution and considerations governing the use of force, law enforcement, policy, and obligations to protect the innocent. While many companies would like to take a more active role in punishing those caught hacking their systems, this might cause more harm than good. However, discounting private companies is also a mistake.
Subscribing to social contract theory does not mean that private citizens do not have a role to play in ensuring societal well-being. Juries are made up of everyday citizens and private think tanks routinely advise the government on security issues. The social contract in a democracy must be participatory. In fact, it is this participation in the government that gives democracies their strength. Participation brings new ideas, energy, and accountability. A successful cyber posture that both defends against attacks and punishes those that are successful will take a concerted effort by government and the private sector. The government needs to take a lead in developing and executing a competitive strategy that bridges the public-private divide and increases the United States’ advantage. But what form should that partnership take? Ought offensive or defensive approaches be prioritized?
Limitations to Offensive Public-Private Cybersecurity Partnerships
US law—specifically, 18 US Code § 1030—prevents private entities from hacking into another computer system. Proponents of hack-back policies find this law overly restrictive. Indeed, frustration with current policies has led to action by the government. Congress has introduced several pieces of legislation aimed at loosening restrictions on hacking back. Some advocates have gone even further by proposing modern day letters of marque authorizing certain companies or individuals to act on behalf of the government to disable or disrupt the attacking systems.
Moreover, hacking back is not as simple as it seems and there are good arguments for a cautious approach. While proponents of authorizing the private sector to hack back typically also advocate for governmental oversite, it is unclear that the government has the capacity or the expertise to provide it. Indeed, Jason Healy and Robert Jervis have argued convincingly that US government departments and agencies involved in cybersecurity are rarely even able to maintain awareness of offensive cyber operations conducted by other US government departments and agencies.
Additionally, attribution for cyberattacks is not easy. The bad guys often originate their attacks from innocent users’ machines they have taken over, employing bots, botnets, or zombies. Disabling or destroying the machines hurts innocent users (they are also victims of the hackers) and not the actual attackers. Imagine the potential harms if an attack was made to appear to have originated from a hospital’s IT network. Hacking back could result in real loss of life.
Furthermore, while there is a lot of focus on offense and the ability to strike back, too much offense can create other problems, like instability in international relations. A back-and-forth exchange of cyberattacks between nation-states can spiral quickly beyond what either nation intended. What started out in the cyber world can escalate into brinkmanship and lethal force.
In short, the United States is right to be cautious with empowering private entities to act offensively on behalf of the government. The past twenty years has demonstrated that the use of private military contractors comes with its own issues. Scandals surrounding Blackwater and other contractors has shown what happens when government allows privatization of inherent government functions.
Defensive Public-Private Cybersecurity Partnerships
Given the limitations inherent to engaging the private sector in offensive cyber operations, defensive options ought to be more carefully considered. Like any successful defense, early preparation and information sharing is critical. Building robust defenses and communicating information about vulnerabilities, where the enemy is likely to attack, any early indications of an attack, and how to support and reconstitute areas attacked are key to strengthening defensive measures and limiting damage.
In 2017, global shipping company Maersk was the victim of a cyberattack that affected its terminals, ports, and ships around the world, costing the company at least $200 million. Maersk’s willingness to share information allowed the US Coast Guard to warn other companies, focus resources, and limit cost to maritime infrastructure. The cooperation by Maersk is a great example of what is needed, but it is the exception, not the norm.
The administrations of both the Donald Trump and Joe Biden issued executive orders to address cyber vulnerabilities, but these orders were for federal systems and did not include the private sector, mainly due to strong industry resistance to government regulation. Companies exhibit a natural preference for a strong, government-led offensive cyber response to deter would-be attackers, instead of paying for expensive defensive measures. Nevertheless, protecting networks needs to be the first step in a successful competitive strategy, and communicating threats is integral to shoring up cyber defenses. Consequently, information sharing is crucial to successful public-private cybersecurity partnerships.
A physical attack is easy to observe, and attribution is usually much easier, allowing for a timely and appropriate response by the government. However, for cyberattacks the government is often dependent on third parties to inform them of not only the occurrence, but also the breadth of the attack. Increasing reporting requirements is one way to help raise awareness and possible attribution, but mandates alone are insufficient.
Currently, there is a hodgepodge of reporting requirements that vary considerably by industry and oversight agency. Recently, there has been a move to standardize reporting requirements, giving the government better visibility and information to decide appropriate actions. This is not without controversy. Many in industry do not want their victimization made public, because it could reduce revenue, as well as investors’ and customers’ confidence. For instance, the 2013 attack on Target exposed forty-one million of its customers’ payment card information and resulted in a substantial drop in revenue, lost customers, and a large settlement agreement. Moreover, many companies do not view reporting as useful due to a perceived lack of leadership, responsiveness, and assistance provided by the government in response to cyber incidents. Although companies are reticent to provide this information, the government cannot develop a coherent response to these attacks without awareness. There must be coordinated government action that changes incentives and increases trust.
Trust, of course, works both ways. Just as the private sector must trust the government to represent its best interests in responding to cyberattacks, the government must also be able to trust private sector entities in order to effectively partner on cybersecurity. Engaging private entities on national security interests is not unprecedented. Besides the obvious defense contractors, there are also occasions when private industry is allowed to see behind the curtain. Government must be willing to do this more often. (Admittedly, though, complex ownership and investment structures that often involve non-US persons and financial interests in today’s globalized economy can make this even more challenging.) This goes beyond just setting up additional advisory boards under the Federal Advisory Committee Act. These boards are often just cursory, given little information, and paid little attention to by relevant US government departments and agencies. On the other hand, the boards’ efficacy is limited as they are too often populated with members that have long since retired from industry and no longer occupy influential positions. Instead of building trust between government and industry, they create frustration. Advisory boards need to be populated with current industry leaders and trusted with information and decisions. The government needs to show the private sector how it is part of the nation’s strategic competition with its adversaries.
When Maersk was targeted in the 2017 cyberattack, the company was hesitant to notify anyone as soon as the attack was identified; however, its long relationship with the US Coast Guard encouraged Maersk’s leadership to report the situation. The trust that Maersk showed allowed the Coast Guard to alert other ports and shippers, heading off what could have become a significantly worse problem (or an overreaction by the US government). Following the incident, the Coast Guard worked with Maersk’s cyber experts to investigate what happened and to prevent future attacks. The Coast Guard needed to work with Maersk’s cyber experts to obtain relevant information about the attack, and Maersk needed Coast Guard authorities to quickly reconstitute its terminals and ships.
A whole-of-nation strategy needs to have clear objectives that are easily understood and actionable by the public and private sectors for the good of the American people. These objectives should include resiliency, redundancy, hardening, investigation, and sharing of information as a minimum. To meet those objectives a whole-of-nation strategic framework requires:
- True public-private partnership. This requires not only the private sector to trust the government with information that they consider vital, but also that the government must trusts the private sector with the information it needs. This means an equal exchange of information.
- Sharing ideas, techniques, and technology. Shared information about attacks themselves is only part of it. Allowing for a sharing of ideas, techniques, and technology is just as important. The government cannot afford to attract all the cyber experts into government jobs, nor should it want to; it needs the innovation and energy of the private sector. Bringing that innovation into the fold creates resources to counter our adversaries. Many in the private sector see the government as the enemy and their employees, shareholders, and customers protest when they partner with the government. This must be overcome by establishing a trusting environment.
- Shared action. The strategy may limit offensive cyber activities to government agencies, or it may include a limited licensing to a few trusted companies. This would not be as much a letter of marque as an avenue to seek permission to take one-time action on a target. Either way, all involved need to have visibility on actions taken and a voice—especially when it is the private sector that might take the brunt of any retaliation.
- Regulations. Although it is not popular with the private sector, government regulation will be required. Without it, incentives will not change and information sharing and investment in sound defenses will be hampered.
Other nations will continue to see cyberattacks on both government and private sector targets as a cheap and effective way to counter the United States. The current whole-of-government response is full of noble intent, but it is not a winning strategy. It fails to take advantage of the resources and expertise in the private sector that a whole-of-nation response can. The United States’ free economy, and the incentives it brings, gives it a competitive advantage over its adversaries, but only if it actively engages with private sector actors and convinces them that a whole-of-nation response is in their best interest.
Jason Smith currently serves as service chair and as assistant professor for security studies at the National War College. He has served as a leader and aviator in the US Coast Guard and the US Army, as advisor to the commandant of the Coast Guard, as senior policy advisor in the US Senate, and on the staff of the National Security Council.
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.
12. The Non-Kill Chain
More on influence operations or PSYOP.
The Non-Kill Chain
Spoiler alert: It’s PSYOP, but that’s a post for another time.
I haven’t read Christian Brose’s book yet (it’s on the list) but from the description, I think I get what he’s talking about.
America must build a battle network of systems that enables people to rapidly understand threats, make decisions, and take military actions, the process known as “the kill chain.”
The Kill Chain (Amazon)
A couple of things struck me in the episode. The first is the role of offensive cyber operations (OCO) at the tactical level. There was a good back and forth on where that capability ought to be. And if you’ve listened to Andy Milburn on other podcasts (which you should), you know that this is one of his chief interests.
Is OCO something that needs to get “pushed down” to the Brigade or below level?
Should platoon’s have a designated “hacker” assigned?
I’m getting serious Cyberpunk / Shadowrun vibes.
The second thing that struck me was the way that Christian closed out the episode. Really, everything from ~47:00 on is great but I want to focus on the below, where he is honing our attention on what actually matters if we want to be successful.
What are the things that we actually want our military to do? What are the things we’re prepared to fight for? What are the actual ends of strategy? What are we trying to accomplish?
Competition is interesting, but it’s not an end in itself.
This is exactly right.
One of the toughest things for military leaders to grapple with is the fact that if the ends are not clearly defined by the most senior leaders (military and civilian) then all of the thrashing done at echelons below add up to nothing.
It’s being sent overseas to divide by zero.
Matt Armstrong argues the same when it comes to “information warfare” (a term he wouldn’t use). It’s not about the tactics or getting the right words and images together. All that is about as interesting as deciding to flank left or right.
No – instead, it is about having a clear vision, a direction we are headed, or a commander’s intent. Then, everyone below can march in step.
And what we’re talking about is political warfare.
How does the military fit into that?
It all starts to fit together if you can take a breath for a moment and let it sink in.
Lastly, this piece by Colonel Steven Heffington takes the strategy argument even further. He argues that what is needed is a “theory of success.”
…a theory of success, when clear, explicit, and well considered, is the strategic version of commander’s intent. It provides subordinate or lateral actors and institutions a strategy heuristic, allowing them to make decisions about the development of their own innovative, timely, and tailored responses to the evolving context. Simultaneously, a theory of success helps limit the play of operational and strategic creativity to the logic path set forth in the founding strategy, which facilitates rapid, tailored responses and iterative evolution of strategy while reducing the likelihood of line-of-effort or iteration fratricide.
CHANNELING THE LEGACY OF KENNAN: THEORY OF SUCCESS IN GREAT POWER COMPETITION
All good. I’m on board.
Here’s the rub. Leaders – at every level – have a responsibility to ask for that intent. To demand it.
Ask for that theory of success. If it isn’t clear, if doesn’t make sense, or if it is non-existent, it must be clarified.
Otherwise, we’re not going anywhere.
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13. How Russian Propaganda Spins a Dark, Fake Tale
How Russian Propaganda Spins a Dark, Fake Tale
TASS, a prominent wire service in the Russian news media, has done a lot to help Russian President Vladimir Putin craft an alternate reality about what is happening along the country’s border with Ukraine. The service has featured a steady drumbeat of reports claiming hostile Ukrainian, NATO, and U.S. actions aimed at a “besieged” Russia and its occupied territories -- Crimea and the so-called People’s Republics of Donetsk (DNR) and Luhansk (LNR).
TASS’s headlines are crafted by Kremlin “information technologists” to convince the Russian people that the true aggressors in the crisis are Ukraine, NATO, and the United States. Readers are supposed to believe that it is NATO and Ukraine that are building up troops on the Russian border to attack Russia. According to TASS, the tens of thousands of Russian troops poised on Ukraine’s borders are simply protecting Mother Russia from the impending onslaught of American-backed Ukrainian neo-Nazis and rabid nationalists.
The following TASS “news” reports show how the Kremlin uses a steady dose of lies to manage Russian public opinion:
TASS Feb. 18
Donetsk ,Luhansk republics need Russia’s support … as hundreds of thousands of Russian inhabitants of Donbas are at risk of being annihilated by the Ukrainian military.
TASS Feb. 17
Kremlin warns situation near Russia’s borders could ignite at any moment…but Russia maintains a responsible position and awaits dialogue from its partners.
TASS Feb. 19
Ukrainian military fires 200 shells at Donetsk Republic over three hours…as the situation at the line of engagement escalated.
TASS Feb. 18
Russia checking reports about mercenaries for Donbas from Kosovo, Albania, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Mercenaries were also being recruited to participate in conflicts that are stoked by countries including the United States.
TASS Feb. 11
DNR head says 130 mass graves of people killed during Ukraine’s aggression were found…and authorities have started a criminal probe.
TASS Feb. 18
Powerful explosion rocks downtown Donetsk…and was "heard across the entire city."
TASS Feb. 17
NATO builds up forces at Russian borders, accusing Moscow of doing the same. Russian forces are on their territory and are not invading anywhere.
TASS Feb. 16
Kremlin points to the high probability of Kiev unleashing a military attack on Donbas. Despite weeks of intensive international negotiations on de-escalation in Ukraine, the tension between Kiev and Moscow is not abating.
TASS Feb. 18
Russia to protect its citizens in Donetsk, Luhansk if they are in danger.
TASS Feb. 16
Situation at line of engagement in Donbas escalates significantly. LDR authorities urge international observers to record aggressive actions on the part of Kyiv’s militants.
TASS Feb. 15
Russia to provide response to Ukraine should it attack or kill Russian citizens. "If the Ukrainians launch an attack against Russia, you shouldn’t be surprised if we counterattack. Or, if they start blatantly killing Russian citizens anywhere - Donbas or wherever." Ukraine may stage an incident against the self-proclaimed Donbas republics, provoking them, and then hitting them with all their might, thus provoking Russia to react in order to avoid humanitarian catastrophe on its borders."
These TASS reports might strike observers as bizarre if they know the truth of the situation: that nearly 200,000 Russian personnel encircle the porous borders of Ukraine. For Kyiv and its allies to plot an attack against such overwhelming force would require a national suicide wish. The power of a repeated message, however, is evident in the Kremlin’s success in forging Russian public opinion. Polling reveals that only a token portion of Russian citizens (5%) blame their own country for the escalation.
Russian propagandists’ molding of Russian public opinion provides adversaries with advance notice of what the Kremlin has in mind. TASS’s emphasis on the Donbas reveals that the most likely plan is for the Kremlin to cook up a false flag operation, which gives the go-ahead for DNR and LNR troops to attack. As they are pushed back by superior Ukrainian forces, they will issue a call to their Russian comrades to come to their defense. The war is joined – or is the war simply resumed? Can it be limited, or will it get out of control?
Paul Gregory is Cullen Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Houston and Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He is also a Research Fellow at the German Institute for Economic Research Berlin. He writes on Russia, Ukraine, and comparative economics. The views expressed are the author's own.
Paul Roderick Gregory is a professor of economics at the University of Houston, Texas, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a research fellow at the German Institute for Economic Research.
14. Putin Chooses a Forever War
Excerpts:
Putin has already sent “peacekeepers” into eastern Ukraine, literally within minutes of completing his television address. His likely next move will be to stage some sort of incident in which he claims (as he did in Georgia in his war there) that the Ukrainians are the aggressors, and that Russia is acting only in defense of ethnic Russians.
That “defense” could lead right into the streets of Kyiv. Putin demanded in his address, as he has before, that Ukraine “cease hostilities” in these areas—in other words, that the legitimate government of Ukraine stop trying to control its own territory—and he warned that “all responsibility for the possible continuation of the bloodshed will be entirely on the conscience of the regime ruling on the territory of Ukraine.”
This is the pretext for war.
Putin has now affirmed that he refuses to accept the outcome of the Cold War and that he will fight to dismantle the European system of peace and security constructed by the international community after its end. This is Vladimir Putin’s forever war, and Russia, cursed as it has been so many times in its history with a terrible leader, will be fighting it for as long as Putin remains the master of the Kremlin.
Putin Chooses a Forever War
His partition of Ukraine is an attack on global peace.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a long speech full of heavy sighs and dark grievances, made clear today that he has chosen war. He went to war against Ukraine in 2014; now, he has declared war against the international order of the past thirty years.
Putin’s slumped posture and deadened affect led me to suspect that he is not as stable as we would hope. He had the presence not of a confident president, but of a surly adolescent caught in a misadventure, rolling his eyes at the stupid adults who do not understand how cruel the world has been to him. Teenagers, of course, do not have hundreds of thousands of troops and nuclear weapons.
Even discounting Putin’s delivery, the speech was, in many places, simply unhinged. Putin began with a history lesson about how and why Ukraine even exists. For all his Soviet nostalgia, the Russian president is right that his Soviet predecessors intentionally created a demographic nightmare when drawing the internal borders of the USSR, a subject I’ve explained at length here.
But Putin’s point wasn’t that the former subjects of the Soviet Union needed to iron out their differences. Rather, he was suggesting that none of the new states that emerged from the Soviet collapse—except for Russia—were real countries. “As a result of Bolshevik policy,” Putin intoned, “Soviet Ukraine arose, which even today can with good reason be called 'Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's Ukraine'. He is its author and architect.”
It is true that the borders of 1991 were created by Soviet leaders. It’s also true of what we now call “The Russian Federation.” Putin, however, went even further back in history: “Ukraine never had a tradition of genuine statehood.”
By that kind of historical reasoning, few nations in Europe, or anywhere else, are safe. Putin’s foray into history was nothing less than a demand that only Moscow—and only the Kremlin’s supreme leader —has the right to judge who is or is not a sovereign state (as I recently discussed here). Putin’s claims are hardly different from Saddam Hussein’s rewriting of Middle East history when Iraq tried to erase Kuwait from the map.
For most of the speech, Putin was drinking one shot after another straight from a bottle of pure, full-strength, Soviet-era moonshine. He accused Ukraine, for example, of developing nuclear weapons, a play right out of the old Soviet handbook, when Kremlin leaders would accuse the former West Germany of developing nuclear arms to serve their “revanchist” plans for war.
He even accused Bill Clinton of denigrating him personally when Putin asked, more than twenty years ago, about the possibility of including Russia in NATO. Among the Russian president’s various other quirks, the man knows how to hold a grudge.
Putin then suggested that international sanctions are “blackmail”—a word used almost daily in the old Soviet press about the West—and are aimed at weakening Russia and undermining its existence as a nation. “There is only one goal,” Putin said. “To restrain the development of Russia. And they will do it, as they did before. Even without any formal pretext at all.” This is nonsense, and either Putin knows it (which is likely) or he has become so detached from reality that he has come to believe it (which is not impossible).
Putin left no room for negotiation with the Biden administration. He is prepared for sanctions, which he says will come no matter what Russia does. He asserts that Western hostility is permanent (perhaps because it would be too painful to his ego to admit that most people in the West, if given the choice, would not think about Russia or its leaders at all).
In short, Putin is now fully embracing a Russian tradition of paranoia, an inferiority complex that sees Moscow both as a savior of other nations and a victim of great conspiracies, a drama in which Russia is both strong enough to be feared but weak enough to be threatened. The West, in this story, is not motivated to seek peace and security, but to undermine Russia, and Putin has cast himself as the beleaguered Russian prophet who must subvert the evil plans drawn against his people.
Back here on Earth, however, we have a more pressing problem. At the end of his speech, Putin recognized the Russian occupied areas of Ukraine, the “people’s republics” of Lugansk and Donetsk, as independent entities. In so doing, Putin has effectively partitioned Ukraine. This specific form of meddling in sovereign nations, too, is a Soviet tradition, as the Poles and others would remind us. His claim to these areas—for they will be Russian satrapies, and not “independent” in any meaningful way—is a claim to be the ultimate arbiter of former Soviet borders, including those now within NATO.
Putin has already sent “peacekeepers” into eastern Ukraine, literally within minutes of completing his television address. His likely next move will be to stage some sort of incident in which he claims (as he did in Georgia in his war there) that the Ukrainians are the aggressors, and that Russia is acting only in defense of ethnic Russians.
That “defense” could lead right into the streets of Kyiv. Putin demanded in his address, as he has before, that Ukraine “cease hostilities” in these areas—in other words, that the legitimate government of Ukraine stop trying to control its own territory—and he warned that “all responsibility for the possible continuation of the bloodshed will be entirely on the conscience of the regime ruling on the territory of Ukraine.”
This is the pretext for war.
Putin has now affirmed that he refuses to accept the outcome of the Cold War and that he will fight to dismantle the European system of peace and security constructed by the international community after its end. This is Vladimir Putin’s forever war, and Russia, cursed as it has been so many times in its history with a terrible leader, will be fighting it for as long as Putin remains the master of the Kremlin.
15. Biden Can Reset the UN’s Discriminatory Approach to Israel
Excerpts:
The Biden administration should spearhead an initiative at the UNHRC session that begins on February 28 to pass a resolution repealing the COI. Support could come from the several countries that abstained on the vote creating the COI but have recently taken proactive stances on analogous issues. That includes the thirty-eight countries that cited concerns about anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias as the reason they withdrew from the UN’s Durban IV conference in September 2021. The thirty-five IHRA member countries would also likely support repeal.
The United States led when it persuaded the General Assembly to repeal its 1975 vote declaring Zionism to be racism. It should now actively and decisively lead the effort to end the COI, which the UNHRC created to conclude essentially the same thing. Ending the COI before it can parrot Amnesty’s anti-Israel slander should be welcomed by those who support a UNHRC that truly advances human rights rather than authoritarian and other pernicious agendas.
Biden Can Reset the UN’s Discriminatory Approach to Israel
The United States led when it persuaded the General Assembly to repeal its 1975 vote declaring Zionism to be racism. It should now actively and decisively lead the effort to end the Commission of Inquiry, which the UNHRC created to conclude essentially the same thing.
by Toby Dershowitz Orde Kittrie
Amnesty International’s recent report falsely accusing Israel of committing apartheid is designed to fuel a Commission of Inquiry (COI) that the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) established in May 2021 to investigate the Jewish state’s alleged human rights abuses. The COI, which will release its first report this June, appears likely to discredit the UNHRC by echoing Amnesty’s false accusation.
The Biden administration, which rightly rejected the apartheid slander and committed to oppose the COI, will have a little-noticed but pivotal opportunity to counter both at a UNHRC session from February 28 to April 1.
The COI is even more egregious and biased than prior UNHRC investigations of Israel. For example, the list of Israeli actions that the UNHRC tasked the COI with investigating includes language adopting a spurious definition of apartheid. Human Rights Watch (HRW) fabricated that definition, which is inconsistent with international law, in a report issued one month prior to the UNHRC’s creation of the COI. The Amnesty report then adopted the false HRW definition of apartheid and accused Israel of violating it in both the territories and within Israel’s pre-1967 borders.
None of the UNHRC’s prior commissions investigating Israel included either an apartheid component or an assessment of Israel’s activities within its pre-1967 borders. Nor were any of them created to last indefinitely, unlike this COI.
It is instructive to compare the COI with the UNHRC investigative bodies for South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen (recently not renewed). All civilian deaths from armed conflict are tragic. The Israeli military takes deliberate steps to avoid Palestinian civilian casualties, even while confronting Palestinian militants’ repeated missile and other attacks on Israeli civilians.
That’s one reason why Israeli-Palestinian conflict deaths since 2010 have, according to the UN, totaled some 2 percent (4,300 total, 360 in the last year) of those resulting from the inter-ethnic conflicts in South Sudan (over 380,000), Syria (over 350,000), and Yemen (over 370,000). Yet in contrast with the Israel COI’s endless mandate, these other investigative bodies require renewal on an annual or biannual basis.
The UNHRC compounded the COI’s one-sidedness by appointing as commission chair Navi Pillay, whose prior record on Israel was so biased that the Obama administration attempted to block her renewal as UN high commissioner for human rights, a position she held from 2008 to 2014. In that role, Pillay falsely accused Israel of committing war crimes and declared, “the Israeli government treats international law with perpetual disdain.” Pillay’s credibility was further eroded by her reported failure to say anything about human rights abuses in dozens of countries that, unlike Israel, received the worst, “Not Free” rating from Freedom House.
The UNHRC was established to advance human rights without “double standards and politicization.” Yet, since its creation, the UNHRC has instead adopted more resolutions condemning Israel—a robust democracy rated “Free” by Freedom House—than every other country in the world combined. In contrast, the UNHRC has adopted zero resolutions on the gross human rights abuses in China, Cuba, and Russia.
The UNHRC’s disproportionate focus on Israel seems designed to distract attention from the gross and systemic abuses committed by the council’s own members, which this year include the following countries rated “Not Free” by Freedom House: Cameroon, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Gabon, Kazakhstan, Libya, Qatar, Russia, Somalia, Sudan, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela. These authoritarian governments will all sit in judgment of Israel.
When Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared last year that the United States would rejoin the UNHRC, he prioritized changing its “disproportionate focus on Israel.” Blinken committed the United States to “using the full weight of our diplomatic leadership” to reform the council and said that “when the United States engages constructively with the council, in concert with our allies and friends, positive change is within reach.” Senator Jim Risch (R-ID), the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s ranking Republican, responded that he opposes U.S. membership in a UNHRC that continues “persecuting our ally, Israel.”
How the Biden administration addresses the COI, including at the upcoming UNHRC session, will be a pivotal test of Blinken’s commitment and, quite possibly, of the next Congress’ support for continued U.S. membership on the UNHRC.
The administration has already taken preliminary action to oppose the COI. At the UN in December, U.S. ambassador Patrick Kennedy, senior advisor for UN management and reform, voted in favor of an Israeli motion to entirely defund the COI. Kennedy said the COI “perpetuates a practice of unfairly singling out Israel in the UN, and like prior U.S. administrations, we strongly oppose such treatment of Israel.” Kennedy also said the “United States will continue to oppose this COI and look for opportunities in Geneva to revisit its mandate” and “to persuade more Member States that it is inherently biased and an obstacle to the cause of peace.”
A January 2022 bipartisan letter from forty-two members of Congress led by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D- NJ) and Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) praised Kennedy’s commitment and urged Blinken to “prioritize reversing the [UNHRC’s] discriminatory and unwarranted treatment of Israel” and to “lead an effort to end the outrageous and unjust” COI.
The COI formally labeling Israel as committing apartheid would be the equivalent of returning to the infamous UN General Assembly resolution—passed in 1975 and rescinded in 1991—that falsely asserted that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” Such an action would also meet the definition of anti-Semitism adopted by the thirty-five member countries of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which includes denying “the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”
It is disturbing to see Amnesty and other self-proclaimed human rights organizations trying to turn back the clock by claiming exactly that. It’s only one reason that since Amnesty published its report, governments including those of the United States, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Ireland, and the United Kingdom have rejected the report’s conclusions and recommendations.
The facts in Israel and the territories don’t fit either the actual international law definitions of apartheid or even the false definition of apartheid cooked up by HRW and parroted by the COI and Amnesty. In apartheid South Africa, black persons had no rights to vote, hold political office, or use “white” universities, hospitals, ambulances, benches, and bathrooms.
In contrast, not only do Israeli Arabs vote but an Israeli Arab party currently holds the balance of power in Israel’s parliament. Israeli Arabs also serve as justices on Israel’s Supreme Court and as cabinet ministers. They also use the same facilities as Israeli Jews, and include leading Israeli scientific researchers and entrepreneurs, prominent physicians (23 percent of Israeli doctors are Arabs), and major generals in Israel’s military.
When asked whether Israel engages in apartheid, Jacque de Maio, who heads the delegation to Israel and the Palestinian Authority of the International Committee of the Red Cross—an influential interpreter of human rights law and the law of war—responded, “The Red Cross was very familiar with the regime that prevailed in South Africa during the apartheid period, and we are responding to all those who raise their claim of apartheid against Israel: No, there is no apartheid here ... There is a bloody national conflict, whose most prominent and tragic characteristic is its continuation over the years.”
Israel has faced repeated armed attacks designed to destroy it. Some in its neighborhood, including Hamas and Iran, continue to issue genocidal threats against it. Despite the security risks, Israel has repeatedly offered—in exchange for peace—a Palestinian state in up to 94 percent of the territory of the West Bank. This notwithstanding the Jewish people’s 3,000-year history there and the Palestinian leadership’s discriminatory insistence that it would not allow Jews to live within a Palestinian state. Israel’s policy is one of self-defense, not subjugation.
The Biden administration should spearhead an initiative at the UNHRC session that begins on February 28 to pass a resolution repealing the COI. Support could come from the several countries that abstained on the vote creating the COI but have recently taken proactive stances on analogous issues. That includes the thirty-eight countries that cited concerns about anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias as the reason they withdrew from the UN’s Durban IV conference in September 2021. The thirty-five IHRA member countries would also likely support repeal.
The United States led when it persuaded the General Assembly to repeal its 1975 vote declaring Zionism to be racism. It should now actively and decisively lead the effort to end the COI, which the UNHRC created to conclude essentially the same thing. Ending the COI before it can parrot Amnesty’s anti-Israel slander should be welcomed by those who support a UNHRC that truly advances human rights rather than authoritarian and other pernicious agendas.
Toby Dershowitz is senior vice president for government relations and strategy at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where Orde Kittrie, a law professor at Arizona State University and former State Department attorney, is a senior fellow. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy. Follow them on Twitter @tobydersh and @OrdeFK.
16. FDD | West is on verge of signing 'surrender pact' with Iran
Conclusion:
Instead of re-imposing maximum economic pressure and building a credible military threat, the Americans are about to sign a “deal of surrender.” In any case, it’s important not to take the foot off the gas even after the deal is signed, and urge that a plan be formulated for the “day after” that will exact a clear and painful price from Iran if it doesn’t swiftly move toward a “stronger, longer-term” deal, which will maybe block its path to a nuclear weapon that will change the world around us.
FDD | West is on verge of signing 'surrender pact' with Iran
The Europeans are again kowtowing to American pressure while the Russians and Chinese are wringing their hands gleefully.
fdd.org · by Jacob Nagel Senior Fellow · February 18, 2022
Everyone involved in the Iran nuclear talks in Vienna is “releasing promos” ahead of an impending formal declaration, which will apparently entail a return to a watered-down, worse version of the original 2015 agreement despite it being clear to all that turning back the clock to the old deal isn’t even possible.
Despite all the warnings, it appears the American delegation headed by Robert Malley – following the resignation of three of his senior colleagues, chief among them Richard Nephew, over the extent of US concessions to the Iranians’ demands – has swayed global powers to consent to an exceedingly problematic deal that will pave a certain path for Iran to acquire a nuclear bomb in the coming years.
Within the framework of the emerging deal, which will partially be based on the 2015 agreement, several fundamental problems, which Israel has highlighted on multiple occasions, have not been resolved. It lacks any mechanisms that will force the Iranians to engage in additional negotiations over a “longer-term, stronger” deal before the new deal expires, as US President Joe Biden promised would be inserted. A short-term deal in which all restrictions imposed on Iran’s nuclear program will soon expire as per the original deal’s outline, which was solely predicated on reciprocity, and without any clear stipulation agreed upon by all sides about what will happen if a new deal isn’t reached, isn’t worth the paper on which it is written.
The deal does not block all the avenues that can lead to a nuclear weapon, doesn’t address the holes that were identified in the previous agreement, and doesn’t even give global powers any actual ability to activate the snapback mechanism that allowed them at the time to reimpose sanctions (according to the original deal, this mechanism is set to expire in 2025).
The last point of contention that seemingly may or may not be addressed in the new deal is the future of the International Atomic Agency’s ongoing investigations. Some of these investigations were made possible by the original deal’s invasive oversight mechanisms, and some pertain to the open questions from the investigation into the possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program, which was mistakenly closed in the past and exposed by Israel’s revelation of Iran’s nuclear archives. Deficient attention to this important issue will diminish the IAEA’s already lowly status even further and put into question the very need for its existence. It appears the sides are on the verge of closing the uranium investigation and perhaps will also formulate a clever conclusion to the other matters, or simply just concede altogether on those as well.
It’s important to recall how the late former director-general of the IAEA, Yukiya Amano, responded when asked about his agency’s enforcement of “Section T,” the part of the original deal that pertained to monitoring activities related to the development of weapons systems. It was clear by his statements that behind the scenes the Russians and Americans had agreed in advance that there was no intention or ability to enforce this section and that the IAEA was also incapable. It’s certainly possible that secret deals of this sort are in the works this time, too.
A foolish attempt to predicate the stability of the new deal on the re-imposition of full oversight, without promising to pursue and exhaust the findings of the previous oversight regime, would simply be ridiculous.
It’s also clear that despite the Iranian regime’s efforts during the current negotiations to intensify attacks on US forces in Iraq and its allies in the Persian Gulf region, nothing was done to confront this aggression, including against the launch of long-range ballistic missiles with warheads weighing upward of 500 kilograms (some 1,100 pounds) for the first time in decades and in contravention of all international oversight mechanisms.
It seems that American lawmakers are unwilling to let Biden and his envoys sign this deal without warning them and mainly the Iranians of its future consequences. Two hundred Republican members of Congress published a scathing letter saying that in 2024, after the next presidential election, a Republican administration will not honor the deal and re-impose all the sanctions currently being lifted. This letter is supposed to send a message to the world that returning to business-as-usual with Iran is a precarious prospect.
What transpires in the short term, however, remains the problem. Reinstating the original deal will “whitewash” all of Iran’s violations and the progress it has made with its nuclear program, and at the same time grant it hundreds of billions of dollars, allow it to rehabilitate its economy, and continue funding its terrorist proxies.
A book that was published this week, co-authored by this writer and Dr. Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies about Israel’s conflict in Gaza in 2021, details why the nuclear deal is dangerous and how the Iranians are behind almost every terrorist event in the Middle East and around the world.
It appears the voices and pressures that were applied this week, including from the important Israeli delegation that flew to Vienna to explain how the emerging deal is problematic for all sides involved in the talks, failed to stop the Americans’ mad dash to reach a deal at all costs. The “weak” Europeans are again kowtowing to American pressure and the Russians and Chinese are wringing their hands gleefully.
Instead of re-imposing maximum economic pressure and building a credible military threat, the Americans are about to sign a “deal of surrender.” In any case, it’s important not to take the foot off the gas even after the deal is signed, and urge that a plan be formulated for the “day after” that will exact a clear and painful price from Iran if it doesn’t swiftly move toward a “stronger, longer-term” deal, which will maybe block its path to a nuclear weapon that will change the world around us.
Brig. Gen. (Res.) Professor Jacob Nagel is a former national security adviser to the prime minister and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Jacob Nagel Senior Fellow · February 18, 2022
17. A New, Weaker Iran Deal Would Pave a Path to the Nuclear Threshold
Excerpts:
Congress should not stand by as the Biden administration moves closer to lifting Iran sanctions in return for such poor terms. Instead, pursuant to the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, lawmakers should vote to prevent the administration from lifting sanctions. Even if the vote falls largely along party lines and thus fails, it will send a message that a JCPOA-minus will end, and Iran sanctions will return, under the next Republican president. Washington is about to concede, once again, a massive uranium enrichment program to the Islamic Republic, when it should be negotiating the program’s closure and removal while holistically addressing all other regime threats.
A weaker JCPOA does not offer enough nonproliferation value to sacrifice the significant amount of leverage the United States retains over Iran’s economy. Biden should resurrect this leverage and cast aside the flawed accord in favor of pressuring Tehran into more comprehensive nuclear rollback.
A New, Weaker Iran Deal Would Pave a Path to the Nuclear Threshold
Even a new deal might give us a ‘breakout time’ of only a few months.
(Photo by Digital Globe via Getty Images.).
One of the top selling points of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran was that it was supposed to keep the Tehran regime at least 12 months away from having enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon. That interval is known as Iran’s “breakout time.”
The Biden administration has spent months trying to coax Tehran back into the 2015 deal—formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—but senior U.S. officials now acknowledge that they cannot secure an agreement that pushes Iran’s breakout time back up to 12 months. In talks now underway in Vienna, the Biden administration reportedly expects to negotiate a breakout time of only six to nine months. The Israeli government estimates an even shorter interval—four to six months.
What this means is that Biden cannot bring back the JCPOA. He can bring back only a weaker deal—a JCPOA-minus—with all the flaws and loopholes of the original, but with even fewer and more transient restrictions on the Iranian nuclear program. And while the United States and its partners get less, the Islamic Republic is likely to get even more sanctions relief than the first time around.
Delaying Iran’s breakout time is so important because, in the event of a crisis, the United States and its allies will need as much time as possible to persuade Iran that making a dash for nuclear weapons is too risky. While diplomacy is underway, Washington and its partners will also have to gather intelligence and—potentially—prepare for military strikes, so Tehran understands the price of defiance.
Why can’t a revised JCPOA push Iran’s breakout time back up to 12 months? The answer revolves around gas centrifuges, the machines integral to the process of enriching uranium. Iran’s centrifuges have continually grown in number and capability. The JCPOA did not stop this advance, and the Iranian regime has ruled out additional restrictions.
Prior to the JCPOA, the breakout time was a matter of weeks. The JCPOA temporarily increased Iran’s breakout time by limiting the size of its stockpile of enriched uranium and constraining the purity level of uranium the regime could produce. The deal also put temporary restrictions on the regime’s use of faster centrifuges—initially, Tehran could only use its slowest model, the IR-1. Since the clerical regime began openly violating the accord in mid-2019, its breakout time has dropped back to a similar range.
Iran was able to reduce its breakout time so quickly because the JCPOA did not force it to discard or destroy its more advanced centrifuges, it required only that they be put in storage. The machines were kept under international monitoring but remained available for rapid deployment at a time of the regime’s choosing. Moreover, Iran could likely have redeployed these machines in only a few months. As part of any new deal, the Biden administration and its European allies will reportedly permit Tehran to retain in storage—not destroy—hundreds of new advanced centrifuges it produced in violation of the JCPOA.
In 2015, the Obama administration met its goal of extending Iran’s breakout time to 12 months only by ignoring its ability to bring its advanced centrifuges out of storage. One former Obama official, Jon B. Wolfsthal, now admits that achieving a 12-month breakout time was merely a “political” goal. That point is not only clear in hindsight. In 2015, a paper I wrote with nuclear experts David Albright and Houston Wood estimated Iran’s actual breakout time under the JCPOA was closer to seven months.
Among the advanced machines Tehran stored away in 2015 and now uses for enrichment—per the latest data reported by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog—are 1,044 advanced IR-2m model centrifuges at the main Natanz enrichment facility and 32 IR-2m machines at the Natanz pilot plant. Iran also reactivated and is enriching uranium in about 500 IR-4 models—many more than the up to 164 stored IR-4 centrifuges that it possessed in 2015. (Higher model numbers indicate newer, faster versions.)
The JCPOA also allowed mechanical testing and computer modeling of advanced centrifuges, which negated most of the utility provided by temporary JCPOA restrictions on the manufacture and operation of advanced machines. According to the latest IAEA data, the regime is now enriching uranium in more than 200 IR-6 model centrifuges—its fastest and most reliable model—at the Natanz pilot enrichment plant. At the underground Fordow enrichment plant, the regime is enriching in nearly 200 IR-6 machines. Iran is also experimenting with enrichment in dozens of other advanced machines.
Returning to the original JCPOA would not do much to fix this problem, since many of the accord’s advanced centrifuge restrictions are poised to expire. In 2024, the deal permits Iran to begin manufacturing 200 IR-6 and 200 IR-8 centrifuges per year, and in 2027, it may install in the machines a key component called rotors, rendering them fully operational. In 2025, the JCPOA’s procurement channel, which provides international oversight over Iran’s nuclear-related imports, will end.
From 2027 to 2029, Iran may redeploy 2,500-3,500 IR-2m and/or IR-4 centrifuges. By the end of 2029, Tehran could have amassed a combined 2,400 IR-6 and IR-8 machines; a few hundred are enough to facilitate an overt or clandestine breakout. These machines will be in storage at Natanz and easily accessible if needed.
For all these reasons, it should come as no surprise that Biden’s team does not believe it can push Iran’s breakout time any higher than six or nine months. And that is likely an optimistic estimate.
Moreover, due to Iran’s efforts to restrict IAEA monitoring of its nuclear activities, the agency has not been able to monitor Iran’s manufacture of advanced centrifuges since February 2021. Absent an intensive investigation, the agency may not be able to detect whether Tehran has hidden away untold stockpiles.
By 2031, when all JCPOA restrictions on uranium enrichment terminate, the deal itself will have paved Iran’s pathway to the nuclear threshold. Thus, any “JCPOA-minus” that the Biden administration finalizes ultimately does little to address the Islamic Republic’s nuclear threat.
Under a JCPOA-minus, Tehran is likely to have already positioned itself only weeks away from making nuclear weapons material, fortified its economy with billions of dollars in sanctions relief, enhanced its missile program, and armed and funded its proxy militias. With limited time to act and likely facing uncertain information about a breakout, an American president may be forced to choose between carrying out major military strikes or letting the regime go nuclear.
Congress should not stand by as the Biden administration moves closer to lifting Iran sanctions in return for such poor terms. Instead, pursuant to the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, lawmakers should vote to prevent the administration from lifting sanctions. Even if the vote falls largely along party lines and thus fails, it will send a message that a JCPOA-minus will end, and Iran sanctions will return, under the next Republican president. Washington is about to concede, once again, a massive uranium enrichment program to the Islamic Republic, when it should be negotiating the program’s closure and removal while holistically addressing all other regime threats.
A weaker JCPOA does not offer enough nonproliferation value to sacrifice the significant amount of leverage the United States retains over Iran’s economy. Biden should resurrect this leverage and cast aside the flawed accord in favor of pressuring Tehran into more comprehensive nuclear rollback.
Andrea Stricker is a research fellow focused on nonproliferation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Follow Andrea on Twitter @StrickerNonpro. FDD is a Washington, D.C.-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
18. Australia urges 'full investigation' into China naval laser incident, Beijing defends actions
Excerpts:
Australia had called through diplomatic and defence channels for "a full investigation into this event", he said.
He compared the incident to a hypothetical situation of an Australian frigate pointing a laser at Chinese surveillance aircraft in the Taiwan Strait, adding: "Could you imagine their reaction to that in Beijing?"
China's defence ministry defended the actions of its vessels, saying its vessels abided by international law and pinning any blame on Australia.
"The Australian P-8 anti-submarine patrol aircraft arrived in the airspace around our ship formation, and the nearest was only 4 kilometers away from our ship," defence ministry spokesman Tan Kefei said in a post on the ministry's official Weibo page published on Monday.
Australia urges 'full investigation' into China naval laser incident, Beijing defends actions
SYDNEY, Feb 21 (Reuters) - Australia's prime minister said on Monday a Chinese naval vessel that pointed a laser at an Australian military aircraft was so close to Australia's coast that it could have been seen from the shore, and urged a full Chinese investigation.
Scott Morrison told media his government had not received an explanation from China over the incident last Thursday, which Australia considered "dangerous and reckless".
China said Australia's version of events did "not square up with facts" and that Australia had dropped a Sonobuoy, which can help detect submarines, near Chinese ships. The Australian defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Chinese navy vessel directed a military-grade laser at an Australian military aircraft over Australia's northern approaches, illuminating the plane and potentially endangering lives, Australia said on Saturday. read more Such a laser is normally pointed to designate a target ahead of the discharging of a weapon.
The P-8A Poseidon - a maritime patrol aircraft - detected a laser emanating from a People's Liberation Army – Navy (PLA-N) vessel, the Defence Department said, releasing photographs of two Chinese vessels sailing close to Australia's north coast.
A Chinese guided missile destroyer and an amphibious transport dock were sailing east through the Arafura Sea between New Guinea and Australia at the time of the incident, and later passed through the narrow Torres Strait.
"It's possible people could even see the vessel from our mainland, potentially," Morrison told reporters in Tasmania on Monday.
1/4
A PLA-N Luyang-class guided missile destroyer and a PLA-N Yuzhao-class amphibious transport dock vessel leave the Torres Strait and enter the Coral Sea February 18, 2022. Picture taken February 18, 2022. Australian Defence Department/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES
Australia had called through diplomatic and defence channels for "a full investigation into this event", he said.
He compared the incident to a hypothetical situation of an Australian frigate pointing a laser at Chinese surveillance aircraft in the Taiwan Strait, adding: "Could you imagine their reaction to that in Beijing?"
China's defence ministry defended the actions of its vessels, saying its vessels abided by international law and pinning any blame on Australia.
"The Australian P-8 anti-submarine patrol aircraft arrived in the airspace around our ship formation, and the nearest was only 4 kilometers away from our ship," defence ministry spokesman Tan Kefei said in a post on the ministry's official Weibo page published on Monday.
"From the photos taken by our ships, it can be seen that the Australian plane is very close to our ship and also drops Sonobuoys around our ship. Such malicious provocative behavior is very easy to lead to misunderstanding and misjudgment, posing a threat to the safety of ships and personnel on both sides," Tan added.
Two Chinese defence ministry stamped photos, which could not be verified, were attached with the Weibo post.
"We demand that the Australian side immediately stop similar provocative and dangerous actions and stop making groundless accusations and smears against the Chinese side, so as not to affect the overall situation of relations between the two countries and two militaries," Tan said.
Reporting by Kirsty Needham, Emily Chow, Martin Quin Pollard; Editing by Lincoln Feast, Robert Birsel and Bernadette Baum
19. Moscow Musings on Brinksmanship from Stalin to Putin
What would Kennan say now?
Excerpts:
There is little left of that brave new world now. The golden arches of Moscow’s first McDonald’s, opened in the Pushkin Square in 1990, remind passers-by of how the Cold War ended. Kennan predicted this. He knew that the vigor of the West would trump the drab reality of the Soviet project. But there was something that he failed to predict: Even after it shed socialism, Moscow would remain preoccupied with its position in the global pecking order and never tire of seeking to improve it by cynical resort to the language of force.
Brinksmanship is an art. Soviet and Russian leaders had all practiced it, with varying degrees of success. In this sense, at least, Putin is well-versed in a tradition established by his predecessors. Like his Soviet predecessors, Putin is willing to use overwhelming brute force in pursuit of clearly imperialistic goals. But he is an incremental imperialist, taking a bite at a time, feeling for weakness in the West’s resolve, ready to back off if he encounters too much resistance. Kennan would have recognized the type.
I turned left and quickly walked towards the Kremlin in a deepening haze. Red Square had been turned into a skating rink. Kids were sliding in circles to the blare of happy tunes. “We are ruled not by our emotions, but by our reason, analysis and calculations,” Stalin had postulated in 1945. The wily tyrant’s ashes were now lodged firmly in the Kremlin Wall. Behind that wall, his successors, still as impervious as ever to the logic of reason, were planning their moves.
Moscow Musings on Brinksmanship from Stalin to Putin - War on the Rocks
Snow was falling on Moscow, turning into brownish sludge on the ground, as I walked down the Strastnoi Boulevard. It was an early winter evening, but the street was strangely soundless except for the clanking of the city’s famously shoddy pavement tiles below my feet. Moscow was tense in anticipation of something. A war, maybe? A war between Russia and Ukraine, which, according to Western assessments, was quite imminent, seemed as yet uncertain here, too awful to contemplate. But its hazy presence was felt in Moscow on that murky evening: enough of a presence to concentrate minds.
I spent my days in the archives, reading documents on Soviet foreign policy for my forthcoming book on the Cold War. But in the evenings, I met acquaintances to talk about a new cold war that Russia was now waging against the West — or was it the other way around? As a historian, I have spent countless hours poring over Soviet fears and Soviet ambitions. I study history for its own sake but also to understand the uncertain haze of the present. Well, then?
There was one persistent factor in Soviet foreign policy that helps to account for Moscow’s propensity for brinksmanship. They called it the “correlation of forces.” “It is widely known,” Joseph Stalin postulated on one grim winter evening in 1945, “that when you cannot attack — you should defend yourself, when you accumulate enough power — you should attack … In his time, Lenin did not even dream about such a correlation of forces, which we have achieved in this war.”
Stalin’s confidence played into a peculiar post-war vision that he attempted to sell to his wary allies at Yalta in February 1945. In that world of Stalin’s dreams, the Soviet Union would be allowed its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, while he would recognize the British and American spheres. This allied recognition was important to Stalin because he knew that brute force alone was never enough. Legitimacy was important, and legitimacy could only be obtained through Western recognition of his gains.
Within months, Stalin’s vision ran aground. If there was a turning point, it was the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. America now intimidated just by virtue of being there. The bomb was always an implied threat — but it was nevertheless a real threat, which Stalin chose to counter with obstinacy and bravado. By September 1945, the former allies were at loggerheads. Washington refused to recognize Soviet puppet governments in Romania and Bulgaria and denied Moscow a toehold in Libya. The Kremlin was also kept well away from the post-war management of Japan.
In a telling innuendo at the Conference of Foreign Ministers in London in 1945, Soviet Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov asked U.S. Secretary of State James Byrnes whether he carried the atomic bomb in his side pocket. Byrnes warned, “If you don’t cut out all this stalling and let us get down to work, I am going to pull an atomic bomb out of my hip pocket and let you have it.” Molotov is recorded as having “laughed” at this blatant atomic blackmail. “The Allies are pressing on you to break your will and force you to make concessions,” Stalin coached him from Moscow. “It is clear that you must display complete obduracy.” Complete obduracy begat the Cold War — the not-so-unexpected consequence of each side’s conviction that any concessions it made would only embolden the other.
***
As I walked, I thought of George F. Kennan. He, too, trotted down these streets before firing off his “Long Telegram,” in which he explained the Kremlin’s motives to a receptive audience back in Washington. “Soviet power,” he famously wrote, “is neither schematic nor adventuristic. It does not work by fixed plans. It does not take unnecessary risks.” Or does it?
When Kennan wrote these words there was talk of war. Following the deadlock in London, the Soviets began to play hardball in their neighborhood. They sponsored a separatist movement in northern Iran, where Stalin had stationed troops. They presented territorial demands to Turkey as part of an elaborate gambit to close the Black Sea to outside powers. In an infamous speech on Feb. 9, Stalin blamed capitalism for starting the world wars and praised Soviet military might, hinting at a coming confrontation with the West.
Kennan didn’t quite get it right. His depiction of Stalin as a rational actor who did not take “unnecessary risks” is readily contradicted by the weight of archival evidence. The problem was not with the rationality of Soviet decision-making — it was with the definition of “necessity.” Stalin provoked major crises with Iran and Turkey — was that an unnecessary risk? He instructed his reluctant foreign minister to take a tough line in diplomatic negotiations. “Come on, push!”, Molotov recalled him saying. “They won’t give in,” he would respond. “But you must demand!”
“Impervious to logic of reason,” Kennan wrote, Soviet power “is highly sensitive to logic of force. For this reason, it can easily withdraw — and usually does — when strong resistance is encountered at any point.” Again, Kennan was onto something, but he overlooked the obvious: Stalin too thought that the West was impervious to reason and that it only understood the language of force. That’s why he pushed hard in diplomacy while keeping the military option on the table. It was a risky game but in Stalin’s view the risks were worth taking.
For all his boasting about Soviet military might, Stalin understood that the Soviet Union was not prepared for war. The country was still in ruins. Millions of people eked out a precarious living just above the point of starvation. Moreover, Moscow faced a nuclear-armed adversary who only months earlier had showed the ability and willingness to obliterate whole cities. Stalin made an all-out effort to build the bomb after Hiroshima, but the Soviet bomb was still an uncertain dream.
Just days before Kennan sent his famous telegram, Stalin told the scientific head of the Soviet atomic project, Igor Kurchatov, to “conduct work quickly, in crude basic form.” Stalin’s comments were in reaction to views of the prominent nuclear scientist Petr Kapitsa, who had called for less reliance on U.S. intelligence (the Manhattan project was riddled with Soviet spies) so that Russia could build its own road to the bomb. Stalin did not care for such sentiments. What he wanted was a basic deterrent, something to show to the Americans as proof that he could not be bullied into giving up on his regional ambitions.
In March 1946, the Soviet Union built up its forces in Iran, with a probable intention to move imminently on Tehran. This was what the American diplomats on the ground were reporting back to Washington. Having reviewed the intelligence, Byrnes noted that “it now seemed clear the USSR was adding military invasion to political subversion in Iran,” adding, as he slammed a fist into his hand, “now we’ll give it to them with both barrels.” There followed a stern letter to Moscow to desist. Surprisingly, Stalin backed off, withdrawing Soviet forces. In return, he secured a promise of an oil concession, which Tehran later reneged on. Soon Stalin also reduced pressure on Turkey, having failed to achieve any of his objectives. It was a net loss for the Soviets and perhaps an early vindication of Kennan’s idea of containment: If the threat was credible enough, the Soviets would not risk a war.
But what makes a threat credible if not a combination of perceived capabilities and perceived intentions? Underestimating the adversary’s resolve can lead to dangerous miscalculations, as the late Bob Jervis theorized in 1976 and as Stalin himself discovered in 1950, when he foolishly backed Kim Il Sung’s bid to reunify Korea by force of arms. He had never intended to do it, telling Kim repeatedly that he was against such an adventure, until U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson implied South Korea was outside of the American “defensive perimeter.” Stalin was also privy to intelligence information suggesting that the United States would not fight for South Korea. It was a fruit ripe for the picking. He could not have been more wrong.
For all his obduracy, Stalin was a cautious man. Korea was a result of miscalculation, not a deliberate effort to test America’s resolve. Stalin’s successors were more reckless, especially Nikita Khrushchev, who so loved the sense of power that nuclear weapons afforded that he repeatedly engaged in brinksmanship: in the Middle East in late 1950s, where he threatened Britain and France with nuclear destruction if they did not desist from their invasion of Suez, and in trying to squeeze the West out of Berlin. He called Berlin the “testicles of the West,” to be squeezed so as to make America squeal. As he told Chinese Foreign Minister Chen Yi on July 5, 1961, “We cannot cajole our enemies to give up anything. We can only take it by force.” But what if the West refused to give in?
Khrushchev discovered the limits of brinksmanship when he attempted to secretly install nuclear missiles in Cuba. He claimed that this audacious move was needed to save Cuba from U.S. intervention. More than that, perhaps, it was needed to address Khrushchev’s sense of fairness. Why, he wondered, did Washington feel entitled to install nuclear-tipped missiles on bases in Italy and Turkey but the Soviets weren’t entitled to do something similar? He wanted, he said, “to give the Americans a little of their own medicine.” That was how the world nearly came to an end.
Earlier that evening, I had discussed President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy with an analyst at one of Moscow’s top policy think tanks. We drank sea buckthorn tea in an Uzbek restaurant atop a large shopping mall amid sparkling luxury that would have made Khrushchev think that a Communist paradise had finally arrived. My companion raised the prospect of Moscow increasing its presence in Latin America by sending troops to Venezuela or Cuba to put pressure on President Joe Biden ahead of the midterms. “This is crazy,” I said. He just shrugged his shoulders.
None of Moscow’s think-tankers are wired to Putin’s murky conscience. They are bemused, like the rest of us, pondering their president’s intricate and sometimes bizarre game. But they channel sentiments, none more pressing than that of injured pride: Should not the Americans be given a little of their own medicine? Weakened by deepening domestic cleavages, shamed by Afghanistan, and preoccupied with China, the United States makes for a good target for poking, if for no other reason than to test its credibility and commitments.
This rather cynical view — shared by many insiders in Moscow — is underpinned by an understanding of Russia’s own weaknesses, which, however, could be mitigated by quick, unexpected moves. And, yes, this strategy requires brinksmanship, just as it did for Stalin and Khrushchev. They do not take unnecessary risks, rang Kennan’s words in my head. Of course they do. This is the nature of the game.
Part of the game is exploiting contradictions between the United States and its allies. It’s not a new strategy — it’s the most persistent feature of Moscow’s foreign policy. Even Stalin’s Yalta vision was premised in large part on the hope that London and Washington would quarrel after the war. It didn’t happen. Instead, Soviet aggressiveness facilitated allied solidarity. Khrushchev tried the same thing, telling his party comrades that “the demise of NATO … is what we want. This is our ardent dream.” But his propensity for brinksmanship only helped to strengthen NATO. His brutal invasion of Hungary in 1956 reminded Europeans why NATO existed in the first place.
The effort to divide the West was continued by Khrushchev’s successor, Leonid Brezhnev, when he pursued rapprochement with France and West Germany. After meeting Charles de Gaulle in 1966, Brezhnev reported in a December speech to the Central Committee that “the so-called Atlantic solidarity … is showing cracks.” He proclaimed, “Many facts demonstrate that our work was not in vain and that NATO is becoming increasingly obsolete.” Brezhnev also developed a productive relationship with the West German Social Democrat Willy Brandt. He tried to play Bonn against Paris, and both capitals against Washington.
Brezhnev was willing to pursue détente with the West because he felt secure in his own “sphere” in Eastern Europe. In August 1968, the Soviet Union ruthlessly crushed the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia as the United States and its allies looked on with impotence and resignation. Having thus consolidated the “socialist camp,” the Soviet leader could engage in a dialogue on his terms.
In 1972, Brezhnev explained to the Central Committee that “force is the language the American imperialists understand best.” Yet he gradually warmed up to Richard Nixon. The two presided over a significant improvement in Soviet-American relations. Underlying this warmth was Brezhnev’s hope that Soviet nuclear weapons might would finally allow him to gain acceptance as America’s equal. As Kissinger later summed up for Nixon’s benefit, during a meeting in May 1973 Brezhnev had put it in the following simple and brutal terms: “Look, I want to talk to you privately — nobody else, no notes … Look, you will be our partners, you and we are going to run the world.”
Putin has no such pretensions. Instead, he likes to talk about the “democratization” of international relations, by which he means a greater role for Russia in a world increasingly defined by the epochal rivalry between China and the United States. Putin’s goal is to make sure that while these two decide among themselves who is better suited to running the world, he’ll claw back at least some of the geopolitical space in Eastern Europe that Soviet leaders had always taken for granted. He is certainly not prepared to go as far as Prague, but he may have decided that Ukraine offers a suitable pressure point — so he is squeezing, expecting the West to squeal.
Brezhnev failed in his bid for a condominium with Washington. U.S.-Soviet relations worsened rapidly in the late 1970s, partly because of Moscow’s exploits in the Africa and Southeast Asia, and partly because of a perception in Washington that the Moscow was getting ahead in the nuclear arms race. The Kremlin’s crackdown on human rights also did not help. Détente that briefly flourished under Brezhnev and Nixon was as good as dead by the late 1970s. The realization that they had little to lose in relations with the West played into the fateful Soviet decision to invade Afghanistan in December 1979, a poorly-thought-through effort to push back against what Brezhnev and his comrades imagined was a growing U.S. influence in the country. The war in Afghanistan was a horrendous miscalculation. It lasted ten years and cost the Soviets nearly 15,000 dead. The last Soviet troops left in February 1989, on Mikhail Gorbachev’s watch.
Gorbachev also presided over Soviet retreat from Eastern Europe. He looked for a reasonable accommodation with the West on the basis of what he called a “balance of interests.” But his dream of a common European home that would include the Soviet Union proved hollow: There were no takers, even among Soviet allies in Eastern Europe. He called for rival blocs to be dismantled. His own fell apart without prodding while NATO stayed robust. By May 1990, Gorbachev was desperate enough to plead with U.S. Secretary of State James Baker for Soviet admittance to the alliance. He was politely ignored. As President George H. W. Bush observed, why should he have allowed the Soviets to “clutch a victory from the jaws of defeat”?
Gorbachev liked to cite a line attributed to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus: “everything flows, everything changes.” Putin, who believes Gorbachev was taken for a ride his Western partners, has a worldview closer to that of the Greek historian Thucydides: “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
***
I reached the Pushkin Square, where the Strastnoi Boulevard intersects Tverskaya, a wide avenue that runs all the way to the Kremlin. It was here that, in August 2019, I took part in a most remarkable demonstration against electoral fraud. Along with thousands of Muscovites, I walked down the boulevard in a peaceful protest. Scores were arrested — people were pulled down by the police in riot gear, beaten with batons, and thrown into police vans to shouts of “Shame! Shame!”
Now, Pushkin Square is quiet. The opposition — such as it was — has been crushed, chased out of Russia, or cowed into silence. There are observers in the West who imagine that Putin is afraid of democracy. Otherwise, why would he keep Aleksei Navalny in jail? Why? Because he can — that’s why. Because Navalny is a reminder to the rest of us that anyone at any minute could exchange the fleeting comforts of a cosmopolitan life in well-to-do Moscow for a hard bed in a prison cell. It’s a potent reminder. Putin will never need to become a Stalin, but the potential is always there, like the hard broken tiles under the thin layer of brownish sludge.
I walked by a bronze statue of Alexander Pushkin standing upon his pedestal in the center of the square, unperturbed. The inscription below the poet reads: “I glorified Freedom in our violent age. And called for mercy for the fallen.”
The poet’s short life overlapped with the reign of Emperor Alexander I, on whose watch the Russians defeated Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1814, the emperor rode triumphantly into Paris, and in the subsequent months played a pivotal role in the establishment of a new great-power order in Europe. His proved more lasting than Stalin’s effort at Yalta or Brezhnev’s hopes for a Soviet-American condominium. The problem for Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev was that their foreign policies were underpinned by utopian ideals: They weren’t just trying to increase Moscow’s standing in the global hierarchy. In the long term they hoped to upend the hierarchy itself in favor of a brave new world.
There is little left of that brave new world now. The golden arches of Moscow’s first McDonald’s, opened in the Pushkin Square in 1990, remind passers-by of how the Cold War ended. Kennan predicted this. He knew that the vigor of the West would trump the drab reality of the Soviet project. But there was something that he failed to predict: Even after it shed socialism, Moscow would remain preoccupied with its position in the global pecking order and never tire of seeking to improve it by cynical resort to the language of force.
Brinksmanship is an art. Soviet and Russian leaders had all practiced it, with varying degrees of success. In this sense, at least, Putin is well-versed in a tradition established by his predecessors. Like his Soviet predecessors, Putin is willing to use overwhelming brute force in pursuit of clearly imperialistic goals. But he is an incremental imperialist, taking a bite at a time, feeling for weakness in the West’s resolve, ready to back off if he encounters too much resistance. Kennan would have recognized the type.
I turned left and quickly walked towards the Kremlin in a deepening haze. Red Square had been turned into a skating rink. Kids were sliding in circles to the blare of happy tunes. “We are ruled not by our emotions, but by our reason, analysis and calculations,” Stalin had postulated in 1945. The wily tyrant’s ashes were now lodged firmly in the Kremlin Wall. Behind that wall, his successors, still as impervious as ever to the logic of reason, were planning their moves.
Sergey Radchenko is the Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.
20. Inside America's only military base in Africa, as it tries to prevent the rise of a new bin Laden, or "someone worse"
Inside America's only military base in Africa, as it tries to prevent the rise of a new bin Laden, or "someone worse"
Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti — While the eyes of the world are on Ukraine, the U.S. is also keeping focused on hidden conflicts against jihadists in Africa, where at least 18 different terrorist organizations are operating. Thousands of Americans are stationed at Camp Lemonnier in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti.
CBS News correspondent Debora Patta visited the sprawling camp, which is the only permanent U.S. military base in all of Africa and as she reports, it's close to some of the continent's most dangerous trouble spots.
As troops dropped one by one out of U.S. military transport plane, Patta said while it was just a routine training exercise, the Special Operations air combat forces know they have to stay fighting fit. Their job is to rescue American troops that get trapped behind enemy lines.
U.S. Special Operations forces jump from a plane over the Horn of Africa during training exercises at Camp Lemmonier, the American military base in the East African nation of Djibouti. CBS News
In the air, on land or at sea, the 4,500-strong American contingent at Camp Lemonnier is tasked with combatting the deadliest al Qaeda and ISIS-affiliated groups in the world.
Standing on the deck of a U.S. Navy patrol vessel just off Djibouti's coast, Patta said it was clear to see why the location is of such strategic importance: Yemen, where a grueling civil war has allowed al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to flourish, is only about 70 miles to the north.
In Somalia, just 20 miles to the south, the al-Shabaab group — which also has suspected links to al-Qaeda — acts with impunity, and violent attacks have increased there.
ISIS-linked groups are on the ascendancy across Africa, too. Throw conflict-ravaged Ethiopia and a shaky Sudan, rocked by recent coups, into the mix and there's no doubt that this is one of the most volatile regions on the continent.
But despite those circumstances, Patta says there has been a rebranding of America's "war on terror" since the country's chaotic departure from Afghanistan.
That strategy is being put to the test at Camp Lemonnier. Instead of having American "boots on the ground" in hotspots like Somalia, the war is being fought from a distance. But the approach has failed to stop the growth of terrorist groups across the continent.
U.S. Air Force Col. Matt Bartlett, the commander in charge of America's air power in East Africa, told Patta that al-Shabaab is now one of the most well-resourced extremist organization's in the world.
The risk, he told CBS News, is that "al-Shabaab has a safe space, as it were, to grow [its] capacity and capability."
U.S. Army Major General William Zana is the overall Commander General for the combined American forces in the Horn of Africa, and he was even more candid.
Patta asked him if he was concerned that Somalia might be harboring the next Osama bin Laden.
"Sure," Zana replied. "Or something and someone worse than Osama bin Laden."
He believes Camp Lemonnier is a modest insurance policy that can help prevent another September 11.
"Groups like al-Shabaab's capabilities are only growing," he told Patta. "From my perspective, it's only a matter of time before... their stated intent, their desire, is to strike the U.S. homeland."
President Biden is expected to make a decision soon on whether to send U.S. troops back into Somalia.
Until then, the last thing America's military leaders on the ground want is an emboldened al-Shabaab that believes all it needs to do is wait it out and wear America down, like the Taliban did in Afghanistan.
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21. UK says ‘serious doubts’ exist within Russian military about invading Ukraine
Is there any serious internal opposition to Putin's actions? If so, can it make a difference? Can it be exploited?
UK says ‘serious doubts’ exist within Russian military about invading Ukraine
The claim, made on Monday, is understood to be based on western intelligence
Britain believes there are figures within Russian military and security services who have “serious doubts” about invading Ukraine as the Kremlin continues to move more troops within 50km of the border.
The claim, made on Monday, is understood to be based on western intelligence, although the concerns that exist are not expected to have any initial impact if President Vladimir Putin were to order an attack.
“There are elements within the military and Russian security services who harbour very serious doubts about the plan to invade and its effectiveness,” said one western official, who added they were “perfectly confident” about the assessment.
However, no further evidence was offered to back up the statement, one of a number of intelligence-led warnings made by the US, UK and others in the past fortnight, all part of a wider political effort to try to demonstrate that the west has an understanding of Russia, its plans and intentions.
Any invasion of Ukraine would be fraught with risk, in what would be the largest war in Europe since the second world war. It would pit 150,000 Russian troops, plus another 30,000 separatists, against a regular Ukrainian army of 145,000 plus tens of thousands of paramilitaries, many of whom have military experience.
But Putin’s dominance of the Russian political and security scene has meant that any internal concerns about an invasion has been muted.
Downing Street said on Monday that there still remained a “window for diplomacy” to resolve the crisis, but added that repeated complaints by the Kremlin that Ukraine had engaged in military provocations in the eastern Donbas region had suggested a plan to attack had already been decided upon.
“Intelligence we are seeing suggests Russia intends to launch an invasion and President Putin’s plan has in effect already begun,” a No 10 spokesperson said. “We are seeing elements of the Russian playbook we would expect to see in those situations starting to play out in real time.”
The western assessment is that Russian forces are now “poised to invade” if Putin gives the order. It is estimated two-thirds of Russia’s 110 battalions in the region have taken up positions within 50km of the border in both Russian and neighbouring Belarus, an increase from half a week ago.
Half of those two-thirds are “tactically deployed” in temporary or makeshift locations even close to Ukraine, where they are awaiting further orders. Defence sources said they could stay in position “for a matter of days” before having to retreat to nearby staging areas, with better facilities.
01:07
Putin committed to invasion of Ukraine, says UK defence minister – video
Defence secretary Ben Wallace said that the continued build up of Russian forces monitored by western intelligence did not suggest that the Kremlin was ready to ease tensions. “These are not the actions of a Russian government fulfilling its repeated declarations that it has no intention of invading Ukraine,” he told MPs.
Updating MPs, the minister said there had been “a proliferation of false flag operations and propaganda stunts and Russian news outlets carrying fictitious allegations”.
Russian officials said five “saboteurs” who tried to breach its border with Ukraine have been killed in the Rostov region were killed. Ukrainian armed vehicles were also destroyed, Russia said.
Ukraine said its forces were not operating in the Rostov region and that such claims were “fake news”. Western officials added that Russia had access to a supply of Ukrainian military vehicles captured in 2014-15, when fighting between the two countries was at its most intense, which were available for “false flag” operations.
British sources also sounded a note of caution about the efforts of France’s President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday to set up a summit meeting between US president Joe Biden and Putin, arguing that Ukraine had to be closely involved if there were to be direct negotiations between the two leaders.
A UK government source said it was “too early” to say whether the summit was a good idea although opportunities for diplomacy were welcome. “We need to make sure Ukraine is played in and we have our set position on Ukraine’s sovereignty and their right to choose on things like Nato and that will remain,” they added.
22. Washington and Aristotle Can Restore the Military’s Professional Ethos
We would be well served to reflect on the classics in addition to modern forms of communication. As much as we might think social media and cable news are having a negative effect, turning away from them will further isolate military leadership. Like it or not social media is a major form of communication and avoiding it will cutlass us to lose touch with the people we serve and even with the bulk of the young people in the military. We need to embrace social media and use it smartly and effectively. But we need balance between reflections on the classics and ethics and the use of social media.
Excerpt:
Officers must pay attention to where the information they are consuming is coming from and practice some ethical reasoning. Senior officers, in particular, need to remind themselves that the public is watching and that their authority to lead derives exclusively from the faith of those being led. When officers—active or retired—“retweet,” “like,” or “share” on social media they give credibility to misinformation and disinformation and become able pawns of U.S. adversaries. Six years ago, the general public—Democrats, Republicans, and Independents—held the military in the highest esteem. Two presidential election cycles later, however, there has been a precipitous drop in the nation’s confidence in the military. How did the military fail institutionally to enforce norms in which personal political views were not shared publicly by officers? When did they lose this basic norm of officership? Rebuilding the reputation begins with restoring the professional ethos and refraining from partisan politics. Developing principled leaders—men and women of virtue and character—to bridge this political divide is a national security imperative. Military professionals need to turn away from social media feeds and turn off cable news’ incessant “infotainment,” and rise above the fray.
A wise conclusion here:
Those familiar with information operations should be astute enough to know when they are being targeted and manipulated. U.S. adversaries are opportunists. Demagogues and populists across the political spectrum have attempted to usurp the military since the Greeks first experimented with democracy. It is too convenient to blame adversaries for stoking divisions without acknowledging how these divisions got there in the first place. The critical fissure is the broken norms as an officer corps. A commission is for life. The nation needs military leaders with the strength of character and virtue to resist being recruited by partisan agendas. An officer corps need not be agnostic, simply professional and mindful that accountability, in a functional democracy, occurs at the ballot box, not on social media.
Washington and Aristotle Can Restore the Military’s Professional Ethos
By Colonel Thomas J. Gordon, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)
February 2022 Proceedings Vol. 148/2/1,428
Regardless of the challenges we face, our leaders, especially our officers, must share a moral foundation and practice a common professional ethic. Our tactics, techniques, and practices may change, but our bedrock principles remain the same.
– General Joseph F. Dunford, Jr., USMC Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The Armed Forces Officer, 2017
By the time this article is published, most of the general public will have forgotten the name of the Marine Corps battalion commander who pleaded guilty at a special court martial after videos he recorded disparaging senior military leaders’ handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan went viral. The most alarming aspect of this event, one that strikes at the heart of the U.S. military professional ethic, is not 20 years of failed Afghanistan policy, a botched withdrawal, or one officer’s failed attempt at martyrdom, but rather the deep divide the debate that followed exposed within the ranks. When field grade officers and senior enlisted leaders publicly endorse the mutinous actions of a sitting commander because they share his pain, incredulity, or disdain for the current administration, politics has supplanted the professional ethic. The comfort level with which senior officers and enlisted leaders—who should know better—publicly expressed partisan political positions is troublesome and dangerous. A nonpartisan military is essential to a functional democracy. The military must step back from the abyss and refresh its professional ethos.
Since the advent of democracy, there have always been enemies—foreign and domestic—who sought to exploit the vulnerabilities of a free society for their own gain. The threat of populism and identity politics within the ranks predates this Republic and can be traced back to ancient Greece and Rome. The Founding Fathers anticipated the danger posed by partisans and demagogues, especially those with ties to the military, and believed that virtue was the antidote to partisan strife. In the article “On Public Virtue,” Vice Admiral James Stockdale quoted constitutional historian Forest McDonald’s warning that: “No shortcoming has been as surely fatal to Republics as a dearth of public virtue.”1 Stockdale’s remarks reflected the deep political divide and the lack of public confidence that defined post-Vietnam America. In time, the nation healed itself, and the ghosts of Vietnam were eventually vanquished in Desert Storm, though politically, the country did not come together fully until 12 September 2001.
This unity, however, was short lived. Twenty years of foreign military intervention took its toll in blood, treasure, and public confidence in the military. Politicians and pundits on the left and right capitalized on this disenchantment to sow the seeds of division and erode confidence in U.S. institutions for their own political gain. U.S. adversaries adroitly exploit these divisions and penetrate deep into the American psyche with new social media tools. Though the medium and the means are new, the toxic material and how it metastasizes is not. The solution, therefore, can also be found in the past.
History’s Lessons
It was not Athens’ defeat in the Peloponnesian Wars or Rome’s failed excursions in Gaul that led to the collapse of their Republics, but the moral vacuum that followed. Sophists, the pundits of the day, filled this void with political speech—unanchored in truth—to persuade people to act against their best interest. It was in this milieu that Aristotle’s moral philosophy was born. Aristotle’s moral theories are ethics for the real world and remain just as valid today as at their inception. The foundational principal of his Nicomachean Ethics is moderation. Rather than focus on the elusive concept of virtue, Aristotle begins with the assumption that real life’s moral deficiencies and excesses are readily apparent.2 He defined virtue as the mean between the extremes.3 It constitutes a situationally defined midpoint between the deficiency and excess of one’s character. For example, courage is equipoised between rashness and cowardice. Loyalty lies at the midpoint of excessive devotion and priggishness. Temperance is neither insensibility nor self-indulgent careerism. Doing one’s duty, therefore, appropriately balances loyalties to one’s self and self-effacing martyrdom. Virtue, to Aristotle, is always defined by the circumstances. It cannot be codified but is exhibited by individuals of good character in response to a given situation.
Except for George Washington, the U.S. Founding Fathers all had classical educations. They studied the Greeks and the Romans and were inspired by Cato, Cincinnatus, and other defenders of the Republic. Virtue, in their day, was personified by putting the common good before one’s own interests. They were acutely aware of the fragility of the Republic and the threat posed by demagogues. These great men viewed virtue as the lynchpin of public life.4 The Founding Fathers’ interest in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy influenced their design of the Constitution. James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton collaborated to create a framework that balanced man’s excesses and deficiencies. The resulting system of government has proven remarkably resilient. The country has bounced back from wars (including a civil war), economic depressions, pandemics, and civil strife without the military’s intervention in politics. Yes, there were the Generals McClellan and McArthur episodes that challenged civilian control of the military, but they were the exceptions, and their dim place in history shows the exception proves the rule.
It was George Washington, as the Commanding General of the Continental Army, who laid the foundation for our military’s professional ethos. Outside Newburgh, New York, in 1783 the Continental Army had legitimate grievances with the Continental Congress. After eight years of war and deprivation they had gone without pay for eight months. Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s aide-de-camp, wanted the general to use the Army to intimidate Congress. On the “Ides of March,” Washington gathered his officers, and “in as much anger as he allowed himself to show in public,” issued a stern rebuke of an anonymous letter circulating among the ranks.5 When Washington learned of Hamilton’s personal involvement, he admonished him as well, reminding all that: “The army is a dangerous instrument to play with.”6
Political Malfeasance Today
Many politicians today seem to have no qualms about playing with the military to advance their political agenda without concern for the long-term implications to national security. One side seeks to use the military to advance its social agenda without respect to the readiness of the force; while the other, under the guise of patriotism, seeks to quash criticism and lawful dissent by labeling it as anti-American and disrespectful to the troops. Political campaigns on both sides lure the endorsements of retired flag and general officers to exploit their credibility. Overcome by hubris, these retired generals and admirals convince themselves to set aside their professional ethic because of the “danger” posed by the opposing candidate.
When this occurs, the dangers to the Republic are multifaceted and far reaching. If the nation continues along this path, it is reasonable to predict that in the future flag and general officers will be nominated and confirmed to three- and four-star positions based on their political fealty instead of their proficiency. Jim Golby, a prolific writer on civil-military relations, portends that politicians will then pick lesser-qualified officers because they will pose less of a political threat should they enter politics in the future.7 But most concerning will be the impact on the readiness of an all-volunteer force. The discipline, cohesion, and readiness implications of a diverse force being led by partisan political admirals and generals point to an untenable future in which the most senior leaders, rather than act as instruments of national power, become political pawns.
For the most part, military officers are mindful about their personal appearance and therefore are cognizant about what they put into their bodies. The same may not be true about what they put into their minds. Just as they were taught in grade school that “you are what you eat,” today’s military leaders are a direct reflection of what they put into their minds. The “law of exposure” holds that the mind absorbs and reflects what it is exposed to the most.8 Social media algorithms and cable news “infotainment” are designed to continually reinforce one’s cognitive biases to create a subjective reality that benefits the producer but misinforms the consumer. This constructed reality dictates how one responds, behaves, and leads.
In an address to students at the Marine Corps Command & Staff College in 2019, then–Major General Matthew G. Glavy, the Commander of Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command, discussed how cyber enables “10-digit grid quality information operations (IO).” In other words, operations in the information environment (OIE) can target populations down to an individual commander. It is reasonable, therefore, to suspect U.S. enemies can do the same. The 2015 Office of Personnel Management hack provided adversaries with a “treasure trove” of personal information that can be used to target future commanders. It is imperative, therefore, that U.S. military training and education focus on steeling the resolve of future commanders while simultaneously developing their decision-making skills in an information-contested domain.
Officers must pay attention to where the information they are consuming is coming from and practice some ethical reasoning. Senior officers, in particular, need to remind themselves that the public is watching and that their authority to lead derives exclusively from the faith of those being led. When officers—active or retired—“retweet,” “like,” or “share” on social media they give credibility to misinformation and disinformation and become able pawns of U.S. adversaries. Six years ago, the general public—Democrats, Republicans, and Independents—held the military in the highest esteem. Two presidential election cycles later, however, there has been a precipitous drop in the nation’s confidence in the military. How did the military fail institutionally to enforce norms in which personal political views were not shared publicly by officers? When did they lose this basic norm of officership? Rebuilding the reputation begins with restoring the professional ethos and refraining from partisan politics. Developing principled leaders—men and women of virtue and character—to bridge this political divide is a national security imperative. Military professionals need to turn away from social media feeds and turn off cable news’ incessant “infotainment,” and rise above the fray.
A Code for Professional Ethics
Military professional ethics and standards of conduct are codified in public law. Title 10 (“Armed Forces”) and the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) prohibit participation in partisan events in uniform. Professional ethos and collective norms are reflected in the military’s culture and can be traced back to the Founding Fathers’ Greek and Roman influence. This culture must be continually cultivated, or the ethos will corrode. It is all military leaders’ responsibility to regain control of the military culture’s trajectory as a profession of arms. Populism has no place in the military. In Federalist Number 10, James Madison warned that “enlightened statesman will not always be at the helm.”9 Yet a cornerstone of the Constitution upholds the concept of civilian control of the military. As notable Duke University civil-military relations expert Peter Feaver observed, U.S. civilian “leadership has the right to be wrong.”10
The strategic failure in Afghanistan should be studied and fiercely—and honestly—critiqued in professional blogs and journals through a lens of integrity that trumps concerns over legacy. It is when this criticism turns contemptuous and partisan, however, that contributors violate the professional ethic. Military men and women of character and virtue cannot allow themselves to be pulled into this partisan fray.
Those familiar with information operations should be astute enough to know when they are being targeted and manipulated. U.S. adversaries are opportunists. Demagogues and populists across the political spectrum have attempted to usurp the military since the Greeks first experimented with democracy. It is too convenient to blame adversaries for stoking divisions without acknowledging how these divisions got there in the first place. The critical fissure is the broken norms as an officer corps. A commission is for life. The nation needs military leaders with the strength of character and virtue to resist being recruited by partisan agendas. An officer corps need not be agnostic, simply professional and mindful that accountability, in a functional democracy, occurs at the ballot box, not on social media.
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.
