Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"Common sense is seeing things as they are; and doing things as they ought to be."

- Harriet Beecher Stowe

"Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd."

- Bertrand Russell

Characteristics of the American Way of War (6 of 13)

6. Technology-dependent. The exploitation of machinery is the American way of war. One may claim that airpower is virtually synonymous with that way of war, and that its employment as the leading military instrument of choice has become routine. So at least it appeared in the 1990s, during the warm afterglow of airpower's triumph in the First Gulf War. America is the land of technological marvels and of extraordinary technology dependency. It was so from early in the 19th century when a shortage of skilled craftsmen--they had tended to remain in Europe--obliged Americans to invent and use machines as substitutes for human skill and muscle. Necessity bred preference and then excellence, and the choice of mechanical solutions assumed a cultural significance that has endured. The watershed, unsurprisingly, was the experience of the Civil War. The way of war that succeeded in that most bloody of America's struggles was logistical, having been enabled by an exploitation of raw industrial power that foreign observers found awesome. American soldiers say that the human being matters most, but, in practice, the American way of war, past, present, and prospectively future, is quintessentially and uniquely technology-dependent. The Army's transformation plans are awash with prudent words on the many dimensions of future conflict, but at its core lies a drive to acquire an exceedingly expensive Future Combat System, consisting of a network of vital technologies.

Given the range of potential demands that foreign policy may place on the Army, the only sound plan for the future has to be one that is flexible and adaptable. The enemies of tomorrow are at least as likely to take regular as irregular forms. The issue is not technology, nor is it any particular set of weapons and support systems. Instead, the difficulty lies in the fact that the American armed forces are culturally attuned to favoring technological solutions over other approaches, while irregular enemies pose problems of a kind where technology typically offers few real advantages. Indeed, machines and dependence upon them are apt to have negative value, because although they can save some American lives, they tend to isolate American soldiers from the social, and even the military, context which is the decisive battleground in irregular conflict. Contrary to appearances, perhaps, this is to condemn neither machines nor technology in principle. Whatever technology can do that is useful in COIN and for counterterrorism certainly should be done. It is the use, or misuse through overuse, of technology that is at issue, not technology itself. The experience of several countries demonstrates unambiguously that there is no correlation between technical sophistication and success in the conduct of warfare against irregulars. Remember the proposed "McNamara Fence" during the Vietnam War and such like extravagant follies.

- Colin Gray, 2006

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 11, 2023

2. How Beijing Boxed America Out of the South China Sea

3. To Counter China, U.S. and Allies Seek to Make Militaries ‘Interchangeable’

4. Russia continues to suffer extremely heavy losses in Ukraine - UK intelligence

5. Chinese Military Pushes For Wartime Law Amid Tension Over Taiwan: Report

6. Opinion Skeptical of the lab leak theory? Here’s why you should take it seriously.

7. Congress and split intelligence decisions

8. Russia has "plenty of surprises" left: U.S. spec ops veteran in Ukraine

9. China’s Model of a New Diplomacy Scores a Win With Iran-Saudi Deal

10. Opinion: What to make of China's role in the handshake heard round the world

11. Fewer Than 1/3 of Navy’s Amphibious Ships Are Ready to Deploy

12. IntelBrief: Glass Houses: U.S. Military Trainees and Destabilization of African Governments

13. “Just Do It, No Delay”: Inside the Secret Mission to Evacuate an Injured Fox News Correspondent From Ukraine

14. 'Top Gun: Maverick' is 'insidious' for portraying 'virtue' of U.S. military: MSNBC editor

15. SFABS ADJUST UNIQUE ROLE FOR LARGE-SCALE COMBAT

16. Anti-Russia guerrillas in Belarus take on 'two-headed enemy'

17. Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline?

18. Opinion | Who Benefits From Confrontation With China?

19. China: EDCA expansion to 'seriously' harm Philippines' interest, regional stability

20. Former top U.S. admiral cashes in on nuclear sub deal with Australia

21. Opinion | Don’t Let the Culture War Degrade the Constitution

22. Traute Lafrenz, Last Survivor of Anti-Hitler Group, Dies at 103

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 11, 2023

Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-11-2023

Key Takeaways

Russian forces did not make any confirmed advances within Bakhmut on March 11.
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova confirmed that there is infighting in the Kremlin inner circle, that the Kremlin has ceded centralized control over the Russian information space, and implicitly that Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot fix it.
Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin said that he would transform the Wagner Group into a hardline ideological elite parallel military organization after the Battle of Bakhmut.
Ukrainian sources report that Ukrainian forces advanced toward Svatove.
Russian forces continue to establish fortifications in Zaporizhia Oblast.
Russian mobilized soldiers continue to publicize complaints that commanders treat them poorly and used them as expendable manpower to patch holes in existent formations.
Russian occupation officials use children’s healthcare to generate dependency on the Russian healthcare system.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 11, 2023

Mar 11, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 11, 2023

Riley Bailey, Karolina Hird, George Barros, Nicole Wolkov, Angela Howard, and Frederick W. Kagan

March 11, 3:30pm ET

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

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain maps that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Russian forces did not make any confirmed advances within Bakhmut on March 11. Ukrainian and Russian sources continue to report heavy fighting in the city, but Wagner Group fighters are likely becoming increasingly pinned in urban areas, such as the AZOM industrial complex, and are therefore finding it difficult to make significant advances.[1] ISW will continue to monitor and report on the situation in Bakhmut as it unfolds.

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova confirmed that there is infighting in the Kremlin inner circle, that the Kremlin has ceded centralized control over the Russian information space, and that Russian President Vladimir Putin apparently cannot readily fix it. Kremlin journalists, academics, and Novorossiya supporters held a forum on the “practical and technological aspects of information and cognitive warfare in modern realities” in Moscow on March 11.[2] During a panel discussion Zakharova stated that the Kremlin cannot replicate the Stalinist approach of establishing a modern equivalent to the Soviet Information Bureau to centrally control Russia’s internal information space due to fighting among unspecified Kremlin “elites.”[3]

Zakharova’s statement is noteworthy and supports several of ISW’s longstanding assessments about deteriorating Kremlin regime and information space control dynamics. The statement supports several assessments: that there is Kremlin infighting between key members of Putin’s inner circle; that Putin has largely ceded the Russian information space over time to a variety of quasi-independent actors; and that Putin is apparently unable to take decisive action to regain control over the Russian information space.[4] It is unclear why Zakharova — a seasoned senior spokesperson — would have openly acknowledged these problems in a public setting. Zakharova may have directly discussed these problems for the first time to temper Russian nationalist milbloggers’ expectations regarding the current capabilities of the Kremlin to cohere around a unified narrative — or possibly even a unified policy.

Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin said that he would transform the Wagner Group into a hardline ideological elite parallel military organization after the Battle of Bakhmut. Prigozhin stated on March 11 that the Wagner Group will start a new wave of recruitment after the envisioned capture of Bakhmut and reform itself into an army with an ideological component.[5] The Wagner Group has recently been expanding recruitment centers throughout Russia, including centers and programs focused on recruiting youth.[6] A Russian regional news source stated on March 11 that the Wagner Group has opened six recruitment centers in schools and youth sports clubs in Altai, Zabaykalsky, and Krasnoyarsk krais and Irkutsk Oblast.[7] A Russian opposition news source reported on March 11 that the Ministry of Education in Apatity, Murmansk Oblast included Wagner personnel at a career guidance lesson to tell “heroic stories” and promote the Wagneryonok [“little Wagner”] youth group and summer camp in Crimea.[8] The Wagner Group likely aims to recruit more impressionable recruits through these youth-focused campaigns and instill in them Prigozhin’s extremist ideological brand of Russian ultranationalism. Prigozhin may be attempting to restructure the Wagner Group into a hardline ideological elite parallel military organization to carve out a specialized role among Russian forces in Ukraine as its former role in solely securing tactical gains dissipates with the Wagner Group’s likely culmination around Bakhmut.

Key Takeaways

Russian forces did not make any confirmed advances within Bakhmut on March 11.
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova confirmed that there is infighting in the Kremlin inner circle, that the Kremlin has ceded centralized control over the Russian information space, and implicitly that Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot fix it.
Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin said that he would transform the Wagner Group into a hardline ideological elite parallel military organization after the Battle of Bakhmut.
Ukrainian sources report that Ukrainian forces advanced toward Svatove.
Russian forces continue to establish fortifications in Zaporizhia Oblast.
Russian mobilized soldiers continue to publicize complaints that commanders treat them poorly and used them as expendable manpower to patch holes in existent formations.
Russian occupation officials use children’s healthcare to generate dependency on the Russian healthcare system.

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

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

Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian forces continued offensive operations northeast of Kupyansk on March 11. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Hryanykivka (18km northeast of Kupyansk) and Masyutivka (15km northeast of Kupyansk).[9] Geolocated footage published on March 11 indicates that Russian forces likely control Pershotravneve (22km east of Kupyansk).[10] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces are maintaining a significant military presence in areas along the Russian border with Kharkiv Oblast to fix Ukrainian forces in the Kupyansk direction to prevent Ukrainian forces from transferring personnel to other areas in Ukraine.[11]

Ukrainian sources reported that Ukrainian forces advanced towards Svatove. A Ukrainian media source reported on March 11 that Ukrainian forces entered Kuzemivka (14km northwest of Svatove) on an unspecified date and now hold positions 11km away from Svatove.[12]

Russian forces continued offensive operations in the Kreminna area on March 11. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Kreminna, Nevske (18km northwest of Kreminna), and within 31km south of Kreminna near Bilohorivka, Spirne, and Fedorivka.[13] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces conducted assaults in the direction of Terny (17km west of Kreminna) and that elements of the 331st Guards Airborne Regiment of the 98th Guards Airborne Division are operating along the Svatove-Kreminna line, likely in forest areas near Kreminna itself.[14] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces counterattacked near Chervonopopivka (6km north of Kreminna).[15]

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

Russian forces continued ground attacks in and around Bakhmut but did not make any confirmed advances within the city on March 11. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian troops repelled Russian attacks on Bakhmut itself; northeast of Bakhmut near Paraskoviivka (3km northeast); northwest of Bakhmut near Zalizianske (10km northwest), Dubovo-Vasylivka (6km northwest), and Bohdanivka (6km northwest); and west of Bakhmut near Ivanivske (5km west).[16] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty noted on March 11 that fighting in Bakhmut was more intense this week than in the previous week and that there were 23 combat clashes in Bakhmut over the past day alone.[17] Russian milbloggers claimed that Wagner Group forces crossed the Bakhmutka River in eastern Bakhmut and are moving towards the city center.[18] Geolocated footage of Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin shows that he was about 1.5 kilometers away from Bakhmut’s administrative center.[19] Several Russian milbloggers notably claimed that Ukrainian forces are preparing for a counteroffensive in Bakhmut.[20]

Russian forces continued ground attacks along the Avdiivka–Donetsk City frontline on March 11. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensives towards Avdiivka itself; in the Avdiivka area near Kamianka (5km northeast of Avdiivka), Severne (5km west of Avdiivka), and Tonenke (6km west of Avdiivka); on the northwestern outskirts of Donetsk City near Pervomaiske, Nevelske, Vodyane, and Krasnohorivka; and on the southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City near Marinka and Novomykhailivka.[21] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian troops are attacking Severne and Kamianka, advanced near Pervomaiske, and are fighting against stiff Ukrainian defenses within Marinka.[22]

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks in western Donetsk Oblast on March 11. Russian milbloggers amplified footage of personnel of the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade claiming that they are still engaged in fierce fighting near Vuhledar despite recent claims of massive losses suffered to the brigade during attacks on Vuhledar.[23] A Russian milblogger posted footage reportedly of Russian forces using incendiary ammunition to target Ukrainian positions in Vuhledar.[24]

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

Russian forces continue to establish fortifications in Zaporizhia Oblast. Satellite imagery published on March 9 shows that Russian forces have significantly expanded fortifications north of Chystopillia, Zaporizhia Oblast between December 2022 and March 9, 2023.[25] Russian forces are likely expanding fortifications in this area to defend the N30 and T0408 highways into Tokmak, a major Russian rear area logistics node that is within 15km of Melitopol along the T0401 highway. Russian forces likely seek to secure major ground lines of communication (GLOCs) into Melitopol in the event of a potential future Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Ukrainian forces continue to target Russian logistics and force concentration areas in southern Ukraine. Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported on March 10 that Ukrainian forces struck three Russian ammunition warehouses, air defenses, and four manpower and equipment concentration areas on the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast on March 9 and 10.[26] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command also reported that Ukrainian forces struck Russian positions on the Kinburn Spit in Mykolaiv Oblast.[27] Ukrainian sources implied on March 11 that Ukrainian forces struck Russian positions near Mariupol, Donetsk Oblast, but Russian sources denied that Ukrainian forces conducted strikes in the area.[28]

Russian forces continued routine fire west of Hulyaipole and in Kherson Oblast on March 11.[29] Ukrainian sources reported that Russian forces struck civilian infrastructure in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia cities.[30]

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

Significant numbers of Russian mobilized soldiers and their loved ones continue to publicize complaints that Russian and Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) commanders treat them poorly and use them as expendable manpower to patch holes in combat formations.[31] Formations from at least 17 Russian federal subjects have released video complaints appealing to various Russian leaders in February and March alone.[32] The increasing rate of public complaints about commanders, lack of equipment, and unit structure — despite ongoing censorship and punishment of scapegoats — indicate that many soldiers feel the threat of war and their present conditions are more hazardous than the consequences of speaking out.

The Ural regional branch of a Russian state-owned news agency claimed on March 10 that Russia is preparing a large-scale recruitment campaign set to launch April 1 aimed at bringing in about 400,000 new contract soldiers. Federal subject governors reportedly have begun preparations for the coming campaign.[33] It is extremely unlikely that Russian recruitment efforts could succeed in recruiting a significant number of soldiers, much less the very high target of recruiting 400,000 soldiers.

Russian authorities continue to struggle to crack down on desertion and resistance to forcible extension of military contracts. A Russian regional news source reported on March 10 that a military court in Moscow will try eight mobilized soldiers from Kaliningrad Oblast for desertion, a charge that reportedly carries a prison term of up to 15 years.[34] A Russian news outlet stated on March 10 that volunteers from Tatarstan with expired contracts are attempting to return home but face criminal prosecution under desertion articles.[35] A Russian opposition exposé source on March 10 amplified a written complaint from military unit 24314, currently located in Rostov Oblast, addressed to Russia’s Southern Military District military prosecutor wherein soldiers complained that their commanders prevent them from leaving, call them deserters, and threaten attritional deployments for attempting to leave once their contracts expire.[36]

Russian authorities continue to prosecute limited domestic resistance to mobilization and the war in Ukraine. A Russian opposition exposé source claimed on March 10 that Russian authorities detained and obtained a confession from a 22-year-old Bashkir resident suspected of committing an arson attack that set fire to a relay cabinet on a stretch of a railway line connecting Sibay and Almukhametovo, Bashkortostan.[37] A Russian opposition source stated on March 10 that a Makhachkala, Dagestan district court on February 10 sentenced a man to 1.5 years in prison for nonviolently protesting mobilization.[38] Russian opposition news source Dozhd reported on March 10 that a Petrozavodsk, Karelia Republic court sentenced the vice chairman of youth activist organization “The Civil Alliance of Russia” for allegedly attempting to sabotage a railway in Petrozavodsk.[39]

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

Russian occupation officials continue to use pediatric healthcare services to generate dependency on the Russian healthcare system. Donetsk People’s Republic Head Denis Pushilin claimed that as of March 11, 13 brigades of Russian doctors have conducted medical examinations on almost 70,000 children aged 2 to 17 in occupied territories of Ukraine.[40] Pushilin claimed that the Kremlin allocated over 1.4 billion rubles (about $18.4 million) for children’s medical examinations in occupied areas. ISW has previously reported that Russian occupation officials may be using medical infrastructure in order to identify and deport Ukrainian children to Russia under the guise of needing more advanced medical care.[41]

The Kremlin continues to attempt to shift the financial burden of integrating Russian occupied territories onto Russian regional authorities. St. Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov met with Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Head Denis Pushilin in Mariupol where they claim that St. Petersburg authorities are updating medical equipment in a Mariupol hospital and helping to restore residences, schools, and intracity transit.[42] Ukrainian Mariupol Mayor Advisor Petro Andryushchenko claimed that Beglov promised Mariupol construction workers their salary arrears (paying employees for work completed during a previous pay period instead of the current one) by March 13, noting that workers are receiving pay for past pay periods but not receiving pay for current work and that occupation officials may be embezzling that money from the current period.[43] Mari El Republic Head Yuri Zaitsev reportedly visited Russian occupation officials in six cities in occupied Luhansk Oblast and met with Russian military personnel promising to address their concerns.[44]

Russian occupation authorities may be attempting to coerce civilians in occupied territories away from the frontline. Ukrainian Luhansk Oblast Administration Head Serhiy Haidai stated that Russian forces cut off mobile communications in settlements near the frontline forcing civilians to move deeper into occupied Luhansk Oblast in order to communicate with their families.[45]

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

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

Belarusian elements continue conducting exercises in Belarus. Artillery batteries of an unspecified Belarusian air assault artillery battalion – possibly of the Belarusian 38th Separate Guards Air Assault Brigade – conducted live fire and field exercises at the Brest Training Ground in Brest, Belarus, on March 11.[46]

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

[1] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid032gXcgsj8TSBMGBzvb5... ua/2023/03/11/za-mynulu-dobu-53-boyezitknennya-ta-ponad-pivtory-sotni-artobstriliv-sergij-cherevatyj/; https://t.me/brussinf/5740 ; https://t.me/grey_zone/17678 ; https://...

[2] https://ratnik dot tv/articles/novosti/forum-media-dronnitsa/

[3] https://t.me/notes_veterans/8431; https://kazan.bezformata dot com/listnews/rosinformbyuro-net-edinoy-informatcionnoy/115103152/; http://www.business-gazeta dot ru/news/586371; https://point1953.livejournal dot com/1318383.html; http://www.business-gazeta dot ru/news/586371

[4] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[5] https://t.me/rybar/44505; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/80175

[6] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[7] https://tayga dot info/180970; https://meduza dot io/news/2023/03/11/osnovatel-chvk-vagnera-ob-yavil-ob-otkrytii-tsentrov-po-verbovke-naemnikov-v-sibiri-po-dannym-taygi-info-oni-razmeschayutsya-v-shkolah-i-sportivnyh-klubah

[8] https://t.me/sotaproject/55153;

[9] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0SadEBad2BrBXA5WMY17...

[10] https://twitter.com/ServiceSsu/status/1634495135999225858 ; https://tw...

[11] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid032gXcgsj8TSBMGBzvb5...

[12] https://focus dot ua/voennye-novosti/554474-osvobodili-neskolko-sel-vsu-pokazali-kak-probivayutsya-k-svatovo-video

[13] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0SadEBad2BrBXA5WMY17...

[14] https://t.me/boris_rozhin/80174 ; https://t.me/wargonzo/11332

[15] https://t.me/wargonzo/11332

[16] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0SadEBad2BrBXA5WMY17...

[17] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2023/03/11/za-mynulu-dobu-53-boyezitknennya-ta-ponad-pivtory-sotni-artobstriliv-sergij-cherevatyj/

[18] https://t.me/basurin_e/142; https://t.me/readovkanews/54463

[19] https://t.me/brussinf/5740 ; https://t.me/grey_zone/17678 ; https://...

[20] https://t.me/readovkanews/54456 ; https://t.me/readovkanews/54466

[21] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid032gXcgsj8TSBMGBzvb5...

[22] https://t.me/wargonzo/11332

[23] https://t.me/readovkanews/54487; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19878

[24] https://t.me/milinfolive/97868

[25] https://twitter.com/bradyafr/status/1634269137647050757?s=20

[26] https://www.facebook.com/OperationalCommandSouth/posts/pfbid02yNyRpAHLFk...

[27] https://www.facebook.com/OperationalCommandSouth/posts/pfbid02yNyRpAHLFk...

[28] https://t.me/andriyshTime/7584; https://t.me/andriyshTime/7590 ; http...

[29] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid032gXcgsj8TSBMGBzvb5...

[30] https://t.me/zoda_gov_ua/17373 ; https://t.me/khersonskaODA/4259; htt...

[31] https://vk dot com/wall-136238148_119335; https://notes.citeam.org/mobilization-mar-9-10; https://vk dot com/wall52782256_5649; https://t.me/belpepel/957; https://t.me/horizontal_russia/20461

[32] https://t.me/svobodnieslova/1566; https://vk dot com/wall-136238148_119335; https://notes.citeam.org/mobilization-mar-9-10

[33] ttps://notes.citeam.org/mobilization-mar-9-10; https://ura dot news/articles/1036286412

[34] https://t.me/Govorit_NeMoskva/5653

[35] https://realnoevremya dot ru/articles/275172-dobrovolcy-iz-rt-pytayutsya-vernutsya-s-svo-na-rodinu; https://t.me/astrapress/22679; https://notes.citeam.org/mobilization-ma...

[36] https://t.me/vchkogpu/37044

[37] https://t.me/vchkogpu/37047; https://notes.citeam.org/mobilization-mar-...

[38] https://ovd dot news/express-news/2023/03/10/v-dagestane-uchastnika-protestov-protiv-mobilizacii-prigovorili-k-polutora; https://notes.citeam.org/mobilization-mar-9-10

[39] https://notes.citeam.org/mobilization-mar-9-10; https://t.me/tvrain/63728

[40] https://t.me/pushilindenis/3243

[41] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[42] https://t.me/pushilindenis/3242

[43] https://t.me/andriyshTime/7577

[44] https://t.me/readovkanews/54493; https://t.me/yvzaitsev/727

[45] https://t.me/luhanskaVTSA/9172

[46] https://t.me/modmilby/24371

How Beijing Boxed America Out of the South China Sea

China incrementally built up military outposts, with little pushback from the U.S., and has emerged as a power in the strategic waters through which trillions of dollars in trade passes

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-boxed-america-out-of-south-china-sea-military-d2833768

By Niharika MandhanaFollow

March 11, 2023 5:35 am ET

In early February, a Philippine coast guard vessel approached a small outpost in the South China Sea when it was hit by green laser beams that temporarily blinded its crew. The source was a Chinese coast guard ship, which Philippine authorities said approached dangerously close.

A few weeks earlier, the U.S. military accused a Chinese fighter pilot of another unsafe action over the waterway—flying within 20 feet of the nose of a U.S. Air Force aircraft.

Before that came a November incident involving a Philippine boat that was towing debris from a Chinese rocket launch. China’s coast guard deployed an inflatable boat to cut the tow line and retrieve the object, said Philippine officials.

Beijing is becoming the dominant force in the South China Sea, through which trillions of dollars in trade passes each year, a position it has advanced step-by-step over the past decade. With incremental moves that stay below the threshold of provoking conflict, China has gradually changed both the geography and the balance of power in the area.

The disputed sea is ringed by China, Taiwan and Southeast Asian nations, but Beijing claims nearly all of it. It has turned reefs into artificial islands, then into military bases, with missiles, radar systems and air strips that are a problem for the U.S. Navy. It has built a large coast guard that among other things harasses offshore oil-and-gas operations of Southeast Asian nations, and a fishing militia that swarms the rich fishing waters, lingering for days.

The U.S. missed the moment to hold back China’s buildup in part because it was focused on collaborating with Beijing on global issues such as North Korea and Iran, and was preoccupied by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. China also stated outright in 2015 that it didn’t intend to militarize the South China Sea.

China’s broader challenge to America’s long pre-eminence across the Indo-Pacific region threatens U.S. allies such as Japan, and puts the vast majority of the world’s advanced semiconductors, which are produced in Taiwan, at risk. China’s buildup in the South China Sea especially threatens the Philippines, a U.S. ally.

A SERIES EXAMINING THE PROBLEMS CONFRONTING AMERICA’S MILITARY

The U.S. Is Not Yet Ready for the Era of ‘Great Power’ Conflict

Former U.S. and Southeast Asian officials and security analysts warn that China’s gains in the waters are now so entrenched that, short of military conflict, they are unlikely to be reversed.

“They have such a reach now into the South China Sea with sea power and air power” they could obstruct or interfere with international trade, said retired Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., who long was a senior naval officer in the region and led the U.S. Pacific Command from 2015 to 2018. The U.S. would have to decide if it would go to war with China if it carried out such actions, he said.

China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.

China said previously its coast guard used the laser with the Philippine vessel for navigation safety and said it took possession of the rocket debris after friendly consultation. In response to the U.S. allegation that it conducted an unsafe air maneuver in December, Beijing accused the American aircraft of flying dangerously.

More broadly, China has accused the U.S. of meddling in the region, and rejected a 2016 ruling by an international tribunal that said its claims to historic rights in the South China Sea had no legal basis.

Global cloutIn recent years, the U.S. has named China as its main security challenge. Lately, disputes between the two nations over a suspected surveillance balloon and sharp rhetoric have pushed U.S.-China relations to their most hostile in years.

President Xi Jinping, who took office as China’s head of state in 2013, has backed a stronger Chinese military and a more assertive foreign posture as part of his campaign to steadily expand Beijing’s global clout. On Friday, Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations in a deal mediated by China, signaling its rapidly growing influence overseas.

The Philippine coast guard said a green military-grade laser was used by a Chinese coast guard ship in the South China Sea last month.

PHOTO: PHILIPPINE COAST GUARD/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The U.S. military said a Chinese Navy J-11 fighter jet flew dangerously close to a U.S. Air Force aircraft over the South China Sea in December.

PHOTO: U.S. INDO-PACIFIC COMMAND/REUTERS

Along its disputed Himalayan border with India, China has gradually widened its troop presence and built new infrastructure to press its territorial claims. In the Arctic, White House officials have said China is seeking to increase its influence with economic and military activities, as warming temperatures melt sea ice and potentially widen trade routes.

Taiwan, which China claims as its territory, is at the center of growing tensions in the region. In August, China carried out dayslong military exercises around Taiwan that included launching missiles over the island for what is believed to be the first time.

China’s gradualist approach has often confounded its opponents, leaving them uncertain about whether, when and how strongly to respond without escalating tensions. “That’s the long game that they often play,” the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet Commander Vice Adm. Karl Thomas said in an interview last year. “They will build a capability—it’s there and they’ll just incrementally increase their presence.”

U.S. Defense Department spokesman Lt. Col. Martin Meiners said that China’s decision “to conduct large-scale land reclamation, outpost construction, and militarization of disputed land features in the South China Sea is deeply destabilizing and has, over the years, brought into sharper focus Beijing’s increasing resort to coercion and deception to change facts on the ground.”

The U.S. will maintain an active military presence in the South China Sea through strategic patrols, and combined and multinational exercises, he said. The U.S. is also upgrading its force posture in the Indo-Pacific, he said, to build a more dynamic and flexible forward presence in the region.

In January, aircraft carrier USS Nimitz with around 5,000 crew on board sailed through the South China Sea with three American destroyers and a cruiser. The carrier strike group’s mission was to show the flag, said Rear Adm. Christopher Sweeney.

“We’re going to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows us,” he said, amid the whir and thud of fighter jets landing on the flight deck.

Chinese-occupied islands/reefs

With built-on runway

Other islands/reefs

Potential Chinese military ranges from islands

Anti-aircraft missiles

Anti-ship missiles

Surface radar

Air radar

Fighter jets

TAIWAN

CHINA

VIETNAM

LAOS

Paracel

Islands

THAILAND

Scarborough

Shoal

SOUTH CHINA SEA

CAMBODIA

Subi

Reef

PHILIPPINES

Fiery Cross

Reef

Mischief

Reef

Spratly Islands

BRUNEI

MALAYSIA

100 miles

100 km

INDONESIA

Source: Center for Strategic and International Studies

Max Rust/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

China’s outposts present additional potential threats for the U.S. military to track and counter. Three of the outposts in the Spratly group of islands are full-fledged military bases that host airfields, surface-to-air and anti-ship missiles, radars and sensors that allow China to see and hear almost everything that happens in the area. One in the Paracels, farther north, also has an airfield, and China has landed a heavy bomber there.

Adm. Thomas said China already flies patrol aircraft from the Spratly outposts and could easily operate fighter jets from the sites.

The islands are “giant information sponges out there providing a much, much better targeting picture of the area than China would have if those bases weren’t there,” said Thomas Shugart, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank that specializes in national-security issues.

When they were first being built, a lot of people were “pretty dismissive of those island bases—‘Oh, we’d be able to scrape them clean with Tomahawk [missiles] in the first hour of the conflict,’” said Mr. Shugart. “I don’t think people see it that way anymore.”

The Chinese have done a very good job at building an integrated air-defense system, said Adm. Thomas. He said the U.S. has studied the islands’ vulnerabilities and could disable them. “Will it be easy? I wouldn’t use that word,” he said.

Fighter jets on the deck of the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier during a deployment to the South China Sea in January.

PHOTO: JOSEPH CAMPBELL/REUTERS

Chinese vessels anchored at Whitsun Reef in the South China Sea in 2021.

PHOTO: MAXAR TECHNOLOGIES/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK

The U.S. military is still more capable than its adversaries, and China’s military more broadly has its own obstacles, including in developing the capability to carry out a potential invasion of Taiwan. The Central Intelligence Agency said Mr. Xi set a 2027 deadline for China to be ready for such action, but said Mr. Xi and the military had doubts whether Beijing could currently do so.

In the South China Sea, China has challenges in maintaining the island bases and hasn’t been able to establish total dominance. Southeast Asian nations, in defiance of Beijing, have pushed through some oil-and-gas projects, upgraded structures on islands they control and maintained military outposts. China’s forceful actions are also hurting its broader efforts to consolidate ties with its neighbors.

Seeking cooperationChina has built outposts in two groups of islands in the South China Sea, the Paracels, which are closer to the mainland, and the Spratlys, which are much farther away. Parts of the Paracels were developed earlier, but over the past decade, China continued to reclaim land and move more military hardware there. It now has around 20 outposts there, most of them small, but some with energy infrastructure, helipads and harbors, along with the airfield on the largest.

The artificial islands in the Spratlys deepened China’s control. The seven outposts there—including three large ones known internationally as Mischief Reef, Fiery Cross Reef and Subi Reef—extend China’s reach far south of its coastline and make it possible for its navy, coast guard and fishing boats to consistently sail across the waters Beijing claims.

The Spratlys buildup began around a decade ago, when the U.S. military was still deeply involved in conflicts in the Mideast and Central Asia. The Obama administration was seeking Chinese cooperation on priorities including securing the Iran nuclear deal, limiting North Korean provocations, making progress on climate change and stopping intellectual-property theft and cyber espionage.

Growth of Mischief Reef

China built up Mischief Reef, a reef in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, into an artificial island that is used as a military outpost.

Jan. 2006

Jan. 2016

Bare reef

Reclamation work

built up land mass

May 2020

Residential structures

Control

tower

1 mile

Hangar space

for combat aircraft

Hangar

Probable

surface-to-air

missile (SAM)

systems buildings

3,000-meter

airfield runway

CHINA

TAI.

South

China

Sea

Radar

systems

VIET.

PHIL.

Oct. 2022

Mischief

Reef

MAL.

INDONESIA

Photos: DigitalGlobe/Reuters (2006, 2016); Maxar/Getty Images (2020); Ezra Acayan/Getty Images (2022)

Source: The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at The Center for Strategic and International Studies

Brian McGill/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

In the years after Mr. Xi rose to power, U.S. officials didn’t realize the degree to which he would break from the past in taking a more confrontational foreign-policy approach, said former U.S. political and military officials.

They “found it very hard to believe that China would do something so coercive and so brazen, and by the time they understood the ambition—just how big these things are going to get, just how militarized—it was too late to do anything about it,” said Gregory Poling, author of a 2022 book on the history of America’s involvement in the South China Sea and director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Some U.S. officials and analysts had initially expected Mr. Xi to carry on the consensus-driven collective leadership that prevailed under his recent predecessors. Instead, Mr. Xi over the years has consolidated his singular control to a degree unseen since Mao Zedong, which makes his policies more difficult to predict.

Daniel Russel, who was Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs from 2013 to 2017, said the Obama administration’s strategy was to manage differences with China without allowing competition to “deteriorate into spiteful rivalry.”

To get Beijing to stop its actions in the South China Sea, he said, the U.S. could have put something very valuable on the table, such as a concession on Taiwan. Alternatively, he said, “We could have made this the absolute be-all and end-all of the relationship, and in effect double-dared the Chinese to enter into military conflict with the U.S. over this at the cost of any hope of progress in any other area of the relationship.”

Both approaches were “utterly unrealistic,” he said.

‘A matter of wait and see’

A 2012 crisis became a harbinger of the problems to come. After a standoff between Philippine and Chinese vessels, China seized a coral atoll called Scarborough Shoal. U.S. officials tried to mediate, but when Beijing took control Manila expected a more direct show of support from its ally, former Philippine officials said.

In early 2014, Chinese dredgers were spotted piling sand onto reefs in the Spratlys. U.S. officials knew that hard-liners in the Chinese military sought to dominate the waters, but it wasn’t clear they would prevail, said Mr. Russel.

“Early on, there was more uncertainty and ambiguity about how serious this was…and what the prospects were for a diplomatic accommodation,” he said. “Now, in retrospect, it looks like the Chinese never ever had the intention of compromising [and were] just playing for time.”

Mr. Russel added that his military colleagues at the time didn’t see the islands as a major national-security threat to the U.S. The outposts were likened at that stage to a handful of warships scattered around the area that couldn’t move, he said.

Adm. Harris said it was obvious to him at the time China was building military installations. He recommended sailing a U.S. warship close to one of the islands to demonstrate U.S. seriousness, but the proposal was rejected by his superiors, he said.

Chinese-occupied islands/reefs

With built-on runway

Other islands/reefs

Ship locations on March 9

Cargo ships

Tankers

CHINA

Paracel

Islands

PHILIPPINES

LAOS

MAJOR

SHIPPING

ROUTES

SOUTH CHINA SEA

VIETNAM

CAMBODIA

Subi

Reef

Mischief

Reef

Fiery Cross

Reef

Spratly Islands

100 miles

100 km

MALAYSIA

Sources: Center for Strategic and International Studies (islands); MarineTraffic (ship locations)

Max Rust/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The first time the then-chief of the U.S. Navy, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, raised the issue with his Chinese counterpart was September 2014. Adm. Wu Shengli, then commander of the Chinese navy, said he was surprised it had taken the U.S. that long, according to Adm. Greenert, who is now retired from the Navy. The implication was that China might have expected to be confronted on the South China Sea activity before then, Adm. Greenert said.

Adm. Greenert asked what China intended to do with the islands. Logistics, said Adm. Wu. The islands would support Chinese ships and crews and would have “notional defensive measures,” he said, according to Adm. Greenert.

Adm. Greenert was suspicious. The momentum of construction suggested it wouldn’t take much to install offensive capabilities. It was also feasible, he said he thought, that Adm. Wu was being upfront. China hadn’t yet put the capabilities there that would later cause worry. “It was really a matter of wait and see,” he said.

Adm. Wu, who is retired from the Chinese navy, couldn’t be reached, and China’s Defense Ministry didn’t respond to questions.

Analysts say in hindsight 2014 was a critical year. Of the seven Spratly outposts, dredgers focused first on the smaller ones, with Beijing seemingly gauging the level of pushback. Then, they forged ahead, according to Mr. Poling, of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative.

Philippine defiance

Mr. Russel said U.S. officials repeatedly told the Chinese they were making a mistake—driving countries in the region closer to the U.S. militarily and hurting China’s ties with Washington.

The Obama administration also tried to help Southeast Asian nations create new ground rules for behavior in the South China Sea with China, he said. Most governments didn’t want to push too hard.

A 1999 photo shows rudimentary structures on Mischief Reef before China’s reclamation work built up the island.

PHOTO: ROMEO GACAD/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

A satellite photo shows vessels allegedly dredging sand to build up Mischief Reef in 2015.

PHOTO: CSIS ASIA MARITIME TRANSPARENCY INITIATIVE/DIGITALGLOBE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The Philippines was an exception. After the loss of Scarborough Shoal, it filed a landmark arbitration case at an international tribunal challenging China’s South China Sea claims, which it won—although China rejected the ruling.

Washington helped rally support for the case and signed a new security pact with Manila in 2014.

But there was ambiguity around an older pact, the countries’ mutual-defense treaty. Philippine officials said they believed the treaty covered an attack in the South China Sea. Washington at the time didn’t say that explicitly, though it did so in 2019 when the Trump administration pressured China more directly on issues ranging from trade to technology.

By mid-2015, the largest three islands China was building were developing rapidly. In September, Adm. Harris, who by then had taken charge of the Pacific Command, raised his concerns before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The late Sen. John McCain, a former naval officer and an Arizona Republican, grilled the Defense Department about why the U.S. hadn’t pushed back against China’s actions by sailing near one of the new islands.

The following month, the U.S. Navy would undertake the maneuver, known as a freedom of navigation operation, or Fonop. It now regularly does Fonops in the South China Sea, actions that China describes as illegal.

In late-September 2015, Mr. Xi offered reassurance on a visit to the U.S. After a White House meeting with President Barack Obama, Mr. Xi said his country had no intention of militarizing the South China Sea. Some U.S. officials said they saw this public pledge as a turning point, signaling that the hawks in the Chinese military wouldn’t be allowed to execute all their plans.

It quickly became clear that wasn’t the case. Most of the seven Spratly artificial islands were completed by early 2016. China then added military infrastructure: 72 aircraft hangars, docks, satellite communication equipment, antenna array, radars, hardened shelters for missile platforms and the missiles themselves.

Economic ventures in the South China Sea became more risky for Southeast Asian nations because of the potential for conflict with Chinese ships, said former Rear Adm. Rommel Ong, who retired as a vice commander of the Philippine navy in 2019. China’s expansion eroded American credibility and altered regional dynamics, he said.

A warning by the Obama administration in March 2016 helped prevent China from further expanding its reach by building on Scarborough Shoal.

The Trump administration took a harder line by officially rejecting specific Chinese claims in the South China Sea and casting China as a bully. The Biden administration has built on that by deepening the U.S. alliance with the Philippines and expanding U.S. access to Philippine bases. It calls China’s actions in the South China Sea destabilizing and coercive.

“We just don’t build military bases in international waters simply because we can and we want to,” said Adm. Harris. “The Chinese apparently can and did.”

Write to Niharika Mandhana at niharika.mandhana@wsj.com

3. To Counter China, U.S. and Allies Seek to Make Militaries ‘Interchangeable’

Interchangeable? Really? More like interoperable I think, though perhaps receiving support from the common partners in the Arsenal of Democracy.

To Counter China, U.S. and Allies Seek to Make Militaries ‘Interchangeable’

Deeper cooperation could involve frequently using each other’s weapons, equipment and supply chains

https://www.wsj.com/articles/to-counter-china-u-s-and-allies-seek-to-make-militaries-interchangeable-269bc5e6?page=1

By Mike CherneyFollow

March 12, 2023 8:07 am ET

When the top general for the U.S. Air Force in the Pacific traveled overseas recently to meet with U.S. allies, responsibility for 46,000 personnel across the region fell to an unusual second-in-command: an air vice-marshal from the Australian air force.

The Australian officer was appointed recently to be one of two deputy commanders for the U.S. Air Force in the region at its base in Hawaii. Although it isn’t unusual for people from friendly nations to embed in the U.S. military, it is the first time an allied officer has held such a top operational role in the U.S. Air Force’s Pacific command.

“That’s the kind of trust that we have in our two air forces, that we could work that closely together,” Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, the U.S. Air Force commander for the Pacific, said while on a visit last month to an air show in Australia.

As concerns grow that China could launch an invasion of Taiwan in the coming years, the U.S. military is expanding its footprint in Asia and the Pacific and boosting the capabilities of allies, which U.S. planners hope will deter China from any aggressive moves. Key to that strategy is a growing focus on interoperability—the ability of U.S. and allied militaries to operate effectively together.

A still from footage released by the U.S. military of a Chinese jet fighter flying close to a U.S. Air Force aircraft over the South China Sea in December.

PHOTO: U.S. INDO-PACIFIC COMMAND/REUTERS

Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles has said he wants to move even beyond interoperability to “interchangeability”—which defense experts say could involve frequently using each other’s weapons, equipment and ammunition supplies, and coordinating logistics and supply chains more efficiently.

“The theme of interoperability is huge,” said Peter Dean, who was a senior adviser to Australia’s recent government review of its military, and is now a professor and foreign policy and defense director at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre.

Other allies in the region are also working more closely with the U.S. South Korea, which already has an integrated command structure with the U.S. as a legacy of the Korean War, joined the U.S. and Japan last month in missile-defense exercises that focused on interoperability. Japan in recent years has also held joint drills with the U.S. that practiced deploying certain capabilities together for the first time.

One challenge to further integration between U.S. and allied militaries are U.S. rules, called International Traffic in Arms Regulations, that control the export of defense and military technologies, and which some people in the defense industry say make it difficult for close U.S. allies to get the most advanced U.S. weapons and equipment.

Defense experts say easing those regulations could make it simpler for friendly nations to set up factories to build U.S. missiles or their components. High demand for those types of weapons in the war in Ukraine has depleted U.S. stockpiles, sparking a U.S. effort to increase production. Australia, which is looking to set up a domestic missile-manufacturing capability, has said it is working with the U.S. to reduce regulatory barriers.

Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, the U.S. Air Force commander for the Pacific, addressing the crowd last month at an air show in Australia.

PHOTO: ASANKA RATNAYAKE/GETTY IMAGES

Australia is already part of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network, which includes the U.S., and has long fought with the U.S. in major conflicts. But Australian officials have been particularly focused recently on improving the ability to partner with U.S. forces. The U.S., meanwhile, is planning to increase its presence in strategic northern Australia, a possible staging ground for any conflict in the Indo-Pacific and where U.S. Marines have been training with the Australian military.

Aside from exploring ways to manufacture the same munitions, the two countries have been buying the same equipment, broadening the scope of joint exercises and enhancing people-to-people links. Interoperability is expected to be a key feature of a plan for how the U.S. and the U.K. will help Australia develop a nuclear-powered submarine capability under the three-way Aukus pact—an acronym for Australia, the U.K. and the U.S.

“We think about interoperability when we design and deliver aircraft,” said Robert Chipman, chief of the Australian air force, which is acquiring Triton surveillance drones that will be able to share information with the U.S. “It’s very important to us to make sure you get that right from the outset.”

Australia already operates the F-35 jet fighter alongside the U.S., and is buying more U.S. equipment: the Himars rocket launcher, upgraded Abrams tanks, and Apache and Black Hawk helicopters. The U.S. is acquiring the Wedgetail surveillance aircraft, which is already operated by Australia, and is testing the Ghost Bat drone, an Australian project that will be able to fly unmanned alongside jet fighters.

“We had started with interoperable, and now what we aspire to—and there’s quite a bit of work to do here—is to be truly interchangeable,” said Brig. Gen. Chris Niemi, the strategy director for the U.S. Air Force in the Pacific, adding that being able to use Australian munitions on a U.S. aircraft would be beneficial in a conflict.

An obstacle for military officials is that even if two countries operate the same equipment, it doesn’t mean their weapons are always automatically compatible, said Prof. Dean, of the United States Studies Centre. Until now, the U.S. has often sold export versions of its equipment to other nations that differ from what is used in the U.S. military, he said. Those differences could be minor components, or varying versions of software inside the systems, he said.

Still, having the same hardware means Australia and the U.S. could eventually cooperate more on maintenance, allowing U.S. assets to be serviced in Australia. Pat Conroy, Australia’s defense industry minister, recently highlighted how a U.S. Navy Seahawk helicopter—a model that is also operated by Australia—is undergoing certain maintenance in Australia for the first time.

“The cost of running defense equipment, even for the United States, it is getting more expensive,” Mr. Conroy said. “Where you could increase economies of scale by cooperating together, that’s important.”

The U.S., Japan and South Korea conducting a trilateral exercise in the Sea of Japan last month.

PHOTO: JAPANESE MINISTRY OF DEFENSE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

China has criticized the move to further integrate the U.S. and Australian militaries. The Chinese state-run newspaper Global Times said that would result in Australia’s military becoming a “plug-in” of the U.S. Australian officials say they will retain sovereignty over their military.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the U.S.-led military alliance with countries from Europe and North America, has an agency that focuses on standardizing equipment and procedures among member nations to improve interoperability. A broad alliance like that is unlikely in the Pacific, but a similar standardization framework could be useful, said Mick Ryan, a retired major general in the Australian Army.

Interoperability “hasn’t always been done at the scale it is being done now,” said Maj. Gen. Ryan, who is also an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. “Over the last decade or so, we’ve really stepped it up across more functions.”

An Australian air force F-35A jet fighter, manufactured by Lockheed Martin, taking off last month during an air show in Australia.

PHOTO: CARLA GOTTGENS/BLOOMBERG NEWS

—Alastair Gale and Dasl Yoon contributed to this article.

Write to Mike Cherney at mike.cherney@wsj.com

4. Russia continues to suffer extremely heavy losses in Ukraine - UK intelligence

Russia continues to suffer extremely heavy losses in Ukraine - UK intelligence

ukrinform.net

According to Ukrinform, the UK Defense Ministry said this in its latest intelligence update published on Twitter.

"As Russia continues to suffer extremely heavy casualties, the impact varies dramatically across Russia's regions. In proportion to the size of their population, the richest cities of Moscow and St Petersburg have been left relatively unscathed. This is especially true for the families of the country's elite," the ministry said.

It added that on February 21, Russian senior officials were photographed making up the front two rows of the audience of President Putin's state of the nation speech. None of these are known to have children serving in the military.

"In many of the Eastern regions, deaths are likely running, as a percentage of population, at a rate 30+ times higher than in Moscow. In places, ethnic minorities take the biggest hit; in Astrakhan some 75% of casualties come from the minority Kazakh and Tartar populations," the intelligence update said.

According to the UK Defense Ministry, as the Russian Defense Ministry seeks to address its continued deficit of combat personnel, insulating the better-off and more influential elements of Russian society will highly likely remain a major consideration.

From February 24, 2022 to March 12, 2023, Ukrainian forces eliminated about 159,900 Russian soldiers, including 1,090 over the past day alone.

ukrinform.net

5. Chinese Military Pushes For Wartime Law Amid Tension Over Taiwan: Report

A number of different initiatives touted by a number of generals.

Excerpts:

PLA deputy Wu Xihua, who was among those pushing for wartime legislation, said China should step up law-making for the military.

Ye Dabin, another PLA deputy, said: "Taking our wartime needs into account, (we should) begin studying wartime legislation in a timely and systematic manner," the Post report said.

Zhang Like, commander of the Shandong Provincial Military District, suggested that China should push for the "introduction of laws such as the mobilisation of reserve forces".

Other deputies called for legislative changes related to the PLA's overseas operations, which have expanded in recent years and include the establishment of a military base in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa and naval escort missions in the Gulf of Aden and waters off Somalia.

Yuan Yubai, a former commander of the Southern Theatre Command, said Beijing should strengthen legal research and study international laws related to national defence to improve "the rationality and legitimacy" of the Chinese military's overseas missions.

Their comments come amid heightened tensions over the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.

China views Taiwan as a breakaway province which will one day unite with it. Beijing has not ruled out the possible use of force to reunify the self-ruled island with the mainland.

US military and intelligence officials have warned there could be a conflict over Taiwan as early as 2027, the Post reported.

Chinese Military Pushes For Wartime Law Amid Tension Over Taiwan: Report

The deputies of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) in the National People's Congress (NPC), China's legislature, during its current session, called for an urgent need for such legislation.

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/chinese-military-pushes-for-wartime-law-amid-tension-over-taiwan-report-3852403

Beijing:

The Chinese military is pushing the government to introduce wartime legislation to defend the country's sovereignty and national interests with force if needed amid the growing tensions over Taiwan with the US, a media report here said on Saturday.

The deputies of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) in the National People's Congress (NPC), China's legislature, during its current session, called for an urgent need for such legislation, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post newspaper reported.

The ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) has a substantial number of PLA deputies in the NPC, regarded as the rubber stamp Parliament for its routine approvals of the party's proposals.

PLA deputy Wu Xihua, who was among those pushing for wartime legislation, said China should step up law-making for the military.

Ye Dabin, another PLA deputy, said: "Taking our wartime needs into account, (we should) begin studying wartime legislation in a timely and systematic manner," the Post report said.

Zhang Like, commander of the Shandong Provincial Military District, suggested that China should push for the "introduction of laws such as the mobilisation of reserve forces".

Other deputies called for legislative changes related to the PLA's overseas operations, which have expanded in recent years and include the establishment of a military base in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa and naval escort missions in the Gulf of Aden and waters off Somalia.

Yuan Yubai, a former commander of the Southern Theatre Command, said Beijing should strengthen legal research and study international laws related to national defence to improve "the rationality and legitimacy" of the Chinese military's overseas missions.

Their comments come amid heightened tensions over the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.

China views Taiwan as a breakaway province which will one day unite with it. Beijing has not ruled out the possible use of force to reunify the self-ruled island with the mainland.

US military and intelligence officials have warned there could be a conflict over Taiwan as early as 2027, the Post reported.

Beijing claims that the US is using Taiwan as a "pawn" to undermine China's rise, and will continue to take stronger measures to push back against perceived increases in support for Taiwan.

Xie Dan, a military law expert in Beijing, said Taiwan was a key factor behind the calls for wartime legislation.

"In recent years, 'Taiwan independence' forces have become rampant, seriously threatening (China's) national sovereignty and territorial integrity," Xie told the daily.

"The Anti-Secession Law clearly stipulates the conditions for unifying the motherland in a non-peaceful way. But the situation...is more acute," he said, adding that China faced greater geopolitical risks.

"The tasks of national defence and military construction in the new era, especially preparations for military struggles, have become more critical and urgent, so there are these calls to establish and improve the country's wartime legal system," Xie said.

"The most urgent need for wartime legislation at present is to adapt to the needs of hi-tech warfare, and further strengthen the mobilisation of reserve forces, requisitioning of strategic resources and integration of military and civilian development." China has in recent years accelerated lawmaking related to the military, including amending both the Military Service Law and National Defence Law to enhance supervision along the borders.

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Last month, Chinese lawmakers approved a resolution that gives the military the power to change how it applies the Criminal Procedure Law during wartime, the Post quoted an NPC saying that the decision was made to safeguard military missions and "improve (the PLA's) ability to win in combat".

Opinion Skeptical of the lab leak theory? Here’s why you should take it seriously.

By Robert Wright

March 9, 2023 at 7:00 a.m. EST

The Washington Post · by Robert Wright · March 9, 2023

Robert Wright, whose books include “The Moral Animal” and “Nonzero,” publishes the Nonzero Newsletter and hosts the Nonzero podcast.

It is understandable that many Americans on Team Blue are deeply skeptical, if not completely dismissive, of the lab-leak hypothesis.

The idea that the covid-19 virus escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China — and, in most versions of the story, had been genetically engineered there — got much of its initial impetus from not-very-reality-based Trumpists, such as the famously inventive Stephen K. Bannon. And the hypothesis fit suspiciously well into their long-standing agenda of demonizing China. Peter Navarro, who served as an adviser to President Donald Trump, went so far as to suggest that the Chinese had developed covid as a bioweapon.

One place Navarro made that suggestion was on Bannon’s podcast, where commercial breaks were ushered in with snippets of a song called “Take Down the CCP” — written by Guo Wengui, the Bannon-backing billionaire Chinese exile who seeks regime change in Beijing (where he is under indictment for bribery and fraud among other things).

So, yes, there is reason to doubt the lab-leak hypothesis. But, strangely, this particular reason — the ideological motivation that helped propel it to prominence — is also a reason that left-of-center Americans need to take the hypothesis seriously.

The lab-leak scenario is having a day in the sun — both because of last month’s report that the Energy Department has weighed in on its side and because House Republicans are holding hearings that will give it airtime. This will naturally lead to discussions about how to prevent future lab disasters, especially ones involving genetically altered pathogens. And if far-right Chinaphobes dominate that discussion — because they’re the ones taking the lab-leak scenario seriously enough to dwell on its implications — then the policy discourse will be skewed in their direction.

We got a glimpse of this direction when Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) greeted the Energy Department’s report by tweeting that “what matters is holding the Chinese Communist Party accountable so this doesn’t happen again.”

The problem isn’t just that Cotton’s prescription isn’t an especially sophisticated response to the challenge highlighted by the lab-leak scenario. The problem is that it’s in a way the opposite of a sophisticated response.

For decades, we’ve seen the proliferation — at home and abroad — of increasingly powerful biomedical technology. More and more labs, in more and more countries, are places where well-meaning research could go catastrophically awry. And that emphatically includes the “gain-of-function” research that might have taken place in Wuhan — genetic engineering that adds potentially dangerous functionality to a pathogen so scientists can assess future threats.

Given that pathogens don’t respect national borders, an effective response to this challenge will have to come under the rubric of “global governance.” It will have to involve, for example, agreement among nations to make their labs more transparent and international collaboration on a monitoring system that ensures that transparency.

Global governance is something the Cottons and Bannons of the world don’t generally like and something that is undermined by the antagonistic policies toward China that they favor. The quest for wise and effective biotechnology policy is, among other things, a struggle against hardcore nationalists, and right now they have the floor pretty much to themselves.

Strictly speaking, you don’t have to take the lab-leak hypothesis seriously to engage in debate over its policy implications. Even if we knew for sure that covid arose through “natural spillover” — that it went straight from a bat or some other animal to humans — the fact would remain that some sort of massively lethal lab leak is a looming and expanding threat. So is the development of a genetically engineered bioweapon, whether by a national government or a nonstate actor.

So, you could, in principle, dismiss the Wuhan lab-leak possibility while still considering it urgent to craft policies that address the threat of new pathogens arising in laboratories — urgent to enter the Tom Cotton discourse and try to elevate its quality. But some Americans who are susceptible to the senator’s simplistic takeaway won’t be open to an alternative view if it’s espoused by someone who dismisses the premise they share with Cotton — that some kind of lab leak probably happened in Wuhan.

To put it another way: This is a rare and possibly momentous teaching opportunity. Regardless of what happened at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the possibility that there was a globally consequential mishap has raised interest in the subject of biosafety. And turning that interest into illumination will be easier if we take that possibility seriously. Doing the opposite — casually rejecting the lab-leak scenario as if it were a fringe conspiracy theory — will just make it easier for the Tom Cottons of the world to keep the illumination low.

I’m not recommending that people on Team Blue, in order to seize this teaching moment, disingenuously claim to share some of Cotton’s premises.

I’m suggesting that people who still reflexively dismiss the lab leak possibility take a look at the evidence. I think they’ll find that (1) there’s no way of knowing for sure what happened in Wuhan; but (2) lab leak is a possibility. Or just consider the fact that two of the six U.S. agencies that have reached a verdict on the question — the Energy Department and the FBI — consider lab leak more likely than natural spillover. And the CIA considers the arguments on both sides strong enough to have withheld judgment.

If embracing the possibility of lab leak is uncomfortable, believe me, I feel your pain. I initially dismissed the lab-leak scenario as a concoction of my ideological adversaries, and if there’s one thing I find more unpleasant than admitting I might have been wrong, it’s admitting that Bannon and Cotton might have been right.

But I find consolation in this underappreciated fact: There’s a tension within the worldview of Bannon and Cotton that can, in a sense, be used against them.

On the one hand, they like to depict the lab-leak scenario as an indictment of the sneaky and perfidious Chinese. But they and many other Republicans also see possible Western complicity. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has lambasted Anthony S. Fauci, former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, for having funded research at Wuhan that, in Paul’s view (though not Fauci’s), qualifies as gain-of-function research. (No knowledgeable observer is suggesting that this particular research could have produced the covid virus.)

And then there’s the EcoHealth Alliance — an American nongovernmental organization that collaborated with the Wuhan lab on some past U.S.-funded research. One piece of evidence in support of the lab-leak scenario is that EcoHealth, in concert with the Wuhan lab and several other institutions, had in 2018 applied for a grant to insert a “cleavage site” into a SARS-related coronavirus. And the covid virus that emerged in late 2019 did feature such a cleavage site at the position envisioned in the grant proposal — a feature that made the virus more infectious.

The grant application was turned down (by the Pentagon’s research arm DARPA), but this doesn’t mean that all of the institutions that collaborated on it gave up their hopes of pursuing such research. And it doesn’t mean that no funder — government or private, American or foreign — wound up supporting such research.

Though including U.S. scientists and institutions on the list of lab-leak suspects may diffuse the nationalist right’s indictment of China — that’s part of the internal tension I was referring to — it still, in a way, fits cozily into their ideology. One big Trumpist theme, after all, is that an international network of shadowy elites makes decisions that hurt the common people.

Let’s face it: International networks of elites do bear watching. It’s possible that, as the covid hearings proceed, House Republicans will use their subpoena power to turn up evidence that’s embarrassing to Fauci or EcoHealth. But whether they do or not, that 2018 grant application is reason to think that both Wuhan and EcoHealth warrant more scrutiny than they were getting — that their research aspirations, however well intentioned, were too risky to stay under the radar.

And that’s the point: Whatever the truth about covid’s origins, the fact that a lab leak could have happened in Wuhan illuminates a regulatory challenge that is international in nature. Meeting that challenge would be hard in any event, but it’s made harder by the fact that the United States and China have been sliding into a Cold War. One thing that will make it even more difficult is if debate over that challenge is left to Cold War enthusiasts who are also global governance skeptics.

The Washington Post · by Robert Wright · March 9, 2023

7. Congress and split intelligence decisions

Excerpts:

Split decisions on crucial issues like the COVID origin and Havana Syndrome simply are not good enough. This is one of those moments when Congress’s constitutional powers come into play. This is when real oversight should occur. It has been done in the past with some success.

I was involved in the support of a two-year bi-partisan Congressional Committee, chaired by then-Senators and Vietnam vets John Kerry and John McCain, to resolve the POW-MIA issues left over from a war finished 15 years earlier.

We have seen the Senate and House Veterans Affairs Committees press ahead for a decade trying to get to the bottom of Gulf War Syndrome that still affects thousands of Veterans.

Whatever the political motivations, in my view, Congress seems to be moving ahead quickly — and justifiably — to do the same with COVID. It should do the same with Havana Syndrome.

Beyond the constitutional aspects of oversight, under any circumstances, Congress is not tied down to the same deep morass of analytic and internal political processes as the Executive; while it will always be dealing with some form of partisan politics, that’s at least in the open, versus behind the often closed doors of the Executive Branch.

In the final analysis, split intelligence decisions are not good enough for all those who have suffered and continue to do so. And they are certainly not good enough for American taxpayers who deserve better answers for their tax dollars.

Congress and split intelligence decisions

BY RONALD A. MARKS, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 03/12/23 9:30 AM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/3896072-congress-and-split-intelligence-decisions/

When I was a young man, I watched my hero, boxer Muhammad Ali, fight his way back from a politically imposed exile to the World Championship. Today’s history tends to overlook his losses and splits decisions with great fighters like Joe Fraser and Ken Norton. Split decisions are a painful part of a boxer’s life. It works that way in intelligence too. But, as with Ali, it should only be a part of the road to resolution.

In the past month, we’ve had two split decisions by the U.S. Intelligence Community — COVID origin at the Wuhan Lab and Havana Syndrome. Both have caused public outrage with wholesale rejection or simple reluctance to accept the most recent findings. Understandable. But answers still must be had.

The fog of intelligence analysis

It’s foggy out there in analysis land.

First of all, there is no such thing as 100 percent certainly in intelligence analysis. In my 40 years of professional experience, I have seen no single piece of data that — in a single flash — would produce the answer. With something as controversial and complex as COVID and Havana Syndrome, it gets even worse. Everyone and no one has an answer.

All analysis is the painstaking collection of information from various sources, with various access, with various axes to grind, and with various viewpoints. This foggy nature of analysis also causes its practitioners to be very (some would say overly) sensitive to what they conclude on a given topic. They write far more carefully than anyone will ever read it. In their caution and efforts at some form of precision, they use standardized hedge words like “likely” or “possibly.” It’s human nature. No one wants to be wrong. And sometimes, in layman’s terms, they simply don’t know. This is not something intelligence analysts want to admit. But, failure is an option.

And (no surprise) analysts themselves have different viewpoints. From where you stand is where you sit. That’s also enhanced by where you work. Energy Department analysts view life differently than their fellow intelligence community members at State. And it is the same around the board for all 18 members of the U.S. intelligence community.

Frankly, I was less than surprised that Energy has a different viewpoint on the origins of COVID and the Wuhan Lab than most other agencies. They relied on their sources and viewpoints and came up with an answer. It disagreed — and agreed — with other IC members.

To an experienced intelligence hand this is no surprise. To the rest of the normal world looking for an answer it’s a big surprise, viewed as either biased or unclear.

The judges of the IC delivered a split decision — with no resolution in sight.

The latest syndrome

In another split decision, Havana Syndrome is still yet to be resolved. It appears that the CIA and others have done an extensive and sympathetic job trying to sort through the hundreds of cases of Havana Syndrome — and, after long review, they have determined it was not caused by directed energy from a foreign power. But, still no definitive answer.

Again, to this experienced intelligence hand, it seems that after looking through as much evidence as possible, they simply can’t come to a conclusion. Less a split decision than a draw.

As someone who has been in the business for four decades, this is also a familiar story — controversial issues such as the apparent presence of POW’s in post-war Vietnam and the nettlesome, hard-to-pin-down Gulf War Syndrome. So let me suggest that before we stick a pin in Havana Syndrome and move on, we understand that we may not yet have all the facts.

And we don’t yet have the clarity of time and sorts of facts to make any final judgments. Both the POW issue and Gulf War Syndrome took decades to settle.

D.C. policymakers must be wary

First a warning — for a policy maker who needs to make a decision, there is another danger of reading intelligence analysis, especially on split decisions. First, you must always question the analytical underlying assumptions. Ceding only to the analytical written word is fraught with danger.

Let me remind you: In the 2003 Iraq-Saddam War, the IC kept asking what kind of WMD Saddam had — not whether he did. That misstep focused policy makers in a way to view evidence in one manner, ignoring or dismissing contrary evidence — of which there was plenty. You must be a wary consumer.

Another danger for Hill policy makers is accepting the analysis at face value because pressed by time — the “we got that off our plate” syndrome.

You have a ton of issues with which to deal, and no one likes dealing with hard, apparently unsolvable issues involving people who are suffering. There’s a temptation to think if you can provide a reason for the problem, great — you’re done. And those still complaining they were not heard – well here’s the report.

Don’t do it.

Time can make you a fool.

What next, Congress?

Split decisions on crucial issues like the COVID origin and Havana Syndrome simply are not good enough. This is one of those moments when Congress’s constitutional powers come into play. This is when real oversight should occur. It has been done in the past with some success.

I was involved in the support of a two-year bi-partisan Congressional Committee, chaired by then-Senators and Vietnam vets John Kerry and John McCain, to resolve the POW-MIA issues left over from a war finished 15 years earlier.

We have seen the Senate and House Veterans Affairs Committees press ahead for a decade trying to get to the bottom of Gulf War Syndrome that still affects thousands of Veterans.

Whatever the political motivations, in my view, Congress seems to be moving ahead quickly — and justifiably — to do the same with COVID. It should do the same with Havana Syndrome.

Beyond the constitutional aspects of oversight, under any circumstances, Congress is not tied down to the same deep morass of analytic and internal political processes as the Executive; while it will always be dealing with some form of partisan politics, that’s at least in the open, versus behind the often closed doors of the Executive Branch.

In the final analysis, split intelligence decisions are not good enough for all those who have suffered and continue to do so. And they are certainly not good enough for American taxpayers who deserve better answers for their tax dollars.

Ronald A. Marks is a former CIA officer who served as Senate liaison for five CIA Directors and intelligence counsel to two Senate Majority Leaders. He currently is a non-resident senior fellow at the Scowcroft Center at The Atlantic Council and visiting professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.

8. Russia has "plenty of surprises" left: U.S. spec ops veteran in Ukraine

Russia has "plenty of surprises" left: U.S. spec ops veteran in Ukraine

Newsweek · by David Brennan · March 10, 2023

Erik, a 26-year veteran of U.S. Army special forces, warned that Western policy makers must not underestimate the tenacity of Russians fighting in Ukraine.
Despite a year of sub-par performances, Moscow is pushing hard for fresh gains in the east and south of Ukraine, with its units reinforced by hundreds of thousands of mobilized reserves.
Russia is also seeking military assistance from Iran, North Korea and China.

Western policy makers must not underestimate Russian formations fighting in Ukraine, an American veteran training Kyiv's forces has said, despite a year of missteps by a military that was considered the second-most potent in the world and a leader in President Vladimir Putin considered by many to be a shrewd strategist.

Erik—who didn't wish to share his full name for security reasons—is a 26-year veteran of U.S. Army special forces who has been working in Ukraine over the past 12 months, training Ukrainian troops for front line combat. Previously working for the Mozart Group, Erik is now coordinating around 20 volunteers through the Ukraine Defense Support Group (UDSG).

Moscow's troops are currently pushing hard for fresh gains in the east and south of Ukraine, in what analysts and officials in Kyiv and the West have said constitutes Russia's spring offensive.

"You can never count the Russians out," Erik told Newsweek. "I've been dealing with the Russians since 1989. They have resiliency and tenacity. If you count them out, they will surprise you...I'm sure the Russians have plenty of little surprises left."

The Kremlin is reportedly expending large numbers of troops—and Wager Group mercenaries, most of whom are believed to be former conscripts—to make limited gains, particularly around the city of Bakhmut. But with some 300,000 mobilized troops coming onto the lines, Moscow has fresh manpower to wield.

A man wearing a military uniform with a Z letter, a tactical insignia of Russian troops in Ukraine, takes a photo at Red Square in front of St. Basil's Cathedral in central Moscow on February 13, 2023. Moscow is pushing hard for fresh gains in the east and south of Ukraine. ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP via Getty Images

Russia began its full-scale invasion with the ambition of capturing Kyiv and toppling the government in just a few days. But now Moscow is taking tens of thousands of casualties to surround—not yet even seize—a settlement that military experts say offers little strategic value.

The Russian game plan seems to be a long war, with incremental advances at the front combined with intense Russification—which Ukrainians say constitutes genocide—in occupied areas. Continued infrastructure strikes are intended to hollow out Ukraine's fighting capacity, while the Kremlin hopes war fatigue will fracture a unified Western response without which Kyiv couldn't continue.

While Russia seeks to stabilize and expand its battlefield control, Moscow is also looking abroad for help. "At the strategic scale, you cannot count out the assistance they're getting from the Iranians, and to a much lesser extent the North Koreans," Erik said. "And it's yet to be seen with the Chinese."

Putin dealt double blow as two of his closest allies turn on him

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said last month that while the war is not yet over, "Russia has lost; they've lost strategically, operationally and tactically."

But Kyiv still faces a tough fight to reclaim all of the territory occupied by Russia since 2014, Erik said. Ukrainian troops are now looking to absorb the Russian push and retaliate with their own spring offensive, supported by Western tanks and reserves. Erik and his UDSG colleagues are training Border Guard units, who will be among the fresh formations.

"The Russian army today is different compared to the Russian military of one year ago," Erik said. "They've lost a lot of capacity and capability. A lot of their trained officers were killed. They pulled out a lot of their trained cadre from throughout Russia, even in the east. They have fewer tanks, they have fewer aircraft."

"But they've also learned...you can't count them out at all and say they are no longer a force to be reckoned with."

Members of Ukraine's 10th Mountain Brigade prepare to fire 122mm artillery shells at Russian troops on March 2, 2023 in the Donetsk Region of eastern Ukraine. Moscow is pushing hard for fresh gains in the east and south of Ukraine. John Moore/Getty Images

The well-executed retreat from the occupied southern city of Kherson in September was an indication that Moscow and its commanders had learned lessons from the first seven months at war, Erik said. So too was Russia's stemming of Ukraine's counter-offensive in the northeast and its gradual—if costly—progress in the east.

Russian units, Erik said, are constantly probing to find Ukrainian weak points, and exploiting any gaps they find with punishing artillery fire and assault operations.

"They are thinking and learning, and you can see that with their operations now," Erik said. "This is a little bit more of a 'drip drip' to find out where the weak points are." He added: "They probe, probe, probe with high loss of life, and then they'll pull back. Then they'll probe again with high loss of life. But it's not like waves and waves."

"They've definitely learned," Erik added. Many Western observers overestimated Russia's military capability before its invasion of Ukraine. But Erik warned that the same observers must not now assume that the Russia threat is neutered. "The problem with the West is that we go to extremes," he said.

Newsweek contacted the Russian defense ministry by email to request comment.

Newsweek · by David Brennan · March 10, 2023

9. China’s Model of a New Diplomacy Scores a Win With Iran-Saudi Deal

I saw some write on social media: "China ADORES a vacuum." Did we create one in the Middle East?

China’s Model of a New Diplomacy Scores a Win With Iran-Saudi Deal

Mideast breakthrough is tangible evidence that Beijing is willing to leverage its influence in foreign disputes

https://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-saudi-deal-scores-a-win-for-chinas-model-of-a-new-diplomacy-bacba072?st=lt6zysdqgxa9d72

By James T. AreddyFollow

and Charles HutzlerFollow

Updated March 10, 2023 6:18 pm ET

News that China brokered a Mideast diplomatic breakthrough offered the most tangible evidence to date that Beijing is willing to leverage its global influence to help resolve foreign disputes.

In a statement issued along with China, rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran said Friday they agreed to re-establish diplomatic ties that were severed in 2016. To propel the agreement, China hosted an unannounced four-day negotiating session between the Middle East adversaries in Beijing, where the parties pushed an agreement over the finish line.

The surprise development puts Washington on notice that despite the U.S.’s historical role and military footprint in the Middle East, China is a rising economic and diplomatic force there, according to foreign-policy analysts. While Beijing has participated in past international talks—like efforts to compel both Iran and North Korea to halt their nuclear weapons programs—the latest deal added some substance to initiatives by Beijing that it says serve as a new model for conducting international relations.

China drew closer to the oil-rich Middle East as it emerged as the world’s No. 1 energy importer, but its role is now much larger.

While the U.S. remains the undisputed military power, aid provider and political influence across the region, China is the Middle East’s biggest trading partner with a fast-expanding role in investment and infrastructure construction.

“It used to be that the U.S. was the indispensable power,” said Tuvia Gering, an Israel-based academic and nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, who has written extensively on Beijing’s growing regional role. “Now China is an indispensable power in the Middle East—that’s a fact.”

Xi Jinping, who secured a third term as China’s president on Friday, has thrust himself into building relationships throughout the Middle East, including with Iran and Saudi Arabia. Mr. Xi has visited both nations and met each of their leaders in recent months, welcomed them into China-founded regional and security dialogues, and stood by them in the face of Western criticism, while endorsing big investments in their infrastructure construction.

China’s Xi Jinping, in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Friday, was awarded a third five-year term as president.

PHOTO: MARK SCHIEFELBEIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Since coming to power a decade ago, Mr. Xi has been trying to carve a role for China as a world power that behaves differently from the U.S., and offers an alternative in geopolitics for other countries. The effort has embraced a variety of slogans. “A shared future for mankind” was one early label; contributing “China’s wisdom” to global challenges was another.

Shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, Mr. Xi launched a new diplomatic push, the “Global Security Initiative,” which called for “indivisible security”—an attempt, foreign-affairs specialists said, to set China apart from the “collective security” that the U.S. alliance system is based on, and that Beijing fears is being mobilized to hem in its ambitions.

A notable plank of Mr. Xi’s vague security initiative described China as intent on “peacefully resolving differences and disputes between countries through dialogue and consultation, support all efforts conducive to the peaceful settlement of crises,” according to a recent analysis of the endeavor by Manoj Kewalramani, a China specialist at India think tank Takshashila Institution.

Beijing also stirred anticipation in the diplomatic community late last month by promoting a fresh effort toward ending Russia’s war in Ukraine. When its policy statement finally emerged, Western leaders panned it for stopping short of offering much of a path toward peace. Still, the 12-point document has gotten a better reception in many developing nations where Beijing’s influence is bigger and where the war’s impact on food supplies and rising prices has been strongly felt.

“Among other things, this suggests that it’s a mistake to dismiss China as a potential peacemaker in Ukraine, as we reflexively did,” said Chas Freeman, a retired U.S. ambassador who served in senior positions in both China and Saudi Arabia.

Iran and Saudi Arabia represent two sides of an often violent schism between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, an antagonism that reverberates throughout the Middle East. Like China, they share autocratic regimes that have testy relations with the U.S.—linkages Beijing has often highlighted by stressing that its brand of diplomacy doesn’t require Western-style democracy.

In one of Mr. Xi’s first post-pandemic visits outside China, he went to Saudi Arabia in December, followed by his welcome of Iran President Ebrahim Raisi to Beijing for two days last month, one of the first state visits he hosted this year.

China’s Xi Jinping with Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Salman Al Saud, in Riyadh last year during a state visit, in a photo from Xinhua News Agency.

PHOTO: XIE HUANCHI/XINHUA VIA ZUMA PRESS

China’s Xinhua news agency described the talks that concluded Friday as a “Beijing dialogue” and said it “has turned a new page in Saudi-Iranian relations.” Mr. Xi’s top international envoy, Wang Yi, said the engagement “also set an example for resolving conflicts and differences among countries through dialogue and consultation.”

Mr. Xi’s warmth toward Iran and Saudi Arabia has made it appear intent to undermine U.S. power, as has his enduring relationship with Russia, another energy supplier. On Friday, Mr. Wang appeared to take a swipe at the U.S. by saying the Saudi-Iran deal demonstrated how the two nations were “getting rid of external interference, and truly taking the future and destiny of the Middle East into their own hands,” though he didn’t specifically mention the U.S.

The U.S. looked past Beijing’s role in brokering the deal to focus on wider Middle East security. “This is not about China,” White House National Security Council Strategic Coordinator John Kirby told reporters Friday. “We support any effort to de-escalate tensions in the region. We think that’s in our interests, and it’s something that we worked on through our own effective combination of deterrence and diplomacy,” he said.

The Saudi-Iran agreement carries potential benefits for the U.S., not all to China’s advantage. A more stable Middle East could help ease regional conflicts in places like Yemen and allow Washington to divert more military firepower to Asia and the Pacific to deter Beijing and its muscle-flexing against Taiwan, the Philippines and others in the region.

The real test of China’s triumph in the Iran-Saudi deal could be with any subsequent breakdown in ties between the two Mideast adversaries. “Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan,” Mr. Gering warned.

—Stephen Kalin contributed to this article.

Appeared in the March 11, 2023, print edition as 'China’s Model for a New Diplomacy Scores a Victory'.

10. Opinion: What to make of China's role in the handshake heard round the world

Opinion: What to make of China's role in the handshake heard round the world | CNN

CNN · by David A. Andelman · March 11, 2023

Editor’s Note: David A. Andelman, a contributor to CNN, twice winner of the Deadline Club Award, is a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, author of “A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy, and the History of Wars That Might Still Happen” and blogs at Andelman Unleashed. He formerly was a correspondent for The New York Times and CBS News in Europe and Asia. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.

CNN —

It was the handshake heard round the world. Indeed, the agreement between long-time foes Saudi Arabia and Iran to bury the hatchet and re-establish diplomatic relations after years of confrontation and religious hostility, must inevitably take a back seat to the venue and the peacemaker who brokered this landmark pact.

Suddenly, Chinese President Xi Jinping, in his first major initiative just hours after claiming an unprecedented third term in office, has shown his ability to play peacemaker for one of the most toxic relationships in a strategically critical and often unstable region. The mediator role is one that Xi has clearly lusted after for some time, most recently in his offer to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, viewed with the deepest skepticism by Ukraine and most of its western allies. Friday’s deal was an aggressive move by China, but it may pay off in spades.

China has secured its status as a close friend and reliable partner to two of the world’s leading oil producers. Iran is also prospectively the world’s newest nuclear-armed power, while the US has faithfully guaranteed Saudi Arabia’s security for generations. Until now.

Both are nations vital to China’s own strategic interests — particularly its need for reliable sources of oil as counterweights to Russian supplies that could prove increasingly problematic if the Ukraine conflict continues unabated. China has been importing oil at a pace of some 10 million barrels per day, according to official Chinese data in tons estimated in barrels by Reuters’ Asia Commodities and Energy Columnist Clyde Russell, a figure that is expected to surge this year as Covid lockdowns have lifted.

Last year, China purchased more Iranian crude oil than it did before a 2017 peak when there were no sanctions on Iranian oil exports, according to three tanker trackers monitored by Reuters. At the same time, China has found itself being forced to compete with rival India for cheap Russian crude oil. New, reliable sources from the Middle East could prove most attractive. In December, Xi paid his first visit to Saudi Arabia in nearly seven years and oil was at the top of the agenda.

TOPSHOT - Protesters brandishing a European Union flag brace as they are sprayed by a water canon during clashes with riot police near the Georgian parliament in Tbilisi on March 7, 2023. - Georgian police used tear gas and water cannon against protesters Tuesday as thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in the capital Tbilisi to oppose a controversial "foreign agents" bill. (Photo by AFP) (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)

AFP/Getty Images

Opinion: Georgia's ruling party is turning toward Moscow. Its people are not

At the same time, China has long lusted after a firm strategic foothold in the Middle East and Gulf regions. Five years ago, it pressured Djibouti into allowing a Chinese naval facility that dominates the entrance to the Red Sea to be built on its shore, just up the coast from the major American facility of Camp Lemonnier. But a toehold on the Middle East mainland has so far eluded it, as Russia has expanded its own military facilities with air and naval facilities in Syria.

But any number of questions remain. How likely, now, is Saudi normalization of relations with Israel? In search of such a gesture, the Saudis have been negotiating with Brett McGurk, the National Security Council’s coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, and Amos Hochstein, the top White House aide for global energy. In January, Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said that, given a recent discovery of indigenous uranium reserves, the Kingdom intended to advance its plans to develop a front-end nuclear fuel-cycle, and was seeking US input (potentially a first step toward a nuclear weapon). The Saudis have also been anxious to receive pledges to resume arms transfers that had been blocked over its human rights record and refusal to back Ukraine in its war with Russia, and for increased security guarantees. A rapprochement with Iran, despite its ambition of destroying the state of Israel and Israel’s intention of pulverizing any Iranian nuclear weapons program, could be seen as a more feasible or appealing course of action for the Saudis.

At the same time, the proxy civil war in Yemen rages on, where Saudi-backed government forces have fought for more than eight years to a debilitating and bloody standoff with Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. The United States has been especially anxious to bring a lasting end to hostilities. The first major initiative taken by President Joe Biden days after taking office was an announcement that Washington would no longer support the Saudi war effort there. Yet the war continued to grind on. This new China-brokered agreement is the first potential breakthrough for an end to hostilities — and without any American participation.

A winding down of American influence in the region has been clear for some time. Last July, Biden shared a much-publicized fist-bump with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, only to have it turned around as a slap in the face three months later when the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC+) announced it would be slashing oil production by 2 million barrels per day — engineered, by most accounts, by Saudi Arabia and Russia to keep oil prices high. With Friday’s announcement in Beijing, Saudi Arabia appears to have thrown in its lot ever more defiantly with China and its close friend Russia. Saudi Arabia has never condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, nor has Russia condemned the Saudi proxy war in Yemen.

So, what should be the American position in all this? Clearly, any end to the hostilities or even a truce between the two principal and virulently opposed religious currents in Islam — the Sunnis (the majority in Saudia Arabia) and Shiites (the majority in Iran) — should be welcome news.

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It should light a fire under Israel to restrain its more expansionist impulses and demonstrate a degree of good will toward the Palestinians —perhaps at this point the only action that could lure Saudi Arabia into a comparable arrangement with Israel, even brokered by the United States.

That Friday’s accord between Iran and Saudi Arabia was undertaken with the good offices of China is most disquieting but should not in any way distract from American efforts to contain China’s ambitious expansion. The big surprise is that China appears to have stepped in to fill the vacuum left by American vacillation in the Middle East. But on Monday, Biden is expected to announce a $100 billion deal with Great Britain to build a nuclear-powered submarine fleet for Australia — a vital step toward countering China’s increasing dominance of the seas in the Pacific.

With this agreement, the stakes have only intensified. China, as well as Saudi Arabia and Iran, appear intent on only expanding their reach and power in their respective regions, making containment an increasingly appropriate goal for the United States.

CNN · by David A. Andelman · March 11, 2023

11. Fewer Than 1/3 of Navy’s Amphibious Ships Are Ready to Deploy

The old maintenance and deployment adage is that it takes three to make one.

Fewer Than 1/3 of Navy’s Amphibious Ships Are Ready to Deploy

“We can’t live with that,” Marine commandant says after high-profile missions were delayed or scuttled.

defenseone.com · by Caitlin M. Kenney

The readiness of the Navy’s amphibious fleet is low—really low, the Marine commandant said.

“I woke up this morning, checked what's the readiness rate. It's 32 [percent]. We can't live with that. We can't live with a 32 percent readiness rate. And over the last decade it’s below 50” percent, Gen. David Berger said Thursday at a Capitol Hill event hosted by the Amphibious Warship Industrial Base Coalition, a lobby group for amphib builders.

The readiness rate is the proportion of ships that can deploy as part of a three-ship amphibious ready group, Maj. Joshua Larson, the commandant’s spokesman, told Defense One.

Over the past decade, the readiness rate of the amphibious fleet has averaged 46 percent, from a high of 55 percent in 2012 to the record low of 39 percent in 2015. It averaged 45 percent last year, Larson said.

The current 32-percent mark is just a “snapshot”—but if it doesn’t come up, 2023 will set a new record low.

Larson ascribed the low readiness to “ship maintenance.” The ships are maintained and operated by the Navy.

Over the past 13 months, the Marines have twice been unable to deploy to urgent missions. In February 2022, maintenance problems delayed an emergency response to the Ukraine invasion. And last month, the Corps lacked the ships it needed to send Marines to help earthquake victims in Turkey and Syria.

“It's not just the amphibious ships and you've heard the [chief of naval operations] talk about readiness,” Berger said. “We've got to improve that. Because if we can't have the readiness, we won't be ready to respond. And you heard about Turkey a couple of minutes ago...And that might be a humanitarian crisis like an earthquake, or a typhoon, or a conflict. Either way, the maintenance, the readiness, it’s a direct impact, because the sailors and Marines have to have that vessel to go.”

The operational availability of ships is “the biggest problem” for the Navy when it comes to readiness challenges for its fleet, Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said Thursday during Defense One’s State of the Navy event.

“You hear the submarine force talking about how you've got a large percentage of the submarine fleet on any given day that's in the shipyard, unable to get out on time,” Clark said. “You've got surface combatants that can't get into the shipyard on time or out on time, because of the lack of availability of dry docks. And then on top of that, you've got ships that are taking too long in maintenance periods because new ships are becoming increasingly complicated, and they're also finding that they're in worse condition.

Berger said the near-term answer is not to retire the dock landing ships, all of which are at least three decades old.

“We have to have the inventory not less than 31. To me, that's a combination of old and new. We cannot decommission a critical element without having the replacement in our hand. We can't do that. Or else back to risk,” Berger said. “So the decommissioning of the LSDs to me is directly tied to the inventory as fast as we can procure and field. Maintenance, readiness, as the CNO has said for four years, is a key factor here. The goal, the Navy’s goal, 80 percent readiness. We got a long way to go.”

defenseone.com · by Caitlin M. Kenney

12. IntelBrief: Glass Houses: U.S. Military Trainees and Destabilization of African Governments

Conclusion:

Yet despite these interventions, the Pentagon’s own reporting shows that extremist activity has surged almost entirely unabated in Africa over the past decade, particularly in the Sahel region and the Horn of Africa, especially Somalia. Last year, U.S. President Joe Biden returned around 450 U.S. troops to Somalia in what is meant to be a “persistent” presence in the country moving forward, reversing a decision by former president Donald Trump to withdraw most of the 700 U.S. troops that were stationed there at the time of his presidency. Under Trump, the United States placed more emphasis on conducting air strikes in the region than maintaining a “boots on the ground” presence, though critics say removing U.S. forces emboldened al-Shabaab forces in the country.

IntelBrief: Glass Houses: U.S. Military Trainees and Destabilization of African Governments - The Soufan Center

thesoufancenter.org · by Mohamed · March 10, 2023

March 10, 2023

AP Photo/Sam Mednick

Bottom Line Up Front

The United States provided training to several West African military officers who later went on to be involved in at least nine coup attempts in five countries since 2008.
Russia may integrate this narrative into overall efforts to undermine the U.S. campaign to convince African governments not to engage further with the Kremlin-linked private military company known as the Wagner Group.
Like many global powers, the United States has a history of involvement in engaging in the affairs of governments across the African continent, which can serve to further discredit future U.S. involvement.
Russian influence is increasing in sub-Saharan Africa while simultaneously, European countries are drawing down forces from peacekeeping and counterterrorism operations in Mali.

Since 2008, the United States has trained or funded the training of several African military officers who later went rogue, going on to lead at least nine coup attempts throughout five West African countries. According to a recent report by Rolling Stone, at least eight of these coup attempts succeeded. The new report comes as the Biden administration has grown increasingly aggressive in countering Kremlin-linked private military companies (PMCs) – particularly the Wagner Group – while raising the alarm with allies about their destabilizing influence and alleged war crimes on the continent.

These African military officers attempted to overthrow governments in Burkina Faso and Mali three times, respectively, and once each in Mauritania, Guinea, and the Gambia. The insurrectionists attended a variety of U.S. funded or supported training courses, ranging from military intelligence and special operations trainings to a counterterrorism course held on a U.S. airbase in Florida and an English-language course taught in the U.S. state of Georgia. U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) states it does not possess data to say how many of its trainees have been involved in subverting African governments, though it did release a statement after the recent September 2022 coup in Mali acknowledging that former Malian army-captain-turned-putschist Ibrahim Traoré had been a beneficiary of U.S. training.

Beyond the report’s demoralizing impact on Africans who want to see stability at a time when the is continent already suffering from issues like terrorist violence, civil war, and food insecurity, the news is likely to undermine U.S. efforts to portray itself and its allies as positive counterweights to Russian and Chinese influence on the continent. Moreover, Russia may integrate this narrative into overall efforts to undermine the U.S. campaign to convince African governments not to engage further with the Kremlin-linked private military company known as the Wagner Group. The U.S. government, not to mention many Western analysts, have made a point of publicly criticizing the Wagner Group as a threat to African stability and security, pointing to the PMC’s support of authoritarian rulers, alleged human rights abuses, and extraction of resources from a number of African states. This criticism has only grown louder following Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, where Wagner forces constitute a significant component of the Kremlin’s war machine. The PMC plays a role not only on the battlefields of Ukraine but also abroad, as it secures natural resource wealth from the African territories where it operates to help Russia skirt Western sanctions.

However, warnings of Wagner’s destabilizing impact may ring hollow for those who interpret the latest news as an indication that U.S. influence is similarly corrosive. It also seemingly adds to a long history of U.S. engagement throughout the Global South, particularly during its Cold War efforts to contain and counter the Soviet Union and the global communist movement. In Africa alone, the United States was involved in meddling in five countries (Egypt, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Angola, and Chad), variously seeking to secure its preferred leaders, support rebel forces, and at least once, actively engaging in the attempted assassination of a sitting prime minister. More recently, in 2011, a United States-led and UN-supported military intervention ousted Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi, producing a power vacuum that dragged the country into nearly a decade of civil war.

The United States is not the only Western power faced with the risk of receding influence or access on the continent. In the last year, the United Kingdom withdrew its troops from the UN’s peacekeeping mission to Mali, while Germany suspended its own participation in the program after the new Malian government refused to grant it overflight rights, announcing it would withdraw German troops from the country by May 2024. More recently, France drew down its own counterterrorism operation to Mali alongside Canada and several EU states per the demands of the country’s latest post-coup ruler and interim president, Colonel Assimi Goïta. Goïta, who previously worked with U.S. special forces focused on counterterrorism and participated in U.S. training exercises, had recalled France’s colonial legacy in the country to demand French forces leave Malian territory while also making room for Russian and Wagner personnel to enter the country in greater numbers.

In light of the many shortcomings associated with the Global War on Terror, the United States has more recently sought to reframe its counterterrorism missions in less stridently militaristic terms. Instead, policymakers have stressed the importance of addressing so-called “root causes” – the social, economic, and civil grievances that can lead civilians to join extremist groups and take up violence against their governments and communities. Nonetheless, the United States still has a substantial military footprint across Africa. While the U.S. military has been reticent to reveal the extent of its involvement on the continent, separate reports published by The Intercept and Yahoo! News and revealed the existence of 29 U.S. military bases in 15 countries and 39 active U.S. military operations across the continent as of 2019, with missions including surveillance, psychological and information operations, logistical support, training African security forces, and countering piracy and terrorism. Additionally, a former head of U.S. special operations in Africa, retired U.S. Army Brigadier General Don Bolduc, said that his forces had engaged in combat in 13 African countries in the four years he served with AFRICOM and the regional branch of the U.S. special forces.

Yet despite these interventions, the Pentagon’s own reporting shows that extremist activity has surged almost entirely unabated in Africa over the past decade, particularly in the Sahel region and the Horn of Africa, especially Somalia. Last year, U.S. President Joe Biden returned around 450 U.S. troops to Somalia in what is meant to be a “persistent” presence in the country moving forward, reversing a decision by former president Donald Trump to withdraw most of the 700 U.S. troops that were stationed there at the time of his presidency. Under Trump, the United States placed more emphasis on conducting air strikes in the region than maintaining a “boots on the ground” presence, though critics say removing U.S. forces emboldened al-Shabaab forces in the country.

thesoufancenter.org · by Mohamed · March 10, 2023

13. “Just Do It, No Delay”: Inside the Secret Mission to Evacuate an Injured Fox News Correspondent From Ukraine

What should not be lost on anyone is what lengths Americans, civilians or members of the military or other government agencies, will go to help fellow Americans (even members of the fourth estate! - note slight attempt at humor)

Seaspray - interesting choice for a "codename."

See the always accurate Wikipedia to learn about "Seaspray."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEASPRAY

"SEASPRAY was a joint U.S. Army special operations and CIA clandestine aviation unit.^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4] It was established in 1981, and now forms part of Delta Force."

Excerpts from the article below:

Griffin had already asked Seaspray for that location, and he told her he couldn’t give it to her. Not yet, anyway. “I told her, ‘Here’s the deal. They gave us this extraction platform and the only thing they asked in return was we don’t say anything about the location until they feel like they’re in a safe spot,’” Seaspray says. “The whole trip was supersecret and you’ve got world leaders on the train and they don’t want to be attacked. So I had everybody constantly hitting me up, Griffin, Kirby, asking, ‘Where do we put the helicopter?’ I just couldn’t tell them yet.”

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If anyone knew how frustrating that could be, it was Seaspray. He’d been on the other end of that conversation too many times to count. On pins and needles, having to wait, not knowing what you need to know. But he also knew that helicopters move fast, and U.S. military assets on the Polish side of the border could scramble to get into position on short notice. The U.S. Army’s Eighty-Second Airborne Division, which a year earlier had played a huge role in airlifting troops out of Afghanistan during the pullout, had moved over to the Polish town of Rzeszow, just sixty miles from the Ukrainian border. The Eighty-Second was in place and up and running, providing thousands of U.S. troops to help NATO with humanitarian missions and refugees streaming in from Ukraine.

“Just Do It, No Delay”: Inside the Secret Mission to Evacuate an Injured Fox News Correspondent From Ukraine

Fox News carefully coordinated with the Defense Department and a former special forces agent to get Benjamin Hall, who was gravely wounded in Russian shelling, safely across the Polish border, Hall recounts in his forthcoming book, Saved.

MARCH 10, 2023

Vanity Fair · by Condé Nast · March 10, 2023

On March 14, 2022, Fox News reporter Benjamin Hall was on assignment in Kyiv and reporting on the Russian invasion, when the car he was traveling in was struck by a Russian bomb. Gravely injured, he was rushed to a Ukrainian hospital, where the severity of his injuries made it clear he needed immediate evacuation out of the country. With the US military unable to set foot in the country to assist, an effort across multiple countries began to get Hall to safety. Jennifer Griffin, Fox News’ chief national security correspondent, was instrumental to the effort, connecting with her friend Sarah Verardo cofounder of Save Our Allies, an organization that helps extract people from warzones. Save Our Allies had someone in Poland who could help—a former special forces who had played a vital, unsung role in evacuating thousands from Afghanistan during the U.S. pullout in 2020. He went by the code name Seaspray.

After Jen Griffin connected Seaspray to Fox executives in New York, and got them to sign off on moving me, she turned her attention to Poland—specifically, who was going to pick me up at the border?

As soon as she got off the phone with Seaspray in Kyiv, Griffin sent an email to Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby, who was aboard a U.S. Air Force E-4B with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, on the way to NATO headquarters in Brussels. Now that I was on the move, and anywhere from ten to twenty hours from the border, Griffin needed Secretary Austin to authorize the U.S. military to set up a pickup point for me in Poland. Griffin knew the lay of the land in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

She’d been covering the War on Terror for a long time. She knew that the U.S. Army–operated Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany had treated the thousands of U.S. soldiers injured in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The medical center was staffed with elite doctors, surgeons, and staffers proficient in treating blast injuries and trauma. It was about 835 miles from the Polish border, or roughly a two-hour flight. It was the obvious place to take me, except for one thing: Landstuhl was only for members of the U.S. armed forces, military retirees, and family members.

Griffin would need to secure an exemption to have me admitted to Landstuhl as a non-military patient, and that meant getting approval from Secretary Austin. Her email to Kirby advised him that I was on my way to the border. She wanted to further update Kirby and Secretary Austin and was hoping to arrange a phone call. While she was walking outside with her earbuds in, trying to sneak in some exercise, her cell phone sounded.

“Can you accept a call from the office of the defense secretary?” an operator asked.

Kirby came on the line. Griffin succinctly filled him in on the details of the train trip and tried to convey the urgency of the situation. It’s go time, she said. We need to cut the bureaucracy. Minutes will matter.

Kirby had an obvious question—where along the three-hundred-mile border Poland shares with Ukraine was Seaspray going to hand me over?

Griffin had already asked Seaspray for that location, and he told her he couldn’t give it to her. Not yet, anyway. “I told her, ‘Here’s the deal. They gave us this extraction platform and the only thing they asked in return was we don’t say anything about the location until they feel like they’re in a safe spot,’” Seaspray says. “The whole trip was supersecret and you’ve got world leaders on the train and they don’t want to be attacked. So I had everybody constantly hitting me up, Griffin, Kirby, asking, ‘Where do we put the helicopter?’ I just couldn’t tell them yet.”

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If anyone knew how frustrating that could be, it was Seaspray. He’d been on the other end of that conversation too many times to count. On pins and needles, having to wait, not knowing what you need to know. But he also knew that helicopters move fast, and U.S. military assets on the Polish side of the border could scramble to get into position on short notice. The U.S. Army’s Eighty-Second Airborne Division, which a year earlier had played a huge role in airlifting troops out of Afghanistan during the pullout, had moved over to the Polish town of Rzeszow, just sixty miles from the Ukrainian border. The Eighty-Second was in place and up and running, providing thousands of U.S. troops to help NATO with humanitarian missions and refugees streaming in from Ukraine.

What’s more, the division was under the command of Major General Chris Donahue, the last U.S. soldier to board the final plane out of Afghanistan—and someone Griffin knew well. Seaspray was confident the Eighty-Second could have a helicopter at the border pickup spot with no more than thirty minutes’ notice. “They wanted to know the location twelve, eleven, ten hours out to have everything ready, and they weren’t very happy with me when I wouldn’t tell them,” Seaspray says. “Periodically they tried to get me to change my mind, but I held my ground.”

For several hours while we were on the prime minister’s train, as few as two people on our team knew the exact drop-off location. Seaspray was one of them. Dave in Krakow was another. Dave had been recruited for the mission by Sarah Verardo, who had close contacts inside the Department of Defense. In essence, Sarah got the military to deputize Dave, who was still on active duty, to serve as the liaison between the Department of Defense and Save Our Allies, Sarah’s organization. Dave had been contacted by Kirby, who told him, “If you need anything at all, the secretary wants you to know you have our full support.”

Yet Dave couldn’t divulge the exact location, either. For the longest time Sarah and Griffin and everyone else knew only that Seaspray had a secret capability, an access point, that he called “the extraction platform.” They would have to wait to find out any more than that.

Meanwhile, Griffin still had to secure Secretary Austin’s permission to not only use the U.S. military to pick me up, but also to get the military hospital in Landstuhl to accept me. Griffin understood how the military works, and she knew that securing permission like that could involve many, many layers of military bureaucracy, and, in normal situations, likely many days. But Griffin only had a few hours to pull it off. She would need an executive decision by Secretary Austin, the only one who could cut through all the red tape. She would also need Austin to make that decision while flying over the Atlantic on his way to a crucial NATO meeting about the worsening war in Ukraine.

'Top Gun: Maverick' is 'insidious' for portraying 'virtue' of U.S. military: MSNBC editor

Zeeshan Aleem called the film a 'poisonous kind of nostalgia' that 'smuggles love of endless war into a celebration of live action'

foxnews.com · by Gabriel Hays | Fox News

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Karine Jean-Pierre pressed on why Biden sent ‘Top Gun fighters’ to shoot down suspected weather balloons

President Biden has faced criticism for overreacting after facing Republican criticism for reacting too slowly to the Chinese spy balloon

MSNBC opinion editor Zeeshan Aleem recently condemned "Top Gun: Maverick" as the "most insidious movie" at the Oscars" because it shows the U.S. military as a "beacon of virtue."

Aleem trashed the "Best picture" nominee in a Saturday morning column for painting America’s military in a positive light, lamenting that the "literal propaganda," as he described it, is "poised to become canonized as a highly decorated film." The Academy Awards are on Sunday.

The action flick, which almost single-handedly recharged the dwindling film industry after the stagnation caused by COVID-19 lockdowns, has been nominated for six Oscars, including "Best Picture."

2023 OSCARS: TOM CRUISE RECEIVES OSCAR NOMINATION FOR ‘TOP GUN: MAVERICK’ AND WHAT ELSE TO KNOW

American actor Tom Cruise on the set of Top Gun, directed by Tony Scott. (Photo by Paramount Pictures/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images) (Photo by Paramount Pictures/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)

Aleem revealed he was not as pleased with the film as millions of American movie goers. Though he admitted it was "a breath of fresh air to see dazzling live-action aerial combat scenes involving real actors (trained to withstand G forces by real pilots) and (mostly) real planes," the columnist slammed it for being "as insidious as it is entertaining."

He declared it is insidious because of its overt pride for the American military, saying, "it also beckons for a return to accepting the American war machine as a beacon of virtue and excitement."

Aleem added, "It’s a poisonous kind of nostalgia, one that smuggles love of endless war into a celebration of live action."

The columnist reduced the film about patriotism, family, and U.S. resilience against unimaginably tough odds to "literal propaganda," pointing to the U.S. Defense Department’s contributions to the film.

He explained, "In exchange for access to military aircraft, the producers of the movie agreed to allow the Defense Department to include its own ‘key talking points’ in the script. Perhaps equally important, the script had to be written in a manner that flatters the military in order to secure the buy-in of the Pentagon."

HARRISON FORD 'SO HAPPY' FOR 'INDIANA JONES' CO-STAR KE HUY QUAN AFTER OSCAR NOMINATION: 'GREAT GUY'

Tom Cruise's sequel film "Top Gun: Maverick" was nominated for Best Motion Picture at the Golden Globes. (Skydance Media/Paramount Pictures)

As such, Aleem said, "This collaboration in jingoism is evident throughout the script."

Elsewhere in his column, he expressed hope that the film "tanks at the Oscars," adding, "It’s possible to make thrilling action without so brazenly priming the public for warfare."

Aleem then pointed to the top-secret aircraft featured at the outset of the film during a test flight, claiming this scene is proof "Maverick is also operating on behalf of more nefarious forces."

He says, "All we know is that the jet looks sleek and powerful. Yet there is a strange desperation to risk life and limb for it, as if a weapons program is a soldier that’s never meant to be left behind. Maverick embodies the American bipartisan spirit of forever increasing the U.S. colossal defense budget."

He then skewered the film over its main mission, to go and bomb a "a nuclear enrichment site which could very well be in Iran." Aleem called it a "a striking choice that betrays a bellicose worldview. It revives the neoconservative conception of preventive warfare — the idea of using force to eliminate threats to American power before they can emerge."

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He returned to a general critique of the film, saying, "War is portrayed purely as a source of glory and camaraderie for Maverick and his colleagues, who are all attractive people and manage to pull off their daring mission with zero casualties. Their training involves speed, sport and glamour."

He added, "Much of the movie has the feel of a racing or sports movie, gamifying the use of lethal technology and geopolitical intervention as a contest of precise oneupmanship."

Jerry Bruckheimer, Danny Ramirez, Glen Powell, Miles Teller, Tom Cruise, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Jay Ellis, Lewis Pullman, Greg Tarzan Davis and Joseph Kosinski attend the Royal Film Performance screening of "Top Gun: Maverick" in Leicester Square on May 19, 2022 in London, England. (Photo by David M. Benett/Dave Benett/WireImage) (Photo by David M. Benett/Dave Benett/WireImage)

Gabriel Hays is an associate editor for Fox News Digital.

foxnews.com · by Gabriel Hays | Fox News

15. SFABS ADJUST UNIQUE ROLE FOR LARGE-SCALE COMBAT

Why? Because large scale combat operations must always be the priority for the US Army.

This is where the SFABs could really make a great contribution - advising and assisting major combat formations of our friends, partners, and allies in large scale combat operations. They could be important force multipliers during LSCO.

During Desert Shield/Storm we employed most of the 5th Special Forces Group as coalition support teams advising and assisting the Saudis, Jordanians, Egyptians, and Syrians. I recall the scouring of units looking for SF personnel with tank and mechanized experience.

Hopefully now we will have SFABs with the requisite expertise (armor, artillery, mech infantry, and other fire, maneuver, C4I, and logistics capabilities) to advise and assist major combat formations).

SFABS ADJUST UNIQUE ROLE FOR LARGE-SCALE COMBAT

https://www.ausa.org/news/sfabs-adjust-unique-role-large-scale-combat

Photo by: U.S. Army/Maj. Jason Elmore

Fri, 03/10/2023 - 06:50

Marking a shift in their mission, the Army’s security force assistance brigades are training to operate with and advise partners and allies in large-scale combat operations.

First established in 2018, the scaled-down, specialized brigades were created to advise and assist foreign security forces while freeing up Army brigade combat teams to remain ready for and conduct combat operations.

As the Army ramps up its capabilities for large-scale combat operations, the special brigades, known as SFABs, are now conducting validation exercises to operate with partners and allies in a conflict environment.

The 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade completed a combat-oriented validation exercise in early February at Fort Benning, Georgia, where it has its headquarters. The 19-day exercise was to ensure the brigade’s soldiers could carry out their mission with foreign security forces during conflict.

Soldiers assigned to the 1st SFAB worked with role-players to rehearse advising and assisting during simulated large-scale combat operations in which they also were permitted to defend themselves by engaging an opposing force, according to brigade spokesman Maj. Jason Elmore.

“They’ll get about a year’s worth of training, and then they come to this final validation exercise,” Capt. Brian Dykeman, the lead planner for the exercise, said in an Army news release.

The February exercise is “very specific, because it’s the first time we have validated our teams to support in conflict,” Dykeman said. “Our advisers will be trained, whether they are supporting our partners through competition or a crisis situation.”

During the exercise, advisers from the SFAB helped the role-players plan military operations and accompanied them on scenario-driven missions throughout the Fort Benning training area, reacting to contact when needed.

The SFABs are organized like conventional brigades and manned by approximately 800 seasoned officers and NCOs of various branches and MOSs. The units are regionally aligned with combatant commands and deploy on six-month rotations to build relationships and provide security cooperation continuity with partner nations.

The 1st SFAB is aligned with U.S. Southern Command; the 2nd SFAB at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, is aligned with U.S. Africa Command; the 3rd SFAB at Fort Hood, Texas, is aligned with U.S. Central Command; the 4th SFAB at Fort Carson, Colorado, is aligned with U.S. European Command; and the 5th SFAB at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, is aligned with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

The sixth SFAB, known as the 54th SFAB, is a National Guard brigade with battalions in Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Texas.

Each brigade is slated to undergo validation exercises like the 1st SFAB between now and the end of the summer, according to Sgt. 1st Class Adrian Patoka, spokesman for the Security Force Assistance Command.

16. Anti-Russia guerrillas in Belarus take on 'two-headed enemy'

We live for resistance.

Anti-Russia guerrillas in Belarus take on 'two-headed enemy'

AP · by The Associated Press · March 10, 2023

After Russia invaded Ukraine, guerrillas from Belarus began carrying out acts of sabotage on their country’s railways, including blowing up track equipment to paralyze the rails that Russian forces used to get troops and weapons into Ukraine.

In the most recent sabotage to make international headlines, they attacked a Russian warplane parked just outside the Belarusian capital.

“Belarusians will not allow the Russians to freely use our territory for the war with Ukraine, and we want to force them to leave,” Anton, a retired Belarusian serviceman who joined a group of saboteurs, told The Associated Press in a phone interview.

“The Russians must understand on whose side the Belarusians are actually fighting,” he said, speaking on the condition that his last name be withheld for security reasons.

More than a year after Russia used the territory of its neighbor and ally to invade Ukraine, Belarus continues to host Russian troops, as well as warplanes, missiles and other weapons. The Belarusian opposition condemns the cooperation, and a guerrilla movement sprang up to disrupt the Kremlin’s operations, both on the ground and online. Meanwhile, Belarus’ authoritarian government is trying to crack down on saboteurs with threats of the death penalty and long prison terms.

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Activists say the rail attacks have forced the Russian military to abandon the use of trains to send troops and materiel to Ukraine.

The retired serviceman is a member of the Association of Security Forces of Belarus, or BYPOL, a guerrilla group founded amid mass political protests in Belarus in 2020. Its core is composed of former military members.

During the first year of the war, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko realized that getting involved in the conflict “will cost him a lot and will ignite dangerous processes inside Belarus,” said Anton Matolka, coordinator of the Belarusian military monitoring group Belaruski Hajun.

Last month, BYPOL claimed responsibility for a drone attack on a Russian warplane stationed near the Belarusian capital. The group said it used two armed drones to damage the Beriev A-50 parked at the Machulishchy Air Base near Minsk. Belarusian authorities have said they requested the early warning aircraft to monitor their border.

Lukashenko acknowledged the attack a week later, saying that the damage to the plane was insignificant, but admitting it had to be sent to Russia for repairs.

The iron-fisted leader also said the perpetrator of the attack was arrested along with more than 20 accomplices and that he has ties to Ukrainian security services.

Both BYPOL and Ukrainian authorities rejected allegations that Kyiv was involved. BYPOL leader Aliaksandr Azarau said the people who carried out the assault were able to leave Belarus safely.

“We are not familiar with the person Lukashenko talked about,” he said.

The attack on the plane, which Azarau said was used to help Russia locate Ukrainian air defense systems, was “an attempt to blind Russian military aviation in Belarus.”

He said the group is preparing other operations to free Belarus “from the Russian occupation” and to free Belarus from Lukashenko’s regime.

“We have a two-headed enemy these days,” said Azarau, who remains outside Belarus.

Former military officers in the BYPOL group work closely with the team of Belarus’ exiled opposition leader, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who ran against Lukashenko in the 2020 presidential election that was widely seen as rigged.

The disputed vote results handed him his sixth term in office and triggered the largest protests in the country’s history. In response, Lukashenko unleashed a brutal crackdown on demonstrators, accusing the opposition of plotting to overthrow the government. Tsikhanouskaya fled to Lithuania under pressure.

With the protests still simmering a year after the election, BYPOL created an underground network of anti-government activists dubbed Peramoha, or Victory. According to Azarau, the network has some 200,000 participants, two-thirds of them in Belarus.

“Lukashenko has something to be afraid of,” Azarau said.

Belarusian guerrillas say they have already carried out 17 major acts of sabotage on railways. The first took place just two days after Russian troops rolled into Ukraine.

A month later, then-Ukrainian railways head Oleksandr Kamyshin said there “was no longer any railway traffic between Ukraine and Belarus,” and thanked Belarusian guerrillas for it.

Another group of guerrillas operates in cyberspace. Their coordinator, Yuliana Shametavets, said some 70 Belarusian IT specialists are hacking into Russian government databases and attacking websites of Russian and Belarusian state institutions.

“The future of Belarus depends directly on the military success of Ukraine,” Shametavets said. “We’re trying to contribute to Ukraine’s victory as best we can.”

Last month, the cyberguerrillas reported hacking a subsidiary of Russia’s state media watchdog, Roskomnadzor. They said they were able to penetrate the subsidiary’s inner network, download more than two terabytes of documents and emails, and share data showing how Russian authorities censor information about the war in Ukraine.

They also hacked into Belarus’ state database containing information about border crossings and are now preparing a report on Ukrainian citizens who were recruited by Russia and went to meet with their handlers in Belarus.

In addition, the cyberguerrillas help vet Belarusians who volunteer to join the Kastus Kalinouski regiment that fights alongside Kyiv’s forces. Shametovets said they were able to identify four security operatives among the applicants.

Belarusian authorities have unleashed a crackdown on guerrillas.

Last May, Lukashenko signed off on introducing the death penalty for attempted terrorist acts. Last month, the Belarusian parliament also adopted the death penalty as punishment for high treason. Lukashenko signed the measure Thursday.

“Belarusian authorities are seriously scared by the scale of the guerrilla movement inside the country and don’t know what to do with it, so they chose harsh repressions, intimidation and fear as the main tool,” said Pavel Sapelka of the Viasna human rights group.

Dozens have been arrested, while many others have fled the country.

Siarhei Vaitsekhovich runs a Telegram blog where he regularly posts about Russian drills in Belarus and the deployment of Russian military equipment and troops to the country. He had to leave Belarus after authorities began investigating him on charges of treason and forming an extremist group.

Vaitsekhovich said his 15-year-old brother was recently detained in an effort to pressure him to take the blog down and cooperate with the security services.

The Russian Federal Security Service “is very unhappy with the fact that information about movements of Russian military equipment spills out into public domain,” Vaitsekhovich said.

According to Viasna, over the past 12 months at least 1,575 Belarusians have been detained for their anti-war stance, and 56 have been convicted on various charges and sentenced to prison terms ranging from a year to 23 years.

Anton says he understands the risks. On one of the railway attacks he worked with three associates who were each sentenced in November to more than 20 years in prison.

“It is hard to say who is in a more difficult position — a Ukrainian in a trench or a Belarusian on a stakeout,” he said.

AP · by The Associated Press · March 10, 2023

17. Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline?

Really? Do we really think the US could get away with this?

I would almost guarantee that if it was the US much more credible journalists than Hersh and Scahill would have already exposed it. I will guarantee that every major news organization in the US has been (and may still be) investigating this. Maybe US OPSEC is really that could or sufficient plausible deniability has been maintained but I think if the US did it it would be exposed by credible journalists and news organizations.

Excerpts:

Or maybe it was the United States all along?

President Biden warned, amid Russia’s buildup on the Ukrainian border in early February of last year, that “If Russia invades… again, then there will be longer Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” Some have interpreted that statement as a kind of advance admission of guilt, like American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who last month self-published a report on his Substack alleging the U.S. had conducted a covert strike on the pipelines. Hersh’s supposed bombshell, which was quickly endorsed by Kremlin officials and Russian state media, primarily relied on what appeared to be a single unnamed source who Hersh wrote had “direct knowledge of the operational planning” for the sabotage. The White House has rejected his post as “complete fiction,” and some members of the OSINT community have detailed numerous holes in Hersh’s assertions.

The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill has offered a more open-minded reading of the allegations, noting that Hersh may have screwed up the facts, but not the premise. Scahill also points out the U.S. has authorized, then lied about, numerous covert actions throughout its history, and that recent disclosures to the media about intelligence pointing toward Ukrainian partisans may be an example of “narrative washing.” At this point, however, there is no evidence linking the U.S. to the sabotage.

UNSOLVED MYSTERIES MAR. 11, 2023

Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline?

New clues are surfacing, but this geopolitical true crime has yet to be solved.

By Chas Danner, associate editor at Intelligencer

New York Magazine · by Chas Danner · March 11, 2023

Photo: Danish Defence

On September 26, a series of deep-sea explosions rocked the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipelines along the bottom of the Baltic Sea, near the Danish island of Bornholm. The bombings severed three of the Nord Stream projects’ four underwater pipelines, which were built to transport a direct supply of natural gas from Russia to customers in Western Europe — though neither were in operation at the time of the bombing thanks to tensions over the war in Ukraine. Nearly six months later, multiple countries continue to conduct their own investigations into the sabotage, but the mystery of who targeted the pipelines remains unsolved. Recent reporting, however, suggests investigators may be hot on the trail of the saboteurs. Below is what we know about the latest developments and prime suspects.

Was it some pro-Ukraine group?

This week, the New York Times reported that U.S. officials have recently seen new intelligence suggesting that a pro-Ukraine, but not necessarily Ukraine-backed, group was behind the sabotage. According to the Times, the unnamed U.S. officials who have reviewed the intelligence said that the group was likely made up of Ukrainian and/or Russian nationals who were opponents of Russian president Vladimir Putin, but there was no evidence of direct links between the saboteurs and Ukraine’s leadership. (Ukraine has repeatedly denied any involvement in the bombings.) The divers in the saboteur group were not currently working for military or intelligence services, but may have been trained by them in the past, according to the intelligence.

The Times also reported that “U.S. officials who have been briefed on the intelligence are divided about how much weight to put on the new information,” but that they are now more optimistic European and U.S. intelligence agencies will be able to get to the bottom of what happened.

A Washington Post report on the intelligence added that “A senior Western security official said governments investigating the bombings uncovered evidence that pro-Ukraine individuals or entities discussed the possibility of carrying out an attack on the Nord Stream pipelines before the explosions.”

Then there’s the German yacht theory.

The German newspaper Die Zeit reported Tuesday that German investigators believe a team of six people — five men and one woman — carried out the sabotage using a yacht hired by a Polish company owned by two Ukrainian citizens.

According to German media reports, the six as-of-yet unidentified alleged saboteurs — which investigators believe included a captain, two divers, two diving assistants, and a doctor — apparently used forged passports and embarked in the rented yacht on September 6 from the German port city of Rostock. The yacht in question, now identified by Der Spiegel as the 50-foot sailboat Andromeda, apparently docked at the German island of Rügen and the tiny Danish island Christiansø, which is very close to the site of the pipeline bombings.

Another very good find from our Discord (https://t.co/i7sSuFvWWd) -- 2018 photo of the Andromeda. This one has a great sense of scale of the actual size of the yacht.https://t.co/MFNcaxK8fm pic.twitter.com/npxfcifWHY

— Aric Toler (@AricToler) March 9, 2023

German prosecutors have confirmed that investigators searched a ship in January that they suspected of carrying explosives, but said they were still analyzing the evidence they seized. A senior government official told the Wall Street Journal that investigators found traces of explosives aboard the yacht. However, as the Journal reports, several large questions remain:

A key operational question investigators are looking into is whether the small boat could have carried the explosives and other supplies needed and whether the six people known to have been aboard would have been enough to carry out the attack, the German government official said. Another possibility is that the boat was part of a larger operation. They are also asking whether the mission was state-sponsored or a private effort, the official added.

German investigators also reportedly believe that the saboteurs may have transported their equipment to Rostock via a delivery truck. Investigators do not appear to have found any concrete evidence linking the yacht and its crew to the bombings, however, and German officials have publicly warned against forming conclusions based on these reports.

What about a false flag operation?

U.S. and German officials have continued to emphasize that it remains possible the sabotage was disguised to look like it was perpetrated by someone else. Ukrainian officials have stressed this possibility — naming Russia as the likely sponsor — as well, but no evidence has been put forward to support this theory. If it was a false flag, it’s conceivable any government could have been behind it.

Why not Russia?

After the sabotage, Poland and the Ukraine immediately fingered Russia as the culprit, and both the U.S. and other NATO allies speculated as much themselves. U.S. and European intelligence agencies have reportedly been unable to find any conclusive evidence of Russia’s involvement, however. It also remains unclear what Russia would have had to gain from disabling their own pipeline, which they helped build and had already shut off.

Or maybe it was the United States all along?

President Biden warned, amid Russia’s buildup on the Ukrainian border in early February of last year, that “If Russia invades… again, then there will be longer Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” Some have interpreted that statement as a kind of advance admission of guilt, like American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who last month self-published a report on his Substack alleging the U.S. had conducted a covert strike on the pipelines. Hersh’s supposed bombshell, which was quickly endorsed by Kremlin officials and Russian state media, primarily relied on what appeared to be a single unnamed source who Hersh wrote had “direct knowledge of the operational planning” for the sabotage. The White House has rejected his post as “complete fiction,” and some members of the OSINT community have detailed numerous holes in Hersh’s assertions.

The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill has offered a more open-minded reading of the allegations, noting that Hersh may have screwed up the facts, but not the premise. Scahill also points out the U.S. has authorized, then lied about, numerous covert actions throughout its history, and that recent disclosures to the media about intelligence pointing toward Ukrainian partisans may be an example of “narrative washing.” At this point, however, there is no evidence linking the U.S. to the sabotage.

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New York Magazine · by Chas Danner · March 11, 2023

18. Opinion | Who Benefits From Confrontation With China?

The NY Times wants us to make nice and play nice with China. How has that worked out with previous authoritarian regimes?

Excerpts:

The Biden administration’s continuation of Trump-era restrictions on trade with China, and its imposition of a host of new restrictions, is also a dubious strategy. Limiting competition is likely to yield some short-term benefits, but American economic growth in recent decades has been driven primarily by increased productivity in sectors that are exposed to global trade. Competition has been both painful and beneficial. The value of the major investments the federal government is making in infrastructure, research and technical education is significantly reduced by measures that limit the size of the market for American goods or that shelter American businesses from healthy foreign competition.

The confrontational turn also makes it harder for the United States and China to cooperate on addressing climate change and on other issues where national interests could plausibly align.

Much of the shift in China policy has been justified as necessary for national defense. National security considerations can provide a legitimate rationale for limiting some types of trade with China. But it can also provide a legitimizing vocabulary for protectionist measures that are not in the interest of Americans. In the long term, the best guarantee of American security has always been American prosperity and engagement with the rest of the world.

That’s true for China, too.

Opinion | Who Benefits From Confrontation With China?

The New York Times · by The Editorial Board · March 11, 2023

The Editorial Board

Who Benefits From Confrontation With China?

March 11, 2023

Credit...Rebecca Chew/The New York Times

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The editorial board is a group of Opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

America’s increasingly confrontational posture toward China is a significant shift in U.S. foreign policy that warrants greater scrutiny and debate.

For most of the past half-century, the United States sought to reshape China through economic and diplomatic engagement — or, in the case of the Trump administration, through economic and diplomatic disengagement. The Biden administration, by contrast, has shelved the idea that China can be changed in favor of the hope that it can be checked.

The White House has moved to limit economic ties with China, to limit China’s access to technology with military applications, to pull back from international institutions where the United States has long sought to engage China and to strengthen ties with China’s neighbors. In recent months, the United States has restricted semiconductor exports to China, and this week it moved ahead with plans to help Australia obtain nuclear submarines. The administration also is seeking to impose new restrictions on American investments in certain Chinese companies. In treating China as a growing threat to American interests, it is acting with broad support, including from leading Republicans, much of the military and foreign policy establishments, and a growing portion of the business community.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken provided the clearest articulation of the administration’s China policy in a speech last May at George Washington University. Dismissing engagement as a policy failure, Mr. Blinken said the United States had tried with little success to persuade or compel China to abide by American rules or the rules of international institutions. He described China as increasingly determined to impose its priorities on other nations. “China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do it,” he said. “Beijing’s vision would move us away from the universal values that have sustained so much of the world’s progress over the past 75 years.”

It is true that engagement with China has yielded less than its proponents hoped and prophesied. China’s embrace of capitalism has not proved to be a first step toward the liberalization of its society or political system. Indeed, China’s brand of state-sponsored capitalism has damaged the health of liberal democracy elsewhere. The United States rightly continues to press China’s leadership on issues where serious differences remain, including its repression of Uyghur Muslims and its disregard for intellectual property rights.

China also is demonstrating a greater willingness to engage in worrying provocations, mounting military displays in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait, and sailing a balloon over the United States. U.S. officials say China is considering military aid for Russia, a move that would deliberately escalate tensions with the United States in an arena where China has little to gain.

Yet the relationship between the United States and China, for all its problems, continues to deliver substantial economic benefits to the residents of both countries and to the rest of the world. Moreover, because the two nations are tied together by millions of normal and peaceful interactions every day, there is a substantial incentive to maintain those ties and a basis for working together on shared problems like climate change.

Americans’ interests are best served by emphasizing competition with China while minimizing confrontation. Glib invocations of the Cold War are misguided. It doesn’t take more than a glance to appreciate that this relationship is very different. Rather than try to trip the competition, America should focus on figuring out how to run faster, for example through increased investments in education and basic scientific research.

Chinese actions and rhetoric also need to be kept in perspective. By the standards of superpowers, China remains a homebody. Its foreign engagements, especially outside its immediate surroundings, remain primarily economic. China has been playing a much more active role in international affairs in recent years — a new agreement facilitated by China to re-establish relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia is the latest example — but China continues to show strikingly little interest in persuading other nations to adopt its social and political values.

There are also signs that China’s leaders are not united in supporting a more confrontational posture. It behooves the United States to reassure those who may be open to reassurance. America and China are struggling with many of the same challenges: how to ensure what President Xi Jinping has termed “common prosperity” in an age of income inequality; how to rein in the worst excesses of capitalism without losing its vital creative forces; how to care for an aging population and young people who want more out of life than work; how to slow the pace of climate change and to manage its disruptive impacts, including mass migration.

The core of America’s China strategy, building stronger relationships with our allies, is sound policy. Over time, the United States ought to seek a greater alignment between its economic interests and other national goals. The president’s budget proposal, released on Thursday, repeats some of the language from Mr. Blinken’s speech last year and proposes several billion dollars of foreign aid and investments to buttress U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific region. “We’re trying to make sure that we can outcompete them when it comes to hearts and minds around the globe,” said Shalanda Young, the director of the Office of Management and Budget.

But the United States should not pull back from forums where it has long engaged China.

For example, the World Trade Organization operates a court of appeals that was created to adjudicate trade disputes. The court, however, has not operated in over two years, since the most recently appointed judges completed their terms. New judges cannot be installed without the support of the United States, and the Biden administration has declined to provide that support. The United States has also pulled back from committees at the W.T.O. that write the rules of trade, according to Henry Gao, a professor at Singapore Management University and an expert on the organization. When Mr. Xi proposed in November 2021 to use the W.T.O. as a forum for establishing rules about state-owned enterprises, a key American goal, the United States didn’t show much interest, Mr. Gao said in an interview.

That is a mistake. The construction of a rules-based international order, in which America played the leading role, was one of the most important achievements of the 20th century. It cannot be preserved if the United States does not continue to participate in those institutions.

The Biden administration’s continuation of Trump-era restrictions on trade with China, and its imposition of a host of new restrictions, is also a dubious strategy. Limiting competition is likely to yield some short-term benefits, but American economic growth in recent decades has been driven primarily by increased productivity in sectors that are exposed to global trade. Competition has been both painful and beneficial. The value of the major investments the federal government is making in infrastructure, research and technical education is significantly reduced by measures that limit the size of the market for American goods or that shelter American businesses from healthy foreign competition.

The confrontational turn also makes it harder for the United States and China to cooperate on addressing climate change and on other issues where national interests could plausibly align.

Much of the shift in China policy has been justified as necessary for national defense. National security considerations can provide a legitimate rationale for limiting some types of trade with China. But it can also provide a legitimizing vocabulary for protectionist measures that are not in the interest of Americans. In the long term, the best guarantee of American security has always been American prosperity and engagement with the rest of the world.

That’s true for China, too.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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The New York Times · by The Editorial Board · March 11, 2023

19. China: EDCA expansion to 'seriously' harm Philippines' interest, regional stability

Will China practice its wolf diplomacy with the Philippines?

Excerpts:

While there have been no announcements as to where the new EDCA sites will be located, it has been reported that the US asked for access to bases in Isabela, Zambales and Cagayan facing north towards Taiwan, and on Palawan near the disputed Spratly Islands in the West Philippine Sea.

The Chinese Embassy also accused the US military of “[stirring] up trouble in the South China Sea and ganging up with its allies from other parts of the world to flex muscle.”

“By doing these, the U.S. has not only heightened tension, driven wedge between China and the Philippines, but also has disturbed and upset the joint effort of countries in this region to safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea,” it said.

China: EDCA expansion to 'seriously' harm Philippines' interest, regional stability

philstar.com

MANILA, Philippines — The Chinese Embassy in Manila on Sunday said the expansion of United States’ access to military bases in the Philippines will “seriously” endanger the country’s national interests and regional stability.

In a statement, the Chinese Embassy claimed that Washington was adding sites under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement “to secure its hegemony and selfish geopolitical interests and out of the cold-war mentality.”

“Whereas the US claims that such cooperation is intended to help the disaster relief efforts of the Philippines and some Americans even tout the EDCA sites as driver of local economy, it is plain and simple that those moves are part of the U.S. efforts to encircle and contain China through its military alliance with this country,” the embassy said.

“To bundle the Philippines into the chariots of geopolitical strife will seriously harm Philippine national interests and endanger regional peace and stability,” it added.

The embassy was responding to the remarks of US Ambassador to the Philippines MaryKay Carlson on EDCA in an interview with GMA Integrated News. In the interview, Carlson said she does not see EDCA sites as a “magnet” for Beijing’s “aggressive behavior.”

US State Department Undersecretary for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland said last week that local communities where four new EDCA sites will be located are being consulted, but she deferred to the Philippine government to announce where these sites will be.

While there have been no announcements as to where the new EDCA sites will be located, it has been reported that the US asked for access to bases in Isabela, Zambales and Cagayan facing north towards Taiwan, and on Palawan near the disputed Spratly Islands in the West Philippine Sea.

The Chinese Embassy also accused the US military of “[stirring] up trouble in the South China Sea and ganging up with its allies from other parts of the world to flex muscle.”

“By doing these, the U.S. has not only heightened tension, driven wedge between China and the Philippines, but also has disturbed and upset the joint effort of countries in this region to safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea,” it said.

A 2016 landmark arbitration ruling that invalidated Beijing’s expansive claims over a large part of the South China Sea, including the West Philippine Sea. China, however, does not recognize this decision. — Gaea Katreena Cabico with report from Xave Gregorio

20. Former top U.S. admiral cashes in on nuclear sub deal with Australia

I guess it is good work if you can get it.

One of the most prominent former officers is retired Vice Adm. William Hilarides, a career submariner who commanded the U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command until 2016. Since then, he has received consulting contracts from the Australian government worth $1.3 million, according to Australian defense officials.

He charges $4,000 per day for his consulting services, according to documents that the U.S. Navy recently released in response to The Post’s FOIA lawsuits. He has also worked for Fincantieri Marine Group, a Wisconsin shipyard company that is majority owned by the government of Italy. He did not respond to an email seeking comment.

...

Eccles also had a full-time job as the chief executive for Trident Maritime Systems, a shipbuilding advisory firm based in Arlington, Va. He charges between $1,500 and $2,000 per day for consulting services, according to documents he submitted to the U.S. Navy. He did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Another retired U.S. admiral, Kirkland Donald, resigned as a member of an Australian submarine advisory committee in April 2022 to avoid any conflicts of interest with his job as chairman of the board for Huntington Ingalls Industries, a shipbuilder based in Newport News, Va., that makes nuclear-powered submarines.

Donald, a retired four-star admiral, had received Australian consulting contracts worth approximately $1.5 million since 2017, according to Australian defense officials, though he resigned before he could be paid the full amount. In an email, Donald said he resigned “once it became evident the Australian government was shifting its focus away from conventional” submarines to nuclear vessels.

Former top U.S. admiral cashes in on nuclear sub deal with Australia

By Craig Whitlock and Nate Jones

March 7, 2023 at 7:00 a.m. EST

The Washington Post · by Craig Whitlock · March 7, 2023

In its quest to build nuclear-powered submarines, the government of Australia recently hired a little-known, one-person consulting firm from Virginia: Briny Deep.

Briny Deep, based in Alexandria, Va., received a $210,000 part-time contract in late November to advise Australian defense officials during their negotiations to acquire top-secret nuclear submarine technology from the United States and Britain, according to Australian contracting documents. U.S. public records show the company is owned by John M. Richardson, a retired four-star U.S. admiral and career submariner who headed the U.S. Navy from 2015 to 2019.

Richardson, who declined to comment, is the latest former U.S. Navy leader to cash in on the nuclear talks by working as a high-dollar consultant for the Australian government, a pattern that was revealed in a Washington Post investigation last year. His case brings to a dozen the number of retired officers and former civilian leaders from the U.S. Navy whom Australia has employed as advisers since the nuclear talks began in September 2021, documents show.

The former U.S. Navy officials are profiting from a web of sources with sometimes divergent interests. One retired U.S. admiral charges $4,000 per day to consult for the Australian government while simultaneously advising other foreign defense clients and collecting his U.S. military pension, according to records obtained by The Post under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

The overlapping arrangements cast doubt on whether the U.S. consultants can provide impartial advice and raise questions about whose interests they are representing, said Jordon Steele-John, a member of the Australian Senate whose Green Party opposes the nuclear talks and has been critical of the government’s dependence on American advisers. “If you’re on the payroll of a foreign government, your advice is by definition not independent,” he said.

Under federal law, retired U.S. military personnel must obtain approval from the Pentagon and the State Department before they can accept money or jobs from foreign powers that could compromise their sworn allegiance to the United States. The law applies to retirees — generally those who served at least 20 years in uniform — because they receive a U.S. pension and can be recalled to active duty.

For years, the armed forces and the State Department kept virtually all information about the practice a secret, including which countries employ the most retired U.S. service members and how much money is at stake. The Post had to file two FOIA lawsuits to compel the federal government to release details about individual cases. Since then, members of Congress have pressed the Defense and State departments to improve transparency and oversight for veterans who work for foreign powers.

Richardson asked the U.S. Navy for permission in June to work for Australia and his application was approved a month later, according to Sandra Gall, a Navy spokesperson. Records show that Richardson registered Briny Deep LLC at his home address in Virginia shortly after he retired from the Navy in 2019. The firm does not have a website and does not advertise its clients.

The Navy declined further comment on individual cases or the number of retired U.S. Navy personnel consulting for the Australian government. In addition to the 12 former U.S. Navy officials recently hired as nuclear and shipbuilding advisers, records obtained by The Post as part of its FOIA lawsuits show that Australia has hired at least 10 other retired U.S. Navy personnel to fill a variety of jobs since 2015, including a retired rear admiral, Stephen E. Johnson, who served as Australia’s deputy secretary of defense between 2017 and 2019.

The United States and Australia are close allies that have fought alongside each other in every major war of the past century. But their interests don’t always align, including on the proposed submarine deal.

The Biden administration announced in September 2021 that it had agreed in principle to a three-way deal with Britain to help Australia build a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines that could cost as much as $100 billion over the length of the program. The Australian subs are intended to complement U.S. and British sea power in Asia and serve as a deterrent to China’s fast-growing navy. Some active-duty U.S. Navy officers and key members of Congress, however, have cautioned that the arrangement could strain U.S. shipyards and delay the Pentagon’s plans to add subs to its own fleet.

The U.S., British and Australian governments are expected to unveil further details this month, including what kind of subs would be built and where. Because of backlogs in U.S. and British shipyards, analysts have predicted the subs might not become operational until 2040.

Australia is seeking to become the seventh country with nuclear subs, which have greater range and can stay submerged longer than diesel-electric boats. The Australian subs would carry conventional weapons, not nuclear warheads.

The country has little nuclear expertise — it doesn’t even have civilian nuclear-power plants — which is why it is relying so heavily on American naval consultants. Yet Australian officials have been vague about the roles its U.S. advisers are playing.

Vice Adm. Jonathan Mead, the chief of Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine task force, told an Australian parliamentary committee last month that Richardson had been hired to provide guidance “on stewardship — that is, how to safely and securely manage nuclear technology” and on the training of naval personnel. “When we have specific tasks, questions or complex problems which come our way that we don’t have the subject matter expertise for, we reach in for his assistance,” Mead said during a Feb. 15 hearing.

Before becoming the top officer in the U.S. Navy in 2015, Richardson oversaw its nuclear program — the biggest of its kind in the world — including more than 90 reactors aboard aircraft carriers and submarines.

Since his retirement from active duty, Richardson also has served on the board of directors for major companies in the defense and nuclear sectors, including Boeing, Constellation Energy and BWX Technologies. In 2021, he received more than $900,000 in compensation for his services on corporate boards, records show, plus a six-figure U.S. military pension.

Mead said the Australian government “sought legal advice” to ensure Richardson’s various jobs did not pose a conflict of interest and asked him to sign nondisclosure agreements. “We’ve been very careful to make sure his advice is very specific to the questions that remain within the guidelines,” Mead said.

Steele-John, the Australian senator, called Richardson and other American consultants “inherently biased” and said they were primarily representing U.S., not Australian, interests. “Our government has been paying them handsomely for their advice,” he said. But he added that the arrangement “calls into question” any collaboration between Australia and the United States on military matters.

In response to questions from Steele-John, Australian defense officials said a total of eight former U.S. Navy officers are advising them on nuclear and shipbuilding matters, including Richardson, two other admirals and five lower-ranking officers. In addition, three former U.S. Navy civilian leaders have been serving as consultants since the nuclear deal was announced in 2021.

One of the most prominent former officers is retired Vice Adm. William Hilarides, a career submariner who commanded the U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command until 2016. Since then, he has received consulting contracts from the Australian government worth $1.3 million, according to Australian defense officials.

He charges $4,000 per day for his consulting services, according to documents that the U.S. Navy recently released in response to The Post’s FOIA lawsuits. He has also worked for Fincantieri Marine Group, a Wisconsin shipyard company that is majority owned by the government of Italy. He did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Hilarides serves on Australia’s Naval Shipbuilding Expert Advisory Panel along with another American, retired Rear Adm. Thomas Eccles, a former chief engineer for ships and submarines for the U.S. Navy. Eccles had received consulting contracts worth about $820,000 since 2016, according to Australian defense officials.

Eccles also had a full-time job as the chief executive for Trident Maritime Systems, a shipbuilding advisory firm based in Arlington, Va. He charges between $1,500 and $2,000 per day for consulting services, according to documents he submitted to the U.S. Navy. He did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Another retired U.S. admiral, Kirkland Donald, resigned as a member of an Australian submarine advisory committee in April 2022 to avoid any conflicts of interest with his job as chairman of the board for Huntington Ingalls Industries, a shipbuilder based in Newport News, Va., that makes nuclear-powered submarines.

Donald, a retired four-star admiral, had received Australian consulting contracts worth approximately $1.5 million since 2017, according to Australian defense officials, though he resigned before he could be paid the full amount. In an email, Donald said he resigned “once it became evident the Australian government was shifting its focus away from conventional” submarines to nuclear vessels.

The Washington Post · by Craig Whitlock · March 7, 2023

21. Opinion | Don’t Let the Culture War Degrade the Constitution

We need to end the culture wars and cancel culture. and get back to our foundational principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (especially getting away from the pursuit of hatred which permeates all camps in the culture wars).

Opinion | Don’t Let the Culture War Degrade the Constitution

The New York Times · by David French · March 12, 2023

David French

Don’t Let the Culture War Degrade the Constitution

March 12, 2023, 6:00 a.m. ET

Credit...Scott P. Yates/The Roanoke Times, via Associated Press

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Opinion Columnist

The Constitution of the United States, properly interpreted, provides a marvelous method for handling social conflict. It empowers an elected government to enact even contentious new rules while protecting the most fundamental human rights of dissenting citizens. Political defeat is never total defeat. Losers of a given election still possess their basic civil liberties, and the combination of the right to speak and the right to vote provides them concrete hope for their preferred political outcomes.

But if a government both enacts contentious policies and diminishes the civil liberties of its current ideological opponents, then it sharply increases the stakes of political conflict. It breaks the social compact by rendering political losers, in effect, second-class citizens. A culture war waged against the civil liberties of your political opponents inflicts a double injury on dissenters: They don’t merely lose a vote; they also lose a share of their freedom.

That’s exactly what’s happening now. The culture war is coming for American liberty — in red states and blue alike. The examples are legion. Let’s start with America’s progressive strongholds. On Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that the State of California would not renew a multimillion-dollar contract with Walgreens — not because Walgreens had failed to comply with its contractual obligations but rather because it had responded to Republican legal warnings and decided not to dispense an abortion pill in 21 red states. Newsom used his political power to punish a corporate position he opposed.

Weeks earlier, a federal judge blocked enforcement of a new California law intended to combat medical misinformation, because the state’s definition of the term was so vague that it couldn’t survive First Amendment scrutiny. This ruling came on the heels of multiple adverse rulings against California at the Supreme Court. In 2018 the court struck down a California rule that required pro-life pregnancy centers to publish information about free or low-cost abortions. During the pandemic, the court repeatedly rejected California public health regulations that discriminated against religious worship. And in 2021 the court invalidated a mandatory donor disclosure law that violated court precedent that dates back to the civil rights era.

California is not alone in its efforts to suppress constitutionally protected rights. Late last month the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that New York’s so-called Boss Bill, which prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of their “reproductive health decision making,” may violate the expressive associational rights of pro-life organizations that require employees not to have abortions and to refrain from extramarital sex.

But no, I’m not letting red America off the hook. The educational culture wars are inspiring a host of educational gag orders across states that purport to block advocacy of disfavored ideas about race and gender. Many of those statutes are aimed at K-12 education, where the government has considerable control over teacher speech. But others are aimed at speech in public universities and private corporations, where states have much less control. Indeed, a federal court has already blocked enforcement of Florida’s so-called Stop WOKE Act to the extent that it limits free expression on public campuses and in private boardrooms.

Florida is one of the hot spots of right-wing censorship and punitive government. It passed an unconstitutional law to control social media moderation in the state, and Gov. Ron DeSantis took direct action against Disney after the company objected to Florida House Bill 1557, which tightly regulated “classroom instruction” on “sexual orientation or gender identity.” If the right is going to condemn Newsom’s action against Walgreens, shouldn’t it also oppose DeSantis’s attack on Disney?

Credit...Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich/EPA, via Shutterstock

It’s a sign of the times that the list above — from the left and the right — is woefully incomplete. Careful observers will be able to point to any number of additional culture-war-motivated statutes, regulations and government actions that take aim at the Bill of Rights.

State attacks on civil liberties are even affecting our most valued relationships: the bonds between parent and child. In January, The Times reported on how public schools sometimes withhold from parents information about a child’s gender transition, even in the absence of any evidence of parental abuse. California has enacted a statute that grants the state broad authority to permit children to receive “gender-affirming health care” there, even potentially over the objection of a custodial parent.

For example, Section 7 of the law states that California courts won’t weigh as a factor against a petitioner seeking California court jurisdiction if the person took a child “from the person who has legal custody” in order to obtain “gender-affirming health care” and that care is limited by the law or policy of another state.

And because every culture war action against civil liberties has its mirror image on the other side, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas issued a directive to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate as “abuse” both surgical and pharmaceutical interventions for transgender children, regardless of the good faith and desires of the parents, children and caregivers involved.

To understand the gravity of the state interference with parental authority, it’s worth remembering the words of Chief Justice Warren Burger in the 1972 case Wisconsin v. Yoder, in which he wrote that the “primary role of the parents in the upbringing of their children is now established beyond debate as an enduring American tradition.” To simply presume that parents are abusive because they may dissent from state consensus on transgender care is to violate this principle of American law.

In a nation as diverse as the United States, conflicts over values are inevitable, but our most basic civil liberties must remain inviolate. To govern otherwise both inflicts a grave injury on dissenting citizens and violates the letter and spirit of the Constitution itself. Our right to speak, much less to parent, should not be contingent on our ability to gain political control.

The much better course for our democracy is to uphold a legal corollary to the golden rule: Defend the rights of others that you would like to exercise yourself. It doesn’t end the culture war. We’ll still clash over contentious issues. But maintaining a bedrock defense of civil liberties lowers the stakes. Protecting individual freedom tells all Americans and all American families that the social compact holds and — win or lose on any given issue, regardless of how controversial — this country is still their home.

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The New York Times · by David French · March 12, 2023

22. Traute Lafrenz, Last Survivor of Anti-Hitler Group, Dies at 103

Resistance in all wars is worthy of study. We too often overlook this key element of the human domain. (if only we recognized the human domain).

Traute Lafrenz, Last Survivor of Anti-Hitler Group, Dies at 103

The New York Times · by Alan Cowell · March 10, 2023

As a member of the White Rose, a small anti-Nazi resistance group, she used peaceful tactics to try persuading Germans to turn against Hitler.

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Traute Lafrenz in 1942. She helped the group known as the White Rose gain access to ink, paper and envelopes to produce political leaflets that urged Germans to turn against the Nazis.

March 10, 2023

Traute Lafrenz, the last survivor of the White Rose, a resistance movement in Nazi Germany whose opposition to Adolf Hitler led to swift and ferocious Gestapo repression and the beheading of its leaders, died on Monday at her home in Meggett, S.C., near Charleston. She was 103.

Her son Michael Page confirmed the death.

The White Rose was short-lived and never counted more than a few dozen members, most of whom were young and idealistic. Ms. Lafrenz (who later in life went by the name Traute Lafrenz Page) carried political leaflets and helped the group gain access to ink, paper and envelopes to produce and disseminate its anti-Hitler tracts, and to urge Germans to turn against the Nazis.

But the response to its activities, peaceful as they were, seemed to betoken the profound intolerance displayed by the Third Reich to any hint of opposition among Germans, even as it pursued the extermination of European Jewry and what it called “total war” against its adversaries.

As the German Army faced crushing losses at Stalingrad in 1942 and 1943, the White Rose sensed mistakenly that military reverses would turn Germans against Hitler. The group’s fliers, quoting from Goethe, Schiller, Aristotle, Lao Tzu and the Bible, urged passive resistance and sabotage of the Nazi project.

“Isn’t it true that every honest German is ashamed of his government these days?” the first leaflet asked. “Who among us can imagine the degree of shame that will come upon us and upon our children when the veils fall from our faces and the awful crimes that infinitely exceed any human measure are exposed to the light of day?”

The second flier said that while the White Rose did not “wish to address the Jewish question in this leaflet,” the murder of 300,000 Jews since the invasion of Poland in 1939, “in the most bestial manner imaginable,” constituted “a terrible crime against the dignity of mankind, a crime that cannot be compared with any other in the history of mankind.”

A memorial for the White Rose in Munich in 2021.Credit...Lukas Barth-Tuttas/EPA, via Shutterstock

It added: “Perhaps someone will say the Jews deserve this fate. Saying this is in itself a colossal effrontery.”

“We will not keep silent,” the fourth of the group’s six published leaflets proclaimed. “We are your guilty conscience. The White Rose will not let you alone.”

More prosaically, it added, “Please duplicate and pass it along.”

Under cover of darkness, some members of the group also painted slogans like “Down with Hitler” on Munich’s thoroughfares.

Given the public mood in Germany after years of Nazi propaganda and the nation’s early successes in World War II, it might seem unlikely that a group of middle-class students with a liking for literary soirees and long walks could coalesce into a dissident group committed to the overthrow of one of history’s most dictatorial regimes.

Yet, by what seems to have been a series of chance encounters, their friendships and intellectual kinship turned into powerful bonds of resistance.

While Ms. Lafrenz was a medical student in Hamburg, she met Alexander Schmorell, a central player in the White Rose, who introduced her to the leaders of the group, the siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl, when she moved to Munich to continue her medical studies in the early 1940s.

Other leading players included Christoph Probst, Willi Graf and the group’s older mentor, Kurt Huber, a professor of philosophy who was committed to liberal democracy.

The Scholls and others had been members of youth groups organized by the Nazis. Some of the men in the White Rose were drafted as medics to the Russian front and, passing through Warsaw on the way, witnessed the far-flung horrors of Germany’s hunger for “Lebensraum,” or living space, and racial exclusivism.

The White Rose’s leaflets began appearing in the summer of 1942, but the project faltered in February 1943 with the arrest of Sophie and Hans Scholl, who were distributing fliers in a university building in Munich when Jakob Schmid, a janitor, spotted them and tipped off the Gestapo. Four days after their arrest, on Feb. 18, 1943, they were executed. Ms. Lafrenz attended her friends’ funeral, even though it was conducted under Gestapo surveillance.

Other members of the White Rose followed the grisly trail to execution; they were among an estimated 5,000 people beheaded under a revival of the use of the guillotine ordered by Hitler. The beheadings continued until January 1945.

Ms. Lafrenz, inevitably, was arrested in March 1943.

“I was aware that the Gestapo knew about my friendship with those who had already been murdered, so it didn’t take too long before I was arrested too,” Ms. Lafrenz was quoted as saying in an account of her activities by the Norwegian author and journalist Peter Normann Waage. (His book, published in English in 2018, was titled “Long Live Freedom!” — the final words of Hans Scholl just before the blade of the guillotine fell in 1943.)

Ms. Lafrenz spent the rest of the war either in prison, under investigation or trying to dodge the Nazis as the Allies pushed into Germany from the west and the east. But as late as April 1945, officials of the Nazis’ People’s Court continued their efforts to crush the last vestiges of resistance. Ms. Lafrenz and others were set to go on trial in the prison at Bayreuth, in southern Germany.

“They were at risk of the death penalty,” the Germany tabloid Bild Zeitung reported after interviewing Ms. Lafrenz in August 2018. But just days before the trial was scheduled to start — and weeks before the end of the war — the United States Army liberated the prison and she was saved.

Ms. Lafrenz with Franz Josef Müller, another former member of the White Rose, in Munich in 1996. They were reunited at an event marking the 75th anniversary of the birth of the group’s Sophie Scholl, who was executed in 1943.Credit...Karl-Heinz Egginger/SZ Photo

Traute Lafrenz was born on May 3, 1919, in Hamburg, the youngest of three daughters of Carl and Hermine Lafrenz. Her father was a civil servant, her mother a homemaker.

After World War II, Ms. Lafrenz completed her medical studies before emigrating to the United States, where she married Vernon Page, an eye doctor. They had four children. The family later moved to Chicago, where Ms. Lafrenz headed the Esperanza Therapeutic Day School for disadvantaged children. After her husband’s death in 1995, she moved to her daughter Renee’s ranch in South Carolina.

In addition to her son Michael, she is survived by another son, Thomas; two daughters, Renee Meyer and Kim Page; seven grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

For much of her life, Ms. Lafrenz was a follower of the theories of anthroposophy developed by the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner. She was a leading figure in the American anthroposophy movement.

Her awareness of Nazism dated to her early teens, when the Nazis sought to impose changes on the education system after Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. Those changes led to the dismissal of Erna Stahl, a respected teacher whom Ms. Lafrenz considered a major influence on her thinking.

She told Mr. Waage that she and Hans Scholl had been involved romantically in 1941. She also offered some insight into the origin of the name White Rose.

“Where Hans got that name I have no idea,” she said, “but I think he searched for something that would resonate,” and that would evoke medieval notions of “the pure, elevated and eternal love.” Above all, she added, “the name resonated, and that was the important thing.”

Mr. Scholl also seemed to suggest, she said, that “there was a widespread network of like-minded people” in the White Rose, and she was disappointed when she discovered that it had been far more modest in scope.

“There is a huge misconception that lingers,” Ms. Lafrenz said. “That is, that the White Rose was some kind of organization. This was not the case. It was just a group of friends who had connections to the Scholl siblings.”

Ms. Lafrenz was seen as instrumental in spreading the movement from Munich to Hamburg, carrying a leaflet back to her home city. But when she was interrogated later about White Rose activities in Hamburg, she soon realized that the group’s activities there had been betrayed by informers.

“Traute Lafrenz was not at the center of the White Rose,” Mr. Waage wrote. “She did not physically write any of the leaflets — but she did just about everything else. She helped lay the foundation for the revitalization of cultural heritage as a weapon against brutality; she helped make the distribution of the leaflets as practical as possible and helped to spread them.”

In the postwar era, Ms. Lafrenz remained stubbornly reticent about her activities. “I was a contemporary witness,” she told Bild Zeitung in 2018. “Given the fates of the others, I am not allowed to complain.” Her daughter Renee told the newspaper that she had not learned of her mother’s wartime struggle until 1970.

Indeed, it was only on Ms. Lafrenz’s 100th birthday, on May 3, 2019, that she was awarded Germany’s Order of Merit, a high civilian honor. The citation said she “belonged to the few who, in the face of the crimes of national socialism, had the courage to listen to the voice of her conscience and rebel against the dictatorship and the genocide of the Jews. She is a heroine of freedom and humanity.”

Lyna Bentahar contributed reporting.

The New York Times · by Alan Cowell · March 10, 2023

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

V/R

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow

Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Phone: 202-573-8647

Personal Email: d avid.maxwell161@gmail.com

Web Site: www.fdd.org

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

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FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

Access NSS HERE

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Traute Lafrenz, Last Survivor of Anti-Hitler Group, Dies at 103