Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

•Sam Sarkesian in Unconventional Conflicts in a New Security Era: Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, in 1993

–Asymmetric conflicts: For the US these conflicts will be limited and not considered a threat to its survival or a matter of vital national interests; however, for the indigenous adversaries they are a matter of survival.

–Protracted Conflicts: Require a long term commitment by the US, thus testing the national will, political resolve, and staying power of the US.

–Ambiguous and Ambivalent Conflicts: Difficult to identify the adversary, or assess the progress of the conflict; i.e., it is rarely obvious who is winning and losing.

–Conflicts with Political-Social Milieu Center of Gravity: The center of gravity will not be the armed forces of adversaries as Clausewitz would argue but more in the political and social realms as Sun Tzu espouses.

After 1941 both the British and the Americans developed a respectable level of tactical political warfare operations. Organized in Britain under a Political Warfare Executive and in the United States under the (misnamed) Office of Strategic Services and the Office of War Information, with a military arm jointly staffed by British and Americans as the Psychological Warfare Division of Eisenhower's headquarters, the political warfare forces offered the Anglo-American leadership an array of capabilities for operations at all levels. They were never, despite occasional high-sounding proclamations, given a sense of strategic direction and sustained high-level political- will comparable to that provided by Lloyd George in 1917-18. The various operational units were numerous, often in conflict with one another, and staffed with quite differently motivated people in terms of radical-conservative preferences. The usual rivalries developed over personalities and power. Churchill took only a spasmodic interest in the mechanism. While a consummate propagandist personally, he professed little interest in organizations for propaganda's strategic application: "This is a war of deeds and not words," he would growl.'

- Paul Smith, On Political Warfare

"The doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The diety is within uou, not in ideas and books. Turth is lived, not taught.

- Herman Hesse, The Glass Bead Game, 1943

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 23, 2023

2. U.S. launches Syria strikes after contractor killed, 5 troops wounded

3. First look — White House says GOP budget plan would harm defense

4. Pentagon: Budget readies US for possible China confrontation

5. Not Stopping Russia in Ukraine Would Force 'Doubling' of US Defense Budget, Milley Says

6. Using Starlink Paints a Target on Ukrainian Troops

7. Xi Jinping’s Chinese Tragedy

8. Lawmakers Blast TikTok CEO Over Data Privacy

9. 'Strategic competition casts doubt on One China policy'

10. Beyond the First Battle: Winning the Long War Over Taiwan

11. The Military Depends on Virtues that Are Fading

12. US review of Afghanistan withdrawal to be released in April

13. Navy denies Chinese claim it drove away American destroyer

14. Using 1202 Authorities to Counter China’s Maritime Militia

15. Inside Ukraine’s scramble for “game-changer” drone fleet

16. Opinion | The Cold War With China Is Changing Everything

17. Key takeaways from TikTok CEO Chew Shou Zi's US Congress grilling

18. Opinion | Biden moves to undo Trump’s political play on the Space Command

19. US State Department ends assignment restrictions that were perceived as discriminatory

20. US sent ‘hunt-forward’ team to Albania in wake of Iranian cyberattacks

21. Christian who escaped Chinese persecution warns US descending into 'communist-style of governance'

22. Ukraine’s M-1A1 Tanks Have A Special Power: The Ability To Pinpoint Targets 8,000 Meters Away

23. China’s Global Influence and Interference Activities

24. How to Out-Deter China

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 23, 2023

Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-23-2023

Key Takeaways

Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin has softened his rhetoric towards the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) likely out of fear of completely losing his mercenary force in Bakhmut.
Prigozhin denied the Kremlin’s claims that Russia is fighting NATO in Ukraine and questioned whether there are actually Nazis in Ukraine as the Kremlin constantly claims.
Bloomberg reported that Prigozhin is preparing to scale back Wagner’s operations in Ukraine after Russian military leadership succeeded in cutting key supplies of personnel and munitions.
Ukrainian officials supported ISW’s prior assessments that Russian forces are unable to conduct large-scale, simultaneous offensive campaigns on multiple axes.
Russian forces may be shifting their missile strike tactics to focus on Ukrainian military facilities as overall Russian missile strikes decrease, indicating the depletion of Russia’s stocks of high-precision missiles.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin outlined various measures to support Russian military personnel, the Russian defense industrial base (DIB), and Russian independence from the West in an address to the State Duma.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Rosatom may be working to restore three power lines at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) which would increase Russian control over the ZNPP.
Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks northeast of Kupyansk and along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
Russian forces are continuing to attack Bakhmut City and areas in its vicinity and around Avdiivka.
Ukrainian forces continue to conduct raids over the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast.
The Kremlin continues efforts to coerce Russian reservists, conscripts, and other personnel into contract service.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin announced that Russia is continuing efforts to integrate newly-occupied Ukraine into Russian institutions and infrastructure.
Russian forces in Belarus recently redeployed back to Russia ahead of Russia’s spring conscription call-up on April 1.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 23, 2023

Mar 23, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 23, 2023

Kateryna Stepanenko, George Barros, Grace Mappes, Nicole Wolkov and Frederick W. Kagan

March 23, 9:30 pm ET

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

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.

Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin has softened his rhetoric towards the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) likely out of fear of completely losing his mercenary force in Bakhmut. Prigozhin emphasized his concerns about a possible Ukrainian counteroffensive in eastern Ukraine during a 23-minute interview on March 23.[1] Prigozhin claimed that Ukraine has 200,000 reserves concentrating to attack along the entire eastern frontline, into Belgorod Oblast, and in Bakhmut. Prigozhin also claimed that the Ukrainians currently have 80,000 troops in Bakhmut, Slovyansk, and Kostyantynivka to counterattack Bakhmut – a claim that former Russian officer Igor Girkin observed was dubious.[2] Prigozhin‘s exaggerated statements about the imminent threat to Russian forces are likely an attempt to secure more supplies and reinforcements from the Russian MoD to save his forces in Bakhmut. Prigozhin made several positive statements about the Russian MoD, even acknowledging that Russian MoD forces are fighting alongside Chechen units in Bilohorivka, Luhansk Oblast. Prigozhin also surprisingly promoted both Russian MoD-controlled volunteer recruitment efforts and recruitment into Wagner, instead of only advertising service with Wagner formations as he has usually done. Prigozhin expressed some generalized criticism of the Russian military bureaucracy – namely the defense industrial base (DIB) - but such criticisms echo the current state propaganda narrative. Prigozhin had been an avid critic of the Russian military command, and the softening of his rhetoric may indicate that he may be attempting to partially appease the Russian MoD to gain supplies or reinforcements for Wagner forces in Bakhmut.

Prigozhin denied the Kremlin’s claims that Russia is fighting NATO in Ukraine and questioned whether there are actually Nazis in Ukraine as the Kremlin constantly claims. Prigozhin stated that Russia is fighting “exclusively with Ukrainians” who are equipped with NATO-provided equipment and some “russophobic” mercenaries who voluntarily support Ukraine - but not NATO itself.[3] Prigozhin also noted that Russian officials most likely knew that NATO would offer Ukraine military aid, because “it is ridiculous to think that when [Russia] decided to conduct this special military operation it did not account for NATO’s help to Ukraine.” Prigozhin noted that he is unsure about the “denazification” objectives in Ukraine, because he does not know if there are “Nazis” in Ukraine. Prigozhin also noted that Russia will ”demilitarize” Ukraine only when all of the Ukrainian military is destroyed, claiming that this effort is ongoing, but that it is unclear if it will be successful. Prigozhin stated that Russia can avoid an exhausting protracted war by deciding now which borders it wants to capture. Prigozhin also called on the Russian military and media to stop underestimating Ukrainian forces and engaging in internal conflicts. Prigozhin effectively rejected the Kremlin’s pre-war and post-war claims that Russia needed to defend itself against a NATO threat in Ukraine and undermined the necessity and probability of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s stated maximalist objectives for this invasion.

Bloomberg reported that Prigozhin is preparing to scale back Wagner’s operations in Ukraine after the Russian military leadership succeeded in cutting key supplies of personnel and munitions, citing unspecified people familiar with the matter. Bloomberg’s sources stated that Wagner is planning to shift focus back to Africa but that there is no current indication that Prigozhin is planning to redeploy the Wagner Group to Africa.[4] Bloomberg reported, citing sources close to the Kremlin and intelligence services, that top Russian military commanders worked to undermine Prigozhin‘s position with Russian President Vladimir Putin by claiming that Prigozhin achieved limited and slow success despite sending waves of Russian convicts to their deaths around Soledar and Bakhmut. ISW assessed on March 12 that Putin ultimately turned away from Prigozhin following Wagner’s inability to capture Bakhmut.[5] Bloomberg’s sources claimed that the Russian MoD will not allow Prigozhin to take credit for the fall of Bakhmut in state-run media, which is consistent with the MoD’s ongoing effort to diminish and supplant the role of Wagner forces in territorial gains in the area.[6] Prigozhin notably denied Bloomberg’s claim of scaling back and shifting focus to Africa.[7]

A Ukrainian intelligence official supported ISW’s prior assessments that Russian forces are unable to conduct large-scale, simultaneous offensive campaigns on multiple axes.[8] Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Spokesperson Vadym Skibitsky stated on March 23 that Russian forces have demonstrated in the last year of the war that Russian forces are unable to maintain large-scale, strategic-level offensives on multiple axes of advance.[9] Skibitsky stated that Russian forces failed to achieve the expected quick or significant advances in the Donbas offensive that began in early 2023. Skibitsky stated that Ukrainian forces fixed Russian forces to multiple areas on the front line and that Russian forces in occupied Crimea and Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts are on the defensive. US National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby stated on March 21 that Russian forces will try to start another offensive, possibly even on multiple different axes, in the coming weeks.[10]

Russian forces may be shifting their missile strike tactics to focus on Ukrainian military facilities as overall Russian missile strikes decrease, indicating the depletion of Russia’s stocks of high-precision missiles. Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Spokesperson Vadym Skibitsky stated that Russian forces may be reorienting their strikes to focus on Ukrainian military facilities and force concentrations while continuing to strike Ukrainian energy infrastructure, as opposed to prioritizing striking energy infrastructure as Russian forces did in fall 2022.[11] Skibitsky said that the GUR assessed that currently only 15 percent of Russia‘s pre-February 24, 2022 high-precision weapons stocks remain. Skibitsky stated that Russia‘s higher-end Kalibr, Kh-101, and Kh-555 cruise missiles comprise less than 10 percent of Russia’s total remaining stocks. Skibitsky stated that Russian forces cannot conduct missile attacks more than twice a month due to the growing need to conserve missiles, in contrast with how Russian forces conducted large air attacks at a higher frequency of about once a week in October 2022. Skibitsky stated that Russia‘s defense industrial base can produce only produce 20 to 30 Kalibr and Kh-101 cruise missiles per month and that Russia‘s production of Iskander ballistic missiles is even lower. ISW has previously assessed that Russian forces are depleting their missile arsenal, which may constrain Russian missile strikes frequency and intensity[12]

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin outlined various measures to support Russian military personnel, the Russian defense industrial base (DIB), and Russian independence from the West in an address to the State Duma on March 23.[13] Mishustin claimed that Russia aims to produce over 100 aircraft, likely including military aircraft, with unspecified modifications by 2026. Mishustin also claimed that Russia has made significant progress towards mobilizing the DIB for increased production and implementing social support measures to support Russian military personnel, particularly mobilized personnel, and their families. Mishustin used the bulk of his address to claim that Russia has done well but will improve even further despite needing to implement additional economic, social, political, technological, and diplomatic measures to both counteract the effects of significant Western sanctions and decrease Russian dependence on the West. Mishustin’s speech follows Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu’s March 22 speech at the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) collegium, and both Mishustin and Shoigu are attempting to portray Russia as capable of maintaining a prolonged war effort at a pace and scope likely beyond Russia’s actual capability, as ISW has previously assessed.[14]

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Rosatom may be working to restore three power lines at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) which would increase Russian control over the ZNPP. IAEA General Director Rafael Grossi on March 22 commented on Russian reports that Russia’s state nuclear energy corporation Rosatom is working to restore three powerlines at the thermal power plant switchyard to incorporate into the grid system in Russian-occupied territory, but that the IAEA has not been able to verify this information.[15] Grossi stated that the IAEA personnel at the ZNPP observed Russian NPP workers training with experienced ZNPP staff in the main control room of the ZNPP. Russian authorities claimed that the purpose of the training is to ensure that adequate staff is available to work at the plant in case of licensed staff shortages. ISW has previously reported on Russian efforts to use Rosatom’s management and personnel to establish control over the ZNPP to force the IAEA into accepting Russian control over the ZNPP.[16]

Key Takeaways

Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin has softened his rhetoric towards the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) likely out of fear of completely losing his mercenary force in Bakhmut.
Prigozhin denied the Kremlin’s claims that Russia is fighting NATO in Ukraine and questioned whether there are actually Nazis in Ukraine as the Kremlin constantly claims.
Bloomberg reported that Prigozhin is preparing to scale back Wagner’s operations in Ukraine after Russian military leadership succeeded in cutting key supplies of personnel and munitions.
Ukrainian officials supported ISW’s prior assessments that Russian forces are unable to conduct large-scale, simultaneous offensive campaigns on multiple axes.
Russian forces may be shifting their missile strike tactics to focus on Ukrainian military facilities as overall Russian missile strikes decrease, indicating the depletion of Russia’s stocks of high-precision missiles.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin outlined various measures to support Russian military personnel, the Russian defense industrial base (DIB), and Russian independence from the West in an address to the State Duma.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Rosatom may be working to restore three power lines at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) which would increase Russian control over the ZNPP.
Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks northeast of Kupyansk and along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
Russian forces are continuing to attack Bakhmut City and areas in its vicinity and around Avdiivka.
Ukrainian forces continue to conduct raids over the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast.
The Kremlin continues efforts to coerce Russian reservists, conscripts, and other personnel into contract service.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin announced that Russia is continuing efforts to integrate newly-occupied Ukraine into Russian institutions and infrastructure.
Russian forces in Belarus recently redeployed back to Russia ahead of Russia’s spring conscription call-up on April 1.

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 conducted limited ground attacks northeast of Kupyansk and along the Svatove-Kreminna line on March 23. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful ground attacks near Synkivka (8km northeast of Kupyansk), Makiivka (22km northwest of Kreminna), Bilohorivka (10km south of Kreminna), and Verkhnokamianske (21km south of Kreminna).[17] The UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported that Russian forces likely aim to capture Kupyansk, expand their security zone westward, and integrate the Oskil River into their defensive lines.[18] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty stated that Ukrainian forces have destroyed many pieces of new Russian equipment in the past several weeks as Russian forces use more conventional forces and armored vehicles in the Lyman and Kupyansk directions.[19] Geolocated footage published on March 23 indicates a limited Russian advance southeast of Bilohorivka.[20] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Terny (17km west of Kreminna), Makiivka, and Bilohorivka but advanced toward the Siverskyi Donets River in the Serebrianska forest area (10km south of Kreminna)[21] Another milblogger amplified footage purportedly showing the 331st Airborne Regiment of the 98th Airborne Division operating near Kreminna.[22] Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov published footage claiming that Akhmat Special Forces Commander and 2nd Luhansk People’s Republic Army Corps Deputy Commander Apti Alaudinov captured a Ukrainian prisoner of war near Bilohorivka.[23]

Russian forces continue building fortifications in the border areas of Bryansk and Kursk oblasts. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continue to engineer terrain in Bryansk and Kursk oblasts and conduct unspecified demonstrative actions in Belgorod Oblast in an attempt to prevent the transfer of Ukrainian forces to other areas of the frontline.[24]

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 attacking Bakhmut City and its environs on March 23. Ukrainian Ground Forces Commander Oleksandr Syrskyi stated that Wagner Group elements remain the main Russian force operating in the Bakhmut direction and that they have not yet lost their offensive capabilities.[25] Syrskyi noted that while Wagner forces still have a numerical advantage on the frontline Ukrainian forces continue to exhaust the mercenaries, which will enable Ukrainian forces to pursue unspecified future offensive operations. Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty stated that Russian and Ukrainian forces made contact 35 times on the entire Bakhmut frontline, 29 of which occurred in the city or its immediate vicinity.[26] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that there are constant positional battles in Bakhmut and that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults northwest of Bakhmut in Oleksandro-Shultyne and Bohdanivka; northeast of Bakhmut in Vasyukivka; and south of Bakhmut in Predtechyne.[27] Russian sources also claimed that Russian forces have completely cleared the industrial zone in northern Bakhmut and are continuing to fight in central and southern Bakhmut.[28] Russian milbloggers claimed that fighting is ongoing southwest of Bakhmut in Ivanivske and that Wagner mercenaries are attacking Krohmalne just northwest of Bakhmut.[29] Geolocated footage posted on March 22 showed Ukrainian forces engaging nearby Russian forces on the western bank of the Bakhmutka River with small arms, which likely indicates that some Russians have forded the river.[30]

Russian forces continued to attack Ukrainian positions around Avdiivka on March 23. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces launched unsuccessful assaults north of Avdiivka in Novokalynove, Stepove, Lastochkyne, and Berdychi; northwest of Avdiivka in Lastochkyne; west of Avdiivka in Sieverne, Vodyane, Nevelske, Pervomaiske; and Avdiivka itself.[31] Russian sources claimed that Russian artillery established fire control over the Ukrainian supply route via Orlivka.[32] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces cleared the western outskirts of Novobakhmutivka (about 12km northeast of Avdiivka) and continued to advance on Pervomaiske and Sieverne from the south.[33] Another Russian source expressed doubt that Russian forces captured Novobakhmutivka and Stepove and noted that Russian forces are also fighting for Kamianka (about 5km northeast of Avdiivka).[34] A Russian source claimed that it is too early to speculate about Russian efforts to create a cauldron around Avdiivka and about operational successes in the area.[35] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced towards Novokalynove and reached an unspecified elevated position in the area.[36] Russian sources also claimed that the elements of the Russian 200th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade (14th Army Corps of the Northern Military District) attacked Tonenke (7km northwest of Avdiivka).[37]

Russian forces continue to form new brigades from legacy standing DNR units and mobilized personnel in the Avdiivka direction. A Russian source claimed that the former DNR 9th Separate Mariupol-Khingan Marine Assault Regiment reformed into the Russian 9th Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade and is now operating in the Avdiivka direction.[38] The Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) indicated that elements of the 14th Artillery ”Kalmius” Brigade and the 1st ”Slavic” Brigade of the DNR’s 1st Army Corps are operating in the Avdiivka direction.[39] ISW previously observed numerous appeals from Russian mobilized servicemen about their subordination under DNR units, indicating that Russian military command is likely reinforcing and/or expanding DNR units with mobilized personnel. The Russian military is also reactivating brigades from the World War II era such as the Red Army‘s 9th Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade.[40] The Russian Ministry of Defense may form some of the new divisions it announced on January 17 by officially integrating the DNR and Luhansk People’s Republic proxy forces into the Russian Armed Forces as opposed to generating wholly new divisions from scratch.[41] The current suite of observed force generation efforts suggests that the Russian military command is apparently prioritizing the formation of motorized rifle infantry units as opposed to reconstituting tank units. ISW has not observed the reconstitution or recommitment of a number of elite tank regiments and brigades destroyed in combat, and the re-activation of disbanded Red Army motorized rifle units rather than the reconstitution of current tank units may reflect the reality that the Russian military lacks the tanks needed to rebuild tank units.

Russian forces continued conducting offensive operations west of Donetsk City but have not resumed offensives near Vuhledar as of March 23. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked Marinka and Pobieda, 22km and 25km southwest of Donetsk City, and Russian sources echoed similar reports.[42] A Russian source claimed that elements of the Russian 155th Naval Infantry Brigade are continuing combat missions in the vicinity of Vuhledar, and recently posted footage from the area indicating that Russian and Ukrainian forces are engaged in positional battles near Vuhledar.[43]

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

The Ukrainian General Staff reported that all Russian units deployed to Nova Kakhovka left the city as of March 22.[44] The phrasing of the Ukrainian General Staff report explicitly mentions that Russian forces “left“ and does not lend itself to an interpretation of a Russian rotation, as some observers have suggested. Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces remained in the city.[45] ISW has not observed visual confirmation that supports either claim. ISW currently assesses that the Russian military still likely controls Nova Kakhovka.

Ukrainian forces continue to conduct raids over the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast and are continuing to strike Russian positions on the east (left) bank of the river. Geolocated combat footage published on March 20 shows Russian forces striking Ukrainian forces operating in the southeast of Velykyi Potemkin Island.[46] Geolocated combat footage published on March 23 shows Ukrainian drones striking Russian positions near Vynrozsadnyk on the east (left) bank of the Dnipro River.[47] Ukrainian Kherson Oblast Military Administration Head Serhiy Khlan amplified a claim from Kherson Occupation Head Vladimir Saldo that Russian forces have tripled the number of personnel on the east (left) bank of the Dnipro River in anticipation of a Ukrainian counteroffensive.[48] Khlan criticized Russian forces’ defensive measures, claiming that they have only established three lines of defense.[49]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast. A Russian milblogger claimed on March 22 that Ukrainian forces control about half of Novodanylivka (53km southeast of Zaporizhzhia City) and that the settlement was previously an unoccupied grey zone.[50] Another milblogger claimed on March 23 that Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive operations in the Robotyne (66km southeast of Zaporizhzhia City) direction.[51]

Russian forces conducted routine shelling in Kherson, Zaporizhia, Dnipropetrovsk, and Mykolaiv oblasts.[52]

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

The Kremlin continues efforts to coerce Russian reservists, conscripts, and other personnel into contract service. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on March 23 establishing two new military honors “For Bravery” that Russia can award to combat participants, including foreigners and stateless persons who may not be part of Russia’s conventional military, either alive or posthumously for bravery on the battlefield.[53] This award is likely a continuation of the Kremlin’s effort to encourage enlistment among stateless persons and foreigners. Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Spokesperson Vadym Skibitsky stated that Russian authorities will try to recruit reservists called up for the April 1 regular conscription cycle into contract service and are continuing efforts to recruit for contract service through other unspecified methods.[54] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian authorities are trying to recruit conscripts from South Ossetia into contract service and managed to recruit 50 new contract personnel between March 1 and March 10.[55]

The Kremlin may begin leveraging a larger number of smaller private military companies (PMCs) and private security companies to reduce its dependency on the Wagner Group and prevent a monolithic PMC – such as the Wagner Group – from gaining leverage against the Russian Ministry of Defense in the future. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on March 23 that the Kremlin seeks to recruit up to 2,000 mercenaries from the “GvardService” private security company. The Resistance Center reported that “GvardService” is the first Belarusian private security company, which Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko established in 2019 to recruit former Belarusian special forces. The Resistance Center’s report also claims that about 100 mercenaries from Angola arrived in Russia, and that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov negotiated their participation in the war in Ukraine after visiting Angola in January 2023.[56] A prominent Russian milblogger stated that the Wagner Group’s success in Ukraine in 2022 piqued Russian society’s interest in PMCs and forecasted that Russia will develop a large marketplace for PMCs.[57] The milblogger suggested this marketplace will include many competing companies ranging from small boutique PMCs and private intelligence firms to one-to-two large PMCs with the ”full-fledged capabilities of private armies.”[58] The Kremlin may use such a model in the future to continue reaping the benefits of using PMCs while ensuring that no single PMC can gain too much influence, as the Wagner Group likely did.

Russia’s defense industrial base is unlikely to manufacture 1,500 main battle tanks in calendar year 2023 despite Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev's claims on March 23.[59] Russia reportedly loses 150 tanks a month in Ukraine while Russia’s sole tank production factory, UralVagonZavod, reportedly produces 20 tanks a month.[60] Business Insider and The Economist previously noted that 18 Russian factories are refurbishing old tanks and that two more repair plants will soon join the efforts.[61] ISW concurs with Business Insider’s conclusion that Russian production remains unlikely to meet demand; Russia would have to produce or refurbish at least 125 tanks per month (over six times greater than UralVagonZavod’s current production) to manufacture 1,500 tanks in 2023.[62] Former Russian militant commander and nationalist milblogger Igor Girkin scoffed at Medvedev’s statement and sarcastically observed that Medvedev’s claims would have been more believable if he clarified that the tanks would be made from plastic or paper.[63]

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

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin announced that Russia is continuing efforts to integrate newly-occupied Ukraine into Russian institutions and infrastructure. Mishustin stated on March 23 that the Russian government is reviewing a draft law to create a free economic zone in occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson Oblasts to submit to the State Duma for further consideration.[64] Mishustin claimed that Russia has repaired over 900km of roads and over 8,500 objects, including residential buildings and infrastructure facilities, in occupied Ukraine. Mishustin claimed that Russia will finish the construction of a water conduit between Rostov Oblast and occupied Donetsk Oblast within the next week.

The Save Ukraine Foundation, a Ukrainian non-governmental organization, reported that Russian authorities treat Ukrainian children in Russian detention abysmally. The Save Ukraine Foundation reported on March 23 that 17 Ukrainian children kidnapped from occupied Kherson and Kharkiv oblasts returned to Ukraine.[65] The Foundation noted that Russian authorities refused to return the children to their parents and did not specify the mechanism by which the children returned. The Foundation amplified statements from the children, who claimed that employees at a Russian children’s camp beat the Ukrainian children, lied to the children about Ukrainian counteroffensives, and claimed that their parents abandoned the children and that Russian parents would adopt the children.

Ukrainian officials reported that Russian authorities are filtering Ukrainian civilians from Bakhmut into remote areas of Russia. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on March 23 that Wagner Group forces are taking Ukrainian civilians from residential areas in Bakhmut and deporting them to filtration centers in occupied Luhansk Oblast, where occupation authorities further filter Ukrainian civilians into remote areas such as Perm Krai in the Far East of Russia.[66]

Ukrainian partisans conducted an improvised explosive device (IED) attack against a Russian occupation law enforcement officer in Melitopol on March 23, injuring the officer.[67] Russian occupation officials reported that the officer is in stable condition as of this publication.[68]

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.)

Russian forces in Belarus recently redeployed back to Russia ahead of Russia’s spring conscription call-up on April 1. Commercial satellite imagery collected on March 17 and 23 shows that significant Russian elements previously deployed at the 230th Combined Arms Obuz-Lesnovsky Training Ground in Brest, Belarus, are no longer at the training ground. Satellite imagery collected on February 12 shows the equipment in place. Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) representative Vadym Skibitsky stated on March 23 that there are about 4,200 Russian servicemen currently in Belarus, indicating a drawdown.[69] Russia had about 12,000 personnel deployed in Belarus in late 2022.[70] Ukrainian Border Guard Spokesman Andriy Demchenko previously stated on March 4 that the Russian force size in Belarus fluctuates but generally does not exceed 9,000–10,000 personnel at any given time.[71] Demchenko stated that replacement Russian forces will likely deploy to Belarus after Russian forces redeploy from Belarus, keeping the overall number of Russian personnel in Belarus more or less equal over time.[72] These Russian forces likely deployed back to Russia to free up Belarusian training capacity ahead of Russia’s spring conscription cycle. Russian forces may send more mobilized forces or possibly conscripts for training in Belarus given that many of the tents at the training ground remained in place in the recent satellite imagery. Russia will likely maintain permanent military forces in Belarus around ongoing training deployments; Skibitsky also stated that Russian forces left an Iskander battery in Belarus.[73]

230th Combined Arms Obuz-Lesnovsky Training Ground in Brest, Belarus. Collected March 23, 2023

230th Combined Arms Obuz-Lesnovsky Training Ground in Brest, Belarus. Collected March 17, 2023

230th Combined Arms Obuz-Lesnovsky Training Ground in Brest, Belarus. Collected February 12, 2023

The Belarusian military announced the completed formation of a new Belarusian air defense regiment equipped with S-300 air defense systems in Luninets, Brest Oblast, Belarus, on March 23.[74] Belarusian media reported that the new unit may be a resurrection of the Belarusian 56th Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment, which Belarus disbanded in 2014.[75]

This unit’s reformation in Brest Oblast indicates a heightened air defense postured against NATO’s eastern flank to defend Russian and Belarusian airspace. Russia already permanently deployed S-300 systems (elements of Russia’s 210th Air Defense Regiment) to Grodno, Belarus, in August 2021 as part of the formation of the permanent joint Russian-Belarusian air defense and air combat training center in Grodno that Moscow and Minsk agreed to create in March 2021.[76] The recent addition of more S-300 systems in Brest completes Russian-Belarusian air defense overage over Poland and much of western Ukraine and further indicates the Belarusian military’s operational subordination to the Russian Western Miliary District.

The Kremlin has long sought to establish more Russian-controlled air defense assets in Belarus. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko confirmed that Russia “gave” Belarus an unspecified number of S-400 air defense systems during his meeting with Putin in Minsk on December 19, 2023, confirming ISW’s 2021 forecast that Russian-made S-400 systems would begin operating in Belarus.[77] ISW warned Putin likely seeks to deploy and control Russian anti-access/area denial weapon systems in Belarus in September 2020.[78]

Belarusian maneuver elements continue conducting exercises in Belarus. Elements of the Belarusian 38th Air Assault Brigade conducted a company tactical exercise at the Brest Training Ground in Brest, Belarus, on March 23.[79] An unspecified battalion of the Belarusian 6th Mechanized Brigade conducted a company tactical exercise at the Gozhsky Training Ground in Grodno, Belarus, on March 23.[80]

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.

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://t.me/concordgroup_official/635

[2] https://t.me/strelkovii/4333

[3] https://t.me/concordgroup_official/635

[4] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-23/putin-s-mercenary-pri...

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

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

[7] https://t.me/concordgroup_official/634; https://t.me/Prigozhin_hat/2915

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

[9] https://www.rbc dot ua/rus/news/vadim-skibitskiy-rosiya-mozhe-vesti-viynu-1679493967.html

[10] https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-03-21-23/h_...

[11] https://www.rbc dot ua/rus/news/gur-rozpovili-k-rosiya-zminyue-tsili-obstriliv-1679491754.html

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

[13] http://government dot ru/news/48055/

[14] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... https://telegra dot ph/Vstupitelnoe-slovo-Ministra-oborony-Rossijskoj-Federacii-generala-armii-Sergeya-SHojgu-na-zasedanii-Kollegii-Minoborony-Rossii-03-22; https://t.me/mod_russia/25012

[15] https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/update-151-iaea-director-g...

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

[17] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0U5nJd58nTcbXGSvYBTe...

[18] https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1638796533436149760

[19] https://t.me/luhanskaVTSA/9422

[20] https://twitter.com/JagdBandera/status/1638897580619751425; https://t.me/WarArchive_ua/518

[21] https://t.me/wargonzo/11551

[22] https://t.me/boris_rozhin/81160

[23] https://t.me/RKadyrov_95/3459

[24] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0U5nJd58nTcbXGSvYBTe...

[25] https://www.facebook.com/easternforces/posts/pfbid015biPNqksWtwEsnyfMb9k... https://t.me/osirskiy/21

[26] https://censor dot net/ua/n3407598; https://armyinform.com dot ua/2023/03/23/prezydent-udruge-vidvidav-misto-forteczyu-sergij-cherevatyj/

[27] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0U5nJd58nTcbXGSvYBTe...

[28] https://t.me/readovkanews/55305

[29] https://t.me/wargonzo/11551; https://t.me/rybar/44954; https://t.me/vo...

[30] https://t.me/WarArchive_ua/505; https://twitter.com/JagdBandera/status/...

[31] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0YU2GMeX1s71P6scxFyr...

[32] https://t.me/kommunist/16551 ; https://t.me/epoddubny/15244

[33] https://t.me/boris_rozhin/81159 ; https://t.me/readovkanews/55305; ht...

[34] https://t.me/zola_of_renovation/4661; https://t.me/notes_veterans/8619

[35] https://t.me/boris_rozhin/81159

[36] https://t.me/zola_of_renovation/4661; https://t.me/notes_veterans/8619

[37]

[38] https://t.me/rybar/44952; https://t.me/rybar/44954

[39] https://t.me/nm_dnr/10040 ; https://t.me/nm_dnr/10039

[40] http://docs.historyrussia dot org/ru/nodes/271026

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

[42] https://t.me/wargonzo/11551; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/p...

[43] https://t.me/readovkanews/55305 ; https://t.me/grey_zone/17885 ; h...

[44] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0U5nJd58nTcbXGSvYBTe...

[45] https://t.me/grey_zone/17896; https://t.me/rusich_army/8171; https://t...

[46] https://twitter.com/PauliusZaleckas/status/1638933488916385793?s=20; ht...

[47] https://twitter.com/PaulJawin/status/1638830164950777857?s=20; https://...

[48] https://www.facebook.com/sergey.khlan/posts/pfbid0DiQ8SWkc4xZxYxJjGcYkz7...

[49] https://www.facebook.com/sergey.khlan/posts/pfbid0DiQ8SWkc4xZxYxJjGcYkz7...

[50] https://t.me/rybar/44950; https://t.me/rybar/44954

[51] https://t.me/wargonzo/11551

[52] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0U5nJd58nTcbXGSvYBTe...

[53] https://meduza dot io/news/2023/03/23/vladimir-putin-uchredil-novuyu-medal-za-hrabrost; http://publication.pravo.gov dot ru/Document/View/0001202303230015; https://t.me/bbbreaking/151262; https://t.me/mod_russia/25048

[54] https://www.rbc dot ua/rus/news/vadim-skibitskiy-rosiya-mozhe-vesti-viynu-1679493967.html

[55] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0YU2GMeX1s71P6scxFyr...

[56] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2023/03/23/rosiyany-shukayut-najmancziv-dlya-zagarbnyczkoyi-vijny-proty-ukrayiny/

[57] https://t.me/Sladkov_plus/7397

[58] https://t.me/Sladkov_plus/7397

[59] https://m.interfax dot ru/892494

[60] https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-demand-tanks-outstrips-production... https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equip...

[61] https://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/Russian%20Offensive... 8 https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-demand-tanks-outstrips-production...

https://www.economist.com./the-economist-explains/2023/02/27/how-quickly...

[62] https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-demand-tanks-outstrips-production...

[63] https://t.me/strelkovii/4331

[64] http://government dot ru/news/48055/

[65] https://meduza dot io/news/2023/03/23/v-ukrainu-vernulis-17-detey-kotoryh-prinuditelno-vyvezli-v-rossiyu-vo-vremya-okkupatsii-odin-iz-nih-rasskazal-chto-v-rossii-detey-bili; https://fb.watch/jsifYQY4tU/ ; https://saveukraineua dot org/tpost/mly82onks1-vtomlen-dorogoyu-i-trivalim-stresom

[66] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ot ua/2023/03/23/okupanty-deportuyut-meshkancziv-peredmistya-bahmutu/

[67] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2023/03/23/v-melitopoli-pidirvaly-misczevogo-policzaya/

[68] https://t.me/readovkanews/55318; https://t.me/vrogov/8311; https://t.me/vrogov/8312; https://t.me/vrogov/8313; https://t.me/vrogov/8316

[69] https://www.rbc dot ua/rus/news/vadim-skibitskiy-rosiya-mozhe-vesti-viynu-1679493967.html

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

[71] https://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/Russian%20Operation...

[72] https://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/Russian%20Operation...

[73] https://www.rbc dot ua/rus/news/vadim-skibitskiy-rosiya-mozhe-vesti-viynu-1679493967.html

[74] https://fanipol.by/novosti/oborona/minoborony-v-belarusi-sformirovan-nov... https://t.me/modmilby/24773; https://t.me/modmilby/24772; https://t.me/modmilby/24780; https://t.me/modmilby/24764; https://t.me/modmilby/24781; https://motolko dot help/en-news/a-new-air-defense-regiment-was-formed-in-luninets/; https://t.me/Hajun_BY/6616; https://reform-by dot cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/reform.by/novyj-zenitnyj-raketnyj-polk-sformirovan-v-belarusskom-lunince/amp

[75] https://motolko.help/en-news/a-new-air-defense-regiment-was-formed-in-lu...

[76] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russia-review-august-18-au...

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

[78] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/belarus-warning-update-put... https://www.iswresearch.org/2020/08/warning-lukashenkos-security-forces....

[79] https://t.me/modmilby/24790

[80] https://t.me/modmilby/24765

U.S. launches Syria strikes after contractor killed, 5 troops wounded

militarytimes.com · by Davis Winkie · March 24, 2023

The U.S. launched retaliatory airstrikes against Iranian-linked sites in eastern Syria Thursday after a suicide drone attack killed a U.S. contractor and wounded five troops and another contractor at a U.S. base there.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the airstrikes targeted “facilities used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps” after intelligence officials determined the drone was of Iranian origin, according to a Pentagon statement on Thursday.

The attack on the U.S. base occurred around 1:38 p.m. local time at a U.S. Coalition maintenance facility near the town of Hasakah in the country’s northeast, the Pentagon said. Two of the wounded troops received on-site medical treatment, while three more troops and the wounded contractor were evacuated to medical facilities in Iraq. Their condition is unclear.

U.S. troops remain in Syria as part of the nearly 8-year effort to defeat the Islamic State and prevent the group’s resurgence in areas left unsecured more than a decade into the country’s civil war.

Austin said in a statement that the strikes were conducted at “the direction of President Biden.”

U.S. Central Command’s top officer, Gen. Erik Kurilla, said “this was another in a series of attacks on our troops and partner forces,” in a tweeted statement.

“We will take all necessary measures to defend our people and will always respond at a time and place of our choosing,” Austin stated. “No group will strike our troops with impunity.”

Videos emerged on social media Thursday showing an apparent series of explosions in Syria’s Deir Ez-Zor province, the Associated Press reported. The oil-rich area is largely controlled by Syrian government forces and Iran-linked militia groups.

Syrian and Iranian government officials did not immediately address the attack or strikes, though Qatar’s state news agency reported the country’s foreign minister spoke with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, according to the AP. Qatar also spoke around the same time to Iran’s top diplomat, the agency reported.

The release characterized the “precision” airstrikes as “proportional and deliberate” though it’s unclear how many retaliatory strikes took place.

The Pentagon has blamed previous unmanned drone strikes and missile attacks on groups backed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The U.S. under Biden has struck Syria previously over tensions with Iran, the AP reported. In February and June of 2021, as well as August 2022, Biden launched attacks there.

U.S. forces entered Syria in 2015, backing allied forces in their fight against the Islamic State group. The U.S. still maintains the base near Hasakah in northeast Syria where Thursday’s drone strike happened. There are roughly 900 U.S. troops, and even more contractors, in Syria, including in the north and farther south and east, according to the AP.

Military Times senior reporter Geoff Ziezulewicz contributed to this report.

About Davis Winkie

Davis Winkie is a senior reporter covering the Army, specializing in accountability reporting, personnel issues and military justice. He joined Military Times in 2020. Davis studied history at Vanderbilt University and UNC-Chapel Hill, writing a master's thesis about how the Cold War-era Defense Department influenced Hollywood's WWII movies.

3. First look — White House says GOP budget plan would harm defense

Excerpts:

The administration is taking aim specifically at a plan backed by some House Freedom Caucus members to cap federal spending at 2022 levels.

“Their proposal could amount to a roughly $600 billion reduction in funding for national defense over just the next five years compared to the president’s budget — undermining military readiness, weakening our deterrence against China, and impeding our ability to meet pressing global challenges, both now and in the future,” the statement says, adding that it would hinder investments in priorities such as the Pacific Deterrence Initiative and the procurement of critical munitions.

While the White House statement asserts that Republicans are focused on across-the-board budget cuts – including to national security – top GOP lawmakers have called for higher defense spending in recent hearings.

First look — White House says GOP budget plan would harm defense

militarytimes.com · by Leo Shane III · March 24, 2023

White House officials are accusing far-right Republican lawmakers of endangering national security with plans to severely limit federal spending in next year’s budget.

In a national security statement first obtained by Military Times, administration officials said threatened Republican cuts to that budget would damage efforts to counter threats from China and Russia, set back plans to modernize the Navy and Air Force, and damage military planning by severely limiting defense spending.

The Biden brushback is part of a coordinated Democratic response to defend the White House budget in anticipation of GOP attacks in months of Capital Hill debate to come. If a compromise on next year’s budget can’t be agreed upon by Oct. 1, it could trigger a partial government shutdown, leading to canceled military training and furloughs of non-essential Defense Department personnel.

The administration is taking aim specifically at a plan backed by some House Freedom Caucus members to cap federal spending at 2022 levels.

“Their proposal could amount to a roughly $600 billion reduction in funding for national defense over just the next five years compared to the president’s budget — undermining military readiness, weakening our deterrence against China, and impeding our ability to meet pressing global challenges, both now and in the future,” the statement says, adding that it would hinder investments in priorities such as the Pacific Deterrence Initiative and the procurement of critical munitions.

While the White House statement asserts that Republicans are focused on across-the-board budget cuts – including to national security – top GOP lawmakers have called for higher defense spending in recent hearings.

Both House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Roger Wicker, R-Miss., have called Biden’s $842 billion military spending plan for next year “inadequate.”

On Thursday, during a Defense Department budget hearing, Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee’s defense panel, told Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that “we’re going to work together to plus this somewhat” i.e. to raise defense spending even higher.

Republican budget plan will ‘undermine’ US security, warns Biden admin

The Biden administration is portraying plans from Republicans to gut the federal budget as jeopardizing national security.

But the White House charges that the slimmed down budgets, as required by the 2022 spending proposal, would require the Navy to cut “at least two capital ships” while “eliminating a new Virginia class submarine and a new DDG-51 destroyer.” For the Air Force, the plan “would likely cause significant disruption and delays to the B-21 bomber program.”

In a statement connected to the White House release, House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., echoed the administration’s concerns, saying that the proposed budget levels “put our national security at risk, undermine military readiness, break promises made to our allies, and gravely impact the brave women and men in uniform who defend our country.”

How the latest attack influences the budget debate remains unclear. Earlier in the day, during a House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing on the White House budget plan, Republican lawmakers grew increasingly angry with Democratic members who accused them of aiming to trim defense and veterans program funding, and vowed to correct the record as budget negotiations continue through the summer.

Troops would see biggest pay raise since 2002 under Biden budget plan

The big pay boost is part of a $842 billion Defense Department spending plan unveiled by the White House on Thursday.

Pentagon officials have urged lawmakers from both parties to avoid a fall budget showdown, and warned against cutting too deeply into non-defense spending, while protecting military funding.

Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord argued in a letter to lawmakers this week that non-defense spending cuts would be “just as harmful” to national security.

“Our whole-of-government response to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine clearly demonstrates the value of integrating security assistance, economic assistance, humanitarian assistance, sanctions and export controls,” McCord wrote. “No one agency could achieve the effects we are producing as a team, and deep cuts to any one of the agencies would undermine the effort as a whole.”

About Leo Shane III

Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.

4. Pentagon: Budget readies US for possible China confrontation

Excerpts:

“This is a strategy-driven budget — and one driven by the seriousness of our strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in testimony before the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense.

Pointing to increases in new technology, such as hypersonics, Austin said the budget proposes to spend more than $9 billion, a 40% increase over last year, to build up military capabilities in the Pacific and defend allies.

The testimony comes on the heels of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow, which added to concerns that China will step up its support for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine and increasingly threaten the West.

China’s actions, said Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “are moving it down the path toward confrontation and potential conflict with its neighbors and possibly the United States.” He said deterring and preparing for war “is extraordinarily expensive, but it’s not as expensive as fighting a war. And this budget prevents war and prepares us to fight it if necessary.”

Pentagon: Budget readies US for possible China confrontation

AP · by LOLITA C. BALDOR and TARA COPP · March 23, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military must be ready for possible confrontation with China, the Pentagon’s leaders said Thursday, pushing Congress to approve the Defense Department’s proposed $842 billion budget, which would modernize the force in Asia and around the world.

“This is a strategy-driven budget — and one driven by the seriousness of our strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in testimony before the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense.

Pointing to increases in new technology, such as hypersonics, Austin said the budget proposes to spend more than $9 billion, a 40% increase over last year, to build up military capabilities in the Pacific and defend allies.

The testimony comes on the heels of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow, which added to concerns that China will step up its support for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine and increasingly threaten the West.

China’s actions, said Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “are moving it down the path toward confrontation and potential conflict with its neighbors and possibly the United States.” He said deterring and preparing for war “is extraordinarily expensive, but it’s not as expensive as fighting a war. And this budget prevents war and prepares us to fight it if necessary.”

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Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., pressed the defense leaders on Xi’s meeting with Putin and its impact on U.S. competition with China, which he called “the elephant in the room.” The U.S., he said, is “at a crucial moment here.”

The growing alliance between China and Russia, two nuclear powers, and Xi’s overtures to Putin during the Ukraine war are “troubling,” Austin said.

He added that the U.S. had not yet seen China provide arms to Russia, but if it does, “it would prolong the conflict and certainly broaden the conflict potentially not only in the region but globally.”

Milley, who will retire later this year, said the Defense Department must continue to modernize its forces to ensure they will be ready to fight if needed. “It is incumbent upon us to make sure we remain No. 1 at all times” to be able to deter China, he said.

Two decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan eroded the military’s equipment and troop readiness, so the U.S. has been working to replace weapons systems and give troops time to reset. It’s paid off, Milley told Congress.

“Our operational readiness rates are higher now than they have been in many, many years,” Milley said. More than 60% of the active force is at the highest states of readiness right now and could deploy to combat in less than 30 days, while 10% could deploy within 96 hours, he said.

Milley cautioned that those gains would be lost if Congress can’t pass a budget on time, because it will immediately affect training.

Members of the panel, including Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., also made it clear that while they support the ongoing U.S. assistance to Ukraine, “the days of blank checks are over.” And they questioned the administration’s ultimate goal there.

Milley said the intent is to make sure that Ukraine remains a free and independent country with its territory intact, maintaining global security and the world order that has existing since World War II.

“If that goes out the window,” he said, “we’ll be doubling our defense budgets at that point, because that will introduce not an era of great power competition, that will begin an era of great power conflict. And that will be extraordinarily dangerous for the whole world.”

The hearing was likely one of Milley’s last in front of Congress. His four-year term as chairman — capping a 43-year military career — ends in October. While many members took the opportunity to thank him for those years of service, it was also an opportunity to press him on one of the darkest moments of his chairmanship — the loss of 13 service members to a suicide bomber at Abbey Gate during the chaotic American evacuation from Afghanistan.

Questions remain about the bombing, and Republicans have criticized President Joe Biden’s decision to completely withdraw from Afghanistan in August 2021. During an intense two-week evacuation, which took place as Kabul fell to the Taliban, U.S. forces got more than 120,000 personnel out of the country, but paid a large price in the lives of U.S. service members and Afghans. The withdrawal also left behind many Afghans who worked with and supported U.S. troops during the war, and efforts to get them out continue.

“I can think of no greater tragedy than what happened at Abbey Gate. And I have yet to fully reconcile myself to that entire affair,” Milley told the panel members. He called the end state, which left the Taliban in control of the country, a strategic failure.

But that “did not happen in the last 19 days or even the last 19 months. That was a 20-year war,” Milley said. “There were decisions made all along the way which culminated in what the outcome was. And there’s many many lessons to be learned.”

AP · by LOLITA C. BALDOR and TARA COPP · March 23, 2023

5. Not Stopping Russia in Ukraine Would Force 'Doubling' of US Defense Budget, Milley Says

Not Stopping Russia in Ukraine Would Force 'Doubling' of US Defense Budget, Milley Says

military.com · by Rebecca Kheel · March 23, 2023

The top general in the U.S. military warned Thursday that not supporting Ukraine now would lead to a massive increase in future defense budgets -- and global conflict that has been avoided since World War II ended.

"If that rules-based order, which is in its 80th year, if that goes out the window, then be very careful," Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley testified to Congress on Thursday. "We'll be doubling our defense budgets at that point because that will introduce not an era of great power competition. That'll begin an era of great power conflict. And that'll be extraordinarily dangerous for the whole world."

Milley's remark at a House Appropriations Committee defense subcommittee hearing comes amid growing skepticism from Republicans about the price tag of U.S. aid to Ukraine. Milley was testifying alongside Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin about the Biden administration's $842 billion request for Pentagon spending for fiscal 2024.

Congress has approved about $113 billion in aid to Ukraine since the war began when Russia invaded its neighbor in February 2022. While that includes humanitarian and economic assistance, the bulk of the funding has gone toward providing weapons to the Ukrainian military.

While still a minority of the party, some members of the GOP have been increasingly vocal about questioning whether support for Ukraine is a good use of U.S. funding, arguing there are more pressing domestic needs or that there has not been enough oversight to ensure the money isn't misused.

For example, expected Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was a vocal supporter of arming Ukraine when he was in Congress, last month said the war in Ukraine is a "territorial dispute" that is not a "vital" U.S. national security interest. He has since walked back the comment after criticism from Republican senators.

Even as some Republicans voice more opposition to the aid, the Biden administration continues to take heat from other Republicans over not providing more advanced weapons to Ukraine.

On Thursday, subcommittee Chairman Ken Calvert, R-Calif., while reiterating House GOP leadership's talking point that it will not provide a "blank check" to Ukraine, criticized the administration for "giving Ukraine just enough assistance to survive, but not enough to win."

Milley, without calling out any specific criticism of U.S. aid, described the war as an "important national interest" and "fundamental to the United States, to Europe and to global security."

The general was responding to a question from Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, R-Fla., who said he thinks "it's important to defeat [Russian President Vladimir] Putin in the Ukraine" but that it would be "helpful" if U.S. officials more clearly defined their strategic goals.

"The strategic end state is that the global rules-based international order that was put in place in 1945 is upheld," Milley said. "How do you do that, how do you know you've achieved that end state? You achieve that end state when Ukraine remains a free, sovereign, independent country with their territory intact."

Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, who said he counts himself among those growing more skeptical of the aid, also pressed Milley on whether U.S. goals include Ukraine retaking Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.

Milley reiterated that, while he personally believes taking back Crimea would be "an extraordinarily difficult goal to achieve militarily," whether to try to do so is a decision for the Ukrainians.

"Our task is to help Ukraine defend itself," Milley added. "The United States is not at war with Russia, even though Russia tries to portray that."

-- Rebecca Kheel can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @reporterkheel.

military.com · by Rebecca Kheel · March 23, 2023

6. Using Starlink Paints a Target on Ukrainian Troops

Excerpts:

The soldier, an ex-French Foreign Legionnaire who now operates as part of a reconnaissance-and-sabotage unit, is just one of Ukraine’s many soldiers for whom the Starlink service is a double-edged sword. Like other soldiers interviewed for this article, Boris asked to be referred by his call sign for security reasons.

On the one hand, Ukrainian soldiers say the device is key to their operations, notably its ability to help coordinate devastating artillery strikes. On the other, they report a variety of ways in which the Russians can locate, jam, and degrade the devices, which were never intended for battlefield use.

The end result is a MacGyver-esque arms race, as Ukraine rushes to innovate and Russia moves to overcome these innovations.

Using Starlink Paints a Target on Ukrainian Troops

Units scramble for solutions as Russia learns to locate and jam the vital comsat links.

defenseone.com · by Sam Skove

Operating behind enemy lines, one soldier fighting for Ukraine knows the Russians will hunt for him the second he sets up his portable Starlink internet dish.

He and his team set up the device only in urgent situations where they need to communicate with their headquarters. The Russians “will find you,” the soldier said, who goes by the call sign Boris. “You need to do it fast, then get out of there.”

The soldier, an ex-French Foreign Legionnaire who now operates as part of a reconnaissance-and-sabotage unit, is just one of Ukraine’s many soldiers for whom the Starlink service is a double-edged sword. Like other soldiers interviewed for this article, Boris asked to be referred by his call sign for security reasons.

On the one hand, Ukrainian soldiers say the device is key to their operations, notably its ability to help coordinate devastating artillery strikes. On the other, they report a variety of ways in which the Russians can locate, jam, and degrade the devices, which were never intended for battlefield use.

The end result is a MacGyver-esque arms race, as Ukraine rushes to innovate and Russia moves to overcome these innovations.

In Boris’s case, Russian signals-intelligence equipment is likely pinpointing the devices by scanning for suspect transmissions, said Todd Humphreys, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who has studied Starlink devices.

One Ukrainian drone operator with the call sign of “Professor” also reported prolonged jamming that prevented his team from using his Starlink unit.

Professor said the jamming began two to three months ago, and that its intensity varied from place to place. “In one place everything’s fine, and in another—it doesn’t work,” Professor said.

At times the jamming would continue all day. “It’s really powerful,” Professor said.

Sometimes if there is no signal for the Starlink, the drone operator Professor tries a novel solution: he places it in a hole. The signal then returns, although only sometimes.

That should help keep the Starlink up through Russian GPS jamming, said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and an expert in electronic warfare.

Starlinks are particularly vulnerable to such jamming. Each terminal uses a GPS unit to determine which passing satellite should provide an internet connection.

Fortunately for Ukraine, GPS jammer signals are low power. This means that dirt or concrete can block the jammer signal. As long as a Starlink device has a barrier between it and the Russian jamming signal, it can continue to function, according to Clark.

A drone pilot with the call sign of Morgenshtern says he’s seen similar problems with other gear that uses GPS. “I think they introduced some more advanced equipment, or just their number increased,” he said.

Clark added that Ukraine can’t put its drones in a hole to protect them from jamming by Russia’s own Orlan-10 drones, but there may be other ways.

As Starlink allows users to manually enter their GPS locations, users could simply place a cheap GPS-receiver device outside jamming range and then enter its location into their Starlink terminal, offset by their distance to the GPS receiver.

One drone unit commander near the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut said his problems were unrelated to GPS jamming. Sometime in January, the commander said, Starlink uplink had been degraded to the point that his units often couldn’t make audio calls. Instead, the device could only send and receive text messages. The Starlink terminal also took longer to find satellites.

Clark said these problems were likely due to advanced jamming systems that attack the uplink of information to a satellite. The Russian military typically keeps these systems in reserve to defend Russian territory itself. They are theoretically vulnerable to Ukrainian strikes as they must be deployed within dozens of kilometers from their target and are not highly mobile.

That Russia might move such valuable systems to Bakhmut aligns with reports that more professional forces are deploying to take the city, which it has been attempting to occupy for seven months and now partly encircles. When visited by this reporter in Bakhmut on Feb. 14, a drone soldier with the call-sign Lebed reported that Russia was sending more professional soldiers to attack Ukrainian positions.

On March 10, Ukrainian Presidential Advisor Mykailo Podoloyak told the Italian newspaper La Stampa that Russia has “converged on Bakhmut with a large part of its trained military personnel.”

Clark said Russian satellite jamming is also defeatable with adjustments to Starlink’s software. In March 2022, Starlink engineers quickly pushed through a code update in response to Russian jamming attempts, a U.S. official said that April.

For now, Ukraine is stuck with Starlink and its problems, Clark said. Other satellite internet companies, such as Astranis, lack the infrastructure to provide continuous coverage, while satellite phone systems have too little bandwidth for Ukraine’s needs, he said.

It isn’t all bad news for Ukraine, though.

Two officers responsible for drone operations reported no issues with jamming. Similarly, neither Professor nor Morgenshtern said they were currently seeing Starlink jamming.

It’s unclear why jamming would have subsided for these units.

Russian forces could be rotating jamming operations across the front, focusing on high-priority areas. Ukraine may also be targeting Russian electronic-warfare units. Ukraine regularly shoots down Russia’s Orlan drones, for example, which can carry electronic-warfare payloads.

In keeping with Ukraine’s often innovative approach to the war, some drone operators are even reselling crashed parts of these Orlan drones. On one website for Ukrainian drone operators, one user posted an image of the Orlan camera, offered for sale.

defenseone.com · by Sam Skove

7. Xi Jinping’s Chinese Tragedy

Excertps:

IGG: Would you call Xi’s techno-autocracy a neo-communist system?

OS: It is fair to say that Mao was actually a “Marxist” or a “communist” of sorts. He did believe in class struggle, overthrowing the bourgeoisie, “the dictatorship of the proletariat,” and so forth. But I think Xi is a pure Leninist. He does have certain aspirations to reduce the inequalities in Chinese society; but his real focus is on building the wealth and power of the state, and he views party organization as the key to that goal. Lenin, too, was a party builder.

After Deng came to power in the late 1970s, the CPC’s standing and power gradually diminished. During the 1980s, party cells were even removed from state enterprises, and private enterprises were left essentially free from direct party control. But Xi has reversed this, proclaiming that, “East and West, North and South, the Party leads on everything.” He has reinstalled party cells not only in state enterprises but also in private ones. And he has rebuilt the party structure in the classical, Leninist fashion – namely, as a highly disciplined, well-organized political apparatus that can rule at home while also seeking to control what happens abroad.

This is done through the party’s immensely well-funded and well-organized United Front organizations, which are now dedicated “to telling the China story well.” To that end, they have appropriated a massive infusion of funds and institutional firepower to work abroad through media, Confucius institutes, cultural exchanges, universities, civil-society organizations, philanthropy, and other channels – all seeking to influence how people overseas view China.

IGG: So, foreign opinion is still important to Xi?

OS: Xi wants China to be an independent superpower, but he also wants to create dependencies among certain foreign companies, so that he can use them as leverage with their governments. Moreover, he has spent a fortune developing his signature Belt and Road Initiative, which promotes economic dependence on China among developing countries so that they will vote with the PRC at the United Nations and support it in its myriad disputes with democratic countries.

Recently, Xi has been focusing on Western investment banks, offering them all kinds of new special rights to set up financial entities and wealth-management arms in China. Some firms are taking the bait, despite China’s increasingly hostile relations with the US.

My own view is that, whether you are from Blackstone or Morgan Stanley, you would have to be deluded not to see which way the wind is blowing. Despite ongoing reliance on China for many supply chains, deeper economic ties are not in the offing, because such co-dependence now comes with huge geopolitical risks. It is hard to imagine that even Elon Musk, who has made a fortune in China with his Tesla factory, will be able to maintain this success over the long term. China now wants to develop its own electric-vehicle industry, and it does not want to rely on Musk anymore.

So, the wind is blowing more and more ferociously in the direction of decoupling, even though that process is neither easy nor welcome. Yes, some US and foreign companies – such as the stalwarts of Germany’s auto industry – have not yet reconciled themselves with the new reality. CEOs do not like to countenance gloomy and disruptive scenarios. But all they have to do is look at what has happened in Ukraine. If China were to move against Taiwan, it would make the fallout from the war in Eastern Europe look like child’s play.

IGG: What do you mean?

OS: Look at what Putin has done out of territorial pique. He launched a full-scale invasion. If companies wait until China attacks Taiwan – or until there is some military accident in the South China Sea or an explosion of tensions with Japan over the Senkaku Islands – it will already be too late to devise a Plan B. Those companies risk losing everything. Some corporate leaders still cannot believe that the era of “engagement” is over, and that China could end up in a conflict with the US. But they need to wake up. I am not predicting a conflict, but such a prediction is becoming impossible to dismiss.

Xi Jinping’s Chinese Tragedy

https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/xi-jinping-china-tragedy-by-orville-schell-and-irena-grudzinska-gross-2023-03

Mar 24, 2023

ORVILLE SCHELL

interviewed by

IRENA GRUDZIŃSKA GROSS

Although Xi Jinping finally ended China's disastrous zero-COVID policy late last year, he has continued to double down on his Leninist project of deepening autocracy at home and aggression abroad. More Sino-Western "decoupling" and the emergence of Cold War-style blocs is all but assured.

Orville Schell, the director of the Asia Society’s Center on US-China Relations and a long-time chronicler of China, has been closely watching the country’s development since the days of Mao Zedong. Here, he speaks with the Polish historian and former dissident Irena Grudzińska Gross about President Xi Jinping’s increasingly iron-fisted rule and China’s regression toward Maoist absolutism at home and nationalist aggression abroad.

Irena Grudzińska Gross: Every day seems to bring new developments that augur a downward spiral in US-China relations.

Orville Schell: Yes. And making matters even more fraught, Xi Jinping has just returned from a three-day official state visit to Moscow, where he met with President Vladimir Putin and other senior Russian officials. As Beijing’s top diplomat Wang Yi put it, China’s goal is “to strengthen our comprehensive strategic partnership” in ways that can “withstand all tests.”

So, of course, the US and its democratic allies feel threatened, and not just by Russia and China’s bellicosity, but by the unholy alliance of autocrats – Iran, Syria, Belarus, and North Korea – they are assembling. It is hardly surprising that the US and its allies are now actively rallying to create a more effective and collective deterrent that makes Russia feel even more spurned and cast out, and China feel even more threatened by what it views as an unprovoked latter-day containment policy.

Earlier this year, just as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was preparing to meet his counterpart, Wang Yi, to set a floor under the downward slide in relations, a massive Chinese balloon appeared over Alaska, and Blinken canceled his trip. It was an unfortunate missed opportunity to try to start stabilizing the bilateral relationship. Since then, the mutual distrust has ratcheted up almost daily. Now, with China drawing even closer to Russia, the world has been dividing ever more rapidly into two increasingly hostile ideological blocs.

While Russia continues to attack civilians in Ukraine, the Kremlin has hosted a parade of unsavory autocrats, from Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko to the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) Director of the Office of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission and, now, Chinese President Xi Jinping himself. As if to eliminate any lingering doubts about China’s position, Xi publicly attacked the US in remarks before China’s National People’s Congress on March 6, declaring: “Western countries led by the US have implemented all-around containment, encirclement and suppression of China.” Calling out the US by name was a first for him.

For his part, China’s new foreign minister, Qin Gang, raised the temperature even further by accusing the US of “hysterical neo-McCarthyism” that has put the two countries on a path to “conflict and confrontation.” Finally, when Xi was anointed with a third term on March 10, Putin praised him for his “personal contribution” to strengthening the countries’ “comprehensive partnership.” Putin is now looking forward to even more “fruitful Russian-Chinese cooperation.”

In short, we seem to be moving irrevocably toward deeper hostilities. With new post-Cold War blocs emerging, and with each side blaming the other for the breakdown, it is increasingly hard to see where all this ends.

THE COVID BLUNDER

IGG: This spiral seems to have begun accelerating late last year, around the same time that Xi reversed his “zero-COVID” policy overnight. What happened?

OS: That, too, was unprecedented – almost unimaginable – to those of us who have long followed China. After so many years of Xi’s centralized leadership and successful revival of the CPC as an all-pervasive force and network across China, we are used to seeing any kind of dissent be immediately suffocated. Xi’s fear of an uncontrollable pandemic (and China’s possession of only moderately effective vaccines) led him to sustain his draconian zero-COVID policy, forcing lockdowns on any city, factory, or town that showed the slightest signs of infection.

But then demonstrations against these unprecedented controls erupted, and soon the protests expanded and acquired a more political valence, with some demonstrators even attacking the party and the state. This gave the outside world a peek into what lies beneath the manicured surface of Chinese public discourse. Though we cannot always see it, there is a good deal of stifled critical sentiment.

IGG: Was Xi genuinely fearful of COVID-19, or was the pandemic more of a pretext to tighten control over society?

OS: Xi deftly used the pandemic to test and implement new kinds of surveillance and control. The real question, then, is why he is so fixated on “control.”

He is somewhat anomalous and surprising as a modern Chinese leader. His father and family were persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, and he, too, got “sent down” for seven years to a very poor part of the country. Despite all this, he really did drink from the political wellspring of Mao’s Cultural Revolution during the 1960s and 1970s. These were his formative years, when he acquired the toolkit he would use later, first when he became a provincial leader and then as the supreme leader of the People’s Republic (PRC).

Unlike many other earlier Chinese leaders who spent some time abroad in Russia, Europe, or elsewhere, Xi, like Mao, never left China for any great length of time. He thus spent the Cultural Revolution learning how to struggle in the Maoist world, how to survive, and how to overcome.

Now, after so many decades of the reforms and openness that began with Deng Xiaoping, we find Xi taking China backwards, to a statecraft that is more Maoist than republican. It is like witnessing the reappearance of some recessive Leninist gene that we thought would never again be expressed in Chinese politics. Because Xi believes that China is in a fundamentally hostile political relationship with the US and the West, he is bent on fostering self-reliance, even returning to a state that is somewhat reminiscent of Maoist autarchy. Gone is the hope that China might become a responsible global stakeholder through “engagement.” Xi had other ideas, and now we are seeing divergence instead of convergence.

IGG: Why did he end zero-COVID when he did?

OS: At first, it looked like Xi was succeeding in his fight against COVID-19. China did seem to be doing better than the West, both in terms of infections and even the economy. The authorities isolated factories – effectively creating bubbles around them – so that the workers could carry on (and couldn’t go home). Party officials monitored workers very carefully, isolating any who were infected and keeping Chinese supply chains going at a reasonable rate.

Meanwhile, we in the West were somewhat in disarray because we did not have such a coherent and disciplined policy. We were feeling our way in the dark, leading many to view our pandemic response as a chaotic mess.

Now, however, we see that the West’s disorganization ultimately allowed it to gain greater herd immunity, and thus to deal with both the pandemic and the return to normal life in a less disruptive way.

Eventually, China’s public-health success story became a political failure. The people in white hazmat suits – who were testing everybody and inoculating some – became associated with the police and an oppressive state. People who tried to escape from their factories, leave their homes, or protest were beaten. But, after months of being cut off from their families, from stores, and from regular life, many more Chinese began to vent their anger against the state, and this anger about Xi’s COVID overkill started to merge with other latent sources of disaffection.

After all, Xi had also been tightening controls over universities, the media, travel, culture, and just about every other aspect of life. For a while, the pandemic itself allowed him to control this incipient disaffection, by developing a surveillance system the likes of which we have never seen. While zero-COVID has now ended, these new mechanisms of state control will survive. Indeed, they are already antagonizing some elements of society.

FANGS BARED

IGG: Are there still prospects for Chinese collaboration or engagement with the United States and Europe?

OS: During the last few decades, the global economy developed very rapidly, leading to what looked like a win-win for everybody. The assumption was that as long as “engagement” with China continued, the PRC would become more enmeshed in the international marketplace and less antagonistic with democratic political systems.

We knew that China was not going to change overnight or change completely. But the direction and pace of reforms were encouraging enough to keep the global proposition of “engagement” going. We knew that China and America would become more interdependent; but we didn’t see that as a danger as long as China was more or less friendly, supply chains functioned, and the globalized market system kept working.

In the event, the US did develop a massive trade dependence on China, especially in manufacturing, rare earths, polysilicon, lithium, cobalt, certain pharmaceutical products, and even in some technology sectors. In the case of microchips that were once designed and produced in the US, we started outsourcing the “fabbing” process to Taiwan, South Korea, and even China. This became true of many other goods that could be made cheaper elsewhere, because companies wanted to lower their costs and did not want to maintain big expensive inventories. As a result, we are now deeply reliant on China for critical elements in our supply chains.

But then Xi changed Chinese foreign policy, adopting a very aggressive and bullying attitude that has alienated one country after another. This began in 2017 with punitive diplomacy against South Korea, in response to South Korea’s decision to host a US-made missile-defense system (THAAD) to defend itself against North Korea. Chinese officials objected on the grounds that the system could be used to surveil China, so Xi’s government set out to punish its neighbor, cutting off flights, closing scores of Korean department stores inside China, blocking K-pop and other cultural imports, and – above all – stopping the huge flow of Chinese tourists to South Korea. The Koreans thus were the first to experience the full force of what the Chinese call “wolf warrior diplomacy.”

IGG: Tell us more about that concept.

OS: As Xi became convinced that China was rising (and the West declining) – that “The East Wind is Prevailing Over the West Wind” – he began to throw China’s weight around more, inflicting on others what China itself had experienced at the hands of “Great Powers” in previous centuries. As it happened, two films had been released in China about a powerful warrior who refused to tolerate any offense from anybody, especially foreigners. Xi embraced this unrepentant aggressiveness as the hallmark of a new foreign-policy style, which was meant to underscore China’s new wealth and power.

But this new posture also meant that China took umbrage at more and more statements and actions by Western powers and others, be it Japan, South Korea, Australia, or India. If any of these governments offended China, it followed that they must be punished. No longer was China developing under the banner of a “peaceful rise.” Instead, Chinese foreign policy became increasingly strident, with power understood as the ability to retaliate against those perceived to be adversaries.

As one country after another got a taste of the “wolf warrior” treatment, political leaders began to question China’s professed friendliness. After South Korea, Canada was punished for its role in detaining Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of Huawei’s founder, on charges of violating sanctions against Iran. In retaliation, the Chinese detained two Canadians on spurious charges for almost three years. Then there was Australia, whose crime was to call for a thorough investigation of COVID-19’s origins. China clobbered the Aussies by canceling barley, lobster, beef, and wine imports.

Moreover, China attacked India for no discernable reason. Though the two countries had not had a real war in the Himalayas since 1962, China inexplicably started challenging Indian soldiers in the Ladakh region. India was so put off by this aggression that it joined the Quad, a new Indo-Pacific partnership with Australia, Japan, and the US.

China also heedlessly alienated other countries such as Sweden, the Czech Republic, and Lithuania, and imposed arbitrary sanctions on members of the European Parliament, thus affronting all of Europe. Xi’s domestic crackdown was being mirrored by a clampdown abroad.

IGG: This should not be called diplomacy at all, should it?

OS: No. It was very counterproductive. China alienated countries for no apparent reason, except that Xi saw some need to throw the country’s economic and political weight around. While this tendency predated the rise of Xi (recall that when Liu Xiaobo received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, China canceled salmon imports from Norway), he took it to a whole new level.

Hence, China also became more belligerent in the South and East China Seas, building and militarizing islands, and claiming one of the world’s most highly trafficked maritime routes as its own. The next assault was on Hong Kong. Violating the terms of the 1997 handover of the territory by Britain, China effectively ended the city’s autonomy and ran roughshod over its free press, electoral system, human-rights protections, and academic freedoms.

Then, Xi turned to the Taiwan Strait, ramping up his belligerent rhetoric and proclaiming that “sooner rather than later” Taiwan must become a part of China. He has declared that China would not eschew the use of military force if that were what “reunification” required. Finally, China has continued to press its claims to various islands south of Okinawa, even though these have long been administered by Japan.

So, we have a whole welter of territorial claims involving countries from Japan, Taiwan, and Vietnam to Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines. China’s approach has increasingly led policymakers in Washington, and now in Europe, to regard the country as a disruptive and destabilizing force.

PARTY OF ONE

IGG: When and why did China’s “peaceful rise” give way to rising tensions?

OS: It began, as I noted, before Xi came to power, under the previous CPC general secretary, Hu Jintao. Hu was the one who started ramping up the South China Sea issue. But when Xi came to power in 2012-13, he went right ahead and militarized the islands that China had been building, despite having promised US President Barack Obama that he would not do so.

And, again, it was Xi’s aggressiveness that put a stake through the heart of “engagement” as a viable US or Western policy. He is the one who has forced governments around the world to consider whether they are too dependent on China, especially when it comes to technology and other sectors with military implications. More countries are asking themselves whether they want to rely on China for rare earths, lithium, cobalt, and certain microchips. The answer is of course no.

That is why the US passed the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act and set limits on the sale of certain kinds of intellectual property, microchips, and chip-fabricating equipment to China, as well as making it illegal for anyone with a US passport or green card to work for certain Chinese tech companies. US strategists are afraid that China will use our technology and intellectual property not just to compete with us but possibly to go to war against us. That, sadly, is where we are today. The relationship is much more adversarial now, and it is rooted in a divergence between fundamentally different political systems. That is why the prospect of greater decoupling now lies at the heart of the relationship between China and the West.

IGG: Now that Xi has secured his norm-busting third term, do you think he sees the risks of overreaching?

OS: While I personally think Xi is overreaching, I do not see many signs that he himself recognizes the danger that he is creating for his country and the world. He is like the hero in a Greek tragedy who succumbs to unbridled hubris. He will continue to hoover up power, just like Mao did.

Mao was “chairman” of the party until he died. But when Deng came to power in 1978, he eschewed that title and set new rules for leadership, prescribing that each party secretary should serve only two terms, for a total of ten years. But Xi – the first party general secretary not appointed by Deng – changed the rules so that he could have more than two terms, both as party general secretary and as president, and potentially rule for life. (President is really a throwaway title; party general secretary is the important job.)

To be sure, at the beginning of his first term (in 2012), many people, including me, thought that Xi might end up being a reformer like Deng, owing to his father’s history as a veteran revolutionary who had been persecuted. But that turned out not to be the case.

Now that Xi has his third term, he will probably secure a fourth term as well. Notably, he has not bothered to appoint any “successor,” even though these are normally designated a few years before the end of the second term. Doing so would have made him a lame duck, which is unacceptable to someone for whom power is everything. Because Xi wants to avoid showing any signs of weakness, he will not allow anyone else near the scepter of power.

IGG: Are there any signs of internal opposition?

OS: Well, the recent “white paper revolution” opposing his zero-COVID policies did show some evidence of disaffection with the extreme controls. But, by centralizing power in his own hands, including through his anti-corruption campaign, Xi has so defoliated the landscape of rivals that there are no overt signs of leadership factionalism or of opposition within the party itself. Xi has used the party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection to intimidate any dissenters into silence.

The CPC has almost 100 million members, but tens of thousands of them are now in prison. Xi has locked up not only those who were corrupt, but also those who could oppose him. Yet, in doing so, he has created many enemies – and, of course, those enemies have friends. Although they have no way to organize or express themselves publicly, we can be certain that there is much latent discontent. Within some groups, the knives are surely out for Xi.

WHAT THE WORLD SEES

IGG: How do you interpret the scene from the 20th Party Congress last fall, when Hu was rather indecorously escorted from the room?

OS: What made this scene so strange was that we’ve never seen such overt signs of disorder, much less opposition in newspapers or on television, at any other CPC Congress. Hu – Xi’s predecessor as general secretary, who left his post in an orderly fashion after two terms – was scheduled to be sitting on the stage in what is always a thoroughly scripted, highly regimented spectacle. But for reasons we still don’t fully understand, he was escorted out.

Maybe he has dementia – he did look rather lost. Or perhaps he was removed because Xi feared that he might stage some kind of embarrassing protest. Hu did keep trying to grab a red folder on the dais. Maybe Xi worried that he would see the lineup for the Politburo Standing Committee and realize that all his own people had been kicked out. All we really know is that something happened that was not in the official script. For a party that has always been allergic to anything spontaneous, it was an arresting moment.

IGG: But everybody was just sitting there so calmly…

OS: I suspect they were all terrified. Nobody wanted to acknowledge what was going on, lest they commit lèse-majesté in front of Xi.

Now, if I were Xi, I would have stood up, embraced Hu, picked up the microphone, and said to the whole zombie-like collection of assembled party officials: “Let’s thank comrade Hu for his great service to the nation. He’s feeling unwell and now needs to take a rest.” Then, he could have had him escorted respectfully from the room. But no! He was indecorously expelled, and his former colleagues just sat there like robots doing nothing. That little drama says a lot about how the Chinese system works.

IGG: Would you call Xi’s techno-autocracy a neo-communist system?

OS: It is fair to say that Mao was actually a “Marxist” or a “communist” of sorts. He did believe in class struggle, overthrowing the bourgeoisie, “the dictatorship of the proletariat,” and so forth. But I think Xi is a pure Leninist. He does have certain aspirations to reduce the inequalities in Chinese society; but his real focus is on building the wealth and power of the state, and he views party organization as the key to that goal. Lenin, too, was a party builder.

After Deng came to power in the late 1970s, the CPC’s standing and power gradually diminished. During the 1980s, party cells were even removed from state enterprises, and private enterprises were left essentially free from direct party control. But Xi has reversed this, proclaiming that, “East and West, North and South, the Party leads on everything.” He has reinstalled party cells not only in state enterprises but also in private ones. And he has rebuilt the party structure in the classical, Leninist fashion – namely, as a highly disciplined, well-organized political apparatus that can rule at home while also seeking to control what happens abroad.

This is done through the party’s immensely well-funded and well-organized United Front organizations, which are now dedicated “to telling the China story well.” To that end, they have appropriated a massive infusion of funds and institutional firepower to work abroad through media, Confucius institutes, cultural exchanges, universities, civil-society organizations, philanthropy, and other channels – all seeking to influence how people overseas view China.

IGG: So, foreign opinion is still important to Xi?

OS: Xi wants China to be an independent superpower, but he also wants to create dependencies among certain foreign companies, so that he can use them as leverage with their governments. Moreover, he has spent a fortune developing his signature Belt and Road Initiative, which promotes economic dependence on China among developing countries so that they will vote with the PRC at the United Nations and support it in its myriad disputes with democratic countries.

Recently, Xi has been focusing on Western investment banks, offering them all kinds of new special rights to set up financial entities and wealth-management arms in China. Some firms are taking the bait, despite China’s increasingly hostile relations with the US.

My own view is that, whether you are from Blackstone or Morgan Stanley, you would have to be deluded not to see which way the wind is blowing. Despite ongoing reliance on China for many supply chains, deeper economic ties are not in the offing, because such co-dependence now comes with huge geopolitical risks. It is hard to imagine that even Elon Musk, who has made a fortune in China with his Tesla factory, will be able to maintain this success over the long term. China now wants to develop its own electric-vehicle industry, and it does not want to rely on Musk anymore.

So, the wind is blowing more and more ferociously in the direction of decoupling, even though that process is neither easy nor welcome. Yes, some US and foreign companies – such as the stalwarts of Germany’s auto industry – have not yet reconciled themselves with the new reality. CEOs do not like to countenance gloomy and disruptive scenarios. But all they have to do is look at what has happened in Ukraine. If China were to move against Taiwan, it would make the fallout from the war in Eastern Europe look like child’s play.

IGG: What do you mean?

OS: Look at what Putin has done out of territorial pique. He launched a full-scale invasion. If companies wait until China attacks Taiwan – or until there is some military accident in the South China Sea or an explosion of tensions with Japan over the Senkaku Islands – it will already be too late to devise a Plan B. Those companies risk losing everything. Some corporate leaders still cannot believe that the era of “engagement” is over, and that China could end up in a conflict with the US. But they need to wake up. I am not predicting a conflict, but such a prediction is becoming impossible to dismiss.

ORVILLE SCHELL

Writing for PS since 1996

25 Commentaries

Orville Schell, Vice President and Director of the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society, is a co-editor (with Larry Diamond) of Chinese Influence and American Interests: Promoting Constructive Engagement.

IRENA GRUDZIŃSKA GROSS

Writing for PS since 2019

7 Commentaries

Irena Grudzińska Gross is a professor at the Institute of Slavic Studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences and a 2018 Fellow at the Guggenheim Foundation. Her books include Miłosz and the Long Shadow of War (Pogranicze, 2020), and Czesław Miłosz and Joseph Brodsky: Fellowship of Poets (Yale University Press, 2009).

8. Lawmakers Blast TikTok CEO Over Data Privacy

Excerpts:

“You came up with a supposed plan in the summer of 2022, specifically based on our concerns that the Communist Chinese government was spying on U.S. users, but you only just came up with the idea to delete historic nonpublic U.S. data just two weeks ago?”

Chew said TikTok hired a third-party auditor to help with the process and defended the company’s actions: “Congressman, respectfully, there are many companies that use a global workforce. We are not the only one.”

In written testimony, the CEO said TikTok started deleting “historical protected U.S. user data stored in non-Oracle servers” in March and “we expect this process to be completed later this year.”

Eventually, “all protected U.S. data will be under the protection of U.S. law and under the control of the U.S.-led security team. Under this structure, there is no way for the Chinese government to access it or compel access to it,” he wrote.

Lawmakers Blast TikTok CEO Over Data Privacy

At a House hearing, legislators took turns grilling Shou Chew about securing Americans’ data on the popular video-sharing app.

defenseone.com · by Lauren C. Williams

TikTok’s CEO Shou Chew endured a barrage of questions about the app’s privacy from lawmakers for several hours Thursday, trying to assuage concerns that China was using the app to spy on American users.

When Rep. Neal Dunn, R-Fla., who asked Chew whether Bytedance, TikTok’s China-based parent company, “has spied on Americans at the direction of the Chinese Communist Party,” Chew said “no.”

Then Dunn mentioned a Forbes article that highlighted ByteDance’s plans to track the physical locations of some U.S. users, and asked again.

“I don't think that ‘spying’ is the right way to describe it. This is ultimately an internal investigation,” Chew said amid crosstalk, during the House Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing.

The popular short-form video app has been in lawmakers’ crosshairs for years amid national-security concerns that TikTok’s data could be accessed by ByteDance and thence by the Chinese government. The White House recently banned the app from government device, and Biden administration said it may not have the legal authority to more widely ban the app without Congress, senior officials told the Washington Post. U.S. lawmakers have been mulling such legislation.

On Thursday, Congressmembers lobbed concerns about child safety on the app, asked for more parental controls, decried misinformation about elections and abortions, called for commitment to American users’ data security, and expressed frustration at the lack of comprehensive privacy legislation.

More than two hours in, Chew appeared unsettled as lawmakers peppered him with questions, often not leaving enough time for him to respond.

But when Chew did respond, he largely stuck with talking points. He pointed to the company’s Project Texas: hiring cloud provider Oracle to move U.S. users’ non-public data to servers that can only be accessed by U.S.-based employees.

But that’s not enough for some lawmakers.

Rep. John Joyce, R-Pa., harped on data security and TikTok’s plan to delete data rather than just move it from one server to another.

“We have heard today about the various ways in which the app's code can be used to monitor or track users. And likewise, we've heard concerns that this data may not be fully isolated from access by the Chinese Communist Party. That said, I'd like to know more about the historical nonpublic U.S. personal data that your company has already amassed.

“You have publicly stated that the nonpublic information of TikTok users in the United States is being transferred to an Oracle-based cloud infrastructure because of safety concerns…What’s the outline for dealing with that data that you’ve already amassed?”

Responded Chew: “All new data is already stored by default in this Oracle Cloud infrastructure,” later adding that the effort to move older data should be finished later this year.

Joyce pressed on, saying TikTok only began planning to delete data after Congress asked about it earlier this month.

“On March 1 of this year, the committee asked you when you plan to delete nonpublic historical U.S. user data,” Joyce said. “On March 7, just six days later, your attorneys wrote the company, I'm quoting: ‘The company plans to begin the process of deleting nonpublic historic U.S. user data this month, and anticipates that the process will be completed this year.”

“You came up with a supposed plan in the summer of 2022, specifically based on our concerns that the Communist Chinese government was spying on U.S. users, but you only just came up with the idea to delete historic nonpublic U.S. data just two weeks ago?”

Chew said TikTok hired a third-party auditor to help with the process and defended the company’s actions: “Congressman, respectfully, there are many companies that use a global workforce. We are not the only one.”

In written testimony, the CEO said TikTok started deleting “historical protected U.S. user data stored in non-Oracle servers” in March and “we expect this process to be completed later this year.”

Eventually, “all protected U.S. data will be under the protection of U.S. law and under the control of the U.S.-led security team. Under this structure, there is no way for the Chinese government to access it or compel access to it,” he wrote.

defenseone.com · by Lauren C. Williams

9. 'Strategic competition casts doubt on One China policy'

Conclusion:

Given the importance of the Taiwan question, China and the United States should conduct a strategic stability dialogue and a crisis prevention and management dialogue. If the politics of initiating such official dialogues prove difficult, both nations should actively promote ‘second track’ dialogues to eliminate misunderstanding, avoid miscalculations and better inform government decisionmaking.

'Strategic competition casts doubt on One China policy'

Author: Yuqun Shao, Shanghai Institutes for International Studies

Pessimism surrounds the future of China–US relations and the possibility of conflict between the two nuclear powers. The Taiwan Strait has become the most likely flashpoint for conflict amid US strategic competition with China and growing disagreement over the Taiwan question.

Though the United States’ One China policy is different from China’s One China principle, there is consensus between the two powers that ‘both the Chinese mainland and Taiwan belong to one China’ and that the United States does not support ‘Taiwan independence’ or ‘one China, one Taiwan’. But the Chinese strategic community is losing confidence in US policy and is anxious that China–US relations will be shaken by the erosion of this political foundation.

To further complicate matters, Taiwan’s position on cross-Strait political relations is unacceptable on the Chinese mainland, where Taiwan is seen as promoting a ‘one China, one Taiwan’ policy. For China, the US engagement of Taiwan for competitive purposes is effectively viewed as support for a ‘one China, one Taiwan’ policy.

An important part of US President Joe Biden’s strategy centres on competition for geostrategic influence. In December 2021, US Assistant Secretary of Defence Ely Ratner testified before Congress that ‘Taiwan is located at a critical node within the first island chain…that is critical to the defence of vital US interests in the Indo-Pacific’.

His testimony sparked widespread debate in Chinese and US policy circles, with many Chinese scholars arguing that the Biden administration may have violated the US One China policy by the perception of Taiwan as a strategic asset of the United States. The US government has denied that Ratner’s statements represented any change in its policy.

After the outbreak of the Russia–Ukraine conflict, the Biden administration and the US strategic community believes that the United States has greater reason to strengthen its ‘unofficial relationship’ with Taiwan, especially its military relationship. Since the Biden administration has failed to deter Russia, it cannot make the same mistake in the Taiwan Strait. The United States believes it must increase deterrence to prevent China from invading Taiwan and that the Chinese mainland has a timeline for resolving the Taiwan question.

In China’s view, it is the Taiwanese authorities that are changing the status quo in the Taiwan Strait with the support of the United States. China’s military operations in the Taiwan Strait are designed to deter such changes. Beijing has vigorously promoted cross-Strait integration and development in recent years and has made Fujian Province — the nearest mainland province to Taiwan — a demonstration zone for this objective. Some argue that if China was preparing for conflict, it would not be promoting economic development in Fujian. Nonetheless, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 significantly increased US military spending on Taiwan.

China feels that US deterrence in the name of ‘strategic ambiguity’ is increasing, while US assurances that it will not support a unilateral change of the status quo by Taiwan are becoming less credible. Some in the US strategic community believe that ‘strategic ambiguity’ should be replaced with ‘strategic clarity’. This is reinforcing China’s conviction that the United States will attempt to keep Taiwan separate from the Chinese mainland to prevent China’s geostrategic influence from overtaking that of the United States.

Taiwan has an important role in the United States’ strategic competition with China in the domains of critical technology and ideology. In October 2021 the Biden administration launched extensive export controls on computer chips to China, while attempting to create a ‘democratic semiconductor supply chain’ that included Taiwan. For China, this policy has two implications. It means that the United States will prevent China from developing into a first-class power. It also blurs the nature of the Taiwan question by including Taiwan in the realm of US–China ideological competition.

Recent leadership elections for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party ahead of Taiwan’s 2024 presidential election, a looming 2024 US presidential election and a possible visit to Taiwan by US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy have elevated uncertainty around China–US and cross-Strait relations. Against this backdrop there is less room to seek common ground while preserving differences. The February 2023 ‘balloon incident’ and the subsequent postponement of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s scheduled trip to Beijing reveals that current crisis prevention and management mechanisms are insufficient when the mutual trust deficit is so large.

Given the importance of the Taiwan question, China and the United States should conduct a strategic stability dialogue and a crisis prevention and management dialogue. If the politics of initiating such official dialogues prove difficult, both nations should actively promote ‘second track’ dialogues to eliminate misunderstanding, avoid miscalculations and better inform government decisionmaking.

Yuqun Shao is Senior Fellow of the Center for American Studies at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies.

This article appears in the most recent edition of East Asia Forum Quarterly, ‘China Now’, Vol 15, No 1.

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10. Beyond the First Battle: Winning the Long War Over Taiwan

Conclusion:

The US services, especially the Navy and Air Force, have invested heavily in preparing to fight the first battle against China, to operate our ships and aircraft within China’s strike range and crush an attempted invasion. But then what? If American forces are not ready to fight the rest of the war, then Taiwan will be devastated, a great deal of blood will be shed on all sides, the US and global economy will suffer enormous harm, all in a failed attempt to prevent an American client from being defeated and occupied. If America is willing to fight this war, then it must be ready for more than the first battle.

Beyond the First Battle: Winning the Long War Over Taiwan - Foreign Policy Research Institute

fpri.org · by Lonnie Henley 22 March 2023

Editor’s Note: This article expands upon ideas discussed in Lonnie Henley’s recent research report, Beyond the First Battle: Overcoming a Protracted Blockade of Taiwan. To read that report, please visit the website for the U.S. Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute.

Much has been written on whether war with China is likely and whether Beijing has a timeline for invading Taiwan. When it comes to what such a war would look like, however, the focus is almost exclusively on the early days or weeks of the conflict, defeating a Chinese attempt to land on Taiwan and countering Chinese threats to American forces. Virtually no one looks past those first weeks, at what happens after the United States repels the landing. The country is in severe danger of winning the first battle only to lose the war.

If Xi Jinping or a future Chinese leader goes to war over Taiwan, it will be in the full knowledge that he is risking both China’s future and the survival of the Chinese Communist Party regime. Win or lose, the conflict would devastate China’s economy, disrupting trade, destroying infrastructure, and opening decades of extreme hostility with the United States and its allies. Having argued to the Chinese people that the situation in Taiwan was critical enough to require such enormous sacrifice, accepting defeat would not be an option. If the amphibious landing failed, and Beijing could not find a political formula they could sell as victory despite the military failure, then they would be forced to continue the conflict by whatever means possible.

There is a risk that Beijing would escalate to a limited nuclear strike at this point, despite their avowed policy of never being the first to use nuclear weapons. If they refrain from nuclear use, then the most effective course of action remaining is a prolonged blockade of Taiwan to starve the island into submission. Unfortunately, the United States (and the people of Taiwan) has little ability to break such a blockade.

This would not be a traditional blockade, intercepting ships at sea and turning them away from Taiwan. There could be some of that in the early days, but weeks into the conflict, after the United States had brought sufficient force to bear, the People’s Liberation Army Navy would not have enough ships surviving to attempt a picket-line blockade. But the Chinese military does not have to stop ships crossing the Pacific; it only has to stop them getting into port in Taiwan, and both the terrain and the remaining military balance would be strongly in China’s favor.

The key fact is that Taiwan is extremely mountainous, and the few small ports on the east coast of the island have very tenuous connection to the populated areas on the western plain. Delivering the amount of fuel, food, munitions, and other vital supplies to keep Taiwan alive through a protracted conflict is only possible through the much larger west coast ports, directly opposite the Chinese coastline a hundred miles away.

China’s long-range strike assets would have been expended in the first weeks of the war or destroyed by US forces. But a large inventory of shorter-range weapons would remain to prosecute the blockade. The Chinese military would use artillery, land-based anti-ship missiles, patrol boats, mines, and older fighter aircraft to destroy port facilities, block the approaches, and bombard cargo ships attempting to enter port, all under the protection of air defense systems along the coast. Any mines and obstacles we cleared during one convoy operation could be reseeded immediately once we pulled back to stage the next.

A parallel air blockade would be enforced by long-range surface-to-air missiles as well as People’s Liberation Army Air Force fighters. Advanced stealth aircraft could probably get through, but not large, slow, and highly-visible cargo jets. Even if US forces disabled China’s air defense systems, aircraft could not deliver the tonnage needed to keep Taiwan in the fight.

Neither the force the United States has today, nor the force the military services are building for the 2030s and beyond, is capable of breaking this blockade. Keeping Taiwan alive requires getting hundreds of tons into port, day after day, month after month, under heavy Chinese attack. The United States does not have nearly enough mine-clearing capacity. It does not have warships suitable for an intense, close-in, long-duration fight. It does not have the number or type of systems for prolonged attrition warfare, or the munitions inventories to sustain it. The American military has a force postured for long-range precision strike, excellent for sinking amphibious landing ships, but not for getting cargo into port.

The US services, especially the Navy and Air Force, have invested heavily in preparing to fight the first battle against China, to operate our ships and aircraft within China’s strike range and crush an attempted invasion. But then what? If American forces are not ready to fight the rest of the war, then Taiwan will be devastated, a great deal of blood will be shed on all sides, the US and global economy will suffer enormous harm, all in a failed attempt to prevent an American client from being defeated and occupied. If America is willing to fight this war, then it must be ready for more than the first battle.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a non-partisan organization that seeks to publish well-argued, policy-oriented articles on American foreign policy and national security priorities.

Lonnie Henley

Lonnie Henley is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a retired U.S. intelligence professional who held several senior positions including Defense Intelligence Officer for East Asia, Senior Defense Intelligence Analyst for China, and National Intelligence Collection Officer for East Asia.

fpri.org · by Lonnie Henley

11. The Military Depends on Virtues that Are Fading

Civic honor and service versus "individual self-fulfillment."

Conclusion:

To succeed at drawing in recruits, the military doesn’t necessarily need to make the oath’s normative content its central message, as it once did. The Marine Corps’s focus on the foundational human need for belonging is effective because it describes the transcendent value of character and self-sacrifice and carefully avoids the true yet controversial claim that America and its principles are their worthy beneficiaries.

Nonetheless, it’s alarming that the military must resort to generic appeals to meaning and belonging in order to recruit successfully. America’s national security is contingent on an all-volunteer force. While some may find the Marine Corps’s call to belong compelling, this draw will not sustain the personnel needs of the entire armed services; after all, all kinds of careers, activities, and communities can give people the same sense of fulfillment. Recruiters rely on Americans who believe in the moral preeminence of the United States and its constitutional principles. Our institutions—especially schools—must instill and embrace these truths: America’s national security cannot wait.

The Military Depends on Virtues that Are Fading

thepublicdiscourse.com · by Theodore Camp · March 23, 2023

An explanation for the military’s recruitment challenges goes deeper than trends in the labor market. Ultimately, the civic honor on which voluntary service depends has quietly been eroding for some time, and is being replaced by an ethos of individual self-fulfillment.

The US military is facing a recruitment crisis. It is so severe that in September, Senator Thom Thillis referred to an “inflection point” for the voluntary-force model, threatening over a half century of precedent. In 2022, the Army failed to meet its recruitment goals across the board: active duty, reserves, and National Guard were thousands of personnel below target. The Navy met its recruiting quota for enlisted personnel, but not for officers. The Air Force met its recruiting quota for active duty, but not the reserves or National Guard. The Marine Corps barely hit its targets for active duty and reserves.

There are a few theories about the causes of this recruiting predicament, which is at its worse since the post-Vietnam era. Direct causes might be record-low unemployment rates, COVID-era restrictions that limited recruiters’ access to the public, and an increase in both mental and physical health problems among young people. The Public Interest Fellowship’s Garrett Exner, a former Marines special operations officer, points to cultural shifts in American schooling, such as lower standards and refusal to subject students to any kind of adversity. Stuart Scheller, the outspoken Marine veteran and author, blames poor military leadership and misdirected shifts in financial incentives for servicemen.

While these hypotheses probably have some degree of truth, they do not explain why some services are better at recruiting than others: the Marine Corps, after all, made all its quotas, while the Army didn’t meet any of its recruiting goals. The Marine Corps’s success is surprising for many reasons: it has the highest physical fitness standards for retention—significantly higher than that of the Navy and Air Force, and a reputation for physical and psychological duress that eclipses the other services. Moreover, the military occupational specialties (career specialties) available to Marine recruits is dwarfed by the Army’s, which casts the widest net for competencies among the services. At a time when obesity alone prohibits a shocking percentage of American young people from serving, the Marine Corps’s recruiting performance is especially puzzling.

An explanation for the military’s recruitment challenges (and the Marine Corps’s comparative success) goes deeper than trends in the labor market. Ultimately, the civic honor on which voluntary service depends has quietly been eroding some time, and it is being replaced by an ethos of individual self-fulfillment. Tragically, different parts of the military have absorbed this mentality to different degrees. Recent recruiting ads—one by the Marines and one by the Army—offer glimpses into these broader cultural shifts and the challenges that they pose to the US military.

Ultimately, the civic honor on which voluntary service depends has quietly been eroding some time, and it is being replaced by an ethos of individual self-fulfillment.

Which Purpose?

“Battle to Belong” is an online recruitment ad for the Marines that depicts young Americans’ sense of alienation and nihilism with splendid accuracy. It was released on YouTube in September 2020, after months of COVID-era lockdowns and mere weeks after the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests. Teens were spending an average of nearly eight hours a day on screens outside of their Zoom classroom-time. At the time of this writing in February 2023, the ad had over three hundred fifty thousand views on YouTube.

“Battle to Belong” opens with a young man walking down an urban street littered with advertisements and floating widgets. “Searching for meaning in a relentless world,” begins the baritone narrator, “Always connected, but somehow alone.” These words establish that meaning is the object of the protagonist’s search and that a fog of empty, virtual relationships obscures his goal. Then, a malevolent digital clone of the protagonist stops him in his path. “Trapped by illusion,” the narrator continues, as the clone offers our protagonist virtual distractions and a menacing look. Shouting, the young man lunges through the hologram clone and falls into the mud at Marine Corps boot camp. “We offer another path where the battle to belong begins.” As the music swells and the protagonist completes the grueling training, the voice continues, “Awakened by a calling, united by purpose, defined by the cause you fight for. No one can ever take away what it means to be among the few, the proud, the Marines.”

This commercial defies expectation in two significant ways. First, it fully acknowledges America’s social decline, and presents the Marines as a way out of that decline. Other advertisements, on the other hand, tend to suggest protection of the homeland as the compelling reason for enlisting. Instead, this Marine Corps commercial presents contemporary American life as culturally indistinct, gray, and alienating. Service offers an escape from home, not a fight to defend it.

Second, and relatedly, its argument for joining the military makes no explicit reference to the official Marine Corps mission—“the protection of our Nation and the advancement of its ideals.” Instead, the Marine Corps is attractive because it provides a purpose at all. Its uses words like “path,” “calling,” “purpose,” and “cause,” but it leaves the specific goal undefined, an afterthought. The incentive to join the Marine Corps is not to serve or accomplish an end, but to merely belong.

The case the ad makes for joining the Marines is brilliant: it presents fundamental human needs, purpose and belonging, both of which are currently unfulfilled. It offers respite to potential recruits who feel desperately lonely and purposeless, not only because COVID restrictions abolished their everyday work and social lives, but also because the Internet encourages the cultivation of a shallow and harmful parallel identity. The Marine Corps obviously understands the corrosive effects of digital media. The young man’s hologram version of himself is clearly a threat to his well-being.

Yet the ad’s unwillingness to define military service in patriotic instead of purely psychological terms leaves undesirable possibilities open. If the purpose of service is to pursue a feeling of belonging, who cares what the purported aim of it is? Is the current population of recruits unable to grasp the moral value of the mission? Do they find it unworthy?

The case the ad makes for joining the Marines is brilliant: it presents fundamental human needs, purpose and belonging, both of which are currently unfulfilled.

Serve Yourself

If the 2020 Marine Corps ad can be faulted for mild banality, the Army’s YouTube ad, “Emma: The Calling”, shamelessly presents the Army as one among many morally equivalent paths for self-fulfillment. The ad has many millions more views than “Battle to Belong,” despite being released almost a year later. But its reception was so poor the Army turned off the video’s comment section. Even Senator Ted Cruz responded, saying “Holy crap. Perhaps a woke, emasculated military is not the best idea. . .”

“The Calling” depicts a real soldier, Cpl. Emma Malonelord, who works with the Patriot Missile Defense System. Despite the gravity of Malonelord’s occupation, the ad employs colorful, visually inoffensive, and almost playful cartoons. Malonelord’s narration heightens this discordance:

“It begins in California, with a little girl raised by two moms. Although I had a fairly typical childhood … I also marched for equality. I like to think I’ve been defending freedom from an early age.” After describing one of her mothers’ arduous recovery from paralysis and her parents’ wedding, she tells us that she graduated top of her class from high school and joined other “strong women” at her UC Davis sorority. She continues:

But as graduation approached, I began feeling I had been handed so much in life—a sorority girl stereotype. Sure, I had spent my life around inspiring women, but what had I really achieved on my own . . . I needed my own adventures, my own challenge. And after meeting with an Army recruiter, I found it. A way to prove my inner strength, and maybe shatter some stereotypes along the way.

The Army ad pitches two ideas in ways that may have the reverse effect of that intended. First and more laudably, “The Calling” posits that one should join the Army to defend equality and freedom. But in presenting gay marriage as the paramount manifestations of these principles, the commercial immediately alienates potential recruits with traditional values or reasonable ethical concerns.

It’s as though her friends’ expensive (if challenging) personal experiences and her military service are all morally equivalent activities on the path to finding themselves.

Its second and far less commendable assertion is that one should join the Army to prove oneself a strong woman. This argument begins hopefully enough with the phrase “I had been handed so much in life.” A generous interpretation of Malonelord’s statement is that it’s an expression of gratitude to America and her desire to give back. But it becomes clear that this isn’t what Malonelord means: she goes on to compare her dearth of accomplishments at graduation to the activities of her fellow sorority sisters, who, she reports, climbed Everest and studied abroad in Italy. It’s as though her friends’ expensive (if challenging) personal experiences and her military service are all morally equivalent activities on the path to finding themselves.

To Malonelord, and by extension, to the Army, service is an avenue to “shatter stereotypes,” flex one’s personal capabilities, and compare favorably to others, rather than a morally resonant act of personal sacrifice to serve one’s nation. This attention-seeking outlook recalls the online narcissism that “Battle to Belong” so incisively rejects.

The Oath

Contemporary recruitment messaging is troubling. America’s military must draw on cultural reservoirs that prize self-sacrifice and the honor due to country. After all, The Oath of Enlistment speaks of bearing faith and allegiance, recognizes a higher power, and insists on selfless service to the Constitution against her enemies. All recruitment efforts must ultimately attempt to persuade young Americans to take this oath at possible risk of life and limb, and the near-certain prospect of fear, physical strain, boredom, and homesickness.

Of course, people join the military for a variety of reasons and serve honorably once they join. The opportunities to improve oneself, through access to education and medical benefits, to escape poverty, and to file for naturalization are among the multitude of incentives service members pursue. Every American owes a debt of gratitude to all service members, whatever their initial incentives for joining.

While some may find the Marine Corps’s call to belong compelling, this draw will not sustain the personnel needs of the entire armed services; after all, all kinds of careers, activities, and communities can give people the same sense of fulfillment.

Yet low recruitment rates and these commercials’ reluctance to mention the stated purpose of the military suggest that the reservoir of virtues on which voluntary service depends is running dry. A nation that is habitually excoriated by its political and intellectual leaders for such things as “perpetuating the unbearable human cost of systemic racism”, demonstrating “arrogance” in foreign affairs, wrongfully occupying ancestral land, and failing to address “the destructive nature of a system that is fueled by uncontrolled greed” (capitalism), while hesitating to celebrate its contributions to humanity, will inevitably struggle to rouse a genuine sense of duty from its youth.

To succeed at drawing in recruits, the military doesn’t necessarily need to make the oath’s normative content its central message, as it once did. The Marine Corps’s focus on the foundational human need for belonging is effective because it describes the transcendent value of character and self-sacrifice and carefully avoids the true yet controversial claim that America and its principles are their worthy beneficiaries.

Nonetheless, it’s alarming that the military must resort to generic appeals to meaning and belonging in order to recruit successfully. America’s national security is contingent on an all-volunteer force. While some may find the Marine Corps’s call to belong compelling, this draw will not sustain the personnel needs of the entire armed services; after all, all kinds of careers, activities, and communities can give people the same sense of fulfillment. Recruiters rely on Americans who believe in the moral preeminence of the United States and its constitutional principles. Our institutions—especially schools—must instill and embrace these truths: America’s national security cannot wait.

Help us improve Public Discourse! Please complete our Reader Survey 2023.

thepublicdiscourse.com · by Theodore Camp · March 23, 2023

12. US review of Afghanistan withdrawal to be released in April

US review of Afghanistan withdrawal to be released in April

AP · by AAMER MADHANI and ZEKE MILLER · March 22, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — The results of the long-delayed government review of the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan will be released next month, the White House announced Wednesday, with Congress and the public set to see an assessment of what went wrong as .

The August 2021 pullout of U.S. troops led to the swift collapse of the Afghan government and military, which the U.S. had supported for nearly two decades, and the return to power of the Taliban. In the aftermath, President Joe Biden directed that a broad review examine “every aspect of this from top to bottom.”

It was originally set to be released at the one-year anniversary of the withdrawal but was delayed while agencies continued their work.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday that the work was nearly complete and that the administration was readying the release next month.

“We expect to be able to share those takeaways with the public by mid-April,” Kirby said. He said the administration would share classified sections of the report with congressional oversight committees.

House Republicans have been pushing the Biden administration since the withdrawal to release documents related to official communications and the review of how the chaotic fall of Kabul came to be.

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There are currently two ongoing investigations into the withdrawal. One them is being led by Rep. Mike McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who requested documents from Blinken in January. On Wednesday, the House Republican received the first batch of documents from the State Department.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to appear Thursday before McCaul and the Foreign Affairs committee, where he is expected to be grilled on the withdrawal.

—

Associated Press writer Farnoush Amiri contributed from Washington.

AP · by AAMER MADHANI and ZEKE MILLER · March 22, 2023

13. Navy denies Chinese claim it drove away American destroyer

Navy denies Chinese claim it drove away American destroyer

navytimes.com · by David Rising, The Associated Press · March 23, 2023

BANGKOK — The United States denied Chinese claims Thursday that its military had driven away an American guided-missile destroyer from operating around disputed islands in the South China Sea as tensions rise in the region between the two powers.

The U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet said that a statement from China’s Southern Theatre Command that it had forced the USS Milius away from waters around the Paracel Islands — called Xisha by China — was “false.”

“USS Milius is conducting routine operations in the South China Sea and was not expelled,” said Lt. j.g. Luka Bakic in response to a query from The Associated Press.

“The United States will continue to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows,” Bakic added.

Bakic would not comment on whether the ship had been operating in immediate proximity of the Paracel Islands, which are in the South China Sea a few hundred kilometers (miles) off the coast of Vietnam and the Chinese province of Hainan, or whether there had been any sort of a confrontation.

China occupies the Paracel Islands, but they are also claimed by Taiwan and Vietnam.

Col. Tian Junli, a spokesperson for China’s Southern Theatre Command, said earlier that the Chinese navy had followed and monitored the USS Milius after it “illegally entered China’s Xisha territorial waters without approval from the Chinese government, undermining peace and stability in the South China Sea.”

He said that the Chinese navy and air force then forced away “the U.S. warship in accordance with the law.”

“The theatre troops will maintain a state of high alert at all times and take all necessary measures to resolutely safeguard national sovereignty, security as well as peace and stability in the South China Sea,” he said.

The incident comes amid growing tensions between China and the United States in the region, as Washington pushes back at Beijing’s growingly assertive posture in the South China Sea and elsewhere.

China claims ownership over virtually the entire strategic waterway, through which around $5 trillion in global trade transits each year and which holds highly valuable fish stocks and undersea mineral resources.

The Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan also have competing claims.

The U.S. itself has no claims to the waters, but has deployed Navy and Air Force assets to patrol the waterway for decades and says freedom of navigation and overflight is in the American national interest.

China has frequently responded angrily, accusing the U.S. of meddling in Asian affairs and demanding it leave the region where it has had a naval presence for more than a century.

Following the incident with the USS Milius, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told reporters in Beijing that “the U.S. should immediately stop such violations and provocations.”

“China will continue to take all necessary measures to firmly safeguard national sovereignty and security and maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea,” he said.

14. Using 1202 Authorities to Counter China’s Maritime Militia

Conclusion:

The April 2020 sinking of the Vietnamese fishing vessel by the Chinese Coast Guard was just one example demonstrating the trend of increasingly aggressive Chinese actions taken in the South China Sea to assert dominance in the region. The Chinese Coast Guard and maritime militia employ guerrilla tactics of harassment and violent engagements below the threshold of armed conflict to exercise effective control over an area rich in natural resources and commercial trade, unafraid to test other nation’s sovereignty with military might.

Current Southeast Asian national navies are under-prepared and ill-equipped to challenge the unconventional methods of Chinese militias without risking escalation, requiring a novel approach to reassert their own territorial claims through the development of tailored, maritime guerilla forces trained and equipped to engage Beijing’s maritime forces in aggressive activities. Section 1202 of the National Defense Authorization Act provides the scalable authority for U.S. military forces to partner with regional surrogate forces to generate an irregular warfare capacity that provides an asymmetric advantage over Chinese conventional forces. The United States can empower these coastal states to work together — both militarily and politically — to assert their respective sovereignty in the region and deter further aggressive Chinese actions that harm national interests. The development of these maritime surrogate forces will generate long-term, combat-credible deterrence against China.

Using 1202 Authorities to Counter China’s Maritime Militia - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Steve Sacks · March 24, 2023

In early April 2020, a Chinese Coast Guard vessel and a Vietnamese fishing boat collided near Woody Island in the South China Sea. The Chinese government claims this island as sovereign territory. Accounts of the incident differed at the time. China claimed the Vietnamese fishing boat had illegally entered the area and refused to leave after being ordered by Chinese Coast Guard personnel and then collided with a Chinese vessel after making dangerous maneuvers. Vietnamese Coast Guard officials contend the Vietnamese fishing vessel was deliberately rammed by the Chinese Coast Guard. The eight crew members of the sunken vessel were picked up by Chinese Coast Guard sailors along with two Vietnamese craft, which were towed back into port.

This event is instructive. The Chinese government used guerrilla tactics and violence below the level of armed conflict to assert its strategic interests in the South China Sea. This approach to regional affairs has no easy comparison with conventional U.S. military applications. This asymmetry in approaches to regional affairs creates a serious challenge for the United States and its regional allies and partners. The danger is that without a proportional means of response, the Chinese government will continue to push the envelope as other nations attempt to avoid escalation through military confrontation.

As the People’s Republic of China expands claims within the South China Sea, the United States should work with partners to find a way to deter further expansion while avoiding escalatory actions that could spark conflict. To do so, the United States government should leverage Section 1202 of the National Defense Authorization Act. This section allows for the United States military to create, develop, train, and maintain partner relationships with irregular maritime forces from across the region. By working with partners, the United States empowers regional nations to defend their respective interests against the encroachment of China while reducing the need for American naval forces to be the sole ever-present bulwarks in the region.

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These partners would leverage lessons learned from Sri Lanka in the 1990s and help create a coterie of U.S.-enabled forces to protect regional infrastructure and national interests. These forces could also help enforce territorial control over disputed territory where China has sought to expand its influence far from its shores.

The Issue

Six nations claim territory in the South China Sea, which include small islands, land formations, and natural resources beneath the water’s surface. The United States is involved in these territorial issues for two reasons: to empower and defend its partners in the region, and to project American power ensuring freedom of navigation for its navies throughout Asia, both of which are underpinned by the economic drivers of trade and investment in the region. Partners prioritize their interests in the preserving of their recognized territorial sovereignty and the ability to extract accompanying resources. These interests are often at odds with China’s — and sometimes with each other.

Beijing has expanded its use of conventional naval forces, including the navy and its maritime militia — an irregular force of Chinese fisherman. Beijing exercised these forces in February when a Chinese Coast Guard vessel engaged a Filipino patrol vessel with high-grade lasers as it attempted to approach the Second Thomas Shoal on a resupply mission to forces there.

Irregular warfare employs “the use of indirect, non-conventional methods and means to subvert, attrite, and exhaust an adversary, or render irrelevant, rather than defeat him through direct conventional military confrontation,” providing China a method to exert their claims in the region while minimizing escalation risks that could lead to a high-end conflict. Mao Zedong pioneered the use of guerrilla warfare in China. In his book, On Guerrilla Warfare, Mao defined the role of militias as a force supporting the better trained and equipped guerrilla forces against their adversaries. Should China continue to build up their maritime guerrilla activities in the region, U.S. naval vessels will face greater risk of harassment from Chinese maritime militia forces. This would risk escalation in a highly contentious theater. Reduced maneuver space could result in decreased power projection, in turn providing opportunity for continued Chinese government claims to more territory. Continued Chinese militia and military harassment in the South China Sea could degrade faith and confidence in American leadership, driving those nations closer to China as a security partner.

The Cause

The cause of these aggressive activities lies in the understanding of one of China’s self-proclaimed strategic endstates: building the country into a maritime great power. Beijing has evolved this strategy to incorporate efforts to divert regional and international attention away from the 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling that rejected China’s South China Sea claims in favor of the Philippines. Instead, China has sought to force its coastal neighbors into bilateral agreements more favorable to Beijing’s maritime interests. The asymmetric tactics of Chinese naval forces provide the tools by which China executes this strategy, ultimately providing a greater sense of effective control over the region for political leaders. The South China Sea holds particular significance for the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese government wants to exploit the region’s natural resources. The South China Sea also serves as a strategic waterway through which approximately 39 percent of Chinese trade passed in 2016 — including more than 80 percent of its daily oil and natural gas requirements.

Beijing has tasked their military to enact “forward defense,” which expands the military’s reach beyond China’s borders to broaden its strategic depth. To achieve this, the military has adapted the Maoist guerrilla tenet to “establish bases … in territory controlled by the enemy so as to deny him access to, and free use of, the water routes,” from which the Chinese maritime forces can launch harassing attacks to further deny freedom of movement to its neighbors. These measures have been implemented in concert with deliberate capability growth with both China’s navy and marine corps to backstop harassment tactics with regular military forces. Sustained maritime harassment measures require overseas strategic support points to enhance the navy’s ability to maintain awareness through an integrated intelligence network across Southeast Asia, further enabling the Beijing’s effective control of its neighbors and United States.

What to Do About It

Current American efforts to deter these activities have relied heavily on Freedom of Navigation Operations, or the transiting of U.S. Navy vessels through international waterways that China claims as its own. This policy is designed to demonstrate American military influence throughout the region. However, this approach means that the United States does not have persistent presence in contested areas.

To overcome this issue, the United States should look to an example from the Sri Lankan Navy’s response to the Sea Tigers — a maritime militia active in the 1990s. The Sea Tigers understood the strategic importance of the sea for survival and worked to degrade the mobility of the Sri Lankan naval forces. The group crafted fiber glass boats, smaller and faster than Sri Lankan naval vessels, equipped them with large outboard engines, and employed “wolf pack” tactics against adversaries. They initiated attacks by surrounding Sri Lankan naval vessels before firing on them or ramming them with suicide boats, causing considerable damage to the national navy’s fleet. These small, agile, and heavily armed speed boats held an asymmetric advantage over the larger, heavier ships of the Sri Lankan Navy, enabling the Sea Tigers to effectively leverage guerrilla tactics against their adversary. The Sri Lankan Navy, ill-equipped and unprepared to combat such a threat, found itself ceding freedom of maneuver to the terrorist organization. In the Sea Tigers case study, the Sri Lankan government was eventually forced to evolve its navy, creating the Fourth Fast Attack Flotilla, comprised of heavily armed fast-attack speed boats that were capable of using the Sea Tiger maritime guerrilla tactics against them.

Section 1202 of the National Defense Authorization Act gives the United States the legal authorities to establish, train, and support unconventional maritime partner forces. This approach could be used to augment the U.S. presence in Southeast Asia. These partner forces would operate on behalf of their respective governments to counter Chinese naval forces and help create a coalition of nations to deter Chinese maritime aggression. These U.S.-trained forces could also be used to secure natural resources and commercial interests, strengthen respective economies, and enable political and economic independence from China.

These 1202 programs would build capacity in irregular maritime elements to resist Chinese maritime aggression in their territorial waters. The goal of these irregular forces would be effective employment in defense of military and commercial vessels and degrading the capabilities of Chinese naval operations in the host nation’s territorial waters. These surrogate forces, operating under the purview and authorities of their respective national governments and in close coordination with their naval forces, could also be tasked with targeting Chinese military assets that attempt to assert illegal claims within the South China Sea, defending host-nation sovereignty.

In addition to training teams, the United States should provide materiel assistance to the surrogate forces, especially in nations that cannot provide those assets organically. Guerrilla warfare operations are “not dependent for success on the efficient operation of complex mechanical devices, highly organized logistical systems, or the accuracy of electronic computers,” so efforts should ensure simplicity of hardware requirements and supply chains. To enable sustainability of the programs, military hardware such as the small watercrafts, motors, and fuel should be derived from indigenous sources whenever possible, further enabling host-nation sovereignty and reducing the risk of perceived dependence on the United States. Enacting these measures in the earliest stages of these irregular platforms will also enable an American exit strategy that allows for management and sustainment requirements to eventually be assumed by host nations.

By empowering regional partners, the United States can help the countries counter Chinese aggression by supporting international legal action or pursuing joint political negotiations through the Code of Conduct framework that results in fair practices for all parties. Through political empowerment of our regional partners, in concert with military capacity building, there is potential for the development of a regional bloc of nations that hold sufficient influence to effectively counter Beijing’s aggression and unfair legal practices within the South China Sea.

Implications of Execution

The development of these surrogate forces across regional partners will enable nations to better assert their legal claims within territorial waters. This would nest within current American efforts to expand conventional force posture in the region but would ensure that power projection and freedom of maneuver assurances would originate organically from partner-nation navies. Raising the collective military naval power baseline of regional partners enables the organic protection of their respective maritime assets, as well as defend against Chinese vessels illegally operating within territorial waters. This approach could help compel Beijing to readdress their maritime strategy both bilaterally with China’s coastal neighbors and collectively against a coalition of sovereign nations.

Three critical errors must be avoided. First, these forces need to be disciplined and employed judiciously. Second, escalation with China has to be managed. Third, these forces should operate as part of a broader diplomatic strategy to ensure the fair adjudication of territorial disputes. The first refers to the risk that host-nation governments could easily take this maritime capability and prioritize its employment against domestic enemies in lieu of deterring Chinese vessels within their territorial waters. Seeing the irregular force as a pathway to receive low-cost training and materiel from the United States, those governments could assign guerrilla forces to other missions that fail to contribute to the counter-China line of effort. Long-term operational partnership with American forces in the Indo-Pacific region could help mitigate this risk. The second refers to the risk that employing a surrogate force against the Chinese naval forces could escalate future engagements, resulting in more dangerous and reckless encounters. The Chinese government argues that the South China Sea is their legal territory, which allows the government to extract natural resources and navigate freely. The third critical error would be for policymakers to believe that the military capacity-building effort will succeed on its own. These military partnerships must be integrated into a whole-of-government approach, incorporating both diplomacy and capacity building into a multi-national approach to containing China’s expansionist efforts. American partner-nation sovereignty claims should be substantiated and reinforced through continued political dialogue within both multi-lateral institutions and bilateral political agreements. This will enable cooperation and coordination in deterring Chinese naval aggression in the region. To suppress Beijing’s expansionist actions, the South China Sea Code of Conduct should be updated to better define fair maritime practices in the region, protecting coastal states from additional Chinese gains. Concurrently, multi-lateral organizations should take the lead to hold member nations accountable for their actions in the region and enact punitive measures when states stray outside established legal norms and boundaries.

Conclusion

The April 2020 sinking of the Vietnamese fishing vessel by the Chinese Coast Guard was just one example demonstrating the trend of increasingly aggressive Chinese actions taken in the South China Sea to assert dominance in the region. The Chinese Coast Guard and maritime militia employ guerrilla tactics of harassment and violent engagements below the threshold of armed conflict to exercise effective control over an area rich in natural resources and commercial trade, unafraid to test other nation’s sovereignty with military might.

Current Southeast Asian national navies are under-prepared and ill-equipped to challenge the unconventional methods of Chinese militias without risking escalation, requiring a novel approach to reassert their own territorial claims through the development of tailored, maritime guerilla forces trained and equipped to engage Beijing’s maritime forces in aggressive activities. Section 1202 of the National Defense Authorization Act provides the scalable authority for U.S. military forces to partner with regional surrogate forces to generate an irregular warfare capacity that provides an asymmetric advantage over Chinese conventional forces. The United States can empower these coastal states to work together — both militarily and politically — to assert their respective sovereignty in the region and deter further aggressive Chinese actions that harm national interests. The development of these maritime surrogate forces will generate long-term, combat-credible deterrence against China.

Become a Member

Steve Sacks is a Marine Corps Reserve intelligence officer and former lead analyst in the service’s Pentagon-based China Research Group. He currently works as a security and risk advisor in the private sector based out of Washington, D.C. The opinions expressed here by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Defense or his current employer.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Steve Sacks · March 24, 2023

15. Inside Ukraine’s scramble for “game-changer” drone fleet

Inside Ukraine’s scramble for “game-changer” drone fleet

Reuters · by Max Hunder

KYIV, March 24 (Reuters) - At an unassuming industrial estate in northern Ukraine, two former Microsoft executives and a team of engineers are producing military drones that can travel over long distances and carry large payloads.

AeroDrone, which made crop-dusting drones prior to the war and now supplies Ukraine’s armed forces, makes unmanned aircraft that can carry up to 300 kilograms or fly up to several thousand kilometres in certain configurations.

As Ukraine seeks to narrow the yawning gap between its own military capabilities and Russia's, Kyiv says it is expanding its drone programme for both reconnaissance and attacking enemy targets over an increasing range. It is hoping that domestic drone makers like AeroDrone will help it meet its ambitious goals.

The government is now working with more than 80 Ukraine-based drone manufacturers, Ukraine's Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov told Reuters. He said Kyiv needs hundreds of thousands of drones, many of which it is looking to source from a rapidly-expanding domestic industry. Currently, the military operates dozens of models of domestic and foreign drones that fulfil a “wide spectrum” of roles, Reznikov said, in written responses to questions.

"Drones are potentially a game-changer on the battlefield in the same way that precise Western MLRS became last year," Reznikov said, referring to Multiple Launch Rocket System weapons.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and other drones are only one element of a war that is currently dominated by artillery, infantry and missiles. Moscow has been able to pound targets across Ukraine with long-range missiles, which Kyiv lacks.

"It is not worth expecting parity in the near future,” Reznikov said on closing the armament gap. He added: “Russia is also working on improving its UAVs."

RAMPING UP

Kyiv is hoping to use Western supplies of battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles in the coming months to launch a counteroffensive to seize back swathes of occupied territory in the south and east.

For cash-strapped Ukraine, whose economy has been decimated by the war and whose government is now reliant on international financing, drones represent a relatively inexpensive way to fight back against Russia's vast military. Ukraine has said it will spend nearly $550 million on drones in 2023 and has set up drone assault units within its armed forces.

The secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council, Oleksiy Danilov, told Reuters unmanned vehicles that crash into their target and detonate - so-called kamikaze drones - will be a particular focus for Ukraine in 2023.

Drone warfare specialist James Rogers, a professor at the University of Southern Denmark, said Ukraine's UAV capability still lags behind Russia and its Iranian-made Shahed-136 kamikaze drones, which have been used by Moscow to target Ukrainian energy facilities for months.

Ukraine has received significant supplies of UAVs from its partners, from Turkey's missile-equipped Bayraktar TB2 to the Norwegian-made Black Hornet reconnaissance drone, which weighs less than 33 grams.

Kyiv is now ramping up its own production. Taras Chmut, a Ukrainian defence specialist, says the country’s domestic production of aerial drones has grown by three or four times since the start of last year’s invasion. His assessment was that the country’s production of such drones capacity was “several thousand” a year if funding and parts supplies are steady.

Chmut heads a non-governmental organisation called Come Back Alive that says it has raised tens of millions of dollars of crowdfunding to supply equipment to the military, including aerial drones. He added that the size of Ukraine’s overall drone fleet had increased by “tens of times” since February 2022 due to new supplies from both abroad and Ukraine, as well as those donated by organisations such as his.

Reznikov said Ukraine had increased its drone production capacity by “several times” since Russia’s invasion in February last year and that it was now able to make drones that work in the air, on land and in the sea. The defence ministry declined to provide drone-production figures.

LONGER RANGE

One area of focus is on developing airborne drones that can travel longer distances, said Reznikov. Kyiv has been seeking longer-range missiles from allies that could hit targets several hundred kilometres away, but has so far been rebuffed.

AeroDrone says one of its models, called Enterprise and based on the frame of a light aircraft, can fly over 3,000 kilometres in certain circumstances.

The company is run by Dmytro Shymkiv and Yuriy Pederiy, who met while working at Microsoft’s Kyiv offices, where Shymkiv rose to be country manager and Pederiy was responsible for a major department.

They said their military contracts strictly limit what the company can disclose, but they said the Enterprise and another model called Discovery can be used for a wide variety of tactical purposes thanks to payloads of 300 kilograms and 80 kilograms, respectively. One of the company’s aircraft can cost between $150,000 to $450,000 depending on the model and configuration, which can include features such as an anti-jamming system to counteract Russian signal interference.

During a late February visit to AeroDrone’s workshop, engineers in blue coats bustled around the metal carcass of a light aircraft that forms the skeleton of the Enterprise drone. "It can carry 200 kg for 1200 km," Shymkiv said of the Enterprise.

Pointing to the cockpit that was designed to house a pilot, he said: “Now, it’ll be the payload.”

The defence ministry said AeroDrone has contracts for the supply of two types of long range drones, but declined to disclose further detail.

The ministry declined to specify the maximum range of Ukraine's current drone fleet, but a major state-owned Ukrainian arms company announced in December it had conducted successful tests for an assault drone with a 75 kg warhead and a 1,000 km range.

RUSSIAN TERRITORY

The range and potency of Ukraine's drones is a sensitive issue. Russia has said some Ukrainian drones have been able to get behind the front lines, even though Ukrainian officials typically deny responsibility for suspected drone activity in Russian territory.

In December, Russia said Ukrainian drones attacked two Russian air bases which house long-range bombers deep inside its own territory, killing three Russian air force personnel.

The defence ministry in Kyiv said: "Ukraine has no connection to the events happening on Russian territory."

Over recent weeks, Russian officials have reported at least six incidents involving drones being downed or conducting attacks on the country’s territory, some of which they publicly blamed on Ukraine.

When asked by Reuters whether Ukraine uses drones to hit targets in Russia, the defence minister said: "Everything happening on the territory of Russia is a question for Russia alone. Ukraine is not a terrorist state or an attacker."

Speaking about attacks generally, national security council head Danilov said that in theory some strikes on Russian soil could be justifiable in certain circumstances.

"If there is a facility which is causing damage to our country ... We have to destroy these facilities. This is war," Danilov said, speaking to Reuters in February. "And it's not our fault that it (the target) is located on the territory of Russia."

EXPANSION BARRIERS

But challenges for expanding domestic production remain. Chmut, the defence specialist, said one barrier to mass production was the reliance on foreign-supplied parts such as engines and communications systems. He and AeroDrone also said getting parts through customs can be challenging.

The process for obtaining certification for military use has also been an issue. Reznikov said the ministry has streamlined the process, reducing it to a few weeks whereas previously it had taken up to two years.

AeroDrone’s Shymkiv said a separate government ruling loosening regulations on dual-use item imports, including drones and drone parts, has made life easier for manufacturers. However, he added there remains room for improvement in removing bureaucratic hurdles generally.

The defence ministry said it was working with domestic drone manufacturers to both increase production capacity and standardise output in order to simplify servicing and training.

Danilov, the national security council head, acknowledged Ukraine’s reliance on other countries for more high-tech drone components.

"We are trying to fulfil our needs in this sector with domestic production, but we realise that it's unlikely we will be able to fulfil everything," he said.

Editing by Mike Collett-White and Cassell Bryan-Low

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Reuters · by Max Hunder

16. Opinion | The Cold War With China Is Changing Everything

Excerpts:

One would hope that as the cold war atmosphere intensifies our politics will get more serious. When Americans went to the polls during the last cold war, they realized their vote could be a matter of life and death. It may feel like that again.

Governing during this era will require extraordinary levels of experienced statesmanship — running industrial programs that don’t become bloated, partially deglobalizing the economy without setting off trade wars, steadily outcompeting China without humiliating it. If China realizes it is falling further behind every year, then an invasion of Taiwan may be more imminent.

Miller was asked what were the odds that over the next five years a dangerous military clash between the United States and China would produce an economic crisis equivalent to the Great Depression. He put the odds at 20 percent.

That seems high enough to focus the mind.

Opinion | The Cold War With China Is Changing Everything

The New York Times · by David Brooks · March 23, 2023

David Brooks

March 23, 2023, 7:00 p.m. ET

Credit...Patrick Semansky/Associated Press

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So I guess we’re in a new cold war. Leaders of both parties have become China hawks. There are rumblings of war over Taiwan. Xi Jinping vows to dominate the century.

I can’t help wondering: What will this cold war look like? Will this one transform American society the way the last one did?

The first thing I notice about this cold war is that the arms race and the economics race are fused. A chief focus of the conflict so far has been microchips, the little gizmos that not only make your car and phone work, but also guide missiles and are necessary to train artificial intelligence systems. Whoever dominates chip manufacturing dominates the market as well as the battlefield.

Second, the geopolitics are different. As Chris Miller notes in his book “Chip War,” the microchip sector is dominated by a few highly successful businesses. More than 90 percent of the most advanced chips are made by one company in Taiwan. One Dutch company makes all the lithography machines that are required to build cutting-edge chips. Two Santa Clara, Calif., companies monopolize the design of graphic processing units, critical for running A.I. applications in data centers.

These choke points represent an intolerable situation for China. If the West can block off China’s access to cutting-edge technology, then it can block off China. So China’s intention is to approach chip self-sufficiency. America’s intention is to become more chip self-sufficient than it is now and to create a global chip alliance that excludes China.

American foreign policy has been rapidly rearranged along these lines. Over the last two administrations, the United States has moved aggressively to block China from getting the software technology and equipment it needs to build the most advanced chips. The Biden administration is cutting off not just Chinese military companies, but all Chinese companies. This seems like a common-sense safeguard, but put another way, it’s kind of dramatic: Official U.S. policy is to make a nation of almost a billion and a half people poorer.

I’m even more amazed by how the new cold war is rearranging domestic politics. There have always been Americans, stretching back to Alexander Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures in 1791, who supported industrial policy — using government to strengthen private economic sectors. But this governing approach has generally been on the margins.

Now it is at the center of American politics, when it comes to both green technology and chips. Last year Congress passed the CHIPs Act, with $52 billions in grants, tax credits and other subsidies to encourage American chip production. That’s an industrial policy that would leave Hamilton gaping and applauding.

Over the next years and decades, China is going to pour immense amounts of money into its own industrial policy programs, across a range of cutting-edge technologies. One analyst from the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates China already spends over 12 times as much of its G.D.P. on industrial programs as the United States does.

Over these coming years, U.S. leaders will have to figure out how effective that spending is and how to respond. Even more than the last cold war, this one will be waged by technological elites. Both sides are probably going to be spending lots of money on their most educated citizens — a dangerous situation in an age of populist resentments.

Already you can begin to see a new set of political fissures. In the center are the sort of Neo-Hamiltonians who supported the CHIPs Act — including the Biden administration and the 17 non-Trumpy Republicans who voted with Democrats for the act in the Senate.

On the right, there are already a range of populists who are super-hawkish on China when it comes to military affairs but don’t believe in industrial policy. Why should we spend all that money on elites? What makes you think the government is smarter than the market?

On the left are those who want to use industrial policy to serve progressive goals. The Biden administration has issued an incredible number of diktats for companies that receive CHIPs Act support. These diktats would force businesses to behave in ways that serve a number of extraneous progressive priorities — child care policy, increased unionization, environmental goals, racial justice, etc. Rather than being a program focused on boosting chips, it seeks to be everything all at once.

One would hope that as the cold war atmosphere intensifies our politics will get more serious. When Americans went to the polls during the last cold war, they realized their vote could be a matter of life and death. It may feel like that again.

Governing during this era will require extraordinary levels of experienced statesmanship — running industrial programs that don’t become bloated, partially deglobalizing the economy without setting off trade wars, steadily outcompeting China without humiliating it. If China realizes it is falling further behind every year, then an invasion of Taiwan may be more imminent.

Miller was asked what were the odds that over the next five years a dangerous military clash between the United States and China would produce an economic crisis equivalent to the Great Depression. He put the odds at 20 percent.

That seems high enough to focus the mind.

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: [email protected].

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

The New York Times · by David Brooks · March 23, 2023

17. Key takeaways from TikTok CEO Chew Shou Zi's US Congress grilling

The takeaways:

TIKTOK AND DATA COLLECTION

ALLEGED CHINA TIES

YOUTH SAFETY AND MENTAL HEALTH

SILLY QUESTIONS AND "POLITICAL GRANDSTANDING"

Key takeaways from TikTok CEO Chew Shou Zi's US Congress grilling

channelnewsasia.com

SINGAPORE: Alleged China links, youth safety and "political grandstanding" – these were some of the themes as TikTok CEO Chew Shou Zi was grilled in the US Congress on Thursday (Mar 23) over the social media platform.

Sitting in front of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and with the world watching, Chew started his testimony by referring to his Singapore roots.

Over the next five hours, lawmakers posed questions about the app, which has more than 150 million users in the US.

CNA looks at the key takeaways from the hearing:

TIKTOK AND DATA COLLECTION

Chew moved to allay fears about TikTok’s data collection practices, but he also said the data is “frequently collected by many other companies” in the same industry.

The CEO was asked multiple times if TikTok can commit to not collecting health or location data.

He told the committee that the app does not collect precise GPS data and that it does not collect any health data.

“We are committed to being very transparent with our users about what we collect. I don’t believe what we collect is more than most players in the industry,” he told lawmakers.

He also said that American tech firms “don’t have a good track record” when it comes to data privacy, singling out Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Personal data belonging to millions of Facebook users was collected without consent by British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, and used mainly for political advertising.

ALLEGED CHINA TIES

Chew responded to the allegations that TikTok posed a national security threat in the US, and said a lot of the risks pointed out were “hypothetical and theoretical risks”.

He added that under the company’s US$1.5 billion Project Texas plan, “American data is stored on American soil by an American company, overseen by American personnel”.

“So the risk would be similar to any government going to an American company, asking for data,” he said.

Project Texas is a plan that involves ringfencing US data into a separate division of the company, co-controlled by Austin-based company Oracle, so that the data is stored on American soil.

Chew also told lawmakers that TikTok is headquartered in Singapore and Los Angeles, and does not operate in China.

The legislators repeatedly asked the CEO about China’s alleged influence over TikTok, with Democrat Representative Frank Pallone calling Bytedance a “Beijing communist-based parent company”.

Chew said Bytedance is not owned or controlled by the Chinese government and that there has been “no evidence” that it has requested or accessed US user data.

One lawmaker responded by saying that the claim was “actually preposterous”, before Chew reiterated that the data will be stored in the US.

When asked if Chinese engineers still have access to US data, Chew said: “After Project Texas is done, the answer is no. Today there is still some data that we need to delete.”

He added: “It is our commitment to this committee and all our users that we will keep (TikTok) free from any manipulation by any government.”

Republican Dan Crenshaw said ByteDance and its employees who live in China must cooperate with the Chinese government when they are called upon, adding that "they are bound to secrecy and that would include you".

Chew replied: "Congressman, first, I'm Singaporean."

YOUTH SAFETY AND MENTAL HEALTH

One of the key issues that came up during the grilling was the app’s impact on children.

Legislators asked about the moderation of harmful content, with some showing videos encouraging users to harm themselves.

Republican Representative Gus Bilirakis said: “Your technology is leading to death.”

Chew said in his testimony that as a father of two, the issues around youth safety were “personal for me”.

He reiterated that the app provides users with “age-appropriate settings and controls”, and that it offers a “separate experience” in the US for children under 13.

He added that these children are directed to videos that are vetted by a third-party expert Common Sense Network, and are given a “curated viewing experience”.

Those under 13 also cannot post videos, comment or message others.

Restrictions are also imposed on teenagers: Accounts of those under 16 are set to private by default, and they are prevented from sending direct messages, while only people 18 and over can host a live stream.

There is also a new 60-minute default daily time limit for those under 18.

The CEO said TikTok employs 40,000 moderators to track harmful content and also uses an algorithm to flag controversial material.

“I don’t think I can sit here and say that we are perfect in doing this. We do work very hard,” he said.

Chew also addressed news reports that his eight-year-old child does not use the app.

“I have seen these news articles, I would like to address that. My kids live in Singapore and in Singapore, we do not have the under-13 experience. If they lived here in the United States, I would let them use the under-13 experience,” he added.

SILLY QUESTIONS AND "POLITICAL GRANDSTANDING"

Some of the questions asked by lawmakers were posted on social media platforms and drew ridicule.

In one exchange, Republican Richard Hudson asked: “Mr Chew, does TikTok access the home Wi-Fi network?”

Chew replied: “Only if the user turns on the Wi-Fi. I’m sorry, I may not understand the question.”

“So if I have the TikTok app on my phone and my phone is on my home Wi-Fi network, does TikTok access that network?” Hudson continued.

“It would have to ... to access the network to get connections to the internet, if that's the question,” said Chew.

Hudson asked if it is possible for TikTok to access other devices on that home Wi-Fi network.

“Congressman, we do not do anything that is beyond any industry norms. I believe the answer to your question is no. It could be technical. Let me get back to you," Chew said.

Republican Buddy Carter also asked if TikTok uses the phone’s camera to determine “whether the content that elicits a pupil dilation should be amplified by the algorithm”.

Chew said the app does not collect body, face or voice data to identify users, and the only data TikTok collects is when a person uses filters – such as pretending to have sunglasses on their face.

“We need to know where your eyes are,” Chew said.

“Why do you need to know where the eyes are, if you’re not seeing if they are dilated?” he was asked.

Chew said the data is stored on the local device and deleted after use. He also reiterated that the app does not collect body, face or voice data.

Throughout his answers before the committee, Chew was cut off mid-sentence by multiple lawmakers who asked for a “yes or no” answer.

Democrat Tony Cardenas compared him to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who testified before the same committee in 2018 over the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

“When he (Zuckerberg) came here, I said to my staff, ‘he reminds me of Fred Astaire – good dancer with words’. And you are doing the same today. A lot of your answers are a bit nebulous, they’re not yes or no.”

After the hearing, a TikTok spokesperson said: “Shou came prepared to answer questions from Congress, but, unfortunately, the day was dominated by political grandstanding that failed to acknowledge the real solutions already underway through Project Texas or productively address industry-wide issues of youth safety.”

Opinion | Biden moves to undo Trump’s political play on the Space Command

The Washington Post · by David Ignatius · March 23, 2023

The aftershocks from Donald Trump’s presidency reach even to outer space, but the Biden administration is quietly moving to repair one piece of the damage that could affect national security.

The White House appears ready to reverse a Trump administration plan to relocate the U.S. Space Command from Colorado Springs to Huntsville, Ala., because it fears the transfer would disrupt operations at a time when space is increasingly important to the military.

The Space Command siting decision has been a political football for the past four years. Trump made the decision on Jan. 11, 2021, five days after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. He had said earlier that he wouldn’t decide until he knew the 2020 election results, “to see how it turns out.” Colorado voted against him, while Alabama gave him strong support and its representatives backed his false claim he had won.

Senior military officials argued from the start for remaining in Colorado Springs, where the Space Command and its predecessors have been based for decades, and the Biden administration seems finally to be nearing the same conclusion. “We share the concerns of some military leaders about potential disruption of space operations at a critical moment for our national security,” a White House official said this week.

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An initial review last year of the Huntsville decision by the Biden Defense Department’s inspector general found it “lawful” and “reasonable,” and the Government Accountability Office said last year that the Air Force had “largely followed” the normal base-location process. But in December 2022, the White House requested “a review of the review,” the official said, because of concerns that the relocation would mean a protracted delay in settling the Space Command in a new location.

“We’re doing some additional analysis; we want to make very sure we get this right,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told the Air and Space Association on March 7.

Trump’s treatment of the issue had a political edge all along, according to John W. Suthers (R), the mayor of Colorado Springs. He told me in an interview, confirming details of a letter he had written this month to Kendall, that Trump told him in spring 2019, when the Air Force was preparing its list of six finalists for the command headquarters, that he would make the decision “personally.”

Trump spoke with Suthers about the decision a second time in February 2020. When the mayor pitched Colorado Springs, Trump asked if he was a Republican. When Suthers answered yes, Trump asked what his prospects were of his winning Colorado. Suthers told me that when he answered “uncertain,” Trump seemed “perturbed.” Trump then declared that he would make the choice after the 2020 election. “I want to see how it turns out,” Trump explained, according to Suthers.

When Trump gathered his advisers at the White House on Jan. 11, 2021, the senior military official present was Air Force Gen. John Hyten, a former head of the Space Command. He told me in an email: “When asked, I provided my best military advice[,] which was counter to the [Air Force] recommendation of Huntsville. I recommended Colorado Springs. My rationale was that the threat, primarily China, demanded that we move as fast as possible to reach full operational capability and that we could do that in Colorado much quicker than in Alabama.”

This same recommendation was made by two other top military space officials, Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond, the Space Force chief; and U.S. Army Gen. James H. Dickinson, who headed the Space Command, according to the GAO report.

A late entrant in this political fracas was Florida, which argued that the Space Command should move to Patrick Space Force Base near Cape Canaveral. “What about Florida?” Trump demanded at the meeting, according to then-acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, who was present. Miller told me that he and others warned Trump against that, citing the frequency of hurricanes and other factors. Miller said that the rejection of Florida was conveyed by his chief of staff, Kash Patel, to that state’s advocates, led by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).

Rep. Mo Brooks made one of the earliest announcements of Trump’s selection of the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville. Brooks, who represents the area, was one of the leading GOP congressional apologists for the Jan. 6 riot, arguing falsely in a tweet the next day: “Evidence growing that fascist ANTIFA orchestrated Capitol attack with clever mob control tactics.”

Some observers saw Brooks’s Huntsville advocacy as crucial. “But for Mo Brooks, the Space Command would not have been at Redstone Arsenal. I want to emphasize though that it’s a team effort,” said Rep. Brian Babin (R-Tex.). A Jan. 13, 2021, story in Axios noted that “two of Trump’s staunchest backers in Congress, Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville and Rep. Mo Brooks, used their strong personal relationships with the president” to advocate for Huntsville.

Trump emphatically took personal political credit for steering the Space Command toward a friendly state. “I single-handedly said, ‘Let’s go to Alabama,’” he told the hosts of “Rick and Bubba,” a Birmingham-based radio show. “They wanted it. I said, ‘Let’s go to Alabama.’ I love Alabama.’”

Trump’s long shadow reaches to some unlikely places, but few as important as the prompt establishment of the Space Command headquarters. President Biden is right to listen to the generals on this one and keep the locus of space operations where it is.

The Washington Post · by David Ignatius · March 23, 2023

19. US State Department ends assignment restrictions that were perceived as discriminatory

We are either Americans or we are not. Almost all Americans come from somewhere else. Let's trust our fellow Americans despite their ethnicity.

Excerpts:

Blinken said the change came after he had lifted more than half of the restrictions during his first year as secretary of state, which opened “new possible assignments” for hundreds of US diplomats.

“Today, I’m pleased to share that after a rigorous review, I have decided that, moving forward, the Department will end its practice of issuing new assignment restrictions as a condition placed on a security clearance,” he wrote to the workforce.

There will be a review and appeal process rolled out for those who are subject to the assignment restrictions currently, he said. But some restrictions will remain in place, such as those that relate to a situation “in which a foreign country may consider an employee to be one of their own nationals” or when there are “assignments to posts rated critical for human intelligence threats,” Blinken explained.

US State Department ends assignment restrictions that were perceived as discriminatory | CNN Politics

CNN · by Kylie Atwood · March 22, 2023

Washington CNN —

The US State Department will no longer issue assignment restrictions as a condition of granting security clearance, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced to the department’s workforce on Wednesday in a memo obtained by CNN.

The change comes after an intensive review of the practice, which was perceived as discriminatory by diplomats and Democratic lawmakers, particularly because the limits appeared to fall disproportionately on employees with Asian American and Pacific Islander backgrounds.

The assignment restrictions were applied by the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, sometimes to employees who otherwise hold top-secret clearances, to prevent them from serving in particular countries or even, while they’re in Washington, from working on issues related to those countries.

In 2021, CNN reported that diplomats felt frustrated that they felt untrusted by their own government. Lawmakers also highlighted the issue that there was no independent appeals process to challenge decisions. Democratic lawmakers introduced legislation in 2021 to address the long-standing complaints.

CNN Photo Illustration/Getty Images

Asian American diplomats say discrimination holds them back as US competes with China

Politico was first to report the changes to the assignment restrictions.

Blinken said the change came after he had lifted more than half of the restrictions during his first year as secretary of state, which opened “new possible assignments” for hundreds of US diplomats.

“Today, I’m pleased to share that after a rigorous review, I have decided that, moving forward, the Department will end its practice of issuing new assignment restrictions as a condition placed on a security clearance,” he wrote to the workforce.

There will be a review and appeal process rolled out for those who are subject to the assignment restrictions currently, he said. But some restrictions will remain in place, such as those that relate to a situation “in which a foreign country may consider an employee to be one of their own nationals” or when there are “assignments to posts rated critical for human intelligence threats,” Blinken explained.

CNN · by Kylie Atwood · March 22, 2023

20. US sent ‘hunt-forward’ team to Albania in wake of Iranian cyberattacks

US sent ‘hunt-forward’ team to Albania in wake of Iranian cyberattacks

c4isrnet.com · by Colin Demarest · March 23, 2023

WASHINGTON — U.S. cyber specialists spent three months in Albania working alongside forces there to identify network weaknesses and hacking tools following Iranian cyberattacks on government systems.

The so-called hunt-forward operation, a defensive measure taken at the invitation of foreign officials, was the first conducted in Albania, a smaller NATO ally. U.S. Cyber Command revealed the operation, handled by its Cyber National Mission Force, or CNMF, on March 23.

Army Maj. Gen. William Hartman, the commander of the mission force, in a statement said the operation brought CYBERCOM personnel “closer to adversary activity” while promoting international relationships.

Army Maj. Gen. William J. Hartman, commander of Cyber National Mission Force, foreground, is seen at ceremony in December 2022. (Provided/CYBERCOM)

“In an increasingly dynamic environment where malicious cyber actors attempt to exploit our networks, data, and critical infrastructure, we have a key asymmetric advantage that our adversaries don’t have: enduring partnerships, like this one with Albania,” he added.

Iran targeted Albanian networks in July and September, forcing offline key government services including the Total Information Management System, which tracks details of those entering and exiting the country.

The Biden administration condemned the digital belligerence and, ultimately, sanctioned Iran. The administration’s cybersecurity strategy identifies the Middle Eastern country as a burgeoning cyber power and a safe haven for ransomware abusers.

Nathaniel Fick, the U.S. ambassador at large for cyberspace and digital policy, in a statement Thursday said the U.S. remains committed “to working with Albania on securing its digital future, and ensuring that connectivity is a force for innovation, productivity, and empowerment.” He also called on other countries to hold Iran accountable for “its destructive cyberattacks.”

Election-defending Cyber National Mission Force elevated by Pentagon

The force has been integral to the command’s work to secure U.S. elections, including the midterms this year.

The CNMF has deployed more than three-dozen times to at least 22 countries — including Ukraine, ahead of Russia’s invasion — to bolster faraway networks and return with information that can be applied stateside.

Hunt-forward operations are part of CYBERCOM’s persistent engagement strategy, a means of being in constant contact with adversaries and ensuring proactive, not reactive, moves are made.

“When we are invited to hunt on a partner nations’ networks, we are able to find an adversary’s insidious activity in cyberspace and share with our partner to take action on,” Hartman said. “We can then impose costs on our adversaries by exposing their tools, tactics and procedures, and improve the cybersecurity posture of our partners and allies.”

About Colin Demarest

Colin Demarest is a reporter at C4ISRNET, where he covers military networks, cyber and IT. Colin previously covered the Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration — namely Cold War cleanup and nuclear weapons development — for a daily newspaper in South Carolina. Colin is also an award-winning photographer.

21. Christian who escaped Chinese persecution warns US descending into 'communist-style of governance'

Some escapees from China (and north Korea) are being co-opted for the culture wars).

Christian who escaped Chinese persecution warns US descending into 'communist-style of governance'

foxnews.com · by Jon Brown | Fox News

Video

China cracking down on Christians; 'This shows the true nature of the Chinese Communist Party': Helen Raleigh

The Federalist senior contributor Helen Raleigh discusses an uptick in Christian persecution under Xi Jinping's communist leadership.

The leader of a watchdog group that monitors Christian persecution in China said he's seeing echoes of the Chinese Community Party "playbook" in the U.S., and he's worried it’ll get worse.

Bob Fu, president of the U.S.-based non-governmental organization ChinaAid, said he's seeing the same tactics in Western nations that the CCP uses to crack down on churches.

"The similarities are very, very striking between the Chinese Communist way of persecution and the American leftist way of restriction and even discrimination," Fu told Fox News Digital.

Fu said he has observed with concern how the left in the U.S. is increasingly exhibiting "dictatorial" attitudes both culturally and politically by censoring speech, enforcing "woke" culture and not tolerating dissent. He pinpointed the alleged political weaponziation of federal law enforcement agencies as a worrisome escalation of such trends.

CHINA RAMPING UP PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS AS IT DEMANDS ‘WORSHIP AND ALLEGIANCE’ OF XI JINPING: WATCHDOG

ChinaAid founder and President Bob Fu, who was jailed in China for his involvement in the house church movement, warned the tactics of the American left are becoming "dictatorial." (ChinaAid)

"It is very shocking and horrible to see American society's transformation evolving from its constitutional basis," Fu said.

Fu was a student leader at his university during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 and became a Christian in the Chinese underground church decades ago, he said. As recounted in his 2013 book "God's Double Agent," he and his wife were imprisoned in Beijing for leading house churches, which are Christian congregations that have not registered with China's official Protestant or Catholic churches.

PASTOR IMPRISONED IN TURKEY FOR HIS CHRISTIAN FAITH SAYS YOUTH AREN'T ‘PREPARED FOR WHAT IS COMING’

Bob Fu and his wife Heidi were imprisoned in Beijing for their work in the underground Christian church in China. (ChinaAid)

The couple escaped the country in 1996 and became refugees in the U.S. the next year. He said he founded ChinaAid in 2002 to provide "a voice for those voiceless persecuted brothers and sisters in China," as well as "legal and humanitarian aid to those who are persecuted, imprisoned and tortured."

Fu, who became a naturalized American citizen and attended Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, said some of the tactics used to crack down on churches during the pandemic both in the U.S. and other Western countries were sometimes straight out of the "Chinese Communist playbook."

"They only have one playbook," he said. "I saw the governor of California basically prescribe and order the church to shut down and say not only when they can worship, but how. The ways that he threatened to punish those churches and pastors sometimes were word-for-word exactly the same as what the CCP is using against the Chinese churches."

ChinaAid President Bob Fu claimed clampdowns on churches during the pandemic in states like California resembled similar tactics used by the Chinese Communist Party. (Dai Sugano/MediaNews Group/East Bay Times via Getty Images)

Fu noted how former Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti at one point threatened to cut off the utilities of homes and businesses that defied California's COVID-19 restrictions.

"Guess what? That's exactly the same tactic, word-for-word, that the Communist Party has issued over the years against the churches," Fu claimed. Neither Newsom nor Garcetti responded to Fox News Digital's request for comment by time of publication.

Fu also noted how pastors have been treated in Canada during recent years as a particularly egregious example of Chinese-style tactics being used to clamp down on churches in a Western democracy, adding that the country has been engaging in "passive and active persecution" against churches.

CANADIAN PASTOR ARRESTED SECOND TIME FOR PROTESTING CHILDREN'S DRAG QUEEN EVENTS: ‘SICK, TWISTED PERVERSION’

"In front of the camera, the police would invade a church during the Sunday worship, kick out all the believers and basically push the pastor away from the church building and then shut down the whole church," Fu said of Canada. "So, that is happening now. I think the church in the West has to be prepared for something like this to happen and maybe happen more."

During the pandemic, churches throughout Canada contended with imprisoned pastors, locked facilities, steep fines and continued interference from government officials. After Pastor Tim Stephens of Calgary, Alberta, was arrested for a second time in 2021 when a police helicopter reportedly found his church gathering outside, U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., wrote a letter urging the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom to consider adding Canada to its watch list.

Pastor Derek Reimer, 36, was arrested and charged last week with one count of breaching a release order that prohibited him from communicating with LGBTQ people or being within 200 meters of events involving the LGBTQ community. (Courtesy Nathaniel Pawlowski)

Pastor Derek Reimer of Calgary remains in prison as of Wednesday after being arrested twice in recent weeks for protesting drag queen story time for children at public libraries. He was most recently charged for allegedly breaching a release order that prohibited him from communicating with self-identified LGBTQ people or being within 200 meters of events involving the LGBTQ community.

Pastor Artur Pawlowski, another Calgary pastor who was repeatedly jailed for keeping his church open during the pandemic, told Fox News Digital last week that Reimer's arrests indicate that authorities are anti-Christian and are beginning to enforce ideology using the same tactics they used to enforce COVID-19 protocols.

CANADIAN PASTOR REPEATEDLY JAILED OVER COVID PROTOCOLS TO FACE FINAL TRIAL: ‘CRAZY STUFF’

"There are so many unprecedented things that really break my heart," Fu said. "I feel America is descending into a Chinese communist-style of governance. The media propaganda is exactly the same as in communist China, where I was born and educated in the trend."

Much of U.S. mainstream media, he claimed, has become "the mouthpiece of one party, one ideology, by twisting and even lying and using all their so-called reports to promote one ideology."

"I feel America is descending into a Chinese communist-style of governance."

— ChinaAid president Bob Fu

Fu said Big Tech's clampdown on speech in the U.S. is also a trend he has witnessed in China, where posts from his organization have been scrubbed from Facebook.

Following the implementation of its "Administrative Measures for Internet Religious Information and Services" in 2022, Chinese censorship of online Christian content — including even in group chats — has reached an "unprecedented" level, according to ChinaAid's most recent report.

CHINA PROVINCE FORCES PEOPLE OF FAITH TO REGISTER ON ‘SMART RELIGION’ APP FOR WORSHIP

Fu said Christian persecution in China has worsened to a point not seen since the Cultural Revolution. According to his organization's report, Chinese Christians are being routinely imprisoned and tortured, and the government is using the traditional Christian practice of tithes and offerings to trump up fraud charges in an attempt to "financially suffocate" the house churches.

Multiple house church pastors and elders have been jailed and potentially face years in prison, and religious citizens in China's Henan province are required to register with the government's new "Smart Religion" app to participate in worship services, according to the report.

A report from ChinaAid warned that while the Chinese government once demanded allegiance to the Communist Party, it increasingly demands "worship and allegiance" to Chinese President Xi Jinping. (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

The report further noted that while the Chinese government has long demanded sole allegiance to the Communist Party, in recent years it has been emphasizing allegiance to Chinese President Xi Jinping. As the CCP "exports its repressive tactics" around the world, Fu believes the same attitude has overtaken some Western politicians.

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"There is a major spirit of similarities against God's church," he said. "Suddenly mayors and governors become little emperors. They think their power is above the authority of God and over the church. They want to be the manager of the church, they want to tell you when and how to worship."

Jon Brown is a writer for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to [email protected].

foxnews.com · by Jon Brown | Fox News

22. Ukraine’s M-1A1 Tanks Have A Special Power: The Ability To Pinpoint Targets 8,000 Meters Away

Ukraine’s M-1A1 Tanks Have A Special Power: The Ability To Pinpoint Targets 8,000 Meters Away

Forbes · by David Axe · March 22, 2023

A U.S. Marine Corps M-1A1 FEP in Iraq in 2004.

Wikimedia Commons

To speed up deliveries of new tanks to Ukraine, the United States has opted to send secondhand M-1A1s instead of newer M-1A2s that would take longer to produce.

The M-1A1s presumably are ex-U.S. Marine Corps tanks that the Corps retired starting in 2019. While lacking the sophisticated commander’s sights that are the main feature of the M-1A2, the USMC M-1A1 Firepower Enhancement Package was the first American tank with a piece of equipment the Ukrainian army might find really useful: a Far Target Locator.

With the press of a button, an M-1A1 FEP’s FTL calculates the GPS coordinates of a target as far away as 8,000 meters. The tank’s four-person crew can relay—via voice radio or a digital network—these same coordinates to an artillery battery, which then can lob guided or unguided shells at the target. All in the span of a few minutes.

In that way, the tank functions as a forward-observer—spotting targets too far away for the tank itself to hit, but close enough for an artillery fire mission.

A Far Target Locator combines a compass, gyros and a processor that takes input from the platform’s GPS and laser rangefinder.

It works like this: the gunner spots a target through their long-range optics, fires a laser at it to determine its range, then activates the FTL. The FTL knows where the tank is, thanks to the vehicle’s GPS unit. With the range data from the laser and orientation from the compass, it then calculates the target’s GPS coordinates.

These days a host of U.S. military systems have FTLs. Even the command units of shoulder-fired Javelin anti-tank missiles. But in 2004, when the Marines began upgrading their 450 M-1A1s to FEP standard, the locators weren’t yet standard equipment on American tanks.

The Marines initially modified a few tanks belonging to units fighting in Iraq, and asked the crews to provide feedback. The crews really appreciated their FTLs.

“The position location capability and the ability to range a target and get a 10-digit grid were considered very useful,” U.S. Marine Corps captain C.S. Roos wrote in a 2005 paper. “It proved valuable in fire missions and situation awareness.”

If there’s a downside to the early FTLs that the Marines installed on their M-1A1 FEPs, it’s the system’s middling precision.

“The Marine Corps' FTL will provide tank crews with accurate target location out to 8,000 [meters] with less than 35 meters [of] Circular Error Probability,” Roos explained. “This means that an accurate grid location to within 35 meters of the target will be provided for situational awareness and/or subsequent engagement by artillery or air.”

Thirty-five meters is pretty inaccurate by today’s standards. The U.S. military’s latest Precision FTL is two or three times more precise.

Still, a loose FTL is better than no FTL. There’s nothing stopping a Ukrainian tank crew in one of Ukraine’s existing, Cold War-vintage T-64s from radioing a nearby artillery battery with a target’s location.

But the crew might have to calculate the target’s coordinates using a map and protractor. And even then, there’d be a lot of guessing.

Even an older, dumber FTL would be a lot faster and more accurate. With their automated locators, the Ukrainian army’s M-1A1s won’t just improve the force’s armor capabilities. They’ll improve its artillery, too.

Forbes · by David Axe · March 22, 2023

23. China’s Global Influence and Interference Activities

Excerpt:

In the following, I will first outline what China’s industrial influence campaign entails: How it operates, targeting whom, and to what ends. I will then point to some concrete cases to illustrate the campaign at work in the United States and internationally. I conclude with a roadmap for action: Key lines of effort for the United States as it works with allies and partners to counter China’s industrial influence campaign — and to shore up the integrity of the global market.

Download the complete written testimony here. https://www.fdd.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Chinas-Global-Influence-and-Interference-Activities.pdf

China’s Global Influence and Interference Activities

fdd.org · by Danielle Kleinman · March 23, 2023

Emily de La Bruyère

Senior Fellow

Download PDF version here.

Introduction

Hearing Co-Chairs Wessel and Borochoff, distinguished commissioners and staff of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, and fellow panelists, it is an honor to participate in today’s hearing.

I aim to emphasize four fundamental points in my remarks:

China’s global influence campaign includes an industrial influence campaign. This campaign develops and exerts leverage over key international financial and economic players in the international system in order to shape government policies.

Beijing’s industrial influence campaign exists within the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) broader international industrial offensive, which seeks to weaponize the interdependencies of a globalized environment to secure asymmetric dependence and, with it, coercive power.

The Chinese Communist Party pursues its industrial influence campaign by leveraging market, capital, and supply chain and technological reliance, thereby threatening the integrity of international political and economic systems as well as the market-based global trading system.

Congress is uniquely situated to respond. While no established tools or fora exist for countering Beijing’s industrial influence campaign, it is an area that demands American leadership — specifically in the trade and investment policies that fall within Congress’ mandate.

Just weeks ago, in a press conference on the sidelines of the Two Sessions, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang issued a not-so-subtle warning to the United States about confrontation with China — and its consequences for American industry:

Qin was addressing escalating U.S.-China tensions and, in particular, Washington’s decision to shoot down Beijing’s spy balloon transiting over the continental United States in February 2023. The message was simple: For Washington, confront Beijing and domestic economic interests will suffer; for American industry, resist a U.S. China policy that could degrade U.S.-China economic ties.

Such messaging is by no means anomalous for Beijing vis-à-vis the United States or the international system more broadly. The Chinese Communist Party routinely leverages its industrial might, and the world’s dependence on it, to shape market behavior and government decision-making globally.

Among other lines of effort, this approach involves an industrial influence campaign. Beijing builds and exerts influence over key international financial and commercial actors in order to shape the political ecosystems in which they have clout. Beijing does so by leveraging investment, market access, and supply chain and technological dependencies. Few clearcut tools or fora exist in the United States, let alone internationally or multilaterally, to respond. The Chinese Communist Party’s industrial influence campaign weaponizes the interdependencies of a globalized world. Those interdependencies are perpetuated by government and private sector incentives and codified in international rules — including trade law. And while Beijing subverts those rules, they also stymie efforts on the part of rule-followers to respond to China’s industrial offensive.

In the following, I will first outline what China’s industrial influence campaign entails: How it operates, targeting whom, and to what ends. I will then point to some concrete cases to illustrate the campaign at work in the United States and internationally. I conclude with a roadmap for action: Key lines of effort for the United States as it works with allies and partners to counter China’s industrial influence campaign — and to shore up the integrity of the global market.

Defining China’s Industrial Influence Campaign

The Chinese Communist Party’s industrial strategy hinges on taking advantage of an era of global interdependence to secure asymmetric dependence. The goal, very simply, is to ensure that the world depends more on China than China does on the world. Such positioning promises Beijing relative insulation from reprisal as it expands its international footprint. Such positioning also promises the ability to compel and to coerce — whether at the commercial level, in terms of securing access to strategic and critical technology and information, or at the geostrategic level.

This strategy manifests, among other ways, in Beijing’s international industrial influence campaign: The CCP positions to leverage industrial dependencies in order to shape the actions of international financial and commercial players — and in doing so to affect national and subnational government policy.

24. How to Out-Deter China

Excerpt:

If China underestimates the U.S. commitment to Taiwan, both countries could end up embroiled in a war.

How to Out-Deter China

Washington Must Make Beijing Understand the Costs of a Conflict Over Taiwan

By Joel Wuthnow

March 24, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Joel Wuthnow · March 24, 2023

In January 1996, in the midst of a crisis brought about by a series of Chinese missile tests conducted in Taiwan’s waters, a Chinese general grimly alluded to a potential nuclear response to any U.S. intervention in defense of the island. “The American people,” he warned a U.S. official, “care more about Los Angeles than Taipei.” Such saber rattling, however, belied the fact that China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) knew it did not have the military strength to deter the United States from intervening in a war over Taiwan. At the time, the costs and risks of any kind of war with the world’s sole superpower prevented China from seriously considering provoking one in the first place.

But in the years since, China has worked to make a U.S. intervention less likely through an approach it calls “strategic deterrence,” which relies on, among other things, using nuclear signals to dissuade a potential adversary from entering the fray. China’s deterrence efforts are intensifying even as the Biden administration moves ahead with its own plans for the “integrated deterrence” of Chinese aggression, which involves threatening military and economic penalties in concert with a coalition of allies to convince China of the tremendous costs of war. These two competing models of deterrence are at odds with each other in ways that could destabilize the Taiwan Strait and the region at large. China, spurred by its perception of U.S. decline, emboldened by its rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal, and inspired by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s apparent success in using nuclear threats to limit U.S. support for Ukraine, could become overly confident and spark a conflict in the belief that Washington will stay out of the way.

Washington must avoid this kind of escalatory spiral by undermining Chinese optimism in its own capabilities; in other words, by out-deterring China. This requires delivering an unequivocal message to Beijing that any conflict between the two nuclear-armed powers could quickly become calamitous, far outweighing the potential benefits of an armed reunification with Taiwan. If deterrence fails—if China grows more convinced of its military superiority and underestimates the U.S. commitment to the island—both countries could end up embroiled in a war between great powers armed with nuclear weapons.

RISKY BUSINESS

Until recently, the PLA assumed that it could not ward off U.S. intervention in a conflict over Taiwan. Frequent displays of American force, such as U.S. President Bill Clinton’s decision to deploy two aircraft carriers to East Asian waters during the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis or the accidental U.S. bombing of China’s Belgrade embassy during the 1999 Kosovo war—seen in Beijing as a brazen provocation—were signs that Washington was undeterrable. This judgment was reinforced by the combination of unrivaled U.S. military power, demonstrated with alacrity in the 1990–91 Gulf War (and by the quick dispatch of the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003, although that war’s aftermath proved much tougher for the U.S. military) and China’s nuclear inferiority. As late as 2020, the U.S. government estimated that China had only about 100 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), with no functioning sea- or air-based deterrent such as long-range bombers carrying nuclear payloads or nuclear ballistic missile submarines on operational patrol. The relatively modest size of this nuclear force reduced the possibility that a conflict would escalate beyond the conventional level but was not strong enough to make U.S. policymakers rule out intervention in the case of a Chinese attack on Taiwan.

China has since worked to augment its military capabilities, building the arsenal necessary to potentially win a conflict over Taiwan. To buy enough time for Chinese troops to land on the island, the PLA has developed weapons known as Assassin’s Maces, including antiship ballistic missiles designed to attack U.S. carriers, long-range missiles targeting U.S. bases in the western Pacific, and bombers capable of striking U.S. forces throughout the region. The use of these weapons would presumably buy enough time for PLA forces to land on Taiwan and seize the island before the U.S. military could arrive. China’s breakneck military modernization efforts have, if not closed the military gap with the United States, made it a formidable power in the region.

A conventional war with the United States, however, remains a risky proposition for China. Each of the U.S. military services has been adapting to potential Chinese threats in ways that could allow them to conduct devastating strikes against a putative PLA invasion force. The air force now has more advanced and powerful long-range bombers; the navy possesses fearsome nuclear attack submarines; the Marine Corps has practiced operating from locations close to China; and the army has begun to field nimble multidomain task forces—highly mobile units with hybrid capabilities, such as missile systems, electronic warfare and cyberwarfare, and intelligence gathering—that would quickly step in to conduct air and missile operations should a conflict break out. Even if the PLA somehow managed to seize Taiwan with U.S. boots on the ground, the military costs alone of a conventional war against the United States would be staggering, potentially setting China’s development back by decades.

FLYING TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN

But China now has reasons to believe that it can deter U.S. intervention. First, the United States seems more politically, economically, and socially vulnerable than it did at the height of its unipolar, post-Cold War power, when China was beginning to craft its deterrence strategy. As early as 2008, following the United States’ weak performance during the global recession, Beijing’s foreign policy began to grow more assertive, spurred on by a sense that China remained strong even as others floundered. The January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and the United States’ hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021 only seemed to lend credence to Chinese theories of American decline.

Second, China is expanding its strategic arsenal and becoming more convinced of its military might. The U.S. government estimates that China’s ICBM launchers increased from 100 in 2020 to more than 450 in 2022, putting the PLA ahead of the United States. China’s stockpile of nuclear warheads is expected to grow from 400 today to 1,500 in 2035. Some Chinese ballistic missile submarines are carrying new long-range missiles that could reach the continental United States. Those submarines have also begun to carry out operational patrols in the South China Sea. The PLA Air Force has put into service a dual-capable bomber—an aircraft that can threaten U.S. territories in the Pacific and U.S. allies such as Japan—with a longer-range successor expected this decade. In July 2021, the PLA tested a hypersonic nuclear missile system that could deliver nuclear or nonnuclear payloads to the continental United States, potentially evading missile defenses. The mere existence of such weapons could encourage Chinese leaders to believe that they can intimidate their U.S. counterparts.

Third, the impact of Putin’s nuclear saber rattling throughout the war in Ukraine has been instructive for Chinese leaders. Although the PLA was probably surprised by Russia’s failure to achieve its initial objectives—overcoming Ukrainian forces and installing a puppet government in Kyiv—Beijing has observed with interest how Putin has warded off U.S. and European intervention through nuclear signaling, including provocative rhetoric, exercises, and raising the alert level of his nuclear forces (emblematic of a doctrine that the Russians, not coincidentally, also call “strategic deterrence”). Dai Xunxun, a scholar in the PLA’s Academy of Military Sciences, claimed at the start of 2023 that Russia’s nuclear arsenal and major conventional systems, such as hypersonic missiles, serve as an “effective strategic deterrence” against direct U.S. and NATO intervention in Ukraine. The success of Putin’s deterrence could help convince Chinese planners that their nuclear arsenal could similarly deter the United States.

Together, a dimmer view of U.S. power, a larger strategic arsenal, and the example of Putin’s deterrence may encourage Chinese leaders to think that they could attack Taiwan without incurring a serious response from the U.S. military. This narrative, to be sure, may be quite out of touch with reality—Chinese aggression against Taiwan could well spur a rapid U.S. intervention, a course that Biden has endorsed on several occasions. Yet in Beijing’s view, its own methods of deterrence could promise victory at a lower cost. According to a series of war games conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Taipei would likely capitulate in a few weeks if the United States does not get involved. Lured by the prospect of a relatively easy win, China could blunder into a much larger war, one that might go nuclear.

OUT-DETERRING BEIJING

Just as China is focusing on strategic deterrence, Washington is likewise absorbed with deterring China. In its 2022 National Defense Strategy, the Defense Department cited the need for integrated deterrence—especially in the context of Taiwan. To achieve this goal, the strategy identified priorities such as more resilient combat systems, new warfighting concepts, and greater intelligence sharing. The 2022 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review noted that efforts must be made to retain the credibility of the aging U.S. nuclear deterrent through building new ICBMs, designing a new ballistic missile submarine, and modernizing the B-52 bomber fleet.

The U.S. approach to deterrence differs from its Chinese counterpart in ways that lend Washington several advantages. First, the U.S. deterrence strategy emphasizes coordinating with allies. Whereas China lacks allies, the United States works closely with Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and others in the Indo-Pacific on a range of security issues. Some of these countries could even become directly involved in a Taiwan conflict, creating additional military risks for Beijing. And with China’s nuclear upgrades casting a pall over the region, the United States may double down on extended deterrence—the idea that any nuclear strike on an ally would be treated the same as one on the U.S. homeland.

Second, the U.S. deterrence strategy aims to bring all the tools of national power together in a coordinated way. China’s policy of strategic deterrence revolves around the military, but the U.S. approach involves the participation of agencies such as the State Department and the Treasury Department. Sanctions against Russia have suggested to Beijing that aggression against Taiwan would invite not only military risk but also U.S.-led sanctions, supported by European and Asian industrial democracies. China could find it difficult to inoculate itself against such pressure because of its integration in the global financial and trading systems.

If China underestimates the U.S. commitment to Taiwan, both countries could end up embroiled in a war.

As part of its own deterrence strategy, Washington must also seek to prevent China from convincing itself that the United States can be easily deterred at the start of a conflict. Saber rattling from Washington could provoke war rather than prevent one, but policymakers can still craft strategic communications to weaken the confidence of China’s leaders in the effectiveness of their own deterrent and to highlight the risks of nuclear posturing. U.S. leaders should communicate, first, that there are no reliable parallels between Ukraine and Taiwan. U.S. interests are much greater in the latter case—according to one senior U.S. official, Taiwan is a “critical node” in the Asian security architecture that Washington cannot afford to lose. The options available to Washington are also different, and likely more limited. Resupplying Ukraine was a way for NATO to show support without putting boots on the ground or establishing a no-fly zone, but a PLA blockade of Taiwan could make resupply an untenable option, narrowing the choice to direct involvement or capitulation. Beijing would have to make the risky bet that Washington would choose the latter course of action.

Second, policymakers should communicate to Beijing that nuclear signaling contains serious risks of escalation that could leave China worse off. For example, signaling tactics such as placing forces on a hair-trigger “launch on warning” status, in which China could launch nuclear-armed missiles under the erroneous assumption that the United States is conducting a nuclear first strike, would increase the risk of an avoidable nuclear exchange at the outset of a conflict. Nonnuclear attacks on the U.S. homeland, such as cyber strikes against critical infrastructure, could also lead to the conflict spiraling out of control. In their discussions with Chinese interlocutors, U.S. officials should make plain that the use of such tools would not just fail to cow U.S. decisionmakers but would only lead to further escalation—with potentially calamitous results. Of course, reassurance also needs to be part of the equation: the United States will not target the Chinese mainland with similar weapons if Beijing refrains from using them against U.S. territory.

With Chinese leader Xi Jinping beginning a third term in power, and with China growing increasingly belligerent in its interactions with Taiwan, Washington must act to ensure that Beijing does not grow overconfident in thinking it can deter the United States in the wake of an invasion. China must understand the true risks of a conflict over the island; should it dismiss these dangers out of hubris, it could invite catastrophe.

JOEL WUTHNOW is Senior Research Fellow in the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University. This article represents only the author’s views.

Foreign Affairs · by Joel Wuthnow · March 24, 2023

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