Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"If your hate could be turned into electricity, it would light up the whole world."

- Nikiola Tesla

"There will be a time when you believe everything is finished; that will be the beginning."

- Louis L'Amour

"Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor."

-Alexis Carrel

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 2, 2023

2. Many Differences Between Liberals and Conservatives May Boil Down to One Belief

3. A Strategy of Denial for the Western Pacific

4. Four Nuclear States Can Ruin Your Whole Strategy

5. The Horror of All-Out War in the Pacific

6. Why does Putin persist?

7. Russian mercenary boss says Bakhmut practically surrounded

8.Open season on China in Taiwan-focused US House

9. The Army Needs to Explain What’s Going on With the Black Hawk Replacement

10. The Limits of the No-Limits Partnership (China- Russia)

11. Asia’s Third Way

12. Does Technology Win Wars? The U.S. Military Needs Low-Cost Innovation—Not Big-Ticket Boondoggles

13. U.S. Security Assistance to Ukraine is Going to Get Complicated

14. How Will the War End? Thoughts on Ukraine, Russia, and a Theory of Victory

15. Lessons from the Melian Dialogue: A Case Against Providing Military Support for Ukraine

16. 'Destabilizing and dangerous’: Pentagon official warns of communication breakdown with China

17. Weapon replacement costs changing nature of Ukraine war

18. The impossible choice facing many of America’s military families

19. U.S., Allies Should Swiftly Penalize China for Supporting Russia’s War Against Ukraine

20. The Munich Security Conference was a display of ‘the West v. the rest’

21. Congress can put Army modernization back on track

22. Key American Allies Aren’t Following Governmentwide TikTok Bans

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 2, 2023

Maps/Graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-2-2023

Key Takeaways

The Kremlin accused Ukraine of conducting a border incursion in Bryansk Oblast, Russia, on March 2 — a claim that Ukrainian officials denied.
The alleged Bryansk incident generated speculations from Russian officials and ultranationalist groups about the Kremlin's response to the situation.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated on March 2 that Germany is negotiating with allies about providing security guarantees to Ukraine but provided no further details on these proposed guarantees.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken briefly spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the G20 summit in New Delhi, India on March 2 about Russia’s suspension of the New Strategic Offensive Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). The Kremlin very probably is weaponizing New START and fears of nuclear escalation in hopes of deterring Western support for Ukraine.
Russian authorities appear to be concerned over a growing loss of leverage in Serbia, which Russia has worked to integrate into the Russian sphere of influence for many years.
Russian ultranationalists continue to debate the appropriateness of criticism of Russian war efforts and to react to proposed increased punishments for “discrediting” the war in Ukraine.
Russian forces continued limited ground attacks northeast of Kupyansk and offensive operations around Kreminna.
Russian forces continued offensive operations around Bakhmut, along the western outskirts of Donetsk City, and in western Donetsk Oblast.
Russian forces appear to have temporarily scaled back efforts to encircle Bakhmut from the southwest as well as from the northeast and may instead be focusing on pressuring Ukrainian forces to withdraw from the city by concentrating on the northeastern offensive.
Russian sources claimed that Russian forces downed two Ukrainian UAVs in Crimea.
Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin announced that the Wagner Group has launched recruiting efforts through Russian sports clubs.
Russian occupation officials denied reports of the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russian territories.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 2, 2023

Mar 2, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 2, 2023

Kateryna Stepanenko, Riley Bailey, Grace Mappes, Angela Howard, George Barros, and Frederick W. Kagan

March 2, 8pm ET

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

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

The Kremlin accused Ukraine of conducting a border incursion in Bryansk Oblast, Russia on March 2 — a claim that Ukrainian officials denied. Bryansk Oblast Governor Alexander Bogomaz claimed that “several dozen” Ukrainian saboteurs conducted an armed incursion into the villages of Lyubenchane and Sushany on the international border.[1] The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) doubled down on Bogomaz’s accusation and claimed that the Russian National Guard (Rosgvardia) conducted an operation to “eliminate” Ukrainian saboteurs who reportedly killed one individual and took up to six individuals hostage.[2] Russian milbloggers and news aggregators offered differing information about the number of casualties and hostages, including claims that Ukrainian saboteurs fired on a school bus.[3] Russian President Vladimir Putin then responded unusually quickly to these claims, alleging that “neo-Nazis and their owners” carried out a “terrorist attack” against Bryansk Oblast.[4] Putin did not directly name Ukraine as the perpetrator of the attack in his televised statement, prompting Russian state media to later clarify that Putin meant ”Ukrainian neo-Nazis.”[5] Putin also claimed that Russia will "crush” neo-Nazis that have consistently aimed to deprive Russia of its history, killed the daughter of Russian nationalist ideolog Alexander Dugin, and ”killed people in Donbas.”[6]

Ukrainian officials denied the Kremlin’s accusations of Ukraine’s involvement in Bryansk Oblast and claimed that Russian officials might be facing problems with increasing partisan activity in Russia. Ukrainian Presidential Adviser Mykhailo Podolyak stated that Russian accusations are a deliberate “provocation” aimed at scaring the Russian people into believing that Russia needs to continue to fight in Ukraine.[7] Representative of the Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Andriy Yusov stated that the incident in Bryansk Oblast is “part of transformative processes in Russia” and pointed to inter-ethnic, inter-religious, and socio-economic conflicts among Russian citizens in Russia.[8] Yusov also noted that the March 2 public statements of the Russian Volunteer Corps’, which claimed responsibility for the incursion, further show that “Russia is beginning to wake up against Putin’s bloody dictatorship.”[9] Yusov likely referred to two videos uploaded by Russian Volunteer Corps fighters claiming that they crossed the international border into Bryansk Oblast to “liberate” fellow Russian citizens from Putin’s dictatorship without harming Russian civilians.[10] The Russian Volunteer Corps claims to be an all-Russian, Ukraine-based armed formation operating under the Ukrainian Armed Forces; however, it is unclear if the group is affiliated with the Ukrainian military. The head of Dutch open-source investigative group Bellingcat's far-right monitoring project reported that the leader of the Russian Volunteer Corps, Denis Kapustin, is a notable far-right extremist figure.[11] Social media users geolocated one of the two videos showing two servicemen with the Russian Volunteer Corps flag to Sushany.[12] ISW cannot independently verify Russian, Ukrainian, or Russian Volunteer Corps’ claims at this time, and the two videos each showing two men in uniform holding a flag remains the only concrete evidence available that anything happened.

The Bryansk incident generated speculation by Russian officials and ultranationalist groups about the Kremlin’s response to the situation. Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov refused to comment on questions regarding any change of the “special military operation” status to “war” because of the incident.[13] Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin sarcastically observed that Russia had been allowing Ukraine to violate its “red lines” and used the opportunity to promote Wagner mercenaries.[14] Russian officials such as Crimean occupation head Sergey Aksyonov and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov along with milbloggers called on the Kremlin to expand security measures and conduct retaliatory operations.[15] Kadyrov, for example, called on the Kremlin to target civilians to punish the perpetrators of this incident - effectively calling for Russia to conduct war crimes. Kremlin-affiliated milbloggers and former proxy officials also called on the Kremlin to designate the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the Russian Volunteer Corps, and Ukrainian armed organizations as terrorist organizations and compared the incident to the Beslan school siege in North Ossetia in 2004.[16] A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that the Russian Volunteer Corps was responsible for the murder of Daria Dugina and other terrorist activity in Russia.[17] Russian milbloggers also called on the Kremlin to use this incident to form a Supreme High Command to undertake all political, military, and economic decisions to ensure that Russia wins the war.[18] Other milbloggers also linked the incident to recent Putin statements that the FSB needs to strengthen border protection and advocated for more resources for border units.[19] Some milbloggers called on Russia to form assassination squads to kill Ukrainian officials and form exclusion zones at the border.[20] These responses indicate that the ultranationalist community is largely dissatisfied with numerous aspects of the Kremlin’s inability to fully commit to its own false rhetoric that Russia is fighting an “existential war” in Ukraine. The Kremlin does not have the capacity to satisfy all of these ultranationalists’ demands and may seize this opportunity to introduce additional security provisions in Russia that would benefit Putin without committing Russia to a higher risk or domestic unrest — such as declaring war.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated on March 2 that Germany is negotiating with allies about providing security guarantees to Ukraine but provided no further details on these proposed guarantees.[21] Scholz emphasized that the pact would only work if Ukraine prevailed in the war. Scholz mentioned the security guarantees while criticizing China for failing to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine and calling on Chinese authorities to pressure Russia into withdrawing Russian forces from Ukraine. Scholz’ statements are consistent with reports of a proposed Ukraine-NATO defense pact that would provide enough arms to Ukraine to force Russia to the negotiation table, but would not offer Article V protection or obligate NATO states to deploy forces to Ukraine. ISW has recently assessed that such an agreement appears to reflect a desire to pressure Ukraine to accept a negotiated settlement on unfavorable terms, especially as Russian President Vladimir Putin is currently unlikely to compromise on his maximalist goals of demilitarization and de facto regime change in Ukraine.[22]

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken briefly spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the G20 summit in New Delhi, India on March 2 about Russia’s suspension of the New Strategic Offensive Arms Reduction Treaty (New START).[23] Blinken stated that he urged Lavrov to reverse Russia’s February 28 suspension of Russian cooperation with New START, which imposes verifiable limits on the number of Russian and US intercontinental-range nuclear weapons. Blinken expressed US readiness to collaborate with Russia on strategic nuclear arms control regardless of the status of the war in Ukraine or the US-Russia relationship.[24] Blinken separately called on Russia to stop its war in Ukraine and come to the negotiating table and to release detained American Paul Whelan.[25] Russian officials are highly unlikely to pursue meaningful discussions to restore New START, however. The Kremlin very probably is weaponizing fears of nuclear escalation and the suspension of New START in hopes of deterring Western support for Ukraine and slowing down pledged Western military aid transfers. The Kremlin remains extremely unlikely to use nuclear weapons but routinely makes low-credibility threats of nuclear escalation in an effort to intimidate the West and appeal to its ultranationalist base, as ISW has previously reported.[26]

Russian authorities appear to be concerned over a growing loss of leverage in Serbia, which Russia has worked to integrate into the Russian sphere of influence for many years. Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) Spokesperson Maria Zakharova stated on March 2 that reports of Serbian authorities secretly transferring multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS) ammunition to Ukraine are a matter of “deepest concern.”[27] Russian state-affiliated news aggregator Mash claimed on February 27 that Serbian defense company Krusik supplied over 3,500 Grad MLRS rockets to Ukraine but claimed that it is not clear that Krusik knew that Ukraine was the final buyer of the rockets.[28] Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin responded to Serbian President Alexander Vucic’s prior complaint that Wagner Group is recruiting in Serbia, claiming that no Serbian personnel have served in Wagner Group in 2023 and characterizing Vucic as having “thrown a tantrum in vain.”[29] Vucic’s complaints about Wagner Group recruitment efforts in Serbia are one factor in Vucic’s possible reconsideration of Serbia’s close ties with Russia, as ISW has recently reported.[30]

Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin and several Russian milbloggers continue to debate the appropriateness of criticism of Russian war efforts as they react to a proposed amendment to Russia’s Criminal Code which would increase punishments for “discrediting” the war in Ukraine. Prigozhin on March 1 defended his statements made earlier that day defending criticism of the war effort. Prigozhin claimed that Russians should have the right to criticize Russian commanders and strategists, including himself, but not to criticize or “discredit” ordinary soldiers.[31] Russian milblogger Yuri Kotyenok defended restrictions on “discreditation attempts,” arguing that criticism of Russian soldiers of all levels — from soldier to supreme commander — is like shooting them in the back. Kotyenok conceded that some criticism is necessary but said that it must be made carefully and in a limited way. Kotyenok added that Wagner Group representatives have earned the right to their “special opinion” due to their efficient fighting near Bakhmut.[32] Former Russian officer (and avid critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin) Igor Girkin feigned repentance on March 2 and mockingly instructed his users “not” to make statements calling Russian leadership “illiterate, irresponsible mediocrities” and telling them to refer to major failures as victories, offering as an example the “alternative successes” in Vuhledar.[33]

Key Takeaways

The Kremlin accused Ukraine of conducting a border incursion in Bryansk Oblast, Russia, on March 2 — a claim that Ukrainian officials denied.
The alleged Bryansk incident generated speculations from Russian officials and ultranationalist groups about the Kremlin's response to the situation.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated on March 2 that Germany is negotiating with allies about providing security guarantees to Ukraine but provided no further details on these proposed guarantees.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken briefly spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the G20 summit in New Delhi, India on March 2 about Russia’s suspension of the New Strategic Offensive Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). The Kremlin very probably is weaponizing New START and fears of nuclear escalation in hopes of deterring Western support for Ukraine.
Russian authorities appear to be concerned over a growing loss of leverage in Serbia, which Russia has worked to integrate into the Russian sphere of influence for many years.
Russian ultranationalists continue to debate the appropriateness of criticism of Russian war efforts and to react to proposed increased punishments for “discrediting” the war in Ukraine.
Russian forces continued limited ground attacks northeast of Kupyansk and offensive operations around Kreminna.
Russian forces continued offensive operations around Bakhmut, along the western outskirts of Donetsk City, and in western Donetsk Oblast.
Russian forces appear to have temporarily scaled back efforts to encircle Bakhmut from the southwest as well as from the northeast and may instead be focusing on pressuring Ukrainian forces to withdraw from the city by concentrating on the northeastern offensive.
Russian sources claimed that Russian forces downed two Ukrainian UAVs in Crimea.
Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin announced that the Wagner Group has launched recruiting efforts through Russian sports clubs.
Russian occupation officials denied reports of the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russian territories.

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

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

Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian forces continued limited attacks northeast of Kupyansk and are fortifying border positions in Belgorod Oblast. A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed on March 1 that Russian forces repelled a Ukrainian attempt to regain positions in Hryanykivka (about 16km northeast of Kupyansk).[34] The Ukrainian General Staff reported on March 2 that Russian forces are continuing to fortify positions in border areas of Belgorod Oblast and are establishing anti-tank barriers.[35]

Russian forces continued offensive operations around Kreminna on March 2. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults near Kreminna, Bilohorivka (about 13km south of Kreminna), and Spirne (about 32km south of Kreminna).[36] Russian war correspondents claimed that elements likely of the Russian 98th Guards Airborne Division from Ivanovo Oblast are attempting to advance through a densely defended frontline in the Kreminna direction.[37] Russian milbloggers also indicated that elements of the 3rd Guards SPETSNAZ Brigade and reconnaissance groups of the 144th Guards Motor Rifle Division of the 20th Guards Combined Arms Army of the Western Military District are continuing to operate on the Svatove-Kreminna line.[38] A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that Russian artillery fire stopped a Ukrainian five-hour-long counteroffensive operation near Kreminna and that Russian airborne elements seized unspecified Ukrainian fortifications in the area on March 1.[39] Another Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that Russian forces seized unspecified heights in the area of the Balka Zhuravka gully northwest of Kreminna.[40]

Luhansk Oblast Administration Head Serhiy Haidai reported that Russian forces have concentrated a significant portion of their heavy military equipment in Luhansk Oblast but have been unable to use most of it due to unfavorable weather conditions on the frontlines.[41] Haidai added that Russians are using Terminator armored fighting vehicles and T-90M tanks in the Kreminna direction, which indicates that Russian forces are continuing to prioritize this direction for an advance.[42] Haidai also stated that Russian efforts to attack in small groups on the Luhansk Oblast frontline are not successful, resulting in losses among personnel and military equipment.[43]

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

Russian forces continued offensive operations around Bakhmut on March 2. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults near Bakhmut, Orikhovo-Vasylivka (11km northwest of Bakhmut), Dubovo-Vasylivka (7km northwest of Bakhmut), Khromove (3km west of Bakhmut), and Ivanivske (6km west of Bakhmut).[44] The repelled Russian assault near Khromove suggests that Russian forces have likely advanced northwest of Bakhmut. Geolocated footage published on March 2 indicates that Russian forces likely secured gains south of Dubovo-Vasylivka.[45] A Russian milblogger claimed that Wagner Group fighters advanced in the direction of Hryhorivka (10km northwest of Bakhmut) and Bohdanivka (6km west of Bakhmut) and conducted offensive operations near Fedorivka (17km north of Bakhmut), Rozdolivka (17km north of Bakhmut) and Vesele (18km northeast of Bakhmut).[46] Geolocated footage published on March 2 indicates that Russian forces have likely advanced in eastern Bakhmut.[47] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces continued offensive operations in southern Bakhmut moving north from Opytne (4km south of Bakhmut), in the eastern part of the city, and in northern Bakhmut moving south from Yahidne (2km north of Bakhmut).[48] Geolocated footage published on March 2 indicates that Russian forces likely advanced near Bila Hora (13km southwest of Bakhmut).[49] Russian milbloggers claimed that Wagner fighters conducted attacks in the direction of Bila Hora and Chasiv Yar (12km west of Bakhmut) and are attempting to cut off a section of the T0504 highway.[50] The Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) People’s Militia claimed that the DNR 132nd Brigade of the 1st Army Corps (formerly the DNR People’s Militia 3rd Brigade) advanced in the direction of Toretsk (22km southwest of Bakhmut).[51]

Russian forces appear to have temporarily scaled back efforts to encircle Bakhmut from the southwest as well as from the northeast and may instead be focusing on pressuring Ukrainian forces to withdraw from the city by concentrating on the northeastern offensive. Russian forces have intensified offensive operations in the northern outskirts and suburbs of Bakhmut in recent weeks and have secured gains in these areas.[52] Russian forces have not advanced closer to the T0504 highway between Bakhmut and Chasiv Yar in this time following a period of intensified operations southwest of Bakhmut in late January and early February of 2023.[53] Russian milbloggers have similarly shifted their attention from Russian operations to capture Ivanivske and positions along the T0504 highway to Russian operations in northern Bakhmut, particularly those focused on capturing Khromove.[54] Russian forces would likely need to capture both Ivanivske and Khromove to cut off Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) into Bakhmut and completely encircle the Ukrainian grouping in the city. Russian forces may be attempting to pressure Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut to conduct a tactical retreat through the T0504 highway and therefore have reduced their efforts to encircle the settlement by capturing Ivanivske as well. The double envelopment of Bakhmut would likely require further manpower and equipment commitments and Russian forces may intend to avoid the further costs of a potential encirclement. Russian forces continue to attack along the T0504 line, however, and may resume more concerted efforts in this direction. Russian forces conducted a similar operational shift in their offensive to capture Severodonetsk and Lysychansk in Luhansk Oblast in June and July of 2022. Ukrainian forces in Severodonetsk and Lysychansk conducted controlled tactical retreats after sustaining increased pressure from Russian forces that initially intended to completely encircle Ukrainian forces in the settlements.[55]

Ukrainian officials are setting informational conditions for a potential withdrawal from Bakhmut but have not indicated that Ukrainian forces intend to leave the city. Ukrainian Eastern Grouping of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty stated on March 2 that Ukrainian forces will conduct a tactical retreat from Bakhmut if there is a need to do so.[56] Cherevaty stated that Ukrainian forces’ main focus is to achieve strategic results and recalled that Ukrainian forces liberated large amounts of territory in Kharkiv Oblast and around Lyman, Donetsk Oblast following Russia’s costly offensive to capture Severodonetsk and Lysychansk in Luhansk Oblast.[57] ISW has previously assessed that the Ukrainian defense of Bakhmut is a strategically sound operation to force Russian forces to extend manpower and equipment on costly assaults to capture a city of limited operational importance.[58] Ukrainian forces have already achieved this strategic aim, and the continued Ukrainian defense of the city will remain strategically sound as long as the costs of holding the city do not outweigh the continued impacts on Russian manpower and equipment. Ukrainian officials continue to emphasize that Ukrainian forces have the option to conduct a controlled withdrawal from Bakhmut if they see fit.[59]

Russian forces continued offensive operations along the western outskirts of Donetsk City on March 2. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Avdiivka, within 7km northeast of Avdiivka near Kamianka and Vesele, and within 27km southwest of Avdiivka near Sieverne, Vodyane, Nevelske, and Marinka.[60] Geolocated footage published on March 2 indicates that Russian forces likely secured marginal gains northeast of Vodyane (8km southwest of Avdiivka).[61] A Russian milblogger claimed that elements of the 150th Motorized Rifle Division of the 8th Combined Arms Army of the Southern Military District are continuing to storm Ukrainian positions in Marinka and that elements of the 20th Motorized Rifle Division of the 8th Combined Arms Army are attempting to advance south of the city.[62] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces also conducted an assault on Pervomaiske (12km southwest of Avdiivka) from Pisky (9km southwest of Avdiivka).[63]

Russian forces continued offensive operations in western Donetsk Oblast on March 2. Geolocated footage published on March 1 indicates that Russian forces likely made marginal advances near Vuhledar (30km southwest of Donetsk City).[64] The Ukrainian General Staff reported on March 2 that Russian forces continue to conduct offensive operations in western Donetsk Oblast and are trying to create conditions to conduct further offensive operations in unspecified areas of this section of the frontline.[65] Ukrainian soldiers stated on March 1 that Russian forces conduct assaults near Vuhledar at least five times a day in small groups of 10 soldiers or fewer but are largely on the defensive in the area.[66] The use of squad-size assault groups and significant Russian personnel and equipment losses in previous mechanized assaults near Vuhledar will likely continue to constrain Russian forces from securing any significant gains in the Vuhledar area.[67]

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

Russian forces continued to conduct routine fire west of Hulyaipole and in Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts on March 2.[68] Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces struck a residential area in Zaporizhzhia City with an S-300 missile, but Russian milbloggers claimed the missile was a Ukrainian air defense missile.[69] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continue to try to create conditions for offensive operations in an unspecified area of southern Ukraine.[70] ISW has not observed indicators that Russian forces are preparing to resume a sustained offensive effort in Zaporizhia Oblast or any offensive effort in Kherson Oblast.

Russian sources claimed that Russian forces downed two Ukrainian UAVs that targeted an unspecified Russian military unit in Saky, Crimea overnight.[71] Russian sources, including the Russian Ministry of Defense, claimed that Russian forces downed 10 Ukrainian UAVs targeting Saky and Yevpatoria (20km northwest of Saky) on March 1.[72]

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

Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin announced on March 2 that the Wagner Group has launched recruiting efforts through Russian sports clubs. Prigozhin claimed that Wagner has established an unspecified number of recruitment centers at sports clubs in several Russian cities to check recruits’ fitness and guide them through the recruitment process.[73] This effort likely represents a youth-targeted expansion of ongoing Wagner recruitment efforts. The New America Foundation observed that Wagner Group’s organizational recruitment structures mirror those employed by the All-Russian Organization-Voluntary Society for Assistance to the Army, Aviation, and Navy of Russia (DOSAAF), a key manager of recruitment for Russian military reserves and former Soviet-era youth movement. The New American Foundation also identified ties between the Wagner Group, other ultranationalist recruitment groups, and DOSAAF.[74]

Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov announced on March 2 that Pskov Oblast officials plan to open an institution in Pskov Oblast to mirror Chechnya’s Special Forces (SPETSNAZ) University in Gudermes, Chechnya.[75] Kadyrov also publicized that he met with Pskov Oblast Governor Mikhail Vedernikov and visited the SPETSNAZ University with him.[76] Kadyrov’s promotion of this effort likely demonstrates his desire to expand his influence within Russia and promote the “superior quality” of techniques employed by Chechen fighters. Kadyrov claimed that the institution will train special units in Pskov Oblast and that several Pskov Oblast instructors are undergoing training at the SPETSNAZ University.[77] Pskov Oblast notably hosts Russia's 76th Guards Air Assault Division, which was considered elite prior to suffering devastating defeats and losses in Ukraine in 2022.[78]

Russian commanders continue efforts to silence units of mobilized soldiers recording complaints and appeals to Russian authorities for better treatment. A regional Russian Telegram channel stated that Russian commanders on March 1 sent mobilized soldiers from Irkutsk Oblast, Regiment 1439, to storm Avdiivka despite Irkustk Oblast Governor Igor Kobzev’s February 26 promise to transfer the soldiers to a new duty station.[79] The soldiers’ relatives claimed the soldiers expected a transfer to defensive positions. The regional source also cited the wife of a mobilized soldier from Angarsk, Irkutsk Oblast who claimed that Russian officers on February 27 seized and searched the phones of mobilized soldiers from Irkutsk Oblast to find recorded video appeals to Russian President Vladimir Putin.[80] The woman claimed that Russian authorities launched an intimidation campaign to force the unwilling mobilized soldiers into battle by cutting off their communications, electricity, and water and threatening them with criminal penalties.[81]

Russian authorities continue to prosecute limited domestic resistance to mobilization and the war in Ukraine. A Yekaterinburg local source reported on March 1 that Russian authorities arrested two local college students following media reports that they attempted to assemble an explosive device and distributed “pro-Ukrainian leaflets.”[82] Two prominent milbloggers shared footage on March 2 allegedly showing Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) agents detaining a Khaborovsk Krai resident suspected of treason for contacting Ukrainian intelligence services with information about nearby military facilities.[83] A Saint Petersburg local source reported on March 1 that members of the Russian National Guard (Rosgvardia) detained a local student after he threw a Molotov cocktail, which failed to explode, at the door of an unspecified military enlistment office.[84]

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

Russian occupation officials denied reports of Russian forced relocations deportations of Ukrainian children to Russia amid continued efforts to forcibly integrate Ukrainian children into Russian culture. Kherson Oblast occupation head Vladimir Saldo claimed that Ukrainian reports of forced relocations of Ukrainian children are an information operation designed to sow panic among civilians about the locations of their loved ones.[85] ISW and various US government, NGO, and international organizations have reported extensively on Russia’s sustained effort to forcibly relocate Ukrainian civilians, including children, to Russia and occupied Crimea.[86] Saldo claimed that 90 Ukrainian children currently attend the “Radiant” children’s health camp in occupied Yevpatoria, Crimea.[87] Zaporizhia Oblast occupation head Yevgeny Balitsky announced that occupation authorities opened 67 branches of the Russian state-affiliated “Movement of the First,” which is based on “traditional Russian spiritual and moral goals,” in schools in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast.[88] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Kherson Oblast occupation authorities introduced mandatory cadet classes in occupied schools and that children as young as six must take Russian military-patriotic education classes.[89]

CNN reported on March 2 that Russian occupation authorities established a complex and widespread network and methodology of torturing Ukrainian civilians to coerce cooperation with Russian authorities, citing investigators and survivors of Russian torture.[90] CNN reported that Russian occupation authorities established a three-stage law enforcement crackdown, first detaining and even killing those identified as most capable of resisting, then detaining and deporting Ukrainians with lesser resistance affiliations, and finally cracking down against Ukrainian identity and cultural displays while promoting Russian identities and patriotism. CNN reported that Russian authorities established at least 20 torture centers in occupied areas as part of a dedicated campaign to “extinguish” the Ukrainian identity. CNN reported that Russian occupation authorities conducted more extensive coercion efforts in Kherson City than in areas like Bucha, Kyiv Oblast due to the length of Russian occupation.

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

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

Russian soldiers and equipment in Belarus reportedly deployed towards Ilovaisk in Donetsk Oblast. Independent Belarusian monitoring organization The Hajun Project reported on March 2 that two trains with Russian military equipment and personnel departed Belarus in the direction of Donetsk Oblast.[91] The first train departed Belarus on February 28 and is scheduled to arrive at the Matveev Kurgan station in Rostov Oblast, Russia on March 7, where the equipment will reportedly deploy further to Ilovaisk in Donetsk Oblast.[92] The second train departed Belarus on March 1 and should arrive at the Neklinivka station in Rostov Oblast on March 8 and also deploy further to Ilovaisk.[93] Russian deployments towards Ilovaisk could support future Russian offensive operations near Avdiivka.

Belarusian maneuver elements continue conducting exercises in Belarus. Elements of the Belarusian 11th Separate Guards Mechanized Brigade conducted a company tactical exercise with live fires and UAVs at the Chepelevo Training Ground in Grodno Oblast, Belarus on March 2.[94]

Damage to the Russian Aerospace Forces Beriev A-50 airborne early warning and control plane at the Machulishchi Air Base in Minsk, Belarus, remains unclear as of March 2. The Belarusian Ministry of Defense posted video of the A-50 taking off from the airfield on March 2 and claimed the plane is fully operational.[95] Social media users seemingly also viewed the aircraft departing from the airfield on March 2.[96] It remains unclear if the reported Belarusian partisan attack against the plane damaged the A-50's radar dish.

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

[1] https://t.me/tass_agency/182769

[2] https://t.me/tass_agency/182766; https://t.me/tass_agency/182769 ; https://t.me/razvozhaev/2183 ; https://t.me/readovkanews/53908; https://t.me/readovkanews/53884 ; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/79471 ; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/79473; https://t.me/avbogomaz/2026; https://t.me/avbogomaz/2029; https://t.me/avbogomaz/2030; https://t.me/wargonzo/11193 ; https://t.me/rybar/44153 ; https://t.me/warfakes/12095; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19695

[3] https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/45759 ; https://t.me/milinfolive/97540 ;

[4] https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-kremlin-russia-border-incursion-zelenski...

[5] https://t.me/rian_ru/195843

[6] https://tass dot ru/politika/17181273

[7] https://twitter.com/Podolyak_M/status/1631241384291172357 ; https://t....

[8] https://suspilne dot media/401708-gur-podii-u-branskij-oblasti-vnutrisne-protistoanna-miz-gromadanami-rosii/; https://www.yahoo.com/news/incident-bryansk-oblast-part-transformative-1...

[9] https://suspilne dot media/401708-gur-podii-u-branskij-oblasti-vnutrisne-protistoanna-miz-gromadanami-rosii/

[10] https://twitter.com/Danspiun/status/1631265641431695363?s=20; https://t...

[11] https://twitter.com/ColborneMichael/status/1631290704625319939 ; https...

[12] https://twitter.com/Danspiun/status/1631265641431695363?s=20

[13] https://tass dot com/politics/1583839

[14] https://t.me/grey_zone/17515; https://t.me/concordgroup_official/541; ...

[15] https://t.me/Aksenov82/2171; https://t.me/RKadyrov_95/3406; https://t....

[16] https://t.me/president_sovet/2581 ; https://t.me/basurin_e/56 ; http...

[17] https://t.me/rybar/44156; https://t.me/bazabazon/16143; https://t.me/b...

[18] https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/45771

[19] https://t.me/notes_veterans/8310; https://t.me/wargonzo/11201; https:/...

[20] https://t.me/vysokygovorit/10908 ; https://t.me/vysokygovorit/10911

[21] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germanys-scholz-china-dont-arm-russ...

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

[23] https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-03-2-23... media/401276-minoboroni-opriludnilo-novi-zarplati-vijskovih-ssa-perekinuli-v-islandiu-litak-sudnogo-dna-372-den-vijni-onlajn/; https://meduza dot io/news/2023/03/02/blinken-i-lavrov-vstretilis-lichno-vpervye-s-nachala-voyny; https://twitter.com/komadovsky/status/1631283562048569346?s=20; https:/...

[24] https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-03-2-23... media/401276-minoboroni-opriludnilo-novi-zarplati-vijskovih-ssa-perekinuli-v-islandiu-litak-sudnogo-dna-372-den-vijni-onlajn/; https://meduza dot io/news/2023/03/02/blinken-i-lavrov-vstretilis-lichno-vpervye-s-nachala-voyny

[25] https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-03-2-23... media/401276-minoboroni-opriludnilo-novi-zarplati-vijskovih-ssa-perekinuli-v-islandiu-litak-sudnogo-dna-372-den-vijni-onlajn/; https://meduza dot io/news/2023/03/02/blinken-i-lavrov-vstretilis-lichno-vpervye-s-nachala-voyny; https://apnews.com/article/us-russia-ukraine-g20-blinken-lavrov-1af60a2c...

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

[27] https://lenta dot ru/news/2023/03/02/prichastna/

[28] https://t.me/breakingmash/42112

[29] https://t.me/concordgroup_official/537

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

[31] https://t.me/concordgroup_official/538

[32] https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/45748

[33] https://t.me/strelkovii/4111; https://t.me/strelkovii/4110; https://t....

[34] https://t.me/rybar/44128

[35] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/videos/202955285652690/

[36] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/videos/202955285652690/; https...

[37] https://t.me/zhdanovrt/1289; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/79435

[38] https://t.me/vysokygovorit/10907; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/79470

[39] https://t.me/sashakots/38695

[40] https://t.me/rybar/44128

[41] https://t.me/luhanskaVTSA/9018

[42] https://t.me/luhanskaVTSA/9018

[43] https://t.me/serhiy_hayday/9565

[44] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0ZUf4B8YGjFgLAWudppg...

[45] https://twitter.com/RedIntelPanda/status/1631356268374810633 ; https:/...

[46] https://t.me/wargonzo/11180

[47] https://twitter.com/chris__759/status/1631262469308940289; https://twit...

[48] https://t.me/brussinf/5712 ; https://t.me/wargonzo/11180

[49] https://twitter.com/PaulJawin/status/1631225834529759238; https://twitter.com/PauliusZaleckas/status/1631324420223451136

[50] https://t.me/wargonzo/11180 ; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/79481

[51] https://t.me/nm_dnr/9960

[52] https://isw.pub/UkrWar022823 ; https://isw.pub/UkrWar022523 ; https:...

[53] https://isw.pub/UkrWar01192023 ; https://isw.pub/UkrWar012123 ; https://isw.pub/UkrWar012423

[54] https://t.me/rybar/44128 ; https://t.me/rybar/44088 ; https://t.me/b...

[55] https://isw.pub/RusCampaignJuly3 ; https://www.understandingwar.org/ba...

[56] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2023/03/02/nashi-shtaby-nashe-komanduvannya-zavzhdy-peregravaly-protyvnyka-sergij-cherevatyj/

[57] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2023/03/02/nashi-shtaby-nashe-komanduvannya-zavzhdy-peregravaly-protyvnyka-sergij-cherevatyj/

[58] https://isw.pub/UkrWar021423

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

[60] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0ZUf4B8YGjFgLAWudppg...

[61] https://twitter.com/operativno_ZSU/status/1631343922919219229; https://...

[62] https://t.me/rybar/44165 ; https://t.me/rusvarg/1338

[63] https://t.me/wargonzo/11180

[64] https://twitter.com/klinger66/status/1631093163346599936; https://twitter.com/SerDer_Daniels/status/1631014952835207176

[65] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0ZUf4B8YGjFgLAWudppg...

[66] https://youtu.be/lD1lrHHEhkQ

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

[68] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0ZUf4B8YGjFgLAWudppg... https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/videos/202955285652690/

[69] https://t.me/V_Zelenskiy_official/5334; https://t.me/orlovdmytroEn/1766... https://t.me/vrogov/7945; https://t.me/vrogov/7934; https://www.facebook.com/OperationalCommandSouth/posts/pfbid0LsAg9fKpWb1...

[70] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0ZUf4B8YGjFgLAWudppg... https://t.me/khersonskaODA/4080; https://t.me/ermaka2022/2151; https:/... https://t.me/mykola_lukashuk/3658

[71] https://t.me/bazabazon/16118; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/79456; https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/45751

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

[73] https://t.me/concordgroup_official/542

[74] https://www.newamerica.org/future-frontlines/reports/putin-mobilization-...

[75] https://t.me/RKadyrov_95/3404

[76] https://t.me/RKadyrov_95/3404

[77] https://t.me/RKadyrov_95/3404

[78] https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-russia-pskov-assault-brigade-1713444

[79] https://t.me/Baikal_People/2042; https://notes.citeam.org/mobilization-feb-28-mar-1

[80] https://t.me/Baikal_People/2044

[81] https://t.me/Baikal_People/2044

[82] https://t.me/itsmycity/25499

[83] https://t.me/boris_rozhin/79468; https://t.me/rybar/44142

[84] https://t.me/paperpaper_ru/34063; https://notes.citeam.org/mobilization...

[85] https://t.me/SALDO_VGA/502

[86] https://www.state.gov/russias-filtration-operations-and-forced-relocatio...'s,to%20remote%20regions%20in%20Russia; https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/09/01/forcible-transfer-ukrainians-russia;...

[87] https://t.me/SALDO_VGA/502; https://t.me/va_konstantinov/1588

[88] https://rtvi dot com/news/novoe-vserossijskaya-detskaya-organizacziya-poluchila-nazvanie-dvizhenie-pervyh/; https://t.me/BalitskyEV/831

[89] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0ZUf4B8YGjFgLAWudppg...

[90] https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/02/europe/russia-kherson-torture-centers-int...

[91] https://t.me/Hajun_BY/6527

[92] https://t.me/Hajun_BY/6527

[93] https://t.me/Hajun_BY/6527

[94] https://t.me/modmilby/23912

[95] https://t.me/modmilby/23935; https://t.me/ATN_BTRC/91646; https://t.me... https://t.me/modmilby/23900; https://t.me/ATN_BTRC/91544; https://t.me/modmilby/23899

[96] https://twitter.com/COUPSURE/status/1631244699682975747; https://t.me/Novoeizdanie/43802; https://twitter.com/COUPSURE/status/1631244703298355202;

Many Differences Between Liberals and Conservatives May Boil Down to One Belief

Conservatives tend to believe that strict divisions are an inherent part of life. Liberals do not

By Jer Clifton on March 1, 2023

Scientific American · by Jer Clifton · March 1, 2023

Credit: PM Images/Getty Images

Disagreement has paralyzed our politics and our collective ability to get things done. But where do these conflicts come from? A split between liberals and conservatives, many might say. But underlying that division is an even more fundamental fissure in the ways that people view the world.

In politics, researchers usually define conservativism as a general tendency to resist change and tolerate social inequality. Liberalism is a tendency to embrace change and reject inequality. Political parties evolve with time—Democrats were the conservative party 150 years ago—but the liberal-conservative split is typically recognizable in a country’s politics. It’s the fault line on which political cooperation most often breaks down.

Psychologists have long suspected that a handful of fundamental differences in worldviews might underlie the conservative-liberal rift. Forty years of research has shown that, on average, conservatives see the world as a more dangerous place than liberals. This one core belief seemed to help explain many policy disagreements, such as conservative support of gun ownership, border enforcement and increased spending on police and the military—all of which, one can argue, aim to protect people from a threatening world.

But new research by psychologist Nick Kerry and me at the University of Pennsylvania contradicts that long-standing theory. We find instead that the main difference between the left and right is the belief that the world is inherently hierarchical. Conservatives, our work shows, tend to have higher belief than liberals in a hierarchical world, which is essentially the view that the universe is a place where the lines between categories or concepts matter. A clearer understanding of that difference could help society better bridge political divides.

We discovered this by accident. My team was undertaking an ambitious effort to map all the most basic beliefs that people hold about the world we share. We call these tenets “primal world beliefs,” or “primals” for short. Primals reflect what people think is typical about the world—for instance, that most things are beautiful or that life is usually pain and suffering. We suspect these beliefs hold important implications for people’s mental health and well-being.

Our effort began with 10 projects to identify possible primals, such as gathering data from more than 80,000 tweets and 385 influential written works, including the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita. After several rounds of statistical analysis with data from more than 2,000 people, we identified 26 primals and found that most beliefs clustered into three areas: the world is generally dangerous or safe, dull or more enticing and alive or mechanistic. We have created a free, scientifically validated online survey that you can take if you wish to learn how your own primals compare with the average.

In most of our studies, we also asked people to share their political party preference and to rate how liberal or conservative they consider themselves. In an early study focused on well-being, I noticed a surprising relationship between people’s beliefs and how they answered these two questions. Dangerous world belief was not linked to party or ideology as past research—including some of our own—said it should be.

We conducted nine more studies with nearly 5,500 participants, mostly Americans, to make sure we had it right. These studies pointed away from dangerous world belief as the core difference between liberals and conservatives and toward a different primal called hierarchical world belief. That primal, we found, was 20 times more strongly related to political ideology than dangerous world belief.

People high in hierarchical world belief see the world as full of differences that matter because they usually reflect something inherent, real and significant. Such individuals often separate things of greater value from things of less value. You might imagine that, to them, the world looks full of big, bold black lines. The opposite view—held by people low in this belief—tends to perceive differences as superficial and even silly. For individuals with this perspective, the world is mostly dotted lines or shades of gray. (To reiterate, primals concern tendencies only. Even people with a strong hierarchical world belief see some lines as arbitrary.) In our work, this primal was high in conservatives and low in liberals.

Most types of hierarchical thinking that have been studied, such as social dominance orientation, concern preferences about how humans should be organized. But hierarchical world belief relates to how people perceive the world to actually exist—regardless of what they’d like to see. In addition, this primal applies not only to human groups but to everything, including plants, other animals and inanimate objects. For people high in this belief, the universe is the sort of place where lines matter.

One reason our discovery is exciting is because it hints at ways to work through specific political deadlocks. For example, consider debates around LGBTQ+ topics. Conservatives may feel the line separating men and women is natural and innate—a big, bold line—whereas liberals may see that distinction as more superficial and culturally based—a gray area. Welfare payments and policies, too, might be seen through a hierarchical lens, with some assuming that lines between rich and poor often reflect meaningful differences in people’s work ethic, talent, morality or value to society.

The line relevant to the abortion debate is perhaps conception. Conservatives believe this line marks the beginning of human life and thus matters a great deal. A nonhierarchical perspective would be that life emerges incrementally across many thresholds.

Immigration debates often involve literal lines, such as the border between the U.S. and Mexico. If nonhierarchical world belief shapes liberal thinking, then no one should be surprised that liberals deprioritize enforcing those boundaries.

Knowing about the left-right split on hierarchical world belief could have practical value. English author G. K. Chesterton once wrote, “The most practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe.” While I might not go that far, Chesterton has a point. Whether you want to empathize with the other side, beat them in elections or convince them of a policy, understanding others’ primals can be useful. And again, primal world beliefs are about the world’s tendencies—but people also expect some exceptions. That nuance creates an opening for productive debate.

For instance, imagine trying to convince a conservative to adopt a more liberal policy on transgender rights. If you assume their beliefs are informed by fear of danger, you might note that transgender people are much more likely to be assaulted than to assault anyone themselves—a tactic of assuaging fears. But another tactic is blurring lines—perhaps noting that a small but consistent number of babies are born with ambiguous genitalia and arbitrarily assigned a sex at birth, which suggests the line between male and female is not always extremely clear. If hierarchical world belief is more at play than dangerous world belief, assuaging fears may be less effective than describing why a specific line is a bit arbitrary.

To reach a point of cooperation—even amid intense disagreement—people often need to grasp the other perspective. Our work shows that conservatives and liberals disagree more about the meaning of differences than the prevalence of danger. That insight may seem modest, but it’s a big step in the right direction.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Jer Clifton directs the Primals Project at the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches research methods in the Masters of Applied Positive Psychology program. He mainly studies the origins and psychological implications of primal world beliefs, such as the belief that the world is dangerous or that life is beautiful, as well as measurement methodology.

Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about for Mind Matters? Please send suggestions to Scientific American’s Mind Matters editor Daisy Yuhas at pitchmindmatters@gmail.com.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

Scientific American · by Jer Clifton · March 1, 2023

3. A Strategy of Denial for the Western Pacific

A Strategy of Denial for the Western Pacific

China aspires to dominate the Indo-Pacific region—the impact of which would dramatically undermine Americans’ security, freedom, and prosperity. The only workable strategy is to deny China this goal. The naval services will play a central role.

https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2023/march/strategy-denial-western-pacific

By Elbridge Colby

March 2023 Proceedings Vol. 149/3/1,441

The primary threat to core U.S. interests is that China could dominate Asia, and from that position atop more than half the global economy, undermine Americans’ prosperity, freedom, and even security. This is not a merely speculative fear. Beijing is pursuing regional hegemony over Asia, and if successful, it will very likely pursue the kind of global preeminence that would enable it to directly intervene in and exercise a domineering influence over Americans’ lives.

As a result, nothing else in the international system is as fundamentally dangerous to U.S. interests as Chinese hegemony over Asia. Accordingly, U.S. policy must prioritize avoiding that outcome, but must do so in ways that correlate the risks and costs the American people incur in doing so with the stakes, which are vital but not genuinely existential. In practice, this requires working together with Asian states in an antihegemonic coalition focused on denying Beijing dominance over the region.

Contrary to some commentary that suggests the military dimension in this dynamic is not that important, the U.S. military’s role in this strategy is central. This is because Beijing will likely not be able to dominate Asia without resorting to military force. While China has enormous and growing economic and other nonmilitary forms of influence, it is finding it difficult to use its leverage to get neighboring countries to accept what would essentially be a tributary relationship. Its efforts to do so have largely backfired—as demonstrated in places such as Australia, India, Japan, and Taiwan—and an increasingly aggressive China’s standing (as reflected in global polling) has declined precipitously.1

The bad news is China has another option: military force. Unlike economic sanctions, decisive and direct military force can compel other countries to do things they really do not want to do.

Coalition: The Center of Gravity

If China can gain sufficient military advantage over its neighbors, it may convince them to accept its hegemony given the plausible alternatives they will face. And the best way for Beijing to operationalize such advantage is not to fight all its potential opponents at once, but to pursue a focused and sequential strategy against the antihegemonic coalition arraying against it, seeking to pick it apart or short-circuit it.

The USS Annapolis (SSN-760) loads a Mk 67 sub-launched mobile mine in Apra Harbor, Guam, in May 2022. Naval mines would contribute directly to a defense of Taiwan by denying the PLA Navy sea control and the ability to project power across the Taiwan Strait. U.S. Navy

The key for Beijing is to strike at the coalition’s center of gravity: perceptions of Washington’s willingness to come to the stout defense of those to which it has committed. Only if they believe Washington can and will stand with them will Asian countries judge it prudent to take the risks necessary to check Beijing’s ambitions. If they do not have this confidence, they will fear being isolated and punished by China and thus will likely cut a deal with Beijing. If Beijing can pick off enough countries in this fashion, it could achieve regional hegemony without having to fight World War III. Indeed, given how sensitive Asian countries are to China’s strength and how lucrative it is to be in its good graces, Beijing may not have to fight many—or even any—wars to attain regional dominance.

A Denial Defense

To prevent this, Washington needs to ensure an effective denial defense along the first island chain, one that includes Taiwan within its perimeter. Denial defense is a military strategy derived from the nation’s geopolitical goal, which is to provide sufficient defense for our allies that they believe it prudent to stand up to China together with us—and thus prevent Chinese domination of Asia. If the United States can succeed in this military strategy, the coalition should stand strong and resist attempts by Beijing to crack it apart. Even better, Beijing might see this strength and never try to break it apart in the first place.

Taiwan plays an especially salient role in this strategy. Washington’s credibility in Asia is, practically speaking, linked to Taiwan’s defense. If Beijing could take Taiwan, it would break out of the first island chain that currently constrains its military power projection. As the recent Congressional Research Service report to Congress on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) points out, China’s “military strategy focuses primarily on preparing for a conflict involving the United States over Taiwan.” The report also highlights the PLA Navy’s 340-ship fleet, its air forces with several hundred fourth-generation fighters, and a large, advanced conventional missile force.2 Thus, if the United States and its allies can prevent China from subordinating Taiwan, they can protect other U.S. allies in Asia, enabling the coalition to stand strong, checking Beijing’s ambition to regional hegemony.

In practical terms, a denial defense strategy generates a minimum military standard of being able to prevent China from seizing and holding the key territory of our allies—essentially, the core political and economic areas of a country. If China cannot seize and hold these areas, it will not be able to bring enough coercive pressure on a resolute ally to abandon the coalition. History and logic indicate that most countries are prepared to hold on even in the face of bombardment, blockade, and harassment if it is a matter of their independence and autonomy, especially if they believe relief will arrive. Crucially, this creates a need for a forward defense for U.S. allies against China.

Alternative Strategies Will Not Work

A U.S. Marine sights his weapon in deep jungle vegetation during an exercise in Japan. The Marine Corps’ Force Design 2030 efforts are rightly focused on capabilities that will be brought to bear in a denial strategy. U.S. Marine Corps

Alternative U.S. and allied strategies will not work or will, if attempted, result in costs grossly out of proportion to the stakes for the American people. For example, relying on the threat of large-scale first use of nuclear weapons to defeat a Chinese invasion of Taiwan or other allies is simply not credible; Beijing is unlikely to believe Washington would follow through. And if the United States did, China could respond with a nuclear attack that would leave the United States devastated, without having reversed China’s gains—hardly a good strategy.

Neither would a strategy relying primarily on cost imposition or horizontal escalation be likely to work. Such strategies would emphasize inflicting costs on China, for instance through measures such as blockades and attacks on Chinese interests beyond the first island chain, with the goal of persuading Beijing to relent. To be clear, such measures could be essential or useful elements alongside a denial defense, but not as the primary line of effort for the U.S. and allied militaries.

Horizontal escalation is unlikely to work because Beijing almost certainly would prize victory over Taiwan and in the first island chain over its interests in places such as South Asia, the Middle East, or Latin America. A blockade-reliant strategy is also unlikely to work for several reasons. Militarily, if the United States and its allies do not contest China forward, the PLA could adapt to challenge a distant blockade, negating the strategy over time. Moreover, a strategy relying on blockade would essentially allow China to assault U.S. allies in the western Pacific at will, increasing the chances they would fold and that the coalition—the center of gravity for Washington’s overall strategy—would fail.

Even if effectively implemented, a blockade is unlikely to work as a primary victory mechanism. China has enormous economic capacity and could weather much of the effects of an embargo; indeed, it appears to be strengthening its ability to do so through measures such as dual circulation.3 At the same time, Beijing could reduce the efficacy of such an effort by exploiting sympathetic or profiteering third parties, ranging from Russia through the Middle East and even to parts of Europe. Further, China’s famously strong nationalism will make it willing to put up with a lot of pain to prevail in a conflict over Taiwan.

Finally, full-scale economic warfare against China is a poor strategy for the United States because it does not credibly match the demands of the military strategy with the stakes for the American people. Such an action would be met with a comparable response from Beijing, with devastating consequences for Americans’ livelihoods. Moreover, rather than providing a clear end point and set of escalation boundaries, such a strategy would turn the war into a contest in pain tolerance, and it is highly unlikely that the United States would be more prepared to prevail in such a contest with China over Taiwan and the western Pacific.

A Chinese J-15 fighter prepares to land on board the aircraft carrier Liaoning during flight operations in December 2021. A denial defense strategy would require containing or sinking PLAN units inside the first island chain. Xinhua/Alamy

Many navalists, however, find horizontal or cost-infliction strategies appealing.4 To advocates of these strategies, navies and their associated forces offer attributes such as global scale, mobility, and the ability to threaten maritime commerce, so why not shape national strategies based on those attributes? But this is the wrong way to approach the problem. The military must conform to the strategy the nation needs, not the other way around. And the strategy the nation needs is a forward denial defense that can prevent China from subordinating U.S. allies along the first island chain in ways that keep the costs and risks to American citizens at a level proportionate to the stakes at issue. If the U.S. military is not so shaped, then it needs to adapt, even if that requires dramatic change.

It is important to emphasize, though, that a forward denial defense is not a static, unimaginative, or fixed defense. It is about meeting a standard—denying China’s ability to subordinate a U.S. ally—not prescribing how to do it. Indeed, forward denial defense is consistent with unorthodox, imaginative, and nonlinear forms of military action and force structure, so long as they materially and efficiently contribute to the goal. It is consistent with any number of different approaches to military operations: high-tech and low-tech; at sea, in the air, space, and cyberspace, and on the ground; at long-range and short. If a naval mine meets the standard better than a long-range hypersonic missile, so be it. But the reverse is true, too: If a new approach is required to make a denial defense work, even at the expense of treasured old platforms and ways of operating, so must it be.

Implications for the Navy and Marine Corps

A denial defense strategy will have far-reaching implications for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.

Responsibility for a denial defense of Taiwan will be shouldered in large part by the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. Here, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael Gilday and Marine Corps Commandant General David Berger testify before the House Armed Services Committee in May 2022. U.S. Navy (Sean Castellano)

First, it necessitates prioritizing China not in some generic sense, but by revamping the U.S. Sea Services to be able to shoulder much of a forward denial defense along the first island chain. This is especially important because the western Pacific and the strategic depth to its rear (from the U.S. perspective) are maritime environments. Naval forces are thus critical—at the front lines, in depth, and in supporting the fight. The Marine Corps is laudably adapting to this reality with Force Design 2030, which specifically seeks to reshape the force to meet the looming threat from China and is consistent with a denial defense strategy. In particular, Force Design 2030, if realized, would provide a strong and resilient forward-deployed blunt layer—one that would present military and political challenges to Beijing while also reinforcing allied confidence in U.S. strength and staying power. That said, given the scale of the China challenge, the Sea Services must work to integrate their forces, posture, plans, and vision with the Air Force, Army, Space Force, and key allies, especially Australia, Japan, and Taiwan. Given China’s enormous size and power, there is simply not enough material advantage for unnecessary duplication or unlinked efforts.

Moreover, this thoroughgoing prioritization must be carried through immediately in every part of the Navy and Marine Corps. People often say China is a long-term problem. But this is misleading. China is a long-term problem only if we can deter or defeat it in the short term. It is like acute heart disease: A patient is lucky if he can make it a long-term problem. And achieving that often requires urgent, drastic steps, such as having a stent put in, before concentrating on longer-term measures such as changing one’s diet or exercise habits. Similarly, the United States must ensure the security of its position in Asia in the near-term, not simply prepare for long-term strategic competition. To qualify for the marathon, we must first sprint.

And there are multiple reasons Beijing might strike in this decade.5 The most pressing is the “Shugart Window”—the assessment that China may judge the 2020s to be its best opportunity to retake Taiwan in terms of relative military advantage over time.6 Others point to Xi Jinping’s own personal calculus and his apparent desire to solve the Taiwan problem during his leadership tenure. Still others suggest China’s economy may decline, increasing Beijing’s incentive to act before it weakens. In any case, Beijing can now clearly see that a coalition is coalescing against it and may judge that its future economic growth and security are in question if it does not act. This fear is not mere speculation. Rather, an increasing chorus of senior Biden administration officials and military officers have stated that Beijing has moved up its timeline to address the Taiwan issue, that overwhelming force is Beijing’s best strategy, and that an invasion is a distinct threat.7

These ominous warnings rule out the Sea Services taking a knee to focus exclusively on modernization. This might have been a reasonable position ten years ago, when Beijing could not hope to take Taiwan. It no longer is now that Taiwan’s defensibility is increasingly in question. The United States needs an all-hands-on-deck effort to ensure its military is ready now.

But the Sea Services also must modernize for the future. The United States cannot succeed in the near term merely to set itself up for failure in the longer term. Accordingly, the U.S. military must ensure the readiness to take on China now and modernize for the future fight at the same time. This modernization effort will require urgency on the part of the defense establishment, given the long lead times needed to bring about changes in force structure and posture.

Priorities

It is important to be clear about what prioritizing a denial defense against China means. It means not taking chances nor cutting it close. To the contrary, it will require extra effort and, as necessary, resources, to ensure a workable denial defense. To continue the earlier metaphor, just as someone at risk of acute heart disease should take multiple precautions to avoid heart failure, the Sea Services must build appropriate redundancy into their plans, posture, and concepts to guard against failure in the nation’s most important strategic priority.

A denial defense strategy also means helping Taiwan defend itself. Here, Taiwan military forces conduct live-fire training during Exercise Han Kuang in 2019.

In part, this challenge is a function of time. Because the threat is already upon us, the Sea Services must ensure they can employ a forward denial defense of Taiwan both in the short and long term. It is also a function of uncertainty around concepts of operations, technology, and allied decision-making. In simple terms, the United States cannot afford to bet its future on one approach to deterring or defeating China. It cannot have single points of failure. It requires strategic redundancy—more than one way to contribute materially to a denial defense.

This means the Department of Defense should not bet solely on either exquisite new technologies or only the tried and true. The former, as in the examples of the DDG-1000–class destroyers, the littoral combat ships, and the Army’s Future Combat System, risks programmatic failure. But failing to exploit new technologies and concepts of operation risks the Sea Services being outpaced by an advancing PLA that is building not just a large force but also a cutting-edge one.

Similarly, the Sea Services should not bet entirely on either a long-range force operating largely from outside PLA striking range or solely on stand-in forces. The former may not live up to expectations in the event of war and may risk allied defection if it undermines confidence in U.S. resolve, while the latter may be too vulnerable to attack within the densest parts of Beijing’s strike envelope. Accordingly, the Navy and Marine Corps must pursue them together, both to guard against programmatic and operational failure and to present greater military difficulties and strategic dilemmas for Beijing and the PLA.

What should be deprioritized, then, is almost everything else (save the nuclear deterrent). This includes naval operations and posture in theaters other than Asia, including Europe and the Middle East, as well as capacity and presence for its own sake rather than warfighting efficacy. The basic point is that U.S. naval forces should prepare to mount an effective and politically credible denial defense of Taiwan, along with the nuclear deterrent needed to back it up. Everything else should be scaled down, pushed to the back, and, if need be, eliminated. This includes symbolic or assurance-oriented presence operations not connected to a robust blunt layer, as former Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work has compellingly argued.8

The reason for all this stems from a simple proposition: The main purpose of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps is to fight and win the nation’s most important wars at a reasonable cost to the American people—not policing the sea lanes, showing the flag, or “facilitating—or deranging international trade.”9 By far the most significant threat to Americans’ prosperity, freedom, and security is China dominating Asia and from that position, the global economy. The Navy and the Marine Corps ought to be clear that their overriding responsibility lies in preventing this baleful outcome through a denial defense along the first island chain, and all other missions unconnected to this goal must take a back seat to that.

The Sea Services must now be laser focused on this core task to make the best use of the enormous resources the American people allocate to defense, as the Marine Corps is so commendably doing. Americans already spend a far greater proportion of their wealth on defense than almost any of their allies. It is therefore incumbent on the defense establishment to make the best use of that money as possible.

At the end of the day, this agenda will require more money. Our allies do need to spend more, but they will not be able to match China alone. The simple fact is the United States will need to spend more just to match China’s buildup. But the American people are most likely to support such an increase if they see the Navy and Marine Corps hyperfocused on implementing a strategy of denial.

1. Laura Silver, Christine Huang, and Laura Clancy, “Negative Views of China Tied to Critical Views of Its Policies on Human Rights,” Pew Research Center, 29 June 2022.

2. Caitlin Campbell, “China Primer: The People’s Liberation Army,” Congressional Research Service, 21 December 2022.

3. “China’s ‘Dual-Circulation’ Strategy Means Relying Less on Foreigners,” The Economist, 5 November 2020.

4. Collin Fox, Trevor Phillips-Levine, and Kyle Cregge, “Hedging with Humility: Reassessing China’s Power Projection Capabilities against Taiwan,” War on the Rocks, 1 September 2022.

5. Mallory Shelbourne, “Davidson: China Could Try to Take Control of Taiwan in ‘Next Six Years,’” USNI News, 9 March 2021.

6. Thomas H. Shugart III, “Trends, Timelines, and Uncertainty: An Assessment of the Military Balance in the Indo-Pacific,” testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 17 March 2021.

7. Julia Mueller, “Blinken: China’s Plans to Annex Taiwan Moving ‘On a Much Faster Timeline,’” The Hill, 18 October 2022.

8. The Honorable Robert O. Work, “A Slavish Devotion to Forward Presence Has Nearly Broken the U.S. Navy,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 147, no. 12 (December 2021).

9. Nicholas Lambert, “What Is a Navy For?” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 147, no. 4 (April 2021).

4. Four Nuclear States Can Ruin Your Whole Strategy

At least Dr. Kroenig includes north Korea. I suppose he has to since it is a rogue nuclear actor. But it seems that roo many in the national community, pundits and think tanks alike focus on CHina, Russia, and Iran and leave out north Korea, or include it as an afterthought.

Not to pick on Seth Jones but one of his recent books is a useful example, Three Dangerous Men: Russia, China, Iran and the Rise of Irregular Warfare. Why does he leave out north Korea which is a guerrilla dynasty whose regime legitimacy is based on anti-Japanese partisan warfare, one of the best examples of irregular warfare there is? north Korea is also intimately associated with the other three dangerous men and threats as well as conducting global operations through cyber, illicit activities, espionage, and proliferation. But unless it is necessary to discuss the north's nuclear threat it is usually left off the table in most other discussions. I tried to call out the north's irregular warfare threat in 2010 HERE. Just saying.

Four Nuclear States Can Ruin Your Whole Strategy

Washington and its allies face new threats from Russia, Iran, North Korea and China—all at once.

By Matthew Kroenig

March 1, 2023 2:29 pm E

https://www.wsj.com/articles/four-nuclear-states-can-ruin-your-whole-strategy-cold-war-icbm-inspection-russia-north-korea-iran-china-uranium-32d79022

In its 2022 Nuclear Posture Review, the Biden administration promised to “reduce the role of nuclear weapons” in U.S. strategy. America’s adversaries have different ideas. In recent days, the rapidly advancing nuclear capabilities of all four of America’s nuclear-capable rivals—Russia, Iran, North Korea and China—have made international news.

Vladimir Putin announced on Feb. 21 that Moscow was suspending its participation in New Start, its last remaining arms-control treaty with the U.S. This means that for the first time since the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty of 1972, there are no negotiated limits on Russia’s nuclear forces.

America hasn’t conducted on-site inspections of Russia’s nuclear arsenal since March 2020 in any case, first because of Covid-19 and then Russian noncooperation during the war in Ukraine. That led the State Department to declare Russia “in noncompliance” with the treaty in January.

It would be prudent to assume Russia may soon expand its strategic nuclear force beyond the 1,550 warheads allowed in the treaty, if it hasn’t done so already. This is in addition to its large stockpile of battlefield and exotic nuclear weapons (such as underwater nuclear-armed drones) that the treaty doesn’t cover.

On Feb. 19, it was reported that International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors caught Iran enriching uranium to 84% purity—a hair’s breadth from the 90% needed for a bomb. Outside experts estimate that Iran’s breakout timeline—the time it would take to produce one bomb’s worth of weapons-grade uranium—is now essentially zero.

Some argue that we have more time because it would take months for Iran to fashion a functioning nuclear warhead, but in reality the game will be over as soon as the Iranians have enough material for a bomb. Like North Korea, Tehran could move the material to secret underground locations and fashion warheads undisturbed.

The Biden administration tried to negotiate limits on Iran’s nuclear program, but talks broke down in the face of Tehran’s brutal crackdown on protesters. President Biden says he is willing to use force as a last resort, but the moment of last resort is now and Mr. Biden isn’t readying military options. The 20-year international effort to keep Iran from the bomb has likely failed.

On Feb. 18, North Korea conducted a test of a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile and demonstrated the ability to reach the continental U.S. Pyongyang is the third American adversary capable of holding the U.S. homeland at risk with the threat of nuclear war.

As the North Korea threat grows, American allies worry about the credibility of our extended deterrence, and some consider building their own nuclear arsenals. In public opinion polls, a majority of South Koreans support building an independent nuclear force.

On Feb. 7, the Pentagon notified Congress that China now has more ICBM launchers than the U.S.

What President John F. Kennedy declared in 1962 is still true: America needs to be “second to none” in nuclear weapons. Falling behind means losing a critical element of deterrence.

Instead of pursuing 1990s-era fantasies about reducing the role of nuclear weapons, Washington needs to understand that, for the first time since the Cold War, it is entering a long-term strategic-arms competition. This time will be even more dangerous because the U.S. now faces multiple nuclear-armed rivals.

America needs to strengthen its strategic forces to provide an adequate deterrent for itself and the more than 30 formal treaty allies that rely on U.S. nuclear weapons for their security.

America won the last Cold War in part because it outcompeted the Soviet Union in strategic forces. Washington should remember that lesson if it doesn’t want to lose this one.

Mr. Kroenig is senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and a professor of government at Georgetown. He served as a senior policy adviser in the Defense Department, 2017-21.

WSJ Opinion: Ukraine Fatigue Is Not an Option

The Horror of All-Out War in the Pacific

commondreams.org · by Alfred W. Mccoy · March 2, 2023

Let us only hope that today’s leaders in both Washington and Beijing prove more restrained than did their counterparts in Berlin and Paris in August 1914 when plans for victory unleashed a war that would leave 20 million dead

A brigade of the army under the Eastern Theater Command and a department of the Navy carry out a multi-subject combat training in a sea area in Zhangzhou, Fujian province, China, Aug 27, 2022.

(Photo credit should read CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)

Mar 02, 2023TomDispatch

Mar 02, 2023

While the world has been distracted, even amused, by the diplomatic tussle around China’s recent high-altitude balloon flights across North America, there are signs that Beijing and Washington are preparing for something so much more serious: armed conflict over Taiwan. Reviewing recent developments in the Asia-Pacific region raises a tried-and-true historical lesson that bears repeating at this dangerous moment in history: when nations prepare for war, they are far more likely to go to war.

In The Guns of August, her magisterial account of another conflict nobody wanted, Barbara Tuchman attributed the start of World War I in 1914 to French and German plans already in place. “Appalled upon the brink,” she wrote, “the chiefs of state who would be ultimately responsible for their country’s fate attempted to back away, but the pull of military schedules dragged them forward.” In a similar fashion, Beijing and Washington have been making military, diplomatic, and semi-secretive moves that could drag us into a calamitous conflict that, once again, nobody wants.

At the apex of power, national leaders in Beijing and Washington have staked out starkly contrasting positions on Taiwan’s future. For nearly a year now, President Joe Biden has been trying to resolve the underlying ambiguity in previous U.S. policy toward that island by stating repeatedly that he would indeed defend it from any mainland attack. In May of last year, in response to a reporter’s question about a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan, he said, “Yes,” the U.S. would intervene militarily. He then added: “We agree with the One China policy. We signed on to it and all the attendant agreements made from there, but the idea that it can be taken by force, just taken by force, is [just not] appropriate.”

As Biden acknowledged, by extending diplomatic recognition to Beijing in 1979, Washington had indeed accepted China’s future sovereignty over Taiwan. For the next 40 years, presidents from both parties made public statements opposing Taiwan’s independence. In effect, they conceded that the island was a Chinese province and its fate a domestic matter (even if they opposed the People’s Republic doing anything about it in the immediate future).

Nonetheless, Biden has persisted in his aggressive rhetoric. He told CBS News last September, for instance, that he would indeed send U.S. troops to defend Taiwan “if, in fact, there was an unprecedented attack.” Then, in a significant break with longstanding U.S. policy, he added: “Taiwan makes their own judgments about their independence… That’s their decision.”

Within weeks, at a Communist Party Congress, Chinese President Xi Jinping responded with a strong personal commitment to the unification of Taiwan — by force if necessary. “We insist on striving for the prospect of peaceful reunification,” he said, “but we will never promise to give up the use of force and reserve the option to take all necessary measures.”

After a long burst of applause from the 2,000 party officials massed in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, he then invoked the inevitability of Marxian dialectical forces that would insure the victory he was promising. “The historical wheels of national reunification and national rejuvenation are rolling forward,” he said, “and the complete reunification of the motherland must be achieved.”

As the political philosopher Hannah Arendt once reminded us, a sense of historical inevitability is a dangerous ideological trigger that can plunge authoritarian states like China into otherwise unthinkable wars or unimaginable mass slaughter.

War Preparations Move Down the Chain of Command

Not surprisingly, the forceful statements of Biden and Xi have been working their way down the chain of command in both countries. In January, a four-star U.S. Air Force general, Mike Minihan, sent a formal memo to his massive Air Mobility Command of 500 aircraft and 50,000 troops, ordering them to ramp up their training for war with China. “My gut tells me,” he concluded, that “we will fight in 2025.” Instead of repudiating the general’s statement, a Pentagon spokesman simply added, “The National Defense Strategy makes clear that China is the pacing challenge for the Department of Defense.”

Nor is General Minihan even the first senior officer to have made such foreboding statements. As early as March 2021, the head of the Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Philip Davidson, warned Congress that China was planning to invade the island by 2027: “Taiwan is clearly one of their ambitions… And I think the threat is manifest during this decade, in fact, in the next six years.”

Unlike their American opposites, China’s service chiefs have been publicly silent on the subject, but their aircraft have been eloquent indeed. After President Biden signed a defense appropriation bill last December with $10 billion in military aid for Taiwan, an unprecedented armada of 71 Chinese aircraft and many more military drones swarmed that island’s air defenses in a single 24-hour period.

As such tit-for-tat escalation only increases, Washington has matched China’s aggression with major diplomatic and military initiatives. Indeed, the assistant defense secretary for the Indo-Pacific, Ely Ratner, has promised, ominously enough, that “2023 is likely to stand as the most transformative year in U.S. force posture in the region in a generation.”

During a recent tour of Asian allies, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin claimed some significant strategic gains. On a stopover in Seoul, he and his South Korean counterpart announced that the U.S. would deploy aircraft carriers and additional jets for expanded live-fire exercises — a distinctly escalatory move after the curtailment of such joint operations during the Trump years.

Moving on to Manila, Austin revealed that the Philippines had just granted U.S. troops access to four more military bases, several facing Taiwan across a narrow strait. These were needed, he said, because “the People’s Republic of China continues to advance its illegitimate claims” in the South China Sea.

China’s Foreign Ministry seemed stung by the news. After a successful diplomatic courtship of the previous Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, that had checked U.S. influence while accepting the Chinese occupation of islands in Philippine waters, Beijing could now do little more than condemn Washington’s access to those bases for “endangering regional peace and stability.” Although some Filipino nationalists objected that an American presence might invite a nuclear attack, according to reliable polling, 84% of Filipinos felt that their country should cooperate with the United States to defend their territorial waters from China.

Both of those announcements were dividends from months of diplomacy and down payments on major military deployments to come. The annual U.S. “defense” bill for 2023 is funding the construction of military installations across the Pacific. And even as Japan is doubling its defense budget, in part to protect its southern Islands from China, U.S. Marines in Okinawa plan to trade their tanks and heavy artillery for agile drones and shoulder-fired missiles as they form “littoral regiments” capable of rapid deployment to the smallest of islands in the region.

Secret Strategies

In contrast to those public statements, semi-secret strategies on both sides of the Pacific have generally escaped much notice. If the U.S. military commitment to Taiwan remains at least somewhat ambiguous, this country’s economic dependence on that island’s computer-chip production is almost absolute. As the epicenter of a global supply chain, Taiwan manufactures 90% of the world’s advanced chips and 65% of all semiconductors. (In comparison, China’s share of chips is 5% and the U.S. slice only 10%.) As the world’s top producer of the most critical component in everything from consumer cell phones to military missiles, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is the leading innovator, supplying Apple and other U.S. tech firms.

Now, American officials are moving to change that. Having overseen the breaking of ground for a $12 billion TSMC chip-production factory in Phoenix in 2020, only two years later, Arizona’s governor announced that “TSMC has completed construction of its main facility.” Last August, just before President Biden signed the $52 billion CHIPS and Science Act, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo insisted that “our dependence on Taiwan for chips is untenable and unsafe.”

Only three months later, TSMC reached for a large slice of those federal funds by investing $28 billion in a second Phoenix factory that, when opened in 2026, will produce what the New York Times has called “more advanced — though not the most advanced — chip-making technology.” At a ceremony featuring President Biden last December, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook proclaimed, “This is an incredibly significant moment.”

That might be true, but the focus on Phoenix obscured equally significant chip factory projects being put in place by Samsung in Texas, Intel in Ohio, and Micron Technology in New York. Add it all up and the U.S. is already about halfway to the “minimum of three years and a $350 billion investment… to replace the Taiwanese [chip] foundries,” according to the Semiconductor Industry Association.

In other words, if Beijing did decide to invade Taiwan after 2026, TSMC’s intellectual capital, in the form of its top computer scientists, would undoubtedly be on outbound flights for Phoenix, leaving little more than a few concrete shells and some sabotaged equipment behind. The global supply chain for silicon chips involving Dutch machines (for extreme ultraviolet lithography), American designs, and Taiwanese production would probably continue without much of a hitch in the United States, Japan, and Europe, leaving the People’s Republic of China with little more than its minimalist 5% of the world’s $570 billion semiconductor industry.

China’s secret calculus over an invasion of Taiwan is undoubtedly more complex. In mid-February at Munich, Secretary of State Antony Blinken charged that Beijing was considering giving Moscow “lethal support” for its war in Ukraine, adding that “we’ve made very clear to them that that would cause a serious problem for… our relationship.”

But China is faced with a far more difficult choice than Blinken’s blithe rhetoric suggests. From its impressive arsenal, Beijing could readily supply Moscow with enough of its Hong Niao cruise missiles to destroy most of Ukraine’s armored vehicles (with plenty left over to demolish Kyiv’s faltering electrical infrastructure).

Bleeding NATO in that way would, however, pay limited dividends for any possible future Chinese plans vis-a-vis Taiwan. In contrast, the types of ground-warfare armaments Washington and its allies continue to pour into Ukraine would do little to strain the U.S. naval capacity in the Western Pacific.

Moreover, the diplomatic and economic price Beijing would pay for a significant involvement in the Ukraine War might well prove prohibitive. As the world’s largest consumer of imported cheap oil and wheat, which Russia exports in abundance, China needs a humbled Putin, desperate for markets and compliant with its designs for greater dominion over Eurasia. A triumphant Putin, bending the will of timorous states in Eastern Europe and Central Asia while negotiating ever-tougher deals for his exports, is hardly in Beijing’s interest.

Ignoring the existential threat Putin’s war poses for the European Union would also cost Beijing decades of diplomacy and billions in infrastructure funds already invested to knit all of Eurasia, from the North Sea to the South China Sea, into an integrated economy. In addition, siding with a distinctly secondary power that has blatantly violated the core principle of the international order — which bars the acquisition of territory by armed conquest — is hardly likely to advance Beijing’s sustained bid for global leadership.

Vladimir Putin might indeed try to equate China’s claim to a breakaway province in Taiwan with his own bid for former Soviet territory in Ukraine, but the analogy is anathema to Beijing. “Taiwan is not Ukraine,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced last year, the day before Putin invaded Ukraine. “Taiwan has always been an inalienable part of China. This is an indisputable legal and historical fact.”

The Costs of War

With both Beijing and Washington contemplating a possible future war over Taiwan, it’s important (especially in light of Ukraine) to consider the likely costs of such a conflict. In November 2021, the venerable Reuters News Agency compiled a series of credible scenarios for a China-U.S. war over Taiwan. If the United States decided to fight for the island, said Reuters, “there is no guarantee it would defeat an increasingly powerful PLA [People’s Liberation Army].”

In its least violent scenario, Reuters speculated that Beijing could use its navy to impose a “customs quarantine” around Taiwan, while announcing an Air Defense Identification Zone over the island and warning the world not to violate its sovereignty. Then, to tighten the noose, it could move to a full blockade, laying mines at major ports and cutting underwater cables. Should Washington decide to intervene, its submarines would undoubtedly sink numerous PLA warships, while its surface vessels could launch aircraft and missiles as well. But China’s powerful air-defense system would undoubtedly fire thousands of its own missiles, inflicting “heavy losses” on the U.S. Navy. Rather than attempting a difficult amphibious invasion, Beijing might complete this staged escalation with saturation missile attacks on Taiwan’s cities until its leaders capitulated.

In the Reuters scenario for all-out war, Beijing decides “to mount the biggest and most complex amphibious and airborne landing ever attempted,” seeking to “overwhelm the island before the United States and its allies can respond.” To hold off a U.S. counterattack, the PLA might fire missiles at American bases in Japan and Guam. While Taiwan launched jets and missiles to deter the invasion fleet, U.S. carrier battle groups would steam toward the island and, “within hours, a major war [would be] raging in East Asia.”

In August 2022, the Brookings Institution released more precise estimates of likely losses from various scenarios in such a war. Although China’s “recent and dramatic military modernizations have sharply reduced America’s ability to defend the island,” the complexities of such a clash, wrote the Brookings analyst, make “the outcome… inherently unknowable.” Only one thing would be certain: the losses on both sides (including in Taiwan itself) would be devastating.

In Brookings’ first scenario involving “a maritime fight centered on submarines,” Beijing would impose a blockade and Washington would respond with naval convoys to sustain the island. If the United States were to knock out Beijing’s communications, the U.S. Navy would lose just 12 warships, while sinking all 60 of China’s subs. If, by contrast, China maintained its communications, it could possibly sink 100 vessels, mostly U.S. warships, while losing only 29 subs.

In Brookings’ second scenario for “a broader subregional war,” both sides would use jets and missiles in a struggle that would engulf southeastern China, Taiwan, and U.S. bases in Japan, Okinawa, and Guam. If China’s attacks proved successful, it might destroy 40 to 80 U.S. and Taiwanese warships at a cost of some 400 Chinese aircraft. If the U.S. got the upper hand, it could destroy “much of China’s military in southeastern China,” while shooting down more than 400 PLA aircraft, even as it suffered heavy losses of its own jets.

By focusing largely on military losses, which are chilling enough, both studies grossly underestimate the real costs and potential devastation to Taiwan and much of East Asia. My own instinct tells me that, should China impose a customs blockade on the island, Washington would blink hard at the thought of losing hundreds of aircraft and dozens of warships, including an aircraft carrier or two, and retreat to its longstanding policy of regarding Taiwan as China’s territory. If the U.S. did challenge that customs interdiction zone, however, it would have to attack the Chinese blockade and might, in the eyes of much of the world, become the aggressor — a real disincentive from Washington’s point of view.

Should China launch an all-out invasion, however, Taiwan would likely succumb within a few days once its air force of just 470 combat aircraft was overwhelmed by the PLA’s 2,900 jet fighters, 2,100 supersonic missiles, and its massive navy, now the world’s largest. Reflecting China’s clear strategic advantage of simple proximity to Taiwan, the island’s occupation might well be a fait accompli before the U.S. Navy ships could arrive from Japan and Hawaii in sufficient numbers to challenge the massive Chinese armada.

If Beijing and Washington somehow let the pull of policy and planning drag them into such an ever-widening war, however, the damage could still prove incalculable — with cities devastated, untold thousands dead, and the global economy, with its epicenter in Asia, left in ruins. Let us only hope that today’s leaders in both Washington and Beijing prove more restrained than did their counterparts in Berlin and Paris in August 1914 when plans for victory unleashed a war that would leave 20 million dead in its wake.

Alfred W. Mccoy

Alfred W. McCoy is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is the author of "In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power". Previous books include: "Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation" (University of Wisconsin, 2012), "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror (American Empire Project)", "Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State", and "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade".

japan new cold war pacific pentagon taiwan us military war in the pacific china

War Preparations Move Down the Chain of Command

Secret Strategies

The Costs of War

Alfred W. Mccoy

War Preparations Move Down the Chain of Command

Secret Strategies

The Costs of War

commondreams.org · by Alfred W. Mccoy · March 2, 2023

6. Why does Putin persist?

The subtitle is key. If Ukrainian and Western interests and objectives cannot be sufficiently aligned then we are going to have significant challenges.

Why does Putin persist? | Lowy Institute

lowyinstitute.org · by Ian Hill

IAN HILL

For all his mistakes, the Russian leader knows the objectives

of Ukraine and its Western backers don’t exactly coincide.

Already it’s clear the invasion of Ukraine has proved a colossal miscalculation by Vladimir Putin and entirely counterproductive for Russia.

Putin wanted to pull Ukraine back into Russia’s orbit but instead has consolidated Ukraine’s national identity and alienated Ukrainians. He wanted to divide and weaken Europe but has ended up revitalising NATO and encouraging Western security cohesion. And as Moscow’s estrangement from Western states has widened, its dependence on China has deepened.

Coercive diplomacy would likely have yielded Putin more at much lower cost than this tragic war he unleashed.

However, when this war eventually ends, it will leave Russia, and Russians, poorer and weaker.

Why then does Putin persist?

Russia’s leaders see the world through a lens of suspicion and insecurity. And the Kremlin elite bitterly resents the West.

Because he’s convinced that time is on Moscow’s side, and that Russia will eventually prevail.

And he remains obsessed with Ukraine – for reasons of national identity, nostalgic irredentism, fear of democratic contagion from a neighbouring democratic and increasingly Western-oriented Slavic state, and his determination to redraw Europe’s post-Cold War security architecture, curbing the further eastward expansion of NATO, restoring Russia’s strategic depth and reclaiming its sphere of influence around its western borders.

Bear in mind Putin’s consistent overarching objectives: domestically, to consolidate the Kremlin’s centralised political authority; and internationally, to rebuild and assert Russia’s power, status and influence, both in its neighbourhood and beyond.

Russia’s leaders see the world through a lens of suspicion and insecurity. And the Kremlin elite bitterly resents the West, claiming it took advantage of Russia and ignored its interests after the dissolution of the USSR.

Coercive diplomacy would likely have yielded Russian President Vladimir Putin more at much lower cost than this tragic war he unleashed (kremlin.ru)

The Kremlin has cultivated a siege mentality and narrative of grievance. This myth of victimhood allows Putin to frame the Ukraine war as one of necessity, not choice: of Russia under assault from a hostile collective West.

The prospects, then, are for a long war. It will be difficult for either side to deliver a decisive military knock-out blow: both armies are strongly dug-in defensively. Yet both are determined to carry on fighting: it’s an existential struggle for Ukraine and, very likely, also for the Putin regime

Yet there’s little prospect of an early negotiated end to hostilities.

Neither side is ready or willing to compromise: indeed, their positions have hardened.

Ukraine’s war aims have expanded. Initially focused simply on surviving, Kyiv is now more confident, and understandably intent on recovering its full territorial integrity and sovereignty.

Meanwhile, Moscow has doubled down, and made plain it’s in Ukraine for the long haul.

Putin is calculating that he can out-wait Ukraine and its Western backers, thinking they will eventually grow weary of war and put pressure on Kyiv to settle.

It's not entirely clear how Russia is now defining victory. But there has certainly been no retreat from the ambition to subjugate Ukraine. At a minimum, Putin will want to occupy the four provinces in eastern Ukraine that Russia illegally annexed last September.

Putin is calculating that he can out-wait Ukraine and its Western backers, thinking they will eventually grow weary of war and put pressure on Kyiv to settle.

That doesn’t seem likely right now. Last week, US President Joe Biden pledged America’s “unwavering support” for Ukraine “for as long as it takes”.

The unspoken question, though, is what ”it” means. Because the interests and objectives of Ukraine and of its Western backers don’t exactly coincide. While strongly backing Ukraine’s struggle to resist Russian aggression, the United States and Europe don’t want to find themselves at war with Russia.

This ambiguity is something Moscow might seek to exploit.

It could happen, say, if Russia comes under intense military pressure, and threatens to escalate and widen the conflict. Alternatively, Russia might cynically propose a ceasefire, seeking to sow division among Ukraine’s Western supporters.

This might lead some Western countries to press Kyiv to be realistic and pragmatic, settling for less than full recovery of all lost territories for now – especially Crimea.

Yet a ceasefire would only work for Russia – not Ukraine. It would leave Moscow controlling those parts of Ukraine it already occupies. It would keep Ukraine in play as another ”frozen conflict”. This wouldn’t give Moscow the subservient Ukraine it wants longer-term. But a divided and dysfunctional Ukraine would serve Russia’s interests meanwhile.

Where does China’s peace initiative fit into this?

There’s understandable scepticism in Western capitals about Beijing’s credibility as potential mediator, given its close strategic partnership with Moscow, and implicit support for Russia’s position on Ukraine. That key provisions of the broad-brush Chinese plan undoubtedly favour Russia, especially calls for a ceasefire and ending sanctions without demanding withdrawal of Russian forces, does nothing to allay such doubts.

China doesn’t want to see Russia defeated in Ukraine. But it’s probably not dismayed at the prospect of ongoing conflict there, keeping the United States and Europe preoccupied, while rendering Russia more dependent on China, giving Beijing increased leverage over its large continental neighbour.

The purpose of China’s peace plan is essentially political.

It burnishes Beijing's global peacemaker credentials. The target audience is the Global South, of which China presents itself as champion, and many of whom anyway are ambivalent about the Ukraine war. Beijing might also be trying to appeal to those elements of European government and public opinion susceptible to calls to end the conflict.

But whether China will try to use its influence with Russia to nudge Moscow towards ending the Ukraine war, and how effective this might be anyway, is questionable.

lowyinstitute.org · by Ian Hill

7. Russian mercenary boss says Bakhmut practically surrounded

Russian mercenary boss says Bakhmut practically surrounded

Reuters · by Leonardo Bennasatto

Summary
Wagner chief says only one route out of Bakhmut left open
Ukraine national guard says situation there 'critical'
Ukrainian forces digging trenches west of the city
Biden, Scholz to discuss weapons for Kyiv

CHASIV YAR, Ukraine, March 3 (Reuters) - Russian troops and mercenaries were closing off the last access routes to the besieged Ukrainian city of Bakhmut on Friday, on the cusp of Moscow's first major victory in half a year after the bloodiest fighting of the war.

The head of Russia's Wagner private army said the city, which has been blasted to ruins, was now almost completely surrounded, with only one route out left open for Ukraine's troops.

Reuters journalists west of the city saw Ukrainians digging new trenches for defensive positions there, and the commander of a Ukrainian drone unit inside the city for months said he had been ordered to withdraw.

Victory in Bakhmut, with a pre-war population of about 70,000, would give Russia the first major prize of a costly winter offensive after it called up hundreds of thousands of reservists last year. It says it would be a stepping stone to capturing the surrounding Donbas region, an important war aim.

Ukraine recaptured swathes of territory in the second half of 2022 but its forces have been on the defensive for three months. It says the city has little strategic value but that the huge losses there could determine the course of the war.

Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, appearing in combat uniform in a video filmed on a rooftop, urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to order a retreat from Bakhmut to save his soldiers' lives.

"Units of the private military company Wagner have practically surrounded Bakhmut. Only one route (out) is left," he said. "The pincers are closing."

The camera panned to show three captured Ukrainians - a grey-bearded older man and two boys - asking to be allowed to go home. From visible buildings, Reuters determined the footage was filmed in Paraskoviivka, a village 7 km (4.3 miles) north of the centre of Bakhmut.

Both sides say they have inflicted devastating losses in Bakhmut. Kyiv has said its forces are still holding out there, while acknowledging the situation has deteriorated this week.

Volodymyr Nazarenko, a deputy commander in the National Guard of Ukraine, told Ukrainian NV Radio the situation was "critical", with fighting going on "round the clock".

"They take no account of their losses in trying to take the city by assault. The task of our forces in Bakhmut is to inflict as many losses on the enemy as possible. Every metre of Ukrainian land costs hundreds of lives to the enemy," he said.

"We need as much ammunition as possible. There are many more Russians here than we have ammunition to destroy them."

The commander of a Ukrainian drone unit active in Bakhmut, Robert Brovdi who goes by the name "Madyar", said in a video posted on social media that his unit had been ordered by the military to withdraw immediately from the city.

He said he had been fighting there for 110 days, and gave no reason for the order to leave.

SCHOLZ IN WASHINGTON

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was due to meet U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House to discuss additional military aid to Ukraine.

Germany makes the Leopard tanks that are expected to be the core of a new Ukrainian armoured force when they arrive later this year.

Scholz has been criticised by some Western allies for taking a cautious public stance towards arming Ukraine, although he has overseen a dramatic shift in policy from a country that was Russia's biggest energy customer on the eve of the war.

Washington will announce its latest military aid package worth $400 million, mainly comprising ammunition and armoured vehicles. The United States has provided nearly $32 billion in weaponry to Ukraine since the invasion.

Biden and Scholz could also touch on concerns that China may provide lethal aid to Russia, a senior administration official said.

The Biden administration is sounding out close allies about the possibility of imposing new sanctions on China if Beijing provides military support to Russia, U.S. officials and other sources said. China has denied considering such assistance, and U.S. officials have not publicly provided evidence for their suspicions.

Asked by reporters whether potential sanctions against China would be a topic for Biden and Scholz, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said "the issue of a third party support to Russia could come up."

Tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers on both sides are believed to have been killed since Russia invaded its pro-Western neighbour a year ago.

Moscow, which says it has annexed nearly a fifth of Ukraine, accuses Kyiv of posing a security threat. Ukraine and its allies say the invasion was an unprovoked war to conquer land.

On the sidelines of a G20 foreign ministers meeting in India, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken briefly met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov face to face for the first time since the invasion.

Blinken told Lavrov to end the war, and urged Moscow to reverse its suspension - announced last week - of the last remaining nuclear arms control agreement, U.S. officials said.

Speaking at a forum in the Indian capital on Friday, Blinken said Russia cannot be allowed to wage war with impunity, otherwise it would send "a message to would-be aggressors everywhere that they may be able to get away with it too."

Reporting by Reuters bureaux Writing by Peter Graff, Editing by William Maclean and Timothy Heritage

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Reuters · by Leonardo Bennasatto

8. Open season on China in Taiwan-focused US House

Open season on China in Taiwan-focused US House

US House committee proposes bills to boot China from G20, expose Chinese officials’ assets in US and bring Taiwan into the IMF

asiatimes.com · by Jeff Pao · March 3, 2023

US-China political tensions are on a new edge after two US House committees proposed more than a dozen bills that call for supporting Taiwan and sanctioning China.

Among the bills:

The Protect Taiwan Act calls for the Federal Reserve, the secretary of the treasury and the Securities and Exchange Commission to exclude representatives from the People’s Republic of China from proceedings of various international financial groups and organizations, including the G20, in the event of an invasion of Taiwan.
The Taiwan Conflict Deterrence Act of 2023 calls on the US government to publish the assets of top Chinese leaders and cut them and their family members off from financial services if Beijing acts against Taiwan.
The Taiwan Non-Discrimination Act of 2023 calls for US government advocacy for Taiwan’s membership in the International Monetary Fund.

The Chinese foreign ministry has so far not commented on the bills individually but complained that US lawmakers held a hearing specifically to smear China.

Chinese columnists focused more on US Congress calls to kick China out of the G20 and expose Chinese officials’ US-based assets while Taiwanese media played up Taiwan’s potential IMF membership.

“The Protect Taiwan Act aims not at protecting Taiwan but at sanctioning mainland China,” Liu Yong, a Hubei-based military columnist, wrote in an article on March 2. “The US harbors a fanciful illusion that it has the power to kick China out of the G20 – in which the US lacks the absolute control that it does have in G7.”

Liu says that, since the Russian-Ukrainian conflict broke out last year, the US has tried to remove Russia from the G20 but failed to do so. He says US allies will not agree with the idea of removing the world’s second-largest economy from the G20, Liu wrote.

He says that to avoid seeing its US-based assets frozen by US authorities, China must increase the pace of de-dollarization now. Once dollar dominance collapses, he predicts, US hegemony will also end.

Photo: World Financial Review

A Liaoning-based writer surnamed Ouyang writes that most of the new US bills are aimed at maintaining dollar dominance. He says the renminbi is increasingly welcomed by foreign countries, including Iraq, which has recently announced that it will settle trade in the Chinese currency.

Taiwanese Central Bank governor Yang Chin-long says it would be good for Taiwan to join the IMF but it will require a big diplomatic push from Taipei as the island must first become a member of the United Nations.

Originally, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was set to visit Beijing in early February but the trip was canceled after a Chinese “spy balloon” appeared over US airspace. US President Joe Biden ordered the shoot-down of the balloon on February 4. The US also unveiled new curbs against more Chinese companies.

On February 28 evening, the newly-formed Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the US and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) held its first hearing, which emphasized recent national security issues.

“The threat against Taiwan grows every day,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said in a hearing-opening speech. “Yet, arms sales to Taiwan – those that the ranking member and I signed off on nearly four years ago – have yet to be delivered.”

“We must strengthen Taiwan’s defenses through weapons and training,” he said. “We will not tolerate any attempts to delay notifications to Congress of arms sales to Taiwan.”

McCaul expressed concern that the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) continues to allow critical US technology to be sold to China, including through licenses reportedly worth US$60 billion to telecom giant Huawei Technologies and $40 billion to chip maker SMIC.

The US State Department has approved the sale of $619 million in new weapons, including missiles for F-16 fighter jets, to Taiwan, the Pentagon told Congress on March 1.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on March 2 that China strongly opposes US arms sales o Taiwan and will take decisive measures to uphold its sovereignty and protect its interests.

“Relevant US institutions and individuals should abandon their ideological bias and zero-sum Cold War mentality, develop an objective and rational perception of China and US-China relations [and] stop framing China as a threat based on disinformation,” Mao commented on the House hearing on March 1.

She said US politicians should stop disparaging the CCP and trying to score political points at the expense of US-China relations.

On February 28, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs spent three hours discussing 11 bills that call for supporting Taiwan and curbing China and approved eight of them.

The next day, the committee passed the remaining three bills – the Upholding Sovereignty of Airspace Act, the Deterring America’s Technological Adversaries Act and the Countering the PRC Malign Influence Fund Authorization Act.

If passed in both the full House and the Senate and signed into law by President Joe Biden, the Deterring America’s Technological Adversaries Act will give the president the power to ban the use of China’s TikTok app on mobile phones in the US.

The TikTok app is now being removed from government work devices in the US and Canada. TikTok logo image: Handout

A different committee – the US House Financial Services Committee – said on Tuesday it approved eight bipartisan bills that are aimed at combating the “generational threat posed by the CCP’s economic aggression.”

The China Financial Threat Mitigation Act of 2023, meanwhile, will require the Treasury Secretary to report on global economic risks emanating from the Chinese financial sector.

The Chinese Currency Accountability Act of 2023 will require the Treasury Secretary to oppose an increase in the weight of China’s renminbi in the basket of currencies determining the value of the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights.

It is aimed at preventing the CCP from co-opting critical international institutions, said the committee.

Read: Xi’s Communist Party wants even more centralized control

Follow Jeff Pao on Twitter at @jeffpao3

asiatimes.com · by Jeff Pao · March 3, 2023

9. The Army Needs to Explain What’s Going on With the Black Hawk Replacement

Sikorsky in Connecticut wants to know what's up with no more rotary wing aircraft for the Army.

The Army Needs to Explain What’s Going on With the Black Hawk Replacement

military.com · by 2 Mar 2023 Military.com | By Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) · March 2, 2023

The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Military.com.

Earlier this year, I had the honor of attending the delivery ceremony for Sikorsky’s 5,000th Black Hawk helicopter. It’s a tremendous feat. For the past 40 years, the U.S. armed forces and our allies and partners have flown Black Hawks for countless missions -- from carrying the troops that brought Osama Bin Laden to justice to evacuating injured service members on the battlefield.

The Black Hawk has served our nation with distinction but, after half a century, it’s rightfully time for the U.S. Army to modernize. That’s why in 2019 the service put out a call for proposals for the Future Long Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) program to replace the Black Hawk. Sikorsky designed the Defiant -- a nimble, advanced design of coaxial rotating blades, offering an unparalleled combination of price, maneuverability and range. Another company, Bell Textron, a company with a long and troubled history of making assault helicopters, submitted a proposal for an unproven tiltrotor aircraft that would require building an entire new supply chain and basing infrastructure. To make matters worse, even without factoring in the costs of a new supply chain and maintenance facilities, the upfront price of the Bell Textron tiltrotor was significantly more expensive than the Defiant.

Sikorsky had the better track record; the better product; and a much, much lower cost to taxpayers. So why on earth did the Army award the FLRAA contract to Bell Textron for the significantly more expensive, less reliable Valor V-280 tiltrotor aircraft? Why didn’t the Army take into consideration the excessive maintenance costs and poor operational readiness of the V-22 Osprey -- the predecessor to Bell’s V-280 Valor?

For the last two months, members of Congress have been asking these questions. They are important questions because this award could put taxpayers on the hook for a budget-busting boondoggle. But maddeningly, the Army has refused to brief Congress on the reasons for the Bell Textron award. The service says it cannot brief Congress until Sikorsky’s protest of the bid is resolved, but in fact there is no precedent for this withholding of information. The Department of Defense has briefed Congress before while a protest is pending, and the law clearly carves out Congress from any confidentiality protections surrounding bids.

As a member of the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, it’s my job not only to represent my constituents in Connecticut, but also to be a responsible steward of taxpayer dollars and ensure the American public is spending only what is necessary for our country’s defense. Sikorsky’s decision to file a protest suggests it has very good reason to believe the Army erred in its evaluation process or treated Sikorsky’s bid unfairly. If the Army did make an incorrect decision, it needs to be held accountable, and the contract reevaluated. When the numbers don’t add up, we need answers.

Our efforts to obtain information have been exhaustive. Over the past two months, members of Congress have repeatedly requested a briefing from Army officials to explain their decision. After denying our requests four separate times, we urged Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to direct the Department of the Army to provide a briefing on how this contract was awarded. Finally, the Army offered us a call with a senior official. But instead of providing us with any substantive answers to our many questions, the service continued to stonewall our constitutionally mandated oversight responsibilities and misrepresent the Army’s clear statutory obligation to provide the requested information to members of Congress.

My best guess is that the Army is refusing to brief lawmakers because it will confirm our serious misgivings about a subjective evaluation process that led to a flawed decision. I fear the Army is afraid the American public will reel from sticker shock when they learn just how much more expensive the Bell tiltrotor is compared to Sikorsky’s Defiant. Sikorsky’s bid is not only significantly more affordable, it’s also better suited to the Army’s modernization goals, infrastructure and future missions. I believe the wrong decision was made, and we deserve to know why.

Let’s be clear: The Army is not exempt from congressional oversight. The Founding Fathers explicitly grant Congress the power “to raise and support Armies,” and I intend to fulfill my constitutional obligation to do so. If the FLRAA procurement process was truly fair, the Army should have no issue explaining that to us. But the longer Army officials refuse oversight by the people’s elected representatives, then more questions are going to be raised about what they might be hiding.

Editor’s Note: Sikorsky employs about 8,000 people in Sen. Murphy’s home state of Connecticut. Sikorsky’s parent company, Lockheed Martin, contributed $5,000 to a leadership political action committee associated with Murphy, MURPHPAC, in 2018. Murphy’s office said that they have stopped accepting PAC funds, and that Lockheed Martin has not made any subsequent contributions.

military.com · by 2 Mar 2023 Military.com | By Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) · March 2, 2023

10. The Limits of the No-Limits Partnership (China- Russia)

Excerpts:

The United States should neither expect the disintegration of this alignment nor resign itself to the further consolidation of Chinese-Russian ties. Instead, U.S. officials should appeal to Beijing’s fundamental interest in stability to push Chinese leaders to rein in Russian recklessness. Recent efforts by Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and others to press Xi to oppose the threat or use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine offer a good example of how Western powers can work with China to send the right signals to Moscow. The same approach should be used to advocate for a peace agreement that delivers justice for the people of Ukraine, once a road map for such an accord emerges. Skeptics may question whether attempting to work with Beijing will be worth the effort, given that it is unlikely to endorse tough measures that jeopardize its ties with Moscow. China will also seek credit for its cooperation, which should be given when due. It will attempt to link its willingness to cooperate with Western powers on Ukraine to concessions in other areas, such as easing export restrictions on Chinese companies or curbing diplomatic support for Taiwan. The United States and its partners will need to manage such demands by setting proper expectations with Beijing. China’s words and actions, as a member of the UN Security Council and as Russia’s most consequential ally and trade partner, will affect Moscow’s decisions in Ukraine and beyond. As such, securing China’s cooperation in working toward peace in Europe will be essential.

The United States and its allies should also give serious thought to why Chinese and Russian accusations of Western hypocrisy and hegemony resonate in many parts of the world and to how they might address these grievances. They will have to grapple with tough issues, such as the damaging humanitarian consequences in the global South of the West’s mounting use of non-UN sanctions. And they will have to find ways to ensure powerful international institutions, including the UN Security Council, the G-20, and the vast array of international standard-setting bodies that shape the rules and norms on everything from global finance to AI research, can better account for the voices and priorities of developing states. To prevent further global division and the exploitation of this gap by China and Russia, the United States and its partners should foster enduring ties with developing countries and actively consider where alterations to the existing international order are necessary rather than ceding the ground to Beijing and Moscow.

The Limits of the No-Limits Partnership

China and Russia Can’t Be Split, but They Can Be Thwarted

By Patricia M. Kim

March/April 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Patricia M. Kim · February 28, 2023

On February 4, 2022, Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, at the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing. After talks, the two sides released a joint statement declaring that China and Russia’s bilateral partnership was greater than a traditional alliance and that their friendship would know “no limits.” Twenty days later, Russia invaded Ukraine. Putin’s brazen gambit immediately cast scrutiny on Beijing; many observers perceived that it had backed Putin’s offensive or, at best, willfully ignored it. Russia’s tight embrace of China since then comes as no surprise, given its dire need for partners in the face of global isolation. More striking is Beijing’s steadfast refusal to distance itself from Moscow, despite the costs to its global image and its strategic interests. Even as Russia has become a pariah, Beijing has not paused bilateral exchanges and joint military exercises or dialed down its public exhortations on deepening strategic coordination with its friend to the north.

Beijing’s resolve to maintain ties with Moscow is partly practical. Chinese leaders want to keep their nuclear-armed neighbor and former rival on their side as they look ahead to intense, long-term competition with the United States. But China’s alignment with Russia is not only a matter of realpolitik. Beijing sees Moscow as its most important partner in the wider project of altering a global order that it perceives as skewed unfairly toward the West. In this order, according to the Chinese and Russian line, the United States and its allies set the rules to their advantage, defining what it means to be a democracy and to respect human rights while retaining the power to isolate and punish actors for failing to uphold those standards. Beijing and Moscow purport to seek a “fairer,” multipolar order that better takes into account the views and interests of developing countries.

Such revisionist aspirations undoubtedly resonate in the global South and even in some quarters of the developed world. But Xi’s designation of Putin as a key ally in the push for a less Western-centric world has ultimately set Beijing back in accomplishing its objectives. China’s association with a revanchist Russia has only drawn more attention to its own aggressive posture toward Taiwan. The perception of a hardening Chinese-Russian axis has, in turn, reinforced ties among U.S. allies and partners. And China’s proximity to Russia has undermined the credibility of Beijing’s claims of being a champion for peace and development.

In short, the Chinese-Russian alignment has proved far more threatening to the U.S.-led order in its conception than in its operation. To be sure, the partnership can still cause damage—for instance, by shielding the likes of Russia and North Korea from punitive measures at the United Nations and enabling their continued aggression. But Beijing’s and Moscow’s conflicting priorities and the latter’s generally dismal prospects limit the pair’s ability to revise the existing global order in a truly coordinated and radical way. Western leaders should nevertheless accept that efforts to push Beijing to cut its ties with Moscow are likely to fail. In the near term, the United States and its allies should focus instead on preventing the partnership from veering down a more destructive path by taking advantage of Beijing’s strong interest in the preservation of global stability. More broadly, Washington and its allies should recognize that China and Russia are channeling real disaffection with the existing international order in many parts of the world—and should get to work bridging the gap between the West and the rest.

FRIENDS in need

Since Xi’s rise to power in 2012, Russia has become one of China’s key partners with the steady strengthening of economic, political, and military ties. Moscow and Beijing may have started off as allies in the early days of the Cold War, but decades of rivalry and mistrust followed a split over ideological differences that emerged in the late 1950s. Beijing and Moscow have been brought together again in the twenty-first century by shared grievances with the West and the clear parallels they perceive in their respective situations, with Russia accusing NATO of encirclement and China feeling hemmed in by U.S. alliances in Asia. Chinese and Russian leaders also share a fear of “color revolutions”—popular uprisings that have ousted autocratic governments around the world, including in former Soviet states—which they allege are Western-sponsored attempts at regime change.

Last year’s rhetoric about a friendship with “no limits” followed an earlier upgrade to relations in 2019, when China and Russia announced they had forged a “comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era” during Xi’s visit to Moscow. China accords this deliberately long moniker to relations with no other state. And by invoking “a new era” (a phrase Xi coined to reflect China’s bid for national rejuvenation in a shifting geopolitical landscape), the label also underscored the two states’ intention to work hand in hand during a period of strategic opportunity.

Xi on television at a shopping mall in Beijing, December 2021

Carlos Garcia Rawlins / Reuters

In recent decades, China has shunned formal alliances for both pragmatic and ideological reasons and has criticized the United States’ vast alliance network as a “vestige of the Cold War.” But Beijing has increasingly resorted to semantic gymnastics to talk about its alignment with Russia. Chinese statements regularly insist that the bilateral partnership is “not an alliance” and “not targeted” against any third party while also making the case that China and Russia’s relationship “surpasses” traditional alliances. Even before the joint statement in February 2022, Beijing had stressed that no areas of cooperation were off limits and that the partnership would stand firm in the face of international headwinds.

Hard military ties have grown alongside this rhetorical camaraderie since the first joint Chinese-Russian military exercise conducted in 2005. Since 2012, the two sides have engaged in increasingly ambitious and frequent training, including naval exercises in the East China and South China Seas and joint engagements with third parties, such as Iran, South Africa, and members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a China-led grouping of states. In late 2021, China and Russia made headlines by holding their first joint naval exercise in the western Pacific, during which their vessels sailed through key waterways around Japan.

Economic ties, too, have deepened in the last decade, with the two sides signing dozens of agreements outlining cooperation on energy, infrastructure, agriculture, finance, and technology. Bilateral trade has grown in volume over the last two decades, but it has also become increasingly unbalanced, with China’s economy rapidly eclipsing Russia’s. As of 2021, China accounted for 18 percent of Russia’s total trade, while Russia only accounted for two percent of China’s. Russia’s top exports to China are natural resources, such as gas, oil, and coal, that may be important today but will become less so as Beijing turns more toward renewable energy sources. China’s top exports to Russia, however, are largely manufactured goods, such as machinery and electronics. Russia depends overwhelmingly on the more advanced Chinese economy for technology imports, from semiconductors to telecommunications equipment.

WOULD-BE REVOLUTIONARIES

This material relationship sits alongside an intensifying ideological alignment. China and Russia both seek to challenge what they perceive to be a Western-dominated global order that allows the United States and its allies to impose their interests on others. The two countries have frequently protested the primacy of “Western values” in international forums and have argued for a conditional understanding of human rights and democracy, defined “in accordance with the specific situation in each country.” In their joint statement from February 2022, China and Russia insisted that they, too, are democracies and took a swipe at “certain states” for using the “pretext of protecting democracy and human rights” to sow discord among other countries and intervene in their internal affairs.

Beijing and Moscow accuse Washington of unfairly using its economic power, including the privileged position of the U.S. dollar in the global financial system, to impose punitive measures on its rivals. China and Russia have both pushed back on Western sanctions, despite employing economic coercion themselves against others. Beijing has argued that sanctions levied outside the auspices of the UN violate states’ “right to development,” a framing that has its roots in the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests to prioritize the “right to subsistence” above civil liberties and political freedoms. Although China no longer struggles with concerns about basic subsistence, Beijing has criticized high-tech export restrictions and other decoupling measures adopted by the United States and its allies as unfairly constraining China’s development and “right to rejuvenation.” Beijing has also used this language to object to Western sanctions on Russia regardless of its offenses, claiming that the sanctions infringe on Russia’s economic rights and have damaging side effects on developing countries.

In the global South, China continues to market itself as an apolitical champion for development, a position that Russia supports. The two have extolled the virtues of Chinese projects, such as the Belt and Road Initiative, a vast infrastructure development program, and the more recently announced Global Development Initiative, a still vaguely defined scheme seen as a successor to the BRI that, according to Beijing, brings development “back” to the center of the global agenda. Such initiatives, along with Chinese messaging about development, have found receptive audiences in the global South, given that many low-income countries want rapid development but remain averse to international scrutiny on their domestic governance.

Xi and Putin have met in person 39 times since 2012.

Over the years, Beijing and Moscow have advanced various measures to weaken U.S. control of the international economy. They have cooperated to create alternative financial institutions and mechanisms to dent the dollar’s dominance and blunt the impact of Western sanctions. This effort has gained greater urgency since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent cutting off of major Russian banks from the SWIFT international payment system. Since Beijing and Moscow agreed in 2019 to boost the use of national currencies in cross-border trade, the Russian central bank has significantly reduced its dollar holdings and increased its investment in Chinese yuan. About a quarter of Chinese-Russian trade is now settled in renminbi and rubles, and this percentage will increase following the announcement last fall that China will begin to pay for Russian gas half in renminbi and half in rubles. Beijing and Moscow’s efforts to reduce the dominance of the dollar have been warmly welcomed in friendly groupings such as the SCO and the BRICS, which brings together Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

At the heart of China and Russia’s ideological alignment is a common desire to weaken the vast U.S.-led alliance architecture in Europe and Asia. The two countries accuse Washington and its allies of violating the principle of “indivisible security” by advancing their security interests at the expense of others’. The Kremlin has employed this argument to justify its war in Ukraine and to redirect blame for the conflict on NATO. And this narrative has caught on in many parts of the global South, thanks in part to Chinese state media amplifying Russian talking points. In Asia, Beijing has pointed to the strengthening of the U.S. alliance network—including the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, a security partnership between Australia, India, Japan, and the United States, and AUKUS, a partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—as evidence of the U.S.-led containment of China. But Beijing faces an uphill battle in challenging the U.S. presence, given that many Asian governments are concerned about China’s aggressive behavior and welcome the United States’ balancing role in the region.

Despite seeking to change elements of the current global order, Beijing and Moscow do not wish to revise all elements of the existing architecture. They continue to stress that the United Nations and UN Security Council should play a leading role in the international arena. This position is unsurprising, given the privileges China and Russia enjoy as permanent members of the Security Council and their ability to rally developing world partners at the UN.

DOUBLING DOWN

Until February 24, 2022, when Russian troops stormed Ukraine, Beijing saw little downside to its burgeoning relationship with Moscow. It is unclear just how much Chinese leaders knew of Putin’s plans in advance. But they were likely taken aback when the Russian attack floundered and placed a heavy spotlight on China. Even so, Beijing has ultimately chosen not to distance itself from Russia. Chinese leaders have yet to explicitly condemn Putin’s ongoing aggression in Ukraine and have spoken in defense of Russia’s “legitimate security concerns.” Chinese state media outlets have also amplified Russian propaganda and disinformation about the war in Ukraine.

At the same time, China maintains that it is not a party to the conflict and that it supports peaceful negotiations, as well as the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states. It has expressed concern about the “prolonged and expanded crisis” in Ukraine, including its negative spillover effects. China also abstained on three UN resolutions last year that condemned Russia’s invasion and annexation of Ukrainian territory. Chinese officials privately insist that these abstentions were a sign of Beijing’s disapproval of Russian behavior and that they went to great lengths to rebuff Moscow’s repeated requests that Beijing veto these resolutions.

Chinese leaders have also made clear to their Russian counterparts that they oppose the threat or use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine and underlined their expectations that Moscow pursue a diplomatic resolution to the conflict. In the months following the invasion, Chinese banks and businesses largely complied with sanctions by curtailing shipments of restricted goods and suspending select operations in the Russian market, although last year, the U.S. Department of Commerce accused five Chinese firms of violating sanctions and the U.S. Treasury recently sanctioned a Chinese company for providing satellite imagery to the Wagner Group, a Russian paramilitary organization operating in Ukraine. To date, the Chinese government has not extended direct material assistance to Russia’s military efforts, although the Biden administration warned in February that Beijing may be on the cusp of supplying Moscow with lethal aid.

At a currency trading center in Beijing, April 2022

Tingshu Wang / Reuters

Beijing has nevertheless made a point of maintaining normal trade ties with Moscow, and nonsanctioned sectors of bilateral trade have ballooned as a result. Just weeks before the Russian invasion, the two countries signed oil and gas deals worth nearly $120 billion and announced the lifting of Chinese restrictions on Russian wheat and barley imports. China replaced Germany as the largest importer of Russian energy last year, and Chinese-Russian trade reached a record-breaking $180 billion in 2022.

China and Russia have also kept up their steady pace of diplomatic engagement. According to China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, top Chinese and Russian officials have met 21 times since last February. Russian state media has reported that Xi may pay Putin a visit in Moscow this spring.

Perhaps most remarkably, Beijing and Moscow have maintained their steady pace of joint military exercises, even as the Russian military is bombarding Ukrainian cities. Last May, as U.S. President Joe Biden traveled in the region, Chinese and Russian bombers flew over the Sea of Japan, the East China Sea, and into South Korea’s air defense identification zone. China participated in Russian exercises in the Russian Far East and in the Sea of Japan in September, and the two capped the year off with a major joint naval exercise in the East China Sea in late December. Their first joint military exercise of 2023 has been planned for February, coinciding with the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and will include South Africa, a BRICS partner.

BLOWBACK

China’s decision to double down on its alignment with Russia even after the latter’s naked aggression in Ukraine has raised grave concerns on the part of the United States and its allies. Polling by the Pew Research Center indicates that the percentage of Americans with unfavorable views of China, which was already at historic highs in 2021, increased further, from 76 percent to 82 percent, in 2022. Moreover, 62 percent believed the relationship between China and Russia is a “very serious” problem for the United States. Views of China have soured, particularly in Europe, dashing Beijing’s hopes that the European Union would adopt a more benign posture than that of the United States. Polling by the German Marshall Fund last September found that many Europeans preferred a “tougher” approach to China, even if such policies would come at an economic cost. Although Tokyo has long been wary of the threat posed by China, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and fears of a similar scenario in Asia have inspired the recent, historic changes in Japan’s defense policies, including its moves to develop counterstrike capabilities, to double its defense budget, and to sign unprecedented security pacts with Australia and the United Kingdom.

The most damaging consequence of Russia’s aggression for China is the heightened global awareness and sense of urgency about Taiwan. Preventing Taiwan from becoming “the next Ukraine” has become a topic of grave concern, not just in Washington but among U.S. allies in Europe and Asia, many of whom once viewed Taiwan’s fate as only vaguely relevant, if at all, to their own security or a matter too politically sensitive to discuss. A record number of lawmakers from countries including Australia, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States have visited Taipei in the last year to express support for the island. Fears about Chinese and Russian revisionism have strengthened ties between NATO and the United States’ Indo-Pacific allies, as well. Last year, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea participated in a NATO summit for the first time. Leaders there jointly recognized the danger of conflict in the Taiwan Strait and called for greater coordination among like-minded European and Asian partners.

Although negative views of China have spiked among developed democracies, that has not been the case in the developing world, especially among nondemocratic states. As a study published last fall by the Bennett Institute for Public Policy found, China’s and even Russia’s favorability ratings remain relatively high in many parts of Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East.

Bounds in the boundless

Partnership with Russia has hurt China’s image in the West and has inspired more concerted coordination among the United States and its partners to the detriment of Chinese ambitions. But China will not forsake Russia anytime soon. Beijing must keep Moscow close as it looks ahead to decades of competition with Washington. It cannot afford to be distracted by tensions with a militarily formidable neighbor with which it shares a 2,600 mile border. In addition, Xi has invested a great deal in his relationship with Putin, the two having met a remarkable total of 39 times since 2012. The Chinese state cannot backpedal away from this personal commitment without suggesting that Xi, its “core leader,” has erred.

Nonetheless, Beijing’s behavior since February demonstrates that there are indeed some limits to its partnership with Moscow. Although China and Russia share revisionist goals and seek privileged positions for themselves at the top of the international hierarchy, the two countries do not always agree about how to achieve these objectives. Even as China grapples with a relative economic slowdown after decades of rapid growth and faces various challenges at home, it remains the world’s second-largest economy. It has much more to lose than Russia does from global instability and economic isolation. Chinese leaders and citizens know well that their country’s integration into the global economy, along with the flow of investments and people in and out of China, has fueled the country’s economic miracle. China still has great capacity to influence other countries through its economic offerings, such as investments, loans, and infrastructure and trade agreements, all of which have allowed Beijing to project power and promote its agenda globally in recent years. Russia, on the other hand, is a lopsided power that has significant military capabilities but dismal economic prospects. With fewer tools of influence at its disposal, Moscow has turned to brute force to achieve its aims and has become increasingly isolated as a result, with years of economic contraction looming. Chinese leaders have staked their legitimacy on achieving their country’s revitalization, so they are less likely to emulate or join in the Kremlin’s violent revisionism.

According to news reports in CNN and the German outlet Der Spiegel, China is negotiating the possible sales of strike drones and ammunition to Russia. These deals have yet to be concluded. It remains to be seen whether Beijing will allow these or other weapons transactions to move forward given heightened global scrutiny. If China does provide such assistance to Russia, it would come with colossal consequences for Chinese relations with the West. But at present, it seems unlikely that China will support Moscow militarily to the degree that the United States and its partners have assisted Kyiv. Military coordination between China and Russia is likely to remain more performative than geared to actual joint combat. In fact, Beijing is likely to refuse any direct Russian military assistance in the event of a war over Taiwan, given the deep nationalist sentiments that undergird its quest to consolidate rule over the island. Similarly, it is hard to imagine Moscow welcoming any operational presence of the People’s Liberation Army in its own backyard. Despite the official rhetoric of friendship, China and Russia ultimately lack close cultural and people-to-people ties that could inspire their citizens to die in war for each other—a high bar to meet even for countries that share such bonds. These factors suggest that the prospect of a joint Chinese-Russian military campaign remains remote for the time being.

Putin at an event marking Russian-Chinese nuclear energy cooperation, Moscow, May 2021

Sergey Ilyin / Sputnik / Kremlin / Reuters

China and Russia’s partnership is real and likely to endure for the foreseeable future. But its strategic implications should not be overstated or underestimated. The fundamental differences between their respective outlooks, along with Russia’s growing limitations, will curb the alignment’s appeal and its ability to revise the existing global order, which requires exerting influence among both developing and developed countries. A limited partnership between the two countries can still be destabilizing, particularly if China serves as Russia’s economic lifeline and the pair continue to partner in protecting fellow autocracies and enabling their transgressions at home and abroad.

The United States should neither expect the disintegration of this alignment nor resign itself to the further consolidation of Chinese-Russian ties. Instead, U.S. officials should appeal to Beijing’s fundamental interest in stability to push Chinese leaders to rein in Russian recklessness. Recent efforts by Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and others to press Xi to oppose the threat or use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine offer a good example of how Western powers can work with China to send the right signals to Moscow. The same approach should be used to advocate for a peace agreement that delivers justice for the people of Ukraine, once a road map for such an accord emerges. Skeptics may question whether attempting to work with Beijing will be worth the effort, given that it is unlikely to endorse tough measures that jeopardize its ties with Moscow. China will also seek credit for its cooperation, which should be given when due. It will attempt to link its willingness to cooperate with Western powers on Ukraine to concessions in other areas, such as easing export restrictions on Chinese companies or curbing diplomatic support for Taiwan. The United States and its partners will need to manage such demands by setting proper expectations with Beijing. China’s words and actions, as a member of the UN Security Council and as Russia’s most consequential ally and trade partner, will affect Moscow’s decisions in Ukraine and beyond. As such, securing China’s cooperation in working toward peace in Europe will be essential.

The United States and its allies should also give serious thought to why Chinese and Russian accusations of Western hypocrisy and hegemony resonate in many parts of the world and to how they might address these grievances. They will have to grapple with tough issues, such as the damaging humanitarian consequences in the global South of the West’s mounting use of non-UN sanctions. And they will have to find ways to ensure powerful international institutions, including the UN Security Council, the G-20, and the vast array of international standard-setting bodies that shape the rules and norms on everything from global finance to AI research, can better account for the voices and priorities of developing states. To prevent further global division and the exploitation of this gap by China and Russia, the United States and its partners should foster enduring ties with developing countries and actively consider where alterations to the existing international order are necessary rather than ceding the ground to Beijing and Moscow.

PATRICIA M. KIM is David M. Rubenstein Fellow at the Brookings Institution with a joint appointment to the John L. Thornton China Center and the Center for East Asia Policy Studies.

Foreign Affairs · by Patricia M. Kim · February 28, 2023

11. Asia’s Third Way

Excerpts:

In short, U.S. policymakers should at least privately recognize that China’s growing economic influence can be an asset when it comes to solving shared global problems. In addition to climate change, poverty and pandemics could also be dealt with more effectively through greater cooperation between the United States and China. Such cooperation will remain elusive, however, unless Washington stops viewing any win for China as a loss for the United States and vice versa.

These three rules reflect an emerging reality to which Washington must adapt: developing countries are growing more sophisticated and better able to make autonomous decisions. The United States has done itself a big disfavor by framing the world in binary terms, as divided between good and evil, democracy and autocracy. If Washington can only work effectively with like-minded governments, it will be locked out of the global South, where most people have a different view of the world.

The vast majority of developing countries are clearly willing to work and cooperate with China. As a result, any U.S. effort to reduce or counter Chinese influence in the global South is doomed to fail. The United States should stop trying to cut China off from the rest of the world and start trying to identify areas where the two great powers can work together. As for the developing countries that wish to partner with both Beijing and Washington, the United States should look to ASEAN for guidance. Its pragmatic balancing act, or something like it, is the future for the rest of the developing world.

Asia’s Third Way

How ASEAN Survives—and Thrives—Amid Great-Power Competition

By Kishore Mahbubani

March/April 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Kishore Mahbubani · February 28, 2023

The defining geopolitical contest of our time is between China and the United States. And as tensions rise over trade and Taiwan, among other things, concern is understandably mounting in many capitals about a future defined by great-power competition. But one region is already charting a peaceful and prosperous path through this bipolar era. Situated at the geographical center of the U.S.-Chinese struggle for influence, Southeast Asia has not only managed to maintain good relations with Beijing and Washington, walking a diplomatic tightrope to preserve the trust and confidence of both capitals; it has also enabled China and the United States to contribute significantly to its growth and development.

This is no small feat. Three decades ago, many analysts believed that Asia was destined for conflict. As the political scientist Aaron Friedberg wrote in 1993, Asia seemed far more likely than Europe to be “the cockpit of great-power conflict.” In the long run, he predicted, “Europe’s past could be Asia’s future.” But although suspicion and rivalry endured—particularly between China and Japan and between China and India—Asia is now in its fifth decade of relative peace, while Europe is once again at war. (Asia’s last major conflict, the Sino-Vietnamese war, ended in 1979.) Southeast Asia has endured a measure of internal strife—in Myanmar especially—but on the whole, the region has remained remarkably peaceful, avoiding interstate conflict despite significant ethnic and religious diversity.

Southeast Asia has also prospered. As the living standards of Americans and Europeans have languished over the last two decades, Southeast Asians have achieved dramatic economic and social development gains. From 2010 to 2020, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), made up of ten countries with a combined GDP of $3 trillion in 2020, contributed more to global economic growth than the European Union, whose members had a combined GDP of $15 trillion.

This exceptional period of growth and harmony in Asia is not a historical accident. It is largely due to ASEAN, which despite its many flaws as a political and economic union has helped forge a cooperative regional order built on a culture of pragmatism and accommodation. That order has bridged deep political divides in the region and kept most Southeast Asian countries focused on economic growth and development. ASEAN’s greatest strength, paradoxically, is its relative weakness and heterogeneity, which ensures that no power sees it as threatening. As the Singaporean diplomat Tommy Koh has observed, “The U.S., China, and India are not able to take the role of driving the region because they have no common agenda. ASEAN is able to drive precisely because the three great powers cannot agree. And we can continue to do so as long as the major powers find us neutral and independent.”

ASEAN’s nuanced and pragmatic approach to managing geopolitical competition between China and the United States is increasingly seen as a model for the rest of the developing world. The vast majority of the world’s population lives in the global South, where most governments are primarily concerned with economic development and do not wish to take sides in the contest between Beijing and Washington. China is already making deep inroads across Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. If the United States wants to preserve and deepen its ties with countries in these regions, it should learn from the ASEAN success story. A pragmatic, positive-sum approach that looks past political differences and is open to cooperation with all will be more warmly received in the global South than a zero-sum approach that aims to divide the world into opposing camps.

peace and pragmatism

ASEAN was not always seen as evenhanded. Established with strong U.S. backing in 1967, the body was initially condemned by China and the Soviet Union as a neoimperialist American creation. But in recent decades, as China opened up its enormous economy, Beijing has embraced the regional bloc. ASEAN signed a free trade agreement with China in 2002, leading to a spectacular expansion of trade. In 2000, ASEAN’s trade with China was worth just $29 billion—roughly a quarter of the region’s trade with the United States. But by 2021, ASEAN’s trade with China had exploded to $669 billion, while its trade with the United States had increased to $364 billion.

Trade with both China and the United States has helped power ASEAN’s remarkable economic rise. The region’s combined GDP in 2000 was just $620 billion, an eighth of Japan’s. In 2021, it was $3 trillion, compared with Japan’s $5 trillion. And projections show that the ASEAN economy will be larger than Japan’s by 2030. Clearly, closer economic ties between the 680 million people who reside in ASEAN countries and the 1.4 billion people in China have delivered significant benefits to ASEAN. And this mutually beneficial relationship is just beginning. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership—a free trade agreement among Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and the members of ASEAN—came into force in January 2022 and will likely spur even more significant jumps in economic growth in the coming decade.

Even as it cultivates closer relations with China, ASEAN is determined to maintain equally close ties with the United States. U.S. President Donald Trump largely ignored Southeast Asia (as he did the rest of the world), but U.S. President Joe Biden has made a major effort to work with ASEAN, and its member states have responded enthusiastically. In May 2022, Biden hosted an ASEAN summit at the White House that was attended by most of the union’s key leaders. Later that month, the Biden administration launched its Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, which aims to deepen U.S. economic engagement with partners in the region. Seven out of ASEAN’s ten countries signed on, together with Australia, Fiji, India, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea, demonstrating again that ASEAN wants to preserve its strong ties with Washington.

Geographic proximity to China inevitably means that ASEAN will have more challenges dealing with China than with the United States. Already, disputes have arisen over the South China Sea and Chinese 5G technology, among other issues. China contests the territorial claims of four ASEAN countries—Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam—but its conduct in the South China Sea disrupts relations with all association members. In 2012, for instance, China unwisely pressured Cambodia, then the chair of ASEAN, to exclude any mention of conflicts over the South China Sea from a joint communiqué following an ASEAN ministerial meeting. Indonesia was able to step in to resolve the impasse by brokering a common ASEAN position a week later. But Beijing subsequently mishandled its relations with Jakarta. Although the so-called nine-dash line on Chinese maps showing Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea runs close to Indonesia’s Natuna Islands, China had previously assured Indonesia that there were no overlapping claims. Yet in 2016 and 2020, Chinese fishing vessels entered Indonesia’s Exclusive Economic Zone, prompting Indonesian President Joko Widodo to make high-profile visits to the Natuna Islands to reaffirm his country’s sovereignty over the region.

The ambiguous nature of the nine-dash line will likely remain an irritant in ASEAN-Chinese relations. So will the inability of both parties to conclude a long-awaited “code of conduct” agreement for the South China Sea that would reduce the risk of conflict in the disputed waterway. But it is also clear that the culture of pragmatism that envelops ASEAN-Chinese relations will prevent any major flare-ups. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam have all increased their economic engagement with China, despite their disputed territorial claims in the South China Sea. In the past, China has also made pragmatic compromises with its smaller ASEAN neighbors, including removing two dashes from its original 11-dash line as a show of friendship to Vietnam in 1952. It would be wise for China to make similar pragmatic compromises in the future.

Another source of friction in ASEAN-Chinese relations is Washington’s global campaign against the adoption of Chinese 5G technology. The choice of a 5G telecommunications system is a national decision, so ASEAN has no collective position on whether its members should deal with Chinese telecom giant Huawei. Yet the union’s signature pragmatism has prevailed, with each member state making its own decision according to its needs. Indonesia and the Philippines have contracted with Huawei to build their 5G networks, while Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam have not. These decisions indicate that ASEAN countries consider American concerns but balance them against their own interest in having access to cheap technology that benefits their people.

Sometimes, those interests demand that ASEAN countries largely ignore American concerns. The United States has campaigned equally hard against China’s Belt and Road Initiative, but this campaign has essentially failed: all ten ASEAN countries have participated in various BRI projects, and the region as a whole has been among the most receptive to China’s mammoth infrastructure investment scheme. According to Angela Tritto, Albert Park, and Dini Sejko of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, ASEAN countries had launched at least 53 projects under the BRI umbrella as of 2020.

These projects have brought substantial rewards. Laos remains one of the poorest countries in the world, but thanks to the BRI, it now boasts a high-speed train linking the capital, Vientiane, to China’s Yunnan Province. With a top speed of 100 miles per hour, the sleek new bullet train cuts what was once a 15-hour road trip to under four hours, promising a new tide of trade and tourism from China. Indonesia also turned to China for help building a high-speed train from Jakarta to Bandung, a little more than 90 miles away. It could have purchased a train from any country in the world but chose China after Widodo took a rail journey of similar length in China in less time than it took him to finish a cup of tea. The United States simply has not put forward a viable alternative to the BRI, so the choice to embrace the Chinese initiative over American objections has been an easy one.

bellwether of the global south

ASEAN’s approach to managing geopolitical competition between China and the United States holds lessons for the rest of the developing world. As China deepens trade and investment ties with states across the global South, more and more countries are adopting a similarly pragmatic approach to balancing Beijing’s and Washington’s concerns. This should not come as a surprise. Many developing countries respect and admire ASEAN’s achievements and see the region’s experience as a guide.

As it has in Southeast Asia, China has cultivated deeper economic relations with Africa. Western countries, including the United States, have warned African governments to be wary of Chinese exploitation, but such admonitions have been met with skepticism, not least because of the West’s long and painful record of exploiting Africa. Moreover, the empirical evidence shows that Chinese investment has boosted economic growth and generated new jobs on a continent where jobs are scarce.

According to the development economist Anzetse Were, Chinese investment in Africa has grown at an annual rate of 25 percent since 2000. Between 2017 and 2020, Chinese investment created more jobs than any other single source of foreign investment and accounted for 20 percent of Africa’s incoming capital. And Chinese companies “are not in the business of just hiring their own,” as some critics have alleged, Were writes. “African employees make up on average 70 percent to 95 percent of the total workforce in Chinese firms.”

The United States simply has not put forward a viable alternative to the Belt and Road Initiative.

By comparison, the United States and other Western countries have offered mostly empty promises and inaction. For much of the last decade, U.S. foreign direct investment in Africa has lagged Chinese foreign direct investment by roughly half, and much of the development aid the United States delivers to the continent—like much Western aid in general—ends up in the hands of Western consultants and companies. As the journalist Howard French has observed, the United States has grown “increasingly stingy and scornful” about development assistance at the same time as China has “gotten into the global public goods game with both feet.”

Hypocritical moralizing about climate change, corruption, and human rights has also undermined the standing of Western countries in Africa. The United States and many European powers have long lectured Africans about the need to transition away from fossil fuels, but they suddenly stopped after Russia invaded Ukraine and they needed Africa’s oil and gas. By contrast, China has been less sanctimonious, delivering aid and investment without the burdensome conditions placed on Western aid. As Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said in January 2022, “Our partnership with China is not a partnership based on China telling us what to do. It is a partnership of friends, working together to meet Kenya’s socio-economic agenda. . . . We do not need lectures about what we need, we need partners to help us achieve what we require.”

China has had similar success in deepening ties with Latin America. Between 2002 and 2019, total Chinese trade with Latin America and the Caribbean increased from less than $18 billion to more than $315 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service. By 2021, Chinese trade with the region had ballooned to $448 billion. That figure is still less than half of U.S. trade with Latin America, but 71 percent of U.S.–Latin American trade is with Mexico. In the rest of the region, Chinese trade has overtaken U.S. trade by $73 billion.

Selling Chinese 5G technology in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, January 2022

Hussain Hasnoor / Reuters

The growth of Chinese trade with Brazil, Latin America’s largest economy, has been particularly striking. In 2000, Brazil’s exports to China stood at $1 billion per year. Now, Brazil exports $1 billion worth of goods and services to China every four days. Some of this growth occurred during the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, who was far closer to Trump than he was to Chinese President Xi Jinping. Even during the two years that Trump and Bolsonaro overlapped in office, Brazil continued to pursue deeper economic integration with China, suggesting that an ASEAN-like culture of pragmatism is taking hold in Brasília.

The Gulf is yet another region where China is making inroads. Traditionally, the oil-rich states of the Gulf have looked to Washington for protection. Yet close political and security ties with the United States have not prevented Gulf countries from deepening their economic ties with China. In 2000, trade between the Gulf Cooperation Council and China stood at just under $20 billion. By 2020, it had grown to $161 billion, and China replaced the EU as the GCC’s largest trading partner. During the same period, U.S. trade with the GCC grew much more modestly, from nearly $40 billion to $49 billion. In 2021, the GCC’s trade with China, at $180 billion, surpassed its combined trade with the United States and the EU.

The GCC countries have some of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world. Their decisions about where to invest are not driven by concerns about politics or a conception of friendship. They are driven by cold calculations about which region is likely to deliver the highest growth. In 2000, the GCC sovereign wealth funds were invested almost entirely in the West. That year, GCC countries accounted for less than 0.1 percent of foreign direct investment into China. But by 2020, most GCC sovereign wealth funds had significantly stepped up their investment in China, although exact investment figures are hard to come by because most of these funds do not disclose their holdings publicly.

Clearly, Gulf countries do not wish to compromise their relations with the United States—and with the Abraham Accords, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates arguably drew closer to Washington in 2020—but neither do they wish to forgo the economic benefits of deeper integration with China. A pragmatic approach that seeks to accommodate both powers is gaining sway.

guns and butter

Given that many developing countries are beginning to adopt ASEAN’s approach to managing competition between the United States and China, Washington would do well to learn from the association’s experience. The strategy ASEAN has used to balance the concerns and sensitivities of China and the United States (and other major powers such as India, Japan, and the European Union) could also enable the rest of the global South to do the same. China is already pursuing deeper trade and investment ties across the developing world. The United States must decide whether to deal pragmatically with these regions or continue with its zero-sum approach to competition with China and risk driving them away.

What would a more pragmatic U.S. approach look like? Consider three simple rules to follow when dealing with ASEAN and, by extension, the rest of the global South. The first is not to ask any country to choose between Beijing and Washington. There is a practical reason for this: compared with China, the United States has little to offer ASEAN. Strained finances and congressional resistance to expanding foreign aid mean that Washington has provided only a fraction of the assistance that Beijing has provided to the region. At the U.S.-ASEAN summit in May 2022, for instance, Biden pledged to spend $150 million on infrastructure, security, pandemic preparedness, and other efforts in ASEAN countries. Compare that with the $1.5 billion Xi pledged in November 2021 to help ASEAN countries fight COVID-19 and rebuild their economies over the next three years.

True, Washington has more to offer in terms of defense cooperation and arms sales. But relying too heavily on military rather than civilian cooperation could end up hurting the United States. As Paul Haenle, a China expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, remarked to The Financial Times, “The risk is that the optics in the region become the U.S. coming to the table with guns and ammunition and China dealing with the bread and butter issues of trade and economics.” It would be a huge mistake for Washington to be associated with guns while Beijing is associated with butter. The simple truth is that for most people in the global South, the first priority is economic development.

Any U.S. effort to counter Chinese influence in the global South is doomed to fail.

And for good reason. Having grown up in Singapore in the 1950s and 1960s, when the country’s per capita income was as low as Ghana’s, I understand how psychologically debilitating poverty can be. I also understand how psychologically uplifting it can be for the people of a poor country to experience development successes. Even as a child, I could feel the quality of my life improve as our family acquired a flush toilet, a refrigerator, and a black-and-white TV set.

This is why it has been a mistake for Washington to campaign against China’s BRI. Western governments and media have portrayed the BRI as a pernicious plan to ensnare countries in debt-trap diplomacy. But of the UN’s 193 member states, 140 have rejected that interpretation and signed agreements to join the BRI. The advantages many have reaped from doing so underscore the folly of asking countries to take sides.

The second rule is to avoid passing judgment on countries’ domestic political systems. ASEAN demonstrates why this rule is critical. The association’s ten member states include democracies, autocracies, communist regimes, and an absolute monarchy. In the rest of the developing world, the variety of regime types is even greater. For this reason, Biden’s decision to frame world politics as a struggle between democracies and autocracies is a mistake. In practice, Biden understands that the world is more complicated, which is why he traveled to the Middle East to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in July 2022, despite having previously called Saudi Arabia a “pariah.”

The United States is only diminishing its own stature by calling on countries to shun China. Neither of the other two largest democracies in the world—India and Indonesia—see themselves engaged in an ideological struggle with Beijing, even if they have concerns about China’s rise. Nor do they feel that Beijing threatens their democracies. By carving the world up by regime type, Washington is just exposing its own double standards at the same time as many other countries are becoming more sophisticated and subtle in their political judgments.

Given the deep ideological conviction of many U.S. policymakers and opinion-makers that the United States should always be seen as a defender of democracy, it will be difficult for Washington to explicitly renounce this commitment. Yet the United States learned to work cooperatively with nondemocratic regimes (including communist China) during the Cold War. If it resuscitates that old culture of pragmatism, it can do so again today.

A Chinese-built railway in Bentong, Malaysia, January 2022

Hasnoor Hussain / Reuters

The third rule for engaging ASEAN and other developing regions is to be willing to work with any country on common global challenges such as climate change. Even if Washington is uncomfortable with Beijing’s growing global economic influence, it should embrace China’s rise as a leader in clean energy and renewable technologies. China is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases and the biggest user of coal today, but its investments in green technology will be crucial in fighting climate change. China leads the world in the production and consumption of renewable energy, manufacturing more solar panels, wind turbines, and electric car batteries than any other country. In short, there can be no feasible plan to fight climate change without involving China and its global economic partners.

Chinese investment will also be critical to ensure that other countries can fulfill their climate obligations while meeting their development and infrastructure needs. The Export-Import Bank of China has funded major solar and wind projects around the world, including Latin America’s largest solar plant, in Jujuy, Argentina, and a major wind farm in Coquimbo, Chile. China is also taking steps to make the BRI more climate-friendly, including by developing green-power, transportation, industry, and manufacturing projects. And it is expanding cooperation in green finance—for instance, by working with the EU to develop a common taxonomy for sustainable finance. Taken together, these efforts arguably exceed anything the Bretton Woods Institutions have done to combat climate change.

In short, U.S. policymakers should at least privately recognize that China’s growing economic influence can be an asset when it comes to solving shared global problems. In addition to climate change, poverty and pandemics could also be dealt with more effectively through greater cooperation between the United States and China. Such cooperation will remain elusive, however, unless Washington stops viewing any win for China as a loss for the United States and vice versa.

These three rules reflect an emerging reality to which Washington must adapt: developing countries are growing more sophisticated and better able to make autonomous decisions. The United States has done itself a big disfavor by framing the world in binary terms, as divided between good and evil, democracy and autocracy. If Washington can only work effectively with like-minded governments, it will be locked out of the global South, where most people have a different view of the world.

The vast majority of developing countries are clearly willing to work and cooperate with China. As a result, any U.S. effort to reduce or counter Chinese influence in the global South is doomed to fail. The United States should stop trying to cut China off from the rest of the world and start trying to identify areas where the two great powers can work together. As for the developing countries that wish to partner with both Beijing and Washington, the United States should look to ASEAN for guidance. Its pragmatic balancing act, or something like it, is the future for the rest of the developing world.

KISHORE MAHBUBANI is a Distinguished Fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Asia Research Institute and the author of The Asian 21st Century. He served as Singapore’s Permanent Representative to the UN from 1984 to 1989 and from 1998 to 2004.

Foreign Affairs · by Kishore Mahbubani · February 28, 2023

12. Does Technology Win Wars? The U.S. Military Needs Low-Cost Innovation—Not Big-Ticket Boondoggles

People win wars. But the right technology is damn important.

Does Technology Win Wars?

The U.S. Military Needs Low-Cost Innovation—Not Big-Ticket Boondoggles

By Jacquelyn Schneider

March 3, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Jacquelyn Schneider · March 3, 2023

It is ironic that, despite two decades of U.S.-led conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, it took just a few months of Russia’s war in Ukraine to finally draw attention to the depleted state of U.S. weapons stocks and the vulnerabilities in U.S. military supply chains. In recent months, American military leaders have expressed increasing frustration with the defense industrial base. As the U.S. Navy’s top officer, Admiral Mike Gilday, told Defense News in January, “Not only am I trying to fill magazines with weapons, but I’m trying to put U.S. production lines at their maximum level right now and to try and maintain that set of headlights in subsequent budgets so that we continue to produce those weapons.” The fighting in Ukraine, Gilday noted, has made it clear to military leaders “that the expenditure of those high-end weapons in conflict could be higher than we estimated.”

Tellingly, just 100 days after the United States approved the transfer of Javelin and Stinger missiles to Ukraine, the missile manufacturers Raytheon and Lockheed-Martin warned that it could take years to restore their stocks to pre-invasion levels. As the war drags on, the United States will face not only production line challenges but also difficulties gaining access to semiconductors and raw resources such as cobalt, neon, and lithium—elements that are essential to the manufacture of modern military technology and that China increasingly controls. The United States will have to develop the means to sustain its current weapons arsenals without sacrificing the resources it will need to research and develop next-generation platforms and munitions.

Since the end of the Cold War, the Pentagon has invested in technology that limits casualties but does not decrease the cost of manpower. It has spent heavily on expensive and scarce technologies for first-strike offensives, largely ignoring the effect of such expenditures on its ability to fund wars and to secure supply chains. Thirty years into this technological push, the United States lacks the technology and resources to maintain support for Ukraine at present levels, much less to deter China from invading Taiwan.

Now that these weaknesses have been revealed, they deserve serious attention. The difficulties the United States has faced in meeting Ukraine’s weapons needs hint at the far greater challenges Washington would likely confront in maintaining its edge in a war fought with more cutting-edge battlefield technologies. A clear understanding of the historical relationship between technological change and war suggests that the United States should urgently prioritize technology that reduces not just the political but also the economic costs of war.

SEEKING AN EDGE

War is the ultimate contest of human will. At its crudest, it is a lethal competition for power and survival in which the weak are destroyed and the strong persevere. But although warfare may fundamentally be a contest of human strength, it is also human nature to seek a technological edge over an opponent in order to shift the balance of power.

The Old Testament Book of Samuel recounts how David used a slingshot and a well-aimed stone to defeat the Philistine giant Goliath. During the Hundred Years’ War, the invention of the English longbow gave England an advantage over France. Stealth aircraft developed by the United States at the end of the twentieth century were used to great effect during the “shock and awe” phase of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. With arrows or with aircraft, military planners have always sought new technology to give them an edge over their enemies on the battlefield.

Nevertheless, states often struggle to translate battlefield technological advantages into strategic victories. For example, Germany’s development of blitzkrieg in the 1930s represented a revolution in mechanized maneuver warfare, yet the technique wasn’t enough to allow Germany to hold territory once American materiel and manpower were committed to retaking Europe. In Afghanistan, a high-tech U.S. military with remotely piloted aircraft, precision munitions, and satellite intelligence couldn't outlast a persistent Taliban.

For technology to influence who ultimately wins or loses, it cannot create merely temporary changes on the battlefield. Instead, it must buttress the human will to sustain conflict over time by fundamentally altering the cost of warfare. Having the right technology for battlefield effectiveness is necessary. But absent a focus on how these technologies affect the long-term cost, be it political or economic, the right tools alone are not sufficient for strategic success. To achieve victory, a government must have both the economic power to finance conflicts and the political control to raise funds and mobilize its citizenry. The economic costs of warfare create political costs when a government levies taxes or institutes universal conscription to maintain a conflict. New technologies become a revolutionary advantage in war when, as the military historians Williamson Murray and MacGregor Knox explain, “they alter the capacity of states to create and project military power.”

With arrows or aircraft, military planners have always sought technology to give them an edge over their enemies.

Technology can do this in myriad ways. First, technology can create greater firepower to increase the cost in terms of life and limb; think of artillery, firebombing, or nuclear weapons. These high-firepower technologies open the way for a strategic victory by creating a high enough human cost that an adversary capitulates, either because it no longer has the military manpower or because civilian casualties erode political will. Alternatively, technology can decrease the human cost of war by limiting losses and making escalation less likely, thus preserving manpower and bolstering political will. This was a theme of U.S. technological investment after the 1990-91 Gulf War, when new tools such as long-range precision-guided munitions helped keep U.S. casualties low during decades of sustained conflict in the greater Middle East.

Technology that changes the human cost of warfare has a secondary economic effect by changing the price of arming, training, and replenishing forces. The development of the longbow, for example, decreased the economic and political cost of warfare by allowing the English monarchy to replace knights with archers. Archers were commoners, requiring a tenth of the pay of noble knights, and their equipment—arrows, bows, swords—was far cheaper to provide than knights’ armor and horses. Monarchs could afford a much larger army with the same budget, allowing more wars of conquest without levying new taxes on the landed elite, which risked turning them against the crown.

Technology also changes the cost of engagement, shifting the balance between offense and defense. Perhaps the best historical example is the Renaissance-era competition between sieges and fortifications. In fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe, advances in metallurgy and gunpowder increased the firepower of attackers. At the same time, however, innovations in fortifications (such as the trace italienne, a type of polygonal fortress that was developed to protect soldiers from cannon fire) made it increasingly costly and arduous for attackers to succeed. As Giovanni Botero, an Italian political theorist of the era, noted, the winners in this contest were those who were able “not to smash but to tire; not to defeat but to wear down the enemy.” The result, Botero wrote, was a form of warfare “entirely dependent on money.”

More generally, technology affects a state's ability to fund wars and to supply the battlefield. It can do this by enabling powerful war economies or by revolutionizing the creation and production of weapons—and ideally by doing both. During the Industrial Revolution, machine manufacturing and steam engines enabled mechanized warfare and the production of mass arsenals. Railroad investments facilitated economic expansion while also decreasing the cost of mobilizing large armies, allowing states such as Prussia to rely on a rapidly deployed reserve force instead of maintaining a costly standing army.

Finally, technology can decrease resource dependencies so that states can control supply chains and sustain their ability to carry out a conflict over time. For example, late-eighteenth-century French innovations in gunpowder manufacturing allowed the French to supply American colonies with enough materiel to outlast the resource-rich British empire.

BLINDED BY VICTORY

Many of these historical lessons about technology and the cost of warfare were overlooked by the post–Cold War U.S. military, which was temporarily blinded by the overwhelming victory that technology allowed in the 1990-91 war against Iraq. American decision-makers believed that advances in computing, stealth technology, and sensors could allow a smaller, high-tech U.S. military to avoid large and costly wars of attrition and thereby preserve the political will to support a post–Vietnam all-volunteer force.

“The new American way of war,” as the writer Max Boot termed the approach, focused on what military planners called “effects-based operations” that offered quick, overwhelming victories. In this view, advanced technology would make wars shorter, more decisive, and less bloody. No longer concerned about the costs of sustaining wars of attrition, the United States could focus its resources on a leaner, higher-quality force.

The transformation of the U.S. military to a smaller, more high-tech arsenal was Donald Rumsfeld's focus when he took over as secretary of defense in 2001. However, the 9/11 attacks and subsequent U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq muddled the logic behind the transformative theory of technological victory.

While insurgents produced cheap IEDs, the U.S. launched $150,000 missiles from $30 million drones.

The United States was still fighting high-tech, expensive wars, but it was doing so over two decades and at a cost of over $10 trillion. Whereas insurgents produced cheap improvised explosive devices, rocket-propelled grenades, and mortars, the United States launched $150,000 Hellfire missiles from $30 million remotely piloted drones, dropped $25,000 precision munitions from $75 million stealth aircraft and spent $45 billion on a phalanx of armored personnel carriers —linking all of these systems with satellites at the cost of hundreds of millions to billions of dollars. And even as the number of U.S. military members shrank, the average cost per service member for the transformed, elite all-volunteer force rose by more than 60 percent between 2000 and 2012. War was indeed less bloody than before, but it didn't come on the cheap, nor did victory come quickly or decisively.

Meanwhile, Chinese advances in electromagnetic warfare, artificial intelligence, stealth, propulsion, space, and precision munitions quickly eroded Washington’s initial information-age technological lead. It was not just that China was a fast follower; the United States was also stumbling. The Pentagon’s sclerotic process for acquiring new technology, bureaucratic complacency, and constant desire for “the next big thing” meant that each technological iteration took longer and came at greater cost. The U.S. Navy’s Zumwalt-class destroyer program, for example, promised 32 stealth destroyers with revolutionary advances in guns, propulsion, and networks. Instead, after spending over $22 billion, technological cost overruns forced the Navy to cut the program to a mere three destroyers, all of which have been plagued by maintenance problems. No one meant to buy three destroyers for $22 billion. Instead, the military had ended up in a paradox: chasing emerging technologies had made weapons so expensive that no qualitative upgrade could make up for the decline in in quantity, leaving the Pentagon with an arsenal that was neither good enough nor large enough for the campaigns it planned to fight. Similarly, in a damning 2021 indictment, the Government Accountability Office projected a $6 billion cost overrun for the F-35 fifth-generation fighter program, warning that the military must either reduce the total number of aircraft it planned to purchase or the number of flying hours anticipated for them.

The United States also underprioritized technology that would rein in the cost of logistics, maintenance, and replenishment, opting instead for high-tech weaponry patched together with fragile and outdated software. This led to a series of ambitious but failed programs—for example, the $20 billion Army Future Combat Systems—that faltered as the military ignored the support technology needed to operate next-generation weapons platforms. The lack of investment in support technology also exacerbated problems with manpower, training, and readiness that had begun to surface after two decades of sustained conflict. This came to a head for the Navy starting in 2017, when a series of ship collisions and maintenance issues highlighted the service’s struggle to man and train surface fleets equipped with "overly complex" technology.

Now, as the United States pivots to Asia while resupplying Ukraine, it is still mired in expensive acquisition programs for exquisite new bombers, submarines, and next-generation fighters. As it embarks on developing military-wide networks to bring all these weapons together, it has little more to show for itself than billions of dollars of PowerPoint presentations.

LOWER-COST ALTERNATIVES

Washington urgently needs to prioritize technology that will curb the economic cost of U.S. warfare. The first step is to acknowledge that it is not realistic for the United States to replace all of its expensive existing systems with cheap, off-the-shelf technology, as some observers have advocated. Many of these high-end systems play important roles in combating U.S. rivals such as China. Instead, the United States should complement complex, high-cost technology with cheaper autonomous sensors, communications relays, munitions, and decoys—all designed to create friction, slow conflict, and increase the long-term costs to adversaries. Simultaneous investments in resilient networks, adaptable information technology, and munitions stockpiles will create a resiliency that also increases U.S. deterrence credibility after the initial salvos of war. The United States will also need to cut the administrative cost of technology by reforming bureaucracy, using the savings to invest in defense industrial capacity and access to raw resources for emerging technology. Such efforts will be difficult at a time of high inflation and political polarization, but they are necessary. Technology must decrease not only the human cost of war for the American public but also the economic toll.

None of these predicaments are new. In 1553, the Republic of Siena began constructing a new fortification so ambitious and costly that when Florentine troops invaded a year later, Siena was only partly fortified and financially destitute, with no money left to raise an army. Poor decisions in managing cost and technology doomed the city-state. More recently, U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (a high-tech plan to shoot down ballistic missiles with airborne lasers) is credited with bankrupting the Soviets as they struggled to compete with what turned out to be a technically unfeasible effort.

To avoid becoming Siena (or the Soviet Union), Washington must remember that having the right technology is necessary but insufficient to win wars. If the United States hopes to persevere against Russia in the short term and China in the long term, it must consider the economic impact of technology even as it pursues a technological advantage.

JACQUELYN SCHNEIDER is a Hoover Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and an affiliate of Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.

Foreign Affairs · by Jacquelyn Schneider · March 3, 2023

13. U.S. Security Assistance to Ukraine is Going to Get Complicated

Based on many different reports I am reading there is a need for both out of country training and in country advising. The Ukrainian Army today is not the same one that existed in the spring of 2022 after some 7 years of defense reforms and training.

Excerpts:

A year into the war, neither Europe nor the United States have prepared themselves for what could be a long war. Both have been understandably consumed with the urgency of the crisis. But both need to start looking ahead and taking the steps to support Ukraine into 2024 and 2025, as inevitably Ukraine’s forces will need to be recapitalized. To do so, the Biden administration will need to continue to make Ukraine the priority. That does not mean ignoring China or neglecting Taiwan, but it does mean accepting and managing certain risks and making sure that there is funding and equipment available for Ukraine. There are clear steps that the administration can take to keep weapons and equipment flowing but that will require senior leaders to set clear priorities, break bureaucratic logjams, and get in the weeds on esoteric security assistance processes. It will also mean building trust with House Republican leaders of key committees and at times playing real hardball with Congress. Lastly, it requires the Biden administration being frank with its European partners about the inevitable challenges it will face in maintaining its support for Ukraine and urging them to step up.

Western support for Ukraine is absolutely vital to Ukraine’s survival and sends a wider message to the world about the underlying strength of the West. It is essential that the United States and Europe keep up their support for Ukraine over the long run. To do so, U.S. and European leaders need to start acting now.

U.S. Security Assistance to Ukraine is Going to Get Complicated - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Max Bergmann · March 3, 2023

As the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approached, Senate Republican whip, John Thune, warned, “every time we’ve had to do additional funding [for Ukraine], it’s gotten harder. I mean there is a constituency out there that doesn’t see the value of it.” The United States has been counted on to help fund Ukraine’s war effort and to provide material support to blunt the Russian military’s invasion since 2022. However, the future of U.S. funding may be in doubt. In the coming months, new Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, who holds a razor-slim majority, will face a choice of whether to bring a new Ukraine funding bill to the floor for a vote. McCarthy is unlikely to bring any legislation to the floor that divides his caucus and could endanger his tenuous speakership. That unfortunately includes another supplemental appropriation for Ukraine, which a small but vocal minority of Republicans oppose. Instead of hoping that this political dynamic will magically change, both the Biden administration and Europe need to start preparing for this new reality.

Congressional gridlock in the United States will require the Biden administration to get creative in how it provides military support to Ukraine. The absence of a supplemental appropriation will not end the Biden administration’s ability to support Ukraine, but it will make it more bureaucratically challenging to keep doing so. It will also require the administration to make tough tradeoffs, something it has not yet had to do when considering how to fund the transfer of U.S. weapons to Ukraine. The administration will need to reallocate funding, use obscure authorities, and work creatively with Congress. This will also demand the Biden administration not just prioritize Ukraine but also politically assert itself to break through bureaucratic barriers and disputes. There will inevitably be issues that cause delays and place greater limitations on what the United States can provide. However, there are six potential options that the Biden administration could consider, should current funding for U.S. assistance end. These six options will also require more European support, and a creative approach to asking for and then allocating monies in the U.S. defense budget.

State of Play

Unless there is a collapse in Russian forces or a change in regime in Moscow, Ukraine will need to keep arming itself — either to maintain the current fight or to recapitalize and modernize its military to prepare for potential future Russian aggression. Not only will Ukraine continuously need to be resupplied with ammunition, but Ukraine will need to continuously recapitalize its forces with Western equipment — the Western tanks that are sent to Ukraine will experience losses and will need to be replaced. This cycle requires constant U.S. involvement and resupply.

Become a Member

The United States has allocated more than $48 billion in supplemental appropriations for Ukraine security assistance since the war began in February 2022. This includes more than $20 billion as part of the $45 billion appropriation that was completed by Congress in December 2022. This funding gives the administration a good runway to continue providing weapons to Ukraine. But it is unclear how long the funding will last. At some point, likely before the fiscal year ends on Oct. 1, 2023, the administration will need more security assistance funding for Ukraine.

Congress up until now has stepped in to pass supplemental spending bills to support Ukraine. However, these requests came at a time of single-party Democrat rule in the United States. This has changed, with the Republicans taking control of the House of Representatives following the November 2022 mid-term election.

The next time the administration runs out of funding and requests more from Congress, McCarthy may choose not to bring a new Ukraine supplemental spending bill to the House floor. The legislation could divide his caucus and could prompt funding opponents to challenge his speakership, replaying his tortuous week-long election to the position in early January. This raises the potential for a potential lapse in funding for security assistance.

Ukraine funding at this point has not demanded any tough bureaucratic tradeoffs between funding priorities. The funding has been all additive, as the administration has been extensively using its presidential drawdown authority. This authority allows the president to take equipment direct from U.S. forces or Department of Defense stocks and send it to foreign partners. This authority was normally capped at $100 million worth of equipment per year. But in response to the war in Ukraine, Congress increased the limit to $14.5 billion for this fiscal year. The supplemental appropriations thus gave the Department of Defense funds to backfill equipment sent to Ukraine in order to make it “whole” after drawing down stocks. Thus, the U.S. military could ship out older equipment and put in orders to replace it with brand-new equipment (although this will take time to contract for and build). The appropriations also gave the Defense Department’s Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative and the State Department’s Foreign Military Financing more funding, but this aid must be used to buy equipment from U.S. defense companies and is therefore often slower.

In other words, the funding thus far has not required balancing needs for Ukraine against domestic spending. It hasn’t required reducing security assistance for the Indo-Pacific. It did not require shifting funding from weapons procurement. Instead, the funding enabled the U.S. military to buy new weapons systems to replace those sent to Ukraine. The one “cost” from the Department of Defense’s perspective was that supporting Ukraine depletes equipment stockpiles, which could impact U.S. military readiness if the defense industry is unable to deliver in a timely fashion. That is a risk, but a manageable one, especially given the strategic importance of Ukraine aid.

Without a specific Ukraine appropriation, the administration will likely have to redirect or reallocate money from within the Department of Defense or State Department. This will require congressional approval. However, this does not require a full vote of the House. The leadership of congressional committees — on foreign affairs, armed services, and appropriations — all must give their approval to the potential reallocation of funding. The new Republican heads of these committees will play a critical role. Foreign Affairs Committee chair Michael McCaul favors heavily arming Ukraine, but with oversight. Kay Granger of the Appropriations Committee is a Ukraine supporter and a defense hawk. Mike Rogers, who will chair the Armed Services Committee, is also a Ukraine supporter. Should the administration get their approval (as well as that of their corresponding committees in the Senate) to redirect funds to Ukraine, the House or Senate could vote to block funding. But it is highly unlikely that opponents would have the majority needed to override, as Congress has never passed a joint resolution of disapproval to block an arms transfer advocated by the executive branch.

Options to Keep Security Aid Flowing

There are a number of ways in which the U.S. government can keep providing significant support to Ukraine without a specific appropriation. To do so, the Biden administration should begin contingency planning now.

First, the administration could keep using presidential drawdown authority to take equipment from Department of Defense stocks and send it to Ukraine. But instead of ensuring that there is funding available to replenish this equipment, the president could simply move ahead and instruct the Department of Defense to send it. The president and the military could then approach Congress and ask for additional funding to replace equipment already given to Ukraine. There are several complications with this approach. First, there is a $14.5 billion limit on how much equipment can be given away per fiscal year — a limit that the administration is fast approaching. Second, the U.S. military may be more hesitant to cede equipment to Ukraine without knowing it has the funds to replace its stockpiles. While the president can overrule these concerns, this would create significant bureaucratic opposition and resistance, particularly from the impacted military services. Furthermore, if Congress refuses to appropriate additional funds to replace equipment sent to Ukraine, the U.S. military could face shortfalls that impact the readiness of the force.

Second, the Biden administration could redirect some of the Department of Defense’s $816.7 billion defense budget toward Ukraine. The most recent defense budget was plussed up by an additional $45 billion above the administration’s request. The Department of Defense could likely find $10–20 billion to reallocate to fill gaps created by sending equipment to Ukraine. This is, after all, how European countries are aiding Ukraine, through their regular defense budgets. While most program retransfers within the department are fairly routine, finding funds of this magnitude would require hard tradeoffs. The reaction is unlikely to be as negative as when the Trump administration reprogrammed $3.8 billion from the Department of Defense to help pay for the border wall. But reprograming this much funding will certainly create bureaucratic challengers that will push back strongly against how money is being spent. Congressional appropriators and Defense Department planners no doubt have designs on this funding, such as strengthening the U.S. military’s force posture in Asia. This might lead to some further loss of support amongst China hawks in Congress. Nevertheless, as noted above, the leaders of key congressional committees are strong supporters of Ukraine and would likely support redirecting funds for military aid.

Third, the administration could reallocate funding from other U.S. security assistance programs in the State Department and the Department of Defense. This may seem the most straightforward place to find funding but there are significant limitations. Most problematic, however, is there is just not that much funding in these accounts that’s available or flexible enough to transfer to meet Ukraine’s needs. It is unlikely that key partners like Israel, which receives the largest portion of U.S. security assistance at $3.3 billion, will be content with reductions and will make that known on Capitol Hill. While there have been significant increases in security assistance funding after the invasion of Ukraine, much of this funding is planned for other partners in Europe, with the United States helping to backfill countries that have aided Ukraine, such as by providing Soviet-era tanks. The United States could reallocate some of this funding to aid Ukraine directly. However, this will leave other partners in the lurch and reduce their incentives to support Ukraine.

Fourth, the Biden administration could also simply request a significantly expanded security assistance budget for the State Department and Department of Defense. If Congress is able to fund the government (which is definitely not a given), it could substantially increase these security assistance funds. Thus, Congress would not be voting specifically for Ukraine funding but for expanding U.S. security assistance in general, which the administration would have the leeway to provide to Ukraine. However, this would require Congress to get past the fiscal brinksmanship and pass a new budget with an eye toward slipping in funding that could be devoted to Ukraine. While not impossible, this is a risky and unreliable funding source.

Fifth, the United States could create a security assistance loan for Ukraine. After the Islamic State overran Mosul in 2014, the State Department rushed to provide more security assistance to Iraq. To do this, the State Department issued a loan through its Foreign Military Financing program. This program used to be a defense lending program but switched to providing grants to foreign governments in the 1990s. Yet the State Department still maintains the authority to provide loans. A loan, however, must be paid back, which could saddle Ukraine with debt. For Iraq, the U.S. government essentially used the Foreign Military Financing program to lower the interest rate at which Iraq has been paying the loan back through national funds. This increases the cost of assistance, as interest must be paid, and would mean that portions of future Ukraine funding in 2024 and 2025 would likely be needed to service the debt. While this is an option, it is not ideal as it would add further costs to Ukraine’s hefty reconstruction tab.

Sixth, the Biden administration could use the Excess Defense Articles program in a deliberate fashion. This might be the most elegant mechanism to support Ukraine should the presidential drawdown authority become exhausted, and it could provide the least bureaucratic or congressional friction. In many ways, this mechanism could closely resemble the way in which the administration is using its drawdown authority. However, it requires the Department of Defense and State Department to start planning now — and would demand the engagement of senior leaders to push the system to work in ways it is not used to operating in, while ensuring that requests for materiel transfers are moved on quickly.

This program is fairly straightforward. Every year the United States provides excess military equipment to key partners, everything from fighter jets to coast guard cutters to tents. The military services examine their stocks and declare equipment “excess” to requirements — this is often old or outdated systems or equipment with significant war and tear. Once the Department of Defense declares a military system to be excess, it is then up to the State Department to manage a process that divests or gives away the equipment to foreign partners. The State Department conducts a review of global requirements and priorities, selecting which partners are eligible for which items. Then foreign partners are required to come and pick up that equipment. The equipment is “as is, where is” — like buying an “as is” house. The U.S. government is not supposed to spend money fixing or transporting equipment to a foreign partner, but can use security assistance funds allocated for that country to fix and transport equipment.

The U.S. military should look at its own equipment stocks, especially equipment that could be useful for Ukraine. It could then determine to replace this equipment and declare it to be excess, likely sooner than it normally would. This would stretch the spirit of the authority, but not actually violate its letter. The administration would then use funds from the regular defense budget to procure replacements for the equipment sent to Ukraine. Thus, the U.S. military would simply be modernizing its equipment ahead of schedule, all the while providing support to Ukraine. For instance, the United States could designate older F-16s, Abrams tanks, missiles, and artillery systems as excess and then the State Department could choose Ukraine as the recipient for this equipment.

However, using the Excess Defense Article system in this innovative way would generate strong bureaucratic resistance at both the State Department and the Department of Defense. I myself had direct experience with trying to use this system to help divest of excess U.S. equipment during the drawdown in Afghanistan in 2013. That effort ultimately failed — huge quantities of equipment were eventually scrapped and a major security cooperation opportunity was missed. Much of the equipment would have ended up with European militaries and would likely have made its way to Ukraine. The major issue was not the authority itself — there were so many different bureaucratic equities involved that the process broke down, largely preventing the divestment of equipment. Ultimately, we had a good plan, but we lacked the senior level involvement needed to get the bureaucracy aligned behind it. To overcome this naturally slow process for Ukraine will require senior officials in the Biden administration to get involved in the process and react with the same sense of urgency that I experienced in Afghanistan. What I learned is that when a political directive is given, things can move faster than previously anticipated.

What This Means For Europe

Inevitably, it will become more difficult for the United States to keep supporting Ukraine at the same pace and flexibility. There will inevitably be growing bureaucratic friction within the Biden administration — whether over reallocating funding or dwindling supplies. As such, it is unlikely that the United States will be able to provide the level of support in Fiscal Year 2024 that it is currently providing. But that is a problem because the Western tanks and artillery sent today will likely need to be replaced next year — either to fight the war or to rearm Ukraine to deter the next war.

Thus, the United States and Europe need to start thinking ahead to 2024. The risk is that without funding, the unity that the Biden administration has pushed so hard for could crack. While there are clearly ways that the U.S. government can maintain its support for Ukraine, the Biden administration should also be clear with Europe that it will also need to step up its support. Europeans have been reassured by statements from White House and other officials that despite the change of control in Congress, American support will continue unabated. The administration should stop making those assurances and instead should let Europe know now that there could be future constraints on assistance.

There will be understandable doubts about whether Europe can or will fill the void. European militaries have given away huge quantities of equipment, their defense industrial base has been depleted, and what industries remain have not yet been activated to a war-time footing. Europe’s ability to assist in the short term may be limited, but the Biden administration should press European countries to start working together to make large joint procurements of items critical for Ukraine’s war effort. With European stocks depleted, Europe should focus on rearming itself and Ukraine for the longer term, as both Europe and Ukraine will need to recapitalize their militaries in the coming years. The Western systems — from tanks to infantry fighting vehicles — that Ukraine is receiving will all need to be replaced. Many of these systems will be damaged in combat or will be used beyond repair. Ukraine will need to acquire new modern Western NATO-compatible systems, including fleets of vehicles and aircraft. Europe will need to backfill itself all the while it also needs to backfill Ukraine.

This will be expensive and will require European and U.S. leaders to plan ahead. It will also further strain European industry that is struggling to meet European demands. The E.U. European Peace Facility could be a vehicle similar to the Ukraine supplemental appropriations in the United States, which essentially incentivized the Department of Defense — or in this case European member states — to provide equipment to Ukraine, without have to make difficult tradeoffs. The European Peace Facility, however, would need a dramatic increase in funding. It has currently allocated more than $3.5 billion to backfill E.U. members sending aid to Ukraine.

The European Union could significantly increase the funding available in the European Peace Facility and use those funds to support the provision of fighter jets to Ukraine, for instance. The Estonians have recently made a €4 billion proposal for the European Union to jointly procure ammunition, using the facility as a vehicle to make joint procurements. The European Union could also do something similar to acquire new Leopard tanks. Unbelievably, the production lines for Leopard tanks have not yet ramped up because the orders have not been made and contracts have not been signed. This is indicative of how challenging the future may be for Ukraine, if there is not a contingency plan for less U.S. funding in the future.

E.U. member states should consider buying equipment for Ukraine collectively and then prioritize sending systems as they come off the production line. Rearming Ukraine should go hand-in-hand with rearming Europe.

Conclusion

A year into the war, neither Europe nor the United States have prepared themselves for what could be a long war. Both have been understandably consumed with the urgency of the crisis. But both need to start looking ahead and taking the steps to support Ukraine into 2024 and 2025, as inevitably Ukraine’s forces will need to be recapitalized. To do so, the Biden administration will need to continue to make Ukraine the priority. That does not mean ignoring China or neglecting Taiwan, but it does mean accepting and managing certain risks and making sure that there is funding and equipment available for Ukraine. There are clear steps that the administration can take to keep weapons and equipment flowing but that will require senior leaders to set clear priorities, break bureaucratic logjams, and get in the weeds on esoteric security assistance processes. It will also mean building trust with House Republican leaders of key committees and at times playing real hardball with Congress. Lastly, it requires the Biden administration being frank with its European partners about the inevitable challenges it will face in maintaining its support for Ukraine and urging them to step up.

Western support for Ukraine is absolutely vital to Ukraine’s survival and sends a wider message to the world about the underlying strength of the West. It is essential that the United States and Europe keep up their support for Ukraine over the long run. To do so, U.S. and European leaders need to start acting now.

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Max Bergmann is director of the Stuart Center and the Europe, Russia, Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He worked as a senior advisor in the State Department from 2011–2017, where he focused on political-military affairs.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Max Bergmann · March 3, 2023

14. How Will the War End? Thoughts on Ukraine, Russia, and a Theory of Victory

Excerpts:

This leads us to an essential component of a theory of victory: the ability on the part of strategists and senior leaders to render politically aware military advice. I do not mean advice adhering to one political party or another. Politically aware military advice is based on listening to policymakers and politicians, and understanding the constraints of national politics and policy. This means engaging in the serious talks about the use of force as an extension of policy, albeit in what Cohen eloquently described as the “unequal dialogue,” but in the strongest possible position. The military does not direct policy, but advises on what force can and most importantly cannot do.

The best outcome for US security and foreign policy is a steady and assured victory for Ukraine in which military conditions are set to give diplomatic options for negotiation. A theory of victory would both reflect this as the optimal outcome and, by linking the use of force to US strategic objectives, enable it to come to fruition.

How Will the War End? Thoughts on Ukraine, Russia, and a Theory of Victory - Modern War Institute

mwi.usma.edu · by Kevin Benson · March 3, 2023

For all intents and purposes the Budapest Memorandum—under which the United States, Russia, and the UK gave assurances on the territorial integrity of Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus—is now worthless. The purpose of the memorandum was violated by the Russia in 2014 with its seizure of Crimea. At best, the existence of the memorandum can provide some diplomatic and perhaps legal basis for the support the West is currently giving Ukraine. That support, from both the United States and its allies, came quickly after Russia’s invasion last February and has rapidly grown since. But to what end? In other words, what does victory, specifically from the standpoint of US interests, look like in Ukraine?

The answer to this question, of course, is a function of US interests and strategic objectives. One of the first statements of US policy regarding Ukraine after Russia’s invasion was in a New York Times op-ed by President Joe Biden, published on May 31 of last year. It laid out the following US objectives:

A democratic, independent, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine with the means to deter and defend itself against further aggression;
Ukraine with a significant amount of weaponry and ammunition so it can fight on the battlefield and be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table;
Russia paying a heavy price for its actions, thus sending a message to other would-be aggressors that they cannot seize territory and subjugate other countries; and
Sustainment of other peaceful democracies and the rules-based international order.

These are objectives issued specifically in the context of Russia’s February 2022 invasion and the ongoing war that it triggered. We can gain further fidelity on US interests by taking a broader view, for which US strategic documents—the National Security Strategy in particular—offer a starting point for review. The 2022 National Security Strategy is explicit in delineating the elements of US strategy vis-à-vis Ukraine, Russian aggression, and the stability of Europe and the world in general:

While some aspects of our approach will depend on the trajectory of the war in Ukraine, a number of elements are already clear. First, the United States will continue to support Ukraine in its fight for its freedom, we will help Ukraine recover economically, and we will encourage its regional integration with the European Union. Second, the United States will defend every inch of NATO territory and will continue to build and deepen a coalition with allies and partners to prevent Russia from causing further harm to European security, democracy, and institutions. Third, the United States will deter and, as necessary, respond to Russian actions that threaten core U.S. interests, including Russian attacks on our infrastructure and our democracy. Fourth, Russia’s conventional military will have been weakened, which will likely increase Moscow’s reliance on nuclear weapons in its military planning. The United States will not allow Russia, or any power, to achieve its objectives through using, or threatening to use, nuclear weapons. America retains an interest in preserving strategic stability and developing a more expansive, transparent, and verifiable arms control infrastructure to succeed New START and in rebuilding European security arrangements which, due to Russia’s actions, have fallen in to disrepair. Finally, the United States will sustain and develop pragmatic modes of interaction to handle issues on which dealing with Russia can be mutually beneficial. [Emphasis added]

From President Biden’s May 2022 op-ed and the National Security Strategy published in October, then, we have a reasonably clear picture of US objectives and strategic interests. US policy is readily apparent: supplying the Ukrainians with arms. The key question is what connects this policy to the strategic objectives.

Reflecting on that question, I am reminded of words I heard spoken by the late Rick Sinnreich during a wargame some years ago. What is the aim of our policy, he asked, and how do we conclude this effort on terms favorable to the United States? War, as we all know, is an extension of policy through other means. With respect to Ukraine today, it is crucial that US strategists and policymakers are considering the questions Rick posed. Success for any US strategy with regards to Ukraine, Russia, and how this war ends requires one fundamental but often elusive element: a theory of victory.

Eliot Cohen has described a model for twenty-first-century strategy in which a “theory of victory” was a vital component. Cohen proposed a consideration of assumptions, ends, ways, means, priorities, sequencing, and a theory of victory. I wrote about this model and suggested substituting risks for priorities. I wrote to Cohen in January 2012 asking what he meant by theory of victory. He replied, “My definition of a theory of victory is really simple—’why do we think this will work?’ I wouldn’t make it any more complicated than that, since nothing ever really takes into account everything the other side is likely to do.”

On this basis, we can establish a theory of victory for the war in Ukraine—essentially, “If the United States commits force in accordance with the strategy developed then we will be victorious because . . . .” The use of force is the actual commitment of US forces or providing US weapons, logistics, and intelligence support. The statement demands constant strategic-level work and interaction with policy and decision makers. I mean this theory of victory to apply to attaining US policy objectives, guided by Rick Sinnreich’s words about ending the war in Ukraine on terms favorable to the United States. Cohen allows us to infer that victory does not simply happen, but is the result of hard work linking tactical success and operational effect to attaining strategic and policy objectives. Attaining policy objectives is victory in this century.

In proposing a theory of victory I am assuming both that there is a grand strategy in place for our support to Ukraine and that the joint staff is continuously assessing (a) how well the support that we (the United States, NATO, and other partners) are providing the Ukrainian armed forces is being used and (b) the effectiveness of those systems. If there is not a strategy in place we have a much bigger challenge. Reading the objectives coldly and pragmatically sets the basis for our theory of victory. Recall the five policy objectives from the National Security Strategy:

Objective 1: Support Ukraine in its fight, help it recover economically, and encourage its regional integration with the European Union.
Objective 2: Defend NATO territory and build and deepen a coalition to prevent Russia from causing further harm to European security, democracy, and institutions.
Objective 3: Deter and respond to Russian actions that threaten core US interests.
Objective 4: Prevent Russia, or any power, to achieve its objectives through using, or threatening to use, nuclear weapons, develop a suitable arms control infrastructure to succeed New START, and rebuild European security arrangements.
Objective 5: Sustain and develop pragmatic modes of interaction to handle issues on which dealing with Russia can be mutually beneficial.

The use of military force by providing the Ukrainians the means to fight as well as reinforcing deployments of US forces to NATO countries establishes the military conditions that underpin policy success. The United States is supporting Ukraine, objective 1. It is defending NATO soil with our presence in Europe and by the Ukrainians fighting Russians on their soil, objective 2. The Departments of State, Defense, and Homeland Security are actively (I am assuming) deterring and frustrating Russian cyberattacks on US infrastructure, objective 3. Given our equipment is assisting the Ukrainians in weakening the conventional Russian armed forces, this offers the Departments of State and Defense ways to engage the Russians in revitalizing START, which in turn plays a part in reestablishing stability and security for all warring parties, key steps toward attaining objectives 4 and 5. While Russian President Vladimir Putin did recently announce Russia’s withdrawal from New START talks, it appears the Russians are not embarking on a massive nuclear arms buildup.

Thus, I offer what we—the West and, most importantly, the United States—are doing will work for several reasons. First, through our unified support to Ukraine the United States is reinforcing US security and the stability of the international system of rules. Overt invasions of sovereign countries will not be tolerated and will be opposed through diplomatic, economic, informational, and military means. Second, there is and will continue to be a more unified and larger NATO. Third, Russia will be weakened militarily. Moreover, demonstrated Russian ineptitude and technical weaknesses in Russian arms will cut into Russia’s ability to export arms. This will also open markets for US export of natural gas to Europe, weakening European reliance on Russian fuels. Finally, Ukrainian resistance and perhaps a Ukrainian victory will enable skilled US and other Western diplomats opportunities to engage a chastened Russia in multiple areas of mutual concern, but on US terms.

The foreseeable options for how this war could end were laid out in a provocative, and thought-provoking, article in the New York Post, written by Douglas Murray. The conclusion of the Russia-Ukraine war on terms favorable to US security and foreign policy must balance, as Murray put it, avoiding provoking Putin to seek a quick victory by “doing something so appalling . . . that the war is terrorized to a stop.” Avoiding this unacceptable option by Putin requires assured, sustained support of the Ukrainian armed forces at a pace that ensures Ukrainian victory. The pace of delivery of support also provides Ukrainian and Western diplomats the best options for diplomatic resolution.

This leads us to an essential component of a theory of victory: the ability on the part of strategists and senior leaders to render politically aware military advice. I do not mean advice adhering to one political party or another. Politically aware military advice is based on listening to policymakers and politicians, and understanding the constraints of national politics and policy. This means engaging in the serious talks about the use of force as an extension of policy, albeit in what Cohen eloquently described as the “unequal dialogue,” but in the strongest possible position. The military does not direct policy, but advises on what force can and most importantly cannot do.

The best outcome for US security and foreign policy is a steady and assured victory for Ukraine in which military conditions are set to give diplomatic options for negotiation. A theory of victory would both reflect this as the optimal outcome and, by linking the use of force to US strategic objectives, enable it to come to fruition.

Col. (ret) Kevin Benson, PhD, commanded from company to battalion level and served as a general staff officer from corps to field army. He was the CFLCC J5 (Plans) at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom and the director of the School of Advanced Military Studies.

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: Chad J. McNeeley, DoD

mwi.usma.edu · by Kevin Benson · March 3, 2023

15. Lessons from the Melian Dialogue: A Case Against Providing Military Support for Ukraine

Excerpts:

Readers will note that excluded from these two options is the outcome that most hope for: Ukraine defeating the Russian military and regaining control of the entire country. Those in the West who promote this outcome are feeding Ukrainians with what we know to be “danger’s comforter.” The longer the West provides Ukraine with military aid, the longer Ukrainians will be deluded in the face of greater dangers than those they already face.

Ending the war through a peace treaty, even an unideal one, is an objectively better outcome than the logical conclusion of its current course. Each new round of military equipment sent to Ukraine is more advanced than the last. The first batch of American aid included anti-armor and antiaircraft munitions. Roughly a year later, NATO countries have provided Ukraine with Patriot missile systems and are in the process of supplying them with tanks as well. Meanwhile, the Russians are becoming increasingly angry with Western governments, cutting diplomatic ties, exiting treaties, and occasionally threatening nuclear war. Is helping Kyiv regain control over the eastern territory worth that risk? Alternatively, Western governments could instantly eliminate that risk by ceasing its military aid. That would, of course, expedite Ukraine’s inevitable defeat and hurt the pride of Western leaders. Was the pride of the Few, or their value of sovereignty, worth the lives of Melos’ populace? And is there a lesson to be learned from the Spartans’ decision not to intervene?

Lessons from the Melian Dialogue: A Case Against Providing Military Support for Ukraine

As the war in Ukraine rages on, and peace talks have yet to commence, it’s long past time we ask ourselves if helping Kyiv regain control of eastern Ukraine is worth the risks, and if there isn’t another way forward.

The National Interest · by Michael Guy · March 2, 2023

The Melian Dialogue is among the most heavily analyzed sections in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. Athens wanted to take Melos, a small island, as a subject of their empire. The Athenians sent envoys to negotiate with the Melians, who had no true means of resisting a superpower like Athens unless their allies, the Spartans, chose to once again fight a long, bloody war on their behalf.

Unlike Melos, which never received Spartan aid and whose population was ultimately annihilated, Ukraine has received an endless supply of military aid from Western countries. Russian leaders regularly warn that the West’s military support of Ukraine could lead to a full-fledged war between NATO and Russia. After all, the truth of the matter is that American and other NATO members’ weapons are being sent to Ukraine in order to kill Russian soldiers.

Furthermore, while the Melian Dialogue certainly consisted of a lot of talking, there was hardly any true negotiation. Each party maintained unconditional positions that were paradoxical to one another, making any meaningful progress impossible. The same can be said with Russia and Ukraine; each party refuses to even come to the negotiating table until the other agrees to unacceptable demands. To avoid a Melian ending in Ukraine, one or both parties will have to modify their conditions. To avoid a worse ending, NATO should consider the following questions. Was it prudent for Sparta not to intervene in Melos, or should they have risked another massive war with Athens over the island? Should Melos have surrendered? As the war in Ukraine rages on, and peace talks have yet to commence, it’s long past time we ask ourselves if helping Kyiv regain control of eastern Ukraine is worth the risks, and if there isn’t another way forward.

The Athenian envoys opened the dialogue by acknowledging that they were brought only before the rulers of Melos, or “the Few,” because the people,“the Many,” would quickly agree to the Athenians’ demands and inferred that the Few knew this to be true. The Melians stated that though they would take part in a dialogue, there was hardly any serious discussion to be had. They understood that the Athenians had made up their minds and intended to turn Melos into their subject, which the Melians refused to consider. Herein lies the key problem that persists throughout the entire dialogue: each side maintained unconditional positions that were paradoxical to one another. The unconditional Athenian position was that Melos would become a subject of the Athenian empire, the only question being whether they would secure it through Melian submission or war. The unconditional Melian position was that they would not become a subject of the Athenian empire, the only question being whether they would achieve that through persuasion or war. The only outcome that both parties were willing to accept was also the one they both wanted to avoid. Does this sound familiar?

Kyiv has offered a ten-point peace proposal to the Russians, which includes the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine and the restoration of pre-war borders. It should come as no surprise that Russia declined Kyiv’s proposal. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has urged Ukraine to accept the “new realities” and that if they don’t, “no kind of progress is possible.” Among these “new realities” include the annexed regions of eastern Ukraine being part of the Russian Federation. Referendums were held in each of these regions, and though they all allegedly voted to join the Russian Federation, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, along with most of the Western world, has denounced these referendums as “shams” with “no legal value.”

Like the Athenians and Melians, Russia and Ukraine each maintain paradoxical, unconditional positions. The party being aggressed has every right to resist. That said, if either of these countries eventually become serious about ending the war for the sake of preventing further loss of life and destruction, there will have to be peace talks, and concessions will have to be made. Short of that, the only alternative is for one side to military defeat the other, which would lead to a far worse outcome for the loser.

The Athenians, like the Russians today, encouraged the Melians to accept the reality before them. They dismissed all arguments grounded in the abstract, such as the importance of hope. The Melians spoke of “the fortune of war” and stated that “to submit is to give ourselves over to despair, while action still preserves for us a hope that we may stand erect.” The Athenians responded coldly, referring to hope as “danger’s comforter,” and said that when reality is too harsh to accept, people “turn to the invisible, to prophecies and oracles, and other such inventions that delude men with hopes to their destruction.” Ukraine is in a similar position, but unlike the Melians, they have been fed reasons to be hopeful by Western governments. Melos received no support from their allies, whereas Ukraine has received foreign military aid since the beginning of the war. This has been noticeably beneficial to the Ukrainians. As of November 2022, Ukraine has reclaimed over 50 of percent the land captured by Russia, though Russian forces still control roughly 15 to 20 percent of the country. Even with most NATO members agreeing to supply Ukraine with tanks, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stated that dozens of tanks will hardly make a difference, given the fact that Russia has thousands of them. Despite the quantity being insufficient, those tanks do provide a real benefit to the Ukrainian military, according to Zelenskyy. “They do only one very important thing—they motivate our soldiers to fight for their own values. Because they show that the whole world is with you.” In short, the West has supplied Ukrainians with hope.

The Melians cited the prospect of a Spartan intervention as a stronger argument against Athenian aggression. They claimed that the Spartans would intervene, “if only for very shame…”. Again, the Athenians struck them down, saying that danger is something “the Spartans generally court as little as possible.” One might not think of the United States as a nation that courts danger infrequently, given their long history of foreign interventions. But in the post-World War II era, the United States has exclusively fought against relatively minor powers. Major powers, which make up most of the United States’ greatest adversaries, tend to be off limits, and rightfully so. Not because America would lose a conventional war against a major power, but because of one key factor: nuclear weapons. In this regard, Americans are like the Spartans, who generally court danger as little as possible.

After going back and forth several more times over the prospect of a Spartan intervention, the Athenians suggested that the Few should seek advice from others before it’s too late. Before leaving, they told the Melians to make their final decision carefully, as it was a choice between “prosperity or ruin.”

The Few never changed their minds, they never sought advice from others and war ensued. The Melians held out for roughly a year before finally surrendering, at which point every man in Melos was executed, the women and children were sold into slavery, and Athenian colonists settled Melos for themselves. The Many were annihilated because of a decision made by a small group of individuals. To prefer death over the loss of sovereignty is noble. Subjecting an entire city to that decision is probably poor governance. If the Many had any say in this dialogue, would they have made the same decision, or would they have preferred to live as subjects of the Athenian empire? For the war in Ukraine to end through peace talks instead of a more Melian fate, either Russia or Ukraine will have to change their unconditional demands.

There are only two possible outcomes for Ukraine. Either most of Ukraine will remain under Kyiv’s control, or all of Ukraine will be reduced to rubble, its leadership overthrown, and the entire country will potentially face annexation. The first outcome relies on peace talks taking place before the Ukrainian military is outright defeated. Those peace talks would probably include Kyiv surrendering its eastern territory to Russia. The second outcome is virtually guaranteed if Ukraine is defeated before agreeing to a peace treaty that involves forfeiting territory it hasn’t had real control of since 2014 anyway. This is true even with a continued supply of Western military equipment.

Readers will note that excluded from these two options is the outcome that most hope for: Ukraine defeating the Russian military and regaining control of the entire country. Those in the West who promote this outcome are feeding Ukrainians with what we know to be “danger’s comforter.” The longer the West provides Ukraine with military aid, the longer Ukrainians will be deluded in the face of greater dangers than those they already face.

Ending the war through a peace treaty, even an unideal one, is an objectively better outcome than the logical conclusion of its current course. Each new round of military equipment sent to Ukraine is more advanced than the last. The first batch of American aid included anti-armor and antiaircraft munitions. Roughly a year later, NATO countries have provided Ukraine with Patriot missile systems and are in the process of supplying them with tanks as well. Meanwhile, the Russians are becoming increasingly angry with Western governments, cutting diplomatic ties, exiting treaties, and occasionally threatening nuclear war. Is helping Kyiv regain control over the eastern territory worth that risk? Alternatively, Western governments could instantly eliminate that risk by ceasing its military aid. That would, of course, expedite Ukraine’s inevitable defeat and hurt the pride of Western leaders. Was the pride of the Few, or their value of sovereignty, worth the lives of Melos’ populace? And is there a lesson to be learned from the Spartans’ decision not to intervene?

by Michael Guy

Michael Guy is a political writer, activist, and campaign worker with a master’s degree in political science with a focus on political theory and American politics.

16. 'Destabilizing and dangerous’: Pentagon official warns of communication breakdown with China

'Destabilizing and dangerous’: Pentagon official warns of communication breakdown with China - Breaking Defense

Chinese counterparts are declining to engage even on working-level dialogues, according to Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Ely Ratner, raising greater fears that misinterpretation could spark conflict.

breakingdefense.com · by Michael Marrow · March 2, 2023

President Xi Jinping of China attends a working session on food and energy security during the G20 Summit on November 15, 2022 in Nusa Dua, Indonesia. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images,)

WASHINGTON — In the wake of the US downing a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina, a key Defense Department official described a collapse in communications with Chinese officials from the top of military leadership down to working group levels — a breakdown that he said creates a dangerous situation as both powers step up military activity in the Indo-Pacific.

“These are the kinds of times that we need to be talking about what our intentions are, what our perspectives are,” Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Ely Ratner said during a forum hosted by the Hudson Institute today.

Ratner was expanding on a previous Pentagon disclosure that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s calls to his counterpart in Beijing went unanswered in the hours after the balloon was blown up by an F-22 Raptor.

It’s not the first time communications with Chinese officials have broken off in the long, strained history between Washington and Beijing, but Ratner suggested it was one of the most sweeping in recent years. Chinese officials have not picked up the phone for other top brass like Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and head of Indo-Pacific Command Adm. John Aquilino, Ratner said, adding that the problem now extends down to lower-level talks on political and military affairs.

“Some of our working-level dialogues that are meant to manage the [political-military] part of this, our [Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for China] Michael Chase’s dialogues as well as some of the operational dialogues INDOPACOM holds with the [People’s Liberation Army], they have turned all of that off for now. And we think that’s destabilizing and dangerous, and we think we both ought to be doing a better job of managing,” Ratner said.

The severed lines of communications come as the US seeks to strengthen deterrence in the Indo-Pacific by deepening military pacts with allies, efforts that Ratner said have so far culminated in a “breakthrough year” for partnerships in the region.

Among growing cooperation with countries like the Philippines, Japan and South Korea, he also said officials are “feeling quite good about making strong progress” on the AUKUS trilateral security agreement, adding that there will be “more capability flowing into the region” as Australia develops its nuclear submarine fleet.

The submarine deal is additionally helping officials to confront another pressing issue, according to Ratner: sharing intelligence with allies, which is often blocked by rules like Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals, or NOFORN, classification that foreign partners have long complained stifles cooperation.

“AUKUS is a good example of that, where if it relates to technology sharing, yes, we need to change the way that we share technology with our partners,” he said, expressing confidence that officials are having “much better conversations… in a way that hasn’t happened previously.”

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia Lindsey Ford further emphasized the importance of documenting evidence of unsafe Chinese maneuvers and sharing it publicly, a tool she said has been essential for countries with fewer military capabilities to prevail in the “information war” that can emerge after an allegation of hazardous military activities.

“These kinds of unsafe operational behaviors carry real risks with them, and seeing something like an accidental incident because of unsafe behavior turning into a conflict is something we all want to avoid,” she said during the Hudson Institute event. “So that’s one of the reasons you hear us talking a lot about this right now.”

breakingdefense.com · by Michael Marrow · March 2, 2023

17. Weapon replacement costs changing nature of Ukraine war

Weapon replacement costs changing nature of Ukraine war

Field commanders loath to use expensive, hard-to-replace equipment could bring a new meaning to ‘cost of war’

asiatimes.com · by Matthew Powell · March 2, 2023

The amount of ammunition being consumed in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict has surpassed all estimates. This is starting to put pressure on the production and supply chains involved in the manufacture of ammunition for artillery guns among other weapons systems.

This is not an unprecedented problem. In warfare throughout history, armies have often underestimated the level of force and destruction of equipment that will be encountered and the amount of ammunition that will be consumed.

Time and again, this has affected military planning. For example, a lack of shells for British artillery in the first world war resulted in a crisis that led to the downfall of the government of Herbert Asquith.

But the ability of protagonists of the two world wars to sustain their efforts despite huge levels of destruction comes down to the fact that weapons of that era were relatively simple to produce compared to today’s sophisticated military hardware. And the relative cheapness of the weapons allowed extensive numbers to be produced during the conflict.

The Russo-Ukrainian war has not involved loss rates of equipment or consumption of material on the scale of the world wars. But, despite this, the destruction of major, technologically cutting-edge, equipment can cause a headache for military planners and strategists.

NATO members and other European countries have sent a great deal of equipment, beginning with air defense systems and escalating more recently to main battle tanks such as the Challenger II and Leopard. If the security of individual nations, Europe and NATO is to remain secure, this equipment will have to be replaced.

HIMARS: sophisticated and accurate over a long range but expensive to run. Photo: Asia Times files

Balance sheet

While losses of equipment in the Russo-Ukrainian are difficult to verify, various bodies including Oryx and Army Technology, an open-source intelligence site, have provided estimates on equipment losses. But when looking at these figures it is important not to look at just the raw numbers. Weapons lost, destroyed or used up need to be compared with the total numbers estimated to have been deployed.

Estimates for the numbers of Russian weapons deployed since February 2022 include 15,857 infantry fighting vehicles and 1,391 aircraft. That side’s estimated losses, up to the end of December 2022, according to Oryx, are 794 infantry fighting vehicles and 71 aircraft as well as 91 artillery pieces.

Ukrainian estimated available deployment has included 3,309 infantry fighting vehicles and 128 aircraft. Estimated Ukrainian losses as of the end of December 2022 are 418 infantry fighting vehicles, 55 aircraft and 92 artillery pieces.

Major modern defense equipment, such as the F-35 Lightning fast-jet aircraft and the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers, is becoming ever more sophisticated and expensive. So it’s no longer possible for replacements to be manufactured quickly. And the sheer cost of this hardware means it’s virtually impossible to keep replacements in reserve for when losses occur.

When ordering the F-35 Lighting, with the first deliveries expected in 2012, the UK originally set out to purchase a total of 138 aircraft. But the timeline for reaching this total has been delayed and now that number has been reduced due to affordability problems.

The first batch of 48 aircraft is due to be delivered by 2025, with an additional 27 by 2033. This delivery schedule, which represents fewer than four aircraft per year between 2025 and 2033, has been agreed with the manufacturer largely on production and cost factors. Such numbers make the creation of a reserve force next to impossible.

F-35 Lightning. Photo: Wikipedia

Such a delivery schedule, caused partly by having to spread deliveries over a longer time period due to cost implications, but also because of the length of time that such equipment takes to be manufactured, means these assets become of increasing value.

Reports suggest that it takes more than 41,000 hours per worker to manufacture an individual F-35 jet aircraft. Such a lead time in manufacturing limits the total number that can be delivered in any one year. With the current backlog of orders awaiting delivery, the replacement of aircraft lost to enemy action or flying accidents could take many years, and perhaps even decades.

Risk-averse

Losing such important and technologically sophisticated military assets may lead commanders in the field to become more risk-averse when it comes to their direct deployment and engagement with an enemy that has an equivalent – or near equivalent – capability.

Without a mass of reserves to replace equipment that has been destroyed in the war, some of this equipment (which – let’s not forget – can cost millions or even billions of dollars) may not be deployed at all. While this is an extreme outcome, the potential for political backlash from the general public is great for politicians and senior military leaders.

This potential for increased risk averseness could mean these cutting-edge assets are not deployed or are deployed only in exceptional circumstances.

Falling budgets

There’s also an interesting equation involved in modern defense budget calculations. Thanks to the increasing sophistication and accuracy of today’s weapons, fewer need to be deployed to achieve similar damage to the enemy. In other words, more can be achieved with less.

Defense budgets as a proportion of overall government spending have tended to fall since the second world war – and particularly since the end of the cold war. This is what’s known as the “peace dividend.”

But, at the same time, individual pieces of equipment are vastly more expensive. Time will tell whether this will mean field commanders are more unwilling to commit to the use of such expensive equipment when it is more difficult to replace. This could change the nature of the conflict and bring another meaning to the phrase the “cost of war.”

Matthew Powell is a teaching fellow in strategic and air Pper Studies at the University of Portsmouth.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

asiatimes.com · by Matthew Powell · March 2, 2023

18. The impossible choice facing many of America’s military families

The impossible choice facing many of America’s military families

militarytimes.com · by Shannon Razsadin · March 3, 2023

Too many military families are in a no-win situation that has put their families’ health and well-being at risk. While addressing military family financial stress, the answer is relatively simple: we must ensure families have the fully funded benefits they’re told they can count on.

Over the last year, there has been an incredible and concerted focus on improving the economic security of service members and their families. Recurring themes like food insecurity, military spouse employment, health care and child care, commissary savings, and affordable housing have formed the nucleus of public perception.

But as our leaders, advocates, and those serving our nation have come to learn: the remedy for securing affordable basic needs is anything but basic.

According to the Department of Defense’s most recent survey of active duty military spouses, one in four have experienced food insecurity, nearly mirroring the food insecurity rate of service members. Military teens report even higher levels of food insecurity in their homes than their parents readily admit.

For the past decade, military spouses have endured an unwavering unemployment rate around 21%. This has presented too many military families with the challenge of trying to make ends meet on a single income. For junior enlisted personnel with families, that can feel nearly impossible.

A proposed fix? A basic needs allowance for the families who need it most. After significant dialogue and congressional involvement, DoD implemented a monthly allowance for active duty service members whose total household income falls below 130% of federal poverty guidelines. But sadly, based on recent reporting, it appears that few are eligible for this new allowance.

With over 1.3 million active duty members and 24% experiencing food insecurity along with their families, how do we close the gap for those who need help but aren’t getting it? An answer could lie at the intersection of food and housing.

Too often, military families find themselves skipping meals or opting for less nutritious options because they are forced to put food on the backburner to keep a roof over their heads. This isn’t a choice they should have to make — and it’s one DoD can fix.

Permanently restoring service members’ housing allowance to the full 100% will make an immediate, tangible difference for families struggling to keep their finances afloat.

Basic Allowance for Housing, or BAH, was previously intended to cover 100% of housing and utility costs. But in 2015, the formula changed so that military families had to shoulder part of that bill. As of 2019, troops are receiving only 95% of the average cost of rent and utilities in the areas where they live. This 5% cost-share for housing, initiated by DoD with congressional permission, has been met with questions, notably by the Government Accountability Office.

But what seemed feasible to leaders just a few years ago has been sorely tested by the pandemic and its aftermath, particularly the unstable housing market and inflation. As military families continue to move across the globe every two to three years, you have a perfect storm for families now on the financial edge.

The huge increase in 2023 BAH rates — which jumped by an average of 12.1%, but reached as high as 38% in Twentynine Palms, California — was a significant step forward. But it didn’t close the gap that the 5% cost-share created. Too many families continue to struggle, with no relief in sight.

According to Military Family Advisory Network’s research, in 2021, 59.4% of families living in civilian housing were paying more than $251 out of pocket each month for housing and utilities. Requiring the Basic Allowance for Housing to cover 100% of the average housing costs in an area would help families living paycheck to paycheck. For the 46% of military teens who told National Military Family Association they had experienced some form of food insecurity in the past 30 days, that could put the food they need on the table.

Military families are shouldering the financial burden of a life committed to service, and that simply cannot continue if we wish to preserve the all-volunteer force. DoD can change that and, with this step, help take care of its greatest asset — its people.

Shannon Razsadin is a Navy spouse and president of the Military Family Advisory Network. MFAN’s mission is to understand and amplify the needs of military-connected families and inspire data-informed change.

Besa Pinchotti is CEO of the National Military Family Association, or NMFA. Since 1969, NMFA has worked to strengthen and protect millions of families with advocacy and programs driven by research.

19. U.S., Allies Should Swiftly Penalize China for Supporting Russia’s War Against Ukraine

U.S., Allies Should Swiftly Penalize China for Supporting Russia’s War Against Ukraine

fdd.org · by Jack Sullivan · March 2, 2023

March 2, 2023 | Policy Brief

John Hardie

Russia Program Deputy Director

Ryan Brobst

Research Analyst

China is allegedly considering supplying Russia with lethal military assistance, including Shahed-like suicide drones and artillery ammunition. This assistance could have a significant impact on the battlefield in Ukraine, depending on the type and quantity provided.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted in February that Chinese firms have already provided non-lethal aid to Russia’s war effort. This assistance allegedly includes satellite imagery for Russia’s Wagner Group as well as body armor and helmets. In addition, China has emerged as the chief lifeline for Russia’s defense industrial base. Russian firms routinely circumvent Western export controls by procuring microelectronics and other sensitive products through China-based traders and shell companies. Chinese firms, including state-owned enterprises, have also continued to supply sanctioned Russian defense contractors with goods such as navigation equipment and fighter jet parts.

Now, Beijing is “strongly considering providing lethal assistance to Russia,” Blinken alleged. On Thursday, Germany’s Der Spiegel reported that the Russian military and China’s Xi’an Bingo Intelligent Aviation Technology are negotiating a deal under which the company would produce and test a hundred ZT-180 one-way attack drones, delivering them to Moscow by April. Russia would also receive components and know-how enabling it to produce 100 of the drones per month.

The ZT-180 reportedly carries a 35-50-kilogram warhead and has a design similar to the Iranian-made Shahed-136. Russia began using the Shahed-136 last year, mainly to target Ukrainian critical infrastructure, especially the power grid. With a larger quantity of suicide drones, Russia could increase the size and frequency of its barrages, further straining Ukrainian air defenses.

Furthermore, according to U.S. government sources cited by The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, China may supply Russia with artillery ammunition, although CNN reported the ammunition would likely be for small arms rather than artillery.

Russia’s military, like Ukraine’s, relies heavily on artillery. Throughout the war, availability of artillery ammunition has greatly influenced battlefield outcomes. In their Donbas campaign last year, Russian forces inched forward thanks to enormous volumes of artillery fire. More recently, withering barrages have helped Russia advance in and around Bakhmut. However, Moscow’s stockpiles appear to be dwindling, forcing Russia to conserve ammunition.

This shortage will worsen unless Russia can secure substantial supplies from abroad. Moscow has reportedly received some artillery ammunition from North Korea and Iran, but China could potentially send much more, enabling Russia to employ a higher rate of fire or its current rate for longer. This could help Russia frustrate Ukrainian advances, occupy more territory, and prolong the war.

Washington has already warned Beijing that it will face “real costs” if it provides lethal aid to Russia. At a minimum, the United States should sanction culpable Chinese firms.

But Washington should not wait for Beijing to send lethal aid before acting. Many Chinese companies have engaged in sanctionable activity by providing other sorts of support to Russia’s war machine, but Treasury has designated only a fraction of them. That should change.

The United States should also push European allies — many of which have been slower than the United States to cut ties with companies linked to the Chinese military — to join the U.S. sanctions. In addition to helping prevent China from exploiting gaps in Western sanctions regimes, European participation would make clear to Beijing that supporting Russian aggression in Ukraine puts at risk China’s economic ties with Europe.

Failing to penalize Chinese entities that engage in sanctionable activity with Russian defense companies undermines the credibility and efficacy of U.S. sanctions threats. Conversely, swiftly targeting those entities could help deter Beijing from deepening its support for Moscow’s war effort.

John Hardie is deputy director of the Russia Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where Ryan Brobst is a research analyst at FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP). For more analysis from the authors and FDD, please subscribe HERE. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_CMPP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy.

fdd.org · by Jack Sullivan · March 2, 2023

20. The Munich Security Conference was a display of ‘the West v. the rest’

The Munich Security Conference was a display of ‘the West v. the rest’

BY CHRISTOPHER MCCALLION, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 03/03/23 7:00 AM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/3876391-the-munich-security-conference-was-a-display-of-the-west-v-the-rest/

As world leaders met in February for the annual Munich Security Conference, the Russo-Ukrainian War and growing Sino-American tensions dominated the proceedings. The conference, which is usually centered around the Trans-Atlantic alliance, made a point this year of inviting a number of delegations from the Global South. Russia, of course, was not invited.

For European attendees, the focus was firmly on Ukraine. In addition to France and Germany’s reaffirmation of their commitments to bolster their own defense and to support Ukraine, both British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Polish President Andrzej Duda called for Ukraine to be given long-term security guarantees by NATO following the war.

Western security guarantees to Ukraine are likely to be seen by Moscow as being a de facto alliance with the West. Given that Russia’s concerns about Ukraine’s deepening security ties with the West arguably have been central to the conflict with Ukraine since 2014, such security guarantees potentially would be an obstacle to ending the current war and a precipitant to a future conflict.

The UK and Poland are among the most hard-line NATO countries when it comes to Russia, but Sunak and Duda strike a hawkish posture in the knowledge that any assurances to Ukraine ultimately will be enforced by the U.S., with the implication that Ukraine will be protected under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. The Biden administration appears to be wisely opposed to offering such assurances, instead seeking to help post-war Ukraine become a “porcupine” capable of defending itself directly against future Russian aggression.

During their remarks, Sunak and Vice President Kamala Harris claimed that Russia had committed “crimes against humanity” in Ukraine and must be “held to account,” with Sunak specifically calling for Russian leaders to be brought before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague. The Russian ambassador to the U.S. responded that the U.S. was “demoniz[ing] Russia” “to fuel the Ukrainian crisis.”

Formal accusations of this kind against a nuclear power are unwise and impose arbitrary limitations on America’s diplomatic options.

First, it sends an unmistakable message that the U.S. and its allies seek nothing less than unconditional surrender and regime change in Russia, which is likely to make Moscow only more intransigent and the conflict more intractable. Second, casting Russian leadership as criminals to be condemned, rather than counterparts to be negotiated with, undermines the West’s ability to pursue an eventual diplomatic settlement. Finally, the fact that the U.S. does not recognize the authority of the ICC over its own actions, while advocating for other leaders to be prosecuted, only increases the perception in much of the world that the U.S.-led “rules-based order” is a hypocritical smokescreen for Western imperialism.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese counterpart Wang Yi met after Blinken’s trip to China was canceled in the wake of “Balloongate,” but there was little sign of progress toward easing Sino-American relations. Wang described Washington’s response to its balloon as “absurd” and “near-hysterical,” showing the U.S. to be weak, not strong. Wang also made clear that Beijing will not tolerate foreign interference over Taiwan, saying that “Taiwan is part of Chinese territory. It has never been a country and it will never be a country in the future.” Meanwhile, Blinken threatened Beijing with “serious consequences” if it supplied Russia with lethal aid, and scoffed at the announcement of a now-released Chinese peace proposal for Ukraine.

China’s peace proposal probably received a more sympathetic hearing from leaders in the Global South, many of whom similarly have called for a negotiated end to the conflict. Western leaders’ attempts to argue that the fate of Ukraine will have far-reaching repercussions outside of Europe, and that Russia was fighting, in French President Emmanuel Macron’s words, a “neocolonial, imperialist” war likely failed to impress most attendees from Latin America, Africa and much of Asia. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz even quoted a previous statement by Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar, that “Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.” “He has a point,” Scholz conceded.

In all, the conference paid lip service to the diffusion of global power away from the West, while in essence insisting on the permanence of the liberal international order underwritten by the Trans-Atlantic alliance, with the U.S. as primus inter pares. Few steps were taken to imagine an international order that could accommodate an emergent multipolar distribution of power in which non-Western states increasingly have the capability to advance their own interests and demand a say over global affairs.

Christopher McCallion is a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities.

21. Congress can put Army modernization back on track

Congress can put Army modernization back on track - Breaking Defense

AEI's John Ferrari asks five important questions that the Army needs to answer before committing to high-dollar procurements during its modernization push.

breakingdefense.com · by John Ferrari · March 2, 2023

Members of the Innovation & Technology Caucus of the Texas House make a visit to AFC Headquarters in Austin, TX on March 4th, 2022. (US Army Photo by Patrick Hunter)

Pentagon leaders have prioritized redefining the way the military procures new weapon systems and equipment, to keep pace — or get ahead of — China and Russia. This is especially true with the Army, which publicized a laundry list of modernization priorities. But in the op-ed below, AEI’s John Ferrari, a retired Army major general, says some recent moves around Army Futures Command have raised concerns, and lawmakers need to take note.

The head of Army Futures Command, Gen. James Rainey, recently stated that the command was told to shift its main focus from modernizing the service for near-peer competition by 2030 to designing the Army of 2040. That’s the bureaucratic equivalent of being told to “sit in the corner and color” for the next 17 years — and is the direct result of service leadership deciding to bring acquisition back into the Pentagon, as opposed to trusting it to the purposefully-designed-to-bring-news-ideas-into-the-service Futures Command.

Given the Army’s many acquisition failures over the past several decades, it seems appropriate for Congress to exercise its constitutional power granted in Article I, Section 8, Clause 12: “To raise and support Armies.” The sidelining of Futures Command should raise real questions about the Army’s plans to modernize itself over the next decade — and Congress should start asking very real questions of Army leadership about whether the current strategic path is still the right one.

Here, then, are five questions Congress should bring up in the coming budget hearings.

1. Is Futures Command Worth Saving? The first question Congress should ask is a simple one: given the decision to sideline Futures Command, is it worth keeping around? In an era where some question the number of flag officers in the military, Futures Command is loaded with one four-star, three three-stars, one two-star, and a one-star. On top of these generals, the command also has numerous general officers leading cross-functional teams and other subordinate units. One has to wonder what impact any of these officers will have on designing an Army that will not take form for almost two decades.

Additionally, a chief reason for the existence of Futures Command was to rebel against and change the acquisition process through innovation and a sense of urgency. If this function is now gone, it may be time to disband the command, return the pieces back to where they came, and harvest savings from the headquarters’ closure.

2. Who Holds The Bag? The next question for Congress is who will be held accountable when modernization programs run aground. The Army has a long history of failed programs, from the Crusader self-propelled howitzer program to the Comanche helicopter, and every time a program fails, fingers get pointed across different Army organizations, preventing one person or entity from receiving the blame. Promises were made, buildings were leased, and housing was procured for Futures Command to be located not at yet another military base but in the tech hub and start-up capital that is Austin, Texas. That was done for the sole purpose of speeding up innovation within modernization and driving capability into the hands of the warfighter faster and more efficiently than anywhere else in the Army — or Pentagon, for that matter.

If the Army’s modernization was to fail, it was clear that the failure would have been with Futures Command. With responsibilities moved back to Washington, who in the Pentagon will be the single person to say “the buck stops here?”

3. Are The Big Programs Still The Right Programs? After addressing the future of the command and accountability for modernization, Congress should reassess and ask the Army whether the largest of the service’s modernization programs should move forward. New start programs which are costing billions to be developed, such as Future Vertical Lift and the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle (OMFV) should immediately be examined by Congress. For the OMFV, which is intended to replace the Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle, that’s all the more important given past failures to replace the platform, namely the Army’s Future Combat Systems program and the Ground Combat Vehicle [PDF].

If the Army is going back to the old way of doing business, centering innovation back in the Pentagon’s Washington bureaucracy, and if, as some say, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results, why should the Army be trusted to spend billions over the course of the next decade? And are we sure these programs, or other key modernization efforts, are still the right path forward given what we’ve learned about modern combat, including the vast consumption of munitions and weapons, over the last year in Ukraine?

4. Is There A Smarter Way To Do This? Instead of pouring taxpayer dollars into platforms that may never bear fruit, could Congress direct the Army to incrementally improve its current fleet of armored vehicles and helicopters with new technology? Not only for the sake of cost, but also to make current fleets the go-to solutions for the militaries of the free-world. For instance, rather than building an entirely new helicopter to replace the Blackhawk, and subsequently take on all of the risks, schedule delays, and cost overruns [PDF] likely to come with it, the Army can build off of what it knows. That means adding new capabilities, like autonomous flight onto the Blackhawk, a tested platform that has been upgraded at multiple points over the course of its time in service.

Or, instead of purchasing an entirely new platform as a future replacement for the tried-and true (not to mention in demand) Abrams tank, it can consider heading down a more iterative production route and purchasing the Abrams X. It can also look at upgrading its new Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle with a gun instead of developing the OMFV.

The Blackhawk and the Abrams are just two of multiple franchise-like programs that can be sold across the globe and upgraded for minimal dollars, thereby gaining huge economies of scale within the supply chain.

As an added bonus, purchasing these two platforms will keep open and resilient the domestic production lines in Connecticut and Ohio that can support their production. Given the military’s habit of prematurely shutting down production of needed weapons and systems, this would be a welcome reversal of that trend.

5. Are We Spending Smartly? Finally, as the Army’s next budget is submitted, Congress should question the Army on whether it has the right mix of procurement and research and development dollars. The Army, like much of the Defense Department, is divesting today to invest for tomorrow. Given that the planning horizon for war with China has moved from 2035 to this decade, and that we have an actual war in Europe that has clearly demonstrated the lack of depth in basic munitions and weapons, Congress should ask the Army if it is building enough Abrams, Blackhawks, Apaches, and all types of munitions.

For fiscal 2024, the Army may submit a budget heavy on development and then expect that Congress will bail it out with more procurement funds as it has done in the past. Considering the recent discussions within Congress concerning spending, the clock may have run out on the Army expecting Congress to add funds for needed tanks, helicopters, and munitions, all of which were on its last unfunded priority list. Congress should be asking tough questions and consider reallocating funds to ensure we have the weapons we need this decade to win wars in Europe, the Middle East, and in the Pacific.

Several years ago, the Army made a bold step in trying to break its cycle of failure in developing new weapon systems. It convinced Congress that Futures Command was different and that the Army should be trusted with multi-billion dollar, decade-long new builds. As the service has sidelined the new command and is back to developing systems using the same old processes, Congress should question the Army on these areas and adjust the service’s programs accordingly.

Maj. Gen. John Ferrari, US Army (ret.), is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and is the former director of program analysis and evaluation for the US Army.

breakingdefense.com · by John Ferrari · March 2, 2023

22. Key American Allies Aren’t Following Governmentwide TikTok Bans

Key American Allies Aren’t Following Governmentwide TikTok Bans

U.K., Australia and New Zealand leave matter to individual departments, spurring concerns from lawmakers

https://www.wsj.com/articles/key-american-allies-arent-following-governmentwide-tiktok-bans-2a67a802

By David WinningFollow

in Sydney and Stu WooFollow

in London

March 3, 2023 5:38 am ET

Bans on TikTok on government-issued devices in the U.S., the European Union and Canada are prompting lawmakers in some of Washington’s main intelligence-sharing allies to demand that their countries follow suit.

Australia and New Zealand haven’t banned TikTok across all government agencies, instead leaving it to individual departments to decide whether their employees can install the app. Australian government departments—including defense—prohibit the installation of TikTok, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd., but some lawmakers say the lack of a blanket ban creates unnecessary national security risks.

The U.K. also hasn’t unveiled a ban on TikTok for work devices, prompting some prominent British lawmakers to urge the government to reconsider its stance.

“We run the risk of becoming a laggard amongst free and open countries on this issue,” said Alicia Kearns, chairwoman of the U.K. Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee.

Last month, the European Commission—the European Union’s executive arm—banned its staffers from using TikTok on work-issued devices, a move that came amid concerns from U.S. and European lawmakers that Beijing could force TikTok to hand over data on its users, or to influence the videos they view.

At the same time, Canadian regulators opened a probe into the platform’s privacy practices. And this week, Canada banned the TikTok app from government-issued devices, citing an unacceptable level of risk to privacy and security.

In the U.S., the federal government and most states have similarly banned employees from using TikTok on government-owned devices.

A TikTok spokesperson said U.K., Australian and New Zealand user data is stored in the U.S. and Singapore and access to it is tightly controlled.

“We have never shared user data with the Chinese government, nor would we if asked,” the spokesperson said.

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