Quotes of the Day:

"Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory." 

– Leonardo da Vinci

"A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition." 

– Jose Bergamin

"He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper." 

– Edmund Burke

1. Misinformation runs rampant after Baltimore bridge collapse

2. Unfounded conspiracy theories spread online after Baltimore bridge collapse

3. Exclusive: Former US official's work for Chinese client stirs concern over disclosure loopholes

4. Two Wrongs Making a Right? An Unconventional Warfare Strategy to Address Illegal Chinese Fishing

5. Small victories: Army Applications Lab issues first progress report

6. Air Force Ospreys in Japan Remain Grounded After Deadly Crash, Even as Marines Return to the Air

7. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 26, 2024

8. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, March 26, 2024

9. The Fight for AI Talent: Pay Million-Dollar Packages and Buy Whole Teams

10. In a Secret Game of Prisoner Swaps, Putin Has Held Most of the Cards

11. Japan And U.S. Will Deepen Military Ties As Tensions With China Rise

12. The ‘Rules-Based Order’ Is Already Over

13. ‘Mayday’ call from ship stopped Baltimore bridge traffic, saved lives

14. In rare triple, Army, Navy and Air Force wrestlers all earn All-American honors

15. Here’s How Nuclear War Could “Destroy Civilization” in Just a Few Hours

16. U.S. Takes Action to Further Disrupt PRC Cyber Activities

17. Mismanaging of the Unmanageable: China Tries to Play All Sides in Myanmar’s Metastasizing Civil War

18. 'Fighting spirit’: How Myanmar’s resistance is taking new ground

19. Denying Russia’s Only Strategy for Success

20. Ukraine Secretly Acquired American Black Hawks. No One Knows How It Happened.

21. Who Is Blowing Up Russia?

22. The Return of the Tactical Crisis

23. China's maritime power cause for action and alarm

24. The Shame Weapon: Condemning a Country’s Human Rights Violations Rarely Works—but That Doesn’t Make It Pointless

25. China’s Economic Collision Course

26. Ukrainian F-16s and All NATO Aircraft Should Be Properly Armed with Precision-Guided Cluster Munitions- JSOW and WCMD Weapons

1. Misinformation runs rampant after Baltimore bridge collapse

Conspiracy theories. The new reality.

Then again, the economic effects of this would be a good outcome for someone trying to damage the US. But from the videos of the incident and the radios call it certainly appears to be an accident based on an equipment malfunction. Even if this was some kind of cyber attack causing the steering malfunction I doubt a perpetrator anticipated the ship crashing into the bridge in the way it did. There would be too many variables. Or the perpetrator just got lucky,  But Occam's razor may apply here. The simplest and most likely explanation is that this was a tragic accident.

9 hours ago -Economy

Misinformation runs rampant after Baltimore bridge collapse

https://www.axios.com/2024/03/26/francis-scott-key-bridge-collapse-reasons-conspiracy

• Zachary Basu
• ,
• Sara Fischer

Photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

The overnight collapse of Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge drove a surge in online conspiracy theories Tuesday, many of them promoted by "verified" accounts with huge followings on X.

Why it matters: Rampant misinformation during mass casualty events is not a new phenomenon. But under Elon Musk's ownership of X, the platform has evolved from an essential real-time news source to a breeding ground for conspiracy theories.

Driving the news: Federal and state authorities said Tuesday there's no evidence that terrorism played a role in the collapse of the 1.6 mile-long bridge, which was struck by a container ship at around 1:30am ET Tuesday.

• The crew of the Singapore-flagged Dali issued a mayday call before striking the bridge and notified authorities that it was experiencing a power issue, according to Maryland Gov. Wes Moore.
• Paul Wiedefeld, Maryland's transportation secretary, said eight members of a construction crew were making repairs to the bridge at the time of the collision.

What they're saying: "Everything so far indicates that this was a terrible accident. At this time, we have no other indication, no other reason to believe there's any intentional act here," President Biden said in remarks Tuesday afternoon.

Zoom in: Within hours, X accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers were promoting baseless claims that the Dali had been the victim of a cyber-attack or had intentionally rammed into the bridge.

• Much of the misinformation was being pushed by "verified" users who pay for a premium subscription that boosts their posts.
• Some verified right-wing accounts speculated that corporate diversity and inclusion initiatives were to blame for the disaster — a claim also embraced during a spate of recent aircraft safety issues.
• Several antisemitic accounts with blue check marks claimed that the "attack" was perpetrated by Israel.

The other side: Community notes, a system on X that allows users to add context to misleading or false posts, flagged some of the conspiracy theories as baseless.

The big picture: Bad actors often take advantage of breaking news events to sow discord and confusion while details are still scant, with cause and intent typically the biggest targets for misinformation.

• Everyday social media users who aren't seeking to intentionally spread falsehoods then amplify the rumors when they see them going viral on social media.

• Over the last several years, most platforms have dramatically reduced content safety and moderation teams that could help respond to these types of misinformation events in real time, citing costs and inefficiency.
• Musk — a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist — has come under especially intense criticism for allowing misinformation to go unchecked on X as long as it doesn't break the law.

Between the lines: Social media companies continue to be haunted by their handling of the Hunter Biden laptop controversy and the COVID-19 lab-leak theory, which contributed to widespread distrust among conservatives.

• Platforms fear that taking quick action to label certain political claims as false or misleading could come back to bite them.
• Ahead of the 2024 election, Big Tech companies have largely walked back policies instituted to curb misinformation around COVID-19 and the 2020 election.

The bottom line: Extreme polarization and a historic low in Americans' trust in media have created a perfect environment for misinformation to flourish in moments of chaos.

2. Unfounded conspiracy theories spread online after Baltimore bridge collapse

As we should now expect as a matter of routine in events like this.

Unfounded conspiracy theories spread online after Baltimore bridge collapse

Major news events — like the pandemic, natural disasters and mass shootings — now consistently serve as fodder for fringe figures.

NBC News · by Kalhan Rosenblatt

Outlandish conspiracy theories circulated on X after a containership collided with a major bridge in Maryland, causing it to collapse, early Tuesday morning.

The ship hit a supporting structure of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which is located southeast of the Baltimore metropolitan area.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore declared a state of emergency and said the calamity that knocked down the bridge was most likely the result of an accident and not an act of terrorism. Moore told reporters that crew members of the Dali containership, which struck the Key Bridge on Tuesday morning, had notified authorities that they lost power.

As rescuers search for survivors, some online conspiracy theorists have attempted to uncover a nonexistent plot to explain the collision.

Major news events — like the pandemic, natural disasters and mass shootings — now consistently serve as fodder for fringe figures, many of them on the far right, to amplify their world views that often feature shadowy cabals or major unseen threats.

Once relegated to certain corners of the internet, these figures have flourished on X since Elon Musk acquired the platform and removed many of the rules that once tried to limit the spread of false claims. Musk has garnered backlash in the past for amplifying conspiracy theories and restoring accounts for known conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones. A spokesperson for X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Some on Tuesday claimed that the shipping vessel came under “cyberattacks,” or that Covid-era lockdowns were to blame. There have been no reports suggesting that any of these conspiracies are remotely true. In response to some of the posts, X had a “readers added context” note/disclaimer, in which people fact-checked the posters.

But it’s not just so-called keyboard warriors who are posting the theories. Several conspiracies were elevated by public officials on TV and by those with massive followings on social media.

On Fox Business, anchor Maria Bartiromo falsely suggested the “wide-open border” could have something to do with the collision, a clip of which circulated on X. No link to immigration has been made by officials.

A spokesperson for Fox did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Controversial influencer Andrew Tate shared a conspiracy that falsely suggested the ship had been “cyber-attacked,” citing that in the video of the collision, the ship’s lights appear to turn off just before impact.

In video leading up to and of the incident, around 1:24 a.m. EDT, the ship’s lights turn off for a minute but then flicker back on. About 10 seconds later, smoke is seen coming from the ship’s chimney. At 1:26 a.m., the ship appears to turn and moments later loses its lights again. They come back on a half a minute later.

A spokesperson for Tate did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Alex Jones responded to Tate, writing in a post: “Looks deliberate to me.”

Michael Flynn, who was national security adviser to former President Donald Trump, appeared to suggest it was not an accident in a post on X.

A spokesperson for Flynn declined to comment.

His account was previously removed from X, then known as Twitter, in January 2021 after he promoted a conspiracy theory around the 2020 election. At the time, the platform cited its policy against “coordinated harmful activity.” He was reinstated on Jan. 6, 2023 and posted a message “to personally thank” Musk for allowing him back.

Another unsubstantiated claim that circulated X on Tuesday was made by Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union.

In a clip of his interview with Newsmax, Schlapp suggested that the Francis Scott Key Bridge’s infrastructure and transportation services were weakened by Covid lockdowns. Later, he suggested drugs could be behind the collision.

Maersk, a shipping company, confirmed in a statement that the ship, called Dali, which is operated and managed by a company called Synergy Group, had been charted to transport its customers’ cargo.

Synergy said in a statement that Dali had “collided with one of the pillars of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, Baltimore whilst under pilotage with two pilots onboard.”

The company said all 22 crew members onboard at the time of the crash were accounted for and there were no injuries or any oil pollution.

The bridge, which is about a mile and a half long and carries Interstate 695 over the Patapsco River, was “fully up to code,” Moore said.

NBC News · by Kalhan Rosenblatt

3. Exclusive: Former US official's work for Chinese client stirs concern over disclosure loopholes

I missed this earlier this month. I saw it flagged on social media with this comment from a congressional staffer:

This story got far less attention than it merits. A former AG lobbying for a company with clear connections to the #PLA and China’s defense supply chains is truly astounding.

Exclusive: Former US official's work for Chinese client stirs concern over disclosure loopholes

By Michael Martina

March 11, 20243:03 PM EDTUpdated 15 days ago

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/former-us-officials-work-chinese-client-stirs-concern-over-disclosure-loopholes-2024-03-11/

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch holds a news conference in Washington. U.S., January 11, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

WASHINGTON, March 11 (Reuters) - When a Chinese drone company came under U.S. government scrutiny over its alleged ties to China's military, the company turned to one of America's pre-eminent lawyers: Loretta Lynch, a former attorney general in the Obama administration.

Lynch, who ran the U.S. Department of Justice from 2015 to 2017 and is now a partner at the Paul, Weiss law firm, wrote a letter to a senior Defense Department official last July on behalf of SZ DJI Technology Co Ltd, asking that her client be removed from a list of Chinese military companies.

Advocating for foreign clients is legal and U.S. law includes a public disclosure exemption for lawyers.

But the letter, seen by Reuters, is an example of what transparency advocates and some members of Congress - dozens of whom have supported bills to change rules - say are gaps in the law that allow lawyers and lobbyists, including former officials, to avoid disclosing their advocacy for companies possibly subject to U.S. sanctions.

The Paul, Weiss law firm declined to comment on the letter, and Lynch did not respond to Reuters emails. DJI also declined to comment, but it has said previously that it is not a military company and that it was prepared to formally challenge its inclusion on the list.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a decades-old law requiring public disclosure of work done on behalf of non-U.S. entities, includes a list of exemptions, including for commercial activities and legal representation.

The work by the onetime top U.S. law enforcement officer on behalf of a company the Department of Defense says poses "threats to national security, opens new tab" comes as U.S. agencies warn about companies with links to China's Communist Party and as lawmakers push to tighten FARA's disclosure requirements.

The U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments say DJI supported biometric surveillance and tracking of Muslim Uyghur minorities in China.

The Defense Department did not respond to a request for comment on Lynch's letter. DJI remained on the Pentagon list when it was updated in late January.

The Justice Department also declined comment on the letter and broader FARA enforcement.

Almost a dozen critics of FARA told Reuters the law's loopholes have allowed less transparency for other companies with alleged ties to China's military, including surveillance technology firm Hikvision and biotech firm WuXi AppTec.

Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, says reforms to the law are needed, given the blurry lines between many Chinese companies and the Chinese government, and to keep former members of the U.S. government from effectively lobbying on their behalf.

"It is appalling that former senior U.S. officials use their connections to serve the interests of U.S. adversaries," Risch said.

However, the American Civil Liberties Union and others assert that broadening disclosure requirements could act as a barrier to legally protected free speech.

In 2022 the ACLU and 13 other groups wrote to the Justice Department about their concerns, cautioning that problems with the law could "enable selective enforcement for bad faith or malicious reasons."

Others argue that stricter FARA rules on disclosure could give authoritarian countries like Russia and China cover for their own stifling of free speech.

Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law school professor, said some countries, such as Russia, label citizens and reporters as foreign agents to limit their activities.

"I do have concerns over some past investigations and prosecutions that targeted individuals who appeared to be engaging in First Amendment activities," Turley told Reuters.

REQUESTING A MEETING

The Pentagon in 2022 placed DJI on its Chinese Military Companies list, a designation that serves as a warning about the risks of conducting business with those entities.

In her letter to Assistant Secretary of Defense Laura Taylor-Kale on behalf of DJI, Lynch urged the department to promptly remove the drone maker.

"The wide use and dependence on DJI products by a variety of U.S. stakeholders reinforces the importance and urgency of deleting DJI from the list," Lynch wrote.

She added that DJI requested "a meeting to discuss this matter." Reuters could not establish whether that meeting occurred.

Also signing the letter, labeled "confidential treatment requested," were former Assistant United States Attorney Michael Gertzman and Associate White House Counsel in the Obama administration Roberto Gonzalez – now both partners at Paul, Weiss.

Gertzman and Gonzalez did not respond to requests for comment.

FARA enforcement has intensified in recent years, with the Justice Department prosecuting, opens new tab individuals for their work on behalf of Chinese interests and pushing some law firms to register.

Paul, Weiss attorneys have acknowledged growing enforcement tied to China.

In a 2022 memo, opens new tab to clients about a U.S. court's dismissal of a FARA case against casino magnate Steve Wynn, Lynch, Gonzalez and other Paul, Weiss attorneys wrote: "The targeting of lobbying on behalf of China by the DOJ is further evidence of the Biden Administration's intention to use all of the legal tools at its disposal in a multi-faceted strategy to counter the perceived threat posed by China."

Paul, Weiss did not respond to questions about the memo and a White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

At the Justice Department's request, the Sidley Austin law firm in 2022 retroactively registered its lobbying, opens new tab on behalf of Hikvision, a company the U.S. says has been implicated in human rights violations toward Uyghurs.

Sidley Austin declined to comment on its registration. While the firm had not originally filed under FARA it had disclosed under the Lobbying Disclosure Act, which has less rigorous disclosure requirements, according to the Justice Department.

The Justice Department has called for the repeal of an LDA exemption from FARA filing.

Hikvision did not respond to a request for comment but has previously denied reports that the company is complicit in human rights abuses.

Congressional pressure again has begun to tick up.

On March 5, the House of Representatives select committee on China asked the Justice Department to review, opens new tab trade association Biotechnology Innovation Organization's lobbying on behalf of Chinese biotech firm WuXi AppTec for possible FARA requirements.

BIO told Reuters that its advocacy was fulfilling its duty to let Congress and patients know the impact of potential policies and "nothing more."

WuXi AppTec, when asked by Reuters about the House committee's request, said it objected to "inaccurate assertions and preemptive actions against our company without due process," adding it was confident lawmakers would see it as a trusted partner.

REFORM IS UP TO CONGRESS

Some experts, including those who have concerns about extending FARA's reach, agree the law is vague and presents particular challenges for attorneys.

David Laufman, a partner at law firm Wiggin and Dana who previously oversaw the Justice Department's FARA enforcement, said while lawyers may not need to register under FARA if they avoid policy discussions with government officials, the only way to know for certain is to seek an opinion from the Justice Department.

"In the meantime, life goes on for attorneys. We have to represent our clients," he said.

Reforms to the law would be up to Congress. Several bipartisan bills to close FARA loopholes have been proposed.

One, proposed last year in the House and Senate could require retroactive FARA registration by anyone who acts as an "agent for a foreign principal."

Get weekly news and analysis on the U.S. elections and how it matters to the world with the newsletter On the Campaign Trail. Sign up here.

Additional reporting by Mike Scarcella Editing by Don Durfee and Alistair Bell

4. Two Wrongs Making a Right? An Unconventional Warfare Strategy to Address Illegal Chinese Fishing

Excerpts:

What does StratBot say?

Using inexpensive, disposable kits to convert small boats into remote-piloted explosive kamikaze drones can be seen as a potential strategy to address illegal Chinese fishing operations. However, it is essential to consider the pros and cons of such an approach before drawing any conclusions. Here are some key points to consider:

Two Wrongs Making a Right? An Unconventional Warfare Strategy to Address Illegal Chinese Fishing

strategycentral.io · March 26, 2024

The rich waters surrounding the Galapagos islands are home to one of today’s largest transnational organized crime operations. Massive fishing fleets from the People’s Republic of China are blatantly pillaging the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of Ecuador and Peru, undermining their national economies and markets, destroying marine ecosystems, and decimating worldwide fish populations. Chinese fleets are also crewed by forced labor, often from the Chinese Uyghur regions. These illegal fishing activities violate not just international maritime laws and regulations, but human trafficking laws as well.

Addressing Chinese illegal fishing requires international cooperation, strengthened maritime enforcement, and diplomatic efforts to promote sustainable fishing practices and protect the rights of affected nations. In June 2022, the Biden Administration released the “Memorandum on Combating Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing and Associated Labor Abuses,” which aimed to address the issue of illegal fishing and labor abuses in the fishing industry. It emphasizes the need for international cooperation, sustainable fishing practices, and the protection of workers' rights to combat these illicit activities and promote responsible fishing globally.

Unfortunately, in the nearly two years since the release of that policy, Chinese illegal fishing activities have only grown. It’s now time for a new strategy.

US Special Operations Forces (SOF) can play a crucial role in addressing illegal Chinese fishing operations by implementing a comprehensive strategy that leverages its unique capabilities and partnerships, while simultaneously investing in our South American partner forces. The pillars of this proposed strategy should be:

1. Enhanced Maritime Domain Awareness: US Special Operations can collaborate with Ecuadorian and Peruvian forces and other relevant stakeholders to improve maritime domain awareness in areas affected by illegal Chinese fishing operations. This includes sharing intelligence, conducting joint patrols, and utilizing advanced surveillance technologies to monitor and track the activities of Chinese fishing fleets.

2. Capacity Building and Training: SOF can provide training and capacity-building support to partner nations to enhance their maritime security capabilities. This can involve training local forces in maritime interdiction techniques, intelligence gathering, and maritime law enforcement. By strengthening the capabilities of partner nations, they can better detect, deter, and respond to illegal fishing activities.

3. Coordinated Operations: SOF can facilitate coordinated operations among partner nations to target and disrupt illegal Chinese fishing operations. This can involve joint patrols, information sharing, and coordinated interdictions. By working together, partner nations can pool their resources and expertise to effectively counter the activities of Chinese fishing fleets.

4. Diplomatic Engagement: SOF can provide support to diplomatic efforts to address the issue of illegal Chinese fishing. This can involve providing intelligence and operational support to diplomatic initiatives aimed at raising awareness, fostering cooperation, and advocating for stronger international regulations and enforcement mechanisms against illegal fishing.

5. Public Awareness and Outreach: SOF can collaborate with partner nations and non-governmental organizations to raise public awareness about the detrimental effects of illegal Chinese fishing. This can involve educational campaigns, community engagement, and media outreach to highlight the environmental, economic, and social impacts of illegal fishing activities.

The recent maritime operations carried out by Ukrainian forces against the Russian Black Sea Fleet make for an interesting prototype. The Ukrainians have found success in attacking the Russian fleet through the deployment of the Magura V5 sea drone, a 5.5m automated boat armed with explosives. Employing similar technology could effectively make Chinese illegal fishing activities significantly more costly while minimizing both the risk of casualties and providing plausible deniability.

The Magura V5 costs around $225,000, a cost that is relatively cheap when compared to equivalent manned naval capabilities, but far too expensive for this strategy. Instead, USSOCOM should take a page from the strategy employed by the Iranian Quds force against US forces in Iraq. USSOCOM should look to develop inexpensive, disposable kits containing a battery-powered motor, guidance system, sensors, and a warhead that can be fixed to existing small boats or an improvised plywood hull, converting them into remote-piloted explosive kamikaze drones.

USSOCOM could easily leverage its existing rapid prototyping and acquisition authorities and capabilities to produce these kits for an order of magnitude cheaper than the cost of a Magura drone. Then, in the execution of their Joint Combined Execution and Training mission, US SOF could train military (or paramilitary) forces in Ecuador and Peru on how to build and employ these systems. It would then be up to Peru, Ecuador, or other partner forces to determine when and where to defend their EEZs.

China is engaging in a form of state-sponsored economic piracy, against not only Ecuador and Peru but our world’s delicate ecosystem. Just as Iraq surrendered its right to sovereignty after it invaded Kuwait to steal natural resources, Chinese actions have no right to safety in the execution of their crimes. Iraq invaded Kuwait overtly and met an overt international response. China using commercial means to invade covertly, but pillaging resources nonetheless. A covert response is warranted.

By implementing this strategy, US Special Operations Command can play a vital role in protecting marine resources, supporting affected partner nations, and promoting sustainable fishing practices. US SOF can not only significantly contribute to the global effort to address illegal Chinese fishing operations, but has an opportunity to do so cheaply and effectively, while simultaneously building an exportable capability to help other partners defend their interests against hostile maritime action.

What does StratBot say?

Using inexpensive, disposable kits to convert small boats into remote-piloted explosive kamikaze drones can be seen as a potential strategy to address illegal Chinese fishing operations. However, it is essential to consider the pros and cons of such an approach before drawing any conclusions. Here are some key points to consider:

Pros:

1. Cost-Effectiveness: Inexpensive, disposable kits can offer a cost-effective solution compared to developing and deploying more sophisticated unmanned systems. This affordability may allow for a larger number of drones to be deployed, potentially increasing the chances of success in disrupting illegal fishing activities.

2. Stealth and Surprise: Small boats converted into remote-piloted explosive drones may have the advantage of surprise. They can be deployed covertly, potentially catching illegal fishing vessels off guard and increasing the likelihood of successful interdictions.

3. Flexibility and Adaptability: The use of disposable kits allows for flexibility and adaptability in deploying these drones. They can be easily modified and deployed in different locations, adapting to changing circumstances and targeting specific areas where illegal fishing activities are prevalent.

Cons:

1. Legal and Ethical Concerns: The use of explosive kamikaze drones raises significant legal and ethical concerns. Under international law, the use of force is generally prohibited, and targeting civilian vessels, even if engaged in illegal activities, may be seen as a violation of these principles. (Human note: US SOF can and has been traditionally employed for addressing illegal civilian activities, e.g., counterterrorism, counterpiracy, and counterdrug operations.)

2. Collateral Damage and Safety: The use of explosive drones carries the risk of collateral damage and unintended harm to innocent civilians or non-combatant vessels in the vicinity. Ensuring the safety of innocent parties and minimizing unintended consequences would be challenging in such operations. (Human note: Acknowledge this strategy does put the force-labor crew of these vessels at risk.)

3. Escalation and Retaliation: The use of explosive drones against Chinese fishing vessels could potentially escalate tensions and lead to retaliatory actions. This could further exacerbate the already complex geopolitical dynamics in the region and potentially result in unintended consequences. (Human note: This is the most significant risk of this strategy, but as China is clearly in violation of the Principles of Sovereignty and Non-Intervention in international law, the ICC would most certainly not uphold a claim in defense of their illegal activities.)

It is crucial to approach the issue of illegal Chinese fishing operations with a comprehensive strategy that considers the legal, ethical, and practical implications of various approaches. While inexpensive, disposable kits for remote-piloted explosive kamikaze drones may offer certain advantages, the potential drawbacks and risks associated with such a strategy should be carefully evaluated before considering its implementation.

strategycentral.io · March 26, 2024

5. Small victories: Army Applications Lab issues first progress report

Fail forward. We cannot be afraid to fail. And the failures indicate we are not being risk averse and therefore perhaps the projects that do make may be stronger because of the failures.

A success rate that is too high may mean we are not trying hard enough and we are not taking enough risks and therefore perhaps the projects that do make are not all that strong.

Excerpt:

But the big test is getting across that “valley of death,” from prototypes and demonstrations to mass production and operational deployment. Of the AAL’s 48 projects to date, almost two-thirds (28) are still in “active” and in progress, so it’s too early to pass judgment. But of the 20 deemed “complete,” with $60 million in funding, nine have “transitioned” to sustained programs, with $44 million in follow-on contracts to date.

Is that 45 percent transition rate a passing grade? Arguably, yes. For Silicon Valley venture capital, if nearly half the companies you invest in survive, that’s actually pretty good — although of course the ROI of a few “unicorns” more than makes up for losses elsewhere. For Pentagon weapons programs, that’s not bad either, especially considering the US Army’s long-running track record of cancelled programs, from FCS in 2009 to FARA just this February.

Small victories: Army Applications Lab issues first progress report - Breaking Defense

45 percent of AAL’s completed projects have “transitioned” into regular DoD programs, but AAL admits others “end up in the valley of death due to factors external to the project, even if the project meets all milestones and the technology solves the military problem.”

breakingdefense.com · by Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. · March 26, 2024

Senior Leaders from Army Applications Laboratory (AAL) host Army Reserve Officer Traing Corps Cadets from Texas Christian University and Baylor University, and members from the Fort Worth Airpower Council at AAL in Austin, Texas. The visitors learned about Army Futures Command’s (AFC) efforts to modernization the Army and toured AFC facilities. (DVIDS)

WASHINGTON — Five years since its founding as part of then-nascent Army Futures Command, and three years since it got its own budget, the Army Applications Laboratory on Monday issued its first formal progress report [PDF].

The good news: AAL has successfully worked with small companies, many outside the traditional defense-industrial base, to get innovative technologies to soldiers for hands-on testing, from a new health-tracking app for soldiers [PDF], to augmented-reality maintenance tutorials, to a robotic arm to help handle 100-lb artillery shells.

The bad news: More than half of finished projects fizzled in the prototype phase for lack of long-term funding. That includes the robot arm — which worked great, cutting loading time by more than half and reducing the risk of injuries to human loaders — “due to a funding tradeoff caused by changing priorities.”

“Program Objective Memorandum (POM) funds may not be available when the technology is ready to transition,” the report acknowledged. “Technologies can end up in the valley of death due to factors external to the project, even if the project meets all milestones and the technology solves the military problem.”

AAL was never intended to reequip the entire Army, just to bring together serving soldiers and innovative civilians — outside the sclerotic federal procurement process — to jumpstart progress on new tech. All told, it’s build a network of over 5,000 companies and awarded contracts to 158 (across 31 states), of which 83 percent are small firms with under 100 employees. Many had only a handful of prior Pentagon contracts, and 16 percent had never even done business with DoD before.

Besides getting private industry engaged, AAL also got support from established Army institutions and even other DoD organizations like the Naval Health Research Center. In fact, of the $183 million awarded on AAL contracts, only $105 million (57 percent) came from AAL’s own budget. The other $78 million (43 percent) came from interested partners across the Defense Department and even in the private sector.

But the big test is getting across that “valley of death,” from prototypes and demonstrations to mass production and operational deployment. Of the AAL’s 48 projects to date, almost two-thirds (28) are still in “active” and in progress, so it’s too early to pass judgment. But of the 20 deemed “complete,” with $60 million in funding, nine have “transitioned” to sustained programs, with $44 million in follow-on contracts to date.

Is that 45 percent transition rate a passing grade? Arguably, yes. For Silicon Valley venture capital, if nearly half the companies you invest in survive, that’s actually pretty good — although of course the ROI of a few “unicorns” more than makes up for losses elsewhere. For Pentagon weapons programs, that’s not bad either, especially considering the US Army’s long-running track record of cancelled programs, from FCS in 2009 to FARA just this February.

AAL has some interesting ideas on how to do better, particularly by seeking multiple funding sources, governed by different legal strictures, so some money is always available even if other cash flows dry up. “By combining SBIR [Small Business Innovation Research grants], flexible RDT&E [Research Development Test and Experiment] (for which the precise project doesn’t need to be defined until the year of execution), and private investment, AAL can mitigate or respond to this uncertainty, helping to bridge the valley of death,” the report argued. “For example, flexible RDT&E can be deployed to transition a SBIR project for which POM funding was delayed a year due to challenges elsewhere.”

“I was admittedly apprehensive about what our metrics would reveal,” AAL director Casey Perley wrote in her foreword to the report. “Nevertheless, as a scientist I was fully prepared to disclose the numbers regardless of what they reveal under the belief that the utility of experiments also comes from the discovery of what doesn’t work. And AAL certainly has done that.”

breakingdefense.com · by Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. · March 26, 2024

6. Air Force Ospreys in Japan Remain Grounded After Deadly Crash, Even as Marines Return to the Air

Air Force Ospreys in Japan Remain Grounded After Deadly Crash, Even as Marines Return to the Air

military.com · by Konstantin Toropin,Thomas Novelly · March 26, 2024

The Air Force is still not flying Osprey aircraft in Japan despite getting the green light to lift a monthslong flight hold following a deadly crash off the country's southern coast, but the Marine Corps has put its aircraft based there back in the skies.

Rebecca Heyse, an Air Force Special Operations Command spokeswoman, told Military.com on Tuesday that none of the service's units have resumed flying the Osprey yet.

In contrast, the Marine Corps' 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, which is based in Okinawa, quickly moved to fly its MV-22s, announcing a return to flight status on March 14 -- less than a week after the hold was lifted, according to a statement released the same day.

The aircraft -- which is flown by the Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force -- was allowed to return to flight in early March after Naval Air Systems Command and the V-22 Joint Program Office announced that they had discovered a new and not fully understood mechanical failure as part of the investigation into the Nov. 29 Air Force Osprey crash off the coast of Yakushima Island that left eight airmen dead.

The Navy doesn't have any Ospreys permanently stationed in Japan. A Navy spokesperson told Military.com on Tuesday that its CMV-22Bs based in San Diego, California, have begun the process of returning to flight.

Officials who allowed the aircraft to return to flight argued that data analysis led to the decision to deem the Osprey safe -- while refusing to disclose any information about what part failed or any major details on procedural changes that were made as part of the grounding being lifted.

"We have high confidence that we understand what component failed, and how it failed," Marine Col. Brian Taylor, the V-22 program manager, told reporters in a briefing in early March.

"I think what we are still working on is the 'why,'" Taylor said, noting that "this is the first time that we've seen this particular component fail in this way."

The Air Force's more cautious approach evokes parallels to how the public discovered the other yet-to-be resolved issue with the aircraft in 2022.

In August 2022, the Air Force briefly grounded its fleet of Ospreys after they experienced a series of hard clutch engagements that worried leaders in the service.

However, the very next day, the Marine Corps said not only that its Ospreys would keep flying but that its pilots could handle the issue, which it has known about for years.

The hard clutch problem is an issue with the Osprey's complex system of clutch assemblies that are supposed to enable one engine to fly the aircraft in the event of an engine failure. However, in some instances -- at least 15 mishaps -- those clutches have failed.

Military.com reported one such mishap with an Air Force Osprey that could have become fatal in 2017.

Despite assurances from the Marine Corps that the problem was under control, the clutch issue became deadly in June 2022 when one of its Ospreys crashed in the California desert, killing five Marines.

After that incident was investigated, Taylor also argued that data analysis of some of the more recent incidents involving the clutch led his office to conclude that replacing a critical component -- the input quill assembly -- more frequently was 99% effective despite skepticism from a Marine Corps widow of one of the pilots.

Now, the Marine Corps is again saying it has utmost confidence in the aircraft.

"The flight clearance by our NAVAIR, our adherence to proven operational risk management practices, our confidence in this amazing aircraft, and our faith in the professionalism of our pilots, crew and maintenance teams undergird our decision to return the Osprey to service," the 1st MAW said in its statement.

The Marine Corps is also very dependent on the Osprey. It owns nearly 350 aircraft, compared to the Air Force's roughly 50 airframes.

Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl said in February that the Corps has seen "dramatic impacts" from the flying halt, while 1st MAW's commander, Maj. Gen. Eric Austin, said the Osprey is "key to the success" of his unit.

In the March statement, Austin said the Osprey "plays a central role in our ability to campaign, to respond in time of crisis, and ultimately to partner with our allies and maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific."

Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force, which also flies the Osprey, also resumed flights last week, according to a report from Japan Times.

military.com · by Konstantin Toropin,Thomas Novelly · March 26, 2024

7. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 26, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-26-2024

Key Takeaways:

• Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that the Crocus City Hall attackers originally fled toward Belarus not Ukraine, directly undermining the Kremlin narrative on Ukraine’s involvement, possibly to head off questions about why the attackers headed toward Belarus in the first place.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin and other senior Kremlin officials appear to be struggling to maintain a consistent rhetorical line about the Crocus City Hall attack, indicating that the Kremlin has not fully figured out how to reconcile its information operations with the reality of its intelligence and law enforcement failure.
• Russian officials are proposing actionable but likely impractical solutions to the emotional outcries for retribution in response to the Crocus City Hall attack.
• The Moldovan Constitutional Court reversed a ruling banning the Kremlin-affiliated Shor Party on March 26, which will likely allow pro-Russian Moldovan actors to reconsolidate around the Shor Party and reverse the impacts of the previous Moldovan ban on the party.
• Ukrainian officials stated on March 26 that Ukrainian forces successfully conducted a strike on the night of March 23 to 24 against a Ukrainian ship that Russian forces had captured in 2014.
• Separate investigations conducted by Western media outlets have found that Russian forces may be using Starlink terminals in Ukraine.
• Russian forces recently made confirmed advances near Kreminna and Bakhmut on March 26.
• The Russian military has reportedly started recruiting personnel for elements of the newly reformed Leningrad Military District (LMD).

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 26, 2024

Mar 26, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 26, 2024

Karolina Hird, Christina Harward, Grace Mappes, Nicole Wolkov, and Frederick W. Kagan

March 26, 2024, 8:20pm 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 see ISW’s 3D control of terrain topographic map of Ukraine. Use of a computer (not a mobile device) is strongly recommended for using this data-heavy tool.

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 map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 2:30pm ET on March 26. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the March 27 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that the Crocus City Hall attackers originally fled toward Belarus not Ukraine, directly undermining the Kremlin narrative on Ukraine’s involvement, possibly to head off questions about why the attackers headed toward Belarus in the first place. During a visit to Belarus’ northwestern Ashmyany raion on March 26, Lukashenko reported that the Crocus City Hall attackers may have been planning to escape Russia’s Bryansk Oblast to Belarus, but that Belarus introduced a heightened security regime that forced the attackers to change course towards the Russia-Ukraine border.[1] Lukashenko stated that the attackers “couldn’t enter Belarus” and praised high levels of cooperation between Russian and Belarusian special services for leading to the attackers’ arrests. Lukashenko’s suggestion that the attackers were heading towards Belarus before Belarusian and Russian special services forced them to change direction flatly contradicts Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claims regarding the attackers’ planned escape. Putin addressed the Russian Federation on March 23 following the March 22 Crocus City Hall terror attack and claimed that the attackers had “contacts” who had prepared a “window” for their exfiltration across the border into Ukraine, a claim for which there is no evidence that has become central to the Kremlin’s baseless accusations that Ukraine was involved in or responsible for the attack.[2] Geolocated footage from March 23 shows Russian personnel capturing the four attackers in a forest area along the E101 highway about 20 kilometers southeast of Bryansk City, Bryansk Oblast.[3] The geolocated place of capture is about 95 kilometers from the Ukrainian border at the closest point, or 130 kilometers from where the E101 crosses into Ukraine. This point is notably about 124 kilometers from the Belarusian border, and about 25 kilometers away from the A-240 highway that runs to Gomel, Belarus. Lukashenko’s statement about the activation of Belarusian personnel suggests a scenario in which the attackers were initially traveling along the A-240 highway towards Belarus but saw roadblocks or other deterrents and shifted their course east through forest roads to the E101 route.

Lukashenko has very little evident incentive to lie about the facts of the attack in this way. The suggestion that the attackers were traveling towards Belarus, presumably to seek refuge there, could have damaging political consequences for Lukashenko and his regime as it would raise questions about why they thought they would be safer in Belarus and who they thought might receive them there. Lukashenko may therefore have desired to preempt discussions about the attackers’ hypothetical links to Belarus by saying that Belarusian forces were instrumental in leading to their arrests. While Lukashenko’s claim subverts the standing Kremlin narrative, it reduces his vulnerability to Kremlin efforts to use non-public information about the attackers’ original escape plans to pressure him in the future.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and other senior Kremlin officials appear to be struggling to maintain a consistent rhetorical line about the Crocus City Hall attack, indicating that the Kremlin has not fully figured out how to reconcile its information operations with the reality of its intelligence and law enforcement failure. Putin and other senior officials have not fully coalesced around the false narrative that Ukraine somehow conducted the March 22 attack on the Crocus concert venue for which the Islamic State has claimed responsibility. Putin directly suggested that the attackers were connected to Ukraine in his March 23 address following the attack.[4] Putin then addressed the board of the Russian General Prosecutor’s Office on March 26 and referenced the Crocus attack, calling for the Prosecutor General’s Office to establish all the facts of the case but not implicitly or explicitly blaming Ukraine for the attack.[5] Putin only mentioned the Ukrainian government once during an unrelated part of the address about returning Russia’s “lost” property abroad — a notable change from his March 25 address that claimed Ukraine was the ”customer” of the attack and his March 23 accusation that the attackers were fleeing to Ukraine.[6] Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov similarly refused to state outright on March 26 that Ukraine orchestrated the Crocus attack in response to a press question on how Russia would respond if Russia ”confirms” Ukraine’s alleged involvement.[7] Putin’s oscillation between blaming Ukraine outright one day and then avoiding the issue the following day suggests that the Kremlin has not yet established a templated line on how to discuss the attack, likely partially as a result of the shock felt by the Russian elite in its aftermath.

Other senior Russian officials have doubled down on the Kremlin’s baseless narrative accusing Ukraine of conducting the attack, however, while conceding that Russian authorities currently lack critical information about the attack, seemingly contradicting their own statements and statements made by other Kremlin officials. Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Head Alexander Bortnikov accused the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) of conducting the attack with involvement from the United States and UK in order to create panic in Russian society — a longstanding Kremlin narrative line attempting to portray the war in Ukraine as an existential war against the collective West — but then stated that Russia has not yet identified the person who ordered the attack.[8] Bortnikov also emphasized that Russian security services conducted every possible measure to prevent the attackers from crossing into Ukrainian territory, aligning with Putin’s March 23 address but contrasting with Lukashenko’s March 26 claims.[9] Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev answered a press question on March 26 about whether the Islamic State (IS) or Ukraine conducted the attack with “Ukraine, of course” then later doubled down on this narrative by claiming “many things point to Ukraine’s involvement” while appearing on Russian state television channel Rossiya-1 and suggested that Russian special services and law enforcement agencies will eventually reach this conclusion.[10]

Russian officials are proposing actionable but likely impractical solutions to the emotional outcries for retribution in response to the Crocus City Hall attack. A Just Russia Party Leader Sergei Mironov called for Russia to abolish the visa-free regime with Central Asian countries in order to regulate migration and counter terrorist attacks.[11] Russian State Duma Deputy from occupied Crimea Mikhail Sheremet and State Duma Deputy Chairperson and recent New People Party presidential candidate Vladislav Davankov also recently proposed harsher measures against migrants in response to the Crocus City Hall attack.[12] Russian ultranationalists have intensified calls for anti-migrant measures since the Crocus City Hall attack, although a prominent Kremlin-affiliated milblogger criticized Mironov’s proposal to introduce a visa regime with Central Asian countries and claimed that a visa regime would damage Russia’s relationship with Central Asian states and Russia’s “compatriots” living there.[13] Russian Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) Head Leonid Slutsky called for Russia to lift the moratorium on the death penalty in response to the Crocus City Hall attack, and United Russia State Duma Deputy Alexander Spiridonov claimed that Russia should consider lifting the moratorium for charges of terrorism.[14] Mironov claimed that Russia could lift the moratorium on the death penalty through a federal referendum, while Russian State Duma Chairperson Vyacheslav Volodin claimed that the Russian Constitutional Court could lift the mortarium without a referendum.[15] The Russian Constitutional Court announced that it would not comment on issues about the death penalty because the issue may “become a subject of consideration.”[16] Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, conversely, claimed on March 25 that the Kremlin is not discussing lifting the moratorium on the death penalty, despite continued calls by various Russian political leaders.[17] Russian officials are likely struggling to establish a cogent response to domestic calls for retribution following the Crocus City Hall attack, causing various Russian political factions to attempt to address the situation along diverging avenues. Russia is unlikely to introduce a visa regime with Central Asian countries given that Russia continues to heavily rely on Central Asian migrants to offset domestic labor shortages and to target Central Asian migrants for crypto-mobilization efforts.[18] The Russian government is also unlikely to lift the moratorium on the death penalty, which it established in 1996, the same year it officially executed the last death sentence.[19]

The Moldovan Constitutional Court reversed a ruling banning the Kremlin-affiliated Shor Party on March 26, which will likely allow pro-Russian Moldovan actors to reconsolidate around the Shor Party and reverse the impacts of the previous Moldovan ban on the party. Ilan Shor is a US-sanctioned, pro-Kremlin Moldovan politician who founded the Shor Party and whom Moldovan authorities convicted in absentia for massive fraud and money laundering.[20] The Moldovan Parliament declared the Shor Party unconstitutional on July 19, 2023, and amended the Electoral Code on July 31, 2023, to ban members of political parties deemed unconstitutional from running in elections for five years.[21] The Moldovan Constitutional Court declared these July 2023 changes to the Electoral Code unconstitutional on October 3, 2023.[22] The Moldovan Parliament responded on October 4, 2023, by further amending the Electoral Code to stipulate that people suspected of, accused of, or indicted for the crimes that the argument declaring the political party to be unconstitutional mentioned cannot participate in elections.[23] The Moldovan Constitutional Court then decided on March 26, 2024, that the Moldovan Parliament’s amendments to the Electoral Code on October 4, 2023, were also unconstitutional, thereby allowing Shor Party politicians to run in the upcoming Moldovan presidential election in late 2024 and parliamentary elections in the summer of 2025.[24] The Kremlin will likely amend its hybrid operations in Moldova to more directly exploit and promote the Shor Party before the upcoming Moldovan elections as part of the Kremlin’s wider hybrid campaign aimed at destabilizing Moldova from within, about which ISW has extensively reported.[25]

Shor-affiliated actors have consistently aligned themselves with Russian authorities. Russian Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) leader Leonid Slutsky met with Vasile Bolea and Alexandr Suhodolskii, Moldovan politicians from the Shor-offshoot Revival Party, in Moscow on March 26.[26] Slutsky claimed that he is ready for more cooperation with the Revival Party and reiterated long-standing Kremlin narratives claiming that the current Moldovan government’s policies are antithetical to the interests of the Moldovan population.[27] Slutsky also has previous connections with other Moldovan Shor-affiliated actors. Slutsky met with several Moldovan Shor Party politicians, as well as a Moldovan Socialist Party politician who has links to the Kremlin, in mid-September 2022 just before the outbreak of Shor Party-organized protests in Moldova that demanded the resignation of the current pro-Western government against the backdrop of rising energy prices.[28] Slutsky also endorsed the candidacy of the current governor of Gagauzia, Yevgenia Gutsul, who initially ran for governor in 2023 as a Shor Party candidate before Moldovan authorities banned the party.[29]

Bolea and Suhodolskii also have connections with other Kremlin officials and pro-Russian Gagauzian politicians. Suhodolskii and Victor Petrov, who ran in the 2023 Gagauzian gubernatorial election and is currently Gutsul’s deputy, invited Republic of Tatarstan Head Rustam Minnikhanov to Gagauzia to attend the “Friendship of the Peoples” forum on April 17, 2023, after Suhodolskii and Petrov reportedly visited Minnikhanov in Kazan at an unspecified time.[30] Moldovan authorities denied Minnikhanov entry into Moldova to attend the forum, however. Gutsul won the Gagauzian gubernatorial election on May 14, 2023, and Suhodolskii, Bolea, and Petrov flew to Israel on May 17, 2023, to meet with Shor.[31] Suhodolskii and Bolea then announced on May 22, 2023, that they were joining the then largely defunct Revival Party.[32] Petrov’s pro-Russian “People’s Union of Gagauzia” political movement, which Suhodolskii and Bolea have supported since the organization's inception in July 2022, then merged with the Revival Party in July 2023.[33]

Ukrainian officials stated on March 26 that Ukrainian forces successfully conducted a strike on the night of March 23 to 24 against a Ukrainian ship that Russian forces had captured in 2014. Ukrainian Navy Spokesperson Captain Third Rank Dmytro Pletenchuk stated that Ukrainian forces conducted a Neptune missile strike on the Ukrainian Kostyantyn Olshanskyi Ropucha-class landing ship that Russian forces captured during Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.[34] Pletenchuk stated that Russian forces had been disassembling the Kostyantyn Olshanskyi at the port in Sevastopol to use it for spare parts but decided to start restoring it in 2024 after concluding that the Black Sea Fleet (BSF) was running out of large landing ships. Ukrainian military officials previously stated that Ukrainian forces successfully struck the Yamal and Azov Ropucha-class landing ships, Ivan Khurs Yury Ivanov–class reconnaissance ship, a BSF communications center, and several unspecified BSF infrastructure facilities in Sevastopol on the night of March 23 to 24.[35] Satellite imagery from March 23 and 24 shows damage to the rear part of the Ivan Khurs docked in occupied Sevastopol, Crimea.[36] ISW continues to assess that Ukrainian strikes against BSF ships and infrastructure will likely continue to deter Russian forces from redeploying ships to Sevastopol and the western Black Sea and complicate the BSF’s ability to maximize its combat capabilities.[37]

Ukrainian State Security Service (SBU) Head Vasyl Malyuk stated on March 26 that Russian forces have not used the Kerch Strait Bridge to transfer weapons and other materiel after two successful Ukrainian operations on the Kerch Strait Bridge, likely referring to an explosion in October 2022 and a strike in July 2023.[38]

Separate investigations conducted by Western media outlets have found that Russian forces may be using Starlink terminals in Ukraine. CNN reported on March 26 that frontline Ukrainian troops have increasingly observed Russian forces using Starlink devices despite US sanctions prohibiting Russia’s use of Starlink.[39] CNN noted that Ukrainian troops’ increased sightings of Russian forces using Starlink coincide with claims from Russian crowdfunders that they successfully purchased Starlink technology in third-party countries. Ukrainian soldiers also told CNN that Starlink’s connection speeds decreased, while connection issues increased in the past several months. ISW previously observed claims in February that Russian forces were using Starlink in occupied Ukraine.[40] Bloomberg reported on March 26 that its own investigation determined that there are “wide-spanning” examples of unspecified actors trading and selling Starlink kits illegally on the black market.[41] An anonymous trader told Bloomberg that recent government crackdowns in Kazakhstan against illegal Starlink terminals “barely” reduced illegal Starlink usage. Bloomberg noted that Starlink‘s operator SpaceX should be able to prevent Russia from using Starlink in occupied Ukraine because SpaceX should be able to identify every Starlink transmitter. ISW cannot independently verify any of these reports.

Key Takeaways:

• Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that the Crocus City Hall attackers originally fled toward Belarus not Ukraine, directly undermining the Kremlin narrative on Ukraine’s involvement, possibly to head off questions about why the attackers headed toward Belarus in the first place.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin and other senior Kremlin officials appear to be struggling to maintain a consistent rhetorical line about the Crocus City Hall attack, indicating that the Kremlin has not fully figured out how to reconcile its information operations with the reality of its intelligence and law enforcement failure.
• Russian officials are proposing actionable but likely impractical solutions to the emotional outcries for retribution in response to the Crocus City Hall attack.
• The Moldovan Constitutional Court reversed a ruling banning the Kremlin-affiliated Shor Party on March 26, which will likely allow pro-Russian Moldovan actors to reconsolidate around the Shor Party and reverse the impacts of the previous Moldovan ban on the party.
• Ukrainian officials stated on March 26 that Ukrainian forces successfully conducted a strike on the night of March 23 to 24 against a Ukrainian ship that Russian forces had captured in 2014.
• Separate investigations conducted by Western media outlets have found that Russian forces may be using Starlink terminals in Ukraine.
• Russian forces recently made confirmed advances near Kreminna and Bakhmut on March 26.
• The Russian military has reportedly started recruiting personnel for elements of the newly reformed Leningrad Military District (LMD).

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

• Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
• Russian Air, Missile, and Drone Campaign
• Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Russian Technological Adaptations
• Activities in Russian-occupied areas
• Ukrainian Defense Industrial Base Efforts
• Russian Information Operations and Narratives
• Significant Activity in Belarus

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Ukrainian and Russian forces both recently made marginal advances along the Kupyansk-Kreminna line amid continued fighting on March 26. Geolocated footage published on March 24 shows that Ukrainian forces recently regained limited positions in northern Synkivka (northeast of Kupyansk).[42] Additional geolocated footage published on March 25 shows that Russian forces advanced near a windbreak just east of Terny (west of Kreminna).[43] Several milbloggers claimed that Russian forces are advancing towards Terny and that Ukrainian troops are counterattacking in the area.[44] Ukrainian and Russian sources reported continued positional fighting northeast of Kupyansk near Synkivka; southeast of Kupyansk near Ivanivka; west of Kreminna near Terny and Yampolivka; and south of Kreminna near Bilohorivka.[45] Elements of the Russian “GORB” detachment of the 2nd Luhansk People’s Republic Army Corps (LNR AC) are reportedly operating near Bilohorivka.[46]

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

Russian forces recently made a confirmed marginal advance near Bakhmut amid continued positional engagements in the area on March 26. Geolocated footage published on March 24 indicates that Russian forces marginally advanced northeast of Kanal (an eastern suburb of Chasiv Yar).[47] Ukrainian and Russian sources stated that positional engagements continued northwest of Bakhmut near Bohdanivka; west of Bakhmut near Ivanivske; southwest of Bakhmut near Klishchiivka; and south of Bakhmut near Niu York.[48] A Russian milblogger claimed that elements of the Russian 11th Separate Guards Air Assault (VDV) Brigade completely seized Ivanivske, but ISW has not observed visual confirmation of this claim.[49] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced near Ivanivske and Klishchiivka, but ISW has not observed visual confirmation of this claim.[50] Elements of the Russian 98th VDV Division are reportedly operating near Bakhmut.[51]

Positional engagements continued near Avdiivka on March 26, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline in this area. Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces entered Semenivka (northwest of Avdiivka) from the south and southeast and that fighting is ongoing in the settlement.[52] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces are trying to take control of the Ukrainian ground line of communication (GLOC) in Semenivka.[53] Ukrainian and Russian sources stated that positional engagements continued northwest of Avdiivka near Berdychi and Semenivka; west of Avdiivka near Orlivka and Tonenke; and southwest of Avdiivka near Pervomaiske, Vodyane, and Nevelske.[54] Elements of the Russian 12th Engineering Brigade (Central Military District [CMD]) are reportedly demining Avdiivka.[55]

Positional engagements continued west and southwest of Donetsk City on March 26, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline in this area. Ukrainian and Russian sources stated that positional engagements continued west of Donetsk City near Heorhiivka and southwest of Donetsk City near Novomykhailivka and Pobieda.[56] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced near Heorhiivka, Krasnohorivka (west of Donetsk City), and Novomykhailivka, and one milblogger claimed that Russian forces control 75 percent of Novomykhailivka.[57] ISW has not observed visual confirmation of these claims, however, and assesses that Russian forces control less than 50 percent of Novomykhailivka.

Positional fighting continued in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area near Staromayorske (south of Velyka Novosilka) on March 26.[58] Elements of the Russian 36th Combined Arms Army (CAA, Eastern Military District [EMD]) continue to operate near Urozhaine (south of Velyka Novosilka) and elements of the 14th Spetsnaz Brigade and 11th Air Force and Air Defense Army (Russian Aerospace Forces [VKS] and Eastern Military District [EMD]) are operating near Vuhledar.[59]

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

Positional fighting continued in western Zaporizhia Oblast on March 26, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline in the area. Positional fighting continued near Robotyne and Verbove (east of Robotyne) and southeast of Orikhiv near Mala Tokmachka and southwest of Bilohirya.[60] Elements of the Russian 70th Motorized Rifle Regiment (42nd Motorized Rifle Division, 58th Combined Arms Army [CAA], Southern Military District [SMD]) reportedly continue fighting near Robotyne.[61]

Positional fighting continued in the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast near Krynky on March 26.[62] Footage published on March 25 reportedly shows a Ukrainian HIMARS strike with a ground launched small diameter bomb (GLSDB) against a Russian drone operation center near Chornyanka, Kherson Oblast (south of Nova Kakhovka).[63]

Russian Air, Missile, and Drone Campaign (Russian Objective: Target Ukrainian military and civilian infrastructure in the rear and on the frontline)

Russian forces conducted drone and missile strikes against Ukraine on the night of March 25 to 26 and during the day on March 26. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russian forces launched 12 Shahed-136/131 drones from occupied Cape Chauda, Crimea, and Kursk Oblast and two S-300s in the Donetsk direction on the night of March 25 to 26.[64] The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Ukrainian forces shot down all 12 Shaheds over Mykolaiv and Kharkiv oblasts.[65] The Ukrainian Prosecutor General reported that Russian forces struck a residential building in Shevchenkiv Raion, Kharkiv City with a Kh-35U cruise missile on March 26.[66] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported that Russian forces struck Odesa City with two likely ballistic missiles on the evening of March 25.[67]

Ukrainian Air Force Spokesperson Major Ilya Yevlash stated on March 26 that Russian forces continue to focus strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure objects and are changing tactics to find gaps in the Ukrainian air defense umbrella.[68] Yevlash stated that Ukraine needs long-range air defense systems as well as Avenger, Gepard, and Skynex self-propelled anti-aircraft missile systems that can intercept both missiles and Shaheds.[69]

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

The Russian military has reportedly started recruiting personnel for elements of the newly recreated Leningrad Military District (LMD). The UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported on March 26 that the LMD’s 44th Army Corps began recruitment in Luga, Leningrad Oblast.[70] The UK MoD stated that Russia has previously committed newly established units to operations in Ukraine and that the Russian need to continue operations in Ukraine has impeded its wider force generation efforts, consistent with ISW‘s long-standing assessment of ongoing Russian military reforms.[71] ISW continues to assess that Russia is forming reserves capable of sustaining ongoing operations in Ukraine, but that such reserves are unlikely to be able to function as cohesive large-scale penetration or exploitation formations in 2024.[72]

Russian Technological Adaptations (Russian objective: Introduce technological innovations to optimize systems for use in Ukraine)

Nothing significant to report.

Ukrainian Defense Industrial Efforts (Ukrainian objective: Develop its defense industrial base to become more self-sufficient in cooperation with US, European, and international partners)

ISW is not publishing coverage of Ukrainian defense industrial efforts today.

Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian citizens into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Russian law enforcement organs continue to solidify coercive control over occupied areas of Ukraine. Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Head Leonid Pasechnik met with Rosgvardia Deputy Director Lieutenant General Alexei Vorobyov on March 25 to discuss Rosgvardia operations in occupied Luhansk Oblast.[73] Ukrainian Berdyansk City Head Viktoriya Halytsyna reported on March 26 that Rosgvardia has increased patrols in occupied Berdyansk, Zaporizhia Oblast.[74] Ukrainian intelligence previously confirmed that Russian authorities are increasing the Rosgvardia contingent in occupied Ukraine to strengthen occupation control and reported that there were over 35,000 Rosgvardia personnel operating in occupied Ukraine as of January 2024.[75] The Ukrainian Resistance Center also reported that Russian occupation authorities have increased law enforcement presence and crackdowns in occupied Ukraine following the March 22 Crocus City Hall attack in Moscow and noted that additional Federal Security Service (FSB) units deployed to occupied Mariupol for “preventative measures.”[76] Russian occupation officials will very likely weaponize discussions of extremism following the Crocus City Hall attacks to further intensify law enforcement measures in occupied Ukraine under the pretext of counterterrorism operations. Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin stated on March 26 that Russian occupation authorities have unlawfully detained over 10,000 Ukrainians in occupied areas and that over 5,600 Ukrainians have been identified as victims of Russian torture.[77] Reports of widespread law enforcement crackdowns and illegal detentions are consistent with ISW’s reporting on the environment in occupied Ukraine, as well as a recent UN report detailing a “climate of fear” for those living under Russian occupation.[78]

Ukrainian partisans continue to pressure Russian military assets in occupied Ukraine. Ukraine’s Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported that a “special action” by GUR operatives and local partisans on March 22 destroyed a Russian concentration point in occupied Melitopol, killing 20 Russian personnel and destroying several vehicles and pieces of military equipment.[79] Zaporizhia Oblast occupation deputy Vladimir Rogov later claimed on March 26 that Russian occupation authorities detained two Ukrainian citizens for carrying out a series of partisan attacks against Russian military personnel and assets between August and December 2023.[80]

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

See topline text.

Significant activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks and Wagner Group activity in Belarus)

See topline text.

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

8. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, March 26, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-march-26-2024

Key Takeaways:

• Iran: Senior Hamas and PIJ officials have traveled to Iran likely to coordinate their ongoing efforts against Israel in the Gaza Strip and across the Middle East.
• Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei emphasized the importance of using information operations, especially in the context of the Israel-Hamas war.
• Northern Gaza Strip: Palestinian militias continued to defend against Israeli clearing operations around Beit Hanoun, northeastern Gaza Strip.
• Palestinian militias have launched most of their indirect fire attacks into Israel from the northern and central Gaza Strip since January 2024.
• Southern Gaza Strip: Israeli forces continued clearing operations in western and northern Khan Younis.
• West Bank: Israeli forces have engaged Palestinian fighters in at least three locations in the West Bank.
• Northern Israel and Golan Heights: Lebanese Hezbollah fired unspecified weapons targeting the IDF Mount Meron air traffic control base in northern Israel. The IDF Air Force conducted airstrikes targeting Hezbollah military infrastructure in Zboud, Bekaa Valley.
• Iraq: Iraqi Foreign Affairs Minister Fuad Hussein said that the United States and Iraq will remain partners in the fight against ISIS,
• Syria: Israel was likely responsible for a series of airstrikes targeting Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and IRGC-affiliated positions in eastern Syria.
• Yemen: The Houthis claimed that they conducted five drone and missile attacks targeting civilian and military vessels in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea over the previous 72 hours.

IRAN UPDATE, MARCH 26, 2024

Mar 26, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Iran Update, March 26, 2024

Ashka Jhaveri, Alexandra Braverman, Amin Soltani, Johanna Moore, Kathryn Tyson, and Nicholas Carl

Information Cutoff: 2:00 pm ET 

The Iran Update provides insights into Iranian and Iranian-sponsored activities abroad that undermine regional stability and threaten US forces and interests. It also covers events and trends that affect the stability and decision-making of the Iranian regime. The Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) provides these updates regularly based on regional events. For more on developments in Iran and the region, see our interactive map of Iran and the Middle East.

Note: CTP and ISW have refocused the update to cover the Israel-Hamas war. The new sections address developments in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, as well as noteworthy activity from Iran’s Axis of Resistance. We do not report in detail on war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We utterly condemn violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

Click here to see CTP and ISW’s interactive map of Israeli ground operations. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report. Click here to subscribe to the Iran Update.

Senior Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) officials have traveled to Iran likely to coordinate their ongoing efforts against Israel in the Gaza Strip and across the Middle East. Hamas Political Bureau Chairman Ismail Haniyeh and PIJ Secretary General Ziyad al Nakhalah both arrived in Tehran on March 26.[1] Haniyeh met with Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian to discuss the war. Nakhalah spoke at a religious rally at Azadi Stadium in Tehran and will likely meet with senior Iranian officials thereafter.[2] The simultaneous visits of both Haniyeh and Nakhalah are noteworthy, as Iranian leaders have repeatedly emphasized the need for greater cohesion among Palestinian militias fighting Israel. Their visits are also noteworthy given that Iran and its so-called “Axis of Resistance” will celebrate Quds Day—an annual anti-Israel holiday—on April 5 and will almost certainly use the occasion to broadcast the strength and unity of the Axis of Resistance.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei emphasized the importance of using information operations, especially in the context of the Israel-Hamas war, on March 26. Khamenei asserted that influencing the information space and using it against adversaries can be just as effective as military strength during a meeting with Iranian poets in Tehran.[3] Khamenei further stated that all “war is a media war” and that whichever actor has greater media influence will achieve their goals. Khamenei especially praised Palestinian militias’ media efforts in shaping public attitudes and narratives in the Muslim world during his meeting with Haniyeh.[4] Khamenei boasted that Palestinian militias’ media outlets have outperformed the Israeli media throughout the Israel-Hamas war. This emphasis on achieving informational effects to win wars is not entirely new; Khamenei has long stressed the need for Iran to fight a “soft war” against its adversaries. This soft war concept involves the use of information operations and psychological warfare to influence public perceptions.[5] Khamenei’s recent statements are, nevertheless, significant, as they are consistent CTP-ISW's assessment that the Iranian regime is trying to exploit the Israel-Hamas war to try to isolate Israel in the Middle East.

Key Takeaways:

• Iran: Senior Hamas and PIJ officials have traveled to Iran likely to coordinate their ongoing efforts against Israel in the Gaza Strip and across the Middle East.
• Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei emphasized the importance of using information operations, especially in the context of the Israel-Hamas war.
• Northern Gaza Strip: Palestinian militias continued to defend against Israeli clearing operations around Beit Hanoun, northeastern Gaza Strip.
• Palestinian militias have launched most of their indirect fire attacks into Israel from the northern and central Gaza Strip since January 2024.
• Southern Gaza Strip: Israeli forces continued clearing operations in western and northern Khan Younis.
• West Bank: Israeli forces have engaged Palestinian fighters in at least three locations in the West Bank.
• Northern Israel and Golan Heights: Lebanese Hezbollah fired unspecified weapons targeting the IDF Mount Meron air traffic control base in northern Israel. The IDF Air Force conducted airstrikes targeting Hezbollah military infrastructure in Zboud, Bekaa Valley.
• Iraq: Iraqi Foreign Affairs Minister Fuad Hussein said that the United States and Iraq will remain partners in the fight against ISIS,
• Syria: Israel was likely responsible for a series of airstrikes targeting Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and IRGC-affiliated positions in eastern Syria.
• Yemen: The Houthis claimed that they conducted five drone and missile attacks targeting civilian and military vessels in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea over the previous 72 hours.

Gaza Strip

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Erode the will of the Israeli political establishment and public to launch and sustain a major ground operation into the Gaza Strip
• Degrade IDF material and morale around the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian militias continued to defend against Israeli clearing operations around Beit Hanoun, northeastern Gaza Strip, on March 26. CTP-ISW previously assessed on March 25 that a small number of Palestinian fighters have likely infiltrated Beit Hanoun.[6] Hamas then published on March 26 footage of its fighters firing an anti-tank rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) targeting Israeli armor in Beit Hanoun.[7] The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, which is the self-proclaimed military wing of Fatah and aligned with Hamas in the war, claimed that its fighters around Beit Hanoun intercepted an Israeli reconnaissance drone and mortared Israeli forces east of the area.[8] The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades may have targeted IDF units involved in establishing the buffer zone between Israel and the Gaza Strip. The IDF has moved its forces to a buffer zone along the Israeli border as part of its third phase of military operations in the Gaza Strip.[9]

Hamas mortared Israeli forces advancing on the outskirts of Tuffah neighborhood, eastern Gaza City.[10] Tuffah is south of Beit Hanoun. 

Israeli forces continued clearing operations in and around al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on March 26. Two IDF brigades as well as Israeli special operations forces engaged several Palestinian fighters in the hospital area.[11] Palestinian militias similarly attacked Israeli forces in the vicinity of al Shifa Hospital.[12] The IDF published footage of its forces questioning a PIJ fighter, who said he had been staying at al Shifa Hospital for three months.[13] Israeli forces initially expanded clearing operations to al Shifa Hospital in November 2023, targeting a sophisticated Hamas tunnel network underneath the hospital.[14] The IDF withdrew from the hospital area on November 24 but resumed clearing operations there on March 18.[15]

A Palestinian journalist reported that the IDF is moving northwestward from al Shifa Hospital toward al Shati refugee camp.[16] Hamas published footage on March 25 of its fighters firing RPGs targeting Israeli forces northwest of al Shifa Hospital.[17] The IDF concluded a two-week re-clearing of al Shati camp on February 15.[18]

Hamas claimed two attacks targeting Israeli forces in Tal al Hawa neighborhood, southwestern Gaza City, on March 26.[19] A Palestinian journalist reported that Israeli forces were operating in Zahra neighborhood, which is southwest of Tal al Hawa.[20]

Israeli forces continued clearing operations in western and northern Khan Younis on March 26.[21] The IDF have been conducting a second round of clearing operations in al Amal neighborhood, western Khan Younis, since March 24.[22] Israeli forces are also operating in Qarara, northern Khan Younis.[23] Israeli forces located IEDs, grenades, unspecified vests, and ammunition during the operations. Several Palestinian militias engaged Israeli forces in western and northern Khan Younis on March 26.[24]

An unspecified informed source told Reuters on March 26 that ceasefire negotiations have continued between Israel and Hamas and that senior Mossad officials remain in Qatar for related discussions.[25] The source noted that a small team of Israeli personnel are returning to Israel for consultations. The report follows speculation that Israel withdrew its delegation from Qatar.[26]

Palestinian militias have launched most of their indirect fire attacks into Israel from the northern and central Gaza Strip since January 2024. An Israeli Army Radio correspondent reported on March 26 a summary of indirect fire attacks from the Gaza Strip.[27] The correspondent noted a general decrease in the number of attacks since January, which is consistent with CTP-ISW's tracking of indirect fire. Palestinian militias launched nearly half of all attacks from the northern Gaza Strip in January and nearly half of all attacks from the central Gaza Strip in March 2024.[28] The correspondent hypothesized why there have not been attacks from the southern Gaza Strip, highlighting the intense fighting in Khan Younis and the continued rocket capabilities of Hamas in the south, where Israeli forces have not concentrated their operations.[29] Palestinian militias continued ability to launch attacks from the northern Gaza Strip is consistent with the infiltration of fighters into the area and Hamas’ intentions to reassert itself following Israeli withdrawals. Israeli forces have not expanded clearing operations to the entirety of the central Gaza Strip, where Hamas maintains four local battalions.[30]

Palestinian fighters have conducted at least two indirect fire attacks from the Gaza Strip into Israel since CTP-ISW's last data cutoff on March 25.[31] PIJ launched rockets targeting Ashkelon. The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), which is a leftist Palestinian militia aligned with Hamas in the war, mortared an Israeli military site in southern Israel.

The IDF said that Palestinian fighters launched rockets targeting Ashdod from a civilian area of Deir al Balah on March 25.[32] The IDF Air Force conducted airstrikes targeting the launch areas in Deir al Balah in response to the attack. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.[33]

Recorded reports of attacks; CTP-ISW cannot independently verify impact.

West Bank

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Draw IDF assets and resources toward the West Bank and fix them there

Israeli forces have engaged Palestinian fighters in at least three locations in the West Bank since CTP-ISW's last data cutoff on March 25.[34] Israeli forces detained two wanted individuals in Jenin.[35] PIJ and the al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades claimed that they conducted separate IED and small arms attacks targeting Israeli forces operating in Jenin.[36] Israeli forces conducted a ”brigade operation” and located and destroyed unspecified explosives in Balata refugee camp in Nablus.[37] The IDF reported that an Israeli soldier shot a Palestinian fighter, who attempted to take the soldier’s weapon in Balata.[38] The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and Mujahideen Brigades conducted multiple IED and small arms attacks targeting Israeli forces operating in Balata.[39]

The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades in Hebron reported on March 26 that its fighters fired small arms targeting an Israeli settlement north of Hebron.[40] The militia reported that its forces were able to leave the Karmei Tzur settlement following the attack. The IDF reported that the Palestinian militia fighters shot at the settlement from Beit Ummar. Israeli forces conducted an operation in Beit Ummar after the attack and found small arms and ammunition.[41]

PIJ’s Jenin battalion reported on March 25 that its fighters fired small arms targeting Meirav, which is an Israeli town near the border of the West Bank.[42] Israeli media reported on March 24 that unidentified Palestinian fighters shot at Meirav from the adjacent Palestinian village of Jalbun.[43]

This map is not an exhaustive depiction of clashes and demonstrations in the West Bank.

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Draw IDF assets and resources toward northern Israel and fix them there
• Set conditions for successive campaigns into northern Israel

Lebanese Hezbollah has conducted at least 12 attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel since CTP-ISW's last data cutoff on March 25.[44] Hezbollah fired unspecified weapons targeting the IDF Mount Meron air traffic control base, which has radar, surveillance, communication, and jamming facilities.[45] The IDF reported that the attack caused no damage to the base or injuries to Israeli personnel stationed there.[46] Hezbollah separately fired 50 rockets targeting an Israeli barracks in Yarden.[47] The IDF said that it intercepted several of the rockets and that the remaining rockets landed in open areas.[48] Hezbollah also fired unspecified weapons targeting Avivim, causing a fire in the area.[49]

The IDF Air Force conducted airstrikes targeting Hezbollah military infrastructure in Zboud, Bekaa Valley, on March 26 following the Hezbollah attack targeting Mount Meron.[50] This strike represents the northernmost Israeli attack into Lebanon since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war.[51] The Bekaa Valley contains significant Hezbollah military infrastructure, including training centers, weapons storage sites, and ballistic missile production facilities.[52]

Recorded reports of attacks; CTP-ISW cannot independently verify impact.

Iran and Axis of Resistance

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Demonstrate the capability and willingness of Iran and the Axis of Resistance to escalate against the United States and Israel on multiple fronts
• Set conditions to fight a regional war on multiple fronts

Iraqi Foreign Affairs Minister Fuad Hussein said on March 26 that the United States and Iraq will remain partners in the fight against ISIS.[53] Hussein made the remark during a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Hussein and Blinken said that the United States and Iraq are preparing for an upcoming Higher Coordinating Committee meeting. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced on January 25 that the US-Iraq Higher Military Commission (HMC), which is comprised of US and Iraqi federal government officials, will soon hold “working group meetings” to evaluate the status of the US-led Global Coalition’s mission to defeat ISIS. The HMC is part of the United States and Iraq’s transition to a bilateral security partnership as described under the 2021 US-Iraqi Joint Security Cooperation Dialogue.[54] Hussein’s meeting with Blinken precedes Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al Sudani’s meeting with US President Joe Biden on April 15.[55]

Israel was likely responsible for a series of airstrikes on March 25 targeting Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and IRGC-affiliated positions in eastern Syria.[56] Israeli and Syrian media claimed the strikes resulted in around 30 casualties, including IRGC Quds Force, Lebanese Hezbollah, and unspecified Iranian-backed militia commanders in eastern Syria.[57] There are several unverified Syrian reports claiming that the Israeli attacks injured or killed Hajj Askar, who is the IRGC commander in eastern Syria.[58] The IRGC announced that Israeli strikes killed an IRGC Quds Force and Basij member in eastern Syria.[59]

Israeli media reported that Israel targeted IRGC Quds Force special operation units in eastern Syria in response to recent Iranian attempts to smuggle advanced weapons into the West Bank.[60] The Israeli media cited an unspecified Israeli defense official.[61] Shin Bet announced on March 25 that the IDF seized a “significant amount of advanced arms from Iran” that the IRGC Quds Force had helped smuggle into the West Bank to support Palestinian militia attacks targeting Israel.[62] The Israeli strike in Syria follows several other Israeli strikes on facilities affiliated with Iran and its so-called “Axis of Resistance” in Syria in recent weeks.[63] The IDF has previously acknowledged that it conducted a series of airstrikes in Syria to interdict Iranian weapons shipments to Hezbollah through Syria after the Israel-Hamas war began.[64]

The Houthis claimed on March 26 that they conducted five drone and missile attacks targeting civilian and military vessels in the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea over the previous 72 hours.[65] The Houthis said that they targeted separate commercial vessels flagged by Malta, Panama, Singapore, and the United States. Maersk denied the attack on the US-flagged vessel.[66] The Houthis also claimed that they attacked two unspecified US surface combatants in the Red Sea.[67]

The Houthis claimed that they conducted a missile attack targeting Eilat in southern Israel.[68]

The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated six entities, one individual, and two commercial tankers for facilitating commodity shipments and financial transactions for the IRGC Quds Force, the Houthis, and [69] This is the sixth round of sanctions targeting the Iran-based Said al Jamal network since December 2023. This is a network of front companies and vessels headed by Iran-based, IRGC-backed Houthi financier Said al Jamal.[70] The US Treasury Department previously sanctioned Said al Jamal in June 2021.[71] The sanctions target entities and an individual across five countries. OFAC sanctioned the following commercial vessels:

• The registered owner of the Panama-flagged Dawn II
• The Palau-flagged Abyss

OFAC sanctioned the following entities:

• Liberia-based Hassaleh International Company
• India-based KNH Shipping Private Limited
• India-based Melody Shipmanagement Pvt Ltd
• Kuwait-based Orchidia Regional for General Trading and Contracting Company
• Kuwait-based Mass Com Group General Trading and Contracting Company WLL
• Vietnam-based Quoc Viet Marine Transport JSC

OFAC sanctioned the following individual:

• Lebanon-based Syrian money exchanger Tawfiq Muhammad Said al Law

9. The Fight for AI Talent: Pay Million-Dollar Packages and Buy Whole Teams

Are there lessons or models here for use by DOD and the IC?

The Fight for AI Talent: Pay Million-Dollar Packages and Buy Whole Teams

Search for AI expertise heats up amid a shortage of candidates and as layoffs hit other areas of tech

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/the-fight-for-ai-talent-pay-million-dollar-packages-and-buy-whole-teams-c370de2b?mod=hp_lead_pos1

By Katherine Bindley

Follow

March 27, 2024 5:30 am ET

The artificial-intelligence boom is sending Silicon Valley’s talent wars to new extremes.

Tech companies are serving up million-dollar-a-year compensation packages, accelerated stock-vesting schedules and offers to poach entire engineering teams to draw people with expertise and experience in the kind of generative AI that is powering ChatGPT and other humanlike bots. They are competing against each other and against startups vying to be the next big thing to unseat the giants.

The offers stand out even by the industry’s relatively lavish past standards of outsize pay and perks. And the current AI talent shortage stands out for another reason: It is happening as layoffs are continuing in other areas of tech and as companies have been reallocating resources to invest more in covering the enormous cost of developing AI technology.

“There is a secular shift in what talents we’re going after,” says Naveen Rao, head of Generative AI at Databricks. “We have a glut of people on one side and a shortage on the other.”

The head of Generative AI at Databricks said there might be only a couple of hundred people who are qualified to train large language models from scratch or who can solve vexing problems in AI. PHOTO: GABBY JONES/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Databricks, a data storage and management startup, doesn’t have a problem finding software engineers. But when it comes to candidates who have trained large language models, or LLMs, from scratch or can help solve vexing problems in AI, such as hallucinations, Rao says there might be only a couple of hundred people out there who are qualified. 

Some of these hard-to-find, tier-one candidates can easily get total compensation packages of $1 million a year or more.

Salespeople in AI are also in demand and hard to find. Selling at the beginning of a technology transition when things are changing rapidly requires a different skill set and depth of knowledge. Candidates with those skills are making around double what an enterprise software salesperson would. But that isn’t the norm for most people working in AI, Rao says. 

For managerial roles in AI and machine learning, base-pay increases ranged from 5% to 11% from April 2022 to April 2023, according to a WTW survey of more than 1,500 employers. The base-pay increases of nonmanagerial roles ranged from 13% to 19% during the same period. 

Levels.fyi co-founder Zuhayeer Musa says the median salary for six candidates who had consulted the career-services platform about job offers from OpenAI was $925,000 including bonus and equity. The median compensation of 344 machine learning and AI engineers at 

Meta who revealed their pay to Levels.fyi was nearly $400,000 a year including bonus and equity, he added. Scott Chetham, CEO of Faro Health, which uses AI to help pharmaceutical companies design more efficient drug trials, aims to keep salaries in the top 25% of what companies in the space pay. Through 2023, that was hard to do because of extremely high outliers, but he is now seeing signs of softening this year. “It’s early, but it’s not as bad as it was,” Chetham said. 

The median compensation of 344 machine learning and AI engineers at Meta who reported their pay to Levels.fyi was nearly $400,000 a year. PHOTO: JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES

Chetham’s company was courting a candidate recently from one of the largest consulting firms and made her an offer. The firm countered by doubling the employee’s salary. The candidate told him she was annoyed that her company only offered to double her salary when she was presented with a competing job because they could have been paying her more all along.

To keep his own talent, Chetham has added more equity incentives for his top employees. Their first set of shares in the company vest over four years, but at the two-year mark they get another grant of shares that starts vesting at the five-year mark.

“We have to keep refreshing equity to keep people incentivized,” he says. 

While base compensation tends to be less at startups than at major tech companies, some employees with entrepreneurial instincts are betting they can make a bigger mark by striking out on their own. Arthur Mensch, a former Google employee, left the company to launch the startup Mistral AI and at less than a year old, it is already valued at a little over $2 billion. 

Arthur Mensch launched his artificial-intelligence startup, Mistral AI, after a stint at Google’s DeepMind. PHOTO: EDOUARD JACQUINET FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

One AI researcher with Google says he has been approached by recruiters regularly over the past five years but that there has been a noticeable uptick recently. 

The researcher says he hasn’t been tempted by opportunities with startups because so few have the funding needed to train LLMs, the machine-learning algorithms trained on mountains of text that power AI programs. Google has the resources he needs and, on top of that, he cares about the work itself being interesting and furthering AI for good, the researcher says. And unlike many of his co-workers, he says, he recently received extra equity as a bonus.

Google has the funding that researchers need to train LLMs, something few startups have. PHOTO: ANDREJ SOKOLOW/DPA/ZUMA/PRESS

Justin Kinsey, president of a semiconductor-recruiting firm, says candidates can be won over by various factors, from compensation to being a true believer in a startup’s mission to being promised autonomy over their work. 

He said he recently recruited an engineering manager for an AI hardware startup from 

Microsoft. The candidate forfeited more than $1 million in bonuses and Microsoft stock, and took a $100,000 cut in base pay to join the startup, Kinsey said, because the candidate had enormous confidence in the CEO. In five to seven years, the recruit anticipates he will get $40 million from the stock alone, says Kinsey. With another candidate, what sealed the deal was a verbal promise that the person could start an entirely new product line once he delivered on making the company’s first chip.

The race to build chips—the hardware required to train large language models—is so intense that Kinsey has had four clients in the past year ask him to poach entire engineering teams from competitors to shave off the time it takes a new team to collaborate well together. 

“We’ve been asked to help really with team extraction,” he says. “They could plug and play, and it eliminates a steep learning curve.” 

Tech workers who don’t have experience in AI are looking to add it to their résumés. When the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania recently held a four-day executive education program in San Francisco called Generative AI and Business Transformation for $12,000, the 50 available spots filled up very quickly, says Caroline Pennartz, a spokeswoman with Wharton. 

Alexis Roucourt, who previously worked at Meta and is currently consulting, says many of his tech worker friends are noticing the growing number of jobs requiring AI knowledge. It has been causing concern and a race to get up to speed. Several workers he knows are upskilling to stay up on trends in AI and build out their résumés. 

“Me included,” he says. “I’m taking a course on AI.” 

Write to Katherine Bindley at katie.bindley@wsj.com

10. In a Secret Game of Prisoner Swaps, Putin Has Held Most of the Cards

Although seemingly counterintuitive, what may allow Putin to hold most of the cards is that he is actually willing to sacrifice Russians who are held hostage. He does not really care if he brings home Russians or not (even as we assume he wants to bring them home). He is more interested in creating dilemmas for the US and creative political friction within the US.

And paradoxically what puts us in a weak position is what is an American strength (and an American value), we will do anything we can to bring home wrongly detained Americans. This puts Putin in a more advantageous position to extort us. Even as he gets Russians returned he is not really concerned with their welfare but how their return can be exploited to create political friction in the US and international community. Look at the controversy over the return of Victor Bout.

In a Secret Game of Prisoner Swaps, Putin Has Held Most of the Cards

Over six years, the Russian leader stockpiled American detainees, enhancing his bargaining position and thwarting backchannel efforts by Trump and Biden to bring citizens home

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/russia-u-s-prisoner-swaps-gershkovich-whelan-be4576f8?mod=hp_lead_pos7

By Aruna ViswanathaFollow, Bojan PancevskiFollow, Drew HinshawFollow and Joe ParkinsonFollow

March 27, 2024 12:01 am ET

There were no aides and no note-takers in the Oval Office—just President Biden and his German guest.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz came on such short notice that the only plane he could book, a small 

Airbus 321, had to refuel in Iceland. Russia’s war in Ukraine and the fighting in Gaza dominated the 90-minute meeting.There was one last secret item on the agenda: Were Germany and America willing to conduct one of the most complex prisoner trades with the Kremlin since the Cold War?

Washington wanted Vladimir Putin to send home two Americans it deemed unlawfully jailed in Russia, former Marine Paul Whelan and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who will mark a year in captivity on Friday. Putin wanted Berlin to release Vadim Krasikov, a Russian hit man serving a life sentence in Germany for murder.

It would be a tough thing for the U.S. ally to deliver, but perhaps it could be sold to the German public if Russia agreed to free its most prominent dissident,  Alexei Navalny, who was imprisoned in an Arctic gulag. 

Both administrations agreed to explore the idea further. 

The White House never had a chance to make a formal proposal to Moscow. Word of the discussions reached the Kremlin via a private intermediary, according to people familiar with the matter. On Feb. 16, one week after the Oval Office meeting, Navalny died suddenly of unknown causes.

“Such is life,” the Russian president told reporters the night after his re-election.

It was the most shocking of a series of setbacks in secret prisoner talks between Washington and Moscow that have now bedeviled two U.S. presidencies. 

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz met with President Biden in the Oval Office in February. PHOTO: ANDREW HARNIK/ASSOCIATED PRESS

America once had only one prisoner it considered wrongfully jailed in Russia, the 54-year-old Whelan. But through nearly six years of intense and combative negotiations, Putin has run up the score, stockpiling his prisons with Americans to swap for the very few Russians abroad he cares to bring back. 

Both Presidents Biden and Trump found themselves facing the crude asymmetry between the U.S. and Russia, whose leader of a quarter-century can order foreigners plucked from their hotel rooms and sentenced to decades on spurious charges.

Putin, whom Biden called “a butcher,” hasn’t been a normal negotiating partner. After news of Navalny’s sudden death interrupted an annual lunch among chiefs of the leading Western security agencies, several attendees immediately wondered if the Russian ruler had ordered a hit. Weeks later, the U.S. hasn’t offered a public assessment of how he died, while Russia has cited only “natural causes.”

At the same time, America has been an easy mark, polarized by its culture wars and susceptible to the power of celebrity-driven campaigns that leveled a degree of pressure on the White House never felt by the Kremlin.

The Biden administration came into office determined to craft a consistent approach to prisoner talks—only to be knocked off course by viral outrage when Russia jailed Olympic basketball champion Brittney Griner. As her representatives lobbied the president to free her, if necessary by trading notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, the Justice Department was concerned such a deal would make it harder to free Whelan and encourage Putin to grab more Americans.

The unreported story of this escalating hostage crisis takes place in clandestine meetings in hotels in neutral capitals booked under false names. The Journal spoke to dozens of current or former U.S., European, Middle Eastern and Russian officials, including individuals directly involved in negotiations. It also reviewed court records and interviewed former prisoners, their families and the people who worked as their backchannel representatives.

The drama features walk-on roles by Hillary Clinton, media personality Tucker Carlson and former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who became involved in the negotiations only to die before Whelan, now closing in on his 2,000th day in prison, could come home.

As of today, the U.S. doesn’t have any Russians in its prison system of the category the Kremlin wants in return for the Americans it has jailed. Washington has been reduced to hoping foreign governments might be willing to trade Russians they hold on espionage or murder charges.

“Putin will take more and more Americans,” said Fiona Hill, who sat across the table from Russia’s president as the top Russia adviser for President Trump. “He has figured out he can exploit our domestic preoccupations and anxieties.” 

‘I’m a Marine, I’m tough’

The first time the name “Paul Whelan” landed in the American Embassy in Moscow, nobody knew who he was—just that he had been grabbed in a raid on his hotel room during the Christmas holidays of 2018.

Paul Whelan, center, a former U.S. Marine accused of espionage, attended a court hearing at the Lefortovo Court in Moscow on Oct. 24, 2019. PHOTO: DIMITAR DILKOFF/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

U.S. national security adviser John Bolton, left, and U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman attended a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by the Kremlin wall in Moscow in 2018. PHOTO: SERGEI KARPUKHIN/REUTERS

In the compound’s safe room, combed daily for surveillance equipment, Ambassador Jon 

Huntsman was asking the CIA station chief the same question he’d asked other diplomatic staff: Who was this Michigan bachelor, repeatedly traveling to Moscow as a tourist on an ordinary visa?The station chief was as befuddled as the ambassador, and replied that Whelan wasn’t working for the CIA. The two contacted the White House, where officials determined he’d been set up.

Held in Moscow’s infamous Lefortovo Prison, Whelan told his lawyer he’d been handed a thumbdrive by a friend, then almost immediately arrested by agents of Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB. One of them had passed on a reassuring message: You’ll be traded.

Days later, Huntsman arrived to meet him. Whelan was being kept in a complex of roughly 9-by-12-foot cells where lights were turned brighter through the night. Inmates’ sole windows were a slice of translucent glass, so high above eye level that when morning broke, they could only see the gray Moscow sky.

“I’m a Marine, I’m tough,” Whelan told the ambassador. “I can get through this.”

Days later, Huntsman bypassed Russia’s Foreign Ministry to talk directly to Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s chief foreign-policy adviser. With a direct line to Putin, Ushakov could get things done.

Their meeting, in an office next to the Kremlin, was to the point. A Russian activist named Maria Butina had pleaded guilty two weeks before Whelan’s arrest to being part of a conspiracy to influence U.S. politics by becoming involved with conservative groups including the National Rifle Association at the direction of a top official from Russia’s central bank. Russia would be willing to trade her for Whelan. Or it could trade him for a pilot, Konstantin Yaroshenko, sentenced to 20 years for drug smuggling.

“Put a deal on the table and let’s talk,” said Ushakov, who would interrupt meetings to take a call from the president he called “the boss.” 

There was another prisoner the Kremlin wanted more: Viktor Bout, the Russian arms trafficker loosely fictionalized by Nicolas Cage in the blockbuster “Lord of War.”

America’s Drug Enforcement Administration had busted him in Thailand in a 2008 sting operation. Russian diplomats had ritualistically invoked Bout in almost every meeting since, calling him a victim of America’s overreach as a global policeman.

Viktor Bout, left, shown being led by armed Thai police commandos, was arrested in a 2008 sting operation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Right, Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko was sentenced to 20 years in prison in the U.S. in 2011 on drug smuggling charges. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS; TASS/ZUMA PRESS

Yaroshenko, grabbed by the DEA in Liberia in 2010, was another American kidnapping on foreign soil, they insisted. Their complaints fell flat with the Obama administration and with Trump.

Huntsman headed to the White House and pressed Trump for a quick deal. “We’ve got to get this done,” the president said.

But Trump sounded a more skeptical tone to Russia specialists in his administration. The president and his national security team feared Putin would sense weakness if the U.S. started eagerly petitioning for Whelan’s release.

The proposition of swapping Whelan for Butina or Yaroshenko never gained momentum. Trading Bout sounded so lopsided that Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, dismissed it outright: “There’s no way we’re going to agree to this,” he said he told his staff. 

In April 2019, the U.S. lost a card in its hand: A federal judge sentenced Butina to just 18 months in prison. Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s ambassador to Washington, teased U.S. officials that the short sentence had made it easy: Rather than trade Butina, Moscow was now inclined to let her jail time run out.

Maria Butina, center, who was convicted of being part of a conspiracy to influence U.S. politics, arrived in Moscow in 2019 a day after her release from U.S. prison. PHOTO: ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

In August, the score shifted again. Police in Russia arrested another former Marine, Trevor Reed, during a drunken night out with his Russian girlfriend. They had been preparing to release him when two counterintelligence officers walked into the station. Reed, who had served at Camp David when Biden was vice president, found himself facing a nine-year sentence for assaulting a police officer. He denied the charge and said Russian law enforcement provided no credible evidence. The State Department declared him wrongfully detained.

The next month, the House of Representatives began an impeachment inquiry into President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, removing any political room for swapping prisoners with the Kremlin. “Everything involving Russia basically became radioactive,” one senior official said. In October, Huntsman, the ambassador who had championed Whelan’s cause, resigned.

The best the U.S. could do was a complex exchange of medical care, partially arranged by former Gov. Richardson, who, over the course of nearly a year, got the Justice Department to persuade the warden of Yaroshenko’s federal penitentiary to permit an outside dentist to treat the inmate’s toothache.

The Kremlin allowed Whelan to see a hernia specialist at a Moscow clinic. Richardson hoped this was building momentum, but in June 2020, a Moscow judge handed Whelan a 16-year sentence. Standing in a glass defendants’ cage and struggling to understand the untranslated Russian, Whelan held up a handwritten note: “SHAM TRIAL!”

Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who was detained and accused of espionage, held a sign during his 2020 verdict hearing in Moscow. PHOTO: MAXIM SHEMETOV/REUTERS

U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan spoke to the media after visiting Paul Whelan. PHOTO: ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO JR/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Days in IK-17, his new home—a maze of low-slung cell blocks wreathed in razor wire some 300 miles east of Moscow began with the Russian national anthem blaring from tinny loudspeakers, its melody the same as in Soviet times. On the prison floor, Whelan was ordered to stitch pants and coats in a sea of inmates in black uniforms huddled over sewing desks for Technoavia, Russia’s industrial-clothing corporation. Food was scarce and fights were frequent in the labor camp sardonically nicknamed “Fashion Colony.”

When the new U.S. ambassador, John Sullivan, visited him, Whelan was eager to share historical trivia on the prison: It had once held German prisoners of war during its days as a Stalinist gulag. Whelan was keeping a small notebook where he meticulously recorded the slights prison guards meted out to him.

Bout, meanwhile, was teaching yoga to inmates in a medium-security Illinois prison. In the mornings, he read the Journal, English being one of at least five languages he spoke—six, counting Esperanto. At times, he dreamed about once again tasting fresh garlic and grapes. Frequent visits from Russian diplomats stopped after Washington restricted their movements, but there was hope for Bout, relayed to him in regular phone calls: In all likelihood, he would be traded for Whelan.

That idea was going nowhere inside the Trump White House. New national security adviser Robert O’Brien vowed there would be “no more ransoms.” Instead, he tried to shake Whelan and Reed free at the end of a meeting with Putin’s most important official, national security chief and former FSB director Nikolai Patrushev.

The two led delegations to Geneva, barely five weeks before the 2020 election, to negotiate an extension to a nuclear arms control treaty. Russia also wanted to restart conversations on cybersecurity and counterterrorism. In return, O’Brien asked, could Russia release Whelan and Reed as a gesture of goodwill?

National security adviser Robert O’Brien outside the West Wing of the White House in 2020. PHOTO: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Nikolai Patrushev in 2020. PHOTO: MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Patrushev offered a loose handshake agreement O’Brien understood as a yes, a fleeting diplomatic win the same day the campaigning president Trump was hospitalized with Covid-19. The State Department was skeptical Patrushev had committed Russia to anything more conclusive than a maybe.

A month later, Trump lost re-election. In his final days in office, O’Brien pinged the Russians again, but they never responded.

“We were aware the Russians were saying nyet. And everything gets frozen,” one official said.

The backchannel

Six months later, America’s new president met Putin in a mansion by Lake Geneva, the choreography echoing the city’s famous Reagan-Gorbachev peace summit. Biden wanted a “stable and predictable relationship with Russia,” and agreed to establish a backchannel to discuss prisoner exchanges.

Russian and U.S. intelligence officials arrived for the first backchannel talks at a European hotel, where a conference room had been booked to disguise its true purpose. The U.S. delegation had come reluctantly, leaving phones behind, wary of the prisoner trades they were sent to explore.

President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in 2021 in Geneva. PHOTO: PATRICK SEMANSKY/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The interlocutor studying the Americans from across the table suggested Russia’s appetite for a deal was souring. When it came to Whelan, Russia had a grim new demand: a spy for a spy. If Washington wanted Moscow to free an American convicted in a Russian court of espionage, the U.S. would have to secure the release of a Russian sentenced for an equivalent crime. And the U.S., he added, didn’t have such a convict anywhere in its prison system.

There was, however, one Russian that Putin was starting to ask about: Vadim Krasikov, the former FSB officer serving a murder sentence in Germany. The two were so close the hit man had once bragged about passing time with the president at an elite military training facility: Putin, the erstwhile chief of the FSB, “shoots well,” he’d told friends.

The price for Whelan, after two years in jail, was ratcheting up again.

In the weeks that followed, U.S. officials watched as police at Russian airports and elsewhere began scooping up more Americans. In August, customs officers arrested Marc Fogel, a history teacher at the Moscow high school U.S. Embassy children attend, for carrying less than an ounce of medical marijuana. 

David Barnes flew to Russia to find his two sons his ex-wife had taken there, only to be sentenced to 21 years for child abuse charges that he denied and which Texas authorities didn’t find evidence to support. Around the same time, Sarah Krivanek, an American teaching English in Russia was arrested for assault after injuring the male Russian roommate she said had been drunkenly beating her.

None of those cases registered with the American public or with officials—Krivanek says no diplomat ever visited her in jail.

But on Feb. 17, Russian customs agents finally seized someone whose ordeal would resonate.

A basketball star

The authorities at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport had installed three new color security cameras, perfectly aligned to record cinematic details as Brittney Griner, a two-time basketball Olympic gold medalist, lifted her black rucksack onto a customs table, en route to play with her offseason team UMMC Ekaterinburg. Inside were vape cartridges containing less than a gram of medically prescribed hash oil, illegal in Russia.

News of her arrest became fodder for America’s gathering culture wars: a Black lesbian sports star had been imprisoned by a regime with draconian laws on LGBTQ rights. In the ensuing months, Hollywood and sports celebrities including LeBron James, Kerry Washington and Amy Schumer joined an exploding social-media campaign: #WeAreBG.

U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner, center, was escorted by police before a hearing during her trial on charges of drug smuggling in 2022. PHOTO: NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed, charged with attacking police, stood inside a defendants’ cage. PHOTO: ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

“Brittney Griner is Trapped and Alone,” read an opinion headline in the 

New York Times. “Where’s Your Outrage?”While other Americans had struggled to get government attention, the crash team including executives and sports agents working to free Griner could immediately reach the heart of the White House; one had served in the Clinton administration with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Russian officials realized they had leverage and floated a possible deal: Bout and Yaroshenko for Griner and Trevor Reed, the former White House Marine who had served at Camp David during Biden’s vice presidency. Biden was also under pressure to free Reed: “Trevor had been willing to die for you,” his father, Joey Reed, told the president during a meeting in March.

Joey Reed says his son’s yearslong detention left him shocked at the inability of the U.S. government, under both parties, to negotiate with Moscow: “I don’t think they generally know how to work these kinds of deals,” he said. Putin, he added, has managed to outfox Washington for 24 years: “They know our government better than we know our government.”

Biden approved an exchange of Yaroshenko for Reed. On April 27, 2022, the former Marine was flown to a Turkish airport. As he walked out onto the tarmac, and into an American jet, he asked the U.S. delegation escorting him on board: “Where’s Paul?”

Whelan, still sewing coats in IK-17 prison, had become the subject of a difficult moral calculus. The U.S. wanted to trade Bout for both Griner and Whelan, arguing the world’s most famous gunrunner was surely worth a basketball center caught with hash oil and an obscure former Marine. Russia, watching the celebrity-studded campaign to free Griner, proposed to trade both the sports star and Whelan for Krasikov.

German police released this image of a man later identified as Russian hit man Vadim Krasikov. PHOTO: BERLIN POLICE

U.S. officials protested. The convicted murderer was in a German prison, but the Russians were unmoved. Tell Germany to release Krasikov, the Russians suggested.

Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, notified his German counterpart of the Russian proposal, but the U.S. didn’t submit a formal request for Krasikov. The CIA sent a query down to its station chief in Berlin—who responded that it wouldn’t even be worth asking. For months, the U.S. and Russia waged a stare-down, the Kremlin hoping the U.S. would deliver Krasikov, and the White House hoping to exchange two prisoners for one.

On Sept. 16, Griner’s wife and agent met Biden in the White House and communicated a plea: Don’t let the negotiations needlessly drag out if there is a narrower deal—either for Griner or Whelan—to be had. The president met Whelan’s sister Elizabeth the same day.

The U.S. tried offering Bout for Whelan—hoping to then trade another Russian convicted of a lesser charge for the celebrity athlete—but Moscow stuck to its guns. For Griner, Bout. And if the U.S. wanted Whelan, they could discuss a trade involving Krasikov.

The Whelan family could feel the tide turning against them once more. “Does this mean he is going to be left behind yet again?” his sister Elizabeth had said to the Detroit News.

Justice Department officials were concerned: Trading Griner for Bout would make it harder to free Whelan, they argued, because there were no other inmates left in U.S. prisons that Russia wanted, plus it could make other countries reluctant to extradite criminals to America. The president overrode internal objections. The State Department dispatched an official to tell the Whelan family that Biden had agreed to exchange Bout to bring Griner home.

“Sadly, for totally illegitimate reasons, Russia is treating Paul’s case differently than Brittney’s,” Biden told reporters, after calling the Whelans.

To retrieve Griner, the State Department chartered a private medical jet with trauma specialists on hand to bring her back to the U.S., where she was later honored at the White House.

That same day, the State Department put Krivanek—whose sentence for assaulting her abusive roommate had ended—on a commercial flight and told her she would have to repay nearly $4,000 in traveling expenses. She had been assaulted in a coed prison, she said, her knee and two cervical spine discs fractured, injuries treated when a friend met her at the airport and drove straight to a local emergency room.

WNBA star Brittney Griner deplaned at Kelly Field in San Antonio following her release in a prisoner swap with Russia. PHOTO: ERIC GAY/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Elizabeth Whelan, sister of Paul Whelan, spoke during a press conference to launch a campaign to bring home Americans wrongfully detained around the world. PHOTO: WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES

Watching from afar, Trump criticized the deal on his social-networking site, TruthSocial. “I would have gotten Paul out,” he wrote.

It was the first time the Whelan family ever saw Trump publicly mention Paul’s name.

The journalist

Putin still didn’t have his hit man back.

Just under two weeks after Griner’s release, the Russian president delivered a video speech to the FSB, admonishing them to find more spies: “You need to significantly improve your work,” he told FSB top brass assembled to celebrate Security Agency Workers’ Day, a Russian holiday.

By the new year, U.S. officials had noticed an uptick in surveillance toward the few Americans still in Russia. Evan Gershkovich had been followed on reporting trips in Moscow and western Russia. 

On March 29, he was on another reporting trip, waiting at a steakhouse in Yekaterinburg, when masked agents barged in.

Gershkovich was charged with espionage and jailed alone in a Lefortovo prison cell, prompting a worldwide outcry. The State Department within weeks deemed him unlawfully detained and Biden pledged to push for his freedom. 

Putin now had two Americans spuriously classified as spies.

When the news reached Whelan in IK-17, it took him weeks to stabilize. He seemed “rattled like never before” and afraid he’d be overlooked for a third time, his family wrote in an online statement.

Months passed with little movement forward in the negotiations. Weeks after Gershkovich’s arrest, the U.S. offered five people, including cybercriminals, a bid it hoped would open new options to return Gershkovich and Whelan without freeing Krasikov. The Russians waited.

From his cell in Lefortovo, Gershkovich was writing letters to friends and family, asking them to deliver flowers to loved ones and to send him obscure Russian literature.

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich stood inside an enclosure for defendants before a court hearing in October. PHOTO: EVGENIA NOVOZHENINA/REUTERS

Hillary Clinton, center, attended an event with Annalena Baerbock, foreign minister of Germany, and Ban Ki-moon, former secretary-general of the United Nations, in Berlin. PHOTO: FABIAN SOMMER/DPA/ZUMA PRESS

A more ambitious transnational effort to free them had begun to take shape, initially spearheaded by an unexpected source: Hillary Clinton.

The former secretary of state had accepted a proposal from Christo Grozev, a friend and associate of Navalny, to lobby the White House to include the imprisoned Russian opposition leader in negotiations, handing the Russians Krasikov in exchange.

Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, had been approaching German officials informally, but the government was divided. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock opposed any deal involving Krasikov, who had gunned down a perceived enemy of the Kremlin in a Berlin park in broad daylight. 

And yet Navalny was such a popular figure in Germany that when he was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in 2020, then-Chancellor Angela Merkel helped arrange for him to be airlifted to Berlin, where doctors saved his life. Scholz, the current chancellor, visited him during his recovery and has spoken about how impressed he was with Navalny’s courage and moral strength.

Spokespeople for Navalny and the German government declined to comment.

Putin, meanwhile, was hinting strongly that he would be open to an exchange that included Gershkovich.

In February, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson arrived in Moscow to interview the Russian leader. Beforehand, Carlson advised the president’s aides that he planned to press Putin to release Gershkovich then and there, so he could personally bring him back to the U.S. An official close to Putin said it would be a “great idea” and could generate a positive response, Carlson told the Journal.

When it came time to spring the question, Putin demurred, although he suggested Gershkovich could be traded for an unnamed prisoner who fit Krasikov’s profile. The Russian leader left Carlson with the sense that he was ambivalent. “Putin basically acknowledged that Gershkovich was held hostage, and my sense was that he was embarrassed about it,” Carlson said.

Momentum appeared to be growing but there was still no final U.S.-German agreement nor any proposal to the Russians. Seven days after Biden met Scholz, Navalny’s closest aides and his wife Yulia arrived at the global gathering of security officials in Munich, where they hoped negotiations could soon reach a breakthrough.

It was not to be. Hours after hearing her husband had died in prison, a tearful Navalnaya held an impromptu speech declaring, “This regime and Vladimir Putin should be held personally responsible.”

Flowers were left next to photos of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny at a makeshift memorial in front of the Russian Embassy in Berlin in March. PHOTO: DAVID GANNON/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Write to Aruna Viswanatha at aruna.viswanatha@wsj.com, Bojan Pancevski at bojan.pancevski@wsj.com, Drew Hinshaw at drew.hinshaw@wsj.com and Joe Parkinson at joe.parkinson@wsj.com

11. Japan And U.S. Will Deepen Military Ties As Tensions With China Rise

Japan And U.S. Will Deepen Military Ties As Tensions With China Rise

Forbes · by Zachary Folk · March 26, 2024

Topline

The U.S. and Japan will sign a new security agreement next month, the Financial Times first reported, marking the first time the two nations have restructured their alliance since 1960 as tensions rise between China and Taiwan, and North Korea continues military exercises and missile tests in waters bordering Japan and South Korea.

Japan has steadily increased its military spending after maintaining only a small self-defense force … [+] for decades after World War II.

AFP via Getty Images

Key Facts

President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida plan to announce the new agreement while the Japanese leader visits the White House for a state dinner on April 10, according to the report.

The new defense agreement will likely give the three-star commander of the U.S. Forces in Japan more operational authority—now the commander must coordinate operations with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, located in Hawaii.

Japan remains one of the largest foreign deployments for the U.S. military, hosting an estimated 54,000 servicemembers, 45,000 dependents and 8,000 civilian contractors.

The U.S. and Japanese governments have not commented on the reported treaty yet.

It’s unclear what else this new security agreement would include, and how much it would depend on Japan growing its own defense.

Key Background

After World War II, the Japanese Constitution, with prodding from the U.S., embraced pacifism as a national ideal, stating “Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation,” adding that “land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.” However, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe signed a landmark bill in 2015 that allowed the country’s military to participate in “collective self-defense.” Since 2015, Japan has steadily increased its military spending, and in 2023 pledged to double its military spending to account for 2% of the nation’s GDP by 2027—a move praised by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Contra

China has consistently condemned Japan’s military buildup, calling Abe’s 2015 bill “unprecedented” and urging the Japanese government to “learn the lessons of history.” China has a tumultuous history with Japan—the National World War II Museum estimates about 4 million Chinese soldiers died during its war with Japan (which began in 1937 and ended with Japan’s surrender to allied forces in 1945), while anywhere between 20 million to 50 million civilians were killed. Japan’s relations with China have strained considerably over the last year as Japan pursues closer relations with Taiwan. Japan does not have official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which China considers part of its territory, but Japan appointed a government minister to serve as a de facto defense attache in September, Reuters reported. In January, Japan’s foreign congratulated Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te on his election, further angering the Chinese government. The official statement called Taiwan a “crucial partner and an important friend.”

What Security Threats Are Japan And The U.s. Concerned About?

The news of the new security treaty comes days after Admiral John Aquilino, the head of Indo-Pacific Command said he believed China will be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Over the last few years, China has continuously flown fighter jets through Taiwanese airspace, even conducting “aggressive maneuvers” near U.S. planes above the island. Both countries are also concerned about military drills and missile tests in North Korea, who recently fired hundreds of artillery shells near a South Korean island, forcing the residents to evacuate.

Forbes · by Zachary Folk · March 26, 2024

12. The ‘Rules-Based Order’ Is Already Over

The problem is there are members of Congress who do not care about the rules-based international order.

Conclusion:

Anything short of total Ukrainian victory is therefore an implicit admission that the “rules-based” economic and political order has been irreversibly altered. Despite getting the premises right, Putin may have subsequently erred in his conclusion that Western leaders understand the Ukraine war as a mere matter of improving their tactical position. With the likelihood of official NATO deployments increasing by the day, the world stands on edge to see where things go next.

The ‘Rules-Based Order’ Is Already Over

Russia has already shown that Western ostracism is not necessarily fatal.

The American Conservative · by Dominick Sansone · March 24, 2024

Vladimir Putin’s resounding victory in Russia’s presidential elections will act as a mandate to the Kremlin for fighting the Ukraine war to completion. At the same time, attacks on Russian territory have expectedly increased over the past several weeks as Kiev’s strategic position has steadily deteriorated. In addition to targeting civilian population centers with missile and drone strikes, forces of the pro-Ukrainian Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK) have also unsuccessfully attempted to invade and consolidate territory in the direction of Belgorod; such attacks were meant to coincide with the elections and intended to demoralize Russian citizens, thereby increasing pressure on the Putin regime by sending the message that the current administration does not have things under control.

All of this is and was predictable. What is less clear, however, is how the Western world will respond to the increasingly poor prospects for the Ukrainian war effort moving forward. In a March 15 meeting with the highest-ranking members of the Russian security and defense services, Putin specifically referred to the involvement of “foreign mercenaries” and Western-backed Ukrainian forces in the attacks on Belgorod and Kursk. In his initial remarks to the country upon winning reelection, the Russian president again referred to troops from NATO countries operating in Ukraine, and warned of the potential for escalation to “full-scale World War III.” These statements were made only several days after Putin declared in an interview that he would not rule out the possibility of using nuclear weapons, should certain “redlines” be crossed in Ukraine.

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But such heightened rhetoric is hardly surprising in response to recent statements by Western leaders. Most notably, France’s President Emmanuel Macron has doubled down on his insistence that the possibility of eventually involving foreign troops in Ukraine is indeed possible, if not likely. Poland’s Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski—husband of Atlantic columnist and prominent spokeswomen of the neoliberal order, Anne Applebaum—lauded Macron’s statements, and reiterated the latter’s evaluation that NATO troop deployments may eventually be called for.

At the same time, the pressure campaign to punish Russia has failed to result in Moscow’s international ostracization, and instead served to accelerate the geopolitical reorientation of the non-transatlantic world. Russia may be just one (and by no means the strongest) of multiple centers of power in this emerging alternative to the “rules-based order”; it has nonetheless illustrated the conditions that must be established in order to successfully break with that previous order, as well as the characteristics of the developing new one.

For one, the Russian economy has largely been able to weather the massive sanctions regime launched against it. A large part of this has been due to its massive capacity for military production. Per the Wall Street Journal, the percent of federal expenditures devoted to defense related industries has jumped by 14 percent since 2020; tank production is 5.6 times greater than it was before the war, and ammunition and drone production are both 17 times greater. NATO intelligence likewise estimates that Russia is currently producing about 250,000 artillery shells per month, which is three times greater than U.S. and European production levels combined.

The broader economic effect of having the country on the war footing has been to stabilize GDP and soften the effect of the sanctions for the Russian population. Russia’s economy beat expectations by growing at 3.6 percent in 2023, higher than all other G7 countries. The IMF predicts growth levels of 2.6 percent this year, twice as much as its previous forecasts; this looks particularly favorable when compared to the 0.9 percent growth level predicted for Europe. And while inflation remains rather high, its effects have been somewhat mitigated by an all-time low unemployment rate of 2.9 percent.

The Russian rouble has likewise proved to be more resilient than expected. The percent of Russian export settlements being conducted in the U.S. dollar or the euro has plummeted from around 90 percent at the beginning of 2022 to less than 30 percent today; meanwhile, those in the rouble have increased from about 10 to more than 30 percent, with the share of transactions being conducted in other currencies—mostly the Chinese renminbi—higher than 40 percent. Despite Western boasting of its campaign to destroy the rouble, the currency has remained relatively stable despite temporary fluctuations, disproving the promises of its impending demise thanks in large part to capital controls (and perhaps an element of loyalty on the part of Russia’s exporting firms).

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There is of course legitimate criticism that an economy built upon weapons production inevitably siphons investment from other sectors; Russia’s inflation level may also be representative of the more widespread systemic dangers of relying on massive state spending to keep things running hot. Still, as long as Moscow is able to keep revenue coming in, its deficit should remain manageable.

No single factor in keeping that revenue flowing and subsequently fortifying the Russian economy is more significant than that of its energy trade. At the same time, no single example stands as a better representation of Moscow’s defiance to the West’s punitive measures than the circumvention of Washington’s $60 price cap. Instituted around the beginning of 2023, the intention was to punish Russia by decreasing its revenue from the oil trade; the mechanism through which these caps are enforceable is that Russian ships transporting oil use Western maritime insurance and financial services.

Expectedly, enforcement was largely ineffective at the outset, although the United States has since attempted to crack down. For instance, Washington pledged to increase its enforcement of the oil caps at the end of 2023, with sanctions placed on two tankers due to their flouting of the regulations last October. Most recently, oil shipments headed to India were rerouted to China due to New Delhi’s apprehension of tougher enforcement.

Almost exactly one year since the sanctions really started to bite, and Russian seaborne crude shipments remain high. Even with its massive budget amid the significant defense spending mentioned earlier, Moscow’s current deficit remains manageable at somewhere between 1 and to 2 percent, and the massive windfall from oil revenues will certainly keep the state coffers buoyed for the foreseeable future. Despite temporarily falling below $60/barrel for its Ural crude blend at various points over the past year, the average price has stayed above the price cap; and after starting off 2024 at around $60, the price per barrel at present stands close to $80.

The politics around the oil trade further demonstrates Russia’s hardly isolated position in the international economy. Increased revenue based on such prices as those listed above can be expected for at least the next several months—if not beyond—as OPEC and its partners initiate coordinated oil cuts that will drive up prices. Cuts will take place over the next several months, with Russia choosing to focus on decreasing production rather than exports. One factor in the latter decision is that Ukraine and its Western backers recognize the independence and geopolitical maneuverability that the oil trade gives to Moscow, and have therefore specifically targeted refining facilities with drone and missile strikes as part of their attacks on Russian territory. The cuts to production could provide the needed space to implement repairs.

Of course, the U.S.-led West still exerts enormous influence on the world stage, as represented by India’s denial of the shipments of Russian crude in the face of mounting pressure. Yet Russia at present remains near the top of India’s oil imports, specifically due to the discounted prices since the start of the Ukraine war; New Delhi started off the year with a 41 percent year on year increase of shipments from Russia. It is hard to believe that India will permanently shun Moscow at the behest of Washington, rather than figure out a way to circumnavigate the sanctions regime.

India may look to the United States in helping to balance China, but Russia’s growing relationship with both of the two Asian heavyweights has provided leverage in its geopolitical maneuvering. (Xi and Modi were both among the first to call and congratulate Putin on his electoral victory, as was Mohamed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.) The diverted Sokol oil shipments from India ending up in China is likewise no coincidence; Beijing subsequently set a record for the amount of Russian oil imports for a single month in March. A major meeting between Xi and Putin has also been scheduled for May; it is to be the Russian president’s first trip abroad since winning reelection. Putin reaffirmed that the two leaders share a similar outlook in international relations, ensuring that bilateral cooperation between the two nations will continue to expand in the coming years.

Meanwhile in Europe, Ukraine’s Energy Minister German Galushchenko announced this past Sunday that his country will refuse to prolong a five-year deal on the transport of Russian gas through pipelines in its territory. The agreement expires on December 31, and besides attempting to harm Moscow’s revenue flows further, the halt in gas transits is undoubtedly intended to leverage Ukraine’s position between Russia and energy-hungry NATO members.

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The hardball tactics are logical, as Kiev needs to do all it can to tip the scales in favor of greater Western intervention. Over the past several decades, the United States has continually placed Moscow in a position either to accept the fait accompli of NATO expansion at the expense of Russian security interests, or to escalate with force and suffer the consequences of increased economic and political ostracization. This disincentive to avoid escalation has been effectively removed. Explicating the altered state of international relations is not cheerleading for the Russian position—although it may be treated as such by those who disingenuously present any realistic assessment of the situation as “appeasement”—but rather illustrating how Moscow has insulated itself from Western ostracization, thus changing the entire balance of power in not only Europe, but the world.

Now, it is Russia that has the West on the horns of a dilemma: It can either watch the Kremlin achieve its strategic objectives, guaranteed in a one-sided negotiated settlement or through the continued attrition of Ukrainian forces, or it can escalate with force. Putin’s statement regarding nuclear weapons was not mere rhetoric—it was the Russian president defining the limits of the current conflict from a position of authority.

Anything short of total Ukrainian victory is therefore an implicit admission that the “rules-based” economic and political order has been irreversibly altered. Despite getting the premises right, Putin may have subsequently erred in his conclusion that Western leaders understand the Ukraine war as a mere matter of improving their tactical position. With the likelihood of official NATO deployments increasing by the day, the world stands on edge to see where things go next.

The American Conservative · by Dominick Sansone · March 24, 2024

13.  ‘Mayday’ call from ship stopped Baltimore bridge traffic, saved lives

For all the conspiracy theorists out there: Only a humanitarian terrorist would have given a warning to prevent maximum loss of life. (note my sarcasm).

‘Mayday’ call from ship stopped Baltimore bridge traffic, saved lives

The Washington Post · by Justin Jouvenal · March 27, 2024

As a cargo ship the size of a skyscraper drifted dangerously close to a major Baltimore bridge that carried more than 30,000 cars a day, the crew of the Dali issued an urgent “mayday,” hoping to avert disaster Tuesday.

First responders sprang into action, shutting down most traffic on the four-lane Francis Scott Key Bridge just before the 95,000 gross-ton vessel plowed into a bridge piling at about 1:30 a.m., causing multiple sections of the span to bow and snap in a harrowing scene captured on video.

“C13 dispatch, the whole bridge just fell down!” someone shouted on an emergency channel.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) hailed those who carried out the quick work as “heroes” and said they saved lives, but the scale of the destruction was catastrophic and will probably have far-reaching impacts for the economy and travel on the East Coast for months to come.

Much of the 1.6-mile bridge fell, sending at least eight construction workers repairing potholes into the 48-degree waters of the Patapsco River. Two were rescued, including one who was seriously injured. Authorities announced Tuesday night that six were presumed dead and suspended the search. Authorities planned to resume the hunt for the victims at 6 a.m. Wednesday.

The collapse halted shipping at the Port of Baltimore — one of the nation’s largest — and severed a crucial portion of Baltimore’s Beltway, which is also a major artery in the busy corridor between Washington and New York.

President Biden pledged that the federal government would foot the bill for the repairs and work quickly.

The impact led to a scene of utter destruction — mangled bridge trusses, shipping containers split open like tin cans and the cargo ship wedged under fallen debris. Officials turned to Hollywood to register the magnitude of what happened.

“This is a tragedy you can never imagine,” Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott (D) said at an early-morning news conference. “Never would you think that you would see … the Key Bridge literally tumble down like that. It looked like something out of an action movie.”

Video showed a crumpled piece of the 47-year-old bridge draped across the bow of the ship, which was laden with shipping containers and had a large gash across its hull. Helicopters buzzed overhead, and boats with emergency lights flashing searched the waters. Divers plunged into the river, which is about 50 feet deep.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) said a preliminary investigation indicated that the wreck was an accident. He said the Dali had lost power and propulsion shortly before striking the bridge. In video, the Dali’s lights could be seen turning off and on before the crash, and the ship appeared to be drifting.

Other state and federal officials said there was no indication of terrorism or intentional sabotage. Moore and Scott declared states of emergency, and the National Transportation Safety Board sent investigators to the scene. They said they hoped to recover voice and data recorders on the vessel.

Biden said in an address to the nation that he was pledging all resources necessary to rebuild the bridge and reopen the Port of Baltimore, where Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stood with Maryland leaders and vowed to address any supply chain impacts caused by the closure. Biden said he would soon visit, too.

“I’m directing my team to move heaven and earth to reopen the port and rebuild the bridge as soon as humanly possible,” Biden said.

Officials said it was too soon to say when either of those things might happen, or how much they could cost.

Marquis Neal, 48, who lives in the Turner Station community near the bridge, said the crash jolted him awake.

“It sounded like a huge bomb,” Neal said. “The house was shaking. The wind — there was a huge gush. Then it just stopped. I thought, is it an earthquake? Then not only five minutes later, all you heard was sirens. Everything was going crazy.”

Neal, who said he used the bridge several times a day, said it is a lifeline for this small, isolated community, whose residents almost exclusively worked at Bethlehem Steel in nearby Sparrows Point before that industry came to an end.

“We’re on that bridge every day,” Neal said. “That could’ve been you. It could’ve been anybody.”

Jesus Campos, who works for Brawner Builders, based in Cockeysville, Md., was anxiously waiting word about the fate of six of colleagues who had plunged into the Patapsco. He paced back and forth at a meetup spot at a Royal Farms parking lot.

Campos said he was not working Monday night but was rustled out of bed around 5 a.m. by a colleague, who told him about the tragedy. Campos, who speaks only Spanish, said the workers had been on a meal break, sitting in or near their vehicles, when the bridge collapsed. He said all six of the missing men were Latino.

“I’m very sad right now,” Campos said in Spanish. “These are my co-workers and friends.”

Campos said working on the bridge is harrowing. Construction crews are constantly worried about speeding motorists, and the bridge “moves a lot” because of its design and engineering. Even so, Campos said he never could have imagined that the structure would collapse.

NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said that the construction workers were employed by Brawner but that the company might also subcontract work. Jeffrey Pritzker, executive vice president at Brawner Builders, said in a brief telephone interview that the bridge collapse was “a totally unforeseen event which no one could have predicted.” He said the company had seven employees working on the bridge overnight; one of them survived and six were still missing, he said. Authorities have described eight victims as “workers.”

“The company is upset, families are distressed, this is a terrible tragedy,” Pritzker said. “I don’t know what more I can say.”

Baltimore Fire Chief James Wallace said in an interview on CNN on Tuesday that sonar showed five vehicles on the bed of the Patapsco River, including three passenger vehicles, a cement truck and one unknown vehicle. Other officials said later in the day that they were still trying to determine whether vehicles plunged into the water, and they did not have clear details on whether any people other than those working on the bridge might have been in those vehicles.

The Singapore-flagged Dali left the Port of Baltimore around 1 a.m. and was bound for Colombo, Sri Lanka, where it was scheduled to arrive on April 22, according to MarineTraffic, a marine data platform.

Around 1:24 a.m., security video showed lights on the Dali switching off, possibly indicating a power problem. A minute later they flicked back on. Seconds later, thick black smoke could be seen pouring from a smokestack, and then the Dali appeared to begin turning to the right.

At 1:27 a.m., the lights on the Dali winked off again, before coming back on seconds later, video shows. Shortly after, radio traffic indicated efforts to evacuate the Key Bridge. The Dali struck the bridge at 1:28 a.m.

Moore said the vessel was traveling about eight knots — or nine miles an hour — when it hit the span.

Synergy Marine Group, which owned and managed the ship, said in a news release that the Dali was under the control of two harbor pilots at the time of the wreck, as required under Maryland law. Synergy said all 22 sailors, who were Indian nationals, were uninjured. Authorities said they remained on the ship Tuesday.

Wallace said rescue crews on the scene had smelled diesel fuel, but Synergy said there was no evidence the wreck had polluted the river. The company said it was cooperating with authorities investigating the disaster.

Inspection records indicate that the Dali had previously had problems. A deficiency in the Dali’s systems was discovered when the ship was inspected in June last year, records show. Inspectors at the port of San Antonio, Chile, discovered a problem categorized as relating to “Propulsion and auxiliary machinery,” according to an intergovernmental shipping regulator in the Asia-Pacific region.

The problem was not serious enough to warrant detaining the ship, according to the records. After a follow-up inspection was carried out later the same day, the Dali was found to have no outstanding deficiencies, the records show, indicating that the problem was addressed.

Synergy was involved in at least three seafaring tragedies since 2018 that led to the deaths of crew members, according to investigation records from transportation safety agencies and government statements.

The incidents involved an elevator malfunction that killed a technician in 2018; an officer who fell overboard and died in 2019, who was not wearing a flotation device; and a tanker partly managed by Synergy that collided with a dredger, killing two seafarers.

Synergy, based in Singapore, controls a fleet of nearly 400 vessels and employs more than 14,000 sailors, according to its website. Its office in Singapore was dark when a Washington Post reporter visited Tuesday evening local time.

Moore said the Key Bridge was up to code at the time of the collapse. The span is a major part of I-695, carrying traffic north-south around Baltimore and connecting Baltimore to Dundalk, Md. Maryland transportation officials said the loss of the bridge could cause transportation issues in the area for the foreseeable future.

The $60 million bridge was hailed as an engineering marvel at the time it was built in the 1970s. The American Society of Civil Engineers called it one of the largest continuous truss bridges in the United States.

Ian Firth, a British structural engineer and bridge designer, noted that the bridge was erected at a time when ships were not as big as they are now and the flow of traffic was not as busy. These days, structures are designed with better protective measures in place, he said, though he noted that even a brand-new bridge would have “come down in the same way” if it were hit by such a large vessel traveling at speed.

Dan Frangopol, a bridge engineering and risk professor at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania who is president of the International Association for Bridge Maintenance and Safety, said the catastrophic failure was not surprising.

“If the pier was destroyed like it was, the bridge has to collapse,” Frangopol said. “It’s not possible to redistribute the loads.”

Michael Laris, Sarah Cahlan, Imogen Piper, Erin Cox, Ian Duncan, Teo Armus, Maria Sacchetti, Jon Swaine, Scott Dance, Jacob Bogage, Joyce Sohyun Lee, Dan Diamond, Rebecca Tan, Jennifer Hassan, Toluse Olorunnipa, Martin Weil, Andrew Jeong and Adela Suliman contributed to this report.

The Washington Post · by Justin Jouvenal · March 27, 2024

14. In rare triple, Army, Navy and Air Force wrestlers all earn All-American honors

Hooah. BZ to all the wrestlers from all four services. In addition to football, wrestling also had a tremendous influence on my life.

As an aside, but on a related note, I saw this meme on social media:

I am the off​ense. 

I am the defense​. ​

I never sit on the bench. 

I never take a play​ off. 

It's all on me. 

I am a wrestler.

In rare triple, Army, Navy and Air Force wrestlers all earn All-American honors

For the first time in 20 years, all three military academies had a wrestler earn Division I All-American honors. A Coast Guard Academy wrestler took Division III honors.

BY MATT WHITE | PUBLISHED MAR 25, 2024 3:38 PM EDT

taskandpurpose.com · by Matt White · March 25, 2024

For the first time in two decades, all three military service academies had a wrestler earn collegiate All-American honors at the sport’s annual NCAA championship meet. The three wrestlers — one each from the U.S. Military, Naval and Air Force academies, all seniors — earned All-American honors by finishing in the top 8 spots in their weight classes at the season-ending national championship meet this past weekend in Kansas City.

Wyatt Hendrickson of the Air Force Academy finished in third place as a heavyweight, while the U.S. Military Academy’s Ben Pasiuk and the Naval Academy’s David Key both finished 8th.

Additionally, Coast Guard Academy cadet Chase Randall was named the Most Outstanding Wrestler at the Division III championships in Lacrosse, Wisc. The Army, Navy and Air Force wrestlers compete in Division I.

Air Force’s Hendrickson is ‘Most Dominant’

Hendrickson finished his career at Air Force as one of the best service academy wrestlers in history. Along with two straight third-place finishes at the NCAA tournament, Hendrickson recorded his third straight year of winning the most matches by pin of any wrestler in the country in any weight class. He also has been named the country’s ‘Most Dominant’ wrestler, an award computed on the number of pins, technical falls and lopsided scores against opponents through a season.

After losing in the national semifinals, Hendrickson won two consolation matches 14-2 and 14-5 to take third for the second year in a row. Hendrickson won 104 matches in his career at Air Force, qualifying for the NCAA tournament every year.

Air Force senior wrestler Wyatt Hendrickson said he hopes to be a pilot in the Air Force after a post-college attempt to make the Olympic wrestling team. Screen capture from FloWrestling.

Hendrickson is from Newton, Kansas. In an interview with FloWrestling, he said he began wrestling at five and credited his father with instilling him with a hard-nosed work ethic in the sport.

“My dad was always tough on me. You always hear ‘work smarter, not harder.’ No,” Hendrickson said. “He’s like ‘work hard, get it done.’ So that was the approach I took to wrestling.”

Army and Navy All-Americans

Army senior Ben Pasiuk took 8th place in the 175 lbs. bracket after coming into the championship tournament as the 18th-seeded wrestler. Though Pasiuk qualified for the national tournament in all four seasons as a wrestler at Army, this weekend marked his first finish in an All-American spot. The senior from Carrollton, Ohio clinched that honor with a 9-8 decision over Northern Iowa’s Jared Simma.

Pasiuk is the first All-American wrestler at Army since 2008, when Matt Kyler finished sixth, according to the school. An Ohio state champion in high school, Pasiuk was recruited to a wide range of colleges but chose West Point after visiting during Branch Week, when senior Cadets find out what jobs they’ll have in the Army.

“It was branch week, so all the helicopters and all the tanks were out there, with all these weapons. We were like, this is amazing,” Pasiuk said in an interview posted to his high school team’s Facebook page. “I started looking at other places and I thought, where am I gonna be after college? You only have four years to wrestle. I’ve learned how important serving is.”

Navy senior David Key climbed even farther up his bracket at 184 lbs, starting the championship weekend as the 25 seed in the 33-wrestler tournament, but finishing 8th. Originally from Norcross, Georgia, Key won two state championships in high school and qualified for the NCAA tournament three times as a Midshipman.

According to an interview on a Naval Academy Facebook page, Key will commission in the Marines to fly helicopters.

The latest on Task & Purpose

• Air Force fires two medical commanders at Joint Base Charleston
• Navy fires commodore of Naval Special Warfare Group Eight
• Families at Edwards Air Force Base living in RVs for housing relief
• Niger cuts ties with US military
• Navy has fired at least 3 commanding officers for DUIs in 2024

taskandpurpose.com · by Matt White · March 25, 2024

15. Here’s How Nuclear War Could “Destroy Civilization” in Just a Few Hours

An interview with author Annie Jacobsen plays about her new book, Nuclear War: A Scenario.

Here’s How Nuclear War Could “Destroy Civilization” in Just a Few Hours

And why Putin and Trump present major danger to the United States’ nuclear paradigm.

BY JON SKOLNIK

MARCH 26, 2024

Vanity Fair · by Condé Nast · March 26, 2024

Twenty-four minutes.

That’s how long it would take—just 1,440 seconds—for a nuclear warhead to travel from North Korea to the largest nuclear power plant in California, where it could set off a chain reaction of events that bring human civilization back to the Stone Age. It’s a situation that may seem, to most, inconceivable. Yet, it’s one that author Annie Jacobsen plays out with disconcerting details in her new book, Nuclear War: A Scenario, which walks readers through what is known of the United States’ secret emergency protocols in the event of global Armageddon. “Since the end of World War II, the US government has been preparing for, and rehearsing plans for, a General Nuclear War,” she writes. “A nuclear World War III that is guaranteed to leave, at minimum, 2 billion dead.”

It starts, Jacobson explains, with a radar screen blip, touching off a chaotic countdown in which the president—and their uppermost military advisers—must decide if, when, where, and how to retaliate. The federal choreography from there is profound, demanding operational perfection from staff in countless agencies tasked with missile interception, international diplomacy, disaster response, and continuity of government—all in a haze of incomplete information. “Nuclear war,” as she argues, “robs man of reason.”

Pentagon employees note how its center looks like a bull’s-eye.Library of Congress, Theodor Horydczak.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, which has been edited for length and clarity, Jacobsen sounds the alarm about everything from Vladimir Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling to the “gaping holes” in America’s defense technology, and the chilling implications of a second Donald Trump presidency. “If you have a ‘mad king’ ruler in office,” she tells me, “it would behoove the entire world to make clear that that mad king behavior is unacceptable.”

Vanity Fair: From my vantage point, nuclear war has been a much hotter topic this year than in the recent past. Of course, in Hollywood, we had Oppenheimer, but there’s also been a lot of nuclear fear around Russia’s war in Ukraine. You probably started researching the book well before all this. What led you to want to dive into this topic specifically?

Annie Jacobsen: How many sources have said to me with chest-swelling pride that they dedicated their lives to preventing a nuclear World War III. And this out of the mouths of, like, the now deceased first director of science and technology at the CIA. You know, very high-level, upper-echelon, top-tier national security people proud that they prevented World War III. And I would always be confronted with this idea of deterrence, also known as prevention. In the former administration with President Trump, I heard his rhetoric—“fire and fury” comes to mind—and thought for the first time in my reporting career, My God, what if deterrence failed? And it stems a little from the “madman theory,” which is sort of entwined in nuclear nonproliferation issues. So, I then put that question to some of my sources. (And again, I’m talking about people who advise the president in the event of this god-awful situation.) And I was shocked that people were very forthcoming with me. I suddenly found myself on Zoom with people like former secretary of defense Bill Perry. So, there, my reporting began. And, of course, you are absolutely right on point because, my God, I never expected it to be headline news. You know, for Vladimir Putin to be, in the most terrible way, promoting the reading of my book because my book demonstrates in appalling detail just how horrific nuclear war would be.

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I want to return to something you said about the madman theory. Deterrence is predicated on the notion that the president is a rational actor with the country’s best interests in mind. What is the danger, then, when it comes to the potential reelection of Donald Trump, a man who regularly put his own interests over the country’s and even once flippantly discussed using nuclear weapons on North Korea in 2017? Can the Biden administration do anything now to guard against the mad king scenario?

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I don’t think since President Kennedy has there been someone in office who has been so educated about the absolute dangers, not just of nuclear war but of rhetoric. Many other presidents have been silent, which doesn’t mean they’re necessarily educated. So whether or not anyone’s madman-type rhetoric is coming from a place of ignorance or information doesn’t matter; nuclear saber-rattling is profoundly dangerous. It isn’t just about American leaders to my eye, it is about everyone. And therefore, if you have a mad king in office, it would behoove the entire world to make clear that that mad king behavior is unacceptable. I used North Korea as an example in my scenario because North Korea is the only nuclear-armed nation that doesn’t adhere to “normal” behavior. For example, North Korea launches ballistic missile tests without notifying anyone. It’s profoundly dangerous when you read my scenario and realize what happens in the first seconds and minutes that a ballistic missile is launched anywhere around the globe: The Defense Department has eyes on it, and a massive alert system goes into effect that could lead to catastrophe, as I show.

Something that struck me was how inevitable catastrophe actually feels. You talk about the Proud Profit war game, where, in the 1980s, a bunch of defense officials played out a ton of scenarios around nuclear war. Time and again, they arrived at the same result: basically complete Armageddon. Could you walk me through why restoring deterrence is so hard once you know a country has launched an attack?

Absolutely. I can give you a concept like “escalate to de-escalate.” That is such an Orwellian concept. This is the whole paradox of nuclear weapons, nuclear war, nuclear deterrence— because you first think this is something out of Dr. Strangelove. Then you realize, Well, perhaps there’s a logic: If North Korea sends one nuclear weapon, we send 82 in return. That is escalate to de-escalate. And then you think, That’s sheer madness, 82 nuclear weapons launched at North Korea will kill tens of millions of people. So, I attempt to demonstrate that there are no good scenarios in a nuclear war scenario. There are no good answers, as the Proud Prophet shows us. We, the public, now know that no matter how nuclear war begins in various scenarios—whether NATO’s involved, whether China’s involved, whether it’s a tactical weapon or a strategic weapon—it ends in a nuclear apocalypse.

In your book, you describe the sheer breadth and meticulousness of America’s nuclear defense protocols. But as you say, it would actually happen so chaotically in real life. What were some of the most gaping holes in the federal government’s playbook? Are there obvious areas where it could improve?

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Even having studied this and reported on this issue peripherally for 15 years, I had the same reaction: Oh, my God, this is all thought through. It is a systematic mechanization: A follows B follows C. Once a launch is detected, the sequence goes into effect. People are rehearsing this 24/7/365. And yet, here we are all going about our business. It is literally like an asteroid coming toward Earth, which is the only other event, as in the words of FEMA, that could end civilization in a couple of hours. Another sort of grand theme is that these war plans were originally made by a bunch of admirals and generals who believed that they could actually fight and win a nuclear war, which is such insanity. And now, we essentially allege that deterrence is such that we never have to fight and win a nuclear war. However, the protocols are still the same. The nuclear triad [the ability to launch nuclear weapons from land, air, and sea] is still the same. The number of warheads has been reduced, but there are still enough nuclear weapons on ready-to-launch status that literally can launch in seconds or minutes. There are enough of them on the planet to destroy civilization. So we are stuck with this legacy, like it or not.

Louis Slotin’s Los Alamos badge (left) and a laboratory mock-up of the experiment that killed him (right) at Los Alamos, New Mexico in 1946.Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The gaping holes, interestingly, exist in technology. It’s shocking that in 2024, you might think the technology would have filled in the holes—but, instead, they’ve created worse holes. And when we say “holes,” we mean the potential for disaster. The two that come to mind right off the bat are that America has this incredibly advanced satellite system in geosync parked above our enemy nations so that the hot rock exhaust on an ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] launch can be seen in under one second. To learn that is remarkable. If that should get any comfort, it doesn’t; when you read the scenario, you learn that’s exactly when the sequence begins, thanks to our launch-on-warning policy. But even more frightening is that, because of all this nuclear posturing over the decades, Russia alleges to have a system that is on par with our system. But I learned that their Tundra satellite system is really compromised. It does not have the same look-down capability from space as the American system. As a result, the Tundra can mistake hot rocket exhaust for clouds and sunlight.

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Another thing you mention in the book is America’s nuclear interception capabilities, which seem futile technologically and financially. Your book says it’s akin to “shooting a bullet with a bullet.”

And that’s a quote from a defense scientist!

Right. Given that, do you think the federal government is better off pursuing efforts at prevention and disarmament—and that interception is just a lost cause?

The interceptor program is a brilliant example of when you go to a dinner party and say, ‘Oh, we could have a nuclear war. You should read this book,’ and then will almost immediately say, ‘That’s ridiculous. We have an interceptor system like the Iron Dome.’ That has actually happened to me. Learned people have tried to correct me. We have 44 interceptor missiles. Russia alone has over 1,670 nuclear weapons on ready-for-launch status. So, how are our 44 going to go up against them, particularly when it comes down to trying to “shoot a bullet with a bullet?”According to congressional Oversight Committee documentation, the success rate is between like 45% and 55%. And that is on a curated test. We do not have interceptor capability that means much of anything. I certainly felt and hope readers feel this after reading the book: Trying to become more supreme in the nuclear arms race only accelerates weapons development, only accelerates the threat, and does not make anyone safer. Therefore, the only solution is communication, diplomacy, and agreements.

That’s a good entry point for my next question: Is there any logic to America sharing some of its technological advances multilaterally with a nation like Russia or North Korea? Or is that strategic nonsense?

Atomic test Baker burst through the lagoon surface, lofting 2 million cubic yards of radioactive seawater and sediment into the air in 1946.Library of Congress.

I think that it is irrational not to communicate with your partners in whatever capacity that may be. There are many people more qualified to answer that question. But fundamentally, there have been efforts in that direction. I also write about one of them in the book, with professors Ted Postol and Richard Garwin having gone to the powers that be in Washington. Both had huge, long-standing relationships with all of this: Garwin drew plans for the first thermonuclear bomb, Ivy Mike. Postol advised the Pentagon. He’s now a professor emeritus at MIT. In the early 2000s, when North Korea began building up its nuclear arsenal, they went to the powers that be and said, ‘Look, we should have a program with Russia together to look at this threat because it affects all of us.’ And that was unilaterally rejected. And I use that as an anecdote to demonstrate that, for the most part, pairing up with anybody is somehow seen as weak.

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I want to discuss mutual assured destruction (MAD) a bit more. You had a great quote in the book: “The madness of MAD is that the two sides are like a mirror…a madman stares in a pond, sees his image on the surface of the water, and mistakes himself for his enemy.” Could you put this in layperson’s terms and explain why MAD is a fundamentally flawed foreign policy paradigm?

Mutual assured destruction is a very Cold War warrior concept—that we will have such a massive arsenal of weapons pointed at the other side on hair-trigger alert that no one will dare strike us. At its core, deterrence says, ‘The more nuclear weapons you have, the safer you will be.’ And so I believe the only way out is to look in the mirror. You have to really ask yourself, ‘What is going on here? What is the point of all of this?’ I think all things begin with the personal. You have the political, sure, but a person or group of people is at the core of every decision. And that’s why I use that analogy, the poetic idea of looking in the mirror. You could be like, Wow, there I am. Or you can be like, That’s my enemy trying to kill me! This is the only way through some of this madness—to move the world off the razor’s edge—and that is where we stand. The president of the United States, President Biden, said we are closer to nuclear Armageddon than we have been since the Cuban Missile Crisis. That frightens me.

Vanity Fair · by Condé Nast · March 26, 2024

16. U.S. Takes Action to Further Disrupt PRC Cyber Activities

U.S. Takes Action to Further Disrupt PRC Cyber Activities

https://www.state.gov/u-s-takes-action-to-further-disrupt-prc-cyber-activities/?utm

MEDIA NOTE

OFFICE OF THE SPOKESPERSON

MARCH 25, 2024

The United States Government is taking a series of actions against APT 31, a cyber threat group connected to the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that has targeted U.S officials, politicians and campaign officials, various U.S. economic and defense entities and officials, as well as foreign democracy activists, academics, and government officials. Today’s actions include:

Announcing criminal charges against seven PRC hackers

The U.S. Department of Justice has unsealed an indictment charging Ni Gaobin, Weng Ming, Cheng Feng, Peng Yaowen, Sun Xiaohui, Xiong Wang, and Zhao Guangzong with conspiring to commit an offense against the United States (computer fraud), in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371, and conspiring to commit wire fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1349.

Imposing sanctions

The U.S. Department of the Treasury is sanctioning Zhao, Ni, and the Wuhan Xiaoruizhi Science and Technology Company, Limited (Wuhan XRZ), for their roles in malicious cyber activities targeting U.S. critical infrastructure sectors that present a significant threat to U.S. national security, pursuant to Executive Order 13694. 

Offering a reward of up to $10 million.

The U.S. Department of State’s Rewards for Justice program (RFJ) is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information on the group and the defendants. The RFJ program seeks information on any person who, while acting at the direction or under the control of a foreign government, engages in certain malicious cyber activities in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). 

The activities of these PRC state-sponsored actors have targeted U.S. defense and government sectors and the intellectual property and trade secrets of U.S. businesses. The United States will continue to disrupt the dangerous and irresponsible actions of these and other state-sponsored cyber actors.

For more information on the U.S. actions, see:

• @RFJ_USA on X/Twitter
• Office of Public Affairs | Seven Hackers Associated with Chinese Government Charged with Computer Intrusions Targeting Perceived Critics of China and U.S. Businesses and Politicians | United States Department of Justice
• Treasury Sanctions China-Linked Hackers for Targeting U.S. Critical Infrastructure | U.S. Department of the Treasury

We encourage anyone with information on these actors to contact Rewards for Justice via the Tor-based tips-reporting channel at: he5dybnt7sr6cm32xt77pazmtm65flqy6irivtflruqfc5ep7eiodiad.onion. More information about this RFJ reward offer is located on the Rewards for Justice website.

17. Mismanaging of the Unmanageable: China Tries to Play All Sides in Myanmar’s Metastasizing Civil War

Excerpts:

Implications for Myanmar’s Future

The implications of shifting interests and misalignment between China, some of the border ethnic armed groups, and the junta are potentially stark. For the pro-democracy resistance, winning Beijing away from its belief that only keeping the junta in power can secure China’s long-term interests is paramount. The National Unity Government is well aware of this and has issued a statement designed to appeal to Beijing. In doing so, it hopes to counter both the junta’s own propaganda and Chinese fears about the pro-democracy movement’s perceived closeness to the United States. If the resistance can convince Beijing that the junta’s intransigence, economic mismanagement, and counterproductive brutality undermine China’s interests, China may draw down its support. Yet it is not quite there. Although China’s tacit approval of Operation 1027 indicates some frustration with the Myanmar military, as do reports of expanded outreach to the National Unity Government, Beijing still sees fragmentation and state breakdown as the dangerous and likely alternatives to the junta.

Even as it courts China, the pro-democracy resistance should also be careful to avoid dependence upon Beijing at all costs. Beijing will not hesitate to throw its proxies under the bus. It views Myanmar through a purely pragmatic lens.

Therefore, the United States can and should do more to provide material support for democratic forces, while also working to reassure China and persuade it to abandon the junta. Striking this balance is, of course, easier said than done.It will require cooperating with China on issues like transnational cyber crime while emphasizing that the Myanmar junta poses a serious long-term threat to regional stability. At the same time, material U.S. support for pro-democracy actors, such as financial and humanitarian aid and diplomatic backing, can mitigate the risk of growing Chinese influence and assist the pro-democracy resistance as it continues to fight the junta.

Mismanaging of the Unmanageable: China Tries to Play All Sides in Myanmar’s Metastasizing Civil War - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Lucas Myers · March 27, 2024

When fighting in Myanmar’s civil war escalated last fall, Chinese-origin weapons could be found on both sides. The military junta’s air force includes Chinese-supplied jets, while the anti-regime Three Brotherhood Alliance employs Chinese-manufactured small arms purchased from another China-backed group along the border. Is China backing both sides simultaneously? And if so, why?

Beijing’s cooperation with multiple opposing actors in Myanmar is nothing new. China’s policy in Myanmar is a “hedging strategy” wherein authorities in Beijing and Yunnan Province foster ties and leverage with actors throughout Myanmar’s complex political environment. By simultaneously backing ethnic armed groups along the Chinese border, keeping ties with the pro-democracy resistance behind the scenes, and supporting the junta in Naypyidaw, China wants to make sure that whatever happens, it comes out on top.

However, since the monumental anti-junta resistance offensive Operation 1027 in late 2023, the junta has lost over 30 towns across the country, seriously undermining the foundations of its grip on power. The offensive brought both boons and setbacks for China, triggering Beijing’s hurried diplomatic intervention and a brokered ceasefire in northern Shan State.

China’s actions since Operation 1027 highlight that its hedging strategy is now a commitment to (mis)managing an untenable status quo by supporting a rump junta’s survival in Myanmar’s center, under-the-table engagement with what it perceives as a Western-leaning democracy movement, and maintenance of a quiescent buffer zone controlled by ethnic armed organizations amenable to its geoeconomic interests. Although the resistance is not anti-China, Beijing will act according to its own interests and its belief that the junta remains crucial to Myanmar’s future. China will interfere with resistance efforts to establish an inclusive, federal democracy if it feels the need to. For Washington, this means that the United States should expand its support for the pro-democracy resistance to ensure that the coalition has a viable alternative to China and can push back against malign Chinese pressure.

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The Contours of China’s Policy in Myanmar

Metaphorically, China views Myanmar like a pot of boiling water on a stove where it cannot turn off the heat, only crank the temperature up or down within a certain range. A rolling simmer is tolerable and perhaps beneficial. But Myanmar’s civil war boiling over and harming Chinese interests in stability and its investments is not. Indeed, despite some initial trepidation, Beijing forged a strong relationship with State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratic government between 2016 and February 2021 — setting aside ideological differences to advance its agenda.

After the military coup in February 2021, China outwardly embraced the junta but quietly maintained contacts with both the pro-democracy civilian government, the National Unity Government, and continued arming its longstanding proxies along the China-Myanmar border. Importantly, Beijing’s strongest ally, the United Wa State Army, receives and then sells or transfers Chinese weapons to many armed groups in Myanmar, including anti-junta groups.

Over the past three years, fighting steadily intensified. The junta’s indiscriminate reprisals and incompetence bred an increasingly cohesive resistance movement bringing together the National Unity Government and many ethnic armed organizations. Crucially, the majority Bamar, who have long dominated politics in Myanmar, are by and large against the military and increasingly aligned (but still in tension) with minority ethnic groups. Meanwhile, Myanmar’s crisis has metastasized, creating the conditions for criminal networks operating along the border — some under the junta’s protection, and others under some ethnic armed groups like the United Wa State Army. There groups run so-called pig butchering scams. These cyber crimes, which are a particular source of irritation for Beijing, involve trafficking thousands of people into scam centers stationed along Myanmar’s borders and forcing them to defraud victims, often Chinese, of billions of dollars.

China’s Turn Toward the Junta

For Beijing, Myanmar’s renewed civil war poses a dilemma. It perceives both threats to its multi-billion-dollar investments under the Belt and Road Initiative’s China-Myanmar Economic Corridor and opportunities to take advantage of an ailing and dependent junta with accelerated economic projects. At the same time, the National Unity Government’s perceived closeness to the United States triggers concerns in Beijing amidst worsening U.S.-Chinese competition. Complicating matters further, the military in Myanmar has thus far demonstrated only incompetence and allowed cyber scammers to operate with impunity along China’s border at a time of economic turmoil.

The situation was rapidly getting out of Beijing’s control, so it responded by engaging the junta more openly in late 2022. In May 2023, then-Foreign Minister Qin Gang became the highest-level Chinese official to visit Myanmar, ending a policy of arm’s-length bilateral diplomatic treatment but also pressuring the junta to cooperate in reining in cyber criminals. Over the course of the next six months, China also worked behind the scenes to pressure ethnic armed groups in the Three Brotherhood Alliance that opposed the junta but had not yet entered open warfare to negotiate with the military regime. On cyber scams, the junta remained intransigent, but Chinese-aligned border armed groups began to hand over suspected criminal leaders to Beijing.

Operation 1027 and China’s Role

Myanmar’s civil war reached a crescendo on Oct. 27, 2023, when ethnic armed organizations under the Three Brotherhood Alliance banner launched a surprise offensive against junta targets throughout northern Shan State along the Chinese border. Quickly seizing towns and cutting strategic highways facilitating border trade, they left the junta facing a cascading series of losses, which soon spread throughout the country.

Given its extensive connections to China, dependence upon China’s arms and economy, and prominent public justification for the offensive as a means of targeting cyber scammers, the Three Brotherhood Alliance and its Operation 1027 raise serious questions about Beijing’s role in Myanmar. Had China, irritated by the junta’s complicity in scams defrauding billions of dollars from Chinese nationals, flipped from the military to the anti-junta resistance — or at least some part of the anti-regime coalition?

Confounding easy analysis, Beijing’s actions and motives are opaque. On one hand, China likely tacitly backed the Three Brotherhood Alliance. The International Crisis Group has suggested that Beijing’s “desire to make inroads against the scam centers seems to have trumped China’s traditional border security concerns.” Some analysts linked the mass killing of Chinese nationals — including undercover Chinese intelligence officers — attempting to escape captivity in a junta-aligned scam center to China’s approval of Operation 1027, which started seven days later. Yet evidence also suggests additional motives exogenous to China, including the many months of cooperation between the National Unity Government and the Three Brotherhood Alliance. Importantly, it is likely that the ethnic armed groups, regardless of their intentions regarding a democratic Myanmar, sense a fatally wounded junta and the chance to make gains against it.

Scrambling to Take Hold of a Spiraling Situation

China’s actions in the months since October 2023 further highlight the extent to which Beijing’s policy involves mismanaging the unmanageable. During Operation 1027’s initial days, China reportedly did not weigh in against the Three Brotherhood Alliance, but it certainly hoped to assert its influence on the situation. During the first weeks of the offensive, high-level Chinese officials traveled to Myanmar for discussions with the junta, while also calling for a ceasefire and expressing “strong dissatisfaction” with the prospect of any spillover into Chinese territory. Chinese officials stressed the importance of border security, clearly laying out their worries about both stability and criminal networks.

While Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s remarks suggest that China was pleased by the destruction of criminal networks, Beijing evidently decided by early December that enough was enough. By that point, the Three Brotherhood Alliance had seized almost a dozen towns and significant territory, and the Arakan Army — one of the three alliance’s “brothers” — had launched its own series of attacks in Rakhine State near important Chinese infrastructure projects. The junta’s forces continued to crumble in strategic areas across the country, and its superiority in airpower and artillery appeared too overstretched to reliably hold ground at the tactical level.

In December, China therefore arranged negotiations in Yunnan’s Kunming, which Beijing then depicted as successful in achieving a ceasefire. Yet the limits of its influence quickly became apparent, as both sides continued fighting. The Three Brotherhood Alliance was clearly interested in taking more claimed territory along the margins of northern Shan State. They denied that a ceasefire had taken place, even saying, “Our aim is to end the military dictatorship.” Moreover, although the junta evidently desired a ceasefire, the military also wanted to hold the important city of Laukkai if possible.

Three Brotherhood Alliance troops cut off Laukkai by early January, and Beijing then reportedly brokered the surrender of the junta’s remaining forces in the city. Likely irritated by instability along its border and the strangling of bilateral trade, Chinese pressure resulted in further failed rounds of talks in Kunming before the two sides entered into a ceasefire on Jan. 12. They agreed to halt fighting in northern Shan State and “promis[ed] not to undermine the safety of Chinese people living in the border area and Chinese projects and personnel in Myanmar.” However, it is important to highlight that the agreement only deals with the Chinese border, not other battlefields in Myanmar where Chinese influence is much less.

Sporadic skirmishes broke out in the days after the announcement, but the ceasefire in northern Shan State has largely held since January. The breathing room bought by the Chinese-brokered agreement allowed the junta to focus elsewhere, such as retaking the town of Kawlin in Sagaing. But it had little influence on the Arakan Army, which continues to advance in Rakhine State.

With the fighting in northern Shan State along the Chinese border halted, news of another agreement became public on March 3. Important provisions included a 70:30 customs revenue agreement between the Three Brotherhood Alliance and the junta, military regime recognition of one of the alliance member’s control over Kokang, and, as always, the safeguarding of Chinese interests and assets. However, it was also seemingly leaked by the Chinese side, as the negotiations were reportedly not so successful. Both sides downplayed (outright denying, in the junta’s case) the terms of the agreement as leaked.

Escalated fighting continues elsewhere in Myanmar, and the ceasefire agreed to in January appears somewhat shaky as of March 2024. The junta announced martial law in three Shan State townships controlled by one of the alliance’s members, and the Three Brotherhood Alliance responded with a warning that fighting could resume. Making matters worse for China, the Kachin Independence Army — a prominent National Unity Government ally along the Chinese border but with less influence from Beijing — launched its own major offensive, leading to artillery shells falling on Chinese territory. China cannot control the war in Myanmar.

China may have tacitly approved of the Three Brotherhood Alliance driving out the border criminal networks — especially because it triggered the junta falling over itself to demonstrate it was now on board by deporting or eliminating high-ranking crime lords. But Operation 1027 sending the junta into a destabilizing tailspin was most likely not in Beijing’s plans.

The Limits of Chinese Influence

China’s efforts to control the spiraling situation in Myanmar suggests another key takeaway. While China may be the most influential outside actor in Myanmar, it has a double-sided “principal-agent” problem limiting its ability to control events.

Beijing certainly wields influence over both the junta and the border ethnic armed organizations. Although complex and with little mutual trust, China’s relationships with the Three Brotherhood Alliance and the junta are arguably different flavors of an exploitative principal-agent relationship. Both depend upon China for weapons and political support to differing degrees at different times. In return for its support, China receives leverage and influence in Myanmar to advance its China-Myanmar Economic Corridor and mitigate cross-border spillover and transnational crime.

To be sure, the descriptor “principal-agent” should not be confused with “puppet,” nor is it intended to overlook the stark differences between China-junta and China-Three Brotherhood Alliance ties (including with the individual members making up the Alliance). The Myanmar military distrusts China and views its support for ethnic armed groups as a serious national security threat, but it is increasingly dependent upon Beijing for arms and diplomatic and economic support. Meanwhile, China cannot wholly dictate to the Three Brotherhood Alliance’s three members, as their persistent opposition to the junta shows, but they are fundamentally dependent upon Chinese arms passed along by the United Wa State Army for their combat capabilities. If China decided to turn off that tap, they would be unable to fight so successfully against the junta. This explains their begrudging willingness to enter ceasefire negotiations with the junta. Moreover, the Three Brotherhood Alliance’s members are no monolith. It is an alliance, not a unitary actor, with the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (the Kokang) remaining closest to — and most dependent upon — China. The Ta’ang National Liberation Army and Arakan Army value Chinese support but are less dependent upon it.

In essence, China’s relations with the junta and the Three Brotherhood Alliance are that of principal and agents, but one where Beijing is now experiencing a period of lessened influence because Myanmar’s renewed civil war fundamentally recasts these ties. In the words of Amos C. Fox, “As time progresses and objectives are accomplished, each parties’ self-interest begins to supplant the objectives and end states that brought the principal and agent together in the first place.” In classic “principal-agent problem” fashion, interests have changed, retracted, or diverged. This dynamic is also arguably more complex in Myanmar than in many other proxy-principal relationships, as China’s hedging approach means that both of its proxies, the military junta and the Three Brotherhood Alliance, are in active armed conflict against each other and China cannot easily reconcile them.

For the Three Brotherhood Alliance, attacking a distracted and weakened junta was too good of an opportunity to pass up, and tying their efforts to the cyber scam epidemic ensured Chinese tacit backing. Had they kept the peace and not launched Operation 1027, then the junta would still be in control of their territorial claims in northern Shan and Rakhine States. As such, the Three Brotherhood Alliance had evidently decided in the months leading up to October 2023 that the costs of peace were no longer worthwhile, signs of which included their refusal to negotiate with the junta in summer 2023. At the time, an Arakan Army spokesperson even stated openly that “we would not be willing to meet with the junta without China.” After Operation 1027, only when China applied real pressure — speculatively, perhaps with threats of reduced arms — to enter a ceasefire did the Three Brotherhood Alliance do so. Even so, the ceasefire remains limited to northern Shan State and is seemingly on a knife’s edge.

For the junta, the criminal networks provided vital revenue to a cash-strapped regime, leading it to initially stonewall China’s crackdowns on the cyber criminals until Operation 1027 upended its calculus. Now, the junta only abides by the ceasefire out of begrudging necessity. Losing lucrative border territory to such brazen opponents is intolerable in the long term, especially as the Three Brotherhood Alliance had been reportedly coordinating with the junta’s National Unity Government and training anti-regime forces well before 1027. If the junta recovers its strength in the future, we can likely anticipate a counteroffensive against the Three Brotherhood Alliance.

This loosening of control and diverging of interests is likely apparent to Chinese leaders, in both Beijing and Kunming. For example, it appears probable that China leaked news of the March 2023 negotiations to apply public pressure on both sides to comply, as well as to advance its narrative of playing a positive role in Myanmar peacemaking.

At the same time, it is also important to highlight that principal-agent relations are not a one-way street. Although Chinese control has weakened, both of its proxies are still trying to use China for their own benefit. The Three Brotherhood Alliance continues to accuse the junta of intransigence on criminal networks, while the junta works to advance China’s economic interests and warns of Myanmar’s fragmentation to trigger Chinese concerns. The military has also reluctantly complied with Chinese demands on criminal networks while also protecting its revenue source by relocating them away from the Chinese border. China is widely distrusted in Myanmar, but its role and support are still valuable for the junta and the border ethnic armed organizations.

Implications for Myanmar’s Future

The implications of shifting interests and misalignment between China, some of the border ethnic armed groups, and the junta are potentially stark. For the pro-democracy resistance, winning Beijing away from its belief that only keeping the junta in power can secure China’s long-term interests is paramount. The National Unity Government is well aware of this and has issued a statement designed to appeal to Beijing. In doing so, it hopes to counter both the junta’s own propaganda and Chinese fears about the pro-democracy movement’s perceived closeness to the United States. If the resistance can convince Beijing that the junta’s intransigence, economic mismanagement, and counterproductive brutality undermine China’s interests, China may draw down its support. Yet it is not quite there. Although China’s tacit approval of Operation 1027 indicates some frustration with the Myanmar military, as do reports of expanded outreach to the National Unity Government, Beijing still sees fragmentation and state breakdown as the dangerous and likely alternatives to the junta.

Even as it courts China, the pro-democracy resistance should also be careful to avoid dependence upon Beijing at all costs. Beijing will not hesitate to throw its proxies under the bus. It views Myanmar through a purely pragmatic lens.

Therefore, the United States can and should do more to provide material support for democratic forces, while also working to reassure China and persuade it to abandon the junta. Striking this balance is, of course, easier said than done.It will require cooperating with China on issues like transnational cyber crime while emphasizing that the Myanmar junta poses a serious long-term threat to regional stability. At the same time, material U.S. support for pro-democracy actors, such as financial and humanitarian aid and diplomatic backing, can mitigate the risk of growing Chinese influence and assist the pro-democracy resistance as it continues to fight the junta.

Become a Member

Lucas Myers is the senior associate for Southeast Asia at the Wilson Center’s Asia Program.

The views expressed are the author’s alone, and do not represent the views of the U.S. Government or the Wilson Center.

Image: Wikimedia

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Lucas Myers · March 27, 2024

18. 'Fighting spirit’: How Myanmar’s resistance is taking new ground

With help (medical) from the Free Burma Rangers.

'Fighting spirit’: How Myanmar’s resistance is taking new ground

Groups fighting against the ruling military are making gains despite air and drone attacks.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2024/3/26/fighting-spirit-how-myanmars-armed-resistance-is-taking-new-ground

By Caleb Quinley

Published On 26 Mar 2024

26 Mar 2024

Shan and Kayah States, Myanmar - The truck rocked violently as the driver attempted to manoeuvre the rough terrain of Shan State’s dirt roads.

As the wheels spun, trying to find traction, the Pa-O National Liberation Army (PNLA) soldiers inside exchanged glances, nervous about the battle to come, but composed and determined.

The platoon was part of a convoy of vehicles making its way towards a small village, high in the mountains, ahead of a new offensive against Myanmar’s armed forces and an armed group aligned with the military government that seized power in a coup in 2021.

Armed with AK-47s, M-16s, and rocket launchers, they planned to retake multiple outposts near Hopong Township in Shan State, in the east of the country.

“We cannot attack directly, we have to check the area first and then attack slowly,” a PLNA soldier named Kyaw Zin explained at a ridge a few kilometres away from the front line. Further to the north, a key road was under the control of the Myanmar military preventing vital resources from being funnelled to the PNLA and other armed resistance groups further south.

Amid the constant threat of weaponised drones and air strikes from military fighter jets, the PNLA said they expected the fight to last at least 30 days. As the sound of gunfire and mortar shelling ricocheted around the amber-coloured hills, the fighters said they were confident they would win.

The Pa-O National Liberation Army (PNLA) is one of several ethnic armed groups fighting to remove the military regime [Caleb Quinley/Al Jazeera]

The PNLA is riding the momentum of a series of victories for anticoup fighters in northern Shan State since the Three Brotherhood Alliance launched "Operation 1027" towards the end of last year. The coalition of three powerful ethnic armed organisations has taken control of hundreds of military outposts and dozens of towns in Shan and Rakhine States since the offensive began, and reinvigorated the campaign against the military in other parts of the country.

Fighting has also escalated in Kayah State (Karenni), just south of Shan State.

The Karenni National Defence Forces (KNDF) launched its own offensive on November 11, 2023, "Operation 1111", aiming to take control of the state capital of Loikaw. About half the city, controlled by the military since the coup, is now in the hands of the Karenni resistance.

The KNDF has also taken control of Demoso, Mese and Ywar Thit as well as the strategically important township of Shadaw.

The battle for Shadaw

[Caleb Quinley/Al Jazeera]

Commander Khu Reedu was the leader of the attack on Shadaw.

“We entered the town very quickly,” Khu Reedu said of the offensive in February. “Once we finished their outposts, we could move inside to the main camp fast. The battle finally ended at the golden pagoda in the middle of the town; this is where the last standing SAC troops all died.”

The Myanmar ruling military, which calls itself the State Administration Council (SAC), has been fighting an armed resistance since launching a vicious crackdown on the mass protests that followed its February 1, 2021 coup.

Khu Reedu is one of KNDF’s most fearsome fighters: although no taller or more muscular than the other men, his piercing eyes suggest an intense determination.

Commander Khu Reedu led the KNDF attack on Shadaw last month [Caleb Quinley/Al Jazeera]

Reedu says he has led multiple attacks on Myanmar forces. Others say he has killed dozens of SAC soldiers.

Shadaw’s shattered buildings and burned-out landscape are testimony to the ferocity of the battle.

Even two weeks later, the bodies of the ruling military's soldiers were out in the open and starting to decompose. The remaining buildings were pockmarked with bullet holes, while others had been destroyed by mortar shells and bombs.

Emptied of its population of roughly 7,000, the streets were eerily quiet.

The KNDF and Karenni Army, the armed wing of the Karenni National Progressive Party, which also operates in Kayah State, had been trying for about a month to push the military from two camps it had established on the hill above the town, which is close to Loikaw and the Thai border and connects to Southern Shan, another area of crucial importance for the resistance.

Once the camps were overwhelmed, the military retreated to positions in the middle of Shadaw and anti-coup fighters surrounded the town.

Shadaw was left a ruin after soldiers from the military holed themselves up in the town [Caleb Quinley/Al Jazeera]

In the early hours of February 12, they launched their final assault. Over a period of about an hour, they fired mortars at the soldiers who had holed themselves up in Shadaw and targeted them with machine-gun fire.

The military, which has Russian fighter aircraft and continues to receive supplies of jet fuel despite calls for a boycott, began to bomb the area.

“All the villagers fled,” said Dave Eubank, the founder of Free Burma Rangers, a non-profit organisation of medics offering humanitarian assistance throughout Myanmar and beyond.

The people of Shadaw had taken refuge in a valley about 10km (6 miles) to the north of the town

“But even then, we were up in a hiding place with wounded villagers, and jets came in and tried to bomb us, tried to bomb the hiding place of the civilians,” he said.

“Even while we were treating them, we still got hit by 32 air strikes in two hours,” Eubank said.

The KNDF is pushing forward in parts of Kayah state in the east of Myanmar [Caleb Quinley/Al Jazeera]

At least 180 Myanmar military troops were killed in the offensive, while the Karenni resistance lost only nine soldiers, according to commander Khu Reedu.

The Free Burma Rangers say at least six civilians were killed - three mothers, and three children - while a further three were injured. The group documents the casualties at each location where they provide medical support.

The military spokesman did not reply to multiple calls for comment. Myanmar's state media carries regular reports suggesting successes by anticoup forces are “fake” news.

“The KNDF and others being able to clear any significant [military] presence in so many parts of Karenni State is a major achievement,” said David Scott Mathieson, an independent analyst. “It offers opportunities to expand supply chains, for the war effort, but also humanitarian support and the potential for trade and livelihoods to assist in reconstruction.”

The military will 'not go easily'

[Caleb Quinley/Al Jazeera]

Despite the breakthroughs, other battles have been more challenging.

Civilians have often found themselves caught up in the fighting, including in Pasaung Township, where anticoup forces say attempts to free about 1,000 villagers have encountered a fierce response from the military.

“You couldn't get all the people out of there, the Burma army was shooting at us, all around. Rifles, machine guns, M79s and mortars, everything,” said FBR’s Eubank.

According to the Free Burma Rangers, a few hundred civilians remain in Pasuang and are being used as “human shields”.

Those who escaped told FBR that they were threatened with death if they tried to leave. And as many were escaping, including some with fatal injuries, on March 1, the ruling military unleashed multiple air attacks and set many parts of the town on fire.

The Free Burma Rangers, led by Dave Eubank, catalogue civilian casualties in the fighting [Caleb Quinley/Al Jazeera]

At an undisclosed location in northern Kayah State, a KNDF platoon was edging closer to its fight.

The sun was blistering. Plumes of red dust billowed up into the sky as the convoy’s wheels tore into the earth. A lone hawk flew above in the pale blue sky. Suddenly, one of the troops spotted what he thought was a military spy plane. The distinctive buzz of its engine started echoing through the valley.

The SAC aircraft, a small white propeller plane, was above the convoy, flying in circles dangerously close.

“Normally, after one of these spy planes is above, if they see us, they will send a fighter jet to bomb 20-30 minutes later,” Mi Reh, a KNDF soldier, said as the troops hid beneath some trees. Above them, the aircraft banked sharply to the left, as the SAC pilots tried to get a better visual on the location.

“Sometimes, these planes are capable of dropping 20 mortars onto us,” Mi Reh added, his eyes fixated on the sky above.

Experts say the military’s increasing use of air power is a sign of its desperation.

Fighters in northern Kayah State hid beneath the tree canopy after they spotted a military spy plane [Supplied]

Increasingly unable to win on the battlefield, the ruling military sends Russian-made MiG 29 fighter jets or other aircraft to bomb its opponents wherever they believe they are operating. Although the bombings have killed KNDF troops in the years since the coup, such indiscriminate assaults often maim and kill civilians too, according to rights groups and experts.

“The real concern is that the SAC forces, while seriously diminished, are still stubbornly holding on in some areas, and they’re exacting a terrible toll on KNDF fighters and civilians through air strikes, artillery, and drone strikes (what the regime calls ‘drop bombs’),” Mathieson said.

Since 2021, a handful of fighter jets have crashed. The resistance claims they have shot down these planes - in January the Kachin Independence Army claimed to have shot down a military helicopter - but the ruling military has attributed the losses to mechanical faults. Whatever the cause, the military is losing planes, fuel and munitions, and being sapped of morale. In February, conscription was imposed to try and boost the military’s ranks.

“The SAC will not go easily but it’s important to reflect on how much territory, troops and bases they have lost in three years,” Mathieson said. “That is all down to the fighting spirit, collective spirit and ingenuity of the Karenni resistance who are winning precisely because they’re fighting a just war.”

Meanwhile, in Shan State, the PNLA platoon hunkered down for the night to the crack of small arms fire and repeated thumping of mortars. The PNLA said they had killed about a dozen ruling military troops over two weeks of clashes, but had also lost five of their own to drone strikes.

Despite the increasingly violent reality of life in Myanmar, many men and women remain focused on a cause they believe to be right - removing the military from power and restoring a civilian government.

“The SAC always tries to target us with air strikes, shelling and now many drones,” Khu Reedu, the KNDF commander, told Al Jazeera. “But it’s never going to work, these attacks are never going to stop us from freeing our country.”

19. Denying Russia’s Only Strategy for Success

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/denying-russia%E2%80%99s-only-strategy-success

Excerpts:

The future of Russia’s power and Russia’s ability to threaten the United States is path dependent on the war in Ukraine. The Kremlin’s intent to undermine the United States and break NATO not only persists but is growing.[61] The Kremlin is preparing for a large-scale conflict with NATO.[62] Russia’s ability to act on this intent is not a given. Russia’s ability to reconstitute, to threaten the United States and NATO; to control its neighbors; the Kremlin’s ability to manipulate the United States will and perceptions; and the strength of Russia’s coalitions, including with US adversaries, all depend on whether Russia wins or loses in Ukraine.

The cost of failure in Ukraine would be catastrophic. The threat of a nuclear escalation will continue to be the core asset of Russia’s perception manipulation.[63] We must address this issue head on. First, we are already in a scenario with a heightened risk of a nuclear escalation. We are here not because Ukraine or the West refuses to settle or deescalate. In fact, both settled for eight years and accepted a Russia-driven peace framework in Ukraine. But Putin reinvaded anyway, bringing us into this unstable scenario with an increased probably of the use of nuclear weapons. Secondly, the risk of a Russia-NATO war increases exponentially if Russia keeps its gains in Ukraine.[64] A victorious Russia is a faster path to a Russia-NATO war than a victorious Ukraine. Finally, Russia prevailing in Ukraine would constitute a convincing argument for the effectiveness of nuclear blackmail and would lead to nuclear proliferation. ISW has assessed other costs of losing Ukraine in detail.[65]

Russian victory in Ukraine would mean a victory of reflective control. If Russia wins in Ukraine, it will mean the Kremlin managed to undermine the Western will and ability to reason from the ground truths and its interests. Truth and free will are concepts that the free world cannot exist without. Helping Ukraine win and defeating the premises Russia is trying to enforce should be the main effort of the United States and the free world if it wants to remain free.

The upside is high. Ukraine’s victory would enhance NATO’s security. Ukraine would emerge as an invaluable asset for the United States and a testament to the values underpinning Western societies.[66] Ukraine will be able to share its experience in how to successfully wage modern war with US allies. Stopping Russia in Ukraine will allow the West to regain its deterrence capabilities — especially against Russia. A pro-NATO Ukraine, even if it is not in the alliance, would pose a serious military challenge to Russian plans to attack the Baltic States or Poland, enhancing NATO’s ability to deter such aggression and avoid future war with Russia.

The West has the advantage, but it must decide to use it. The West is a giant that – at times – behaves like a mouse when it comes to Russia. All it needs to do is stand up. That is why Russia needs to develop offsets and ways to fight asymmetrically. The power dynamic favors the West — and Ukraine, if the West decides to mobilize on behalf of Ukraine. Mobilizing would mean surging its military production, sparing more of its existing military capabilities and economic assets, and accepting a higher threshold for pain and risk now to avoid more cost and pain and risk in the future.

DENYING RUSSIA’S ONLY STRATEGY FOR SUCCESS

Mar 27, 2024 - ISW Press

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Denying Russia’s Only Strategy for Success

By Nataliya Bugayova and Frederick W. Kagan with Kateryna Stepanenko 

March 27, 2024

Russia cannot defeat Ukraine or the West - and will likely lose - if the West mobilizes its resources to resist the Kremlin. The West’s existing and latent capability dwarfs that of Russia. The combined gross domestic product (GDP) of NATO countries, non-NATO European Union states, and our Asian allies is over $63 trillion.[1] The Russian GDP is on the close order of $1.9 trillion.[2] Iran and North Korea add little in terms of materiel support. China is enabling Russia, but it is not mobilized on behalf of Russia and is unlikely to do so.[3] If we lean in and surge, Russia loses.

The notion that the war is unwinnable because of Russia’s dominance is a Russian information operation, which gives us a glimpse of the Kremlin’s real strategy and only real hope of success. The Kremlin must get the United States to the sidelines, allowing Russia to fight Ukraine in isolation and then proceed to Moscow’s next targets, which Russia will also seek to isolate. The Kremlin needs the United States to choose inaction and embrace the false inevitability that Russia will prevail in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin’s center of gravity is his ability to shape the will and decisions of the West, Ukraine, and Russia itself. The Russian strategy that matters most, therefore, is not Moscow’s warfighting strategy, but rather the Kremlin’s strategy to cause us to see the world as it wishes us to see it and make decisions in that Kremlin-generated alternative reality that will allow Russia to win in the real world.

Those whose perspective aligns with the Kremlin’s are not ipso facto Russian dupes. The Kremlin links genuine sentiment and even some legitimate arguments to Russia’s interests in public debate. The Kremlin is also an equal opportunity manipulator. It targets the full spectrum of those making or informing decisions. It partially succeeds on every side of the political spectrum. Perception manipulation is one of the Kremlin’s core capabilities — now unleashed with full force onto the Western public as the Kremlin’s only strategy for winning in Ukraine.[4] That is not a challenge most societies are equipped to contend with.

The United States has the power to deny Russia its only strategy for success, nevertheless. The United States has allowed Russia to play an outsized role in shaping American decision-making, but the United States has also made many sound choices regarding Russia’s war in Ukraine.[5] The key successes achieved by Ukraine and its partners in this war have resulted from strategic clarity.[6] Lost opportunities on the battlefield, on the other hand, have resulted from the West’s failure to connect ground truths to our interests quickly enough to act.[7] Fortunately, the United States faces an easier task in overcoming the Kremlin's manipulations than Russia does in closing the massive gap between Russia's war aims and its capabilities. The United States must surge its support to Ukraine, and it must do so in time. Delays come at the cost of Ukrainian lives, increased risk of failure in Ukraine, and the erosion of the US advantage over Russia, granting the Kremlin time to rebuild and develop capabilities that it intends to use against the West — likely on a shorter timeline than the West assesses.[8]

The United States must defeat Russia’s efforts to alter American will and decision-making for reasons that transcend Ukraine. For the United States to deter, win, or help win any future war, US decisions must be timely, connected to our interests, values, and ground truth, but above all – these decisions must be ours. The US national security community theorizes a lot about the importance of US decision advantage over our adversaries, including timeliness. Russia presents an urgent and real-world requirement for America to do so in practice.

I. The Kremlin’s Strategy

The Kremlin’s principal effort is to force the United States to accept and reason from Russian premises to decisions that advance Russia’s interests, not ours. The Kremlin is not arguing with us. It is trying to enforce assertions about Russia’s manufactured portrayal of reality as the basis for our own discussions, and then allow us to reason to conclusions pre-determined by the Kremlin. Accepting Russia’s premises and reasoning from them may proceed in a formally logical way but is certainly not rational, since it is divorced from actual reality and from our interests. Soviet mathematician Vladimir Lefebvre defined this process as “reflexive control”– a way of transmitting bases for decision making to an opponent so that they freely come to a pre-determined decision.[9] A key example: Putin takes the false assertion that discussions of Ukraine’s NATO accession posed a clear and imminent danger to Russia along with the false assertion that Ukraine is not a real country and builds them into a false conclusion that he was justified in launching a war of conquest.[10] Another assertion: Russia has the right to a self-defined sphere of influence, and, therefore, a right to do whatever it wants to those within this sphere – including invading, killing, raping, and ethnic cleansing – with no repercussions.[11] The degree to which Western discourse includes serious consideration of these falsehoods marks the success of long-running Russian information operations.

Some sincerely accept the Kremlin’s false predicates and resulting conclusions. Others may accept the predicates but stop short of leaping to conclusions that any of these arguments justify the Kremlin’s invasion and atrocities. Many can see past the Kremlin’s manipulations and recognize that Russia’s war is an unprovoked war of conquest, however.

The Kremlin then targets this last category on a different level of reasoning – the predicates that inform our will to do something about Russia’s war and the lengths to which we are willing to go. The Kremlin targets our perceptions of costs, priorities, risks, upsides, alignment with our values, and effects of our own actions. Two main categories of false assertions that the Kremlin is trying to enforce in this respect are that: a) Ukraine cannot win this war; supporting Ukraine is a distraction from ‘real’ US problems; Ukraine will be forced to settle; the United States is at risk of being stuck in another “forever” war; and b) the risks in helping Ukraine defend itself, let alone win, are higher than the risks of failure in Ukraine for the United States - it is too costly, too risky, and that Ukraine is not worth it. ISW and many others have thoroughly debunked these assertions, yet they remain pervasive in US discussions about opposing Russia.[12] The Russian goal is to have us freely reason to a conclusion that Russia’s prevailing in Ukraine is inevitable and that we must stay on the sidelines — and Moscow is succeeding far too well in this effort.

It is important to emphasize that by no means all who oppose continuing or expanding support for Ukraine are doing so as the result of Russian reflexive control measures. The point, however, is that Americans must recognize the enormous effort the Kremlin is putting into these and other assertions in order to create a picture of reality that, taken in its totality, is false — Russia had no right to invade Ukraine, has no rights to control Ukraine, was not provoked into such an invasion, will not inevitably win, will not inevitably escalate to fighting a full-scale war against NATO, and helping Ukraine liberate its strategic territories as the only viable path to a durable peace remains the most prudent course of action to secure US interests.

The Kremlin is also flooding Western discourse with false and irrelevant narratives, forcing us to expend energy, time, and decision bandwidth on irrelevancies rather than solutions. It is not an accident that the Western debate often becomes impaled on arguing about basic well-established facts about this war. This phenomenon is not merely a function of Western knowledge gaps or short memory. It is also a result of the Kremlin’s effort to saturate the Western debate with its assertions. A key example is a myth about Russia protecting Russian speakers in Ukraine.[13] Russia has obliterated predominantly Russian-speaking cities in Ukraine, killing, torturing, forcefully deporting, and forcing to flee many Russian-speaking Ukrainians.[14] Russia harmed the very people in the name of whom it waged the war. Despite this well documented reality, discussions about letting Putin keep “Russian-speaking provinces” to stop the war persist in Western debate. These discussions proceed from a false premise that Russia’s war aimed to protect Russian speakers to a false conclusion that ceding portions of Ukraine that have Russian speakers can resolve the war and is, furthermore, reasonable or justifiable. Many other basic facts are in question daily as the Kremlin floods the Western debate with its narratives. Putin deliberately chose to focus his interview with an American media personality on historical justifications for the war.[15] Putin is retroactively creating casus belli by twisting a historic narrative on the record. The history of Kievan Rus is as irrelevant to the current war as the history of the Roman Empire was to World War II. Every country in the world has a historical basis to claim rights to some or all of the territory of its neighbors. The world avoids a Hobbesian war of all against all by rejecting the validity of such arguments. Yet the Kremlin’s constant driving of them continues to divert Western discussions about what to do now into these historical irrelevancies. The Kremlin also forces the West to dedicate energy to an equally irrelevant discussion about whether Ukraine has the “right” to be a state or a nation. No country with a seat in the United Nations and recognized by the overwhelming majority of states in the world has an obligation to prove its right to exist no matter how small or ethnically like another state it might be. This principle is central to the current world order, and its destruction would open the floodgates of war around the world as predators used such reasoning to justify attacks on would-be prey. But the flood of false Russian narratives forces us to engage in such irrelevancies rather than focusing on war-winning strategies and our interests.

Russia is hijacking and substituting key concepts of Western debate about this war, such as notions of peace and defense, contributing to Western category errors about both.

Peace = Surrender. The West naturally and understandably gravitates toward peace. Our default instinct is to seize the first opportunity in any conflict to “stop the fighting.” The Kremlin has mastered using the Western predisposition to peace as a lifeline for Russia’s wars – from Syria to Ukraine.[16] The Kremlin has not once supported its euphemism of “peace” with action in the context of Ukraine. The Kremlin has had continuous opportunities to choose peace, including a choice not to invade Ukraine – a country that Putin considered to be so militarily unthreatening that Putin assessed he could conquer it in a matter of days. Allowing Russia to keep its gains in Ukraine in 2015 and having a peace framework in place for seven years did nothing to stop the Kremlin’s reinvasion in 2022.[17] Every single version of the Kremlin’s euphemisms of “peace” since 2022 has included a demand that amounted to the destruction of Ukraine’s sovereignty.[18] Russian Security Council Deputy Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev’s recent “peace formula” explicitly called for the elimination of the Ukrainian state and its absorption into Russia.[19] The Kremlin’s use of the term “peace” has been incompatible with its actions, including Russia’s campaign to eradicate Ukrainian identity in the occupied territories.[20]

The Kremlin’s exploitation of the Western argument for “stopping the bloodshed” conceals another critical nuance. Stopping the fighting does not stop the killing when it comes to Russia. The killing continues in Russian torture chambers on territory that Russia occupies – a process that is less visible to Western audiences and in a place where victims are stripped of the means to defend themselves.[21]

The Kremlin dangles the concept of “peace” to steer the West towards Ukraine’s surrender - the outcome that Russia seeks but cannot accomplish militarily on its own. When the Kremlin “signals peace,” it actually signals a demand for Ukrainian and Western surrender. Western debate continues, nevertheless, to indulge the Kremlin’s false overtures for “‘peace,”’ despite the total lack of evidence to support any reasonable assessment that letting the Kremlin freeze the lines in Ukraine can lead to peace rather than more war.[22]

Resisting Russian Aggression = Escalation. No one should be confused about verbs when it comes to Ukraine’s actions. Russia imposed its war on Ukraine. Ukraine chose to defend itself. Ukraine’s action is resisting death, occupation, and atrocities at the hands of Russian forces. Yet, the Western debate periodically accuses Ukraine (or the West itself) of “escalating” or “prolonging the war.”[23] The Kremlin has greatly invested in framing Ukraine – and anyone who dares to resist the Kremlin – as an aggressor (and Russia as a victim). The West’s legitimization of Russia, a belligerent in Ukraine since 2014, as a mediator in the Minsk agreements also gave the Kremlin eight years to falsely frame any Ukrainian self-defense action or unwillingness to bend to the Kremlin’s will as Ukrainian aggression.

No one should be confused about verbs when it comes to Western actions regarding Russia. The West has been non-escalatory toward Russia for years to the point of self-deterrence and ceding its own interests. The West has consistently chosen a path of negotiations, resets, and concessions with Russia.[24] The United States did not prioritize Russia, while focused on counterterrorism, largely until 2016 when the Kremlin openly interfered in US politics.[25] NATO has been self-deterring for years, discussions about Ukraine’s NATO accession have stalled, and Putin expected the Western response to his invasion of Ukraine to be so weak that he could conquer Ukraine in a matter of days.[26] Russia has been a self-declared adversary of the US and NATO, but neither the US nor NATO took meaningful steps to defend against Russia, let alone attack it, until after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.[27] The West nevertheless periodically views its actions regarding Russia as by default escalatory, conceding the Kremlin’s reasoning. This includes Western actions to defend itself or its partners against unprovoked Russian aggression or measures to limit Russia’s access to Western technologies and markets – neither of which Russia is entitled to and certainly not when it uses both to sustain its unjust war. The Kremlin’s framing that any Western action to resist Russia is aggression does not make those actions aggression. But the Kremlin has conditioned the West to think that way, forcing us yet again to reason from the Kremlin’s assertions, not ones based in reality. The West also indulged Putin’s grievances and grudges and reasoned to a false conclusion that we are somehow responsible for the Russian crimes that the Kremlin voluntarily committed against other states and its own people.[28]

These Russian efforts benefit from and strengthen trends already strong in Western discourse, such as the belief on both sides of the political spectrum that US or Western interventions are the source of all or most problems in the world. People, again, are entitled to their own views on these matters—but all should be aware of the degree to which the Kremlin seeks to weaponize our own internal discussions and disagreements to advance the Kremlin’s own aggressions and protect itself from the consequences of its atrocities. One can in principle condemn US or NATO policies and actions in the past and also condemn Russian aggression—but not in the Kremlin’s world, and not in the false reality the Kremlin seeks to impose on our internal discourse.

The Kremlin’s focus on degrading US decision making is not opportunistic, new, or limited to Ukraine. Perception manipulation is a key element of Putin’s offset strategy – a way to achieve goals beyond the limits of Russia’s power. In 2020 ISW assessed that Putin’s center of gravity is increasingly his ability to shape perceptions of others and project the image of a powerful Russia based on limited real power.[29] We wrote: “The Kremlin often generates gains based on perception without changing Russia’s capabilities. These gains emerge at the nexus of the Kremlin’s efforts to manipulate perceptions and the West’s inherent blind spots about Russia’s intent and capabilities. Minimizing the West’s perception of its own leverage over Russia is a core component of this effort.”[30]

The Kremlin depends on this strategy in Ukraine. Russia does not have sufficient military capability to achieve its maximalist objectives if Ukraine’s will to fight persists alongside Western support. Degrading US decision making is one of the few, possibly the only way, to narrow the gap between Russia’s goals and means in Ukraine.

Russia uses perception manipulation to advance its interests globally. Information operations have been a key part of the Kremlin’s toolkit for decades. Russia’s national security paradigm shifted heavily toward the information space after 2014, however, as a recognition of the increasingly vital requirement to shape global perceptions to advance Russia’s goals.[31] The Kremlin has been working to create an environment that would simply accept Russian premises. If the world accepts that Russia can do whatever it wants within its self-declared sphere of influence, Russia will need fewer sticks and carrots to impose its will on its neighbors. Or, for example, if the Kremlin succeeds in creating conditions in which NATO is forced to abandon its principles, such as Article 5 or the Open Door Policy, Putin would have succeeded at his goal of breaking NATO.[32]

The ability to control perceptions inside of Russia has been an existential requirement for Putin. In 2020 ISW wrote that Putin’s rule depends on his ability to maintain the perception that an alternative to him in Russia is either worse or too costly to fight for.[33] The Kremlin has succeeded in instilling inaction as a default instinct within the Russian population through physical and informational means. Submission takes time to achieve but the self-deterrence it generates pays off. The submission of the Russian population is the reason Putin can afford to rule with a suppression apparatus short of Putin’s likely suppression needs – if his regime were ever to be tested again (with Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin providing a glimpse of such a test during his June 2023 mutiny).[34]

Herein lies Putin’s core problem with Ukraine. Ukraine has demonstrated the capability to defy Putin’s center of gravity – his ability to shape the will and decisions of others. Ukraine is not immune to the Kremlin’s reflexive control, but it achieved strategic clarity in pivotal moments. In 2014, barely-equipped Ukrainian volunteers saw past the Kremlin’s hybrid cover and rushed to the frontline to combat Russian aggression – even in the absence of Ukraine’s conventional military and Western willingness to counter Russia.[35] Ukraine did not fall prey to the Kremlin’s campaign in 2019 to force Kyiv into political concessions that would have compromised Ukraine’s sovereignty.[36] Ukraine resisted Russia’s unprovoked full-scale invasion in 2022.[37] Growing antibodies to Russian manipulations within Ukraine’s civil society are among the key reasons Ukraine continues to exist as a state. (The Ukrainian instinct to run to the sound of the guns whenever Russians invade to “protect” Ukrainians from themselves should be a clear indicator of the falsehood of many Kremlin premises for its aggression. The fact that those premises continue to persist in the Western discourse despite these obvious contradictions is a testament to Russia’s successful reflexive control techniques.)

II. Our Susceptibility

US susceptibility to the Kremlin’s manipulations is not all of Russia’s making. It is also a consequence of America’s inherent traits and blind spots.

Values. The United States values peace, life, American interests, freedom of debate, and is trying to act responsibly with the power it wields. These are virtues, not weaknesses. They set us apart from Russia. Russia nevertheless uses these concepts against us in its way of war, as discussed throughout this paper.[38] The Western way of life also prevents us from grasping the full scale of what Russia is. Russia being mostly content with killing and wounding over 300,000 of its own citizens to conquer a country that did not pose a military threat is a reality unimaginable in a Western country.

Defeatism and the legacy of US wars. America’s past wars are distorting America’s understanding of Russia’s war against Ukraine. US concern about endless wars is a result of its experiences in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. But US debate about the risks of a long war in Ukraine revolves around a profound category error in discussing this war as if the United States were fighting it.[39] The United States is not fighting in Ukraine and should not discuss the costs to the United States as if it were. Ukraine, a US partner, is fighting this war against a US adversary. It is not a US proxy — Ukraine is fighting for its own reasons, not ours. And Ukraine has never asked for American soldiers to fight — only for material and financial support. US psychological scars from previous American conflicts have no place in discussions about what the United States should do vis-a-vis Ukraine.

Misunderstanding of the Russian threat. The United States has learned a lot about Russia’s intent and capabilities. The United States still, however, does not fully grasp the nature of the Russian threat, Russia’s sources of power and weakness, and the Russian way of war – including reflexive control. This knowledge gap is reflected in the prevailing US national security assessment that, while Russia poses the most immediate challenge, China is the bigger long-term threat.[40] This may be a valid assessment of China, but the framework is limiting for three reasons. First, it ignores the nature of the Russian threat to the United States, which goes beyond military power. Second, it ignores the path dependency of the Russian threat to the United States on the outcome of Russia’s war in Ukraine: the United States will face the greatest threat from Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union if Russia prevails in Ukraine.[41] Finally, it ignores the path dependency of China’s threat to the United States and the future of the anti-US coalition on the outcome of Russia’s war in Ukraine. A Russian victory in Ukraine will empower US adversaries in many ways — the most dangerous of all, perhaps, would be US adversaries learning that the United States can be manipulated into abandoning its interests in a winnable fight.[42]

III. Effects on US Decision-Making

The West accepted and reasoned from the Kremlin’s premises prior to 2022. The West did not react in any meaningful way to the de facto military occupation of Belarus in 2020-2021, endorsing Putin’s premise that Belarus is in Russia’s sphere of influence.[43] Europe endorsed Russia-driven and Russian-favorable peace talks in Ukraine during Russia’s initial military intervention in 2014, accepting the false premise that Russia is a mediator in the conflict where it actually has been the initiating belligerent.[44] These are two of many examples.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine temporarily restored the West’s strategic clarity, helping Ukraine defeat Russia’s initial objectives in this war. The world had a moment of clarity in 2022, recognizing Russia’s true intent and capability – including the limits of Russia’s capability, Ukraine’s agency, and the civilizational stakes of this war. That strategic clarity informed a myriad of actions by individuals and leaders in Ukraine and globally. These actions yielded critical successes: enabling Ukraine to defeat Russia in the battle of Kyiv, which meant the difference between the world’s largest present-day war and what would have been the world’s largest insurgency. It also enabled Ukraine to liberate critical terrain and people throughout 2022.[45]

The Kremlin shifted its main effort to shaping Western decisions ever since Russia’s failed ‘three-day war.’ This effort has several subordinate objectives:

• Delaying US provision of military capabilities to Ukraine by reinforcing narratives about the dangers of providing Ukraine materiel; exploiting US approaches to escalation management; and planting discussions of negotiations with the West about Ukraine’s fate around critical Western debate moments.[46]
• Driving the West to constrain Ukraine’s right to self-defense, including striking legitimate and necessary military targets in Russia or by limiting how Ukraine can use Western-provided weapons.[47]
• Constraining and delaying Western direct actions against Russia, such as transferring frozen Russian assets to Ukraine or applying more effective energy sanctions.[48]
• Delaying the West’s ramp up of its own capabilities and divestment from Russia.[49]
• Deterring potential Western combat operations in Ukraine by using nuclear blackmail and issuing other ambiguous threats.[50]
• Degrading NATO’s ability to resist Russia by exploiting relationships with select NATO members to drive wedges between alliance members.[51]
• Preventing the West from developing a long-term policy on supporting Ukraine by manipulating the Western perception about what constitutes a victory or a defeat in Ukraine.[52]
• Distracting the West from Russian aggression by playing up US fears over the emergence of other conflicts throughout the world.[53]
• Driving the West to concede on behalf of Ukraine via diplomatic backchannels and persistent public messaging.[54]

Russia has regained its ability to alter Western perceptions without meaningfully altering Russia’s capability. The Kremlin-generated information backdrop of mostly groundless fears and irrelevancies has shaped Western decisions, resulting in lost opportunities for Ukraine and an advantage for Russia. Western self-deterrence and delays in Western decisions extended the Kremlin’s runway to sustain this war:

• Russian perception manipulations cost Ukraine gains in its 2023 counteroffensive.[55] Russia’s nuclear-centric information operations in the fall of 2022 aimed to delay Western provision of tanks and other key capabilities to Ukraine.[56] US failure to proactively resource Ukraine’s initiative after two successful, successive counteroffensive operations in the fall of 2022 contributed to a missed opportunity for Ukraine to conduct a third phase of counteroffensive operations in the winter of 2022-2023.[57] This reprieve allowed Russia to build its defenses in depth and conduct a partial mobilization to shore up manpower, making Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive an extraordinarily difficult undertaking.[58]
• Western hesitation to provide the longest-range systems to Ukraine – and foregoing the strategic effect those systems would have generated on the battlefield – has been driven by the Kremlin-fueled fears that Ukraine might use those systems to strike targets in Russia provoking some unspecified escalation. Putin is not at all likely to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine simply to retaliate for Ukrainian strikes in Russia with Western missiles when he has not done so in response to repeated Ukrainian drone strikes.
• Western self-deterrence of its own actions against Russia, such as slow rolling sanctions on Russia or transferring frozen Russian assets to Ukraine, also reflects some fear of retaliation, even though Russia’s ability to escalate in the economic realm is highly limited.
• Western self-deterrence has not prevented the Kremlin from ramping up Russia’s capabilities, including by developing anti-satellite weapons and procuring military equipment from North Korea and Iran, and growing military exchanges between these countries.[59]

IV. Defying the Kremlin’s Strategy

Escaping the Kremlin-generated alternative reality requires more than evading Russian information operations. The United States must reconnect with its own interests and the ground truths of this war.

The ebbs and flows on the battlefield in Ukraine are irrelevant to the fundamental US interests regarding Russia and Ukraine. Russia aims to erase Ukraine as a state – an outcome that is unacceptable to US interests and values. Any outcome short of Ukraine liberating its critical territory will likely lead to a larger war with higher escalation risks for the US and under the conditions that favor Russia.[60] As long as Ukraine’s will to fight persists, the most prudent US strategy remains helping Ukraine liberate its territory and people as the only viable path to a durable peace. A result of any individual phase or an operation – such as the 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive – should not affect the fundamental US calculus regarding Russia’s war against Ukraine.

The future of Russia’s power and Russia’s ability to threaten the United States is path dependent on the war in Ukraine. The Kremlin’s intent to undermine the United States and break NATO not only persists but is growing.[61] The Kremlin is preparing for a large-scale conflict with NATO.[62] Russia’s ability to act on this intent is not a given. Russia’s ability to reconstitute, to threaten the United States and NATO; to control its neighbors; the Kremlin’s ability to manipulate the United States will and perceptions; and the strength of Russia’s coalitions, including with US adversaries, all depend on whether Russia wins or loses in Ukraine.

The cost of failure in Ukraine would be catastrophic. The threat of a nuclear escalation will continue to be the core asset of Russia’s perception manipulation.[63] We must address this issue head on. First, we are already in a scenario with a heightened risk of a nuclear escalation. We are here not because Ukraine or the West refuses to settle or deescalate. In fact, both settled for eight years and accepted a Russia-driven peace framework in Ukraine. But Putin reinvaded anyway, bringing us into this unstable scenario with an increased probably of the use of nuclear weapons. Secondly, the risk of a Russia-NATO war increases exponentially if Russia keeps its gains in Ukraine.[64] A victorious Russia is a faster path to a Russia-NATO war than a victorious Ukraine. Finally, Russia prevailing in Ukraine would constitute a convincing argument for the effectiveness of nuclear blackmail and would lead to nuclear proliferation. ISW has assessed other costs of losing Ukraine in detail.[65]

Russian victory in Ukraine would mean a victory of reflective control. If Russia wins in Ukraine, it will mean the Kremlin managed to undermine the Western will and ability to reason from the ground truths and its interests. Truth and free will are concepts that the free world cannot exist without. Helping Ukraine win and defeating the premises Russia is trying to enforce should be the main effort of the United States and the free world if it wants to remain free.

The upside is high. Ukraine’s victory would enhance NATO’s security. Ukraine would emerge as an invaluable asset for the United States and a testament to the values underpinning Western societies.[66] Ukraine will be able to share its experience in how to successfully wage modern war with US allies. Stopping Russia in Ukraine will allow the West to regain its deterrence capabilities — especially against Russia. A pro-NATO Ukraine, even if it is not in the alliance, would pose a serious military challenge to Russian plans to attack the Baltic States or Poland, enhancing NATO’s ability to deter such aggression and avoid future war with Russia.

The West has the advantage, but it must decide to use it. The West is a giant that – at times – behaves like a mouse when it comes to Russia. All it needs to do is stand up. That is why Russia needs to develop offsets and ways to fight asymmetrically. The power dynamic favors the West — and Ukraine, if the West decides to mobilize on behalf of Ukraine. Mobilizing would mean surging its military production, sparing more of its existing military capabilities and economic assets, and accepting a higher threshold for pain and risk now to avoid more cost and pain and risk in the future.

The challenges facing the United States are easier to solve than those facing Russia. The gap that Ukraine and its partners need to close to help Ukraine win is smaller than the gap that Russia needs to close to achieve its objectives in Ukraine. The Kremlin has mobilized a lot of its resources — far from all that the Kremlin can mobilize but orders of magnitude higher than what the West has mobilized on behalf of Ukraine. Russia had every advantage in the last ten years and occupied 18% of Ukraine at an enormous cost. Putin will mobilize more manpower and material, but Russia’s surge capacity is neither unlimited nor without costs and constraints.

The West is not as fragile as Russia wants us to think. Putin sought but failed to freeze Europe.[67] He has been trying but has failed to break NATO (though he will have a real chance to do so if Russia wins in Ukraine). Minimizing the West’s perception of its own strength is a core component of the Kremlin’s perception manipulation.

The West is awakening. Many Western leaders and societies have awakened to the reality that there is no going back to the status quo ante, that Russia is a self-declared adversary, and that the West has two choices: counter the threat or surrender to it. Ukraine’s European and Asia-Pacific partners began forming coalitions for weapon procurement to support Ukraine; European countries began ramping up their defense industrial bases to restock NATO supplies and assist Ukraine.[68] French President Emanuel Macron warned the West against showing any signs of weakness to Russia as he entertained the prospect of sending Western troops into Ukraine.[69] But US leadership remains indispensable.

Western advantage is not a permanent condition. Ukrainian lives and the Western advantage over Russia are the costs of US and Western decision-making delays. Ukraine’s agency and will to fight are assets of historical proportions that should not be taken for granted. Delaying resource mobilization decisions in the West will erode this center of gravity. Putin has considered Russia to be at war with the West for a while and has been acting like it. Putin recently signed decrees restoring the Moscow and Leningrad Military Districts, which may be in preparation for a potential future large-scale conventional war against NATO.[70] The Kremlin intensified the use of rhetorical threats against Finland and the Baltic countries, including accusing Baltic countries of intolerance towards ethnic Russians in the region.[71] The erosion of the West’s capability to counter the Russian threat will be proportionate to the delays in the Western realization of the threat itself.

V. The Next Decisions

The United States must restore its strategic clarity and get the big idea right: the best course of action for US interests is to support Ukraine to its victory, as the only path to a durable peace rather than a temporary respite, and then help Ukraine rebuild, putting the largest combat-effective friendly military in Europe at the forefront of NATO’s defense.[72]

The United States needs to surge and then persist in support of this objective. A sustained US effort, rather than a one-time surge, will grant Ukraine the certainty about resourcing that it can expect from international partners so Ukraine can plan for future operations. The US decision to persist should also stem from a recognition that Russia is a persistent challenge that requires persistent effort. The costs of persistence are minor compared to the catastrophic and irreversible consequences of letting Russia prevail in Ukraine.

The United States and other Ukrainian allies need to take several specific and immediate steps:

1. Provide Ukraine with sufficient military aid and other support required for Ukraine to restore maneuver to the battlefield.[73]

2. Support Ukraine’s effort to expand its defense industrial base (DIB) but also ramp up the US and allied DIB to support Ukraine in the medium term and to strengthen our own deterrence capabilities against Russia and other US adversaries. 

3. Target Russia’s capability to sustain the war against Ukraine.[74]

• Deny Russia’s sanctuaries. Russia is not entitled to sanctuaries when it is trying to erase a nation. The West must abandon the Russian information line that Russia, having launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, can demand immunity from attack with Western or Ukrainian weapons. The United States must remove any existing constraints on Ukraine to target legitimate Russian military and defense industrial capabilities in Russia. The West should also develop a long-term strategy against “sacred Russian cows” in the West, such as the Russian state nuclear energy corporation Rosatom. Rosatom is a major arm of the Kremlin, doing its bidding from Ukraine to the Arctic to Africa largely unimpeded due the Western economic interdependencies.[75] The long-term divestment from Rosatom is likely feasible, but it requires just that — for us to think in terms of a long-term strategy of denying Russia its capability sanctuaries.
• Focus on asymmetries. Ukraine has exposed numerous Russian weaknesses from the vulnerabilities of the Black Sea Fleet to the vulnerability of Russian defense industrial assets to Ukrainian drone and missile strikes.[76] The United States should amplify and accelerate not constrain these effective asymmetric warfare approaches that also impact Russia’s battlefield operations and force Putin to make hard choices about resource allocation. 
• Target Russia’s capability globally. Putin is playing the full board, so should we – targeting Russia’s capability from Africa to the Arctic.
• Strip the Kremlin of its offset capabilities. The United States must defy the Kremlin’s efforts to alter our own decision making and will. The United States must also deny the Kremlin the luxury of time to regroup on the battlefield, and to rebuild Russia’s broader military and perception manipulation capabilities only later to be used against us.

20.  Ukraine Secretly Acquired American Black Hawks. No One Knows How It Happened.

Hmmm....

Ukraine Secretly Acquired American Black Hawks. No One Knows How It Happened.

Two choppers have taken flight under Kyiv’s command, leaving a trail of questions in their wake.

BY KYLE MIZOKAMIPUBLISHED: MAR 26, 2024 9:00 AM EST

Popular Mechanics · March 26, 2024

• Ukraine’s intelligence service is operating at least two American-made UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters.
• GUR has operated one Black Hawk for a year, but a second recently made an appearance in a social media video.
• Western governments have not directly supplied NATO helicopters to Ukraine, meaning Kyiv acquired them privately.

The shadowy agency that controls Ukraine’s spies now flies at least two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters. In response to rumors that one of the GUR intelligence service’s UH-60s had been shot down, the agency released a new video that showed not one but two of the American-made helicopters. How Ukraine got its hands on any Black Hawks at all is not clear.

Proof of Life

Global Images Ukraine//Getty Images

Most of Ukraine’s helicopters, such as this Mi-8 armed with S-5 rocket pods, are more than thirty years old, built by the Soviet Union.

The story started last week on Telegram, when Russian military blogger Yevgeniy Poddubniy posted a video of what he described as a Ukrainian Armed Forces helicopter that had been shot down on the border between the two countries. Poddubniy described the helicopter as a “American-made UH-60 or (Soviet-made) Mi-24.”

Related Story

• Why the UH-60 Black Hawk Is Such a Badass Helo

At the time, only one UH-60 was known to fly in Ukrainian service—one flown by GUR, the national intelligence service. In response, GUR posted the following video showing not only one, but two working Black Hawk helicopters. Each has a blue and yellow Ukrainian aviation roundel and a large Ukrainian flag on the side sliding doors.

View full post on X

As a spy agency, GUR is notoriously clever in their use of social media. The video not only refuted the allegation the UH-60 was shot down, but shows two helicopters without explanation. This prompts all sorts of uneasy questions for Russia, such as: what are the helicopters used for? How did they get to Ukraine? And, maybe most importantly, exactly just how many Black Hawks does Ukraine have?

Sourcing Black Hawks

Historical//Getty Images

The Black Hawk made its combat debut in the invasion of Grenada, October 1983.

In February of 2023, GUR revealed that it operated a Black Hawk helicopter by placing it in the background of a photo without explanation. The United States and other donors have not supplied any Black Hawks to Ukraine, so the question was: how did it get there?

The helicopter’s registration code, N60FW, tracked back to Alabama-based Ace Aeronautics. In April of 2023, ABC News reported Ukraine had raised $6 million to purchase the plane “from a private seller”, which was apparently Ace Aeronautics or an intermediary between the company and the Ukrainian government.

In 2022, the company posted a video of the actual helicopter below.

View full post on X

The aircraft is listed in the Federal Aviation Administration’s registry as a UH-60A, the original Black Hawk variant flown by the U.S. Army. The UH-60A medium lift helicopter began replacing the Vietnam-era UH-1 “Huey” helicopter in the early 1980s and first saw action in the 1983 invasion of Grenada. The -A model had a crew of four, carried 11 troops or two tons of cargo internally, had a top speed of 184 miles an hour, and a range of 368 miles.

Related Story

• Watch This U.S. Air Force Chopper Refuel in Midair

The Army began divesting itself of UH-60A helicopters in the early 2010s, replaced them with newer UH-60M and refurbished older models brought to the UH-60V standard. Since 2012, U.S. Army Redstone Arsenal’s Black Hawk Exchange and Sales Team has released nearly 550 UH-60s from Army service. Those helicopters not snapped up by other government agencies are put on the commercial aircraft market, with the proceeds of the sales going to fund the purchase of new Army helicopters.

Two or…?

MICHAL CIZEK//Getty Images

"Cestmir" parked at Letna Park during the presentation of the "Gift for Putin" project in Prague, Czech Republic on November 17, 2023. The fundraising for the helicopter fell short of the target and it is unclear if it was ultimately procured.

Where did Ukraine’s second Black Hawk come from? Florida’s JetLease is advertising five UH-60s for sale, including new UH-60Ls, while Helitrader advertises another five. The helicopters are out there, if Ukraine can find the money to purchase them.

There are also private efforts outside Ukraine meant to source a Black Hawk for the country’s military. Weapons to Ukraine, Czechia’s largest fundraiser for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, has raised more than $1.6 million to purchase a used Black Hawk it has named “Cestmir”. The nonprofit claims that it needs $4.5 million. According to Key Aero, the helicopters typically sell for $500,000 to $1 million, but total acquisition costs can reach $3.5 million.

The question everyone wants to know is: just how many Black Hawks does Ukraine have? GUR has revealed it has two, but it is distinctly possible it operates more. As #2’s reveal makes clear, Ukraine’s spies will likely keep additional helicopters—if they exist—in the shadows until it can gain some advantage by revealing them.

Kyle Mizokami

Kyle Mizokami is a writer on defense and security issues and has been at Popular Mechanics since 2015. If it involves explosions or projectiles, he's generally in favor of it. Kyle’s articles have appeared at The Daily Beast, U.S. Naval Institute News, The Diplomat, Foreign Policy, Combat Aircraft Monthly, VICE News, and others. He lives in San Francisco.

Popular Mechanics · March 26, 2024

​21. Who Is Blowing Up Russia?

Excerpts:

In other words, as Washington has retreated from (or been forced out of) its efforts to confront global disorder, the disorder has grown. What happened in Moscow is reminiscent of what happened at the Bataclan theater in Paris in 2015, where 90 were murdered. ISIS seems to have a taste for concert halls.

The word “pivot” gets used a lot in foreign policy discussions, as in the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” or the “pivot to great-power competition” under Trump and President Biden. But if the lesson of the first pivot is that we neglected NATO and European security at our peril, the lesson of the second is that we have lulled ourselves into the belief that our Islamist terror problem is largely behind us. As Israel found out on Oct. 7, a country’s mortal enemies aren’t tamed or vanquished just because leaders have other priorities.

The American security challenge today is global: a resurgent ISIS, a revanchist China, a regionally aggressive Iran and a Russia where the lines between grandiosity and paranoia blur. Whether what happened in Russia was Islamist terror, an F.S.B. conspiracy, or some appalling combination of both, it augurs ill for us.

BRET STEPHENS

Who Is Blowing Up Russia?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/26/opinion/russia-shooting-concert-terrorism.html

March 26, 2024

Credit...Maxim Shipenkov/EPA, via Shutterstock

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By Bret Stephens

Opinion Columnist

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There are two plausible hypotheses regarding Friday’s terrorist attack at a concert hall outside Moscow, in which at least 139 people were killed. The first is that it was an inside job — orchestrated by Russian security services, or at least carried out with their foreknowledge.

The second is that it wasn’t.

In open societies, conspiracy theories are for cranks. In closed societies, they’re a reasonable (if not always correct) way to understand political phenomena.

In 1999, more than 300 Russians were killed and 1,700 injured in a series of apartment bombings for which authorities blamed Chechen terrorists. The bombings served as a pretext for Vladimir Putin — who had ascended swiftly from secondary apparatchik to director of the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., to prime minister — to launch the second Chechen war.

Then something strange happened. The police found three enormous sacks of white powder in the basement of an apartment building in the city of Ryazan, connected to a detonator and timer set to go off at 5:30 in the morning. Initial tests of the powder found it contained the same explosive, hexogen, that had been used in other bombings.

The police soon apprehended the culprits who had placed the sacks — and they turned out to be employees of the F.S.B. The Russian government later said the sacks were filled with sugar and had been left in the buildings as a training exercise. But as the historian David Satter and others have documented, the claim borders on the preposterous. And numerous journalists and politicians who sought to investigate the incident wound up poisoned or shot dead.

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Why does this history matter? Because it shows that Putin “has no allergy to blood, Russian or any other kind, if spilling it furthers his goals,” as Garry Kasparov noted in The Wall Street Journal.

It says something that Putin seemed to provide a motivation for a false-flag attack by almost immediately pointing the finger at Ukraine for Friday’s massacre — an absurd if telling choice of a culprit, given that Ukraine would immediately destroy its credibility with its Western partners if it had any connection to the event.

It says something, too, that the attack occurred right after Putin’s re-election in this month’s sham vote, and just as he is seeking to mobilize tens of thousands of fresh troops for the war in Ukraine. What better way for him to do so than to revert to the tried-and-true formula of creating panic on the home front so that he can bring destruction to the frontier?

That’s the first hypothesis. But there’s also a brutal history of Islamist terrorism in Russia, and the United States alerted Moscow on March 7 (just as it alerted Iran before an ISIS attack there in January) that an attack was imminent. In both cases, the warnings were ignored — Putin dismissed it as “an attempt to frighten and destabilize our society” — perhaps because cynical regimes have trouble imagining the possibility of altruistic motives.

This suggests what we already knew: Putin’s state is as incompetent as it is brutish. And with the enemies it has, it doesn’t need to invent a fictitious conspiracy between Western powers and the “Nazi regime” in Kyiv. Russia will never resolve its inner weaknesses — a shrinking population, fissiparous ethnic minorities, a brain drain and an energy-dependent economy — through foreign conquests.

But it suggests something else: Five years after the Islamic State’s so-called caliphate fell in northern Iraq and Syria, ISIS and its offshoots are far from gone.

Around 9,000 hardened ISIS fighters are held as prisoners in several camps in Syria, guarded by Kurdish forces with American help (which Donald Trump attempted to end). The branch of ISIS accused of the Moscow attacks, known as ISIS-K, is estimated to have as many as 6,000 fighters at large, mostly in Afghanistan. Other ISIS affiliates operate throughout Africa, where U.S. counterterrorist efforts are being hampered by local upheavals.

In other words, as Washington has retreated from (or been forced out of) its efforts to confront global disorder, the disorder has grown. What happened in Moscow is reminiscent of what happened at the Bataclan theater in Paris in 2015, where 90 were murdered. ISIS seems to have a taste for concert halls.

The word “pivot” gets used a lot in foreign policy discussions, as in the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” or the “pivot to great-power competition” under Trump and President Biden. But if the lesson of the first pivot is that we neglected NATO and European security at our peril, the lesson of the second is that we have lulled ourselves into the belief that our Islamist terror problem is largely behind us. As Israel found out on Oct. 7, a country’s mortal enemies aren’t tamed or vanquished just because leaders have other priorities.

The American security challenge today is global: a resurgent ISIS, a revanchist China, a regionally aggressive Iran and a Russia where the lines between grandiosity and paranoia blur. Whether what happened in Russia was Islamist terror, an F.S.B. conspiracy, or some appalling combination of both, it augurs ill for us.

More on the concert hall attack

What We Know About ISIS-K, the Group That Has Been Linked to the Moscow Attack

March 22, 2024

Russia’s Battle With Extremists Has Simmered for Years

March 24, 2024

ISIS-K, Group Tied to Moscow Attack, Has Grown Bolder and More Violent

March 24, 2024

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A correction was made on March 26, 2024: An earlier version of this article misidentified the country whose credibility with the West would be damaged if it was tied to Friday’s massacre at a concert hall outside Moscow. It was Ukraine, not Russia.

When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more

Bret Stephens is an Opinion columnist for The Times, writing about foreign policy, domestic politics and cultural issues. Facebook

A version of this article appears in print on March 27, 2024, Section A, Page 22 of the New York edition with the headline: Who Is Blowing Up Russia?. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

22. The Return of the Tactical Crisis

Excerpts;

On a dispersed and sensor-saturated battlefield, the role and impact of electronic warfare has increased significantly. But besides communications frequently being hampered, there are other constraints. Contrary to popular belief, most Ukrainian commanders do not usually promote personal initiative. This is especially true regarding higher-ranking reserve officers, who still adhere to the Soviet method of top-down, centralized decision-making. Unsurprisingly, the same applies to most Russian commanders. Besides cultural limitations, heavy attrition on both sides has aggravated the shortage of experienced commanders even further. So, while the German Army a century ago was able to conduct dispersed attacks on a grand tactical scale, current actions by either side in Ukraine remain limited in scope and duration.

There are those who argue that the return to trenches on the battlefields of Ukraine is in itself an indication that, despite technological advances, the character of warfare has essentially not changed—not realizing that these technological advances are actually the driving force behind the return to trench warfare. Now, as in World War I, increases in firepower force troops to once again disperse, dig in, or both, in order to be able to survive. The casualty-intensive, attritional nature of World War I encouraged the search for new tactics and technologies. Above all, it led to the development of combined arms warfare on different tactical levels, which attempted to combine effects in order to substitute for mass and reestablish conditions that enable maneuver.

With low troop density being offset by technologically advanced sensors and indirect fires, current conditions are again favoring the defender. Due to increased dispersion, the span of control of individual commanders is expanding, especially at lower tactical levels. This complicates command and control, while reducing the ability to concentrate fighting power from dispersed positions to establish a main effort during offensive actions. The war in Ukraine has currently entered a phase of attritional and positional warfare, characterized by small-scale assaults on prepared positions. While the weapons and technologies are dramatically more advanced, the challenge remains the same as it was during World War I: establishing combined arms formations at the lowest tactical levels, providing them the right fire support to enable maneuver, and reestablishing conditions that enable massed and concentrated fighting power. Ukrainian forces did not have the means of overcoming that challenge—the right mix of tactics and technology—during their 2023 counteroffensive. Whether either side’s forces have made progress toward solving this tactical crisis will influence the shape of the war in 2024.

The Return of the Tactical Crisis - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Randy Noorman · March 27, 2024

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“Despite the requirement to achieve mass and concentration for decisive results, the greater lethality of weapons dictated a contradictory need for dispersion. Much of the history of modern warfare can be written as a function of attempts to reconcile these seemingly contradictory elements.”

Following Russia’s failed attempt at a coup de main beginning on February 24, 2022 and the subsequent transition to what many believed would be a war of maneuver, the roughly six-hundred-mile Russo-Ukrainian front has transformed into a grinding war of attrition. This has fueled discussions on whether or not the conflict has reached a stalemate, or even whether it signals the end of maneuver warfare. With the exception of Ukraine’s spectacular Kharkiv offensive and the recapture of Kherson—though these succeeded for different reasons—neither side has been able to break the deadlock of positional warfare. Even the highly anticipated and much-hyped Ukrainian summer offensive in 2023 fell far short of expectations, with the former Ukrainian commander-in-chief, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, admitting its failure.

Particularly notable, as Zaluzhnyi pointed out, is that large-scale maneuvers conducted by highly concentrated armored formations and aimed at achieving operational breakthrough have remained conspicuously absent. Instead, small-scale infantry units fighting over elaborate trench systems zigzagging throughout terrain pockmarked by artillery are conjuring images of World War I. Unsurprisingly, comparisons to the First World War’s Western Front have been numerous. Apart from the obvious similarities, however, few have grasped the real dynamics at play and what implications they entail.

Recent publications show that Ukrainian military officials have even accused their American counterparts of not adequately grasping the extent to which technology has changed the modern battlefield. Although US military officials have repeatedly stressed the importance of concentrating a sufficient number of large, armored formations to achieve a breakthrough, the Ukrainians themselves quickly discovered that current battlefield conditions dictate otherwise. As Zaluzhnyi described, “Modern sensors can identify any concentration of forces, and modern precision weapons can destroy it.” This has prevented both sides from concentrating into sufficiently large formations to achieve a breakthrough in the traditional sense. Instead, it forces units to disperse, dig in, or both, further expanding the empty battlefield.

Increases in firepower—in terms of range, accuracy, speed, and lethality—that had begun in the last quarter of the nineteenth century resulted in what became known as the tactical crisis, which in part induced stalemate on the Western Front during World War I. Comparable advances in weaponry are having the same effect today in Ukraine, creating similar dilemmas. Like the initial tactical crisis, it temporarily offers an advantage to the defender. This marks a shift in the offense-defense balance, the measure of relative advantages that offense and defense have over one another, which is determined by factors like geography, troop density, and especially military technology. But if these two cases, separated by more than a century, stem from similar causes and pose similar dilemmas, then the case of World War I can serve as a framework for understanding and seeking solutions to the challenge of breaking the stalemate of positional warfare.

The Tactical Crisis

There exists a photograph taken on September 1, 1870, during the Battle of Sedan, allegedly the first ever taken during an active battle. It displays German soldiers in column formations advancing toward French held positions. The leading company has transitioned into skirmisher lines, enabling the columns to press home the attack. Densely packed column formations eased command and control and increased battlefield mobility, simultaneously providing the physical mass necessary to conduct a successful bayonet charge. Close-order, linear formations provided the necessary concentrated firepower to soften up the enemy. This is basically what the infantry battle had looked like since at least the days of Napoleon, with assault power and firepower together constituting the infantry’s fighting power.

However, up until around the mid-nineteenth century, infantrymen were primarily equipped with muzzle-loading smoothbore muskets, which had a severely limited effective firing range and a low rate of fire. Troops could therefore approach and maneuver across the battlefield largely unhindered, out of the enemy’s firing range. This all changed with the large-scale application of rifled barrels, followed by the introduction of breech-loading and repeating rifles. In just a few decades, both the effective range and the rate of fire increased dramatically, devastating close-order formations, with major implications for the traditional conduct of battle. As assault power gradually gave way to firepower tactics, infantrymen went to ground, searching for cover—walls, ditches, trees, and the like. Illustrative of the effects of dramatically increased firepower was the Prussian Guards assault against the French-held village of St. Privat on August 18, 1870, during which the attacking force lost eight thousand out of its twenty thousand men in a mere twenty minutes’ time. This was one of many similar bloody encounters that took place between different armies across different conflicts during that period.

The ensuing tactical crisis that would trouble militaries all the way up to 1914 and beyond involved all three arms—infantry, artillery, and cavalry—although it primarily concerned the infantry assault and its premature culmination in the face of rapidly mounting losses. The tactical crisis fueled discussions about whether it was still possible to approach the enemy using close-order formations, especially when executing the final, often frontal, assault. Skirmisher lines with wider spacing in between soldiers and laterally dispersed across a linear front—like those captured in the photograph from the Battle of Sedan—limited casualties but were less suitable for offensive action. Wider dispersion made it much more difficult to manage forces in battle and sacrificed the ability to concentrate fighting power at the decisive point. Cooperation with the artillery therefore intensified in order to suppress the enemy during forward movement. However, without the means to communicate with the necessary speed and clarity across large distances, this cooperation faced a similar dilemma, being unable to mass fire from dispersed positions.

Consequently, the battlefield not only expanded significantly in scale, but also became empty as troops disappeared out of sight, trying to blend into their surroundings. The battlefield’s expansion beyond the relatively small, open, and carefully selected sites optimal for set-piece battles increased its diversity, adding complicated terrain features and obstacles, while the pace of the fighting accelerated, creating rapidly changing circumstances. While obstacles provided cover during movement, they also limited visual contact and reduced command and control. Managing an attack, that was spread out over a much larger and diversified area, therefore, became much more difficult. In Germany, two opposing views emerged, with advocates of the conservative Normaltaktik stressing the need for a limited number of standardized drills and formations. This simplified cooperation between infantry and artillery, but also reflected a belief that, with limited time available, it was impossible to bring conscripts up to the level of training necessary for independent action.

Proponents of the more progressive and innovative Auftragstaktik believed that modern battlefield conditions necessitated independent judgment on the part of lower tactical commanders in determining the appropriate tactics and formations, which would depend on circumstances. Their leading spokesman, Sigismund von Schlichting, also recognized the emergence of the meeting engagement. The increased effective range of weapons meant that fighting now began the very moment armies came within visual range of one another and combat commenced straight from the march. The assault, therefore, had to be conducted across much larger distances. Schlichting also cautioned that modern mass armies, with ever-widening frontages, would ultimately result in what he called “the parallel battle,” wherein two linearly deployed armies would be permanently engaged, lacking the ability to either conduct an envelopment or achieve a breakthrough, resulting in a tactical stalemate producing extraordinarily high casualties. As opposed to the speed that was essential during meeting engagements, Schlichting believed that attacks against prepared positions would become the dominant form, necessitating a more deliberate approach.

The Parallel Battle

By the summer of 1914, firepower had again increased significantly. As armies clashed all across Europe, many prewar assumptions were shot to pieces. While on the Eastern Front, due to a lower troop density, maneuver warfare would remain possible to a certain extent, maneuver on the Western Front, with its higher troop density, quickly became stalled. Within three months’ time the maneuver phase ended and Schlichting’s parallel battle became a reality. Consequently, with no open flanks left to envelope, the only remaining option was a frontal assault, in turn expanding the defense in depth. The next chapter of the tactical crisis thus not only involved breaking the forward enemy trench lines, but carrying the attack all the way through. Because field guns, using direct fire, were equally vulnerable to the increased range of infantry weapons, the importance of howitzers using indirect from concealed firing positions increased accordingly.

Forward enemy defenses could be effectively targeted by artillery because observers were able to adjust their fire using line-of-sight observation. Following the initial penetration of the enemy’s forward lines, however, direct visibility of target was lost, and fire support quickly became less effective and primarily used for general suppression. The next problem arose the moment the infantry attack exceeded the range of its own artillery support altogether, with the artillery itself often unable to advance. Additionally, coordination between infantry and artillery occurred at the divisional level, while machine guns were allocated to battalions and regiments in very limited numbers. Communications technology at the time was simply not advanced enough to coordinate fire and movement between different tactical levels during offensive actions. So, in order to enable maneuver and concentrate fighting power, the infantry remained dependent on their organic firepower, which was still based upon individual riflemen.

All warring factions began searching for new methods, tactics, and technological solutions. This led increasingly toward combining direct and indirect fire as mutually complementary effects and establishing combined arms warfare across different tactical levels. The role of artillery, applying predictive fire, increased significantly, as did its cooperation with infantry, employing a creeping barrage at a predetermined rate of advance. The tank combined firepower and protection by adding armor in an attempt to facilitate maneuver. Poison gas was used as a means to inflict mass casualties or paralyze defenders. Airplanes even began conducting air support and air interdiction, establishing joint cooperation at the tactical level. Ultimately, while all belligerents developed specialized assault detachments, none did so to such an extent as the German Army.

German stormtroopers abandoned linear formations and instead operated in small, mutually supportive groups, enabling them to utilize the terrain to maximum effect for cover while searching for weak spots in the enemy’s defenses. Instead of relying on firepower of individual riflemen, these forces were assigned heavy weapons down to the lowest tactical levels. This equipped stormtrooper detachments to provide their own fire support, without the need to deploy in long and vulnerable skirmisher lines. This, in turn, required independent decision-making and initiative, which was delegated down to the lowest tactical levels accordingly. Fire planning was coordinated at higher levels, while artillery was concentrated against targets located throughout the enemy’s tactical depth using aerial observation and was increasingly used for counterbattery fire. Although coordination between artillery and the advancing infantry remained crucial, beyond the range of effective artillery support the availability of direct and indirect heavy weapons at the squad, platoon and company levels provided the necessary speed and precision to take out enemy strongpoints.

The Tactical Crisis Today

Fast forward just over a hundred years and it becomes apparent that the pendulum of the offense-defense balance has once again swung over to the defensive side. As for geography, much of the Donbas generally consists of relatively open terrain, providing clear fields of fire favoring the defender. Troop density, in contrast, is relatively low. Although engaged along a roughly six-hundred-mile front, both the Russian and Ukrainian armies are still relatively small historically speaking. This, however, is offset by the widespread application of drones, creating a transparent battlefield wherein it is very difficult for movement and any sizable presence to remain undetected—and once located, forces can be easily targeted. These trends have once again introduced a tactical crisis, much like the one driven by advancements made in the nineteenth century.

Modern sensors can now locate any concentration of enemy forces far beyond the forward positions occupied by ground troops, long-range precision strike systems can effectively target them, and the sensor-to-shooter cycle is greatly accelerating. Sophisticated kill chains and effective reconnaissance-fire and reconnaissance-strike complexes are revolutionizing large-scale combat operations. When General William E. DePuy made his famous 1974 statement—“What can be seen, can be hit. What can be hit, can be killed”—advancements in reconnaissance, surveillance, and target-acquisition capabilities were still in their infancy, and advancements were being made in the deep-strike capabilities necessary to engage Soviet rear echelons as part of the US AirLand Battle doctrine and NATO’s associated Follow-On Forces-Attack concept. Now that this technology has reached adulthood and come into widespread use, it has eliminated the traditional advantage of direct over indirect fire and no longer requires a clear line of sight during battle. This represents similar increases in the range, precision, speed, and lethality of firepower that induced the original tactical crisis around one and a half centuries ago.

Just like breech-loading cannons and repeating rifles expanded the nineteenth-century battlefield, forcing infantry columns to disperse and adopt open order formations at far greater distances, modern deep-strike capabilities also expand the battle zone to an unprecedented depth with similar consequences. The impact of these capabilities therefore goes far beyond the actual front line and not only concerns combat formations. Key enablers for sustaining an offensive, like headquarters and logistics, have become equally vulnerable, reducing the ability to scale offensive operations. With the empty battlefield thus continuing to expand, it is reviving the issue of how to concentrate fighting power from dispersed positions during offensive actions. It also raises the question of how to command and control sizable formations during attacks across extended areas. Because dispersion increases a commander’s span of control, it reduces the ability to command and control the overall battle and in turn, raises the need for independent action of subordinate commanders.

The Return of the Parallel Battle

Russian defenses do not constitute an uninterrupted front line, but rather consist of unconnected company- and platoon-sized fighting positions. Nonetheless, at the lower tactical level, assaults against vulnerable flanks have become exceedingly difficult. Like barbwire during World War I, extremely dense Russian minefields canalize attackers and force them to remain exposed to defensive fire for longer periods of time. Meanwhile, Russian artillery is able to mass fires from dispersed positions, thwarting every Ukrainian attempt to concentrate and advance. Even though Ukrainian defenses are much more rudimentary and are faced with Russian superiority in both materiel and fires, they are still able to inflict tremendous losses, slowing down Russian advances to such an extent that gains are measured in yards rather than miles. So, while the defense is generally bolstered by these developments, it erodes the ability to take offensive action, requiring movement and mass rather than concentrating effects.

The Ukrainian army came to these conclusions just a few weeks into its 2023 summer offensive, when it first sought to penetrate Russian defenses by concentrating at the intended breakthrough locations. After suffering considerable losses during the initial phase, Ukrainian troops quickly switched to more time-consuming, but less costly, small-scale dismounted infantry assaults. Only through a temporary dominance in artillery were they able to locally establish the necessary preconditions to advance. The Russian army made similar adaptations following the costly fighting around Bakhmut, Vuhledar, and more recently Avdiivka. While its reconnaissance-fire complex continues to evolve, it has largely abandoned large-scale attacks with concentrated armored and mechanized formations and when it still does conduct such attacks, it does so with predictable consequences. Instead, both sides now primarily employ tanks from a standoff distance or in an assault-gun role in direct support of infantry units operating in platoon or company strength.

Although the term human wave attacks conjures a certain image, in reality Russian infantry assaults are no longer concentrated in a single mass. Additionally, the Russians revived the concept of storm groups and storm detachments—specialized assault formations for operating in urban terrain and fortified areas—originally developed during the Battle of Stalingrad and used again during both of Russia’s wars in Chechnya. Much like the German stormtroopers of World War I, these units are designed to be more flexible and self-supporting as breakthrough formations. They are smaller and more simply organized than regular infantry companies, with higher-echelon heavy weapons and the decision-making authority for their employment delegated down to subordinate commanders.

The shortage of physically fit and well-trained troops, led by experienced and able commanders, serves as an additional constraint on scaling up operations. Similar to the German Army during the latter stages of World War I, the Russians now differentiate between offensive and defensive formations, with line battalions manning trenches and specialized storm detachments conducting assaults. Likewise, Ukrainian brigades as a whole usually deploy only two to three companies capable of offensive actions. The ability, on both sides, to conduct dispersed offensive actions on a larger scale is further hampered by a shortage of competent battalion- and brigade-levels staffs to provide the necessary coordination and integration of assets and their effects. As US Army Major Rick Chersicla so adequately put it in a recent article:

Increased dispersion increases the need for disparate tactical actions to be synchronized in time, space, and purpose for their individual outcomes to register as cumulative operational effects.

On a dispersed and sensor-saturated battlefield, the role and impact of electronic warfare has increased significantly. But besides communications frequently being hampered, there are other constraints. Contrary to popular belief, most Ukrainian commanders do not usually promote personal initiative. This is especially true regarding higher-ranking reserve officers, who still adhere to the Soviet method of top-down, centralized decision-making. Unsurprisingly, the same applies to most Russian commanders. Besides cultural limitations, heavy attrition on both sides has aggravated the shortage of experienced commanders even further. So, while the German Army a century ago was able to conduct dispersed attacks on a grand tactical scale, current actions by either side in Ukraine remain limited in scope and duration.

There are those who argue that the return to trenches on the battlefields of Ukraine is in itself an indication that, despite technological advances, the character of warfare has essentially not changed—not realizing that these technological advances are actually the driving force behind the return to trench warfare. Now, as in World War I, increases in firepower force troops to once again disperse, dig in, or both, in order to be able to survive. The casualty-intensive, attritional nature of World War I encouraged the search for new tactics and technologies. Above all, it led to the development of combined arms warfare on different tactical levels, which attempted to combine effects in order to substitute for mass and reestablish conditions that enable maneuver.

With low troop density being offset by technologically advanced sensors and indirect fires, current conditions are again favoring the defender. Due to increased dispersion, the span of control of individual commanders is expanding, especially at lower tactical levels. This complicates command and control, while reducing the ability to concentrate fighting power from dispersed positions to establish a main effort during offensive actions. The war in Ukraine has currently entered a phase of attritional and positional warfare, characterized by small-scale assaults on prepared positions. While the weapons and technologies are dramatically more advanced, the challenge remains the same as it was during World War I: establishing combined arms formations at the lowest tactical levels, providing them the right fire support to enable maneuver, and reestablishing conditions that enable massed and concentrated fighting power. Ukrainian forces did not have the means of overcoming that challenge—the right mix of tactics and technology—during their 2023 counteroffensive. Whether either side’s forces have made progress toward solving this tactical crisis will influence the shape of the war in 2024.

Captain Randy Noorman MA is an officer in the Royal Netherlands Army and currently working as a military historian at the Netherlands Institute for Military History, part of the Netherlands Defense Academy.

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

Image credit: Oles_Navrotskyi, via depositphotos.com

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Randy Noorman · March 27, 2024

23. China's maritime power cause for action and alarm

Excerpts:

In short, the US currently finds itself at a disadvantage vis-a-vis China in terms of industrial capacity. China already leads the world in sea power in the aggregate. But there are paths both through additional industrial investment at home and amongst its allies that could enable it to reestablish local naval dominance in the western Pacific.

The United States Congress should rapidly and enthusiastically pursue a “Ships Act” on par with the 2022 “Chips Act” that should have as its ends the modernization and expansion of the nation’s ship-building and repair capacity.

As part of this effort, the nation should be open to outside investment from foreign shipbuilding leaders in American shipyards. It should also seek to better leverage the repair capacity of foreign yards, perhaps by providing advanced surface-to-air defensive missile systems to protect those sites.

The threat is proximate and real, and time is late. Industrial investments in shipyards must be the national priority.

China's maritime power cause for action and alarm - Asia Times

US needs a ‘Ships Act’ on par with ‘Chips Act’ to restore its declining naval deterrence and keep ship-building pace with China

asiatimes.com · by Jerry Hendrix · March 26, 2024

The People’s Liberation Army Navy is now, and has been for several years, larger than the US Navy with over 370 ships currently in commission. What’s more, in a few years, if it continues its current building rate, it will reach around 450 ships, making it larger than the US Navy and the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force combined.

However, Western commentators, especially those who don’t want to support larger defense and shipbuilding budgets, consistently argue that the navies of the United States and Japan are more technologically advanced and hence more lethal.

This argument, while true, actively ignores the fact that when Chinese maritime and naval sea power is considered in the aggregate, the technical superiority of the navies that would be expected to resist Chinese aggression is likely to be overwhelmed very quickly in any potential conflict.

In October 2023, I published a study that raised alarming questions about the declining conventional deterrent power of America’s naval presence.

The study, which sought to create a measurable model of naval presence, found that even when American ships were assigned a higher platform score than their direct Chinese counterparts, for instance a score of 1.0 for an American Burke-class destroyer versus a score of .75 for a PLAN Luyang III warship, the Chinese still came out ahead due to the larger size of their navy, the capacity of their industrial base and their proximity to the battlespace.

Follow my math here.

The US Navy presently has 73 Burke-class destroyers with about two-thirds of them assigned to the Pacific fleet, and is building two new ships a year, thus creating an aggregate score of 50. China currently has approximately 50 guided missile destroyers but is laying down six new keels per year at their Jiangnan and Dalian shipyards. At China’s current pace, it will have created a force of 80 modern destroyers within the next five years which will combine to create an aggregate score of 60, surpassing the United States.

Additionally, the Chinese shipbuilding base gives it a tremendous industrial advantage and amplifies its score. It can both build and repair ships faster than the United States. If a US ship is damaged in battle, there is not a robust ship repair capacity that could return that ship to the fight and the shipbuilding industrial base cannot rapidly scale to increase new ship construction. A ship damaged in battle will not return to the theater of war in a timely manner.

The USS Nimitz (CVN 68) in dry dock at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard/ Photo: Puget Sound Shipyard / Public Domain / Thiep Van Nguyen II

Finally, China would have another mathematical advantage in that it is fighting in its own backyard. Currently, the areas of competition where China is asserting illegal territorial claims that are at odds with America’s friends and allies are within the first island chain, especially around the island nations of the Philippines and Japan, with whom the United States has mutual defense treaties, and Taiwan, with which the United States has a long-standing security relationship.

If a ship is damaged in battle in these waters, it would need to transit to American bases in Guam, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, or the American west coast. Damaged Chinese naval vessels would need to simply pull into a nearby port or one of China’s 19 major shipyards.

Some recent voices have argued that the United States should plan to make better use of shipbuilding and ship repair capacity that exists within key American allies such as South Korea and Japan in Asia or even key shipyards in Europe for our ships based there.

This would make economic sense and certainly no one could question the loyalty of key allies who have consistently fought alongside US forces over the past seventy years, but there should be some acknowledgment that most of this industrial capacity lies under the missile threat rings of many Chinese missiles and aircraft.

Perhaps the US should more heavily leverage its recent AUKUS agreement with Australia to expand the repair capacity in that island-continent nation, which is well-placed geographically.

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The United States should also seek to pursue repair capacity in the group of Freely Associated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau, with which it just recently signed a new Compact of Free Association. These islands, some of which lie just outside of the Chinese threat perimeter, possess some superb harbors and airfields but require investment to modernize their repair capacity.

In short, the US currently finds itself at a disadvantage vis-a-vis China in terms of industrial capacity. China already leads the world in sea power in the aggregate. But there are paths both through additional industrial investment at home and amongst its allies that could enable it to reestablish local naval dominance in the western Pacific.

The United States Congress should rapidly and enthusiastically pursue a “Ships Act” on par with the 2022 “Chips Act” that should have as its ends the modernization and expansion of the nation’s ship-building and repair capacity.

As part of this effort, the nation should be open to outside investment from foreign shipbuilding leaders in American shipyards. It should also seek to better leverage the repair capacity of foreign yards, perhaps by providing advanced surface-to-air defensive missile systems to protect those sites.

The threat is proximate and real, and time is late. Industrial investments in shipyards must be the national priority.

Dr Jerry Hendrix (PhD) is a senior fellow at the Sagamore Institute and a retired US Navy captain.

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asiatimes.com · by Jerry Hendrix · March 26, 2024

24. The Shame Weapon: Condemning a Country’s Human Rights Violations Rarely Works—but That Doesn’t Make It Pointless

We should also not forget the example of Ronald Reagan who told Gorbachov to "tear down this wall" even as they were conducting arms control negotiations.

Often, leaders of totalitarian regimes believe the denial of human rights is necessary to remain in power. Therefore, human rights are not only a moral imperative but also a national security issue.   It is a line of effort in support of the diplomatic and informmational instruments of national power

Excerpts:

Enforcing international norms requires political leverage; it demands that states harness their material and strategic influence for the benefit of innocent civilians in far-off places, which itself requires an enormous amount of political will. In this sense, U.S. policymakers can learn from another time in history when the United States was one of the last holdouts protecting an ally facing worldwide condemnation: apartheid-era South Africa. After decades of resistance, the United States finally yielded in 1986 to global and domestic pressure and issued sanctions against South Africa, despite Washington’s close economic and strategic partnership with the apartheid government. The sanctions helped speed the end of apartheid precisely because the United States had a strong relationship with the country it was targeting. If international pressure is to have any chance of curtailing the unfathomable suffering in Gaza and elsewhere, it will have to be led by the actors that have done the most to enable and protect the perpetrators.

This understanding should inform the United States’ approach to advancing human rights through foreign policy more generally. Governments are in a better position to influence states with which they share political or economic ties. When it comes to trying to change the behavior of adversaries, engagement—not isolation—offers the best chance for promoting human rights in the long term. As for partners, leaders will need to summon the political will required to overcome the costs of shaming a friend. In the service of protecting human rights, the United States must be willing to put strategic interests on the line.

The Shame Weapon

Condemning a Country’s Human Rights Violations Rarely Works—but That Doesn’t Make It Pointless

By Rochelle Terman

March 27, 2024

Foreign Affairs · March 27, 2024

In its December 2023 filing to the International Court of Justice, South Africa accused Israel of violating its obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention in a case that prompted strong reactions. Some touted the investigation as a significant step toward the fair application of international law. Others deemed it a cynical exercise, infused with double standards and political bias.

Amid the controversy, it was easy to lose sight of the fact that any ruling from the ICJ is effectively unenforceable. The court has no independent mechanism to ensure compliance. Israel could easily ignore any decision it dislikes, and the United States would almost certainly veto any attempt to coerce Israel through the UN Security Council.

But even without the material powers to enforce its judgements, the ICJ can still have a considerable effect by marshaling the moral powers of global condemnation. In this sense, it joins other forms of international rebuke in attempting to enforce human rights and humanitarian norms through shaming. International shaming, whether through formal legal mechanisms (such as the censure of the ICJ) or informal denunciations in diplomatic rhetoric, can hurt countries alleged to have violated international norms, embarrassing their leaders and tarnishing their reputations. It can also mobilize domestic opposition within the targeted countries, encouraging publics to demand change from their own leaders.

And yet, when it comes to Israel, the ICJ does not appear to be swaying Israeli leaders or citizens to implement a cease-fire or change the way Israel is fighting so that fewer Palestinian civilians will be killed. If anything, the investigation has only inflamed long-standing suspicions of international institutions. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu captured the pique of Israeli public opinion when, in remarks in January, he pithily dismissed South Africa’s case as an act of “brazen gall.”

Israel is not unique in defying international pressure. Global shaming often fails to produce any meaningful change in the targeted country, and in some cases can backfire by provoking outright resistance. For example, after Western countries condemned Uganda and Nigeria for criminalizing homosexuality in 2014, rights groups reported a spike in human rights violations against LGBTQ people in those two countries. In China, international shaming about human rights issues has sparked defensive nationalist backlashes among citizens, increasing support for the regime. Rulings by international courts have provoked similar “rally ’round the flag” responses in other countries, shifting public opinion and government policies in a counterproductive direction.

Shaming rarely works to convince rivals or adversaries to change their behavior because a targeted country has little to gain from acquiescing to the demands of its opponents. Governments understand this dynamic, and yet they insist on shaming others anyway. That is because the point of shaming is not just to try to change a state’s behavior but also to stake the moral high ground, earning credit with the public and winning the favor of other countries. In truth, shaming works to change behavior only in particular contexts, namely when friendly countries exert pressure on one another using existing leverage. But those states rarely want to throw their allies or partners under the bus and risk damaging valuable relationships. The irony of shaming is that it is used most often when it is almost destined to fail and not enough when it is most likely to succeed.

FOR SHAME

Shaming a state is much like shaming an individual: in both cases, shaming works to place social pressure on actors that violate shared norms. When world leaders denounced violence in Syria during its decade-long civil war, or when Gambia accused Myanmar of genocide in the ICJ in 2019, or when the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution in 2022 condemning human rights violations in Iran, the goal was to put a country in the spotlight, decry violations, and urge reform. Although these situations differed in important respects, all of these actions attempted to enforce widely accepted norms by applying some kind of social sanction.

Like shaming people, shaming governments is an inherently social process, occurring through preexisting relationships and risking damaging them. Even when it is purely rhetorical, criticizing other countries can endanger valuable ties. For example, many of China’s partners—including many Muslim countries—have refused to condemn its abuse of Uyghurs because they fear undermining a profitable relationship.

And yet leaders still try to shame other countries quite often, even when there appear to be few direct benefits of doing so. That’s because there are other benefits. By publicly shaming other countries for violating human rights, leaders can be rewarded by third-party audiences, such as their own voters, who genuinely believe in human rights and wish to see their government take action to protect them, or their allies, which want to see norms enforced on the world stage but may not want to bear that responsibility themselves. South African policymakers won tremendous domestic and international credit, for instance, by prosecuting Israel for genocide, reaping political gains at home while enhancing their country’s reputation abroad.

Shaming a state is much like shaming an individual.

Shamers can benefit from stigmatizing a target. In the international realm, leaders often denounce human rights violations not because they genuinely care about human rights but because they want to inflict political damage on foreign adversaries, thus bolstering their own relative power. As a result, states shame their rivals in particularly sensationalist and inflammatory ways.

Compare, for example, Western reactions to human rights violations in Saudi Arabia and Iran. The two Middle Eastern countries are similar in many respects: both are run by authoritarian regimes and both rank among the worst human rights violators. But they enjoy very different sorts of geopolitical ties. The United States and its Western allies routinely condemn Iran—an adversary—in the harshest terms. Many policymakers are rightly horrified by Iran’s record of abuse, but it is also clear that geopolitical motives underly their rhetoric. “Allies should be treated differently—and better—than adversaries,” wrote Brian Hook, a State Department aide in the Trump administration, in a 2017 memo. He elaborated that Washington should press China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia on human rights not only out of moral concern but also because doing so “is one way to impose costs, apply counter-pressure, and regain the initiative from them strategically.”

Saudi Arabia and the United States have sustained a close partnership for nearly 80 years, cooperating on a range of security, economic, and diplomatic issues. As a result, U.S. policymakers have hesitated to condemn the kingdom’s abysmal human rights record. When Saudi operatives killed the Saudi journalist (and U.S. resident) Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018, the United States decided against denouncing or sanctioning Riyadh after the Saudis threatened to retaliate economically to any such measure. Even after the Biden administration released a report in 2021 that claimed that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the murder, little changed. In the eyes of Washington, the cost of endangering an important relationship eclipsed the moral imperative of punishing Saudi violations.

The point here is not that Washington is guilty of hypocrisy—it is hardly unique in this regard—but rather that countries tend to shame their rivals and adversaries more often, and more harshly, than they do their friends and allies. It can be rational for leaders to continue to shame another country even if their efforts fail to reform the target’s behavior and even if those efforts backfire and exacerbate violations. Simply put, compliance is not always the primary goal of shaming.

SHAMELESS

Even when pressure is applied, it doesn’t always succeed in improving human rights conditions or deterring abuse. The shaming of adversaries is rarely effective. Because there is no valued relationship to protect, target countries have little reason to acquiesce to the shamer’s demands. Tehran, for example, takes U.S. criticism less seriously because it has no incentive to maintain good relations with Washington. Such accusations are also less credible; policymakers and the public see them as a cynical attempt to attack the target for political reasons, a perception that allows governments to safely reject and deny such accusations.

Shaming can even backfire by stimulating a defensive nationalist reaction in the target country. When domestic audiences perceive foreign pressure as hostile, paternalistic, or threatening, leaders can conclude that flouting that pressure will better serve their interests. In an earlier incident in Uganda, for example, Western condemnation of an anti-gay bill in 2009 provoked a defiant reaction from the public, transforming a local policy issue into a symbol of national sovereignty and self-determination. President Yoweri Museveni—who had reservations about the legislation—was backed into a corner. When he signed a different version of the bill in 2014, he did so, in the words of his spokesman, “with the full witness of the international media to demonstrate Uganda’s independence in the face of Western pressure and provocation.”

A similar reaction is evident in Israel, where a large portion of the public views the ICJ case as yet another iteration of unceasing international hostility toward the Jewish state. Such sentiments are not entirely unreasonable, considering that UN organs condemn Israel far more than any other country. Research has shown that even Israelis who are otherwise sympathetic to the Palestinian cause can find themselves supporting hard-line policies as part of a defensive reaction to international pressure. Such shifts in public opinion have bolstered the most hawkish segments of Israeli society while dampening internal calls for restraint.

Human rights enforcement is more likely to succeed when countries pressure their friends.

Israel and its defenders have decried South Africa’s role as cynical and theatrical. But it is certainly true that South Africa chose to lead the case against Israel for reasons beyond shaming the Jewish state. In prosecuting the crime of genocide, South Africa has not only earned credit among those who wish to see Israel held accountable—a contingent that spans much of the world—but also among other countries in the global South that resent what they see as Western hypocrisy in the enforcement of global morality.

Sometimes shaming really does change the behavior of targeted states. Human rights enforcement is more likely to succeed when countries pressure their friends and allies. When it comes to Israel, that responsibility falls squarely on the United States, which has the deepest alliance with Israel and thus the greatest leverage to help contain the destruction in Gaza.

But despite being the most effective kind of pressure, it is also the most difficult to pull off: leaders are reluctant to criticize friends and allies because they value these relationships and do not want to risk endangering them. For decades, the United States has shielded Israel from legitimate human rights criticism in large part because it views the alliance as critical to its security interests in the Middle East. “It’s not only a long-standing moral commitment,” then Vice President Joe Biden explained to an American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference in 2013. “It’s a strategic commitment.” Even as U.S. domestic opinion is gradually turning against Israel, Washington remains reluctant to use the leverage it has to constrain Israeli behavior.

THE STAKES OF SHAME

When it comes to human rights, adversaries are quick to condemn but often provoke a counterproductive response. Allies are the most effective enforcers but also the most reluctant to push friends to change their behavior. As a result, shaming is most common in situations where it is least likely to be effective and most effective in situations where it is least likely to occur.

Enforcing international norms requires political leverage; it demands that states harness their material and strategic influence for the benefit of innocent civilians in far-off places, which itself requires an enormous amount of political will. In this sense, U.S. policymakers can learn from another time in history when the United States was one of the last holdouts protecting an ally facing worldwide condemnation: apartheid-era South Africa. After decades of resistance, the United States finally yielded in 1986 to global and domestic pressure and issued sanctions against South Africa, despite Washington’s close economic and strategic partnership with the apartheid government. The sanctions helped speed the end of apartheid precisely because the United States had a strong relationship with the country it was targeting. If international pressure is to have any chance of curtailing the unfathomable suffering in Gaza and elsewhere, it will have to be led by the actors that have done the most to enable and protect the perpetrators.

This understanding should inform the United States’ approach to advancing human rights through foreign policy more generally. Governments are in a better position to influence states with which they share political or economic ties. When it comes to trying to change the behavior of adversaries, engagement—not isolation—offers the best chance for promoting human rights in the long term. As for partners, leaders will need to summon the political will required to overcome the costs of shaming a friend. In the service of protecting human rights, the United States must be willing to put strategic interests on the line.

• ROCHELLE TERMAN is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. She is the author of The Geopolitics of Shaming: When Human Rights Pressure Works—And When It Backfires (Princeton University Press, 2023), from which this essay is adapted.

Foreign Affairs · March 27, 2024

25. China’s Economic Collision Course

Excerpt:

Chinese officials often say that Beijing does not deliberately seek a trade surplus. Deliberate or not, China’s trade imbalances are not sustainable for the rest of the world, and China should not be surprised if foreign governments start to respond more aggressively. Beijing is likely to reject measures similar to those the United States and its partners adopted in the 1980s to address Japan’s trade imbalances, such as an exchange rate arrangement resembling the Plaza Accords or Louvre Accords. Tariff hikes on Chinese imports, another policy available to foreign governments, may only provide temporary relief; when the Trump administration imposed such levies, many Chinese suppliers were able to skirt these regulations by shipping goods through third countries before they reached their final destinations in the United States. With few effective policy options and an unwilling negotiator in Beijing, Western governments in particular will consider increasingly draconian restrictions on Chinese trade. That shock may be what is necessary for China to take structural reforms seriously, for the sake of its own economic health and in the hope of avoiding an irreparable split in global trade.

China’s Economic Collision Course

As Growth Slows, Beijing’s Moves Are Drawing a Global Backlash

By Daniel H. Rosen and Logan Wright

March 27, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Daniel H. Rosen and Logan Wright · March 27, 2024

China’s economy has barely grown in the past two years. The immediate causes, including a decline in property construction and ham-fisted “zero COVID” policies that tanked private-sector investment, are well known. But the roots of the stagnation are systemic, and firms and analysts inside China, as well as governments and businesses around the world, have waited with anticipation for Beijing to clarify its plans to put the country’s economy on a more stable track. Between 2010 and 2019—not long ago—China’s annual GDP growth averaged 7.7 percent, but today the basic policy reforms necessary to support even three or four percent growth are proving difficult for Beijing to achieve.

Domestic and foreign observers pinned their hopes on the biggest policy event on China’s calendar, the National People’s Congress (NPC), for signs of an overdue change in direction. China has run an annual trade surplus for more than two decades, but in 2022 and 2023, a slowdown in China’s domestic demand pushed the country’s exports to exceed its imports by a shocking $1.7 trillion. A year earlier, in 2021, President Xi Jinping had declared that China had become a “moderately prosperous society”—a reference to a concept defined more than two millennia ago in the Chinese poetry collection known as the Book of Songs. In modern economic terms, Xi was taking credit for China’s rise to middle-income status. This transition should come with a policy pivot. After over two decades of strong investment-led growth, China now needs consumption-led growth. Further investment will have diminishing returns unless China can consume more at home. Yet over the past two years, the opposite has happened. Unable to sell goods to domestic buyers, Chinese companies are exporting their excess production abroad.

The United States, the European Union, Japan, and other advanced and developing countries worry that this trend will continue—that China is preparing to export its way out of the economic slowdown. Beijing has declined to prioritize domestic demand and openly denigrated consumer stimulus proposals, and it has promised to sustain support for the very industries that are driving China’s export growth. These policies will result in larger Chinese trade surpluses and foreign deficits, undercutting competition abroad and threatening to put Western firms out of business and their workers out of jobs.

The outcome of the NPC, which concluded on March 11, will heighten rather than allay foreign countries’ legitimate worries. Faced with an economic situation that calls for structural reform to enhance productivity and bring domestic demand more in line with production, China’s leaders have instead put forward a policy mix that will delay necessary changes and deepen the economy’s reliance on foreign sources of demand. To protect their own economies from the damage caused by inexpensive Chinese exports, foreign governments will increasingly turn to antidumping tools, which typically include tariffs on Chinese goods produced below cost.

Worsening trade conflict is an inevitable outcome of current Chinese policies, and it will not be limited to China’s relationships with advanced economies. Trade disputes are already arising between Beijing and several other members of the multilateral forum known as BRICS, for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Earlier this month, Brazil initiated antidumping investigations into Chinese steel imports. India has introduced more antidumping orders than any country in the world in its efforts to restrict imports from China. South Africa’s trade commission recently completed an assessment of Chinese imports and confirmed that dumping was taking place. While developed and developing economies alike push back against China’s high export volume, Beijing appears to be simply ignoring the problem. And as Chinese overcapacity drives foreign governments toward ever-harsher countermeasures, the resulting confrontation is something neither the Chinese economy nor the global trade system can afford.

NO CHANGE ON THE HORIZON

This is not the first case of broad international objection to a single country’s trade practices. Advanced economies also took issue with Japan’s refusal to address its trade imbalances in the 1970s and 1980s. The United States intervened by holding direct talks with Japan in 1984–85 to compel Tokyo to deal with the root of the problem: structural policies that disadvantaged foreign products and undervalued Japan’s currency. As a result, Japan agreed to “voluntary” export restrictions. The Plaza Accord of 1985 and the Louvre Accord of 1987, both signed by France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States (with Canada joining the latter agreement), codified further arrangements to reduce trade imbalances by allowing exchange rate adjustments to strengthen the yen against the dollar. These coordinated efforts to change Japanese economic practices were controversial at the time, eliciting complaints that Washington and its partners were being heavy-handed. But in the end, the measures did not impede Japan’s economic development. In fact, by dealing with legitimate concerns about trade imbalances, they laid a foundation of trust in globalization that would benefit many countries—none more than China—in the ensuing years.

Today, the question is whether Beijing will agree to correct its policies, as Japan did, forestalling a campaign by G-7 countries to impose more aggressive restrictions on the growing volume of Chinese exports. But trade policies would be only a temporary expedient. China’s trade surplus will persist until its domestic demand meaningfully grows or investment growth slows significantly. To alleviate the problem in the short term, Beijing would need a strong fiscal stimulus. And to fix it in the long term, China must transfer resources from the state to households—either directly through cash payments or shares in state-owned enterprises, or indirectly through changes in tax policies or subsidies for housing, retirement, medical care, and other services.

If China had such steps in mind, its intentions would have been apparent in the policy messaging that came out of the NPC. But no such evidence has emerged. In fact, Beijing’s economic targets show not only that it remains committed to its old export- and investment-led development model but also that it may even be planning to expand Chinese manufacturing capacity to further increase exports.

The industries China seeks to champion are exactly the ones that threaten to undermine competitors abroad.

Consider that Beijing’s new fiscal policy package includes no direct support for household consumption or incomes. China’s formal budget deficit target of three percent of GDP in 2024 is largely in line with its 2023 target, which, taking into account the current combination of government spending and bond issuance, means that Beijing will not be implementing the kinds of fiscal policies that spur domestic growth. Most important, China continues to channel credit and fiscal resources into local investment rather than making direct transfers to households to boost their spending. In the past, Xi has derided such payments as “welfarism,” but China cannot sustainably expand household consumption as a share of the economy only using supply-side measures. Eventually, fiscal resources must move from the state to the household sector, and there are no signs now of that transfer taking place.

This industrial policy is particularly unwelcome to the rest of the world. China’s official government work report for 2024 identifies the electric vehicle, battery, and solar cell industries among the “new productive forces” that will boost the country’s overall productivity growth. An entire section of the report describes how the government “will actively foster emerging industries and future-oriented industries” with an aim to “consolidate and enhance [China’s] leading position” in several of them. But the industries China seeks to champion are exactly the ones that are threatening to undermine competitors in developed and developing economies.

China’s fiscal revenue targets, too, imply that it is aiming for stronger export-led growth. These figures include various types of collected taxes as well as rebates on export taxes. Although the Ministry of Finance projects that overall fiscal revenue will rise by just 3.3 percent this year, it expects that spending on export tax rebates will increase by 9.9 percent. Meanwhile, the ministry expects that the taxes China collects on imports will rise by only 4.1 percent. These forecasts do not necessarily indicate an explicit intention to boost exports, but at the very least they show Beijing does not anticipate any reduction of its trade surplus in 2024.

There is no sign of China taking requests from Western governments into account.

Defense spending is also set to rise much faster than overall government spending or revenue generation. China has planned for only a 4.0 percent increase in total expenditures, but it has mapped out a 7.2 percent expansion of the defense budget. The signal to the rest of the world is that Beijing is prepared to prioritize its military over investments in sustainable household development or human capital.

Before China unveiled any of these policies, European officials engaged in extensive outreach to urge Beijing to consider the threat its exports posed to European industries and employment—and the risk of spoiling a European political environment that had long been favorable to trade with China. On a visit to Beijing in early February, officials from the U.S. Treasury Department delivered a similar message. But the NPC's plans show no signs of China taking these requests from Western governments into account.

The optics at the NPC did not help. Typically, at the conclusion of the congress, China’s premier gives a press conference. This year the event was canceled—not only for 2024 but for future years, as well. The press conference was always a staged affair, with questions submitted in advance and answers prepared. But by calling off the event, China’s leadership is showing that it now sees convergence with the practices of developed economies as unimportant, or at least not as important as whatever backstage politics were behind the cancellation.

DOUBLING DOWN

Not only does Beijing appear unwilling to address domestic economic imbalances, but it may also lack the capacity to do so. This is especially concerning. For decades, economists have called for China to shift toward domestic consumption by addressing constraints on individual spending, which include insufficient household income. To both rebalance the domestic economy and reduce the country’s trade surplus, Beijing must encourage consumption in addition to slowing investment in property and infrastructure.

But China is now poorly positioned to engineer such a shift. The state collects only around 14 percent of GDP in tax revenues, far below the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development average of 34 percent. More important, a large part of those revenues comes from value-added taxes on manufacturing and other taxes on businesses, rather than from taxes on individual income and domestic consumption. Under the current tax system, therefore, a transition to a consumption-led economy would result in a dramatic decline in tax revenues, undercutting Beijing’s ability to execute policy.

The need for tax reform is clear; Xi himself acknowledged the problem in his policy agenda announced in 2013. The fact that no such reform is in sight is thus additional evidence that Beijing is doubling down on its antiquated growth model. Every year, as it does with all countries, the International Monetary Fund consults with Chinese officials on economic policy, makes recommendations, and then reports on Beijing’s view of the proposed changes. In previous years, Chinese officials agreed with the IMF on the need for fiscal reform. But this year, Beijing told the IMF that a suitable tax system “has been basically established” and that Beijing’s goals would focus on high-quality development “rather than directly increasing fiscal revenue.” China is rejecting not only the specific reforms that would facilitate a more sustainable trade relationship with the rest of the world but the need for any reform at all.

China’s trade imbalances are not sustainable for the rest of the world.

China faces limits when it comes to updating its industrial policies, too. Even if Beijing were to yield to foreign pressure and make concerted efforts to restrict investments in electric vehicles and batteries, solar cells, and other industries, the companies and manufacturing facilities that benefited from earlier government subsidies would not disappear. A central government campaign, moreover, is unlikely to change lending decisions on the ground, given that local officials face mandates to maintain employment levels and ensure financial stability.

It would be difficult for China to quickly reduce its widening trade surplus, and no one expects the country’s leadership to deliver a fix overnight. But it is alarming that Beijing seems to have made no meaningful effort to right this imbalance. By idly allowing policies to remain as they are, China is setting itself up for confrontation with developed and developing economies alike.

Beijing should recognize foreign countries’ valid reasons for introducing protective trade policies, at least until China achieves structural reform at home. Instead, Chinese officials have described U.S. trade measures as “reaching bewildering levels of unfathomable absurdity.” If Beijing is unable to acknowledge the real economic harms that these policies seek to avoid, there is no starting point for a discussion with the leaders of advanced economies. G-7 countries will end up formulating solutions among themselves, rather than working with China.

Chinese officials often say that Beijing does not deliberately seek a trade surplus. Deliberate or not, China’s trade imbalances are not sustainable for the rest of the world, and China should not be surprised if foreign governments start to respond more aggressively. Beijing is likely to reject measures similar to those the United States and its partners adopted in the 1980s to address Japan’s trade imbalances, such as an exchange rate arrangement resembling the Plaza Accords or Louvre Accords. Tariff hikes on Chinese imports, another policy available to foreign governments, may only provide temporary relief; when the Trump administration imposed such levies, many Chinese suppliers were able to skirt these regulations by shipping goods through third countries before they reached their final destinations in the United States. With few effective policy options and an unwilling negotiator in Beijing, Western governments in particular will consider increasingly draconian restrictions on Chinese trade. That shock may be what is necessary for China to take structural reforms seriously, for the sake of its own economic health and in the hope of avoiding an irreparable split in global trade.

• DANIEL H. ROSEN is a Founding Partner of Rhodium Group and leads the firm’s work on Asia.
• LOGAN WRIGHT is a Partner at Rhodium Group and leads the firm’s research on China’s financial markets.

Foreign Affairs · by Daniel H. Rosen and Logan Wright · March 27, 2024

26. Ukrainian F-16s and All NATO Aircraft Should Be Properly Armed with Precision-Guided Cluster Munitions- JSOW and WCMD Weapons

Wed, 03/27/2024 - 6:53am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/ukrainian-f-16s-and-all-nato-aircraft-should-be-properly-armed-precision-guided-cluster

Ukrainian F-16s and All NATO Aircraft Should Be Properly Armed with Precision-Guided Cluster Munitions- JSOW and WCMD Weapons

By Daniel Rice, MSeD

F-16s will soon be arriving in Ukraine.  That is publicly available information. What is not known, is what armaments packages they will bring- what rockets, missiles, electronic warfare, navigation systems and bombs they will carry. We have, in the past, sent in weapons platforms with the suboptimal weapons for the Ukrainian mission, and we should not make that mistake again with the F-16s. 

As an example, in 2022 Ukraine began receiving NATO standard 155mm artillery systems from France, UK, Germany, US and others, of all types. However, the ammunition was 155mm High Explosive (HE), not cluster munitions. It wasn’t until November 2022, that cluster artillery shells from Turkey for 155mm Howitzers started arriving with 3,500 rounds in the Battle of Bakhmut. These Turkish shells were limited in quantify. 

In summer 2023, President Biden supported a bi-partisan support from the House and Senate to provide US supplied 155mm DPICM in larger quantities. These are precise artillery shells that will be fired upon only Russian military targets in Ukraine occupied territory. 

Another example, in the summer of 2022, Ukraine started receiving HIMARs M142 rocket launchers from the US and M270 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS) from the US, Netherlands, United Kingdom and Germany.  But the rockets they received were all unity rockets with a single explosive. Ukraine started receiving these in June 2022, and did not receive cluster artillery rockets and missiles for these systems until October 2023. In October 2023, HIMARS cluster rockets and missiles, (M-26 and M-39 series respectively) appeared on the battlefield unannounced and had incredible effects immediately with two strikes on Russian airfields that destroyed a reported 24 Russian Alligator attack helicopters. 

Each of these cluster munitions systems were delayed by months and years, due to political delays. And those delays cost Ukrainian lives and momentum.  And extended the war. 

F-16s were delayed due to politics. When they finally do arrive, over two years after the start of the war, they should come fully armed with the right weapons.  The F-16 has nine “hard points” that can carry air-to-air missiles, air-to-ground missiles, bombs, electronic countermeasures (EW) and weapons and navigation pods.  

Two of the weapons that should be approved so that the Ukrainian pilots can be trained in their application, are precision guided cluster munitions, the Wind Corrected Weapons Dispenser (WCMD) or AGM-145 Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW). The AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) is a 1,000 lb air to ground missile with 145 BLU-97 submunitions. The JSOW has a 12 to 63 mile standoff range.  

The WCMD is a Wind Corrected Munitions Dispenser which converts previously “dumb” air to ground cluster munitions into a very accurate weapon capable of hitting targets within 26 meters (85 feet) by using an Inertial Navigation System (INS). This can convert a whole series of cluster munitions such as CBU-87, CBU-89 and CBU-97. 

The U.S. has an extensive inventory of the CBU series cluster munitions.  All of these weapons are both anti-personnel and anti-armor. These weapons can be devastating to Russian front line troops especially in Russian offensive operations when they are exposed. 

Arming F-16s will give Ukraine increased range and capabilities to inflect losses on large Russian troops formations, command and control and supply depots throughout temporarily occupied Ukraine.  These weapons also have a ‘standoff’ range between 20 km and 100 kilometers. This means the aircraft do not necessarily have to fly over enemy controlled airspace and can send these precision weapons from a safer zone and let them glide into enemy territory to precisely hit Russian targets with an area weapon, with maximum effect. 

The war has become a war of attrition, and cluster munitions, being the most lethal, are one of the best ways to increase Russian casualties. The artillery howitzers, HIMARS rocket launchers, and F-16s should all have large quantities of cluster munitions to destroy Russian units in large numbers, to deny the Russians the use of the temporarily occupied territories, until they leave Ukraine to the 1991 borders. 

If Russian forces attack the Scandinavian or Baltic Countries, and trigger Article V “an attack on one is an attack on all”, Pilots from all NATO countries will be obligated to defend the country or countries that is being attacked.  It would be ludicrous to limit their weaponry, based on whether Russia attacked Estonia/Latvia vs Lithuania.  If they are flying a sortie over the border of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, they should not have to determine over which border they can use, which weapons.  

Lithuania and Norway are the only two NATO countries that border Russia and have ratified the Cluster Munitions Convention. They should voluntarily abandon this Convention to show a unity of support allowing all NATO countries to send their pilots in with the best, most lethal weapons for the Mission, Enemy, Time, Terrain, Troops &Civilian Considerations (METT-TC) as determined by their commanders. 

Cluster munitions received an unfair “demonization” from the Cluster Munitions Convention of Oslo in 2008. Any weapon, if used indiscriminately against civilians, is a war crime and illegal. The Russian army is using all types of weapons, littering and contaminating Ukrainian land with unexploded ordnance (UXOs) with extremely high “dud rates”. The Russians do not care. If they win the war, they will not clear the land of unexploded ordnance. If they lose the war, they hope the Ukrainians cannot use the land. Ukraine wants to win the war, then clear the land of unexploded ordnance and live in peace.  

If NATO is attacked, all NATO aircraft should be armed with the best armaments to defend all of NATO, and cluster munitions are one of those weapons. 

These cluster bombs will help them achieve that objective. 

About the Author(s)

Dan Rice

Dan Rice is a 1988 graduate of West Point and is the President of the American University Kyiv and the Co-President of Thayer Leadership at West Point. He holds an MBA from Kellogg/Northwestern, a master’s in journalism and Marketing from Medill/Northwestern, a Masters of Education from the University of Pennsylvania and has completed all doctoral classes in Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania.  He served in the Infantry in combat in Iraq in 2004-2005. Dan served as Special Advisor to the Commander in Chief of Ukraine Armed Forces (May 2022-March 2023) as an unpaid volunteer. He has been the primary advocate for Cluster Munitions for Ukraine and received the Saint Barbara’s Medal in 2023 for his advocacy that helped gain cluster artillery shells in July 2023, and then cluster rockets and missiles in October 2023. 

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

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