Quotes of the Day:

"There are only two ways to address the collapse of north Korea. To be ill-prepared. Or to be really ill-prepared." 

- Dr. Kurt Campbell, 1998

"Angry people want you to see how powerful they are. Loving people want you to see how powerful you are."

- Chief Red Eagle

"People who are aware of, and ashamed of, their prejudices are well on the road to eliminating them."

- Gordon Allport

1.  Innovative Thinking on the Role of Irregular Warfare in Strategic Competition: Key Insights from the Irregular Warfare Initiative and Joint Staff J7 Office of Irregular Warfare Essay Contest

2.RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 26, 2023

3. Special Operations News Update - March 27, 2023 | SOF News

4. Here's When Army Bases Honoring the Confederacy Will Shed Their Old Names

5. TRANSCOM’s Unreadiness

6. The future of the U.S. military's tank force

7. Marine Generals: ‘Trust But Verify’ Force Design 2030

8. Find It, Vet It, Share It: The US Government’s Open-Source Intelligence Problem and How to Fix It

9. This week in Congress: Top military leaders storm Capitol Hill

10. 5 Reasons Veterans and Military Families Should Be Concerned About TikTok

11. U.S. Air Strikes Hit Iranian Proxies in Syria After Iranian Drone Kills U.S. Contractor

12. Iran-backed Militias Target U.S. Troops in Eastern Syria

13. The Limits of Economic Warfare

14. The U.S. Doesn’t Need Another Democracy Summit

15.  Friends Over Factories (Ukraine versus Russia)

16.  The “Indo-Pacificization” of Asia: Implications for the Regional Order

17. From Rockets to Ball Bearings, Pentagon Struggles to Feed War Machine

18. Countering United Front Work: Taiwan’s Political Warfare System

19. How the Corps’ new training document ignores US law

20. Department of Defense Support to the U.S. Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability

21. Friendship means telling hard truths about the endgame in Ukraine

22. Chinese communist way of war: Different than the West

1. Innovative Thinking on the Role of Irregular Warfare in Strategic Competition: Key Insights from the Irregular Warfare Initiative and Joint Staff J7 Office of Irregular Warfare Essay Contest

Nicely done: All these essays should provide a lot of interesting thoughts to consider.

The four trends and insights are very important. 

The question I have is who will be the champion for Irregular Warfare. What senior leader in DOD is going to embrace IW and act on these trends.  We can have an IW office in the J7, we can have ASD SO/LIC, we can have an IW Center all doing good work. But if do not have a champion both a leader and a strong organization with the power to make a difference we will simply continue to admire the IW problem.

ESSAY PROMPT: How can irregular warfare activities help the United States address challenges presented by Russia and China in the context of strategic competition?

FOUR OVERARCHING TRENDS AND INSIGHTS FROM ENTRIES

1. Importance of acknowledging the central role of IW in strategic competition and future operating environments.
2. Criticality of investing in and fostering partnerships and building partner capacity
3. Need for a comprehensive overhaul or reimagining of IW and its operating context.
4. Imperative to identify and address gaps, opportunities, and areas that merit further investigation

Innovative Thinking on the Role of Irregular Warfare in Strategic Competition: Key Insights from the Irregular Warfare Initiative and Joint Staff J7 Office of Irregular Warfare Essay Contest - Irregular Warfare Initiative

irregularwarfare.org · by Lisa McKinnon Munde · March 27, 2023

Lisa McKinnon Munde

Editor’s note: Many thanks to our judging panel including Rich Tilley, Lauren Lyons, Amy Frumin, Katherine Muther Gilmore, David “Mojo” Garten, Chris Booth, Kyle Atwell, Amber Oliva, Catrina Doxsee, Kevin Bilms, and Lisa Munde.

The Irregular Warfare Initiative and the Joint Staff J7 Office of Irregular Warfare and Competition co-sponsored an essay contest to generate new ideas and expand the community of interest for irregular warfare in the context of strategic competition. Participants were asked how irregular warfare activities can help the United States address challenges presented by Russia and China in the context of strategic competition.

ESSAY PROMPT: How can irregular warfare activities help the United States address challenges presented by Russia and China in the context of strategic competition?

We received over sixty entries from a diverse group of participants, including undergraduate students, medical students, military personnel from all services within the US Department of Defense, foreign service officers from the US Department of State, as well as experts from industry, think tanks, the legal community, academic institutions, and other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The contest generated a wealth of thought-provoking insights and ideas about the role of irregular warfare in competition—from leveraging lawfare for advantage to the role of offensive cyber operations to countering private military companies like the Wagner Group globally.

The range of innovative insights offered by authors underscores the need for continued dialogue and collaboration among policymakers, practitioners, and researchers to respond to security challenges in today’s rapidly changing technological and geopolitical landscape. As an example of this dynamic environment, when we first began planning for this contest, Russia had yet to invade Ukraine and advanced AI platforms like ChatGPT were not yet released to the public. We hope that the ideas and recommendations from the contest will help inform future applications of irregular warfare (IW) and enable the United States to deter malign activity from adversaries like Russia and China.

Overarching Trends and Insights from Entries

An analysis of the arguments and recommendations articulated from over sixty submissions pointed to four overarching insights at the intersection of irregular warfare and strategic competition: (1) the importance of acknowledging the central role of IW in strategic competition and future operating environments; (2) the criticality of investing in and fostering partnerships and building partner capacity; (3) the need for a comprehensive overhaul or reimagining of IW and its operating context; and (4) the imperative to identify gaps, opportunities, and areas that merit further investigation. The section below illuminates key insights around these themes, including excerpts from contest winners and finalists.

FOUR OVERARCHING TRENDS AND INSIGHTS FROM ENTRIES

1. Importance of acknowledging the central role of IW in strategic competition and future operating environments.
2. Criticality of investing in and fostering partnerships and building partner capacity
3. Need for a comprehensive overhaul or reimagining of IW and its operating context.
4. Imperative to identify and address gaps, opportunities, and areas that merit further investigation

Trend #1: Importance of acknowledging the central role of IW in strategic competition and future operating environments

Many essays highlighted the importance of irregular warfare in today’s global landscape and argued that decision-makers should place greater emphasis on IW. Authors pointed out that in prioritizing irregular warfare and building capacity in this area, the United States and its partners can confront challenges from adversaries like Russia and China more effectively, while also mitigating the risk of unintended nuclear escalation.

Some pieces argued that conventional overmatch will be increasingly irrelevant, direct or conventional confrontation will not be useful or effective in geostrategic environments, and IW approaches should, therefore, be prioritized. Furthermore, focusing on irregular warfare can help to build collaboration with partners and counter adversaries in the process. As the US government examines the security landscape and develops approaches for the future, authors argued that it will be crucial to recognize and elevate the significance of irregular warfare and its role in shaping the future of activities across the competition continuum, including conflict.

Jacob Ware, whose essay was selected as a finalist, offered a unique perspective by pointing out that while somewhat counterintuitive at face value, effective counterterrorism capability underpins success in strategic competition and is a prerequisite for the joint force to be able to focus on campaigning and integrated deterrence. Ware notes that “beyond alliances, tactical counterterrorism also strengthens US bilateral relations with weaker partners plagued by insurgent threats. In the Belt-and-Road era, the United States must emphasize and offer its own comparative advantages, such as counterterrorism, to smaller states, to ward off Chinese influence. While higher-order goals of regime change or even democratization have consistently failed, more narrowly defined (though often maligned) missions to build capacity or to support allied-led counterterrorism and counterinsurgency capabilities have succeeded in strengthening partner forces and degrading terrorist adversaries. For evidence, look no further than the successful Kurdish ground campaign against the Islamic State in Syria. Supported by US intelligence and air assets, the Syrian Democratic Forces not only militarily defeated the terrorist organization, but also deepened its partnership with the United States.”

Trend #2: Criticality of investing in and fostering partnerships and building partner capacity

Given the timing of the contest amid conflict in Ukraine, many authors focused on countering Russian malign activity and praised US efforts between 2014 and 2022 that helped prepare Ukraine for their somewhat unlikely success thus far in the conflict. Nearly all essays highlighted the imperative to invest in partners and partnerships as a strategy for confronting Russia and China to mitigate their attempts to undermine the global order.

In recognition of fiscal realities, many authors made the business case for partnering in terms of the value of partner approaches both from a financial and effectiveness perspective. While many of the essays focused on traditional security assistance and ways the United States government should expand the scope and goals of such programs and initiatives, others focused on exploring non-traditional partnerships with industry (e.g., technology and manufacturing) and NGOs. Many authors highlighted that Russia and China are well-positioned to out-compete the United States as they are centralized, and therefore better at integrating whole-of-nation approaches.

In his piece, Cadet Anthony Marco argues for expanded security cooperation for countering Russian influence and the Wagner group in the Sahel. He points out that although “enacting a larger-scale, long-term regional approach to foreign internal defense comes with inherent risks, it would restore Western credibility in the region and offer an alternative to governments seeking to avoid the destructive effects of outsourcing to private military companies.”

While a majority of pieces focused on IW approaches for countering Russia, finalist Cliff Lucas offers insight on partnering to counter malign Chinese influence by noting that while “creating and training resistance forces may seem antithetical to promoting stability in the region…advising partner nations in capabilities to patrol their shores and enforce international law provides an avenue to hold China accountable for its aggressive behavior more effectively.”

In another China-focused piece, Midshipman Charles Wright explains how partners can enable overarching IW approaches and aid in tasks like logistics and resupply. He uses the example of the US Marine Corps and Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations in the South China Sea by noting that “the Marine Corps has laid out a plan to populate islands with small unit ship killer teams that will assist in area denial missions of large enemy surface combatants. The difficult piece of this is inserting these teams and keeping them resupplied. Our partners in the area could utilize their knowledge of the waters to close that final distance of logistics.”

Trend #3: Fundamentally Overhaul/Reimagine IW and the Operating Environment

These essays argued for a large-scale shift or overhaul in the way we conceptualize the nature and character of conflict, the operating environment, and the value and applications of IW. Authors characterized familiar advantages like air superiority and technological overmatch as outdated presuppositions—and as such argued that decisionmakers should instead prioritize IW and indirect or asymmetric approaches.

Many pieces argued for the United States to better exploit asymmetries by applying lessons learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, Dutch resistance in World War II, and appeals to leverage the collective memory of our own “revolutionary” roots. Authors also advocated a reimagining of IW activities as a “preventative” rather than a “reactionary” toolkit—with increased emphasis on unconventional warfare (UW), resistance, and civil affairs.

Cadet Hannah Lamb offers such a reimagining in proposing a semi-doctrinal implementation of UW noting that “an over-the-horizon UW campaign has potential to address theNational Defense Strategy priority of limiting the expansion of adversarial spheres of influence, while simultaneously maintaining the Biden administration’s promise that it will not insert American soldiers into Ukraine. This approach would entail the training and equipping of irregular Ukrainian fighters outside Ukraine in order to subvert the occupying force.”

Trend #4: Gaps, Opportunities, and Areas to Explore

Given the dynamic operating environment, many authors focused on gaps and opportunities in several areas including in medical logistical support capability, lawfare, cyber operations, civil affairs, information domain, and AI. For example, many authors, including the contest winner, presented arguments that the United States should be more proactive in leveraging AI and tech breakthroughs, including commercial technology, for advantage.

In his winning essay, Moellering offers recommendations for contending with technological advances by pointing out that “in order to be effective in this space, the US military must change how it thinks about its operating environments, which requires integrating digital exhaust training into all exercises. This will help those on the ground better visualize how adversaries use their data against them and will create a culture that understands the importance of AI and how it can work for them. It will also help translate what operating in this new environment looks like for the experienced combat veteran who is well versed in irregular warfare but reluctant to adapt to the rapidly changing technologies that now permeate the operational space. And it will give operators a distinct advantage as the United States integrates its own AI tools into its intelligence and operations processes, as they will already be familiar with the benefits and vulnerabilities of AI.”

Michael Listner, another contest finalist, offered a perspective on the role of lawfare and articulated a call for “legal tiger teams” as specialized, cross-functional teams with diverse, specialized expertise to pursue “resourceful legal authorities outside of the mainstream.” Listner notes that “both the PRC and the Russian Federation recognize war exists outside of the Clausewitzian scope of kinetic warfare and the Westphalian view of war to include media, psychological, and legal facets. It is in this sphere both the PRC and the Russian Federation engage in great power competition to the detriment of the existing international legal system. The United States must recognize the reality of hybrid warfare and meet the challenge posed by its existence.”

In a particularly innovative essay on a topic that does not receive adequate emphasis from the IW community of interest, Mason H. Remondelli opens a dialogue about the medical and casualty planning considerations associated with “a conventional large-scale combat operation against a technologically comparable adversary [that] will also generate substantial combat casualties for US service members and create the need for prolonged-casualty care in a denied, hostile operational context.” He argues that “to address the challenges in combat casualty care elucidated by a theater-wide distributed multi-domain environment, policymakers and military leaders should establish irregular warfare trauma systems and covert medical intelligence networks to increase the US medical sphere of influence.”

On behalf of IWI and the JS J7 OIWC, we would like to extend our gratitude to those who answered the call and submitted a piece for this contest. Your contributions have been invaluable and have provided leaders with a diverse range of perspectives and insights to inform modern debates in irregular warfare. We appreciate the outstanding effort and thought that went into each submission and are proud of the opportunity to share them with the wider community of interest in the field of irregular warfare via this piece. We look forward to continued engagement and ways to collaborate to bridge the gap between practitioners, scholars, and policymakers.

THE WINNING ESSAYS

GENERAL CATEGORY | WINNER AND FINALISTS

WINNER

Captain Matthew Moellering, USA |
“Hiding in the Noise: Preparing the Irregular Warfare Community for the Age of AI”

The winning essay in the general category came from Captain Matthew Moellering, an Army Special Forces Officer in the second cohort of Army Artificial Intelligence Scholars at Carnegie Mellon University. His essay provides recommendations for how the IW and special operations communities might approach challenges and opportunities inherent in the rise of technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning. His piece provides an analysis of the implications of emerging technologies from AI-enabled facial recognition technology for human intelligence or “tradecraft” to “data poisoning” of machine learning algorithms as well as recommendations for proactively contending with crucial yet often overlooked challenges like mitigating “digital exhaust.”

FINALISTS

Mr. Jacob Ware | “The Enduring Importance of Tactical Counterterrorism for Strategic Competition”

2nd LT Mason Remondelli, USA | “Strengthening the Medical Sphere of Influence through Guerilla Trauma Systems and Covert Medical Intelligence Networks”

Mr. Michael Listner, Esq. | “Lawfare: Tiger Teams to Deploy Law in Hybrid Warfare”

Major Juan Quiroz, USA | “The Oblique Approach to Irregular Warfare: Civil Affairs as the main effort in Strategic Competition”

UNDERGRADUATE CATEGORY | WINNERS AND FINALISTS

WINNERS (TIE)

Hannah Lamb (USMA) | “Great Power Proxies: Opportunities for Unconventional Warfare in Ukraine”

Charles Wright (USNA) | “How Irregular Warfare Activities Can Help the United States Address Challenges Presented by Russia and China in the Context of Strategic Competition”

In the undergraduate category, Cadet Hannah Lamb from the United States Military Academy and Midshipman Charles Wright tied. Lamb shared an innovative approach for “long-range” unconventional warfare in Ukraine. Charles presented an argument for the United States to take a balanced approach to irregular warfare as an element of an overarching security strategy.

FINALISTS

Anthony Marco (USMA) | Forces of Destabilization: Countering Wagner Group in the Sahel

Sam Konen (USMA) | “Irregular Warfare in Ukraine”

Logan Bolan (Utah State) | “’And Two Shall Put Their Tens Of Thousands To Flight’: Increasing the Pace of Innovation for Irregular Warfare in Allied Nations And Partners”

Photo: US Marine Corps by Sgt. William Chockey.

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irregularwarfare.org · by Lisa McKinnon Munde · March 27, 2023

2. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 26, 2023

Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-26-2023

Key inflections in ongoing military operations on March 26:

• Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar called for informational silence regarding a potential Ukrainian counteroffensive.[14]
• Russian milbloggers largely amplified and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin’s March 25 information operations.[15] One milblogger claimed that the deployment of nuclear weapons does not change Russia’s military situation in Ukraine or need to defend against a future Ukrainian counteroffensive, however.[16]
• Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks on the Svatove-Kreminna line.[17] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty stated that Russian and Ukrainian forces fought 10 battles in the Kupyansk-Lyman direction.[18]
• Russian forces continued attacking Bakhmut and its environs and made marginal gains within the city.[19] Russian sources claimed that Wagner Group forces cleared the AZOM plant in northern Bakhmut.[20]
• Russian forces continued attacking along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line and made marginal gains within Marinka.[21] Ukrainian intelligence stated that Wagner Group forces may arrive in the Avdiivka direction.[22]
• Russian forces continued routine fire against areas in Zaporizhia, Kherson, and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts.[23] Head of the Ukrainian United Coordination Press Center of the Southern Defense Forces Nataliya Humenyuk stated that Russian forces in southern Ukraine lack adequate supplies of missiles and drones.[24]
• Russian sources reported the formation of the “Uragan” volunteer battalion of the irregular formation 1st “Wolves” Sabotage and Reconnaissance Brigade, which operates in the Avdiivka area.[25]
• United Russia Secretary Andrey Turchak announced the proposal of a draft law on March 24 that would allow families of employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) who died in the war to be eligible to receive a one-time housing payment.[26]
• The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian occupation authorities in Berdyansk in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast are requiring locals to obtain passes from the occupation administration by April 1 in order to move around occupied Zaporizhia Oblast.[27]

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 26, 2023

Mar 26, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

Frederick W. Kagan

March 26, 4:30 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.

ISW is publishing an abbreviated campaign update today, March 26. This report discusses Russian President Vladimir Putin’s continued efforts to seek complete victory in Ukraine, which he appears confident that he can attain over time. Putin seems to reject the idea increasingly prevalent in Western discourse that the current military realities require or support a negotiated resolution of the conflict. Neither Ukraine nor the West has persuaded him that he must consider accepting any sort of off-ramp or compromise settlement. Putin instead remains focused on achieving his initial war aims through protracted conflict in which he wins either by imposing his will on Ukraine by force or by breaking Ukraine’s will following the West’s abandonment of Kyiv. Multiple successful Ukrainian counter-offensives are almost certainly necessary but not sufficient either to persuade Putin to negotiate on acceptable terms or to create military conditions on the ground favorable enough to Ukraine and the West that continued or renewed Russian attacks pose acceptable threats to Ukraine or NATO.

The outcomes of wars often are, in fact, determined on the battlefield with negotiations that merely ratify military realities. Putin likely has one such example vividly in his mind—World War II in Europe. That war ended only when Allied forces had completely defeated the German military and Soviet troops stood in the wreckage of Berlin. Japan surrendered a few months later after the US had demonstrated what appeared to be the ability to destroy the country completely—and only after the Japanese military had lost the ability to do more than impose casualties on the US in the process of losing. Going further back in history the peaces that ended the three Wars of German Unification, the American Civil War, and the Napoleonic Wars also merely ratified realities created by decisive military victories. Even the most recently ended war adhered to this pattern. The US withdrawal from Afghanistan was followed by a decisive Taliban military victory that has ended that conflict (for now) without any formal treaty or accord ratifying this outcome. History offers many counter-examples, to be sure, including the Dayton Accords that ended the Bosnian conflict and the resolution of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. But it is simply not the case that all wars end in negotiated settlements, particularly if by “negotiated settlements” is meant mutual recognition of the impossibility of achieving desired aims through military force.

Putin initiated the current war and is the key actor who must decide that he cannot achieve his aims by military power and must instead engage in a negotiated resolution of the conflict if the war is to end in this fashion. The war will protract as long as Putin believes that he can impose his will on Ukraine by fighting or by breaking the Ukrainians’ will to fight following their abandonment by the West.

Putin continues to make clear by word and deed that he has come to no such conclusion yet despite the failures of his major military efforts this winter. His efforts to freeze Ukraine and Europe into surrendering over the winter came to nothing, and the Russian winter-spring offensives that were supposed to secure the borders of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts are culminating.[1] The Russian military has committed the overwhelming majority of the reportedly 300,000 reservists mobilized in Fall 2022 as well as the 40,000 convicts recruited into the Wagner Private Military Company (PMC) into a multi-divisional offensive all along the line in Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts.[2] The results of that effort are deeply unimpressive. Russian forces gained no significant terrain in Luhansk. Wagner troops have taken part of Bakhmut City and conducted an incomplete turning movement that has so far failed to persuade Ukrainian commanders to withdraw from the Bakhmut pocket.[3] Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) forces, now reinforced by conventional Russian troops, have conducted a similarly incomplete turning movement around Avdiivka.[4] Offensives against Vuhledar in western Donetsk Oblast have made effectively no gains at staggering costs in manpower and materiel.[5] The Russian milblogger space and Russian, Ukrainian, and Western media are full of discussions of the upcoming Ukrainian counter-offensive, about which the only real questions appear to be when and where it will occur.[6] This would be an appropriate moment for Putin to conclude that Russia cannot impose its will on Ukraine by force and that he must seek a compromise settlement. He has clearly come to no such conclusion, however.

Putin is instead doubling down on his commitment to overpower Ukraine militarily and/or protract the war by mobilizing Russia’s defense industrial base and renewing various crypto-mobilization schemes to generate renewed combat power. Putin’s March 25 speech continued a months-long effort to mobilize Russian military industry for a protracted war.[7] That effort and his speech also aim to portray Russia (falsely) as the modern incarnation of Stalin’s Soviet Union able to overwhelm its enemies with unstoppable masses of men and materiel despite Putin’s manifest unwillingness actually to put Russia fully on a war footing. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu began this effort at the end of 2022 and has continued it through this year, and Putin has been amplifying it.[8] The Russians clearly are attempting to mobilize their military industry and will surely generate some improvements. The exaggerated claims and unrealistic goals that Putin and Shoigu have made and set are intended in part to portray greater strength and potential than Russia has. They do not, however, reflect the challenges Russia faces in acquiring essential war materiel in the face of Western sanctions and in shortages of skilled labor. The latter challenge is made more acute by the need for Russia to balance mobilizing young men to fight and keeping them in the workforce.[9] That Putin should be mobilizing Russia’s defense industry now is surprising only in that it took him this long to start. The fact that he is not accompanying this mobilization with any suggestion that he would consider a compromise peace—particularly after Chinese Premier Xi Jinping appeared to offer to help negotiate one during a high-profile and dramatic visit to Moscow—indicates that Putin remains committed to achieving his aims by force.[10]

The continuing of Russian offensive operations around Bakhmut and Avdiivka, as well as along the Luhansk and western Donetsk front lines, is a further indicator that Putin remains committed to victory in a protracted war whose outcome is determined in large part by military realities on the ground. These attacks have now become not merely pointless, but actually harmful to Russian preparations for the next phase of this war, which will revolve around the upcoming Ukrainian counter-offensive. Russian forces may or may not be able to drive Ukrainian troops out of Avdiivka or Bakhmut, but they will gain no significant operational advantage from doing either because they lack the ability to exploit such advances. The Russians appear to have little likelihood of making any gains that are even tactically significant in western Donetsk or on most of the Luhansk line—yet attacks in all these areas continue.

Putin’s continuation of these Russian offensive operations in the current operational and strategic context amounts to strategic malfeasance. It expends scarce Russian combat power in pursuit of operationally meaningless gains rather than setting conditions to receive and defeat a Ukrainian counter-offensive that everyone appears to expect imminently.

Putin’s stubbornness in clinging to these offensive operations could make sense, however, in a protracted conflict during which Western support for Ukraine wanes or ends. Putin might even mean these operations to set conditions for a negotiated settlement on terms he has already articulated that include international recognition of Russia’s annexation of all of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson oblasts; Ukrainian “neutrality;” the “de-militarization” of Ukraine; and the “de-Nazification” of the Ukrainian government. He may be pressing his commanders to continue attacks that are increasingly pointless in the short term because he recognizes that he can only hope to make good his claims to unoccupied areas of the four oblasts he has annexed if his forces actually take them. He may, in this sense, indeed be seeking to set conditions for a negotiated settlement. In that case, however, it becomes apparent that he must still believe that he can impose his desired resolution of the conflict on Ukraine and the West by military force—or by convincing Ukraine to surrender—and that he is unwilling to accept a resolution short of his stated aims (which include territories that Russian forces do not yet control) at this time.

A successful series of Ukrainian counter-offensives, not just one, is thus almost certainly necessary but not sufficient to persuade Putin to enter negotiations on terms other than the achievement of all of his stated objectives. Ukrainian forces must show that they can do what Russian forces cannot, namely change the realities on the ground through military action. They must further damage Russian military power in Ukraine to the point at which it becomes clear to Putin and the inner circle that supports him in this war that the Russian armed forces cannot hope to improve the outcome of the war by continued fighting. Multiple major Ukrainian operational-level victories are therefore likely essential to creating any prospect of a negotiated settlement of the current conflict or forcing Putin to accept unfavorable military realities absent a formal settlement.

There is reason to expect that Ukrainian forces can, in fact, make gains through counter-offensives. Ukraine has launched two major counter-offensive operations in this war, not counting the voluntary withdrawal of Russian forces from around Kyiv. Both were successful in retaking large areas, first in Kharkiv and then in western Kherson.[11] Various analysts have expressed various opinions about whether Ukrainian forces can penetrate prepared Russian defensive positions and raised other concerns about the prospects for Ukrainian successes. It remains the case, however, that whereas Russian force have demonstrated that they cannot make significant gains at this stage of the war, Ukrainian forces have yet to fail in such an attempt.

It is far from clear that Putin ever will accept these military realities, however. He may resolve to continue fighting, with or without a pause, as long as it takes to achieve all his aims. His rhetoric and actions, as well as his past patterns, certainly suggest this possibility. A negotiated settlement may therefore be unattainable because Putin will not accept the reality that he cannot actually conquer Ukraine.

Ukraine and the West will have to create military realities that permit a cessation of hostilities on terms that they can effectively impose on Putin in that case. Ukrainian forces, properly supported by the collective West, can retake the terrain that is strategically vital to Ukraine’s military and economic survival and that would be essential for renewed Russian offensives on terms favorable to Moscow. ISW has assessed the operational and strategic significance of various parts of occupied Ukrainian territory and stands by that assessment.[12] There likely is a line short of the full restoration of Ukrainian control over all of occupied Ukrainian territory that could be the basis for a protracted cessation of hostilities on terms acceptable to Ukraine and the West—but that line is not close to where the current front lines stand.

It is not a given, nevertheless, that Putin will continue fighting regardless of cost until the day he dies. He has ostentatiously and surprisingly refrained from going all-in on this war from its inception. One can dismiss his failure fully to mobilize and prepare his military before the invasion because he clearly believed that the Ukrainians would not or could not fight. He has passed by multiple moments when moving to fuller mobilization had become necessary, has delayed decisions to implement even partial mobilization for far too long from Russia’s perspective, and even when he has made such decisions has sought to limit their impact on the Russian society and economy.[13] Putin’s Stalinist rhetoric aside, he has shown remarkable concern about the danger of pushing Russia too far and generating a threat to the stability of his regime. Ukraine and the West should not count on Putin’s will breaking by any means, but neither should they dismiss the possibility that he might at some point decide that the costs and risks of continuing the fight are no longer justified by the potential gains.

Putin is nevertheless putting no terms for negotiation on the table now other than Russia’s total success. He is not taking the military measures that would be prudent were he serious about seeking some negotiated off-ramp or compromise settlement. The current frontlines would set highly favorable conditions for renewed Russian invasions if Putin were offering to accept them as a ceasefire boundary—but he clearly is unwilling to do so.

The choices before Ukraine and its Western backers at this time are thus relatively straightforward. Ukraine can unilaterally cease fighting even as Russian attacks by ground and air continue, which would lead to disastrous defeat (and which almost no one is advocating). Ukrainian forces can continue fighting in a very constrained way seeking only to hold what they now have, which will encourage Putin to continue his efforts to pursue outright military victory. Or they can launch successive counter-offensive operations with the twin aims of persuading Putin to accept a negotiated compromise or of creating military realities sufficiently favorable to Ukraine that Kyiv and its Western allies can then effectively freeze the conflict on their own regardless of Putin’s decisions. Those are the options facing Ukraine and the West as long as Putin continues to believe that he can impose his will by force of Russian arms over however long a period he is willing to fight.

Key inflections in ongoing military operations on March 26:

• Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar called for informational silence regarding a potential Ukrainian counteroffensive.[14]
• Russian milbloggers largely amplified and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin’s March 25 information operations.[15] One milblogger claimed that the deployment of nuclear weapons does not change Russia’s military situation in Ukraine or need to defend against a future Ukrainian counteroffensive, however.[16]
• Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks on the Svatove-Kreminna line.[17] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty stated that Russian and Ukrainian forces fought 10 battles in the Kupyansk-Lyman direction.[18]
• Russian forces continued attacking Bakhmut and its environs and made marginal gains within the city.[19] Russian sources claimed that Wagner Group forces cleared the AZOM plant in northern Bakhmut.[20]
• Russian forces continued attacking along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line and made marginal gains within Marinka.[21] Ukrainian intelligence stated that Wagner Group forces may arrive in the Avdiivka direction.[22]
• Russian forces continued routine fire against areas in Zaporizhia, Kherson, and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts.[23] Head of the Ukrainian United Coordination Press Center of the Southern Defense Forces Nataliya Humenyuk stated that Russian forces in southern Ukraine lack adequate supplies of missiles and drones.[24]
• Russian sources reported the formation of the “Uragan” volunteer battalion of the irregular formation 1st “Wolves” Sabotage and Reconnaissance Brigade, which operates in the Avdiivka area.[25]
• United Russia Secretary Andrey Turchak announced the proposal of a draft law on March 24 that would allow families of employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) who died in the war to be eligible to receive a one-time housing payment.[26]
• The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian occupation authorities in Berdyansk in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast are requiring locals to obtain passes from the occupation administration by April 1 in order to move around occupied Zaporizhia Oblast.[27]

[1] https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-ass...; https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-ass...; https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-ass...; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[2] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... https://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/Russian%20Offensive...

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

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...; https://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/Russian%20Offensive... ; 

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

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

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

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

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

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

[9] https://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/Russian%20Offensive...

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

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

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

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

[14] https://suspilne dot media/425538-minoboroni-zaklikae-do-informacijnoi-tisi-sodo-kontrnastupu-zsu/

[15] https://t.me/rybar/45046; https://t.me/readovkanews/55493; https://t.me/readovkanews/55475; https://t.me/readovkanews/55476;

https://t.me/readovkanews/55473; https://t.me/readovkanews/55472; https://t.me/readovkanews/55468; https://t.me/readovkanews/55469; https://t.me/readovkanews/55470; https://t.me/readovkanews/55471; https://t.me/readovkanews/55480; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/81381; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/81380; https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/46318; 

https://t.me/Sladkov_plus/7414; https://t.me/rlz_the_kraken/57287

[16] https://t.me/vysokygovorit/11125; https://t.me/rt_special/3337

[17] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02FnK5bXUHWMsuvWNC48...; 

https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid04fY6zCR3r13jxwxTvkd...;

[18] https://suspilne dot media/425655-rosia-budue-aderne-shovise-u-bilorusi-minoboroni-ukraini-zaklikalo-do-informacijnoi-tisi-396-den-vijni-onlajn/

[19] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02FnK5bXUHWMsuvWNC48...; 

https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02FnK5bXUHWMsuvWNC48...; https://t.me/rian_ru/198008 ; https://twitter.com/War_cube_/status/1639923570536054785?s=20 ; https://twitter.com/Circonscripti18/status/1639913105026166785?s=20 ;

https://twitter.com/War_cube_/status/1639928925659750401?s=20

[20] https://t.me/rybar/45055; https://t.me/grey_zone/17935; https://t.me/milinfolive/98468; https://t.me/z_arhiv/19884; https://t.me/readovkanews/55491; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/81414; 

https://t.me/basurin_e/347; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/81379; https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/46317

[21] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02FnK5bXUHWMsuvWNC48...; 

https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid04fY6zCR3r13jxwxTvkd...; 

https://t.me/wargonzo/11610; https://t.me/rybar/45060; https://twitter.com/klinger66/status/1639758080673038337 ; https://twitter.com/Bodbe6/status/1639744439676551171 ; https://twitter.com/GeoConfirmed/status/1639771937206353921

[22] https://suspilne dot media/425655-rosia-budue-aderne-shovise-u-bilorusi-minoboroni-ukraini-zaklikalo-do-informacijnoi-tisi-396-den-vijni-onlajn/;

https://suspilne dot media/425853-aktivizuvalisa-v-napramku-avdiivki-rosijski-vijskovi-315-raziv-strilali-po-doneckomu-napramku-dmitraskivskij/

[23] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid04fY6zCR3r13jxwxTvkd...; 

https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02FnK5bXUHWMsuvWNC48...; 

https://t.me/mod_russia/25112; https://t.me/rybar/45058; https://t.me/mykolaivskaODA/4654; https://t.me/zoda_gov_ua/17804;

https://t.me/dnipropetrovskaODA/3783; https://t.me/mykola_lukashuk/3927; https://t.me/mykola_lukashuk/3929; https://t.me/vilkul/2948;

https://t.me/Yevtushenko_E/3012; https://t.me/Yevtushenko_E/3010

[24] https://suspilne dot media/425733-dvi-dobi-pospil-armia-rf-atakue-hersonsinu-samorobnimi-kerovanimi-bombami-ale-u-nas-e-dosvid-ih-zbitta-gumenuk/

[25] https://t.me/notes_veterans/8645; https://t.me/interbrigady2022/1681

[26] https://t.me/turchak_andrey/1118; https://t.me/sotaproject/55952; https://notes.citeam.org/mobilization-mar-24-25

[27] https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=961727605186991 

Tags

Ukraine Project

File Attachments: 

DraftUkraineCOTMarch26,2023.png

Bakhmut Battle Map Draft March 26,2023.png

Donetsk Battle Map Draft March 26,2023.png

Kharkiv Battle Map Draft March 26,2023 .png

Kherson-Mykolaiv Battle Map Draft March 26,2023.png

Zaporizhia Battle Map Draft March 26,2023.png

3. Special Operations News Update - March 27, 2023 | SOF News

Congratulations to the soon to be newest Distinguished Members of the Special Forces Regiment.

Future Distinguished Members of Special Forces Regiment. The following men will be inducted as Distinguished members of the SF Regiment on April 20, 2023 at Fort Bragg, NC. MG (Ret) David Morris, COL (Ret) Mark Mitchell, COL Ronald Johnson, SFC (Ret) Riley Lott, COL (Ret) Christopher Miller, and LTC (Ret) Roger Carstens.

Special Operations News Update - March 27, 2023 | SOF News

sof.news · by SOF News · March 27, 2023

Curated news, analysis, and commentary about special operations, national security, and conflicts around the world.

Photo / Image: A CV-22 Osprey flies over Fort Walton Beach, Florida. (USAF photo by Senior Airman Christopher Callaway, April 24, 2015).

Do you receive our daily newsletter? If not, you can sign up here and enjoy it five (almost) days a week with your morning coffee (or afternoon tea depending on where in the world you are).

SOF News

V-22 Osprey – No More Purchases? It appears that the different military components that use the tilt-rotor aircraft have decided not to buy any more. This includes USSOCOM. See also “Military Quietly Stops Buying Ospreys as Aircraft Faces an Uncertain Future”, Military.com, March 24, 2023.

V-22 Osprey Problems. One of the principal aircrafts of AFSOC is the CV-22. The Osprey aircraft are being grounded around the world as the military services grapple with problems with the gearbox. Known as a “hard clutch engagement” – the problem has led to a few emergency landings. “Military Grounds Some Ospreys While a ‘Complete Redesign’ is Underway on Troubled Clutch System”, Military.com, February 6, 2023.

Future Distinguish Members of Special Forces Regiment. The following men will be inducted as Distinguished members of the SF Regiment on April 20, 2023 at Fort Bragg, NC. MG (Ret) David Morris, COL (Ret) Mark Mitchell, COL Ronald Johnson, SFC (Ret) Riley Lott, COL (Ret) Christopher Miller, and LTC (Ret) Roger Carstens.

USAF Officer Promotion. Air Force Brig. Gen. Claude K. Tudor Jr. has been nominated for appointment to the grade of major general. Tudor is currently serving as the commanding general, Special Operations Joint Task Force – Levant, U.S. Special Operations Command, Xiphos, Jordan.

USAF SR. United States Air Force Special Reconnaissance (SR) is a specialized unit that conducts operations behind enemy lines to provide battlefield intelligence and develop targets. Read more on the mission, TTPs, training, and equipment of this Air Force special operations unit. “United States Air Force Special Reconnaissance”, by Maxwell Goldstein, Grey Dynamics, March 20, 2023.

USAF Special Warfare Fitness Standards. The Air Force has revamped its training pipeline for special warfare students after controversy over standards when a female airman went through the training over a year ago. “Air Force solidifies fitness standards for special warfare trainees”, Air Force Times, March 23, 2023.

SF vs. Rangers. There are major differences between the Ranger Regiment and Special Forces. Each are important components of the U.S. Army with their specialized missions. Learn more in “Army Ranger vs Green Beret: What’s the Difference Between These Special Ops Forces”, by Samantha Franco, War History Online, March 24, 2023.

USASOC International Sniper Competition. An international sniper competition event took place at Fort Bragg this past week. The two-person teams came from 19 different units from around the world.

Delta Force Info. Samuel Longstreth has penned an article about the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment Delta (SFOD-D). He covers the doctrine, history, tactics, organization, selection and training, and more. “Delta Force: The Elite Counter-Terrorism Unit of the U.S. Army”, Grey Dynamics, March 23, 2023.

7th SFG(A) and Media Training. Members of the 7th Group recently conducted media engagement training at Camp “Bull” Simons, Florida. The training provided tools to better equip the soldiers with the skills needed to effectively communicate with the media and the public. “Mock Media Training for 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne)“, DVIDS, February 15, 2023.

USASOC Soldier Charged. A soldier is awaiting extradition from Virginia to North Carolina to face first-degree murder charges related to the death of a fellow soldier. “Fort Bragg soldier charged with killing 3rd Special Forces Group member”, Task & Purpose, March 23, 2023.

International SOF

Swedish Air Force Rangers and Arctic Partnership Recovery. U.S. Airmen assigned to the 57th Rescue Squadron teamed up with Swedish Air Force Rangers in an exercise in Sweden. Pararescue members and their counterparts trained in cold weather survival skills and personnel recovery tasks in an Arctic environment. “57th Rescue Squadron trains alongside Swedish Air Force”, Aviano Air Base, March 21, 2023.

Project Hunter and UK SOF. The United Kingdom is moving forward with acquiring a new battle rifle for the British Army’s Special Operations Brigade. The new rifle may replace the SA80 Bullpup assault rifle which first entered service in the 1980s. “New British Army Special Operations rifle could influence SA80 replacement”, Army Technology, March 22, 2023.

Wagner Group in Africa. The Russian paramilitary group continues its engagement on the African continent. One country that it will likely remain in is the Central African Republic. The mercenary group is assisting the Russian government with it objective on the continent as well as chipping away at U.S. and Western influence. “Wagner PMC Activity in the Central African Republic: A Geospatial Analysis”, Grey Dynamics, March 24, 2023.

Canada’s JTF2 Modernization. A 10-year construction project will assist in the training and high-readiness operational needs of Canada’s special operations force. “JTF2 special forces base to get $1.4 billion modernization upgrade”, Montreal Gazette, March 21, 2023.

SOF History

20 Years Later – OIF. This week marks the 20th anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). A group of RAND experts discuss what the war means for the people of Iraq and for combat veterans, lessons learned (or not), the effect on the balance of power in the Middle East, and the global reputation of the United States. “Twenty Years After the Iraq War, a Q&A with RAND Experts”, The RAND Blog, March 21, 2023.

ARSOF and OIF. Christopher E. Howard reviews the contribution of U.S. Army Special Operations Forces from the beginning of OIF in March 2003 until its conclusion in 2010. “To Baghdad and Beyond: ARSOF in Operation Iraqi Freedom”, USASOC History Office, March 20, 2023.

Vietnam MoH Recipient. On March 21, 1967, SFC Charles Hosking Jr., U.S. Army Special Forces, lost his life after he took the blast of a hand grenade to save the lives of his fellow Americans and members of the Vietnamese CIDG Reaction Force. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his bravery.

ARSOF Aviation. On 25 March 2011, the U.S. Army Special Operations Aviation Command (Airborne) was provisionally activated as a new HQs under USASOC to provide the Commanding General with an element that serves both as a command and staff entity to advocate aviation issues for USASOC. It was created out of the need to separate the combat role of Army Special Operations Aviation (ARSOA) from the resourcing responsibilities.

12th SFG(A). On March 24, 1961, the 12th Special Forces Group (Airborne) was activated. It was a part of the U.S. Army Reserves until it was deactivated in 1994.

M1911 .45 Pistol. On March 29, 1911. The United States Army adopted the M1911. This is a single-action, semi-automatic, magazine-fed, recoil-operated pistol chambered for the .45 ACP cartridge. It served as the standard-issue sidearm for the United States military for over 75 years, from 1911 to 1986.

National Security and Commentary

Economic Statecraft and Warfare. A future fight with China could possibly be over quickly if China continues its quest to control strategic economic nodes around the world. Access to critical seaports, airports, and waterways around the globe could determine who comes out on top in a future fight. Read more in “Financial Access Denial: An Irregular Approach to Integrated Deterrence”, Military Review, March-April 2023.

A Dangerous Mission – US in Syria. Although not in the headlines very much, the US effort to degrade the Islamic State in Syria is still going on. According to some news releases by DoD there are approximately 900 U.S. service members plus contractors based in Syria. “A look at the US military mission in Syria and its dangers”, Associated Press News, March 24, 2023.

U.S. Contractor Killed in Syria. On March 23, 2023, a U.S. contractor was killed by an one-way unmanned armed drone. Iranian-backed militias are believed to be responsible for the attack. A maintenance facility on a Coalition base near Hasakah in northeast Syria was the target. Six U.S. service members were wounded. U.S. Central Command conducted precision airstrikes in response to the UAV attack; utilizing F-15E fighters.

U.S. in Somalia – Why? Justin Klawans examines the mission of U.S. troops in Somalia. This is one of the remaining ‘conflicts’ of the Global War on Terror where the military is still on the ground assisting counterterrorism and counterinsurgent forces of a host nation. “The U.S. military’s ongoing presence in Somalia”, Yahoo! News, March 23, 2023.

U.S. Hostage Released. Jeffery Woodke, an aid worker abducted in Niger by militants, was released after more than six years in captivity. He was kidnapped in October 2016 in Niger and taken to neighboring Mali. Woodke, now age 62, is in Niamey, Niger undergoing medical evaluation and treatment. The circumstances of his release is unknown at this time. “American Held Hostage in Africa Is Freed”, The New York Times, March 20, 2023. (subscription)

Afghanistan

Hollywood Movies, Afghanistan, and SOF. The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan has become the topic of several new movies that will soon hit the big screen. Three of them revolve around the idea of U.S. service members on a mission to rescue the interpreters and other Afghans who served alongside them. A common trend in the movies is the people portrayed are from the U.S. special operations community. By the end of 2000 Hollywood caught on to the concept of ‘the operator’ – complete with long hair, beard, and special ‘kit’. Read more in “Afghanistan rescue missions are Hollywood’s latest military movie fad”, Task & Purpose, March 21, 2023.

Paper – Staying the Unfavorable Course. The RAND Corporation has published a paper about the National Security Council decision making and the inertia of U.S. Afghanistan policy from 2001 to 2016. The paper explains why U.S. goals in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2016 did not evolve. It also answers the question – how do policymakers attempt to adapt national security decision making processes when their policies are not achieving their intended results? March 2023, PDF, 178 pages.

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA808-1.html

ISKP Threat. The Taliban are neither demonstrably capable of weakening the Islamic State Khorasan Province, nor are they willing to accept and capacity enhancing external cooperation in this regard. “In Afghanistan, Taliban Face a Growing Threat in ISKP”, The Diplomat, March 21, 2023.

Review of U.S. Withdrawal. The Biden administration has announced that it will release a review of the chaotic U.S. departure from Afghanistan in August 2021. It was supposed to be released on the one-year anniversary of the event . . . but was delayed. “US review of Afghanistan withdrawal to be released in April”, Fox News, March 22, 2023.

Taliban Reprisals. Almost 1 1/2 years after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan they are still hunting down former members of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF). Over the past few months the killings and illegal detentions have increased. Many are detained, tortured, and then ‘disappeared’. “The Taliban escalate their brutal hunt for American allies”, by Beth Bailey, Washington Examiner, March 26, 2023.

Upcoming Events

April 5-6, 2023. San Diego, California

Warrior West

ADS

April 14-16, 2023. Fort Benning, Georgia

Best Ranger Competition

May 8-11, 2023. Tampa, Florida

SOF Week

USSOCOM

May 16-18, 2023. Fort Bragg, NC and via Zoom

Geostrategic Symposium 2023

USASOC

May 22-26, 2023. Indianapolis, Indiana

Special Forces Association Convention

May 31, 2023. Ijamsville, MD

6th Annual Golf Tournament

Three Rangers Foundation

SOF News welcomes the submission of articles for publication. If it is related to special operations, current conflicts, national security, or defense then we are interested.

Podcasts

SOFCAST. United States Special Operations Command

https://linktr.ee/sofcast

The Pinelander. Blacksmith Publishing

https://www.thepinelander.com/

The Indigenous Approach. 1st Special Forces Command

https://open.spotify.com/show/3n3I7g9LSmd143GYCy7pPA

Irregular Warfare Podcast. Modern War Institute at West Point

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/irregular-warfare-podcast/id1514636385

sof.news · by SOF News · March 27, 2023

4. Here's When Army Bases Honoring the Confederacy Will Shed Their Old Names

Here's When Army Bases Honoring the Confederacy Will Shed Their Old Names

military.com · by Steve Beynon · March 24, 2023

The Army is moving forward with renaming bases that for decades have honored Confederate rebels who waged war against the United States largely to protect and expand the slave trade.

Those new designations are set to be mostly wrapped up in the summer with Fort Pickett, Virginia, being renamed Fort Barfoot on Friday and most other posts set to have name changes by early June.

The new names are part of a larger effort by the Pentagon to scrub references to Confederate military leaders and commemoration of rebel victories. The congressionally mandated Naming Commission, a committee formed to examine all Confederate references across the military, recommended nine Army bases for redesignation.

Those bases were founded long after the Civil War, between the early- and mid-twentieth century -- an era in which the bulk of Confederate monuments were erected as Southern states enacted laws disenfranchising Black Americans.

The next redesignation will be Fort Rucker, Alabama, home of the Army's aviation training, on April 20. The base will be renamed after Chief Warrant Officer 4 Michael Novosel Sr., a veteran of World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars. He was awarded the Medal of Honor in Vietnam after he flew his helicopter into heavy gunfire during 15 medical evacuations in a single battle, saving 29 soldiers. His helicopter was heavily damaged, and he was also shot while flying.

On April 27, Fort Lee, Virginia, will be redesignated Fort Gregg-Adams, a name that references two trailblazing Black officers: Lt. Gen. Arthur Gregg, the first Black soldier to rise to three-star general in the logistics field; and Lt. Col. Charity Adams, the first Black officer in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, the component of the Army where women served when units were still segregated by gender. Gregg, 94, would be the only living person to have an Army post named after him.

On May 11, Fort Benning, Georgia, which is the home of the service's infantry, tanker and cavalry scout basic training, will be renamed Fort Moore after Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and his wife Julia Moore. Hal Moorel, a Korean and Vietnam war veteran, is best known for leading 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, in the legendary Battle of Ia Drang Valley in 1965 -- immortalized in the book and movie "We Were Soldiers." The battle was one of the first major engagements for the U.S. in the war and was the first notable employment of modern cavalry and air assault tactics.

In the aftermath of the Battle of Ia Drang, in which the U.S. took heavy casualties, Julia Moore lobbied the Army to reinvent how it notified next of kin of battlefield deaths. Previously, families had been notified via telegram, sometimes delivered by a cab driver. Following Julia Moore's advocacy, the service implemented a support network that involved the family being notified in person by a soldier wearing their dress uniform, a system still in use today.

"There can be no better way to inspire the men and women who will train to defend our nation, and particularly to provide recognition to the widows of our Nation's fallen, than to name our installation for a couple who exemplifies America's highest standards of courage, character, and compassion -- Hal and Julia Moore," Maj. Gen. Curtis Buzzard, Fort Benning's commander, said in a press release.

Fort Hood, Texas, is set to be renamed Fort Cavazos on May 9 after Richard Cavazos, the Army's first Hispanic four-star general and a veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars. He earned the Distinguished Service Cross separately in each conflict for heroic actions in combat.

Fort Bragg, North Carolina, which is home to the Army's airborne and Special Forces, will be renamed Fort Liberty on June 2. It's the only post that will not be named after a famed member of the service. It is unclear why Army planners took a unique path with Fort Bragg, amid a vast roster of Medal of Honor recipients from the airborne and Special Forces communities.

"The name Fort Liberty was not chosen at random," a news release from Fort Bragg said. "Those who served on the Naming Commission for Fort Bragg struggled to agree on one name from the more than 50 Medal of Honor recipients who could capture and encompass the scope and spirit of this installation. Each of them is just as deserving as the other. What resonated among the Commission and community members was the desire to name the installation not after a single person, but a value or characteristic that would have significance for everyone."

Fort Gordon's date is not set in stone, but garrison officials are aiming for October, according to a spokesperson for the Georgia base. That could coincide with the birthday of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who will be the installation's new namesake.

Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia, and Fort Polk, Louisiana, do not have dates yet for their renaming, spokespersons for each post told Military.com.

-- Steve Beynon can be reached at Steve.Beynon@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevenBeynon.

military.com · by Steve Beynon · March 24, 2023

5. TRANSCOM’s Unreadiness

TRANSCOM’s Unreadiness

By Seth Cropsey

March 27, 2023

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/03/27/transcoms_unreadiness_889580.html

U.S. Sealift is Insufficient for a Major Power War

The United States is a maritime power in disarray, as the U.S. Navy’s current woes indicate: the Navy cannot build enough ships, with designs from the 1980s, to maintain the fleet’s current size, nor can it keep ships in the active battle force to preserve a fleet large enough to even maintain an acceptable balance of forces against China.

Yet the issue of sealift may be more critical, and more eroded, than that of active combat capacity. American political figures should take note, and resource the U.S.’ maritime transport capabilities as thoroughly as what is required to sharpen the U.S.’ naval combat fleet’s power.

America is a bizarre maritime power. From the view of national interest, the U.S. is indisputably a maritime nation. It exists at significant remove from Eurasia, but fundamentally depends upon the free flow of goods along Eurasia’s littorals, and between Eurasia and the Americas, for its political-economic model to be sustained. In this sense, the U.S. is a maritime power in the same mold as the UK or Imperial Japan, with a distinct interest in the freedom of the seas, stable international chokepoints, and most fundamentally, an existential interest in the denial of any power or coalition hegemony upon the Eurasian landmass.

Yet the U.S. is also a continental power, one that has a historical industrial heartland, massive agricultural capacity, and energy reserves large enough to sustain domestic and international consumption. There is a distinct strain in American strategic thought, driven by this hybrid nature, that downplays the role and relevance of Eurasia in American policy and towards American interests. This strain has sought all sorts of quick-fixes to the American strategic problem, including the overwhelming deployment of nuclear weapons, the exclusive use of airpower, and the continuous underestimation of naval power.

Even American navalists misunderstand the role of maritime strength in U.S. policy. The U.S. must fight every war in an expeditionary manner. The reality of a great-power war, or even a limited war on the Eurasian rimland, is that it will be fought thousands of miles from the United States, and therefore requires the U.S. to transport men and materiel over those thousands of miles of the open ocean, and do so continuously – after all, even the Korean police action of 1950-1953 required hundreds of thousands of troops, multiple aircraft carriers, and a continuous “tail” of ships to support the forward-deployed force in the field.

America’s strategic “tail”, the critical link between the continental United States and the Eurasian landmass, is as brittle as a thin sheet of ice. U.S. TRANSCOM, the umbrella for each service’s transportation functions, is far smaller than what it was during even the Gulf and Iraq Wars. Most critical among TRANSCOM’s service elements, however, is Military Sealift Command (MSC), the U.S. Navy’s logistics component. The U.S. Army’s Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command (SDDC) manages supply flows to units on the ground and ensures they reach port rapidly and in the correct numbers. Meanwhile, the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command (AMC) maintains rapid-deployment capacity and the essential tool that is the U.S. tanker fleet of range-extender aircraft. But MSC, given its maritime nature, carries the bulk of the materiel needed in any major conflict.

MSC maintains a number of ships under its continuous control for sustainment of peacetime operations. But these ships are grossly insufficient to support a wartime surge. For that, MSC would need to turn to chartered ships, almost invariably crewed by U.S. Merchant Mariners. This has been the case, whether the U.S. charters a major supplementary fleet or moves mothballed ships out of storage, since the Second World War.

The distinction today is that the U.S. Merchant Marine lacks the ships and mariners to execute a major expansion in a great-power conflict, while the U.S. Navy and military more broadly has no experience defending American logistics from enemy predation.

The U.S. Merchant Marine is comprised of under 200 vessels that can carry over 1,000 tons, of which 152 the U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD) considers as having military utility. Even in 1996, decades after the U.S. Merchant Marine’s 1950s-1970s global market peak, the U.S. Merchant Marine still maintained 320 relevant ships. The U.S., to sustain major Eurasian combat operations, and assuming no damage to American logistics, would need some three times this force at minimum for a large-scale Eurasian war and, of equal relevance, to ensure that U.S.-bound shipping remains regular enough to sustain the American economy.

The U.S. could purchase several hundred ships from foreign buyers. American allies, most notably South Korea and Japan, are both major shipbuilders. Japan in particular is expanding its merchant ship construction industry to compete with South Korea and China, specializing in liquified natural gas (LNG) powered ships, which the U.S. would be especially suited to use considering its domestic reserves.

Yet this would solve only part of the issue. Only one institution, the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA), trains mariners with a service obligation in crisis. The USMMA produces only 100-200 graduates per year and has not received a funding injection in decades – one of its major academic facilities quite literally lacks in-building toilets and heating. It will take several years for the U.S. at minimum to train enough mariners to crew new ships, assuming the USMMA were to maximize class capacity and receive funding to sustain training programs.

In turn, the issue of adversary logistics targeting comes to the fore. The most vulnerable and least adequate part of the American military is its logistics system. The same system is the lynchpin in conducting successful expeditionary warfare. U.S. adversaries, particularly China in the Indo-Pacific, will target American and allied ports and logistics vessels to disrupt the U.S.’ long-term sustainment capacity and cripple U.S. military power after just weeks of war.

The solution is as clear as it is difficult. The U.S. must expand its merchant capacity through foreign purchasing, ensure that the USMMA has the financing to produce the merchant mariners the U.S. so desperately requires, and construct the warships needed to defend American logistics during a great power war.

Seth Cropsey is the founder and president of Yorktown Institute. He served as a naval officer and as deputy Undersecretary of the Navy and is the author of Mayday and Seablindness.

6. The future of the U.S. military's tank force

9 minute video at the link: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/25/the-future-of-the-us-militarys-tank-force.html

The future of the U.S. military's tank force

CNBC · by Brad Howard · March 25, 2023

In this article

The war in Ukraine has been defined by images of destroyed armored vehicles. During the early weeks of the conflict, it seemed as if tanks had become obsolete as mobile anti-tank infantry, precise artillery and drones pushed back Russian armored columns intent on surrounding the capital city of Kyiv.

"The Russian tanks didn't fare well," said William D. Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute. "They were taken out pretty quickly by modern anti-tank systems. And I think that would be a problem also for U.S. tanks in a future conflict."

Despite the effectiveness of anti-tank systems, such as the U.S.-made Javelin and the British-produced Next Generation Light Anti-tank Weapon, or NLAW, the heavy armor and firepower that tanks can bring to bear remain in demand by both sides of the conflict.

"When you look at how combat has proceeded, and Ukraine has been a great example of that, tanks have been very important to be able to gain and take territory, " said Bryan Clark, director of the Center for Defense Concepts and Technology at the Hudson Institute. "You need something that's going to have some protection behind it, that's going to allow infantry to be able to either use it for cover or use it for indirect fires."

As Ukrainian tank crews learn how to operate the various donated tanks from Western countries, the U.S. Department of Defense recently announced that it would be sending refurbished M1A1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine. The department estimates that sending M1A1s will speed up the estimated delivery time to the fall.

"If you look at what the Ukrainians are doing, they're desperately trying to get hold of our Abrams tanks and German Leopard tanks and some of the better quality arms," said Conrad C. Crane, senior historian and acting editor-in-chief at USAWC Press. "It's pretty obvious from that, that the tank is still an important part of the battlefield."

Watch the video above to find out more about tanks and what military experts view as their potential relevance in future battles

CNBC · by Brad Howard · March 25, 2023

7. Marine Generals: ‘Trust But Verify’ Force Design 2030

Excerpt:

Both articles raise concerns about military innovation and transformation that should alarm the new Congress. Congressional oversight is needed, to include hearings where witnesses for and against ongoing transformations are asked hard, thoughtful questions about whether the services, especially the Marine Corps, are transforming in a manner that supports current and future U.S. national security objectives. The Congress cannot assume every prospective military innovation and transformation is necessarily good for the national defense simply because it offers seductive budgetary solutions and illusions of future “silver bullet” technologies. To paraphrase former President Ronald Reagan, our elected representatives can trust but they must verify.

Marine Generals: ‘Trust But Verify’ Force Design 2030​

Congress cannot assume every prospective military innovation and transformation is necessarily good for the national defense simply because it offers seductive budgetary solutions and illusions of future “silver bullet” technologies.

by Jerry McAbee Mike Hayes​

The National Interest · by Jerry McAbee · March 26, 2023

Most people assume military innovation and transformation are two sides of the same coin, and in many respects they are. Many also believe military innovation and transformation are good, never bothering to “look under the hood” and ask the hard questions about the integration, testing, and validation needed to assure a positive outcome and bring about genuine improvement in operational capability

Two recent articles address the virtues and pitfalls of redesigning a military force, albeit from different perspectives. These articles deserve a closer look given ongoing innovations and transformations across the military services. The poster child for both revolutions is the United States Marine Corps, which is well down the road of redesigning and restructuring itself for what it perceives, correctly or not, are the challenges of the twenty-first century. Pursuing the unwise strategy of “divest to invest,” the Marines have shed approximately 50 percent of the combined arms capabilities needed to fight and win today to acquire new weapons and technology for specific future threats. These new capabilities are at least six to eight years away from being fielded in sufficient quantities to be operationally relevant. The Marine Corps is foolishly gambling that potential enemies will ignore the window of opportunity these misguided actions present them.

The first article, “Dangerous Changes: When Military Innovation Harms Combat Effectiveness,” is authored by Kendrick Kuo. One of Kuo’s most important cautions is “The notion that innovative and better military performance go hand in hand is thus intuitive. It is also wrong.” True innovation is the result of a well-developed and tested operating concept that can be vetted through a robust combat development process to determine integrated requirements necessary to effectively implement the concept. The enablers include doctrine, force structure and organizations, training and education, equipment, and facilities and support. A good example of failed innovation is the flawed Pentomic Army Divisions developed between 1957 and 1963 to counter the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield. Conversely, an example where innovation succeeded was the Army’s Air-Land Battle concept that was developed to counter the Warsaw Pact’s plan to overrun NATO defenses in Europe in the 1980s and was later validated during Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait and Iraq.

A valuable second observation by Kuo is

“harmful innovation is more likely to occur when military services … make desperate gambles on new capabilities to meet over ambitious goals while cannibalizing older capabilities. The military services treat innovations as a silver bullet and endorses destroying traditional capabilities before innovation advances can justify their beliefs about the new one’s effectiveness.”

“Harmful innovation” is exemplified by Marine Corps Force Design 2030. The Corps has mortgaged its current and future capabilities as a global force-in-readiness and combined arms team valued by combatant commanders for the allure of long-range precision weapons and associated technology that are experimental and may not perform as expected.

A final reflection by Kuo is during combat, “…the military service is likely to discover that it has overspecialized in the new capability to its own detriment. To improve performance, the service may try to downgrade the centrality of the new capability and restore traditional capabilities that remain surprisingly relevant and necessary.” This conclusion highlights the unacceptable risks associated with “divest to invest.” In the case of the Marine Corps, traditional capabilities for global response have been lost today because the equipment, personnel, and logistics required have been drastically reduced or totally discarded.

The second article, “Transforming the Marine Corps for an Uncertain Future” by General Charles Wilhelm, USMC (Ret), compares and contrasts two different approaches for transforming the Marine Corps. One approach resulted in a more relevant and capable service with a global focus. The other approach will result in a less relevant and less capable service with a narrow geographical focus.

The first transformation began in the late 1980s. The Marine Corps commandant began to refocus the service on its traditional core competency as the “first to fight” with a new emphasis on the doctrine of maneuver warfare and the intellectual development of Marines. In Wilhelm’s words, “Marines would outfight and outthink their adversaries.” The Marine Corps was better configured to support the combatant commanders, as specified in the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986. Marines were made more capable of supporting and participating in joint and special operations.

The next two commandants built on and solidified these principles and established a systems-based approach to identify and develop future capabilities: the Marine Corps Combat Development Process. The process allowed Marines to remain ready, relevant, and capable of responding to constantly shifting threats and national security priorities. Concepts led the way to the identification, prioritization, and integration of doctrine, force structure, equipment, training and education, and facilities and support. Current capabilities were maintained until new capabilities were developed, tested, and fielded.

The second transformation begun in 2020 rejected the systems-based approach in favor of one based on intuition and hope. The range and depth of capabilities needed to fight and win today are being eliminated or significantly degraded to acquire future, experimental capabilities, creating a window of opportunity for our adversaries. Marine forces are being optimized for one task, against one enemy, in one specific location. According to Wilhelm, the Marine Corps is being transformed into a “less tactically and operationally capable and less strategically relevant force than the one that emerged from the previous transformation.”

Both articles raise concerns about military innovation and transformation that should alarm the new Congress. Congressional oversight is needed, to include hearings where witnesses for and against ongoing transformations are asked hard, thoughtful questions about whether the services, especially the Marine Corps, are transforming in a manner that supports current and future U.S. national security objectives. The Congress cannot assume every prospective military innovation and transformation is necessarily good for the national defense simply because it offers seductive budgetary solutions and illusions of future “silver bullet” technologies. To paraphrase former President Ronald Reagan, our elected representatives can trust but they must verify.

Brigadier General Jerry McAbee (USMC, Ret) is a career artillery officer who served thirty-six years on active duty.

Brigadier General Mike Hayes (USMC, Ret.) is a career artillery officer who served thirty-three years on active duty.

Image: DVIDS.

The National Interest · by Jerry McAbee · March 26, 2023

8. Find It, Vet It, Share It: The US Government’s Open-Source Intelligence Problem and How to Fix It

As I have written I think open source information (intelligence) is very important and I am a strong believer in it.

To complement this article I off this from Thomas Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree on "information arbitrage" (something that I have been trying to develop as a personal skill for decades)

"Hey, Ahmed, what do you think of the U.S.-Japan talks?" That I was doing back in those days filing the weather report from Beirut, and what Reuters was doing with its stock and currency stories, was trying to order the chaos-without much success in either of both our cases. I knew when I began my foreign affairs column in 1995 that I would not survive very long if all I was doing to order the chaos was the political equivalent of just guessing the temperature in Beirut. So what to do? How to understand and explain this incredibly complex system of globalization? 

The short answer is that I learned you need to do two things at once look at the world through a multi-lens perspective and, at the same time, convey that complexity to readers through simple stories, not grand theories. I use two techniques: I "do information arbitrage" in order to understand the world, and I "tell stories" in order to explain it. What is information arbitrage? Arbitrage is a market term. Technically speaking, it refers to the simultaneous buying and selling of the same securities, commodities or foreign exchange in different markets to profit from unequal prices and unequal information. The successful arbitrageur is a trader who knows that pork bellies are selling for $1 per pound in Chicago and for $1.50 in New York and so he buys them in Chicago and sells them in New York. One can do arbitrage in markets. One can do it in literature. It was said of the great Spanish writer Jose Ortega y Gasset that he "bought information cheap in London and sold it expensive in Spain:" That is, he frequented all the great salons of London and then translated the insights he gained there into Spanish for Spanish readers back home. But whether you are selling pork bellies or insights, the key to being a successful arbitrageur is having a wide net of informants and information and then knowing how to synthesize it in a way that will produce a profit

Today, more than ever, the traditional boundaries between politics, culture, technology, finance, national security and ecology are disappearing. You often cannot explain one without referring to the others, and you cannot explain the whole without reference to them all. Therefore, to be an effective foreign affairs analyst or reporter, you have to learn how to arbitrage information from these disparate perspectives and then weave it all together to produce a picture of the world that you would never have if you looked at it from only one perspective. That is the essence of information arbitrage. In a world where we are all so much more interconnected, the ability to read the connections, and to connect the dots, is the real value added provided by a journalist. If you don't see the connections, you won't see the world. 

​As a side note, please see the diverse backgrounds of these authors. Our Army is fortunate to have these three officers serving.​

Find It, Vet It, Share It: The US Government’s Open-Source Intelligence Problem and How to Fix It - Modern War Institute

mwi.usma.edu · by Brian Cheng, Scott Fisher, Jason C. Morgan · March 24, 2023

When Russia launched its latest invasion of Ukraine early in the morning of February 24, 2022, we were serving as information operations planners for the US European Command Information Operations and Special Activities Division. Army reservists, we had arrived at EUCOM in September 2021 and soon after were assigned to help develop response plans in case of a Russian invasion. When that invasion occurred, our task shifted to rapidly operationalizing those plans. These efforts included working with interagency partners both before and after the invasion to combat Russian disinformation and help inform international audiences of Russian activities, in what some considered a “ramped up” US information warfare effort.

Throughout this process we routinely faced challenges in maximizing the value of open-source information. More specifically, we encountered problems in three areas: collection, vetting and analysis, and sharing content. We attempted several methods to address these deficiencies, with varying degrees of success, but our experiences laid bare a fundamental truth: better solutions are required to ensure US and ally information warfare capabilities are prepared for future crises.

Open-Source Challenges

As the war began it was critical to collect, rapidly vet, and then share open-source content that would support US and partner messaging efforts. A subset of this task came through our work with members of EUCOM’s judge advocate general—collecting, vetting, and properly storing content that could serve as evidence of possible Russian war crimes. Using online content as evidence in international legal tribunals is relatively new, and collecting it quickly became an interesting, but often disgusting, part of our work. Teaming with the judge advocate general also assisted us as we navigated the Geneva Conventions’ messaging-related restrictions, which our leadership had strongly emphasized.

As we set out to collect, vet, and share information, we quickly realized the scope of the challenges we faced in each of those three areas.

Problem One, Collection

Content on Russian activities was flooding social media even before the invasion, and the rate at which it appeared exploded once the invasion occurred. Tools to collect this content are widely available and often free or very low cost. Unfortunately, as anyone who has ever used a government computer can attest, loading social media and related software on an official computer is rarely an option. Instead, we had to rely on requests for intelligence support and, despite herculean efforts by members of our intelligence team and others in the interagency, we were collecting only a fraction of what was needed. This was not a surprise—with the largest war in Europe since World War II occurring, intelligence capabilities were in high demand. This did not, however, diminish the frustration of walking out of the SCIF, turning on our phones, and gaining access to more (and more relevant) open-source content than we had at our workstations.

On our personal laptops, using systems and practices from our civilian work lives, accessing the stream of content was not difficult. At the most basic level this meant following new sources on Twitter and other social media. At a more advanced level it meant automated web scraping and text analytics. But we still encountered challenges—one a function of the sheer amount of data and another related to language. First, the amount of content was so large, and occurring across so many channels, that automated tools were required to collect and store the information—open-source collection goes far beyond simply assigning a few analysts to monitor feeds. Second, the content was rarely in English. To properly capture relevant content, the tools (and the people training the tools) need to understand the target languages—Ukrainian and Russian in this case, but conceivably Chinese, Korean, or any of a range of others in future cases.

We ultimately received content, but only a fraction of what was available. What we did receive led to the second problem—analysis and vetting.

Problem Two, Vetting

The second problem occurred upon receipt of seemingly relevant content—how to analyze it to determine authenticity? While our partners in EUCOM intel and at NGA (National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency) were able to devote some resources to this task (for which we were very grateful), it was not their primary mission. Unfortunately, despite much effort to find support, this appeared to be no organization’s primary mission. Perhaps even more frustrating than not having content was having a video or image perfectly aligned to a messaging goal but not being able to use it because we could not vet it. While part of the vetting process can be automated, this typically requires a human (or dozens of humans) in the loop, as so effectively demonstrated by Bellingcat and the Institute for the Study of War in their analysis of the war in Ukraine. Though few would suggest the EUCOM (or any other) information operations directorate should be tasked with vetting open-source content, someone needs to do it. Organizations and commands need access to an effective mechanism for analyzing a piece of content (tweet, text, video, image, etc.), including for use in messaging activities.

Problem Three, Sharing

The third problem we encountered was that once we had collected a piece of content, there was no readily available means of storing it and sharing it with DoD, interagency, and international partners. For example, when someone (or some system) surfaced a potentially useful piece of information, we needed a shared space to host it. In the shared space we could:

• catalog the material (content, languages used, date, source, location, etc.);
• indicate whether it was vetted (and who vetted it, in case of questions);
• offer checkout functionality to indicate if an organization was working to vet it and, once vetted, to indicate which organization was using it for messaging (to deconflict multiple organizations unwittingly publishing the same content); and
• provide feedback on published content (e.g., how many likes or retweets) so those who collected and vetted the content could quantify successes and refine their efforts based on these reflections.

Such a system and process would, over time, create a searchable database of cataloged content for use by public affairs personnel, psychological operations units, and other US government organizations and international partners. The database would also support legal efforts to catalog evidence of possible war crimes.

Initially, we had no system capable of this functionality, while civilian organizations with nowhere near DoD’s funding were able to rapidly crowdsource, iterate, and verify the (in)authenticity of content to create useful, interactive reporting systems and maps.

The Search for Solutions

Email Distro

As the war started, we worked with our partners to establish a method for sharing unvetted, possibly relevant content by email. Partners on the collection side (primarily intelligence organizations) would attach open-source content, tweets, images, or videos to emails; we would forward this content to partners on the messaging side. Then we removed ourselves as intermediaries and created an email distribution list that allowed both sides to directly interact.

The outbreak of the war also brought additional attention and offers of support from other US government and international partners. For this we were grateful, but it highlighted two key points: (1) there was a need for an easy-to-use, shareable content repository and (2) some organizations are unfortunately out of touch or uncomfortable when it comes to open-source content.

A particularly salient example of the latter was one US intelligence organization that regularly emailed useful, relevant content—but only on JWICS, the top-secret system. Even when content is unclassified, getting it from JWICS to an unclassified network requires a written request, making the process time-consuming and administratively demanding, especially at scale. Given that the content was originally open-source and that we needed it for public messaging, delivery would have been much more efficient on NIPRNet, the unclassified system. But when we asked for that, the organization refused. It is hard to imagine a less useful distribution method than social media content provided solely on a classified system, without any added analysis or intelligence that would make it classified.

Overall, at this early stage, our main finding was the prescience of DoD’s 2018 Joint Concept for Operating in the Information Environment. It described the US military as a force “hampered by its policies, conventions, cultural mindsets, and approaches to information,” one that had built barriers that inhibit adaptation and synchronized approaches to information warfare. These were precisely the barriers we were running up against.

SharePoint

After meetings and requests for a better solution, we attempted to create one. In our civilian careers we conduct marketing campaigns, teach data analysis in public policy, and are comfortable with cloud-based software tools and crowdsourced project iterations. Searching for related options available through Army and government systems led us to create a SharePoint site on the unclassified version of Intelink. Though hindered by Intelink’s antiquated version of SharePoint, this existing, no-cost solution allowed us to quickly create a system for cataloging, storing, and sharing content, specifically including large video files. The system was immediately accessible to our US government partners.

This effort was entirely crowdsourced—no individual or organization was tasked with creating or managing the SharePoint site (members of the EUCOM Information Operations and Special Activities Division served this function as an additional duty), nor were any organizations tasked to collect, analyze, or use the content. We saw a need, leveraged an existing resource in conjunction with our partners, then advocated for its use. We achieved buy-in and the site’s capabilities were quickly operationalized.

Unfortunately, the system’s ad hoc nature—with no one tasked to collect, analyze, or provide feedback—was a key weakness. Those that collected and cataloged content could do so only when available. Those able to conduct analysis did so not as part of a requirement or a tasking, but as other taskings permitted. The consistent signal we received from those using the content for messaging was that it was valuable, but without formal support mechanisms we could not compel collection or analysis. All we could do was beg and proselytize.

The Way Forward

We see two broad options ahead—aside from stasis, which would effectively guarantee others will continue to encounter the same challenges and limitations that we did and, from our vantage point, is a nonstarter. The first option is simply to let the private sector handle open-source material. To date, the private sector has proven itself more dynamic, flexible, and capable of harnessing open-source content than government organizations. In our own office, for example, our contracted assessments team offered excellent analysis of sentiment and trending topics from traditional and social media. With some changes to funding and contract requirements, this could have addressed at least part of our collection problem (vetting would likely have required greater contract changes). With this option, government organizations would primarily rely on private entities for open-source collection, vetting, and sharing. While this solution would be quick to implement, and possibly efficient, there are issues with it—not least of which is that many of the leading open-source practitioners are civil society organizations that actively seek to distance themselves from governments. In addition, relying primarily on an outside resource, rather than developing the capability in-house, means the knowledge gap between the public and private sectors will only grow, leading to follow-on problems with program oversight, management, and needs assessments.

The second option is to adapt, for the federal government to clearly designate an organization to take on the role, funding, and responsibilities of open-source lead. In academic, organizational theory terms, open-source collection, analysis, and sharing needs to become the “organizational essence” of an agency. This organization would require personnel with strong foreign language and data analysis skills, but in a post-Covid world of work-from-home preferences, it may have recruiting advantages compared to organizations working principally with classified material. The idea of creating a new intelligence agency, on top of the dozen and a half that already exist, might seem ridiculous—perhaps the very last thing the US military or government needs is to create more bureaucracy. And yet there is a reasonable argument for doing just that: establishing a new open-source intelligence agency. Someone, somewhere needs to take the lead on open-source intelligence, and if not an entirely new agency perhaps it could be along the lines of the CIA’s former Foreign Broadcast Information Service or a better-resourced Open Source Center/Enterprise. Another possible model would be cross-organizational, something similar to the National Counterterrorism Center, established after the 9/11 Commission recommended it as a means to ensure unity of counterterrorism effort across the federal government.

The question of how to adapt aside, there is wide agreement, from RAND to the Center for Strategic and International Studies to others who have studied the problem, that improvements need to be made in open-source intelligence. The challenges we outlined above are neither new nor unique to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing war.

We advocate the adaptation option and make the following recommendations, which come from our experiences at EUCOM but mirror those made by experts at organizations and in outlets cited previously:

1. To avoid the problems outlined here and elsewhere, an organization needs to be tasked to collect, analyze, and share open-source content as a primary function. US government elements capable of these activities exist, but too often they remain siloed or lack open-source intelligence as their primary mission. This new organization would manage the shared database(s) described above, vet relevant content in coordination with other agencies, and provide a surge capability for users to rapidly create requirements during crises. Reserve component organizations can and should assist with this surge capacity.
2. Crowdsourcing the SharePoint site through Intelink was well received and a similar functionality should continue, though with a system that allows access for international partners (Intelink is typically reserved for US entities).
3. Messaging organizations, whether interagency partners, public affairs offices, psychological operations units, or others, need to provide feedback when they use a piece of content, including popularity (likes, shares, etc.) and other reflections. This is vital for two reasons: to assess the content most engaging to various audiences, and to signal refinement requirements to collection entities. Properly operationalized, this creates the fast, powerful, data-driven engagement loop required for modern information warfare.

In response to the latest Russian invasion of Ukraine, the EUCOM Information Operations and Special Activities Division and partners quickly created a system for collecting, vetting, and sharing publicly available content that supported goals outlined in preinvasion planning. The system was created with what was on hand, using existing personnel and technical capabilities. Unfortunately, a lack of dedicated resources for collection and analysis, dated technical tools, lack of a feedback mechanism for gauging success and refining requirements, and an inability to integrate international partners limited the system’s effectiveness.

In terms of open-source intelligence, many small, private organizations outperform US government entities with only a fraction of the funding available to DoD and the intelligence community. Traditional media organizations, often under the rubric of data journalism, also demonstrate capabilities that exceed those of the government, again with a fraction of the funding of government organizations.

Improvising tools and capabilities in response to an attack is part of the military profession and a challenge we readily accepted. This is why an information operations office built and managed a SharePoint site focused on open-source intelligence collection and analysis. We do not begrudge the work; our frustrations came from trying to solve problems that have been known for years and highlighted in multiple studies. Adapting how we approach open-source intelligence in the way outlined above is neither difficult nor expensive—private organizations conduct these activities cheaply and effectively every day. The signals are clear that changes are necessary. It’s time to respond to them.

Major Brian Cheng, US Army Reserve, is the 301st Information Operations Battalion operations officer. He holds a BS from Saint John’s University. During his career, he served as an information operations planner with Special Operations Command Forward – North and West Africa (SOCFWD-NWA) and with SOCFWD – East Africa. He recently served as the current operations officer for US European Command’s Information Operations and Special Activities Division. As a civilian, he works for the New York City Police Department.

Major Scott Fisher, US Army Reserve, is special projects officer for the 151st Theater Information Operations Group. He holds a BA from the University of Michigan, MA degrees from Seoul National University (South Korea) and Georgetown University, and a PhD from Rutgers University. During his military career he has supported US Special Operations Command as an information operations planner in Afghanistan and East Africa and worked for the 301st Information Operations Battalion. He recently returned from serving as an information operations planner for US European Command. As a civilian, he is a professor of security studies at New Jersey City University.

Major Jason C. Morgan, US Army Reserve, is currently the military deception and OPSEC planner for the 151st Theater Information Operations Group. He holds a BS from Northeastern University and a JD from Benjamin Cardozo Law School. During his eighteen-year career, he served with the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan (twice), the 8th Theater Sustainment Command, the 77th Sustainment Brigade, the 99th Readiness Division, the 301st Information Operations Battalion, Special Operations Task Force – East Africa FWD, and US European Command. He also owns a Coffee House (Breukelen Coffee House) in Brooklyn, New York, a restaurant (Suya Guys) in Brooklyn, New York, and a watch company (TRU-TIME) in Astoria, New York.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Staff Sgt. Chad Menegay, US Army

mwi.usma.edu · by Brian Cheng, Scott Fisher, Jason C. Morgan · March 24, 2023

9. This week in Congress: Top military leaders storm Capitol Hill

For defense and national security nerds to plan their week

This week in Congress: Top military leaders storm Capitol Hill

militarytimes.com · by Leo Shane III · March 27, 2023

Capitol Hill will see a parade of top military officials this week, led by a pair of appearances by the defense secretary and featuring top leaders from each of the services.

A dozen military budget posture hearings are scheduled between Tuesday and Thursday before the armed services and appropriations committees in both chambers. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the Joint Chiefs Chairman will appear at two of them, following their testimony before the House Appropriations Committee last week.

The hearings blitz comes ahead of a scheduled two-week break starting April 1 for lawmakers in both chambers. When Congress returns, lawmakers will put the final touches on their own budget plans for fiscal 2024, expected to be released in late spring for the House and early summer for the Senate.

Congress has until Oct. 1 to pass a new budget for federal operations for next fiscal year, but lawmakers in both chambers have said they hope to start negotiations on the work much earlier, given the expected friction over plans put forth by the House Freedom Caucus in the Republican-led House and the ones to be offered by Democrats in the majority in the Senate.

Tuesday, March 28

House Armed Services — 9 a.m. — Rayburn 2212

Nuclear Forces

Defense and Energy Department officials will testify on U.S. nuclear weapon and warhead modernization and sustainment plans.

Senate Armed Services — 9:30 a.m. — G-50 Dirksen

Defense Budget Request

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley will testify on the White House’s fiscal 2024 budget request for military operations.

House Armed Services — 10 a.m. — 2118 Rayburn

Transportation Command

Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost, head of Transportation Command, will testify on the fiscal 2024 budget request.

House Appropriations — 10 a.m. — Capitol H-140

Air Force/Space Force Budget

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown, and Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman will testify on the fiscal 2024 budget request.

House Appropriations — 10 a.m. — 2362-A Rayburn

Cybersecurity Budget

Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, will testify on the fiscal 2024 budget request.

Senate Appropriations — 10 a.m. — 192 Dirksen

Navy/Marine Corps Budget

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday and Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger will testify on current operations and the fiscal 2024 budget request.

House Foreign Affairs — 10 a.m. — Visitors Center H210

Pending Legislation

The committee will consider several pending bills.

Senate Foreign Relations — 10:30 a.m. — 419 Dirksen

Human Rights

Outside experts will testify on global efforts to protect human rights.

House Appropriations — 2 p.m. — Capitol H-140

Army Budget

Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth and Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville will testify on the Army’s fiscal 2024 budget request.

House Oversight — 2 p.m. — 2154 Rayburn

Progressivism in the Military

The committee will discuss force readiness and the impact of diversity initiatives on military training.

Senate Armed Services — 2:30 p.m. — 232-A Russell

Navy/Marine Corps Investment

Federick Stephany, acting Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research and Development, will testify on service investment goals and the fiscal 2024 budget request.

Senate Armed Services — 4:45 p.m. — 222 Russell

Regional Nuclear Deterrence

Outside experts will testify on U.S. nuclear deterrence strategy and areas of potential improvements.

Wednesday, March 29

Senate Armed Services — 9:30 a.m. — 222 Russell

Cybersecurity

John Sherman, Chief Information Officer for the Department of Defense, and Lt. Gen. Robert Skinner, director of the Defense Informations System Agency, will testify on department cybersecurity efforts.

House Veterans' Affairs — 10 a.m. — Visitors Center H210

Pending Legislation

The committee will consider several pending measures.

House Appropriations — 10 a.m. — Capitol H-140

Navy/Marine Corps Budget

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday and Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger will testify on current operations and the fiscal 2024 budget request.

House Appropriations — 10 a.m. — 2362-A Rayburn

Homeland Security Budget

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will testify on his department’s fiscal 2024 budget request.

House Appropriations — 10 a.m. — 2007 Rayburn

VA Budget

VA Secretary Denis McDonough will testify on the White House’s fiscal 2024 request for his department.

House Foreign Affairs — 10 a.m. — Visitors Center H210

Ukraine Assistance

Defense Department Inspector General Robert Storch will testify on oversight of U.S. military assistance to Ukraine.

House Armed Services — 10 a.m. — 2118 Rayburn

Defense Budget

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley will testify on the White House’s fiscal 2024 budget request for military operations.

House Veterans' Affairs — 1:30 p.m. — 2253 Rayburn

Pending Legislation

The committee will consider several pending measures.

Senate Appropriations — 1:30 p.m. — 192 Dirksen

Homeland Security Budget

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will testify on his department’s fiscal 2024 budget request.

House Armed Services — 3 p.m. — 2212 Rayburn

Personnel Posture

Service personnel officials will testify on quality of life issues and the fiscal 2024 budget request.

House Armed Services — 3:30 p.m. — 2118 Rayburn

Fixed-Wing Aircraft

F-35 Program Executive Officer Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt and other service officials will testify on fixed-wing tactical and training aircraft programs.

Thursday, March 30

House Armed Services — 8:30 a.m. — 2118 Rayburn

Cyberspace Operations

Gen. Paul Nakasone, head of U.S. Cyber Command, will testify on current operations and the fiscal 2024 budget request.

House Veterans' Affairs — 9:30 a.m. — 390 Cannon

Pending Legislation

The committee will consider several pending measures.

Senate Armed Services — 9:30 a.m. — G-50 Dirksen

Army Posture

Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth and Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville will testify on the Army’s fiscal 2024 budget request.

Senate Foreign Relations — 10:30 a.m. — 419 Dirksen

Nominations

The committee will consider several pending nominations, including Nicole Theriot to be ambassador to Guyana.

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.

10. 5 Reasons Veterans and Military Families Should Be Concerned About TikTok

Common sense considerations for all Americans not just veterans.

Excerpts:

President Biden has cited national security concerns in his proposed plan requiring TikTok's Chinese owners to divest their stake in the app. While the administration and Congress decide how to act, veterans and military families should take particular care when using TikTok -- for their own interest and the best interest of all Americans.

1. Securing Sensitive Information

2. Protecting Military Children

3. Insulating Against Misinformation

4. Defending Against Disinformation

5. Halting Propaganda from Anti-American Groups

5 Reasons Veterans and Military Families Should Be Concerned About TikTok

military.com · by 24 Mar 2023 Military.com | By Ellen Gustafson · March 24, 2023

The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Military.com. If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@military.com for consideration.

Congress and the Biden administration are currently considering bans or requiring changes to ownership for the popular social media app TikTok. Their concerns stem from the app's current Chinese ownership group and issues around data security for American users, as well as the potential spread of false information to Americans by foreign actors.

Veterans and military families should be especially aware of the risks involved with the use of TikTok. Most Americans hold veterans and military families in high esteem. With that trust and respect comes responsibility, and that includes all aspects of operational and national security, including what is on your phone.

Here are five reasons veterans and military families should be concerned about TikTok.

1. Securing Sensitive Information

TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, can access and record every keystroke made by American users on their phones -- even when the app is not actively being used. As a result of a 2017 Chinese cybersecurity law, ByteDance could be compelled to share data with the Chinese government. Thus, Beijing could collect sensitive information and be given a powerful tool for espionage against American targets. For military families, this could include data that endangers operational security, such as unit movements and timelines, training details, and locations pinpointed to the individual level. For these reasons, the U.S. Army banned the use of TikTok on government-owned devices in 2019, and all government employees faced a similar restriction as of last December.

2. Protecting Military Children

Military kids are also high-value targets because they have the ability to unintentionally or accidentally provide potentially sensitive information as a result of actions taken in their everyday lives. The children of service members and veterans could also be specifically targeted, and TikTok's core audience skews younger than most social media apps and networks. Once data is available to foreign bad actors, TikTok users could be susceptible to phishing or location tracking. This would include not only the Chinese Communist Party, but any other government or non-state actor to whom the Chinese might sell or share information.

3. Insulating Against Misinformation

Because veterans and military family members enjoy a high level of trust amongst the American public, they have a responsibility to be thoughtful about the kind of information they share. An increasing number of adults today get their news from TikTok and, like any social media platform, TikTok can be a purveyor of misinformation. Incorrect or misleading information (regardless of the intent to mislead) has consistently played a detrimental role in the political and ideological discord that currently plagues our country. What makes TikTok particularly dangerous is the chance that the app's algorithms could be manipulated or abused to push the most harmful types of misinformation to the most vulnerable users.

4. Defending Against Disinformation

While misinformation is typically defined as falsehoods that the user doesn't know are falsehoods, disinformation is deliberately misleading or biased information, typically spread with malicious intent. This is one area where U.S. political leaders find common ground. The Biden administration has warned against the spread of disinformation from China. Meanwhile, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., wrote an op-ed last November where they warned, "The CCP [Chinese Communist Party] could also use TikTok to propagate videos that support party-friendly politicians or exacerbate discord in American society."

5. Halting Propaganda from Anti-American Groups

Should the Chinese government choose to share data collected on TikTok, anti-American and anti-democracy groups around the globe would be able to use it for their own nefarious intentions. Both international and domestic bad actors -- terrorists, Nazis, anarchists, etc. -- have recruited veterans because of their leadership skills and weapons training. The propaganda they spew, in combination with mis- and disinformation, can lead to detrimental results for our nation and our democracy.

President Biden has cited national security concerns in his proposed plan requiring TikTok's Chinese owners to divest their stake in the app. While the administration and Congress decide how to act, veterans and military families should take particular care when using TikTok -- for their own interest and the best interest of all Americans.

-- Ellen Gustafson is the co-founder and co-executive director of We the Veterans, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that empowers the veteran and military family community to strengthen American democracy, and she is a proud military spouse.

military.com · by 24 Mar 2023 Military.com | By Ellen Gustafson · March 24, 2023

11. U.S. Air Strikes Hit Iranian Proxies in Syria After Iranian Drone Kills U.S. Contractor

U.S. Air Strikes Hit Iranian Proxies in Syria After Iranian Drone Kills U.S. Contractor

fdd.org · by Danielle Kleinman · March 24, 2023

Latest Developments

A drone attack on a U.S. military base in northeast Syria on Thursday resulted in the death of a U.S. contractor and the wounding of five American troops and another U.S. contractor. The U.S. intelligence community assessed the drone to be of Iranian origin. In response to the attack, Washington launched airstrikes against facilities used by militias affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). One local monitoring group reported four fatalities among the IRGC-aligned militants, while another group put the number at eight.

The New York Times reported on Friday that the primary air defense at the base, an Avenger missile system, was “not fully operational” at the time of the attack, experiencing an unexpected maintenance problem. U.S. officials also said Iran-backed militias launched 10 rockets at another U.S. base in the area on Friday, causing no casualties.

Testifying before Congress, U.S. Army General Michael Kurilla, commander of American forces in the region, reported that Iran has launched 78 attacks on U.S. positions in Syria since January 2021.

Expert Analysis

“The frequency of attacks on U.S. targets demonstrates the failure of the Biden administration’s efforts to deter Tehran. Its rare counterstrikes impose limited costs that the IRGC and its proxies can easily bear. U.S. forces could inflict severe damage on the IRGC’s infrastructure in Syria, but the administration prefers to tolerate Iran’s attacks. The broader problem, of course, is that Biden refuses to give up on nuclear negotiations regardless, even if that means staying at the table while Iranian proxies attack U.S. troops and Tehran moves closer and closer to a nuclear weapons capability.” — David Adesnik, FDD Senior Fellow and Director of Research

“The administration should waste no time making sure every militia behind the reported 78 rocket or drone attacks on U.S. positions since 2021 is also subject to terrorism sanctions. There should be no daylight between militias that are struck versus militias that are sanctioned.” — Behnam Ben Taleblu, FDD Senior Fellow

Iran’s Enduring Support for the Syrian Regime

Iran continues to fund, train, and deploy Shiite militias to fight on behalf of the Bashar al-Assad regime. This includes major deployments by Lebanese Hezbollah and Iraqi, Afghan, and Pakistani Shiite militias. There are no precise estimates, but the number of fighters likely exceeds 10,000 at any given time. Tehran has also dispatched IRGC officers to command and supervise the militias.

Iranian crude oil shipments are also essential to the survival of the Assad regime, along with flexible lines of credit. A senior Iranian lawmaker estimated Tehran had spent $20 billion to $30 billion propping up Assad.

Iran Ships Advanced Weapons to Hezbollah via Syria

Syria provides an indispensable corridor for the shipment of Iranian weapons to Lebanese Hezbollah, including precision-guided munitions (PGMs). With a sufficient number of PGMs, Hezbollah could strike both civilian and military targets in Israel with unprecedented accuracy. Given Israel’s size, such attacks would pose a strategic threat, potentially shutting down the economy and disrupting military operations.

Related Analysis

“Breaking Precedent, Israel Provides Details of Syria Air Strike,” FDD Flash Brief

“PGMs: Iran’s Precision-Guided Munitions Project in the Shadow of a Nuclear Deal,” by Jonathan Schanzer and Mark Dubowitz

“The White House is Bending the Law on Syria Sanctions,” by David Adesnik

fdd.org · by Danielle Kleinman · March 24, 2023

12. Iran-backed Militias Target U.S. Troops in Eastern Syria

Iran-backed Militias Target U.S. Troops in Eastern Syria | FDD's Long War Journal

longwarjournal.org · by Joe Truzman · March 26, 2023

U.S. officials blame Iran-backed groups for targeting a facility housing U.S. military personnel near Hasakah in northeast Syria on Thursday. The attack killed one American contractor and wounded several U.S. service members. American intelligence estimates a drone of “Iranian origin” carried out the strike.

A Syrian militia, called Liwa al-Ghaliboun, say they are behind the assault near Hasakah on Thursday. However, the group did not provide evidence to support the claim.

For its part, Kata’ib Hezbollah leader Abu al-Askari congratulated the Syrian people for the strikes on American bases but denied his group was behind the offensives.

In response to Thursday’s attack, the U.S. military carried out airstrikes against facilities used by Iran-backed militias in Deir Ezzor near the Syria-Iraq border.

A statement by CENTCOM commander Mike Kurilla detailed the American response following the drone assault.

“This evening, we responded to an attack on our forces that killed an American contractor and wounded our troops and another American contractor by striking facilities used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.”

Following the U.S. strikes in Deir Ezzor, ten rockets targeted U.S. personnel at the Mission Support Site Green Village in northeast Syria on Friday morning. No American troops were injured, but civilians were wounded when a rocket strayed off course and struck a home, according to a CENTCOM statement.

“On the morning of Mar. 24, at approximately 8:05 a.m. local time, ten rockets targeted coalition forces at the Mission Support Site Green village.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin noted that U.S. strikes in Deir Ezzor were also a response to “a series of recent attacks against coalition forces in Syria by affiliated with the IRGC.”

In addition to the Friday morning rocket offensive, a U.S. official confirmed to Fox News that more strikes were launched on American bases by Iran-backed groups in eastern Syria that day, resulting in one wounded American soldier.

Militias loyal to Iran have been operating in Syria since the beginning of the Syrian civil war, and these deployments include Lebanese Hezbollah, Pakistani Zainebiyoun, and Afghan Fatemiyoun Brigades.

U.S. troops have been assaulted about 78 times in Syria since the beginning of 2021, according to data published by the U.S. military.

The U.S. has previously responded with force against Iran-backed groups in Syria. In Dec. 2019, the U.S. attacked Kata’ib Hezbollah facilities in Iraq and Syria, killing at least 25 members.

While militias in Syria have previously targeted American forces, Shiite groups based in Iraq have also carried out offensives.

On Jan. 24, 2023, an Iraqi façade group called Tashkil al-Warithin said it was responsible for attacking a U.S. military base in al-Tanf, Syria, with drones.

In 2020, Iran-backed groups launched a campaign of onslaughts against American coalition forces in Iraq. [See FDD’s Long War Journal Analysis: Iran’s propaganda game inside Iraq.]

David Adesnik, an FDD senior fellow and director of research, noted that Tehran had taken notice of the U.S. military’s underwhelming response to strikes from its proxies in the region. “The frequency of attacks on U.S. targets demonstrates the failure of the Biden administration’s efforts to deter Tehran. Its rare counterstrikes impose limited costs that the IRGC and its proxies can easily bear.”

Joe Truzman is a contributor to FDD's Long War Journal.

Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.

Tags: centcom, Iran, Iraq, Syria

longwarjournal.org · by Joe Truzman · March 26, 2023

13. The Limits of Economic Warfare

Conclusion:

In late 2021, the U.S. Treasury issued a report on the U.S. use of sanctions. As it said in the opening, “After the September 11, 2001 attacks, economic and financial sanctions … became a tool of first resort to address a range of threats to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.” The principal lesson of U.S. sanctions on Ukraine is that sanctions are less valuable as a tool of first resort than as a supporting tool of U.S. national security. Washington should be at least as focused on developing and harnessing the other tools as it has been on deploying its tools of economic coercion.

The Limits of Economic Warfare

What Sanctions on Russia Can and Cannot Achieve

By Peter Harrell

March 27, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Peter Harrell · March 27, 2023

Over the past decade, economic sanctions emerged as Washington’s preferred policy tool to deal with a range of concerns, from adversarial governments in Iran and Venezuela to international drug trafficking. Sanctions became popular because officials saw them as a low-cost tool that could hurt the United States’ foes. The 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which Iran agreed to after years of devastating sanctions, seemed to vindicate policymakers’ view that sanctions could force adversaries into strategic concessions. Under U.S. President Donald Trump, renewed sanctions against Iran and sanctions targeting Venezuela were widely seen as effective in debilitating those countries’ economies.

Against this backdrop, when Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Western response was immediate: the United States and its allies slammed Russia with a raft of sanctions and other economic restrictions. But a year later, the effectiveness of these measures offers important lessons on their limits. Sanctions and export controls have been useful in undermining Russia’s financial resources and industrial base, but they have done little to change the Kremlin’s strategic calculus.

As Western policymakers dig in for both a protracted conflict with Russia and an era of geopolitical great-power competition with China, they should recognize that sanctions can do real damage to their targets but rarely succeed in making those targets change course. Sanctions are not a panacea, and, as Ukraine’s victories over Russia on the battlefield have demonstrated, economic warfare is no substitute for the real thing. The United States and its allies need to invest in a range of tools to defend their interests and values rather than expect too much of economic warfare.

TALE OF THE TAPE

U.S. policymakers began planning major sanctions on Russia in late 2021, as U.S. President Joe Biden grew concerned about the prospect of a wide-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Initially, policymakers sought to use the threat of sanctions, alongside bolstered security assistance to Kyiv and diplomatic overtures to Moscow, to dissuade Putin from invading. Western officials made clear that the economic damage of an invasion would be significant, and qualitatively different from the measures that Russia faced in 2014, when it first invaded Ukraine. But Putin was undeterred. He chose to invade—likely assessing that the toll of punitive sanctions would be an acceptable price for the quick capture of Ukrainian territory.

Once Russia invaded, the United States and its allies moved swiftly to impose economic costs, both to signal resolve and, in anticipation of a protracted conflict, to begin to degrade Russia’s financial reserves and military might. Within a week of Russian tanks crossing into Ukraine, the United States and its G­-7 partners had leveled sweeping sanctions on Russia’s central bank and on several of Russia’s most significant commercial banks, oligarchs, and political operatives, as well as on the country’s military-industrial complex. Moreover, the West instituted sweeping export controls to cut off Russian access to semiconductors and other key high-tech products.

Sanctions initially rattled markets, with the ruble plunging and Russia forced to double domestic interest rates to stem capital flight. Export controls had a compounding effect on Russian military-industrial production over the course of last year, with Moscow forced to turn to Iran and North Korea for ammunition and weapons, and with other metrics of industrial production, such as the manufacture of cars, slumping. But by late 2022, it was increasingly apparent that Russia had weathered the initial economic storm better than many Western officials and experts had expected: Russia’s economy contracted by more than two percent in 2022, a sharp reversal from the five percent growth in 2021, but a dip not nearly as severe as some initial estimates of a ten percent or greater decline in GDP.

Sanctions rarely succeed in forcing changes of strategy.

Russia’s economy proved resilient for three main reasons. First, Russia was initially able to profit off its own war. Oil and gas made up nearly half of Russia’s budget prior to the war, and geopolitical uncertainty surrounding the war led to high energy prices for most of 2022, allowing Russia to bolster its oil revenues by an estimated 20 percent—a significant cushion against the impacts of Western sanctions.

Second, Russia was prepared. In the years prior to the war, Russia had worked to insulate itself from Western sanctions. Moscow withdrew its reserves from the U.S. financial system in 2018 and bolstered holdings of gold. It built domestic interbank transfer and payment mechanisms that proved successful at handling domestic payments and those between Russia and its allies. Russia deepened diplomatic relations with China, India, and countries in the Middle East, providing new outlets after trade with the West collapsed. And once sanctions were imposed, Russia adopted macroeconomic policies, such as capital controls and bailouts to firms hit by sanctions, to blunt the shock. Such measures will not ensure Russia’s long-term economic health, but they did temper the near-term economic impact of Western sanctions.

Third, unlike the “maximum pressure” economic warfare that the United States has waged in recent years against Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela, sanctions on Russia have been somewhat more limited in scope. Consumer goods have generally been exempt. Dozens of Russian banks remain connected to the international financial system, providing a financial conduit for trade that has not fallen under sanctions. The West has broadly refrained from introducing secondary sanctions that seek to prevent countries such as China and the United Arab Emirates from trading with Russia.

THE REGIME ENDURES

To be sure, sanctions will continue to be a drag on Russia’s economy and its industrial base. Perhaps most important, the introduction of a price cap on Russian oil exports in late 2022, which effectively forces Russia to sell oil at prices well below global benchmarks, has contributed to Russia’s budget falling into a deficit and will further cut into revenues in the months ahead. Over the longer term, Russia will suffer from the loss of the estimated 500,000 Russians who have left the country, a talent drain that will have long-term ramifications. Export controls will continue to degrade Russia’s manufacturing base. Actions to target evasion and to go after broader categories of goods, such as those that the G-7 announced last month to mark the first anniversary of the war, will steadily cause further economic damage. In the months ahead, Western policymakers should also target other categories of Russian exports, such as metals, and try to further reduce Russia’s oil revenues by lowering the value of the oil price cap even more.

Yet policymakers should recognize that sanctions and export controls are not going to affect Putin’s strategic calculus, which will be shaped much more heavily by events on the battlefield. Authoritarian regimes in recent years have withstood shocking levels of economic pain: the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad survived a 50 percent economic decline between 2010 and 2020 and Venezuela’s economy shrank by three-fourths between 2014 and 2020. Putin views victory in Ukraine as essential to his ambitions, if not his survival. Sanctions should continue to focus principally on constraining Putin’s ability to sustain his war and forcing him to reckon with more severe domestic tradeoffs rather than on changing Russian objectives.

Authoritarian regimes have withstood shocking levels of economic pain.

That said, Western policymakers can use sanctions to support more immediate goals. First, the G-7 should redouble early efforts to use Russia’s frozen assets and other resources abroad to support Ukraine. The G-7 recently said that it would keep Russian assets in their member states frozen until Russia and Ukraine reach a diplomatic resolution and Russia “pays for the damage it has caused” to its neighbor. Practically speaking, however, any such settlement would likely be years in the future. Western countries will not be willing to finance Ukraine’s war indefinitely. Handing Russia’s frozen assets to Ukraine offers a way to continue providing necessary support to the defense of the country.

Western countries can also use the tariffs they have imposed on the Russian goods they continue to import as a source of support for Ukraine. Last month, for example, the United States hiked tariffs on aluminum imports from Russia to 200 percent. These tariffs force Russian exporters to offer lower prices and encourage Western importers to diversify to other suppliers. But the money raised with these tariffs should fund weapons purchases and financial support for Ukraine—sending a message to Putin that Russia’s exports will ultimately underwrite Ukraine’s war effort.

Finally, even if sanctions will not alter Putin’s calculus in the near term, history suggests that the prospect of lifting of sanctions can be a useful incentive over the long term. Fifteen years after Libya’s 1988 bombing of a passenger jet over Scotland, the prospect of sanctions relief helped encourage Libya to offer a settlement to the victims. In 2017, the prospect of relief from 20 years of sanctions helped persuade the Sudanese government to cease its support of terrorism and reduce its destabilizing regional activities. Years from now, after the Ukraine war is resolved on the battlefield, sanctions relief can still be a useful chip in broader negotiations aimed at reintegrating Russia into the West.

THE FULL ARSENAL

The primary lesson of Western sanctions on Russia is one that sanctions experts and practitioners have long noted: officials should not rely too much on such measures. Sanctions are a valuable supporting tool but are rarely going to be a magic bullet or radically alter the decision calculus of an adversary in the short term.

In the context of the West’s overall strategy toward Ukraine—a strategy that has been enormously successful in uniting the West, at repelling much of Russia’s initial assault, and at eliminating Russia’s chances of conquering Ukraine—a related lesson is also clear. Countries continue to operate in a hard-power world.

Ukraine’s fighting on the battlefield and Western support for Ukraine’s military have been by far the most important drivers of Russia’s failure in the conflict. And the success of Ukraine’s defense and the failures of the Russian military will be a greater deterrent to military adventurism by other potential adversaries, such as China, than will be the prospect of economic costs. The United States and their allies need to be prepared to credibly threaten—and use—force to preserve the broader peace and defend their interests.

The United States needs to boost its favored narratives in nonaligned states.

Fortunately, policymakers in the United States and around the world understand this fact. Planned military expenditures are up across G-7 countries. The United States is working to bolster military alliances with countries such as Australia and the Philippines, and is trying to expand and speed military deliveries to Taiwan. These are critical steps to protect U.S. allies and the United States’ own national security. U.S. officials also need to think more creatively about other tools. For example, discreetly aiding an ally such as Taiwan to bolster its offensive cyber-capabilities, which could be deployed in advance of a Chinese attack, could serve as a more effective deterrent than the prospect of economic sanctions.

Better information tools are critical, as well. In the run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration was quite creative in its disclosure of intelligence regarding Russia’s plans, helping Ukraine prepare for the invasion and galvanizing a global response. But the United States has been much less effective at countering Russia’s messaging in the developing world, where the Kremlin has expanded efforts to promote pro-Russian and anti-Western narratives regarding the conflict. The failure of the United States and its allies to develop tools in the information space is even more evident in Russia itself, where popular support for the war appears to remain strong. The United States needs to invest more heavily in information tools to ensure that it boosts its favored narratives not just in like-minded countries but also in nonaligned states and, to whatever extent possible, within Russia and other authoritarian countries themselves.

In late 2021, the U.S. Treasury issued a report on the U.S. use of sanctions. As it said in the opening, “After the September 11, 2001 attacks, economic and financial sanctions … became a tool of first resort to address a range of threats to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.” The principal lesson of U.S. sanctions on Ukraine is that sanctions are less valuable as a tool of first resort than as a supporting tool of U.S. national security. Washington should be at least as focused on developing and harnessing the other tools as it has been on deploying its tools of economic coercion.

• PETER HARRELL is a Nonresident Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He served at the White House as Senior Director for International Economics and Competitiveness between 2021 and 2022.

Foreign Affairs · by Peter Harrell · March 27, 2023

14. The U.S. Doesn’t Need Another Democracy Summit

Excerpts:

But a global strategy for democracy isn’t enough. Any meaningful conversation about defending democracy must also take place at the country level; after all, it is countries that ultimately progress or regress on the path to democracy. Planning on that level forces policymakers to make tradeoffs between competing imperatives and to balance multiple priorities in a way that thematic planning does not.

Unfortunately, officials in the Biden administration have resisted country-level plans—or if such plans exist, they are not being shared with the public, so the opportunity to coordinate with activists in each country is being missed. Biden should direct the White House and the State Department to collaborate on specific support plans (while soliciting input from activists from those countries) for at least a dozen states in which democracy is in flux, including India, Nigeria, Sudan, Thailand, and Tunisia, among others. The plans should have short- and long-term components, since democratic change is a lengthy, uneven process that doesn’t abide by the American electoral calendar. Congress, which has often been out in front of the Biden administration on support for democracy abroad, should consider mandating such country-level democracy plans as part of the appropriations process.

The fact that expectations are so modest for the coming democracy summit gives Biden an opportunity to greatly exceed them. But doing so will require his administration to develop not just a global strategy for democracy but also country-level plans to which it can be held accountable. Washington cannot advance the cause of democracy simply by bolstering those who champion it, as the first two years of the Biden administration have shown. The United States must also confront the authoritarians responsible for democratic decline.

The U.S. Doesn’t Need Another Democracy Summit

It Needs a Plan to Confront Authoritarianism

By Jon Temin

March 27, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Jon Temin · March 27, 2023

When U.S. President Joe Biden convenes his second Summit for Democracy on March 29, expectations will be modest. A new report from the research institute Varieties of Democracy suggests that 72 percent of the world’s population now lives in autocracies, up from 46 percent in 2012, and Freedom House recently declared 2022 the 17th consecutive year of global democratic decline.

Biden’s first Summit for Democracy, held virtually in December 2021, sought to galvanize democratic countries to work toward advancing democracy within their own borders. But the United States didn’t build an accompanying monitoring mechanism, making it difficult to track countries’ progress on the commitments they made. Nor has the United States made defending democracy abroad a major foreign policy priority, a puzzling decision given that Biden has described the struggle between democracy and autocracy as “the defining challenge of our time.”

As a candidate for president, Biden campaigned on the need to preserve democracy at home and abroad. Since taking office, he has championed voting rights and worked to strengthen democratic institutions within the United States. But his administration’s approach to defending democracy beyond U.S. borders has been much less vigorous. It has centered around organizing summits that bring together countries that are already largely committed to democracy, bolstering democratic reformers, and responding to broad, thematic challenges to democracy, such as the use of technology to limit individual freedoms. None of this requires making hard choices between values and interests when dealing with autocracies or backsliding democracies or confronting individual autocratic leaders.

For the most part, the Biden administration has shied away from those confrontations, favoring security and economic concerns over governance issues. It said little publicly about democratic regression in Turkey, Hungary, and Poland before Russia invaded Ukraine and has said almost nothing about it since. U.S. support for democracy movements in Sudan and Myanmar has been inconsistent under Biden. And when Chadian President Idriss Déby died and his son Mahamat seized power in 2021, clearly contravening the country’s constitutional order, the United States chose not to risk jeopardizing its security relationship with Chad by declaring the move a coup. U.S. defense cooperation with Thailand and Vietnam is increasing, even as those countries disregard basic democratic norms. The Biden administration touts its support for Ukraine as evidence of its commitment to defending democracy, but the fact that it has done so much to assist Kyiv also underscores how little it has done to counter threats to democracy in parts of the world where the United States has fewer interests at stake.

Biden has rightly emphasized humility in foreign policy, given that the health of the United States’ own democracy is not what it once was. But to mount a credible defense of democracy abroad, Washington and its partners would need to challenge authoritarian and authoritarian-leaning governments, not just bolster democratic reformers. Doing so requires a strategy that better aligns U.S. policies and actions with the democratic aspirations of people around the world. The second Summit for Democracy—which the United States is set to host with Costa Rica, the Netherlands, South Korea, and Zambia—gives the Biden administration another chance to match its rhetoric with action. But if this summit, like the first, doesn’t elevate democracy to the status of a core national security interest and lead to country-specific strategies for countering authoritarianism, many champions of democracy will be disheartened and could grow cynical about American intentions.

TOO MANY CARROTS, TOO FEW STICKS

The Biden administration is aware of the gap between its rhetorical commitment to defending democracy and the reality of its foreign policy and has sought to fill it with programs that support democratic reformers. At the first democracy summit in 2021, Biden unveiled the Presidential Initiative for Democratic Renewal, a collection of worthwhile programs that support independent media, marginalized groups, and free and fair elections, among other things. The administration has also launched an effort to support democratic “bright spots,” countries that are undertaking democratic reforms. At a total of just $424 million, however, the administration’s financial commitment to the democratic renewal initiative is modest, the equivalent of what the United States spends in a single year to combat HIV/AIDS in Mozambique.

And such programs can only go so far. They can bolster democratic activists and strengthen civil society organizations, but they can’t impose costs on autocrats for malign behavior. As a result, the Biden administration’s approach to democracy support has plenty of programmatic carrots but few policy sticks. This isn’t a formula for success, since autocrats and reformers alike can see that Washington will commit resources to defend democracy but won’t use its leverage or expend political capital to do so. Moreover, autocrats know how to undercut U.S.-funded initiatives. They can harass dissidents or muzzle the press, for instance, making it all the more essential that the United States provide political cover for reformers by condemning abuses or imposing penalties, among other measures.

The same is true of thematic programs aimed at countering systemic threats to democracy, such as abuses of technology or corruption. These, too, can allow the United States to avoid confronting authoritarian leaders—some of them U.S. allies—who exploit such threats. The Biden administration has developed tools that bite harder, such as export controls and curbs on illicit finance, but they are under the radar; officials should do more to package and explain these to the public as part of its commitment to defending democracy.

Biden’s efforts on this font have been hobbled by the absence of a Senate-confirmed assistant secretary for democracy, human rights, and labor, the usual point person for policymaking that prioritizes democracy. Senate Republicans refused to approve Sarah Margon, Biden’s nominee for the post, depriving the State Department of a vital voice for democracy.

But the Biden administration bears responsibility for its broader failure to challenge autocrats—or even to lay out a plan for how it might do so. Although the administration has published strategies on cybersecurity, countering corruption, the Arctic, advanced manufacturing, and many other issues, it has yet to publish one on democracy. Instead, the Biden administration has fallen back on symbolism: its two summits have become the central focus of its democracy agenda, consuming much of the bandwidth of officials responsible for democracy support.

POLICY OVER PAGEANTRY

Pageantry is no substitute for policy. What the Biden administration needs is a global democracy strategy to guide bureaucratic decision-making and align its policies and programs with clearly stated priorities. Drawing up such a strategy, as a bipartisan task force led by a group of think tanks recommended early in Biden’s tenure, would both signal the administration’s renewed resolve to defend democracy and serve as a roadmap for doing so.

The strategy should not just lay out the administration’s priorities but also embed them in decision-making structures so they can’t be ignored when they seem inconvenient. To that end, the administration should establish regular processes, such as an annual report tracking strategy implementation and an oversight council, that help keep its priorities in sight. The strategy should also recommend policies that regularize responses to threats to democratic governance. For example, when a foreign leader scraps or extends term limits to remain in office, the United States should automatically suspend some forms of assistance, as it does in response to military coups. Finally, the strategy should make clear which agency or department has overall responsibility for keeping democracy at the heart of foreign policy decision-making.

Calling for a “whole of government” approach will elicit eye rolls from some, but the reason the phrase is invoked so frequently in Washington is that disparate components of the government too often chart their own courses, especially on issues they don’t view as central to their mission. A global democracy strategy must require all parts of the executive branch—including the Department of Defense, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Commerce, and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative—to consider the impact of their decisions on democratic trends. In particular, they should consider the risk that cooperation in the security sector could encourage democratic backsliding or human rights abuses. U.S. economic assistance should also be guided, at least in part, by countries’ commitments to democratic governance.

To promote democracy, the Biden administration has fallen back on symbolism.

But a global strategy for democracy isn’t enough. Any meaningful conversation about defending democracy must also take place at the country level; after all, it is countries that ultimately progress or regress on the path to democracy. Planning on that level forces policymakers to make tradeoffs between competing imperatives and to balance multiple priorities in a way that thematic planning does not.

Unfortunately, officials in the Biden administration have resisted country-level plans—or if such plans exist, they are not being shared with the public, so the opportunity to coordinate with activists in each country is being missed. Biden should direct the White House and the State Department to collaborate on specific support plans (while soliciting input from activists from those countries) for at least a dozen states in which democracy is in flux, including India, Nigeria, Sudan, Thailand, and Tunisia, among others. The plans should have short- and long-term components, since democratic change is a lengthy, uneven process that doesn’t abide by the American electoral calendar. Congress, which has often been out in front of the Biden administration on support for democracy abroad, should consider mandating such country-level democracy plans as part of the appropriations process.

The fact that expectations are so modest for the coming democracy summit gives Biden an opportunity to greatly exceed them. But doing so will require his administration to develop not just a global strategy for democracy but also country-level plans to which it can be held accountable. Washington cannot advance the cause of democracy simply by bolstering those who champion it, as the first two years of the Biden administration have shown. The United States must also confront the authoritarians responsible for democratic decline.

JON TEMIN is Vice President of Policy and Programs at the Truman Center for National Policy. From 2014 to 2017, he served on the U.S. Department of State’s Policy Planning Staff.

Foreign Affairs · by Jon Temin · March 27, 2023

15. Friends Over Factories (Ukraine versus Russia)

Excerpts:

In order to refill their inventories and prepare for a possible future war in the Pacific, Ukraine’s allies must identify and address their own defense production challenges. To restock its depleted inventories, Washington will need to engage the full industrial might of its defense economy. Given the number of weapons and munitions that have been sent to Ukraine, this may require investment in additional capacity to replace what has been shipped and prepare for any future engagement. Critics of Washington’s current industrial base who worry that its capacity is inadequate have often focused on only one part of the ecosystem—the companies that manufacture weapons. If there are gaps, however, these need to be addressed by the government, by both the executive branch—through the Department of Defense requirements process that identifies what is needed—and by Congress. The latter funds and approves the multiyear contracts necessary for the investments required to build capacity. By working together, industry and government can produce what no single institution can accomplish alone.

Strengthening industrial and other ties among Western allies may prove crucial in a future war.

Increasing the capacity of the U.S. defense industry is not the only way of making the United States an effective “great arsenal of democracy.” So-called ally shoring, which involves working with partner countries on sourcing goods, means that necessary investments can be shared or even avoided if there is unused industrial capacity in partner countries. This shared approach allows U.S. manufacturers to focus on producing more advanced systems and allies to focus on manufacturing legacy systems overseas in a partnership that allows each to play to its strengths. The resulting strengthening of industrial and other ties among Western allies may prove crucial in a future war—or even in the continued effort in Ukraine.

The lesson from the war in Ukraine on the importance of allies is clear. It would have been extraordinarily difficult, perhaps impossible, for Ukraine to keep fighting as long or as effectively as it has without a continual inflow of weapons from foreign countries—and without the sanctions that have limited Russia’s own access to global supply chains. In contemporary warfare, a small country can make up for its relatively limited production capacity through firm connections to global suppliers. The unanswered questions surround how China and Taiwan will take note of these lessons and incorporate them into their own plans. The United States must do the same, working with its allies and developing its capabilities as tensions mount over Taiwan.

Friends Over Factories

Why Ukraine’s Alliances Are Worth More Than Russia’s Industries

By Cynthia Cook

March 27, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Cynthia Cook · March 27, 2023

As the war in Ukraine enters its second year, both Russian and Ukrainian forces are at risk of running out of weapons and equipment. Tanks, guns, and long-range missile systems have been destroyed in battles across Ukraine, and both armies are burning through munitions at a furious rate. Russia has worked to increase its defense production and is channeling munitions straight from its factories to the frontlines. On the Ukrainian side, despite the quantities of weapons and supplies that have poured into its armories, relatively little of this war materiel has come from the production line. Instead, it has come from existing stockpiles, principally from Kyiv’s allies and supporters. The United States has been Ukraine’s most generous supplier, and the Biden administration has begun to take further action, asking Congress in March to authorize funding for multiyear procurements of munitions that would provide manufacturers with the incentives and security necessary to invest in increased capacity. This change augurs a greater shift: for the first time since the end of World War II, the United States may once again become—in U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt’s words from 1940—the “great arsenal of democracy.”

The war in Ukraine has underscored the importance of alliances and partnerships. At the beginning of the war, Russia had an overwhelming advantage. Moscow’s active-duty military had more than five times as many fighters as Kyiv’s, in addition to more weapons systems and larger stockpiles of armor, artillery, and aircraft. For Russian President Vladimir Putin, those numbers, combined with the assumption that Russian troops would be welcomed as liberators, contributed to his confidence that the war would be won quickly. But Ukraine has fought far more doggedly than Moscow anticipated, and it has been able to draw on the West’s military industrial might in doing so.

Moreover, at the same time that many advanced industrialized countries provided Ukraine with intelligence, materiel, and training, they hit Russia with sanctions, isolating it from world trade and global supply chains. Without this support from the West, Kyiv would not have been able to stay in the fight or liberate areas under Russian occupation. The lesson, then, is clear: in contemporary warfare, a country that has limited defense production capacity need not be at a military disadvantage, as long as it can acquire what it needs from foreign sources. And conversely, a country with very large capacity may struggle if it is cut off from global supply chains. In other words, industrial giants, like Russia, can no longer count on their ability to manufacture what they need, whereas countries with smaller economies, like Ukraine, may not need to manufacture what they require. The war in Ukraine has shown that, for small countries, allies matter more than factories.

THE SECRET OF FOREIGN SUPPLY

Although Ukraine has worked in recent years to build its own military industrial capacity, that is not the primary driver of its success against Russia. When Ukraine became independent in 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, it inherited a sizable defense industrial base. Its 140 science and technical institutions and over 700 factories were consolidated into Ukroboronprom, a state-owned industrial conglomerate, which was plagued by a fragmented regulatory structure. Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 brought home to Kyiv the inadequacy of its forces and their inability to mount an effective defense. Thereafter, Ukraine embarked on a military transformation, including organizational reforms and new investments in defense capabilities. To that end, in 2020, Ukraine established the Ministry of Strategic Industries to support and rationalize the country’s defense industrial base. This modernization included restructuring Ukroboronprom, which became a joint-stock company in October 2021, and implementing several reforms aimed at reducing corruption. Kyiv also produced a new national security strategy that classified Russia as a long-term threat and called for developing “closer ties with the European Union, NATO and the United States.”

In fact, Ukraine’s security leadership had recognized engagement with the West as a strategic imperative long ago. In September 2014, after Russia’s seizure of Crimea, Ukraine hosted troops from the United States and 14 other NATO member states for a series of military exercises called “Rapid Trident.” These occurred annually until 2022 and served to enhance Ukraine’s coordination with NATO on both an operational and tactical level. After Russia’s 2022 invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky embarked on a global campaign to gain international assistance in Ukraine’s fight against Russia. This high-profile public relations effort has proven effective in pushing the West to deliver the crucial weapons systems and munitions that Ukraine needs.

Ukraine’s pivot to the West has paid enormous dividends since the war began. According to a January report from the Congressional Research Service, “much of U.S. assistance has been focused on providing systems and capabilities that Ukraine’s domestic defense industry cannot produce.” The United States has also provided equipment that can be deployed immediately. During the war’s first year, Ukraine’s allies and partners—including Canada, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States—delivered the tens of billions of dollars’ worth of security assistance that has enabled Kyiv not only to mount a strong resistance but also to recapture some of the territory seized by Russia in the opening phases of the invasion.

THE LIMITS OF INDUSTRIAL MIGHT

By contrast, Russia has a vast military-industrial complex but more limited access to foreign supply chains. On paper, its production capabilities are formidable: Russia’s defense industrial base employs well over two million people, and it is the world’s second-largest defense exporter after the United States. But focusing on these figures does not present the full picture. Russia’s industrial base suffers from top-down and often secretive decision-making, endemic corruption, cronyism, and a lack of transparency that has led to a substantial waste of resources and outright theft. The country’s industrial management is so centralized that it is common for those who serve on the supervisory Military-Industrial Commission of Russia to also sit on the executive boards of the state-owned conglomerates that they are supposed to oversee. As a result, oversight is weak, and contracting officers and other officials within the defense industrial base’s bureaucracy are reluctant to scrutinize the institutions’ shortcomings for fear of inviting the Kremlin’s ire.

Russia’s industrial base has also been degraded by Western sanctions, the most significant of which were applied after the invasion. In October, the U.S. Department of Commerce asserted that these had worked as intended, cutting Russia off from crucial global supply chains and limiting its ability to replace weapons lost in the war. At that time, the U.S. government estimated these losses as being more than 6,000 pieces of military equipment, including tanks, armored personnel carriers, and infantry fighting vehicles. One of Russia’s major tank producers, Uralvagonzavod, has experienced production challenges caused by a lack of foreign components and has had to furlough its employees. Moreover, Russia’s production of both hypersonic ballistic missiles and next-generation early warning aircraft systems has nearly ceased because of a lack of semiconductors from abroad. It has attempted to evade the impact of the current sanctions through a variety of strategies, ranging from using third-party intermediaries to disguising the identities of the end users, and has continued with some exports.

Russia has also turned to new sources to bolster its military capabilities. Initially, Western intelligence officials identified Iran and North Korea as providing weapons systems to Russia, although both Tehran and Pyongyang have denied this. It is known, though, that Iran has been supplying Russia with drones, as fragments have been found on the battlefield. North Korea has reportedly supplied rockets and artillery shells. More recently, there have been accounts of other countries providing critical supplies. In February, it was disclosed that Turkey had sold machinery, electronics, and spare parts to Russia, including some U.S.-made items, in violation of export controls. That same month, The Wall Street Journal reported that China had supplied Russia with microchips and other dual-use items, as well as raw materials including aluminum oxide. In March, the United States government confirmed that Chinese ammunition had been used on the battlefield.

THE POWER OF PROCUREMENT

The dramatic mismatch in the level of foreign military, intelligence, and economic support provided to Ukraine and to Russia has played a fundamental role in the conflict. Even more than the relative strength of the two militaries, this disparity has accounted for the war’s length and Ukraine’s growing confidence that it may survive as an independent country and regain at least some of its territory. The current war of attrition has become a contest between the two sides’ industrial bases, and both face challenges.

For Russia, sanctions have limited its ability to produce the weapons and supplies that it needs, although it has been pushing to expand its industrial production. For Ukraine, its factories and installations have been severely damaged by Russian attacks, although the country’s scientists and technicians have continued to work on new capabilities, including kamikaze drones with the potential to reach into Russian territory. Ukraine’s lost industrial capacity has been made up for by supplies from its international allies. The range of weapons that they have provided to Kyiv have come principally from their own existing stockpiles. These systems and munitions were not produced for Ukraine, and much of what has been delivered represents yesterday’s industrial base. But their quality and effectiveness on the battlefield have demonstrated the importance of access to reliable defense production. For Ukraine’s allies, the conflict has not yet—for the most part—become a war requiring the mobilization of their own industrial bases, although that is changing.

In order to refill their inventories and prepare for a possible future war in the Pacific, Ukraine’s allies must identify and address their own defense production challenges. To restock its depleted inventories, Washington will need to engage the full industrial might of its defense economy. Given the number of weapons and munitions that have been sent to Ukraine, this may require investment in additional capacity to replace what has been shipped and prepare for any future engagement. Critics of Washington’s current industrial base who worry that its capacity is inadequate have often focused on only one part of the ecosystem—the companies that manufacture weapons. If there are gaps, however, these need to be addressed by the government, by both the executive branch—through the Department of Defense requirements process that identifies what is needed—and by Congress. The latter funds and approves the multiyear contracts necessary for the investments required to build capacity. By working together, industry and government can produce what no single institution can accomplish alone.

Strengthening industrial and other ties among Western allies may prove crucial in a future war.

Increasing the capacity of the U.S. defense industry is not the only way of making the United States an effective “great arsenal of democracy.” So-called ally shoring, which involves working with partner countries on sourcing goods, means that necessary investments can be shared or even avoided if there is unused industrial capacity in partner countries. This shared approach allows U.S. manufacturers to focus on producing more advanced systems and allies to focus on manufacturing legacy systems overseas in a partnership that allows each to play to its strengths. The resulting strengthening of industrial and other ties among Western allies may prove crucial in a future war—or even in the continued effort in Ukraine.

The lesson from the war in Ukraine on the importance of allies is clear. It would have been extraordinarily difficult, perhaps impossible, for Ukraine to keep fighting as long or as effectively as it has without a continual inflow of weapons from foreign countries—and without the sanctions that have limited Russia’s own access to global supply chains. In contemporary warfare, a small country can make up for its relatively limited production capacity through firm connections to global suppliers. The unanswered questions surround how China and Taiwan will take note of these lessons and incorporate them into their own plans. The United States must do the same, working with its allies and developing its capabilities as tensions mount over Taiwan.

• CYNTHIA COOK is Director of the Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group and Senior Fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Foreign Affairs · by Cynthia Cook · March 27, 2023

16. The “Indo-Pacificization” of Asia: Implications for the Regional Order

Conclusion:

The Indo-Pacific as we know it today inherited many attributes from the preceding Asia-Pacific. It remains a fact that the region is one of economic growth and cooperation, however, with greater strategic elements infused into it. Perhaps the biggest and most significant difference between the two regional constructs is the latter’s inclusion of India and the Indian Ocean. The country has demonstrated a willingness and capacity to engage in the region, both economically and strategically, and both bilaterally and multilaterally. The Indo-Pacific is not only India looking eastward, but also China looking westward, as it realizes that its fate and fortunes extend beyond the Malacca Straits and into the Indian Ocean. The result of which is the emergence of regional ordering visions like FOIP and BRI to make sense of this super-region.

The “Indo-Pacificization” of Asia: Implications for the Regional Order | Geopolitical Monitor

geopoliticalmonitor.com · by Justin Au-Yeung · March 22, 2023

The Indo-Pacific is a vast geographical region that encompasses the Indian Ocean and the western and central Pacific Oceans, including the many seas in Southeast Asia and Oceania. In a geopolitical context, the term only started to appear in the lexicon of geopolitics in the late 2010s. The late Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo first referred to the confluence of the Indian and Pacific Oceans in mid-2007, and the official use of “Indo-Pacific” first appeared in Australia’s 2013 Defense White Paper. Since then, the U.S., India, EU, and ASEAN have all published their respective visions and strategies for the Indo-Pacific. What drove the emergence of this vast super-region in the geopolitical discourse?

Mental Maps, the Far East, and the Asia-Pacific

Regions are social constructs that serve political agendas. Fundamentally, they are mental maps that revolve around power, shape identity, agenda setting, and sense of belonging as a stakeholder in a shared space. Regional identities form the basis for which a state perceives itself vis-à-vis others. A logical consequence of the dynamic nature of political agendas is that regional constructs are also dynamic, and subject to reflect the given state of international relations.

The contemporary Indo-Pacific construct is a relatively recent phenomenon. Previously, the term “Far East” was widely used. The term has mostly fallen out of popular use, due to its certain connotations with eurocentrism, colonialism, and cultural exoticism. The term was also initially used by Imperial Japan, but it later opted for “East Asia” in an attempt to create an alternative region order in the form of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.

Fast-forward to the late twentieth century, the Asia-Pacific emerged as a new regional construct with the world’s largest ocean – the Pacific – at its heart. What was previously seen as a geographical barrier is instead seen through the lens of connectivity, where shipping lanes and flight routes would bring the emerging economies of Asia closer to the developed markets of the U.S. This occurred in the context of the unipolar moment, where the United States emerged from the Cold War as the world’s sole superpower. It is within this unipolar framework that the U.S. was able to act as the security guarantor the regional order through hubs and spokes – a series of bilateral security ties between the U.S. and its partners in Asia.

Institutions played a key role in upholding the regional order. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) perhaps best encapsulates the idea of an Asia-Pacific construct. Formed in 1989, APEC promotes free trade and economic cooperation between the Pacific Rim economies. Although economic in nature, the institution has diplomatic implications. It promotes dialogue between member states and has a normative effect on regional stability and integration. Hence, the narrative mattered as well. A 1993 World Bank report titled The Eat Asian Miracle brought forth the idea of the Four Asian Tigers, referring to the exceptionally high growth rates of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. Evidently, the Asia-Pacific narrative is one of prosperity and economic integration, as well as optimism for said integration to develop into cordial political relationships. For instance, China’s inclusion into the World Trade Organization (WTO), APEC and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) signalled to the world an upward trend to prosperity and a general acceptance of the US-led “rules-based international order.”

In short, the Asia-Pacific region pays tribute to the growing connectivity in trade between Pacific Rim countries as a result of shrinking geographic distances due to globalization and geopolitical change. Multilateral institutions like APEC and ASEAN are key features in the Asia-Pacific construct, contributing to narratives of prosperity and amiable cooperation.

Into the Indo-Pacific

The emergence of the Indo-Pacific in geopolitics coincided with challenges posed to the Asia-Pacific. The 1997 Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) was the first roadblock to the vision of endless prosperity and development. In the aftermath, the US-led International Monetary Fund (IMF) alienated many Asian countries that resisted pressure for internal reform, creating frustration with the regional order. Consequently, an East Asian identity emerged, and as scholar Alice Ba contends, the post-AFC East Asian regionalism does not include the United States, or at least seeks to see the U.S. play a more minimal role. On the contrary, China came out of the AFC relatively unscathed and have instead increased its reputation within the region. Its refusal to devalue the Chinese Yuan and its contribution to bailout its struggling neighbours were well received by regional stakeholders. To reinforce this perception, the World Bank published a report in the same year stating that “continued growth in China has been an important source of stability for the region and for the world.”

The AFC represented the first major challenge to the Asia-Pacific, especially the centrality of the U.S. within it. Other developments in the world like the September 11 attack and the subsequent quagmire in the Middle East further affected the U.S. position in the Asia-Pacific. An increasingly powerful (but not yet assertive) China wanted to play a greater role in regional order building. Chinese participation in regional multilateral institutions grew. For instance, the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) arrangement demonstrated the growing weight of China but more importantly, excluded the U.S. It was within this context – the disillusionment with hegemonic order and the AFC – that set the stage for the Indo-Pacific construct to emerge in the 2010s.

The India Factor

The “Indo-Pacificization” of Asia is manifested in two ways – first, the recognition that India may no longer be excluded from the Asian strategic system; second, the emergence of contending visions for regional order building. The India factor is the most intuitive, representing the “Indo” in “Indo-Pacific,” but its meaning is two-fold – a more proactive India, as well as the merger of the Indian and Pacific Oceans into one strategic system.

India is a rising power, which apart from growing internally, also has a proactive foreign policy culture. India’s Act East Policy, the successor to the Look East Policy, is an effort by New Delhi to cultivate extensive economic and strategic ties with nations in the Indo-Pacific. For instance, the India-Japan strategic partnership saw both nations engage in regular naval exercises, political exchanges, and military-to-military contact. Accordingly, scholar Dhruva Jaishankar stated that “Tokyo has become an indispensable partner in the region’s security architecture as per New Delhi’s calculations.”

Furthermore, India also expanded diplomatic, economic and security ties with South China Sea countries like Vietnam, and demonstrated a general willingness to strengthen its ties with ASEAN. With that, India increased its presence in the South China Sea when its navy conducted bilateral exercises with various ASEAN member states, signalling to the world its stake in the region. The implication of which is that India’s engagement in the Indo-Pacific is partially driven by its concerns regarding China’s newfound status.

Given the current state of U.S.-China relations, it would seem logical that the U.S. would welcome the inclusion of India to contain China, manifested in the minilateral arrangements such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD). Yet, scholar Rory Medcalf rebuffs claims of containment and exclusion. Rather than excluding China, the Indo-Pacific recognizes that China, like India, would play a major role in the region and instead legitimizes their security roles. However, there is no doubt that including India would dilute China’s influence and relative weight in the region.

Indeed, the inclusion of India does not translate into the enlargement of the U.S. containment camp. For one, India lies outside of the U.S. alliance structure, and its non-alignment tradition means that India has maintained extensive ties with different countries and has avoided picking sides in the region. In fact, Professor Rajesh Rajagopalan argues that India pursues an evasive balancing Indo-Pacific strategy, which is a combined effort to balance and reassure Beijing. Rather than seeing the Indo-Pacific through the lens of containing China, Modi’s speech in the 2018 Shangri-La Dialogue claims that India does not wish to see the Indo-Pacific as directed against anyone, and should not be a space for domination by vying powers.

India’s proactive Act East Policy is also reflective of the confluence of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The global trade that passes through the Malacca Straits also passes through the vast Indian Ocean. From the Chinese and Japanese perspectives, their overwhelming dependence on the sea lines of communication (SLOC) for energy imports means that their economic security rests on the Indian Ocean as well, alongside their trade and naval access. China’s interest in the Indian Ocean is demonstrated by its String of Pearls strategy, a term that was never used in official Chinese lexicon, but is widely believed in American and Indian circles. The enlargement of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) means that its presence in the Indian Ocean will continue to become more frequent, including counter-piracy missions in the Gulf of Aden and port visits to surrounding countries. More recently, China has been accused of using infrastructure investments to acquire port facilities in countries surrounding India, with the Pakistani Gwadar Port and the Sri Lankan Hambantota Port being the more controversial and high-profile examples.

As evident, the confluence of the Indian and Pacific Oceans is a result of a growing and increasingly proactive India, but also a result of China looking westward to the Indian Ocean. In that sense, as scholar Priya Chacko argues, China and India are the most important drivers of the emergent Indo-Pacific. The region also highlights the economic-security nexus, as maritime trade routes become interlinked with energy security and naval access.

Contending world views – FOIP and the BRI

The second way the “Indo-Pacificization” of Asia is manifested is seen in the emergence of contending visions for regional order building. The Indo-Pacific construct forms the basis for the continued relevance of the U.S. in the regional order. The Cold War and the unipolar moment that entrenched the Asian security architecture still exist today, however, the challenges that emerged in US-China strategic competition mean that the U.S. would have to offer more to legitimize its interests in the Indo-Pacific. That came in the form of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP), which is a strategy derived from Japan’s 2016 FOIP concept. At its core, FOIP is a status-quo-oriented strategy that promotes the rule of law, economic prosperity, connectivity in sea lanes, and peace and stability. However, many regional actors have published their own interpretation of FOIP with small though important nuances that reveal the different ways the Indo-Pacific is conceptualized.

For example, Japan’s FOIP strategy has a greater emphasis on connectivity in the form of quality infrastructure investments, such as the economic corridors that would connect the Indian and Pacific Oceans through mainland Southeast Asia. Japan’s FOIP also places significant attention on the growth potential of East Africa, again through nation-building assistance and infrastructure investments. Investment and development have strategic undertones as well, as China invests in the same regions for geopolitical influence.

In contrast, the U.S. FOIP has a greater emphasis on its security alliances and partnerships, with a greater strategic weight given to its traditional allies like Japan and Australia, as well as fostering closer relationships with India and ASEAN. Furthermore, the 2022 U.S. report explicitly calls out China for its coercive behavior and accuses it of possessing hegemonic ambitions. Medcalf argues that the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy sets the stage for a more fully fledged strategic competition with China. However, this is also a contestation of visions for regional order building, which is evident when considering China’s vision – the BRI.

China has refrained from using the term “Indo-Pacific” as they believe it is a ploy by the U.S. to contain its rise. This may create the impression that China does not have an Indo-Pacific strategy, yet it does exist – the BRI is China’s Indo-Pacific strategy. The global infrastructure development strategy, enshrined in China’s constitution, became the centrepiece of Chinese foreign policy. Although economic in nature, the project does have geopolitical implications. Professor Li Mingjiang posits that the BRI would transform China’s security policy to protect its overseas investments. While scholar Wei Ling, taking a more constructivist international relations approach, argues that the BRI would advance Chinese norms and values like non-interference. This suggests that the BRI is a means for Chinese power projection, both materially and normatively.

Furthermore, China’s investments are present from the Solomon Islands to Pakistan, which strongly indicates its Indo-Pacific geographic scope. In fact, scholars have pointed out that the BRI is just the “Indo-Pacific with Chinese characteristics.” Economics and security are intertwined in the Indo-Pacific which has significant diplomatic and normative repercussions. Given its comprehensive nature, the BRI may be more accurately labelled as a vision for regional order building. Together with FOIP, these regional orders go beyond traditional security and into prosperity and values of social progression. The Indo-Pacific construct plays a critical role in these visions, in the sense that it interlinks the fates of the two oceans and provides the framework for countries to understand the economic-security-diplomatic connection.

Summary

The Indo-Pacific as we know it today inherited many attributes from the preceding Asia-Pacific. It remains a fact that the region is one of economic growth and cooperation, however, with greater strategic elements infused into it. Perhaps the biggest and most significant difference between the two regional constructs is the latter’s inclusion of India and the Indian Ocean. The country has demonstrated a willingness and capacity to engage in the region, both economically and strategically, and both bilaterally and multilaterally. The Indo-Pacific is not only India looking eastward, but also China looking westward, as it realizes that its fate and fortunes extend beyond the Malacca Straits and into the Indian Ocean. The result of which is the emergence of regional ordering visions like FOIP and BRI to make sense of this super-region.

geopoliticalmonitor.com · by Justin Au-Yeung · March 22, 2023

17. From Rockets to Ball Bearings, Pentagon Struggles to Feed War Machine

From Rockets to Ball Bearings, Pentagon Struggles to Feed War Machine

The New York Times · by Eric Lipton · March 24, 2023

The flow of arms to Ukraine has exposed a worrisome lack of production capacity in the United States that has its roots in the end of the Cold War.

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An Air Force technology expo in Aurora, Colo., this month. Major contractors like Lockheed Martin are looking across the United States to bring on new suppliers for missile programs.Credit...Rachel Woolf for The New York Times

By

March 24, 2023

WASHINGTON — The Navy admiral had a blunt message for the military contractors building precision-guided missiles for his warships, submarines and planes at a moment when the United States is dispatching arms to Ukraine and preparing for the possibility of conflict with China.

“Look at me. I am not forgiving the fact you’re not delivering the ordnance we need. OK?” Adm. Daryl Caudle, who is in charge of delivering weapons to most of the Navy’s East Coast-based fleet, warned contractors during an industry gathering in January. “We’re talking about war-fighting, national security, and going against a competitor here and a potential adversary that is like nothing we’ve ever seen. And we can’t dillydally around with these deliveries.”

His open frustration reflects a problem that has become worryingly apparent as the Pentagon dispatches its own stocks of weapons to help Ukraine hold off Russia and Washington warily watches for signs that China might provoke a new conflict by invading Taiwan: The United States lacks the capacity to produce the arms that the nation and its allies need at a time of heightened superpower tensions.

Industry consolidation, depleted manufacturing lines and supply chain issues have combined to constrain the production of basic ammunition like artillery shells while also prompting concern about building adequate reserves of more sophisticated weapons including missiles, air defense systems and counter-artillery radar.

The Pentagon, the White House, Congress and military contractors are all taking steps to address the issues.

Procurement budgets are growing. The military is offering suppliers multiyear contracts to encourage companies to invest more in their manufacturing capacity and is dispatching teams to help solve supply bottlenecks. More generally, the Pentagon is abandoning some of the cost-cutting changes embraced after the end of the Cold War, including corporate-style just-in-time delivery systems and a drive to shrink the industry.

“We are buying to the limits of the industrial base even as we are expanding those limits,” Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said this month at a briefing on the Biden administration’s 2024 budget plan.

But those changes are likely to take time to have an effect, leaving the military watching its stocks of some key weapons dwindle.

Industry consolidation, depleted manufacturing lines and supply chain issues have combined to constrain the production of basic ammunition like artillery shells.Credit...Natalie Keyssar for The New York Times

In the first 10 months after Russia invaded Ukraine, prompting Washington to approve $33 billion in military aid so far, the United States sent Ukraine so many Stinger missiles from its own stocks that it would take 13 years’ worth of production at recent capacity levels to replace them. It has sent so many Javelin missiles that it would take five years at last year’s rates to replace them, according to Raytheon, the company that helps make the missile systems.

If a large-scale war broke out with China, within about one week the United States would run out of so-called long-range anti-ship missiles, a vital weapon in any engagement with China, according to a series of war-game exercises conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.

The shortcomings in the nation’s defense industrial base are vividly illustrated by the shortage of solid rocket motors needed to power a broad range of precision missile systems, like the ship-launched SM-6 missiles made by Raytheon.

It was the shortage of SM-6 missiles in particular that had Admiral Caudle fuming; they are used to defend ships against enemy aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles and cruise missiles.

There are only two contractors today that build large numbers of rocket motors for missile systems used by the Air Force, the Navy, the Army and the Marines, down from six in 1995.

A recent fire disrupted the assembly line at one of the two remaining suppliers, Aerojet Rocketdyne, causing further delays in delivering the SM-6 and other precision missile systems, even as Pentagon orders for thousands of new missiles pile up.

Understand Biden’s Budget Proposal

President Biden proposed a $6.8 trillion budget that sought to increase spending on the military and social programs while also reducing future budget deficits.

• Recapturing a Centrist Identity: As he unveiled his proposal, Mr. Biden made curbing the budget gap one of his centerpiece promises. The move is part of a wider shift that sees the president speaking more to the concerns of the political middle.
• Reducing Deficit: Instead of talking about hard choices and freezing spending, the president has pledged to defend popular federal programs and rely on taxing corporations and high earners. That represents a break with the past.
• A Missing Plan for Social Security: Like the president’s previous budgets, his new proposal makes no mention of the program, which he promised to shore up during his 2020 campaign.
• N.Y. Transit Projects: President Biden’s budget plan routes about $1.2 billion to two of the biggest transit projects in New York City: the Second Avenue Subway extension and new train tunnels under the Hudson River.

“Rocket motors, a bane of my existence, continued to be a problem,” Gregory Hayes, Raytheon’s chief executive, told Wall Street analysts last month. He said the shortage would affect the company’s ability to deliver new missiles on time and was a problem unlikely to be solved “until probably the middle of ’24.”

Aerojet is building motors for older systems such as Javelin anti-armor missiles and Stinger antiaircraft missiles, of which over 10,000 have already been sent to Ukraine. It is also building new rockets needed to power so-called hypersonic missiles that can travel much faster, as well as the rockets for a new generation of nuclear weapons for the United States and even the rocket for a new NASA spaceship soon headed to the moon.

The result is billions of dollars in backlogged orders at the company — and frustration at the Pentagon about the pace of delivery.

“At the end of the day, I want the magazines filled,” Admiral Caudle told contractors and Navy personnel in January, referring to the storage areas on his ships for guided missiles. “OK? I want the ships’ tubes filled.”

“We’re talking about war-fighting, national security, and going against a competitor here and a potential adversary that is like nothing we’ve ever seen,” Adm. Daryl Caudle said. “And we can’t dilly dally around with these deliveries.”

Other shortages slowing production include simple items such as ball bearings, a key component of certain missile guidance systems, and steel castings, used in making engines.

There is also only one company, Williams International, that builds turbofan engines for most cruise missiles, according to Seth G. Jones, a former Defense Department official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, weapons that would be vital for any war with China given their long range.

The current problems have their roots in the aftermath of the Cold War’s end, when a drive for the “peace dividend” led to cuts in weapons procurement and consolidation of the industry.

In 1993, Norman Augustine, then the chief executive of Martin Marietta, one of the largest of the military contractors, received an invitation to a dinner with Defense Secretary Les Aspin, who was helping President Bill Clinton figure out how to shrink military spending.

When he arrived, more than a dozen other chief executives from major contractors were there for a gathering that would become known as “The Last Supper.” The message delivered to the industry by Mr. Aspin was that many of the companies needed to disappear, by merging or going out of business.

“The cost would be enormous of maintaining the half-full factories, factory assembly lines,” Mr. Augustine, now 87, said in an interview at a coffee shop near his Maryland home, recalling the message shared with the executives. “The government was not going to tell us who the survivors would be — we were going to have to figure that out.”

Mr. Augustine still has a copy of a detailed “Last Supper” chart broken down by weapons systems that he typed up after the dinner. The total number of shipyards and tactical missile makers would each be cut to four from eight, while the number of rocket-motor manufacturers would be reduced to two from five.

Soon enough, Martin Marietta acquired GE Aerospace and General Dynamics’ Space Systems, and then merged with California-based Lockheed Corporation to form what is now known as Lockheed Martin.

“The conclusion they made — to get rid of most of the headquarters and the C.E.O.s and get the people left in the business operating at 100 percent, I think that was the right conclusion at the time,” Mr. Augustine said. “But it had long-term consequences. The challenge we face today was one of our own creation.”

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States — from the perspective of demands on its industrial base — has faced either short, high-intensity fights, like the first Persian Gulf war in 1990-91 and periods of the Iraq war starting in 2003, or prolonged but lower-intensity conflicts like the decades-long war in Afghanistan, said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a Brookings Institution military scholar.

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But even these engagements, far different in scale from potential confrontations with other major powers, exposed the emerging risks: By 2016, the United States ran short of precision missiles after a series of fights in Afghanistan then Iraq, Libya and finally Syria.

The Pentagon briefly ramped up production to rebuild missile supplies, but it was a temporary move, said William A. LaPlante, the under secretary of defense who oversees acquisition. Defense Department leaders, and lawmakers who set the budget, would often turn to missile programs to cut spending totals.

An American volunteer teaching Ukrainian soldiers how to use a Javelin missile last year.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

Prodded by military industry lobbyists — and the hundreds of retired high-ranking military officers they have hired to their sales and marketing teams — the government has instead mostly focused on buying new ships, planes and other extremely high-priced pieces of equipment, where the major contractors make most of their money.

Lobbyists have also pushed Congress to hold on to older ships and planes that even the Defense Department says have limited military value but which burn large amounts of money to equip and staff.

But the lower-priced items — like the missiles and other munitions — became an easy way to cut budgets to keep up spending on the big-ticket items.

“It becomes very attractive when our budgets are being balanced, to balance them on the munitions funds, because it’s fungible money,” Mr. LaPlante said. “We really allowed production lines to go cold and watched as parts became obsolete.”

That habit has also extended to European allies such as Poland, which has committed to buying F-35 fighter jets, which cost about $80 million apiece, but not enough missiles to use them for more than about two weeks in a war, said Mr. Hayes, the chief executive of Raytheon, whose Pratt & Whitney division builds engines for the fighter.

“We spend a lot of money on some very exquisite large systems, and we do not spend or focus as much on the munitions necessary to support those,” Mr. Hayes said in December. “Nobody’s buying the weapons systems necessary to engage for anything other than a very, very short-term battle.”

The Pentagon is now working to jettison an approach built around a Walmart-style just-in-time philosophy of keeping inventory low and instead focusing more on production capacity, Mr. LaPlante said in an interview.

The Biden White House this month proposed a 51 percent increase in the budget to buy missiles and munitions compared with 2022, reaching a total of $30.6 billion.

And that is just the start. The White House’s proposed budget just for Air Force missile procurement is set to jump to nearly $13 billion by 2028 from $2.2 billion in 2021. (Congress is just beginning to consider the administration’s proposals and those from both parties on Capitol Hill.)

Major contractors like Lockheed Martin, with the support of the Pentagon, are looking across the United States to bring on new suppliers for missile programs. The Defense Department is also sending in teams to help them eliminate bottlenecks, including turning to allies from around the world to find particular parts in short supply that are holding back assembly lines.

President Biden visited a Lockheed Martin facility that manufactures Javelin missiles in Troy, Ala., last year.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Last year, Lockheed could produce 7,500 of the artillery rockets that Ukrainian troops have fired to great effect from HIMARS launchers. This year, that number will jump to 10,000. But that is still far less than the Pentagon needs, even just to resupply Ukraine, and it is one of more than a dozen rocket and missile systems that contractors are now rushing to expand.

The surge in spending is likely to translate in the long run into increased profits at military contractors. But in the short term several of them, like Lockheed, continue to struggle to hire workers and eliminate shortages of key components needed to meet the Pentagon’s demand.

Lockheed expects its revenues to remain flat this year, even as the federal government pushes up spending.

Building up the additional needed capacity is likely to take several years.

“Any time you see an analysis that says, hey, we might not be prepared to achieve our strategic objectives, that’s concerning,” Frank A. St. John, the chief operating officer at Lockheed Martin, the nation’s largest military contractor, said in an interview. “We are on a path to address that need.”

Congress in December gave the Pentagon new power to award military contractors multiyear contracts to buy missile systems, providing financial commitments that allow them to hire more subcontractors or expand factories so they can build more missiles, knowing that there are profits to be made.

“It will give industry the real confirmation that they’re going to be in it for years to come,” Mr. LaPlante said. “That’s a big, big culture change.”

The Pentagon last year also created a team assigned to work with contractors to identify labor and supply chain shortages — and then gave out more than $2 billion in funding to quickly help resolve them.

That team started with a focus on resupplying weapons sent to Ukraine, Mr. LaPlante said, but it has now been set up as a more permanent unit inside the Pentagon to help the Defense Department make an “overall shift away from the just-in-time mind-set.”

In a reversal of post-Cold War policy, antitrust regulators have also increased scrutiny of continued military industry consolidation, with the Federal Trade Commission for example moving last year to block a $4.4 billion plan by Lockheed Martin to buy Aerojet Rocketdyne.

“We cannot afford to allow further concentration in markets critical to our national security and defense,” Holly Vedova, the director of the trade commission’s Bureau of Competition, said early last year, after the agency sued to block the deal.

Another major defense company, L3 Harris Technologies, which is the nation’s sixth largest, has moved to buy Aerojet, a deal that is still not completed. But contractors are also looking for new options to expand the ability to build rocket engines, with Lockheed asking for bids from a variety of potential new suppliers.

Aerojet has moved recently to expand its own rocket-engine plants in Arkansas and Alabama, where the company makes rocket motors for the SM-6 that the Navy is waiting for, as well as the PAC-3 missile, which Taiwan is waiting for as a defense against any incoming missile threats.

“D.O.D. leaders have signaled a critical need to replenish existing stockpiles,” the company said in a statement, “as well as a need to invest significantly to address overall munitions inventory.”

The Air Force has started to change the way it buys missile systems in part to expand the number of companies that manufacture key items like rocket engines, said Andrew Hunter, an assistant secretary at the Air Force in charge of acquisitions.

“It’s almost inconceivable that a single supplier is going to have the kind of capacity you’re going to need, if that conflict becomes extended,” he said after being asked about the rocket-engine shortage.

A shipment of defense equipment, including Javelin missiles, arriving at Kyiv’s Boryspil airport from the United States.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

President Biden has also turned to the Defense Production Act — used during the pandemic to speed up the manufacturing of respirators and vaccines — to move ahead with new missile programs faster, including a number of hypersonic weapons being developed for the Air Force, the Army and the Navy.

All the moves have been needed because the United States underestimated the threats it now faces — or failed to prepare adequately, Pentagon officials acknowledged.

“No one anticipated the prolonged high-volume conflict we are seeing in Ukraine, or that we might see against a strategic competitor in the future,” Mr. LaPlante said this month, referring to China.

A surge in requests for weapons sales by the United States from allies in Europe and Asia will also help by creating more demand that can support domestic production lines.

For Taiwan alone, there is a $19 billion backlog of orders for American-made weapons — large chunks of it for Stinger missiles with rocket engines built by Aerojet that are already in short supply.

The Pentagon is also working with certain U.S. allies to create more partnerships, like a $1.2 billion contract awarded last year funding a joint project between Raytheon and the Norwegian defense firm Kongsberg to build a surface-to-air missile system called NASAMS that is being sent to Ukraine.

Ms. Hicks, the deputy defense secretary, said the goal is not necessarily to prepare to fight a war with China — it is to deter one from breaking out.

“Still, we must have the combat credibility to win if we must fight,” she said.

John Ismay contributed reporting.

The New York Times · by Eric Lipton · March 24, 2023

18. Countering United Front Work: Taiwan’s Political Warfare System

Excertps:

The political warfare system also assists in coordinating counter-interference efforts across Taiwan’s civil society and national defence architecture. Within Taiwan’s defence architecture, there is a high level of exchange and cooperation between the local and national level institutions–from the police to the investigation bureaus and national security organs–in identifying activities associated with united front work. The political warfare system contributes to this coordination not only by providing fundamental training to all personnel in united front work tactics but also through monthly briefings on united front activity with other organs of national defence. These regular cross-institutional exchanges can provide insight for other countries in terms of synthesising the identification and repellence of united front work.

Based on these findings, I posit the following policy recommendations for improving democratic resistance against united front work through a ‘whole-of- society’ response:

• Defining foreign interference in legislation and incorporating this definition into the frameworks of relevant state institutions.
• Introducing education in foreign interference activity into the national curriculum.
• Creating accessible educational programmes and or tools that improve public media literacy, public understanding of how foreign interference operates in the digital sphere as well as public knowledge of civic duties and democratic procedures.
• Training all military personnel as well as staff within relevant state institutions in the nature of foreign interference as well as the implementation of a broader counter-interference strategy.
• Establishing a chain of command between a centralised Fact-Checking Centre and the organs of state and national defence to identify and publicise any instances of foreign interference through social media.
• Establishing a platform for greater coordination and cooperation between civil society groups and state institutions in reporting instances of espionage or foreign interference.

Countering United Front Work: Taiwan’s Political Warfare System

lseideas.medium.com · by LSE IDEAS · March 23, 2023

by Mariah Thornton

Abstract

This report introduces the challenges posed by China’s united front work, which has significantly expanded due to unprecedented institutional elevation and support under Xi Jinping. I argue that Taiwan — a country that has effectively resisted China’s united front activities for several decades — can serve as an instructive case for other democratic countries in institutionalising counter-interference operations. The briefing initially explores the origins of Taiwan’s political warfare system, its evolution from the martial law era to democratisation in the 1990s, and how this history informs the institution’s modern structure and operations. The information presented in this report was compiled during a period of fieldwork in Taiwan from late September to early November 2022, in which I interviewed dozens of political warfare officers as well as Taiwanese defence and security experts–a majority of whom have chosen to remain anonymous. In the conclusion, I offer broad policy recommendations based on these findings that may be applicable to other countries experiencing united front work activities and or seeking to institutionalise counter-interference operations.

Acknowledgments

I would like to extend my deep gratitude to all those who participated in interviews. Without their generosity and expertise this strategic update would not be possible. I would like to also thank my colleagues at LSE IDEAS for their support in publishing this briefing.

This report summarises findings from fieldwork I conducted in Taipei from late September to early November 2022, supported by the Sir Patrick Gillam Scholarship for fieldwork funding. The views expressed in this report are my own.

Table of contents

1. The Challenges of United Front Work
2. ‘Political Work’ and the Origins of Taiwan’s Political Warfare System
3. The Evolution of the Political Warfare System from Martial Law to Democratisation
4. The Modern-day Operations and Structure of Taiwan’s Political Warfare System
5. Conclusion and Policy Recommendations

Figures and Tables

Figure 1. Political Warfare at the Military Level

Table 2. The Operations of the Political Warfare System

Figure 2. The Structure of the General Political Warfare Bureau

The Challenges of United Front Work

The evolution and escalation of China’s overseas influence in recent years has captured the attention of foreign policy elites across the world. In October 2022, news broke of the discovery of three secret police stations run by the Chinese government in London and Glasgow. It was revealed these stations were being used to repatriate overseas Chinese, monitor those classified by the Communist Party of China (CPC) as political dissidents, as well as counteract social movements in the UK deemed ‘anti-China’.[1] A report by the Spanish civil rights group Safeguard Defenders confirmed the existence of such stations in at least 21 countries across five continents since 2018.[2] A few months prior in January 2022, MI5 had issued an unprecedented alert detailing Chinese United Front Work Department official Christine Lee’s targeted donations of £420,000 to UK parliamentarians of strategic interest to Beijing, including Sir Ed Davey and Barry Gardiner.[3]

Such activities are not unique to the UK. They are commonplace in countries with high overseas Chinese populations and robust economic exchanges with China. This is due to Xi Jinping’s revival of united front work (tongyi zhanxian gongzuo 统一战线工作), a strategy of propaganda, alliance-building, and espionage that has undergirded his administration’s foreign policy in recent years. Historically, the CPC employed united front tactics to bring certain individuals and groups within Chinese society into the Party’s fold, and ultimately establish moral and ideological leadership across China. In 1942, united front work became a set of domestic governance practices institutionalised in the creation of the United Front Work Department. Under Xi, modern-day united front work tactics have been elevated from a domestic governance approach to a foreign policy strategy which targets the civil societies, governments, and economic operations of other countries.[4] This foreign policy strategy has received unparalleled institutional support granted under Xi’s 2018 reforms, including the creation of four new bureaus responsible for ‘overseas Chinese affairs’ as well as the United Front Work Department’s absorption of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office and the State Administration for Religious Affairs.[5] According to analysts, these institutional reforms effectively subordinated China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the United Front Work Department.[6] Modern day united front work operates on the principle of the ‘three warfares’ (san zhan 三战): public opinion warfare (yulun zhan 舆论战), psychological warfare (xinli zhan 心理战), and legal warfare (falü zhan 法律战).[7] Experts have struggled to categorise united front work as either ‘hybrid warfare,’ ‘soft power,’or ‘sharp power,’ because it involves a wide range of activities from espionage to cultural diplomacy. Nevertheless, these activities all aim to influence the domestic environments of countries overseas in ways that favour the advancement of CPC objectives.[8]

Specifically, united front efforts can include but are not limited to: (a) disinformation and pro-CPC propaganda campaigns, (b) substantial donations to influential individuals and groups that hold favourable views of China, © discouraging Chinese diaspora from supporting political dissidents or anti-CPC movements, (d) mobilising pro-China groups to silence criticism of the CPC, and (e) reducing the impact of the ‘Taiwan democratic model’ overseas.[9]

Compared to authoritarian systems, democracies are especially vulnerable to these activities; their commitments to freedom of speech and freedom of press usually entail looser regulations on civil society activities and the flow of information. The traditional dichotomy drawn between civil society and the military spheres within democratic systems has also undermined efforts to identify united front work.

This dichotomy has caused policy makers to view united front work as simply a security issue as opposed to a society-wide phenomenon requiring cooperation and coordination between civil society and the organs of national security. This presents fertile ground for disinformation and propaganda to take root among targeted social groups, which can stoke distrust in democratic elites, institutions, and processes.

Many countries experiencing united front work within their borders presently lack the institutional means to identify and counter these interference activities, highlighting the urgent need for research on institutions that effectively resist it at the levels of national security and civil society.

Taiwan is arguably the country with the richest experience and greatest institutional capacity in terms of resisting united front work. During the Chinese Civil War from 1927 to 1949, the CPC developed united front tactics to co-opt groups within Chinese society into alliances with the Communists against the rival Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, hereafter ‘KMT’ or ‘Nationalists’) vying for political and military control over China. After losing the civil war, the Nationalists relocated their government to Taiwan to in 1949.[10] Since then, China and Taiwan have maintained separate political, legal, and economic systems. Since the 1970s, Beijing has used united front work to advance the goal of China’s unification with Taiwan. CPC propaganda campaigns have sought to influence the Taiwanese public to support peaceful unification with China, to identify more as ‘Chinese’ than ‘Taiwanese,’ as well as empower groups within Taiwanese society and politics that favour unification with China. However, despite these efforts, approximately 90% of the country’s population identify exclusively as ‘Taiwanese’ as opposed to ‘Taiwanese and Chinese’ or ‘Chinese,’[11] and a vast majority of Taiwanese oppose unification with China.[12] Alongside the strong consensus among Taiwanese that Taiwan and China are separate states, Taiwan has also become more entrenched in its commitment to democratic norms and values since its transition from authoritarianism to democracy in the 1990s. Today Taiwan is widely considered one of the leading democracies in Asia, consistently achieving high scores in the RSF Freedom of Press Index and Freedom House’s Freedom in the World country reports. As a democracy with decades-long experience at the forefront of resisting Chinese interference, the case of Taiwan offers valuable lessons for other democratic nations facing united front activities within their borders.

As Taiwan’s counter-interference institutions have played a crucial role in its resistance to united front efforts, they are worth further examination. One of the institutions at the forefront of countering united front work is Taiwan’s political warfare system (zhengzhan zhidu 政戰制度). Drawing lessons from the loss of mainland China in the civil war, KMT elites believed the main factor contributing to their defeat was a lack of political unity and ideological conviction within the party. In other words, where the Nationalists had failed to win over the Chinese population to their cause, the CPC had succeeded in persuading diverse groups of people of the appeal of Marxist-Leninist ideology and the Communist’s superior leadership.

So effective was united front work propaganda that it even convinced several high-ranking KMT commanders to defect to the CPC during the civil war. Seeking to address the lack of ideological unity within the Nationalist’s ranks, party leader Chiang Kai-shek established the political warfare system in Taiwan in the 1950s.

The political warfare system became crucial to fostering a strategic culture, defined as a common set of ideas regarding strategy that exist across a population, within the Taiwanese military and society that has arguably contributed to the country’s effective resistance towards united front work today.[13]

‘Political Work’ and the Origins of Taiwan’s Political Warfare System

To understand the political warfare system and its approach to countering united front work in the modern era, it is essential to briefly examine its historical origins. The precursor to the political warfare system was the political commissar system, an institutional model geared toward the ideological instruction of a state’s military that was imported from the Soviet Union by both the Nationalists (KMT) and Communists (CPC) during the 1920s.[14] The political commissar system runs parallel to the structure of the military and has two main functions: to provide education in political values to military personnel and monitor the political loyalties of troops, ensuring they did not deviate from the party.[15] In 1924, in an effort to unite the country and eliminate the chaos brought about by provincial warlords competing for territorial control over China, the KMT and CPC forces established the first ‘united front’ with support from the Soviet Union. That same year, the Huangpu Military Academy was founded by the KMT with the support and guidance of Soviet Union officials to train troops from both the Nationalist and Communist forces in military strategy as well as the ideology of party founder Sun-Yat Sen.[16] In 1926, Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek led a purge against the Communists which resulted in the dissolution of the united front between the two parties and the start of the Chinese Civil War. The political commissar systems of the KMT and CPC, once interconnected under the first united front, were separated that same year.[17] In 1927, KMT elites discovered the CPC was targeting Huangpu Military Academy trainees with propaganda which sought to dissuade them from supporting the Nationalists due to widespread corruption within the party.[18] Communist propaganda was so effective it resulted in widespread defection from the KMT to the CPC. Nationalist and Taiwanese military elites to this day view the experience at Huangpu Military Academy as a ‘historical lesson’,[19] and consider this episode the prototype for the modern political warfare system — evidenced by the prevalence of slogans like ‘Huangpu spirit’ (huangbu jingshen 黃埔精神) in the institution today.[20]

The origins of political warfare lie in the concept of ‘political work’ (zhenggong 政 工), a practice employed by both the Nationalists and Communists which sought to strengthen ideological commitment to the party. Chiang Ching-kuo, son of Chiang Kai-shek and former president (1978–1988), described the significance of political work in the following way: ‘Revolutionary spirit flourishes most when political work is most developed. Military spirit falls when political work declines.’[21] It is clear political work was seen by the KMT as a tool for consolidating unity and boosting morale among troops. Chiang’s conceptualisation of political work is strongly linked with Sun Yat-Sen’s ‘political tutelage’ (zhengxun 訓政), a stage within Sun’s envisioned path to eventually establishing constitutional democracy where the party educates citizens in an effort to instill loyalty to the KMT and fundamental values within society. These values included fostering nationalism, democracy, and citizens’ livelihood under Sun’s ‘Three Principles of the People’ (sanmin zhuyi 三民主義). Nationalist elites believed would create the necessary environment for constitutional democracy to be introduced. In the years following the KMT’s loss of control over China to the CPC and retreat to Taiwan, the Nationalist leadership was most preoccupied with ensuring the military’s ideological loyalty through political work. Political work was seen as the antidote to the defection and espionage activities that had unfolded in Huangpu Military Academy at the onset of the Chinese Civil War. The task of political work was not only to impart KMT values to the military but also to foster a quasi-nationalistic political loyalty toward the party. During the early martial law era, political work was carried out with the aim of reinvigorating troops’ morale to one day fight against the Communists and regain control of China.

As the KMT implemented political work within the military, an initial conceptualisation of ‘political warfare’ began to emerge. Chiang Kai-shek described political warfare as a ‘battle of wits’ (douzhi 鬥知) in contrast to warfare on the battlefield as a ‘battle for power’ (douli 鬥力). In the 1956 Joint Operations Framework (lianhe zuozhan gangyao 聯合作戰綱要), Chiang built on the ideational focus of political warfare in the ‘30% military and 70% politics’ principle (sanfen junshi, qifen zhengzhi 三分軍事, 七分政治). The ‘70% politics’ referred to organisational warfare (zuzhi zhan 組織戰), political warfare (zhengzhi zhan 政治戰) social warfare (shehui zhan 社會戰), strategic warfare (moulüe zhan 謀略戰), psychological warfare (xinli zhan 心理戰), propaganda warfare (xuanchuan zhan 宣傳戰), sabotage warfare (pohuai zhan 破壞戰), and intelligence warfare (qingbao zhan 情報戰).[22]

Chiang’s principle sought to articulate the link between the ideational or psychological elements of war — societal awareness of enemy tactics, persuasion, morale — with its more material components, such as running military drills or the procurement and maintenance of weapons systems. However, as the political warfare curriculum developed over the course of the martial law era, the concept evolved to encompass six more distinct categories of warfare: psychological warfare (xinli zhan 心理戰), ideological warfare (sixiang zhan 思想戰), organisational warfare (zuzhi zhan 組織戰), intelligence warfare (qingbao zhan 情報戰), strategic warfare (moulüe zhan 謀略戰), and mass warfare (qunzhong zhan 群眾戰). These are known as the ‘six warfares’ (liu zhan 六戰) and are the basis from which Taiwan’s political warfare system trains political warfare officers in counter-interference today.

Psychological warfare is defined as the ‘extra-military skill’ of defeating the enemy through spiritual determination (jingshen yizhi 精神意志), using strategy as guidance, ideology as a foundation, intelligence as a reference point. In practice this means attacking the weak points of the enemy’s ideology. Unlike psychological warfare, which focuses on the enemy or threat, ideological warfare involves establishing a coherent and unified ideology within the military and among civilians. Organisational warfare refers to establishing counter-interference organisations, coordinating their operations, generating plans with strategic goals, as well as synthesising the broader counter-interference strategy at the levels of politics, economy, culture, and society. Intelligence warfare is the practice of accumulating as much knowledge as possible about the enemy and developing warfare tactics from the basis of ‘knowing oneself and knowing the enemy.’ Strategic warfare involves consolidating the enforcement of policy at the military and political levels, differentiating united front activities according to the political, economic, psychological, and military spheres, as well as introducing confusion and chaos in the enemy implementing their strategy. Finally, mass warfare refers to integrating civil society’s role within warfare, mobilising and leading civilians during wartime, and removing any obstacles to military-civilian cooperation.[23] Overall, the two core values the political warfare system seeks to impart to soldiers and civilians are: 1) for whom do we fight? (weishei erzhan 為誰而戰), 2) for what do we fight? (weihe erzhan 為何而戰).[24] Figure 1 synthesises the political warfare system’s incorporation and operationalisation of the six warfares:

Figure 1

The Evolution of the Political Warfare System from Martial Law to Democratisation

The modern-day structure and operations of the political warfare system are informed by Taiwan’s not-too-distant authoritarian past. A number of political warfare officers I interviewed argued that democratisation strengthened Taiwan’s political warfare system due to improved capacities for ‘soft warfare’ (ruanzhan 軟戰).[25] Others have claimed the system functioned best in an authoritarian context, but at the expense of citizens’ privacy and liberties.[26] However, this paper seeks neither to assess the effectiveness of the political warfare system in the pre- or post-democracy periods nor to evaluate whether the political warfare system is democratic or undemocratic. Rather, I argue that tracing the evolution of the political warfare system will provide a deeper understanding of how the institution has since been reconfigured to operate in a democratic context.

During the martial law era, Taiwan’s political system could be characterised as ‘rule by party’ (yidangzhiguo 以黨治國). This meant the party, military, and administrative offices of government were highly fused, with the party taking precedence over the operations of the other organs of state. The military, including the political warfare system, therefore remained ‘party-fied’ (danghua 黨化). As the KMT’s ideology was rooted in the ‘Principles of the Three People’ which included Sun Yat-Sen Thought (guofu sixiang 國父思想), this defined the party’s ideological education of political warfare officers. Sun Yat-Sen Thought emphasised the values of democracy (minzhu 民主), human rights (renquan 人權), legal systems (fazhi 法制), freedom (ziyou 自由). Historically Sun Yat-Sen Thought was viewed as the rival ideology to Communism and contrasting vision for uniting China during the Chinese Civil War. Over the decades following the KMT’s retreat to China in the 1940s and 50s, the Nationalists, still concerned with regaining territorial control over China, sought to revive Sun Yat-Sen Thought in its psychological warfare strategy towards Chinese citizens. Psychological warfare consisted of counter-propaganda campaigns which encouraged the Chinese public to question the CPC’s leadership and support the Nationalist regime in Taiwan which promised greater freedoms and rights to citizens in Sun Yat-Sen’s envisioned path to constitutional democracy.[27]

Inspired by the US military, the KMT’s ideological education within the political warfare system emphasised cultivating patriotism, dedication to Sun Yat-Sen Thought, and loyalty to party elites under its ‘leadership programme’ (lingxiu gangling 領袖綱領). Taiwan’s Garrison Command (jingbei zongbu 警備總部) was the institution at the forefront of implementing Sun Yat-sen’s ‘political tutelage’ phase towards the military and society.[28] Under political tutelage, the political warfare system was not only responsible for monitoring the political beliefs of military officers but also Taiwanese citizens, which involved reading citizens’ private correspondence to ‘protect secrets and guard against espionage’ (baomi fangdie 保密防諜). Such activities were part and parcel of Taiwan’s party organisation (dangzu黨組) structure which, much like the CPC’s danwei (单位) system, established a party representative at most levels of civil society to exert political control. However, since Taiwan’s democratisation, the presence of the party organisation system within civil society has been entirely dismantled. Accordingly, the political warfare system no longer monitors private correspondence and the institution’s ‘monitoring’ (jiancha 監察) operations have been reformed to focus solely on military personnel.[29]

During the martial law era, China’s united front propaganda towards Taiwan emphasised mutual recognition between Chinese and Taiwanese, encouraged Taiwanese to identify as Chinese, and sought to advance the misleading narrative of Taiwan as a ‘breakaway province’ that must return to China. In response, Taiwan’s political warfare work was characterised by a strategy of ‘stabilising the interior, disrupting the exterior’ (annei raowai 安內繞外). For political warfare officers, stabilisation of the interior meant ensuring loyalty to the commander within each battalion, as well as ensuring the military strategy (junshi zhanlüe 軍事戰略) — building the military’s defence capabilities — and national strategy (guojia zhanlüe 國家戰略) — the ‘grand strategy’ of how the state combats warfare at the legal, military, and economic levels — were well-coordinated.[30] On the other hand, disruption of the exterior was characterised by two activities: 1) persuading the Chinese public of the merits of Sun Yat-Sen Thought, which emphasised citizens’ fundamental rights and the path of constitutional democracy in contrast to the CPC’s authoritarianism, 2) encouraging people in China to question CPC leadership and ideology. Slogans such as ‘The Three Principles of the People unifies China’ (sanmin zhuyi tongyi zhongguo 三民主義統一中國) were seen as an alternative, counterpropaganda to China’s pro-unification discourse, the content of which included promoting the phenomenon of ‘anti-Communist righteous surrender’ (fangong yizhi touxiang 反共義士投誠) as well as highlighting the superiority of Sun Yat-Sen’s Three Principles of the People (sanmin zhuyi 三民主義) vis-a-vis Communist ideology (gongchan zhuyi 共產主義). The Political Warfare System’s News Bureau and the Liu Shao Kang Office (liushaokang bangongshi 劉少康辦公室) were the primary institutions responsible for disseminating this counterpropaganda during the martial law era.[31] The Liu Shao Kang Office disseminated this propaganda through radio channels, banners on ships sailing through the Taiwan Strait, streamers from aircrafts, and other such means during the 1980s.[32]

However, following on the heels of Taiwan’s democratisation in the 1990s, the political warfare system was extensively reformed under a programme called ‘nationalisation of the military’ (jundui guojiahua 軍隊國家化). Nationalisation of the military meant ideologically and institutionally decoupling the party from the military. In the political warfare system, this involved reconfiguring the education of troops to train loyalty to the Republic of China (ROC) government and constitution as opposed to a single political party or individual. Nationalisation of the military was also characterised by a concerted effort to ensure greater ‘administrative neutrality’ (xingzheng zhongli 行政中立) among all military personnel. At a legislative level, this was enshrined in articles 5 and 6 of Taiwan’s National Defence Act, which state: ‘the ROC infantry, navy, and air forces should serve the Constitution, be loyal to the nation, love the people, bear the utmost responsibility, to protect national security,’and ‘the ROC infantry, navy, and air forces surpass individual, regional, and party ties, relying on the law to maintain political neutrality.’[33]

To implement this legislation, political warfare officers were barred from participating in any political events or publicly promoting their political views. The recruitment of political warfare officers was expanded to include more social groups beyond the KMT’s usual support base such as women and aboriginal peoples. Ideological education was gradually reformed to foster troops’ loyalty to the government and constitution, no matter the political party in power.[34] This meant less emphasis on Sun Yat-Sen Thought and the Three Principles of the People and an increased focus on learning the articles of the constitution relating to national defence. Decoupling the KMT from the military was also reflected in reforming the powers of appointment within Taiwan’s broader national defence system. For example, former president Chen Shui-bian (2000–2008) transferred the power of appointing the most senior position within Taiwan’s political warfare system from the president to the Ministry of Defence. The move was considered another important step towards ensuring greater administrative neutrality as it reduced the likelihood of politically motivated appointments made by the leader of the ruling party. The separation between the organs of the party and military was further underscored by the change of position’s title from ‘Chief of Defence’ (canmou zongzhang 參謀總長) to ‘Chief of National Defence’ (guofangbu canmou zongzhang 國防部參謀總長).[35]

However, the decoupling of the KMT from the military and the implementation of administrative neutrality within the political warfare system has taken several years and for some remains an on-going process. Many senior political warfare officers who were trained prior to the nationalisation of Taiwan’s military in the late 90s and early 2000s tend to favour the KMT politically. But as the political warfare system’s recruitment has broadened to include more women, aboriginal peoples, and people from Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ‘green’ regions, the make-up of the system and its ideological leanings appear to be moving closer towards the ideal of administrative neutrality.

Since democratisation, the counter-propaganda activities towards Chinese citizens as well as the surveillance of Taiwanese citizens’ political loyalties that were characteristic of the political warfare system under martial law have either ceased entirely or been extensively reformed in greater compliance with democratic norms and values. During the phase of political tutelage under martial law, the operations of ‘monitoring’ and ‘ideological education’ were directed towards both military personnel as well as civilians. The KMT elite considered this a necessary step in fostering a political environment in which constitutional democracy could eventually be realised. Following Taiwan’s democratic transition over the 90s, these functions of the political warfare system have largely been redirected towards the training of political warfare officers. Nevertheless, some vestiges of this authoritarian institutional legacy continue to inform the modern-day operations of the political warfare system. These institutional legacies will be further explored in the next section.

The Modern-day Operations and Structure of Taiwan’s Political Warfare System

The operations of the political warfare system can be categorised according to nine areas: political warfare (zhengzhan 政戰), propaganda/communications (wenxuan 文宣), monitoring (jiancha 監察), defence (baofang 保防), psychological warfare (xinzhan 心戰), counselling (xinfu 心輔), support for retired officers (juanfu 眷服), media (xinwen 新聞), civilian affairs (minshi 民事). Drawing from the works of several Taiwanese scholars of political warfare as well as several interviews with political warfare officers, the table below explains each component of the political warfare system as well as its practical applications:

Table 1

These categories and activities within the political warfare system are often overlapping and highly interconnected. For example, defence education of high school students falling under the category of ‘civilian affairs’ work may also involve utilising propaganda to highlight the effectiveness of the Taiwanese military response to China’s interference attempts and intimidation tactics. All-out defence education may then also contribute to the defence component of Taiwan’s political warfare system by increasing social awareness of the manifestations of China’s united front work and therefore reduce the likelihood of espionage activity. For example, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defence hosts an ‘All-Out Defence Summer Camp’ which educates Taiwanese youths about the concept and operations of national defence: from counter-interference to providing support to other civilians in wartime scenarios.[40] These kinds of educational programmes have also featured trips to Taiwanese-controlled islands in the South China Sea, such as Itu Aba (Taiping) and Pratas (Dongsha), where political warfare officers detail Chinese military activity and Taiwanese responses.[41] Other activities falling under ‘All-out Defence Education’ and ‘civilian affairs’ work could involve dispatching political warfare personnel for administrative assistance to organisations like local temples,[42] which are commonly a target of Chinese united front activities.[43]

Some of the operations carried out by Taiwan’s political warfare system are still informed by its authoritarian past. For example, ideological education remains a fundamental component of modern political warfare training. These ideological education sessions require military personnel on a weekly basis to watch programmes like ‘Chuguang Island Garden’ (juguang yuandi 莒光園地) which educates soldiers in interference and counter-interference operations, such as the ‘three warfares’ approach underpinning China’s united front work, manifestations of united front work or CPC espionage, and other related topics. After watching this programme, trainees are then required to record their views on this ideological education material in diaries (dabing riji 大兵日記) which are then submitted to a political warfare officer for review.[44] If trainees exhibit thoughts or behaviours deemed ‘problematic’ or ‘risky’ for the operations of the political warfare system, such as mental illness, ‘anti-establishment thinking’, strong connections with the CPC, or excessive fixation on financial gain, they will either undergo further ideological education or be removed from the military.[45] The ideological education and monitoring components of the modern-day political warfare system are therefore continuations of the institutional practices during the martial law era.

Though many of the operations within these nine branches are largely concentrated within Taiwan’s military, there remains a high level of interaction and exchange between the political warfare system and civilians. This is in part because the political warfare system educates groups within Taiwanese society, including students and public service workers, about military operations and interference activities from China. This pedagogical function of the political warfare system is implemented through ‘all out defence education’ (quanmin guofang jiaoyu 全民國防教育) as well as ‘military classes’ (junshi ke 軍事課) taught in Taiwanese high schools and universities.[46] Furthermore, due to the policy of mandatory military service, most members of the Taiwanese public will receive a basic education in the ideology and operations of the political warfare system. Therefore, the political warfare system’s impact extends well beyond the military by fostering a strategic culture within civil society that contributes to the strength of Taiwanese resistance to united front work.

In terms of structure, the General Political Warfare Bureau (guofangbu zhengzhi zuozhanju 國防部政治作戰局) is the central institution of the political warfare system. The GPWB is comprised of eight divisions, each dedicated to operationalising the nine areas of political warfare:

Figure 2

As Figure 2 demonstrates, several divisions within the GPWB coordinate with civilians to implement political warfare within Taiwanese society. The Psychological Operation Division is involved in delivering all-out defence education and bolstering public morale in the event of war. The Civilian-Military Affairs Division is responsible for resolving military-civilian disputes such as noise disturbances caused by military traffic zones situated near residential areas. The Military Spokesperson’s Office works with the Taiwanese mainstream media to deliver military-related news as well as identify fake news of cross-Strait military activity. The ways in which the GPWB divisions work with civil society is crucial to understanding the country’s relative success in resisting united front work campaigns and is an area that would benefit from further research.

The political warfare system is one institution within Taiwan’s broader national defence structure alongside the National Security Bureau (guojia anquanju國家安全局), Investigation Bureau (diaochaju 調查局), Ministry of the Interior National Policy Agency (neizhengbu jingzhengshu 內政部警政署), Coast Guard Administration Ocean Affairs Council (haiyang weiyuanhui xunshu 海洋委員會海巡署), and the Military Police Command (xianbin silingbu 憲兵司令部).[47] The majority of personnel within all of these institutions will have received training in political warfare. Within the broader national defence structure, the political warfare system works most closely with the National Security Bureau and the Investigation Bureau on countering espionage activity within Taiwan. The directors from the GPWB and National Security Bureau meet monthly to exchange intelligence and discuss how to counteract China’s united front work activities.[48] The GPWB and National Security Department also coordinate with the Ministry of Education to implement ‘all-out defence education’ across high schools and universities.[49] In recent years as disinformation campaigns have intensified, the GPWB has worked with the Fact Checking Centre (shishi chahe zhongxin 實查核中心), a cabinet-level department responsible for monitoring fake news on Taiwanese social media outlets, to identify and counter any disinformation relating to cross-Strait military activities. For example, following former US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022, a deep fake picture of Chinese naval warship off the Taiwanese mainland coast was widely circulated on Taiwanese social media outlets. The Fact Checking Centre worked with the GPWB and Ministry of National Defense to alert the public of this fake news through all official military webpages and accounts.[50] These examples highlight the ways in which Taiwan’s counter-interference strategy is highly interconnected and coordinated across areas of policy relating to both national defence as well as civilian affairs.

Conclusion and Policy Recommendations

The hybrid nature of united front work — a strategy of interference that employs both military and non-military tactics — presents substantial challenges for democratic countries which boast freedom of speech, freedom of press, and vibrant, diverse civil societies. United front work capitalises on the looser state control over civil society characteristic of many democracies as well as the lack of social awareness around the nature of CPC interference. This is evident in the number of pro-CPC organisations and societies linked to united front work institutions that exist across many democratic countries, as well as the increase in disinformation campaigns during events of political significance such as elections or referendums. Under Xi Jinping, united front work has become more institutionally robust and intertwined with China’s foreign policy than ever before. Repelling united front work activities therefore necessitates the institutionalisation of counter-interference and the coordination of counter-interference operations at the levels of national security and civil society.

Though its institutional character is informed by an authoritarian past, Taiwan’s political warfare system nevertheless presents interesting lessons in counter- interference for democracies. These lessons are even more pertinent when one considers how this once authoritarian institution has been reconfigured to not only to better conform to Taiwan’s democratic norms, values, and processes but also protect those features from foreign interference activities that would seek to exploit these features. Overall, this briefing has sought to highlight how the political warfare system has contributed to Taiwan’s ability to effectively resist united front work.

Through its educational role, the political warfare system strengthens counter- interference abilities in two ways: 1) exposing united front work and the ideology motivating these activities, 2) spreading awareness of united front work activity across the military and civil society. Many countries have been confounded in their attempts to identify united front work due to its hybrid and varied nature, which ranges from targeted political donations and espionage activity to the establishment of pro-CPC cultural organisations. Therefore, Taiwan’s political warfare system can be seen as an instructive case in how democracies can institutionalise the education of the military and civilian populations in foreign interference. If the public is more able to identify instances of foreign interference like disinformation, it will likely mitigate the effect of these activities and therefore improve a country’s ability to resist interference in the first place.

The political warfare system also assists in coordinating counter-interference efforts across Taiwan’s civil society and national defence architecture. Within Taiwan’s defence architecture, there is a high level of exchange and cooperation between the local and national level institutions–from the police to the investigation bureaus and national security organs–in identifying activities associated with united front work. The political warfare system contributes to this coordination not only by providing fundamental training to all personnel in united front work tactics but also through monthly briefings on united front activity with other organs of national defence. These regular cross-institutional exchanges can provide insight for other countries in terms of synthesising the identification and repellence of united front work.

Based on these findings, I posit the following policy recommendations for improving democratic resistance against united front work through a ‘whole-of- society’ response:

• Defining foreign interference in legislation and incorporating this definition into the frameworks of relevant state institutions.
• Introducing education in foreign interference activity into the national curriculum.
• Creating accessible educational programmes and or tools that improve public media literacy, public understanding of how foreign interference operates in the digital sphere as well as public knowledge of civic duties and democratic procedures.
• Training all military personnel as well as staff within relevant state institutions in the nature of foreign interference as well as the implementation of a broader counter-interference strategy.
• Establishing a chain of command between a centralised Fact-Checking Centre and the organs of state and national defence to identify and publicise any instances of foreign interference through social media.
• Establishing a platform for greater coordination and cooperation between civil society groups and state institutions in reporting instances of espionage or foreign interference.

Endnotes:

1. Singh, Namita. “MPs Say China’s ‘Secret Police Stations’ in UK Must Be Investigated.” The Independent, 27 Oct. 2022, https://www.independent.co.uk/ news/uk/home-news/china-secret-police-stations-uk-mp-b2211663.html.
2. “110 Overseas: Chinese Policing Gone Wild.” Safeguard Defenders, Sept. 2022, p. 21, https://safeguarddefenders.com/sites/ default/files/pdf/110%20Overseas%20%28v5%29.pdf.
3. Corera, Gordon, and Jennifer Scott. “MI5 Warning over ‘Chinese Agent’ in Parliament.” BBC News, 13 Jan. 2022, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59984380.
4. Brady, Anne-Marie. “Magic Weapons: China’s Political Influence Activities under Xi Jinping.” 2017, p. 7.
5. Joske, Alex. ‘Reorganizing the United Front Work Department: New Structures for a New Era of Diaspora and Religious Affairs Work’. China Brief, vol. 19, no. 9, May 2019, https://jamestown.org/program/reorganizing-the-united-front-work-department-new-structures-for-a-new-era-of-diaspora-and-religious-affairs-work/.
6. Ibid
7. “Articles on the Political Work of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army”《中国人民解放军政治工作条例》. The Central People’s Government of the People’s Republic of China, 13 Sept. 2019, http://www.gov.cn/jrzg/2010-09/13/content_1701725.htm.
8. Cole, J Michael. “On the Role of Organized Crime and Related Substate Actors in Chinese Political Warfare Against Taiwan.” Prospect and Exploration 展望與探索月刊 19, no. 6 (2021): 55–88.
9. Hamilton, Clive, and Mareike Ohlberg. Hidden Hand: How the Chinese Communist Party Is Reshaping the World. Oneworld Publications, 2020.
10. Suzuki, Takashi. “China’s United Front Work in the Xi Jinping Era — Institutional Developments and Activities.” Journal of Contemporary East Asia Studies 8, no. 1 (2019): 83–98.
11. Brady, 2017.
12. The Republic of China, founded in 1912 by Sun Yat-Sen, was the government in power prior to the outbreak of the Chinese Civil War in 1927. When the Nationalist Party retreated to Taiwan in the 1940s following their defeat in the civil war to the Communist Party of China, they relocated their government to Taiwan.
13. Chen, Yu-fu, and Jonathan Chin. “Nearly 90 Percent of Public Identify with Taiwan: Poll.” Taipei Times, 11 Aug. 2021, https://www.taipeitimes. com/News/front/archives/2021/08/11/2003762406.
14. “Taiwan Public Rejects ‘One Country, Two Systems’ and Opposes Beijing’s Hostile Military Threats and Diplomatic Pressure against Taiwan.” Taiwan Mainland Affairs Council, 1 Aug. 2019, https://www.mac.gov.tw/en/News_Content.aspx?n=2BA0753CBE348412&sms=E828F60C4AFBAF90&s=7062B3A2F65996A6
15. Lock, Edward. Strategic Culture Theory: What, Why, and How. Oxford University Press, Sept. 2017, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.320.
16. Wang, Hanguo 王漢國. The Road to Political Warfare《政戰風雲路》. Fu Hsing Kang Education Foundation 復興崗文教基金會, 2021. p. 27.
17. Bevenuti, Francesco. The Bolsheviks and the Red Army 1918–1921. Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 22–23.
18. Sun Yat-Sen’s ideology consists of the “Three Principles of the People” and the “Five Constitutions,” which emphasis citizen’s rights, freedoms, and the establishment of legal frameworks and institutions to facilitate the state’s transition to constitutional democracy.
19. Anonymous Participant. Interview. 10 Oct. 2022.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Anonymous Participant. Interview. 30 Nov. 2022.
23. Chiang Ching-kuo, Political Work Cadre College (政工幹部學校), 1949, p. 58. cited in Huang, Hisao-Hsiang 黃筱薌. The Science of Political Warfare of the ROC Armed Forces 《國軍政治作戰學：政治作戰制度的理論與實踐》. Liming Cultural Enterprise Co Ltd 黎明文化事業股份有限公司, 2010, p. 78.
24. “The KMT Central Party History Association”《 國民黨中央黨史會編》1971, p. 27, cited in Huang, 2010, p. 40.
25. Wang, 2021. p. 53–4.
26. Anonymous Participant.Interview. 14 Oct. 2022.
27. Anonymous Participant. Interview. 18 Oct. 2022.
28. Anonymous Participant. Interview. 10 Oct. 2022.
29. Anonymous Participant. Interview. 14 Oct. 2022.
30. Anonymous Participant. Interview. 10 Oct. 2022.
31. Anonymous Participant. Interview. 13 Oct. 2022.
32. Chiu, Yan-Yu, 邱彥瑜, Interview. 7 Feb. 2023.
33. Anonymous Participant. Interview. 18 Oct. 2022.
34. Anonymous Participant. Interview. 14 Oct. 2022
35. National Defence Act 國防法. https://law.moj.gov.tw/LawClass/ LawAll.aspx?pcode=F0010030. Accessed 15 Feb. 2023.
36. Anonymous Participant. Interview. 14 Oct. 2022.
37. Anonymous Participant. Interview. 2 Oct. 2022.
38. Chiu, Yan-Yu, 7 Feb. 2023.
39. Anonymous Participant. 13 Oct. 2022.
40. Ibid.
41. Chiu, Yan-Yu, 7 Feb. 2023
42. Hwang, Joseph Ji-Jen (黃基禎).‘A New Way of Thinking about National Defense Education through Civil Defense in the UK’以英國民防詮釋全民國防教育的新思維. 2012.
43. Anonymous Participant. Interview. 18 Oct. 2022.
44. Anonymous Participant. Interview. 14 Oct. 2022.
45. Cole, 2021.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid.
48. Anonymous Participant. Interview. 14 Oct. 2022.
49. Ibid.
50. Anonymous Participant. Interview. 13 Oct. 2022.
51. Anonymous Participant. Interview. 25 Oct. 2022.
52. Ibid

lseideas.medium.com · by LSE IDEAS · March 23, 2023

19. How the Corps’ new training document ignores US law

Excerpts:

Is it really in the Marine Corps best interest to subordinate itself to the Navy given the turmoil that service is experiencing with its own transformation? The answer is no. We believe the Marine Corps’ primary focus should be on supporting the combatant or joint force commander as a service or functional component, not on placing Marine Forces under Navy command and control.

Training and Education 2030 has much in it to be applauded. It’s not what is said that should concern Congress, the Department of Defense, the combatant commanders and the American people.

It’s what is not said that needs congressional oversight. What is not said is a threat to our national security.

How the Corps’ new training document ignores US law

marinecorpstimes.com · by Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper (retired) and Brig. Gen. Jerry McAbee (retired) · March 23, 2023

“Beware a calm surface ― you never know what lies beneath,” Paula Hawkins, “Into the Water.”

The Marine Corps’ latest addition to its trilogy of documents that are redesigning and restructuring the service appears innovative and forward-looking.

The Marine Corps’ Training and Education 2030 includes much that is good. Many of the training and education initiatives proposed are long overdue. We applaud Marine Corps senior leaders for recognizing deficiencies and shortcoming and articulating a plan to address them.

But let’s not be fooled by what’s on the surface. What lies beneath is destructive and comes dangerously close to violating U.S. law.

We refer to three important areas. One is the coup de grace to the Marine Corps combat development process. Two is the tacit admission that the Marine Corps is no longer a combined arms force. Three is the clean break from service componency.

RELATED

Here’s what’s in the Corps’ new training and education plan

New ranges, tougher swimming. Inside the Corps' new training blueprint.

By Jonathan Lehrfeld and Irene Loewenson

The elevation of the commanding general, Training and Education Command to deputy commandant status and the realignment of doctrinal development under Training and Education is a death blow to the Marine Corps combat development process. No single commander now owns the entire process for developing the operating concepts and guiding the integrated determination of needed capabilities and requirements.

The genius of Marine Corps combat prowess has been getting the capstone and supporting operating concepts right. The brilliance of the combat development process for the past 30 years has been unity of command in identifying and prioritizing correct and sustainable requirements to enable concepts.

These requirements broadly include doctrine, force structure and organizations, training and education, equipment, and facilities and support.

The new training document effectively has codified the disjointed and uncoordinated process that most recently failed to define the problem in an operating concept, which resulted in the emasculation of Marine Corps combat capabilities by moving straight to the solution, Force Design 2030. We believe the Marine Corps will be better served by a combat development process where concepts and requirements are determined and integrated under one commander.

Training and Education 2030 barely pays lip service to combined arms training. Instead, the focus is almost exclusively on integrated naval fires.

The lack of emphasis on combined arms training is not surprising because Marine Corps leaders have eliminated or significantly reduced the capabilities needed to train for and implement combined arms operations. Tanks, assault breaching and bridging have been totally eliminated; the number of Marines in infantry battalions has been reduced by 21%, cannon artillery has been reduced by 67%, assault amphibious vehicles have been reduced by 33%, and aviation has been reduced by 29% across the board.

The ugly truth based on these divestures is that the Marine Corps no longer has a combined arms capability and comes dangerously close to violating Title X, U.S. code, which states in part: “The Marine Corps shall be organized, trained, and equipped to provide fleet marine forces of combined arms… and shall perform such other duties as the President may direct.”

The cuts in combat capabilities seriously degrade the effective application of combined arms in the close and rear battles. The capability of the Marine Corps to “perform other duties as the President may direct” will significantly be constrained by too few appropriately sized combined arms teams built around Marine infantry.

As envisioned in Force Design 2030 and Training and Education 2023, the Marine Corps will not be organized, trained or equipped to conduct combined arms operations as traditionally understood.

This radical reorganization of the Marine Corps is not just an internal matter, but has serious implications for the Army, which likely will see its operational taskings increase to compensate for lost Marine Corps capabilities. It also will have implications for combatant commanders, who will have fewer forces available to support regional campaign plans.

We believe the focus of combat training should be on combined arms, of which the integration of naval fires is a necessary component but not the raison d’etre, or reason for being.

Much like ignoring combined arms, Training and Education 2030 virtually disregards service componency and at the expense of acknowledging the Fleet Maine Forces, the term the document refers to repeatedly.

The reference to “Fleet Marine Forces” is a look backward. The Fleet Marine Forces is a subordinate U.S. Navy type command under the fleet commander. Simply stated, Marines in the Fleet Marine Forces work for the Navy.

The Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 changed the way the Department of Defense was structured and permanently altered the way the U.S. military would fight future wars.

It gave the Marine Corps service equivalency as a separate component under Joint Force Commander control. Subordinating Marine Corps Forces to Fleet Marine Forces status gives up the Marine component’s seat at the table and violates the spirit and intent of Goldwater-Nichols by limiting Marine Corps contributions to the joint force.

As envisioned in Training and Education 2030, training to prepare Marines for service and functional componency, which is essentially a congressionally mandated responsibility, will take a back seat to naval integration.

Is it really in the Marine Corps best interest to subordinate itself to the Navy given the turmoil that service is experiencing with its own transformation? The answer is no. We believe the Marine Corps’ primary focus should be on supporting the combatant or joint force commander as a service or functional component, not on placing Marine Forces under Navy command and control.

Training and Education 2030 has much in it to be applauded. It’s not what is said that should concern Congress, the Department of Defense, the combatant commanders and the American people.

It’s what is not said that needs congressional oversight. What is not said is a threat to our national security.

Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper is a career infantry officer. His previous assignments include commanding general, Marine Corps Combat Development Command.

Brig. Gen. Jerry McAbee is a career artillery officer. His previous assignments include chief-of-staff, Marine Corps Combat Development Command.

Have an opinion?

This article is an op-ed and, as such, the opinions expressed are those of the author. If you would like to respond or have an editorial of your own you would like to submit, please email Marine Corps Times Editor Andrea Scott.

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20. Department of Defense Support to the U.S. Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability

Department of Defense Support to the U.S. Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability

defense.gov

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The Department of Defense is proud to partner across U.S. federal agencies to mitigate global conflict and promote stability and prosperity. The Department of Defense’s efforts, collaboration, and commitment in support of the U.S. Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability include:

• Robust participation in the development of the 10-year country and region plans, as well as any future revisions.
• Fostering civil-military engagement, defense institutional capacity building, and the professionalization of security forces.
• Incorporating the 10-year plans into theater campaign plans and additional regional strategies.
• Identifying security assistance and cooperation programs for integration into the objectives in the 10-year plans.
• Appointment of a deputy coordinator to the U.S. interagency Secretariat to facilitate implementation coordination and planning.

An additional U.S. interagency statement can be found here: https://www.state.gov/joint-10-year-plans-for-the-u-s-strategy-to-prevent-conflict-and-promote-stability/

defense.gov

21. Friendship means telling hard truths about the endgame in Ukraine

Excerpts:

The U.S. point to him could be reinforced by an agreement to provide Ukraine with advanced American fighter aircraft. The agreement would be purely symbolic for some time to come, as such aircraft cannot be immediately absorbed by a Ukrainian air force lacking the necessary training and logistics. But the short-term political symbolism and the long-term threat to Putin’s strategy of attrition could be telling. 

That is not to suggest for a moment that the U.S. should engage in negotiating Ukraine’s future. Kyiv is not Kabul, and cannot be treated as such. Ukraine will make its own sovereign decisions regarding war aims. But Zelensky will need to understand, given his near-abject dependence on Western support, that there will be limits on the aspirations the West will support, and therefore on what he can legitimately hope to achieve. 

A nation once seen as hopelessly corrupt and tied only tenuously to Western values, Ukraine has become an international symbol of freedom, democracy and principled resistance to aggression. Anyone involved in dealing with Ukraine on behalf of the U.S. cannot be unmoved by that. But politics and geography are real. Neither Ukraine nor we can help that it shares a long border with a large, powerful and paranoid neighbor. Ukraine’s friends and supporters have interests that will eventually overshadow their affections, and their resources are finite. 

Just as I was called upon to do in northern Iraq 20 years ago, that is the message which can and must be conveyed by a true friend in Kyiv.

Friendship means telling hard truths about the endgame in Ukraine

BY ROBERT GRENIER, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 03/26/23 11:00 AM ET

​https://thehill.com/opinion/international/3916787-friendship-means-telling-hard-truths-about-the-endgame-in-ukraine/

The handwriting is on the wall. As extensively covered in these pages, the evolution of U.S. domestic politics — as indicated in critical commentary from prominent political figures by no means limited to the right wing of the Republican Party — makes it increasingly clear that President Biden’s policy of robust, largely unconditional military and financial support of Ukraine cannot, and probably should not, be sustained. 

To give Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif) and other naysayers their due, U.S. officials should never issue “blank checks” in support of any policy, save to counter an existential threat. Resources and risks must always be carefully calibrated in proportion to the genuine national interests at stake. 

Despite the foolishly narrow terms in which he has framed the issue, DeSantis is right: The Russian invasion of Ukraine, on its own, is no threat to U.S. national security. It is only when the issue is viewed more broadly, in the context of the continued aggressive Russian adventurism the sacrifice of Ukraine could incentivize — to say nothing of the demonstration effect which Ukraine’s conquest would register in Beijing — that we begin to assess the actual national security stakes involved. Even then, it would be hard to argue that the full defense of every inch of Ukrainian territory is absolutely vital to Western interests.  

The shift in the U.S. political zeitgeist has surely not gone unnoticed in Kyiv, but neither should it be ignored by the Biden administration. Now is the time for the administration to engage in some hard critical thinking, followed by tough talk in Kyiv, in NATO capitals, and yes, in Moscow. 

Although the stakes I dealt with were decidedly lower, the current situation puts me in mind of a mission I undertook 20 years ago in northern Iraq, just three months before the March 2003 U.S. invasion.

CIA’s robust pre-invasion intelligence campaign, which depended upon Iraqi Kurdish support for teams operating at considerable peril within the country, was at risk. Fearful that U.S. threats of war with Saddam might be nothing more than a bluff that would leave them vulnerable to vicious reprisals, Kurdish leaders were weighing whether to cut a new deal with Baghdad of the sort they had negotiated in the past, which would have worked heavily against our interests. 

At the same time, the U.S. was actively trying to convince a reluctant Turkish government to allow the U.S. 4th Infantry Division to transit Turkey and invade Iraq from the north (while the main force moved up from Kuwait). Though the likelihood of Turkish permission was low, all anticipated that the price for Turkish cooperation, if it came, would be a U.S. agreement to allow Turkish forces to accompany the division into Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, where the Turks would have their own agenda. 

Despite the fact that the Iraqi Kurds were fierce, avowed enemies of the Turks, no one in the George W. Bush administration thought to take them into confidence. That fell to CIA, and therefore, to me. 

After providing Kurdish leaders the assurances they sought, I came to the bad news: If the Turks allowed the 4th Infantry Division to pass, they would insist on sending troops to accompany it. And if the Turks agreed, in effect, to join the U.S.-led coalition, the U.S. could not say no. 

Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani responded with expected truculence, saying his troops would shoot any Turkish troops that cross the border. I looked at him with feigned impassivity. “No,” I said evenly. “You won’t.” 

 I explained that Turkish troops, if it came to that, would not be transiting the border alone. “They will be with us,” I said. And if Kurdish Peshmerga forces engaged them, they would be considered defenders of Saddam by U.S. forces, and treated accordingly. 

Though he was clearly unhappy, the rest of the conversation with Masoud was far more agreeable and constructive. That was only possible because Masoud knew throughout that he was dealing with a friend, one who had come not to threaten, but to do him the courtesy of telling him the unvarnished truth about a situation neither of us could avoid. 

The time is fast approaching when a senior representative of the Biden administration will need to begin a similarly tough, realistic — and empathetic — dialogue with Zelensky. Biden is surely seen as a great friend in Kyiv. But his ability to deliver on his implicit and explicit promises of support for Ukraine “for as long as it takes” is likely to be curtailed in the near future. That’s something he can’t help. Now would be the time to begin to disabuse Zelensky of the notion that he can count on unqualified U.S. and Western support for war aims that he sets unilaterally.   

Specifically, Zelensky must be pushed in the direction of a negotiated solution, likely to include territorial concessions on Crimea and the Donbas. That would be admittedly unpalatable, to say the least. In a just world, it would be a non-starter. But in an American political environment that is increasingly focused on core U.S. interests, which include the maintenance of Ukraine as a bulwark again further Russian encroachment on Europe, it must also be acknowledged that not all of Ukraine is necessary to meet that goal. The offset, and the concomitant to a policy focused on European security, would be the extension to Ukraine of a far more explicit and permanent NATO security arrangement, probably ending in full NATO membership and Article 5 security guarantees. 

The latter, of course, will surely be unacceptable to Russia. But in the end, Putin will have to accept that these are the wages of sin, the inevitable result of a disastrous miscalculation. He cannot expect that NATO will maintain something like the status quo ante in terms of its expansion, when he has gone so far as demonstrating that the possible eventuality which NATO’s post-cold-war continuation was designed to forestall is, in fact, not a hypothetical but a clear and present danger. His alternative will be to risk utter, humiliating defeat. 

The U.S. point to him could be reinforced by an agreement to provide Ukraine with advanced American fighter aircraft. The agreement would be purely symbolic for some time to come, as such aircraft cannot be immediately absorbed by a Ukrainian air force lacking the necessary training and logistics. But the short-term political symbolism and the long-term threat to Putin’s strategy of attrition could be telling. 

That is not to suggest for a moment that the U.S. should engage in negotiating Ukraine’s future. Kyiv is not Kabul, and cannot be treated as such. Ukraine will make its own sovereign decisions regarding war aims. But Zelensky will need to understand, given his near-abject dependence on Western support, that there will be limits on the aspirations the West will support, and therefore on what he can legitimately hope to achieve. 

A nation once seen as hopelessly corrupt and tied only tenuously to Western values, Ukraine has become an international symbol of freedom, democracy and principled resistance to aggression. Anyone involved in dealing with Ukraine on behalf of the U.S. cannot be unmoved by that. But politics and geography are real. Neither Ukraine nor we can help that it shares a long border with a large, powerful and paranoid neighbor. Ukraine’s friends and supporters have interests that will eventually overshadow their affections, and their resources are finite. 

Just as I was called upon to do in northern Iraq 20 years ago, that is the message which can and must be conveyed by a true friend in Kyiv.

Robert Grenier served for 27 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, ending his career as director of the CIA CounterTerrorism Center, responsible for all CIA counter-terror operations around the globe. He is the author of “88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary.”    

​

22. Chinese communist way of war: Different than the West

Conclusion:

Major Chersicla’s article focuses more on the similarities than the key differences between Western and Chinese Communist concepts of warfare. In this article, I tried to highlight those differences and to familiarize readers with the key areas of divergence and the dangers of mirror-imaging.

I encourage Major Chersicla and other military strategists, policy and decision makers to visit Taiwan and meet with ROC military and academic experts that have been studying the CCP’s and PLA’s way of war. Recall that the Taiwanese, who speak and read Mandarin Chinese, have been fighting the Chinese Communists since 1927, and have suffered many hard lessons, including the loss of territory and people currently under the CCP’s oppressive dictatorship.

In the future, I hope we do not read a case study of a mirror-imaging failure regarding how the CCP’s plan for global domination succeeded.

Chinese communist way of war: Different than the West | Taiwan News | 2023-03-26 10:51:00

By Guermantes Lailari, Taiwan News, Contributing Columnist

2023/03/26 10:51

taiwannews.com.tw · by Taiwan News · March 26, 2023

I disagree with the article written by Major Rick Chersicla, "Stop Talking About a 'Chinese Way of War'" in The Diplomat on 14 March 2023. This article commits the mirror-imaging error, which in trying to understand the adversary, is one of the biggest mistakes any military planner, strategist, policy and decision-maker can make. I will identify errors in his arguments and highlight why the Chinese Communist strategy is different from the Western model.

Similar and different strategic thinkers

A cursory review and comparison of US military doctrine with Chinese Communist military doctrine reveals that US military doctrine refers almost exclusively to Western military strategists. Sun Tzu receives a token footnote. In contrast, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) strategy fuses Western and Eastern military, political and economic thought.

For example, the Science of Military Strategy (2013) cites 28 sources: twenty of these sources are not mentioned in US military doctrine, such as Lenin, Marx, Mao, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Chinese strategists, and PLA authors. Eight Western sources were translated into Mandarin, and include Clausewitz, Jomini, Liddell-Hart, Sokolovsky, and the US Military Academy’s Military Strategy.

This initial comparison of Chinese and American doctrinal instruction materials should not calm concerns. I have attended all levels of US professional military education (PME) and these PME schools did not teach adversary strategy to any level of competency. Underlying the Chinese approach to adversary strategy is Sun Tzu’s often quoted guidance in The Art of War 3:18: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.”

Mirror imaging

The absence of instruction on adversary strategy in American PME is compounded by the propensity to commit the analytical error of mirror-imaging. In Psychology of Intelligence Analysis (2009), Richards J. Heuer, Jr. describes mirror-imaging as a source of error in describing the thoughts and actions of an adversary:

“Be Wary of Mirror Images. One kind of assumption an analyst should always recognize and question is mirror-imaging filling gaps in the analyst’s own knowledge by assuming that the other side is likely to act in a certain way, because that is how the US would act under similar circumstances.” (p. 70)

Mirror-imaging, as a way of thinking, is dangerous because it prevents analysts from accurately describing adversary thinking and behavior. Heuer cites former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral David Jeremiah, who headed a review of the intelligence failure to predict India’s 1998 nuclear weapons test, and named the failure: “everybody-thinks-like-us mind-set. … the ‘underlying mind-set' was that India ‘would behave as we behave,’ … ‘We should have been much more aggressive in thinking through how the other guy thought.’”

Replace India in the above reference with China or Russia and you understand my point. For example, Edward Luttwak, one of the greatest grand strategists of our generation, noted that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) predicted the invasion of Ukraine in 2023 would be a cakewalk for the Russian military. The CIA and the FSB were wrong; they did not understand Ukrainians and their will to fight.

Red teams and alternative assessments

The Indian government developed and conducted an elaborate denial and deception plan to prevent the US from applying pressure on it not to conduct the tests. The Jeremiah Report recommended two correctives to mirror-imaging: (1) engage outside regional experts to provide expertise in describing an adversaries’ history and worldview, and (2) conduct red team and alternative assessments to apply regional and country-specific knowledge to a hypothetical situation.

According to the US military’s Joint Publication 5-0 Joint Planning (2020), “red team complements intelligence efforts by offering independent, alternative assessments and differing interpretations of information. This includes critical reviews of intelligence products, considering problem sets from alternative perspectives, and helping contribute informed speculation when reliable information is lacking.”

Chinese deception

Just as the US intelligence community failed to predict the Indian nuclear tests, the US has failed in its analysis of the intentions and capabilities of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the PLA. Such failures are not accidental. Deception permeates PLA’s military doctrine and all efforts by the CCP and its subordinate elements.

The Chinese communists employed deception and subterfuge—to compensate for inferiority in training and equipment—during their war with the Imperial Japanese and the Chinese Nationalist forces from 1 August 1927 until 7 December 1949. The West is not adept at using deception beyond the military arena, whereas the CCP has practiced employing deception in every dimension of the struggle.

Michael Pillsbury realized late in his long government career the vast extent of the CCP’s strategic deception. In The Hundred Year Marathon (2016), Pillsbury identified the following elements of deception in the Chinese strategy to defeat the US:

1. Induce complacency to avoid alerting your opponent. Chinese strategy holds that a powerful adversary, such as the United States today, should never be provoked prematurely. Instead, one’s true intentions should be completely guarded until the ideal moment to strike arrives.

2. Manipulate your opponent’s advisers. Chinese strategy emphasizes turning the opponent’s house in on itself by winning over influential advisers surrounding the opponent’s leadership apparatus. Such efforts have long been a hallmark of China’s relations with the United States…

4. Steal your opponent’s ideas and technology for strategic purposes. Hardly hindered by Western-style legal prohibitions and constitutional principles, China clearly endorses theft for strategic gain. Such theft provides a relatively easy, cost-effective means by which a weaker state can usurp power from a more powerful one…

7. Never lose sight of shi [national vitality]. … two elements of shi are critical components of Chinese strategy: deceiving others into doing your bidding for you, and waiting for the point of maximum opportunity to strike…

9. Always be vigilant to avoid being encircled or deceived by others. In what could be characterized as a deeply ingrained sense of paranoia, China’s leaders believe that because all other potential rivals are out to deceive them, China must respond with its own duplicity… (pp. 35-36)

Pillsbury’s description of the principal elements of Chinese strategy to defeat the US are unlike those used in Western states. The CCP’s focus on deception is key to their goal of defeating the US.

Sun Tzu and Mao

Major Chersicla provides many good examples of Western applications of military deception, yet his article lacks examples of how Mao—and his successors—applied deception.

Mao’s famous speech given in 1938, On Protracted War, states unequivocally that “’There can never be too much deception in war’, means precisely this.” He added, “to achieve victory we must as far as possible make the enemy blind and deaf by sealing his eyes and ears and drive his commanders to distraction by creating confusion in their minds.”

These concepts correlate to Sun Tzu’s “All warfare is based on deception.” Mao and Sun Tzu agree on the key role of deception in all conflicts which contradicts Major Chersicla’s claim that “[i]n terms of military theory, however, these two strategists [Mao and Sun Tzu] – as enduring as their legacies are – do not align on key points, let alone represent an unknowable Chinese way of war.” The CCP seeks to confuse the rest of the world about its true intentions and goals.

Unrestricted Warfare

Chinese deception is not only key to military operations: deception must inform all aspects of the struggle, especially political warfare and other types of warfare cited in Unrestricted Warfare, authored in 1999 by two senior PLA Air Force colonels.

(Unrestricted Warfare, p.146)

The PLA colonels used the above list of warfare to explain how “warfare” goes beyond the kinetic or classic shooting war. Instead, “[a]ny of the above types of methods of operation can be combined with another of the above methods of operation to form a completely new method of operation” (p. 146).

The emerging Chinese Communist revolution in military affairs uses combinations of warfare types (from the columns, military, trans-military, and non-military) to achieve the CCP’s objectives. The list enables CCP and PLA planners to conceptualize novel and specific configurations of capabilities, at tactical, operational, and strategic levels, against their adversaries. In contrast, the West, including the US, lack the intellectual tools to identify, describe, assess, and counter the challenges posed by the CCP and PLA. Thanks to Dr Mark D. Mandeles for his thoughts on this subject.

Spying

The main reason the Chinese Nationalist forces (Kuomintang) were defeated by the Chinese Communist forces was that the US made the Kuomintang forces concentrate on fighting the Imperial Japanese military instead of the Communist Chinese forces so that the US could prosecute a Europe first policy.

At least three additional factors aided the Chinese Communists during the Chinese civil war: corrupt Nationalist officers, ill-treatment of Nationalist soldiers and civilians under Kuomintang control, and the vast infiltration of the Chinese communist network of spies into Chiang Kai-Shek’s military. Many analysts discuss CCP’s intelligence operations successes, including Nicholas Eftimiades, Roger Faligot, William C. Hannas, Alex Joske, Matthew Brazil, and Peter Mattis.

The PLA used Sun Tzu’s dictum of never fighting your adversary’s strengths and always using your strength against the enemy’s weakness. The PLA exploited the corruption and the dismal morale of the Kuomintang forces. Today, the CCP and the PLA continue this tradition of subterfuge, deception, and manipulation.

Spying for the CCP

PRC citizens are legally obligated to participate in information and intelligence collection. Article 7 of the National Intelligence Law (2017 and amended 2018) requires every Chinese citizen and organization to spy for the CCP. The relevant passage states:

“All organizations and citizens shall support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts in accordance with law, and shall protect national intelligence work secrets they are aware of. The State protects individuals and organizations that support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts.”

Article 14 specifies that CCP intelligence agencies can legally insist on this support:

“The state intelligence work organization shall carry out intelligence work according to law, and may require relevant organs, organizations and citizens to provide necessary support, assistance and cooperation.”

Mobilizing ethnic Chinese overseas to collect information of all types for the CCP is a feature of everyday life in the Chinese diaspora. The National Intelligence Law uses “language that does not limit these demands on individuals to Chinese citizens.” The CCP expects nationalist sympathy or threatened coercion against relatives and friends living in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to motivate every ethnic Chinese person in the world to uphold this law.

The Western view of spying is limited to political and military intelligence. For example, CCP economic espionage seeks to gain economic and military advantage against non-Communist Chinese competitors. These efforts are conducted by CCP intelligence collectors from the Ministry of State Security, United Front Work Department, Ministry of Public Security, and the PLA. Western intelligence agencies do not pursue this kind of intelligence on behalf of western private corporations to enhance their corporate advantage against their competitors. These CCP’s actions reveal a new kind of intelligence warfare designed to strengthen their comprehensive national power.

Conclusion

Major Chersicla’s article focuses more on the similarities than the key differences between Western and Chinese Communist concepts of warfare. In this article, I tried to highlight those differences and to familiarize readers with the key areas of divergence and the dangers of mirror-imaging.

I encourage Major Chersicla and other military strategists, policy and decision makers to visit Taiwan and meet with ROC military and academic experts that have been studying the CCP’s and PLA’s way of war. Recall that the Taiwanese, who speak and read Mandarin Chinese, have been fighting the Chinese Communists since 1927, and have suffered many hard lessons, including the loss of territory and people currently under the CCP’s oppressive dictatorship.

In the future, I hope we do not read a case study of a mirror-imaging failure regarding how the CCP’s plan for global domination succeeded.

Guermantes Lailari is a retired USAF Foreign Area Officer specializing in the Middle East and Europe as well as counterterrorism, irregular warfare, and missile defense. He has studied, worked, and served in the Middle East and North Africa for over 14 years, and similarly in Europe for six years. He was a US Air Force Attache in the Middle East, served in Iraq and holds advanced degrees in International Relations and Strategic Intelligence. After retiring from the USAF, he worked in a variety of positions, including four years for the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict (ASD-SOLIC) Irregular Warfare Technology Support Directorate. He was selected to be a program manager for the Asymmetric Warfare Program at the Virginia Tech Applied Research Corporation, followed by assignments in the Middle East where he managed a US forward-based missile defense radar and a variety of other technical positions. He was selected to be a 2022 Taiwan Fellow by the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is researching for the year at National Chengchi University in Taipei, Taiwan.

taiwannews.com.tw · by Taiwan News · March 26, 2023

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com